Sim: [00:00:00] What do you know about the situation? He goes, they pulped it and it was coming up high, right? He’s, I honestly believe that they shipped the product hot. Then we were basically like CSI. We had to do an investigation. That’s your last resort. 

Caroline: Welcome to this week in trucking, the podcast that tells you what you need to know about the trucking market for the week.

Caroline: My name is Caroline. And today I am very excited to have an opportunity to talk to Sim Singh of FERC Express and talk about how he’s grown his business despite the downward trend. In the trucking market and see what we can learn from him. We’re also going to be joined a little bit later by his business partner, Sunny.

Caroline: Thank you so much for being here, Sam. 

Sim: Oh, thank you for having us. Thank you for reaching out and giving us this opportunity. Never expected I’d do one of these. I’m just 

Caroline: so excited that I got a hold as you and really for a really good reason, because it’s been tough to get you. On the show, because your business has been booming.

Caroline: So tell me a little bit about your background in trucking. What brought you to the industry first and [00:01:00] how did you get started with your business? 

Sim: Just a family. My dad was in trucking. So when he came to, so we’re, I’m a son of an immigrant. I’m an immigrant. Cause I was nine when I came here from India to America.

Sim: And, uh, he’s right off the bat got into trucking. He was local construction trucking. And from there he just grew. He, I saw him grow from one truck to five, six trucks and then sell it when he was at its peak and then just move on to other segments and trucking basically. He’s been trucking. He was trucking in India when he was there too.

Sim: So it was just one of those things where, um, he told me, Hey, I wasn’t, I was average at school. I wasn’t bad or anything, but he’s, Hey, if you’re at this point at this rate, you’re not even going to be able to get a class. And I said, I’ll show you. And, uh, at 18, I got my Class A just to show my dad that I could get a license, but I didn’t start driving.

Sim: For young, right? 

Caroline: Yeah. For, for getting your CDL, usually, cause I, I think there’s, were, or could be some restrictions around someone that young driving a Class A vehicle. Yes. Yeah. So at that time, 

Sim: this was 2007, 2008. I’m not exactly sure which year, but [00:02:00] at 18, you weren’t allowed to drive across state lines.

Sim: So you could only drive intrastate, which was in, in California. Yeah. So. I went and got my car license, I think at 17. And then as soon as I was able to, you have to be 18 to get your CDL. So as soon as I did, I went back and I redid everything and I got it. I did fail. I did get it on my sixth attempt, as far as the driving part.

Sim: Yeah. Cause there was manual trucks back then. So now they’re all automatic. Yeah. But so I did, but I didn’t. And ever since then, I’m glad I did because it’s become my, this is how income, everything I have today is because of trucking. All the people I know, Sonny, everybody is because of trucking. 

Caroline: Yeah. Yeah.

Caroline: Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your journey to owning your own business. You got your license. Did you start driving or did you work in the industry right away? 

Sim: I actually got my license and I wanted to pursue a career in teaching. I wanted to be a history teacher. But, uh, when I got to college and I just saw the prereqs and all that stuff, I was like, you know what, I’m just going to [00:03:00] take a job.

Sim: And make enough money to pay for college. And I did that. And I took a year off and I was like, I’ll drive and I’ll just save all that money. And I’ll be able to pay for college. I don’t have to take out any loans. But then when I saw how much money I can make. I just never left. 

Caroline: And some people just graduating from college now, you can’t get a better pay than for a lot of fields, depending on what field you go to.

Caroline: Maybe if you’re going to finance or something really competitive, for the vast majority, I think of people graduating with, with two year degrees, four year degrees, you’re not making much more than a truck driver does when you graduate. 

Sim: Exactly. Yeah. It’s one of those things where it’s a lifestyle, right?

Sim: It’s you have, you do give up the time, you do give up your social life to a certain extent. But in return, you do get paid pretty well, especially if you do the job right. If you learn and you do the job and you’re safe all the time, there’s no way you cannot make money in this business. 

Caroline: So what made you want to start your own trucking business?

Caroline: Did you have that model from your [00:04:00] family? Did your dad own his own business? Was he a company driver? He, 

Sim: he, yeah, he had his own business. It never got to the point where he wanted me to join his business, and I wanted to prove to him that I can do it on my own too. We, we start, I started off as a driver and when I was 23, so this was like 2011 or 12 started off as a driver.

Sim: I think I drove for maybe a year before I got an opportunity to go work in an office, like in the back office of a trucking company, the one I drove for. The funny thing was that trucking company was just all guys my age. They had a language problem, their English wasn’t as good as mine. And I know it sounds weird, but back then they needed somebody in the office that could communicate, email, all that stuff.

Sim: And I was the only one because we were all friends. They’re like, Hey, do you wanna come work in the office? I’m like, I’m making pretty good money driving a truck. Is this a demotion, a promotion? What is, what’s my situation? And they said, get in the office, we’ll pay, we’ll start you off at minimum, but we’re gonna get, we’ll give you some sort of profit sharing or something from a truck or something.

Sim: And that’s what Lee got me interested in, [00:05:00] or. Once I got into that, I saw there was way more than two, what was actually happening in trucking. How are you booking loads, repairers and driver pay and if the taxes and all that other stuff. So once I got into that, I got, I had a good, I want to say two years of training working for them on the job.

Sim: And when I figured that out, I was like, okay, this is something I can do on my own. Then I bought my own truck, started driving my own truck, did just by myself. And then I knew Sonny from the same company. He was a driver as well. And he started working with his dad. And then we just, we were just on the phone one day.

Sim: He was running East coast. I was running from, so we’re in Sacramento, California. And because I was married and I had a kid at the time, I was like, you know what? I don’t really want to spend that many days outside. So I used to run a Salt Lake and that, and that was maybe a two, two and a half day trip back then.

Sim: And I told Sonny, I was like, Hey, why are you running East coast? You’re gone for two, three weeks at a time. He lived in Sacramento too. I was like, why don’t you start running this one? And he’s like, the company he worked for at the time didn’t have any [00:06:00] lanes that way. That’s just where the idea grew. I was like, what’s stopping us from just doing it ourselves?

Sim: I’m like, you’re paying them dispatch. Why not? Why don’t we just open up our own and not save that money? So that’s where it started. 

Caroline: To be totally honest, if I walked into a trucking operation and without knowing anything about the industry, you already had some experience. idea from being a driver, you see it all, right?

Caroline: But if someone just coming in from the outside thinking, so yeah, trucking operation, point A, point B, how hard can that be? If they get into a trucking operation, they will be so overwhelmed by the amount of information that a trucking operation has to handle. So tell me about what that operation that you were working for was doing that you thought, I could probably do this.

Sim: So, sucks to say, but they mismanaged a lot of stuff, which caught me a lot because I saw when I got in there and I was doing the finances, I was seeing, I was like, okay, there’s money coming in, but where’s the money going? And when I saw [00:07:00] the on the road repair bills, when I saw the lack of, uh, basically payroll amongst each other, they, like, they just didn’t have a.

Sim: Business plan setup. And I was like, okay, these guys are just mismanaging their money. And then when I told them, I was like, we need to do this. We, we should do, they didn’t, they slowly understood the concept, but by the time they understood it, they were already deep in water with repair bills, with just owing drivers, some money and some owner operators, some money.

Sim: So they were already in a hole instead of trying to dig themselves out. They just kept digging deeper and deeper. And that’s when I decided, okay, I don’t see a future in here for me. I have to learn from this and. Basically manage it right. And that’s what I did when I did step away from them. I realized that when people say that you need to have a three, four month reserve of all your expenses, you need to have a good insurance company.

Sim: Your safety score needs to be good. So you don’t get pulled over in the scale and. Yeah, you might have a bad tire, but if your safety score is good, you’re not going to get [00:08:00] pulled over and you can repair that tire at home. But when you don’t take care of your equipment at home, it’s going to break down on the road.

Sim: And the repair that will cost you 50 or 100 at home is going to cost you triple the price. That’s what got them in the court. Plus 

Caroline: a tow job. 

Sim: Okay, personally, I went through one myself. This is, tow bills today are ridiculous. This was 2016 or 17 and I had to pay 2, 500 for about 40 miles. So all because my, my rear end went out on the truck and, uh, I was just in a situation.

Sim: At that point, you can’t do anything. You just have to say, okay, just get me where I am, especially if you’re loaded. And then you’re, you know, committed to the customer and you’re like, Hey, I’m going to figure out a way to get this going. 

Caroline: Yeah. But 40 miles. Wow. 

Sim: Yeah. 2, 500, 40 miles. It’s ridiculous. It’s, but it’s pretty few things like that in this industry that still tick me off that we know that can take advantage of you.

Sim: You just have to be aware of it and try to dodge it as much as you can. 

Caroline: Tell me a [00:09:00] little bit more about Verk Express. How many trucks are you running? What kind of equipment do you have? What lanes do you do? 

Sim: So as of today, we have five trucks, seven reefers. So we run all reefers and We said more, we had about five owner operators, but we did let them go.

Sim: We kind of wind down in the last three or four months of our owner operator business. Because of the way the rate and fuel price, everything was so high. It didn’t make sense for us. It didn’t make sense for them. Now we just have five company trucks, seven reefers, and we just run Northern California to Salt Lake City, Idaho Falls back to Northern California.

Sim: And we’ve been doing this for the last, it’s 2024. So we’ve been doing this since. It’s 18, 17, 18. 

Caroline: And have you always been in the refrigerated freight business or? 

Sim: Yeah. When I, so when I started off as a driver, I think I ran a dry van for a month, but after that it was all reefers. So I, it was just something that was familiar with the company I worked for.

Sim: Majority of them were reefers. So it just made sense when I started my own thing, I did reefers. [00:10:00] Sunny was also doing Reefer, so I was like, Hey, this is something we understand, something I know there’s money in this. So we just stuck with that. 

Caroline: And what kind of tips do you have for other reefer carriers about booking loads?

Caroline: How do you get loads? How do you get, do you do dedicated lanes? Do you work the load board? How are you making sure your trailers are, are full? 

Sim: Yeah. So we’re, 90 percent dedicated. So there’s every now and then where we’re looking on the board. To where we’re going to be, uh, we have to look on the board and work with TQL or Allen Lund or some company out there.

Sim: But the 90 percent is dedicated and those didn’t dead distance. I didn’t, we didn’t start off dedicated. We worked boards. We basically, I found this lane that we run now for Associated Foods out in Utah. They’re Kroger, Associated Foods, and they have a few other chains. So basically, they take, they, all their milk goes up from here.

Sim: All their dairy from the farms out here. And when I found that [00:11:00] lane, I just stuck with that broker. I just kept calling that broker every day. I said, Hey, we did this load for you. Do you have another one? Oh, I don’t have any more for the week. Maybe next week. Okay. Called her back the next day. Do you have one for next week?

Sim: Not yet. Call me back. Okay. Just kept bugging her. Not in the sense where she would get annoyed. Just check in every day, just checking, Hey, how’s it going? I’m going to have a truck for you if you have something. And that’s what got the ball rolling when that started. And I was like, okay, we’re getting a consistent load through California.

Sim: I started working on the back halls and we used to be. Randomly picking up from Salt Lake or Idaho. And again, we found this, it was a particular load that I found. We work with Wada Farms. I think they’re the second largest farm in Idaho. And when we found that lane, I asked the lady, I said, Hey, it’s going from Idaho Falls to Stockton, very close to Sacramento everything.

Sim: She goes, yeah, I’ll have a, I usually have about four or five of these a week. I said, great. Yeah. And I just. Every day called her and yeah, some days [00:12:00] I didn’t have a truck up there, but I would still make it look like I did, or I was interested in trying to help her out to make sure it got covered. And that’s what started it.

Sim: And we were lucky enough. We work with a gentleman named Kevin King, uh, water farms. He’s, he’s about to retire, but he, I, we’ve been holding him, not, I’ve been telling him not to retire for the past two years. Cause I was like, you can’t go. Cause if you go. My, who am I going to be working with? And he basically took over our account and he called me one day and he goes, Hey, you’ve been doing these potato loads.

Sim: For the past two weeks. And I liked the way you guys are doing them. You’re showing up on time. You’re picking up on time. I’m going to be giving you these. It’s a, it’s, if you can do it, it’s going to be a dedicated opportunity. I don’t want to hear any complaints. I don’t want nothing. Basically he, when he called me, it felt like my dad called me because he was like, you’re going to do this.

Sim: You’re going to do this. I’m like, I’m thinking like, who is this guy just telling me what to look. I’ve been in this industry for 35 years. I had my own trucks. I had my own brokerage and now I work for these guys. It’s like, [00:13:00] he’s, you’re not, you’ll never have to complain about work. And if you’re going to work, that’s who I’m looking for basically.

Sim: And I don’t know if he was just trying to feel me out or what. And then I did ask him a month later, once we did, I’m like, Hey, why, how come you called me like that? He goes, honestly, you were the only one that could communicate with, in English. Verbatim. That’s exactly what he said. And that felt bad. But then at the same time, I’m like, okay.

Sim: I do have an advantage over, in my community, in the Indian community, that I was able to, I am able to speak, articulate a little bit better than the people that are in, majority of the people that are in the industry. And that’s what he was looking for. Somebody that just understood what he needed, and he didn’t have to explain.

Caroline: There are plenty of native English speakers that can’t communicate with their wind of a paper bag. So. Thank you. You’re welcome. I, it probably goes even further beyond just language skill. Obviously the language skill is going to be really important. 

Sim: It was, if he emailed me or called me, it answered right away.

Sim: Yeah. It was open communication. It was, there was, I [00:14:00] always believe if I’m not honest with the people I’m servicing, they’re not going to be honest with me. And he was honest enough to where, like you were asking about finances earlier. I’ll just give you an example. We were doing the Idaho Falls Stockton loads for about 1, 400.

Sim: Yeah. And that was a good price for a backhaul at the time. Cause about 750 miles, right around 2 a mile on the backhaul. And when he took over the account, it jumped to 2, 400. Wow. Like without even me asking, he didn’t even, and I thought it was a mistake. I thought it was a mistake. I thought, Hey, what’s. He goes, Oh, no, that’s the rate.

Sim: That’s the rate I’m going to give you. I’m not going to, I don’t want to hear anything. I don’t want to hear you were delayed or this. You’re going to be working. You, I need trucks that are willing to work, that want to work. And I’m going to make sure they get picked up. And then he told me something. He goes, so he’s on the brokering side and he said, I only take about 8%.

Sim: And he’s, I have about two other companies that were dedicated with me. He’s, if you want, you’ll be in the pool. And I, I don’t argue with people. I don’t negotiate. I just, whatever I can, I try to pay you guys the best. And those rates have only gone up. So I [00:15:00] don’t know if we were just lucky or out that we, he ended up contacting us, but he, from talking to Kevin, he knew what he was talking about.

Sim: He, I, I took it upon myself to just learn from him because that’s when I, I, as much as I knew about the trucking side, like truck payment, insurance payment, fuel and stuff like that, he taught me the freight market and how, how to What’s in season? When does the seasons end? When do the seasons start? When you should ask for more money.

Sim: When you should just do it. Don’t even ask for, don’t ask for it. He taught me those tips and tricks and he still teaches me. We, right before Thanksgiving, I think, in about 3 weeks we ran about 120 loads for him, just because they were so busy. And it, it It was so busy that I can’t say, we made it work. We made it work and he was happy.

Sim: We were happy. We were, everybody made money in that situation. So people that are saying that it’s bad out there, I can’t afford it or anything, or I can’t, they’re just mismanaging. There’s something going on where they’re mismanaging something. And once they figure that out. They’ll be able to make [00:16:00] money.

Caroline: I think one of the, one of the issues, this is something that I’ve talked about with a couple of people on the show. Sometimes the problem isn’t just mismanagement, although there’s plenty of mismanagement in any industry. Sometimes the problem is, especially with small businesses, owner operators, if you don’t have really well defined what kind of freight you’re going to be in and what kind of market you want and what kind of customers you want to build relationships with, if you don’t have those things in mind, sometimes those feel like a luxury.

Caroline: Because they’re this, there’s this sort of esoteric, intangible thing, but they’re actually a really important part of running a trucking operation. Can you talk a little bit about that? How did you decide, okay, this is the visa in the lanes that I’m going to run. Was it customers kind of defined that first and then you responded?

Caroline: Or did you just decide that for yourself? 

Sim: No, it was actually when I started speaking with Kevin and he told me, he basically said one day, he said, Hey, there’s a lot more to this industry [00:17:00] than what you’re asking me or which, cause I, I like to ask questions. I started asking them. I was like, well, how much potatoes do you guys ship?

Sim: He goes, Oh, we go all over us. He goes, we have customers from Walmart to Costco to the smallest of the smallest guys, right? He goes, it’s just a matter of, he said, who do you want to service? Which customer do you want to be? out there sending your trucks to and that’s when I realized I was like, okay, this trucking is just a very small part of the whole circle.

Sim: It’s the freight that gets moved. And those people are the ones when they build relationships with, because a lot of companies have their own trucks and then they just send their drivers out there and, but when they’re looking for a carrier, they don’t want to deal with the trucking part of it. They want somebody to come in and take care of that.

Sim: And then they want to be able to tell their customer, my truck is coming because that’s what they say. They say, my truck is coming and they’ll be delivering or they’ll be there at this time or whatever. That’s when, that’s what I realized is that, okay, I have to run this like a boutique. I can’t just be, I can’t be another trucking company.

Sim: I have to run it like a boutique. And that just changed it from the trucking business [00:18:00] to just customer service. To making sure whether it’s the broker that calls me or the shipper for updates or the receiver, they’re going to get the best customer service I’m able to give them. And then just that is going to make them, not the first time, the second time or the third time it’ll work where they’ll be like, okay, we’re going to call that guy because he knew what he was talking about.

Sim: He was on time. He didn’t cause any problems. There was no issues when we used that carrier. And that’s why when, when me and sending that together and when we started doing, before it was just random, it was just open up the board. Oh, Hey, let’s do this. Let’s go here. Then when it became this lane out here in California, I don’t know much about it.

Sim: Highway five, there’s a, just from Portland to LA. So just a bunch of drop and hop. And there’s quite a few big, large companies that have just taken over. Our goal should be to take over this little from Sacramento to Salt Lake. Like we should be the ones people are like, Oh, Hey, who goes to Salt Lake? All those guys.

Sim: Or who do we call if we want to send somebody or from Idaho back to here, let’s use those guys. So that’s where my idea of running it as a boutique came in, where I was like, let’s just [00:19:00] focus on these three to four customers. I know a lot of people say, don’t throw your eggs all in one battle. We’re not.

Sim: We didn’t throw all of our eggs in one basket because when they weren’t busy, we still had the board. We still had the load bird. We still had other freight out bird that was available. But we focused on that so much that we’ve budgeted our, we’ve made our budgets according to the work that you have to just sit here and be like, Oh, it’ll be busy next week, or it’ll be slow next week.

Sim: No, we knew, okay, Hey, he has. Five loads next week. How are we going to get those covered? And we’re going to get paid this much per load. So that’s how much money is coming in. How much fuel is going to get used? How much are we paying the drivers? And then what’s her truck payment or insurance payment? All that.

Sim: Does it make sense? Cause if it doesn’t make sense, then we wouldn’t be running the lane. And when you give good customer service, they’ll listen to what you have to say too. So if you go to them and say, Hey, I need a little bit more money. They don’t ask you any questions. They say, okay, that’s fine.

Sim: Whatever you need. That’s why we’ve been able to sustain this. Because we don’t, we don’t give them a chance to complain. And at the same time, we don’t take advantage of the situation. Like during COVID, we didn’t raise our prices and we’re still getting the same [00:20:00] prices now, even though everybody else is getting lower prices.

Caroline: Hey, Sunny, I am hoping Sunny that you can tell us a little bit about how you got into the trucking industry. Where did you get your start? And how did you come to, to start VerkXpress? 

Sunny: My dad started VerkXpress back in 2011, and I actually had to get into trucking after he passed away, covering the bills and stuff, and then quit college and started this.

Sunny: And yeah, we worked for a different company. The company, this company stayed dormant for a while, and we worked for a different company that, went under since then but that’s how me and him went met and then from there on we could 

Sim: decide to basically start this we didn’t think this is what was gonna come out of it at the time it was more of just he was gone for two weeks and then he would come take like a week off then he would go away for two weeks and i was like hey we don’t hang out we don’t do anything we’re full line was dead at that point he ran the salt lake we could literally just Do a trip a week and have a couple of days off and be able to hang out and enjoy time with our family or just get together and then work at the same time.

Sim: And that’s, that was the goal when we first got together and [00:21:00] it just slowly just turned into this. 

Caroline: And combining those two things, right? The, what do you want personally? And then solving a business problem. We’ve been talking about these lanes for produce and how critical it is to have good communication, to have people on time, to have your maintenance on point, to have trucks ready to go.

Caroline: All of that. There’s so much work that goes into that. Sonny, what do you think is the toughest part about running this business? 

Sunny: I don’t know. Everything seems tough sometimes, and sometimes everything runs smooth, but fucks of new drivers that are very inexperienced and patience. Basically, I think the biggest problem with trucking right now is patience.

Sunny: No one’s got it. Everybody’s lost their. Sucker where they actually watch out for each other, but he’s just in a rush. ELDs I don’t think help out much either. The electronic ones, just like that. I believe that’s one of the biggest problems I freaking right now, even running a business, it’s just, why can’t I go faster?

Sunny: Why can’t I, why aren’t they unloading me on time and all that kind of stuff. 

Caroline: You mentioned drivers. That was, um, one of the things I wanted to ask you all about. You’ve been on a journey of expanding your operation, it’s [00:22:00] contracted a little bit, having owner operators, not having owner operators, deciding just to go with company drivers.

Caroline: How do you make that decision and how do you find good drivers to fill those trucks? 

Sunny: These drivers are just really recommendations. Someday I got a guy who’s just perfect. We got fired for this thing, or he likes your route. He wants 

Sim: more home time too. And a lot of it, a lot of it does have to do with what stage we’re in.

Sim: As far as their, them being a driver, what we, what I’ve noticed in this industry is when they start off, they’re like, Hey, we will go anywhere. We’ll go anywhere. Send us any time. We don’t need any home time, especially if they’re single. Cause they’re looking to hustle and make money. And, uh, if it’s a family person, somebody with a wife and kids, they usually want to be like, Hey, I want a little bit more home time.

Sim: And because of the lane we’re in, that’s when, like he said, we get recommendations because someone will say, Hey, I have a guy who’s really good driver, but he doesn’t want to run East coast anymore. Sure. He needs more home time, something. And that’s where we come in. Cause we’re like, yeah, we only go here.

Sim: So. If you run to Utah, [00:23:00] you’ll have two days off in the week, no matter what. And 

Sunny: reputation helps too. They know that we’re not going to mess up anything or do them wrong or any way. And then be like, Hey, the other guy ran them this much and didn’t pay him enough. So he’s down on his luck. You guys need a driver.

Sunny: Sometimes we have to say no, because we only got a certain amount of trucks. But sometimes, yeah, we’ll take them on. No worries. And then. They run with us and they’d like the stuff. We have one driver that’s decent, but he loves Nevada. He loves to gamble. He left and came back just cause it wasn’t working out for him.

Sim: Yeah, we left because he, he basically was like, it’s not as busy as it was during COVID. And I’m like, it’s not COVID time anymore. It’s just, we just got to do what we got to do. When he left, he realized that he wasn’t making the same amount of money, but then he wasn’t, it wasn’t the same. I don’t know if it’s trust or what it was.

Sim: He just didn’t feel right. He’s like, Hey, I’d rather do this. And I know that you guys, I’m going to get paid at the end of the week. Whatever the time is and it sucks, but that’s a really big problem in the industry where smaller companies do take advantage of these guys and they’ll nickel and dime them for the dumbest [00:24:00] things.

Sim: And me and Sunny went through that. That was one of our things when we did decide to start this. I was like, one, we’re not keeping anyone’s trip down or a deposit or anything like that. Like they do the work, they get paid, they do the work, they get paid. And it was going great until. California announced this whole AB5 law thing and that just threw a wrench in it too.

Sim: Cause in trucking, they’re used to getting their money right away and then they can figure out their own taxes. And I, I know AB5 is that in the longterm, it’s a good thing for everybody, the social security and all that stuff. But a lot of drivers are, they’re trying, they’re just going from, if they do drive, they’re driving six months and just buying their own truck.

Sim: They don’t want, they don’t want a W 2. They’re like, we want to deal with our taxes at the end of the year, which it’s okay with me. I don’t have a problem, but we used to be able to pay them right out for trash. Now we have to do the whole W 2, pay them after two weeks biweekly. Why is it like this? How come this much tax?

Sim: I’m like, Hey, it’s just the category you fall under. I can’t control it. That’s how much you make. And that’s what the tax is going to be. But that’s the situation with the drivers. It’s a [00:25:00] lot of them are recommended. Majority of them are recommended. I’ve used indeed. I’ve used monster to post up job postings, Craig’s list.

Sim: And I’ve gotten a lot of calls through that too. We’ve hired a few people through those channels as well. But when it’s someone recommended and you trust the person that recommends them, it’s a little bit more easier process that way. 

Caroline: Can you talk through the process of actually getting a new driver onboarded?

Caroline: I know that there’s a lot of regulation around that. You have to do a drug test. You have to do. Background checks and all of that. Do you manage that yourself or do you have, you know, a system you use or a person that you use to do that? 

Sim: Yeah, I did try in the beginning to do it myself, but I, it was just way too much.

Sim: So I, we do have a company now that we use locally here. They do our drug test. They do our pre employment. They do the whole clearing house, everything for us. It’s a one stop shop. And we just send the driver there every day. They make the driver file, all that stuff. And then we just kind of, they just manage it for us.

Sim: And it’s easier, but again, it’s another service we have to pay for every month. They used to be, they used to be [00:26:00] truck payment, insurance payment, and fuel. That was it. Or trailer payment, if you had one. And now it’s truck trailer payment, insurance, ELD, all drug and alcohol program. And now there’s pre employment, then clearing house, then.

Sim: Just pre pass. Throwing things out. 

Sunny: All we do is look at the driver is he’ll go with the driver, do a couple of trips, make sure that the guy’s running good, knows how to come over Donner pass, especially because a lot of rookies will end up burning out the brakes on that one. And the FTL they’re doing and go from, put them on permanently.

Caroline: Do you have pretty, a pretty good track record of. Hiring drivers or has it been a bit of a learning curve? 

Sim: There’s always, uh, I don’t know if you heard this from other companies, but there’s always like that one guy that like the company always has that one driver that’ll just stay with them. No matter what, like we have that guy and he’s good, but he’s also a pain in the butt come time to us.

Sim: You just deal with that. And then so out of the five, Out of the five trucks, there’s always one truck down because of a drug. It’s just part of the game. And at that point, it’s usually him or me on that truck using it to deliver or pick up, or even do a trip. And just funny how that works. That’s [00:27:00] never, we’ve never had like good four or five guys that are always this ready to go.

Sim: There’s always one guy who. Work for six months and be like, I’m out. I’m going to go somewhere else. For the most part, I think we’ve had, we have about three guys that have been with us for four plus years now. Yeah. 

Caroline: That’s a great tracker. That’s great retention. 

Sim: Yeah. Driver. Yeah. Main thing is just pay them on time.

Sim: Just some of these stories I hear, Oh, you were late to the delivery. Here’s a hundred dollar charge, even though there’s no charge, like the broker didn’t charge you or the shipper didn’t charge, but they’ll charge drivers. And then you’ll hear stories. Oh, the truck is dirty. I’m going to charge you or you didn’t do this.

Sim: I’m going to charge. We won’t. Me and Semi went through that and I’m like, we’re, we’re not going to do that to these guys. Cause we know how hard it is to be away from home, be away from your family, drive a truck, and nothing is in your control other than the truck is moving. Then you’re controlling the truck.

Sim: But when you’re at a receiver, they’re going to take their sweet time. It’s out of your hands. When you’re at a shipper, they’re going to take their sweet time. So for us to nag them and nickel and dime them, and then of course they’re going to go somewhere else. Yes, if we do get charged, We, we, I still try [00:28:00] not to charge them, but I do let them know, Hey, this is what happened.

Sim: And a lot of times it’s not the driver’s fault. It’s a truck broke down or traffic or whatever the case might be. Weather, majority of the time, these brokers and, uh, shippers and receive, they understand, Hey, if the weather caused a delay or traffic or whatever, that’s our main thing. Like first we pay them, then we figure out the rest.

Caroline: I love that. Unfortunately that I think that’s pretty unusual in this industry. So I’m hoping that people. Hear this and see it not only as the right thing to do, shit is, but also a really strategic business move. Because if you can have great drivers that drive for you for multiple years, that saves you so much in having to hire an onboarding.

Caroline: At a 

Sunny: certain point, they start treating the truck like their own. They, they eventually will be like, they’ll start nagging us like, Hey, I need this part. I need this. Do better pre trips or just vibrating like this could work on this. Or they start because a lot of new guys you bring in first six, seven months, they just, why even pre trip the truck?

Sunny: Why could I do it? That’s not my thing. I only get some of the drivers. Yeah. They’re like, Oh, I 

Sim: get paid to drive the pre trip and I’m like, and it’s, [00:29:00] did you not learn anything? And it’s getting worse because now. You can get a license in two weeks and it’s all automatic trucks. They, it’s like a, it’s like a pre written course, every trucking school that’s out there.

Sim: They make them go through the motions and here you go. And then the real training starts after they get a license because then they’re with me or Sonny or somebody, an experienced driver sitting next to them. And I feel like in the, since 18, I’ve trained about five guys. And to this day, I’m like, none of these guys had a license.

Sim: Any idea, even though they held a feeding, even 

Sunny: know how to distribute the weight. Should I slide the tandems or should I slide the fifth wheel to get the weight? Right? This seems very, I don’t know if we’ve learned it or been in it for a while, that it seems very rudimentary to figure out. It’s not that hard, right?

Sim: When me and Sonny got our license, like it was a lot more hands on and we were a lot more, Hey, this is how you do this. This is how you do this. And you actually learned. So before you’ve done 

Sunny: the fact that there’s a lot of more manual, uh, not many more manuals out there because you would get your CDL, but you still needed to learn how to shift gears, float them or double clutch them [00:30:00] or however you’ve wanted to do it.

Sunny: And you’d go 

Caroline: to like, really think about how the truck works with 

Sunny: someone for a couple of months or a couple of trips or however you want, then you learn smaller things as it goes. The truck starts driving weird. Maybe the leveling valve on the trailer broke. So the airbags dumped out. It’s jolting around, or this is where we need the tandems to be to distribute the weight.

Sunny: Or sometimes the tandems get stuck and you got to jolt the truck back and forth to break that little rust thing. Like, no one, sometimes they’ll just, 

Sim: I 

Sunny: don’t know 

Sim: what’s going on. Converse. What did you see? What, what Sunny is saying is sounding foreign to you, like leveling valve and tandems and all that stuff, right?

Sim: It’s foreign to these CDL holders too, when they first start. It’s like, how do you not know that? How do you not know this? You should be trained in this. And you’ve been driving for what, a year now, and you don’t know how to put the glad handles on the trailer. They never taught you that. Like, how are you on the road?

Sim: And it’s just amazing that [00:31:00] that’s the crazy part where I can, we can’t hire a new driver because of the way our insurance works, we’re not big enough to where we can hire a brand new driver and just put them on the road. And we’re still in that one spot where yes, they have to have some sort of experience before we can hire them on.

Sim: But even when they say, Hey, I have two years of experience. I’m ready to go. I’m like, okay, you would think somebody with two years of experience, I don’t even need to do a trip with them, but I most likely usually have to spend a month with ’em just to make sure they know what they’re doing, what they’re not doing.

Sim: And that’s the drivers that usually rotate out of this whole thing. ’cause the ones we do have that are sticking with us, they, they knew from the beginning and they, they’re still learning it. When a driver comes to you and says, Hey, I know everything, that’s usually a bad start. I still learn every day.

Sim: Plenty of docks where I can’t park even after all these years and me and Sonny are usually like, oh, you don’t get cocky, we’re trying to fizzing 

Sunny: and start 

Sim: messing 

Sunny: around, 

Sim: if rightly. And like you said, it’s just weird that in this industry, that’s keeping America moving is there’s so many levels to it.

Sim: And yet some levels are so [00:32:00] still so elementary, so basic. 

Sunny: Don’t check the seals on the trailer, because if they leak out, bearings turn dry, they can catch them. What are seals? Hard, get under the trailer, get a flashlight. There’s only four of them on the trailer, just make sure there’s no 

Sim: And Sonny’s not a mechanic.

Sim: He doesn’t have a mechanic’s license. He’s learned this on the road. This seems like it would be 

Caroline: even more treacherous for a business that deals with refrigerated freight, too. There’s a lot that you have to know about that reefer trailer, not just the truck. Well, 

Sunny: you have to learn how to prime them, they ran out of sealer.

Sim: One of the, one of the reasons why we weren’t able to do this about two weeks ago is because of that one, just what you said right now, we did the, we do the dairy loads, the milk loads to associated from Sacramento, and we’ve been doing them for six, seven years. We’ve never had an issue. All of a sudden they rejected a whole load.

Sim: Yeah. And we were like, what? They’re like, they, the driver calls me [00:33:00] like, One a. m. He goes. Hey, they rejected the whole load. Actually. It was sunny. Wasn’t it? You the first? No, I sat there 

Sunny: for four 

Sim: days 

Sunny: until they came out with a decision to either keep or 

Sim: they, they told us that, Hey, we rejected the load, the temperature is out of range.

Sim: And I said, well, that makes no sense. The temperature is where it’s always at. It’s the next morning. They’re like, the broker calls me and says, I need you to go get a reefer report. I was like, yeah, I’m going to get a reefer report and show you the, what the temperature has been since the time we picked up the load to the time we delivered and you can check.

Sim: And that’s exactly what it was. The report showed that we had it set at 35 degrees and it sat at 35 degrees the whole time. And for some reason they were saying, nope, it’s coming up 40 degrees, 40 degrees or above, but it’s milk, right? So they can’t, it’s, it’s dangerous. They’re like, Hey, we can’t take this because.

Sim: We take it and somebody gets sick, we’re selling them, right? And I get it. And they try to pin that on us. And I said, how is this my fault or our fault? [00:34:00] We set the temperature where you wanted us to set it at. And I was like, you guys took four hours to unload. Maybe your dock, maybe your warehouse is at the wrong temperature.

Sim: How do you, where do we go? We’re just two people, right? We’re now we’re trying to figure out, 

Sunny: I was pinning on them. Cause they can 

Sim: take this big corporation. What’s the dock temperature? What’s this? So. What I, what do I do? I have the number for the receiving guy. I emailed him. I said, Hey, this is Sam. This is what’s going on.

Sim: What do you know about the situation? He goes, they pulped it and it was coming up high, right? He’s, I honestly believe that they shipped the product hot. Like, okay, so that’s who, so I was like, okay, then we were basically like CSI. We had to do an investigation. We came back here, Sacramento. And then that was the first load that got rejected.

Sim: The second load got there, got rejected. So now we have two trailers full of milk that are being rejected and they’re calling our insurance to file a claim. And the third one that [00:35:00] we’re picking up, we hope we’ve never pulped it, but we they’re like the Sacramento said, we cannot go in the warehouse to pulp the product.

Sim: I said, that’s fine. Load us and we’ll pulp the product once it’s in our trailer. And lo and behold, it’s pulping at 40 degrees and about 57, 58 degrees. They never rub it. But there, there were, the shipper is saying, Hey, our product is okay above 40 degrees. We’re, we’re okay with that. We guarantee the quality of it.

Sim: Okay. Give us a letter, say, releasing it. If anything happens, we guarantee everything is good and they could. So, they try to do that, but then they realize that, oh, oh, We can’t do that because we might be taking that whole liability on us. And my insurance company is getting calls that we’ve got two loads worth about 90, 000, uh, that they’re going to file a claim on.

Sim: So what we decided to do with the broker is we ran the reefer at 33. So we used to run them at 35 and then now we run them at [00:36:00] 33. And by the time we deliver, they’re pulping at 37, 38 and they’re like, we’ll take it. So they started taking them. Then. We ran the two trailers that were sitting there for Sonny was sitting there for four days.

Sim: The second load was sitting there for three days. We reset them to 33. And after the four or five days, they were 37, and they took them as well. Oh, 

Caroline: interesting. 

Sim: I just feel like I was telling Sonny, I was like, if it was somebody else, like another company that didn’t know, didn’t have people that they could call and figure this, like they would be on the hook for this stuff and all that.

Sim: They would have had insurance claims and, The broker would have been like, you know what, maybe we can’t use it, we’re going to have to find somebody else, but we figured it out because those guys. They just wanted to blame us. They’re like, Oh no, it’s your guys as well. But then the, the insurance 

Sunny: did help out too.

Sunny: They stepped up and they said, yes, because they don’t want to, don’t want to fake that insurance was like, we’re mawing up our operation. [00:37:00] These are multimillion dollar companies. They, they don’t just, they’ll just pin it on you and say, you know what? There’s nothing you can do about it. 

Sim: They have, what’s the company?

Sim: Swift has 6, 000 trailers. So if two of them do get rejected and are loaded and sitting there, that’s not even going to, no one’s going to notice them for us for having seven trailers and then two of them are all of a sudden down loaded and we don’t know what’s happening and we’re in limbo. Not only is it affecting the work right there and then, but it’s also affecting the work that’s coming up because now we’re having to cancel and reschedule and all that stuff.

Sim: And. At the end of the day, yes, we have great relationships with everybody, but nobody owes anybody anything. They’re going to, they’re going to want their freight moved. And when me and I was like, we got to, we were basically trying to figure out what’s going on and when we figured it out, that then basically it was a lesson in the sense that, okay, if you try hard enough, you can get through and you can, you figure it out.

Sim: You don’t just, oh, okay, fine. You rejected it. Okay, fine. I have [00:38:00] insurance. I’ll just claim. No, like that’s your last resort. That’s their last resort. If you can figure it out without having to get any insurance or any kind of legal stuff into it, that’s the best case scenario. And the only way you’ll be able to do that is if you have relationships with a broker, with a shipper, or a receiver, and they trust you enough that, hey, what he’s saying, let’s listen to what he’s saying.

Sim: Because they’ve been doing this for a long time and we’ve never had an issue and all of a sudden we’re going to have these issues and ever since then, no problem. And it’s just weird. It’s just small examples like that, where that’s where we are. We actually do feel our size. We’re like, Hey, because when, when everything is normal, we’re like, Hey, we’re doing good.

Sim: We’re making money everywhere. But then when stuff like this happens, that’s when they make you feel like, okay, you are just a little tiny fish in of this. Big whole thing where they’ll just be like, yeah, we don’t care. We just want our money or we, we, we’re going to claim this and we’ll just move forward from 90, 000 for a multimillion dollar company.

Sim: Isn’t much, 

Caroline: no big shake. 

Sim: Yeah. But for us, [00:39:00] it’s okay. We don’t necessarily want our insurance rates to go up. And 

Caroline: when your insurance then renews, it’s not just about the claim. It’s, you know, in the moment, it’s also about the ramifications that has a year later when you’re about to renew your insurance and that’s actually something I wanted to bring up around compliance because that’s the thing that I’ve seen that puts a lot of people out of business.

Caroline: It’s not necessarily just the cost of insurance, although the cost of insurance has gone up incredibly in the last couple of years. But it’s the differential in the cost of insurance once you’ve had an accident or you’ve had a claim or you’ve had some kind of issue or you’re not paying attention to your safety score and you’re not noticing that things are going wrong.

Caroline: So, um, So how do you deal with that? How do you manage compliance? Do you have another service that, that you use that manages compliance? Do you do it all yourself? And then how do you make sure that, that you’re keeping your insurance as low as possible? 

Sim: Uh, yeah, [00:40:00] we’re trying and it’s not working. She says that and Berk keeps going up and up.

Sim: But as far as compliance goes, we, so we have prepass in all of our trucks and prepass has a really good website and dashboard as far as, Why the truck got pulled in or why they’re giving you a red light and all that stuff. So that gives us an insight as to what we can improve on. And then every now, every time we do get an inspection for the, I think it used to be that you would get red tagged if there was something wrong with their equipment.

Sim: But now we’ve, I’ve noticed that we are getting, if we do have a few people go, but not red tag, but just OUTTA service is because log books not necessarily like they’re running their logbook wrong, it’s just. Sometimes they don’t connect to the phone or the device doesn’t want to work. And what’s written in the book is, Hey, you need to start a paper log book.

Sim: You need to write down what happened and we follow it to the rule book, but we’ll control the DLT on 

Sunny: their mood. Cause we just had one of our drivers get a ticket. That [00:41:00] seems very ridiculous in the sense that, so when you’re running your log book, you look at that thing, there’s a button where you can press it.

Sunny: And it’ll show you your split book. Like your original book will be out of time and show a violation on it, but if you hit the split, it’ll show you, okay, you got this extra time and you can run it that way. And then you get back to Sacramento and you do your 10 hour sleep or whatever and everything’s fine.

Sunny: He got a ticket that he said he was cheap. The officer said he was cheating on his log books by not pressing that button beforehand, before showing the off before showing you, because if I pay you the book, all I do got to do is press a button and it’ll update it and show you that it’s okay. If he splits it like he is, as when he was, he’s legit, everything’s up and fine.

Sunny: But he got a book. He got a, what is he warning or a ticket for. Just you were manipulating your phone. 

Sim: Yeah. He got a warning and they made him sleep 10 hours because the DUT officers exact words was that when he showed me his [00:42:00] book, it said zero on his clock. And I said, yeah, but he’s running a split book.

Sim: I was like, do you, you split book means that he has time. He has four hours and something left on his drive. He goes, no, no, he, he said, he goes, no, no, no. You just edited that. I said, how I’m, I was like, I’m not even there. How can I edit it? I was like, it’s just like, he just forgot to press the, not even for a question, he just needed to show you that.

Sim: Oh, look, Hey, I’m running my split book. And here you go. This is how much time I have left. He goes, Nope. I saw 000 on his time. He’s got to sleep for 10 hours. You’re lucky I’m not going to give you a ticket. And, at that point, it’s like, what do we do? Who do we call? Can’t call anybody. Can’t do it. Don’t start arguing with the officer if he wants to.

Sunny: That goes on the record. Pull into the bay. I’m an inspector truck. And I’m going to make sure I find something wrong with your truck. To put you out of service and then it just escalates the whole thing. Always convey it. Okay. I’m sorry, officer. Thank you for the warning. I’m so grateful for that part. But officers, well not most, but [00:43:00] some of them don’t even know the rules as well.

Sunny: When they pull you over. I think they’re learning as they go. It gets very complicated sometimes and how it goes and doesn’t go. It was, uh, end 

Sim: of 22, 23. We got our basically bed inspection here in California. Where they come and check everything, all your paperwork, all your equipment, the CHP comes out to your yard and everything, and that’s where we’re, we’ve got a good lesson on logbook and how we should be using it, and what are the rules pertaining logbook and split book and all that stuff.

Sim: And what had happened was we, we were, we, some of the drivers weren’t using the book like they’re supposed to, but. That officer, he’s like, Hey, look, you, it’s fine. It’s your first time, this is what you need, you’re supposed to do. And so then you, we tell that to the drivers and then when they do that, it’s not correct to a certain DOT officer in Nevada or Utah or Idaho, and that’s, wait, I was told that I’m allowed to do this and that I can run it like this.

Sim: And you’re telling me I can’t. [00:44:00] Who’s right? Because you guys are both coding FMC, SCA rules, but you’re interpreting them differently, and he’s interpreting them differently. I’m just, I’m not trying to break any laws. I just need to know what I can do, what I can’t do, so I can let everybody, let the drivers know.

Sim: But I feel like they, it is up to the cops, but it’s a whole thing. There needs to be a little bit more of a, what’s the word, you know, like, yeah, as a standard and on the same page, this is the rule. This is what you’re allowed to do. And I feel like there’s too many ELD companies and those ELDs, each ELD company is pulling in customers because, Oh, we, we will allow you to do this.

Sim: So we’ll allow you to do that. Question mark and then FMCSA is now emailing every three months like, Oh, this ELD is no longer, um, uh, valid anymore. So you can’t use this company anymore. Why are we doing that? Like, why can’t we just, why can’t the FMCSA just make a logbook software and to say, Hey, [00:45:00] everyone just use this.

Sim: So that way there’s no, nobody’s, Oh, what’s this software like, or what’s that ELD? What’s this system like? I think it’s way more confusing. 

Caroline: Just regulate the softwares a little bit more. And maybe regulate is the wrong word there, but don’t penalize the driver or the carrier for using something that was usable before, at least give an off ramp.

Caroline: If you’re going to take something out and not allow people to use it anymore. Okay. But give us some time and let us know which system. 

Sunny: I think we should just go back to paper books. Time for simpler, easier back then. 

Sim: And everybody, we ran through COVID, we had ELDs through COVID and they recorded everything.

Sim: We didn’t, obviously we had a clocks off recording because we fell under the emergency thing. None of my guys got into any accidents. None of my guys were sleepy, tired. None of them got overworked. None of them complained they were [00:46:00] overworked. It was all, it was very easy. It was just, they could pull over and sleep when they wanted to.

Sim: And when they had, they were done taking their nap or doing their 10 on, they were ready to go. And it just felt so much easier. I know it’s never going to happen, but it was just so much easier. It’s 

Sunny: easier when it’s whenever it’s convenient for the government to say, okay, you don’t need to run by the rules.

Sunny: Just get the supplies there. Cause we had the hurricanes in South or South Carolina or whatever we had before. Then all, you know, then the gloves are off and just run as you need to. And when they follow the law to the dot. And otherwise you’re going to get penalized heavily. 

Amy: Hey, this is Amy, your editor.

Amy: We hope you’ve enjoyed this video. Our conversation with work express was so good. And so long, we had to split it in two parts. This is a bit of what you can expect on the next video. And we hope you enjoy it. Don’t forget to subscribe. So you never miss an update. 

Caroline: Something that we like to do on this show is to talk to carriers and figure out what they’re making, how much it costs to run their operation and get an idea for what is normal in this industry or what [00:47:00] you should be reaching for.

Sim: His payment was just as much, if not higher than they’re The brand new truck we got and I’m like, what are you doing? I was like why we were One of the few companies that didn’t raise our rates that didn’t jump on the bad lagging of oh, yeah We can run this lane for four or five six thousand dollars.

Sim: Why should we keep doing it for this price?