Making A Haul Freight Management Resources Keeps Businesses In Ship Shape

A. Michele Maher is part Teamster, part stevedore, part teacher.

And she’s all chief executive officer and owner of Freight Management Resources, a Spokane consulting firm.

If something must be moved, Maher will see that it is - at the lowest cost.

Her expertise has taken Maher from a childhood in the Southwest to a seat on the Washington Transportation Commission.

Freight Management Resources has never dealt in nuts, but it has shipped soup, as well as steel, boat buoys and vending machines.

“I even have one client who does composting toilets,” Maher said.

One new client is EarthGoods, which imports industrial hemp. Co-owner Wendy Schneider said Maher has been invaluable and much easier to work with than others in the freight business.

“She works through all the glitches,” Schneider said. “Brokers don’t want to help you. They just want to give you a price.”

Maher said she can handle just about anything, from negotiating shipping rates to warehouse analysis to invoice audits.

Billing errors are pervasive in shipping goods, according to “Traffic World” magazine.

Maher also provides instruction in shipping and receiving to client employees, a service she calls “Freight 101.”

But some clients prefer to leave freight matters in her hands because doing those chores in-house would be more expensive, she said.

Maher said she acquired her knowledge of freight matters through experience.

She oversaw the trucking operations of a major Southern California nursery.

At Western Digital, a maker of hard drives and other computer equipment, she built a traffic department that eliminated the need for outside consultants.

In 1992, Maher arrived in Spokane with husband Tim, who had been recruited by Spokane Systems Software as a systems analyst.

“I spent the next year wondering who would offer me a job,” Maher said.

The answer was not what she had expected: Maher bought J. White & Associates from founder Jerry White.

White, she said, had been invited to Spokane from Hanford by the economic development group Momentum, which saw a gap in local trade expertise.

White remained with the business two years after the purchase, Maher said. Since 1995, she and an administrative assistant have been on their own.

Maher changed the company’s name in January.

She said about 80 percent of her clients are in the Inland Northwest, including Boise. Freight Management deals in domestic and foreign traffic, most of the latter for export.

Although inland businesses are less export-oriented than those in Western Washington, Maher said the gap has closed. Still, 30 percent of her clients are not involved in foreign trade.

“Spokane needs to think globally,” she said. “That’s what’s going to drive us economically. That’s what’s going to provide us jobs.”

Like many state officials, Maher was dismayed by voter approval of Initiative-695 Tuesday, and the potential impacts on roads and other critical transportation infrastructure.

“I really do worry about freight mobility,” she said. “What if my clients can’t get product to market?”

Besides her duties with the transportation commission, Maher serves on the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce board of trustees. She is a director of the Cheney Cowles Museum and International Trade Alliance and president of the Hispanic Business/Professional Association.

Maher takes pride in the growth of that group since its formation less than six years ago. Five Hispanic students in the area now receive awards of $5,000, more than triple the amount the organization was able to distribute its first year.

Professionally, she said solving intricate logistical problems gives her the most satisfaction.

When fires in the Los Angeles area a few years ago left denuded slopes ripe for erosion, Freight Management helped get semi-truck loads of straw mats to exposed sites before seasonal rains arrived.

And Maher recently helped steer a load of hemp for EarthGoods from Romania to Seattle.

“Those are the fun things,” she said.