Downtown Wichita firm expands into three new states
King of Freight, the freight brokerage firm that always seems to be expanding, is doing it again. “We’ve kind of found a gold mine,” partner Mike Ricklefs said. He’s referring to Addison, Texas, the latest place the brokerage is expanding. Ricklefs has a house in Plano, and he said he noticed how many companies are in Addison, a city north of Dallas. “I saw the opportunity,” he said. “We’re hiring 50 people on the first of May. . . . We’re going to (hire) 50 people probably every 20 days until we can scale up to the thousands.” King of Freight doesn’t own trucks. It connects companies needing to move products with trucking firms and truckers who are able to move them. A couple of months ago, King of Freight expanded into Little Rock, Ark., too. With 30 employees, it’s not growing as quickly as Ricklefs predicts Addison will. “Little Rock has been kind of slow. It’s kind of a slow-growing culture.” A new office in Tampa, Fla., with 25 employees is doing a bit better, he said. “We’re brand new in Tampa. We’re trying to grow that as much as possible, too.” Ricklefs said one of his top brokers moved there, and ten of his best have moved to Texas. At the Wichita headquarters at the former Gander Mountain building at WaterWalk, King of Freight has 600 employees. Ricklefs said sales are up by 20% month over month compared to last year, and he anticipates adding more employees here as well, including at a future east-side office. “We’re building a monster office just for brokers,” Ricklefs said of plans on the east side. “I’ve already paid to have drawings.” The land is across Greenwich from Topgolf. “If you walk out of Topgolf’s front door, it’s right across the street,” Ricklefs said. He said he plans a 25,000-square-foot building, which compares to 90,000 square feet he has downtown. “I’ve had it in the works, and I’m just waiting because we haven’t maxed out the Gander Mountain building yet, but we will by probably early next year.” Ricklefs said he plans to keep the downtown building, which the company owns. “My headquarters is always going to be in Wichita, Kansas.”
Downtown Wichita firm to hire 200 to 300 more workers in the next six months
A number of things have been prompting King of Freight partners Mike Ricklefs and Greg Bolain to want to expand their downtown Wichita freight brokerage, then news broke last week that Minnesota-based C.H. Robinson Worldwide had substantial layoffs. “Our biggest competition is laying off (650 workers), so we feel like now is the right time to strike,” Ricklefs said. “That’s just more motivation.” King of Freight has 560 employees, 274 of whom are brokers, and Ricklefs said he and Bolain are going to hire another 200 to 300 people “probably within the next six months.” Another part of the expansion is how much sales have grown following the first year of the pandemic. In 2020, the company had 3% growth. Last year, that number jumped to 62%. “We had a surge when supply and demand just went crazy,” said CFO Whitney McFall. So far this year, she said the company has experienced a 36% growth in sales. Ricklefs said brokers are making an average of $260,000 a year, “which is incredible.” “Our brokers are just making a killing right now.” Of those who are also managers, he said several are making more than $1 million annually. As sales have increased, McFall said support staff have gotten raises, too. Ricklefs won’t disclose gross or net sales figures. McFall said the company is moving 5,000 truckloads a week. King of Freight doesn’t own trucks. It connects companies needing to move products with trucking firms and truckers who are able to move it. Ricklefs said he’s spent the last year developing load matching software that will allow drivers to drop off loads and pick up more in the same areas. “Basically we’re going to auto offer them reloads,” he said. For instance, a driver can drop off a load in Houston, and the software will search for possible reloads specifically in that area. Ricklefs said the idea is that the driver “just works with King of Freight and nobody else.” In years past, Ricklefs has made predictions about hiring more workers, but that hasn’t always happened. “We found out we do a lot better business and more business with the higher quality employees than the mass quantity.” He said the difference now is the amount of growth the company has had, the new software and the layoffs elsewhere in the industry. “We’re getting a ton of referrals right now,” Ricklefs said. Almost 400 employees are working out of the former Gander Mountain space at WaterWalk, and the rest work from home. At one point during the pandemic, Ricklefs thought he’d sell the building. He said he’s glad he kept it, but now he’s thinking he’ll eventually have to move out of it for larger space or have a second office. He said he’s added a pool table, foosball and ping pong to the office along with biweekly cookouts. “We’re doing a lot to boost morale. We’re having fun.”
A pandemic boost in business means this downtown space is no longer for sale
When last we checked in with King of Freight, owner Mike Ricklefs had put his WaterWalk office — the former Gander Mountain space — on the market for $6 million due to the pandemic. Now, also due to the pandemic, the building is off the market. Ricklefs said his freight brokerage now needs the almost 90,000-square-foot downtown space. About 150 of the firm’s 500 employees are back working at the office since working from home in the pandemic. “We leave it up to the employees,” Ricklefs said. All new employees have to work at the office at least initially. “We kind of use it for development,” Ricklefs said. “It’s really hard to teach people who have not had industry experience.” He said his company is still growing. “We’ve been doing record-breaking numbers,” Ricklefs said. “We’re still growing like crazy.” He said that’s in part because of the pandemic and supply chain issues. “Everybody’s so desperate for trucks, and they all need our help quite a bit.” King of Freight used to lease space in several buildings but now has consolidated everything into the WaterWalk space. Ricklefs said he’s still getting an occasional call from someone interested in the former Gander Mountain space. “We’ve turned down anybody that’s talked to us.”
King of Freight’s move to Gander Mountain signals end of WaterWalk’s glitzy dreams
The Wichita City Council has approved King of Freight’s move to WaterWalk, signaling an end to plans for a glitzy entertainment district on the east bank of the Arkansas River. Despite some reluctance to turn over prime riverfront property for office space, the council Tuesday unanimously approved King of Freight’s planned move into the former Gander Mountain store at the WaterWalk. King of Freight is a freight brokerage that connects trucking companies with loads that need to be shipped. It has 535 employees and promises to add at least 400 more as part of the deal for the Gander Mountain building, which is on city-owned land that was leased for $1 a year to WaterWalk for 99 years. The vote signals a recognition that WaterWalk will likely never be the vibrant focal point of downtown revitalization that its developers promised 15 years ago. City Manager Robert Layton said he has been in talks with WaterWalk developer Jack DeBoer for the past year about recasting the WaterWalk as an office park development, now that the city is committed to a new $75 million Triple-A baseball stadium and an accompanying village of restaurants, bars and shops on the west bank. “Remember now that the key for an entertainment district is across the river,” Layton said. “The fact that (WaterWalk) was formulated in a very different environment 15 years ago, it unfortunately maybe isn’t as dynamic as it should have been. I think Mr. DeBoer recognizes that and is willing to look at something that maybe is more marketable today.” Tuesday’s vote also means it will probably be decades, if ever, before the city recoups the $41 million in public subsidies that have been spent on the WaterWalk project. The original agreement calls for the city to receive 25 percent of the net profit from WaterWalk rentals, but the contract was so favorable to the developer that the city has never gotten any profit-sharing and probably never will. If King of Freight keeps the 400 new jobs in Wichita for 10 years, the city will drop the profit-sharing clause from the contract. It is estimated that the taxes paid by King of Freight’s new employees will be about $100,000 a year and the company is committing to pay the city $70,000 a year for parking. Because of term limits, no one serving on the council today was part of the original WaterWalk plan. “I get it. We’re all struggling a little bit with this. Is it the best use of the river?” Mayor Jeff Longwell said. “None of us like the way that building was oriented along the river corridor. Certainly it’s something we would have done differently or asked them to do differently from day one, but we didn’t have that power or authority.” Longwell also said growing the freight brokerage helps the economy diversify away from its traditional aviation manufacturing base. “We need more density, we need more bodies, we need more opportunities,” he said. “This does lock them in to growing long term in Wichita, maybe not necessarily growing long term on that site, but it locks them in to growing in Wichita.” The Gander Mountain building has sat vacant since 2017, when the outdoor-products warehouse retailer went bankrupt. Council members Brandon Johnson and Jeff Blubaugh expressed reservations about the King of Freight proposal, but voted for it. The vote was a unanimous 6-0 with Bryan Frye absent. Hoyt Hillman, a river activist and member of the city’s Park Board, urged the council to reject the office plan. “This is what you get when you sit on your hands, OK?” Hillman said. “You have a beautiful piece of land that had an opportunity to be developed into something really useful and you’re going to pass it off.” He offered to work with King of Freight, the city or anyone else to better activate the river behind the building. Delano photographer and resident Christopher Parisho said turning over the building for office space “totally defies everything the WaterWalk was sold to us as.” “I’m asking you to really think hard before you do this because you could be tying your hands for something even greater,” he said. He suggested a better use would be a performing arts center to replace the theaters in the Century II Convention and Performing Arts Center. But Andrew Nave of the Greater Wichita Partnership spoke in favor of King of Freight’s plan. “Freight brokerage is one of the fastest growing segments of the logistics industry,” he said. “This industry segment continues to grow and we should be very proud of a hometown company . . . that’s one of the rising stars in this space.”
Will King of Freight be the final tenant for the Gander Mountain building? Maybe not.
As King of Freight stands poised to buy the abandoned Gander Mountain building in the WaterWalk for office space, the proposed land lease contract with the city leaves lots of flexibility for it to one day revert to a store or other commercial use. As long as King of Freight keeps its promise to create 400 new jobs in Wichita and keeps them anywhere in the city, under the contract it could use the Gander Mountain building however it wants and still lease the city-owned land it sits on for $1 a year, City Manager Robert Layton said. The original 99-year lease to the developers of WaterWalk has about 85 years left on it. That flexibility was built into the deal because King of Freight may not want to stay there forever, Layton said. The company, a freight brokerage with nationwide reach, has been rapidly growing for several years and probably will need more space a few years from now. “If their growth continues and they may outgrow that building, we don’t know if they would keep part of their staff there or if they would move,” Layton said. The city of Wichita has put $41 million of taxpayer money into developing the WaterWalk, including $6 million that was spent on constructing the Gander Mountain building. The city was supposed to get 25 percent of the revenue, after expenses, from the WaterWalk developers subleasing property for stores, restaurants and other retail businesses. But City Hall has never gotten any money from the profit-sharing agreement because the formula used to calculate the expenses heavily favors the developer. If King of Freight did move, but kept its 400 new jobs anywhere in Wichita, the company would have the options of selling or leasing the building to another user without triggering the provision for the city to get 25 percent of the rental income. After 10 years, the rent-sharing provision would be removed from the contract entirely. Layton said it would be a better deal than the previous one, even without any theoretical potential for profit sharing. “I look at it as I get additional payroll (the King of Freight employees) which generates additional taxes for us,” Layton said. “So that’s a million dollars (over 10 years) that I don’t have right now from those 400 jobs. And I get parking revenue that I didn’t get from Gander Mountain.” The combination of the increase in taxes and the $70,000 a year for parking amounts to about $170,000 a year in increased city revenue, he said. The Gander Mountain building, which is on the banks of the Arkansas River just north of Kellogg, is owned by hotel developer Jack DeBoer. King of Freight would buy the building from DeBoer for an undisclosed purchase price. Bryant Parker, a lawyer representing King of Freight, said one of the things that attracted them to the Gander Mountain building is that it’s immediately available. “We’ve hit upon a problem where we are just out of space altogether,” he said. Parker said the company’s presence would benefit downtown even though it won’t generate direct taxes like the destination retail stores, restaurants and entertainment venues that WaterWalk originally promised. Per the contract, King of Freight is guaranteeing it would pay the 400 new employees $50,000 a year on average. Also, its workforce skews young, with an average age under 35, Parker said. “This space brings a number of things not only for our business but for downtown as well,” Parker said. “We’re talking about bringing young people with high-paying jobs to Wichita’s downtown, and that will kind of spur and catalyze all the other redevelopment efforts that are going on throughout the area.” The plan was presented to the City Council and the community at last Tuesday’s council meeting. The council decided to delay voting on it for a week to give members time to examine the agreement. It will be brought before the council again at 9 a.m Tuesday at City Hall, 455 N. Main, Wichita.
Council takes a week to consider King of Freight move to old Gander Mountain building
UPDATE, 10 a.m. Tuesday: The Wichita City Council delayed consideration of this proposal for one week on Tuesday. City Manager Robert Layton and City Attorney Jennifer Magana recommended the delay to finalize terms of the contract and King of Freight’s attorney, Bryant Parker, said he agreed with it. Original story: A fast-growing Wichita freight broker will take over the former Gander Mountain building in the WaterWalk if the City Council approves the plan on Tuesday. King of Freight has signed an agreement with WaterWalk to acquire the rights to use the former outdoor products store as its local headquarters, according to a report attached to the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting. “KOF currently has approximately 535 employees officing in Wichita, and is in a phase of rapid expansion,” the report says. “KOF plans to redesign the Gander Mountain space, and there is also vacant space on the parcel for an additional satellite building should one be desired to accommodate more employees.” In March, Mayor Jeff Longwell hinted that a deal was in the works to bring 700 jobs to the vacant building, which backs up to the east bank of the Arkansas River just south of Waterman. At the time, WaterWalk developer Jack DeBoer said no such deal was in the works. King of Freight is a rapidly growing freight shipping brokerage with offices in two downtown buildings. Under the WaterWalk agreement, the company promises to create at least 400 new jobs with an average salary of $50,000 a year. If it meets those job goals, King of Freight won’t have to pay the city any rent on the Gander Mountain building, according to the city report. That could be a moot point. The developer and the city were supposed to share profits on rental income at the WaterWalk, but the terms of that agreement are so favorable to the developer that it has never generated any income for the city anyway. Starting with an original $30.9 million commitment of city funds in 2002, public funding of WaterWalk ultimately rose over time to about $41 million. The city money paid for land, parking structures, streets, utilities, amenities and, in the case of Gander Mountain, $6 million of construction costs to build the building. The $6 million has been paid back from sales tax income in the area, City Manager Robert Layton said Monday. Gander Mountain went bankrupt and closed the Wichita store in 2017, and the building has sat vacant since. Adding 400 King of Freight jobs to the local economy would generate about $1 million in new tax revenue over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the Wichita State University Center for Economic Development and Business Research. King of Freight would also pay the city $70,000 a year to lease parking at the site, the city report said. Layton said his recommendation to the council will be to put that money toward paying for the new baseball stadium project under construction at the northwest corner of Maple and McLean.
King of Freight cracks list of top freight brokerages and expands yet again
With his April announcement of more space at the Ruffin Building, King of Freight partner Mike Ricklefs said he and partner Greg Bolain likely would be leasing more within three months. That’s what’s happening now with a lease they’re signing Tuesday for the second floor of the building, which makes a total of 71,221 square feet the freight brokerage has there. They also have a combined 32,000 square feet in the High Touch and Sterling buildings downtown and expect to eventually lease more at both as well. Ricklefs says the company now has 500 employees and should have 750 to 800 by the end of the year. He says his goal is still to have 5,000 employees by 2021. For the first time, King of Freight has broken into the top 100 freight brokerages in North America, according to the online Transport Topics. The list is based on 2017 numbers. King of Freight is at No. 87, with $87 million in gross sales and $7.4 million in net sales. Ricklefs says so far this year, the company has done $165 million in gross sales and has about $8.3 million in net sales, so he expects to be in the top 40 in next year’s rankings. He wants to be No. 1, though. “I feel like we’re just getting started. We have a really long way to go.”
Wait a minute . . . didn’t I just read that King of Freight news?
King of Freight is expanding yet again. If you’re thinking, wait, didn’t we just read that the other week? Yes, you did, but that’s how fast the company is growing. “We’re hiring about 50 people . . . every three weeks,” says Mike Ricklefs, who owns the freight brokerage with partner Greg Bolain. In January, Have You Heard?reported that in addition to its combined 32,000 square feet in the High Touch and Sterling buildings downtown, the company signed a lease for 32,865 square feet of new space in the Ruffin Building at Douglas and Broadway. That’s the entire sixth floor that Viega used to occupy. “We’re out of space,” Ricklefs says. He says he’s signed a lease for two thirds of the third floor of the Ruffin Building, which is 23,000 square feet. “We’re going to be renting out another floor probably within three months,” Ricklefs says. He attributes growth to something he’s calling a freight draft. “Instead of speed dating, it’s called speed freighting,” he says. He hires 40 sales people at a time along with five to 10 support staff members. Then, during the freight draft, the new sales hires have one-minute meetings with each of the company’s 30 managers. According to how well those managers have done in sales, they get to rotate picking which new employees they want on their teams. “We even have draft music,” Ricklefs says. “We (make) it really fun.” Managers get 10 percent of the profit of everyone on their teams. Bolain says it incentivizes managers to have an interest in new hires and get them performing quickly. Ricklefs says strong new hires can be making about $10,000 a month within a few months. “We can get them there really quick,” he says. “People are making a lot of money working at King of Freight. . . . We have turned it into a very enjoyable game for everybody.” Ricklefs used to say he wanted to get to 500 employees. “Now it’s 5,000.” Bolain says most of the nation’s top brokerages have about that many people. “We’re trying to play on that level.” Ricklefs says it won’t be only King of Freight that benefits. “It’s going to be very good for Wichita.”
King of Freight has ‘biggest accomplishment’ yet with major new downtown lease
UPDATED – In August, King of Freight owner Mike Ricklefs told Have You Heard? he wants to hire 15 to 20 people every 15 days at his freight brokerage. It may be difficult to understand how the business, which Ricklefs started with a laptop in his apartment in 2008, is growing so quickly. However, if there’s any doubt, perhaps this is proof: In addition to its combined 32,000 square feet in the High Touch and Sterling buildings downtown, the company has signed a lease for 32,865 square feet of new space in the Ruffin Building at Douglas and Broadway. That’s the entire sixth floor that Viega used to occupy. “We’re looking to have that filled up within (eight to 12) months and then add another floor,” Ricklefs says. “This is our biggest accomplishment that we’ve had.” Currently, King of Freight has almost 200 employees on the third floor of the High Touch building at 110 S. Main St. and the entire Sterling Building next to it at 123 S. Market. “We’re out of space,” Ricklefs says. “We’re keeping those buildings, and we’re doubling in square footage, and we’re doubling in employees again,” he says. “We’re on a huge hiring spree.” Ricklefs credits his King of Freight partner Greg Bolain, who writes code for the company, and general manager Brandon Howarah with helping the business grow. Mostly, though, he says commission packages are what is fueling the biggest growth. He says he’s offering a supervisor status for anyone who reaches $20,000 in regular monthly sales. Supervisors get 50 percent commission on those sales, plus they can start forming teams and get 10 percent of each of the sales from the people on their teams. King of Freight has 20 managers now compared to nine in August. In 2016, Ricklefs says the company had $44 million in sales. For 2017, he says it was $60 million. Ideally, Ricklefs says he wants only one building for his employees. “We would like them all together.” His High Touch and Sterling leases aren’t up until the end of February 2020. The Ruffin lease is through March 2021. “We thought it was beautiful,” he says of the new building. He says there are more than 50 private offices on the floor. Ricklefs says he’s hiring in all areas – accounting, dispatch, customer service, support and sales. At one time, he said he’d like to have 500 employees. “Our goal is no longer 500 employees,” he says. “We want to have thousands of employees.” He says he’d like to help the Wichita economy, too. Mostly, though, Ricklefs focuses on one lofty goal. “We’re trying to basically take over the freight industry,” he says. “We feel like we can grow our business to be one of the top freight companies in the United States.”
King of Freight ‘on a massive hiring spree’
King of Freight is expanding again, and in a big way. “We’re going on a massive hiring spree,” majority owner Mike Ricklefs says. “We’re trying to map out a game plan … to where we can get 500 employees for King of Freight.” He says that would make his company one of the largest freight brokerages in the country. “It’s a really unsaturated market,” Ricklefs says. Also, he says, “There’s so much business out there because we service the entire country.” Ricklefs started the company in 2008 with a laptop in his apartment. Now, he has 105 employees, 54 of whom are sales representatives. Ricklefs wants to hire 15 to 20 people every 15 days. “Now we’re basically at the tipping point to where we can do that type of hiring.” He says his commission packages are part of what is fueling the company’s growth. Ricklefs says he’s offering a supervisor status for anyone who reaches $20,000 in regular monthly sales. Supervisors get 50 percent commission on those sales, plus they can start forming teams and get 10 percent of each of the sales from the people on their teams. King of Freight has nine managers now, and Ricklefs wants about 40. “I feel like that’s going to help me get to 500 employees,” he says. “My goal is within two years.” In 2016, Ricklefs says the company had $44 million in sales. “This year, we’ve already done that,” he says. He says sales are “equal to $45 million right now, and we still have the rest of the year to go.” In order to hire and train more staff, Ricklefs is expanding King of Freight’s space again. The company’s 20,000-square-foot headquarters is in the Sterling Building at 123 S. Market. In October, Ricklefs is adding 10,000 square feet at the High Touch building at 110 S. Main, which is where the company previously was before it moved to the Sterling Building. That gives the company a total of 30,000 square feet, and Ricklefs says he expects to add more soon. “We’re going to be needing space within four months.” Though it seems like there might be a lot of stumbling blocks for a company that’s growing so fast, Ricklefs says that’s no longer the case. “I feel like a lot of the blocks are over. We’ve seen every problem that there really is to have.” He says that includes stolen truckloads and identity theft, which is a big issue in the industry. “We’ve developed a lot of systems to block those,” Ricklefs says. He also now has a lawyer, Jason Janoski, on staff. “He’s blocked a lot of potential threats that I didn’t even know about.” Greg Bolain, who also is a partner in the company, runs technology for King of Freight. Ricklefs says that’s another key to the company’s growth. “It’s just getting easier and easier for us every year it seems like.” While his goal of covering the entire country may seem daunting, Ricklefs notes that “every single company in the United States ships.” “I look at this as like a game, and I’m trying to beat it.”