Week 3 of the new job started with more training, which included a road trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I got up early last Sunday morning and left home by 5:30 am and headed to Lakeville, MN on the south side of the twin cities. To meet another salesperson named Randy, and carpool with him and another salesperson named Roger whom we picked up near Westby, WI which is about 35 minutes east of LaCrosse, WI.
Randy drove his vehicle has I only have two seats in the van I have, and his suv had lots of room. The drive to Grand Rapids, MI is an 11 hour drive that took us through Chicago. We arrived in Grand Rapids, MI about 8 pm their time (1 hour ahead of ours) and met up with 5 other sales people of Carlson Systems at the hotel. It was about 9 pm when we ate supper, and then off to our rooms in a Holiday Inn Express for some much needed sleep.
We were the guests of a company called Highlight Industries, that specializes in manufacturing stretch film machines. Which is a product that we sell a lot of in our packaging side of our business. So we were all there to learn about the equipment and the stretch film, which they do not manufacture but they build the only machine that tests the stretch film which costs about $130,000.
An explanation on stretch film simply put is it is like a big roll of cling film you would find in your kitchen but it has a property of not only clinging to things but also when you pull it has some elasticity so it shapes it self around things and then acts like a rubber band holding it together. But it does not resume it previous shape like a rubberband. When it is stretched the some of the elasticity is maximized and therefore it won't return to size.
So we learned about the machinery they build from scratch, actually watched many of them work, and learned of their various features and benefits to the customer. They have machines that have the capability to pre-stretch the film before it is applied to a pallet of material or item that is to be contained.
We also saw some of the their box assembly machines and how those worked along with the automated taping of the seams of those boxes being constructed. Our teachers were the President of the company who started the company 31 years ago in his basement, along with our sales support person and a couple of their engineers.
Here is there website link http://www.highlightindustries.com/
Check it out you will be amazed, and here is a link to a video I shot of a Robot machine applying stretch film. http://qik.ly/DHEtbEp8R25hZNt2gQYfZ34 this is pretty crazy.
After about 13 hours of training Monday and Tuesday, we left Grand Rapids about 1:30 on Tuesday and headed back to Minnesota, and we arrived about midnight back in Minneapolis. Where I checked into a hotel for the night.
Wednesday I headed up to St Cloud, and worked in the office and also met a couple of new customers and prepared for a busy day of making sales calls on Thursday and Friday. All in all it was a long week but I learned lots and it felt good to be making sales calls on Thursday and Friday and meeting more of my customer base.
