At the end of 2020, Cameron Baird’s logistics company CargoBarn Inc. had a Sandy Springs office with 66 people as it served a customer base of 477 businesses.
With e-commerce soaring and businesses facing labor shortages, companies looked towards innovators such as Baird to resolve supply chain woes. The company added new services and refined its hiring model to meet the demand.
The result? The company’s revenue grew by 73% while its volume of sales and staff increased by 52%, said Baird, CEO of CargoBarn.
Fast forward to last March. The company was serving over 700 customers and moved into a 24,000 square-foot Central Perimeter office, which could accommodate 200 employees at full capacity.
Now, the company is geared to expand its offices in Dallas, Jacksonville, Florida, and Fresno, California, in addition to establishing new locations and reaching at least 1,200 employees nationwide.
So far, CargoBarn has enjoyed this growth with no institutional venture capital, though Baird said he's working on a funding round now.
CargoBarn's hiring plans
Last year, the company refined its process of hiring talent to make sure that it could recruit, retain and train the right people for the job.
CargoBarn has 132 employees, twice the headcount it had in 2020. It plans to reach between 1,200 and 1,800 employees by 2025, Baird said.
Baird wants to fill the Atlanta office in the next 15 months. By 2023, he expects to make 40 hires per month.
Due to the company’s expansion plans, Baird expects to move both the Jacksonville and Dallas locations to new offices by next year. It will look for a 50-plus person space for Jacksonville and a 200-plus person space in Dallas, said Baird. He plans to open offices in at least three more U.S. locations by 2023.
The company will look for cities with a population of at least 2.5 million people that are also relatively affordable, said Baird. Some cities being considered are Detroit, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Tampa Bay, Florida.
New services led to growth
In the interest of becoming a one-stop shop for its customers, the company began to offer drayage services, the process of transporting cargo from a port to its next destination.
During the same time, it began to offer expedited shipments. A shipment made by a smaller truck or van that can curtail certain transportation regulations, such as Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans, as opposed to a larger traditional truck.
Baird attributes these new features to much of its rapid growth in the past year. Whereas none of its business came from drayage or expedited shipments in 2020, those sectors now make up 20% of the company’s profits.
“There is a lot more competition in the traditional highway trucking industry, but there are very few brokers in the drayage space,” said Baird. “I wouldn’t be shocked if it takes up half of our business within three years.”
Now, the company is turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning to continue expanding its Optimum software, which aims to better inform its employees which trucking companies to source for its customer’s loads.
CargoBarn plans to launch its Connect platform by September. The platform will act as a self-service portal for customers to track where their shipments are located and get real-time pricing on their orders.
Why it matters
Atlanta is increasingly becoming recognized as a supply chain innovation hub. Its legacy as a physical distribution hub and burgeoning tech ecosystem add to that reputation.
CargoBarn is one of many Atlanta-based companies who provide solutions to the logistics industry. Many of which have received substantial growth and funding as the pandemic increased demand for e-commerce products while labor shortages caused supply chain backlogs.
Last week, robotics company GreyOrange announced they were adding 300 jobs globally following a $110 million investment. Cloud-based supply chain company and unicorn Stord recently raised $120 million, bringing its valuation to $1.3 billion as the company plans for 1,000 employees.
More details about CargoBarn
CargoBarn is a freight brokerage company that helps businesses arrange the transportation of their shipments by connecting them to the optimal trucking companies for each of their loads.
Prior to launching CargoBarn, Cameron Baird worked for four years as a sales representative at the Fortune 200 third-party logistics company C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc.
In 2007, Baird launched CargoBarn in Fresno, California. Within a decade, the company expanded its services to non-refrigerated commodities and reached 323 customers nationwide.
In 2018, he decided he needed to leave California for a state that was more business-friendly and was still a hotbed for logistical talent. His choices came down to Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta.
“I fell in love with the cityscape, how green everything is, and its logistical talent,” said Baird. “When you’re looking at growing as fast as we are, you need to organically grow your leaders and managers, so you need to be in a city where you can poach talent from competitors.”
