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Alumnus of the Year Ed Vander Pol, Business Success Comes From
Above
ED VANDER POL SLEEPS SOUNDLY for a man with
big responsibilities. His company has 1,300 employees in five states,
hundreds of trucks on the road and nearly $100 million in annual
revenues. Yet, like many a trucker hauling an 80,000-pound payload
down the interstate at 60 mph, Ed takes the risks and variables
in stride and keeps an open line to God.
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The 1972 graduate of Seattle Pacific
is co-owner and co-president of Oak Harbor Freight Lines Inc.,
one of the largest family-owned businesses in Washington state.
Along with brother David, he runs the 87-year-old operation they
say “belongs to God.”
“Money is overrated. This is about integrity,
customer service and wonderful employees,” says Ed, who was honored
as the 2004 Alumnus of the Year during Homecoming in January. “God
expects us to help others and blesses us to be able to do so.”
A
combination of successful business practices, good hearts and helping
hands has grown Oak Harbor into a transportation company that serves
more Northwest points than any other single carrier. Whenever a
snowstorm shuts down the mountain passes, businesses in Eastern
Washington know they can count on Oak Harbor to go a day out of
the way by first driving south to Portland, then turning east to
bypass the Cascade Range before turning north again to finally
deliver the goods.
Such faithfulness does not stop at Oak Harbor’s
paying customers. Ed’s company won the 2002 Community Partnerships
Award from Seattle’s public television station KCTS for its volunteer
service to national and local organizations, including the Boy
Scouts of America and Northwest Harvest, the only statewide hunger
relief agency in Washington.
“Last year, Ed’s company transported
about half a million pounds of fruit and vegetables for our 300
food banks and meal programs across the state,” says Northwest
Harvest Executive Director Shelley Rotondo. “They treat us with
the same courtesy and reliability as they would a paying customer.
I have a great deal of respect for Ed and his family. It costs
them.”
Ed shrugs off any notion of sacrifice. “We haul empty trucks
back from the east side of the state all the time. Instead of letting
all that food go to waste, we pick it up at little cost and get
it to the people who badly need it. What moves me is when kids
go hungry.”
The Vander Pol enterprise began in 1919 in the small town of Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island when Ed’s uncles
purchased two cartage trucks from a dairy farm for $600 cash. By
1937, their younger brother, Henry (Ed’s dad), had joined them.
Despite having only an eighth-grade education, Henry’s business
savvy became a guiding light for years to come.
“Dad worked hard,
always told the truth, didn’t waste money and lived a simple lifestyle,” says
Ed. “He expected the same from his employees, and he got it.” Henry
drove the 46 miles from Whidbey to Seattle twice a day in an era
without freeways. Since trucks then couldn’t travel much over 40
mph, this meant plenty of 16-hour days. Today, Dad Vander Pol is
87, and he still pops into the office occasionally.
Ed, who never
had a job interview in his life, started working for his father
on the loading dock as a high school student. When Seattle Pacific
College denied him admission due to weak grades, he attended one
year of college in Iowa. “I hated Iowa and buckled down to my studies
so that I was accepted at Seattle Pacific my sophomore year.”
He
majored in business; married his high school sweetheart, Mary Lindberg;
and after graduation was put to work at Oak Harbor finding lost
freight and soothing the occasional disgruntled customer. “Dad
made me office manager at the ripe old age of 25,” says Ed with
a lingering trace of good-natured disbelief. “I wouldn’t recommend
having someone manage people 25–30 years their senior, but Dad
was in the office right behind mine, and he helped smooth things
over.”
Thirty years later, Ed is happy to share the leadership
load, and an office wall, with his younger brother. At corporate
headquarters — now located in the city of Auburn, Washington — David
oversees sales while Ed looks after internal functions such as
payroll, computer systems, maintenance and accounts receivable.
The one job he’s never held at Oak Harbor is that of driver, and
for good reason: “You can’t learn to run a company from the cab
of a truck.”
The Christian faith permeates everything Ed does,
and he prays before company business meetings and makes Bibles
available to anyone for the taking. He doesn’t force his faith
on anyone, but his employees are treated well and know that Oak
Harbor’s way of doing business stems from Christian ownership.
“We’ve
never had an employee complain about our faith,” says Ed. “One
person even told me that the company is blessed and protected because
there are Christians at the helm.”
Trusted driver and friend of
16 years Don Davidson certainly experienced some kind of protection
during a close call in a recent windstorm. Enumclaw Community Hospital
was in critical need of intravenous saline solution, and the precious
liquid was aboard Davidson’s company truck en route when 80 mph
winds struck.
The mayor of Enumclaw closed down the town and declared
a state of emergency. Street lights went out, and the path ahead
of Davidson lay strewn with downed trees and power lines. The veteran
trucker knew the side streets well, so the hospital got its vital
solution — but not before a falling tree sheared a side mirror
from the truck, narrowly missing the cab and Davidson inside.
A
sign on the wall of Oak Harbor’s headquarters quotes Exodus 14:14
and is as good a statement as any of how the company is run: “The
Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Active in
lobbying for sound national trucking policy, Ed doesn’t let his
business or advocacy overshadow devotion to family, church and
the needs of the poor. He credits 33 years of marriage to a faithful
and understanding mate. “Mary and I had some tough times, but she
hung in with me when I wasn’t so good,” he says. She loves the
Lord and prays for me. I know I can count on her.”
The couple has
a daughter, Deborah, and two sons following in the family business:
Daniel Vander Pol ’98, in sales; and Mark Vander Pol ’97, a cost
analyst in the pricing department. Both were SPU business majors. “Dad
taught us kids to work hard and not expect everything to be handed
to us,” notes Mark. “We had to be in church every Sunday without
fail, and we learned the importance of caring for people.”
A bass
singer on the worship team at Tacoma Christian Reformed Community
Church, Ed served on the board of Seattle Christian School and
actively promotes child adoption through Bethany Christian Services. “Abortion
bothers me so much,” he says. “It was legalized the year I went
full-time with Oak Harbor.”
“Ed has a tender heart for others and
recognizes that how he treats the poor is how he treats Jesus,” says
Mary. “And he is simply overwhelmed at being named SPU Alumnus
of the Year. We’re so grateful for the education our sons received
there, and now to hear your own alma mater say, ‘You are valued,
you are a godly man,’ is a huge thing to Ed.”
Seattle Pacific Alumni
Director Doug Taylor marvels that “such a regular guy” is respected
in so many places and on so many levels. “It’s difficult to overstate
the incredible impact Ed has had in his community and around the
state.”
Friend Bob Shupe believes Ed’s impact stems from the fact
he doesn’t blow his own horn. “I treasure the man. He is genuine,
astute and as caring as they come.”
His alma mater’s vision for
effecting positive change in the world resonates with the 2004
Alumnus of the Year. “SPU has a tremendous president with the right
message,” says Ed. “Engage the culture is exactly what Christians
should do.”
President Philip Eaton has high commendations for the
Alumnus of the Year as well. “I find Ed Vander Pol’s approach to
his business and his life to be deeply rooted in SPU’s vision,” says
Seattle Pacific President Philip Eaton. “He is a soft-spoken gentleman
who runs his very successful company with great skill and competence,
and with the utmost integrity. His warm commitment to his family,
to his church and to the people who work for Oak Harbor Freight
Lines clearly springs from his Christian faith and is evident in
everything he says and does.”
In three decades of engaging the
culture through good business practices, Ed has watched his competition
both dwindle and expand. While few of the trucking rivals from
the ’70s still exist, a glut of new carriers is responsible for
excess hauling capacity in the market. Regulations have multiplied
until the only things not regulated are rates and routes. Ed places
such red tape issues in wry perspective: “The good news is you
can’t make trucking in China.”
To David, his plainspoken brother
is simply trustworthy. “What he says he’ll do, he does. When it
comes to financial reporting, you can take his numbers to the bank.” But
Ed’s read on Oak Harbor’s success is predictably modest. “I’d like
to tell you my brother and I are real smart, but that’s not true.
God has blessed us, and we’re just amazed.”
— BY CLINT KELLY
— PHOTOS BY ROD MAR
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