Wichita company has doubled in size every year for four years
King of Freight, a Wichita trucking brokerage, is doubling in size and employees – again. The company that started on owner Mike Ricklefs’ laptop seven years ago now has about 55 employees and 9,000 square feet in the High Touch building at William and Main downtown. Ricklefs said his business is growing rapidly. But so are other businesses in the building – technology companies SNT and High Touch – meaning somebody had to move. So King of Freight will move into the former Sterling Building next door at William and Market around March 1. It is taking about 18,500 square feet on two floors. Ricklefs said he plans to put in 100 workstations in the new space and have those filled by early 2018. “We’ve doubled every year for four years,” Ricklefs said. Freight brokerage is an old and highly competitive field, but Ricklefs said he has an edge that is driving his growth. King of Freight’s brokers are salesmen who develop personal relationships with shippers and haulers to solicit loads and match them with available truck space all over the country. It can take anywhere from a few minutes in a busy city like Houston to a few hours in rural Idaho. But the secret is the speed at making that connection, and with speed comes volume and lower prices. Ricklefs’ partner, Greg Bolain, developed the software that integrates the databases the brokers use to quickly match and vet the truckers. That allows King of Freight to be less expensive and more flexible while still observing all regulations, he said. Ricklefs met Bolain when they were teenagers working at the MCI call center in Wichita. Both achieved top salesman status. Later, Ricklefs become a logistics broker, and Bolain became an IT technician. Ricklefs, who started his own truck brokerage, reconnected with Bolain and asked him to work on the system to automate the process. “The robots do all the work,” Ricklefs said with a laugh. The plan for the future is to continue growing, he said. “We want to be the biggest freight broker in the country,” he said.
Wichita freight company ready to switch into high gear (+video)
The self-described best salesman at every peddler job he has had, Mike Ricklefs decided in 2008 that he wanted to run his own operation. Nearly a decade after its humble beginnings in its owner’s apartment, King of Freight is a growing logistics brokerage company in Wichita featuring a set of young leaders with big plans. “There’s no limit to what we could be,” Ricklefs said. “We could pretty much be one of the biggest companies Wichita has, with time.” Right now, the company – which essentially brokers deals between manufacturers and contractors who move freight to market – has 35 employees, though general manager Brady Miller said the goal is to have at least 100 employees by the end of 2016. The company recently moved its headquarters from North Rock Road to the third floor of the High Touch Technologies building downtown, 110 S. Main, and has plans to add more than 4,000 square feet to its operation. Ricklefs said the operation will expand to nearly 9,200 square feet once the office space renovation is complete later this year. “The freight industry services the entire country,” Ricklefs said. “If you look outside, everything from the signs to the cement on the ground was shipped here. The computer in my office was shipped here, and nobody is going to replace a semi truck driver with a robot. “What’s cool about this industry is that it’s still going to be here when we die, it’s not going anywhere.” Don’t get Ricklefs wrong. He and his two top lieutenants – Miller and company partner and IT specialist Greg Bolain – don’t figure to kick the bucket anytime soon. The three range in age from 28 to 32; Ricklefs and Miller are former roommates during their time at the University of Kansas, and Ricklefs and Bolain met as teenagers working at a call center. “Me and Greg were both 16 years old, and we were the top sales reps at MCI in Wichita,” Ricklefs said. “We used to work four hours per night there after school, and we were making a ton of money. “When I came up with the idea for King of Freight, I got in touch with Greg and he ended up learning how to program computer code from YouTube videos. Greg is a genius, and he does all of our custom software.” With all three being from the area, the members of King of Freight’s brain trust agree that it’s important to grow in their home city. Miller said the company strives to do as much business as it can in the Wichita area, even though it also has accounts with major national shippers, such as Georgia-Pacific. “It’s a three-headed attack,” Miller said. “Mike is at the top; he has Greg running IT and me helping him run sales. We’re three young guys who are willing to do whatever it takes to keep this thing moving, to provide jobs for Wichita, and to be the best we can at everything freight-related, from small shipments to really big shipments. “We’ll work with the guy who ships once or twice per month – if you’re a small Wichita company, we welcome you.” Ricklefs said he “knew nothing about freight” until working for a logistics company, where he said he studied every aspect of the business. The secret, he said, is to provide enough financial incentive for his salespeople to keep them motivated to continuously bring in clients. “Our biggest selling point to employees is that we offer the dream to them,” Ricklefs said. “We put our people on 50 percent commission – if they ship a load for $1,000, they get $500. That’s the highest commission in our industry. “There’s no cap on what you can earn here. We have people who have worked here for six months and they’re already making the equivalent of $100,000 per year.” After experiencing the ups and downs of starting a company from scratch, Ricklefs said he thinks King of Freight is at the “tipping point” of a major growth spurt. The ultimate goal, he said, is to become the biggest freight brokerage company in the U.S. Can King of Freight get there? “Yes, it can,” Ricklefs said. “We have time. “We’re in it to win it – we want that No. 1 spot.”
King of Freight almost doubles space at High Touch building
A year after moving to 5,000 square feet at the High Touch building downtown, King of Freight is expanding again, this time within the building. “We’re getting ready to hire about 20 to 30 new people next year,” says Mike Ricklefs, who started the business eight years ago from his apartment. “We have more than doubled in size the last four years in a row, profit and gross sales and employees.” The freight brokerage company currently has 40 employees and is grossing about $35 million a year, Ricklefs says. King of Freight is something of a middleman between businesses – including such as customers Georgia-Pacific and ABC Supply – and trucking companies. “We’re landing big corporations to ship through us,” Ricklefs says. “When we land big corporations, that comes with a lot of different branches,” he says. “We pretty much go in, and we attack all their branches and get them to start shipping with us.” Though he’s adding new customers, too, Ricklefs says, “We’ve grown a lot more through our current accounts.” He says he’s now expanding for a total of 9,160 square feet in the High Touch building at 110 S. Main. Cristi Howell and Kristin Stang of J.P. Weigand & Sons handled the deal for the new space. Ricklefs credits others, such as business partner Greg Bolain, for helping King of Freight grow. “He’s created us … a million-dollar website,” Ricklefs says of Bloain’s work on www.kingoffreight.com. “We have a lot of functionality as far as IT goes.” He also credits managers Brady Miller and Brandon Howarah. “The two managers have helped me build a very, very strong sales force,” Ricklefs says. Whitney Cochran is in charge of the billing department, which Ricklefs calls a “major asset.” He says the company is on track to make half a million dollars a month in profit by next year. “That’s what we’re estimated to do next year with the growth that we’ve been doing.” Ricklefs says he expects more growth after that, though he says he still marvels how far he’s come from his humble start with one laptop at home. “I still feel like I’ve (come) a long way.” Ricklefs says the company’s move into the new space will happen will happen between Dec. 1 and Jan. 1. “We plan to have that place filled up in 2016.”
King of Freight to expand to High Touch Technologies building and add employees
Five years ago, King of Freight was a new business that consisted of Mike Ricklefs and a laptop in his apartment. Today, the fast-growing freight brokerage has 38 employees in Wichita, Kansas City and Houston, and it’s about to seriously expand its headquarters here. “We ended up landing some pretty big accounts,” Ricklefs says of customers such as Georgia-Pacific and ABC Supply. “We’re pretty much the middle man between the business and the trucking company.” King of Freight needs space for more employees to service accounts. “We’re scrambling to hire people and give them jobs,” Ricklefs says. Next month, the company will move from 2,000 square feet at 1835 N. Rock Road to about 5,000 square feet at the High Touch Technologies building downtown at 110 S. Main St. Ricklefs says he has an option for 5,000 square feet more, which he thinks he’ll take within three months after hiring about 15 new sales people. “We have the option to grow while we’re there,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about.” Cristi Howell and Kristin Stang of J.P. Weigand & Sons handled the deal. Ricklefs says the company is in Houston because a number of its customers are there, but he says he wants Wichita to be the King of Freight headquarters because he’s from here and wants to hire people from here. “We service the whole entire country,” Ricklefs says. He says his customers are “giving us so much freight right now.” “We can’t really service all the business that we have.” That’s a problem, he says, but “it’s like a good thing.” “We can’t wait to grow.”