This former teacher built a million-dollar business with nothing

Meet Ashley Booker, she is the founder of Complete Logistics Service Inc., an asset-based company that provides intermodal drayage services for small and large clients in the southern seaboard region of Texas. Her company is listed as one of the top 10 small business drayage companies in the Houston, TX area. She also owns a Brokerage firm.

In a year, she has transported over 2,500 containers. Aside from breaking barriers and setting standards for herself, she continues to create opportunities for future female minority-owned companies to excel in the United States Port Authority business, according to Authority Magazine.

Booker was introduced to her career by a friend, who taught her how to dispatch and within her first week, she organized a group of carriers and helped them grow their fleet. She made around $8,000 that week. By 2014, she had launched her own company.

Booker grew up in the Northside of Houston. She schooled at Westfield High School and continued to Texas Southern University where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management with a minor in accounting.

Her parents separated when she was only five years old. Although she was raised by her mother, her father was financially and physically present in her life. In other words, she didn’t experience hardship growing up.

Her father was a trucker but switched his profession to construction to be closer to his children and have more home time while her mother stayed in a middle-class neighborhood in spring and worked for a hospital for more than 28 years.

However, she felt a shift in her life when her father passed away when she was in high school. Although her mother was still receiving hundreds of dollars in weekly allowance, purchasing whatever she wanted came to an immediate stop.

“I always had a job due to the Co-op (highschool working program). After my father passed my money couldn’t just be spent on whatever I wanted, I had to pay for things that I needed. This is when I learned the difference between wants vs needs,” she told Authority Magazine.

The mother of three also has an entrepreneurial spirit. According to her, she has never been content with working for any company despite her broad job history.

“I have worked in the ER & life flight in patient access, tech support, I used to do hair & sale bundles, I had a construction company, financial planning, insurance, CPS, and I was a geometry teacher for 5 years,” she said.

“I feel that I am so resourceful due to the connections I have made through my multiple career paths. When an old friend showed me how to dispatch, I then fell in love. I feel in love with the freedom of not having to clock-in, making my own schedule, and of course the money.”

As people continued to contact her to help them in the trucking industry, Booker created Surviving Intermodal to assist them with the process of how to operate in the port, railroads, and dispatch. She also wrote a book Surviving Intermodal, which is available on Amazon. Her Complete Logistics Service is now worth $3.5 million.