Delivering Quality: Acme Driver’s Bring Smoked Salmon to the Table

Every day for Brian begins the night before. Brian’s driving shift starts at 1AM, so he has his morning coffee before midnight. Just after midnight, he’s in his car driving from his home in Queens to the Acme Smoked Fish headquarters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn listening to the 1010 traffic report. He usually punches in early. Today is no different, and Brian punches in at 12:53AM.

Brian is a tall, broad-shouldered man with a goatee. His facial expression suggests earnestness, and he often starts phrases by saying, “I’m going to be honest with you.” While he works, he typically wears a camo, throwback logo Acme Smoked Fish baseball cap. He originally hails from Jamaica.

The first thing Brian does after punching in is say, “Good morning,” to Rimma, Acme’s Billing Specialist of over 20 years. Rimma is just wrapping up the day’s invoices from a shift she started at 4PM the day prior. Brian grabs his keys and heads out to Gem Street where Acme’s trucks are lined up, plugged in, refrigeration units running on electric, and loaded up by the shipping team. Some of the trucks are still being loaded, but the shipping team knows when Brian starts his day. His truck is loaded and ready.

Brian hops into the driver’s seat of his Hino L Series truck, and starts the engine, transferring the refrigeration unit’s power from electric to gas. As soon as it’s running, the engine getting warmed up, he’s back on the street, heading towards the office where his invoices and manifest for the day are waiting for him. He does a little tweaking of the route, changing the order of the invoices to reflect the way the stops are mapped out in his mind. The fleet manager and associates know the routes extremely well, but no one knows a particular route better than the driver himself. Some customization is necessary for each driver before they leave for the day. Today, Brian is starting in The Bronx and heading down the West Side of Manhattan.

“He has it mapped out in a way where he does his route from uptown all the way down and he hits all green lights. He makes the trip between each stop in like 10 minutes and it’s smooth sailing all the way North to South in Manhattan the way he does it,” said Tomasz Lipinski, Acme’s Senior Safety and People Specialist.

A Day in the Life, Driving Smoked Salmon

Not every driver starts their route at the same time. Gem Street, the narrow Brooklyn street that Acme Smoked Fish has occupied for over 70 years has been outgrown a bit, and the street simply couldn’t handle that much activity all at once. Driver’s starts are staggered depending on where they are going. The earlier routes tend to be the most desirable among the fleet’s drivers. John, a driver who tends to cover the East Side of Manhattan said, “I like doing things early. It's empty out there. There's nobody out there. There’s a lot of crazy drivers later in the day.” Acme trucks can hit the road anywhere from 1-6AM.

John is a Brooklyn native. He wears his hair and beard tidy and closely cropped. He’s of modest stature and possesses an agreeable temperament. He bikes to work and treats his driving job at Acme with the disposition of a Zen monk.

The order in which a driver’s stops take place depends heavily upon when customers open. Regarding timing a route, John had to say, “Sometimes I have a bunch of people open and then there's a short little window where there's nobody open. I just figure out how I'm going to do my route so I can just keep flowing, trying to make sure there's no stoppage until I take my lunch break.”

Days can be long for Acme drivers. Roger, an Acme employee of 35 years, at times works from 1:15AM to 6:30PM. On these long days he drives the Upstate New York route, but he says he doesn’t mind it. “I think a lot of guys don't like my Upstate route because they know they have to cover a lot of ground. But it's fun for me. I don't have no problem with it,” Roger says.

Roger is a middle-aged man with a fully shaved head. He sports a big smile below his large, roughly trapezoidal glass frames that rest snugly on the bridge of his nose. Roger laughs frequently, in a way most who know him describe as infectious. Roger, originally from Trinidad, is one of Acme’s longest tenured truck drivers.

Roger isn’t the only Acme driver putting in a lot of miles on certain days each week. Acme sends its fleet of trucks to the Hamptons, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and elsewhere. Walter, Acme’s Fleet Manager, said, “In a day, my New York City guys may do 10 or 20 miles. My Jersey guys may do 40 miles. My guys going down to Philly might do 300 miles in a day. My Baltimore guy is going to do over 400 miles. My Massachusetts guy is going to do something comparable to that.”

“On a good day, I can do my stops and get back to Brooklyn in 12 hours,” said Marcus, the owner of the Baltimore route. Every driver’s day is a little different, but one thing they all have in common is a fundamental commitment to the value of quality.

Bringing Quality Smoked Salmon

Marcus respects quality. About managing the final miles Acme products travel from the facility to a customer’s store, he said, “We make sure that everything is packed right. That everything is stacked properly. That everything looks the way it should, and that everything is always at the proper temperature, so that when we bring the product to customers, they're happy and we won't have any issues. Yes, we transport the product, but it’s our job to make sure that everything's A1.”

Marcus once worked as a truck driver at Service Smoked Fish, a former Acme competitor that closed its doors about a decade ago. When Service Smoked Fish shut down, Marcus was one of three drivers – out of eight – that were asked to join the Acme fleet. Like many Acme drivers, Marcus is another New York City native. He has smiling eyes and a kind demeanor, and like Roger, he maintains a fully shaved head, but keeps his facial hair shaped into a thin chin patch and mustache.

Marcus joked, “Some of my early stops in the morning, the minute they hear the truck backing in they’re making me breakfast, so it really motivates you to treat the product well!”

On the topic of quality, Brian had to say, “When you handle the fish like you are going to eat it yourself, you get good quality fish. The same way I want somebody to treat my food, I treat the product the same way.”

“Quality, for me, is a lot,” said Roger. “To me, it’s really the main thing. All my customers will tell you that I take care of the product. When you work with fish, it’s all about maintaining the temperature, so you must take care of your truck. When you know how your truck and reefer unit operate, if you go in one day and something’s wrong, you can feel it, so the product won’t be put at risk.”

Justin, the Shipping Manager at Acme, has a distinct appreciation for how driver’s treat the product. They make sure that all the hard work that came before doesn’t go to waste. “We grade fish for our customers. Whether it’s Barney Greengrass, or Zabar’s, or Utopia Bagels, or your local supermarket, or your corner store or bodega, we’re picking out the fish according to our customers’ needs. We pack fish to meet our customer’s standards of quality. Every customer has their own requests, and we cater to that, to make them happy. Our drivers make sure that we finish the job,” said Justin. His team’s attention to detail sets up the drivers to complete the final step in the product journey, where it gets unwrapped or unboxed and showcased in stores, but it’s on the drivers to execute.

When it comes to product quality, Walter says that’s the obvious part, and that you can’t deliver quality product without having quality people. According to Walter, “It comes down to the people. Finding quality people. I can get decent trucks from Ryder, from All Island, from Mendon, from anybody, but I need to get the people.” To Walter, it’s as much about customer service as it is about delivering quality product.

Walter continued, “I want somebody that's customer service oriented. Kindness is important. Someone that's very personable, that handles themselves the right way, because they don't see you, they don't see me, they don't see everybody else inside of Acme HQ here on Gem Street. When my drivers go out there, they are Acme to our clients.”

John sees customer service as paramount to quality as well. From John’s perspective, “It’s all about top service. You have to keep it professional. Make sure you do the job the right way. Ask 'em where they want certain things. You want it downstairs, I put it downstairs. How I see it, everybody is going to be how they’re going to be. You can only make sure you are kind and courteous and do what they ask, then it’s on to the next one.”

With Smoked Salmon, Every Relationship Matters

Marcus echoed Walter’s sentiment about always representing the company in the best way possible. “We're basically the face of the company out there. So, whatever issue the customer may have, they come to us first and we try to resolve it for them. We've known these customers day in and day out week after week, so they're kind of like family to us, so we want to make sure that they're happy. I've come to really know them. We even have each other's phone numbers. I’ve seen their children grow up; we speak about them all the time. We know each other's families. Like I said, we see them day after day, week after week and they already know us. I see some of the customers more than my own family,” said Marcus.

Like Marcus, Roger sees the relationships he’s developed with his customers as personal. “All the relationships I have with my customers are personal, because they know me. They know how I operate. A lot of them tell me I smile all the time, and I guess that’s true,” Roger chuckled.

Brian says that a big part of the efficiency and speed he’s known for amongst his colleagues comes from the relationships he’s built with Acme customers. “All my customers are my favorite. Like I don’t have a favorite child, I don’t have a favorite customer. You have to be nice to the customers. If you aren’t nice, you aren’t working together. If you don’t work together, things take longer,” Brian said.

Of course, maintaining relationships and teamwork don’t only happen during the delivery. It all starts with the way people interact at the Acme Smoked Fish headquarters. This attitude gets carried forth by the drivers when they are on the road. Brian said about the time he spends off the truck working at the Acme facility, “I like working here. For instance, there are a couple of guys here… and we talk stupidness, and that keeps things fun. Sometimes I might come in a little stressed, and they throw out little jokes and it makes me happy. Nobody takes things personal. I love the job, the people, the relationships. It helps a lot when you're working. And we have our barbecue and the Christmas party, and we all come together the next day, and we talk about it. I love the job. I’m not going to lie to you.”

It's important to stress though, that all of this is tied together by safe driving. You have no quality, no relationships, and no efficiency without safety. Walter said about what he sees as most important in hiring drivers, “The first and foremost thing is that they have a safe driving record and they're conscious and they're aware of driving safely and what that means.”

Delivering Smoked Salmon Safely

“The job is mainly about road safety. You have to be cautious out there. Things are crazier on the road nowadays, so safety is number one. You just try to maintain calmness and always give the right of way to everybody. Try to be the least aggressive person on the road whenever possible. Honestly, the road used to be calmer. Just in the last few years, people have started treating the roads like a raceway,” said Marcus about maintaining road safety in the current driving environment.

As stated earlier, some of these drivers work long days, but that doesn’t mean they let themselves get burned out. Getting a good night’s sleep, avoiding back-to-back long days, and appropriately timed breaks are key to maintaining alertness, especially for drivers doing hundreds of miles in a day like Marcus and Roger. About maintaining alertness, Roger said, “When you're driving, you have to space yourself out, give yourself a little time, a little break in between because you can't drive all the time and just not stop. You have to stop at some point. So, I take a break when I need to, just to get a little breather. It's normal. If you don't do that. You are heading for a failure.”

Acme drivers are trained to flawlessly observe road safety rules and maintain awareness of the actions of other drivers on the road. That said, even when a driver does everything right, bad things can still happen. “One time, during a snowstorm, I was in the right lane and another company’s truck near me on the highway lost control. He hit some snow, he lost control, he came right across all lanes, and he hit and damaged my truck. He almost flipped me over. Anything can happen out there. You have to be aware and make sure that you are doing all the things right that you can control,” recounted Roger.

Walter disclosed, “The most important thing for me as a manager and responsible for other associates here is that they go home the same way they came into work. I don't ever want to make that call to a family member. I had to do that earlier in my career at another company where a guy got in an accident. He was seriously, seriously injured. And I had to make that call to his wife and let her know. I don't ever want to have to do that again.”

All those at Acme within the trucking and shipping departments agree that safety is the most important thing. Without safety, we don’t have quality or customer service. And with safety comes the health and happiness of the drivers. In sharing what helps the drivers maintain an upbeat attitude while shouldering such a profound responsibility, drivers offered their favorite listening choices while they are on the road.

The Smooth Sounds of Smoked Salmon

“I’m West Indian. They would expect me to say a lot of Calypso music and stuff like that,” said Roger. “But I grew up as a baby with Jazz, so I'm very versatile in my tastes. I listen to all different kinds of styles of music. Spanish music, Reggae music, Jazz music in particular, R & B. I like George Duke and Miles Davis a lot.”

Like Roger, John prefers to listen to the music he grew up hearing. “I listen to stuff from the 90’s and the 2000’s. I don’t understand what any of these artists are saying nowadays. No particular genre. I just put on a mix playlist and let it go. Then I listen to sports talk radio on the way back. DiPietro and Dave,” said John.

Brian listens to Reggae. “I like Bob Marley, but I listen to a lot of the new stuff. Like Vybz Kartel and Alkaline. I’ve got to go where I’ve got to go, so I listen to what I want to listen to, to keep my head positive,” shared Brian.

Marcus prefers talk radio. He likes to stay up to date on current events and keep his mind active between stops, which for him can be long distances due to his route. “Early in the morning, I like hearing talk radio especially. It makes me feel social while most of the world is still asleep.”

Smoked Salmon, and Driving it Home

Acme’s trucking and shipping teams treat their jobs like the high stakes enterprises that they are. Somewhere, on Yom Kippur and other significant holidays, a family is counting on a fish platter to break the fast, and appetizing stores are counting on providing that service. Acme’s drivers take that responsibility quite seriously.

Brian stressed the importance of overcoming challenges to make sure that customers and consumers can get the smoked fish they’re expecting, and that a day’s work isn’t over until it’s over. Brian pointedly said, “You don’t know who is running out and really needs the fish that day. So, you make sure everybody gets what they ordered. You never know. Not every day is going to be easy. Some days are easy, some days are hard. So, when you get the easy times, it's okay. When you get the hard times, it's okay too. You just work hard and do your best, day by day.”