For more than a year after he founded KTI Transportation at age 27, Alan Weiner was the company’s sole employee. But he used those hardscrabble times to build up KTI’s most valuable asset: its reputation.
“There was a lot of ‘Who are you?’” Weiner recalls.
Ten years later, more than 15,000 client carriers—including trucking companies, railroads, and international shipping lines—know who KTI is. The Richfield-based company is a third-party logistics provider and transportation broker, acting as a conduit between companies with something to haul and truck fleets that do the hauling.
It’s a highly competitive industry, but KTI has been pedal to the metal. Its 2007 revenues were nearly $20 million, up from just under $12 million in 2006. Last year, the company made Inc. magazine’s list of the fastest-growing companies in the United States. It ranked 1,325 out 5,000, making KTI the fastest-growing transportation company in Minnesota and the third-fastest in the Midwest.
“Our customers give us the freight and we find the proper mode of transportation and the proper rate for them to move it,” Weiner says. “This is not a glory business. A lot of what we do is behind the scenes.”
Why the fast growth? In a word: service. “Our industry has a reputation for companies that hand off a load and forget about it,” Weiner says. “We don’t do that. We demand full dispatch and control all the appointments. It allows us to let the customer know exactly what’s happening, even if that means calling them to let them know a shipment is behind schedule. It might be bad news, but at least they know it as soon as possible.”
Because it has no fleet of trucks—and, in fact, nothing much at all in the way of physical assets—KTI, which employs 28, operates lean. That has helped attract such national clients as FedEx, Dart, and Schneider National. Weiner says that KTI’s bread and butter are small-to-midsize carriers, since many of the big boys have started installing in-house logistics departments.
“Customers have a short memory for when things go right, and a long memory of when things go wrong,” he says. “Our motto is, ‘You’re only as good as your last load.’”
