Entrepreneur Has Eye on Success, Not Succession
Alex Uribe has overcome grinding poverty, the INS and cutthroat competition to become a millionaire entrepreneur. Uribe owns Alex Moving & Storage in Santa Ana, the largest independent truck fleet for North American Van Lines Inc. in California and the eighth-biggest in the country.
But like most entrepreneurs--and particularly Latinos--Uribe, 43, has made no real succession plans. That flaw in Uribe’s operation almost brought down his company. Last year, a heart attack nearly killed him, and productivity and profitability plummeted during his absence.
Without Uribe, who built his company by putting in nearly 100-hour weeks--doing everything from dispatching drivers to interviewing potential hires and planning sales strategies--Alex Moving & Storage was nearly wiped out.
Although he now talks vaguely about grooming one of his sons to run the business, the three now working for him all drive trucks and are nowhere near ready to take over, he said. If something were to happen to him, Uribe’s wife, Christine, probably would have to sell the company.
Long-range planning is an afterthought among the vast majority of small businesses. Only about 30% of white-owned small businesses have developed plans for the future of their company, said Charles Hofer, a University of Georgia professor of entrepreneurship. But Latinos trail other ethnic groups. About 15% of African American entrepreneurs have compiled succession and estate plans, while roughly 25% of Asian American small-business owners have done so, Hofer said.
For a variety of reasons, though, Latinos lag most other groups. “I’d be surprised if 10 Latino entrepreneurs out of 100 have done any succession planning,” said Jaime Hernandez, president of Jardez Financial and Insurance Services Inc. in Burbank and a succession expert. “They are working so hard to build their business that they sometimes overlook certain things.”
Baylor University business professor Duane Ireland said Latinos have lower rates of succession planning because many are first-generation Americans and “lack an awareness about the array of issues that one must pay attention to be a successful entrepreneur both today and in the future,” he said. That should change as Latinos gain more small-business experience, he added.
Uribe’s most pressing concern these days isn’t finding a replacement for himself. It’s growing his business without ruining his health. To alleviate stress, he has reduced his work week to 65 hours, no small feat for a workaholic like him.
“His nickname was ‘The Rabbit’ because he never stopped jumping around doing things,” said Dick Schmitz, a former trucking executive who has known Uribe since the mid-1980s. “He worked hard at everything.”
Founded a decade ago on little more than drive and ambition, Alex Moving & Storage today has 115 employees and 100 trucks, and last year generated sales of $8.5 million, up 31% from 1997.
The company’s customers include UCLA, Bank of America and Orange County. In addition to winning blue-chip clients, Uribe has garnered awards. He was named a finalist for the 1999 Small Business Administration Person of the Year in the Santa Ana district, and North American has honored him for his company’s safety record, rate of growth and service.
Perhaps Alex Moving & Storage’s best weapon in its quest for a larger slice of the $10-billion moving and storage market is Uribe himself.
Wandering around his company’s new 110,000-square-foot facility, Uribe glances at his growing fleet of blue-and-white trucks and smiles. He banters in Spanish with a group of workers gathered around the loading docks, his thick gold chains glistening in the sunlight.
He points out three palm trees swaying in the breeze at the company entrance, a stark contrast to the oil-splattered asphalt, low-slung offices and musty warehouse surrounding him.
Entrepreneurs everywhere will their way to success, making huge personal sacrifices along the way. But Uribe has come further than most.
He was born in the hardscrabble Mexican town of Colipa in the state of Veracruz. The second of eight children, he grew up in houses with no running water or indoor plumbing. At 12, he ran away from home and ended up in Martinez de la Torre, where he worked in television repair shops for a few years before saving enough to open his own store.
By 24, Uribe fathered four children with four different women. “I had no goals,” he said. “It was party time, and I was going nowhere.”
So Uribe headed north, making his way to the San Diego area with only $20 in his pocket. Communicating with the aid of a Spanish-English dictionary, he found work on a horse farm. A few years later, Uribe landed his first trucking gig. He worked his way up from lowly assistant to general manager within a year. Then in 1984, he went solo. Uribe bought a truck with his savings and began working as a moving and storage subcontractor in San Diego. His nascent business thrived for awhile. Then the Immigration and Naturalization Service caught up with him.
Acting on what Uribe believes was a tip from a jealous former colleague, the agency sent him a letter ordering him to appear in court. A judge gave him six months to “figure out how I was going to get my papers,” Uribe said. His solution: he married his American girlfriend and obtained a green card. The marriage lasted a scant 16 months.
In 1985, Uribe bought a second truck and started working as a subcontractor for Cor-O-Van Moving & Storage in Costa Mesa. He openly dreamed of having his own moving business. Nearly everybody doubted him.
“I don’t think anybody ever thought he’d own a big moving company. He was just a truck driver,” said Bob Coelho, a former Cor-O-Van general manager who worked with Uribe in the mid-1980s.
One thing never in question was Uribe’s drive. He used to work 24, sometimes 48 hours straight, said Mike Kachmar, who has worked with Uribe for 14 years. “He did in one day what others did in two,” Kachmar said.
Uribe bought Cor-O-Van’s Costa Mesa operations in 1989 for $450,000, re-christening it Alex Moving & Storage. He had five trucks and 10 employees.
Alex Moving & Storage has grown steadily ever since. Sales hit $1 million in 1990, $3 million in 1992 and $5 million in 1994. A couple of years ago, Uribe opened a second office in Oxnard. He said he has turned a profit every year.
Uribe believes that one of the keys to his company’s success is his close relationship with his workers. Throughout the years, he has hired scores of uneducated Latinos and embraced them as hermanos and hermanas, family. He lends employees money to buy cars and houses, eats lunch with them at work, gives them turkeys at Thanksgiving and bonuses at Christmas.
Uribe’s generosity helps keep morale high, said Manny Ybarra, an assistant manager of operations who has worked with him since 1985.
“If you need help, he goes all out for you,” said Ybarra, who has borrowed money from Uribe on four occasions to pay for such things as rent and car repairs. “He’s one of us.”
That kind of treatment has engendered loyalty. Annual turnover among his truckers is just 5%, Uribe said. The industry average exceeds 50%, said Joe Harrison, president of the American Moving & Storage Assn. in Alexandria, Va.
By the late 1990s, Alex Moving & Storage had outgrown its Costa Mesa location. Uribe began looking for new digs and settled on the Santa Ana property, which is nearly four times bigger, closer to workers’ homes and has better access to freeways than the Costa Mesa site.
To drum up business, Uribe employs three full-time telemarketers, a rarity in the industry. The company finds leads by buying commercial mailing lists of houses for sale and properties for rent.
Despite his success, Uribe’s unwillingness to give up some control is likely to prevent Alex Moving & Storage from becoming a “big league player” in the industry, said Jay Conger, a USC business professor and author of “Building Leaders.”
“At some point, he’s going to have to bring in some outside talent if he wants to take his company to a higher level of success,” Conger said.
Uribe knows that, but he is reluctant to share the power.
He likes the status quo and his starring role in it, even though that might leave his wife and children vulnerable if something were to happen to him.
“I used to worry, but not anymore,” Uribe said. “I live one day at a time.”
