Final Mile Logistics Targets New Opportunities for Growth

Final Mile Logistics Targets New Opportunities for Growth

Mercury Air Cargo

When Chris Dale took the helm as CEO at Final Mile Logistics, his aim was to determine new ways in which the company might grow. To do so, they hired new sales people. One of those was Bryce Dalziel, and also, the leadership welcomed Mick Sheldrake back to the fold. Mick had left the company prior to Chris Dale joining, and Dale asked him to return to Final Mile.

“Mick is an industry veteran,” Dale said, adding that he believes Sheldrake’s industry contacts will allow them to seek out many opportunities for new business.

One of Sheldrake’s areas of focus is in developing a product for special equipment-type moves within the U.S. domestic market. “It would be very heavy pieces, or oversized type moves requiring special handling processes,” Dale said.

“We've had some success with those early on, and Mick is continuing to work on additional opportunities for growth,” he said.

Final Mile is also working with a company it hopes will be one of many in its target market moving forward. This company is a higher echelon government contractor that specializes in unmanned air systems – for military and commercial use or for things like firefighting. While FML has not officially been awarded a contract with this company (and as such, want to avoid publicly naming them), they expect to have bids come out in the late spring. In the meantime, Final Mile has been able to take advantage of some of their side business bids.

One of those ad hoc projects has Final Mile personnel traveling to the Middle East to observe the delivery of a particular project. “We’ll do a site prep and route survey of three new locations of where they’ll be building over in Iraq,” Dale said. “We’re helping them do the site selection to handle the business supply into that area,” he said.

Being able to quote and win some of this company’s side business, “is a very positive sign,” Dale said. “The opportunities give us a chance to prove ourselves as a known, reliable supplier before we compete in a bid situation.”

“When the bid comes out, our goal is to be in a leading position,” Dale said.

The unmanned air system company is an example of the higher echelon government contractor that Dale said he is making the target market for Final Mile moving forward in 2018. “It is a year of growth and a year of finalizing our restructure - which we started in 2017 - and it’s all based on providing a better customer experience and more efficient operations. Efficiency for us means higher profits and higher quality of execution,” he said.

FML has also just been awarded a major project for an important customer, PAE. This contract is for several millions of dollars and the largest project FML has won for a long time, Dale said.

“We won based on our competitive solution and, most importantly, a proven track record in past performance,” Dale said. PAE knew FML would be able to handle their requirements, “therefore Trust was a major factor in the award, “ he said.

“We are working hard to handle this project flawlessly in order to position ourselves for serious consideration on the next opportunity,” Dale said.

He added that the two FML colleagues mainly responsible for the win were Jason Joseph and Paul Gentzke. “Between Jason and Paul, we had the previous experience and understanding of the solution that would be right for PAE,” Dale said.

For PAE and other companies like it, “we want to be their preferred provider for logistics services,” he said.

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