Episode Highlights

Corisa Carter – New

Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to this Weekend Trucking. My name is Caroline. Today I am really excited to be talking to Carissa Carter, owner of CM Transportation and founder of the Charleston Trucking Expo. I saw Carissa on one of Adam Wing Fields’s interviews on freight waves. And knew I had to talk to her on this weekend.

Caroline: Trucking, thanks for joining us,

Corisa : Carissa. Thank you so much for having me. I was excited when you messaged me and I really love this. I love what I do. I love sharing information. And we on the trucking side, the company side, we wanna thank you for keeping the dialogue open. We wanna thank you for getting as much as this information out to our industry that you do.

Caroline: Thanks, Carissa. That’s nice of you to say. So tell me a little bit about how you got into trucking.

Corisa : I didn’t choose trucking.

Corisa : Trucking chose me. And I love to tell that story when I’m mentoring as well, just looking for a better paying job here in Charleston, South Carolina. My background had been in finance and customer service, so I accepted a customer service position with OOCL, [00:01:00] which is Orient Overseas Container Line.

Corisa : Charleston, South Carolina is one of the largest import export ports here on the southeast coast. Transportation and logistics is very big.

Corisa : I moved my way up the ranks and I began to dispatch their door moves. And that means that anything that was routed through them, that the customer requested to be delivered to the door, then I was promoted to handle the Atlanta, Georgia area.

Corisa : So once I started dispatching the trucks in the Atlanta, Georgia area, then I got pretty familiar with the truck drivers and the trucking companies. One of the gentlemen

Corisa : he thought that I would do very well on the trucking side. So if I ever wanted to leave customer service and I wanted to open the terminal to give him a call, and that’s exactly what I did. So back in 2001, I was at OOCO from 1999 to 2001. In 2001, I left the Ocean Line Company and I went and opened the first trucking terminal of six for the gentleman out of Atlanta who put his faith in me.

Corisa : From there, I never looked [00:02:00] back. I love it. I love the relationships, I love the drivers. So trucking found me.

Caroline: Yeah, no kidding.

Caroline: Is that still the business that you are running today or how did you transition into starting your own company or starting CM Transportation?

Corisa : One of the great parts about Charleston is that there are so many owner operators and truck drivers and trucking companies. So after I opened that initial terminal, then I became as what you might call a hot commodity.

Corisa : I actually opened a total of six different terminals for different companies. So that kind of became a niche of mine that I could open the terminals, grow the truck following, bring customers, set up the processes and procedures. And back in 2011 I was blessed to be able to open my own terminal.

Corisa : I opened CM Transportation 2011, so this will be 14 years this November. That I’ve been my own boss and I didn’t open it for someone else. I actually opened it for myself. We currently run 43 owner operators under our terminal, and we actually do business as, [00:03:00] so CM Transportation is my company.

Corisa : I have two dispatchers, billing and payroll clerk, a safety manager, but we run under the Cowen intermodal flag. And that was something that I found, actually working in Charleston intermodal and working with the owner operators, I definitely thought that it would probably be in my best interest to work under a larger company for insurance pricing.

Corisa : For safety securement compliance and it’s definitely been a business model that’s worked for me.

Caroline: Can we talk about what an individual truck makes for your business?

Caroline: I don’t know if we usually do these cost per mile interviews in a way where the person who owns the truck is telling us how much it costs to operate. Your situation is a little bit different, so I don’t think we’re gonna be able to use the same methodology that we usually do, but I’m interested to understand on a truck by truck basis maybe what would this look like for.

Caroline: An owner operator who Yes. Who drives the truck.

Corisa : That is another passion of mine because [00:04:00] they are owner operators. So if you think about it, I actually have 43 small trucking companies working for me. Even. Only one truck. And they didn’t look at it like that. I don’t think a lot of them looked at it like, this is my business.

Corisa : And you need to know how much it costs to operate your business. So I go over these numbers with them. I set my rate based on market trends. So I charge the customer.

Corisa : A rate per mile. Now with my owner operators, I need to know how much it costs them to operate their truck. So they’re currently making a dollar 40 per mile. And as we mentioned, the gentleman who had the three generation truck that’s older, let’s just say that, that truck may be granddad bought it new.

Corisa : And so he’s driving a 2000 truck. And the gentleman that bought the $120,000 truck, he’s driving a 2020 truck. Okay, so he’s going to run more miles per week, even though he’s running more miles per week. Our rate per mile is still pretty much the same to the customer, so it stays the same to the driver.

Corisa : So they’re making approximately a dollar [00:05:00] 40 to a dollar 50 mile, Since per mile, the Shorthaul driver in that older truck, he’s running about 3,600 miles a week. I’m say from Charleston to Charlotte is what I would call our regional Shorthaul lane. And we have a lot of guys, that’s what they wanna do.

Corisa : They wanna get up, they wanna go, three or four hours out, turn that empty back into the port, pick up another load, go home, spend their night, spend the night with their family, and not sleep in their truck. And so they’re grossing about $3,600 a week. Out of that $3,600 Cowen is a company like with the intermodal, the way that it’s set up is they don’t have to pay a large monthly insurance premium.

Corisa : So that’s broken down per week. And as I mentioned earlier, 1152 for non trucking liability. We pay the cargo insurance so the owner offer doesn’t have to pay the cargo insurance. So that’s a cost savings. But now what we do say, since we’re paying the cargo insurance and you’re running under our authority, if you have an accident, we need to have a little safety net that makes [00:06:00] sure as your, if your truck is totaled, that you know that we can recoup our.

Corisa : We could recruit the down payment for the insurance. So we hold a security escrow that runs them $50 a week, and then their fuel is going to be about 40% of their gross. And some of that could be because of the type of equipment with it being older. And you can still give or take a couple of percentage there based on how that owner operator operates his truck.

Corisa : But by the time they gross that $3,600 and they pay $1,300 in fuel, they’re running. That’s running. 2200 miles a week and pretty much staying in North Carolina and South Carolina. So after those deductions, they made 30 or they gross 3,600, but they probably see 14 or $1,500 to the house.

Corisa : But with that, they have no headaches. They don’t have to worry about DOT coming in. They don’t have to worry about. Purchasing their own eLog program and maintaining it. when you run under our umbrella, you’re also running under our IFTA [00:07:00] so they don’t have to pay their own international fuel tax.

Corisa : And it runs about 1.4% now in the United States. So what Cowan does is they calculate their miles. Carissa makes sure they’re educated on how, the IFTA program works. And at the end of the quarter, if Cowan is sent a bill for sent IFTA bill because didn’t purchase enough fuel, then they’ll deduct that out of their check over the next four weeks.

Corisa : Even though. I’m saying that they’re bringing home $1,500. It’s $1,500 with no headache. So now we’re gonna double those numbers pretty much for the guy with the newer truck. So when he has a good week, he’s probably running 5,000 miles a week, and then 40% of that is going into his fuel, and then he’s got the insurances that are coming out.

Corisa : So he’s still probably bringing home about double. So he’s bringing home $4,000 a week, and as owner operators now. They have to put some of that money aside for their maintenance as well. I recommend anywhere between 5% to 7% [00:08:00] of their gross that they set aside in a maintenance account. I call it the rainy day fund, just ’cause I like cliches and stuff and then I tell some people, you may have great credit, you may have a nice credit card out there, but if your engine goes out of your truck.

Corisa : How are you going to operate your business? Can you go put your hand on $15,000 to get an engine rebuilt so that your business is not operating as long for a shortest period of time as possible. So they also put up their money for their maintenance. And those numbers are based, are after my fee.

Corisa : So that’s what they’re bringing home to the house. And just like a freight broker how we talk about freight broker transparency, that’s another part of that contract. I’m telling them, Hey, you are making $800 off of this load and that’s 73% of what I’m billing the customer. So they have that transparency.

Corisa : So now they didn’t have to find the load. They send us the paperwork, we do all of the billing, we do all of the collecting. We sign all of the contracts, we call them and [00:09:00] tell them what time they gotta be there, set the appointments, and all they have to do is send us their proof of delivery or bill of lading and they can go home and sleep at night and they’ll have to answer the phone in the middle of the night.

Corisa : That’s what Carissa’s getting. if you’re on the side of the road, you need somebody to call at three o’clock, they’re gonna call me. That’s something, that Carissa, that percentage is paying for. They don’t have to worry about DOT showing up at their door and doing a DOT audit on their records because we handle all of that.

Corisa : When they get pulled over by DOT, we handle collecting the roadside exam, filling it out, making sure the repairs are made and submitting it back. Heck, if he has to buy a tire and he got written up. We pay for the tire and take it out of their check. So it’s almost like a large factoring company for owner operators.

Corisa : But those numbers, the same numbers that they need to operate, whether they were operating under Cowen or under themselves, those numbers really don’t change because still need to know that rate per mile versus how much fuel it’s gonna cost you versus the overhead that you have to pay.

Corisa : [00:10:00] In maintenance, your insurance payments as well as uncle Sam has to get his cut, so they still have to get a 2290 every year and pay their heavy road use tax. So that’s $550 that’s coming out. that business model I found also helps small businesses as well because they don’t have to output a large amount of money at one time.

Corisa : But the numbers still should be typically the same if you’re running a truck from the year 2000 to 2010. Those numbers to operate it. When it comes to maintenance fuel insurance deductions is gonna be pretty close to the same.

Caroline: Makes sense. Can you tell me a little bit about the types of loads that you haul and how you get those loads? Are they on contracts? Are you on load boards? How do your dispatchers source those loads?

Corisa : That’s one of the things that makes intermodal a lot different than the domestic freight. So since the container loads are actually coming in on the container ships to the various ports, we have to have different contracts with each of the steamship [00:11:00] lines in order to pull their equipment out of the port.

Corisa : So a relationship is built there once the carrier gets the proper insurance and gets the SCAT code and is able to access the port, then you develop a relationship with those steamship lines. So the steamship lines do offer carriers freight because they route some of the deliveries and anything that comes in and out of the United States has to be cleared through the United States Customs.

Corisa : So the feds are right here, and you have to go through customs house brokers in order to get your cargo. Cleared to enter or to exit the United States. So there’s say a shipper is overseas, let’s just use Shanghai, China, for example, and a manufacturer in.

Corisa : Spartanburg, South Carolina purchased these parts from that warehouse in the shipper in Shanghai, China. Then they would hire a customs house broker to make sure that all of the documents are filed and the money is paid so that it’s able to discharge in the port. And then they even go as far as to say, once it gets to Charleston, [00:12:00] I want, you find a truck to get it to me.

Corisa : So the customs house brokers are our primary. Customers now since COVID and there was a spike of freight. You see a lot of customs house brokers who have outsourced to, companies like TQL and Nolan Transportation. There are more domestic brokers and domestic brokers have gotten involved as well.

Corisa : So a lot of the freight that we get, we have already had since we’ve been in business for 14 years and actually through my, returning customers. Over a period of 27 years. So those are customs house brokers that I get my freight from and I do have a great contract. I’ve been a carrier for international paper for 15 years, so that’s not something that happens every day.

Corisa : But when you do get those large bids for companies like Michelin Goodyear, Volvo, Mercedes International Paper, and you’re lucky enough to be able to secure that bid, and when that contract, then that’s the recurring freight that you usually see. Once you do a good job. Now, if you decided that [00:13:00] you wanted to ship something because you’re moving to Thailand and you can live over in Thailand for a thousand dollars, you would still follow that same process.

Corisa : You would handle someone to make the booking so that you could export your stuff over to Thailand, and then you could call me and say, Hey Carissa, I need you to come where I am. And Michigan and pick up this load and track it to the port. So we also have customers that are not customs house brokers, but anybody who’s moving products in and outta the Port of Charleston, they may find us online on social media and call us to truck their stuff as well.

Caroline: You mentioned a couple of things in that answer that I wanna pick apart a little bit because I think maybe other listeners, and I’m not super familiar with a SCAT code. Can you explain what that is and why someone in Intermodal Freight might need it?

Corisa : Yes. Once you fill out the application to become an intermodal carrier and get approved by the various steamship lines to pull their cargo, then the organization that handles all assigning. [00:14:00] All of the carriers that go in and out of our ports called the UIIA.

Corisa : you have to sign a uniform intermodal interchange agreement. And once you fill out that application and your application is approved, then you are issued a four letter SCAT code so that the steamship lines can differentiate each company, like you may have US one, and then you may have us two.

Corisa : Because we have intermodal, we have Cowen systems, we have cow transport. So in order for the steamship lines to differentiate who went on the port and pulled their equipment off of the port, they issue you a four letter SCAT code. And so that is required for port entry at all the ports of the United States.

Caroline: You also mentioned different insurance needs for intermodal freight. What does insurance look like for your carrier?

Corisa : That is a very good question also a lot of times there may be an owner operator who has been pulling freight for me, say for 15 years, and he decides that, Carissa, [00:15:00] I wanna put in my application to be an intermodal carrier.

Corisa : And any questions that you can have. Any questions that I have, I’d like to run past you. I tell ’em all the time. No problem. Mentoring is one of my passions as well. One of the first things that I do recommend that they do before they jump off the bridge per se or jump off the cliff, is to start getting rate quotes.

Corisa : You can pull domestic cargo and different types of equipment that you own, and you’re ensuring that equipment. It’s a lot. From truck and trailer lease. Now what we are doing is we are pulling car equipment that. Is owned by the steamship lines. So the steamship lines won’t approve just any insurance.

Corisa : So we have to have, everyone is probably familiar with the million dollar cargo liability coverage, right? One of the accounts that we hauled were refrigerated containers of pharmaceuticals, so it wasn’t a million dollar cargo liability insurance, so it was required. It was a $10 million.

Corisa : Cargo liability policy. And there are certain insurance companies that have clauses when it comes to. When [00:16:00] it comes to accidents or cargo claims and the U, the UIIA will not approve those. So their, the insurance requirements are a little different, which makes the cost a little different now, right now in our industry, across the board.

Corisa : Insurance premiums have went up 150% in the last three years. Especially after some of those major fatality accidents and prior to e-logs coming in, the insurance companies, we know that those numbers jumped up. But to give you a specific example, the gentleman that was still pulling for me for 15 years and he wanted to go get his own insurance. When he ran for me under Cowen, he was paying $11 and 53 cents a week for non trucking liability insurance. And he was paying probably. $10 a week for $20,000 in physical damage coverage. That’s because he’s a part of a larger fleet under the Cowen umbrella.

Corisa : Now, that same gentleman called and the price of his insurance policy was gonna be $15,000 down In order to meet the minimum standards required by [00:17:00] the UIIA and so that the domestic carrier, some of them are out there probably saying yeah. You know that I had to pay $10,000 down too, Carissa.

Corisa : And it, of course, we all know that it’s based on the. Longevity of your MC number, you know how long your business company has been in business and it’s also based on the driver’s motor vehicle reports. But there are gonna be different levels of insurance that are required to pull different types of cargo.

Corisa : And I know you’ve mentioned that again, and I just keep saying container freight. But let’s talk about what’s in that container. Freight, like I just mentioned, the pharmaceuticals electronics. One of our customers is Tory Birch. I’d love to know what’s inside there, but we would never know because it ships into the country sealed and we deliver it and we don’t touch that seal until it gets there,

Corisa : Parts for Mercedes come Cummings engines. And the value on a lot of these items is it’s quite expensive. So those insurance requirements are different. The cost of the premiums for a smaller company is. very extreme. So that’s another reason when you see intermodal companies, [00:18:00] you don’t see a lot of four or five truck operations because of the cost of the insurance and because of the cost of us to pull that equipment because we don’t lease it with the steamship line.

Corisa : But when we sign that agreement, we’re saying we are pulling your equipment. If something happens to it before we return it to the port, we picked it up. We’re responsible for that on our insurance. You’ve already our insurance. If we don’t return it within a certain amount of days per your contract with us, then we’ll pay you per day for having your equipment out.

Corisa : And then we have to go get a set of wheels. So we have a separate set of chassis. So now that’s another contract with another set of companies, and that’s an additional charge. So when it comes to intermodal and you talk about the actual dollar figure to operate it it is. Definitely more expensive to operate intermodal than it is to operate domestic.

Corisa : And then I’m gonna go ahead and tell you that we probably are the lowest paid of all of the divisions of trucking. The intermodal. Yeah, the intermodal pay per mile. And I dunno if it has to do [00:19:00] with us not pulling our own equipment and actually pulling the ocean liner equipment. Or maybe just because it’s, like one of the oldest businesses.

Corisa : We haven’t been able to, those loads are gonna come into the port, they’re gonna get to Spartanburg by somebody. And so maybe the market, because of the amount of freight that we have is lower. But yes ma’am, insurance costs are definitely higher for the smaller companies. Larger companies like Cowen are able to offer that at lower prices, and they’re the ones who are able to go.

Corisa : Say, okay, Carissa, we’ll get you an insurance certificate for $10 million. ‘ cause I don’t think I would’ve been able to pull that cargo if I wasn’t working for Callen.

Caroline: Usually I have to go through all of those different areas of the business one by one.

Caroline: But you, it sounds like you have this memorized down to a science. Can we talk a little bit about your model? It is a little bit like having a big freight brokerage, but it occurs to me that when you work with freight brokers as a carrier. They’re not taking on the risk [00:20:00] or they’re taking on very little of the risk of if something happens to the freight or someone doesn’t pay.

Caroline: There’s a, huge issue of fraud. And if the broker doesn’t pay, then you’re, a lot of times out of luck. There’s not a lot that you can do, especially if you’re a small business. Talk to me about how that has affected your business and what makes your model different.

Corisa : And I think that was one of the reasons that I felt so pressed to have this trucking expo because what you just said a mouthful there. Once again, there are a lot of owner operators. There are a lot of trucking companies who are taking on that risk and don’t really have the financial stability and the financial backing. So once you fill out that contract with those customers, with those large companies, but especially with those freight.

Corisa : Brokers, there’s a lot of fine print that says what you just said. I’m not taking the risk for the cargo. Once you hook up to this or you pick up this shipment, you’re taking [00:21:00] 100% of the risk. one of my mentors told me that. You do what you’re good at and you pay somebody else to do what they’re good at.

Corisa : And that’s what I tell the owner operators. Like when I’m like, Hey, you looking for a job? You wanna, stop running under your mc because it pays too much. This is what I’m good at. I’m good at finding freight. I’m good at knowing the requirements on maintaining the ports equipment, what’s expected for them.

Corisa : I know how to keep the cost down because I’ve been doing this for 27 years, and so I’m good at this. I’m good at finding the freight. I’m good at keeping the cost down. I’m good at helping you make money, and that’s one less headache that you have. So I think that my business model. definitely different even with others that are within the intermodal industry.

Corisa : You still have some trucking companies that will not, don’t have a TAG program. So the owner operator’s still responsible to get his own tag that they don’t allow you to run under their ifta. So the owner operator is still responsible for getting their own ifta. But when I did my research for companies, I had the owner [00:22:00] operators.

Corisa : Best interest at heart. And I also wanted to treat them as individual businesses and to teach them as well. So I wanted to know, like what company was I secure enough to say, you don’t have to do anything. It’s like a click it and forget it. So my business model is a little different I mastered my craft.

Corisa : I figured out what it was per mile to operate the truck. I figured out what it was. To make sure that the overhead stayed down in my office. I put those processes and procedures in place. I’ve got a great team that helps me enforce them. And mainly the relationship that I have with the drivers.

Corisa : Like right now when we get off the phone, I have five loads that I need to get covered and nobody’s gonna wanna give up what they’re already on. So I gotta put some Carissa honey on it and make sure that I get those five loads delivered. But they trust me and they know that I wouldn’t call them and say, Hey, do this.

Corisa : And if I wasn’t going to make sure that they were compensated for it and that it wasn’t gonna help us in the future, those five loads that I accepted that I probably shouldn’t have, and my dispatchers probably fussing at me now [00:23:00] I know that’s a part of a relationship that’s gonna bring more freight, i’m very proud of my business model and I did wanna share it. I had so many people asking me during COVID how to get into the industry. What’s the keys to my success? How do you be there for 14 years? One of the things that I wanted to leave with them was to master their craft, and that there are so many pieces of the puzzle, like you mentioned earlier from insurance to the brokerage.

Corisa : To the customer service, to technology. Now, we can’t leave out GPS tracking and e-logs, so there are so many different parts of this to help you make your business successful. I wanted to put them all under one roof. And be tangible for the owner operators and the people in the community here in Charleston to come out and ask questions and to learn.

Corisa : And I think that I did that because I found that my business model does work. It works because the people who don’t know are letting people who do know, operate and they’re learning from those people instead of learning on the fly and learning as they go.

Caroline: Let’s talk about something that [00:24:00] I didn’t tell you ahead of time.

Caroline: So let me know if this is a little too out of left field. Let’s talk about tariffs. I imagine that. May have disrupted to say the least your business and intermodal freight generally, what were the impacts of those first couple of months with all of that uncertainty? And now we’re on a pause and what are you thinking about for the future?

Corisa : Wow. And to talk about Terrace, I do wanna almost to paint a picture of it. I wanna go back to COVID and it’s not in left field at all because as soon as, oh, I’ve been calling it the T word, as soon as the T word popped up, my phone started ringing off the hook. Like Carissa, this is directly affected intermodal Carissa.

Corisa : What is this gonna do? And I’m on a daily conference call with my largest customer who is a. Fortune 500 company and we’re all doing the same thing. It’s like we panic first and then you have to sit and wait to see what’s gonna happen. And if we back up to COVID when we were in a global pandemic and [00:25:00] pretty much the world shut down and the only people that were working were essential workers, it crippled a lot of business. It crippled a lot of trucking companies. It most definitely did A lot of the small business owners when they stopped producing and the shelves started getting empty. If the shelves are empty, that means we’re not working. Yeah, because. A truck brought it, right?

Corisa : So when the shelves were empty and they’re not working and then all of a sudden, we’re coming out of the pandemic and everybody’s we never want this to happen again. So we need to go rent two more warehouses and fill it up with Charmin to make sure that when out toilet paper, it’s there.

Corisa : That was the first time in 15 years. Our rates have ever increased as much as they did per value. our rates almost doubled. The freight almost tripled. So it’s almost like a snowball effect in this industry, and I found The same thing to happen with tariffs. And for those who you know, you can listen, you can look by definition, you can ask Siri, you can watch CNN or you can watch Fox and you’re gonna get something different, right?

Corisa : You may understand it differently. But I can tell you from sitting at the [00:26:00] desk that I’ve been sitting in for 27 years, that when a country applies a tariff to another country, those goods are taxed, is what a tariff is, right? It’s a tax on those goods Now. Remember earlier when we talked about the company in Spartanburg, ordering from the company in China.

Corisa : So if Spartanburg placed this order and the United States placed a tariff on China, do you think that China is going to eat the additional cost of that to send the stuff to Spartanburg when Spartanburg really needed? Shanghai’s warehouse, right? So that cost is put back on the purchaser. So those goods that are imported into our country now those rates go up because they have to pay Shanghai more to get it over here.

Corisa : Not to say that the United States isn’t making something off of that, but when it comes to the transportation and logistics and the supply chain, then, so now. That Spartanburg doesn’t wanna pay as much to me because they have to pay more to Shanghai. So the very first thing that we saw when the administration [00:27:00] changed and they began talking about tariffs, is now the supply and demand.

Corisa : The customer has more demand. I’ve got this coming in, but this is all I can afford to pay. If we don’t accept that pay the cut and that rate, then the truck isn’t doing anything. So now we have to balance. Do we want to take a hundred dollars rate cut so that the truck has something to do? Is the truck still gonna be.

Corisa : Able to operate its rate per mile that is needed in order to do that, or do we wanna pass on it? So usually in the beginning we say, no. Know my, my drivers are gonna be on time. Okay? So come on Tom, I’m not, I’ve been doing this with you for years. This is what our rate is. This is what I need you to pay.

Corisa : After trucking companies sit for so long, they start undercutting each other’s rates, right? Or undercutting the rate. And they say, I need to pay my house payment. So yes, I’ll take that a hundred dollars rate. So now it snowballs to us. So at that point, as the freight started slowing down. Supply and demand.

Corisa : The rate started dropping. Why did the slate freight slow down? Because the purchasers didn’t wanna pay [00:28:00] the tariff. The shippers don’t wanna pay the tariff. So we’re not gonna order anything right now. We’re gonna wait and see what happens, because we don’t wanna pay a tariff if we don’t have to. So then the tars went on pause and it was like COVID.

Corisa : So then we got the, Hey, okay, this tars went on pause. So we’re gonna have 15 that we need you to deliver next week ’cause we gotta get ’em. Before the tariffs may go back into effect. So then the freight spiked again. So now we got to go back to that customer and say we want our a hundred dollars back ‘ cause we’re gonna get it there.

Corisa : You need, you’ve got 15, we want our a hundred dollars back. And that actually helped us. On the southeast coast where it hurt la. I don’t know. For those of you all who are watching and who have been following the tariffs, the stuff that was shipped into our areas it’s all like a big circle.

Corisa : So where the product is coming from and where it’s delivering to, that kind of determines the port that it’s gonna go to. A lot of the far East freight goes to LA because it’s right there. China was our largest importer. If stuff stopped shipping from China, then nothing showed up in la.

Corisa : Now the stuff that’s coming [00:29:00] to the southeast coast probably is coming from Europe, like Germany, France those, ports that are over there. So they wanna hurry up and get it into us. Let’s get it into Norfolk and Savannah and Charleston and get it out there. We even saw stuff that came into Charleston that would rail to the West coast that would’ve shipped into the port of la, but did not because of the tariffs.

Corisa : They went and found. Other manufacturers that didn’t have to pay the cost of the tariffs. So it is very heavy, especially when we are trying to dispatch plan when these drivers are trying to plan their budget. When I’m trying to plan my budget because I get paid off of the loads that I book, this morning I had the grand baby and I was like we may not be going on vacation, even though she’s only four months old. Caroline. I was like Disney World might be out because if the diesel goes up and we don’t get any those for six months, grandma’s gonna have to go get a job at Walmart.

Corisa : But I always joke about that, but it’s really a volatile industry. A lot of us, one of our joke, our women in trucking jokes is we love trucking, but trucking does not love us. Because one minute, it could be great. [00:30:00] And The current state of the international world always affects us.

Corisa : There’s a port that was just closed, just like that, so any, Hoffa and Israel, any those ships. So now the steamship lines have to reroute it. They have to notify their customers of a delay and that cargo arriving, Now that means that we are delayed. So we had. Plan to deliver these 10 loads next week.

Corisa : They’re not gonna get here for two more weeks now. So all of that shifts and we have to be able to move and shift with it. But tariffs directly affect the intermodal industry first, and then it all, since it is a big circle, so the less that we’re receiving in, the less that we can deliver to the warehouses for our domestic partners who are pulling those 53 foot vans, drive

Corisa : Vans and step decks and reef refer. So they don’t have, they have less at the warehouse to go pick up. So now since there’s less freight on the road even though there’s still the same amount of trucks, so now the rates are going down, but guess what? Those tariffs affected manufacturing and the cargo that’s imported, their parts went up.

Corisa : Because now they’ve [00:31:00] gotta pay more to fix that truck with their making list. Their diesel went up. we have to go to the customers and we have to ask for a higher fuel surcharge because of the price of the changing market in the oil. So it definitely has an adverse effect on our intermodal market.

Corisa : It keeps me. I keep seeing on a lot of my TVs ’cause I do need to know what’s going on in the world. Because what’s going on over there directly affects us in our intermodal industry here.

Caroline: Absolutely. That sounds like a lot of screens that you have to be looking at every day and probably most of the hours of the day.

Caroline: how do you take care of yourself as a business owner?

Corisa : Steam. I actually just did a small interview on Friday and the lady was interviewing my staff as well and asking about the experience. So I have 27 years. My road dispatcher has 27 years. My local dispatcher has 35 years.

Corisa : My safety director’s a younger gentleman, but he’s still pushing seven years. My billing and payroll manager pushes 10 years. So we’ve been [00:32:00] through it. We know we can tell what the market trends are. We’ve developed those relationships with our owner operators and with our customers so that we keep the dialogue open.

Corisa : That daily conference call that I mentioned with the Fortune 500 company. They know, Carissa’s gonna ask has your schedule already changed for July? What are the projections for July? We go to our larger companies, or excuse me, our larger customers, and we ask that, let’s talk about the projections for July.

Corisa : they’ll come to us if they see a trend and change in the market rates. And that’s really how we maintain it through our relationships more so than the technical data. ’cause as I said before, between CNN Fox and HHLN News and the internet, you’re gonna get five different things anyway.

Corisa : So let’s go straight to the horse’s mouth We have relationships with the port, we have relationships with the steamship lines, so we keep the dialogue open on the projections so that we can follow the projections and use those trends. find out if the trends are gonna be an advantage or a disadvantage.

Corisa : During what? No wars, no tariffs, just a [00:33:00] regular straight regular urine trucking. Most intermodal drivers and office staff know when the Chinese New Year is, because freight is, they stop shipping during the Chinese New Year. So that’s when I’ll send out a company wide message that’s okay, this is probably gonna be your last good check in a while, and make sure you add something extra to your rainy day fund, to give them their reminders.

Corisa : We have, there’s a peak usually in July for, or excuse me, a peak usually at the end of second quarter for back to school and for summer. Summer products, whether it’s, your swimming suits, your boogie boards or whatever, then we’ll see another peak again probably in July for the holidays, and then we may see another peak again.

Corisa : We knew what the trends were because this is when these large companies, like your Walmart and your targets are ordering to stock their shelves to change their holiday stuff. So we knew what those regular trends were, so that helped Also, it’s it’s. Embedded into our process already, so I don’t have to have the five screens, I just have five phones.

Caroline: If you were starting your [00:34:00] business today, what would you do differently than the 15 years ago when you started?

Corisa : Wow. If I was starting my business today I think that. The main thing that I would’ve done is listen to that mentor when I started 15 years ago. Especially when you’re first starting out, you wanna try to save as much money as possible.

Corisa : So I, I’m good with numbers. I thought I was smart enough to be my own bookkeeper and balance my own accounts and I probably would’ve done a little bit more research about being a 10 99 contractor when it comes to the federal, the IRS tax laws. And when it comes to something as simple as health benefits, they have. When you go from working for a company that offers those and then you become the company that’s supposed to offer those, or you don’t have any yourself either. So I think that I probably would have done a little bit more research before I started, or as I was starting and I would’ve taken that mentor’s advice and would’ve found the people that would’ve helped [00:35:00] me be a little bit more successful.

Corisa : So it took me a little longer ’cause I’m a little bit hardheaded. So it took me a little longer for me to say, oh my God, I can’t do everything and, and pull my hair out. And I probably wouldn’t have had need to spend as many days crying trying to figure it out. But I definitely believe in relationships and that is something that I suggest for anybody that wants to get in this game or anybody that wants to get in small business ownership at all.

Corisa : You, it’s about relationships. No other small business owners talk about where they have their cost savings, how they got their cost savings, how the business model is. But I just had, eight wonderful drivers who believed in me. When I started, it started off with eight, and a couple of them were fleet owners.

Corisa : I had friends that worked for Penn’s because they believed in me, and we jumped off the cliff and we’d done it. And I wouldn’t change anything now. For the 15 years that I’ve been through, because I’ve learned a lot. But had I started if I could have read a book first that’s what the book I, that’s what I would’ve taken from it.

Corisa : Do your homework, find out [00:36:00] what it is that you’re doing when you’re setting up your company so that I could be profitable and continue to be a blessing to my staff and to my owner operators. Tell me about the Charleston Trucking Expo. Oh man, it’s my baby Caroline. I, as you can tell, I like to talk.

Corisa : And I did, and I love mentoring. I love teaching, I love people. I really have this passion for trucking that I think that, some people don’t realize exactly how deep it goes and how, financially beneficial it can be if you do it correctly. So a lot of the people in my circle that were in transportation and logistics, once we started getting these phone calls, they’re like, everybody wants you to tell them how to open a company, but they don’t follow through, so then I started seeing these flyers go out that say freight forwarding class $999 freight forwarding class $299 dispatching class. And I was like, wow. that’s hard for me to say that, I could put a price on answering your questions about intermodal because I love to do that [00:37:00] and it’s free to me.

Corisa : But what if I could get all of those people under one roof and those that have those questions reach out, are able to access us. So that’s how it came about. I also, of course, during. Post COVID, there was not enough trucks on the road for the freight because remember, everybody went and rented 303 more warehouses, right?

Corisa : So I was like, how do we get young people excited about trucking? Because usually, people hear trucking, they just think about you driving a truck, getting your CDL, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you just wanna drive the. Get your CDL, let me help you do that too. But once you graduate from just driving and maybe to owning your own business, these are the components that I know that can make you successful.

Corisa : So we offer CDL scholarships to those who wanna get their CDL and continue mentoring them throughout, the lifetime of them having their CDL. We put them in touch with. Community businesses, like the insurance agents financial planners, loan officers. how do I enroll in CDL school?

Corisa : [00:38:00] So we put all of them under one umbrella. I was thinking, the wives may wanna come out and learn about what their husbands do, and the husbands may wanna come out and learn about what their wives do. So that means if the whole family can come out, that would be even better, right?

Corisa : So we put a kid zone out there, come on and bring your kids. They could do touch a truck and the fire department comes out. We had Jump Castle this year. We’re gonna have a stem park. We have a food truck park. So you know, if mom doesn’t care about what you do, but she just wants to walk around and get some good food, Then she can do the same thing. We have a dj. it’s just like a fun filled day for our whole Charleston community trucking is such a major part can come out, see what it is. We do gain some knowledge, meet people. I made connections between, here California this year we’re coming back for the third time.

Corisa : We had one in 22, 23. Then we will be back for the third one this year, September the 20th, in Laton, South Carolina, which is right outside of Charleston at our local exchange park and fairgrounds. So we have about 60 vendors, 10 food trucks. This year we’re gonna have a barbecue cookoff. You [00:39:00] can find it on event break.

Corisa : You can follow me on social media. But throughout the day you’ll have me talking. You’ll have a financial planner talking, you’ll have a business development manager talking. We have, a live cooking demo on one pot meals that drivers can make within their trucks to eat healthier. We have mental health advisors, anything that we can help the community succeed and make changes in our life and empower our youth to do something positive that’s what I wanted to do. So did ever, we’re gonna have a homeless drive too, that everybody can bring the toiletry packets and we go out, we’re gonna go out into the community and distribute those.

Corisa : But we definitely know that this industry is. One of the foundations of our country, and there is so much information and so much that you can do within trucking to create generational wealth for your family. I’d just love to see people be successful and I love to see people happy, so yeah.

Caroline: I love it. Chris, I wanna thank you so much for joining us on this week in Trucking.

Caroline: We will link [00:40:00] everything that Carissa was talking about in the description. Please let us know if you have questions for Carissa. We will send her. The questions by email and get answers from her and answer those for you. So make sure you like and subscribe to this weekend trekking to learn more about this industry and so that you never miss another conversation with incredible people like Carissa.

Caroline: Thanks again, Carissa, for joining us. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.