going to costme a lot todo, why not? Even if
I fail, I’ll learn fromit.”
And, he said, every time a big goal is set and
reached, the stares are a little less frequent.
“They don’t look at me as quite so crazy
now. I’ve got a littlemore street cred to back
me up when I say something,” he said. “It
shouldbe a fun couple of years.”
The trek toward $250 million actually
began a few decades back when his father,
Ron Williamson, created the company
after earning a double major in trans-
portation management and business
administration at Elmhurst (Ill.) College.
The elder Williamson actually worked
toward those degrees – and another from
the College of AdvancedTraffic inChicago
– via night school while working full-time
day jobs to support a burgeoning family
that included a wife and four children
belowage 12.
He received an ICC license that enabled
him to broker freight and began the RJW
Logistics business that is now part of a
multi-facetedRJWGroupoperation.
These days, the group’s services include dry
less-than-truckload (LTL) or truckload
(TL) transportation within 500 miles of
Chicago (via RJW Transport), LTL/TL,
dry van or reefer, flatbed or intermodal
movement across the United States and
Canada (via RJW Logistics) and ware-
housing in a 180,000-square-foot facility in
Woodridge, Ill.
“My dad put in the 60- and 70-hour weeks,
took over my bedroom and started there,”
Kevin Williamson said. “Then we moved
to a basement in Bloomingdale (Ill.) and
then to an old Blockbuster. In 1991, we
started the trucking operation and moved
into a 5,000-square-footwarehouse.”
Incremental size increases occurred steadily
over the years – from 5,000 square feet to
20,000 to 60,000 – before the son officially
took over and managed a move to 75,000
square feet in Woodridge, and subsequent
additions of four more facilities that boost
the overall footprint to450,000.
The company’s growth in multiple service
directions was triggered when Williamson
began aggressively hiring sales people
82 | BusinessWorld |
July-August 2014
