Scaling Up vs. Driving Lean

At the annual American Logistics Summit in Austin, a panel of industry leaders discusses operating efficiency and relative performance.

Scaling Up vs. Driving Lean

True or false?

Apex Logistics is twice the size of Red River Freight.

• True
• False

John used to work at Red River Freight before joining Apex.

• True
• False

Rebecca admits that Apex's margins are currently a far cry from John's numbers.

• True
• False

John kept his operating costs low by implementing scheduling algorithms learned during his past tenure.

• True
• False

Rebecca announced that Apex is planning to sell its fleet next year.

• True
• False

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Mike: Welcome everyone to today's panel on ____ and industry metrics in American freight. I'm Mike, your moderator, and I'm joined by Rebecca from Apex Logistics and John from Red River Freight.
• John: Glad to join you, Mike. Looking forward to a lively discussion on how we measure our ____ against the peer group.
• Rebecca: Well, Mike, it's about ____ . We're running a much broader national network with heavy capital investments in automated cross-docks, whereas John's fleet focuses on regional lanes.
• John: That's true, but ____ immensely here. We've managed to keep our cost per mile benchmark lower by tightening our driver turnover benchmark through localized dispatching.
• Mike: But John, looking at the ____ , Red River is every bit as profitable as the industry leaders, despite being nowhere near as large as Apex. What's your secret?

Sources: photo by Vitaly Gariev on Pexels