Background
Averitt is an award-winning freight transportation and supply chain services provider, specializing in LTL, dry van, international and logistics solutions. For the better part of two decades, they have been transloading containers for import and export. The company culture talks about many things, but one of the main things is how to make life better for our associates.
The Problem
The company can receive anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 containers per year that need to be transloaded. The process is very labor-intensive, especially when containers are floor-loaded to maximize space. It is also a manual process, leading to safety and injury issues. The physically demanding nature of the job and long hours has negatively impacted employees morale and the company has experienced higher turnover rates.
These challenges prompted Averitt to seek a solution that would improve safety, efficiency, and the employee experience.
The Solution
Ed Smith, VP Distribution & Fulfillment, went to the executive team in corporate and said, "If we want to make the lives better of our associates, we want to build speed and efficiency, and we want to give something to our customers something to understand what we're doing, to protect their product, to make it easier to transload it: This is the machine."
Initially, employees were skeptical fearing job elimination. Employees were assured that the machines were for assistance in making the task easier and not to replace jobs.
"The truth is, this used to be a 12-hour process for us. We'd start about six in the morning, and we'd finish up about six at night. Now we start at four in the morning and we're done by noon. From a business aspect, we're more productive. We've doubled the amount of cartons we can move per hour. Our doors are able to be utilized more times. We don't need as many doors to get the same amount done," said Kevin Flenniken, Service Center Director.
"I can't speak enough about it from an overall standpoint of how pleased I am with it. I've been doing this for over 20 years, and it's the best device we've found so far to enhance the lives of our associates, the experience for our customers, and to overall better manipulate the volumes that come in," said Ed Smith.