6 | Bridge Logistics
but over time, he had increasingly yearned
to return to Wisconsin where he was born
and raised, which makes sense because as is
routinely reported in Wisconsin, it is much
easier to separate a man from cheese than the
cheese-head from a man. Upon returning,
Haering took on a marketing and product
development role for a manufacturing firm,
but realized that he had actually grown to
enjoy overcoming the challenges associated
with distribution and warehousing. Seeing a
business opportunity existed there at home,
Haering andhiswife launched their company
in 1998, an era that give rise to the reference
of “logistics” as indicative of a fuller range of
services. Companies had increasingly grown
to realize that commercial warehousing and
logistics services were specialty areas of ex-
pertise and that by outsourcing such servic-
es to a third party, they could not only save
time and money, but better focus on core
competencies. The company’s first customer
was a firm that needed warehousing of the
account bank statements it produced for US
Bank and International Paper. Today, by in-
corporating a horizontal integration strategy
to service, Bridge Logistics is serving many
other companies, and not only providing
