WorldCity Business Magazine

The Next Generation of Deliveries

by WC

WHO’S HERE Profile

Canadian delivery company AppleExpress tapped Raul Lopez to open and manage its new and only international facility. But the Miami location presented an unusual problem since the company’s first U.S. client needed its products warehoused at cool temperatures.

“Parts had to be kept within a specific range of temperatures and level of humidity,” explained Lopez. “And here in South Florida there are either non-refrigerated warehouses or freezer warehouses. We needed something in between.”

So AppleExpress, a third-party logistics company, leased a warehouse then installed air conditioning units and worked with industrial-strength sheets of plastic to create the environment required for the goods, which were plastic parts and components for the aviation industry. The warehouse is backed up by a generator that will run the air conditioning during hurricanes or other power outages.

“This is part of what we do. We solve problems,” said Lopez, a former executive with DHL.

But solving problems and a core business of next-flight-out deliveries are just a portion of AppleExpress’s operations. The 22-year-old company, headquartered outside Toronto in Mississauga, also provides warehouse space for customers. And with specialized clients, it not only makes deliveries, but AppleExpress couriers will even install the products.

“In Canada, we have a big customer that, whenever it needs medical equipment delivered, we also install it. The same with an ATM company. We deliver and install the ATM machines, and then we do the troubleshooting for them,” Lopez said.

In its home country, the company does local door-to-door deliveries, domestic and international shipping and a combination of warehousing, packing and delivery sometimes with product installation as well. At the Miami facility, which opened in April, operations are confined to warehousing, packing and delivery. But Lopez expects services to expand as the company grows.

The Miami warehouse, where the executive offices are also located, employs 32 workers. Lopez expects to add another eight or so before the end of the year and to move into a larger facility as he directs an expansion throughout the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Industry-wise, he predicted that air conditioning and medical equipment might soon be among the products warehoused and shipped through AppleExpress in Miami. Although the company’s first four U.S. customers are Fortune 500 multinationals, Lopez said his team is able to work with smaller firms as well. He also said there could be additional U.S. offices opened in the near future, most likely in cities where the company currently has agents. Those cities are Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“There is a lot of consolidation in the logistics industry, and we think we can build on our niche,” Lopez said. “We’ll do warehousing and we’ll ship for you or deliver using our own transportation, but we take it a step forward. If you need specialized delivery or installation, we can do that. We can do our own deliveries or we can contract that out, whatever the customer wants.

“And we are trying to morph from third-party logistics into fourth-party logistics,” he added. “That means we might have a customer that is a logistics company like DHL or Fedex. We’ll do the work that they can’t.”