GIRARD, Ohio (WKBN) — A Girard company has been given some prestigious honors over the past several months for its workplace environment and its CEO.
In early October, Girard’s AIM Transportation Solutions announced that it had been placed on Newsweek’s list of the top 100 most loved workplaces for the second year in a row.
Then in mid-November, the website Most Loved Workplaces.com announced that AIM CEO Tom Fleming, 73, had been named a Most Loved CEO.
The results were based on confidential surveys from employees.
“The fact that our employees consider me one of the most loved is a really humbling and gratifying experience,” Fleming said.
AIM’s headquarters is on Trumbull Avenue in Girard. The company employs 1,100 people and leases trucks to major companies.
The company’s history dates back 120 years, becoming prominent during the heyday of steel. In 1906 in Youngstown, Tom Fleming’s grandfather J.V. McNicholas founded McNicholas Transportation which was a steel hauler. He hauled items from the train station with a horse and buggy.
After the demise of the steel industry, Fleming bought the company in 1982 and changed the focus to leasing trucks. Today, AIM has 11,000 of them on the road.
“We provide the truck and all the maintenance on it to typically companies that need trucks but aren’t a trucking company,” Fleming said.
Fleming says if someone has enjoyed a Coors Light or Miller Lite lately, it was delivered on one of AIM’s Trucks. They also deliver the drinks and snacks for American, United, and British Air flights.
“People may not notice AIM trucks traveling down the road but they would notice some of the products they are carrying,” Fleming said.
The key to running a successful company, according to Fleming, is keeping in touch with the employees.
“I told people you could either call me, email me and I will give you an answer. May not be the answer you like but you won’t not have an answer at some point,” he said.
His management style is to be visible and available.
“My goal was to always be visible and available and I do simple things and I require or ask some of our other senior managers to do the same things — simple things like where I park at the office requires me to walk through our shop and walk through our office,” he said.
While Tom Fleming remains CEO of AIM Transportation Solutions, his son Scott is now the president of the company and handles most of the day-to-day operations.
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