written by: Dave Cranfill, Director, MD Express
Since its founding in 1996, MD Express has prioritized building lasting relationships with our vendors. Operating as a fully licensed and insured truckload broker, MD Express provides full truckload, LTL and flatbed services to our customers. As a sister company to third party logistics provider MD Logistics, we understand that different freight has different transportation needs. Specifically, temperature controlled freight. When offering cold chain transportation services we uphold product quality and integrity by offering validated and secured carrier options. When transporting such temperature sensitive product, we work with a network of highly skilled, reliable transportation vendors who uphold the quality that the MD Express brand demands and our customers have come to expect from us over the years.
MD Express also offers a variety of value-added and white-glove delivery for those on a schedule or who need assistance with unpacking and assembly. For delivery needs further away or across borders, we offer team driving to ensure your freight stays on the move to meet your deadlines and the drivers stay compliant with Federal driving mandates. Our network of dry-van and cold chain carriers all undergo a strict vetting process that ensures the carriers are qualified to handle the various temperature and special handling requests our customers product requires.
Building a Partnership
Our work revolves around the changing needs of our customers and the evolution of the industry, so not only is it important that we remain agile, but we also need vendors who will change and evolve with us. All of the vendors we work with today are companies we have worked with for a number of years, some of them since the very beginning!
We put an emphasis on building a lasting relationship with our vendors. For us, we prefer to work with vendors who share similar ideals and business practices. While each vendor relationship varies, these are the basic cornerstones that we have found to be the foundations for a successful partnership.
- Communication: Just like in any relationship you have, it’s important to keep open and honest communication channels. Over the years we have found this to be true with our vendors, especially as our business has grown and evolved.
- Trust & Honesty: Working with people whom you trust is paramount, especially in the transportation industry. We need to have vendors who will be honest and transparent to ensure mutual trust across the board.
- Personal Interest: We have found success in creating a personal relationship with every vendor we work with. After some time, our vendors become an extension of our team, and our customers team, which leads to the desire to see all parties succeed.
- Loyalty: In our business, loyalty is a major quality we look for in a vendor relationship. Every vendor we bring into our network has to go through a vetting and qualification process, which can be lengthy. This is why it is important that we remain loyal to our network of qualified carriers, as in most cases they have made an investment to become part of the MD Express network. As such, we work with filling our customers’ needs through our network first, before we look for outside carriers.
Present Day & Future Growth
In the past 20+ years, as MD Logistics has experienced tremendous growth in the demand for warehousing services, so too has MD Express in the demand for transportation services. We now work with a network of dedicated, carriers who are great partners and keep us operational and get our customer’s product where it needs to be in a safe and efficient manner. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an exponential increase in our business due to our customers’ needs expanding. We’ve relied heavily on our network of carriers to service our customers evolving needs and plans for future growth.
As we look to what the future holds for MD Express, I see a path of continued growth. Not only do our customer’s needs continue to grow, but so too do the needs of the industry. With the acquisition of the MD Express brand into the Nippon Express global network, I think we will again see growth as our reach and service offerings expand.
Conclusion
Without the long standing partnerships we have built throughout the years, we wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as we have been as a company. Even if your business isn’t specific to the transportation industry, the basic fundamentals of building a strong working relationship still applies. Creating true partnerships with your vendors can be the key to business success!
