To spend some time with Tom Pellington is to understand why we continue to feature today's logistics and transportation superstars on the cover of Logistics Management. His positive attitude is infectious, and his unwavering desire to drive change and champion the integration of logistics into broader business processes verges on visionary.

In an age when it's too easy to lose yourself in the day-to-day grind, Pellington made the time to push the National Industrial Transportation League (NITL) into a more enlightened age of collaboration, pumping new energy into an organization that had long been wedged into a narrow regulatory silo. For his effort in implementing the League's Vision 2020 initiative, NITL, in conjunction with Logistics Management, will present the 2004 McCullough Logistics Executive of the Year Award to Pellington at the group's 97th Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

As I mention in this month's cover story, Pellington's work with NITL is just one reason why he's been tapped for this honor. I was perhaps most impressed by the fact that this industry veteran with 26 years at the same company—Cincinnati-based scrap-broker David J. Joseph Co.(DJJ)—holds the same healthy enthusiasm for adaptation as he did back in '78, when he was looking to round out his training in the new era of deregulation.

Finding that his personality was a perfect fit for the fast-paced brokerage environment, Pellington quickly learned DJJ's specific business needs. He developed a way to put shipment cost and routing information at the fingertips of the company's brokers—the logistics department's demanding internal customers. That initiative integrated DJJ's core business with its logistics operations, and today it's an ongoing IT project that has become the company's key differentiator.

But most importantly, he says, the project illustrates the characteristics that today's logistics and supply chain professionals need in order to be successful. "You have to be a multi-dimensional professional. You have to become a project manager and you have to become an advocate of technology," he says. "Those are the key skills that allow us to do more with less."

Following my interview with Pellington, I had the opportunity to meet with MBA students who are members of Michigan State University's Graduate Supply Chain Management Association. Hoping to hear Pellington's words echoed back from a crop of future stars, I asked them what they thought today's logistics and supply chain professional needs to understand to be successful.

Second-year student Nicole Ingram replied, "Today you have to understand procurement, how to integrate IT, how to build relationships, how to transform a product, and how to get that product to the customer at the right time. But most of all, you have to have a passion to make sure your internal and external customer is served."

It appears that the next generation has already heeded Pellington's advice.

Mike Levans, Chief Editor