ABOUT
I wrote this video script for Dupre Logistics to introduce new employees to the company as part of their on-boarding experience. I conducted interviews and compiled historical information to come up with content and script for the long-format video.
VIDEO SCRIPT
Hello and welcome. As a member of our team of employees, you’ve probably seen our company values and vision posted somewhere – and heard the mission statement, Safe Service That's Profitable, along the way.
To some, those are just nice words. If you’re new here, you may not know the story of how this company came to be -- who we are, and what’s happened along the way that makes us who we are. I always say, “People are our greatest treasure.” So today, I’d like to give you a closer look at your company and show you exactly why we hold that view…
OUR HISTORY
We started our business from a service perspective, with the mindset of a customer. Back in 1973, we acquired a small service station in Opelousas, Louisiana. It was named ‘Hep Ur Sef’ (sp?) and had a horseshoe gravel driveway, a makeshift canopy, and two underground storage tanks. We were in business, but we couldn’t find a reliable transporter to deliver fuel to us.
We were being overlooked by the big haulers, and we figured that other businesses probably had the same problem, too.
So in 1980, we decided we’d do it ourselves. We wanted to establish a transportation company that would meet the needs of petroleum marketers. And that’s when Dupré Transport was born.
We bought a small trucking company, and it came with two trucks. Except that we later found out that only one of them ran. So with one truck, and using the broken truck for parts, we set out to fill the void that existed in the marketplace for reliable fuel distribution.
We had a vision – but we didn’t know anything about trucking: we weren’t truck drivers or equipment people, and we didn’t know how to dispatch drivers. So we had to hire people that knew how to deliver the services that we would promise. And we were fortunate to get very good people – people who knew what they were doing, people who wanted to work in a good environment.
OUR TEAM MEMBERS
John Istre was our first employee, and John knew the gasoline hauling business. He was in the latter part of his career, in his late 60s, and he knew drivers, and customers, and how the business worked. So we were able to learn from John.
One day I asked him, ‘How do you build a great trucking company?’ and he said, ‘Reggie, it’s pretty easy. If you want to have a good customer base and you want to have a good company, hire good people and take care of them. And you can end up building a company you can be proud of.’ I took that advice. And John was right.
We were fortunate to start off with John, and he brought other good individuals to our company: drivers, mechanics, dispatchers, and others. He put together a trusted team of experienced people and those were the founding people of our company. It was a little group of about 8 people who started out in that first year. Those were good people. They came to work and we stand on their shoulders today.
SERVICE
In the early days we were picking up new customers and delivering good service, but as our business grew, we found that while we were adding new clients -- we were also losing clients along the way. And that’s because we weren’t fulfilling our service requirements. So I brought in some professional managers to help us.
These guys, Tom Bocal and Doug Place, were leaders. They helped us build the processes and the organization and the to fulfill our promises to our clients. They helped us deliver steady, good service. It helped us to meet the ever-changing requirements of the clients. It helped us deliver on our promises.
And there were many other people along the way, too, who helped us to organize and bring in systems that gave us consistency to what we were trying to do.
FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE
As we grew our business, we realized that we are financial stewards of this business -- that we need to have a return on investment – to make money so that we can continue having good people and good equipment and good technologies. A growing company that’s profitable is good for all of our stakeholders: our customers, our team members and our stockholders.
We pledged to reinvest the money that we make in a certain order: We reinvest in our people first, our equipment second and technology third. All three are important, but when we look at reinvestment that’s how we look at it.
SAFE OPERATION
As we got better at service and growing our business, unfortunately we had a time when we were having accidents – back in the late 1990s and early 2000. Drivers were getting hurt and some of them were dying.
When you go to those funerals and you suffer with their relatives, you actually hurt, because you know the drivers. You talked to them, you had lunch with them, shared stories of growing your families. And to look in the eyes of their children is just life changing. And out of those tragic accidents came our extreme dedication to your safety. And to the safety of the people we operate around.
RELATIONSHIPS
Dupré is a company that people join not just for a job, but for a career. Many of us have been with the company for several years and some even for decades. These long-term relationships with other team members and customers over time have enabled us to be able to serve our customers better, which benefits everyone.
We value our people in a high way. We want to create a good place for you to work, so that you can to find your place at Dupré -- so you can deliver your talents every day and see your company grow, and know you’re a vital part of our success.
Our goal is to be the ideal place to work. So, our hiring standards are higher, and our vetting process a little longer, but once you become part of the team we hope that you’re happier and will want to stay here a lot longer.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
We’ve been in business for 38 years now and we’ve built a solid foundation to go forward on. And one thing that has been consistent in our history is that Dupré has always evolved, changed and improved. That’s why we chose the phrase Always Forward Thinking as our slogan.
We started off as a gasoline carrier; we added chemical hauling since we were on the Gulf Coast it was along the same lines. We bought an over-the-road dry van company in the mid-1980s and from that business, we spun out two of our businesses that today are some of our best businesses: our dedicated business and our brokerage business, SCS Strategic Capacity Services. And our SCS business is our fastest-growing business today and our dedicated contract business is the one where we probably deliver the greatest value to our clients.
Every one of our businesses has a history and a purpose and they all tie back together. We’ve taken what we’ve learned from each business and used that experience to make our entire operation better.
I would say that one thing we try to be at Dupré is that we try to be constant learners. Every day is an opportunity to get better. We don’t have all the answers, but the answers are available if we’re willing to learn. And that’s difficult some times because it means you’re always in transition and we’ve encountered some growing pains we get bigger and try to get better.
We have encountered some issues when it comes to our equipment and our technology. We’re working on those things now – things like upgrading our systems so that they facilitate you, our team, to be able to efficiently and productively serve our customers.
So be encouraged when you encounter these challenges, and know we’re not where we want to be yet. I realize that sometimes it feels like we’re working against you, keeping you from delivering the mission, but that’s never our intention. We can’t fix everything as fast as we’d like to, but we will persevere through this together and we will come out much better as a company.
LOOKING FORWARD
As we’ve grown our team to almost 1,400 people now, we want our people to be our best team. We want to do the best for our clients, customers, for shareholders. We’ve had to learn how to do things better and better all the time. You know, I think that hope, faith, patience & perseverance are some of the ingredients it takes to move from good to better.
We want to be the very best team that we can be. We want to double the size of our business over the next 4 years. This is going to require each of our 5 business groups to grow aggressively.
We want to maintain safe operations, customer focus, and we want to build the ideal place to work, while we maintain profitability. This is going to require collaboration, your help, and sometimes sacrifices – but if we can come together as a team we can accomplish this exciting vision.
We’re shooting for greatness. We’re shooting for a better future. Know that we’re here for you. Collaborate with us and with each other. When we win, we win together.
