The Story of Our Challenges

Faye and Larry VanWagoner started Vanco Warehouse, Inc. in 1975.

Vanco Warehouse, Inc is a public warehouse/transfer serving furniture dealers and manufacturers in Utah and the surrounding states.

Larry was a manufacturer’s representative selling furniture to retail stores. He had a difficult time getting shipments transported from California to his smaller dealers in Utah and the surrounding states. Another problem with smaller shipments being shipped via common carriers was that they were co-loaded with all kinds of products. This usually resulted in damaged to the furniture. Because of customary damage, furniture was billed at an extremely high rate.

We talked to other manufacturer’s representatives who had the same problem. We were able to convince them that by pooling only furniture items they would have much less damage and if we could get enough of them to pool their merchandise with Larry’s we could cut down on transit time as well as transit costs. In cutting down on damage we felt we could offer sufficiently lower rates than had been offered before. We would also offer even lower rates to dealers who would pick up their shipments at our dock. 

We leased 9,000 square feet in a warehouse convenient to furniture dealers in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Larry continued to sell furniture and Faye was planted in the warehouse trying to arrange all these shipments until 1984, when Faye bought out Larry’s interest and continued to run the business on her own. 

The promises we had made to the other reps sometimes meant we had to ship loads that were not completely full. This was not a money making proposition. Fortunately, Larry was able to support the family with his sales commissions because it was many years before any type of a salary was to be taken out of the business.

These arrangements usually didn’t go as smoothly as we would have liked because we were using “Independent” truck drivers. These drivers were too independent for us to be able to keep to any kind of a schedule so we were forced to start our own trucking company.

We started with only 1 tractor and 2 trailers. Before we were able to put on our send tractor the first one was wrecked . . . . . . along with a whole load of furniture. What started out as entertainment centers ended up as toothpicks! We thought we were doomed. 

Others were noticing what we were doing in both the furniture and the transportation industry. Nobody wanted our service to stop and we received valuable advice on using other carriers and lease equipment to get us by for a while.

Other sales representatives from factories in the East liked what we were doing in the west and asked if we could provide a similar service for their manufacturers.

We were now armed with the knowledge of using leased drivers and equipment to take up the slack as we grew so we gave it a try.

We were able to double our space in the complex which brought us to 18,000 square feet.

We were not handling freight from both coasts of the country.

Read on for our solution

 

2597 West California Ave. Salt Lake City, UT 84104
© Copyright 2007 Vanco, Inc. All rights reserved.