Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/751200
COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2016 51 INNOVATORS ORTRAN Kansas City, Mo. A mission to improve lives In 2013, Orscheln and Gallup, the chief operating o cer, designed a new business model for OrTran with a mission to improve the lives of drivers, their spouses and their children. e objective was to create a network that would give drivers a predictable work schedule and daily home time. As part of the network redesign, they also wanted to maximize produc- tivity and improve customer service to command the highest possible rates. One of the rst steps in the pro- cess was to part with its intermodal operations to make the business more manageable, Orscheln says. " e identity of our trucking com- pany as a business was intermodal plus truckload," he says. " ere were too many variables to keep up with." e intermodal business was dis- solved in July 2013. Next, they focused on updating OrTran's information systems to cut costs and better manage the business through automation and visibility. "We were fragmented," Gallup says. "We didn't have our systems integrat- ed, and we muddled through. e way we were sitting with our system was clunky at best." Orscheln was familiar with e orts made by a number of truckload car- riers to design regional and dedicated models that made driving careers more attractive. He wanted something a "little di erent," he says, and started OrTran's 'Driver Tours' match customer, driver schedules to promote retention BY AARON HUFF O rTran arrived at a crossroads in early 2013. Looking at the road ahead, David Orscheln and Chris Gallup knew the status quo for the business was not sustainable. Since its founding in 1993, the Kansas City, Mo.-based company had been an over-the-road truckload and intermodal carrier. Orscheln, OrTran's founder, president and chief executive o cer, had grown weary of recruiting over-the-road drivers from the same pool as the company's competitors. In 2013, the trucking industry still was adjusting to the Compliance Safety Accountability program. e Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's new safety scoring methodology gave extra weight to hours-of-service violations, and more eets were adopting electronic logs to comply. OrTran already had electronic logs because the company had been familiar with CSA since it rolled out prior to the program's 2010 e ective date in the test state of Missouri. Orscheln was concerned about the impact on drivers from lost productivity and that more would be leaving the industry. " at's what we talked about three years ago," Orscheln says. "With the hours- of-service rules and everybody talking about a 10 percent reduction in produc- tivity, what do we need to do to not hurt the drivers?" ose conversations led OrTran to take a new direction. "I didn't want to be in the traditional over-the-road model anymore," he says. "I wanted to nd something unique and di erent that would be attractive to a driver's life." The company redesigns its network to balance and maximize driver home time and productivity. OrTran's leadership team, from left: Chris Gallup, COO; David Orscheln, president and CEO; and Mark Towster, CFO.