What a year! Our team members’ accomplishments in 2020 truly embodied our Guiding Principles of People First, Safety Focus, Exceptional Performance, Customer Satisfaction, and Continuous Improvement. Despite everything 2020 threw at this country, our team members rose to the challenge. In March as we faced the early days of the virus with uncertainty and fear, our team operated courageously. They worked safely, resiliently, and with dedication to keep America’s supply chains strong. Every American should be thankful for our nation’s truck drivers and technicians—and those team members who lead and support them. We certainly are.
As 2020 ends, we want to take some time to reflect on the past year.
PEOPLE FIRST
Ruan’s mission is to empower the best team in logistics to deliver exceptional experiences that create value for our partners. Our goal is to attract and retain high quality team members in all facets of our company, and we are successful in doing so. Ruan’s retention rate is four times better than the industry average, and many driving team members celebrated milestone anniversaries this year—five, 10, 15, 20, even 25 years. Our recruiting team hired 1,411 professional drivers and 65 technicians.
SAFETY FOCUS
Through the excellent execution of our driving team members each day, we delivered the best safety performance in our 88-year company history. And notably, we recognized nearly 3,000 driving team members for their combined 11,100 consecutive years of safe driving through our new and improved Megasafe Recognition Program. Each year a driver successfully completes without a preventable accident, they will get to select a gift from an online catalog as part of the program. Gifts include Ruan-branded items, jewelry, furniture, camping and leisure items, the latest technology, and so much more.
EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE
Celebrating and recognizing our team members is critical. While 2020 precluded us from gathering together in person, we were still able to virtually recognize some of our best technicians, drivers, and operations.
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Bryan Farmer, who operates out of T391 in Fair Oaks, IN, was named Ruan’s 2019 Driver of the Year. He’s been with Ruan since 2015 and hauls milk in super tankers for our valued customer Select Milk Producers.
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Ruan’s Canton, OH, operation, was named the 2019 Operation of the Year. The team, which serves Medline, annually delivers nearly 4 million pounds of essential medical supplies to Medline’s customers including hospitals, urgent care facilities, nursing homes, elective surgery centers, and more.
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We replaced our annual Top Technician Competition with a virtual competition in September 2020. Out of 10 competitors, James Wheetley of Cedar Falls, IA, took home first place for the third year in a row.
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Our Fleet Services team named T701 in Middletown, DE, the 2019 Shop of the Year based on total performance against 10 key performance indicators.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Our customers were incredibly pleased with the service each of you provided in 2020 despite the conditions our country faced. We achieved our highest score ever in our Customer Satisfaction Survey ratings, finishing 2020 at 85.87 percent against a goal of 85 percent. Read more about the importance of measuring customer satisfaction here.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
We are continually changing and improving our practices to reduce waste and costs, and to drive efficiencies for our customers. A few innovations from 2020 include:
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Ruan added super tankers to our fleet at our operation in Fair Oaks, IN. The units travel to Coopersville, MI, hauling for Select Milk Producers. Super tankers hold 12,000 gallons of milk, more than doubling the capacity of traditional trailers.
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Ruan purchased a fully electric Orange EV terminal truck for our warehouse in Otsego, MN. It is utilized 24/7 to move inbound and outbound trailers for our customer Bobcat. Ruan is currently working on a project for a second terminal truck unit in another operation, and we have five build slot reservations for Tesla electric heavy-duty trucks. Read more about Ruan’s sustainability efforts.
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Our IT team selected UiPath as our robotic process automation (RPA) provider. UiPath was named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner RPA Magic Quadrant for ability to execute. Our UiPath suite of products has enabled us to scale our business without a linear increase in people. We began 2020 by assigning 33 tasks to our digital team members, and within four days we started to realize the return on our investment, ultimately exceeding our total investment payback period within 15 weeks. Want to learn more about RPA? Read our blog post: Why Companies Should Consider Employing Robots.
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Ruan’s enhanced Freight Exchange (RFX) tool provides business system visibility and operational insights for our logistics experts to optimize customer deliverables and services. The platform allows integrated transportation network mapping; enhanced commercial solutions intelligence; increased operation and vertical synergy; improved asset utility and fuel economy; and refined load procurement and capacity deployment.
While 2020 was unlike anything we could have expected, we are in awe of our team’s ability to adapt and be kind, disciplined, strong, and resilient. Each of our families are thankful for their dedication to maintaining America’s supply chains. We wish all of our team members a happy, safe, and healthy 2021.