Truckload Authority - April/May 2019

Bryan Keller has been
company president and
CEO since 2000.
knew this was going to be a lifetime career for me, but I also realized I
needed to grow the business and diversify.”
Bryan Keller had worked for Keller Trucking during the summers
while in college, working half a day in the office and half a day in the
shop, so he had developed a knowledge of the industry and liked what
he saw.
Moving to Defiance, however, was a major life-changing event for
Bryan, who been raised on a farm in Indiana.
“For me, Defiance was a big town. It has two McDonalds,” he said
with a chuckle. “I just felt like coming out of college someone was
going to give me my own business and I’m going to jump all over it.”
And jump he did, hard and with feet first.
Keller Trucking was operating smoothly when Bryan became
president and CEO, in part because the carrier didn’t try to do too much
too fast, staying true to a marketing zone that took it to North Carolina,
central Pennsylvania, central Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas,
which enables Keller to offer something drivers relish — home time.
“Sixty-five percent of our drivers live within 50 miles of Defiance
and the rest are in pockets that we serve heavily or are en route to
our customers, which enables us to get them home frequently,” Bryan
said. “We guarantee they are home every weekend if they sign up for
our over-the-road fleet, and we have 30 percent of our drivers who are
home every day. If we were undisciplined and ran all over the country,
there’s no way we could guarantee our drivers get home as often as
they do.”
But he didn’t forget the need to diversify, and in addition to trucking,
Keller now has Keller Freight Solutions (brokerage operations), Keller
Packaging, and Keller Warehousing & Distribution.
“About eight years into my career, I noticed an opportunity … to get
into warehousing because some of the companies in Defiance were
warehousing outside of Defiance and we were hauling their freight,”
he said. “I thought if I put a warehouse building here I could keep the
business in Defiance, so we built a 90,000-square-foot building in 1999
and immediately had it filled. We built another building in 2000, another
building in 2003, and another building in 2006 and immediately filled
them up. “‘We Go Where You Grow’ is the tagline for our warehousing
group and that’s why we are all over the country. This year, we closed
Columbus, Ohio, but we opened Salt Lake City and Orlando, Florida,
because our customers’ needs shifted.”
Bryan said warehousing has helped the company become
diversified. “The warehousing helped us to grow the trucking business
and helped us get into freight brokering and expediting,” he explained.
Keller has 5,000 carriers in its brokerage network. “That group can
solve any problem a customer may have,” Bryan said. “We are going
to find the most cost-efficient solution for the customer. Keller Freight
Solutions has its own set of customers or can handle overflow of our
current customers.”
Keller Packaging is the company’s all-in-one source for staging,
packaging and repackaging.
Specialized equipment allows a customer to price, label, pack and
wrap to many different specifications, from discount, multi/bonus, to
warehouse club packs, to shippers and end-aisle displays.
One thing is for certain with Bryan Keller and Keller Logistics Group:
Status quo will never be a company motto.
“We’ve always been growth-oriented and I feel like we need to be a
bigger truck line to compete in this business and satisfy our customers
with density and to diversify further,” he said. “I just bought a 40-truck
fleet, so we are up to 175 tractors, and the goal by the end of the year is
to be at 200 tractors and in two years to be at 300 tractors. It’s going to
be really hard to thrive and survive as a small carrier. It’s just too risky,”
he said. “Ever since I started with 20 trucks, I saw that as a risk, and
not too long ago we were at 135 trucks and I saw that as a risk. I saw
business we didn’t get because we weren’t big enough.”
Continuing to grow will make Keller a stronger company that can
weather any storm by having businesses in different sectors of the
country, he said.
Bryan is appreciative of the benefit of heading a family-owned
business.
“I always say the best thing about owning your own business is
you run it to your values system and not somebody else’s,” Bryan said.
“That benefits the customer, because if they know me and can look at
our track record, they know the kind of job they are going to have done
and they know there’s one person they can call who can allocate the
resources and take care of any problem.
“You deal with these larger carriers and can you get to the president
and talk to them? Will he take your call? Will he care, no matter what
size company you are? Maybe. But getting hold of Bryan Keller is very
easy. We are the size company that it doesn’t take very long to realize
something is going wrong. I had a customer call me the other day and
say, ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ and I said ‘no, this is what I do. If you are
not satisfied with the way we are handling things, you call me and I’ll
get to the bottom of it.’ Everybody knows I am accessible, and they
know I care, and so they care. I’m not trying to build up sales or flip the
business or make my board of directors happy. I’m here to make the
customers happy, so our employees have satisfying careers and can
support and raise their families here in little Defiance, Ohio.”
That’s located in far, far northwest Ohio at the confluence of the
Maumee and Auglaize rivers, with a population of 17,000 and two
McDonalds.
Ah yes, you remember your geography lesson well.
Capacity Manager Aaron Patterson,
left, and Fleet Manager Derek
Gearhart review a route plan.
Thomas E. Keller Trucking has 175
power units.
Brian Varner is a veteran professional
truck driver and is a driver trainer.
• Founded: 1978
• TCA Member Since 2014
• CEO: Bryan Keller
• Chief Operating Officer: Nate
Schaublin
• VP: Aaron Keller
• VP of Trucking: Jonathan Wolfrum
• Director of Safety & Wellness:
Bethanne Woodbury
• 175 Power Units
• 200 Drivers
TCA 2019 www.Truckload.org | TRUCKLOAD AUTHORITY 31