Spotlight On: Rob Hooper, CEO, Atlantic Logistics

Spotlight On: Rob Hooper, CEO, Atlantic Logistics

2022-12-15T12:25:27-05:00December 15th, 2022|Infrastructure, Jacksonville, Spotlight On|

2 min read December 2022 Rob Hooper is the CEO of Atlantic Logistics, a Jacksonville-based 3PL company. In an interview with Invest:, Hooper discussed how the logistics industry is evolving to meet consumer demand and finding ways to streamline the process for a smoother supply chain down the road. 

What have been Atlantic Logistics’ key accomplishments in the past few years?

The past few years have been challenging as we faced the pandemic, but the logistics industry fared well. For us, it was a matter of taking advantage of opportunities, ensuring employee safety and serving our customers. We saw significant growth and are working to install updated processes and procedures that will help us scale from $50 million to $100 million and then $200 million. In the midst of this, we’re working to ensure what we’re doing is sustainable. The Great Resignation did not have a huge impact on us, but we do need more people brought on to accommodate our growth. Jacksonville has a tremendous logistics community and we’ve been able to bring great people in. It’s been a tiring time, but we consider ourselves blessed to be in logistics.

How has the deepening of JAXPORT’s harbor brought more business in? 

We serve nationally, but Jacksonville is our home base, and we have great relationships with JAXPORT and other logistics companies. The deepening of the harbor has us excited to increase the throughput as freight activity shifts from the West Coast to the East Coast. We’ve benefitted from that. We do a lot of drayage business, which has grown in the past few years, even through the headwinds of port congestions. We need to step up support on the warehousing side with the inland distribution competing markets have. We’re working to get into the warehouse business and vacancy rates here are very low. We’re trying to offer pieces of the supply chain. We’re in the planning phase, looking at different pieces of property and are in the process of trying to get the anchor of the business down before leasing.

What is your role in mitigating supply chain headaches?

For us, communication is key, both for our customers and carrier partnerships. We don’t want them to have any surprises. Particularly with our drayage and steamship carriers. If the ship is delayed, we are proactive in communicating that. In the same vein, price inflation for trucking – due to fuel prices and capacity shortages – is also communicated clearly. Prices have begun to balance out, which is good for consumers and the wider economy, but hurts our top line revenue and margins. We rode the wave up with our customers and are riding it back down, trying to get ahead by communicating with customers and revising our rates. We need to pass savings onto our customers, because if we don’t, competitors will try. We refuse to get greedy in this business. If you’re not upfront and honest, you lose good customers.

What is your approach to finding the talent to accommodate growth? 

The hiring market has evolved into something more complex and targeted. We are partnering with Beachside High School’s Academy of Global Logistics and Supply Chain Management in an effort to evolve with it. A year or two ago, we began strategizing on how to create a talent pipeline for the industry. One of our team members sits on the school’s advisory board, which gives us access to that pipeline of incoming talent. We also set up a scholarship fund with FSCJ. Our benefits offerings have also been ramped up. We’ve always offered health insurance coverage, but as costs have gone up for our employees, we’ve increased our cost share to keep coverage affordable for our staff. This makes us competitive with other companies. Every hire in the past year has joined our health plan.

What role do you see technology playing in logistics in the next five to 10 years?

The third-party logistics (3PL) industry has transformed since I started 20 years ago. Digital freight matching is a necessity where freight loads are digitally matched with a carrier. Big players and competitors in the industry, such as Uber and Amazon, are leveraging technology and changing the way we do business. Cell phone app, or ELD (Electronic Logging Device) tracking is the norm now. Our customers want to know where their $500,000 load of lobster is and have visibility on it, so technology is key in our industry.

In five to 10 years, technology will continue to evolve and the logistics industry will be radically different and even more efficient. We just went through an upgrade on our TMS (Transportation Management Software) system, and we’re looking closer at ways to automate the process and make freight movements touchless. We also recently hired a data analytics specialist to facilitate this, while providing the highest level of customer service. 

Customers want to talk with a person. It’s still a relationship business built on trust; that won’t get stripped from the equation. But we need to automate as many links in the supply chain as possible to be able to compete with the likes of Amazon and Uber. This is good for the economy, as we’ve seen what chaos ensues when the supply chain doesn’t operate properly. When the supply chain breaks, it causes problems that reach the home. Streamlining this will make the consumer experience that much better.

For more information, visit: 

https://www.shipatlantic.com/ 

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