Charting his own course: How one CSUSB alumnus created a global freight staffing company

When CSUSB alumnus and business owner Edward Lockridge earned dual degrees in economics and sociology in 2009, entrepreneurship was not on his radar.

“My initial goal was to get a job and to be able to market myself on both sides,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that I could very easily and effectively market myself for jobs, manage and deal with people and also handle numbers and calculations.”

That proved to be an effective — and highly successful — strategy. Today, Lockridge is the founder and CEO of My Freight Staff, a virtual staffing provider that caters to the freight transportation industry. Headquartered in Rancho Cucamonga, the company employs about 20 full-time staff members at its main office and about 3,000 virtual staff worldwide, he said.

My Freight Staff specializes in training and providing virtual assistants (VAs) with expertise in the freight transportation industry to small and mid-sized companies. VAs handle a variety of tasks, from data entry, dispatch and operations to sales and cold calling. “The goal is to assist companies that need operational help but struggle to fill the associated positions, as well as those that struggle to hire domestically due to cashflow constraints,” said Lockridge.

Next February will mark the company’s 10th anniversary — a significant milestone. 

But Lockridge points out it's not his first rodeo. In 2013, he founded a mid-sized freight brokerage business in Southern California that “guided me into the world of My Freight Staff,” he said.

At the time, he was doing business in what he described as a traditional way, leasing an office space and hiring staff members.

“I got to this crossroads where I needed to add some additional people, but that would require me getting a bigger office, and then obviously the costs were going to be challenging,” he said. “That guided me into looking into some strategic solutions, and I stumbled across outsourcing. After ‘bumping my head’ a number of times, I fortunately was able to master the world of outsourcing.”

By “bumping his head,” Lockridge was referring to a number of challenges he faced.

“We didn't really have a business to model ourselves after,” he said. “Outsourcing for the transportation industry wasn't a well-known concept,” he said. “I don’t think there were even five companies that were doing anything like it.”

In addition, he didn’t have a background or experience in the staffing industry. “It was all very new to me. But I think that challenge was actually one of the keys to our success because the approach and the solutions to that challenge were to put myself in the shoes of the potential client and ask, ‘What problem are we going to solve? What type of people would I want to hire? What doubts would I have, and what information would I want from a possible vendor in order to help me curb those doubts?’”

Ultimately, Lockridge said, “We built in our own way. That's part of our success story.” 

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 2022, transportation contributed 6.7 percent – or $1.7 trillion – to the nation’s economy.

“The transportation industry is super competitive,” Lockridge said. “It's also very lucrative, and because of that, it's very competitive. I saw that there was a major opportunity, beginning with myself.”

Lockridge refers to himself as a “case study” for that opportunity. “If you can really reduce the overhead cost of some of the more mundane tasks, you can do three things. One, you can be more proactive and reactive to your client's needs. Two, you can afford to compensate your in-house domestic staff more competitively, which is a great thing. Happy people tend to perform better for your clients. And third, you’re able to do so at a more competitive rate than your competition.”

Those distinctions made My Freight Staff “a no-brainer for logistics companies to work with as compared to other solutions. It was just a major competitive advantage for us,” he said. 

For Cal State San Bernardino students interested in starting their own businesses, Lockridge noted, “they already have a head start. They can easily identify peers who are genuinely committed to their education and work. When they’re ready to start a business and assemble a team, their future collaborators are already around them. That’s how Facebook started,” he said.

CSUSB campus collaborations have also played an important role in Lockridge’s commitment to community service. While students at Cal State San Bernardino, he and Lawrence Hardy, B.A., mathematics, ’08, met and became friends. Hardy is now the Equity and Targeted Student Achievement Program Specialist with the San Bernardino City Unified School District (SBCUSD) and is piloting a program called Kings on Campus, a youth mentorship program designed to broaden students' perspectives by providing them with meaningful experiences and exposure to new opportunities.

“Lawrence and I first connected in college and later reconnected as adults. We found ourselves reflecting on how different things are now compared to when we were growing up,” he said.

“We realized that Black and brown kids see heroes everywhere in entertainment — sports, music — but rarely in business. And it's hard for them to aspire to what they don’t see. You can't expect them to dream of being entrepreneurs or executives if all the visible success stories are entertainers and athletes. We wanted to change that narrative and show that business can be just as powerful a path.”

So, in February, Lockridge and the My Freight Staff team welcomed 100 SBCUSD Kings on Campus students to their corporate office, showcasing its diverse team of managers, offering a firsthand look at the inner workings of the organization's operations, and encouraging students to dream big and embrace the possibilities that come with hard work and dedication.

“It might sound a little like something out of a Hallmark movie, but seeing the kids' faces really struck me. I remember what it was like being in school — sometimes you're just not that interested. You think, ‘Eh, I’m just here to have fun.’ But these kids were different — they were so engaged,” he said.

“I simply wanted to be an example — ‘Hey, come look at what you can do, too,’” he said. “And it doesn’t hurt that I’m San Bernardino through and through. I went to Del Rosa Elementary, Golden Valley Middle School, San Bernardino High School and Cal State San Bernardino. I felt fortunate to be able to show the kids what you can do and what you can achieve.”