2026 Dynamic Dozen No. 1: Good Company

SBJ: What are the keys to the growth you’ve experienced in recent years?
Chad Carleton: We have been a 100% referral-based business. We’ve never marketed a dollar, and that’s been the credit to, I think, goodwill that we’ve built amongst our clients. They’re the ones that are really spreading the gospel. We wouldn’t have been able to impress them without the really hard work of a very dedicated team, many of whom have remained with me since day one.

SBJ: Talk about the idea behind the company and how it got started. What was the need that you saw that you could fulfill?
Carleton: E-commerce saw a pretty significant boom through the COVID years, and my background was in e-commerce. I maintain a pretty big peer group of e-commerce operators. What was clear was there was no direct-to-consumer e-commerce focused (third-party logistics company) that really had its north star as a happy recipient. If we can align our interests with our clients ... what can we do on their behalf to understand not just the nuances of their business, but how they make decisions and what’s important to them to produce a happy recipient, if we can make that our north star, then I think our incentives are always aligned, which gives us a great deal of autonomy. That was a thesis at the beginning, but I think here five years later, that’s played out to be true.

SBJ: How has being located in this region hurt you or hindered you? Why have you continued to stay here?
Carleton: There is no disadvantage for being located in southwest Missouri. We are 30 minutes away from the dead center of the continental United States. That makes [our] shipping zone – there are eight shipping zones that looks like an onion springing out from your origin – the most advantageous place in the entire United States to ship from. It also means that our time in transit for the East to the West Coast is almost identical. Now add to that our cost of living is very reasonable. The cost of real estate and overhead, by comparison to the major metropolitans where most of our peers are located, is very, very competitive. Also, we have a great, hardworking workforce. So, if I’m honest, it kind of feels like we’ve got it easy out here.

SBJ: How do you track the pace of growth that you can sustain?
Carleton: All the credit for that goes to my counterpart, Miranda Stamps. She’s our COO. I am the what and why, and she is the how and when. When you’re running a very aggressive race, the fastest way to take corners is to use your brakes as much as possible. And she breaks us at the most intelligent intervals. That doesn’t mean that she’s not in this to see us get the fastest lap time. I think it’s just the combination between how can we speed up when the timing is right and not just stay on the gas all the time.

SBJ: You’re just five years in, so presumably there’s more growth ahead. Do you see an expansion of your physical presence?
Carleton: We’re looking at closing on a facility in the next 30 days, but I’ve got to wait to announce that formally.

SBJ: What do you see as the biggest threats to the industry or to your company, and how do you mitigate those?
Carleton: The No. 1 threat is brands believing that the only way to create a happy recipient is for them to do fulfillment themselves and to stop believing that a 3PL out there can really give them enough TLC and dedicated attention that they can deliver a package to their customer exactly the way that they wish they could have done it. To me, the 3PL industry is over $1 trillion in size. Hub and spoke redistribution is as old as trade itself. So, I have very little concern about our industry at large; my chief concern is that brands just think they can’t hire a 3PL who would act on their behalf.

SBJ: What motivates you?
Carleton: Watching our people become fulfilled themselves. There’s no higher honor than watching people who started with you at minimum wage ... their wages start to get close to six figures, or they buy a house or have children, get themselves out of debt. These are very, very deserving people who are really given nothing more than an opportunity and they took advantage of it to the benefit of everybody involved.

SBJ: You’ve exceeded 100% growth every year since the company’s founding. Are you still on that same clip right now?
Carleton: Yes.

SBJ: And are you anticipating that in the years ahead?
Carleton: Oh, man. Part of me is like, I hope not because this has been breakneck speed. [Laughs] I think what we’re doing has demonstrated itself to be the right thing. And we’re not going to stop doing that. I also think it’s the thing that’s gotten us new clients. So, my anticipation is that we continue to grow intelligently, but quickly.

SBJ: What’s the worst business advice you’ve received?
Carleton: Do everything you can to eliminate people from the equation. People are really the ones that make this business work. When you think about the most innovative fulfillment centers out there, they’re usually full of robots. Some of them don’t even have the lights on because there are no humans inside. I don’t believe that that’s the future of this industry. It used to be in e-commerce, just getting a brown box at your door was like, “Oh my gosh, can you believe I never left my couch and then here’s this thing on my door?” Now, everybody has a brown box on their door every day when they get home. I think that the pendulum of differentiation has swung back the other way where it’s like, “How can we be more than just a brown box at someone’s door?” When you’re trying to create the human-to-human connection, I don’t think that you can ask a robot to do that. I think it still requires people, and those are the types of brands that we work with.