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Life of work helps man find ways to keep things moving
He advises businesses how to get merchandise shipped
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Published: August 17, 2009
Learmond "Buddy" Hayes Jr. started working as a kid and never stopped.
Growing up, he worked on his grandparents' tobacco farm, picked strawberries and blueberries, cut grass, turned in pop bottles for the deposit and bagged groceries.
When he was a junior at Reynolds High School, he got a job working after school and on weekends in the kitchen at Baptist Hospital, now part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. In following years, he worked as a stock clerk at Kmart, a carpenter's apprentice and an assistant manager at a dry cleaners.
Since the early 1980s, he has been a supervisor in the shipping department for the yearbook printing company that was Hunter Publishing before being bought out by Jostens, a national company based in Minnesota.
A few years back, he founded a freight-management company on the side.
"I've been working all my life," said Hayes, who turns 53 this week.
Hayes also is a community volunteer. Over the years, Hayes has also devoted considerable time helping young people through nonprofit sports-and-education programs -- first through Tri-City Relays Track Club and now through Next Level Youth Enrichment.
And, each year, he dresses up as Santa Claus for the annual holiday party at the city recreation center at Reynolds Park.
In June, Hayes' life took a turn. When he went into work at Jostens one morning and saw a podium set up, he knew something was up. "I said, ‘This is not good.'"
When, a few minutes later, he heard about a mandatory meeting later in the morning, he said, "This is it."
And so it was.
On June 16, Jostens officials told them that, in the months to come, Jostens would be closing the Winston-Salem plant and laying off all 185 employees.
Although Hayes' initial thought had not been bad, he said, when the actual announcement came, he felt "almost relieved."
For one, it put an end to wondering. As technology has with many businesses, he said, it has brought a lot of changes to the yearbook business, and, after Hayes visited a Jostens plant in Tennessee last year and saw how advanced its technology was compared to the Winston-Salem plant, he figured it was a matter of time until the plant here was closed.
More importantly, it instantly turned Hayes Transportation & Logistics, the business he started on the side six or seven years ago, into his main focus. And that felt right.
"Now you know that path your future is going to take," he said. "They no longer control what might happen."
Jostens has not yet closed the plant here, and people in different positions are being laid off at different times. Today is the day that Hayes is scheduled to meet with the people in the personnel department to go over his severance package.
He will miss the people he has been working with at Jostens.
"I will never forget the people I worked with," he said. "The people are outstanding."
With accumulated leave time and such, it has been a couple of weeks since he has gone in to work at Jostens. Instead, he has been going to the office at Hewitt Business Center on South Marshall Street that he started renting earlier this year.
On the walls hang the logo for Hayes Transportation & Logistics, which his artist friend Jon Welker designed for him, and a cover featuring Hayes from a magazine put out by the Winston-Salem Recreation and Parks Department.
Hayes has a gift for making things more efficient, and his business grew out of people at other companies turning to him for advice.
"People were always asking me how to ship things," he said.
He moved from simple advice into looking into the specifics of how a business was doing its shipping and showing the owners ways to move things more efficiently. For some businesses, he handles all the shipping particulars. Word-of-mouth has gotten him clients from South Carolina to New York.
"I've been doing this for a long time. I understand what I'm doing," he said. "If people will give me five minutes of their time, I can save them thousands of dollars."
Hayes said that he feels as if he sees the hand of God in the way that his business has developed. He needed a logo. Welker offered to design one. He needed a Web site. The necessary information came his way.
The timing of the transition felt good, too. He and his wife, Phyllis, had just come back from a trip on which he had seen a sonogram for their newest grandchild.
"We had just gotten back from getting that great news," Hayes said. "I'm very excited. I am optimistic."
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
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