Trailer Bridge's Tony Kvasnicka Talks Crisis Management: Pros to Know Award

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Hello, my name is Marina Mayer, Editor-in-Chief of Food Logistics and Supply and Demand Chain Executive, and I am here with Tony Kavaska, President of the Ocean Division for Trailer Bridge. Tony is a recipient of this year's Pros to Know Award in the Leaders in Excellence category. Congratulations, Tony, thank you so much for joining me today.

Let's talk about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and the journey it took to get to this current stage in your career.

Tony Kavaska: I've got a kind of an interesting story. I grew up farming. That was my background. For many years, and then, just like everything else, the farming kind of gets displaced by neighborhoods, and as the farm got down in size, I decided it was time to go back and get into a field that I had a little bit of history in with the Coast Guard. I spent 10 years in the Coast Guard, and that led me to Trailer Bridge to come on board as their port engineer. So that's where I started about 8 years ago.

Then, just things happened to work out, and we fell in line, and every time there was an opportunity for me, I took it, and about a little over a year ago, I made the final decision to accept the promotion to president. So, here I am today.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: One of the things outlined in your submission form is how your day-to-day responsibilities include the oversight of vessel operations and port operations in Jacksonville, San Juan, Puerto Rico. You oversee customer experience, support services, and asset maintenance as well as managing partnerships with some of these ports, like the Jacksonville Port Authority, Puerto Rico Ports Authority, U.S. Coast Guard, you mentioned earlier, U.S. Customs and Border Production. What are some of the challenges evolved over the years based off of your time in the industry?

Tony Kavaska: Domestically, the U.S. went through its longest freight recession, so that provided challenges for the ocean department as well. The ports, everything is always changing. They're always looking for new ways to invent and attract business, and we have to kind of adjust to that as well.

Puerto Rico, it's a sensitive market, it's stable, but it relies a lot on projects and stuff that have to happen. They're still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Maria back in 2017 with a lot of their infrastructure projects. So, all those things play a part in how we operate, how we get creative with the customer, stuff like that.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Over the past 12 months, you've led several initiatives, including driving improved asset utilization and financial performance across the Ocean Division. What does this entail? What does this look like?

Tony Kavaska: We serve Puerto Rico, Jacksonville, Dominican Republic, and the big part of the asset utilization is just getting a better understanding of our containers, our chassis, the equipment, where do we need to put emphasis on so we are at the leading edge of what we're capable of doing, because that drives the bottom line, and that's where we all want to be, is to provide the best product for our customers and for the company.

We can roll with the punches, and if maintenance is getting behind, we'll bring on new groups to help out with maintenance. Same with the vessels. If something's not performing well, then we go to the market and we search for changes. So, it's a big, big opportunity for us to to really get efficient.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: And you also played a central leadership role during the Brooklyn Bridge barge incident, when the vessel ran aground off the coast of the Bahamas, and then it was subsequently looted. Kind of walk us through what happened, and then how you provided the crisis management.

Tony Kavaska: Yeah, that was a day, for sure, when I found out what had happened. So, once we got notification from our tug provider, we jumped into action. I deal with the Bahamas on a lot of our dry docks and repairs and stuff like that, so I knew how to navigate getting to the Bahamas and getting the work permits and all that stuff, and who to call. I got myself down there to be kind of the on-scene eyes and ears for Trailer Bridge. And, that was the bulk of it, reporting back and giving them the information so they could take that off of my plate, so I could focus on how do we resolve this? How do we get our barge off the reef? How do we make sure it's not going to sink? How do we protect our customers’ products? And that's where I was boots on the ground, from the time, the day after it happened until we got free.

I want to say that was the easier task because then once we come back, now we've got to deal with the hazard issues for Hazmat containers, Coast Guard, EPA, DEP; every agency you could imagine was at our terminal, and we had to organize that and keep things moving along so we could get through and protect what we could from our shippers for their cargo, and protect the environment, the port, and all that.

We had to get that barge off the ground, and that's kind of where the 8 years of building connections, knowing who's in the market, where they're at really helped play a role in getting this thing off before weather turned bad. So, we were very lucky in that aspect.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: The Leaders in Excellence category honors company leaders who've made outstanding contributions to the supply chain space. What advice do you have for other professionals in the supply chain space?

Tony Kavaska: You can get stuck in the same mundane task of trying to provide service, and when things happen, COVID hit, a barge going aground, hurricanes, natural disasters, all these things, you have to get creative in how you can still provide that excellent service. So that would be my biggest piece of advice there.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: And what is something important to tell our readers that we haven't discussed so far? What's a good takeaway?

Tony Kavaska: A good takeaway from everything we do, especially in my instance. Like I said, I started out as the port engineer. If you would have asked me 8 years ago, would I be sitting in the seat? No way. It wouldn't even a thought on the radar.

Take the opportunities. Don't be afraid to fail in some of the stuff. I come up with some crazy ideas, but luckily I have a good team here at Trailer Bridge, and we sit down and we talk about it. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't. But it never makes me stop, There's room for growth every day, personal growth, business growth, and that's just what I get from it.