What does our truck say about our business? When a customer watches us pull on to their property, do they unconsciously get a mental picture of how their freight will be handled?
***image3***What does our truck say about our business? When a customer watches us pull on to their property, do they unconsciously get a mental picture of how their freight will be handled?
We often see the owner of the business as well as the people involved with loading our truck and handling the paperwork. When we open the back doors and back into the dock if they have one or we open our doors and lower our lift gate what are they thinking?
We often do not know the customer or how big a business will be when we accept a load offer. We have made it our policy to treat every customer the same regardless if they are shipping a box of flat washers, a mainframe computer loaded with priceless data, or explosives; all freight is treated as irreplaceable.
***image2***We had a lot to learn when we first started in expedite world as in the past we had mainly dealt with warehouses and distribution centers in the truck load carrier arena and the only person that saw the outside of our truck was the gate guard. The trailer was always swept out and clean for the forklift driver and most of them did not care they wanted to load the freight and get another trailer in the door. Load securement was not something that we often worried about as the trailer was usually full from front to back. Our time as well was not much of a concern and the forklift driver loaded us on there schedule not ours.
Expediting changed all of that thinking as well as procedures when we arrived onto a customer’s property. We still have gate guards on many of the properties and we still have docks to deal with. The difference is the type of customer on the dock, as many of them oversee the loading of the truck or they even get involved with loading the freight. We quickly learned to step up our level of professionalism and attitude. We found out quickly that we liked dealing with this level of customer.
In our business the Cascadia, with its aerodynamics, the truck being clean, the company logo, us getting out of the truck being clean and neat, the back of the truck being organized and set up to haul freight, our paperwork in order for them to sign, strapping in the freight correctly so as not to have freight damage, and being courteous to the customer, pulling out of the docks and applying a lock to the doors, and then pulling off of the property at the appropriate speed all leads to a good customer experience for them as well as us.
Our old Freightliner had over 800,000 miles on it which made no difference when we pulled onto a customers property; the truck was clean and neat and ready to haul freight. We will continue to evolve and improve our business as we continuously strive to do a better and more professional job.
