In It for the Long Haul
Not many CPAs get to play with trucks as a child and then spend whole days evaluating them as an adult. But that’s the case with Scott Fitzgerald. As the assistant controller at Inter-Metro Freight, based in Elizabeth, Scott had to learn the ins and outs of the freight industry — no easy task but a place where he now feels right at home.
To Scott, keeping track of the financials for Inter-Metro Freight means being on top of the transportation for everything from wine and spirits to timber, stone and any other heavy-weight commodity. What started out as an in-house trucking company to assist holding company Fedway Associates of Basking Ridge transport their containerized cargo of wine and spirits from the port and rail to the warehouse door, Inter-Metro has grown into a national truck operation that services ports in New York/New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and California. Its fleet of over 700 new tri-axle chassis (which hold containers) enable the firm to transport in some parts of the country up to 100,000 lbs. at a time, a 20,000 lb. increase over the standard gross vehicle weight limitation across the U.S. “Instead of a customer using 10 containers to import or export their merchandise, they can use eight containers with us,” he explains. “In addition to our tri-axle chassis, our tractors have four axles compared to a standard three-axle tractor. Because of that, we are able to carry extra weight.”
While hauling freight was new to Scott, he was used to dealing with all kinds of customers from his days as an institutional equity trader. After almost 15 years in finance, he made the leap to accounting as the Great Recession of 2007/08 made him realize accounting, not trading, would be a more useful and practical profession. “I know accounting has many transferrable skills,” says Scott.
He didn’t take too long to ponder about getting a CPA, however, when opting to go the accounting route. After a quick read of what courses he was lacking, he became a full-time student for a semester and made up his mind to sit for one section of the CPA exam every time it was offered. The end result? He easily passed the exam on his first try. Soon after, he joined a regional accounting firm, where he remained for about five years.
Digging Deeper
But it wasn’t until he jumped to the corporate accounting side at Inter-Metro Freight that he discovered what he liked best about accounting — analyzing expenses at a deep level and coming up with solutions for more efficient operations. “I can dig my teeth deeper into the financials. Here, I can see how we’re doing and how I can help with different expenses, such as why a certain expense went up,” explains Scott, who calls himself a problem-solver. “I’m definitely more hands on and more focused.”
With Inter-Metro Freight’s specialty in heavy-weight transportation, Scott has to be on top of the correct billing for each client and state, and even those international customers who want to ship something domestically. “Each state has a limit of the max gross vehicle weight. A lot of times a container is not full by volume but maxed out by weight,” he adds.
That means a lot for Scott to keep track of. So is he up to the challenge? A decisive “yes,” he says. “I do the financials for all of our remote locations, and will do so for future sites also. We are growing that part of the business.”
And while the firm’s expansion plans do come with a cost, they also mean more opportunities to satisfy customers. “We are very vertical here. We have customers that ask us to bring their products off of the ship, get them to another company and truck them somewhere else. It also can mean getting them on the rail,” says Scott, who is always looking for ways to save his company and his customers shipping costs.