AKRON, Ohio, August 26, 2009 - In the world of freight, perhaps nothing is more challenging than expedited hauling. “Every day is a deadline. Every hour counts,” said Donnie Clayton, terminal manager for Service-One. “People think overnight mail just reaches its destination by air, but much of it is by truck, moving deliveries from hub-to-hub. That’s what we do. And, for the eight years since we’ve been in business, we’ve been doing it very well with annual growth pegged at 18 percent.”

As an agent for Midwest Carriers, Florence, AL-based Service-One runs expedited freight through 48 states, utilizing 150 tractors and 300 trailers. Tractors with single drivers average 3,000 miles per week, while about 20 percent of the fleet runs twice that with driver teams. The company’s main hubs are in Florence and Memphis.  

“We sell service and the ability to deliver on-time,” said Clayton. “We have vehicle tracking to monitor the status of our vehicles and we track our delivery rate religiously – it’s at 98.9 percent.”

To enhance an already outstanding on-time delivery rate and save money, Clayton said he determined a new tire program would achieve such improvement. And since developing a program with Wingfoot Commercial Tire in Memphis, that hunch has paid off.

“We determined that roughly 70 percent of our downtime could be attributed to road calls for tire issues,” Clayton said. “The length of time it took to respond and the cost of replacement tires were all over the board.”

According to Clayton, phone calls from drivers came into him or another member of his team, and both were on call 24/7. “We averaged about a call a day,” said Clayton.