Jeff Albert left the northern Maine woods 15 years ago to help run the family trucking business and has never looked back. In fact, he has expanded his empire by rescuing two other companies.

In job-hungry Aroostook County, this type of entrepreneurial savvy is welcomed.

A forest engineer by education, Albert left the woods in 1989 after seven years with Irving Woodlands. His father, Elmo Albert, had converted the family farm into a trucking business. The elder Albert, now in his 80s, still offers daily advice.

Albert, as president of Evergreen Trading Co. LLC in Madawaska, oversees a trucking and truck brokering company with 35 employees and 24 tractor-trailers. He also operates Evergreen Manufacturing Co. LLC, which comprises the two other companies he has purchased. Fifty employees work in the two manufacturing operations.

When he joined the business, its trucks hauled mostly paper from Nexfor Fraser Papers in Madawaska. Now they also haul goods for the two companies he has acquired. The truck brokerage part of that business uses many local independent truckers, those with one or two trucks on the road.

The first company he purchased was Northern Trading Co. when it ceased operations in 1999.

Northern Trading had been one of Evergreen Trading’s accounts. The company takes barrels of perfume that are trucked to Madawaska and bottles it for the retail market.

“Northern Trading was one of our biggest freight companies, and now we can offer cosmetics delivered,” Albert said.

When Albert bought the bottler, he also purchased its real estate, which lies east of the Madawaska business district on Route 1. The facility can fill about 30,000 bottles of perfume a day.

Cosmetics work is cyclical: The perfume, which includes the Elizabeth Arden line, has to be on store shelves in October for holiday sales. Spring and summer are the busiest, with a dozen or so students augmenting the work force in May for the seasonal push.

So Albert purchased the assets of PaulMart in 2002 at auction and relocated its work to the Route 1 site.

The company takes second-grade paper and turns it into pads of paper, construction paper and colored paper. The products are sold to discount stores across the United States and Canada.

“The paper conversion business fits in nicely because we have a good working relationship with Fraser and, again, we can move our own product,” Albert said.

“My different management style is making these two outfits work,” Albert said.

“Different synergies have helped double the output of PaulMart, which always made money,” he said. “That was done by bringing in other resources we have, both in manufacturing and freight capabilities.”

Albert’s trucks haul Fraser paper south and return with bottles and other supplies for his two manufacturing lines. Then they turn around, hauling the bottled perfumes and finished paper.

“My job and challenge is to make it work, mesh it together,” he said. “That’s what we’ve done, and it works.

“Our clients get better service, and independent truckers we broker for make it as well,” he said. “The bottom line is that we built a client base by giving them the service they want.

“This is also a big reflection of the work ethic of the people in the area,” he said. “We have a small core of people who worked with Northern Trading and PaulMart, and we have a lot of newer people as well.”

But still, Albert’s major problem is finding workers. Minimum-wage production jobs are hard to fill. He has thought of moving some work to nearby towns to make it easier to find people.

He said he has surrounded himself with “good, positive-thinking managers,” and they work as a team. Albert wishes he could bring back some of the talent that is working out of state.

“The future looks good. We are not making a lot of money, but our companies are stable and the future looks bright,” he said. “We are diversified enough to react to the marketplace, and our mix of products could change.

“Of course there will be new things,” he said. “As opportunities arise, we will take advantage of them.

“There’s a saying in business: If you can make it in northern Maine, you can make it anywhere,” Albert said. “That says a lot.”