Podcast: How Nicole Glenn of Candor Expedite is Revolutionizing the Trucking World

It’s rare for someone to have a smooth route into the trucking industry. Nicole Glenn, Founder and CEO of the revolutionary expediting company Candor Expedite, is no different. In fact, venturing into trucking was purely coincidental for her. Today, she is revolutionizing the expedited trucking industry, but how did she get there?

In this episode, Nicole sits down with Truckstop Chief Relationship Officer, Brent Hutto, to discuss her unexpected entrance into the trucking world. She talks about her journey to founding Candor Expedite, examining the highs and lows of the expediting sector and her recent foray into frozen freight.

Finding Trucking and Becoming a Leader

Nicole always says she didn’t find the trucking world; it found her.

While working an automotive retail job at age eighteen, she served a customer who was remarkably impressed with her memory. So much so that he gave her a makeshift business card, inviting her to call and enquire about his available positions.

Hedging her bets, Nicole made the call was the start of her path to becoming the trucking leader she is today.

She was instantly offered a role, which she accepted immediately. Over time, she and her boss gradually moved the company from handwritten receipts to accounting software, and she moved through the ranks as a result. She became a backhaul dispatch before transitioning to new companies, including a small expedited shipper, and gradually rose to President of another.

Nicole eventually made the leap and founded her own business. The decision came from a vacation when she constantly received calls that required her insight to help fix. In a moment of reflection, she realized she was ready to take on the responsibility herself. And with that, she decided to leave the company when the time was right.

Once she was able to, Nicole founded Candor Expedite.

The first few months of owning her business were hard. She missed her team.

“Even when I started my own business, I didn’t love it as much as I loved that one. And I said to myself, Am I ever gonna love my own company? […] Because now I went from a team, a collaborative team, and the people that I knew and trusted to by myself. I had no one to bounce ideas off.”

However, if it weren’t for making the leap and working through those difficult months, Nicole wouldn’t be where she is today.

The Expedite World

From working in a small expediting organization at age 23 to now owning Candor Expedite, Nicole has seen both the highs and lows of the expedited shipping sector.

For her, expediting shipping revolves around solving a problem, which means getting your first customers can be incredibly hard.

“It is the hardest way to get a customer, right? You’re going, Hi, you don’t know me. I don’t know you. I don’t know what your business is like, but do you ever have something that you really need someone to trust? You don’t even know me and don’t trust me yet, and I’m asking you to have it.”

However, relationships flip once you build up credibility through testimonials, stories, and case studies. Now, she is often tasked with the most random, complex loads a shipper could imagine, such as refrigerated and frozen goods.

Revolutionizing Frozen Freight

Recently, Nicole’s team has stepped into the world of frozen freight. Having served many fast food retailers and food companies, Candor was often asked to move frozen products but could never find refrigerated expediting equipment. Although it existed, it just wasn’t commonly available.

Nicole ended up talking to her buddy working in supply chains, who turned her on to a wrap product that could sustain the temperature of a skid. Although it seemed like they were onto a winner, it just wasn’t good enough.

Nicole didn’t give up, though. She kept searching and utilizing her network, eventually finding a product used in the pharmaceutical world that had a cooling system built in with a less than 1% error rate for sustaining temperatures. Testing it out, they found it can hold food at the same temperature, whether fresh or frozen, for five days of shipment. Now in active use, there is even a live feed so that on the rare occasion errors occur, all parties can step in to solve and reroute the expedited shipment.

If it weren’t for Nicole’s attitude towards solving problems, she wouldn’t have ever found this revolutionary solution to the expediting problem.

“It’s just fascinating to see how this can actually happen and change. And it’s all from that concept of who do I know? How can I get something accomplished?”

To find out more about Nicole, tune into this episode of Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.