TMW Systems announced that 140 customers signed new software contracts with TMW in 2009. TMW credits the healthy sales performance to the strategy of many successful transportation firms to retool and boost productivity ahead of 2010’s anticipated freight recovery.
“Companies using TMW software are often diversifying their business models to be more flexible, resilient and better prepared to profit during change,” says David W. Wangler, president and chief executive officer of TMW Systems. “Keeping businesses running lean and fit to help sustain them through difficult times and, more importantly, to prepare them for new opportunities when the economy turns around – these were prime motivations many new customers expressed when buying from TMW.”
Wangler says both new and existing customers are capitalizing on periods of reduced market activity to strengthen their operations and increase management visibility to business performance. “We were pleased that so many new carriers and freight brokers took the opportunity to partner with us,” he says. “It shows confidence both in a freight recovery and in TMW.”
TMW says many existing customers also took advantage of the broader range of well-integrated product offerings available from the company because of its acquisitions in recent years. Page Trucking, for example, chose to move to TMW’s TMT Fleet Maintenance software last August because of the strong integration with its TMWSuite operations platform, also from TMW Systems. Page Trucking specializes in hauling various bulk commodities, including both hazardous and nonhazardous.
“We investigated several software applications for our shops, but finally chose TMT Fleet Maintenance because of its strong productivity features, the tight integration with our TMWSuite system and its cost-effectiveness,” says Piper Titus, controller for Page Trucking. “All around, TMT Fleet Maintenance was a much better fit for our business, and we expect that our transition to a ‘digital’ shop will yield significant cost savings for us.”
The pace of strong sales is continuing into 2010 as evidenced this past January by the U.S. Xpress decision to license TMW software. “U.S. Xpress chose TMWSuite to support its rapidly growing brokerage service offering,” says Steven J. Cleary, senior vice president of Xpress Network Solutions.
“TMW was chosen because of our existing relationship with the IDSC optimization products, the strength of its capabilities for brokerage and the technical architecture for a high availability low-cost platform,” says Dale Langley, chief information officer of U.S. Xpress Enterprises.
Based on steady customer growth and increasing signs of a freight recovery, TMW expressed a strong sense of optimism for the industry in 2010. “We see trucking’s best days ahead of us,” Wangler says. “In 2009, TMW invested nearly 250,000 hours across all of our business units in software development, and we are still hiring. We have over a dozen open positions right now that we hope to fill in the first quarter of 2010.”