Built to Last: Inside Holman Logistics with Mike Gardner

Joe Lynch: [00:00:00] Hello, friends. Welcome to the Logistics of Logistics. My name is Joe Lynch. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today’s topic is Built to Last: Inside Holman Logistics with my friend Mike Gardner. How’s it going, Mike Gardner?

Mike Gardner: Outstanding. Beautiful day here in Seattle. Great to be on with you, Joe

Joe Lynch: It’s nice to finally talk to you. We’ve been talking about it for a long time. So Mike, please introduce yourself and your company and where you’re calling from today

Mike Gardner: Mike Gardner, president and COO of Holman Logistics. We are [00:00:30] a Seattle-based three PL

Joe Lynch: Very nice. Now, what do you guys specialize in?

Mike Gardner: We specialize in solving customer problems. Focused on the CPG industry, but really the breadth of the supply chain and trying to co-help our customers solve problems

Joe Lynch: Very nice. Very nice. So you said CPG. Who else do you work with?

Mike Gardner: In terms of specific companies?

Joe Lynch: Yeah no, industry groups. Unless you feel like talking about the companies you work with.

Mike Gardner: It’s primarily CPG. A little bit of there’s a number of companies that are [00:01:00] ingredients manufacturers that feed into the CPG space, but that’s kinda food, beverage is really where we specialize.

Joe Lynch: So today’s topic is built to last, and one of the reasons is because your company is 162 years old. Talk a little bit about that. I think I saw somewhere that it started when President Lincoln was in office

Mike Gardner: We actually started down in Portland, Oregon. We were talking before the podcast about Portland and then the Downey [00:01:30] family purchased it about 100 years ago, so it’s been in Brian’s family over 100 years

Joe Lynch: So they’re the newbies. They didn’t start it. The- so they bought it 100 years ago. We’re we’re gonna get into the more of the details of this because that’s a, it’s a rare thing. If a company lasts 50 years, people are asking why. But to last 162, especially in logistics, which tends to be I won’t say ch- fleeting, but y- there’s always a consolidation, there’s always a big change, and [00:02:00] people retire and move on.

But to have a company stick around 162 years and be stronger today than ever before is quite a feat

Mike Gardner: Yeah, it is quite remarkable. It’s f- it’s fun to be part of it

Joe Lynch: Yep. So you guys have warehousing locations. Where- how many of them are across the US?

Mike Gardner: We’ve got about 20 locations across the country

and yeah. And I should have said in addition to CPG, we also handle major appliances and pet food. Those are the three core markets that we

Joe Lynch: [00:02:30] Oh, so the major appliances, that, the big and bulky stuff?

Mike Gardner: Oh, yeah. Yeah

Joe Lynch: Oh, nice. Nice. That’s not easy. A lot of people say no as soon as you say appliance

Mike Gardner: Yeah, we’ve been doing that about 45 years for that particular customer, so longstanding relationship

Joe Lynch: Nice. So warehousing’s a big part of what you guys do. You have assets?

Mike Gardner: We also have a, a fleet primarily focused on the Pacific Northwest. We do have some dedicated plant shuttles spread across the country, but the [00:03:00] for-hire transportation, as I call it, is focused on the Pac Northwest.

Joe Lynch: Very nice. Very nice. But you- you’ve got coverage nationwide, first with your warehouses, and then secondly with the trucking, either your own trucks or with your partner carriers.

Mike Gardner: Yep. Yep, exactly

Joe Lynch: Very nice. Very nice. When you th- when, in a thumbnail, what problems are you solving for these companies?

Mike Gardner: We recently opened an FTZ, so we’re fighting or helping customers fight the tariff war. We’re also [00:03:30] doing store door delivery, so we deliver appliances, pet food to the end customer. I mentioned earlier about ingredients manufacturers, so we’re actually taking those ingredients and delivering those into the manufacturing operation and then pulling finished goods out. So really kind of the breadth of the supply chain we’re trying to help solve. And then, when we get bored of that, we’re doing ecommerce as well. So we’re doing final mile, direct to consumer deliveries as well

Joe Lynch: Oh, wow. I s- I was on your website. Do you guys do some kitting and manufacturing type stuff [00:04:00] also?

Mike Gardner: We’re doing some sub-assembly, I’d call it

Joe Lynch: Subassembly. Yeah, I know it’s ma- manufacturing’s probably overstating it, but subassembly is a big im- important part for a lot of big supply chains

Mike Gardner: And we actually have teams of people that work in the manufacturing plants. So it’s, oftentimes you think of kitting as outside of that and you’ve transported into the operation. We actually have teams that work in the manufacturing plant side by side with our customers’ people,

Joe Lynch: it’s an extension of your supply chain. I know everybody says that but not everyone’s actually doing [00:04:30] that. So Mike, tell us a little bit about you. Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? Some career highlights before you joined the mothership, Holman Logistics, and why did you join?

Mike Gardner: All right. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was a restaurant chef in high school and college, a little-known fact about me. Put myself through school. I studied at Miami University in Oxford,

Ohio.

Joe Lynch: school

Mike Gardner: Studied under the late great Tom Spay, and Professor Spay was a friend and a mentor, and that name’s probably known by a lot of your listeners. He [00:05:00] passed away about 10 years ago.

Joe Lynch: Oh, sorry to hear that

Mike Gardner: first job out of Miami University was with a guy named Ken Ackerman another kinda legend in the industry, and that business grew and evolved into what’s now DHL Supply Chain. But I worked for Ken. I started as a second shift supervisor in a union warehouse

Joe Lynch: That sounds easy.

Mike Gardner: Yeah.

Daddy, it gets better though, Joe. Bobby Walker, the union president, was on my shift it was kind of baptism by fire. And then, [00:05:30] throughout the career, I had a number of different opportunities a- across the supply chain industry, and then retired in 2021 and did some teaching at Miami University, did some charitable work. I guess I was bothering my wife a little too much decided to unretire. So I got bored in retirement and I’ve been working with this great company out here called Holman Logistics helping Brian through the… his father passed away unexpectedly with cancer.

Joe Lynch: Oh, sorry to hear that

Mike Gardner: Yeah. [00:06:00] And Brian needed some help.

One thing led to another and moved out here about a year ago to lead this great company

Joe Lynch: Very nice. Very nice. I say it every time I talk to somebody from Ohio or Michigan. When you think of logistics, there’s hubs, and you think of Chicago, and then there’s the newer hubs like in Texas and even Arizona obviously Chattanooga. But I always say the supply chain as we do it today was founded in Michigan and Ohio, and a lot of it was automotive, but, [00:06:30] people always think, “Oh, yeah, Michigan is automotive,” but so is Ohio, so is Indiana.

Every- everywhere in the Midwest has not only the assembly plants, but all the suppliers. And the way we were doing it 25 years ago is what is now standard practice for most of the industries across the world that have complex supply chains

Mike Gardner: I think the other thing about that s- that Midwest has also become a, a hub for direct-to-consumer as well. There’s quite a bit of [00:07:00] ecommerce activity in that Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana region, and peop- people forget about that, yeah

Joe Lynch: If you’re driving across from, like say, New York to Texas, you gotta go through Ohio. You, and I don’t care where you’re going from the East Coast to the West Coast, you’re gonna go through Ohio. Not so much my beloved Michigan, but Ohio is hard to miss. Going down to Florida, which we have to here from Michigan, gotta go through Ohio, and then we’re gonna get tickets ’cause that’s what happens.

Mike Gardner: Yes, you will.[00:07:30]

Joe Lynch: You better go the speed limit. Anyway I, I really love what you guys are doing over there at Holman Logistics, and before we hit the record button, we had said we wanted to talk about five points, and we organized them already so we could talk about them. And the first one is all about safety.

Talk about Holman’s commitment to safety

Mike Gardner: Yeah, we’re on what I call a journey to zero. And oftentimes you’ll hear people say our safety record’s better [00:08:00] than the industry average.” So what? Our view, my view is that the goal has to be zero. It’s no accidents, no incidents, therefore no injuries, right? And my view is that we owe our people a safe work environment. If we expect them to be able to do what our customers need done we’ve gotta give them the tools and the processes and the environment where they can be successful. And the go- again, the g- goal is zero

Joe Lynch: Yeah, I’ve started my career in automotive, [00:08:30] and when I started, I don’t even wanna say when, it was a long time ago, and if you walked through a automotive facility, there was a lot of people who were kneeling or crouched, and sometimes they were carrying things that were too heavy, sometimes they were walking too far every day, which by the way, maybe you can do when you’re 25 or 35, but as soon as the guys start getting a little older, you start seeing they’re breaking down.

If your body’s not [00:09:00] feeling good and ’cause you’ve been kneeling for the last 10 years, y- what do you care about the quality of the job you’re doing? And what happened to those companies over time is they learned, I think first they learned from the Japanese. The Japanese had this culture that we are going to be fantastic at manufacturing, and to get there, we have to really value the people on the assembly line.

Do you value the guy who’s f- forced [00:09:30] to walk around carrying heavy things all day? Or the woman who’s carrying s- something half her weight? You can say you value them, but you’re not showing it. And by the time I left automotive, there was nobody getting hurt and the, the injuries were almost a, a rarity.

Before, it was when you’d see that sign in one of the facilities, no injuries in two days. You’re like, “Oh, fantastic. What a fantastic organization you’re running [00:10:00] here.” It’s unacceptable, and you can’t expect someone to do quality work if it’s not safe. You can’t get someone to give a damn about the customer if you don’t give a damn about them

Mike Gardner: Yeah, you’re exactly right. We- we’ve got this phrase we call own the stop button. So every new hire goes to an orientation with Brian and I. So we tell them about the company, the history, the values, and we talk safety. And I tell them, “You own the stop button. If there’s something that you don’t feel is [00:10:30] safe, stop the process.

Just stop it. Get your supervisor. Let’s talk about it. Let’s see if there’s a better way to do it.” Again, there’s a mutual responsibility. I’ve got to provide a safe work environment, but they also have to step up and say, “Hey, this isn’t safe.”

Joe Lynch: Oh, yeah. Yeah, y- that’s the bare minimum, and of course you wanna provide the environment where they can thrive and support the customer and do a good job for the company. When I worked, I was a lean facilitator. So in lean, you’re always looking to improve, order to [00:11:00] cash.

And we used a framework that we would measure, and it was SQDCM. And the S stands for safety. It’s always was first. It was, m- every once in a while there’d be a debate whether quality should be after delivery and, all the … But it, safety was always in front. So it was safety, quality, delivery, cost, morale.

We would love it if everyone could be happy, but the, morale some days i- is [00:11:30] not good because you were busting your ass. Safety has to be first. You can’t get quality without safety. You shouldn’t worry too much about cost until you got the delivery right. So safety first, quality second. But I, again, I think they’re

You could call these all 1A, right? 1A, 1B, 1C. They’re all super important, but if you don’t put safety first, you can’t get the rest Yeah. I [00:12:00] shared an article that I’ve maybe I’ll find a link and I’ll put it in the show notes, but it was about Paul O’Neill. He took over at Alcoa, this is 1987, and the company was in…

Not doing very well. Margins were low, and this is one of the largest aluminum companies, and everyone said he’s gonna come in with a great cost-cutting plan. And he was a kind of a government guy, like a, a budget guy in the, in Washington. And he showed up and said, “I wanna talk to you guys about safety.

Alcoa’s [00:12:30] already the best in safety, but we’re gonna get even better. We’re gonna have zero safety is- issues,” just like you mentioned. And I heard somebody describe it this way. This is Wall Street all standing there, and they said the, the people, the analysts ran to the phones to say, “Sell Alcoa,” because they couldn’t believe this was the direction.

So he had this policy where I want to get to zero, but every, every injury worldwide has to be reported to me within 24 [00:13:00] hours, and if it’s not, you’re gonna lose your job. So these, this was the policy, and they drove injuries way, way down, but there was deaths. That’s a dangerous business.

But what they a- accidentally, I shouldn’t say accidentally, I think he knew what he was doing, they found that communication really improved. 1987, we had technology, but we didn’t have the internet. To get… They set up a system, a called early internet, in- intranet [00:13:30] probably, to inform him of injuries, and they said before long, the, the information from the bottom of the company to the top of the company was one day, as opposed to probably was weeks at that point.

And what does that tell your workers when the CEO is saying, “We are not going to have another injury in this f- in this business”? They say, “Oh, this guy gives a damn.”

Mike Gardner: Exactly. Yeah, in this day and age with [00:14:00] technology, we do have the same kind of system. I get, momentarily, as soon as an incident happens, I’m aware of it. And we have videos and analysis about what happened so that we can start to investigate. If you need to do a stand down, you do, if it’s that serious. But you’re right, it’s that information and that quick response that demonstrates to people you really care

Joe Lynch: Yeah and I think it’s also, it’s a habit of excellence. It’s a f- did you ever hear the ge- generals talk about the importance of [00:14:30] making your bed in the morning? It’s that same thing, but for business, right? Th-

Mike Gardner: You’re exactly

right

Joe Lynch: When you start on that foundation of we’re not gonna have injuries, you know there’s operational excellence in that building.

No sloppy

Mike Gardner: Yeah, you can feel it. You can just walk through and feel it

Joe Lynch: Yeah. And that’s a ch- that’s an even bigger challenge for you guys with all those offices across the country. And before we hit the record button, we were talking about b- to support same day, next day, we’ve seen a whole bunch of consolidation [00:15:00] in this industry. But we’ve also seen tech companies that say we have a warehouse management system and, an operating s- system, and all, all these disparate companies are using that system, and we can drive excellence from our tech platform.”

And I was like I’m not I’m not, I don’t… I’m not a hater, so I’m not gonna say that can’t work. But do you have the culture and the consistency and the predictability in all those [00:15:30] locations? No, you can’t. And if I was vetting and say, “Hey, I need to work with someone who has facilities across the country,” I want an, I want one throat to choke, or, as my friend said, “Joe, that’s old school.

It’s one back to pat.” I wanna come to Mike and say, “Damn it, Mike, something didn’t work. Will you please make it w- please make it better?”

Mike Gardner: I’ve had those calls before.[00:16:00]

Joe Lynch: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You don’t get the big job over there without having that.

Mike Gardner: Yeah, you’re probably right

Joe Lynch: So we talked a little about safety and that being a foundational value for you guys. Talk about that 162 years you’ve been in business, and how, what, what has been some, what has been the, What’s been the, the North Star on that?

Mike Gardner: I think the North Star, in addition to safety, of course, has been the customer. And just, over the years, we’ve [00:16:30] shifted and changed and added locations and closed locations and added trucks, whatever it may be, to support those customers to support their changing needs. You talked about M&A in our space.

There’s been an M&A probably in every industry. And every time something happens, networks change. You look at the tariff war that we’ve experienced the last couple years, right? That’s disrupted supply chains. There’s been volcanoes all kinds of weather issues, and that creates challenges for people.

And, again, our North Star has [00:17:00] been that customer

Joe Lynch: Yep. And you, the constant adapting. When you think just the last, I’ll say seven, eight years. I’ll go back all the way to the ELD mandate. The ELD mandate was oh my God, what a pain this is, ’cause some carriers weren’t doing, they weren’t getting compliant right away. And it seemed that COVID just pushed, and pushed on the supply chains, and we found out there was some brittle parts.

Mostly good. It was not your great-grand- it’s not your [00:17:30] great-grandparents’ pandemic where people lost 20% of the population, but it was very difficult on a lot of families. But everybody who’s running a big supply chain organization like you guys really had to adapt. Y- there was people who couldn’t come to work.

There was demand from the consumers that outpaced everything we’d ever seen before. And of course, we couldn’t get anything out of the ports. We just had to keep adapting. And then as soon as [00:18:00] that got done, we had this freight recession, the longest one ever. And then just as everyone’s like, “Cool, we’re slowly coming out of that freight recession,” the damn tariffs.

It feels like the disruption never ends now. It’s just… And maybe we just have more visibility. There was challenges a generation ago. We just didn’t know about what was going on across the world

Mike Gardner: That’s what I try to tell my wife, all these various incidents and, now we’ve got the war in Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is open or closed. I [00:18:30] was talking to her over the weekend. I just said, “I think that’s just the new normal.” There are gonna be continuing challenges for all of us and part of it is just ’cause we know more than we used to know

Joe Lynch: Yeah. And yet, when I was growing up, Washington, DC existed. I just didn’t hear about them every single day. You had to read a, you had to look in the newspaper. You had to like actually pay attention to find it. Now it chases you down, and I have to cut it out of my podcast. It’s not a political podcast.

But yeah, [00:19:00] it’s so much of the challenges in the world are front and center, yet we have a better world than ever before. Yeah, so you guys have survived all this time, and you said the, the Downy family, which owns it now, they bought it 100 years ago. Even 100 years ago is an unbelievable success.

I don’t know that there’s a logistics company that’s been around in the same family. I think I talked to you about Ruan just before we hit record. I think they’re 90 years with Ruan, but you guys, you had two generations longer. [00:19:30] That’s incredible

Mike Gardner: It’s quite a legacy. Yeah, you’re right

Joe Lynch: Yeah, and yeah, so talk about your, y- I know you guys have this we exchanged some emails, we talked before we hit record.

You have this people first performance-driven culture. Talk about how you keep that culture going across all of these s- all of these locations across the country.

Mike Gardner: It starts with safety, right? That we provide the right work environment that we’ve got some core values and we try to recognize the [00:20:00] leaders and teams that live those core values. We’ve got something to honor Brian’s father, it’s called the Bob Downey Legacy Award. Bob had this saying and kind of mantra about a can-do attitude. So you think about how have we survived 100 years? Yeah, we can do this. Hang up the phone, you’re not sure how you’re gonna do it, but you’re gonna try to figure it out. So it’s just that kind of resilience around, we’re gonna get this done. We’re gonna get it done with our team, and again, with the north star being the customer

Joe Lynch: I love that. I always say to [00:20:30] young people that I talk to and when I used to hire a lot of people, I was at a logistics company, and I hired a lot of young people out of school, and I would always say when I hired them, there’s attitudes, skills, and knowledge. That’s all I’m gonna get. I can get you the skills you’ll need, m- the ones you don’t already have.

You can pick up the phone, you can use the computer, you can spell and speak, right? Write emails. That’s a skill I [00:21:00] need. Customer service, we’ll get… make sure we teach you that. The knowledge you’re gonna need of the industry, you can learn a lot of that either through our training or through just on the job.

And I said, “But I’m not worried about the skills, I’m not worried about the kn- I’m worried about the attitude.” ‘Cause if you can get the attitude piece right, the skills and knowledge are easy. You can acquire those. It’s hard to acquire a good attitude if you don’t have one,

Mike Gardner: You’re exactly right

Joe Lynch: and I’m telling you, if you can bring a good attitude to a warehouse [00:21:30] you are in demand.

In the past, I think we overvalued college degrees. Everyone has to get a college degree. Everyone ha- oh, you gotta get a college degree, you can’t have a good job. I guarantee you right now, if you’re in a warehouse and you keep learning and you have a great attitude, the sky’s the limit for you.

It’s not it’s not 10 years ago where somebody says 15, 20 years ago maybe, “we’re gonna hire this young man out of college who’s got a management degree to be the new head of this this part of the [00:22:00] warehouse.” Nope. Nope. We’re bringing on a guy who we’ve had here for five years who really gets it

Mike Gardner: Yeah, and that’s part of what we do as well. There is a real culture. You talk about kind of bringing, promoting from within. A lot of the team has been here a number of years, and it’s it does help build that culture and that, that attitude. You’re exactly right.

Joe Lynch: Yeah, I had, I, I won’t mention their name, but one of the largest parcel companies, they were on the podcast a while back, and they said, [00:22:30] “We we do a really good job of hiring people, not necessarily college degreed. We train them.” They were doing a lot of medical stuff. They said, “We train them in what they need to know, and then we work like crazy to keep them because we realized how expensive it is to have turnover.”

And I think one of my favorite companies is Costco. And I don’t know if you pay attention to Costco. They pay more money upfront to their associates [00:23:00] because they don’t wanna lose them. And they have, I think, 7% turnover in the first year, and they said, which is a fraction of what most retailers have.

And, anyone who goes to Costco, they go, “Yeah, tho- those people are shining on the spot. They care ’cause the company cares

Mike Gardner: Yeah, it’s hard to live in Seattle and not know Costco.

Joe Lynch: Oh, that’s right. It’s based out… I told you my daughters are in Portland, and [00:23:30] they’re, they got an old Costco where they live, and I was like, “I’m used to the new one by my house.” I love that place.

Mike Gardner: We got some older ones here too, and the format is backwards. It’s taken me a while to get used to. The flow is a little bit different.

Joe Lynch: Yeah. I just I listened to a podcast called Acquired, and it’s a business podcast. These guys did a three-hour podcast about Costco. If I can find it, I’ll put it in the show notes. And it talks about the founding [00:24:00] and these guys had a vision of we’re really gonna take care of our customers.

And to this day, I just heard somebody say this, some bankers were in meetings with Costco about something, and each one of them was asked at the end, “Tell me how this is gonna be good for our members.” And some of them were like it’s good for, you’re gonna make money.” And they go, “Tell us how it’s gonna be good for our members.”

And they made each one of them, if they didn’t have an answer, come back and tell [00:24:30] us how this is good for our members. Yeah, and I always say you talk about operational excellence. I think they’re at 3,500, 4,000 SKUs, way less than, say, Walmart or Meijer here in the Midwest. And obviously they’re a little different business.

Sam Walton copied from Costco and said so. Sam’s Club was copying Costco. He went and visited, had lu- had dinner with the founder of Costco, and then went home and said, [00:25:00] “I’m gonna, I’m gonna change it.” I think even the predecessor, if you hear Walmart, Kmart those were named after the predecessor to Costco, which I think was, I forgot something Mart.

So yeah. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes so you guys can listen to that if you get a chance.

Mike Gardner: Yeah, they’re a challenging customer. We do a lot of deliveries to Costco.

Joe Lynch: Oh, really?

Mike Gardner: Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot of our customers have, have products that go into Costco, and it’s

it’s exciting

Joe Lynch: talk about that, that consolidate- that, so [00:25:30] you’re delivering to Costco every day. So let’s just say a new brand, and they said, “Hey, we just got to, finally got a deal with Costco. We’ve been working on it, and now we’ve got to support Do they does Costco say they now have to support us across 30, 30 warehouse, th- 30, 30 locations, and then they come to you and you say, “We can help you”?

Mike Gardner: It’s a combination of that or some have national deals with Costco. Sometimes Costco sends their fleet in to pick it up. Sometimes we deliver it, so [00:26:00] it’s really all of the above. But we, we know the people at Costco. We know how to get into Costco, so yeah, that’s absolutely part of how we can help some of our customers.

Joe Lynch: I love I personally love going there but I also, I admire these companies, and they’re not the only one. I think Trader Joe’s Aldi. Aldi’s the fastest growing grocery store right now. Very few SKUs compared to Kroger and the others, and I don’t think that’s by accident. I think it’s a lot easier to [00:26:30] manage 3,500 SKUs than 100,000 SKUs like you see.

I think Walmart’s up to that. And by the way, they’re different stores. Wal- Wal- Walmart’s obviously fantastic what they do, and when I go to Walmart … I just was there. I bought a, a bed frame and groceries at the same time so that’s what I want from my Walmart.

Mike Gardner: I just, you have to make sure you don’t take your wife with you when you go to Costco. That’s

Joe Lynch: Oh, yeah. By the way, my s- my sister says, [00:27:00] “I can’t stand Costco.” And her husband, of course, he loves it. He’s going there constantly, and he is really big into wine. And he’s Italian and grew up in South Africa, which has fa- fantastic wine, and he loves Costco. He says this it… So when I’ve been there, and I say I’m picking up a bottle of wine.”

He goes, “Whoa, whoa, wait. Where are you at?” He goes, “I want you to pick it up,” and he describes exactly where it’s at and what bo- bottle. I’m like, “Okay.” It’s like he, he’s [00:27:30] in his element.

Mike Gardner: Sounds like my daughter. “Hey, Dad, pick this up.”

Joe Lynch: So I wanna talk about this, this true partnership model. I know we talked about this before we hit the record button, is y- you don’t wanna be transactional. You can’t be transactional and get the kind of results that you guys wanna get. If somebody shows up and says, “Hey, we’re- we don’t wanna do your orientation.

We don’t wanna f- we don’t want to spend the time to help you understand us. [00:28:00] We’re not gonna integrate our systems completely. We’re just gonna try you out,” it doesn’t work. I feel like i- you have to have the dedication of, “I’m going to vet. I’m gonna pick the very best partner for us, and then I’m gonna invest in that partnership un- until it works.”

Mike Gardner: Yeah, I agree. One of the things we’ve done, some of our customers date back to the 1960s. So large multinational customer back to the [00:28:30] 1960s. Think about that. Others are in the 1980s. So we’ve invested in the relationship. They’ve invested in the relationship. It’s a bit of a marriage. But you integrate systems. We understand their expectations. We provide a full solution, so oftentimes it includes the fleet so we can deliver to their customers. And the other thing we like to do is include gain sharing. If they win-

Joe Lynch: Oh, I like that

Mike Gardner: They win, we win and you work together to try to create opportunities to save a bit of money. One of the [00:29:00] examples you talked about before we joined was one of your former clients and, not gonna be the cheapest. But one way to get to the value for the customer is to work together, solve a problem, and then, hey, let’s share the gain, share the

Joe Lynch: Yep. Two companies said it on my podcast. Ruan, their vice president of safety said this, and then Joyce Brenny, she owns Brenny Trucking. They both said, “People buy from us because they share our values.” [00:29:30] And, that’s different. And when you share values with your customers or your … There’s gonna be a different level of commitment.

And when you say, “Hey, why’d you go with Ruan?” Because they are one of the safest over-the-road trucking companies. That and that’s important to us.” Okay. They, so you don’t leave at the fr- if somebody says, “Hey, ’cause they’re cheapest,” guess what? There’s gonna be someone else cheapest next week.

Cheap is not a strategy. [00:30:00] And when we talk about true partnership model, I said I think we said it before we hit the record button. Right now we have cybersecurity issues, and cybersecurity issues often turn into cargo security issues. And cargo theft has been a problem in our industry.

And if you have long-term relationship with your suppliers, you probably don’t have that problem. And I’m not against automation. We’re all for [00:30:30] automation. The technology that l- allows somebody to automatically pick a truck, even if you don’t know who they are, I think we’re all for that. But that is also let the door open to some bad actors, and they’re very sophisticated.

And we’ve seen the results. And if you’re f- if you’re a company that’s providing product to your customers to Costco or to some of the other big box stores, I don’t think they’re gonna like it very much [00:31:00] if there’s cargo theft. And it’s a huge issue. I recently was on another podcast.

It was Fraud Girl, Danielle Spinelli. And I said, “One of my friends, he’s an attorney, he said, ‘Hey, Joe, I was just on Facebook Marketplace. I see I could buy a pallet of linens.'” I was like, he’s single, never married. That’s where we watch football. I go, “But what are you gonna do with a pallet? You don’t even have any linens, let alone a whole [00:31:30] pallet.”

And I said, that’s stolen. That’s what that is.” S- they, so we have Facebook Marketplace and eBay and other s- places where I believe a whole bunch of stolen stuff ends up. Not, those aren’t happening in the long-term relationships where you say, “I’ve been working with Holman Logistics for the last 25 years.”

You’re not gonna get your stuff stolen. It’s, not to say it can’t happen, but it’s a lot less likely

Mike Gardner: But see, what’s interesting too about these long-term partnerships is there will be issues, there will be disruptions [00:32:00] in supply chain, there will be misshipments, there may be a stolen trailer, right? When those things happen, it’s not the end of the relationship, right? You work together, you identify what happened, and you correct it. Had a customer that we had a theft broke into the warehouse. Police responded, thought the building was secure, left. The bad guys, the bad actors were still in the building. And they know the police aren’t coming back twice, so they popped the doors. The alarms went off again, [00:32:30] but again, the police aren’t gonna come a second time. Loaded the trailer and left, and it happens. And I remember calling the CEO of our customer saying, “Hey, here’s what happened.” And very understanding. And I said, we’ll pay for the product.” He goes, “Oh, I know you will.”

Joe Lynch: I was at a little th- 3PL, and we only had… We didn’t have gr- we couldn’t get great pricing from the LTL carriers unless we had all their business. We [00:33:00] couldn’t do anything transactional. If we got a customer, we got all their freight. And of course, you have to have that conversation with f- 200 people who don’t wanna have that type of relationship.

And I would always say, “You are tr- you are… You wanna send an Excel spreadsheet to all the 3PLs you work with, all the fr- freight brokers you work with, and we f- all fill that out every week, and then, and will you go with the cheapest price?” She says, “Yep.” And I said, “And you’re [00:33:30] convinced that’s the cheapest way to do business?”

She said, “Yeah.” I said I have customers that when I screw up, when we don’t g- it’s not on time, we’ll go rescue it off the dock and expedite it.” And she goes that costs extra.” I go, “We pay for it ’cause it’s our fault.” And I said, “You can’t make that investment in someone who is transactional.” I said, “I guaran– I…

we’ve also said we’re not billing you for that shipment, or we’re gonna, we’re gonna take all the profit off of that [00:34:00] movement because we didn’t do something we were supposed to do.” The long-term, long-term benefits really outweigh that transactional approach, and it’s saving a penny and costing yourself a dime.

Silly way to do business. You’re not gonna ever convince anyone who… I gotta say that one person, I convinced one person out of probably 200 of those conversations, and he said, “No, I get it. I get it.” He was an old purchasing [00:34:30] guy, and he said, “I get it. I like it.” He goes I never liked the idea of middlemen.”

And I would always say, “How do you call me a middleman? I’m bringing a team, I’m bringing technology, and I’m cheaper than what you get it for.” I was like, “Do you go to the grocery store and y- accuse them of being a middleman ’cause you can’t get your own bananas from the source? Or do you just buy a bunch of bananas and leave it at that?”

The last point I wanna talk to you about is this whole idea of like modern capabilities. So [00:35:00] somebody says, “Oh, this old company,” it’s like, “Oh God, they’re probably ancient. They’re probably decrepit,” right? They… It’s this, that’s the first thought you have. But you guys, the reason you’re here after 162 years is ’cause you’ve made the investments, you’ve kept up and obviously have the technology necessary to do business with the biggest companies in the world, and some of my favorite, like Costco.

So talk about that

Mike Gardner: Yeah, we like to call ourselves a thinking company, right? We’ve got a lot of bright young talent. [00:35:30] Yeah. We got ideas. Being a little smaller than some we’re able to move pretty quickly. Again, it’s a family-owned business. We identify we’ve got a, an AI tool, for example, that we put on our forklifts, so we can see everything that happens use that for coaching and training. We did that very quickly. And we try things out. We tried some autonomous forklifts. Technology didn’t fit the solution that we needed, so we dropped it. So you could try something, you think [00:36:00] about it, somebody on the floor has an idea, you try it, it works, it doesn’t work, and you move on. So we’re pretty nimble and able to deploy various technologies, so

Joe Lynch: It’s not easy. You guys are a top 100 3PL, so it’s not easy to stay nimble as you get big. But being privately owned, that is a superpower. I’ve talked to, to Doug Wagner from ACCO Global Logistics a while back, and they went– they were publicly traded, and then they went back to [00:36:30] privately owned.

And he said, when you have a big ownership model,” and it doesn’t necessarily have to be publicly traded. If you have a whole bunch of owners who are say, have different ideas about how the business should be run from New York you can see how that would slow down and also maybe make you reconsider an investment that’s gonna make this quarter’s numbers look weaker.

When you have a, a private ownership, you say, “Nope, we’re gonna do what is right. We’re gonna [00:37:00] think about it and do the right thing.”

Mike Gardner: And we can sit with our customers. They have an idea, we have an idea, we can go do it

Joe Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah that’s that isn’t always easy as you get big. But again, you guys have figured it out ’cause you’ve been around 162 years. I got, I g- I’ve been doing this podcast for eight years, and I’ve not talked to anyone anywhere near that. Again, I think Ruan’s probably the oldest company I talked to.

They’re probably, I think they’re 92 maybe. That’s [00:37:30] crazy. And you guys, again, two generations older than that

Mike Gardner: And we talked about people before. We’ve got a guy, Doug Swanson, who has been driving a forklift for fifty-one years

Joe Lynch: That’s nice though. That’s nice that he found a home

Mike Gardner: 51 years. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, what do you do when you’re not working?” He goes, “I just work. I love this place.”

Joe Lynch: I’m telling you, I have … I was … I met some buddies for drinks last night, and I have a friend who’s retired, and we’re all kinda looking at him going, [00:38:00] “What are you gonna do with yourself, dude? You’ve been working hard for a long time. I just don’t…” And he goes I’ve I’m gonna have some hobbies.”

I was like, “They’re gonna be pretty intense hobbies if you do them at that level.” We’re not meant, we’re not meant to be retired, I’m convinced.

Mike Gardner: I know that story.

Joe Lynch: I have a s- I have a son-in-law who is a financial planner, and right after he started working in financial planning, he said… He was at a big company, and he said All day [00:38:30] long we get phone calls from guys who are talking about their portfolio.

And he goes, “A lot of times we’re, we already know what we’re doing with them. We’re managing it. That’s why they have us.” He goes, “But they’ve been watching the news all day.” And he goes, “And a lot of times there’s, the news is on in the background.” And he said, “We put whatever station they were listening to in the CRM.”

He goes, “That’s another thing. They’re always listening too loud, so you can hear exactly what’s going on their TV.” And he said “They have a lot of money sometimes,” he goes, “and more than enough money to be retired,” he goes, “but they’re [00:39:00] too sharp to be retired, so they mess with their portfolio instead.”

And he goes, “You’d be better off going back. Go do something.” Yeah. Anyway, enough of my blather. I’m gonna summarize what we talked about today Mike, and then I wanna get your final thoughts on the topic. So I’m talking to my friend Mike Gartner, and we’re talking about Holman Logistics. So Built to Last: Inside Holman Logistics, 162 years old.[00:39:30]

And the f- we talked about five big points today. And th- these are some of the things that allowed you guys to stick around for 162 years. And I know we exchanged some emails this morning about the same topic, is the whole idea of operational safety. Operational safety isn’t just about keeping people safe.

It’s about building a foundation that not only values the worker, but also is a really good habit to acquire. If you’re getting safety right in a big facility, you’re also getting [00:40:00] a whole bunch of other things right. If you’re getting safety wrong in a facility, I guarantee there’s a whole bunch of other things going wrong.

I’m an automotive guy, and when I used to work in engineering, we had safety parts. Safety parts always had to be tested a lot more. I won’t mention the OEM, but we tested a whole bunch of these parts one time, as a separate study, and found out that even our safety parts did not have the quality level that we wanted them to.

And we’re like, [00:40:30] “These are the safety parts. What are we doing for the other parts that are not deemed safety?” So anyway, operational safety, super important. One of the reasons you guys been around for 162 years, and again, beyond safety, just having a culture of let’s get the operations right. Let’s get them clean.

People first, performance driven. When you have the biggest companies in the world working with you, the, the Costcos of the world, we didn’t [00:41:00] talk about your other customers, it– you have to be p- people first so you can be performance driven. But make no mistake, those companies demand performance. It can’t be like, “Hey, everybody’s here singing Kumbaya.”

I’m sure there’s some very difficult days. Not everyone’s not everyone’s humming while they work, but if you do it right, you can get both the people part right and the performance part right. We also talked about the importance of the true perf- true partnership model. You’re not get– you’re not [00:41:30] dating, you’re not engaged, you’re married, so take the time and vet that 3PL.

And I, I, and I, we didn’t talk about it, but I guarantee there’s companies that Holman has talked to over time and said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” I’ve talked to a lot of warehousing companies on my podcast and separately off my podcast. The worst ones, the ones who get in trouble, say yes to every new customer.

And I know why you do it. I’m a small business man myself. It’s really easy to say yes, because you’re getting the money [00:42:00] next week. But they are going to drive you out of business if you pick the wrong customers. And and in the warehousing business, especially during COVID when everyone was starting an ecommerce brand, those little companies are almost impossible to make money on.

They don’t know their own business. You can’t figure it out either. L- last but not least, we talked about modern capabilities, heritage values. You guys have been around a long time, but obviously kept adapting. You’re not in the… You might be 162 years [00:42:30] old, but you’re not using 162-year-old ideas to run the business.

Anyway, enough of my blather. Put a big old bow on this one, Mike. Final thoughts on the topic

Mike Gardner: Again, safety is a journey to zero and really creates an environment, a, it’s a, a great place to work, and that’s really what we’re trying to create. So again, as you say, we can deliver the right experience for the customer. And being a thinking company, hopefully we can bring some good ideas, good solutions, and as I mentioned before, gain sharing, I think, is the way to [00:43:00] build that long-term partnership. So we bring ideas, we share the benefit, and everybody wins at the end of the day.

Joe Lynch: Yep. And who’s the i- ideal type of customer for you? I don’t mean just in terms of industry, but in terms of, the partnership values you’re looking for

Mike Gardner: It tends to be kind of the middle market customer. We’ve got some long-standing relationships with multinationals, and we value those relationships. Kind of the emerging customer is one I call the middle market. They may or may not have a big supply chain team. They’re really looking to… They [00:43:30] value kind of the values that we bring, back to your point about kind of shared values. And they look for ideas. They look and really embrace the thinking that we can bring bring to the table

Joe Lynch: From what I’ve learned on my podcast it seems as if the m- middle market companies often gain the most from a, a partnership like this. The big companies kinda know what they want. They’ve been ar- around, they have a little more capability, a little more money to spend. The mid-market are trying to figure [00:44:00] out, how do we get to the big leagues?

And they need a partner who says, “Yeah, we already play in the big leagues. We’ll take you with.”

Mike Gardner: Yeah, we could show you. Here’s some of the big leagues players that we have, some of the ideas we have, and yeah, we can take care of that problem

Joe Lynch: Yeah, and we didn’t touch on it too much here, but, That operational efficiency being really good operators that, that also shows up in your on-time performance. And, we talk about with Walmart, OTIF, on time and in full, but every, [00:44:30] every major supply chain has some version of on time and in full.

And I say it all the time is Yeah, you get, if you got charged as a brand $1,500 because you were out of stock, and you say, “Oh, now I’m angry with my 3PL.” That $1,500 or $1,800 that you got billed, that’s the small number. The bigger number that you can ever measure is you just hurt your relationship with a huge [00:45:00] big box store.

They’re judging you. They got scorecards too. Also, us consumers, when we get there and say, I want to buy this type of peanut butter, but it’s not there, I’ll try something else.” You don’t know how many customers you lost. So operational efficiency seems like, oh I can kinda tell because the $1,500, how many times I pay that.

Those out of stock or just as bad, way too much stock, those are k- those are the silent killers ’cause you can’t always [00:45:30] measure it. You’re in a bad place and you don’t know it

Mike Gardner: And oftentimes that dates back to you, to those companies hiring the lowest cost provider

Joe Lynch: Yep. Yep, yep. Again, i-i- if you have a true partnership, they’re gonna do everything they can to make sure they maintain that relationship. Anyway what I’ll do Mike, is I’ll make sure I put a link to your LinkedIn profile, a link to your website, any of the links you and your go-to-market team give me, I’ll put those in the show notes so people can reach out and talk to you.

What [00:46:00] conferences will we see you guys at? I kinda already know this ’cause I talked to your man Alex today. You guys go to all the major conferences, but what’s on your radar?

Mike Gardner: All the major food conferences. I think next up is CSCMP. That’s in Nashville coming up. And then, of course, Manifest is the up-and-coming show that’s in February in Vegas

Joe Lynch: Yep, I sent them an email yesterday. That’s a fantastic conference in Vegas

Mike Gardner: Yeah, those would be the two

Joe Lynch: Those are on your… I know you guys get to a lot more than that, but those are the big ones [00:46:30] that are on your radar. I’ll also put a link to the to the Costco episode on Acquired, which is a fantastic podcast. I also I listened to an interview with Jamie Dimon, and, Jamie Dimon in the news all the time.

He talked about how they got JPMorgan, Stanley, whatever they’re called right now. JPMorgan Chase, I think

Mike Gardner: JP JP Mor-, JPMorgan, if I remember, Morgan Chase, yeah

Joe Lynch: Yeah. [00:47:00] Yeah. Anyway he’s taken a deliberately low-risk approach to growing tho- that business, and is by far the biggest. I think when you look at the, the trillion-dollar companies, those are usually tech companies. I think they’re an $800 billion company. No one in the banking industry is near that.

And he said, “Yeah, we can tell, here comes the downturn, and we’re in good shape, and here’s who we’re gonna buy during the next downturn.” They’re… He [00:47:30] says, “We’re always here. We’re not going out of business,” because they’ve taken on this approach that has a little longer term. They aren’t looking and saying what’s good for quarterly profits.

You know what’s good for quarterly profits? Taking a lot of risk. D- taking big p- taking big swings. It works until it doesn’t.

Anyway, it was a pleasure talking to you, Mike. Again, I’ll make sure I put a link to your LinkedIn profile, a link to your website. Any links you and your go-to-market team give me, I’ll put those in the show notes. [00:48:00] Thank you so much for taking the time today.

Mike Gardner: Yeah, great to meet you. Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it. Bye

Joe Lynch: Yep. Thank you, and thank all of you for listening to my show. Your support’s very much appreciated. Until next time, on- onward and upward