As the pandemic drove more people to turn their backyards into staycations, BBQGrills.com took off, netting more than $1 million in sales during its first year. But rapid growth meant more shipments, and the business quickly outgrew its shipping operations.
help keep their customers happy and get the experience they’ve come to expect,” he says. When a company’s management team nds a freight provider they can trust— one that understands how important the growth of their business is—that relationship can pay dividends over the longer term, Graziano says.
Freeing up time has helped Maltbie focus on revenue, which doubled in 2021, he says. At the same time, shipping costs have dropped by 35%, while the order ful llment process is more streamlined. Once someone places an order, BBQGrills.com determines from which of 15 warehouses to ship it. Then it informs Coyote of the order, and Coyote takes it from there. Another bene t has been the drop in damaged freight claims, which declined by about three-quarters. In the 18 months the two companies have been working together, only a handful of shipments have suffered damage, and all of these were quickly resolved, Maltbie says. When BBQGrills.com had been with a previous logistics company, it could take close to one year to resolve a claim, he adds. Coyote “has been a great company to work with,” Maltbie says. Even as the number of shipments jumped by about two-thirds between 2020 and 2021, Coyote was able to keep up. “BBQGrills.com is a growing company with great people behind the brand,” Graziano says. He adds that Coyote is “thrilled to play a small part supporting their journey.” Leadership at Coyote prides itself on being fast, ef cient, and service-centric, and prioritizing communication with its clients, Graziano says. This helps foster an atmosphere of trust on both sides. “We can rely on their business; they can rely on us to
process,” that could consume several hours every day, Maltbie says. Having Coyote handling these “was de nitely positive,” he adds. SOUND FREIGHT MANAGEMENT Consolidating freight under one logistics provider gives smaller businesses access to pricing and LTL rates more favorable than many can access on their own, Graziano says. In addition, by working with strategic carriers and monitoring each shipment from freight classing through delivery, and providing shipping insights, Coyote can reduce claims and operate more ef ciently. “There are no smoke and mirrors, just sound freight management with an eye toward a longer-term strategy instead of chasing rates load-by-load,” Graziano says. In working with BBQGrills.com, “my biggest focus was giving time back to Maltbie so he could focus on other growth areas of his business, like sales, marketing, and strategizing,” Graziano says. To provide additional help, Coyote put together a support team that could help BBQGrills.com with quoting, building shipments, generating bills of lading, supporting freight claims, and other functions. The goal? “Making freight something Maltbie just needs to check in on occasionally, knowing it’s in good hands and, therefore, reducing his day- to-day time spent on managing logistics,” Graziano says.
READY FOR MORE GROWTH The growth and change at
BBQGrills.com appear likely to continue. Maltbie’s team is looking into expanding its supplier base and adding new brands to its distribution network. It’s also building relationships with architects and manufacturers to create custom designs. The continued growth will mean even larger orders and higher volume. As the owner of the company, Maltbie strives to remember why he started it in the rst place: to source excellent products, provide outstanding customer service and offer reliable shipping. Yet growth can make it more dif cult for the founder to directly administer every operation. Dependable service providers allow him to focus on quality customer service and continued growth. “From the ve-plus freight brokers I’ve gone through in the past nearly three years, the reason we settled on Coyote was because they’re the most ef cient and the most reliable,” Maltbie says. “They were, in the long run, also the most cost effective. It’s a bene t on all fronts.” n
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