Smith Creek Maintains an Advantage
“Animal Bedding. Landscape Products. Wood Fuels." The signs attached to an impressive fleet of semi-trailers reveal only part of what’s on offer at Smith Creek.
The product selection itself may not turn heads. How the operation supports those products certainly does.
“We’re a little unique in that we are providing a lot of our own transportation,” Matt Smith, the COO and managing partner, said in a humble understatement. “We have 400 semi-trailers that haul raw materials in and out of here.”
Amassing a fleet that size was not necessarily by preference. The operation, headquartered about 20 miles northwest of Louisville, Kentucky, could not find the service it needed to take care of the suppliers and customers throughout Indiana and Kentucky. So, it grew the fleet.
Walking floor trailers, van trailers, blow in trailers, chip trailers, roll offs, open-top trailers, auger trailers, flatbeds and tankers now traverse a 200-mile radius. And with them comes a relentless need for maintenance.
THE FIX IS IN
Smith Creek has 14 dedicated mechanics, a supervising mechanic and three service writers. The 18-member crew focuses on the transportation and heavy equipment sides of the business.
“We do all of our own maintenance and have been that way from day one,” said Smith, noting the operation has a different maintenance division that takes care of the plant. “This way of doing things is not cheap — we’re employing experienced mechanics. But as a result, we avoid downtime, and that allows us to service our customers and suppliers without delays.”
The maintenance facility is in the middle of the primary production yard. Just steps away, Smith Creek operates a parts department that could pass as a retail store. Shelves are stocked with parts that can be quickly utilized by the maintenance team for efficient repairs.
“Everything we do involves expensive equipment, and uptime is critical,” Smith said. “We can’t wait a day or two to get a technician here from a vendor or contractor. We’ve always chosen to fend for ourselves.”
“We do all of our own maintenance and have been that way from day one." - MATT SMITH
PROVIDING THE WORKS
The work never stops at Smith Creek — literally. The bedding side of the business runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Another of its production facilities in Evansville, Indiana, runs 24 hours a day during the week. The entire operation employs about 145 people across all its locations.
The customers’ needs are a key reason for the round-the-clock production and priority on maintenance.
“When it comes to animal bedding for poultry, we’ve only got a three-day window from the time they clean out the building until the time they have to put birds back in,” Smith said. “So, there is no option to say, ‘I can’t get you this week because of a problem.’”
On the mulch side of the business, the hours have been greatly reduced since Smith Creek took delivery of the first Sahara XP colorizer. The company had used Colorbiotics colorant for its mulch products for about 20 years, but for most of that time it used a trommel to do the coloring.
“We didn’t realize we had outgrown the trommel until we got the XP. It was a game changer as soon as we got it because we were able to produce the amount of yardage that we needed to in one shift without going to two shifts.” - MATT SMITH
The improvement was such that the business purchased a second Sahara XP for its location in Louisville — a valuable gain in efficiency for an operation that never rests.
THE SECRET SERVICE
Any business can acknowledge the importance of customer service. Smith Creek takes that all the way to its own welders and a parts inventory for every need that can arise.
“We ship pretty quick, especially on the landscape side,” Smith said. “If a customer calls in the morning, they’re typically going to get their delivery after lunch. We stand out because of our service and having our own transportation fleet helps us with that.”
Watch the Smith Creek story: https://www.colorbiotics.com/resources/smith-creek-bought-first-sahara-zp-then-it-bought-another