I got into transportation and logistics 20-plus years ago when a family friend reached out to me. (I had just wrapped up more than a decade with the IRS, so I wasn’t used to getting invited out to lunch all that often.) His business was growing, and he was feeling anxious that he had a lot of questions and not all the answers. He thought he needed a little more firepower in the accounting room, so he started to pick my brain. 

Transportation and logistics became my niche. I’ve worked with companies that are more heavily into the transportation side (the company owns the asset) and companies that are more heavily into the logistics side (non-asset base, brokerage operation). I’ve also run a $127- million logistics division of a large company, so I’ve seen the industry from multiple perspectives. 

It’s a complicated accounting model. There are a lot of moving parts, literally. You've got fuel, driver wages, got repairs on the road. It can be an accounting nightmare with all the operations people that need access to cash (unless you want a call in the middle of the night because someone’s truck broke down). You have to relinquish some control – and control what you can.