your outbound nished goods locations, to reduce that transportation spend. Once you’ve picked that location, you also want to look at where you will draw employees from to ll that warehouse. If you’re in a spot where you don’t have access to enough team members, you will be challenged. We work with our customer to make sure that not only do we nd the right location from a transportation standpoint, but also decide if it is the right location for staf ng inside the facility. Then we work closely on the con guration. If we know that a customer’s growth projects that they will need 450,000 square feet in four years, we don’t want to get them into a building that’s 250,000 now and then we’ve got a year to gure out how to add to it or move into another location down the road. We work with the customer to con gure the portion of that building they need with the ability to grow into the balance of it. In the meantime, we’ll work with other partners, other shippers, to bring in third-party freight to defray the cost of that facility so customers can take the full building and be able to grow into it eventually. n
Dedicated contract transportation solutions allow companies to focus on their core competencies without having to own or operate a private fleet.
has gotten easier over the past ve or 10 years. What hasn’t gotten easier is understanding who your partner is going to be—getting to know them. And not just the services that they provide, but the type of organization they want to be. The way they behave, the way they interact with their customers, and cultural alignment is often overlooked. You need the ability to meet each other’s needs in a transparent way and develop a sense of trust. When you go out and try to nd the right partner, understanding who they are and what they want to be is just as important as pricing and capabilities because your needs will evolve. I saw this on the shipper side when I worked for a seed manufacturer. In the ve years I was there, our business in that industry changed dramatically with complexities that were injected into the manufacturing process, which resulted in much different distribution. Having a partner who could work through that with us would have been a lot easier than trying to gure it out on our own. That’s the kind of partner we want to be. I’d also caution folks as they look to build a distribution network, build out a regional distribution concept, or just take distribution out of manufacturing to allow more space to create material. Don’t shortchange your long-term plan. Often, in the interest of saving a few dollars on the front end, companies want to buy into a smaller facility that meets today’s needs, but it won’t meet their
needs in three to ve years. Take a hard look at what your long-term plan is and build for who you want to be—not for who you are. Although it’s more expensive in the near term, it’s a lot less expensive in the long term to be in the right facility, as opposed to having to make changes along the way as you implement your growth strategy. Wadle: We perform site analysis for potential customers. One thing that you look at is identifying the right location for your inbound raw materials and for
Ruan offers versatile warehouse space and customized solutions tailored to partners’ requirements.
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