Did local freight for 30 years after manufacturing in Sidney ceased
We pioneered external management of mail rooms & by using the appropriate shipping methods could usually knock 50% to 80% off a companies freight costs .
So we used plain parcel post, priority parcel post , budget overnight prepaid, budget overnight post paid , budget casual returns ( could take a week ) and direct point to point .
I know I sound like a broken record on this but again it was the fault of cookie cutter MBA's applying cookie cutter business management .
One of the things they teach MBA graduates is non core departments should be abolished so the mail rooms got closed down & the receptionist ( had they not been sacked as well ) was responsible for despatching , I mean how hard can it be ? all you have to do is put a label on some thing and call some one to pick it up .
Remember managers have no concept on the problems involved with doing anything.
Things happen because they say they will happen. I call it the God complex and it is running rampant down here.
When eventually they notice that freight has gone from $ $100,000 / pa including the wages of the 2 staff to $ 300,000 /pa they pick up the phone to the biggest freight company in the country and negotiate a massive discount , then pay themselves a big bonus on the grounds of the new contract discounts .
The idea that they could be using 10 companies , each one specializing in their own niche is beyond their lack of imagination and besides that their professor taught them that it costs money to service an account so effiiency comes from having as few service suppliers as possible and prepaying for anything is a sin just short of murder.
One company we went into was spending over $ 500,000/pa because each department did their own despatching .
We made the mistake of knocking that down to $ 150,000 in our first year.
Downside was Mr MBA wanted to see the same reductions every year so after a couple of years when we could not meet his effiency targets they went back to the old system and in no time at all were back to spending way too much & last I hear the transport budget had blown out to over 1.5 mil ( accounts manager went to same gym as my missus ) .
Another place I worked closed down their mail room then got cranky when the managers & more important the accounts recievable department were not getting their mail for 1 to 2 days after it was delivered .
So we got them to change their address to a locked bag at the local PO so it was ready for pick up at 5 am
We picked it up at 6 delivered it at 7 ( could be anything up to 5 bags + parcels ) , the receptionist came in 1.5 hours earlier so the mail was sorted and each department could grab theirs as they arrived . Receptionist was over the moon because she not only got 7.5 hours extra pay a week but the early start meant she got a parking spot and of course was not spending all day trying to do 3 things at once while having every person calling her to see when they could get their mail .
Eventually the big companies realized there was a lot of money to be made by doing the same thing & crowded out the market with all sorts of BS discounts that MBA's fall for every time.
Prime example was one of our customers who did a lot of work for a fast food company & a cigarette company .
Both of these used one of these BS freight managers who do things like offer massive discounts, if they do all the work, including the pick ups from clients, so strait away that doubles the work because previously the sender would pay .
Because the transport company had a captive customer they gave them trash service but for our customer to use us to deliver to these two companies I had to supply him with an inflated price list so I could discount our prices to 10% lower than what was currently being paid , which by the way was just short of double our normal rate .
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