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I Had A Guradian Angel
In Teachers, Teams & Tugboats, you share your reflections on a more than forty-year career in global logistics. Why was this an important book for you to write?
As I was reflecting back on my long career, I realized I had not properly recognized or thanked some of those most important mentors and colleagues who helped me succeed. In fact, I had not communicated with some of them in over 20 years. I was motivated to let them know how important they were in my life and that they were truly appreciated. Most are elderly now, and they deserved to know the impact they made on someone else.
There was one very important mentor who I neglected to thank before he died and that has always haunted me. I mention this football coach in the beginning of my book on pages 6 to 9. I didn’t want to duplicate the regret I carried for not ever thanking him. As a result, I wrote this memoir in dedication to them all
What was the most difficult memory to revisit while writing this memoir?
The most difficult memory was the DUI and realizing I almost destroyed my career at age 31. Thankfully, I had a guardian angel.
What lessons froam the trucking and transportation world apply surprisingly well to everyday life?
The transportation and logistics world is very demanding and requires a disciplined work ethic and an attention to detail in order to succeed. Similar to everyday life, there are changes in the industry that we have to adapt to on a daily basis. Every day reveals a new challenge and adventure.
What is the best piece of advice you ever received from a mentor?
The best advice was from Charlie who said, “it is easy to just terminate a manager for not doing a good job and replace him with an A player”. “But a true leader is a teacher who can motivate and bring that manager to from a C player to a B player. That’s a real achievement.”
Author Links: Facebook | Website
Rich Higgins spent forty years in the demanding world of global logistics, helping teams through trucking deregulation, corporate bankruptcies, multi-billion-dollar mergers, and international sourcing expansions in Asia. But this isn’t a book about supply chains or bottom lines.
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats is about the seven mentors who shaped his journey, the “tugboats” who provided guidance, protection, and course correction when he needed it most.
In this candid memoir, you’ll discover: How a motor vehicle violation at age 31 nearly destroyed his career, and the friend who drove 110 miles daily to save it; What it’s like to work under armed protection when union related decisions turn dangerous; The leadership lessons learned from navigating Chapter 11 bankruptcy and emerging stronger; Why the best mentors don’t create you in their own image, they help you create yourself; How to recognize and honor the tugboats in your own life before it’s too late.
Higgins writes with the honesty of someone who’s lived through chaos and came out grateful. His storytelling blends professional insight with personal vulnerability, offering lessons on teamwork, integrity, and the importance of “paying it forward.”
This book is for: Mid-to-senior logistics and supply chain professionals; Business leaders, MBA students, and emerging executives; Anyone seeking authentic mentorship wisdom over hollow leadership theory; Readers who appreciate memoirs like Shoe Dog, Principles, and Leaders Eat Last.
More than a career memoir, this is a guide to recognizing the people who make success possible, and a reminder to thank them before the opportunity passes.
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats is a reflective career memoir about leadership, mentorship, and the complicated machinery of global logistics, told through Rich Higgins’s more than forty years in the field. Using tugboats as his central metaphor, Higgins looks back at the people who steadied him, pushed him, protected him, and taught him how to lead. The book moves from noisy trucking docks and deregulation to retail bankruptcies, mergers, Asian port visits, union conflicts, public speaking, health struggles, and late-career reinvention. What holds it together isn’t just supply chain expertise, though there’s plenty of that. It’s gratitude. Again and again, Higgins returns to the idea that a career is rarely built alone, and that the best leaders are the ones powerful enough to guide without needing the spotlight.
I appreciated the book’s emotional honesty. Higgins doesn’t polish himself into some flawless executive hero, and that gives the memoir its warmth. The scene where Tom drives him to work every day after his DUI is one of the book’s most affecting moments because it’s both painful and generous. Higgins lets us feel the shame of that mistake, but he also lets us feel the astonishing grace of a friend who simply shows up. I found that more memorable than many of the larger corporate victories because it captures the book’s real subject: character under pressure. The same is true when he writes about relocating his family and watching his daughters struggle, or turning down the dream job in St. Louis so he could be near his dying father. Those passages carry a quiet ache. They remind us that every career decision has a private cost, and Higgins is at his best when he lets that human truth sit beside the business lesson.
The writing is plainspoken and sincere. Higgins writes like a man talking across a table, and that directness suits the material. The book uses a lot of quotations, acronyms, and operational detail, especially when it gets deep into detention, demurrage, ocean rates, UPS contracts, and best-practice checklists. I did occasionally want a little less instruction and a little more scene. But even the technical passages have an authentic authority. When Higgins describes eliminating rail detention by teaching the distribution center team how the clock worked, creating a Container Priority Report, and getting everyone aligned around FIFO, the lesson lands because it’s concrete. The ideas are strongest when they’re embodied in action: Charlie trying to turn C players into B players, Dave bringing in positive reinforcement training, Greg keeping a position open until Higgins found his way back, Jimmy valuing expertise over age. The book’s moral universe is clear, maybe even stubbornly so, but I liked that about it. Tugboats, captains, crew members, pirates. It’s simple language for complicated workplaces, and it sticks.
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats feels less like a conventional business book and more like a thank-you letter written after a long and meaningful voyage. Its best moments are tender, funny, and grounded in hard-earned perspective, especially when Higgins admits what he didn’t know, who helped him survive, and which values still matter after the titles and relocations fade. I closed the book feeling that its deepest argument isn’t about logistics at all, but about remembering who carried us when we couldn’t quite steer ourselves. I’d recommend it to readers in supply chain, retail, transportation, or operations, but also to managers, mentors, and late-career professionals who want a candid reminder that leadership is built through patience, integrity, gratitude, and the grace to help someone else reach safe harbor.
Pages: 78 | ISBN : 978-1970751505
