Orgill bolsters supply chain
On the heels of a record year in sales and volume, Orgill has announced plans to continue its ongoing investment in improving, expanding and modernizing its distribution and logistics network.
With its new state-of-the-art distribution center in Rome, New York, currently receiving product and just months away from being fully operational, Orgill unveiled additional plans to nearly double the size of its Hurricane, Utah, distribution center.
“With the new, 900,000-square-foot facility in Rome coming online and the expansion at our Hurricane distribution center, we will have nearly 6 million square feet of warehouse space in North America available to us,” says Randy Williams, Orgill’s executive vice president of distribution. “This is a testament to the growth our customers’ operations have experienced in recent years, and it is also a testament to our commitment to invest in our logistics network to keep pace with our customers’ needs.”
Including Rome and Hurricane, Orgill currently operates eight distribution centers throughout the United States and Canada, with other facilities located in Tifton, Georgia; Inwood, West Virginia; Sikeston, Missouri; Kilgore, Texas; Post Falls, Idaho; and London, Ontario.
The decision to expand the Hurricane distribution center was primarily driven by the growth of Orgill’s customer base in the Western United States, according to Darin Houskeeper, Orgill’s vice president of distribution for the Western region.
“Since we first opened the Hurricane facility in 2005, we have just seen our growth explode in this part of the country,” Houskeeper says. “Not only have we watched our business with existing customers grow, we also continue to add new accounts. All of this additional volume translates to the need for more space within the facility and a more efficient use of that space.”
Along with the addition of more than 425,000 square feet of under-roof space in Hurricane, Orgill’s senior vice president of logistics Vic Price says that they will also be taking additional steps to modernize the facility, including the relocation of the shipping and receiving areas to create better flow-through of product and the addition of more narrow aisle racking that allows for stocking of even greater product volume.
“Everything we are doing is designed to create greater efficiency and accuracy,” Price says. “As our volume increases, we need to make these kinds of investments and improvements to ensure that we are delivering product to our customers in a timely and cost-effective way that helps them build their business and their profitability.”
Orgill’s Hurricane facility currently services customers located in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and portions of Idaho, Nebraska and New Mexico.
Construction at Hurricane is scheduled to begin in the coming weeks and should take 12-18 months to complete. When finished, the Hurricane distribution center will employ about 350 Orgill team members.
Along with the investments in its distribution centers, Orgill continues to look for ways to modernize its overall logistics operations, including upgrading and expanding its trucking fleet, according to Tom Liddy, director of fleet safety and services for Orgill.
“About two years ago, we made the commitment to upgrade our fleet and partnered with Ryder for all of our power equipment and today, about 75 percent of our trucks are less than two years old,” he says. “And with the increase in business we have seen over the last year, just since October we have added 60 new trucks to our fleet and an additional 200 trailers.”
While the trucks themselves are new, drivers are also being given access to some powerful technology to improve their efficiency and customer service, Liddy adds. “On the safety side, we invested in state-of-the-art dashcams for our trucks, technology like collision avoidance, roll safety and lane departure systems. We have also partnered with a company to create a positioning system that integrates with a customer-facing app so customers can track their orders in real time and know when the trucks will be arriving at their stores.”
For Orgill, making these investments in logistics and infrastructure are integral to fulfilling their mission to help their customers be successful.
“First and foremost, we are a distributor of products and services, and our goal is to perform those functions better than anyone,” Williams says. “We now have one of the newest and most technologically advanced distribution networks serving this industry, and that is core to fulfilling our commitments to our customers now and well into the future.”
