1113. #TFCP - What To Expect When Building Your Freight Company!

Starting from the agent model to the founding of Alliance Logistics, Alex Schick joins us to share his entrepreneurial journey in the freight business!

Alex highlights the emotional hurdles of being an entrepreneur, critical business strategies, the importance of sound financial understanding, the danger of rapid diversification in a business, and staying attuned to market conditions through direct engagement with drivers!

 

About Alex Schick

Alex embarked on his logistics adventure in 2007 at Intransit, which later transformed into DSV Road through several acquisitions. Starting from the bottom in tracking and tracing, he quickly climbed the ranks. By 2009, he was overseeing a small region of freight in Northern California. His responsibilities expanded significantly by 2014, when he began handling all customer bids, pricing, and rate structures for carriers. At that point, he also managed the operations side of about 40% of the branch's freight.

In early 2017, he became the branch manager, overseeing the overall strategy and direction of the entire branch. From 2014 to the end of 2018, they grew from 7,000 truckloads per year to 55,000 truckloads per year as an agency. They expanded from 6 employees to 18 and from $5 million in revenue to almost $20 million. They were a bootstrapped company growing like crazy before the tech boom hit the industry.

He left DSV in 2019 and joined Wilson Logistics in 2020. Together with his wife, Natalie, they started to rebuild. By the end of 2020, they had hired their first employee in their Wilson Agency. In early 2023, they departed the agent model and co-founded Alliance Logistix LLC. By late 2023, they ventured into asset-based trucking alongside their brokerage. Today, they have 12 employees in the brokerage, 7 drivers, and 2 employees at their asset company. They are currently handling volumes of more than 30,000 truckloads annually.

With nearly two decades of industry experience, he’s committed to fostering strong relationships, building alliances, and identifying synergies with their customers and carriers. They are focused on being a lean as possible, efficient as possible, and eliminating and/or automating repetitive and monotonous tasks with technology and automation. The most important thing is that they are keeping to their roots of the family feel for their customers, carriers, and employees alike. After all, in logistics, it's all about the journey and the company you keep!

 

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