LEADERSHIP
Many pieces go into enabling this. We place a big focus on the overall health and wellness of our employee population. We want to know that we’re providing the right bene t plans, the right support, the right employee assistance programs, and the right tools. Within the leadership team, we’ve had a lot of conversations about these issues. We’re translating them into action plans that we’re executing as we head into 2026. We also have robust and ever-evolving training programs, safety monitoring systems, and high levels of supervisor and trainer engagement. IL: What new skills are you learning? In my previous life, I was on the operations side of a food manufacturer, where you’re always looking at cutting costs. You look at what you’re buying, who you’re buying it from, and ways to drive ef ciency. I was good at that and it would have been easy to continue that path, but I wanted more. At YMX, we’re building a logistics company. Everyone in the organization is driving the top line, interacting with customers and asking, ‘How do we attract new potential business?’ A big part of what we do today is designed to impact the top line as much as the bottom line. It has been an exciting change. IL: What’s a typical day like? There’s no typical day, but there are two activities that are some of the favorite parts of my job. One is visiting customer operations. I see a variety of industries and facility types, from those that are heavily automated to those that are incredibly manual. I see a huge variety in how things are made and different applications of technology, and I love every bit of it. I also love interacting with our drivers, especially when we do operations startups. I love that rush of energy and introducing new drivers to YMX, while also letting them know how excited we are that they’re part of this. Breaking the Rules “The pandemic was horrible for most of us,” says Erin Mitchell, COO of YMX Logistics. “But the transportation and logistics sectors also learned some important lessons. “We had to compromise on dierent ways of shipping or managing supplier relationships. We broke ‘rules’ and we were fine. The pandemic made us challenge those barriers in a good way. “We also learned to leverage technology better and faster. Again, it was rule breaking, but for the greater good; and we found out most of those rules really didn’t matter. “While the pandemic did have some positive outcomes, it wasn’t worth the cost of admission,” Mitchell adds.
When we combine that with data, it becomes easier to engage in continuous improvement discussions. Drivers often notice changes in yard volume or mix and will let us know how they can make a change to improve the ow of an operation. Rather than waiting for the customer to come to us with a problem—or worse, never hearing about the problem—we engage and let customers know how we can enhance operations. IL: How do you keep your team motivated? It’s easy to keep people motivated and challenged in a high- growth organization. We go out of our way to look for drivers who are motivated professionals and take pride in what they do. Then, we try to ensure we provide opportunities to keep them engaged and growing. We place quite a few drivers on training or deployment teams and give them the chance to be part of continuous improvement initiatives. We use their feedback as we develop our training, as well as our operating and technology systems. Our focus on customer satisfaction and employee engagement is different than some competitors. While we do face challenges getting candidates in some markets and do a lot of work in driver recruitment in those areas, our retention numbers are higher than the industry average. IL: How would you describe your leadership style? I’ve been blessed with some good managers and mentors. The most impactful ones followed the servant leadership model. I’ve tried to replicate the way I lead, and even the way I parent, from this model. I aim to be transparent and candid with employees, making sure that I communicate the vision and strategy of the organization. Then, I build capable and con dent teams, give them the tools they need, and work together to remove any barriers that could prevent us from getting to our goals. It’s a simpli ed way of leading, but it’s effective in this high- growth environment. IL: What challenges keep you up at night? Safety, especially in the trucking industry, is always huge. We want everyone to get home every night in the same condition in which they went to work that morning.
September 2025 • Inbound Logistics 11
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