New Office Hire: Travis and His Role in Planning

Marvin Keller has been seeking to expand our business and invest effort into landing more accounts. Recently the company brought aboard Travis Bartels from Mattoon Illinois to play a big role in operations, which will free up Rick Ellis, current Vice President of Operations to focus on other areas of the company related to growth.

Travis has started out strong in his role as the Central Illinois Planner, a role given to him so that he can learn all aspects of operations. The goal is to eventually transition him into a larger role as Operations Manager where he would be responsible for all daily operations.

The plan is for Rick to focus on other areas on the company related to growth such as sales, coaching and general development of operations personnel.

According to Rick, Travis is always eager to learn and has picked up the concepts of the asset aspect of the business quickly. Before coming aboard with Marvin Keller Travis worked in brokerage for a year and a half. At his previous company he was responsible to cover loads his company had with outside carriers. Rick says that this gave him good insight into our side of the business. He says,

“We are on the other side, being an asset based transportation company. Before coming here he was calling the asset carriers to receive loads. Now he is on the asset side doing planning and helping to deliver loads. He also does a good job at getting loads when needed for our trucks.”

Travis is from the local area, Mattoon where graduated and went to the military. After spending over eighteen years serving in the Marines he retired and worked locally in Mattoon. While he was in the Marines Travis worked primarily in logistics on the ground. He started off driving a truck and eventually took his place as gunner sergeant. His experiences in the military include performing preventative maintenance on vehicles, convoy logistics in Iraq, Afghanistan and Japan, and working in the transportation sector moving equipment and also troops for incursion. He developed a familiarity with the equipment in transportation and even has his commercial driver’s license.