Hello, and welcome to Freight Founders, a weekly newsletter exploring one of the industry’s most important founders. Thank you to the 94 of you who joined since the last edition, if you aren't subscribed, and want to join the community, please subscribe below. You can also listen to the newsletter HERE :

I owe my career to Ted Alling.

A younger, more naive Adam cold-emailed Ted in mid-2014. The classic "Can I pick your brain?" email that most executives would (rightly) ignore.

Ted not only responded to my email but also gave me a private tour of the Lamp Post Group offices. He spent over an hour with me, and he asked me question after question about my aspirations and career goals. His energy was infectious.

Fast forward 2 years and I’d left my job to pursue self-employment. In large part thanks to that conversation (and others that followed) with Ted.

Personal stories aside, he is a prolific builder who built and sold a $600 million dollar company, established a Venture Capital firm, invested in companies like Bellhop, and has now started a public charter school in Tennessee. He is the obvious choice for the first Freight Founder profile.

Let's dive into what makes Ted, Ted.

Growing Up

Ted has done a number of public interviews about his experience growing up in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. Instead of rehashing what he’s already shared, I pulled out some of the key themes from his formative years.

Biological Lottery

Ted talks openly about how lucky he feels to have been born into his family, “I had a really all-star dad growing up, and an incredible mom.” He continues, “I’ve realized over the years how much I was born on third base.”

While the family seemed comfortable as a result of Dr. and Mrs. Alling’s work as an oral surgeon and nurse, respectively, I don’t think Ted was referring only to whatever financial comfort he grew up with.

His parents clearly had an enormous impact on how Ted views the world - especially how he views work as an opportunity, and how he sets and pursues big goals along the way.

For example, Ted recounts how his father would call patients the night after their surgeries. If they were nearby, he’d physically visit the patient and ensure they were recuperating properly.

Who even does that?

We’ll see later how this idea of doing the unscalable and putting people ahead of profit stuck with Ted. But it wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows in the Alling household.

The idea of pursuing excellence was also emphasized at an early age.

The concepts of prioritizing people + pursuing excellence are themes we’ll run into again and again throughout Ted’s story.

Sibling Rivalry

Ted often speaks fondly about his two brothers: Matt and Rocky. Both siblings seem to have received the benefits of growing up in the Alling household and have built successful careers in their own right.

The brothers root for each other and support one another in their pursuits. From the outside, they also seem to push one another. Having siblings who excel in one arena or another can be a positive motivator. Nobody wants to fall behind.

This next part is TOTAL conjecture on my part. But Ted has talked a few times about how he was limited as an athlete in high school. In one interview, he describes a student who was riding the bench at Chattanooga Prep (the school Ted and his wife Kelly eventually founded), and feeling connected to the student through his own experience with athletics.

Matt and Rocky both seem to be athletic individuals who probably did well in sports. Jawlines don’t lie.

Ted finding his outlet for creativity and dominance in business as opposed to sports may have helped fuel his outsized success down the road.

Again, total conjecture. But interesting to dwell on. Sometimes the bench player becomes the boss. Business is a long game.

Speaking of which, let’s dive into Ted’s actual career.

Building Access America

For the uninitiated, Access America was a full service transportation company founded by Ted and his two college friends Barry Large and Allan Davis. They started the company in 2002 and grew its value to $500 million. Access eventually merged with Coyote Logistics and was a part of the biggest acquisition in UPS company history for a reported $1.8 billion.

Let’s see how they did it.

College Roots

The three friends met while attending college together at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. As fraternity brothers, the trio spent a ton of time planning activities and essentially building an organization together.

Ted recounts times when one of the three would miss or skip class because they were so busy scheming up the next event for their fraternity. This experience clearly laid the foundation for future partnerships.

Founding Access America

Following college, Ted took a job he found to be less than fulfilling.

“I took a job with a large logistics Fortune 100 company and it was in one of these jobs like my first day at work…I was totally pumped up, I graduated on Saturday, started on Monday. I was just fired up to take on the world, walked in the first day and I was like, ‘whoa, this is terrible, this totally sucks’.

There was no energy there, my boss was just okay, he just wasn’t a very good inspirer guy and so — anyway, I kind of ground it out for two years in this company…”

Alling would leave after two years to link back up with his college buddy, Barry Large. Barry’s father had a brick business that had extra space the budding entrepreneurs used for their new venture. Allan Davis rejoined his college pals, and a fledgling Access America was born.

Thanks to their prior job experiences, Ted and crew knew what they didn’t want to build. In true Alling form, the founders set two aggressive goals from the outset:

1. Make Access America the best place in America to work.

2. Grow into a $100 million company

Ted learned from his previous job and knew employees would need a reason to come to work past their specific role or responsibility.

Later Ted would say, “I think you kind of need to know where you’re headed in life because if you are just showing up every day and just kind of mechanical and doing your job, you just don’t have much purpose.”

He continued, “There are so many people in corporate America that hate their jobs. They look like zombies walking in the door every day. We wanted to change that. We wanted to have a place where people felt empowered and energized to take on the day. We wanted to hire people that were pumped up and had a zeal for life.”

The founders made it their purpose to let employees bring their whole selves to work at Access.

From the outside, the culture looked more akin to something you’d see at a tech company or startup. Sports teams were formed, musical artists were hosted, and employees were even encouraged to bring their favorite instrument to work to play together at times.

Just like his dad before him, Ted found ways to make serving the humans around him his priority.

The people-first benefits didn’t stop with themed days or sports teams, though. The founders recognized that the employees worked for money, and created ways to make this a unique benefit as well:

For being young founders, Ted, Barry, and Allan held a uniquely wise and long-term view of how they would receive value from the company. In fact, they weren’t even the highest paid employees at Access.

“...Barry, Allan, and I were never the highest paid employees at Access America. It might sound crazy. I’m not sure how many companies in America have C-level employees who aren’t drawing the highest salaries. I’m guessing it isn’t many.”

Rather than taking money for themselves in the short term, they built a foundation that allowed the employees to feel ownership of their workplace. The results speak for themselves.

Scaling Access America

If Ted followed his father in prioritizing people, he also followed the example of doing the unscalable to grow.

“My wife and I used to drive around at truck-stops and I would literally knock on the doors of truck-stops and give them my card and be like, ‘hey man, when you deliver that load, give me a call, I’m going to find you another load’.

And so it was a very grassroots, just kind of raw in the beginning starting the company.”

In every interview I read, Ted is very careful to give ample credit to his cofounders for their contributions to Access America’s success. Rightfully so.

The trio had a unique blend of charisma, operational knowledge, and financial wizardry to generate interest, run efficiently, and make dollars stretch further than normally might. Here’s Ted on the group’s dynamic:

“Barry, Allan and I were lucky that our natural strengths and tendencies in business are completely different. Barry is amazing on the finance side, Allan conquered operations, and I was in charge of rocking sales.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine the company succeeding in the early days without their gregarious CEO spreading the good word of Access America everywhere he went.

There are several stories of how Ted led the growth at Access America by example, so I just decided to include several below:

Cold Calls

“I mean I look back and I would legitimately — I have called customers for seven years straight every month or maybe even every week. But for seven years, I would continue to hammer the phones to try to get in more customers.

Mailers

“I have mailed a shoe to a guy before and I wrote a note like, ‘hey, I’ve got one foot in the door, help me get another foot in the door’.”

Tradeshows

“I’ve done whatever it takes — I mean like we go to tradeshows and people were scared to see us at trade shows because we were like — when I go to tradeshows, we would have people standing in the middle of the aisle so you’d have to walk by us.

We weren’t hiding behind the aisle; we were the most aggressive people on earth. We were straight out just warriors going out and trying to get business. It didn’t matter; whatever it took, we would do it.”

Customer Service

“I had a brutal schedule early on and it’s not like I have really slowed that down that much but we have — we are constantly — whatever a customer needs, we kind of coined a term, one of our top guys at Access America called ‘fast twitch muscle’ … whatever a customer needs whenever, like if you send us a text, you get a text back in two seconds with your answer.

And so we were so much faster than our competition no matter what, we were going to get back to them with an answer even if it was right or not.”

Fast twitch muscle.

I love this idea so much. How often do you hear founders who obsess over their customer’s needs like this? In an era of chasing valuations and raising the next round, Access America zagged their way into building an industry behemoth through gritty work and the fastest customer service in the industry.

Oh, and the second goal of becoming a $100 million business? The company scaled to over $490 million by 2014. Mission accomplished.

The “People First, Profit Later” formula had worked. Later was now.

Selling Access America

By 2014, the founders of Access America had removed themselves slightly from the day to day operation of the company. In their place, they hired a new President named Chad Eichelberger.

According to Ted, Chad inhibited many of the attributes that made the group special.

“‘Speed of the pack is determined by the leader’ is one of my favorite sayings, and Chad is the very definition of it.

Chad does nothing slow. He lives and breathes urgent customer service. If there is a problem with a load, he takes it head on. He always gives customers clear direction on what steps the company will take to fulfill their expectations.

That’s a very different kind of dedication than you see at a lot of companies.

I see so many companies where the boss takes long lunches, comes in after 8 a.m., passes afternoons on the golf course, and spends corporate money inappropriately. That’s not how Chad does things.”

Eichelberger freed the founders up to begin considering what life outside of Access America might look like.

All three felt passionate about supporting founders, giving back to the community that had helped them grow, and continuing to invest in Chattanooga, TN as a startup and supply chain hub.

Their first step came in 2010 when Ted, Barry, and Allan founded a venture incubator called “The Lamp Post Group” to guide aspiring entrepreneurs with financial investment and business advice.

It was an initial step for Ted who had further plans to invest in more companies, develop new ideas, and find ways to give back to the community. He just needed the capital to make it all happen.

Coyote Logistics

Coyote Logistics was a Chicago-based competitor to Access America. On a surface level the companies were as different as can be. Midwest vs. the South. Big city vs small town. Hi-tech vs. customer-centered.

Jeff Silver was willing to dig past the obvious differences to discover the overwhelming similarities the companies shared.

As CEO of Coyote, Silver was well-acquainted with Access America, and had been in competition with the company for several years. He understood the unique culture that Ted and co. had fostered, and saw a unique opportunity to build a behemoth.

In March of 2014, Coyote announced the acquisition of Access America. The merger would form one of the country’s biggest freight and truck management services with sales expected to top $2 billion.

The impact of the acquisition was felt throughout the entire industry. The new combined entity would become a major player in the freight space, and still is to this day.

Other, larger suitors became interested in the Coyote/Access conglomerate, and eventually one decided to buy the company outright.

In July of 2015, just 15 months after Access America sold to Coyote, UPS acquired the company for $1.8 billion. It was the largest acquisition in UPS company history.

Just like that, the company the three friends had spent 12 years building was sold.

With one mission ending, others were just beginning. And now the capital they needed to pursue new goals.

Lamp Post Group

Following the sale, Ted took some time to decompress and reset his goals for the next phase of life post-Access America. The Alling family spent a year abroad for a “sabbatical” of sorts.

Even in taking a step back, Alling relied on his habit of setting goals to ensure the time was well spent.

“I’m about trying to put stuff down and be like ‘okay, this is where I am going to be’. And so I’m actually moving to London here, taking a year’s sabbatical with my family and I am just kind of sort of setting my London goals for myself.

And it’s like people that I want to meet, stuff that I want to do daily, just things that I want to happen in the next year and I know I am going to track that into my life because I’m putting it down on paper and it’s going to become real.”

Ted wasn’t going to be idle for long.

The Allings returned from the year abroad with a new enthusiasm for building up the city that fostered Access America’s growth: Chattanooga, TN.

The first recipient of Ted’s energy would be the incubator he and his partners had founded back in 2010. Since its founding the Lamp Post Group had continued to grow its reputation for investing in startups in the southeast.

During the life of the fund, Lamp Post Group companies included Reliance Partners (still active), 6am City (still active), The House (acquired), Supply Hog (acquired), Ambition (still active), and most famously - Bellhop.

What began as a way to re-invest in the community became a new passion. Ted and his crew found real satisfaction in helping the next generation of entrepreneurs find their footing in the marketplace.

The next step would be finding a way to match their energy for startups with their unique understanding of the freight industry. A dynamo of energy was brewing.

Dynamo Ventures

By 2016, life was beginning to normalize for the Allings.

Access America was sold. Coyote had sold to UPS. Lamp Post Group was running and founders were succeeding. The family’s sabbatical to the UK had been a success.

Now it was time to get refocused.

Ted and the crew wanted to combine their unique understanding of the freight markets with their high enthusiasm for supporting startup founders. Through a number of conversations with colleagues like Jon Bradford and Gary Vaynerchuk, Ted became convinced that he needed to start a new fund that was laser focused on investing in supply chain founders.

The result is Dynamo Ventures.

Before this, Ted had recruited a young finance executive named Santosh Sankar to leave his investment banking career behind him and move to Chattanooga. Sankar took a gamble on the burgeoning startup culture and dove in head-first.

Two years later, Dynamo was ready to launch.

As Ted would say, “Boom, baby.”

The pair would partner with Alling’s previous co-founders Barry and Allan to launch the industry’s foremost venture seed fund focused on the Supply Chain space.

Alling and crew offered unique culture and operational insight to the founders building the next wave of tech for the industry.

Since its founding, Dynamo has made over 65 investments and deployed over $18 million of capital. The firm has seen several exits in addition to investing in some of the leading brands in the space right now, including: Plus One Robotics, Stord, Gatik, Seeva, and more.

The unique combination of industry and entrepreneurship allowed Ted to scratch multiple itches while beginning to give back to the community that supported him. Together with some of the founders they’d previously funded, Alling and crew would go on to launch a third VC firm called “Brickyard.” Yet another opportunity to make Chattanooga a special startup hub.

But it wasn’t enough. Ted and his wife Kelly faced their biggest challenge yet.

It was time to go back to school.

Giving Back: Chattanooga Prep

Kelly Alling has long been a part of the philanthropic community in Chattanooga. Kelly was once the resource manager for Habitat for Humanity.

It comes as no surprise that philanthropy became another pursuit for the Allings following the Access America exit.

When Ted and Kelly toured the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy, an all girls public charter school, they became impressed with the desire to open a sibling organization for boys.

In classic Alling fashion, the couple set aggressive goals once they committed to the concept.

“You have to set goals so high that other people laugh… Kelly and I have always been goal-oriented in business and with the school.”

The Allings left no stone unturned as they pursued the new vision. Ted and Kelly traveled across the country to visit similar educational concepts and began building partnerships with business leaders who would pour into the students.

In August of 2018, their dream became a reality as Chattanooga Prep welcomed its first students into the hallways.

Once again, Ted relied on his entrepreneurial instincts to lead a team in building an overwhelming idea,

“Working together, we lean on each other just like a startup,” says Alling. “You want co-founders with complementary skills. I’m good in certain areas, and Kelly is very good in others. I’m a good dreamer, and she’s great at making things happen and executing.”

The Allings approached the school like they would a business venture. They’ve thought specifically about each part of the product, and incorporated unique experiences for the students.

Chattanooga Prep students (or Prepsters) have experienced talks and interactions with business and media icons like Peyton Manning, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jimmy and Dee Haslem and others.

The goal? To show the students what is possible.

The school is an entrepreneurial miracle in many ways. Just by existing the Allings have proven what is possible. Chatt Prep educates over 300 students, adds an additional grade each year, and is now getting a brother school in Knoxville, “Knox Prep.”

It all leads back to demonstrating what's possible for the kids.

Conclusion: Strive for Greatness

Ted’s desire for his students is the same desire he holds for himself, his family, his companies, and anyone else he comes in contact with: maximize your potential.

From setting goals as a child, to taking pride in how clean he could keep the gas station bathroom where he worked - Alling is a case study of getting the most out of any situation.

His public persona seems to match who he is on a daily basis. The kind and energetic leader who quickly turns into a cheerleader for anyone who carries the positive energy he holds inside.

Personally, I’m forever grateful for him answering a cold email from a young professional with nothing to offer except ambition and a good attitude.

Thanks for reading! If you found this valuable, consider subscribing and sharing it with a friend 😊 

Bibliography note: To receive the sources cited in this profile, please respond to this email with “bibliography.” I’ll happily send you the full list.