July Business Update
Contributed by: Eric Vander Pol, Co-President
Greetings Oak Harbor Team,
It is great to be writing to you all once again as we are over halfway through another successful year at Oak Harbor Freight Lines. 2023 has seen us return to a more normal shipping schedule and environment, and for the most part that is a good thing for our company and employees. We hope you and your families are currently enjoying the summer and all it has to offer. I wanted to take just a few minutes of your time to highlight how the company is operating through the first half of the year:
Second Quarter Metrics
Operating Ratio
We want to recap our operating results. At the halfway point of the year, we are sitting with a Year-to-Date Operating Ratio of 92.64%. This is slightly ahead of where we were last year at this point. We have been able to maintain our Operating Ratio at the same level even though our volumes are down about 5% in that time frame.
The main contributor behind our success is being staffed to run our freight on our own linehaul schedules and perform our P&D functions ourselves. Being in positions where we need to use outside help for these two fundamental tasks hinders our profitability. Staffing has never been as important and competitive in our business as it is now. If you know of someone that would be a great culture fit at Oak Harbor, we want to talk to them!
On Time Service
We have seen an improvement in our On Time Service of over 2.5%. When you factor in that we picked up over 840,000 shipments thus far YTD, this means there are over 21,000 more shipments that were delivered on time this year vs last year.
On Time Service is still the biggest driving factor for shippers when choosing which carrier to entrust their freight to. Improving this metric will only help us bring more shippers and freight into the Oak Harbor network.
Weight Per Trailer
One other major metric we put a lot of energy and focus on this year is our Linehaul Weight per Trailer. I am happy to report that we also saw a 3% improvement on this metric thus far for 2023. My grandfather was always quick to remind myself, and anyone on the dock, that “we own the top half of the trailer too!” Raising our WPT metric helps us reduce the number of schedules we need to run each night, thus driving down costs while improving service. The more freight we get into the delivery terminals sooner, the better off they will operate.
Congratulations to the team on improving this metric! We still believe there can be even more improvement in the future!
What’s Going on at OHFL?
Outside of our operating focuses, there are a handful of other exciting items going on at Oak Harbor Freight Lines. As a company, we should always be focusing on how we can improve our product to our customers and employees. In business you are either moving forward or drifting backwards. Staying where you are is not an option. Here are just a few items we are investing in to improve our product internally and externally:
- New Shirts for Drivers: It is important we present a clean and consistent image throughout the network.
- Forward facing Cameras in all trucks: We live and operate in an increasingly litigious environment and it is tough to argue with video evidence.
- New Handhelds (Zebra) and improved cradling for them: The lifecycle of hardware in technology is about five years and it was time for an upgrade.
- OHU LEAD: We saw our first graduating class this spring and have already identified our next wave of students to start this fall.
- Additional staffing in our Learning and Development department: In addition to the LEAD program, we will be starting to create additional avenues for our team members to train and learn necessary skills to advance within the company. Stay tuned for more to come on this.
This list could go on, but the point we want to highlight is that we are investing in our future. This leads me to my last, and perhaps most important, update of all, the new Vision Statement for Oak Harbor Freight Lines.
Our New Vision
In life and in business, it is important to have a vision of what you want to be or where you want to get to. Simon Sinek, a world-renowned author and speaker on this topic, describes a corporate vision statement as
“A destination, a fixed point to which we focus all effort.”
Given the transition at Oak Harbor Freight Lines and the growth we have seen in recent years, it was time for us as a Leadership to re-draft our Vision Statement to make sure it lines up with where we want to get to. It will also provide guidance to everyone on the team in their daily decision making.
The new Vision Statement for Oak Harbor Freight Lines reads as follows:
“To be the premier carrier and employer in the West, providing exceptional service and culture where we consistently deliver peace of mind.”
Vision statements of the past have purely focused on being a premier carrier, delivering peace of mind, and using creative solutions. This new vision statement addresses the fact that we want to continue to do that, but also be the premier employer in our industry. This provides more focus on our culture and employees, which are the backbone to everything that we do.
You will start seeing this permeated in various communications moving forward.
In closing, I want to thank every one of you on the team for showing up on a consistent basis and getting the job done. We are blessed with the best team in our industry, and we have an exciting future ahead of ourselves because of it.
Attached are some images from our most recent Leadership Meeting where Leaders from all over Oak Harbor Freight Lines gathered together to discuss the Company’s goal and vision together.
