Global logistics is a volatile market — enough so that anyone building a logistics business is opening themselves up to considerable adversity. However, for entrepreneur Lucas Grizz, the challenges of creating a global cargo business were far from daunting.
That might be because Lucas had to overcome significant adversity long before he ever ventured into the cargo industry. He was born in Krakow, Poland, and immigrated to the United States at the age of ten. His family was middle class “My mom was a cleaning lady, and my dad worked at a factory,” Lucas says. Ultimately, his family gave him something far more valuable than money — an unwavering work ethic.
Lucas founded Raven Cargo, a technology-driven shipping company, in 2020. However, in doing so, he built on the IT knowledge he gained in the first part of his career.
After studying at DePaul University, Lucas started working with a business that developed automated solutions for the transportation industry. He was with the company for a decade, and he learned about more than just technology. The company was in its infancy when Lucas started, and he played an instrumental role in scaling the company. By the end of his tenure, he was managing 80 employees in just his department.
Lucas had already transformed from a immigrant child into a successful IT innovator. However, he was determined to leave a mark in the business world, and from his vantage point, that meant starting his own business. “I’ve always had the entrepreneurial mindset,” he says. “So I’ve always hustled. I’ve always had problems with authority and people telling me what to do.”
But before pivoting, Lucas needed a clear idea of what he wanted to do next. He settled, somewhat unexpectedly, on logistics. Thanks to his work in a transportation-adjacent industry, he spent a good bit of time around trucks. And then, one day, a serendipitous conversation illuminated his new career path.
“I basically ran into a guy at a golf course,” Lucas says. “And he was telling me about his job in logistics. I didn’t know what logistics was.” But then, it began to make sense.
“I knew that there’s the other side of the business,” he says. “Tires are expensive. Truck drivers are expensive. Oil is expensive. Gas is expensive. Insurance is expensive. The fixed costs are so expensive, so that means you need high revenue. There’s a lot of money to be made top-line. So in logistics, it’s my job to make sure I can save the money on the back end, streamline operations.”
Lucas Grizz then founded Raven Cargo in 2020. It wasn’t much at first — the company’s headquarters was a closet-sized office. But Lucas had a vision and was ready to see it through.
Raven Cargo’s humble beginnings soon became a massive operation. With the help of his new employees and the scaling knowledge he gained at his prior company, Lucas grew the company more in a few years than many businesses grow in a lifetime.
“We very quickly grew to the company we are now,” he says. “We have about 90 people working for us at this point. It’s hard to keep track. We keep hiring and so that number keeps growing.” Now, Raven Cargo has offices in the United States, Poland, Canada, and Mexico.
The world is full of logistics companies, and many of them are unsuccessful. What makes Raven Cargo unique? Much of its value proposition centers around technology. For instance, the company uses Raven Eye, its own software, to give clients complete, end-to-end visibility. In the logistics world, overlapping supply chains and different software systems mean that it can be nearly impossible to keep track of a shipment at every point along the route.
The company offers a number of high-tech features, but that doesn’t mean that Raven Cargo offers a cookie-cutter solution that fits all clients. Its central goal is to reduce inefficiencies in the logistics space, and the best way to do that is to offer customized solutions for each client.
What’s next for Lucas and Raven Cargo? For now, continued growth is the most important thing. Sometimes, Lucas sounds like he can’t believe how quickly Raven Cargo has expanded. “The growth has been explosive,” he says. “It’s truly monumental.”
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