Then & Now: Eric Wolfe’s career defined by startups

Eric Wolfe’s career is defined by successfully launching four third-party logistics companies. The veteran executive of supply chain and logistics credits those successes to “great teams and a great market environment.”

“To see something develop, and the excitement and energy that needs to be put into a startup — and you’re going against the odds to get one of these things off the ground and make it work and doing that and repeating it — is fulfilling and exciting,” Wolfe said.

Under his leadership as president of Springdale-based Watco Logistics, the company now accounts for one-third of the consolidated revenue of parent company, Kansas-based transportation group Watco Companies LLC, Wolfe said.

“We deliver 70,000 final-mile packages a day, while delivering transformers weighing in excess of 900,000 pounds through our Houston-based holding Colossal — and everything in between. This includes truckloads of all sorts, managing rail private fleets and intermodal, international boxes and 3.5 million tons of barge freight on the inland riverways annually through our Midship logistics holding,” he said.

Wolfe plans for Watco Logistics to become a billion-dollar business unit by the end of 2028, while “maintaining above-market profitability and ensuring we’re responsive to rapidly changing customer needs.”

Asked in a recent interview about challenges, Wolfe cited the “rapid changes in tariff policy. The impact on reshaping global supply chains is both a challenge and an opportunity,” he said. “You try to keep the company aware of what’s happening, focused on providing optionality and trying to anticipate some of these significant changes in supply routes or supply chains.” Wolfe deals with the challenges by “listening to your customers and making decisions accordingly.”

A Missouri native, Wolfe’s career began in 1988 at J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. in Lowell during his senior year at the University of Arkansas. After graduating, he was part of launching J.B. Hunt Logistics in 1992 and named vice president of operations in 1994. Three years later he helped start Cardinal Logistics Management. The Lowell office became the biggest managed transportation office in the company, with $100 million in revenue. That business became Clicklogistics, and Wolfe became COO in 2002.

Then Wolfe was named vice president of BNSF Logistics, a subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., and helped guide that company through rapid growth and acquisitions, becoming COO in 2011.

In 2004 he was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class. In 2014 Wolfe headed up his fourth startup as president of Watco Logistics.

Wolfe advises young professionals to “pay attention to details early in your career and throughout your career,” he said. “Ensure that the team pays attention to the small things because that drives excellence. It’s the detail of calling that customer back at nine o’clock at night or going the extra mile on finding the third carrier that has fallen off a load on a holiday weekend. It’s those kind of details you can’t gloss over.”

Wolfe tries to “be consistent, fair, push hard, demand excellence, but also always be a people person at heart.” He learned “a long time ago to put a velvet glove over an iron fist.”

For the future, Wolfe sees “a lot of innovation. Of course, the overused words are AI, but it will have an impact,” he said. “There’s an unprecedented level of technology investment and global change — so things like autonomous trucks, things like AI automating and learning on how to improve operations and flows.

Then there’s the Amazon effect that was only enhanced by the pandemic, where when customers place an e-commerce order, not very often are they selecting the slowest, cheapest option to get there. It’s pushing for same-day, drone deliveries — deliveries within six hours. And how you stock to that, and place inventory and create micro-fulfillment centers to meet demand and try to do that profitably — that’s a unique, rapidly changing environment that’s got all kinds of opportunities.”

On the University of Arkansas’ Mack-Blackwell Transportation Center advisory board, Wolfe is a season ticketholder for most of the university’s sports teams. Empty nesters, Wolfe and his wife enjoy their farm in Missouri.