(SEND Transportation Team | Photo courtesy of SEND Transportation)
In the heart of a freight recession, SEND Transportation, based in Bend, has not only survived, but it has also grown. At the center of this turnaround is Sarah Smith, a co-founder who never envisioned herself in the CEO seat.
Smith was chosen as the CEO of SEND in 2023, following the tenure of an external hire that wasn’t the right fit for the employee-owned company’s vision and goals.
“I was a bit of a reluctant CEO,” Smith admitted in a recent interview for Cascade Business News’ Women in Business edition. “I had always been sort of the passenger, never the CEO,” she recalled. “I was super scared. I had serious imposter syndrome.”
Though she had helped build SEND from the ground up beginning in 2013 (along with her husband, Nate, and initial partners Dru and Erin Allen, who later exited the company), Smith had spent most of her time behind the scenes in accounting and human resources roles.
When she took the CEO role, Smith immediately worked to implement a company-wide reset. “We just started back at the basics,” she said. “I found every possible way to cut expenses that did not include cutting payroll.”
She led the team through a move to a smaller office, streamlined technology costs, and stabilized cash flow. The company finished 2024 with nearly 15 percent growth and remains on solid footing midway through 2025, all while navigating what Smith calls “the longest freight recession this century.”
SEND Transportation specializes in food logistics, a choice grounded in stability. “Food is a little bit more insulated from economic highs and lows than other commodities,” Smith explained. “People have to eat.” That strategy has served them well; even during the 2008 recession and the pandemic.
While 98% of SEND’s shipments involve food, the company also maintains a long-standing book of nursery and plant freight — a legacy from one of their earliest employees, Howard Rackham. “He was actually the one who brought my husband and co-founder Dru into the transport industry 30 years ago.”
SEND operates as a freight broker, serving as the link between shippers and trucking companies across the 11 Western states and beyond. What sets them apart, according to Smith, is not just customer service but also how they treat their carrier partners. “We pay our trucking companies in 24 hours with no fee,” she said, referencing the industry-standard “quick pay” charge that SEND deliberately avoids. “We understand that trucks are the absolute foundation of everything we do.”
This relationship-first approach allows SEND to build long-term partnerships with reliable carriers, which in turn creates more stable pricing for customers. “It serves us, and it serves our customers,” Smith added. “We’ve been working with some of the same trucking companies for over 20 years.”
A major source of strength for SEND is its employee ownership structure. The company, which has 23 team members, became a 100 percent ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) years ago. “Growth for the company doesn’t fatten my wallet, it builds their retirement,” Smith said. “Employee-owned companies offer larger retirement benefits, and companies see more engagement, less turnover, and less burnout.”
This model, Smith believes, is central to SEND’s resilience. “Employee ownership gives organizational resilience,” she explained. “We leaned on that so heavily during our difficult time. I think it would have been a lot harder if we weren’t employee-owned. All companies go through difficult periods, and employee ownership gives you that resilience that can help you”
Now firmly established in her role, Smith says leadership is less about knowing all the answers and more about consistency and authenticity. “I’ve learned that so much of being a leader is showing up,” she said. “I think the team trusted that I wasn’t going to jump ship… and that trust allowed them to focus on where we were going.”
As the only woman in a prestigious leadership peer group in Bend, Smith has benefited from monthly meetings with other executives from other industries. “I look at problems differently than they do sometimes, and that’s been a really great way for me to grow,” she noted.
Michael Mack, chair of the Vistage group and Smith’s professional mentor, observed her leadership strengths: “Sarah has this wonderful combination of a strong strategic mind and the capacity to notice what’s going on with people,” Mack said, noting that he has seen her become more confident and steadfast in her voice and vision over the last two and half years.
“She taps into her intuition and really listens to that inner voice that may not be analytical, but she combines it with grounded business principles. That’s just rare to see someone who has that capability,” Mack said.
Smith offered advice for young women hoping to climb the leadership ladder: “Know yourself, trust yourself, and bring all of it to work,” she said. “There’s no separation. Who I am outside (of work) is who I am here.”
