***SPECIAL: Inside Challenger Motor Freight

The best-managed carriers manage to grow in good times and bad. Challenger Motor Freight’s president Dan Einwechter outlines his company’s recent expansion into several new areas in an exclusive interview.

CT&L: Congratulations on requalifying for the 50 Best Managed Companies Award yet again and during a particularly tough year for many carriers. What are the major challenges carriers face during these more uncertain times?
Einwechter: There are a lot of issues but border security is the largest issue we face because that involves access to our markets. At Challenger I believe we have been very proactive in handling this issue by enrolling in the appropriate border security programs, working with our clients on border security matters, and in screening and training our drivers. High insurance rates are also a huge issue but we’ve managed the insurance situation pretty well because of our risk management policies. We screen intensively every accident and then train accordingly. If an accident happens you can’t treat it lightly. You have to constantly ask yourself why it happened and what you can do to change it. We’ve also done a great job of managing fuel costs by doing things such as buying our own tanker. But you can still get blindsided by things such as the currency shift we are experiencing. Buoyant times can mask inefficiency and poor management practices in some carriers. Now, the challenges we face require tough administrative actions that some carriers either are not capable of implementing or find so frustrating they want to give up. You will see carriers throw in the towel this year; there’s a lot of frustration out there.

CT&L: It seems the best-managed carriers are able to grow during good times and bad. I understand you have expanded your operations out of the Vancouver market?
Einwechter: We started off there in 1995 as a long haul operation Toronto-Vancouver-Miami. But we’ve got a good core of drivers and we’ve developed good clientele so we wanted to look at some additional opportunities. We’ve placed 15 tractors and 25 trailers to handle regional hauls from Vancouver to Washington, Seattle and Portland with special permits to run four-axle, specially designed lightweight trailers.

CT&L: And you have also grown into the garbage hauling business?
Einwechter: Late last year we bought a company in Toronto that hauled waste, and which wanted to grow. We’ve built that operation up from 14 trucks to about 50 hauling waste from southern Ontario to Michigan. It’s a natural for us because we are right on the highway here with our facility in Cambridge and we’ve got a facility in London right by the 401. So with that addition we’re up to around 1150 trucks.

CT&L: You have been a market leader in terms of your willingness to invest in new technologies on a regular basis. What can shippers expect from Challenger this year on the technology front?
Einwechter: Invoice e-mailing is new and it’s an extension of our Pegasus system, which is designed to give our clients quick access to our data. We scan the necessary documents and e-mail allows us to share the information with our clients faster. And once they have it they can easily share it internally within their own departments any way they want. That’s up and running now. We are also testing read-only inventory access for our warehousing clients. It allows them to see a snapshot view of their inventory levels day or night. We work in a JIT environment with many of our clients and they may have a need for data at two in the morning because it may affect decisions about a shipment they expect at five in the morning from Texas, which is going to our warehouse. We anticipate being able to roll out this feature later this year.

CT&L: Speaking of the warehousing side of your business, are you also expanding the available square footage to accommodate increased business?
Einwechter: We have a new warehouse in Kitchener that offers all our traditional services. Ideally we would have liked to increase the size of the warehouse we have here in Cambridge and have it all under one roof but we had some demand that came faster than we could respond to without a new building. Combined with the existing Cambridge facility our warehouse space is close to 200,000 square feet now. When we move to our new office and operations facility, however, it will free space in the current Cambridge building and we will be able to expand the warehouse here.

CT&L: How are the plans for a new office coming along?
Einwechter: It looks like we will be able to have 50-60 acres in Cambridge. The architects and designers have been hired and we are going to be sending out RFPs probably in the next month. The plans are pretty close to being drawn for a 44,000 square-foot office facility, dispatch and driver administration centre. The maintenance centre will probably be 45,000 square feet. Then we are going to have automated drive-through wash bays, a separate fueling and safety area and my hope is to have that indoors. That’s the wish list. We hope to be in the new building a year from now.