DistTech: Rolling Right Along

It’s not often we consider the work that goes into the safe transportation of, say, a gallon of milk from a farm states away or a Florida orange to a supermarket in Maine. Thankfully, companies like Ohio-based DistTech do, and through improved safety regulations and investments in technology, this tank/truck company is making it safe for all of us to travel along our country’s interstates.


The DistTech name came to be in 2004 when the former Manfredi Motor Transit Co. revamped its business model and added dedicated contract carriage services to its portfolio. In the tank/truck industry, the traditional service structure is based on common carriage, meaning if a company has a load, it calls a carrier and arranges for the carrier to pick it up.

“Traditionally, it’s sort of a you-call, we-haul model,” said John Rakoczy, COO at DistTech. “We changed our business model to be more focused on dedicated contract carriage, which is an integrated approach with the customer.”

For example, dedicated customers involve DistTech in their IT integration, share asset lists, and share labor. To date, roughly 65% of the company’s business is in dedicated contract carriage, but the goal is to increase that number to 80%.

“Our dedicated customers outsource their transportation and logistics departments to us,” Rakoczy said. “We do fleet-sized analyses and lower the number of assets needed to produce the same amount of work.”

DistTech helps clients find efficiencies and lower their costs by leveraging the convenience of its nationwide facilities footprint as well as its technological and operational capabilities. First, it moves customers’ distribution centers offsite, meaning customers outsource their transportation and logistics departments. Second, by triangulating outbound finished product deliveries with inbound trucking needs, DistTech enables customers to co-mingle their volumes with other customers, mixing and matching freight for the benefit of the company’s entire customer base.

“We get our customers out of the transportation business so they have more time to spend manufacturing, marketing, and selling their products, focusing on their core competencies, and improving their balance sheets,” said Rakoczy. “We take over their private fleets and buy out the asset base, and they return to business as normal.”

Safety first
Efficiencies of scale are important in any business, but for the tank/truck industry, safety is always first. Since 1987, DistTech has won six Outstanding Performance trophies in the National Tank Truck Carriers Tank Truck Safety Contest. The contest honors carriers whose safety management programs go above and beyond even the highest industry standards and is only awarded to one company each year.

In addition, DistTech won the platinum award from Great West Casualty Corporation, its insurance provider, in recognition for having the highest safety standards of any of Great West’s clients. “Our executive team, led by L.T. Slater, CEO and Chairman; Mark Kadlec, VP of safety and human resources; and John Hazenfield, CIO, embodies a moral high road,” said Rakoczy. “We owe it to the vehicular public, wives, husbands, children, and grandparents everywhere, to be the safest carrier out there.”

DistTech ensures its drivers are safe by using a geographically focused business model. As often as possible, truckers will drive the same route and stay closer to home, enabling more rest, consistent patterns of traffic, and less stress. In addition, the company worked with Carnegie Mellon University to develop a drowsy driver alert scanner. The scanner measures the speed at which the driver opens and closes his or her eyes. If the pattern slows, it’s an indication that the driver is dosing off to sleep.

“We’ve also invested in the safety of the cab and truck with side-view cameras that eliminate the blind spots,” said Rakoczy. “Our business model breeds safety, and regimentation is the key.”

Key components
Technology is a key component supporting DistTech’s promise of safety and efficiency. The company uses technology developed by Qualcomm that not only tracks the trucks but also enables drivers to send billing confirmation back to customers within seconds of unloading a vehicle.

“They can bill a load upon arrival rather than waiting to get back to their home port,” said Rakoczy. “On average, it cuts six days out of billing cycles and ends up being a huge money saver for our customers.”

In addition, DistTech’s billing systems can work with whatever ERP system its customers use enabling instant customer and product information updates. “We’re able to give our customers real-time pertinent information for them to manage their business,” Rakoczy said. “We also handle inventory management.”

In the past few years, fuel costs have taken a toll on businesses, especially those in the transportation industries. Fuel is often the largest material spends, and when the price goes up, it makes an enormous impact on a company’s bottom line.

To ensure the company wasn’t breaking its bank and having to push the added costs onto its customers, CIO Hazenfield put together a program called the Fuel and Routing Optmizer. The program routes all of DistTech’s trucks to the fuel stops the company has negotiated optimal pricing options with.

“Whether it’s retail-minus or cost-plus, we get the lowest possible rate at these stops because we’ve negotiated and maintained strong working relationships,” said Rakoczy. “On the other side of the equation is controlling MPG.”

DistTech’s operations group reset its speed limit guides to 62 miles per hour and limited the RPMs to 1,700 to prevent drivers from wasting fuel. Since implementing these guidelines, the company has improved its MPG average by half a mile per gallon. “It’s a tremendous impact on your bottom line when you’re buying $25 million worth of fuel each year,” Rakoczy said.

Overall, DistTech applies more than a base level of IT, operational analysis, and safety-focused attention to every account it has to differentiate itself from the competition but, more importantly, to give its customers a leg-up in their industries. “For companies that value safety and want consistent value-driven deliveries with continuous dialogue at all levels of their organization to improve processes, we are the carrier they need,” Rakoczy concluded.  About DistTech
Distribution Technologies Inc. (DistTech) is an established industry leader in dedicated contract carriage, common carriage and logistics services and returnable container management, primarily for liquid bulk commodities. Founded in 1932 as Manfredi Motor Transit, DistTech combines a modern, secure fleet with the latest technology to offer customers such value-added services as real-time satellite tracking and communication, electronic load tendering and computerized dispatch. Headquartered in Newbury, Ohio, DistTech operates more than 30 facilities nationwide and has been consistently recognized by the National Tank Truck Carriers (NTTC) for operating one of the country's safest fleets. For more information on DistTech, please visit www.disttech.com or call 1.800.321.3143.