Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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INNOVATORS One trailer, two loads T Heavy-haul dry van trailer a win-win for both carrier and customer BY DEAN SMALLWOOD wo heads may be better than one, but when it comes to trucking, the same theory often doesn't apply. That's the situation that Nussbaum Transportation faced a few years ago when a customer wanted to find a way to use only one trailer to do a job normally performed by two. The Normal, Ill.-based dedicated and truckload carrier offers transportation services to a variety of industries such as automotive, agriculture, food, steel, paper, tires, consumer goods and construction. Over the course of its 66-year history, Nussbaum never has been shy about deploying new tech- nologies and implementing best management practices, reflecting its commitment to "setting new ideas in motion." More recent cutting-edge green strategies have included auxiliary power units to save fuel and reduce emissions, various driver fuel efficiency incentives, truck speeds capped at 63 miles per hour, late-model aerodynamic and fuel-efficient tractors and aerodynamic fuel-efficient add-ons such as specialty mudflaps, side skirts and trailer tails. The 190-truck 400-trailer company has earned the highest rat- ing possible from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay Transport program – 1.25. "Being at the forefront of the industry has been central to Nussbaum's business TRANSPORTATION Normal, Illinois NUSSBAUM which traditionally is transported by flatbed from steel suppliers. After the steel coils were unloaded at Electrolux's plants, the flatbed carrier would need to find freight to haul from other shippers in the area since only finished goods are coming back out of the Electrolux plants, which requires dry van trailers. To support its freezer manufactur- ing operations, Electrolux itself faced a costly transportation equation. After bringing in the steel coils on flatbeds, they had nothing to load on those trucks going back out. "One of their biggest challenges was getting flatbed capacity, " Nussbaum says. "They were having a problem locking in the cost of mov- ing the heavy-duty steel coils." Since Electrolux's finished product needed to be hauled to distributors on dry van trailers, both ends of the operation generated deadhead miles. In addition, the steel Nussbaum Transportation worked with a customer and a trailer manufacturer to develop a heavy-duty dry van that could haul both inbound raw materials normally hauled by flatbed and outbound finished products. coils – even when covered with a tarp to protect them from the elements – oc- casionally still got wet and suffered moisture damage during transit. Also, the coils – which normally range widely in weight from 6,000 to 18,000 pounds – would have to be unloaded by crane, a scheduled process that slowed turnaround times. After giving Electrolux's situation much thought, Nussbaum realized that one trailer could be better than two. strategy since its inception," says Brent Nussbaum, chief executive officer. "People don't always think out of the box, but we love coming up with new ideas." So when one of Nussbaum's longtime customers approached the company with a daunting challenge, the hauler relied on its longstanding tradition of innovation to address the customer's problem. Electrolux, one of the world's largest appliance manufacturers with numerous plants in the United States, purchases heavy steel coils for use in manufacturing, Heavy hauling In mid-2008, Nussbaum proposed the concept of a heavy-duty dry van – a specialized trailer with a heavy-duty floor built to handle heavier loads such as steel coils. COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | FEBRUARY 2012 39