Thanksgiving Dinner at Home Depot

 

 

To thank our drivers at The Home Depot Accounts in Monroe and Van Buren, OH, our team catered in lunch.  Our teams that support our retail clients are consistently subjected to working the holidays.  We appreciate all of their hardwork!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to Team Central Region.  This includes all of our professional drivers, managers and support group members.  Thank you for all that you do to serve our customers every day!  Have a Safe and Happy Holiday!

Welcome Chet Gilbert!

Please welcome the newest member of the Central Region, Chet Gilbert who is the new Operations Supervisor for the Family Dollar account in Ashley,IN. Chet is a proud graduate of Manchester College in North Manchester,IN where he studied history. Currently, Chet is working on completing his Masters of Science in Leadership with a focus in Environmental and Sustainable Management. Chet currently resides in Ashley,IN with wife Tess, and two children Jack and Jordyn. In his spare time, Chet enjoys hunting, fishing, camping, and really all things outdoors. Please join me in welcoming Chet to the Central Region!

Thanksgiving Turkeys at C & S

As many people know, C&S does a lot of the little things that turn out to be big things in regards to Driver Dedicated. Above is a picture of Tyler Hall (Account Manager) passing out Thanksgiving turkeys that he purchased for the drivers. While many of the guys are out stocking up the stores with Thanksgiving trimmings, Tyler and Christopher Block (Operations Supervisor) have their birds provided by JB Hunt.

Great touch by the staff at C&S on helping to make sure their drivers realize just how appreciated they are to us!

CVD at Cargill in Batavia, NY

 

The email below came over today from our customer Cargill Animal Nutrition out in Batavia, NY.  This site has battled the winter storms all week and have operated flawlessly through it all.  Great job to Russ and his team!



As many of you have seen or heard, the WNY area has received some of the heaviest, fastest, & extreme snow fall in US history. When it’s all said & done, by the end of the today there will be towns in between Lake Erie & our Batavia Plant that have received over 80 inches of snow within 5 days. There were times this week where the snowfall reached 4 inches of snow per hour which is a rate, that even a place like buffalo that isn’t a stranger to extreme snowfall, isn’t capable of handling effectively.

I heard a news reporter comment that “Western NY can at times be a tough place to live, but the people that live here are even tougher!” I can’t think of a better comment that describes how our Cargill team responded this week. All in all, with one of the worst snow falls the area has ever seen, our people returned home safely & our customers were serviced. This week was nothing short of a complete & total team effort, while customers were struggling to keep their operation moving with some having to result to dumping milk, our teams found a way to get things done!

A huge shoutout to the following groups & I know that I’m missing a bunch

The Batavia Plant employees not only had the stress of figuring out how to service our customers, they had the stress of just getting out of their driveways. With several road closures in the area there were several folks that physically couldn’t safely make it to the plant. For the folks that could make it in, there were some long days & hectic scheduling but they found a way. Most folks will continue to work well into Saturday & Sunday to get caught up so a lot of well-deserved thanks are needed for that team.

Our JB Hunt drivers deserve a huge thank you. Still not sure how we got things delivered when it seemed like 7 out of the 8 roads in and out of Batavia were shut down, but for the customers that were out of feed & needed feed the most, they were there.

                                                                                                                                                     

The Liverpool & Jamestown Plant, both were there to create some breathing room many of the days this week when things got tight. I’ve got to think, in situations like this, our competition has to envy our footprint & our ability to service our customers, no one else could really do what we did this week that efficiently, really awesome to see.

The help of RMS, Formulation & Customer Ops were vital in all that went on the last five days. RMS somehow kept most bins full, formulation moved formulas around at a moment’s notice & our customer ops teams were constantly on the phone with customers tracking inventories & helping prioritize those with immediate needs. Huge shoutout to all of the folks behind the scenes that made it happen.

Finally, thanks to all of the folks across NY/NE area that reached out. I know many of you have been reaching out to check in or offer help.

We’re not out of the woods yet, we have some rain coming our way this weekend as well as some warmer weather which will produce some flooding challenges in some areas paired with short Holiday week. However, with all that’s gone one the past few days, it should be a walk in the park for this team!

We’ll continue to keep everyone up to date if there are any major events, but in the meantime , enjoy your weekend, keep those that were heavily effected with this storm in your thoughts & Happy Thanksgiving in advance.  

Clayton Wood
_­­| Cargill Feed & Nutrition | Business Development Manager

Supporting the Indianapolis Food Bank!

 

This week, our customer at Quaker came to our Account Manager Josh Kimble about the possibility of helping to deliver food to a local food bank.  Josh was able to utilize one of the Service Partners account trailers and drivers from both Quaker and Service Partners to help deliver the food to the New Life Worship Community Food Bank in Indianapolis. Great job to Josh Kimble, Rob Miller (MILR5), and Mark Bullock (BULM1) to help feed the hungry during the holiday season!

New Hire Class in Columbus

 

Here's our group photo upon completion of the New Hire Orientation Class. Pictured below left to right front row is Terry Galyon, Michelle Simpson, Eric Holman, and Michael Cohen. In the back row left to right is Adam Stampfer, Tracy Walker, Raymond Colio, and Joseph Elliott.

Above, AMMs John Dodson and Cort Duggins

explain what items we should be looking for when inspecting trailers during Maintenance 101

 

 

This week in Columbus, OH we had four managers take part in New Hire Orientation. Eric Holman, Raymond Colio, Michael Cohen, and Joseph Elliott were our participants in this training. These managers received classroom and interactive training on several topics including Workday, Safety Culture 101, Maintenance 101, Freight Manager, Customer Service, Driver Dedicated Culture, PACE, PeopleNet, RAIR, and Smith System. We hope these folks enjoyed the training and will bring great value back to the accounts they go back to work at. We would like to give special thanks to Megan Perez, Tracy Walker, John Dodson, Cort Duggins, and Terry Galyon for leading their respective sessions this week.