30 Under 30: Future Tech Transport’s Anil Kumar is broadening the freight brokerage industry

Anil Kumar, 26

Founder + CEO, Future Tech Transport

Life Story: When Anil Kumar was in Grade 1, his older brother was diagnosed with a brain tumour. “He says to me on his deathbed, ‘Look, I’m going to die, nothing we can do about it. I need you to stay strong and take care of mom and dad,’” remembers Kumar. His parents were immigrants from India, who both worked minimum wage jobs and, a few years later, when Kumar was in high school, they separated. 

He got a job at Value Village in East Vancouver at the age of 13 for the employee discount to save his family money on clothes and started working his way up the ladder. After a year at Capilano University, he decided to drop out and “reinvent myself, find my purpose.” Kumar started working full-time at Value Village, where he was promoted to the head of donations and eventually became head of warehousing and trucking for the company’s flagship location on Hastings Street.

That was his foot in the door into the industry of logistics. From there, he worked as a trucking dispatcher at Speedee Transport before launching his own transportation and logistics venture in Future Tech Transport.

Bottom Line: Kumar bills Burnaby-based Future Tech as “the only freight brokerage company in the province owned and run by millennials. Our entire demographic is millennials. I don’t know of another freight brokerage in B.C. that has that.” The company has access to over 500 trucks and does business in both Canada and the U.S.