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Let’s face it, as a business owner, purchaser or facility operator, it’s hard not to notice the increase in the cost of doing business. While many of these rising costs are the direct reflection of a strong and working economy, they do require those in purchasing positions to strategically plan and spend their budgets accordingly.
One such cost that has risen dramatically over the past decade or so is that of shipping. With the rise of online shopping and e-commerce, goods are being shipped at a record pace across the US and Canada. Pair that with volatile oil and gas prices and you have a perfect storm for rising costs associated with shipping by sea, ground and air.
When it comes to our business, traditionally, we do the majority of our shipping on the ground, depending on the location the goods are to be delivered to. While we explore alternative shipping options when shipping overseas, to the Middle East or to the Caribbean, here in North America, we mainly ship the old-fashioned way: by ground.
As most are aware, these prices often fluctuate over time with gas prices and are often subject to additional service fees. As this has become somewhat of the norm in the shipping industry, we are always looking for additional ways to optimize budgets and save our customer base money.
Our Design Process
Look out onto the sports fields across the United States and Canada and you will find our products such as player’s benches and large grandstand bleachers. Most everything that is manufactured in our plant is done so on an extremely customized basis. Our engineering and design team is cutting edge and has the innovative software to match.
While this software is great for putting the nuts and bolts together of a 10,000-seat stadium, it is also used to optimize other areas of our business, such as shipping.
We utilize our software to simulate flatbed loading, hence maximizing trailer capacity and lowering the costs for customers.
In the example above, we have a beam-style grandstand shipping to northern Alberta. First the cross beams are loaded on the flatbed and then our stringers are nested in a way to minimize any lost space. By employing this attention to detail, we have seen shipping costs on large jobs being reduced by as much as 50%.
These savings are passed along not only to our customers but in many cases, to our network of dealers. Giving them a competitive edge in a growing marketplace and optimizing our processes is just one of the reasons why we are the fastest-growing company in the athletic equipment and infrastructure industry.
