The Mheda Journal

I had the opportunity to speak with a different kind of MHEDA distributor this week, at least different than what I’m used to. I spoke to Vince Sullivan, president of Southern Acquisitions in Dallas, Texas, a distributor of loading dock equipment and overhead doors. No forklifts, no conveyors, no racking. Just dock and doors. It’s a fascinating company, with 10 locations spread from Texas to New York. There’ll be more explanation in The MHEDA Journal’s third quarter issue, but I wanted to talk about one thing in particular that Mr. Sullivan mentioned. It goes along with the whole theme of customer service that MHEDA is focusing on at its Convention next week. (Only 3 days away…how’d that happen?!)

“Every week, we say to our people: ‘I didn’t see too many people lining up on our doorstep today to give us a lot of orders, so I guess that means we have to go out and hustle to find them.’” What a great way to motivate people. If customers aren’t coming to you, then you need to go find them and serve them the best you can.

During the downturn, one thing MHEDA members talked a lot about was how it was a wake-up call to a lot of poor tactics and gave them a chance to streamline their operations. But the question, they said at the time, was how long it would take to revert to bad habits when things picked up again. It’s easy to be diligent when times are rough, but if sales are coming more easily, it’s hard to motivate yourself to do the little things. However, with motivational tools like the one above, at least one MHEDA distributor is fighting to make sure those bad habits don’t creep back in.

What are some other ways to ensure good habits? I realize that many of us aren’t yet back to what can be termed “good times” just yet, but if we don’t pay attention to the little things now, they’ll be harder to correct later. So, what do you think?

It’s been a while since I posted an entry, but I swear I have a good excuse. I was on my honeymoon. I spent the week of January 9-16 in St. Lucia, a small island in the southern Caribbean Sea (near Barbados). I did my best to escape the world of material handling, but as is wont to happen with an industry as pervasive as ours, I failed.

I stayed at a Sandals resort, and there are a lot of things going on simultaneously on site. There were reception tents to erect, crates of beverages to be moved, lounge chairs to move, performance stages to set up and dozens of other tasks that needed to be performed on a daily basis. Being the astute observer of material handling equipment that I’ve become, I couldn’t help but notice the carts, containers and manual pallet jacks that made it all happen. While sitting on our balcony eating breakfast one morning, I saw a Sandals staffer rolling a pallet jack (I couldn’t tell what kind, other than it was yellow) full of empty pallets down a sidewalk and joked that our honeymoon had just become a business trip.

As my colleague Steve Guglielmo wrote last week, the material handling industry is all around us. Even when you try to get away, you can’t. Which I suppose is a good sign. If the whole world is using material handling equipment, that means they’re all going to need new stuff before too long. Recovery can’t be far behind.

With all the bad news out there, it’s nice to report some good, heartwarming news for a change. A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from Jeff Ross, president of ESS Group (Brenham, TX). Jeff was calling to report a good deed done by one of his suppliers for a friend. It’s a nice story and I thought it deserved some recognition.

Jeff’s brother, Tom, lives in Big Bear, CA. Tom’s neighbor, Brad Floyd, is afflicted with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and confined to a wheelchair. Brad’s wife Kay has a difficult time moving him in and out of the chair.  When Jeff heard about their situation, he called Gorbel, on e of his longtime suppliers, to see if they had anything to help. Although Gorbel does not make people-moving cranes, they happened to have a unit on site for evaluation made by another manufacturer. Gorbel Product Manager Mark Grandusky said that they would donate the lift if ESS Group would pay the freight. Ross agreed and the unit was delivered in mid-August.

As you can tell by the picture at right, both Brad and Kay are very happy with the end result. In fact, Jeff says, “Although Brad is a tough cowboy, the goodwill gesture brought tears to his eyes. This is a wonderful gesture by Gorbel and they did not blink an eye to help someone in need.”

Sounds like Jeff is selling himself a little short in there, too. Kudos to all involved and best wishes to the Floyds.

As is often the case these days, material handling played a role in two events I attended this weekend. Before I started writing for The MHEDA Journal, items like these would not have made an impression on me…now I notice them ever more frequently. I’m sure MHEDA’s Industry Advocacy Committee would be happy to hear that!

Friday night, I went to see the new animated movie Despicable Me. The main character, Mr. Gru, is intent on becoming the greatest villain of all time by stealing the moon. More than once in the film while devloping his plans, Gru ascends a scissor lift. I’m sure most people wouldn’t give it a second thought, but material handlers with children may want to give Despicable Me a view. It was a funny movie, and the aforementioned scissor lift scenes could be a nice teaching moment!

Then on Sunday, a local brewery held an anniversary party outside its facility. There was a good crowd on hand, and my group of friends carved out a spot near the brewery away from much of the crowd to chat in relative quiet. Every so often, a gentleman on a well-used Nissan forklift would go through the loading dock door and come back with two or three kegs of brew. Again, I doubt most people noticed how the material handling industry kept the party come off smoothly, but as we all know, material handling played a huge role!

On Thursday, October 1, MHEDA published a new issue of MHEDA Edge, the association’s online magazine for young professionals. Although the issue, as always, is targeted at the young up-and-comers in the industry, I think this one is full of information that everybody can use.

Titled “The Economy: Stepping Back From The Edge,” the October issue is all about finances. It includes interviews with CFOs, tips for managing a parts department, and a recap of MHEDA’s Rental & Used Equipment conference. All important things, but I think the most useful article is from material handling consultant Matt Senecal, who explains myriad startegies for making money in sales, service, parts and rentals. 

I encourage you take a look at it and pass it along to your employees and co-workers. There’s a lot of important information in this issue. Kudos to Edge Editor Dan Vest for tackling an important issue in today’s marketplace!

We’re always looking for “green articles” to publish in The MHEDA Journal. The sustainability/enviromentally friendly trend is a big one in the material handling industry and it’s something that members are definitely interested in talking about. Here’s a link to a few of the articles we’ve published on the topic.

So it was with great interest that I stumbled across this blog entry from MHEDA Member Ron Gilleland at Bluff Manufacturing. They are taking a stand against printed product literature by eliminating lengthy product catalogs and instead providing one short document for all their products and then offering all those documents online. Gilleland says:

“It does not matter if you and I can agree on the cause of problems, but we must recognize when a problem exists and do the right thing.”

I couldn’t agree more.

It’s just one example of the prudent things companies are doing to save the environment (and cut costs at the same time!). Kudos to Gilleland and Bluff! Any other examples out there, i’d love to hear them!