Business View Magazine | December 2018

250 251 REDBIRD CARRIERS Transform your business with Web-based software technology Tailored Logistics Solutions Trucking Software Providing web-based trucking dispatch software solutions is all we do. Keeping you on top of technology so you can stay ahead of your competition. Of course, being web-based means all you need is a browser and an Internet connection – nothing else. After all, your business by its nature is mobile, your software technology should be mobile too! We provide software solutions for Intermodal carriers, LTL carriers, Truckload and Brokerage operations. Satisfy your customers’ needs with software that provides web-portal access, automatic email notifications, EDI and API’s. Additional automated functions like rating, discounts, accessorials, fuel surcharges and document indexing keep you running efficiently. Arm your drivers with either a smart phone or tablet and many of your current, labor-intensive processes can be transformed into smoother, easier processes saving you a great deal of time and money! Our Mobile Transformation application runs on either an Android or Apple device. It also comes with the ability to tailor the application to fit your needs. Telephone: 630-887-4470 • Fax: 630-887-2801 Email: sales@tailoredlogistics.com • Website: www.tailoredlogistics.com We are serious about transforming the workplace for the transportation professional. employees and others are agency locations for Redbird. Three years ago, the company did a $4 million, 6-acre terminal expansion at the St. Louis headquarters. In addition, they have company stores in Kansas City, Charlotte, Memphis, and north New Jersey. All the rest are independent agency locations. Top level management have over 50 years at Redbird between them and include Dack Ledbetter (President), Jennifer Hayes (VP-Administration) and Brian Hayes (VP-Oper- ations). David Beasley joined Redbird a fewyears ago as VP-Business Development and has 35 years’ experience with The Hub Group under his belt. Redbird’s fleet is 95 percent owner-operated. Of the company’s 500-truck fleet, it only owns 15 to 20, all based in St. Louis, essentially loss leaders doing the work that owner-operators don’t want to do. According to Belew, “The intermodal busi- ness is a brutal form of trucking, meaning it beats up the truck more than almost any other type of trucking. It’s a maintenance nightmare; you’re going into horrible facilities with craters that’ll swallow your truck, and you’re banging over rail- road tracks in and out all day long.” An extreme amount of honesty and organi- zation are the traits Belew believes set Redbird apart from the ample amount of competition out there. He notes, “Typically, agents that come on board with us from other companies say, ‘Wow, you guys are unbelievable, you pay to the penny what I’m owed every week, I don’t have to chase my money from the home office.’ It’s the same with owner-operators - we have the lowest turn- over in the industry, as far as intermodal trucking, because we pay them in full every week. That sounds like it should be a normal procedure but it’s not. In contrast to our competitors, we take pride in the organizational end of the business. We have never lost an agent or an employee – zero turnover.We take care of our people.” Technology needs for intermodal carriers have changed significantly in the last couple years. In the past, shippers were satisfied on getting up- dates only when the shipment was placed on a railcar, when it passed the railcar scanner point, and when it unloaded on the other side. Today, every order is monitored and traced from door to door and intermodal shippers are demanding. In 2015, Redbird took the approach of implementing the Federal E-log solution, prior to its mandated date of Dec. 2017. Company President Dack Ledbetter reports, “We knew the solution would need to provide a breadcrumb trail of drivers and transit, and we had to be willing to share that information with our operations system provider. Once that was in place, we were able to take that info from the E-log system and provide real-time updates to our dispatch team. This enabled us to better serve our customers, our drivers, and the public in many facets. These include: safety, on-time performance, and driver wait time. “In 2016, we were approached by an intermod- al broker with a big base of customers to start feeding the breadcrumb data to them for a spe- cific shipper. This was common for on-the-road shipments and had never been done on non-as- set-based intermodal shipments to this point.We