Michael Dykstra
39
Owner
Terpene Transit
Amber Vaughn
36
President
Terpene Transit
Michael Dykstra and Amber Vaughn are the husband-and-wife team behind the longtime Washington cannabis cultivator, Mt. Baker Homegrown, and the Evergreen State’s largest cannabis logistics company, Terpene Transit.
“When we first started, Terpene Transit had two vans,” Vaughn says. “Now we have 38 vans, two box trucks, 90 employees. It’s been a wild seven years.”
Dykstra credits part of the company’s transformation to one of its early clients, Cowlitz County Cannabis Cultivation, a large producer/processor that demanded a lot from Terpene Transit but also helped Dykstra and Vaughn set a high bar for themselves moving forward.
“They really helped us develop the model and how to do high-volume, high-frequency deliveries and get really good at it,” Dykstra says. “That helped us scale a lot.”
Unlike cannabis distribution companies in other state markets, Terpene Transit is strictly a third-party logistics business as it does not take fiscal possession of the products it moves, and every delivery has to be completed within 48 hours.
The demands of the cannabis industry have ultimately shaped the couple’s delivery service, but at the same time, the state’s licensing structure has also shaped their personal lives.
“We waited for so long to get married because at one point I was interested in a retail license and in Washington, if you’re married to someone with a producer/processor license, then you cannot have a retail license,” Vaughn says. “But we run Terpene and at this point there’s no interest in retail, so we finally got hitched.”
And in a somewhat circular fashion, the couple’s personal lives have also shaped their business. When Vaughn became pregnant with their daughter, they realized the need to restructure the company to better define all the separate departments and include more managerial roles.
“We had a director of operations sit in the driver’s seat for a couple months while I healed and then we were back out again and on to the next steps,” Vaughn says. “It’s been great ever since.”
“It was so easy for us to have our lives be our careers instead of our lives,” Dykstra adds. “It was good to have a step back and really look at some big finishes.”
Dykstra has continued his roles with Mt. Baker Homegrown and Terpene Transit, while Vaughn has also been busy as a board member of the Cannabis Alliance, working with regulators to try bringing a true distribution model to Washington and ease the warehousing burden placed on state operators.
“There’s just so many aspects in which we can help create a healthier environment for the industry as a whole,” Vaughn says.