Overview

Company: Reddy Ice 

Industry: Packaged Ice Manufacturing & Direct Store Delivery 

Locations: Nationwide U.S. operations 

Contact: Jessica Harbin, Senior Recruiter

Reddy Ice is the largest manufacturer and distributor of packaged ice in North America, operating as a DSD (direct store delivery) company across the U.S. The recruiting team hires across a wide range of roles: drivers, plant operators, maintenance and HVAC technicians, and corporate leadership.

The Challenge

Reddy Ice's recruiting needs are heavily technical. Plant managers need HVAC and ammonia exposure to oversee operations. Maintenance leads need specialized backgrounds in robotics or industrial systems. Drivers need the right CDL credentials and safety records. These roles are hard to fill, and the candidates Reddy Ice needs are not usually browsing job boards.

Before FactoryFix, the recruiting team relied on Indeed and LinkedIn. Both platforms generated volume, but volume was never the problem. The problem was sorting through it.

On platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed, candidates apply to as many jobs as possible, hoping something sticks. For recruiters on the receiving end, that means volume without quality.

"I have to go through thousands of applications to get to maybe the three I want," says Jessica Harbin, Senior Recruiter at Reddy Ice. "And they're not qualified. And they're from out of state."

Job board quality kept declining while pricing kept climbing. Reddy Ice was paying more to screen more unqualified resumes for roles that needed specific, technical experience.

The Solution

FactoryFix gave Reddy Ice a manufacturing-specific talent network paired with built-in AI that handles initial outreach, screening, and qualifying conversations. Recruiters only engage with candidates who have already been vetted and confirmed as interested.

For Jessica, the AI is the core of the value.

"The AI is taking a lot of that first call out. Candidates are telling it either yes or no. So I'm really only contacting the truly qualified, interested candidates. That's better than a low-level intern sourcer that we used to have to pay. Now we don't have to pay."

She uses the platform's interaction logs as a ranking system. Before her first call with a candidate, she can already see where their hesitations are, whether compensation is an issue, and what they've engaged with. She structures her conversations around that context.

For specialized technical roles, the screening logic does the heaviest lifting. Bob, the recruiter at Reddy Ice who owns maintenance and HVAC technician hiring, only engages with candidates once FactoryFix has pre-qualified them.

"He doesn't have to engage until he has someone in the pipeline that he knows already has all of it," Jessica says. "Then it's an exercise of making sure they can verbally articulate what was put in there."

The Results

Since signing on with FactoryFix at the start of 2026, Reddy Ice's recruiting team has seen measurable wins across multiple role types:

• 500+ recruiting hours saved across the Reddy Ice account
• Time-to-fill cut by weeks on hard-to-fill leadership and technical roles
• Plant manager hired in Freeport, FL, a role requiring HVAC and ammonia exposure, sourced from the FactoryFix candidate pool
• Four qualified interviews scheduled in a single week for a maintenance lead role
• A significant reduction in first-touch outreach work, with AI handling initial qualifying conversations

The time savings matter most to Jessica. "Time is my currency here," she says. The hours that used to go into reading through unqualified resumes and chasing candidates who were never really interested now go into actual recruiting work: building relationships with candidates, supporting hiring managers, and closing offers.

Expanding Across More Roles

Reddy Ice started with FactoryFix on the roles where the recruiting team needed the most help: technical maintenance and HVAC hires for Bob, and specialized leadership and corporate roles for Jessica. The results in those buckets have built confidence in the platform across the team.

Now Reddy Ice is putting FactoryFix in front of more of their hiring. Drivers represent roughly 70% of Reddy Ice's hiring volume, and Jessica is testing the platform on a CDL-A driver role, the first time FactoryFix will touch Reddy Ice's largest hiring bucket.

"If it works, we talk about replacing Indeed and investing all of our money into this bucket," Jessica says.

Whatever the team decides on Indeed, the core value of the platform is already settled.

"Time savings is the biggest one," Jessica says. "I get to focus on the candidates who are actually ready, and the platform handles the rest."

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