because i really was hoping to get this event because i remember my first time when i joined the chamber love the chamber i was sitting right where sarah was actually sitting and that first event was an early bird breakfast that taste early bird wake up west coast so much better and it was it was who the small business person here was so excited to be coming around this rotation to be part of this program this is very exciting let's start off with the you know and this wonderful breakfast or breakfast sponsors by consumers credit union in that's a great job for me that's all feel empowered trust said motivated to do what's right for us if they could see behind the curtain and see how much energy and drive and purpose that the employees of consumer credit union work but to make sure that we're michael hill and cindy visser to the small businesses small business of the year selection committee that's a mouthful they're here to tell us who this year's winner so michael being a part of the selection committee gives us the opportunity to meet so many of west michigan's most dedicated and innovative business leaders who are generous enough to invite us in to take a closer look at their operations and their businesses each year the chamber asks its members to nominate small businesses for the award as always results are outstanding this year with many interesting businesses nominated once the criteria for eligibility is confirmed the nominees are asked to provide information about their business businesses via questionnaire the selection committee reviews the responses from each nominee and pays visits to the top four finalists to interview them and make a final decision once the winner is announced we will begin the process of nominating them for the state of michigan's small business person of the year awar fourteen of the previous west coast chamber small business person of the year winners have also gone on to win the state of michigan award in fact last year's winning winner john landing with in on time also won the state of michigan's award having a business that shows growth and profitability is a key factor in determining the success of a company but for this award we look beyond those indicators of success to discover how they invest in their facilities their employees and how their businesses go above and beyond to strengthen our community and let me tell you any of the finalists this year could have been chosen for the award we are truly blessed to have some amazing small businesses in our community this year's winner is a thirty year plus veteran of the temperature controlled transportation and warehouse industry which is involved in establishing itself as a leading supply chain service provider in west michigan offering trucking deep frozen warehousing and third party logistics services our recipient strategy is not simply to be big but rather the emphasis is to be sustainably good last month or ri sipping and now it's the completion of an eighty one thousand square foot expansion to its warehouse which more than doubled the company's deep frozen storage capacity as a member of the west coast community our recipient has added over fifty jobs growing from just under sixty employees to in two thousand and eleven to over one hundred fifteen as of september of two thousand and seventeen the company's strong emphasis on giving back include sponsorship ship of several community festivals and a longstanding commitment of providing storage facilities and donating transportation assets to the hungry for christ food ministries without further ado we are pleased to were to say that i was surprised to be notified that one would be an understatement and i stand before you today being very honored being very grateful and most of all being very humbled did not expect to be honored in such a way so thank you very much i'd also like to thank the west coast chamber and the selection committee for all the work that they put into choosing the small business person of the year it's a lot of work nominations interviews deciding who it is and thank you so very much for all that hard work and i'd also like to thank our team at hot we have grown over the years as mentioned one hundred fifteen people know this stage should have all one hundred fifteen of us up here because i'm nearly well i guess in the case of chemical bank i'm the person assigned to guarantee on the loan so maybe that's why i'm up here co founder of the company but each and every one of these people have worked so hard at work for us for years and years some as long as thirty two years and we would i would not be here today without all of their hard work all that all their dedication so thank you very much and to my family my goodness running a small business is tough those of you that do that any business is tough small business has its own challenges small business for a family even more  challenges it's got its ups and downs and their patients their love their support is just something that has gone and sustained us myself and my wife ellen for all these years so thank you so very much  about so you probably want a little bit a little bit of history on us our local by the way the little red thing up on the corner some people might be wondering what is that for real quickly if you look at that those are links in a supply in a chain so transportation logistics warehousing or what's jim all about well my back story here pretty much starts with mom and dad dad's no longer with us the past in two thousand and eleven months here this morning and of dad were ver couldn't be prouder but mom and dad helped found the company with us back in eighty five i was raised on a farm down near pencil and stay there until the seventy's and at that seventy seven i had the opportunity my senior year i had enough credit i had the opportunity to be able to go to college for half a day so i found a whole college if you check out my resume you'll see that i did attend whole college briefly when i discovered that whole college was i was not ready for college i did not prepare myself especially my english skills for college so graduate from west s m buddy of mine says let's go to chicago where he's from going to road trip on the way back below the hole we've got up on the blue star highway because we want to get off the interstate and we're rolling down blue star highway and lo and behold well this little gem appears ok this is the start ok now here i am seventeen almost eighteen years old i don't really want to go to college what am i going to do all my dad's in trucking don't get into trucking til hard going to the right so i pick this one up to nine hundred dollars ok nine hundred dollars and by the way this is after it was painted and fixed up and really looking good so this truck and i were very well acquainted with each other i worked from stem to stern and what it taught me was how to be a mechanic it taught me how to go and manage business it has taught me a lot of things what not i made a lot of mistakes but if you're going to make mistakes in business make your mistakes at a very low level ok you can you can survive a hundred or two hundred dollar impact when you've got a nine hundred dollar truck you get to this level of rest a day you can't make those kind of mistakes all that being said i learned a lot about truck and learned out where to learn where to go learn what loads to haul learn who to talk to pick up some serious self build along the way and all the whole it worked out pretty well so and thirty eight years later well here we are so what a story what a risk i always said the biggest risk i want to ever took in her life was marry me and it's true so out of that union has come this route right here is our son james our daughter in law mindy our daughter nicole and then our five grandchildren and the little one there in the yellow after four grandsons the good lord blessed of with a granddaughter we're pretty excited about that one right there and especially know they also represent the third and fourth generations to work at the two grandsons work there as well so for generations in a family business and that's something that is kind rare these days so we're a we're pretty we're pretty proud of that back so let's talk about our culture here what is founded on her face everything is founded on our faith beyond that family family of soul port and that's why we have people that stay with us so long because we really try very hard to treat our employees as if they were family try and understand the days that you know you've got a problem somebody's sick and i need to stay home because my daughter is and i don't have a babysitter will work around that ok because that's what family does so we work very hard in that aspect right there we also believe in credibility when you tell a customer you can do something you do it it's plain and simple you only get one chance to make a first impression as cliche goes but it's an ongoing relationship with your customers under promise over deliver all the time and then integrity that goes with that know that when you say what you're going to do you can follow up and handle it we also take big pride in being entrepreneurial the business changes over the years we are no what we don't look anything like the company we were when we started out back in eighty five obviously but even as recent as ten years ago even the reason is seven years ago s see opportunities if they make sense embrace them and try and grow with them and we also believe in giving back to the community if you're on a labor day you might receive some ice cream every good dust and likes ice cream and we hand o labor day front braden's of down by the civic center in highland that's just one of the things that we do we also are sponsors of the tool time and tool time is obviously an institution here in holland we believe in it's part of our heritage and la but not least here is hungry for price food ministry curtain tracy barker thirty two year employee of my goodness about twenty years ago they felt a call to do something the good lord called them what can we do what we had free that would be distress can find a home for this stuff and they started hungry for christ to charities and so most biblical because they've grown from that one pal the product to today where they have a forty thousand square foot distribution facility and that's of special note a distribution facility serves all the other smaller charities that are around there's a lot of food pantries a lot of well intentioned people and god bless each and every one of them but they need a place to go to to get that product and kurt and tracy take in truckloads of product and then they don't distribute it so thank you kurt and tracy for what you guys very good at and go with something that is going to go and be a long term solution for you and we believe we've done that we're where we're headed and also know what you're doing as far as your freight or less it's the deep frozen know your lane because and also know your customers that's the important partner of the people that you can trust i mean it sounds fundamental tons pretty basic and you can get it you can get a lot lured in by big shippers and what they can do for you and on a bad day i know what they can do for you to your you're down the road because an r f p came out and your rate is up here because you provide a really good service and maybe times are tough and they're looking for a number so know your customers and last unique in your services we have built a career i'm being unique to start out with going east coast when i walked in to bill maher foods which was my first account with two accounts and then i start of bill maher foods and henry house if you recall now tyson  boston absolutely because i was so dedicated to working directly with the customer and networking through a brokerage and it turned out very well for the company history companies composed of three different divisions but that nicely to be honest with you i think she was a little more stern but it was time for me to be home one hundred eighty eight is a big move for us we moved to hamilton because we built a terminal out there seven thousand square foot terminal dav which is our truck program and our truck rogueries is freight that we can't move our own fleet because we don't have enough capacity or maybe planes that we don't go to one of their shippers agree we're able to go and sell that to other carriers it's a very good business to have and then in two thousand and five c logistics and now known as logistics was formed and that was the year that we moved from hamilton to our location that we're still out in holland by the airport about sixty five thousand square foot building so another big leap for us but it got us into the dry warehousing business and it was a different component that we could add another shall we say bullet in the chamber or whatever you want to follow the arrow in the quiver but we want to be able offer more services get more ingrained with their customers so three divisions of the trucking  corp and one of the trucking trucking is our fleet that's all of our trucking assets and our trucking operation is composed of about sixty tractors by one hundred twenty five friends the vast majority of which are refrigerated trailers so r for what we call in the business and our fleet is composed of three different areas that they serve we have the o t r these are the guys that are really tough to find they're going to go on about five days a week or so and hope for a couple of days but those guys are really hard to find in this industry right now so drivers are o t r really tough to find and they are gold if you have them and we're so proud to have some great over the road drives we also have regional drivers those guys kind of run from detroit to milwaukee down to indianapolis that's a good link for us and then our local drivers and those are the guys are wholly from our shippers back to our warehouse and serving local operations and we do a little bit of everything in the trucking we go all the way from florida all the way up in the main heavy concentration on the northeast and then what we call we hold everything from bananas to ice cream and it's a little bit of everything and ice cream is a pretty tough commodity hall because of the temperature bananas are equally tough because they are such a site temperature banding you have to map and when you haul these things not everybody wants to do it but that's where we like especially once again be good in an area that maybe other people kind of shy away from and specialize in and so some of the challenges and changes that we have here well we're in a market that capacity was already getting fairly tight and then hurting family on not just one but two hurricanes and then compound that with puerto rico which i'm sure draws do some work to pass the way  been with you for years but it's a challenge for us because we really love our customers i'm contracted rate so it's a challenge when you see the outside period issues are chasing some other freight and then the other thing of note here electronic logging devices i don't know if everybody's heard of those and the impact that's having on the industry but as of next month they're going to be mandatory so no longer going to log books and you fill it out and mistakes are made in their fudged and call it what you want we were proactive we went electronic back in april already so we're one hundred percent electronic compliant there's still police that are still trying to come up to speed today and they're scared to death they're technophobic with it when it comes to this kind of stuff and i'm a guy that kind of like technology so for us this wasn't a big leap but what it will do what's really important what it will do is get everyone to be compliant and that's a big deal because people were able to go in budgeting the little bit and extend hours and the like technology well satellite tracking we have in our trackers as in since ninety five when the first carriers in the area put it in a special note we have satellite tracking in our trailers and our trailers not only do we go and so it gives a real chain of custody to our shippers and they know that their product for the time that leaves are dying until it gets to their customer has been at proper temperature and then trucks real basic care aerodynamics it's all about aerodynamics today and make that truck up through the air just a smooth as possible where you can see on their container from bumpers the ordinance that almost wave the ground skirting on the side of the tractor skirting on the trailer and then on the back of the trailer we've got a little bit of work  that equates to about three hundred grand a year for us as far as our fleet goes so our ally in that is usually about twelve to fifteen months so it's a good investment for us to talk about trucking let's talk about logistics warehouse temperature you know prepare the dinners and things like that and then this is where we play we play in the deep throws and arena minus twenty how can we keep up why we keep ice cream at minus twenty it's because it keeps that creamy keeps it smooth why can we keep it there so long is because it's always a minus twenty y freezer home stays zero to minus five and then it goes through defrost cycle and your ice cream will get gummy after a while maybe we don't have that problem because we're always atlanta's twenty when we go into defrost which at the fans down and the units go in defrost so we don't have that we don't have that issue so think about getting in to transfer into the pros inside of transportation here as far as storage and it's like ok let me check into that well we found the place down comes to have room for  but we start with fifteen hundred palestinian groups in fact it grew to the point that by the end of twenty fourteen we had about three thousand adults and there also in two thousand and fourteen if any recall early twenty fourteen about mark to fourteen or so where health and hudsonville owned by although they tore that building down the are two buildings there the other one was still good and guess what we ended up falling a lot of that product out of there and saved one customer alone probably a good portion of ten to fifteen