Ripple effects: Alumni use their
education to create opportunity for others
Joel Raney launched the first of his businesses, Raney’s Truck Parts, from a kitchen.
When he founded Volt Air in 2006, Julius Davis hoped to eventually employ a dozen people. Today he has 150 employees in seven offices.
Joel Raney keeps on truckin’
Lessons to grow by
JOEL RANEY’S COMPANY BEGAN in 2010 as an online merchant for custom aftermarket parts and accessories for semi-trucks. In the beginning, while he was still completing graduate courses at USF, Raney, ’11, Life Member, commuted back home to the Ocala “warehouse’’ — the kitchen of a converted house, where parts were crammed into every available cabinet space. Ebay inquiries were diverted to his cell phone, which he answered while darting in and out of USF classrooms. By 2015, Raney’s Truck Parts was doing more than $10 million in annual sales. Although online sales still account for 97 percent of the company’s business, a transformation began three years ago when he opened a 125,000-square-foot warehouse and showroom, what he calls a “toy store for your big rig.’’ “People walk in and think they’re in heaven,’’ says Raney, a 2018 USF Outstanding Young Alumnus who has since launched two more businesses: HammerLane Apparel and South Florida Strong, which sells Bulls gear. For his truckers’ showroom, Raney delighted city fathers by renovating a sprawling abandoned building that “looked like something out of an apocalypse movie.” What had begun with him, his dad and cousin working out of a kitchen has grown to 100 employees coming to work in a space with beanbag chairs, Ping-Pong tables, billiards and other perks, creature comforts that make everyone happy to be at work. “It was a direct result of what I learned at USF,’’ Raney says. “I was taking master’s classes in structural engineering, but I wanted to know more about business. The administrators allowed me to do almost a dual major and those MBA classes taught me about human resources, company culture and core values. You always take care of people first.”
A GAINFULLY EMPLOYED ELECTRICAL ENGINEER, Julius Davis, ’93 and MBA ’14, just couldn’t let go of the notion of starting his own engineering business. So he studied up. He read autobiographies of prominent business owners. He signed up for the free and low-cost classes offered by the USF Small Business Development Center — some twice. He learned about forming a business plan, taxes, marketing and human resources. In 2006, he founded Volt Air, an architectural engineering firm, with dreams of one day employing a dozen people – a business big enough to provide him a comfortable life. Today, Volt Air has 150 employees with offices in Tampa, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Houston and Dallas; Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta. It’s doing interior work for the $22-million Indoor Performance Facility for USF Athletics, the USF Honors College and the College of Business on the St. Petersburg campus, along with projects for the City of Tampa and Hillsborough Community College. “I learned so much at USF,’’ says Davis, Life Member. “Engineering in general really trains your mind differently. You learn to think logically and solve problems. When I got my MBA, that has directed me in the way I do everything from my financials to legal documents. That knowledge is my foundation.’’ You can’t prepare for the unknown, Davis says – like the 2008 recession, or the COVID-19 pandemic. “But you can prepare for knowing there will be some unknown. … I couldn’t ask for better than what USF provided.’’
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UNIVERSITY of SOUTH FLORIDA
