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Sweet Express owner Damir Vidinlic, right, has relied on a strong support team – including Kemal Hamulic, left – and acquisitions of other companies to help grow his trucking business despite the economy and his unfamiliarity with the industry. PHOTO: JOE BOOMGAARD

By Joe Boomgaard | MSS
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GRAND RAPIDS – The adversity and constant struggles of owning a business pales in comparison to what Damir Vidinlic experienced in his native Bosnia. But by honing in on and doggedly pursuing his goals, he’s been able to not only move beyond the horrific past his family endured, but also start Sweet Express, a successful transportation business that employs dozens of people in West Michigan, many of them with stories like his.

Vidinlic grew up in a successful family in a small Bosnia village, graduated high school and attended Belgrade University. His father, an executive at a local company, made good money and the family had three cars, a nice home and computers. But around 1992, the situation in the former Yugoslavia turned upside down.

“Over night, we had to leave everything and run away,” Vidinlic told Main Street Strategies.

Fourteen years ago, Vidinlic and his family fled the war and, through the help of Catholic Human Development Outreach, came as refugees to West Michigan and were given an apartment and food stamps. His parents, unable to speak good English, couldn’t find any professional work in the region and had to take warehouse jobs at minimum wage just to bring in income to support the family. Vidinlic got a job washing dishes at Fudruckers and tried going to school at Grand Rapids Community College and Grand Valley State University, even though he struggled with the language barrier.

“At that point, if I had to go to work in a factory, I realized that I would not let my parents do that for the rest of their lives,” he said.

While he couldn’t speak the language of words with his peers and teachers, he could communicate with numbers, so he took to math and physics courses, eventually settling on an engineering program. After graduation, he was hired in as one of the youngest engineers at Magna, where he designed the manufacturing process for an outside mirror for BMW.

Taking the plunge

Vidinlic said he was happy with the work, but he began to feel the lure of entrepreneurism. Since he was a youngster, he had wanted to start his own business, but the realities of the war and being exiled from his home tamped down those dreams. They were lessened but not gone, he said.

When his brother joined the family in West Michigan around 2000, he approached Vidinlic with a proposition to start a trucking company in Grand Rapids. The brother worked as an independent contractor for a trucking outfit in Chicago, but like most other drivers in this area, had to run empty to Chicago at his own cost. It was unpopular with the drivers and cost them money, so they thought they could start a new company to help get drivers loads closer to home so they weren’t losing money by running empty.

His parents were skeptical, but the brothers set about starting Sweet Express. Since Vidinlic worked second shift, he was able to handle the dispatch at the beginning of the day and route the one truck they bought. With $1,000 to his name and no knowledge of the logistics industry, he started the company.

“I didn’t know anything about trucking – I was thrown into the snake pit,” he said.

“On the second day, my brother got into an accident in our only (truck). We had no trucks on our second day of business. It was definitely extremely hard to do this.”

That was in October 2002. By the next May, Sweet Express had 15 trucks. Today, the company has about 150 trucks and employs about 30 people at its headquarters plus another 40-50 company drivers, in addition to the independent contractors the company works with.

But that rise certainly wasn’t easy. Although not often recognized, West Michigan has a handful of sizeable, long-term trucking companies that had the most lucrative contracts.

“For you to come here and start a company, you’ll be shut down in a couple of months,” he said friends in the trucking industry told him. “We got no respect (being a startup) and we’re also foreigners.”

Building a base

Slowly, the company focused on building relationships with other companies and freight brokers, and it began to attract drivers because of the open-door management style Vidinlic instituted. However, growing relationships only got Sweet Express so far. With so many legacy companies in the area, it was tough for Vidinlic to break into some big contracts, so he knew that he had to grow by acquisition. They now haul for major regional manufacturers, as well as local retailers thanks to the books of business that they acquired.

“They never see an open door,” he said, looking up from some paperwork as a driver stepped into his office during the interview, as if on cue. “Drivers are not used to talking to the owner, but I’m not ashamed to talk to drivers.”

The result has been an extremely low rate of employee turnover. Those who do leave often go on to start up their own small businesses, likely with the help of Vidinlic and his management team. It’s a form of paying forward the help he received.

“The biggest help has been the employees, family and a few friends that helped me start this who were in this business already,” he said. “They didn’t see me as a threat and they wanted to help me. We’ve probably helped to open 10 other companies.”

Vidinlic also looks to provide opportunities to other immigrants and minorities. Conversations at the company’s offices are as likely to take place in Bosnia, German or French as English. He said what matters is doing good work, not where people come from. As the son of a “mixed marriage” – his father is Muslim and his mother is a Russian Orthodox Catholic – he’s faced discrimination in his homeland and even among the ethnic community in West Michigan.

“I don’t divide people by color or religion; I don’t care (if they’re) black or white,” he said.

Invest to survive

The business was literally trucking along until late 2008 and early 2009 when the economy crashed. The company’s cash had dwindled as demand dried up and manufacturers halted production. Adversity had again reared its head, and Vidinlic knew he had to gamble.

“We were at the point where we could make a change. I sat down and tried to figure out what we were doing wrong,” he said, realizing that the company’s weak spot was dispatching. “So I started negotiating with another company that had two dispatchers that were good. I wanted to bring in new blood.”

He poured virtually the last of the cash into a $40,000 software program that would connect dispatches to billing and make the company more efficient. “If it goes, it goes,” he said he told his employees at the time. Vidinlic also shifted from virtually all West Coast runs to more on the East Coast.

While drivers didn’t make as much – and a couple of them left because of the decision – the company was able to pull in more revenue and stay alive, acquiring a rival company in May and another in June of 2009.

“Our last two months have been our best ever in sales, although the profits still aren’t where they should be,” Vidinlic said. “Unless the right opportunity arises, right now, we’re looking to buy more equipment.”

Perhaps because he didn’t really know much about the industry, Vidinlic had a laser-like emphasis on customer service. If a driver screwed up, he’d call and explain. He says they didn’t get a foot into some customers by cutting rates like other companies. Instead, if a company used Sweet Express, he’d make every effort possible to ensure that the experience was favorable to ensure repeat business.

“When we get the chance to do one load, we have to do the best we can,” he said. “It’s consistency, being more personal.”

Still, Vidinlic’s unfamiliarity with the industry led to some costly mistakes along the way. He said he didn’t know about the requirements for the federal DOT rating system until he was hit for noncompliance, and because of that, he’s been forced to operate with a conditional rating for the last three years, a mistake that’s cost him a quarter of a million dollars in business, he said. The company has been working with the agency to get a satisfactory rating, and he believes it could come this year.

As he continues to learn the industry and develop those relationships, Vidinlic continues to pour himself into his business. Since he started Sweet Express, he’s only taken about 10 days of vacation. Mostly, that’s attributable to his dedication to the company, he said, but it’s also partly because he wants to keep repaying his parents for their great sacrifices for him and his brother.

“(When I started the company), I wanted to be able to go and give my parents an account number and say, ‘You’re all set.’ Five years ago, I asked my parents to quit work, and at first they wouldn’t do it, but they finally did. Now they come here for four or five months of the year, stay in Europe for four or five months, and vacation the rest of the year,” he said. “They’re extremely modest.” MSS

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• damir vidinlic
• grand rapids
• small business
• sweet express