[00:00:05] It’s time for Supply Chain Now Radio. Broadcasting live from the Supply chain capital of the country, Atlanta, Georgia. Supply Chain Now Radio spotlights the best in all things supply chain the people, the technology’s the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

 

[00:00:29] Good afternoon, Scott Luton here with you live on Supply Chain Now Radio. Welcome back to the show. We aren’t broadcasting live today from Atlanta, Georgia, but we are covering the South Carolina fall Logistics tech talk right down here in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina, at the Gilliard Center, where we’ve been interacting, interviewing a wide range of industry leaders, all in partnership with the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness. This event highlights some of the leading innovative companies that are driving the Logistics industry forward here in the booming state of South Carolina. To our listeners, like all of our series on Supply Chain Now Radio, you can find our replays on a variety of channels Apple podcast, SoundCloud, YouTube, wherever else you get your podcast from. As always, we love to have you subscribe so you don’t miss anything. OK. My co-host, Steve, co-host Joe Hurley us one more time. Hey, let’s get Greg White serial supply chain tech entrepreneur and trusted advisor and board member. Greg, how are you doing?

 

[00:01:25] I’m doing great. This has been a great session, man. It’s going by fast. We’ve done a lot in this short time.

 

[00:01:32] Absolute learned a ton. I’ve got 38 pages notes. I think there’s a lot happening here. We’re going to write a book on the way back to Vetlanta. But now we get a lot of fast conversations from a wide variety of different aspects of End to end Supply chain. In this episode, I think it’s also going to continue that that string get our cleanup hitter today. Yeah.

 

[00:01:51] And let’s welcome in Mr. Jimmy, Danica’s president, CEO of ATSI Logistics. Jimmy, how you doing?

 

[00:01:57] We’re doing well. Thank you. Great to have you. Glad to be here. We enjoy the warm up. I wish we’d recorded all the warm up sessions from the time you sat down. Yeah. Let’s see if we can. We’ll see if we can prove it. Yeah. Well so we want to start. You’ve got a really neat story both personally and professionally how you y’all stood up the company. So. So for starters, before we talk about $80 80 atsi Logistics, let’s talk about your background, where you’re from and in kind of your journey took to right now.

 

[00:02:29] Well, I’m right here. Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. And this is where I’ve lived except for four years when I went to college, which was not too far up the road, and Columbia, South Carolina University, South Carolina, and been here this whole time. I had the fortunate times to be able to travel a little bit. So, you know, that’s been that’s been fun. But this journey here with the. Yes is has been an interesting one. And it’s been a good one.

 

[00:02:59] Mm hmm. And as you were talking, tell us in the warm up, you and your two brothers. Yes. But too, browns of the company, right. Quite some ago in March made nineteen eighty six. March eighty six. So tell me what goes through your mind. What data do you mean what let’s say it’s the first of March 6. So at the end of February what went through your mind before you founded ATSI Logistics. What’s said hey let’s do this.

 

[00:03:23] Yeah. My brother and I at the time both was singled out, married. We were living together and we had talked about maybe don’t. One of my brothers talked about doing something together and he was working part time out of the airlines back in the day with Olympic Airlines, which when it ended up being U.S. Airways later. But he said that people deliberately lost luggage out at the airport are not doing a good job and they’ve got a monopoly and they getting fed up with them. And he said it might be an opportunity. So I said, well, brother wanted to go back. You know, it’s not a big airport, especially at that time. Yeah. I say, you know, the station managers wanted to go back and see if they will entertain us coming in and talking to him about the possibility of doing it. And it took probably 30 days from the time we we spoke about going to them and we did. And they set forth to the five airlines. So they’d give us an opportunity to do come in and then take the work over. So now we that’s a big opportunity.

 

[00:04:28] I mean, this. Yeah. Even in a small airport, that’s a big opportunity. Yeah. Yeah.

 

[00:04:31] And you know, it’s a well we ended up doing was so we went in at least a little small van and we came out and we went toe to toe with the existing company out there. And after the first week we were able to take all of those four airlines, one airline was holding out for the other company and buy the first part of the next week. Didn’t have any choice but to go with us to because it just there’s just too much and there’s a lot of hours. Involved in that particular an adventure we in because you had to start at 7:00 in the morning.

 

[00:05:06] You didn’t finish to 1:00 in the morning, 365 days a year, because we all know the airlines don’t, then they don’t stop. Listen, you’re lucky.

 

[00:05:14] And so we we went on with with that and we battled those people and they you know, we knocked him out after two weeks. And, you know, our moral story is, you know, you get complacent. You can you can lose everything. This particular company became complacent enough that they allowed us the opportunity. We seized the moment and we went in and took the airport over. Wow. And we ended up getting in another van after two weeks so we can handle all the volume. Wow.

 

[00:05:46] And so we went on with that. And, you know, we were rolling along. And 30 days later, these guys try to make a run back at it. And we you know, it’s a funny story.

 

[00:05:57] But, you know, when you are talking and waiting on lost luggage at these airlines, and so we hired a couple of guys sort of, you know, I wouldn’t call them bouncers.

 

[00:06:07] Verusen guys, you know, they had a couple little smelt, small fellas and a guy they go to grabbed a bag, guys away. You die, you go, you have it. So how did you last law? We bugged about it and we took over for good.

 

[00:06:24] And so he went off and took over the airport. And now that was an adventure, because at first my two brothers and I for the first especially probably six months, even though my brother that brought the idea to me, still work part time at the airport.

 

[00:06:40] I worked Full-Time out of being out of college and not really being able to get in a field that I wanted to get in. My dad was on the the the waterfront and he was with the clerks injectors. You knew he was in the first one. They have a form here in the late 50s and early 60s. So he knew I was unhappy where I was at. He said Sciarrotta wanted to come back. When you just can’t work out here with me, just work two or three days and do your thing. You know so well he had to make a long story short. I was twenty three years old. I went only went out on the waterfront, and within a couple of years I was one working.

 

[00:07:16] Two or three days I was working five and six days. And I was a young man and I was able to Obama first house had some car. So, you know, I sort of trapped myself. But anyhow, we were we were rolling. We were rolling. And I did that for the first six my first six years or so out of college.

 

[00:07:34] And and but that time is you know, when I got into my new right, about 30 or so, that’s where my brother and I came up with this idea. So we had we went ahead and we had the younger brother who was basically full time for us when we started. And my brother was working at myself. We each worked on on the weekends driving different routes to deliver bags. And we we would deliver bags within a hundred mile radius of Charleston. Got it. So we did that. Try to speed up story a little bit. We did that and we got in a small delivery and so forth.

 

[00:08:08] And right about 1988, the Eastern Airlines on off your own, that they unfortunately by last when I tell this story, unfortunately, they lost about 50 percent of the bags in the industry really so bad and they never on time. So I’ll I’ll tell you everything going forward. And ultimately at that time, they went out of business. Yeah. So they weren’t half of our business. Oh, yeah. So we went to the airlines after losing money for about six. About 45, 50 days. And we said, look, you guys, we’re gonna have to change that. We are gonna have to cut back hours. We’re gonna have to up our rates. And they said, we don’t want you to do the one. And that’s where I’ll tell you what we load you guys. Could you give us a start? And we’re gonna go ahead and give you guys 30 days to decide what you all want to do. And if y’all can’t, you know, help us and we will we will be out of here. 30, they came and I guess they thought, we are bluffing. And the thirty first day came, sorry. And they thought we were bluffing. When you show up and and they’d never call us anything. And that was the end of us for them. We just went on with the small deliveries we’re doing. And now and fortunately for us about that time, one of our freight forwarders that we did business with came to came to me on a Monday and said, hey, y’all ever thought about getting in the warehouse?

 

[00:09:33] And I said, No, not really. Then think nothing of it. Then Wednesday, another one, James asked the same question. So I told my brothers, I said, Man, we might want to research there. Some might be some two-disc because we we know something about loading and unloading the containers, working on the waterfront, you know. So we researched and it found it was a good time to get into the business. We got into it and we’re you know, we came. So we said, how we gonna come up with. Money because I was a young man with it, but a place but not much equity, and they didn’t have any bars.

 

[00:10:04] They didn’t have yet to have any money.

 

[00:10:06] And make a long story short, we. We are fretting and with it and so forth. We’re from a close Greene family and our mom and dad came into the office and sat down with us. You know, we understand y’all was struggling with a new idea. Yes, there we are. And we told them to say we need forty thousand dollars to get this warehouse business going and we don’t have it, you know.

 

[00:10:29] And when next day they came back to work and said, we got a second mortgage, our house so y’all could get the phone. I said, oh, wow. What year was that? Nineteen eighty eight. Wow. And I’m so serious. That was that was pretty good.

 

[00:10:43] And it just shows, you know, the love they had for us and so forth. And we went ahead and took the money, got in business. We actually the next Fayza was getting a business and trying to get a bill. And we had a gentleman that we were actually in the bill and doing our delivery business in the back of a big building where nobody where the North American line man moving storage agent moved out of when they went bankrupt. So we’d be around the back, which you have to come around. You went there in time.

 

[00:11:15] We saw somebody come on on the property with a coat and tie. We hide because we had a little off with we were paying $200 a month for it. So they wouldn’t, you know, say once you got to get out, but make it, you know.

 

[00:11:26] But fortunately for us, six months went by. Nobody came to the building. So I went to the owner to billman, and I asked the gentleman, I said, would you consider renting this building? He said, OK. Is said how you can pay me?

 

[00:11:40] I said as little as possible.

 

[00:11:43] And so he was able to strike a deal with him that he took a liking to us. And he said, I tell you what, should I pay you a thousand the first month?

 

[00:11:53] And now you’re looking at a bill and a cost like ten thousand a month. Yeah.

 

[00:11:56] And anyhow, he gave us some time. Give us a little bit of square footage to lease and we went ahead and started and what we’re supposed to get in three months down the road. We got it in three weeks. So you give us the whole bill and they give us enough time before we get up to the agreement we had with him to get to the full payment in six months. Yeah. And we had three or four months to run before we had to pay very big money. So we did that. And then we often run running in the 50000 square feet and we we were able to move on it and get it all filled up.

 

[00:12:32] And then about a year later, I went back to this gentleman and that’s it.

 

[00:12:37] And then as a Mr. Hall, is it a. How about if we’d like to buy a billion in property from you?

 

[00:12:43] It was a bill, an honor, you know, 7 acres prior, worth a million or so. And he said, well, I’ll sell it to you for 1.2 million.

 

[00:12:51] I said, Oh, boy, oh, boy. And I said. I said, oh, I see.

 

[00:12:56] So he says, well, how use plan on finance? And then that’s almost all. I was hoping you’d help us with that. And he said, OK, if I finance it with, you know, 10 percent downpayment, how are we gonna do that? I was hoping you could do that.

 

[00:13:13] And he came back the next day and he said, you know what? I like you guys. I would do it. And so we bought a 1.2 million dollar property with no money.

 

[00:13:23] It’s amazing.

 

[00:13:24] And it cost we bought it down. We finance it cost us less than what we had to pay the lease for. Yeah. So we owned a piece of property, which was a nice thing. And and we.

 

[00:13:32] So we went rolling on. And over the next six years we went from fifty thousand square feet to six hundred thousand square off on that property. Yes. Yes we are. We had something new, meaner. The biggest thing that Boone does for our growth was a nineteen eighty nine. We had a little storm come through that called Hurricane Hugo. I’ve heard of that and it destroyed but in everybody in the town had damage. We had two places, we had got another bill. And what the builder was completely tore up and you couldn’t find anybody. Communication was down. And so we went ahead and my two brothers and I and my dad, we went ahead and got all the cargo. It was ex-POWs upended part of the bill and it wasn’t covered with plastic.

 

[00:14:14] And we started Friday. And on Sunday when we finished, it started raining.

 

[00:14:19] Wow. So with that happened in, nobody in Charleston had inventory to give to them. Most of the clients back in the days were textiles are all up in New York and the fashion districts are. We were getting flooded by these people. Yeah. Everybody else was shut down for like two weeks. We were. The storm happened Thursday night and Monday morning we’re operating. Wow. And we became popular. And that’s why we grew to six hundred thousand square feet. We went a little extra mile to to try to deliver protect our clients. And so that was cool. And then we went on and then we got in now and trucking because nobody would service to customers like they wanted to be service. So. And we got a small truck and back in the late 90s and then move fast forward all the way up to by 2010. And we had about 12 trucks and then we’d made a decision in 2012 to get more trucks. And now we’ve got 100 over-the-road truck trucks. So we deliver all our own freight plus other people’s freight and a lot of steamship line freight and so forth.

 

[00:15:21] So we you know, we’re we’re a big warehouse dealing with importers and exporters and we deal with a lot of steamship lines on our truck inside and we service the southeast. And that’s what we presently do. We’re made up of about 130 people now.

 

[00:15:38] So what I like is kind of with where you’re where your role has evolved is you’re out meeting with business leaders. Right. And you’re off the market. Right. And I can only imagine some of the conversations and insights. Probably it’s a healthy two way street based on what you’ve experienced for 33 years in business, growing this this business into where it’s dropped. But also all the insights you get from meeting folks that are business, that whether the. Yes. Or they’re doing they’re doing business in other aspects. And in Supply chain, I would love to kind of, you know, what are some of the topics or trends or news or developments? What are you hearing?

 

[00:16:22] Well, lately, I industry has really grown, especially in this Charleston market. You know, basically south east, you know, even in the state, you guys from Savannah is. Yeah. Is really, really growing at a faster pace. In the past, over Charleston, of course, Charleston has been growing pretty good the last few years for sure. And but between the two, the two ports, they just they’ve taken up a good market share of what’s going on out there. And it’s, you know, other ports out there on the West Coast that got so many problems, so much congestion, same thing up in the northeast that everything’s sort of migrating this way.

 

[00:17:02] And, you know, with the Panama Canal open in a lot of stuff that used to come on the West Coast and get railed in. Yeah. Is now being brought about, you know, by ocean carry straight to the southeast ports.

 

[00:17:16] And we’re getting it to the consumer because 70 percent of all the consumers in the United States are on our east of the Mississippi. Right.

 

[00:17:25] You know, so it’s we’ve been, you know, beneficiary of all this new business. And what I can see and I have just gone through a nice conference here this just the last few days, it appears. Everything is going to continue to grow. The rest of this year, they shown in 2020 that they feel like because it’s always the year of the election. And, you know, we have some issues. You know, I know you already talked about this with previous people you had on board here, but you know, the tariff issue and so forth. And I personally don’t think that the Chinese are going to change their stance until they know they feel that either Trump has been reelected or they think he’s gonna definitely be reelected. But once if he is reelected, you will see them soften. Yeah. Because, you know, they can’t afford their their. Their economy can’t afford another four years of that. You know, the older, though, in the downturn that they’ve been experiencing. So I think you’ll see a little bit of softening in 2020.

 

[00:18:30] I’m not much, you know, maybe a half percent or so at least Phos on the East Coast. And and then I think once the election’s over. As history has shown the last three elections, that you’ll see it the following year in 2021. One take off again.

 

[00:18:44] Yeah. Hmm. I think there’s good reason to believe that. Yeah, right. Yes.

 

[00:18:49] So Jimmy, out to run a grow organization to Europe to deciles ya. I think he had one hundred trucks. And you’re right. Right. Yes, sir. And keeping good drivers and keeping all those things moving. What what kind of culture have y’all put in place to to to keep all the town on board?

 

[00:19:08] Well, that’s a good question, because, you know, we’ve we’ve taken a lot of pride in trying to find the right team to put together. And as as we mentioned in the pre-game show, I’ve been able to put together a nice team of four managers that all smart and really versed in the areas.

 

[00:19:32] We have somebody that’s in charge of our truck and somebody in charge of our warehouse and somebody that’s actually in charge of finding which is a big challenge today. Fine. And truck drivers and retaining them. I think we just heard a statistic in here just a little while ago, one of these forms that said that, you know, whenever you lose an employee and you got to replace them, it costs right.

 

[00:19:57] About $5000 per each. That’s right. To do that. You know, and so that was Michael from Syntheo, I think. Right. That’s him.

 

[00:20:05] That’s him. And the thing about it is that, you know, we’re not when we go up to the last 10 years, we were proper dominantly warehouse men, warehouse people, and we were used. We had such a great culture. We still do in our company that those type of people came and we never lost them. I mean, I turnover in our company was like that, you know, and the with once we got in a truck and that’s a different animal these days, guys. You know, even though we’re an asset based company, which you don’t see, many of you that we own all our trucks, we’re not we don’t have owner operators in these even at that. These guys get a little finicky and and so forth. And we’re one of the better companies in Charleston and the truck industry. And, you know, most of them will have an turnover of 100, 110 percent every year. And we’re probably we’re probably around 60 or 65 percent. And that’s considered good.

 

[00:21:04] And we were used to that. So you’re replacing almost two thirds of your drivers every year. I mean, you know, like I I’ll talk to my guy, George, my driver Tench. I say, how are we doing? So we’ll get six open trucks. I got six drivers. Got them in there and to quit yesterday. So it’s sort of that type of thing. You know, it’s two steps forward, one step back. All right.

 

[00:21:24] But right at the present moment, thank God we are Rod and full on all on all sides of the business. And I just feel blessed and I hope it just continues that way for a while, you know?

 

[00:21:37] So let’s make sure, by the way, doing our homework, we were checking out ATX eight dot net. Loved the site. And one of my favorite parts, I believe is this is the pictures of you and your brothers down through the years. Yes, I love that. I mean, that just screams family owned business. Family run business.

 

[00:21:57] Well, companies don’t get built like that anymore. I’m not sure that you could do that anymore. That I mean, that is a that’s a unique combination of guts, ingenuity. Right. Ambition and assistance from your family. I mean, that’s just that is a great story.

 

[00:22:14] You know, I’ve had the fortune of, you know, teach in some of the college classes on entrepreneurship and everything. And every every time somebody will ask the question, you say, well, how did you guys get along? You know, I can always be serious face. And I’ll say, well, I tell them what to do and they do it.

 

[00:22:29] And it was like looking at me like that. I said not. Yeah, yeah.

 

[00:22:34] I said, we have arguments like other people. But, you know, we were we were taught. But early age by our parents that y’all can get in fights, whatever you want.

 

[00:22:42] You know, whenever you have to do that, but you know, the next day is a new day. Yeah. Y’all don’t make up a move on. And that’s why we that’s what we’ve always done, you know, and that is unique. It is unique is so. But there there’s turmoil.

 

[00:22:57] And, you know, no different than the other business. Right. Right. No, not at all.

 

[00:23:01] A lot of passion, whether it’s family or non-family, you know, you’re not going to see. I think the beauty of diversity and diversity of perspective is folks see the problems definitely. They see challenges. They see growth opportunities. Right. I mean, that going back to that 1.2 million dollar purchase y’all made. I bet y’all had some differences of opinion, terms of how to approach that. But it made job better, more informed group. And then the other thing that you mentioned that that stood out that I bet you had some opinionated or passionate discussions around is when you’re doing your warehousing research because you hadn’t done warehousing yet. Right. And and I bet that that decision to jump into that really built the next chapter of the company is what it did when I heard it did.

 

[00:23:45] You know, we’ve we’ve always had a knack, I guess, back in the day. We you know, we sort of used to maybe the Japanese mentality of analyzing something maybe a little longer than most companies in America would.

 

[00:24:00] But most companies America analyzed something and come up a decision fairly quick. Then they take they have it implemented. We would make sure we took pretty much as much risk as we possibly could out of it. And then when we made the decision, we hit we didn’t look back. We implemented right there. We didn’t sit down over, analyze it, or wait eight months down the road to do it. We do it right away.

 

[00:24:22] Boy, that’s great guidance. That really is great guidance for companies.

 

[00:24:26] And, you know, sometimes you’re wrong, but you do it to you live and learn and you try not to make the same mistake again. And you just you just go down the road.

 

[00:24:35] Yeah. Well, if you’re not wrong, some of the time you plant too safe. Right.

 

[00:24:38] That’s right. That’s right. And like, you know, you got to take that. You know, I see so many companies out then and I look at it like a circle. You know, they want to get that chair over there and all the way they can get to it. It’s a risk. Yeah. Is it have to leave the circle on a stretch and they it then they never get to. Yeah. But if you want to do you just got to leave circle. Go and get it.

 

[00:24:59] Love it. Well. So to our listeners to learn more. ATDC dot net. Right. Yes. And of course they can find Jimmy Jinhua is out across the market.

 

[00:25:10] He’s on air. Yeah.

 

[00:25:11] I’m, I’m I’m in different markets in the southeast. I come to Atlanta a lot. Charlotte UPS Day, you know, travel.

 

[00:25:20] We pretty much deal with people all the way out about Texas or so went up to New York. And we don’t we don’t really at this point in time. We have we don’t really have any clients out in California a lot. So but it’s it’s fun traveling around, meeting and talking to people. And, you know, I’ve always liked going and visiting our clients and all to learn and see what they do. And I think a couple of things happen. One, they appreciate you coming out. Yeah. Taking an interest in what they do. And one, when you there are a lot of times you can see things that, you know, will make things better for them. And you make suggestions. And, you know, a lot of times it works out and they just those are the ones I think afterward they they don’t want to leave you there. Yeah. They become when we go after a client, we want them to be a partner. If you tell them all the time as a you know, if you’re looking for a vendor. So we’re not the right people like us. I say because when I leave, somebody else comes in and they go, do it for a nickel cheaper. You go get rid of me. I said, we’re now looking for that kind of relation. We’re looking for a partner. And that we can we can work with and we can grow with and we can go back. I mean, we went through the recession and the 2008 time. Almost every one of our clients asked us to reduce our prices. We were hurt, too. But we did reduce our prices. And I tell every one of them, I said, we’re your partner and we going to do that to help you. But all I ask is that when we get back on even ground, you allow us to increase our rates and make up. Yeah. And I went to everyone. I’m not one now. One balked. Everyone UPS it. Thank you. We appreciate what you did. You know, that’s a huge testimonial.

 

[00:26:55] Man. Well, congratulations. Yeah. All of the success during three years in the organization. Jones. And best of luck in this new phase as you brought in the management team and as your Sheer and you’ve kind of, you know, like any business owner that’s built a business over that period of time, you probably don’t want to. It’s not easy to let go the reins, but.

 

[00:27:16] But I don’t I don’t mind getting rid of the date because it’s day to day operations, which is necessary. Is that what bogs you down and put you in the forest? Yeah. Now I’m outside of it. I don’t feel as stressed. And I’m able to, you know, to look at the labors of my fruit and go out and talk to people and. All of a sudden now I’m talking to my brothers now about possibly expand some more. And here’s an opportunity over here that’s in our type of business. And when you get time, you get people all the time want you to do this, this and that. But, you know, it’s not as if it’s not in our alleyway.

 

[00:27:54] You know, our wheelhouse. Yeah. I don’t want to get. I don’t want to go in that direction. I want. I went back to commercial Jenny delay broke. I want to I want to stay in sometime. Not that I’m good at.

 

[00:28:04] And I know, you know, my brothers and my company is good at, you know, so we feel like we’re the best at what we do. And we want to go ahead and utilize those expertise to, you know, bring us further down the road and utilize make him somebody else. You know better what they do. That’s what it ultimately comes down to. I mean, people pay us to take care of something for them so they can concentrate on what they do. Well put.

 

[00:28:31] And Jimmy John Lucas, president CEO, ATSI Logistics, thanks so much for joining us.

 

[00:28:36] They have pleasure. Great. We’re going to have you guys. You have to have a second installment of your story because I’m sure there’s plenty of other stories that we could quite get to today.

 

[00:28:44] Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to be here with you guys of the day.

 

[00:28:48] And good luck to you guys. Thanks, guys. Good guys to talk to fight in the trenches every day. Thank you. OK. To our listeners. Thanks for joining us here today. Hope you’ve enjoyed the conversation with Jimmy jannika as much as we have.

 

[00:29:02] Be sure to check us out. Apple podcast, SoundCloud, YouTube, really wherever else you get your podcast from. Of course, find us. We’ve get lots of buzz momentum going on as planned. Of course, you can find us at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com to see all of our past episodes as well as some of the events we’re gonna be broadcasting live from in the next few months. So for Greg White and Scott Luton really are intriguing. Have a great afternoon and we will see you next time on Supply Chain Now Radio. Thanks everybody.