Sweet Success!

The following story will show you that Phoenix employees will go to unusual lengths to satisfy the needs of their clients and global partners.

Phoenix International wanted to establish a strong partnership with one of the premier Mexican forwarding companies, in order to provide their clients with fast, reliable, and affordable import and export shipment services in Mexico.

Phoenix president Mike Panasewicz had his eye on one of the best, Universal Cargo, based in Mexico City. Discussions were advancing nicely, so Mike set up a meeting in Mexico to make the deal.

A week before the meeting, Tom Sweet, director of overseas development at Phoenix, responded to an urgent call from one of the owners of Universal Cargo, Carlos Greenham. Mr. Greenham asked Tom to charter a plane in order to move 550 kilos of product from Illinois to Mexico City by midnight that day. MABE, the largest manufacturer and supplier of kitchen stoves in Latin America, had to have the parts installed by sunrise to avoid a production shutdown that would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars or maybe millions.

At 3:00 p.m. that day, the request for charter was revoked as the shipper's forwarder promised to deliver without the need for a chartered plane. At 4:00, Carlos called Tom back to say that the shipper's forwarder now reports the task at hand is impossible. At this point, it was too late to contract a charter, find a trucker for the pickup and arrange for a commercial flight to carry the shipment.

Without hesitating, Tom jumped into action. He booked himself on the next (and last) flight from Chicago to Mexico City, and arranged for the shipper to produce just enough material to keep the line moving for another day, but still small enough to carry on a passenger flight.

Tom left Chicago at 4:00 p.m. and drove the hour to the supplier, while calling his wife to have her pack his overnight bag and meet him on his way back to O'Hare airport with his passport and kids. Tom was thus able to board the plane to Mexico as the flight attendants were closing the doors at 6:30 p.m.

Carlos met Tom at the Mexico City airport at 11:15 p.m. They drove straight to an agreed-upon meeting place where they turned the part over to a trucker who delivered it to the MABE factory. Then MABE installed the part and had its line up and running by sunrise, with no disruption to MABE.

This was our first shipment for Universal Cargo, and the beginning of a great relationship with our new Mexican agent. The client saved millions of dollars and Phoenix won the respect of everyone involved. We proved that where others fail, Phoenix rises to the occasion.