Devoted to you...(page 3)

-- Logistics Management, 2/1/2006

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TechTrans: Handle With Care

If you walk by a neighbor's house and see a couple of guys wearing white gloves and shoe covers carefully maneuvering furniture or home theater equipment through the front door, they might be from TechTrans. You might see those same guys delivering diagnostic equipment to your doctor's office, carrying fixtures into a soon-to-open retail store, or installing new copiers in your office.

Southlake, Texas-based TechTrans has been transporting the hard-to-handle since 1990. The concept traces back to the AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s, when company President Len Batcha and colleagues from Abbott Laboratories and Abbott's freight forwarder had to find a way to get desperately needed diagnostic equipment into the field quickly, predictably, and damage-free. They later formed TechTrans to apply their expertise to other high-value commodities.

Although shippers often choose TechTrans for its delivery services, Batcha says, the company also evaluates and tests packaging, manages order processing, consults on route design and cost control, tracks and traces shipments, and offers customizable performance reports.

TechTrans is non-asset-based and acts as a process and information manager. It uses expedited carriers for lengthy linehauls and a network of agents for pickups and "last mile" services, including inside delivery, installation, and removal of packaging. TechTrans electronically notifies its agents of upcoming shipments and requires them to successfully complete written or video-based training on packing, handling, and installing new items.

For medical equipment manufacturers, TechTrans offers crating, delivery, setup, and cleanup of demonstration models. The forwarder delivers the equipment to the demonstration site, gets it running properly, sets up accessories, and removes all packing materials. After the demonstration or trial period has ended, agents clean the equipment, repack it, and return it to temporary storage, where they prep it for the next demonstration.

Retailers of high-end home goods also depend on TechTrans to handle deliveries to their service-sensitive customers. Wisteria, a home and garden catalogue firm, sells unique decorative items that globe-trotting owners

Andrew and Shannon Newsome import from all over the world. Many of Wisteria's products are one-of-a-kind or limited quantities, so TechTrans' ability to handle high-value objects of almost any size or shape has been helpful. "It's often a product that no one's seen before, and they have to figure out how to handle it," says President Andrew Newsome. "Some things need six guys to move them."

Such complicated moves can be costly, and Wisteria builds the cost of special handling into its selling prices. Newsome also likes the fact that TechTrans has assigned a service coordinator to Wisteria's account, and that one company can "pick up forty different products and ship them to forty different places," he says.

Equally important in the home furnishings business, he adds, is professionalism. "Anyone we use has to understand consumer and home delivery. Ultimately we asked ourselves, 'Would we send this company to our own house?' "