Tim Rausch
With the national news focused on supply chain issues, RBW Logistics was a timely Business Showcase for Hull College of Business students on Wed., Oct. 20.
The second in-person showcase of the fall semester was standing-room-only in the Allgood Hall classroom.
“Logistics is moving a product from one place to another. In our case, we hope that they come through our warehouses,” said Patrick Randolph, Director of Operations.
RBW Logistics is a four-generation Augusta business, specializing in warehouse, distribution, and transportation. The company does business with Textron in Augusta, Kimberly-Clark in Beech Island, and Huffy in Savannah, to name a few.
“If you watch the news, you know that the ports in the U.S. are congested. There are these gigantic cargo ships at sea that are not getting in right now,” Randolph said. “The appetite for goods is so extreme, we can’t get things through fast enough.”
Warehousing is a growing industry, he said, but there still isn’t enough cubic footage for all the demand.
RBW recently expanded to Valdosta, GA, and are looking for more expansion opportunities outside of Georgia and South Carolina.
“Success is never final. We’re always trying to take the next step,” said Eddie Griffith, Financial Controller.
Griffith stressed the importance of networking, telling the students that they should have the mindset that they are always interviewing for a new job every time they meet someone and add them to their network, because those connections could turn into job opportunities later. It was a connection in his network that led him to RBW.
“If you invest in your employees, they will stay with you, especially if you invest in them in the right way,” Griffith said.
Recent graduate Guanyu Li, BBA Accounting ’21, obtained a full-time job at RBW following an internship there. She provided advice to the students in attendance.
Li graduated from Augusta University in May and now works as an accountant for the firm. Her advice: pay attention to the Microsoft Excel training in class, since the program is a prevalent tool in the real world.
Li said it was about a month into her internship with RBW that she decided she wanted to take a full-time job there after getting her degree.
Randolph said he used internships in college to have experiences in many job fields in order to discover what he wanted to do with his career, which landed him in logistics.
