Problem Solved in Columbus, Ohio

The Problem:  Our bathrooms and breakroom are locked up after hours with no ability to access for our pass through drivers.  So, our Professional Drivers were relegated to a port-a-potty.  Not a good solution on a winter day at 20 degrees or a summer scorcher at 90 degrees.

Solution:  Maintenance built a door that can retract during the day, but offers a solid and secure barrier between the hallway and our shop tools, tech tool boxes, and company tractors and parts. 

This is just another example of Rick Easley's team coming up with solutions. 

It's Just Propaganda?

Think it is just marketing?  It might not have been Fred,  It might not have been Neil's Cafe in Springdale.  But, when we walked into the Lowell terminal on Thanksgiving Day we found Eugene Schermerhorn sitting in the breakroom by himself.  He was on his cell phone with a yellow pages book in front of him trying to find someone who was open and would deliver to the facility.  We hooked him up with a local mexican restaurant that was open after he turned us down to come to corporate to eat the dinner that was prepared for our holiday staff.  But, a little good news here too.  He was leaving right after he finished lunch to pick up a load in Missouri that delivered in Pennsylvania.  He was excited to have a good load that got him excellent miles.

        

November Note

To all JBHT team players involved directly in the Safe execution of our business every day:

I write this note for one reason today and that is to say Thank You! Safety takes commitment and effort. If you participate in this daily update, then you are one of the people that influences the Safety culture of JBHT.

We have over 12,000 active tractors in our fleet, not counting the number of independents working for us. Wow! That's a lot of equipment and people to watch over and keep safe every day. You all do a fantastic job and we should never take that for granted.

Please take care of your area to make sure we stay Safe, and prevent injury for our people and others. We have a world class operation and we should all work hard to keep it that way.

So, for this Thanksgiving eve, I say again, Thank You for being great!

JR

JBT Driving Hours

Ever wonder how many hours our Truckload Professionals drive per shift?  I bet you are surprised to see 6.7 to 7.09 hours of actual driving that occurs during an 11 hour shift.  Imagine how life changing it would be for our drivers to achieve 8 per days of work that directly equates to their wage.  The figures to the right reflect how many ELD's are reporting each week.

They Said It Could Never Be Done

For many years our Professional Drivers have begged us to supply showers in the Kansas City terminal.  This became an even bigger issue once we stopped utilizing the fuel stop across the street.  So, guess what our maintenance team discovered?  The terminal was plumbed for showers if we ever desired them in the facility. 

We are installing 1 men's and 1 women's shower.  Our contractor is getting close to finishing the project.  What a great solution to a long-term need.

Driver Feedback-J.B.Hunt Drive App

"Love the drive app!  It makes communication between my Fleet Manager and I move a lot faster.  No delays and keeps me moving when the system is down so I can see my loads." #driveisawesome

Another Thanksgiving Option

One of our vendors, Mystik Lubricants, shared this with us today.  Any driver for J.B. Hunt that is on I-10 exit 692 on Thanksgiving Day will be given a free Thanksgiving Meal.  That is what we call partnership.  If our drivers are traveling between San Antonio and Houston, then send them to the Columbus Rest Area. 

 

Walmart Store Delivery Recognition-Job Well Done J.B. Hunt!

When you are in the service industry you strive to exceed customer expectations.  In a recent partnership with Walmart to support store deliveries we received this note from our National Account Executive who helps support the client.  Enjoy the below:

I wanted to reach out to pass along some good news from a call I just had with Walmart. They said they were extremely grateful for our capacity, consistency, and flexibility to support this business. They also went to great lengths to emphasize how well our drivers performed throughout this project. In their recap call, every person our drivers dealt with stated that our drivers were some of the best they have ever worked with, from manners and thoroughness to professionalism and reliability.

Please pass these compliments along to our asset drivers and IC's and let them know how big an impression they made on our company's largest customer. Thank you for all your support these past few weeks, I really appreciate your hard work!

Weigh My Truck Pilot

Ever wonder how many Truckload scale reimbursements flow through our system that our funded by our drivers and reimbursed over two week periods of time.  The chart above shows truckload scale events in our business unit for the first 6 months of 2015.  This information reinforces how important it is to gravitate to EFS and the "weigh my truck" app.  Our pilot is in its first week and we expect to see great results.  What does this mean to our drivers if the pilot is successful?  It means that our drivers can keep their wallet in their pocket.

  The one piece of data that we still need to understand is the amount of scale reimbursements for over $20.00.  Less than 1000 reimbursements out of 2185 in January were for the standard CAT SCALE amount of $10.50. Over 900 of our reimbursements in the month of January were for $20 or more. We will dig into the details of this line item to make sure we have a clear strategy on how to make sure we are legal, but are also using the most cost effective scaling practices.  

One Driver's Dedication

J.B. Hunt Truckload was present at a recent Military Career Fair on November 14, 2015.  We attended The Transportation and Logistics/Supply Chain Career Fair that was hosted by the Army Reserve Private Public Partnership Office at Fort Sheridan Army Reserve Center in Fort Sheridan, IL. It was an event that ran from 10 a.m. thru 4 p.m..  We believe it represented the veteran's engagement that J.B. Hunt provides for our service men and women throughout our company.

Professional Driver Rick Santowski gladly stepped up and accepted the responsibility of attending this event. Rick is assigned to one of our camouflage military wrapped trucks. Rick not only showed up early, he was an exemplary example of professionalism. Based on the positive interactions with everyone at the event, it was apparent the dedication he has for our company and his professional career. Even though it meant extending his time out away from home, he graciously accepted the offer without hesitation. It is veterans like Rick who stand up and do the right thing when asked to serve.  As we always say, bet on a vet!

I-49 Exit 78 in the Hamlet of Lowell

Nigel Stewart was delivering in Lowell, AR last Friday and stopped by for a quick visit. With no intentions other than to say hello and see the team that works with him, Nigel brought with him a ray of sunshine to our day. It is always a pleasure when a contractor stops by the office to share a few minutes of their day with us.

 

Nigel will reach his 1 year anniversary with the J.B. Hunt Lease Purchase Team in January. He is always a pleasure to work with and maintains a top notch attitude, even when it might be challenging at times. We would like to extend an open invitation to any driver, carrier or contractor passing through the area to stop in and say hi and visit with your team. We enjoy spending time and getting to know all of our driving professionals. 

                   

No Runt To Us

Julie Akey drives for our Truckload team on our Georgia Pacific account.  She has been steadfast in her belief that having her pet with her during her long periods from home would make her feel more secure and be more productive.  We were excited to share the good news regarding our impending decision to introduce a pet policy in our Truckload operating group.  Here is the note we received from Julie once she heard the news:

 
My boxers weighs 50 pounds and his name is Runt.  Your note means I can take him with me after this trip.  Thank you so much.  You have no idea how much this will help me.  Have a good Thanksgiving.

Doing the right thing for our employees is not always easy.  But, making a difference is worth it.



 

This Professional Driver Is Depending On You

Lets keep him rolling.  Don't let him down.

Driver Hotline Updated

Please call 844-588-8785 to hear the latest concerning:

 

 

*3 Day Freight Outlook

*Holiday Plan

*Risk Management Performance

*Special Guest Pat Wheeley and our new "weigh my truck" tool

 



Turkey and All The Fixin's

Truckload will be extending a $15.00 nontaxable meal addition to all Truckload drivers that will be working through the Thanksgiving Holiday.  We will be empowering our Fleet Managers to pay the drivers who have earned the meal benefit.  Lets make sure we honor our drivers in the best fashion by also providing freight that will maximize the time they have elected to work.  Remember, we need freight for every single Thanksgiving driver---that is over 1,000 trailers that need to be fully loaded over the November 25-29th holiday timeframe. 

 

Driver Feedback

The J.B. Hunt Drive App is gaining momentum, 10% of our Truckload drivers have downloaded it. Here is the feedback we received from one of those drivers.

Driver Jonte Robinson    Tractor 327263

JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW I
REALLY APPRECIATE THE JB HUNT DRIVE
APP. REASON 1) I FEEL BETTER CONNECTED

 TO DISPATCH 2) ALL MY LOAD INFORMATION

AT MY FINGER TIPS *3) I LOVE THAT
I DONT HAVE TO SIT IN THE TRUCK ALL
THE TIME WAITING FOR A MESSAGE OR LOAD

 INFORMATION THANKS AGAIN...

 

 

 

Keep testing it, let us know how you like it.

Industry Update:Tech Tricks Shrink Delivery Routes

This article was in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette today.  Does it make you Think Big about what we could do to be more effective in our Truckload routing and efficiencies?

PITTSBURGH -- Around 8 a.m. at a cavernous warehouse outside Pittsburgh recently, about four dozen delivery drivers for United Parcel Service got their first look at the scheduled drop-offs for the day.

Prepping for roughly nine-hour shifts with anywhere from 50 to 150 stops, it could have been -- and, until recently, was -- a daunting start, as drivers had to calculate how best to juggle the day's load while negotiating Pittsburgh-area traffic snarls such as bridges, tunnels and sudden road closures.
But as the drivers did their stretches and huddled for a morning pep talk, they stopped to consult a computer screen. It told them precisely what route to take to make each delivery and what time they would get there.

UPS has been expanding its use of the technology that it hopes could save 100 million miles a year from the shipping company's treks around America's cities and neighborhoods. Big shippers such as UPS and FedEx Ground have been embracing tracking data as a way to cope with and grow with the prolonged boom in online shopping, even as they work to give customers more specific options for home delivery.

"As technology has evolved, so has what we scan," said Kevin Koken, vice president of the FedEx Ground's eastern region, which covers the New England and Mid-Atlantic areas. He noted that FedEx developed the first bar code used for shipping purposes in 1985.

Online sales have grown at a faster rate than retail store sales, and sales this November and December are expected to follow that trend, according to the National Retail Federation. The Washington, D.C., trade group expects online sales to rise between 6 percent and 8 percent to as much as $105 billion, compared with retail stores growth of 3.7 percent to $630.5 billion.

The shift hasn't always gone smoothly for delivery companies -- just two years ago, stories about delayed Christmas deliveries grabbed headlines. This year, FedEx expects a record 317 million shipments between Black Friday and Christmas Eve across its global network, a 12.4 percent increase in seasonal volume. UPS is forecasting a Thanksgiving through December delivery volume of more than 630 million packages, up more than 10 percent from 2014.

The ground division of Memphis-based FedEx Corp. has increased levels of automation at some of its 31 hub facilities across the U.S. and Canada.

A key feature that management is excited about is a system that sends packages by conveyor belt through a six-sided "scanning tunnel" that tracks everything from package dimensions to weight and makes sorting decisions in about half a second.

The package then is directed using automatic sorters to its appropriate destination in the hub, where workers then load it onto a FedEx van for delivery. The goal is to minimize the number of times a human touches a package, Koken said.

"Each time you touch a package, you introduce the possibility of an error," he said. "A computer in that same situation makes the right decision almost every time."

FedEx Ground is now constructing a new distribution facility in suburban Pittsburgh set to open next summer. The 300,000-square-foot facility was needed to meet demand growth, Koken said. The facility will process about 15,000 packages an hour.

It's clearly a strategic site choice: The new facility is directly across Interstate 79 from the UPS facility, which is entering its third Christmas season in operation after moving there.

During a recent tour of the UPS facility on I-79, center manager Jason Rezak said the bigger building means workers can process about 40 percent more packages than at the old place.

Each day around 3:30 a.m., packages are carried from semitrailers and put onto conveyor belts along a network of metal chutes that feed two main belt lines.

Under low-hanging bright lights, pre-load workers pick packages off the central belt lines and use bar codes to tell them which of about four dozen delivery trucks to load the goods into. On that particular morning, the center handled roughly 15,600 packages, said Walt DeMase, a pre-loading supervisor.

The new routing technology for delivery trucks, called Orion, will be used on 70 percent of the company's U.S. routes this Christmas season, up from 45 percent last year at this time. For each 120-stop route, the algorithm analyzes more than 200,000 options in selecting the most efficient route, the company said.

Last year, drivers with the technology showed a reduction of 6 miles to 8 miles per route driven, resulting in lower fuel use and related vehicle emissions, said UPS spokesman Susan Rosenburg. Once rolled out completely, UPS expects drivers to shave off 100 million miles. UPS doesn't disclose the total number of miles its trucks travel in a year.

DeMase, a former delivery driver, remembers when he had to use paper maps to figure out routes. After being assigned the same delivery area on most days, drivers became "creatures of habit," he said.

"Orion shows us a better way of doing that," DeMase said.

1,000 Trucks Rolling

This guy is sacrificing his Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of earning some much-needed cash.  He is betting on J.B. Hunt Truckload having enough freight to keep our Professional Drivers busy during the 4 day period from November 26-29.  Don't let him down.  If you have freight in these specific markets, share it.  If you have freight in other markets, try us first.  We won't let our drivers down.
 

Harrisburg, PA    Pittsburgh, PA    Edison, NJ   Atlanta, GA  Dallas, TX   Kansas City, MO
Cincinnati, OH    Columbus, OH   Indianapolis, IN   Chicago, IL   Any regional SE opportunity
 

Women In Trucking

 

J.B. Hunt Transport is a proud Sponsor of the WIT program which was first established and founded by Ellen Voie in March, 2007.

 

 

Women In Trucking’s mission is to encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry, promote their accomplishments, and minimize obstacles faced by women working in the trucking industry.

                With professional drivers like Edwina Webb on our team we are excited to see the increase of female drivers in our industry.

Top 50 for Logisitics and Top 100 for Hire

J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. recently made the lists...

 

 

A unique ranking of the third-party logistics companies in North America includes listings of the largest freight brokerage firms, freight forwarders, warehouse operators and dedicated contract carriage service providers.

 

Annual rankings provide an indispensable overview of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada, along with timely analysis of trends shaping the industry.

One Women's Experience

In a recent article read, a forty-year old Air Force Veteran said she has a bachelors degree in social work, an associates degree in business and it has always been her desire to work in a free-spirited setting.

 

This particular women has found her perfect profession on the road. With her Class A Commercial License she started her driving career out on the road as a long haul truck driver for 10 years.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Data, women constituted only 4.5% of the workforce in the transportation industry.

 

For our female driver however the transportation industry was a choice she made after serving 12 years in the Air Force. "It was easy for me to be by myself, I was not tempered to be in an office all day." "Truck driving gives the opportunity to be alone and have a job I actually enjoyed."

 

Her opinion is that when you have a CDL, there's always a place for you as a driver.

 

With the partnership between J.B. Hunt and the WIT Association we are honored to hear stories such as this and hope to one day be able to say half of our driving force is women.

 

Currently 6% of our Truckload Professional Drivers are female.  We are proud to have the most gender diversity of any fleet within J.B. Hunt.  We are certain that our female drivers deliver great service, above average utilization, and fantastic results to our internal and external customers. 

The Boot Is Back

Our duo of Jerry Rico and Rodney Collins completed their work for the 6 away games we were contracted to complete by the University of Arkansas.  As you can see, our team successfully completed another "tight" delivery and parking job. 

As members of the equipment team, our two drivers helped lay out the pads and helmets before game time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

Yes, that is the illustrious gold-plated Boot.  "The Boot" was a trophy that was designed to bring attention to the annual LSU-Arkansas game.  The winner keeps "The Boot" for 365 days. 

100.000+ loud Tiger fans filled the stadium until the 3rd quarter.  At that point the Razorbacks had broken the will of the LSU team.

Our duo finished 3-1 I the SEC. 

Razorback players enjoy returning "The Boot" to the back of our trailer. 

 

 

The pride of a team of drivers who have driven error free during the 2015 season is exhibited in the above Facebook post.  We have learned a lot during this experience.  Now, the team has one more task at hand.  They will get to participate in the bowl game as a reward for their hard work and diligence.

 

 

 

Forest Park, GA Upgrades

Sitting proudly in our Service Center in Forest Park, Georgia is a banner that expresses our true feelings about our Professional Drivers. 

Our new wash areas in a bathrooms. 

Storage area for towels for our Professional Drivers.

Heavy duty dryers that are FREE of charge. 

Folding area in the laundry room. 

Now this is what I call a Professional Driver's Lounge! 

Our kitchen area still has some quirks (microwave over the sink), but check out the free coffee area.

The water fountain on the right hand side allows for water bottle fill-up.

Our new interactive area is clean and efficient. 

Modern scan station. 

The front desk area of our terminal is bright and welcoming now.