We interviewed Todd Fain, Transportation Impact’s VP of Freight Services, on some of the supply chain trends he discussed at the 2016 edition of the North American Supply Chain Executive Summit.

Transportation Impact, a 4-time Inc. 5000 company, comes from humble beginnings. In 2008, Keith Byrd and Travis Burt, both then senior-level managers at UPS, left the world’s largest shipping company after nearly two decades, respectively, to launch their own start-up with the mission of providing clients with the most competitive small package contracts in the country.

Then, the company’s original headquarters was nothing more than a table and chairs in the 10×20 storage closet of an Emerald Isle, N.C., surf shop Byrd co-owned. The founding partners leveraged their experience to grow the company door-to-door and, eventually, the word began to spread about the spend management firm based in a coastal vacation town along the southernmost part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

As the company grew, its team expanded to include other former senior managers from various carriers, all of whom brought their own experience from a variety of parcel, and later freight, shipping backgrounds. Through their extensive carrier experience and the development of an effective negotiation process, Transportation Impact has achieved sustained growth by driving measurable results to its clients’ bottom-lines. Today, the company employs a team of more than 50, with more than 200 years of combined carrier experience, leveraging its industry savvy to drive down clients’ net annual parcel, LTL and TL spends by an average of more than 20 percent.

By staying true to its core values of work ethic, professionalism, perfection, integrity and passion, Transportation Impact has developed a strong presence in its community and is among the fastest-growing businesses in the country.