Ralph's Rapid Trucking

Actually, it's Alex and Ralph's Rapid Trucking.

Anybody running a small biz knows the story ... you do all kinds of things because they need doing and you can do them passably well and that's the whole story.

An interesting thing is that no matter what my present work is supposed to be, I also always seem to wind up doing things that I used to do.

So, although I am now a clothing manufacturer, I spend a lot of time fiddling with numbers (my first white-collar job), writing (my second white-collar job), handling freight (my first "real" job) and driving for pickup/delivery (done that, too).

We've had pickup trucks and vans for a long time, so moving small stuff -- up to around 2500 pounds (1150 kg) was an obvious thing to do, at least within 500 miles (800 km). But I was very surprised to suddenly find myself hauling about 11,000 pounds (5,000 kg) of wool more than 600 miles (about 1000 km) on an emergency basis in September of 2021.

And lately, it's becoming routine to move my yarn and my Fabric between American Woolen (spinning and finishing) and MTL (weaving) and Better Team USA (garment production) and Factory8 (garment production). Professional trucking is getting more difficult to schedule and the doubling of the cost of fuel is also a significant factor. Also, the relatively small size of my loads are not a good fit for the real truckers.

As long as the savings in time and cash remain significant, we'll probably KEEP ON TRUCKIN' ... (sorry for that).

Debby and Ralph of WeatherWool in a Penske Truck Rental, heading from Philadelphia to Jamestown, South Carolina, with our Batch 7 wool

Debby and Ralph in a Penske Truck Rental, heading from Philadelphia to Jamestown, South Carolina, with our Batch 7 wool. This was part of our response to the floods of Hurricane Ida.

Ralph’s Rapid On-Demand Trucking (and Alex’s too) is a just a little bit of a joke about the owners of WeatherWool often handling their own trucking

Picking up yarn at American Woolen, June 2022, above and below

I'm standing around uselessly while Mee Lo, Keith and Stuart load my trailer. Keith was prominently featured on Mike Rowe's How America Works a couple of weeks ago, when the show detailed the operations of American Woolen. Now that Keith's a movie star, I will probably have to pay royalties or something for this video.

Below, at MTL, Ralph and Mike (the owner) load some WeatherWool Fabric onto my trailer for the trip to American Woolen in Connecticut, where it will be finished. Since our early days, WeatherWool has relied on the support, advice and expertise of Mike Hillebrand and his team at Material Technology and Logistics. MTL has resources, including the highly sophisticated Jacquard Looms, that are necessary to create the Hardcore Luxury Merino Jacquard Fabric that is the basis of WeatherWool.

Since our early days, WeatherWool has relied on the support, advice and expertise of Mike Hillebrand and his team at Material Technology and Logistics. MTL has resources, including the highly sophisticated Jacquard Looms, that are necessary to create the Hardcore Luxury Merino Jacquard Fabric that is the basis of WeatherWool.

5 June 2022 --- Ralph

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