We were actually going after a market that’s complementary and additional to our domestic forwarder business partner market. And so we tried that out with SMB. Now we’re going to continue doing that, and we’re going to go medium-sized and large customers also. So much more of that, but we are not rookies to that game. But we do still need to get better on finding the volume and pricing suite both selecting the right freight correctly. And again, some of the conservatism into our Q4 numbers is reflecting the fact that we still have untapped upside on the pricing side for the business that’s direct and that’s door-to-door.
Bruce Chan : Okay. Great. That’s really helpful. And maybe just a follow-up. You talked a lot about metrics and KPIs for your customers. Obviously, one of the important ones is service. Can you just talk about how things like damage claims on-time metrics have trended through the quarter from last quarter? And when you think about some of the coming changes to your business and your network, what are the investments that you need to make in order to maintain those levels of service?
Tom Schmitt: Yes. Bruce, it’s interesting when we actually did the third-party study last year on looking — having a third party, this was SJ Consulting ShipMatrix, looking at the entire U.S. LTL market millions and millions of data points and looking for speed, on-time performance, claims ratios. And we came out on top of each one of those metrics over world-class companies. The others are hunting and chasing us. They are very good at what they do, and it always keeps us sharp when they’re looking to get better, too. But we have objectively the lowest claims ratio in the LTL market in the U.S. We have objectively the best on-time performance once you actually eliminate or at least make parallel all the exemptions and exceptions.
So that takes a lot of investment, which we are obviously making in our terminal network. Our operations team led by Chris Ruble is world-class. But we’re not taking this for granted. We have absolutely top-notch competitors that are chasing us. But we are the best at what we do. In terms of investments, anything from making sure that the flows in the terminals are efficient. There’s technology we’re deploying. We have a great kind of business partner with our CIO, Jay Tomasello and his team that’s making sure that the flows are the most direct flows between inbound and outbound floors. That we can actually always locate the freight. We have obviously a guaranteed service on top so that we have a last in first out rule in place. There is significant safety investments, there’s significant operational investments that we are making and we’re going to continue making those.
The best service in the industry doesn’t happen. It actually is obviously an outcome of investments in technology is a big one, both on the safety side as well as on the operational efficiency side.
Bruce Chan : Okay. Great. And then just directionally, with the changes in the mix and the changes in the business, have those metrics been flat, up, down?
Tom Schmitt: So with the increased focus on door-to-door and also direct, especially going forward, the investment itself, I think, is still as a percentage of overall revenue going to be somewhat stable. What we do have to do, Bruce, is we do have to get more into making sure that the customer service aspects, the pricing aspects are going to be equally sharp as they were in Airport-to-airport. So there may be a small uptick there for a short period of time. But again, this is why I said before, we have to find the money in other spaces. This cannot be an investment year coming up. But yes, we do have to build out that door-to-door in the direct service, not just on the sales side, as I said before, but also on the supporting team side.
So you will see an investment there that has to come from other resources and expenses inside the company. Cost management is certainly going to be a top priority to make sure that we can funnel those types of energy and resources into the direct space.
