by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Pay Lynch and his staff at Granite Logistics might as well be on vacation, what with a fabulous view from their huge glass windows of beautiful Lake Francis and a huge patio complete with Adirondack chairs for relaxing.
OK, so Lake Francis is really just a pond, but so what? The 41 employees at Granite Logistics love their new building, their new location and Lake Francis really does resemble a lake.
There was a time, not too many months ago, when the employees worked in cramped quarters at their previous building along CR 29 in East Sartell near Hwy. 15. That place was like a cubby hole, with room for only up to 36, compared to the brand-new 13,200 square-foot building at 25 3rd St. S. just south of PineCone Marketplace. The new place has room for up to 120 employees, and in the next five to 10 years, Lynch said he is confident the company will grow to that size.
“We’re really happy with how it (the new building) turned out,” Lynch said.
The building has a lot of open space, perfect for quick team communications. Plus, there are a lot of conference rooms and collaboration areas. The north and south sides are glass, which lets lots of natural light flood into the building. The patio is ideal for breaks and a bit of relaxation.
The building was designed by Negen Architects of St. Cloud and built by Strack Cos. of Sartell.
Granite Logistics was founded in December 2011 by Lynch and business partner Jeff Smiens. It’s one of the sales-and-operations agencies for Trinity Logistics, based in Seaford, Del. Lynch is president of Granite Logistics, Smiens its vice president. What the staff at the company does is to arrange transportation logistics to ship from place to place large items on flatbed trucks and over-dimensional items, such as large cranes, steel structures, construction materials and heavy-steel machinery. Basically, the company serves as a middle man between the shipper and the one(s) who will figure out how best to ship the item to where it is needed. The company has two branches – sales and operations.
Lynch is no stranger to the shipping brokerage business. Back in 1996, he formed Payne Lynch & Associates with two business partners, Todd and Jake Payne. The company flourished at its place in east Sartell near the Array Services Co. It was even honored as an “Inc. 500 Company.” But in 2006, Lynch and others agreed to sell the business to C.H. Robinson, also a third-party logistics transportation broker (the biggest in the world). And ironically, that was the same company Lynch worked for as an accounts representative in Winston-Salem, N.C. shortly after graduating with a business degree from St. John’s University, Collegeville. The C.H. Robinson company is still in Sartell, but it’s now located in the Northwest Professional Building just behind Perkins restaurant near the medical campus.
When Payne Lynch & Associates sold its business, they signed an agreement they would not compete with C.H. Robinson for a period of five years. That period ended in 2011, at which time Lynch and Smiens were eager to begin business again, and so they did.
Lynch, who is also a Sartell City Council member, grew up in Worthington. A graduate of St. John’s University, he moved to North Carolina and then back to Minnesota, where he worked for Anderson Trucking of east St. Cloud for a couple of years. He moved to Sartell in 1996, the year he and the Paynes opened Payne Lynch & Associates.
Success seems to beget success. Two weeks after the new building opened in Sartell, Granite Logistics opened another office in Minneapolis.
Lynch attributed the company’s success to “a great group of people, great staff, great team work.”
In the old building, he said, the staff functioned fine, even in cramped quarters.
“But it’s so much more enjoyable with the nice, newer building,” he added.

This is the reception area of the new Granite Logistics headquarters in Sartell.

Granite Logistics’ collaboration room somewhat resembles a modernistic style of a room on the spaceship Enterprise in “Star Trek.”

A patio at Granite Logistics allows employees to get some fresh outdoor air and relaxation during breaks.

Employees in the sales division of Granite Logistics work in their own cubicles, but there is plenty of open space for easy and instant communication among them when needed.

A conference room at Granite Logistics is flooded with plenty of outdoor light.