Written by Bruce Fleischmann, General Manager

After joining the Truckmen team back in 2008 I was asked to begin penning articles for this long-running quarterly best seller started back in 1995. They must have been really desperate to help fill some space, eh? The first article came rather naturally as I settled in at my desk here in Geneva reflecting about how life had come full circle. It was a flashback moment about living in Conneaut back in 1983, starting a family and getting hired by Coca-Cola right here. I used to think at the time that my daily 28 mile drive to work for five years was the world’s longest commute; it sure felt that way back then. Little did I know until Coca-Cola relocated my family first to Philadelphia and later down to Houston! Only then could I better understand the real definition of the term commute as in a long commute, rough commute, brutal….well you get the picture.

So right about now you have to be asking yourself “so what’s this have to do with warehousing”? If you haven’t already moved on to something much more interesting in this 20th Anniversary newsletter, then here we go…Our warehouse business has been extremely strong the past few years and is gaining momentum. We strategically align our regional trucking and warehousing divisions offering our clients one-stop supply chain shopping. Recently, demand has surged to the point where we were completely stuffed and actually turning away business and that really hurts!

Some of our larger key accounts store their products here at Truckmen because we offer secure, sprinklered space, 75,000 square feet under one roof, in fact. So after completely scouring the entire area the past few months in about a 30-40 mile radius looking for anything available and hopefully offering sprinklered warehouse space with at least 2 docks, I had no success. Suddenly I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago and a light bulb went off! When I left Coke’s Geneva plant in 1988 we had just finished a plant expansion which may have eventually led to adding a sprinkler system to the warehouse after I left, so worth checking out I thought with one crusty eye opened? All I could keep thinking to myself that next morning was quite simply, duh!

I stopped by not knowing anything about who may be occupying it or if it would even be open. Long story short the back door was open so I ventured in and quite ironically ran right into the owner who later that day told me that it may become available very soon. So once again I am using this space to not only share this weird twist of fate story with you but to also help spread
the word that we have more available sprinklered space less than a five minute drive between operations. A stroke of good luck I believe and/or a feeble mind finally catching up a few years later? Never-the-less, onwards!