Shortly after sunrise at Stevens Park Golf Course, Tré Black approaches the first tee armed with a bucket hat to block the Texas heat. The CEO of On-Target Supplies & Logistics has been at the helm of his family’s 42-year-old North Texas company since 2018, when his father, Albert, stepped down from leadership.
Founded in 1982, On-Target started out as a janitorial supply business, evolved to a copy and computer paper company, then morphed into a complete outsourced logistics operation. On the 426-yard par 4, 1st, Black’s drive nestled beneath a tree just right of the fairway; his approach shot landed him a few yards short of the green.
Growing up, Black never wanted to work under his father. Instead, he hoped to work in finance. When Black was 11 years old, his dad asked him to spend the summer rolling $700 worth of coins. The elder Black took the 11-year-old to the bank, opened up a brokerage account for the youngster, and with that $700, taught his son to trade stocks.
“So, growing up I wanted to be a stock broker,” he says with a laugh before knocking in his putt on the first hole. “I was set on going to New York and trading stocks—or making deals as an investment banker.”
But he got roped into the family business shortly after graduating from college. Black’s chip shot on the par 4, 2nd hole set up him for a good chance at an up-and-down for par. Before stepping up for the putt, though, he talked about how his dad tricked him into what was supposed to be a short stint at On-Target after graduating from Baylor University.
“I was looking around at different banks in New York and was really wanting to work for JPMorgan, but while I was interviewing, my dad told me, ‘Son, our investment company, Treco Investments, needs some help. Why don’t you come in here and help with some things—just until you find something else.'”
One day turned into a few weeks, which turned into a lifetime. “At Treco—which invests in industrial real estate, commercial office space, multifamily partnerships, and some private business—I started by collecting rent on the office buildings and commercial real estate we had,” he says amidst a bogey run for the both of us from the 3rd through 6th holes. “Then I started focusing on the cash cycle for On-Target. I was assigned to collections and payables, and I really got a grasp of the cash cycle. I got good at it. I started to really understood how incredibly imperative it is for small to midsize companies to be very good in cash management.”
Now, On-Target Supplies & Logistics—which had 70 employees when Black started at the company in 2006—boasts a full-time employee base of more than 260. The company ended 2022 with a year-over-year EBITDA increase of 300 percent. ReadyToWork, a workforce development firm—and one of two companies under On-Target ownership—is on pace to see a 35–40 percent YoY EBITDA increase by the end of 2023. “Companies like ours traditionally just don’t see that kind of growth,” he says. “But shareholders are very happy.”
On top of leading On-Target, Black is also on the board at Baylor University Medical Center and chairs its Community Engagement Committee. “One of the biggest things we’re pushing is a significant upgrade of our BUMC facilities,” he says. “We certainly want the community, the business community, the civic community, and the philanthropic community to really support and endorse that initiative so we can offer the most modern healthcare in the region.”
I ask how much funding it’s going to take to modernize BUMC’s facilities. Black is quiet on a specific amount but says, “We could start seeing a formal campaign start to form in the next 12 months.”
Black expects On-Target to become an official holding company within the next 12–24 months, expanding its portfolio beyond the two companies it already owns. “At the heart of who we are, we’re entrepreneurs,” he says after lagging a 50-foot downhill putt to 6 inches on the par 3, 7th hole. “We recognize the importance of diversifying and having different revenue streams—different business lines—with different operations and different leaders in each company. We’re getting closer and closer to that.”
Once the holding company is launched, Black says On-Target hopes to split off different business departments into independent operations under On-Target’s direction. “We’re looking at spinning off a distress management company we’ve been working on for about 11 years,” he says as we make the turn to the backside after a bogey-bogey and bogey-par on holes 8 and 9 for he and I, respectively. “In that same vein, everyone is concerned with an upcoming recession and economic downturn. So, right now, we’re being very conservative with our investments, and we’re being very conservative in ramping up our workforce.
“We’ve never wanted to be one of those companies forced to do layoffs. Coming out of the pandemic when so many companies were over hiring, we didn’t [hire]. I feel really good about that because I never wanted to be in a situation where I had to let people go. I’m glad we kept waiting, and we’re going to continue to do that. Our goal is to continue to have some good treasury management and keep as many things in cash as we can until the economy settles.”
Through nine holes, Black’s strength on the golf course is clearly his short game. Inside 40 yards, the executive has great hands and feel as he tossed up several pitch shots within 10 feet—plus a Tour-level 50-foot lag putt that was the most impressive roll on the front side.
After a long par 5, 10th, and a short par 4, 11th, we find ourselves with a good scoring opportunity on the par 3, 12th as we both throw up solid tee shots within 25 feet. We then start to talk about how Black has handled the succession plan that culminated with his promotion in 2018.
“I had to make sure to focus on having humility with dignity,” he says as we both tap in for par. “I was really willing to work—and I think the executive management team and other managers noticed that. So many times people think that folks who grew up like me, who are involved in family businesses, have a silver spoon and don’t do anything. I think there’s a lot of family businesses where that is the case, but my mom and dad did a really good job with my upbringing, so I wouldn’t be a spoiled brat who takes things like this for granted.
“But transitions are very difficult. In transitions, you have to be empathetic to employee’s concerns, you have to appreciate their historic contributions, you have to be patient, and you have to ask others to be patient. Quite frankly, we did really well with a smooth transition. That’s a credit to all the senior leadership of the company who really made it their mission to make it work.”
After a par for both of us on the dogleg left par 4, 13th, we follow it up with two bogeys on the longest par 3 on the course—the 193-yard 14th.
As we approach the home stretch, Black opens up about the challenges that On-Target is facing currently. “Encouraging prospective clients to make dramatic shifts in how they manage their supply chain is difficult,” he says as we tee off on the 387-yard par 4, 15th. “So being able to convince people that we really can bring greater efficiencies to supply chains without using the temporary labor model, but rather a W-2, full-time, better trained, more-rounded professional can sometimes be a hard sell that can take a long time. But the fact of the matter is that the model we have is going to bring greater consistency to the supply chain.”
But opportunity still abounds for the company: “The industries that we’re in, I mean goodness gracious, there are incredible amounts of opportunity,” Black says. “With the semiconductor industry, we’re going to have some of the greatest semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure built in the last 50 years—or ever. We’ve got broadband that needs to expand to more rural and urban communities, so there’s opportunity there. And then in the utility space, there’s going to be more infrastructure improvements to the grid and other transmission distribution infrastructure—not just in the state, but in the region—and we want to be some of the workforce that’s a part of that infrastructure expansion.”
On-Target also partners with Workforce Dallas—a workforce development initiative started by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson to upskill and upgrade low-wage workers to higher-paying job opportunities. “We’ve put together a training program in supply chain management and once you go through that folks can make $21 an hour—rather than the $7.25 I know some folks in Dallas are making. We want to see people earn an appropriate living wage,” Black says.
Both of our drives set us up as well as we could ask for on the 16th. But we’re staring down an intimidating second shot that requires a 3-wood to climb at least 30 feet of elevation to get up on the same tier as the green. Before we attempt it, Black and I discuss how technological innovations are disrupting the logistics industry and supply chain management.
“We’re certainly looking into more modern skill development around automation and the use of robotics in the workplace,” he says. “We feel it’s essential for our longevity. We’re excited about the technological advancement, but we are understanding that the ordinary inter-level jobs will go away. There will be greater tech-focus jobs, and we have to make sure that our students in our schools are ready. We have to make sure we have workforce programs that are being held accountable for ensuring that our workforce is truly ready to work in this modern-day economy.”
Neither of our shots make it over the intimidating wall, and we make our way to the drop zone with nothing but a chance to try to save bogey. Both of us fail to do so, but we bounce back on the par 3, 17th with pars. Before teeing off on the final hole of the day, we dive into talking about electrification and automated vehicles.
“There’s still a ways to go on electrification,” he says. “As it relates to automated vehicles, it’s not something that has affected us too much. We’ve experienced several friends of ours in the industry who were part of the first wave of commercial trucking automation and electric vehicles, and they just went bust. I think a lot of these companies, even publicly traded companies, are having a difficult time pulling this off with the constraints on ranges and the training that folks need to operate those vehicles.”
Looking ahead for On-Target, as we both nestle our approach shots onto the two-tiered green on the 18th hole, Black is bullish on continued growth. “In the next five years, I can see us at an employment base of at least 500 employees,” he says as he lines up his final putt of the day. “I could see us really turning the corner and being able to invest more technologies and automation, and working with some of our biggest clients to continue to provide efficiencies with supply chains.
“We’re going to continue to keep up in the manner that we’ve been keeping up over the last 40 years—actually, scratch that, we’re going to become something even more than what we’ve been over the last 40 years.”
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