By Wally Kennedy
Globe Staff Writer
AVILLA, Mo. Theres not a lake in sight, but every once in a while, you can see big boats floating south on a farm road near Avilla.
Of course, these ships are hitching a ride to Carthage Marine Transport, a new company that has seen its gross revenue double in less than four years.
My father started Carthage Marine Transport 3 1/2 years ago with a quarter-ton truck, said Travis Gubser, manager of the company. Today, we have a fleet of 14 trucks with more on the way.
In its first year, the company did $500,000 worth of business, Gubser said, and it is expected to exceed the $2 million mark this year. The fast-growing trucking company specializes in hauling watercraft. Drivers transport boats of any length and size within the lower 48 states and Canada.
Brooks Gubser started the company after retiring from the Schreiber Foods cheese plant at Carthage. He had worked for Schreiber for 40 years. Neither Gubser had a background in trucking when they started the business.
The one thing I learned at Schreibers is that customer service is the key, said Brooks Gubser. If you take care of the merchandise and treat the dealer politely, theyll call you again.
To ensure that customer service is high, each client gets a customer-satisfaction survey to fill out.
There seems to be a niche out there for premium service, Brooks Gubser said. We are not the cheapest out there, but we believe we are the best out there. Over the last year, weve had to control growth so we could control the quality of our customer service.
Travis Gubser said he had to slow down business in order to focus on the completion of a new $300,000 terminal at 1865 Iris Lane, south of Avilla. Having achieved that, the company is ready to kick it up a notch maybe even two notches, he said.
When Dave Dorman, a Joplin resident, spied a 29-foot sailboat he wanted to buy on eBay, he wasnt sure how he was going to get the boat to Joplin from Annapolis, Md.
My next-door neighbor works for the Jasper County Road District, and he told me about Carthage Marine Transport, Dorman said. If he had not told me, I would have not known it was there.
They did an excellent, a fantastic job of moving my boat. The nice thing is that they are centrally located. Most marine transport companies are on the coasts.
Dorman said Hurricane Katrina damaged many boats, some of which ended up for sale on eBay, the Internet auction company. He plans to repair the boat over the next several years and eventually take it to Corpus Christi, Texas, with the intent of eventually sailing the Gulf of Mexico.
I saw some pictures and read the information, Dorman said. Thats all I had to go by just some pictures on eBay. It was purely speculative. When I get the boat done, Ill call them (Carthage Marine Transport) to move it to the Gulf.
