Samantha Taylor: Welcome to this episode of The Amigo CartCast. This one’s going to be a little fun and different as we are recording in our library. I’m here with my co-host, Scott, and we have a special guest, Nic Sulfridge, who is from a local package transport company. And we’re going to talk about how they have been able to use the Amigo units in their facility and help improve efficiencies in your facility.

Scott Chappell: Nic, you’re up!

Samantha Taylor: How are you feeling?

Nic Sulfridge: Great! This is… This is great. And thank you for the opportunity. And this is quite a place you have set up here in the podcast booth. Pretty impressive.

Samantha Taylor: Thank you.

Scott Chappell: Thank you.

Nic Sulfridge: And slightly intimidating.

Scott Chappell: I’m intimidated, too.

Nic Sulfridge: This is it’s been great and I appreciate the invitation. Glad to be out here and help support the product that you have. Truly, it’s been a great addition to our operation. But really going back even further in a little history with me and understanding where Amigo came from. I’ve got a family member who used your product, your your personal mobility device, healthcare mobility device for several years, from the mid-nineties until he passed recently.

So I’m very familiar with the product and have a history of understanding the customer service aspect of Amigo and how dedicated Amigo’s been to its end users. And when I saw the opportunity to put the material handling pieces of equipment into our operation, I thought this would be a great place to… a great place to get involved with and see what that product can do for our operation.

Samantha Taylor: So can you share a little bit more on how that came to light? So you were familiar with Amigo. You heard that we started a new line, so our line started in 2016?

Scott Chappell: 2016 it actually started, yep.

Samantha Taylor: 2016, one-hundred percent.

Samantha Taylor: So how did you hear about the new line at Amigo?

Nic Sulfridge: So in 2016 when you were developing the material handling products, the Dex Pro and Dex Pro Plus, we were actually just opening up a brand new facility.

Samantha Taylor: Perfect timing.

Nic Sulfridge: Right down the road. Down the road. And we were going from a very medium sized facility to about a 250,000 square foot facility. And really just about the same month that we opened the doors on that building, just in passing, had a conversation with the good folks here at Amigo. And they had said, “Look, we have this material handling device that we’re testing.”

“We want to get this in the marketplace. Just take a look at it for us, see if it will work in your operation.” I said, “That’s sounds like a great opportunity. Let’s do it.”

Scott Chappell: Pretty easy! No pressure.

Nic Sulfridge: “Drop it off. Bring it over. We’ll see if it if it fits with what we do and we’ll give you some feedback.” And that’s really… that’s… Amigo brought that to us and said, “Tell us if this works.” And so there we got we’re off and running. That was in 2016 with one test unit or sample unit, and since then we’ve purchased four just for our building and our operation and they’ve been phenomenal units, fan favorites, if you will.

Everyone loves to have the Dex Pro or the Dex Pro Plus and use it for their shift. And it’s been very, very helpful.

Scott Chappell: What’s interesting to note is that basically in 2016, that’s kind of how we started our whole demo process and that was basically we’ve got somebody that might have a need, Nic might have a need. We didn’t know he had a need, so it was almost like… a catch line like try it before you buy it. So and that was a perfect for you guys.

No pressure at all to purchase anything, but just see if it works. And we still do that today with our roadshows.

Samantha Taylor: So can you share, because I know in your large facility, you obviously have a lot of different conveyors, different products that you’re able to use. Have you found a specific application that… you said the Amigos are a fan favorite? How do they use them?

Nic Sulfridge: Right. So we move small packages and freight from one… from in the building to out of the building. We sort it in the middle. Okay? So we move about 35,000 pieces every morning in about a four/four-and-a-half hour span. And then we do that again in the afternoon in about the same amount of time.

So we move quite a bit of freight in and out of the building every single day. Most of that freight is handled on a vast sortation conveyor system. Okay? We do have a specific a niche need for these material handling these Dex Pro, Dex Pro Plus Amigo devices to move very specific pieces from one place to another quickly. And when I say that, I mean the sortation equipment in our building takes roughly 13 minutes to get from point A to point B, and in 13 minutes in our business is a long time.

Scott Chappell: Wow. Seems like a short period time to me.

Nic Sulfridge: When we’re talking about productivity, getting something from here to there quickly matters, and when we have one piece or five pieces, one specific thing that we need to get moved, we’ll grab the Dex Pro Plus and put that thing on it, move it very quickly. And it’s been very, very handy. The other nice thing about the Dex Pro and other material handling devices are they’re very mobile and they can get in and out of places easily and quickly and safely.

Nic Sulfridge: Whereas a Cushman, a tugger, a tugger cart or a golf cart or an old steel pushcart just are not that efficient or safe or easy to use. And these Dex Pros have been great for those applications.

Scott Chappell: I’ve been to that facility and you have what’s called tugger trails. And it basically, if people don’t know what that is, because I had to learn it as well, that’s basically markings on the floor that your folks have to actually drive on. Is it true that the… because of the size and the speed of the products, the Dex Pro, Dex Pro Plus, that they go, are they allowed to go anywhere?

Nic Sulfridge: Yes. Yeah, exactly. The we use a tugger path for the larger pieces of equipment, the Cushman carts and the trailers behind it. Number one for safety and safety is a top priority in our operation. So we keep those tugger, pass on a certain route so that we can avoid accidents or injuries or colliding with people on their travel path.

The Dex Pro’s similar to like a push cart. We can move anywhere in the building, on or off those cross paths. And that’s what makes the Dex Pro so popular is that instead of waiting for a tugger cart to come around on the path, just it put on the Dex Pro, get it to where it needs to be, and you can really virtually go anywhere you need to in the building, including into the office space down the hallway, wherever you need to be.

Samantha Taylor: So before you had the Amigo units, was that what you were doing before? Waiting for a tugger to move those packages or doing it manually?

Nic Sulfridge: Right. Well, manually with a very heavy steel cart. You had a push or pull. And number one, it’s fatiguing. It’s tiring to do that, especially when the building is as big and as fast and expansive as it is. Number two, it’s heavy, and it’s. It can be dangerous. There’s been plenty of times when people have hurt themselves, pushing and pulling a cart, either hitting a foot or heel or just the repetitive motion. So those… the Dex Pros make everything so, so much easier. It’s been very, very popular.

Scott Chappell: Kind of off on a tangent. It’s funny, we go to a lot of trade shows and it’s 2024, right? And it’s amazing the amount of people that are still using pushcarts today. So you’re facility is no different than the facilities we hear about at these trade shows is that we’re looking to try to lessen fatigue or improve safety.

Samantha Taylor: Well, and we just recently recorded in an episode that was all about rightsizing your fleet. You know, we understand we’re not trying to replace maybe all the carts. There’s still a need for them. We’re not trying to replace fork trucks. There’s still a need for those. But it’s just how can we integrate to make it more efficient for your employees and you spoke about fatigue, which I think is very important to understand that the workforce needs to be able to do their job efficiently and not go home at the end of the day, like regretting what they did all day. We want them feeling good about it.

Scott Chappell: Well, and let’s be real, since 2020, COVID and all that good stuff, hasn’t there been an issue of keeping workers and finding workers? So the other side is that maybe that the tougher sell is we’re trying to keep our employee, our workers happy. But honestly, with a lot of these products we’ve sold not just to your facility, but around the country, we’ve had a lot of people say employee satisfaction has gotten better.

Nic Sulfridge: Yeah, absolutely. Number one is safety. And we… obviously that’s a priority. And these devices make work safer. Number two is morale, right? Engagement with our people. And if people are happier at work because of maybe a simple device like having a Dex Pro to move around the building to do their work instead of having to push around a cart or carry something in their arms. That’s a… it’s a no brainer.

Scott Chappell: Perfect. That’s great. Wonderful. So I’ve been to your facility a couple of different times. We’ve had also in our podcast, we’ve talked about this. What’s neat about our product, one of the neat features is it plugs into a 110 outlet. So when I come into your facility and I come through the back doors and you’ve got your safety guardrail, those machines are sitting there.

Now tell me if I’m right or wrong. I like to think I’m right, Samantha, most of the time, but your bigger equipment, it sits somewhere else. And it’s possible, you know, for a guy like me that struggles to take steps, it’s many steps away. When I come in your facility, it’s right back. You come the door. I think the time clock’s there where people punch in and those machines are parked there charging. So is there a benefit to that?

Nic Sulfridge: Absolutely. And that’s one of the one of the features that I noticed first when that first model was dropped off. We had just opened that building. We had just finished putting in the high output charging stations for the tugger equipment, the golf cart, so on and so forth. And I thought, “okay, so now we have to add more power units and charging stations for these things” and I believe it was within a few minutes I asked that question and the answer was, “No you just take the cord and you plug it into any outlet.”

I said, “Any outlet? You just plug it in?” That’s it. It’s very, very simple. In fact, in the few hours that the machines are down for us during the day, you’ll see them parked in various places throughout the building. Just wherever somebody finds an outlet, they stop, they park, they plug it in and they walk away and it’s done.

Scott Chappell: It’s really cool. Like I say, the people that listen to podcast, you know, you take everybody for face value, right? And we speak the truth, but they might be going, “Is this really a big deal?” You live it every day and you see it’s a big deal. So that’s… what a great feature for us to offer.

Samantha Taylor: Yeah, and also, I mean, we were very fortunate to start the relationship early on while you guys were building your new facility. But the benefit of being able to plug it in anywhere is it doesn’t have to be a new facility. We’ve sold to other locations that might have been maybe a legacy site and they have the same benefits.

They’re able to find a corner that they’re able to plug it in and make sure that they’re charged. So you don’t need a whole warehouse remodel to make it work.

Nic Sulfridge: No, it’s a very user friendly piece of equipment. And it’s been great for us.

Scott Chappell: So along that line and I’m sorry, I know you have a bunch of questions, but I just get excited. I mean, I’m excited!

Samantha Taylor: There’s no script! Don’t worry.

Scott Chappell: The other thing about the product is when we talked about your bigger equipment and the special high efficiency or high voltage charging, let’s talk about the batteries. These batteries are sealed batteries. They require zero watering. I’m assuming your bigger products are in a different area. They might require maintenance. So not that we’re always plugging the products, which we kind of are, but tell us about the batteries and how simple that is.

Nic Sulfridge: Okay. So simple answer is I don’t know much about the batteries because I haven’t had to learn anything about these pieces of equipment aside from reading the user’s manual.

Scott Chappell: Right.

Nic Sulfridge: There’s been no issues with the equipment in almost eight years now. So, periodically we do maintenance, or your techs will come out and do maintenance. Yeah, it’s it’s very simple in and out. And the equipment themselves are… I can count on one hand the times that I’ve called Amigo and said, “Hey, I think maybe something’s wrong with this thing.”

Nic Sulfridge: And it turns out that it was user error, right?

Samantha Taylor: We’re here though, no matter what. Yes.

Scott Chappell: This, this just ties into if people had listened to the service podcast…

Samantha Taylor: To K.I.S.S.

Scott Chappell: Yeah, the K.I.S.S. that’s right. That was your deal. The K.I.S.S. — keep it simple service. And this is… so this is real life stuff so people can now, when they hear the podcast and then see this video, they’re going to know, hey, you know, you are we are trustworthy, Samantha.

Samantha Taylor: Nic said…

Scott Chappell: Nic said!

Nic Sulfridge: Yeah, yeah, zero problems with these with these devices. It’s been great. Plug them in. They run all day. In fact, I think they run for a couple of days. We have a habit of charging them every day, which maybe that’s not good.

Samantha Taylor: That’s a good habit, absolutely.

Scott Chappell: No, we want that. We want that habit. Some folks do charge them once a week and then we just recommend every day you use it, you charge it even it doesn’t need it. The other cool thing about the product line is the batteries will never overcharge because the charger doesn’t… it just shuts itself down to a point to like a trickle.

Samantha Taylor: Okay, well I think one thing that you had mentioned earlier and something that we really are excited about is just the partnership. And we appreciate you letting us come in early on to kind of test the product, to get feedback, to be here today as a testimonial. But also one thing I would love for Scott to share is maybe a little bit about how we’ve been able our entire team.

So it’s not just the sales team but our research and development team, our continuous improvement team to really understand how can we keep up with the times to constantly evolve our product. And you’ve been a great partner with that. You’ve been letting us come into our to your facility to maybe put new things on or test things. And I know, Scott, you’ve been involved with a few of those.

If you can share with our listeners some of the continuous improvement we’ve been able to implement.

Scott Chappell: Most definitely. Well, what kind of came from selling their products to their facility is there are vehicles that are in and out and there are… there’s salt and there’s water. Initially, when we did this, we didn’t realize that, right? So the next thing we hear is, oh my gosh, these handles are aren’t turning properly. We scratch your head and go, this doesn’t make sense.

I mean, these things are destructible, we think. Right? Long story short was because of the moisture and because of the salt, our steering kind of had some corrosion. So in that instance, we were able to possibly create a fender, an idea that we had. We were obviously interested in looking at a lubrication and the steering mechanism and then also maybe some testing and some different bearings.

So because of a relationship with you Nic and this is where it all started, we’ve been able to all of a sudden make changes on our whole product line because we didn’t know about it until it happened there. So even though we didn’t want to hear there’s a phone call in there having troubles, it’s just really helped our product become better.

And we also had a sensor that we came up with that we wanted to try to see if it would help out. We put it on your units and we got a phone call within like an hour and they said “it is eliminating our efficiency. It’s slowing us down.” And believe it or not, we stopped it so we didn’t do it anymore.

So it’s really because of your facility and the people that work there that we’ve made those improvements.

Samantha Taylor: Yes, and the feedback is so important because the end user who uses it day in and day out, that’s our goal is how to make it more efficient for you. And it’s the feedback can be good, it can be bad, but that’s important for us. And we do take it back and take it very seriously to have those continuous improvements and make sure that ultimately you’re getting the best efficiency out of your team.

Nic Sulfridge: Yeah, and the team that uses these are these devices in our building are very good at providing feedback. And over the course of the first few years that we had the machines in use, we came up with we, my team came up with some very good suggestions, I thought, such as the tray that carries other utility items like tape and pens and pencils and… the tray on the front of the device.

A cage around the safety light. The strobe light. Those are the important things, right? Little things, but important things. And then as time has gone on, you’ve been able to adapt. And I’m sure that applies to several of the other customers and units that you have out there.

Scott Chappell: The cool thing about that is when a salesperson talks about these improvements, we get an eye roll with our product people. Nothing against our product people. We love you, but we get an eye roll. When we can tell them a customer. Because when you talked about the tray and the pockets, our first… the first prototype we had didn’t have anything on there at all.

It was empty and then we came up with that. So that is… that’s, that’s critical feedback.

Samantha Taylor: Absolutely.

Scott Chappell: Most definitely.

Samantha Taylor: Nic Is there anything else that you feel like you would like to share about what you do or the Amigos? I feel like you’ve done a great job really explaining how it’s been able to improve efficiency and help your facility out.

Nic Sulfridge: I would really I’d just wrap it up with this and I’d say the carts, the Dex Pro the Dex Pro Plus have been great for the specific need that we have to move freight from one place to another very, very quickly, very safely. And to do so in a way that the employee using that device is very satisfied with. It’s been it’s been a great addition to our operation.

Samantha Taylor: Yeah, I love that.

Scott Chappell: I have one other… I have one other question or one other comment is… and it’s kind of a tribute to you, Nic, is that since we met Nic in 2016, we are proud to say that we are in two, four, six, eight, probably 12 locations of your organization.

And that really started with you. We kind of had to get you involved with that. You had to start with you and you’ve been gracious to us and we appreciate that. But we’ve grown it that much. Now in the world of sales, we obviously want more. If we didn’t, we shouldn’t be in sales, right? But– and we’re slowly getting there.

But one other quick thing would be, so thank you for that, but the other thing is with your organizations, it’s really up to that location if they’re interested in finding something new, right? So is that how that kind of works?

Nic Sulfridge: It is, yeah. In our organization, it’s very individualized to the operation. Yeah. And it may not fit in every single operation.

For ours, it certainly does, for a handful of others, it certainly does. For those operations, if they don’t have that– if they don’t have that piece of equipment, they’re missing out. They really… they should look at this thing, see what it can do for them, and see how much safer and more efficient they can do the work that they’re already doing, but in a much, much better way.

Samantha Taylor: And I think real quick, if anyone is listening and hears that and think that they might have an application or want to see it, we have some different case studies and testimonials specifically that tie into what Nic’s speaking to on our website. So please visit myamigo.com/industrial.

Scott Chappell: You’re pretty good at this. You know, the other side of that is that fits into our Amigo Roadshow and our five to seven day…

Samantha Taylor: That was my next point!

Scott Chappell: We are– you and I, if we’re thinking alike, you’re in trouble.

Samantha Taylor: Oh boy, I know that.

Scott Chappell: But that’s the whole thing, is we still do that today, Nic. I mean, we’ve built off that. The fact that we have a facility, we’re going to drop it off. We’re going to train people to a point. We’re going to drop it off. And you know what’s kind of cool about it? You just sell yourself on it. And you know, what’s really unique is that if it doesn’t work, no worries. We’ll pick it up and we’ll move on.

But you don’t know you need it until you see it, and we’d rather you see it and either say yes or say no. But if you never see it, there’s never a yes. It’s always a no.

Samantha Taylor: I think that’s great. Yeah. One other thing I did want to mention, because I did do a little statistic research, just that your company that is now up to 15 million packages a day across the world, which is incredible. So you think about how like one… one site can impact to that and how you’ve been able to do it just so effectively in our Great Lakes Bay region.

Samantha Taylor: So thank you for all that you’ve done.

Scott Chappell: I think this has been great. This is our trial run. This is the maiden voyage.

Samantha Taylor: It is.

Scott Chappell: We’re not going to end up at the bottom of the ocean.

Samantha Taylor: I feel like wee need champagne.

Scott Chappell: Are we going to be at the bottom of the ocean?

Samantha Taylor: I hope not.

Scott Chappell: I don’t think we’re going to.

Samantha Taylor: No, no.

Scott Chappell: So in true podcast form, how do we end?

Samantha Taylor: Well, we like to say, first of all, Nic, thank you so much for joining us. This is wraps up another episode of our Amigo CartCast and ways to improve efficiency in your facility. We really appreciate your time with us today and I’m sure we’ll see you soon.

Nic Sulfridge: Thank you for having me. It’s been great. It’s great to see the facility. Great to see you guys. Always great to support to support a business that’s not only local, but really a truly well-run business with great people, with a great mission. So it’s been my pleasure. Thank you.

Scott Chappell: So what’s the final thing you say?

Samantha Taylor: That’s it! Oh– all right. Ready?

Scott Chappell: Yep.

Samantha Taylor: What do we say? Keep it rolling.