LEGACY
THE LEGACY BUILDS
The shadows of the past often loom large. You don’t just represent the present… you are a culmination of the past, and hope for the future. Your time is now, only because of the toils of past generations.
Life Changes.
How often we don’t realize where we are is because of who brought us here.
But sometimes we can, and that perspective can be magical.
Nick Leist you see is the 8th generation of dispatchers at our mother ship in Campbellsport.
It is solely the most important position within our organization. He is in control of the one thing we can control. The one thing that adds true value to what we do. Deliveries made in full and on time at our largest and founding location.
This is not to minimize any other position. Billing, estimating, ordering, receiving, purchasing, design, service, installing, selling, and so much more is very critical as well. And of course no location is more important than the other.
But the core of Drexel is our delivering and scheduling services…and it all started on Main Street in Campbellsport.
Everything we do that is right can be made horribly wrong by a delivery or install team arriving at the wrong time with the wrong product. It takes a team of experts to make a load perfect, estimating, the right mix of product quality and price, certainly good service and good billing practices… but one person can make a huge mess out of all it.
Ultimately, it is in the scheduler’s/dispatcher’s hands to make us look good.
That is why the 8th generation of dispatchers is so closely fostered, trained and coached. That person has to be just the right mix of saint and sinner, therapist and enforcer, mathematician and mechanic. With a little magician throw in.
Albert believed that we will NEVER say no to a delivery until every person in the company was on one or every truck was gone. In 30 years we HAVE NEVER had a load that didn’t make it out because we ran out of time.
NO LOADS HAVE EVER BEEN LEFT BEHIND UNTIL THE NEXT DAY.
Which of course has led to many stories, including…
Kris Ballard (at that time Kris was the secretary and cabinet designer) taking out a load of 4’x’8′ styrofoam that peeled off the back of the truck like a deck of cards as she drove….
Starting to pull a delivery at 4:30pm on Friday July 3rd…and arriving home just in time for the fireworks in town…
Receiving material purchased from a freight train that ran off the railroad tracks…
Making deliveries by boat, helicopter, and by hand… to prisons, schools, churchs and countless more…
16 hour work days…
I’m sure most of us has a story like this, something we just HAD to do to please the customer.
We’ve delivered to Florida, Nebraska, and dozens of other states…we have done online sales to Alaska. Our first delivery to Canada is starting next month.
And we will continue to do the un-doable….safely…on time…and complete…
When do you need it by?….and we will get it done by then. The only thing stopping us is mother nature, and even then we win most of those battles. We can and we will continue to BE the difference.
It’s simple really. We are a logistics company. Taking product from one truck on to the next. Barb and the flooring team install it too. At the core, that’s really all we do… we do make this small task, moving materials from one place to its last, fantastically hard!
History has taken us from no communication in any trucks, to a system where you called “base camp”, to beepers and pagers, to cell phones, and now to Drexel logistics.
Our current dispatchers and schedulers are:
Thank you dispatchers, both current and past, for being the glue that holds the puzzle together. And to all those that surround them… you are all part of what we do. It is the daily “doing” that makes what we do so incredibly awesome.
Being on time and in full takes an army of blue. Each of you make that delivery go perfectly, and currently we are doing it 92% of the time. We will continue to improve.
WE ARE ON A MISSION FROM GOD.
– Joel Fleischman. Joel is Head Coach of the solution providers for Drexel Building Supply. (drexelteam). You can follow him on twitter: @JoelmFleischman. Since 1985, our business success has come from building others UP.