Alum Hunter Riley came to the Clinton School as a graduate of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville in 2007. Since graduating in 2009, he spent more than four years in various roles at the Pat Tillman Foundation. In 2013, he co-founded Schlep, a tech-enabled local logistics and delivery company in Chicago – with operations also in Milwaukee and soon to launch in New York City.
Riley acts as the CEO and COO at Schlep, which specializes in supporting businesses with their local logistical and heavy lifting needs. Through a partnership with ToolBank USA, Schlep has taken its services to Houston to assist with Hurricane Harvey relief. He and his team have been in Houston for more than two weeks and took some time shortly after arriving to answer a few questions about Schlep’s role in the relief.
What are you doing through Schlep to help with Hurricane Harvey?
Schlep is a local logistics company based in Chicago. We partner closely with the Chicago Community ToolBank due to the fact that we share space with them. Proximity is an important aspect when it comes to collaborating. In that partnership, we manage the warehouse and the delivery of tools in Chicago and have gained a good reputation within the ToolBank USA network. Because of this, we were asked to come down to help manage the ToolBank here in Houston. So, specifically speaking, our team is coming down one at a time over the next several weeks to manage the ToolBank lending program here in Houston.
What have been your biggest challenges while working in Houston?
Traffic may be the biggest challenge (laughs). I’ve been down here since Monday; we flew in a week after the hurricane hit. The ToolBank itself, which is the nonprofit partner we’re helping lift up in this time, has had challenges that we’ve witnessed – just being able to staff during a time of such a high demand. After this massive flooding there have been communities, churches, and nonprofits that traditionally borrow tools from the ToolBank that can’t because there are not enough to go around. The ToolBank itself is doing an all call to send down the most needed of what they call muck and gut tools – wide mouth shovels, scrapers, squeegees, wheel barrows, and anything that can help clear a house of water-logged drywall and mud. So, that’s the biggest challenge we’ve seen – an insufficient supply of tools to lend.
For our specific purpose, the need for staffing to be able to manage the tools that are going in and out and the receiving of new tools that are being donated has been difficult. That’s where my company, Schlep, has been able to plug in and help Erika and her team down here at the Houston Community ToolBank stay on top of inventory and be able to continue to be that backstop of support that they are to the Houston community at large, and specifically in this post-Harvey cleanup and recovery time.
How did your time at the Clinton School affect the career path that you have now?
It’s been an interesting path since Little Rock. Particularly, going straight into the nonprofit management world at the Pat Tillman Foundation is what kept me firmly rooted in the public service community I built at the Clinton School. The connectivity that I personally have, and now that Schlep has, is definitely also impacted by my time at the Clinton School. Specifically, the fact that we see the nonprofit space as a partner for Schlep – a network we can support through our logistical offerings.
My team is taking our time here as a professional development opportunity – to come down to Houston and not only help out and volunteer our time, but to see how our skill set as problem-solving, logistics operators can plug in and support the ToolBank. Particularly during a disaster response and disaster recovery period, we are able to wrap our heads around the on-the-ground challenges and be a part of the organizing force. Personally, my time at the Clinton School and the nimbleness and adaptability that we learned while there – getting thrown into projects starting day one – has played a role in how I’ve lead Schlep to approach each new hurdle with an attitude of teamwork and a desire to create. Further, learning to come in with confidence and follow through with organization and hard work is something that, for me particularly, was honed at the Clinton School.
How did you and your co-founder, John Godwin, come up with the idea for Schlep?
That’s a good story. John and I grew up together in Arkansas. He was acting as a creative director for an ad agency in Chicago, and I was in a transitional year or two where I was contracting with a lot of different NGOs and startups and really trying to find what was next after the Pat Tillman Foundation. One of those contracts was with Good Weather, the contemporary art gallery in North Little Rock that my brother founded. I was transporting art around the United States, and happened to be in Chicago with my pickup truck, which led to the conversation with a former colleague that they needed support schlepping stuff. Schlep means to carry something large and awkward, and that’s where it all started.
We realized people needed help with transportation – specifically with heavy and large products – and after building on this idea for a few months, we started to realize there was a larger void in the local logistics niche. There was a need for two-man teams, pickup trucks, and sprinter vans to be able to provide furniture deliveries or event support on a customer-controlled timeframe, with less turn around time. Over the past 2-3 years, it’s really snowballed from there.
Is there anything else that you all are doing in Houston that you think that you want to talk about or that you think is important for this interview?
Just one final thing: I’d like to again shout out the Houston Community ToolBank – as they are the headwaters of the stream of support that is trickling into Houston. All of the volunteers coming into Houston and being coordinated on the ground ties back to the ToolBank – these volunteers are being engaged and activated with the tools that come from this shared resource ToolBank.
When you think of it, as we do at Schlep, in a logistical sense, they are the start of the supply chain – we just hope that people are aware of what they’re doing, not only now, but throughout the year in the cities that they’re located. So, a shout out to the ToolBank network (and our close friends at the Chicago Community ToolBank) and really a thank you to them for trusting our Schlep team to help manage their operations while they’re in this time of need.
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