By Gigi Wood
CEDAR RAPIDS – They have a deep bench.
Worley Warehousing is a third-party logistics company specializing in food distribution that provides warehousing and logistics for companies such as General Mills and Quaker, as well as serving local and regional biotech, paper, steel and appliance industries.
The company was founded in 1977 by Robert Worley, who was heavily involved in the business’ operations until his death a year ago. Because the family had a well-planned and documented succession plan, when Mr. Worley passed away, his two sons, who have worked for the company for decades, were ready to take the helm.
Brandt Worley has served as president of Worley Warehousing for 15 years, while Blaine Worley is executive vice president of Worley Companies and president of Worley’s sister business, Kenwood Records Management.
Brandt Worley graduated from the University of Iowa in 1980 with no interest in joining the family business. Instead, he planned to move to Chicago with his fraternity brothers and find a job in the finance industry. His father asked him to help out at Worley while the younger Mr. Worley prepared for his move.
“I came back and just found the whole entrepreneurial aspect of helping build a business with my father to be very rewarding, very exciting, there were clearly a lot of challenges, but that’s how I came into the business,” Brandt Worley said.
Meanwhile, Blaine Worley joined a few years later. He was trained in computers and helped Worley develop the software program it uses today.
“It’s a full blown radio frequency warehouse management system that we consider a tier-one system within the industry,” Brandt Worley said. “Without that investment and ongoing investment in that technology, we would not be competing in this industry today the way we are.”
The third-party logistics industry has changed dramatically since 1977 when Worley began. Brandt Worley said staying competitive in today’s changing world is a top priority of the company, which now employs 275 people.
“Over the last 10-12 years, there’s been a lot of private equity rollup in this industry, consolidation,” Mr. Worley said. “And we’ve chosen to remain a closely-held company. With that strategy and decision, there are disadvantages to being a mid-tier player in the industry, but there are also many advantages. For one, we don’t worry about pleasing Wall Street, or private-equity boards. When our customers are working on a project with us, they know all the stakeholders. They don’t have to worry about a changing of the guard. In addition, we remain relevant because we bring the same capability that the large 3PLs (third-party logistics companies) do. In addition to that, I think we are more nimble and make quicker decisions than the larger 3PLs, which our existing customers value.”
Worley has 60 employees stationed at the General Mills plant, where they help the cereal giant sort, distribute and ship packages of Cheerios and other brands across the country. Worley and General Mills have worked together for 30 years and Worley helped General Mills in the design of its 410,000-square foot warehouse expansion it completed in 2008.
“We were the first 3PL to come on to a General Mills plant site and assist in facilitating the construction of a warehouse facility right on their plant ground and then go in and run it for them,” Mr. Worley said.
From that plant, 65 semitrailers of product are shipped daily.
“There is some seasonality to it,” he said. “We’re moving into peak baking season, where there’s a lot of baking products produced and kids are back in school, so cereal production starts to ramp up a little more and also with the winter months coming on, you start to see a larger build up and outflow of oats and oatmeal.”
That much product movement means dozens of forklifts are whizzing around Worley’s warehouses each day. The company spends a lot of time on safety and training when it comes to the vehicles. Every Worley employee is required to pass a forklift safety program to work at the company. And forklifts are inoperable until a full inspection is completed every day.
“One thing we pride ourselves on is we do all of our own maintenance on our forklifts,” Mr. Worley said. “You will not find more well maintained cleaner forklifts in the industry.”
Worley also handles much of the distribution for the Quaker plant, which is the corporation’s largest food distribution in its network. For the past 15 years, Worley Warehousing has received superior ratings for cleanliness at all its facilities from the American Institute of Baking, Mr. Worley said. Kristi Ring, a spokeswoman for AIB, stated in an email that the she could not confirm the rankings, because “for privacy reasons, we cannot share any information regarding our customers.”
Among its technology upgrades throughout the years is increased security at its warehouses.
“Our customers really started to kick in (the need to improve security in) the post 9/11 era with bioterrorism and so forth,” he said. “So security from an ingress/egress standpoint is really critical and our process in terms of how we check in and check out truck drivers has changed enormously. All of our trailer drop lots outside the buildings are monitored with security systems.”
Growth
Those high profile clients and rankings have helped Worley secure new clients throughout the industry. The company hopes its reputation and connections will help it secure new customers that will allow Worley to increase business.
“We know we need to grow and grow regionally and that’s really where our focus is,” Mr. Worley said. “We’d like to be able to go out if a customer like General Mills said we’ve located a location in the Southwest, we’d like you to do the build to suit arrangement, build the facility for us and then operate it for us under a long term agreement, that’s our wheel well right there, that’s our target.”
The company is on the lookout for future clients in food distribution, biotech, paper, steel and appliance industries.
“I think 3PLs like ourselves tend to grow one of two ways, they grow organically with their existing customers in other regions and they grow into other regions because another food company, like a Campbell’s Soup hears that, ‘Worley does a great job for General Mills and we need to include them in the RFP (request for proposal),’” he said. “Part of the key to our growth is to continue to be invited to the party. And to be able to respond to requests for information and RFPs that we feel is a good fit for our company and we know we’ll be successful, whether it be from a geographical standpoint or from a customer fit.”
If Worley was tapped to operate a new warehouse in a different region of the country, it has a plan in place to do so. A team of employees is in place that is ready to travel and relocate to a new facility.
“We have been very focused on building bench strength within our company,” he said. “(Employees) that have a proven track record with our current customer base, during their review quarterly, we’re making clear that they’re mobile if get called on go do the startup.”
The plan allows Worley to rely on its existing employees to manage a new facility.
“It clearly helps us replicate from within because they’re coming from an existing operation where the culture and the values and the mission statement, they’re going to take with them, so when the bell rings and somebody wants us in Texas, we’ve got a startup team that’s ready to go,” Mr. Worley said.
Succession planning
Today, Blaine Worley’s sons, Chad and Brock, work for Kenwood Records Management, while Brandt Worley’s sons, Robby and Matthew, work and attend school in Denver. So far, no one from the third generation of Worleys work on the warehousing side of the business. If one of them decided he wanted to join Worley Warehousing, he would need to follow the family’s carefully crafted succession plan.
About six years ago, the family formalized a document that they refer to often. It outlines an entry and exit policy for all family members and establishes basic criteria for working in the business. There are four phases to a family member joining the company: initiation, selection, education and transition.
“One of the keys for us was to develop a family strategic plan,” Mr. Worley said. “That involves determining the long-term personal and professional goals of each family member and also determining what family members want to be potentially active in the business and what family members maybe want to be passive and still have some kind of stakehold in the business. Our plan establishes policies for the family’s role in the business. It outlines an entry and an exit policy for all family members and it establishes some basic criteria for working in the business. Probably most importantly, how do we go about determining whether a family is eligible, wants to be in the business.”
To determine that eligibility, the company looks at three characteristics of that family member.
“In that education and evaluation phase, there are really three key attributes, the three C’s, which are character, where we looking to identify a strong work ethic and an attitude where they’re working to earn their own way,” Mr. Worley said. “Confidence, we’re looking to see, do they display confidence in their own abilities, as well as the other employees they work with? Capability, do they have the raw talent to do the job? And do they have the natural leadership skills to eventually be in a position to run the company?”
As the company transitions during the next 20-40 years, it is beneficial to have a plan in place for the family, but also for department managers, Mr. Worley said.
“We’ve spent a great deal of time doing our homework on succession and succession planning and then applying what we feel are best practices to our business here,” he said. “Our succession plan starts in general with the premise, the family isn’t a business. And the business isn’t a family. It’s about the business performing first.”
