CASE STUDY
How United Road Consolidated Legacy Systems and Scaled Operations with NetSuite and Caravel
July 29, 2026
Industries: General Services
United Road is a finished vehicle logistics and transportation company that moves everything from remarketed fleet vehicles for major rental and used car brands to individual owner relocations. Built over the past two decades largely through acquisition, the company has matured into a national logistics operator with roughly a thousand colleagues and revenue approaching the mid-market threshold. Technology sits at the core of the business, and United Road has been pushing to modernize a segment that has historically lagged in that area.
Challenge
United Road had outgrown its legacy accounting platform, a system that had not seen a meaningful update in about a decade. Years of acquisitions had also left the company running a patchwork of point solutions, including standalone applications for lease management and fixed assets, alongside a proprietary transportation management system known internally as OVIS and a separate maintenance platform.
Senior Director of Operations Technology Kevin Kirkpatrick and his team needed an ERP that could scale with a growing mid-market business, consolidate the point solutions under one roof, integrate cleanly with OVIS, the maintenance platform and the CRM used by the sales organization, and stand on its own without being tethered to the broader Microsoft stack already in place. Compounding the challenge, United Road ran a small IT shop with limited NetSuite expertise, so the company needed a partner who could bring deep platform knowledge, guide the team away from unnecessary customization and provide dependable support long after go live.
Solution
After evaluating several mid-market ERP options, including Acumatica and Infor, United Road selected NetSuite for its functional fit, integration flexibility and cost. The company chose Caravel as its implementation partner because the team led with candid advice rather than a sales pitch, brought strong NetSuite expertise and offered a clear post go live support model built for a lean IT organization.
Caravel and United Road designed a phased implementation to avoid a big bang cutover. Phase one focused on the essentials, standing up general ledger and core accounting in NetSuite and building the integrations from OVIS into the new platform. Caravel implemented middleware to orchestrate data flow between NetSuite and the surrounding systems, and the team delivered phase one in roughly an eight month release cycle. Throughout the build, Caravel consultants pushed back when a request would have led down a custom rabbit hole, pointing the team toward out-of-the-box NetSuite capabilities and explaining what accounting adjustments would unlock them.
“Caravel really told us where we needed to be right and wrong, and was not afraid to say, ‘Hey, you guys are doing that wrong. Please consider this because of X, Y, Z,’” said Kirkpatrick, Senior Director of Operations Technology at United Road. “They were really good partners with us and not just, ‘Sure, we can go build whatever you want.’”
Once the core was stable, the team moved into a prioritized phase two backlog covering the migration of invoicing out of the transportation management system and into NetSuite, ongoing optimization of the middleware layer and expense management. Because the same Caravel consultant who led the build rolled directly into phase two, there was no relearning curve, and the post go live support team handles day-to-day fixes with resolution often inside 15 minutes.
Outcome
United Road now runs on a modern, scalable ERP that consolidates functions previously scattered across legacy applications. The company retired a decade-old accounting platform, folded lease and fixed asset management into NetSuite and connected the ERP to its proprietary OVIS transportation system through a middleware integration. After a few expected bumps in the months right after go live, the environment is stable, the team is making steady tweaks and colleagues across the organization are learning how to get more out of the platform.
Just as important, United Road came away with a partner it trusts and a repeatable model for tackling what comes next. The phased approach let the business absorb change without disruption, honest guidance from Caravel kept the implementation clean and continuous support from the same consulting team gave United Road a foundation the business can confidently grow on.
Explore What’s Possible With Caravel
Every ERP journey looks a little different, and the right partner makes all the difference. Whether you are evaluating NetSuite for the first time, planning a phased rollout or looking to optimize an existing environment, Caravel’s team is ready to help you build a plan that fits. Connect with us to get started.