Load It Once: Breaking the Bonds of What Is to Reach Great New Heights
Entrepreneurs are taking business to new heights as shown recently with the Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos pioneering space launches. You might say that Budd Van Lines is playing in a similar innovation —if you’ll excuse the pun—space. Though not 50+ miles to the limits of outer space, Budd Van Lines ventured into a similar orbit with its Load It Once Moving System (LIO) and unveiling of the Load it Once Transporter. The new LIO Transporter will serve the Mother Ship Load it Once units. (Okay, so, we’re having a little geeked-out fun with this.)
LIO’s Mother Ships, are patented custom-designed modular tractor trailers exclusive to Budd Van Lines. The LIO System is a revolutionary improvement for shipments that require storage and the most advanced moving system ever built in America. In fact, the Mother Ship earned Budd numerous Platinum Innovation Awards in 2016 and 2018. Not a company to be daunted by new frontiers, Budd is now on Mother Ship Gen IV and just launched the Load It Once Regional Transporter to the fleet.
The LIO Transporters Expand National Capacity
Budd took the modular concept of the full-size modular Mother Ship and created 26-foot Regional Transporters outfitted with the container system. The size and capacity of the LIO containers are the same for both double unit mother ships and single unit transporters. Half the size of the Mother Ship, the Regional Transporter is an excellent carrier for smaller moves and is designed to support the Load-it-Once, NO TOUCH feature that makes LIO such a draw for corporations who want to take special care when moving executives and their families around and across the country.
The Regional Transporters serve as feeders to the complete Load it Once System. The storage containers are transferable between the Transporter and the Mother Ship models. The Regional Transporters are positioned regionally at each service center to augment the double unit mother ships. This is optimization at its best. We can serve both large and small shipments, too, and will no longer have to dedicate tractor trailers to perform deliveries out of SIT on bigger moves. The LIO Regional Transporters can perform deliveries while eliminating any additional handling of goods being transferred between warehouses or shuttle trucks.
In fact, the transporters eliminate the need for shuttles. It is rare that a truck cannot get close to a residence in the suburbs. We also smoothly navigate challenging metro areas like NYC, Boston, and Chicago without the need to shuttle.
Storage Without Excess Handling
At least 40% of shipments go into storage for some period of time. With the traditional pre-LIO system, a customer’s belongings were loaded onto the truck at their old house, unloaded from the truck at the storage facility, positioned in that facility, then put back on the truck when it came time to deliver goods to the new residence. The result was too much handling.
With LIO, on the other hand, there’s 6 times less handling. The customer’s belongings are loaded on and off the truck only once. Our employees load a customer’s belongings into a modular storage container—the Mother Ship or the smaller version Regional Transporter—and is driven to a warehouse, removed from the frame and trailer in its entirety by a 30,000 lb. capacity fork-lift and safely stored in the warehouse without having to double handle a stitch of furniture.
The containers are designed to be stacked, which allows goods to be off-loaded and reloaded without any manual labor or rehandling. When it’s time to deliver the customer’s belongings to their final destination, the sealed containers are returned to the truck and driven to the customer’s new home. On the front end of a move, customers are present to witness our employees seal their belongings in a modular container and then load them unto the truck. The container remains closed until Budd reaches its destination.
Thinking Beyond the Boundaries of What Already Is
LIO with its landmark Mother Ship is the brainchild of Budd Owner and Chief Executive Officer David W. Budd, Sr. He demonstrates the same Branson-Bezos mentality to solve customer problems and fulfill customer dreams by blazing new trails with outside the box thinking. David had actually been intent on taking the company’s corporate moves modular for years. “There was simply too much handling with the old way of doing things,” he says. “The [Regional] Transporter and the Mother Ship provide the safest possible method of shipping and storing household goods.”
Thanks to the modular design and its minimal handling feature, LIO has a 0% claims record for storage shipments and 98% claims free overall record. The container is offloaded at the warehouse for storage, and then loaded on a regional transporter without the customer’s goods ever being touched by human hands. This provides less stress on the furniture and other belongings and eliminates the chance for items to be misplaced in the warehouse.
Already, we have demonstrated that customer satisfaction is high. “Our customers can have peace of mind knowing their belongings are being transported safely and efficiently—and that customer satisfaction includes the individuals being moved as well as the corporations who are transferring them or organizing their move,” adds Budd Senior Vice President Gary Grund.
Less Time More Customers Served Even During Peak Season
A traditional, non-modular operation will handle customer goods up to six times when delivering into storage and reloading for delivery out of storage. Now with the Regional Transporter there is zero touch handling. By having the Regional Transporters, the large double unit LIO (mother ships) can now do twice as many shipments. This allows us to do more for our clients during the peak season rush.
Consider this key metric: A traditional full straight truck will take 36 labor hours (3 men x 12 hours) to offload into the warehouse and load another shipment coming out. That means the truck and driver are not in the field covering moves for that period. Over a year, a traditional straight truck and driver are “stuck” at the warehouse for up to 50 days. That leaves a 50 move a year shortfall in what a driver could have covered.
The Load it Once Difference
But the LIO-Regional Transporter takes less than 30 minutes to offload and load containers. That is a savings of 11.5 hours when compared with the 12 hours done the old way. A driver gains an additional 10 hours of service per week and is readily compliant with the Department of Transportation hours of service. This equates to a 50% productivity boost. We can now cover 50+ more moves a year without having to recruit another driver or buy another truck.
The Regional Transporters permit faster delivery to out of storage customers. Another benefit to service we provide: We can commit to more late notice requests because we have maximized the time to load a shipment by 96%. What would take 6 hours to load a 13,000 lb. move from SIT to a traditional truck, takes only 15 minutes with Load it Once.
Personal Wins for Drivers Too
As important, increased efficiency in lesser hours, eliminates the interruptive feature of drivers being ordered to stop en route to a destination because their consecutive hours of work exceed their 14-hour workday DOT requirement.
The LIO Regional Transporter Series is designed and engineered to set new standards for quality and productivity with spacious cab interior for driver comfort, control, and safety. Our drivers are the backbone of our business. We value their contributions and are quick to share with them the many customer compliments our drivers receive for the quality of the service they provide.
Beyond appreciation, home time is a major goal for drivers. The Regional Transporters allow us to offer this benefit to drivers as the regionally based drivers are home most weeks. There is less wear and tear on our drivers’ bodies because they are not required to do all the warehouse handling. The fact is as our drivers are able to cover more jobs, they earn more revenue.
Factors like this benefit our company, too. The driver shortage is acute and always challenging. The household goods industry poses issues for haulers because of the irregular routes, inconsistent workloads, extended times away from home, and the slow off season. LIO, especially our regional transporters, address this issue. In addition to providing fulfilling work for our drivers, Budd is able to recruit and retain the best driving talent in the industry and compete with the draw of companies like Amazon and Walmart.
The Bigger Picture: Saving the Planet
Green initiatives have been part of the Budd Van Lines footprint since the company’s founding. The Mother Ship and the newer Regional Transporters enhance that mission. Automatic transmission engines designed for reliability, durability and fuel efficiency are in each unit. Features such as Idle Shutdown Timers, speed governors, and battery powered HVAC systems contribute to the truck’s fuel efficiency.
Safety features on the Regional Transporters include ABS disc brakes, multi direction camera systems (front/back/sides), and expanded front and side driver visibility to stay ahead of what is happening on the road. Moonlights, appropriately named for such an innovative space-age program, provide natural light for drivers as they load or drive. LED lights installed on the truck are not only energy efficient but also provide comfort to drivers when they are required to unload trucks in night-time hours. On top of that, the trucks are meticulously clean.
Beyond the Horizon: Lessening Deadhead Miles, Increasing Predictiveness
As with the space travels of Branson and Bezos, our innovators at Budd continue to push the limits. Next year, we will implement a Planning Optimization System (POS) to take our Mother Ship and her sister Regional Transporters to break through even more boundaries. With planning optimization, we will evolve our tracking systems, minimizing deadhead miles, or the empty miles when a driver is not carrying cargo. Even more, this POS will reduce our carbon footprint and increase our ability to perform predictive maintenance. Leveraging the latest technologies (more specifically the use of Electronic Logging Devices, ELD) and POS, we will be better positioned to evaluate our routing systems and provide our partners with solutions that facilitate the enhanced optimization of dispatch routes, better assets management, predictive maintenance, and mileage capability as well as enhance our driver safety. This will play a huge role in alleviating the odious BLT (brakes, lights, and tires) said to be the cause of more than 80% of downtime for commercial trailers, including haulers.
Exceeding Expectations
The LIO Regional Transporters have exceeded our expectations, ROI, and service experience for our customers. This moving system is a major leap forward in terms of overall customer service and the safe, efficient handling of goods. Bottom line: We will continue to break through barriers to enhance and invest in the Load It Once System. We believe that LIO is a game changer that will forever transform the moving experience for our corporate clients, our relocation company partners, and for all the individuals and families we move around and across the country.