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Driving the streets of Baton Rouge, the need is apparent. Life is slowly getting back to normal in some places, but the majority of streets hold deep pockets of pain. In these areas, SBDR volunteers are greeted with smiles, tears and heartfelt gratitude.
By Carmen K. Sisson | Randall-Reilly Publishing/Mack Trucks NORTH SALT LAKE, Utah — Scott Hughes, president of Lakeview Rock Products and Hughes General Contractors, has owned Mack® trucks since 1977 and says he considers Mack Trucks a crucial business partner in the company’s quest for continued success. Located in North Salt Lake,…
Neighborhoods and side streets tell a heartbreaking story. Clothes, mattresses and household furniture lay strewn across wet lawns in hopes that the sun will shine long enough to dry them. Everything that was not salvageable is piled high along the roadways, transforming shady lanes to narrow pathways, children’s toys providing the occasional jolt of color.
Jeff Loudermilk can tell you anything you want to know about Hilco Transport, but he laughs when you ask about uptime. He stopped tracking it years ago, because he didn’t have enough issues to report. His 381-truck fleet — 279 of which are Mack Pinnacles and Granites® — keeps rolling, season after season, regardless of climate or application. Downtime is a distant memory.
“When John Jennings made the commitment to become greener, Mack — the leader in the industry — already had a product engineered for the refuse industry,” Brown says. “A lot of the big garbage guys have gone green. Lots of contracts and municipalities want it.”
“When that sheriff’s department calls and they’ve got a tractor-trailer blocking five lanes of interstate, they don’t want to hear that the truck won’t run or that we’re putting on a tire,” Adams says. “They want to know we’re on the way. The man at a red light, broken down in a log truck, needs to get that truck to a repair facility so he can make a living. It’s as important to the small man as it is to the large, right up to the state patrol.”
Sunoco was rapidly expanding its footprint across the nation and needed a truck manufacturer that could keep pace with company goals. It had five major requirements: the tractors needed to be lightweight, driver friendly, fuel efficient, powerful and good-looking. Mack Trucks provided all that and more, says Bob Manchester, Sunoco’s senior director of Transportation/Operations.
“I was 53 when I started. I had tried other things out there, but I was getting older all the time, and I got to thinking, ‘I’d like to drive a truck. I think I would be good at it.’ I was tired of being broke. I didn’t have medical insurance. I was tired of going nowhere. I wanted to have a skill.”
Every day, more than 500 drivers — including nearly 200 owner-operators — haul loads coast to coast for Carroll Fulmer Logistics Corporation, Groveland, Florida. Monte Vanover, director of fleet maintenance, keeps the trucks — a challenge he says he enjoys even more since implementing Mack Trucks’ GuardDog® Connect.
When V McGee decided to upgrade its fleet, they knew they wanted equipment that could handle the rigors of the job while still being agreeable to the drivers. Operations manager and truck foreman Kevin Mays obtained five trucks from different manufacturers — and allowed drivers to demo them for a few weeks. “It didn’t take long for us to realize that what the drivers wanted was to operate Mack Granites.”
Outreach teams load their vans with granola bars and water and head into the dark, armed with nothing more than flashlights, clipboards, and hand sanitizer. They search the streets in the daytime, looking for signs of life such as bedrolls. At night, they return, hoping to find the owners. Sometimes they are asked to leave; other times, they are hailed as angels of mercy.
Jim De Armond founded JSD Express in April 1990 with one truck and barely made enough money the first year to make the truck payments. Now, however, he expects to close out 2015 with more than $4 million in revenue, and he anticipates growing 45-50 percent per year over the next decade thanks to online retailers like Amazon and big box stores like Wal-Mart.
