How to Secure Dedicated Lanes w/ Ed Burns | Ep 32

Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to This Week in Trucking, a podcast that tells you what you need to know about the trucking market for the week. If you are looking for insights for your trucking business, make sure you like and subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an update. My name is Caroline. Today we have Ed Burns of Burns Logistics.

Ed is a sales expert who connects trucking companies with shippers that need help getting their goods to market. Seems simple, right? If you’ve ever tried to get dedicated freight for your business, you know that’s not exactly the case. So I brought on Ed here to help us figure out how to approach it.

Thanks for being here, Ed.

Ed: Caroline, thanks so much for having me here.

Caroline: So can you tell us, how did you get into the trucking industry in the first place? What brought you here?

Ed: I’ve been fortunate to talk to a lot of people in the industry. And one thing I never ever hear is how I did this on purpose. And it was my plan since I was a kid. Everybody seems to fall into it. For me, I grew up around it. My dad was an LTL sales guy, and he would take his kids with him on [00:01:00] sales calls.

I think he thought bringing kids with him would help him get some pity freight or something. I don’t know whether it worked or hurt him. But we, so we grew up around the industry and he would make sure that a driver brought a truck to the school every year and we would go to truck driving competitions and driving down the road, we’d point out different types of equipment and we had to know what it was and it was just part of growing up.

Let’s see. Great group of people in trucking. So you grow up around it and then you get to meet all these people and they become part of your life. So his friends were like uncles go on vacations or go hang out or go fishing together. And then professionally, I went in a different direction out of school.

I was going into digital marketing, but stayed tied into the industry. My dad had started his business by that point. I was trying to help him out here and there. We’d talk about it over the dinner table, right? When you’re growing up in a family business, you talk a lot about business. It’s part of life.

And So I was selling websites essentially. And I was trying to get a trucking companies on the [00:02:00] digital marketing bandwagon Probably call it eight, 10 years ago. And 

Caroline: how did that go?

Ed: It was a mixed bag. And it depends on the marketplace where and how much trucking companies are willing to invest in their marketing, right?

In a market like this one, money’s tight and they’re not spending money. When freight’s flowing, they’re like, yeah, I’ll take a new website. I’ll take two, , it’s definitely an interesting place to sell into for I think all vendors and no matter what they’re selling to the industry.

So yeah, I grew up around it, went to conferences, was had clients who would send me to conferences to help with their marketing. So stay tuned into the marketplace. And then when I sold my agency, a friend of mine said, why don’t you go work with your dad? He’s a great guy. I said, I don’t know.

We just never that was never part of the plan. He said, we’ll call him. Just call him right now and ask for an interview. So I did as for an interview took a couple rounds, but finally got into the family business. And here we are.

Caroline: Sounds like a pretty competitive place.

Ed: It’s a tough. It’s a tough one.

Caroline: Speaking of where the trucking. freight market is. What is [00:03:00] your read of the market today? How many cycles of the trucking ups and downs have you seen and how optimistic are you that we might see a turnout around in the market

Ed: Yeah, this is a tough one. And I wish because I called it. I called the market swing, About a year ago and was way off. So I dare not put a date on it, but I remember that first market swing that really, I noticed was in 2008 when my dad lost his job doing sales for a trucking company.

So that’s how our family business was born out of that. And that’s The market cycles pretty regularly. What’s unusual about this one is how long it’s lasted. It’s just dragging on. So got into the industry really officially with the COVID downturn when market, the market just bottomed out.

 It’s when I came into it and then it obviously swung back up. Now we’re in a bit of a trough and what I find perplexing is carriers can only run at a loss for so long. The fact that rates are where they are, [00:04:00] particularly in the spot market, that people continue to move freight at those rates I haven’t figured it out.

So I don’t know. I think we’ll continue to see some bankruptcies and some people go out of business, unfortunately, until until freight starts flowing a little better. Don’t think we want the market to turn around because of a hurricane or something like that. We don’t, those things don’t last very long, first of all, and it’s a bad reason for business to, to be good.

Caroline: Yeah, that’s true. And that’s happening as we speak. Actually, we should recognize that, although, as the date of recording this, hurricanes are ravaging the Carolinas, Florida. It’s a really scary time. We just hope that, everybody is safe in that region. Let’s talk a little bit about about your role and your experience.

What exactly does your business do? Because when you see something that has logistics at the end of it that’s such a general term for our [00:05:00] industry, right? And so some people have logistics at the end of their carrier business name. You could be a carrier, you could be a broker. So what is it exactly that Burns Logistics does?

Ed: Yeah, we have a quirky little business model it’s called a sales agency model, right? A non asset sales agency model, which means we have a book of carriers who we represent, and they are our clients. And mid sized fleets in different parts of North America who have different service offering could be, Dry van, refrigerated, hazmat teams flatbeds of various configurations, and they all do their own unique thing.

And we help them get into accounts, right? We help them find contract freight opportunities, and on the shipper side, the value we provide An extension of their procurement team, right? So these fleets, if you have 115 or 120 trucks, you probably don’t have a salesperson. The owner probably does sales. And if if there’s anything that is Universal and trucking.

It’s that most people spend most of their time putting out [00:06:00] fires. So if you’re putting out fires all the time, you’re not doing sales. And for the shippers, where do you find these 120 or 100 or 200 truck fleets in different parts of the country? There are a lot of them. And how do you know whether they’re good and whether they’re the right fit?

So we say we’re matchmakers in the industry. We find. The right fits between the asset fleets and the shippers and we bring them together so that they can work together directly.

Caroline: Now that sounds a lot like a freight brokerage. Can you explain what is the difference between a sales agency and a freight brokerage?

Ed: Caroline I’m really glad you’re asking. Yeah, because some people just not you know, they’re like, okay and then You know, they move

Caroline: You’re a middleman, right? That’s that’s how people usually see the brokers in the industry. So what is the difference then?

Ed: Yeah, so the big difference is with us is we work pretty much exclusively in the contract market, right? So that’s That may or may not be a differentiator. We do not have an MC number. We do not have our authority. We do not set rates, right? So where a [00:07:00] broker gives a price to the shipper and then they get paid by the shipper, we do not.

The carrier gives us the rate that they want on a given lane. We do not mark that up. We send that to the shipper. The shipper sees it. It’s completely transparent. And look, a lot of brokers are transparent too, so I don’t, I mean that it doesn’t happen that way, but sometimes it’s not. And then the carrier as our client, they pay us a finder’s fee for that freight.

The money flows the other direction.

Caroline: And so you know exactly what the middle person is making, which, you said a lot of brokers are transparent. I don’t know if that’s the case. I don’t know that the industry is actually set up for brokers to be transparent. Not that brokers don’t want to be all the time but I think a lot of them don’t.

And I think the business model of a brokerage sort of hinges on the. The need to not always be showing all of your cards. That, that’s not to say that brokers are making insane, margins on shipments. They’re certainly not some, sometimes they lose money or they just break even.

And that’s why [00:08:00] they have to then put on a big margin onto the next load. To make up for that. But it sounds to me. This is a way for carriers to get relationships directly with shippers. Now, does that, is that relationship then has to be maintained going forward through your business or is it they find that shipper and now they get to contact directly with that shipper?

Ed: Yeah. Operationally they’re contacting them. directly. So we really are bringing them together to work together directly. We usually stay involved to help solve problems, right? Hey, I’m not getting paid correctly, right? That’s probably one of the biggest things we see early on in a relationship with the carrier is we’re not getting paid correctly.

And nine times out of 10, it’s cause they’re not billing correctly. So those are the kinds of problems that we help them work through. Relationships do need to be maintained, and I think that’s where depending on the marketplace, we’re talking a lot about market swings. Our industry has a tendency to have a very short so I think sometimes [00:09:00] people think they lock in the business and then they can move on and forget about it.

So we’re, we really just remind both parties to talk to each other. Keep talking, right? So carriers need to ask their shippers how else they can help. So this is a remarkable, a lot of times carriers say I need new shippers. And that may be true. But there are shippers out there who have pretty extensive networks that if you’re working with them already, you’re already on board, you’re already contracted, you’re already moving freight, just ask for more freight.

And I think a lot of people forget to do that. So where the, that’s what we’re there for the carriers is keep asking for more freight. Always look at the network and say like, where can we make this better? What’s working? What’s not working? And then go back and ask for help.

And then on the shipper side, it’s the same thing. Their networks change, they open a new facility, are they going out and procuring new fleets for a new facility or are they checking with their existing incumbents first to, to see if they can get that freight covered and are the network matches correct, right?

Because sometimes people over promise [00:10:00] and they think they can do things that aren’t really a fit. So I think that starts for the carriers, I think it starts with being honest with themselves about how they’re managing their network. And. Where they like to go and what kind of freight works for them.

Right now I think there’s a tendency to say yes to everything when that market changes. Stuff that looks, freight that looks really good right now might not look that good in six months, and you have to adjust.

Caroline: And the other way around too, right? Some freight that doesn’t look so good right now that might actually be a nice thing to fall back on in six months.

Ed: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Caroline: Can you talk about what it is that carriers can do to make themselves really look good in front of a shipper that a shipper would want to work with them.

Ed: Absolutely. Yeah. Get it together and keep it together. I think

Caroline: It sounds so simple, right?

Ed: No, it’s so complicated. There are so many carriers that are bad communicators and they and that’s horrible. It makes a horrible impression. If you communicate really well and really [00:11:00] consistently, that’s. gonna lead to a very good reputation in the industry.

There are shippers who will talk to each other about who they’re using and who they like and who they don’t like. And hey, don’t talk to that guy because this is what happened at this conference and I didn’t like it. And so I think the most important thing for the carriers is to communicate clearly and to do what they say they’re going to do.

In the sales process, the first part isn’t getting the new customers, it’s delivering on what you’re already doing. If operationally you’re doing that, then you have a strong reputation and you can build off of that. But then for, there are shippers who care a lot about what the equipment looks like.

There are some that don’t. If you’re, I don’t think as a trucking company you want to be in the race to the bottom for rate. So for the fleets we work with is we are not coming out and saying Oh, we’re going to save you money. And I think a lot of carriers say, we’ll save you money. First of all, you don’t know that.

Second of all, saving them money might lose you money. So that doesn’t seem like a good play. So I think niching down into a region or a [00:12:00] vertical or a service offering and getting. Really good at it and knocking it out of the park and just being a little bit different. There are a lot of shippers who move a lot of different kinds of freight in different parts of the country, right?

So there’s even though the market’s down. I still think there’s enough freight for everybody who does a good job but once again, oh, yeah, we’ll we do anything and we go anywhere That’s what you hear a lot from carriers. And if you go to a shipper and say we’ll do anything and we’ll go anywhere you’re not helping the shipper at all because You There are lots of people who say they’ll do anything and go anywhere.

If you say, I run refrigerated hazmat team service from Chicago to Los Angeles and I have 10 trucks a day on it. It might not be a fit for that shipper, but for the shipper that fits for, they’ll talk to you at least because there are only so many carriers who do that. And I think that’s really important is you can’t be everything to everyone and you got to find the niche and then articulate it very clearly, follow up with good communication and and just keep delivering [00:13:00] and asking for more business.

I hope that wasn’t a redundant there, Caroline.

Caroline: I don’t think so. I think that it makes a lot of sense. And I liked that you gave that example. Cause sometimes it sounds there’s this, business school speak of find your vertical. And it’s hard to sometimes visualize that if you don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s basically finding a specialization or, special, specializing your business so that it matches exactly what your future customer wants, not to try to please everyone because always know that a business that’s for everyone or for everything is really a business for no one.

Ed: Yeah, exactly. And if somebody has freight and they need food-grade trailers, you either have food-grade trailers or you don’t, right? And you’re I have some, but not well, what do you land in where that’s what’s important, right? I think being able to share what equipment you have and what markets with what frequency and what kind of freight works well in your [00:14:00] network is, that’s important.

And another thing too, is just thinking drop trailers, like a lot of fleets who have gone from the spot market and want to get into contract the contract world operates a little differently and so they might have a one-to-one trailer pool or less and you really need to have a four to one trailer pool for that shipper, right?

So if you’re willing to invest in that and you have access to the trailers and you want to bid on it, go ahead, but know that there’s a cost associated with it. And if you don’t want to do that, then don’t go after it.

Caroline: And most of the customers at Bobtail, they have between maybe one and 10 trucks. We have some carriers that have larger fleets. But that’s a minority of our customers. You’ve been talking a little bit, you’ve been talking about. larger carriers than that. And I think that the spot market, because it’s so accessible, it’s what most of the time people are depending on.

And that worked out really well after COVID, right? 2021, even into 2022, but end of 2022. And it was so easy to, latch on to those to those load boards and just get stuff off of the spot market, but that’s obviously a really short amount of time that you’re going to be in the industry is going to be, you’re going to be able to actually take advantage of that.

So can these smaller fleets get contracts? If I just have one truck or two trucks, is it feasible for me to get into the contract industry? And what’s different about getting in contracted freight versus spot market?

Ed: Yeah, I think it’s difficult, but I think it’s possible, right? There are shippers who have fleet minimums, right? And if the fleet minimum is 150 trucks, then probably not going to get in there. However there’s a guy named Dan, the driver row. He’s pretty active on LinkedIn and he’s an owner-operator who only works directly with shippers.

And I think he’s well worth following because he’s very knowledgeable about the industry has a fun personality and knows his business really well. So he’ll he’ll load his own trailers and unload he’s getting after it. And I think you need to be willing to do that [00:16:00] kind of extra work if you’re going to work directly with shippers.

I think it has to be localized. Who are the local shippers who can give you a load a week or two loads a week, depending on what you want when you have a smaller fleet? So what I would do is as you’re running freight off the load boards is just start calling everybody within 50 miles of where you live and ask them if they’re willing to take a shot on a local person.

And then when you’re home, make time to go see them and meet them in person and establish the relationship. I think the difficulty is that’s really hard to prioritize doing that while also having to make money while being on the road and then trying to find time for family and everything else.

But that’s what it would take to get the contract freight is find some small local shippers who move a couple truckloads a week and see if you can get in there. And if you’re willing to change your network for them, and this is where I’ll go back on what I said previously if you’re running out of Dallas and you typically go to Chicago on the spot market, but there’s a local shipper there in Dallas who wants to take you to Atlanta.

Are you willing to [00:17:00] do that? Or maybe it’s someplace in the middle of Nebraska, are you willing to do something different in order to get that direct shipper? Cause then even with a small fleet, you can have a consistent network. There’s a shipper I know of who’s very significant.

They move a ton of freight but on one of their lanes, the, they only, they have a difficult lane to cover. It’s a multi-stop move and they give it to the same owner-operator all the time. And that’s who gets that freight every time because they get the service and it works for everyone. So there are people who are willing to work with the small fleets.

I just think it takes some effort to build the relationship. I’ll add with that one. The person in charge of that shippers freight when that owner-operator was working a lot he went to his house and made him take a vacation and said, I promise you, the freight will still be here when you get back, but you need to take a week off and spend some time with your wife.

And she cried. And, it was like, that’s the kind of relationship building that takes some time. But I, [00:18:00] but it’s out there. It’s out there. And it just takes some effort.

Caroline: Yeah, building up enough trust to say, okay I’m going to believe you that this work will be here for me when I come back.

I think people would think that’s unusual, but I don’t think that it’s unusual if you’ve already created a friendship over time with the people that you work with.

And I think that’s something that you miss out on when you just rely on the spot market all the time,

Ed: Absolutely. If you’re moving freight for somebody different every single day, then you’re not going to build the relationship.

Caroline: What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see carriers making? You talked about communication. Can you give an example of a communication mistake that you saw a carrier make that, that really exemplifies that point?

Ed: I think every single time a problem happens. The carrier needs to be the first one to communicate about it. And that happens way too infrequently in our industry. As soon as something happens, if there’s a breakdown or a problem or the freight gets busted, the carrier needs to communicate [00:19:00] that first.

Whether it’s an owner-operator or a 10, 000 truck fleet. Whoever you have to call to say, hey, here’s what happened and here’s what we’re doing to fix it. Or, hey, here’s what happened. I don’t have the solution right now, but I’ll call you back in 15 minutes or a half an hour and update you. I think people have the mistake happen.

They freeze up and they’re afraid to say something cause they don’t want somebody to find out. They’re going to find out, people find out every single time people find out. I think the biggest mistake is not owning the problems and communicating them. Because that is what builds trust.

Everybody knows that something’s going to go wrong and how those mistakes are handled can really build the relationship.

Caroline: Yeah, that reminds me of something that I heard Simon Sinek say in an interview which was you don’t build trust by offering help. You build trust by asking for it. And I think it goes along the same lines of you don’t build trust by everything going right all the [00:20:00] time because that doesn’t exist.

You build trust by when things go wrong, you’re honest, you have a problem-solving mindset and you handle it with integrity and that’s really how you build trust. No one builds trust by perfection. Perfection is actually really suspicious.

Ed: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Simon Sinek doesn’t say too much wrong.

Caroline: Maybe he just doesn’t record those moments.

Ed: That must be it. That must be it. Yeah.

Caroline: So what do you look for when you are onboarding a new carrier to Burns Logistics? Do you just you take any old carrier, anybody got an MC, sign them up, connect them with a shipper? I can’t imagine that’s the process. So can you tell me a little about What you do, what are you looking for when you’re onboarding new carriers?

Ed: Yeah, absolutely not. We, look, we don’t onboard a ton of carriers because that’s not our model, right? We don’t want to have a bunch of fleets that compete with one another in the same markets with the same services. So we do a lot of conferences. I like going to truckload carriers association a lot, and I think the quality of fleet that you find there [00:21:00] is impressive.

Ed: These are, we’re looking for people who exemplify the best of our industry, which is, I think we have a very hardworking industry. We have a lot of good people, like a lot of people who just want to do right. A lot of people want to take care of their families and keep moving America, right?

So these are people who we’re looking to work with. If people want to grow and are willing to build that growth mindset into their company I don’t want to work with a bunch of fleets who who complain about the market all the time and say, everybody’s bad, right?

Everybody can’t be bad. If everybody’s that bad, go do something else. More technically with the fleets, we’re looking for somebody who has a unique service offering, does something a little bit different. If it’s funky, that’s cool. 

We work with one fleet, that’s pretty cool. They’re not huge. They’re probably 20 trucks or so but their equipment is really neat. It’s it’s for picking up trees or logs or telephone poles. They have a hook on the front of the trailer that picks up that kind of thing. Do we have a ton of work for them right now?

Yeah. But it’s cool to have [00:22:00] it, it’s cool to have a fleet like that and somebody with a can do attitude and and we can learn, we learn a lot from our fleets. We talk to them about what they’re going through what they’re seeing in the marketplace. And, we just find ways to help each other.

So I think fleets that are willing to communicate and provide high levels of service. That’s extremely important. And obviously, when you look them up on safer, they can’t look terrible if there’s suspicious stuff that we see, then there’s going to be suspicious stuff that the pardon me, then the shipper will see those things as well and then. It’s a no.

Caroline: Talk to me about that. It’s the suspicious stuff. What are you looking for when you see something on a safer cab that you see a suspicious, what does that mean?

Ed: One of the first things that we look for is what do you say your tractor count is versus what does it say on safer, right? Are those numbers aligned or are they way off? I think there are some fleets who say, yeah, we have 100 trucks, but really they have four trucks and so what’s going on there?

Is there a big owner-operator network or is it something else? Yeah. It’s good to work [00:23:00] the shippers right now. They want to see somebody smart way certified, right? So that’s not a nonnegotiable for us, but it’s always good to see. What’s their safety rating satisfactory rating is a lot better than than conditional.

So those sorts of things.

Caroline: Do you said smart way certified? What is that? I hadn’t heard about that before. Is that something that’s something that shippers specifically look for?

Ed: Yeah, it’s a free EPA certification that carriers go through. And it just, it’s really about fuel efficiency. And there are all different things you can do to help with that, right? And one is newer tractors are typically more fuel-efficient. When carriers skirt their trailers, they put the, you ever see those trailers?

They have something running along underneath it. That’s to make them more aerodynamic. There are the flaps they can put on the back of trailers that when they hit a certain speed, they flip out. And that helps the wind roll off and reduces drag. So all kinds of things they can do.

Caroline: That’s cool. I will leave a link to some more information about Smart Way certified in the description. So people can check that out. So you’ve been [00:24:00] in marketing and sales for a long time. When you see a carrier. That is really doing, that’s really marketing their business, right? What does that look like?

Ed: I think part of it is, a lot of it is, what do you see on the road? Do I think part of the marketing sales is do you have safe and courteous drivers, right? Because I think there’s nothing worse than having a bright, beautiful truck. And then you’re getting cut off. And drivers driving on safely like that catches attention, but there are a lot of courteous drivers out there.

And I think if you combine that with good marketing and branding. Good branding on the equipment. I think that goes a long way. There are some cool-looking fleets out there and you’ll see them and their trucks are way more noticeable. Their equipment is noticeable and as simple as having a simple way to contact them on there.

There are a lot of unbranded white trailers on the road, and so you overlook those, but you see a painted trailer really well. I [00:25:00] think, Some people would argue what if there’s an accident? If there’s an accident, you’re up the creek anyway. Hopefully have a good safety program and that doesn’t happen.

But I think having nice-looking equipment that is branded well in atypical colors, something that stands out, I think goes a long way. I think especially when people have multiple trucks, they should keep their tractors all the same color. I think a lot of people don’t do that. And then on the marketing side, I think there’s a lot of opportunity specifically on LinkedIn to hear from trucking companies.

They’re noticeably missing the platform is overrepresented, I think by the brokerage side. And I think shippers want to hear from carriers and lack of it. I would just add lack of engagement from shippers does not mean that they don’t see what you’re putting out there. I think a lot of times they don’t want to comment or because then they don’t want to get solicited.

They’re putting a target on their back, but they see that stuff. Specifically activity on LinkedIn, I think goes a long way for the carriers. And then having a decent website [00:26:00] that clearly articulates what you do and what you’re good at and makes it easy to contact you. I think that goes a long way.

More particularly when we get into talking to shippers, have a very clear graphic that’s part of your onboarding packet. A lot of carriers don’t have an onboarding packet and you have to ask for one document at a time. And it’s Oh where’s your COI? Where’s this, have that all packaged up together to be able to send to a shipper or a prospect.

Ed: And with it include a graphic with a map of your service area. shows where you go and what you do. It’s not that complicated, but so few do it. And I think it makes life so much easier for somebody who you’re selling to, to understand people are pretty visual. So that’s what I got on that, Caroline.

Caroline: We have a whole guide on our website about putting together that carrier packet or the onboarding packet. And I don’t have that graphic in there. So I’m going to add that because I think that’s a really good point. People are visual. They don’t like to read paragraphs. If you can explain the concept of whatever you’re explaining your [00:27:00] paragraph in a graphic, that’s even better.

Ed: Yes. Yeah,

Caroline: So I noticed you talk a lot about having a growth mindset in your posts. Can you give an example of what that looks like for a small fleet manager or owner operator to have a growth mindset?

Ed: yeah, absolutely. I think a growth mindset means a willingness to learn. The industry is both changing and not changing, right? So I think it’s easy to get confused with one for the other. So I think Knowing what technologies are out there and what they’re doing is important. It doesn’t mean you have to buy all of them, but I think keeping up with that is, is good.

I think a lot of small fleet operators and owner-operators should take advantage of audible or another book service and consume more business content. I think there are a lot of excellent truck drivers out there who have driven for millions of miles accident-free, and they’re so good at what they do.

But there’s a lot of the skillset to run a business is very different and it, there’s so much out there on it and there’s so much to learn about it [00:28:00] and I think the fleets that have been very successful have an owner or a leadership team that is. Always learning those things, reading stuff by Simon Sinek or listening to him or or Mike Michalowicz or Gino Wickman or Dale Carnegie or Christopher Voss.

There’s so much good stuff out there. I think listening to some of those thought leaders on business would go a very long way financial controls. There are books on that. And yet a lot of a lot of fleet owners talk about problems with cashflow and. Read some books about cash flow and money management in a business.

And it’s, that’s not something people know naturally. I think that’s a learned skill. You’re not, I don’t think anybody should expect themselves to know how to be good with money or particularly with their business. So

Caroline: I think it’s different, right? The way that you manage finances for a business is different. How you manage personal finance and cashflow can look really differently. You mentioned problems with billing that a lot of times carriers are making mistakes when they are billing direct [00:29:00] shippers.

Can you talk a little bit about what those mistakes are?

Ed: Sure. I think, especially when you’re getting into some of these shippers is procedurally, they all do things a little bit differently and they have different tools they use and they have different billing softwares or they have different. They all have a different process. Everyone is different, and if you don’t follow it exactly, you’re probably not going to get paid especially when it’s something quirky, like you’re submitting an assessorial this assessorial is, 85 days overdue.

Why? Probably you just didn’t submit it to the right email address, right? I didn’t know that was the right email address. So in the onboarding process, I think it’s very important that the carrier asks for all of those contacts up front. And then when there is a problem, they need to know who the escalation contact is.

And then instead of waiting until something gets 85 days overdue when it’s five or 10 days overdue, take it to the escalation contact. I think carriers a lot of times wait for a problem to resolve itself especially with billing. It’s oh that’s not my priority right now.

Not the move. [00:30:00] Gotta get after that early and figure out who you need to be talking to. That solves it typically.

Caroline: And I think people maybe who are used to working on the spot market might have a factoring company like Bobtail and that’s great. But if you start billing certain people directly, then that might cause issues. If you are just used to always sending everything to a factoring company, and now you need to bill someone directly that can get complicated.

Ed: Sure and they still might, they still might factor on contract freight depending on the payment terms. That’s not outside the realm of possibility. But it’s important and billing could be anything, could be an operational issue, could be who do I talk to about getting more freight, right?

Do you need to know who the contacts are in the organization to have those conversations and then have them with some regularity?

Caroline: Ed, thank you so much for all these insights. Who do you think we should talk to next? You actually already mentioned someone that I’m going to look up. But do you have anyone else that you think we should talk to who would have good insights for our small fleets and owner operators?

Ed: Wow. I didn’t prep for this one, Caroline. So [00:31:00] if it’s okay I’ll follow up with you and send you some names.

Caroline: Sounds good. Sounds good. Anything else that you think our audience should know about before we close?

Ed: I would just, if I may, I would just like to share a word of encouragement. I think the market’s tough and a lot of people are struggling right now. And that’s okay because it’s going to be, it’s going to come back. It’s cyclical. I would suggest if you are struggling and you’re having a tough time financially, don’t wait to ask for help until it’s too late.

There are people out there who can help. There are, if you have, a couple of trucks and you talk to some bigger fleets and talk about signing on to their owner-operator program. If you’re having a tough time. I think talking to other people in the industry can help a lot, even if it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.

There are people who have different perspectives. I’ve learned a lot by talking to other people in the industry, talking to fleet owners of various sizes, everybody’s got a different perspective and different experience. And the trucking industry is wild in that everybody’s like on their own [00:32:00] and everybody wants to be the Lone Ranger.

And yet everybody’s very willing to help everybody else. So there’s a hesitancy, I think, for people to ask for help from one another. But when asked for help, they’re very willing to give it. So I think we need to overcome that and be more willing to ask each other for help. And that will help the whole industry.

Caroline: I couldn’t agree more. That’s actually something that I noticed very early on was that People, especially carriers amongst each other are really quite collaborative and helping each other out. They might not always say things in the most sensitive way.

It’s never sensitive. It’s never sugarcoated, but it really is with this very sort of deep sense of solidarity between carriers.

And that’s something I really appreciate about this industry. Something that I really liked doing was doing some of the events that we used to have recordings of those on our YouTube channel. So we’ll leave those in the description below, but that was something that really made me fall in love with this industry was that collaborative aspect and comes [00:33:00] back to that quote that I mentioned before, that you don’t build trust by Offering help you trust you build trust by asking for it and so if you want to have a strong network then ask people if you have an idea of how to get direct, contracted freight And work with direct shippers.

Maybe go to some of those shippers or go to some of the carriers that, have already have those relationships and say, Hey, you can I show you my plan for this? What do you think? What might you change on this?

Ed: Yeah. Or can you get me in? Or can you get me a call?

Caroline: For sure. Thank you so much again, Ed for your insights and your wisdom. We hope to circle back with you with any questions or comments. If you have comments or questions for Ed, write them below. We will send them to him. We’ll get answers and maybe we’ll follow up with you in a couple months and see where we’re at.

Ed: That sounds great, Caroline. Thanks so much for having me on.