Speedy Delivery

Same-day courier service is the niche carved out by this can-do company

by Virginia Lindauer Simmon

When Matt Kozlowski’s stepfather, Doug Haser (below), bought Green Mountain Messenger in 1989, it was a tiny courier service operating with one car out of the Mad River Valley. Today, the company has 137 employees, 78 vehicles and offices in four locations. Haser stays involved from his home in Arizona, and Kozlowski (left) runs the operation from its Williston headquarters.

Humility is the last trait one would expect from a high-energy guy in his 20s — especially one who’s a volunteer fire fighter and spends his free time four-wheeling and motorcycling. Add to that the fact that he has been given the chance to run his step-father’s flourishing company, and the temptation to caricature him is irresistible.

One would be wrong. Matt Kozlowski takes himself and his work seriously, and considers himself fortunate for the opportunity he’s been given. 

Kozlowski is vice president of Green Mountain Messenger, a same-day courier service based in Williston with offices in Brattleboro, and in West Lebanon and Portsmouth, N.H. Last year, a banner year, the company brought in $4.1 million in revenue, the highest in its history.

That achievement is the result of a lot of stubborn dedication by Kozlowski, who runs the company, and Doug Haser, his step-father and the company president, who lives near Scottsdale, Ariz.

The arrangement is ideal for Haser, a Santa Barbara, Calif., native who decided a year or so ago that he’d had enough of the cold and sought to leave Vermont and return to a more familiar and comfortable climate. 

 “Matt and I e-mail each other on a daily basis,” says Haser, “we talk almost every other day, and I’m back to Vermont three times in six or eight months, so I’m still in it.” 

Haser had moved to Vermont at age 29 so his then wife could pursue her master’s degree at the University of Vermont. 

“I had been a courier and a meat cutter in California and had attended Santa Barbara Business College and Santa Barbara City College,” he says. “When we first got here, we worked for temp agencies.; I worked for a bank, she worked for an advertising business. She met Bruce Cahan.”

Cahan was the owner of Mountain Messenger, a tiny, one-man courier service operating out of the Mad River Valley. The business was for sale, and in 1987, Haser bought it for $10,000. 

“I took it from there,” Haser says. “It was the one car for about a year and a half, then another one; we started growing a little more, to four and five cars; but we didn’t really start growing until 1999.”

A native of Poland, Kozlowski moved to Vermont from Toronto in ’98 with his mother and her then husband. He was 16. Following graduation from Colchester High School, he earned his bachelor of business administration with a finance emphasis from Kentucky Christian University. 

In 2003 and 2004, he worked at Green Mountain Messenger as an intern, starting from the ground up. “I swept floors in the warehouse, took out the trash, washed the cars, vacuumed them, I drove, and worked my way up slowly,” says Kozlowski.

Green Mountain Messenger is a one-courier service with routes throughout Vermont, New Hampshire, northern New York and southern Maine, the company’s 124 drivers provide the daily courier runs for Chittenden Bank and BankNorth, and do film pick-ups and deliveries for Konica and Qualex, which service overnight developing at stores such as Price Chopper, Hannaford, and Kinney and Brooks pharmacies. Lois O’Brien works in dispatch; Tim Blades is operations manager.

His big break came because the bookkeeper quit. “The bookkeeper didn’t even let us know what to do, just left, so I had to pick it up from there, figure it out from scratch and start it all over again,” he says. “That got me involved; I got to apply what I had learned and figure things out. It was a real benefit to the company at that point, because nobody knew what was going on with it.”

Another crisis was also brewing three years ago. Haser had been approached by the owner of Greenfield Courier in Connecticut, whom he had met through a business associate. Greenfield offered to buy the business, says Haser, “to become the largest independent courier in New England.”

Haser agreed, and they struck a deal. “Seven months into it,” Haser says, “he hadn’t paid any of the bills, which put us into a pretty bad situation.”

“This guy spent all of Green Mountain Messenger’s money,” says Kozlowski. “He didn’t pay any of the bills, which included a gas bill in excess of $30,000 a month, didn’t pay insurance, and spent all the company’s money. On top of that, he didn’t pay Doug for the company.”

Haser ended up taking back the company, saddled with huge debt. He obtained an SBA loan from Chittenden Bank to get the company back on its feet, “and we’re repaying it right now,” says Kozlowski.

Kozlowski is quick to say that the experience hasn’t hurt the company, “because we’re doing very well, and in another couple of  years, we’ll be out of debt.”

He says that since May 2005, when he took the reins, he has generated about $505,000 in sales for the company, including three new contracts, although he readily admits that Haser is the “killer salesman.”

Contract accounts are the company’s bread and butter. Driving routes throughout Vermont, New Hampshire, northern New York and southern Maine, the company’s 124 drivers provide the daily courier runs for Chittenden Bank and BankNorth, and do film pick-ups and deliveries for Konica and Qualex, which service overnight developing at stores such as Price Chopper, Hannaford, and Kinney and Brooks pharmacies. New contracts have brougaht Klinger Bread Co. and Corporate Express (an online office supplies company) into the mix. These are in addition to cash customers and monthly accounts.

Now that things have settled down a bit, Kozlowski’s day has taken on a more familiar eight-hour routine when he’s not on the road visiting the other offices, although he continues to be on call seven days a week in case of emergency. 

On a typical morning, he checks with the office manager to see if any issues or problems need addressing. Then, “for probably the better half of the morning,” he does bookkeeping, pays bills and makes deposits. Afternoons are often spent on projects, he says, “either dealing with current issues, whatever it may be — accidents, workers’ comp, anything on a day-to-day basis.”

He also sits down with Bob Ransom, with whom he does special projects. Ransom knows the courier business well, having worked as regional manager for UPS in the Bronx. “Bob’s got an eagle eye,” says Kozlowski. “There’s nothing that man won’t catch when it comes to auditing drivers, auditing bills — from gas bills to cell phone bills to making sure people are not slacking on their routes. That guy can audit anything. He’s taught me a lot and been very, very helpful.”

With a fleet of 78 vehicles, gas bills are a huge expense. Last year, when prices began to rise, Kozlowski raised the company’s rates to compensate. “This time around, when gas went up again,” he says, “I didn’t raise the rates again, but created a fuel surcharge chart that is applied to our customers.” The chart tracks prices, and as the price rises, the surcharge rises; as gas prices drop, the surcharge drops.

Green Mountain Messenger is the largest courier company in Vermont. Revenue in 2005 peaked at $4.1 million, the highest in the company’s history. Rae Drown does billing, payroll and dispatch; Bob Ransom, formerly a regional manager for UPS, handles special projects and audits all aspects of the operation.

The biggest challenge, says Haser, is “the same as any business has: trying to sustain growth, have enough cash flow to pay for everything you need to do. When I get a large contract, we have to  purchase 12 to 14 cars at a time; you have to price it right. You come to natural disasters like oil spikes, you have to learn by the seat of your pants — the school of hard knocks. There’s the ramifications of workers’ comp and taxes.”

Workers’ comp in a sore issue right now, says Kozlowski, because the company is in a legal battle over having been misclassified for about a year. “It was a mistake one of the agents made,” he says. “We’re paying almost twice as much as we should have been.”

“You have to make the right decisions all the time,” Haser says, “to be responsible for your employees, their income, their family. Nobody tells you, ‘I think it’s time to incorporate or do certain financial things. You have to do that by yourself.’”

The most important thing, says Haser, is to build relationships. “We’re a service-oriented company. Our niche is same-day delivery, so we get a lot of referrals. It took a long time to build these relationships. You can’t make boo-boos. They have to trust you.

“So I tried to teach Matt we’re a business about truth. If you say you’re going to do it, you do it, and if we don’t, then we make up for it; we correct the mistake.”

“I think for me,” says Kozlowski, “the biggest thing was coming in, being inexperienced and being young, and being accepted by the workforce. I have great employees who work for me; 90 percent of them are, for the most part, retired — you know, IBM retirees, guys who like to come in here just to get out of the house and drive.” 

In the last year, Kozlowski has made some changes, all with Haser’s approval. He implemented a time clock system and upgraded the equipment — computers, servers and telephones. 

“I really want to build up the business,” he says. “I have a tremendous opportunity and a great way to gain an exceptional amount of experience. A lot of people build up gradually. Me? I went from 0 to 100. It was crazy. It was tough at first, but I don’t think I’d be here over a year later if I couldn’t run the company, if I couldn’t take it.

“How lucky I really am.” •