Profile: Kam-Way Transportation
REFLECTIONS ON TRUCKING: Kam Sihota reflects on his trucking brokerage and fleet that operates from Mexico to Canada, and that is growing like wildfire. (Photo by Steve Hortegas)
Roaring along in a fast lane Riches to rags and back again—a story of vision and overcoming business naivete to success with family, friends, and customers By Steve Hortegas
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am Sihota took his first ride in a big-wheel truck a month after he was born in Fresno, Calif. Just 28 years later he founded Kam-Way Transportation, where he serves as CEO overseeing a fleet of trucks and trailers out of headquarters along Drayton Harbor in Blaine. Kam-Way operates as a freight brokerage. Within five years of start-up, Sihota had hired 35 employees and had grown his business to $34 million a year in sales by matching up shipping firms with bluechip companies providing produce, foods, and beverage. Kam-Way has carried 54,500 36 | BUSINESSPULSE.COM
loads, and developed a network of 4,500 different carriers, in addition to its own six trucks and 17 trailers. The business has expanded wherever the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) applies—from the northern Rockies to Mexico—and opened regional offices in Sunnyside, Wash., and in two California locations, Fresno and San Diego. All the while, the company has grown at an average rate of 33 percent a year. Sihota is a man who went from riches to rags, and back again, according to the firm’s chief financial officer, Steve Pannu, the former director of finances for Mark Anthony
Group that owns Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Sihota’s dad, Charlie, and Uncle Paul Sihota had a 400truck transportation fleet in Fresno. By the age of eight, while other kids played baseball and hung out, Kam Sihota was hanging out in the family’s truck yard, revving up refrigeration units to see how cold they would get. By age 12, he was driving trucks around the yard, and at 19 his father called him home from college to work full-time. He gave his son the business the following year. “I knew how to sell and keep drivers going,” Kam Sihota said, “but I didn’t know about Business 101 issues.”