First priority
At Reed Transport Services Inc., their vision is to develop and grow by creating opportunities for employees – who, in turn, drive value to customers and partners. To execute on that mission, the company has made their employees their “first and foremost priority,” says Mike Ryan, COO of ReedTMS. “Our culture here is to take really good care of our employees, and they take care of our customers and our carriers, which helps drive the business.”
Employees are taken care of in many ways, Ryan says. They are provided with compensation at or above market value, benefits, events, atmosphere, and more. The idea is that a happy employee is a productive employee, which in turn creates a happy client. “We hire a lot of life people. We feel like you spend more time at work than you do with your own family, so you want the employees to enjoy working with one another,” Ryan says. “We hire like-minded individuals.”
Leading technology
To help drive efficiency, Reed Transport Services, Inc. uses two of the industry’s leading technology platforms, as well as their own internally-developed proprietary software. “Between three systems, we’re doing pretty well,” Reed says. Their systems help the company to push forward their pricing and lane analytics in order to acquire additional strategic lanes and opportunities. “We’ve got all kinds of analytics that we look at through our reporting mechanisms.”
Drivers needed
One of the main challenges for Reed Transport Services, Inc. has been the difficulty they have had in acquiring drivers in certain markets. “It’s very challenging to recruit drivers in the northeastern Wisconsin region, which is where our main terminal is,” says Reed. Responding to that challenge, the company has begun offering various incentives upon recruiting, including signing bonuses.
Operational expansion
Looking ahead at the longer term, Reed Transport Services, Inc. will expand their operations in and outside of Florida, for example, where they’ve utilized the significantly-sized ports state-wide and along the Gulf Coast. “The East Coast is starting to get some of the bigger container ships coming from overseas. The widening of the Panama Canal will have a positive effect on our domestic truckload opportunities,” Reed says. “Getting into some port services is a possibility with maybe some warehousing and cross-docking. It certainly is a viable option.”
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