Business View - May 2015 113
SUPPLY CHAIN / LOGISTICS
“We were using a lot of forklifts in the warehouse busi-
ness, but we were having a lot of difficulty in getting
consistent service and good equipment,” said Tim
Hodge, who’s the grandson of the company’s founder
and now oversees the entire amalgam along with his
brother, Mike. Tim’s son, Zach, has taken on more of
a leadership role, too – extending the lineage into a
fourth generation.
“It was little bit of defense, but also seen as an op-
portunity to put on technicians and buy equipment for
ourselves,” he said. “Slowly that began to stand on its
own two feet and today it’s one of our bigger entities.”
Another subsidiary, TM Logistics, was created in 1986
as a hand-in-hand offshoot of the original company
and has since evolved into an operation with more
than 600 of its own employees in Iowa, Illinois and
North Carolina. Walter Development arrived in 2000
in response to challenges the original company was
having while trying to find suitable warehouse space.
In fact, the initial intent of Walter Development was
simply to get warehouses built for use by the family
of Hodge companies or via rental to customers, but it
subsequently evolved to include retail space and of-
fice space alongside the original warehouse and logis-
tics facilities.
“We’re spread out differently in all of the operations,”
Hodge said.
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Hodge Company
WHAT:
Founded in 1958 as a public warehous-
ing company before subsequently evolving into
a four-division entity that includes operations fo-
cused on material handling and forklift sales and
service, third-party logistics services, commercial
records storage and real estate development
WHERE:
Corporateheadquarters inDubuque, Iowa
WEBSITE
:
