California Plastics co-founder Abby Khanna recently went more than 100 extra miles for a customer.
A customer of Downey, Calif.-based CP in July needed a shipment of polycarbonate resin to keep its machines running. The customer makes face shields for medical and other applications, Khanna said in a recent phone interview.
Truck drivers are in short supply in California, as they are in many other parts of the country. When a deal for a driver fell through, Khanna rented a 20-foot van, loaded the PC shipment at a warehouse in Los Angeles and drove two and a half hours to San Diego to make the delivery.
"We pride ourselves in next-day delivery," Khanna said. "And the customer needed the material to run that weekend."
Khanna and his wife, Bianca, launched CP in 2019 after he had worked almost 10 years in the industry. The firm now distributes a wide range of engineering and commodity resins covering 20,000 grades.
CP generates about 70 percent of sales from engineering resins, although the amount of commodity resins it sells is increasing. CP does most of its sales in California but also sells throughout other parts of the U.S. and into Mexico and Canada.
In early 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, CP added personal protective equipment to its product mix. The firm continues to offer face masks, face shields, surgical gowns and similar products.