Transport Firms, Schools Forge Closer Ties to Help Employees Advance Their Careers

This story appears in the Sept. 8 print edition of Transport Topics.

Trucking is an industry heavily infused with entrepreneurial, family-owned businesses where learning takes place on the job over time. As companies grow larger and more complex, however, the need for more formal education and training is growing, executives said.

Some trucking companies and logistics firms are forging closer ties with schools and universities in an effort to prepare students for careers in transportation, and to broaden the expertise of employees who have either worked at the same company for years or are related to its owners or top executives.

Richard Murphy Jr. is one who knows this terrain well. To broaden his employees’ business perspectives, Murphy requires family members seeking to work for his company to first get a college degree and gain work experience elsewhere.

“I want them to learn to work somewhere where their name is not on the building,” he said.

A fourth-generation member of the family that started Murphy Transfer and Storage Co. in Minneapolis in 1904, Murphy gave up a career as a professional landscape architect to join his father’s struggling trucking company as a dispatcher in 1983. The firm collapsed a few years later, but with the help of several long-time executives at the company, Murphy was able to take what was left of the business’ assets — a couple of warehouses and a specialized rigging operation — and built it into Murphy Warehouse Co., which has an asset-based logistics subsidiary. The warehouse and logistics units employ about 200 people and provide warehousing and distribution, product assembly and fulfillment, regional trucking and international shipping services.

To further his business acumen, Murphy enrolled in an executive MBA program at the University of Minnesota. It was here where he discovered that his background as a designer gave him an edge over some of the more seasoned executives in the program.

“In business, people tend to work in silos,” Murphy said. “I came through the design world where you learn to think outside the box. Architects are trained to solve problems, but the challenge is not simply going from A to B. It’s going from A to C, D, E and F to get to B. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”

Murphy, who still serves as an adjunct professor of landscape architecture at the university and lectures at other schools on supply chain logistics, said he wants to inspire that same outside-the-box thinking with his employees, most of whom have never worked anywhere else and where there is very little turnover.

“No one here wants to leave, and that’s good,” Murphy said. “So how do I get new ideas?”

Murphy said he hired a recent college graduate to help the company expand its social media presence, and is now looking for another young person to fill a sales support position after having poor results with older personnel.

“We send people to courses and seminars, and we support continuing education for executives because we want people to see things in the outside world,” Murphy said.

Getting students ready for the outside world compelled Ruan Transportation Management Systems’ new CEO, Benjamin McLean, to provide transportation management software to students studying business and supply chain management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, starting this fall.

“We want to take an active role in preparing students by letting them use the same tools we use in our business,” McLean said. “This gives students a step ahead and makes them great job candidates for us and other companies.”

McLean, who is married to a granddaughter of John Ruan — the Des Moines, Iowa, company’s founder — earned three degrees from Northwestern: an undergraduate degree in computer engineering, a master’s in business administration and a law degree. He serves on the business advisory council for the Northwestern University Transportation Center, which is marking its 60th anniversary this year.

“Our founder was closely involved in the beginning,” McLean said of John Ruan, who dropped out of college during the Great Depression, bought a truck and began delivering gravel in 1932.

After McLean graduated from college, he worked as a code writer for computer software companies and later joined the consulting firm Deloitte, where he worked with companies that needed to upgrade technologies. He then worked for several years at investment firm William Blair & Co. in Milwaukee, where he handled the sale of stock for a number of technology firms.

In 2007, McLean joined Ruan as director of information strategies, advanced to chief information officer and then become senior vice president of administration.

“You can’t prepare for one company or one industry,” McLean said. “My goal was to learn about as many disciplines as possible. I wanted to be a part of a team. That’s what led to this position [at Ruan].”

McLean said the Northwestern Transportation Center does a good job of bringing together executives from all modes of transportation.

“You get the full, broadest view of transportation problems and policies,” he said.

McLean also said he has gotten involved in research projects at Northwestern, such as a new process for storing natural gas and a system to identify and track freight carriers.

Ruan ranks No. 38 on the Transport Topics list of the 100 largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.

Andrew Boyle is executive vice president and chief financial officer at Boyle Transportation in Billerica, Massachusetts. Like McLean, he is a member of Northwestern’s business advisory council and said he sees benefits in working with faculty and students.

“My graduate education was enhanced by course work in operations, marketing and transportation, and I frequently apply those principles to our business,” Boyle told Transport Topics.

“The semiannual meetings give me a chance to interact not only with executives from all modes but also with very bright faculty and students who are passionate about transportation-related issues,” he said. “They come from around the world, and I think particularly those from emerging markets understand how critical mobility — of both people and freight — is to economic growth.

“They want to solve problems, and Northwestern provides them the right mix of engineering, business and social sciences.”

Despite these companies’ drive to broaden their employees’ horizons, there may be limits to what schools can do to help companies develop executive talent, said Daniel Murray, vice president of the American Transportation Research Institute.

“I don’t see a lot of universities expanding or creating vocational training programs for practitioners,” Murray said. “It’s not seen as a profitable venture.”

Murray said that’s because most schools are set up to do research, which is funded by government agencies and not by companies in the private sector.

Another factor, Murray said, is the attitude among some second-generation executives that trucking is no different than other business operations and that no amount of academic instruction in transportation, logistics and supply chain management can replace the knowledge and expertise built up over the years by people on the job.

“An MBA gives you business acumen, but that is not helpful in terms of maintaining commitment, loyalty and a deep appreciation for the trucking industry,” Murray said.

ATRI President Rebecca Brewster noted that most company executives want the “best of both worlds,” where promising young employees can attend educational programs at schools and also participate in programs such as American Trucking Associations’ LEAD ATA program, in which young executives learn about key industry issues and develop leadership skills.