Plotting a New Course
With an office in the middle of an 85,000-square-foot refrigerator and freezer, Mike Nasif is the man with the icy nerves helping with this transformation. “After 12 years in here, I’m used to it,” he said about the year-round 38-degree Fahrenheit air surrounding the small, heated steel box that is his home away from home.
The director of distribution for Murry’s, a 50-year-old company in Upper Marlboro, Md., is leading the charge by keeping the company’s transportation, distribution and logistics aligned with its new strategic plan. Tim Hazel, his right-hand man who handles the day-to-day operations, is helping him plot a new course through uncharted waters for Murry’s, which is trying to make itself more competitive in the food-distribution market.
The company owns 32 tractors, 55 trailers and 39 straight trucks. Mr. Nasif is responsible for its tractor-trailer fleet as well as its two warehouses, logistics operation and physical plant maintenance. Straight trucks, whose drivers act as salesmen, are outside his jurisdiction.
Murry’s makes about 400 products, ranging from steaks and chicken to onion rings, French toast, pork chops and buffalo wings, at its plant in Lebanon, Pa. The items are distributed to the company’s network of 68 stores along the East Coast. About 60% of the products are shipped frozen, with the other 40% made up of dry goods.
To get the items to their destinations, Murry’s has 45 refrigerated and 10 dry Dorsey trailers. Its “reefers” are 461/2 feet long and are powered by Carrier cooling units. The 10 dry vans are 53 feet long.
Long reliant on selling to inner-city customers through a network of company-owned stores, Murry’s is now branching out to serve grocery chains and others in a national sales effort supported by its tractor-trailer fleet.
“We are now serving major supermarket chains such as Kroger’s, Publix, Winn-Dixie, Safeway, Giant, Super Fresh,” said Mr. Nasif. So far, the company serves 17 grocery store customers from Maine to Florida.
“We’re now expanding our national sales effort to every state east of the Mississippi,” he said. “We’ve reduced the geographic area our own stores serve and focused on expanding the scope of our national business. That’s the future for Murry’s.”
Trucks will play a key role in helping Murry’s with its expanding sales vision, but it’s a strategy the company knows will take time to develop. This year will be crucial in gauging whether its effort will pan out, Mr. Nasif said.
“Right now, we’re taking a wait-and-see approach,” he said. “If the (national sales) effort is successful, if we expand, then we are going to go out and get more trucks. We’ll know where we are going by the end of this year.”
So far, things seem to be going well. The company’s dry goods business has skyrocketed, going from contributing just 10% of revenue to more than 40% since 1989. The growth has forced an expansion of the dry goods warehousing operation from 10,000 square feet to more than 80,000 in the last seven years.
For the full story, see the Jan. 18 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
