His Personal Touch Helps Retain Top Drivers
Mulschlegel's success story continues with New Century.
Jim Winsor
Executive Editor
Meet Harry Muhlschlegel, a name that's probably not on the tip of your tongue. He's the chairman of New Century Transportation Inc. headquartered in Westampton, N.J., not far from Philadelphia, Pa. You probably don't know that name either, unless you're from the Mid-Atlantic states. Maybe the name Jevic Transportation rings a bell?
Muhlschlegel and his wife, Karen, founded Jevic initially as a for-hire LTL carrier - but without local terminals - a revolutionary concept at the time. In simplest terms, LTL freight is sorted and loaded into trailers in the correct sequence for driver deliveries without having to rehandle the freight.
The concept worked and the company took off.
The Muhlschlegels eventually took Jevic public and it became an investor-owned corporation, a genuine American success story. Yellow Freight became interested in Jevic and eventually Yellow acquired Jevic "for a pretty penny," Harry recalls.
A large part of Jevic's success was Muhlschlegel's ability to provide customized service to his shippers, to hire drivers who were the best, pay them top dollar to make multiple stops, get them home at least weekly and provide them with premium tractors loaded with "bells and whistles."
Harry is a long-time acquaintance of mine, going back more than three decades. When I first met him, he was an owner-operator steel hauler contracted to Kaplan Transportation. He's also an avid collector of vintage tractors, most of them Macks - and a beautifully restored International Harvester high cabover "Cherry Picker."
After the sale of Jevic, Harry wasn't ready for the rocking chair. So he and several partners formed New Century Transportation and basically picked up, on a smaller scale, where he had left off with Jevic. One of his partners is Jim Molinaro, who is now New Century's president. I recently had lunch with them during a local American Truck Historical Society meeting.
A large part of New Century's success and rapid growth (now numbering 400-plus tractors) is Muhlschlegel and his managers' relationships with their drivers, some of whom left Jevic to join the new company.
Part of Harry's charm is that most any Saturday morning, any driver who's in the Westampton area is welcome to stop by and have breakfast with the boss. Many do. When New Century was looking for drivers, more than 400 applied. That's the reputation this self-made man (who still hauls loads himself on occasions) has.
Muhlschlegel is very much a hands-on executive when it comes to equipment. Part of his success with drivers is buying premium equipment with big horsepower and top-of-the-line cab interiors. His current fleet is split between Freightliner and Kenworth with 500 hp (or more) CAT power. All equipment is dispatched out of the New Jersey terminal so the company sees it regularly and maintains almost everything there.
Harry knows specifically what happens to mpg with just a small change in rear axle ratios. He keeps in touch with driver miles-per-gallon. There's almost no driver turnover as long as their mpg and safety performance is satisfactory. The fleet hires only the best and expects only the best from them.
His latest innovation is installing onboard generators to provide heat and cooling and to eliminate engine idling. He's retrofitting existing tractors and ordering all new sleeper tractors with them.
What's the payback? "The upfront cost is $7,000 a tractor, installed. The payback is two years or less depending on tractor mileage. Overall, eliminating idling by using onboard power translates to at least 2/10ths mpg fuel savings," says Harry.
But the biggest savings down the road for New Century may be equipment life. "I figure there's 2,000 engine hours those pistons aren't going up and down when we're parked or making deliveries. That's going to be more important than the fuel and maintenance savings. I'm shooting for an additional two years of tractor life." (That' six years versus four).
And to think, Harry Muhlschlegel started it all with one rig hauling steel back in the '60s.
