A truck leaves Boston for Philadelphia at the same time another truck leaves Philadelphia for Boston. The truck from Boston travels at an average rate of 45 miles per hour; the other truck travels at an average rate of 55 miles per hour. Which truck should you hire?
If you’re like most people, algebra, geometry and statistics were not your favorite subjects, and you’d probably rather have a root canal than try to make sense of mathematical word problems like the ones above. But me? I’m a numbers geek. I actually enjoy reading financial statements – sad, but true!
In the past year, I’ve taken an active role in our company’s sales and marketing efforts–a big step outside of my comfort zone, since I consider myself to be a numbers guy, not a great salesman. Last week, Mary taught us that’s it’s best to just be yourself. This reminded me of a recent sales ‘breakthrough’, where I realized that selling and ‘working the numbers’ really do mix:
I met with a client who ships product to high-end construction sites. Other carriers were averaging a 75% on-time delivery rate, meaning that one-quarter of the time, he had to deal with the headache of pushing back his construction schedule and the heartache of paying construction crews top dollar to wait instead of work.
As we looked at solving his problem, I realized that other carriers were operating on the assumption that they had to offer a low line rate on back haul service in order to earn this customer’s business. For those of you not familiar with the transportation industry, let me quickly explain the difference between a back haul and a head haul:
A back haul is a shipment destined to unload in the vicinity of a trucking company’s home terminal. Back hauls pay less because the shipment is repositioning the carrier in an area where he knows he’ll have more available freight. Back hauls are an efficient use of truck capacity. After all, none of us want trucks driving empty (dead head) miles. But, a lot of things can go wrong–trucks break down, shipments get rejected. If you are counting on one truck in a back haul lane, you are playing the odds, hoping everything will go right.
The opposite is a head haul, a shipment that takes a carrier away from his home terminal. In general, head hauls are more costly because a truck may end up driving empty upon its return to the home terminal. Head hauls may be a little more expensive and less environmentally friendly, but in some instances they make more sense. This was certainly the case for my client.
With head haul service, we knew could improve his on-time delivery percentage, thus reducing the costs associated with paying entire work crews overtime and pushing back construction schedules. This would far off-set the extra expense of head haul shipments. By combining head haul service with proactive communication, the Matchmaker Logistics team was able to take our new client’s truckload on-time percentage from 75% to 100% (so far!) Best of all, we make our client look great for his high-end customers, turning this into a win for everybody involved.
Now there’s some math that should make sense to anybody! Well…almost anybody. All of this talk about numbers, word problems, and math reminded me of one of the numerous “faux pas” allegedly committed by our former President, George W. Bush:
The junior Bush President went on a State visit to Algeria. As part of his program, he delivered a speech to the Algerian people: “You know, I regret that I have to give this speech in English. I would very much prefer to talk to you in your own language. But unfortunately, I was never good at algebra…”
Take care of number one this weekend,
~Bob
