The Art of Customer Relationship Building | Episode 297

Speaker 1: 0:19

Hey, welcome to this week's episode of Freight 360. Nate is off on military duty this week, so Stephen's going to be joining me for this episode. If you're a friend of the content, please like, share, comment, send your questions over All that's appreciated. We are going to cover how to get more freight for brokers Some like 101 level stuff, some basics these are probably the things that we'll talk about today that the folks that do these well consistently tend to have long, profitable or successful careers, and they're the most common things I see brokers not getting business or watching their accounts shrink aren't doing. So they are just some like really straightforward things that everyone should be doing in this industry that we'll talk about.

Speaker 1: 1:09

In sports, to kind of kick things off, the Memorial Tournament was last weekend. Scotty Scheffler won. I don't know if anyone saw that. You got the French Open going on. Finals will be this weekend. I don't think there was too much noteworthy in there. Oh, my cousin Darren Kowalski won the Tri-State Open in South Hills Country Club in Pittsburgh yesterday. As an amateur he ended up winning in a playoff hole, so that was pretty cool. Shout out to him. That's awesome. What do we got in the news? Got a few things we wanted to chat about. You want to talk about the FMCSA thing that's making some note.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Yeah, so the FMCSA released in April the identity verification steps for motor carrier and the fall off from new authorities applications has been quite dramatic. I don't know if you, if you look at your stocks, it's not a line on a chart that you would like to see.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Sixty five percent in the month prior, down to 30 percent in April. So it got cut in half and the important part is like, that is the step between, like the application and approval Right. So same number of applications but like half of the people that would have gotten through are getting through, now that they need to go through an identity check.

Speaker 2: 2:34

Yeah and then. So there's a lot of people talking about how this could impact rates capacity, which there's some obvious correlation there. Rates capacity, which there's some obvious correlation there. But the one thing that is interesting is the MCS-150 form that the carriers have to fill out, which is every two years. They have to re-verify their essentially their identity, all their equipment, all that kind of stuff. Miles like average miles, that will be part of that process. So I think every month, as these biennials are due from different carriers, you'll keep seeing that go down and down and down. So it'll be it'll be interesting to track.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Agreed. I mean I'm just really excited they're actually doing something. I mean clearly it's having some result. I'm super skeptical in the short run this is going to halt any type of fraud or crime, because I don't know the instances. I haven't seen go down at all and I've had some conversations with folks that are on that side, meaning like I'll give you an example we had.

Speaker 1: 3:40

It was a client of mine had a truckload stolen, right. He was a client of mine had a truckload stolen, right. We were able to one I can't remember if we were. I think we were in contact with the dispatcher who was clearly the one committing the fraud because he was holding the load hostage and we were trying to negotiate some portion to get the load back. And I think they had said you know, the load's worth a hundred grand. If you give us 10 grand, we'll tell you where the load was. But then you run into this hard problem of like, okay, we give you 10 grand, what's going to say? You're going to give us the information or that the truck's there. So there was a whole bunch of back and forth with this gentleman that was clearly admitted to have stolen the load. Right, knew the load stolen. We're talking to the person that stole the load.

Speaker 1: 4:26

And the two funny things were the client I was working with was in Europe and when he was on the phone with this guy, I was on the phone too. It was like a three-way call. The police car happened to drive past the broker and the broker owning the USs company in europe right, but it was a european cop car, so the siren sounded different and you could hear the criminal on the phone. Just pause. And his voice changed like well, wait a minute. Like where are you again?

Speaker 2: 4:59

like because he clearly wasn't in the united states right, which was like the first part that I thought was kind of comfortable.

Speaker 1: 5:05

But the second piece was and this is the part that I think is worth telling for everyone to be aware of is like he said listen, I know what you're gonna try to do. You're gonna try to pay me half, because I think we got to the point where, like, hey, you want 10, we'll give you eight, but we'll give you four up front and the other four when we can find the truck Right. So here's half, in good faith. Here's the other half, because the reality was like this client of ours like has theft insurance and the deductible was like 10 grand anyway.

Speaker 1: 5:34

So it was like hey if you're going to pay the money anyway and you're not going to get it back, this gets the cargo to your customers sooner and you don't have the claim, your insurance premiums don't go up. So it seemed like it made sense to go this route. Okay, and what he said was listen, I know what you're thinking, because the first thing we asked was like well, just have your driver bring it to our customer. He's like I'm not, because like you're just going to have the authorities meet my driver there and arrest them. So like we're not going to do that. Okay. And then the second thing the threat that he made was he goes, listen, like I know what you're thinking is you're going to pay me half and then screw me on the other half, not pay me the other half once you get the cargo. But he's like I'm telling you right now, like we know who your brokerage is, we obviously have your MC, we know who this customer is. He's like I've got at least a handful of other legitimate carrier MCs right now that have no freight guards, that are running freight legitimately. That I absolutely can, whether it's next week, two weeks or three weeks from now, I will take another load from you and I will take one of this customer's loads and I will let that customer know that you knew this was getting stolen and you won't get it back. So basically he was telling us that, hey, you don't pay this other four grand, I will use one of my other clean MCs, absolutely steal another load and I will make it very clear and apparent to your customer that you didn't do what you were supposed to and you knew this was going to get stolen.

Speaker 1: 7:06

And it was like you could tell in the guy's tone of voice. It did not seem like a bluff, Like he absolutely knew what he was doing. He absolutely understood the system and clearly was doing this more than a one-off scenario. Like these are sophisticated criminals that operate like legitimate brokerages. They just steal the things instead of actually moving them. And to me, like, if you're that sophisticated and you see what the FMCSA is doing, there's still so many MCs out there that are legitimate. There's so many carriers that are going to go out of business or are in financial hardship that, like they'll probably sell their MCs to some of these in the meantime and if they got a two year window before they're going to get verified, to lose that MC they only need three or four days to steal a lot of freight under a legitimate MC. So like hey, kudos, I'm glad they're starting to do these things. I'm surprised they did them as fast as they have, but I think it's still going to be a long while before we see a reduction in crime or fraud.

Speaker 2: 8:11

Yeah, I agree and I think, kind of going to what you said. During COVID, I mean, we all talked about it we saw the rise in authorities A lot of that was just people applying for these burner MCs because they could just get 30, 40, 50 of them at a time.

Speaker 1: 8:33

So at least it's not. That's not going to continue to happen. Agreed Again. Hey, I don't want to criticize making steps towards the goal that we all want them to have, right, not trying to be overcritical. I'm mostly pointing this out because I think everyone needs to be super diligent still and not expect this to go away just because the FMCSA is finally doing something.

Speaker 1: 8:51

The other thing this was in Freight Caviar this morning and this just astounds me is that the FMCSA is cutting their staff. At the same time, they're supposedly combating fraud by 7%. Like to me, that is absolutely absurd. Yeah, I know that they don't have the ability to determine how much funding they get. That comes from DC and Congress.

Speaker 1: 9:17

But when you are reading what is going into the budget the amount that they're adding to the deficit within weeks of being all over the news saying we have this huge problem, the government is over leveraged, we're spending too much money, doge is going to cut $2 trillion Within weeks, you don't hear anything about Doge. I've seen articles that it might've cost more money to implement Doge than they actually saved. So it was basically a net zero. And then, when it came time for all of Congress to decide, hey, we actually do need to make some of these cuts permanent or reduce our spending. They're spending more money and in addition to that, they're on the news talking about driver safety because people were getting killed by unsafe drivers, unlicensed cdl drivers what was the number like? Four percent on dot blitz week that just had no driver's license whatsoever yeah, it was.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Uh, I think it was one in one in five, right it was one in 20, but one in five are below the safety standard.

Speaker 1: 10:20

So one out of five trucks are not meeting the safety standards and it was like 4% of the drivers pulled over during Blitz week had no CDL whatsoever. We're just driving without a license and when you look, and on top of that, like there is a backlog of years of inspections, they're behind on the safety standard. Safety is literally in that organization's name Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association and they haven't been caught up. I don't even know when the last time they were actually upholding the safety standards that they're supposed to be holding. And now they're going to cut the budget. So you've got government saying hey, this is a big issue for us, yelling about people not speaking English, when one in 20 drivers has no CDL. One in five trucks is below the safety standard and they're like you know what, we're going to give you less money, but hey, we need more money for everything else that we want to spend it on. Like, to me, it's just such horseshit.

Speaker 2: 11:21

Well, did you? I don't know if you saw the stuff about the Blitz week and that carrier that got the most inspections? That was a Prada, I think Prada LLC. I didn't see that. So Garrett made a system called search carriers and during Blitz week he collected all the data and there was this carrier and everyone thought his data was wrong. It was two trucks and they had like 200 inspections or something, just during Blitz Week.

Speaker 2: 11:49

And then when you look into their company profile, they got started in February of this year and they've had 1,128 inspections. I think the last time I looked at since February of this year for two trucks and everyone was like no, this isn't right, this isn't right. So then Ryan at Genlogs looked at it and then he confirmed with their system that oh, it's actually multiple trucks. They're just putting like paper MCs on it. And then the kicker that no one's talked about that I noticed is that this carrier with two trucks, 1,100 inspections, more than Swift and all these large mega carriers is still unrated. They have never been looked at. Nope, although I mean they have all the red flags. They're obviously doing things completely wrong, but the FMCSA still has never looked at them.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Yeah, and the two things that bother me the most, I would say like fraud is probably number two to safety for me. Like I have a family, like I drive on the road with my kids in the car. Like and when you see these incidents and you see how much more carriers that are operating that way have more incidents, more accidents, more fatalities related to it, like everybody in the country is likely on the road at some point in time, maybe on a given week or a given month, right, and like these are huge things for just societal safety that this agency is just absolutely not doing anything about and they're cutting their budget to me, like I am, I'm not not surprised, but it makes me want to throw up, to be honest right and like when you look at so, uh, one in five pieces of equipment are, you know, unsafe at any speed.

Speaker 2: 13:33

And then you do the licensing and I did the the math on it a couple weeks ago. So if you don't weight it at all right with the, the illegal or the invalid license and the safety equipment, there's a 1% chance that someone without a license is operating unsafe equipment. It's like 0.7 or something like that and I'll bet if you weighted it. It's very high. Well, yeah, you obviously have to weight it because the unsafe drivers are going to be using.

Speaker 1: 14:00

Yeah because I don't have a driver's license and I'm willing to cut, make that gamble like I'm probably not on top of my maintenance either and I'm probably driving a truck that absolutely has some issues with it, right, I mean right.

Speaker 2: 14:15

So then you have to think OK, so if then, maybe if you wait, what is it then? Is it 10 percent, Is it 15 percent?

Speaker 1: 14:22

You know it's it's just crazy that, yeah, like driving on the highway over the last, like this year, specifically with all the amazon relay issues and stuff like that, like it makes me think twice before, like putting all my kids in the car and driving anywhere and I'll tell you this again, it's anecdotal, but my next door neighbor is a fireman and like, so he's constantly at these scenes, right, I mean, you're on that side of the world, like on that side of things I'm sure you have friends that are in the paramedics and the you know emergency services and like he we talk about dude, like so often he's like, yeah, like I don't like taking road trips to go anywhere anymore, like I try to minimize driving at any point in time and like again, I probably think Florida probably is one of the states where you see more instances of this for sure, like the insurance rates just to drive a normal car here are obscene. Because I remember when I first moved here, my insurance and I had no accidents, no speeding tickets, nothing, right, in Pennsylvania where I lived until I was 32 or 33, like my insurance was like 80 bucks, maybe 110 bucks a month, something like that Give or take. When I moved to Florida and got my license in Florida and bought my first car in Florida, I was quoted at like five to six hundred dollars a month for insurance, with nothing on my record at all. And I remember asking him I'm like this is more than the car payments I was looking at, I'm like how in the world one does anybody afford this and why is this so high? And the insurance agent was telling me he's like, oh, something like 43% of drivers on the road in Florida were considered underinsured or completely uninsured. So most of my premium was my insurance company making me insure myself against people that could hit me that had no insurance, because like roughly one in two cars just don't have insurance or not enough insurance. And I got hit by a car on my bike and it was somebody that had $10,000 in insurance. I had like $200,000 in medical bills from this car accident. I got hit as basically a pedestrian on my bike and had an attorney like yeah, there's like basically 10 grand that they're going to be able to get from this company's insurance. Like the whole scenario is just absolutely ridiculous and I don't think anybody realizes how bad this is for just regular vehicles, let alone a vehicle driving 90,000 miles, 90,000 pounds or 85,000 pounds right down the road going 80 miles an hour three feet away from you, driving 70 miles an hour in the other direction. Like it's terrifying when you think about it. Yeah, yeah, it definitely is.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Anything else in the news working. Oh, tariffs went up 50% on steel and aluminum, seemingly out of nowhere. Ironically, I think it was related to Trump's Also seemingly out of the blue. Tariffs on steel went from 25 to 50 percent, according to Jason Miller.

Speaker 1: 17:32

It's worth emphasizing how much broader in scope the 25 tariffs are relative to the 2018. Based on the Federal Register of Documents, 2018 tariffs and the 25 tariffs the HTC could subject to these two sets of tariffs obtained. To be honest, it just looks like they're going to have a much larger impact than they did. I mean, who really knows it says how can this be? I mean, who really knows it says how can this be? You'll see that China is the most affected country because the derivative products in 25 tariffs are much more expansive and they include computer parts, exercise equipment, metal furniture, air conditioner parts and cookware. Mexico is next on the list with auto parts. Canada is third due to imports of steel and aluminum. So, yeah, that's going to have an effect for sure on load volume, freight, what everybody is paying for cost of goods sold. So things certainly aren't going to get cheaper.

Speaker 2: 18:36

No, yeah, and I saw Brian Peterson over at Flexport, I think it was yesterday, maybe two days ago. They put out, they made a calculator, so like people can go and put in what their product is or whatever, and it'll spit out like, hey, this is what we think your tariffs will be based on the most in it, and I guess they set it up in a way that, as news breaks Based on this morning or an hour ago Right, I mean, that's the only way you can do it the tariffs change like with the wind, it seems.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Well, I mean there's a lot of pushback now where basically not just the press but I mean they're picking up on the fact that like yeah, this, oh the art of the deal, this super great negotiator, right. They're like it's kind of the same playbook. You throw out some crazy number nobody thinks is going to play out, then the market reacts, it falls, and then you walk it back and they're like yeah, how long do you think that's going to continue to work? Like people have kind of picked up on the whole strategy at this point. So I don't know.

Speaker 1: 19:46

And then I hear defenders, people that are supporting it, basically saying well, at least everybody's talking about it. I'm like, yeah, that doesn't mean it's a good thing. Just because he's drawn attention to it doesn't mean there's not entirely more damage than there is good coming out of this.

Speaker 2: 19:59

It's just, yeah, it'll be interesting to see, like once we're through, like what the end result finally becomes. It's just one of these things that other people, like your manager, would tell you oh, trust the process, trust the process. And then you get to the end date and you're like this process sucked. Well, here's the thing. Or it could be vice versa.

Speaker 1: 20:29

But that assumes that the ends justifies the means. Let's just give the whole situation the benefit of the doubt and say, hey, at the end this would be a net good. That doesn't mean that the process doesn't do more damage in the meantime than the benefit you get at the end. Right like, right, hey. Just because you make it to the finish line doesn't mean like you don't have two broken legs and you have permanent damage for the rest of your life just because you finished this thing. That was important to you, like to me. That is the biggest piece of this that is being overlooked, that every company is making arguments for like we can't plan. We can't plan. We can't buy things, we don't know how to predict inventory. We don't know what our sales are going to look like. We don't know what our cost of goods sold looks like we don't know what our prices are going to be this company.

Speaker 2: 21:15

I hit the wrong button. There was somebody talking.

Speaker 1: 21:19

Where the like I mean Walmart announced they're going to start passing through price increases. Where the like I mean Walmart announced they're going to start passing through price increases. I mean there's only so long companies can hold price increases in their cost of goods sold before they've got to increase what they're selling it to consumers. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Speaker 2: 22:29

I don't even think it's worth digging into because nobody knows what the hell is going to happen. Yeah, I think the one interesting thing that kind of pairs with it and Unusual Whales is an account on X that puts out breaking news and they had put out a stat I think it was three days ago that there was more inventory in real estate than in any other time in history. Like on sale right now, yes, history. Like on sale right now, yes, uh, and so pairing that with like the steel imports and stuff, it's like what's that? What's the real estate market gonna look like over the?

Speaker 1: 23:02

years. Here's the thing the biggest indicator of what's gonna happen really is consumer sentiment. If people are scared and they feel there's uncertainty, businesses clearly are voicing that concern right. But when people like households, your family, my family start going well, I don't know if I'll have a job, I don't know if things are going to get super, super expensive, so I'm going to spend less money. That is the bellwether. That is the thing that starts indicating that things will go into a recession, because the first thing that people stop doing is making large purchases automobiles, homes.

Speaker 1: 23:40

It's not a coincidence that homes to your point, inventory is up at its highest level since like 2008 or 2009,. Where people are like I'm not buying a new home right now. I have no idea. And then couple that with all of the fear related to AI and what everyone's job or industry is going to look like, and whether or not people will have a job if they're going to get laid off. Nobody has any idea. Like I don't know that there's ever been a point in time in my life where there's been this much economic uncertainty as to what the future looks like in the next year, even to three years, or even six months, or hell, tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 24:17

Right, yeah, and that's. That's one thing like me and my, my wife, have talked about. Quite a lot is not only that, but like, so we're one of like in that group of people that bought new houses in 2021. So, like, my interest rate is 2.4 or 5%. Why would I give that up? Yeah, Like, and we want, we want to buy land, we want to build a house, but for what? Five percent interest rate.

Speaker 1: 24:42

Even if you can, you just keep your house indefinitely and wait till you can save enough to buy a second one. My buddy who I used to work with at TQI I had this conversation with him he bought like a six hundred thousand dollar house then in Colorado and, like I was asking, I was like, oh, what are you doing? He's like dude, like I would, I can't ever give up my mortgage. His mortgage, his mortgage is like on like a $600,000 house. He definitely put a decent down payment down, but I think it's like $2,000 a month, like $1,900, on like a $600,000 house, cause he's got like a 1.8% mortgage. He's like, dude, I'm going to live in this house forever.

Speaker 2: 25:17

Right, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's exactly how we feel, unless I can rent it or something and make money off it, like there's no reason to give that up.

Speaker 1: 25:24

My house was give or take similar to his and my mortgage is. It isn't more than double what his is and I bought mine last year. Yeah, yeah, that's nuts Makes a huge difference. All right, let's jump into some basics on like how to get more freight, what you can do to get loads. Let's start here. Like, what do you think most people do with their customers related to like day-to-day? Okay, let's just lay the framework. You've got a new customer, you've onboarded them. They send you load requests from time to time. Maybe it's every day. Hey, here's a list of six loads we're moving tomorrow. Here's a list of 20 loads we've got this week. Here's my 50 loads for this week. Here's my 25 for tomorrow. Right, some variation of that is pretty common, right? How do you think most brokers operate? You run a brokerage. Now what do you think most brokers do in those scenarios? They get that email taken from them.

Speaker 2: 26:23

So most of them are going to, they're going to look at it, they're going to find some rates. They're going to kick them over, maybe in a half hour, maybe in an hour, it just it depends on how busy they are. Are they doing, you know, are they working on other freight? But in reality what they should be doing is providing that rate, getting it over at least within the first five minutes, and then talking, or at the very least talking to that. That shipper like hey, what's the details on this? Like, if you don't know already, in the context of what you given, this is a new shipper for you. So I'm assuming that they've had the conversation. They kind of know what the requirements are. But if you don't, like that should be the first step get the requirements. What? Like engage in a conversation, call that person. Step get the requirements, engage in a conversation, call that person. But most of them are going to throw it into whatever rating tool they have. Kick over a rate, maybe whenever they feel like they have the time.

Speaker 1: 27:27

Let's go through the most common one. Most common, I'd say, most likely is most people get an email. Get to it when they can, hour, 45 minutes later, look up a rate, email it over. Let's look at this from the customer's point of view. So you're a shipper, you got 25 loads to move tomorrow, you send it out to your brokers and your carriers get a bunch of numbers back. What do you do? What do you think are the variables that shipper looks at to determine who they're going to go to? I mean, let's look at the variables that do exist. You've got price. You've got likelihood of service, like are they going to pick up on time and deliver on time? And three like I would say the thing they're trying to avoid is booking a carrier or a broker on a load and then finding out from their warehouse and nobody showed up. That's the thing they want to avoid the most and they want to pay the least. So how do you think they're making that decision on a daily basis?

Speaker 2: 28:22

Yeah. So, whether it's intentional or not, the rates that come over. They're going to look at price, but then they're going to look at, okay, who's this email from? Do I trust them, do I know them, okay, and then that's there's. So there's going to be that bias that's involved in there, and then it's going to be the rate and quality and the timeliness of how the rates came over.

Speaker 1: 28:43

Great. So let's look at the most common scenario of I'm just getting rates from a broker via email. Ok, the thing I'm going to do if I don't speak to them, because your other point is, most of them don't pick up the phone and talk to these people because they're too scared to interact with a human being, they don't want to have a conversation, they feel like they don't have enough time, they're too lazy. Whatever Pick your reason, it's not happening most of the time. So they go OK.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Well, when was the last time I had a problem with this company? Oh well, the next thought is well, I booked them on six loads last week. One or two trucks didn't pick up. And here's the kicker On the one or two trucks that didn't pick up, did that broker tell me before the load was supposed to pick up at noon, like, did I find out at 11 from that broker, or 1130 or even 1145? Or did my warehouse email me and call me at 1230 going where's this truck?

Speaker 1: 29:37

So when I find out from my company that the company I paid to send a truck didn't know their truck was showing up on time, I look bad in my company. I look like I'm not doing my job because I booked a truck and I didn't know that. I didn't even tell my warehouse, hey, this guy's going to be late. So you've got guys that maybe staged a load, that are standing there waiting to load this truck, and now there's the truck that was supposed to be there, 1230 and maybe at one o'clock already waiting, but the load for noon is sitting on the dock and I can't load the next truck or the truck after that Cause this load sitting there and I didn't know that this guy was coming or not going to be there until after the fact.

Speaker 1: 30:17

So if I'm going to pick, even if that guy's the cheapest, every time that happens they get a little less likely. They're going to get more freight, right. And then from the broker's point of view they think, well, maybe he'll get there on time and I don't really want to have that conversation, so like I'll just hope they don't notice, right. And then they wonder oh, I was doing 10 loads a week with this customer last month, now I'm doing seven and now I'm only getting like one or two quotes. They must not be shipping that much. Or the other thing they'll tell themselves is oh, they must be just too cheap and they just don't like my rates.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Then they go oh man, this market is killing me. Then they blame something else. Well, it's the market, it's this, this is their manager goes. Why is your load volume down, jimmy? Well, you know, it must be the rates. This customer's just super cheap and they just don't like me. That's why my load volume is going down. And then what do they do? They do the same thing today Send over rates, hope they get more freight, nothing changes. And they blame everybody else. Right, I'd say that's your most common scenario.

Speaker 1: 32:38

Now let's look at the completely other end of the spectrum. Right, and I do think incentive plays a big part in this, because when you have brokers that are more salary and have guaranteed paychecks, this becomes more common. Why? Because it takes sorry, I thought someone said my door. Because it takes energy and you have to overcome some fear to actually have these conversations when things go wrong, which most people avoid. And two right Like let's just be honest, most people are going to revert to the least amount of effort they've got to do to perform the work they've got to do. Right, you see things similar.

Speaker 2: 33:12

Yeah, definitely, and it's just what. It's funny, you mentioned the salary Cause. You know, I've had a couple of people that are like oh, you know, I'd like to have a, I'd like to have a raise, or or maybe we can do something with the commission split. You know, I just need to make more money. And the first response I always give them is have you tried getting more freight Cause? That's how you make more money, because you earn commission. And they always are just like oh yeah, no, I guess you know it's always the same thing.

Speaker 1: 33:41

It's always an excuse and the thing is right, like the thing that I always think of simply is right, like even long before I owned businesses. It's like if you aren't creating more value for the business you work for, how can you expect to take more value or money out of it? Right, like there's nothing that bugs me more than people that are like I need to be making more money while their book of business is shrinking and they're doing less to increase it or take initiative to do more things.

Speaker 2: 34:10

Right, initiative to do more things. Right, right, yeah it. I never understood that. And then there's always this well, if I you know, xyz, I can make more.

Speaker 2: 34:21

They're just trying to find more ways to split a dollar, and it's like just just do the work, bring in more freight, just do the work. That's the take, the initiative, that's it's. The beauty of this industry is, the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. Yep and it's all. Your success is dependent on how much you want to work, so couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 1: 34:44

It's something I've always been good at. Now let's look at the other end of the spectrum Brokers that I think I've met, that I've learned from that, that trained me, that did really well good or bad markets, right. What are they doing? And this was a guy. He was like a regional manager, but like when he was telling me how he ran his book before I was even in the industry, right. And this story just kind of always stuck with me because I could literally picture him in the front of the room, kind of like giving this speech.

Speaker 1: 35:11

But he's like listen, like every day. He's like here's the way my day started. I have 15 customers that are active right Every morning. I'm calling all 15 of them, regardless of whether or not they sent me any loads or not. Hey, want to see how your day was going, how'd your day play out yesterday? Do anything last night?

Speaker 1: 35:30

You have a little bit of a conversation and the way I always described is like your customers. You should be interacting with them like they're your coworkers, not like the people that are physically sitting next to you. You don't make any money from them. Like hey, it's great that you I'm not saying you shouldn't be friends with your coworkers. I've enjoyed the people I've worked with too. But like if I looked at my day like when I'm just a broker, I spent way more time talking to my customers every day than I ever did talking to people physically in my office. Right, Because that's the job, first of all.

Speaker 1: 36:02

So it's every morning he would call all 15 of his customers to see how their loads went yesterday. Did anything come up? Did any orders come in overnight? Usually a little bit of chit chat hey, how was your morning? He cause he knew them well enough. Like hey, I know your kid had a softball game last night or baseball or a dance recital, how did that go? Like genuinely talking to them the same way he would any coworkers sitting next to them. And hey, anything coming up today. You might need a hand on anything on the horizon later this week or you're worried about. Just let me know, give me a heads up so I can try to plan and help if you need something. Right.

Speaker 1: 36:34

And what would happen when you talk to them every day is like there's always more loads that would come in out of those 15 customers. Between the end of the day yesterday and the next morning there were always loads that were supposed to pick up that night. That didn't get picked up, that needed recovered in the morning. So guess what? By being there and talking to them every morning, that customer did not send all those loads to eight other brokers and 10 other carriers because he's on the phone with them. He's making a point to know hey, I'm here, I'm ready to work with you today. What do you need help with? So they're going.

Speaker 1: 37:04

Yeah, I got three loads last night. It weren't supposed to pick up. If you can get a truck first thing, let me know before I send these out. So he's got first dibs. Now his rates aren't getting, compared to everyone else's, to be cheaper, which is the first advantage. He's getting them before they go out to the market to see who's going to. Just let this shipper pick. The second thing it does is it saves that shipper time. The shipper doesn't have to email those loads out because he just talked to somebody he knows and trusts and says hey, see what you can do, here's my targets, get me as close to it. I got other stuff to do anyway. I don't want to worry about these. So now he's adding value to that person's day to day work life. Because he freed their time up. They don't have to read all those emails, they don't have to pick and choose later and he's working on them first thing. So like long before, this person could send emails out to everybody else, get responses, then respond, then they work on it. That's like an hour this guy's literally on

Speaker 1: 37:59

it already got these loads posted first thing. It's 7 30 in the morning. These loads are posted first trucks. He's going hey, I get this guy in there in 20 minutes. I got another truck be there in 45 minutes. He's genuinely helping increase their efficiency, their supply chain. And you know what, when they trust him and they know he's going to do what he said, he's genuinely helping increase their efficiency, their supply chain. And you know what, when they trust him and they know he's going to do what he said he's going to do, they don't usually mind paying an extra 50 bucks or 100 bucks on those loads. Doesn't seem like a ton, but that adds up.

Speaker 1: 38:24

I got four more loads from my customer and they gave me an extra 75 on each one because I saved them time and allowed them to do more other work which creates value for their company. I get paid for my time, I save them time and the warehouse is able to get the things out. They were supposed to get out last night. So everybody wins in these scenarios the trucks that are empty that want to get their wheels turning sooner. He's getting the loads to those guys that need it, so they're not waiting until nine, 30, 10 o'clock in the morning to get loaded. They're getting loaded at eight 30 because they're empty last night and everybody wins in these scenarios. And then the third thing is like when you're talking to your customers every day, like they trust you and also you need to do the thing we talked about a moment ago. It's like if the truck you booked is not going to be there at nine, you've got to be check calling or at the very least on top of your tracking to see hey, are my trucks that are supposed to be at your place, steven, in an hour? Are they where they're supposed to be? Meaning like, did they have an issue? Maybe they broke down, maybe there was traffic, maybe there was something that happened, maybe they got stuck at their receiver and letting you know, hey, guy that's supposed to load at nine, he was stuck at his receiver way late, ran out of hours, he's not going to be there till 11, but I can get my guy that's supposed to be there at 10 and a little early because he got empty early. Can we switch these POs? Get this truck loaded first Now.

Speaker 1: 39:40

The warehouse wins, the shipper wins, the driver gets loaded early, the guy who had an issue gets a better appointment.

Speaker 1: 39:46

He's not waiting for detention, he doesn't get because he's late, and you're able to configure all of these things more effectively and efficiently.

Speaker 1: 40:01

And again, the shipper doesn't mind paying me an extra 75 bucks a load because I'm doing these things for them. With them, I'm proactively reaching out, I'm proactively knowing where my trucks are supposed to be. When the ones can't be where they're supposed to be, I'm reworking these schedules with them to be able to help manage my shipper's supply chain more efficiently, so that they spend less money on warehouse labor, that the guy sending the loads has less headaches, can get more work done than he needs to do for his boss. And I'm adding value to the carriers because I'm getting the ones loaded that are there first without them having to wait, and the ones that will be late they don't have to wait and not get paid detention because of something that wasn't their fault. Right, these are the things that happen when you are actively engaged, having conversations, proactively reaching out to your customers, having these conversations and being on top of the thing you're getting paid to. You get paid to hire drivers to be where they're supposed to be.

Speaker 2: 40:51

You need to know where they are, otherwise you're not doing all of your job, either, right right, exactly, and and one of the things like you can, you can kind of take that into the prospect, like even if you don't have a customer yet and you're just prospecting, like you're not going to touch the same people every day, but you should be making these contacts with people every single day. So, whether it's you know, you've got a list of 200 prospects that you're working. You're going to stagger them through and as you add people to that pipeline right to get that phrase so the people you call on Monday, maybe you'll call them on Tuesday next week or Thursday and you just kind of stagger that through so that you're always calling or emailing. But it's multiple touches and same thing with your active customers. Just because you got a customer and they're sending you freight doesn't mean you shouldn't be having those same conversations and constantly reaching out and talking to them, right?

Speaker 1: 41:48

Because there's sayings or cliches like the money is made on the margins. Right, it sounds fancy, but like what does that mean? Margins are like the smallest percentage on the outside, like, think of a paper, or think of like Microsoft Word. The margin is that very little line around whatever document you create that is blank. Right, it's the small little distance at the very edge, right, little distance at the very edge, right.

Speaker 1: 42:15

If I know, you and me are competing for freight from one shipper, right, and I know you're sending emails with rates. Maybe you're sending them quickly, maybe you send them within two, three minutes, right, dude, we're in a commodity business. You're truck loading and picking up on time and getting there on time. It's not much different than mine. So if my shipper has a choice, he's going to pick the cheaper one if we both have equivalent service, right, and most shippers have at least a handful of brokers, so they've got probably one. If not, they probably have two, if not three, where they're all pretty much the same service percentage that they can pick from. So why do you think they pick the cheapest one, wouldn't you? I mean, if you could go buy milk and there's five brands there, three of them are the same quality and one's cheaper, which one are you going to start buying every day? Right? If you've got to buy gasoline and there's five gas stations, three of them have the same quality gas but one of them's cheaper. Which one are you going to go load your tank up with every time you got to fill up? Right? These are the things we do all the time and everyone wants to yell and go. Well, this shipper is just cheap. Why he always goes on rate. He won't give me the freight.

Speaker 1: 43:15

What are you doing differently? What are you doing to get off your ass, to create an advantage on the margin? That the other people aren't right and most of the time it's nothing. It's complaining about the market, it's complaining about the shippers, it's complaining about the government. It shippers, it's complaining about the government, it's complaining about the economy. And even if any of those things, or all of those things, are true, what can you do about any or all of them? Nothing. What can you do about your own behavior? You can pick up the phone and you can make one more phone call. You can ask one more question.

Speaker 1: 43:46

I get an advantage over you because I will spend more time trying to build rapport with my customer. I want to get to know them. I want to know what is going to make their job easier day to day. What can I take off their plate, put on my plate that allows them to get more work done? We talked about asking for bonuses without moving more freight and asking for money without doing better at your job. That is great in your company, but the same principle holds true with your customer.

Speaker 1: 44:13

I'm creating value for my customer in a way that you can't. How am I doing that? I don't know what makes their life easier. It's not like they put it on their Facebook posts or on X or put it on LinkedIn. Hey, you know what would make my life easier If I got this load booked at 1030 on a Tuesday so everyone can see it? No, you only get that information if you're proactive and you engage with them and you talk with them enough until they trust you and start telling you hey, this would be really helpful if these loads I move every Thursday afternoon. I could book ahead of time so my boss knows where these trucks are. Great, I'll try to work on a dedicated carrier that works on that lane that can pick it up every Thursday. I can get you that truck number, that driver info on Wednesday.

Speaker 1: 44:56

What does every other broker do?

Speaker 1: 44:58

Waits to cover that load on Thursday, tells the customer they booked it and then, when they don't book it, they go oh sorry, that guy broke down 15 minutes before the load picks up.

Speaker 1: 45:07

Now the customer's pissed, their boss is yelling at them and nobody is understanding what is actually happening behind the scenes. Why? Because people aren't being proactive, right like I always feel like the best analogy when I think of like freight brokering and sports is like you've got to actively engage. You've got to go get the ball. Like, if it's a baseball analogy, if you're waiting for ground balls to be hit directly to you, you're going to be standing there a long time waiting and you have no control. What you should be doing is, when that ball gets hit, get as close to where you can and go and chase the ball down. Get proactive about it. Engage with it, go get it. Sitting there waiting, sitting on your ass for freight to fall in your lap and throwing rates out via email while you're staring at Instagram isn't going to grow your business, isn't going to grow your book and sure as shit ain't going to add dollars to your paycheck.

Speaker 2: 45:58

Yep, that's absolutely correct, and one of the things that especially the last, like week or two that I've been thinking a lot about is a lot of the AI companies. You know they focus especially in our space. They focus on um things that can control an output. So, like what was a happy robot, we'll do, you know, negotiating on the phone and and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 46:20

But where people are kind of lacking with AI, especially in relation to this, is, you know, don't use AI to do your sales outreach, but do use AI to research your leads and your prospects and I was just listening to my first million podcast from this I think it's from Monday that they were using different AI workflows to like scrape LinkedIn and scraped YouTube and X and all these things.

Speaker 2: 46:51

To like find out information on, you know, potential prospects and leads and stuff. Then use that information to cater specifically to that person, learn that, build that relationship, learn what it is that they like and don't like and like. That's, I think, where eventually we'll go to, but you will get outpaced by the people who are doing that now and that is that is something that, um, our industry being 10 years behind tech in general, uh, uh. If you were to take these processes and start to learn how to build workflows and like that is what will make this easier, but the end goal will be the same You're constantly going to be touching different prospects, different customers, learning more, and, instead of it taking three or four hours, like it did when I first started, maybe it takes 20 minutes, but you're still getting that same quality information. But you still have to craft that outreach yourself.

Speaker 1: 47:49

And the thing I think that everyone should keep in the back of their mind, like that I look at daily, is if you are doing a task that is repeatable and takes no thought, it's pretty likely that task will get automated pretty quickly, like if you were just covering your loads by waiting for a carrier posting a load, waiting for carriers to email you, negotiating down by 25 or 50 bucks, looking at the MC through a system, then putting them in another system and then sending tracking. That job is not going to exist in five years because it's almost automatable. Now, right, if you aren't doing additional things to add value picking up the phone, calling that carrier, negotiating with them, understanding if they're empty, what their equipment is, are they fresh on hours, building rapport with them Our advantage over AI is human to human interaction and understanding and connecting with people. Yes, it can talk, but it can't do that like a human and at least they can't do it in the near future. And if you aren't doing things like that to create value in your role, eventually someone that owns your company is looking at this. I mean, it's happening every day in larger companies.

Speaker 1: 49:04

Companies are going hey, before you hire, can you see if we can automate that. Well, that's the first step. The second step is who have we hired that we can automate, that we don't need? And then it becomes how many of these people do we need to pay to do what they're doing? If we can automate it anyway, right. So even if it's not, hey, how do I do better for my company? Now, it's not just this altruistic, oh, I need to do everything for this company I work for. It's like there's self-interest there. The more you do, the more indispensable you become. The more value you create, the longer you'll have a career in that thing that you're doing, the better you'll do, the happier you'll be. Right, like it's built into being human is the fact that, like, when you strive through something difficult and achieve it, it's rewarding and you feel better. When you do the least amount of work and effort to achieve a goal every day, your happiness and well-being decreases.

Speaker 1: 50:04

It's that it's like this cliche, right, that counterintuitive of like I heard this best phrase is if you do what's hard today, tomorrow gets easier. If you do what's easier today, tomorrow gets harder, right? Yeah, it feels better to be lazy in the moment. I'm no different than any other human being that I have that part of me there, right. But when you can beat into your head and develop the habit that like doing more now feels a little shittier now makes you feel a lot better a little bit later, like I always reference it in my head is like, yeah, I don't want to do this, but tomorrow Benjamin will be happy I did it. Or this evening Benjamin will be happy, I did it.

Speaker 1: 50:43

I'm like basically incentivizing myself to do the things I don't want to do because I know later me will thank me for it. And when I do the opposite, I'm like, yeah, if I want to go and have a couple drinks tonight, tomorrow morning Ben is not going to be thankful that I did that. So you know what? I'd rather make my future self happier than my current self. And if you can just think about that a little more frequently, slowly you start to develop the habit of just picking the harder thing over and over again and then you feel better, like you have more energy. Whether it's exercise, whether it's running, whether it's your job, whether it's school, whether it's learning a sport and instrument, literally anything and any aspect of being human gets better when you do the thing. That's a little more difficult in the short run versus the long run.

Speaker 2: 51:29

Yep, exactly, and there's. There's definitely um, a lot of that and some of what I've learned in probably the last two years um, especially recently being diagnosed with adhd and all that and like managing that. It's uh, you know, creating the, creating the system that benefits you the best. It's going to be different from you to your co-worker and after, but that ability to take the things out of your head that you don't need to hold on to and put them in a place where you know to get them immediately is the most beneficial thing to like.

Speaker 2: 52:04

Saving time and being able to be in the moment with the people that you're talking to whether it's your wife or a prospect or a customer and not have this like thing in the back of your head of I got to do this, I got to do this. So creating, like, whether it's, you know, a knowledge base or a CRM or something where you can just take all this information that you're you're keeping in your head and put it somewhere that you know it's going to be and you can go back and tap into it, take that off your mind. It has a very powerful impact, especially on phone calls. When you're cold calling, you can hear the hesitation in people's voices when they're caught up with something else and you know they're not in tune with the conversation with something else and you know they're not in tune with the conversation, and so things like that are definitely going to help in getting a relationship with those customers and those prospects and bringing in more freight and helping you in the long run.

Speaker 1: 53:01

Good to agree with you more. Any final thoughts?

Speaker 2: 53:05

That's all I got. It's finally warm in Ohio.

Speaker 1: 53:11

Thank God, I'm happy to hear that buddy, buddy, it's starting to get disgustingly hot down here, so I believe it. Oh, whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.