Congratulations to Team PPG!

 

This past week, JB Hunt was selected as a PPG Excellent Supplier for 2015.  PPG has been a customer of DCS and the Central Region since 2003.  We currently operate a fleet of near 100 drivers based out of their corporate office in Pittsburgh, PA.  In addition, we run various fleets for PPG on the PAF and Flat Glass Business.  In addition to DCS, PPG is a customer on the ICS side as well.  Congratulations to all involved in servicing this customer and for being part of this prestigious award!

 

                         

 

Below is a quote from PPG CEO Michael H. McGarry:

 

"PPG purchases $7.5 billion plus of goods and services worldwide each year through thousands of suppliers.  We rely on our suppliers to be a critical strategic resource in enabling us to meet present and future requirements of our own customers.  We rate our suppliers on criteria of quality, delivery, documentation, innovation, responsiveness, and commercial value, including our $AVE program participation.  These ratings are supported by evaluations from PPG people who use their products and services as well as initiatives towards "continuous improvement".  Every year, we recognize a handful of outstanding suppliers whose performance has consistently exceeded requirements with our highest level award, the Excellent Supplier Award.  On behalf of PPG, let us once again congratulate you on your achievements in 2015 and thank you for your hard work, dedication, and team efforts.  We extend our best wishes for a great 2016."

Happy Anniversary Josh Mann

Congratulations to Josh Mann as tomorrow, February 20th marks his 4 year anniversary with the company!  Josh is a graduate of Western Kentucky University, he started his career with J.B. Hunt at the Home Depot account in Monroe, OH. He held various roles from Manager Trainee to Operations Supervisor, Logistics Coordinator and Account Manager. In July of 2015 he took on his current role as Account Manager of the Toyota account in Hebron, KY. Thanks for all you do; Happy Anniversary, Josh!

Promotion Announcement - Jacob Maas Account Manager for PAF Reading and PAF Huron

Please join me in congratulating Jacob Maas on his promotion to Account Manager for PAF Reading and PAF Huron!

Jake graduated from Virginia Wesleyan University in 2011. He relocated to Vermont to start his career with JB Hunt as an Operations Supervisor at our Swanton Cargill account. This initially made us question his sanity but being an avid snowboarder helped make sense of his decision. Jake did a great job for Cargill and is now relocating to Reading, PA to take on his next challenge. Congratulations, Jake!

Promotion Announcement - Brian Faust to Account Manager at PPG

Please join me in congratulating Brian Faust on his promotion to Account Manager for PPG! Brian will be overseeing the daily operation of our dedicated business out of Pittsburgh including seven managers, over 100 drivers, and multiple P&Ls.

Brian, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, started his JB Hunt career in the Northeast Region and worked at multiple accounts. He came to the Central Region in 2014, relocating to Pittsburgh and managing our PAF accounts in Huron, OH and Reading, PA. Brian graduated our Leaders 301 program last year and has been waiting for his next challenge. Congratulations, Brian!

Home Depot and J.B. Hunt Team to Help Flint

Casey, the Transportation Manager for Home Depot, is highly involved in her community.

Once she heard about a local school donating time and effort to provide some relief to the Flint Water Crisis, she immediately stepped up to the plate.  She reached out to the J.B. Hunt Team. From there, we worked together to help the student council in their effort to support the city of Flint, Michigan and their water troubles.

Along with a local warehouse who donated space for us to work, we were able to provide them with the equipment and transport of the water and save the school almost $1,500. The situation was that the local student council was going to “stuff a bus” from one of the district buses. The district in turn was going to charge them almost $500 per bus. In addition, the local Red Cross in Flint was unwilling to unload water that is not palletized and wrapped. This caused them to have to rent another bus for students to go all the way up and unload themselves. Due to the amount of water, they would have at least 2 if not 3 buses due to weight. 

When the J.B. Hunt team heard about that, they stepped up to the plate immediately and volunteered to help.

 Not only did Sam help us with the transportation, his team which included; Jeremy Messing, Austin Eckert and Beth Chapa volunteered to help us as well as some of the other office staff at RDC5120. They helped to palletize all of the water so it could be unloaded.

Overall, it was a highly successful event thanks to the team and the drivers who also helped. We loaded up roughly 20,000 pounds of water onto pallets!

Beth and Jeremy even volunteered to go pick up the pizza and deliver to the other water drop off points. You’ll see driver William Chesire helping us in the pictures and Scott Gilbert is willingly delivering the load tomorrow to the Red Cross… on a Sunday. 

It’s an amazing team that you have at our building and we’re glad to have them!!

Getting to Know - James Berkshire - Professional Driver Soft Lite

James Berkshire (BERJ85) - Professional Driver Soft Lite

James Berkshire is an entertaining individual, always happy go lucky, and loves talking /meeting new people.  He has been driving truck for almost 10 years now, the last 5 with J B Hunt.

Prior to driving truck he worked for the local gas company and is a Vietnam Vet.

He and his wife Debby have been married for 45 years, and had one miracle child, a daughter named Beth.  But his adopted grandson Sam is his right hand man.  Sam is 6 years old and when Jim talks about him his face just lights up.

            It was a great two day ride along with an awesome driver!

Central Farm & Garden Blitz

Bright and early Friday morning February 12, our Central Farm and Garden Management Team Andrew Vincent and Orin Schumacher, along with Area Maintenance Manager John Dodson and Area Risk Managers, Rich Schwartz and Tracy Walker, braved the extreme cold temperatures for a Maintenance/Safety Blitz.













The purpose of this was to bring attention to CSA items, by getting extra eyes on our equipment, reducing DOT violations. We were also drawing awareness to various other safety and maintenance related issues as we saw the majority of the drivers on the fleet.

As part of the blitz, Orin manned the grill cooking up some breakfast sandwiches to show appreciation to the drivers. With temps near 5 degrees, trying to keep the eggs and OJ from freezing was a challenge.