American Business

I work for a manufacturer of a commercial product that is installed in hospitals, arenas, library, and major retailers. The past 23.5 hours are a blur. We are currently working on a large hospital in the middle of no-where Tennesse that is being designed by an architect in Dallas and we are going to manufacturer our product in Ohio. So Wednesday we flew to Dallas to meet with the construction manager, architect, and owners rep to discuss some changes. The completely odd part to me is that we left Dayton a little after 5pm and arrived back here the next day around 4:30 pm.

So I travelled somewhere close to 1800 miles in 23 hours, had a 3 hour meeting, ate 3 meals, and got little sleep. My wife picked me up at the airport because I car pooled down there and it was on her way home from work. On the way back she was telling me how when she tells people that I am out of town that they think it is "cool". Cool is not the word I use to describe it, I think wasteful is a better word. We are able to distribute our product nationwide because we have great suppliers, great machinery, great engineering, and most important great workers. Because of this we are required to do these little one day trips frequently. Now thanks to email and 3way calling we are able to avoid alot of them, but with any project you are required to visit the site atleast a few times.

This great workforce that we employ that sustains our way of business is drawn from a 90 minute commute radius. The worst part is that everyone drives seperately. We have 60 people working at our one facility and we have 59 cars (2 are brothers that live together). Then next thing you know everyone is complaining about the cost of fuel and how much it costs to get to work. I know for a fact that many of these people either drive past anothers house or share routes for longer than 50 mins. I couldn't stand a 25 min commute because I felt that 50 min of my life was too much per day to be spending in the car so I moved within biking distance. Logisitics were once an afterthought in the bidding process but here soon it will be a key ingredient, will you be ready?