Raj Lail moved to Canada in 2006 and built SST Trucking from the ground up. They are already up to 55 trucks and don’t plan on slowing down. In this interview, Raj explains that as they continue steady growth Axon Software minimizes their workload and allows them to stay lean in office personnel.
Q&A
Tell us about yourself and the company.
My name is Raj Lail. I am the owner and manager at SST Trucking. We are a flat deck company located in Saskatoon. We run mostly in Western Canada as well as the US. We haul anything that we can fit onto a flat deck. Most of our fleet is B-train flats. We have some tandems or flats that we run in the US.
I moved to Canada in ’06 and after a few months I got a Class 1 license and started driving. I love driving. It’s kind of a passion, and after a couple of years I started pursuing my career in trucking. I bought my own truck and started out with one truck. Now we have a fleet of 50 to 55 – half of those are owner operators and half are company-owned.
We heard of Axon in 2011 and had a couple of phone meetings with them. In 2012, they convinced us that it would be the best decision. And it was. It’s like we can do anything we want with Axon.
Can you tell us about some of the problems you are solving with Axon?
It makes your life way, way easier – especially with me because I have to check everything. I have to go through everything. Once you enter an order, after that you can run any report. You can do whatever you want to do, so you don’t have to re-enter anything twice. You don’t have to go look in different places. Everything that I want to see is in Axon.
Has the way you do fuel tax changed with Axon?
Before, what we used to do is give drivers a paper that they had to fill in. Every province or state. How many miles or kilometers they drove in a day. And what fuel they bought. We were doing it manually. But after Axon, it’s just simple.
At the end, you just do one click and it calculates everything itself. Especially that new thing, carbon taxes going on right now in some provinces. It’s so easy with Axon that you don’t have to look into what you need to do. They do it for you, and you just have to enter the stuff once, and everything is done through Axon.
Has Axon helped you get your invoices out and collect your money more quickly?
Yes, it has. Once the order is entered, we put the order number on the paperwork, and once we receive it, we invoice it right away. We don’t have to worry about which load it is or what we are doing. Axon has made our life very easy.
Once the order is entered, we tell the driver, “This is your order number.” Everything is through the order number. Once we receive the paperwork for that order number, the only thing we have to do is invoice and attach the paperwork. It’s way, way easier.
How do your drivers and owner operators like their settlements and equipment statements?
It’s very simple. They can understand whatever they need to and they have their year-to-date earnings on there too. Same with the owner operators.
What makes our life so simple is that, once the order is entered, it ultimately goes into the unit. We don’t have to do anything at the end. It just creates the statement because we download the fuel directly from our providers.
When we are making a statement, it’s just a simple click and it’s done. The drivers and owner operators love it.
Has Axon helped you improve productivity in the office?
We had 6 trucks and now we have 55. We did not increase any staff. We’re using Axon, so we did not increase our office staff other than the people on safety or the ones in the shop. The office staff is the same as at that time, and now we have 55 trucks. We’re doing invoicing, statements, everything.
I think we can go up to 100 trucks with the same staff with the way Axon is working, because it’s so simple.
Axon paid for itself a few years back. Now we’re just making money out of it. Where we are right now, we would need two or three more people in our office to do the stuff that Axon is doing. At 40 grand a year, Axon is saving at least $100,000 a year for us in employee wages.
Has Axon helped you maintain or improve your customer relations?
It’s very easy. Sometimes customers call and they say, “I need to know where this load is.” They give me the order number. Some of our customers book hundreds of loads with us. The only thing I have to go on is the customer’s PO in the system. It tells where the load is, whether it is picked up or delivered, if it’s invoiced, or anything, and if we have to send them paperwork.
It’s so simple. I can tell them within a minute. Customers are really, really happy with that.
How do you find the software in terms of ease of use?
That’s the best thing. It’s so easy. We can teach anyone in a day how to operate it and there are not too many complications. It’s so simple.
You can make the reports the way you want it. It’s not how the reports are set up in some other software – it’s the way you want it. You can do whatever you want to with the software. That’s the best thing.
How would you describe the training from Axon?
Yeah, whenever we need it, anything, they just provide. It’s the same day. They say, “Yeah, we will figure something out,” and in a day everything is done.
How do you find the Axon shop program?
A couple of years back we put in the inventory system with Axon. It’s so easy now. We can track everything. We can track when our oil change is done, how much inventory we have left, tires, and other stuff. It’s very simple.
Before, we were always running out of stuff because we didn’t know. We were not tracking it. Since we are now, we know how much stuff we have and when to order, so it’s a good thing.
If somebody asked about your experience with Axon, what would you say?
As I said, it paid itself off a few years back. I couldn’t imagine doing trucking without Axon right now. I can’t go back. It’s part of our business.
