Quote of the Day (positive ones preferred)

MikeJr

MikeJr

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Jan 21, 2010
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So, I thought to start a thread of positive quotes of the day. Never know, it may catch on.

Some background: I'm in a meeting last week with one of our favourite carriers to work with. High service levels, premium price but you always get what you pay for. It's been a few years since I've visited so we hit on every topic from personal to business to histories of both companies and back... Then he says something I think more and more is being forgotten, certainly by reading some of the threads on here:

"Hey Mike, you know what kills me? The number of orders (not from your team) that we handle where the order turns into rocket science... It's very simple, we have trucks, we pick up goods at a shipper and deliver them to a consignee. I'm amazed at how often people forget how simple it is. We pick up and deliver. I tell them to call me whenever you need something moved and we'll do just that, I promise we will."

Great guy, great team and always great service. Thank you, you know who you are!

Keep well,
Mike
 
Very true. However, as those of us that have been in this industry for a while know, things are not quite as simple and straightforward as they were 20+ years ago. The days of picking up a load at a Canadian factory or mill, and then delivering it right to the end user, are slowly disappearing , along with those Canadian factories and mills. There are more parties involved in transport transactions (and I am not referring to brokers) than in the past. There are a number of things that have made this business somewhat more like "rocket science" than in the days of yore and carriers have had to make adjustments, most of them successfully. I admire and respect your carrier's concise definition, but I am sure that like most carriers, they are adapting and evolving to deal with the new realities of todays transportation. Do I wish things were the same as they were back then?.....of course. Do I think we will ever return to those "simpler" times?..........not a chance!
 
loaders - they are doing quite a bit of updating, yes. All trucks are on E-logs already, software has long been EDI capable for those clients that require, the list goes on of course. Perhaps yes, he/we/others like to reminisce about simpler times. I'm considering moving to the country and eating a lot of peaches...

Rob - I'm very happy for the 5 shipments we've done together this year because you are also a top notch provider. If s*%t went sideways you'd be the first to call and let us know so we could fix it together, most of the 'very economical' providers simply are not set up to provide the same level of service. You pay for what you get, there ain't any way around that! :)

Keep well,
Mike
 
There's still lots of room left for you up here in the country MikeJr, just stay the hell away from my peach tress though!
 
Positive quote of the day:
Email received near 5AM: We are sorry to report that the driver scheduled for your 9AM pickup in MI is no longer available to handle this shipment. We are routing another driver from Strathroy ON and will still arrive 30 minutes prior to the 9AM pickup apt.

These are the carriers that I want to give every load to! High level of service, a;ways honours their commitments no matter what happens, love it!

Keep well,
Mike
 
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The industry has definitely changed in that things are not as simple as just making a pick-up and delivery, and not as simple as a one on one relationship with one person at a company. If it's a small company it may be so but not with anything of real substance.

The present (and future) of the industry is end-to-end solutions and integration with customers. If you look at the majority of the M&A activity out there in our industry, it's not so much about buying a book (though it does come into play) as it is about adding complimentary services to become more complete.

From a carrier standpoint, I do believe that it's largely about cash flow. Carriers will flock more and more to larger brokers that can offer a way to be more collaborative with their carrier partners with a way to enhance cash flow at low cost.

Larger carriers and brokers will tend to have hybrid models of asset/non-asset. Assets may mean rolling or real estate assets, but can also include IT infrastructure (this is the model for growth of CHR, Transplace to name a couple).

Transactional freight will end up becoming more automated once the systems are figured out to vet carriers and shippers alike properly and minimizing transaction costs. Actually, it's already happening on the LTL side but the truckload side is more difficult because it's so fragmented.

So ... in short ... our industry is becoming rocket science.
 
I don't know about carriers flocking to the big brokers. Every day I go head to head with the big boys, and guess what, more often than not I get the truck. I'm more concerned about the aggressive upstart than with the big boys and their talking heads. The way I see it, if they're so great I wouldn't be in business to begin with let alone for almost 15 years.
 
" What do you mean you can't be at the Food Terminal for 3 am" ?
" What do you mean you have to shut down in Buffalo " ?
" What the hell is an e-log " ?

Well I'll be dipped in shit !

Not sure that was positive but I am positive things were much simpler years ago. We may have to contact Cape Canaveral for help !!!
 
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We haul a box around that we put other boxes in, as long as we know the commodity, weight, Custom Broker and transit time we do what we say. Our goal is to take over lanes and fade into the background by which I mean we do the job we said we would and not show up on anybodies radar for bad service. I had a multinational approach us to do some work for them and they where shocked that we did a multi drop daily run for them for 3 years and they did not even know about it - fade into the background until they need for something else.
 
Response from a broker who was very happy with our frequent updates: "You are amazing...Fantastic actually".
It's nice to know that our efforts are appreciated. :)
 
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