We’re so excited to show you our newest van in the Le Bleu East Tennessee fleet for this month’s blog!
New van. Who dis?
If you’re a current customer, you receive our reminder emails the day before your scheduled delivery. These help our customers and us best prepare for the smoothest delivery. If you’re stocked and don’t need delivery, you can let us know to skip this trip. If you’re running lower than usual, it’s easy to send a quick email request to add more Ultra Pure Water on the upcoming delivery. We love our reminder system for all these reasons! You’ve probably noticed a long disclaimer in the reminder about the possibility of your delivery time being later than in the past. In the reminder email, we explain that we’re adding new customers and reworking our delivery routes almost every day. Le Bleu East Tennessee has been in business for less than two years and there are growing pains with any company. These are positive growing pains! We’re so thankful to be growing and we’re even more thankful for understanding customers who trust we will keep our service just as reliable (even if it’s a little later in the day) no matter how many customers join us. With a goal to get back to our regular (and much more manageable route times), we made the business decision to acquire a new and versatile vehicle.
Introducing our new Freightliner Sprinter van! We purchased this workhorse from another small business that just outgrew this vehicle size. We’re so pleased with how the van’s branding turned out thanks to the great folks at Knoxville Wraps. We wanted to communicate our great water and great service to potential customers that see the van around their area. Knoxville Wraps made that goal happen! There’s no question about what this truck is delivering when you see it around East Tennessee!
For your viewing pleasure in Knoxville traffic.
If you like numbers, here’s some stats about how the vehicle will work for our business: it can hold up to 50 cases of bottled Ultra Pure Water and up to 100 5-gallon jugs. Some of our bigger business clients take over 30 jugs in one delivery (even in the cooler months), so this van helps us tackle that large demand. We can send one vehicle to service more than one large business in one trip! That efficiency factor was one of the most important points when we were deciding if another vehicle would really benefit the business at this time. We’re pleased this purchase helps us run the route faster, uses less fuel and, most importantly, makes the day easier for our employees by cutting down on trips and loading trucks during the day.
Speaking of loading and unloading, this van is also benefiting our large-volume customers that order pallets of water. The van is easily unloaded with a pallet jack. We love working with our business that order pallets of our water with their branding on it. Some sell the water in their businesses and others give it out as a marketing device. Our custom-label water is always fun to design and produce! When we deliver pallets of custom-label water to customers, being able to use their pallet jack to quickly unload the pallets to their locations saves us and them time and lets the customer easily place the large amounts of product exactly where they’d like to store it with minimal manpower. We value a customer’s time in our business so this addition to our fleet was a no-brainer when it came to that benefit.
This van is not our biggest or smallest vehicle which makes it the most versatile one in our fleet. You might recall earlier this year when we featured some images of delivery spots our drivers venture to for our customers. This van will be perfect for those hard-to-reach parts of our routes where the biggest truck might hit some tree branches on the driveways or it could be hard to maneuver it in and out of a tight parking lot or driveway, and the smallest vehicle wouldn’t be efficient cargo-wise to carry all the water needed for the route in one trip. At the risk of sounding like Goldilocks, this one is JUST RIGHT!
Tell me you’re not one of the national company water guys without telling me you’re not one of the national company water guys.
Lastly, you’ll notice in the pictures that the wall between the driver area and the cargo area is not solid. This means we can control the climate in the back of the vehicle! Getting heat to the product on cold days and cool air to the product on warm days will help us protect our product from the temperatures on the road! It’s also another feature to make our driver’s day easier because the driver can quickly glance in the back to visualize the inventory in the van.
This time of year just lends itself to thankfulness and appreciation. We’re especially grateful to be able to purchase this new addition to our business because our business is growing and succeeding. We love East Tennessee and we love helping everyone in our area hydrate with the best water and the best service. We wish everyone a joyous and healthy 2024!
So much room for WATER!