By Kenny Lund, Executive Vice President, ALC Logistics
Back in 1976, when Allen Lund went out on his own and established the Allen Lund Company, there was tight control on “regulated freight,” and brokers like him could only manage loads of vegetables and fruit, along with raw goods like bailed cotton. His very first load was a load of cotton.
Most other goods were tightly regulated. Regulations on carriers, rates, and government-approved truck brokers were numerous. Every non-exempt load had to have an approved filed tariff. Transportation was expensive and inefficient.
It all changed when deregulation was brought in under the Carter Administration and continued under the Reagan Administration. Within a few years, thousands of carriers, brokers, shippers, and receivers started operating in a new, freer transportation system. The government got out of the daily pricing of loads and let freedom through capitalism determine the rates. If this injection of freedom had not happened, we would still be hindered by over-regulation and government red tape. Fewer products would be available and they would be more expensive.
Capitalism is not perfect, but there has never been a better system to bring people out of poverty, create more businesses, and supply more products at lower prices throughout the country. Currently, there are more than 400,000 trucking companies, 10,000 transportation brokers, and our stores are chock-full of products from across the country and around the world.
It is easy to compare to the supply chains of communist and socialist countries. Every economic measure bears this out. Democracy and capitalism win every time.
In the early 90s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Allen Lund was asked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to go with a team to Moscow to help improve the produce supply chain that helped feed 11 million Russians in and around that city. For three months, he observed and tried to improve a system that allowed more than 50% of the fruit and vegetables coming into the area to disappear or be destroyed in transit. Drivers who did not care sold their refrigeration fuel on the black market and delivered rotten vegetables. The government paid them anyway. Allen Lund saw how badly a fully controlled economy operated with incredible lack of efficiency. He saw hope in the younger generation as they worked to build up the black market that began to operate with some capitalist principles.
Fast forward to today, it is painful to observe that socialism and even communism are on the rise with those under 30 in the USA. It is inexplicable…and yet there it is. Too many of our universities teach that businesses are all corrupt and that the government and centralized control are the answer. As a business involved in the great American supply chain, the Allen Lund Company has a front-row seat to see how well our nation’s distribution systems work. We must then take it upon ourselves to educate and, in many cases, re-educate the population. We must pass down to the next generations the information about how good we have it with a system based on freedom. We also MUST run our business with professionalism and integrity. Scams, collusion, and cronyism are a stain on the freedoms we enjoy and only paint targets on our free society. Capitalism is the system that allows all participants to achieve the high standard of living available to those who work hard. Freedom is the answer – not government over-regulation.
I’m ready to have a fresh conversation with you!
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Kenny Lund graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in Business Administration. He managed the Los Angeles, refrigerated transportation division of the Allen Lund Company for eight years, before shifting full-time into managing the Information and Technology Department in 1997; becoming the Vice President of the department in 2002. Lund was promoted to Vice President – Support Operations in 2005. In 2014, Kenny, in the position of VP of ALC Logistics, began working with that division of ALC to sell their AlchemyTMS software solutions. In 2019, Lund was promoted to Executive Vice President of ALC and ALC Logistics.