Business View Magazine | December 2018

244 245 transload facility, to who we are, today.” “Ancon Transportation started in 1968,” Smith continues. “Our partners, the Hardin family, started by Conrad Hardin, began his business providing environmental clean-up services and transpor- tation around the Port of Los Angeles, and later branched out to create a trucking company that was primarily port-focused. In 2014, they strate- gically acquired, ‘Keep On Trucking’ and became Ancon KOT.What made the merger between Bud- way and Ancon KOT unique was that both compa- nies were doing primarily the same business with different primary focuses. Budway focused the majority of its business on domestic, large vol- ume movements and was supported by import, whereas Anton KOT focused on import services and was supported by domestic.We combined the leaders in our industry to find out how we can be more successful, together. So, this is who we are as MHX; our name came from combining the partner families: the McLeod and the Hardin family. It was important to us as a company to re- member the companies and families that gave us the opportunity to be who we are but also come together as a new leader in our industry” Today, the newly-formed MHX has seven rail- served facilities throughout California, 170 em- ployees, and a fleet of approximately 80 trucks to support the movement of its customers’ products. It moves a multitude of products –steel, alu- minum, lumber, wallboard, rebar, tires, dry bulk, consumer goods, and hazardous material – from its rail-served facilities, the break-bulk ports, and container terminals out of the Ports of Los An- geles, Long Beach, and Stockton. “Our customers ship large volumes and need to move product efficiently to their end users,” says Smith. “So, we seamlessly marry rail and boat distribution sup- MHX ported by an efficient fleet of trucks to provide an efficient solution.” Smith believes that one of MHX’s main advan- tages in a very competitive sector is its deep un- derstanding and application of information. “We know our data points,” she exclaims. “We believe that you can always improve something if you know the information, so we analyze every origin and destination pair at every time of day through- out California where our trucks deliver.We know the miles and minutes for all our deliveries. By tracking that information, we can look at the best time to deliver, where’s the demand, what are the traffic patterns, and how we can be most cost-ef- ficient for our customers.We meet our customers’ demands as far as the end delivery and then, we work backwards to find the right facility and we staff that facility to move the product in the most efficient manner at the lowest cost.We know how long everything takes and we really study that. We know the dwell time at all of our facilities to know exactly how long our trucks are going to sit; we know the exact time it’s going to take to go from our facilities to wherever the destination is, as well as the pull time to unload.We believe our efficiency is what sets us apart from our competition.” “We try to think about, not what we are going to do today, but what are we not going to do,” she continues. “We talk about our ‘jeopardy loads.’ Out AT A GLANCE MHX WHAT: A transload and trans- portation company WHERE: Headquarters in Car- son, California WEBSITE: www.mhx.solutions