Labor Ready, Inc. is a provider of temporary workers for manual labor jobs. The Company's customers are primarily businesses in the freight handling, warehousing, landscaping, construction and light manufacturing industries. These businesses require workers for lifting, hauling, cleaning, assembling, digging, painting and other types of manual or unskilled work. The Company has dispatch offices in markets throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Puerto Rico. The Company's expansion from 1991 to 2000 resulted in it establishing a national footprint with a presence in all 50 states. In 2001, the Company undertook a program of consolidating certain offices to achieve increased efficiency without abandoning markets. This process resulted in the Company opening 32 dispatch offices and closing 92 in 2001, for a net decrease of 60 offices, leaving Labor Ready with 756 dispatch offices as of December 31, 2001. There are also five Labor Ready franchised dispatch offices.