ME3 Corporation is a hauler from Pennsylvania. After 20 years on the job, their comptroller announced her retirement. They realized that it would be a huge challenge to train somebody else on the many different spreadsheets, programs, and relationships between them. So, instead, they decided to shop around for all-in-one software that could handle everything – simple, quick, and easy.
We sat down for an interview with Rob Eldredge to hear about their experience with Axon Software.
Q&A
Tell us about yourself and the company.
I’m Rob Eldredge, president of ME3 Corporation. We are in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania. We’re a trucking company that hauls off-spec baked goods that get turned into animal feed.
Trucking overall was a family business and I worked there for over 20 years. I left there and worked for a couple of other companies and eventually got to the point where it was time for me to do my own thing. My business partner and I were looking around at several other businesses and we came back to transportation and just settled in.
Can you talk about your decision to start using Axon Software?
It’s been about 6 months since we started using Axon. It has been wonderful. I looked at it 10 years ago when I worked for our family business and I thought it was a great program. Everybody in operations, sales, and compliance loved it.
Our comptroller who was with us here for 20 years decided to announce to us in May that she was retiring in September.
At the time, we were using about 5 different Excel spreadsheets, Word, and everything was stored in Dropbox. Financials were done on QuickBooks. We used an outside web-based program for our compliance stuff, and spreadsheets for that.
To replace her, it was going to be too much for somebody to have to learn all those things in such a short period of time. We made the decision to look at Axon again, and decided that was the way to go because it’s all in one.
It has saved us a lot of time. Our comptroller was working 5 days a week, and the lady who replaced her works 3 days a week.
Do the drivers like their statements?
They’ve all liked it. They’re very clean and they like the way it’s laid out. It shows them exactly what they’re getting without having to make a bunch of photocopies of tickets.
How is the training and support?
Training was great. The transition staff was very helpful. It was long, a couple of weeks, but it was good because it made everything easier.
When we went live and went on our own, there weren’t many questions. It was very thorough, very methodical, and we caught things that we wouldn’t have caught otherwise. We were able to integrate with what Axon does.
Support is wonderful. Axon has a great staff. If we need help, even if they’re not available at that moment, they will call us back quickly and walk us through the information that we’re looking for.
Does everyone find the software easy to use?
It’s very easy. We have a gentleman that’s not computer-savvy at all. He has picked it up and does a great job with it. A few questions at the beginning, but now he’s got it. He picked it up quickly and does extremely well with it.
Has Axon changed anything else about how you do business?
We are in a unique situation where we work for one customer. They have 32 customers that we service for them. Everything that comes in across the scale gets put in a report for them, and we get paid off that report. We just make sure that everything matches up.
If it doesn’t, then we do a miscellaneous invoice to them, so with Axon it has been very easy. It makes it easier than putting everything in a spreadsheet and working through things that way. It makes it much quicker.
That’s the thing with Axon. Everything is all in one. That’s what we like. Rather than having to pull all the information from different places, pulling the miles off of this sheet, fuel off of that sheet, maintenance out of here, everything is in one program, and it breaks down for us instead of having to make a sheet for each thing.
I’d say it probably saves us 20 to 30 hours a week of manpower. Easily. Axon is great. I have recommended it to two other companies already.
