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Posted October 3, 2018
In March, Nicola Morris, WEX Chief Corporate Development Officer, was featured with her husband in the Wall Street Journal. The piece discusses Morris’ career and the job-hunting aid her husband received from WEX, which enabled them to settle here in Maine.
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D&D is committed to keeping their business up and running as they, like others, face many challenges. They are out on the roads every day delivering goods to keep products on the shelves for those of us sheltering in place. Because they are a small operation, it’s all hands on deck: they don’t have the bandwidth to provide back-up if people are not able to come into work. While they do have a few employees working from home, they feel it’s important that they be in the office for the constant interaction needed with the company’s drivers. And their drivers are on full force out there making deliveries through this pandemic.
As Heisten puts it, “Freight is nuts right now. A lot of contracts we have involve making deliveries to places like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King distributers. With many stores shuttered, that type of freight is drying up, and we are doing more delivery transactions with brokers. They are paying high rates to haul, including bonuses. A majority of our freight is shuttle movement within a 125-mile range for Schreiber (Cheese). I have heard that Walmart has pushed orders to new levels. Their biggest weekend to date was 2.4 million pounds shipped which last weekend went up to 3.6 million pounds.”
Some of the things drivers are faced with are long delays loading and unloading, and an inability to find places to eat on the road but their spirits remain high and they are grateful to be able to continue to bring in an income.
“Rusty Heisten and his team at D&D Sexton have been putting in long hours to ensure their drivers can stay on the road and keep food deliveries happening all across the country. They are out in the field every day keeping the economy going. I’ve been working with Rusty for 19 years and his passion for trucking has always impressed me. We are proud to support him and his company and help them get through this difficult time,” says Bridget King, Manager of Account Services, WEX.
LaTaschia Velasquez has been helping WEX customers in the trucking industry for almost eight years. During this particularly difficult time for the world with the coronavirus turning everything upside down and forcing a lot of us to shelter in place, she is grateful and awed by her customers for the essential services they are providing.
Says Velasquez, “My team is helping those who manage fleets of trucks and we see what our customers are facing during this pandemic. Our customers who are sheltering in place find they don’t have access to the systems they normally have in their office. But they are still finding ways to take care of their employees, meet payroll, and even when working from home seamlessly run their business. As a result, their drivers on the road can continue to take care of the work of delivering goods and essential services.”
Velasquez goes on to say, “Our customers range from small owner-operators to companies with 100 semi-trucks. I’m impressed by their passion to keep goods moving across America and particularly with the men and women who are themselves on the roads every day keeping services and supplies moving all over the world.”
Thank you to the truckers out on the road every day providing essential services out in the field.
A WEX customer, Tenet Health, is a healthcare services company based in Dallas, Texas providing essential services during this pandemic. They called WEX on Sunday, March 22, looking for help. Due to COVID-19 and the increase in the need for medical equipment and supplies, Tenet was running into supply shortages with their existing vendors. They needed a new way to purchase medical gear and a different way to access the supply chain.
With 113,000 employees, Tenet serves 65 hospitals, 24 surgical hospitals, and 480 outpatient centers. When you think about it, that’s a lot of supplies to keep stocked. They turned to WEX to help resolve their supply chain dilemma so they could continue to care for their patients during this difficult time.
Tenet is a client Jessica Cook implemented in the summer of 2019. So, when she was tapped to work on this project she was already familiar with their business practices and was able to quickly start work on a solution. It was essential for Tenet to find creative ways to pay suppliers for the goods they needed. Jessica used WEX’s TransAct Global (TAG), a proprietary processor of WEX, which allowed her to provide immediate results for Tenet. She turned the implementation around quickly that Sunday night which allowed Tenet to be up and running just a few short hours after they brought the issue to us.
Tenet’s program is working well and with hospital supplies still in high demand, this will continue to be a great tool for them. As Cook describes it, “With WEX’s flexible technology, we are able to create a virtual card instantaneously. And during this shortage of hospital supplies, Tenet can use that virtual card to turn to less commonly used e-commerce web sites like Ebay, Amazon, and others and purchase from places they do not normally bulk order supplies.”
We are grateful for organizations like Tenet who are working tirelessly out in the field to ensure the safety of their patients and care providers.
3 reasons we see people flipping to a fuel card:
