Business Spotlight: High Tech with Textiles

For a 124-year-old company, AmeriPride Services Inc. is pushing the technology envelope.

Concepts involving compressed natural gas, double-decker semitrailers and vehicle telematics are in pilot programs to test the technological advantages in getting clean uniforms and linens to the company’s clientele.

“We don’t take it to the river and rub it on rocks like we used to. The laundry business is getting high tech,” says Brett Wooden, AmeriPride’s general manager in the Springfield market, where all three of those advanced programs were rolled out in recent weeks.

The Springfield branch facility at 3901 E. Evergreen St. – one of 45 across the United States and Canada – serves nearly 3,000 customers spanning as far west as Oklahoma City, down into northwest Arkansas and through Missouri up to Columbia and outside St. Louis. Processing and cleaning by some 85 employees in Springfield is aided by service centers in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla., that transport the goods to customers primarily in the manufacturing, hospitality and medical industries. The company operates 70 service centers, roughly two or three for every branch facility.

Last year, AmeriPride officials say its 115 facilities generated about $600 million in revenue. The privately held Minnetonka, Minn.-based company is reinvesting in technologies and acquisitions, including the summer purchase of a Rogers, Ark., linen company that folded 10 production workers and two drivers into the Springfield operation.

Driving technologies
Environmental and safety concerns are driving the technological experiments.

For instance, the telematic platform in vehicles aims to reduce fuel consumption, and increase compliance and safety.

“It verbally tells you if you’re doing something wrong,” AmeriPride spokesman Ben Saukko says, pointing to alerts for speeding, driving without a seat belt and braking or turning too hard. “Some of our executives had it installed in their personal vehicles while we were testing it. It really does modify your driving behavior.”

The platform was installed in the Springfield trucks a few weeks ago, and Wooden has one in his personal vehicle.

On the environmental side, AmeriPride has rolled out two double-decker semitrailers to move clean and dirty product between its processing plant and service centers, as well as compressed natural gas vehicles on customer delivery routes.

“The trailers are very similar to what NASCAR is using to transport,” Wooden says, noting the double deckers have been on the streets almost two months throughout the Springfield market.

AmeriPride has started with five CNG delivery trucks and a CNG tractor to pull a double-decker trailer.

“Compressed natural gas is a pretty broad resource,” Wooden says. “It doesn’t emit the carbon base that regular fuel will.”

Other digital innovations are online ordering for uniforms, radio-frequency identification chips and bar coding to track the garments, and electronic handheld devices for drivers to place orders and send invoices.

Springfield entry
The Steiner family who founded AmeriPride in Lincoln, Neb., in 1889 remains in ownership. The company entered the Springfield market with sales and service representatives in the 1950s and put down firm roots through an early 1960s acquisition of Peerless Towel & Linen Service when AmeriPride operated as American Linen Supply.

Today, area clients include Bass Pro Shops, O’Reilly Hospitality Management and Silver Dollar City.

AmeriPride delivers up to 15,000 napkins and hundreds of tablecloths, aprons and hand towels to the food operations at Bass Pro Shops’ Outdoor World at Campbell Avenue and Sunshine Street.

The roughly $75,000 annual contract calls for two visits a week, but needs are known to come up more frequently, says Lori Zeppenfeldt, general manager of Bass Pro Shops food services, including Hemingway’s Blue Water Cafe and White River Conference Center.

“They come by as often as we need linen. The conference center provides some unique challenges,” she says, pointing to coordinating color preferences for various event linens.

With about 1,200 trucks on the road nationally serving 150,000 customers a week, AmeriPride officials say it’s more efficient to give their drivers the handheld devices to manage client inventory on site.

“A lot of our vendors have switched to that,” Zeppenfeldt says of the handhelds. “It allows the invoice to be a lot more accurate.”

Zeppenfeldt says Bass Pro has contracted with AmeriPride for longer than the 10 years she’s worked there.

“There are a lot of linen companies to choose from in town,” she says. “We have stayed with AmeriPride (mostly) because of their customer service. They are very responsive.”