Background: Div V customer Cargill, in Fayetteville, NC, has been a customer of Oil-Dri since 2015. During that time, we have repeatedly experienced issues with deliveries as their silo can only hold 30 tons and a truck delivery is 25 tons. Because their consumption is variable, we are essentially tasked with hitting a moving target with a Just-In-Time delivery. As such, the Operations and Logistics face a Sisyphean task to supply the customer as they require. Over these years many countermeasures have been trialed and proposed (local transloading, local drop&hook, smaller deliveries, etc. etc.) but none were successfully adopted by Cargill.

Actions Taken: In October 2022, Eric Martin and Steve Powell planned to visit the customer for a discussion about business and to propose a solution for Cargill- a supplemental onsite storage unit (a “pig tank”) that provides them additional safety stock and us a window target for order fulfill. Eric and Steve reviewed the agenda and planned their talking points prior to the call (Lesson #23: The key to making effective sales calls, business presentations and successful negotiations is advance preparation) but unfortunately, the next day Steve Powell woke up ill and prudently notified Eric he could not make a call to a customer sick, and Eric could cancel or go alone.

Eric took this opportunity and ran with it- Eric conducted the call by himself at the Fayetteville factory, executing the entire agenda, creating additional goodwill with the customer and Oil-Dri, but most importantly he successfully convinced Cargill to lease a pig tank! These actions will save the supply chain immensely, as well as benefit our customer.