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The Logistics Company Announces New President

The Logistics Company, Inc. (TLC) is proud to announce that General (Retired) Dan McNeill will join the company as President on March 21, 2011.  He succeeds Mr. Larry Walsh, who remains the Chairman of the Board.

General McNeill, a North Carolina native, retired from the Army in 2008 and returned home to Fayetteville.  He has a long and distinguished record of service and has strong ties to Fort Bragg and the Fayetteville community, with key assignments as the Commanding General, 82nd Airborne Division, as well as the Commanding General, XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg.  General McNeill served as the Commanding General, United States Army Forces Command, at Fort McPherson, Georgia, before his final overseas assignment as the Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in Afghanistan.  He is a highly decorated senior Army leader with combat experience in Vietnam, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Logistics Company welcomes General McNeill to our team and looks forward to moving into the future under his leadership as our company President.

Chamber honors Walsh

When Larry Walsh co-founded The Logistics Company in 1996, he and his 11 employees worked out of an office with just four rooms.

Fifteen years later, Walsh — whose company was honored Friday as the Business of the Year — will soon move with more than 200 employees into a $8 million office park off Andrews Road.

The award was announced at the end of the Fayetteville-Cumberland County Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquet at the Crown Coliseum.

Other finalists were K3 Enterprises and Moore Exposure.

More than 360 business leaders attended the event, which returned to a nighttime format for the first time in two years.
Walsh, whose company was a finalist for the award last year, credited his company’s success to his employees, his business partners and the chamber, which for two years helped scout locations for Patriot Park, the mixed-used complex that The Logistics Company will anchor.

“I’m humbled and surprised,” Walsh said following his receipt of the award and the standing ovation that came with it.
A retired warrant officer who spent the bulk of his Army career at Fort Bragg, Walsh said his company’s goal has always been to give back to the military and the surrounding community.

With branches in Virginia and Georgia, Walsh said the more than 1,000 employees total that work for The Logistics Company are roughly 60 percent retired military.

The company, which works with the Department of Defense, other government agencies and private industry, has benefited from growth in the defense sector, despite a rough economy, and has been named one of the nation’s 5,000 fastest growing companies twice in recent years.

The Logistics Company, Inc Moves to new Headquarters in Patriot Park Office Center

The Logistics Company, Inc. (TLC) has moved their corporate headquarters from 6200 Ramsey Street to a new office building in Patriot Park off Andrews Road.  Development of the new office park began in 2009 and the initial office building was completed in March 2011. TLC moved to the new location on March 18th and TLC’s new address is 3400 Walsh Parkway, Fayetteville, NC 28311.
The move to the new facility is an important step in the company’s overall growth strategy. This is an exciting move for TLC and one that is good for employees and our business.

Event honors local entrepreneurs

Lawrence “Larry” Walsh

The way Jeff Saut sees it, the stock market is like a spring.

“You can only push down so far before you get a — boing — bounce back,” said Saut, chief investment strategist and managing director of equity research for Raymond James.

He spoke Tuesday night at the 32nd annual Stock Market Symposium, which was organized by the Center for Entrepreneurship at Methodist University and held at Fayetteville’s Doubletree Hotel.

It was an event where even the prayer before dinner touched on the fact that investment portfolios held by many — if not most — in the room aren’t worth what they were during the 31st annual symposium.

So has the market hit the bottom?

“It’s too soon to tell,” Saut told a room full of business movers and shakers from Cumberland and surrounding counties.

But his theme for the evening centered around his conclusion that while there still are likely to be some periods of weak growth yet ahead, “We’ve probably seen the worst of it.”

Job loss numbers are going to look worse in the future, Saut said, adding that those are backward-looking indicators.

But housing affordability and interest rates are just some of the positive signs of recovery, he said.

“The time to be bearish and cautious was a year ago,” Saut said.

Four key awards were also presented during the evening.

And if the winners had one theme for their acceptance speeches, it was giving credit to their employees.

Here are this year’s award winners, with biographical information primarily pulled from their citations:

Lawrence “Larry” Walsh received the Silver Spoon Award, which is presented to individuals who “although not born to wealth and status, have distinguished themselves by significant economic achievement and accomplishment.”

Before retiring from the Army in 1997, Walsh worked logistics and received the Bronze Star for organizing the Logistical Support Base for his battalion during Operation Desert Storm.

With a fellow retired Army warrant officer, Ben Sweatland, Walsh founded The Logistics Company Inc. (TLC), which opened with 11 employees and one contract worth $235,000 and grew quickly from there.

Working on government and civilian contracts, the company now employs more than 1,000 people at locations across the country and abroad. In 2008, Inc. magazine listed TLC’s revenues in 2007 at $69.9 million and ranked TLC as the 10th fastest-growing logistics company in the United States.

A new headquarters for The Logistics Co. is planned for Patriot Park, a mixed-used development on Andrews Road approved for rezoning this month by the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners.

Dr. Ernest J. Goodson received the Small Business Excellence award.

After completing a one-year fellowship in dental surgery at the University of London, Goodson worked as a public health dentist in nine counties of eastern North Carolina; completed his residency at the University of California; and has been practicing orthodontics in Fayetteville since 1986.

For 13 years he has been volunteering his services at the CARE Clinic of Fayetteville, which provides free medical and dental care for uninsured, low-income adults in Cumberland County. He has volunteered as a coach and has for years tutored elementary and middle school students.

Working with the Caring 7, he has fed and supported the homeless at Thanksgiving and Christmas for 10 years and when his wife, Judge Patricia Timmons-Goodson, was campaigning for the North Carolina Supreme Court, he served as an advisor and strategist.

Rena McLaurin was named Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur of the Year

She is co-owner and one of two marketing directors for the AmeriSpec Home Inspection Service, which her husband, Arnold McLaurin, purchased in 1995.

That business started in Fayetteville and has since expanded to include two other locations in North Carolina and two locations in South Carolina.

In 2007, the McLaurins were recognized for achieving the highest gross revenue of any small-market franchise owner, not only in North Carolina, but also in all of North America, and were recently honored for being AmeriSpec’s sixth in the nation in terms of 2008 revenue.

McLaurin is vice president of the Hope Mills Area Chamber of Commerce, and has served on its board; serves on the Hoke County Housing Coalition for Fair and Equitable Housing; and has volunteered in several capacities including helping to develop the “Love Lunch Program” in Hope Mills.

Robert “Bob” Smith, Jr. received the American Business Ethics Award.

Smith worked his way up through the ranks at Monroe Systems for Business, eventually landing in Fayetteville in 1974 to become the local branch manager. When the owner began downsizing and consolidating locations, Smith got to work on new opportunities that led to Copiers Plus, making it an authorized dealer with Mita Copystar America.

With some former employees beside him, Smith and his wife, Jackie, opened a small office on Ramsey Street.

By 1988, Smith’s son, Tim, and his daughter, Leslie, were part of the team. By 2000, the business was flourishing and the team moved to a new 8,000-square-foot facility on Chicago Drive. In the same month, a second location opened in Raleigh. Later, Smith purchased a dealership in Wilmington and opened a branch in Greensboro.

Copiers Plus now employs 35 people and has furnished copiers to several local nonprofit organizations.

Staff writer Rebecca Logan can be reached at loganr@fayobserver.com or 486-3582.

Home-grown defense firm fast becoming a big player
[The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.]