Seward County Independent

    Ed Schulz, LLC, Seward, started 58 years ago with one Chevrolet straight truck, making it the oldest one-generation owned business in Seward.
     Since the company's start in February 1949, it has grown to 40 semi-trucks and 60 trailers.
     Ed Schulz, LLC, formerly known as Schulz Transfers, is an outsourcing transportation company. Three of its main transports are grain, wheat and salt.
     Owner Ed Schulz, 81, owner, said he started making delivery runs just after he and his wife, Nora, 82, were married March 11, 1948.
     Some of the first runs were transports to the grain elevator in Omaha, he said.
     "I just got hooked on it I guess," Schulz said. "I enjoyed driving and hauled a lot of feed. There were three grain elevators going at the time in Seward."
     Schulz said that Nora did the bookkeeping, paperwork and dispatching until recently.
     "That woman, I'll tell you, what a great lady," Schulz said. "We had five kids and she did all that work and reared them and did a good job. They all turned out great. I was always on the road."
     Schulz said that when he started the government required permits to transport manufactured goods on the interstate.
     Schulz said he bought his permit for a very reasonable price, but couldn't remember the exact amount.
     "See, there was a widow in Garland who had a permit that had been her husband's," Schulz said. "She said she wouldn't sell it to me unless I bought his old Chevrolet straight truck, too. So I did; and then I had two trucks."
     Schulz said that in the beginning he worked alone, but after buying the second truck, he hired his first employee, the late Charlie Borgman.
     Schulz said first lived in Lancaster County when he started his trucking company and moved to Seward in 1955. About five years later, he bought the property at 741 South 2nd, where Ed Schulz, LLC, is still located.
     Schulz said he did a lot of transport driving for his company until recently.
     "There were times when I went two nights in a row without going to bed," Schulz said.
     Schulz said he oversees the company and does the purchasing and replacement for the semi-trucks, but his son, Bob Schulz is manager of Ed Schulz, Inc. He said Bob, 45, has been helping since age 16.
     Another one of Schulz's children, Alan Schulz, 50, also started helping Schulz around age 16, but at age 25 he started his own transportation company.
     Alan Schulz owns Schulz Transportation, Inc., Lincoln. Alan started his company with one truck that his father sold him and now has 99 semi-trucks.
     "I told him one day I think I'll chip in so he can get the 100th semi," Schulz said.
     Schulz also has three daughters, Nancy, 52, of Pleasant Dale, Connie, 48, of Lincoln, and Susan, 44, of Seward.
     Schulz said in the last 58 years, the thing he has enjoyed the most at his company is the customers.
     "I enjoy every one of them," Schulz said. "I have got attached to some of them. I like to do a lot of talking."
     He said the customers at Ed Schulz, LLC, have been loyal and the company didn't advertise their business.
     "I didn't solicit business," Ed Schulz said. "It was all by word of mouth."
     He said the company's business grew slowly, but it really became a success in the last 20 years.
     "It seemed like a lot of one-truck-operators couldn't support themselves anymore."
     Schulz said owning the company for 58 years has created many exciting memories like the time his company drove two loads of purebred cattle (40 to a load) to JFK International Airport, New York, where they were flown to a buyer in Turkey.
     He said there was also the time when he drove a load of purebred cattle to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
     "I think it has been an exciting life," Schulz said. "I've met a lot of people and seen a lot of country and been to every coast."
     Bob Schulz said there are a lot of differences in the way the trucking company is run now that when it started.
     He said the hardest part is logistics and planning.
     "We could get a call tonight to haul a load tomorrow," Bob Schulz said. "The tough part is you have to plan a return load so you aren't wasting a load."
     He said the company averages $50,000 per week in fuel costs.
     "That's the largest expense the company has," Bob Schulz said.
     He said in the past the company hauled more livestock and it wasn't as important to plan return loads to save on gas because trucks of the demand for trucks at the time.
     "Now, you cannot afford to waste loads," Bob Schulz said.
     He said that the majority of Ed Schulz, LLC, hauls are flour by-product transports for Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) and ConAgra Foods in Nebraska.