employees and a certain amount of sales and
I’d be happy.’ I still have that way now, but I
never thought we could get to 50 employees
in the timeframe we did. And last year we
did $50 million in sales, and I didn’t think
we’d hit $50 million in sales in our first 10-
15 years.
“You hire somebody and you have personal
expectations and they exceed it, and then
you push themfurther and then they exceed
those goals and you keep pushing them. My
focus wasn’t necessarily a number as much
as it was continued growth, month after
month and year after year.”
The company maintains its headquarters in
Blue Ash while other employees are
scattered within the state in Canton, as well
as outside it in Tampa, Fla., Gainesville, Ga.
and Salinas, Calif., with imminent growth
planned into both the Chicago and
Nashville metropolitan areas. It owns 25
trailers and hires owner/operators to haul
the equipment across the country. It also
leases a service yardwith a garage inCanton,
and its service range encompasses the
continental 48 states as well as Canada and
Mexico.
No one customer makes up more than 3
percent of the business, but it does have
large entities in the food service industries
like Kroger and Harris Teeter for whom it
moves product – wither with its own assets
or a third-party vendor – that needs to be
kept freshly stocked in the stores.
Other frequent customers include produce
brokers who buy product from a wholesaler
and need it delivered to a specific retail
customer in a given time period. In those
cases, Integrity Express Logistics bids on the
Pete Ventura
Director of Business
Development
July-August 2014 | BusinessWorld | 77
