FROM THE DESK OF THE PRESIDENT: RICHARD LICATA – Page 2
Safety by choice…. not by chance!
After two years of successfully navigating the many obstacles associated with a major pandemic, we are hopeful 2022 will give us a sense of normalcy. Successfully navigating the obstacles, we faced in 2020 & 2021 has only strengthened our company and proven we have the right strategy – based on operational excellence and expanded offerings and services. The operational excellence element of our strategy has served us well, resulting in superior service and receiving excellent reviews. Our average Google review rating is 4.70. I have yet to see a higher score in the whole Allied and NorthAmerican system. We also continue to expand our offerings and services to make us more diversified which helped us stay busy during the early stages of the pandemic. Even though Corporate and International business stalled, our diversification in other product lines that weren’t negatively affected by the pandemic flourished. This includes our most profitable product line, storage. Additionally, I don’t know what we would have done had it not been for Northwestern University asking us to move the thousands of their students out of their dorms during the early stages of the pandemic.
We are grateful for our team’s accomplishments in 2021 as we put safety first, remained productive and continued to deliver for our customers. We have overcome many challenges, and once again, our employees rose to the occasion. Although we emerged from the pandemic even stronger, we face new challenges in 2022. The once thriving housing market has slowed down greatly as we enter the spring season. Pending home sales, which measure signed contracts on existing homes, fell in February and is the fourth straight month of declines. That is why we are coming out of the gates slower than I had hoped this year. Additionally, one of our biggest accounts, Northwestern, which now represents almost 10% of our business is mandated to go back out to bid. Although the outcome seems promising as we provided them exceptional service the past 8 years, you really don’t know what the outcome will be or if there is any politics will come into play and prevent us from being awarded the business for the next 5 to 7 years. But even with these challenges, I remain optimistic this year because of the strong sales staff we have and the operational excellence we provide. Spring is upon us and it is great to see the sun again and flowers bloom. Hopefully spring will also bring us another successful moving season. But to do so, we will need to take advantage of every opportunity we get.