Brent – 00:00:01:
Welcome to Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of trucking and freight management. We dive deep into the freight industry and uncover why the trucking industry is more crucial to our country now than ever before. Stay tuned to uncover the driving forces behind successful trucking businesses and hear from the hardworking truckers and leaders who keep the world moving. Let’s hit the road. All right, well, welcome back to Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast from truckstop.com or Truckstop, whichever you prefer to call us. Guys, welcome back to the show today. Appreciate you guys listening in and watching in, whether you watch or listen. Appreciate you giving us your time. For those that may be new to the podcast, Freight Nation exists because I find it great to listen to other people’s stories on how they got to freight. I had an unconventional path to freight. One of my best friends invited me to come work for a transportation media company, and that’s how I got to the freight industry. But everybody has a unique path. And most people didn’t start out with this, “oh, I have this great dream of being inside of freight transportation”. But when they get into it, they love it and they rarely leave it. And if they leave it, a lot of them come back. So these stories are really a lot of fun to talk about. And then along the way, we talk about “what does it mean to be a leader?” “What does it mean to move your career forward?” What are some tips and tricks to help you be more proficient in what you do with your career inside of freight transportation? So today’s going to be a really fun episode because we’re going to talk to a guy that’s been a lot of fun for me to get to know. Because man, wait till you hear this guy’s history of all the stuff that he’s done, and it’ll give you a really good indication of how he creates success in his business. Joining me today on Freight Nation is Mr. Will Hopkins of BlackBox Logistics. Will, thank you so much for joining us today.
Will – 00:01:40:
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I’m really looking forward to it.
Brent – 00:01:43:
Yeah, me too. So Will is actually, as with everything in freight, he’s joining us via satellite in another part of the United States. He’s actually in Philadelphia at Home Delivery World. So the great thing about freight is it happens everywhere, all over the place, and you can find a lot of success anywhere you want to. So Will, one of the really cool things, you’ve had a kind of a fun pathway to freight. But before you talk about that, I really want to kick this thing off. And I want you to talk about the pre-jobs that you had before getting into the freight industry. And so just so you know, Freight Nation, Will started out with a dispatch service, and now he’s moved into a full logistics company. But he had some really fun jobs when he was a younger pup growing inside of his career. So Will, talk a little bit about those and tell the Freight Nation watchers and listeners so they can enjoy it too.
Will – 00:02:28:
Yeah, so it’s funny that you refer to it as a fun path, right? Because a lot of those jobs weren’t very much fun. Like you referenced, right? I didn’t grow up with this dream of, hey, when I grow up, I want to be a freight broker, right? To be honest, I didn’t know that it existed. I just saw trucks and figured, hey, if you have stuff that you need to move, you just move it yourself. Right?
Brent – 00:02:46:
Yes, automatic, right?
Will – 00:02:47:
Yeah, so I had a kind of a strange journey into the freight world. But believe it or not, I wasn’t the best behaved kid growing up. So I didn’t take the traditional route to college from high school. I started off at 17 years old working on a horse farm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Brent – 00:03:02:
Oh, cool.
Will – 00:03:03:
Yeah, it was cool, actually. Well, some of it was really cool. And then other parts of it were awful. I mean, imagine Baton Rouge, Louisiana, throwing hay bales at 17 years old. There’s other things that the kids would like to be doing, right? But at the same time, it was good. It helped me build a work ethic, right? And there were good parts of it.
Brent – 00:03:19:
You probably had a great tan and great guns.
Will – 00:03:21:
Yeah, a great tan and great guns. And I learned some stuff about horses. I saw some crazy stuff out there. It was an Arabian horse farm.
Brent – 00:03:27:
Oh, wow. Yeah?
Will – 00:03:28:
Yeah, so they had some nice horses that they would breed. It was a large farm, also a fish farm. So just doing odd things out there, building fences, plowing fields, tossing hay bales.
Brent – 00:03:38:
Tell the Freight Nation, how did you end up there? You said you weren’t the kid that always followed the rules. And so how did you end up there?
Will – 00:03:44:
It was kind of the road less traveled, right? So I did very well in school. I just didn’t like going to school. I wasn’t the best rule follower, right? And so nobody was really sure what to do with me. So they sent me out to Baton Rouge with some family friends. Hey, maybe a change of environment, some structure. Put them on a horse farm. It’ll get them into gear, there was some really good stuff out of it and then some stuff that wasn’t super fun, right? Nobody really wants to be 17 years old working on a horse farm doing online high school, right? It’s not what I had envisioned early on. But a lot of that stuff has really served me as I’ve progressed through life. At the time, I was throwing hay bales just like, man, this is awful. And then from there, I actually moved to Destin, Florida, and I worked on the beach. I was running beach chairs, that whole deal, at Pompano Joe’s. I actually graduated high school online in Destin while I was doing the beach chairs.
Brent – 00:04:36:
Okay. So throwing the hay bales, and getting a tan, and working on the guns paid off because you’re at the beach.
Will – 00:04:41:
Yeah, man. It was just training me for the beach job. I came in and got right after it. But that was a really cool experience. When I look at it in a broad sense, working on the beach and getting to meet and talk to people of all walks of life, that served me in sales, just connecting with people.
Brent – 00:04:57:
That’s a hustle. You got to hustle in that job, man.
Will – 00:04:59:
It is. Yeah, yeah.
Brent – 00:05:00:
And I mean, hustle like work hard all the time, constant, always moving. Yeah, exactly.
Will – 00:05:06:
And it was great. I mean, so I went from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, super hot throwing hay bales to working on the beach at 18, doing online high school. And that was great. I really enjoyed that. At a certain point, it was like, what am I going to do with my life? Again, I’d always done really well in school, tested very well on everything. I just didn’t have a lot of purpose, right? I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was always kind of looking, searching, bouncing around, doing this and that. So I moved back to Birmingham where I was raised for the most part. Man, I was just looking for traction. Again, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I worked some odd jobs delivering pizzas, just kind of trying to figure out, hey, what am I going to do? I actually became friends with this guy who owned a freight brokerage agency. And so I guess he had seen some potential in me. He just said, hey, come over to the office to talk to me. And man, when I was going over there, I didn’t know what it was. Again, I heard brokerage. I thought this was some kind of finance gig. I didn’t even know that it was a job interview. I was just going over there to talk to him. I was 18 years old, with no formal education. I saw these computers. And by the end of it, I was like, okay, yeah, I mean, I’ll try it out. I don’t really have anything else going on. Delivering pizzas at Domino’s. I’m going to step up. So I went to work there. 18 years old, first brokerage position job. That was a Roadrunner agency. So it was their brokerage arm, Ascent Global, which was recently acquired by a private equity firm. But it was a good company. I was there for, man, not even a year. I picked up on it really quickly. Man, since growing up, I kind of always had an entrepreneurial spirit.
Brent – 00:06:38:
I was going to tell you, when you said you were a little disobedient or maybe you didn’t follow the trend, it usually means you’re an entrepreneur.
Will – 00:06:44:
Yeah. But even so, I was like at 10 years old, I was buying and reselling socks online. It was big when the Nike Elite socks were made.
Brent – 00:06:51:
Wait a minute. At 10 years old?
Will – 00:06:53:
Like 10 to 14, I was just reselling stuff. I love it. It was the road less traveled. I was always pretty confident in my abilities and figured it out. It was just about, hey, what’s really going to keep that fire going? I don’t get bored. It’s satisfying. It’s enough for me. But yeah, I was reselling socks, when Nike Elite socks were big, man, and there was this company that did all kinds of crazy designs. I would just list the socks to eBay and different third-party resale sites for double, triple the price. They’d buy them. I would just ship them directly from their website to the customer. I would buy them, dye them. We used to do prayer breakfast on Wednesdays. We’d all go to church, pile up in a bus, go to the public, I may not take like $100, buy all the snacks, bring them to school and sell them four or five times as much. Again, I always had, I don’t know. I understood that concept, right? And then through working on the horse farm to the beach chairs and just kind of getting to know a wide spectrum of people. When I came into the brokerage world, I picked up on it really quickly. It made sense to me. So man, I’m doing my first load. My second day was minimal training. My business partner now actually trained me and he had given me this huge binder and he was really busy. He’s like, all right, read through this. I read through this. Do you have any questions? And I was like, yeah, a lot actually. And he was like, welcome to the show. Go fire up your computers. I was like, are you okay? And I did. And I got a load. It was a three pick US to drop off a Canada reefer load. My first and only reefer load ever. It went awful. I got the truck at $8,000. I quoted the customer at $100, and then everybody made fun of me. Why would you only quote a hundred dollar margin? It’s my second day. I don’t know. Nobody told me. But yeah, I mean, that’s how I got into the industry. So it was, I really just kind of stumbled into it. But in hindsight, when I, I look over my journey in my life. It almost seems like everything kind of aligned me to this world. It all makes sense that I ended up here. It’s just how I got here. It’s one of those things.
Brent – 00:08:47:
All right, Freight Nation. So here’s the thing I want you to take away from what Will was talking about at every stage, no matter where he was. Whether it was with horses, whether he was on the beach, whether he was just moving across another state, taking a job delivering pizzas, moving freight. He’s learned something to add to his abilities every single time. Some people would say, oh my gosh, I’m throwing hay. I’m sure you were cleaning out a little bit of horse you-know-what as well. There’s always that part. It’s like, oh my gosh, there’s nothing I can learn from this, but that’s not true. You can build the character of yourself and your ability to think and withstand and move forward on things at every single turn. That’s really a cool thing. That’s why I really wanted you to talk about all those unique stops that you made along the way. On top of this, Will knew himself. He knew that he had an entrepreneur mindset when he’s a 10-year-old selling socks to his friends and to others. I guess maybe it was online. Then what you’re doing with continuing to just you’re helping satisfy a customer need or a want all the time. Now, you get to where it happens lightning fast inside the brokerage industry. You found out, wow, I actually really like this. This is a lot of fun. All right, talk about that. You got into it. You were working for a division of Roadrunner. What was your next step after being there?
Will – 00:10:03:
Yeah. When I was there three to four months in, I actually moved in with these two guys who are also working there. They’re my business partners today. One of them was a broker. The other one did a bunch of admin back office stuff. They had another roommate who moved out. It was time for me to go out and do something. I moved in with them. And then after six months to nine months, we’d go home every day after working in the office. We start talking about it at first. It’s just one of those things. It was like, yeah, that would be cool. Then over time, it just compounded, snowballed. Eventually, it’s like, let’s do this. Let’s leave and start our own company. We were under non-compete, non-solicits. More than that, at least for me, the guy who hired me took a chance on me where I didn’t have a lot of direction or purpose. I was very grateful for him and still to this day I am. It’s KTV Global now. They’re great people. And they really altered and changed the direction of my life. For me, when I was thinking about leaving, it wasn’t a, can I get around this contract, this or that? It’s like, man, I owe it to them out of respect. We’re going to do this the right way. We went to them. We told them, hey, we’re leaving. We want to do our own thing. We’re very grateful for what you’ve taught us. We didn’t burn the bridge, so to speak. When we’re thinking about waiting out a year, it was, I mean, I don’t want to go work another odd job. I found something I love, right? And I want to stay with it. So it was, what do I do for this year? And looked over the contracts, spoke to an attorney. I found a third-party dispatching company, stayed in touch with the industry, gained some new skills, and made a living that way while I waited on these contracts. So we started a dispatching company, Compass Dispatching Services. And that was a great experience because I didn’t have any. I wasn’t ever able to see it from the drivers then, but through that, we worked with a lot of owner-operators, one to four truck fleets. We also were doing it through COVID, right? So we started dispatching before COVID. We experienced the lockdowns, the new authorities. That was probably the most I learned in like an eight, nine-month period in the industry as a dispatching company. We worked with factoring companies to get our drivers. That’s how we set up our pipeline with factoring companies. Hey, these new authorities, kick them to us. We will drive the revenue. We’ll make sure that the paperwork is clean, all that good stuff. Just let them worry about driving. We’ll do that. They loved it. We would tell them that we’d kick them drivers. We didn’t have any drivers to kick them, but they’re getting a percentage of the revenue. So it makes sense for them to pair them up with somebody who’s going to ensure that it’s up there. A lot of those guys that jump into it don’t have experience with that. It’s a lot more than maybe they initially expected, right? So it was a good setup. There’s a lot of different schools of thought on the third-party dispatch companies, the way I see it, it’s similar to the freight broker agent model. It’s a shell dispatcher. Lots of companies have shell CFOs or shell accountants. So we did a good job. We took care of them. We treated their authority as our authority in the sense that we’re not canceling loads, getting freight guards. But at the end of the day, the brokerage was the ultimate goal. So as the contracts got closer to an end, we scaled back that as well. I continued dispatching trucks. We’re working out of my friend’s house at this point in Birmingham, Alabama. The air conditioner’s broken. It’s scalding hot, the dispatching thing was kind of my baby. It was my idea. So when they started the brokerage, we’d hired one of my best friends growing up. His name’s David. So it was David, my two partners, Logan and William. They’re starting to work on the brokerage, but I’m still dispatching trucks to ensure that we have some money coming in. So I’m working out of my old bedroom. There’s no AC or lights. I’ll dispatch 45 trucks in heat and COVID.
Brent – 00:13:34:
Did you have no AC just to match the working environment on the horse farm and the beach? Is that what you’re trying to emulate?
Will – 00:13:41:
We just didn’t have any money. I went “It’d be a lot cooler if we just worked in the heat to build character”. But no, it was just part of that same track that we just, we had to do what we had to do. But I was dispatching trucks while they were starting the brokerage as they started to get loads of customers. And it made sense. We started to scale back the drivers. But for a while there, I was just dispatching all the trucks alone. And again, it’s back in COVID, where everything’s good.
Brent – 00:14:02:
Is this the beginning of BlackBox? Or was this right before that?
Will – 00:14:05:
Well, Compass, the dispatching company, was founded before. But that’s as BlackBox is starting. I’m still dispatching the trucks.
Brent – 00:14:13:
Right. Okay. I knew that. Yeah. Okay, yeah, keep going. It’s great stuff.
Will – 00:14:16:
Yeah. And then over time, I mean, I kept around maybe four to five companies. But as time went on, it just made sense to continue to scale it back. I kept one owner-operator up until about six, nine months ago. And he was the last one. So at this point, we’re not doing any dispatching. The company still technically exists. So there’s no business trying under it. But we’ve been around with BlackBox ever since it’s been, I don’t know, four years and two, three months. We’re up to between 40 and 45, if you count offshore employees. We’re out of space in our current office. We’re moving. We’re 3x in our space from 5,500 square feet to 15,500, downtown.
Brent – 00:14:50:
That’s exciting.
Will – 00:14:51:
Yeah. We’re super excited. But, you know, with that sort of thing, you get into just renovations, timelines. We’re supposed to be in next month, but that’s not going to happen. It’s just off in there. It’s kind of messy right now. We’re ready to get in that space. Yeah. We’re holding our breath until we’re able to. But hopefully sooner rather than later, two, three months.
Brent – 00:15:07:
All right, so talk about the transition. Let’s talk about this to the Freight Nation watchers and listeners. Just talk about the transition, what it was like going from, and I know you have an entrepreneurial mindset, which is super helpful because there’s a sense in entrepreneurs that. It doesn’t matter what it is. I’m going to do it. I’m going to get it done. I’m going to sacrifice. I’m going to make sure I put in the time and I’m going to be successful. So, talk about some of the experiences that brought you through or what happened to you when you’re like, okay, I’m going to start a business. What were some of the things that were really challenging and what were some of the things that you thought were going to be hard that maybe weren’t that hard?
Will – 00:15:43:
Yeah. So there’s a lot of things about starting and running a business that I just wasn’t. I was just ignorant to write things like HR payroll, like rules, regular tax, like all this stuff. That’s just not the fun part of running the business. It’s the worst. Actually, nobody talks about it. I’ll start a business. This, that, what’s actually happening, everything that goes on inside it. It can be a lot. But that said, I’m very blessed and grateful to have two great partners. Right? So between the three of us, we all excel at different areas within business. Right. And one of them, his name is William Graves. He does pretty much all the administrative paperwork, all that stuff. Between the three of us, it’s one very high functioning person. Right. So I’ve got my areas. They’ve got their areas. But a lot of that stuff, man, just to be frank, I don’t know if I would be able to do it without them. Like the stuff that he does. I just have no interest in doing it. And I don’t know if. I hate it. I hate all the administrative stuff that he does. And man, thank God for him. He’s great at what he does. So for me, there was never really a backup plan or even the notion that it might not work. I don’t know if that’s confidence or just, I don’t know. I always envisioned that it would work and that we would do whatever we needed to make it work. And I felt confident enough in our abilities and who we were as people to make it work. And I felt like we had a good business plan and we had thought it through. And yeah, I mean, I didn’t know that we would grow this quickly. I didn’t really foresee that. I didn’t have any doubts that I would still be doing what I’m doing today. that I was doing four years ago, right? That the BlackBox would exist and that this is what I would do for now and most likely forever. I mean, sure, I have some outside ventures, but for the most part, this is what I love and what I plan to do forever. I want to be involved in transportation. It’s a really cool industry.
Brent – 00:17:27:
Yeah, most entrepreneurs don’t have a plan B. And that’s what makes you successful because you are hyper-focused in one direction. So you’ve got two partners and been very complimentary about how you guys work together. What’s the biggest challenge of not just having one partner, 50-50, but you’re a third. What would be your advice to the Freight Nation watchers and listeners on working in concert with two people?
Will – 00:17:51:
Yeah, so the biggest thing is, man, for me, what’s been really important is just remembering that, hey, these are my people, these are my guys. If there is an internal struggle or it’s just distance, and human nature, we’re going to disagree on things. But how we go about those disagreements at the end of the day, these are my people, this is my team, this is who we’re going to be with, we have to coexist. So it’s shifting from there’s an issue, me versus you, but us against the problem.
Brent – 00:18:15:
Oh, that’s a good way to put it. Yeah.
Will – 00:18:17:
Yeah. And while we might not see eye to eye, let’s talk through it and come together. At the end of the day, we can disagree behind closed doors, and we do, man. We’ve gone at it. Not in a bad way, just tensions were raised. We’re passionate, right? But at the end of that meeting, we will come out solidified. Whatever we decide to do, especially if it’s internal policy and there’s an employee who doesn’t like it, even if I was against it, right, behind closed doors, it’s similar with almost like kids to their parents, right? Like one parent wants to do something, the other one’s like, yeah, I don’t know. We stand together, right? So it’s a solidified front. Even if I disagree behind closed doors, I’ll get behind it. Whatever we come to as three, we’ll be 100% with it. Also, three is a good number. Because you need two thirds, right? One on one could be more problematic.
Brent – 00:18:59:
That’s a good piece of advice. There’s no growth without friction.
Will – 00:19:02:
Yeah, exactly. And also, we’re all pretty like-minded. We think differently. We do. We’re just different people, right? But at the end of the day, we all want the same things. And I think that it’s also beneficial to have different schools of thought as opposed to just this group think where everybody, man, the big thing with brokers that I see actually is you see these trees, right? You’ve got a brokerage right here. People break out from there. They start a brokerage. They break out. And you all have one way of training and thinking. Over the last year to two years, I’ve been big on networking and talking with other people in the industry and getting insights. And we pulled a lot of stuff from other companies that you could classify as competition that’s really helped us. Because again, we were kind of in that group thing. Because in Birmingham, there’s the original freight broker. That started at least our kind of community. He started, people broke off, started, broke off, started. So everybody aligns with that way of doing things. And when you’re so used to the norm, you don’t really consider other viewpoints, right? So that’s been big for us is being open-minded to change.
Brent – 00:20:03:
Yeah, cool. So you started right when the pandemic started.
Will – 00:20:08:
Yeah, which ironically was great.
Brent – 00:20:11:
Well, did it give you a little bit of pause? Like, I’m not sure we should do this right now.
Will – 00:20:15:
No. I didn’t have anything else to do. I didn’t have any formal education or anything. I mean, I had soft skills, but we didn’t have a lot of them, or at least that’s what I wanted to do. We were going to do it regardless. And ironically, as we experienced, as COVID went on, it turned out to be a boom for transportation. We really rode that wave and expanded it very quickly. But really it was the dispatching that was tough because at the beginning of COVID, it was really hard on the carriers, right? And then as time went on, they pumped all the money into the economy. Things were really good. Rates were up. But at the beginning, we were dispatching a lot of the brand new authority owner operators with these inflated expectations. And I was having to deal with them daily and just like, look, there’s a pandemic. Nobody’s really shipping anything. It’s an awful time to be doing this. Like I’m doing the best I can. And watch them, these hopes and dreams, you get their own authority. And then just kind of watching people struggle, that was tough. But again, the brokerage, it was kind of, you’re more flexible as a brokerage. It’s not, as opposed to being asset-based, you don’t have the overhead and you can adapt and shift the market. So, I mean, there were some advantages to the brokerage as opposed to owning the structure, even dispatching to an extent.
Brent – 00:21:24:
Right. So you’ve launched a business, you’re growing it. And you talked about the standard back office stuff, which is not your favorite thing, but as we said, necessary to the business, because you got to have structure in order to grow anything, you got to have structure. So you got through the first couple of years, you rode the wave of the pandemic and then you also are in the downward wave towards back to normality. So how have you guys navigated this kind of post-pandemic market as it’s come back down to what some would say marginal today or just adjusted back to normal? How has BlackBox fared during the return back to normalcy?
Will – 00:22:03:
Yeah, so we’ve continued growing throughout all this. So during the boom, it was when we were first starting, right? So we grew quickly. And I hate to say it, a little sloppy, right? We didn’t have all the SOPs or anything.
Brent – 00:22:14:
Yeah. Well, you could be sloppy then, right? The rates allowed you to do it.
Will – 00:22:18:
Exactly. You can be sloppy. And we didn’t really have a ton of documented processes, business things, right? We were just booking freight and hiring people and running out space, hiring people. And it kind of slowed down. We took a step back and looked at it and we’re like, hey, we need to get systems and processes in place. And then we shifted from a purely cradle to grave office, which for anybody listening, it’s just, you eat what you kill, right? It’s full service. You’re doing the sales, operations, everything up until billing. We split it into half cradle-to-grave. The other half is a team system with the team systems being geared towards volume accounts. So during the boom, margins were great. Volume wasn’t as big of a concern because, I mean, the margins are two times than what they are today. But as that slowed down, we kind of looked at, okay, what’s sustainable to grow a business off of? And at the beginning, it was a lot of small to medium-sized relationship-based customers, which we still are people-centric at the end of the day. But we needed a little bit more sustainable foundation, right? And the foundation for us has been that team system. So what the team system looks like is if you have a high-performing cradle-to-grave, you shift them to an account manager role. At that point, the account manager gets a dispatcher who’s building all his orders, doing all the paperwork, carrier sales, who’s sourcing the trucks, and a track and trace representative who is tracking all the woods, and in addition, we have inside sales, business development reps who are kicking them customers, essentially. So at that point, you’re able to shift from cradle-to-grave to more of a volume-based broker. And what we’ve experienced or come to find is that those volume accounts are just more consistent with the cradle to grave or even project-based. It’s kind of tough. If you’re one of those brokers, you come into the week and you’re like, I don’t know if I’m going to be extremely busy or I’m just going to have nothing going on. But with the team system, you get more sustainable freight and it’s just easier to build off of. So we picked up the load count by a significant amount. Our margin percentage is about average. It’s about 15% to 16%. It’s about the freight broker average. But again, 15% to 16% today versus what it looked like two, three years ago is a little bit different. So we just picked up load count, but we’ve been able to adapt and kind of make changes to the market shift. So it’s been fun. We’ve been adding people. Again, we were out of the room in our current office, and we didn’t think that every time we moved into an office, we’d have plenty of room to grow it. And then we ran out of room early. So it’s a good problem to have. So it’s fine for us.
Brent – 00:24:43:
That’s a really good problem to have. All right. So big question. What was the hardest thing, transitioning from a dispatch service to a full brokerage? There’s probably some dispatchers out there that go, well, I mean, I really like what I’m doing. This is pretty simple. It’s straightforward. It’s not as complex, or maybe it’s got a little less headaches to it. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never been a dispatcher. I’ve never been a broker, but I’m just wondering, what was the big hill to climb to go from dispatcher to broker? And second question, how does your relationship change with the carrier going from dispatcher to broker?
Will – 00:25:16:
So when considering dispatcher broker, there’s two main variables for each one that’s going to determine the difficulty of the position, so to speak. So for a dispatcher, it’s going to be the driver that you’re dispatching. So I mentioned earlier that there was this one driver, a flatbed driver out of Fort Worth that I had kept.
Brent – 00:25:33:
Right. Up until a few months ago.
Will – 00:25:36:
Yeah, man, he was so easy to work with. Again, for the dispatcher, it’s who you’re dispatching for. If you have difficult drivers, too. Man, we experienced a lot where nothing’s ever good enough. If the low pay is $250, it should pay $270. If it pays $3, it should pay $310. I’m not hauling that. I’m not going here. I got these weird criteria for where I will go, where I won’t go, how many days I’ll be out. It just makes it tough, right? Especially COVID, where there’s not as many options. And that can be extremely stressful. It’s trying to cater to somebody where the goal always changes. Not the goals, but what’s acceptable, what’s not, what are we doing, and what are we trying to accomplish? Nothing’s ever good enough. And then for the broker, I think it depends on your customers, who you’re working with, right? Some customers are just easier to work with than others. Some are organized and they’re easy in, easy out facilities. And there’s others where, man, the POs are always wrong. I’m giving you the wrong address. The weight’s off by 25,000 pounds. So either role, I think that who you’re working with is going to affect that drastically. As far as the brokerage, it’s a little bit different for where you are as a broker. So getting started out, it’s very sales intensive, unless you’re past accounts, right? And then from there, just the landscape of the position is different because as a dispatcher, you’re receiving the details from the broker. You’re looking at the driver’s logs, making sure it all makes sense, right? And then using dispatch to book it. The broker, you’re having to go get it and then translate it and then vet. And then it’s not over from there, right? You got to track the truck, keep everybody updated. So I think it depends, I really like dispatch, honestly. I enjoy it as much as Brokering.
Brent – 00:27:08:
Okay. Do you like it because of the sort of closer relationship you have with the carrier or what is it that motivates you to like it, but maybe just enjoy it more?
Will – 00:27:17:
I don’t really know why this is the case, but I think that I like to be a little bit different. So my two partners hated it. And I think that I like it because to an extent they didn’t like it. It was my little baby, right? And just the experience and the perspective I get from working with the drivers, it keeps me on my toes for the brokerage space. I’m able to see other brokers, how they’re doing things, and the market. I get a feel for it. I feel like it gave me a leg up on the majority of brokers that don’t have that experience. And then, yeah, I don’t know. It does feel good when you have an owner-operator, a small trucking fleet, and you’re helping them out. Not that the broker isn’t on the driver’s side, but being on the driver’s side feels good.
Brent – 00:27:54:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m just wondering from a broker’s standpoint, your customer is the shipper. From the dispatch standpoint, I’m sort of guessing the carrier is your customer, even though I realize it may be the same model, pseudo the same model. But you’re still paying one side, but it feels like maybe they’re more your customer because you’re really trying to sell them on letting you help them.
Will – 00:28:14:
Yeah. Well, the way I put it is the carrier’s really our boss in that situation. We’re operating as a shell dispatcher to that extent, right? So it’s, yeah, I mean, they’re essentially your boss, right? So again, back to the driver, I’m sure that everybody listening, you’ve probably had good bosses and bad bosses. And some of those bosses, so to speak, the drivers I was working with, I enjoyed working with them. I enjoyed helping them out. And so I got a lot out of it as a human being, right? Like those fulfilling work for me. This is what I think I’m getting at.
Brent – 00:28:42:
So would you say you enjoy the relationship aspect of dispatching more than the relationship aspect on the broker side?
Will – 00:28:49:
Yeah. And it’s something about what you’re getting into with dispatching. It’s easy to sort of schedule and I can put it onto a screen and look where all my drivers are and know, hey, on Wednesday, this is what we’re looking at with the broker, just a little bit more. You got to be on your toes. There’s a lot of things that just come up. And not to say that, it doesn’t happen when you’re dispatching. It’s just a little bit different.
Brent – 00:29:10:
Yeah. Fantastic. So you started BlackBox with your two partners and you guys are moving forward. So what was the next big decision once you guys started building your shipper customers and you started moving more freight? What was the next big decision that you guys had to make that helped you scale the business?
Will – 00:29:28:
Yes. I think the first one is just at what point do we increase our overhead and invest into the business?
Brent – 00:29:34:
Always a big deal. Yeah. Always a big decision.
Will – 00:29:36:
Yeah. So with the brokerage, for the most part, if you’re hiring cradle to grave brokers, you’re looking at, I mean, it varies, right? But for us, we’re probably expecting six to nine months before we see a return.
Brent – 00:29:48:
Okay. Yeah. Well, that kind of makes sense. It’s 90 to 120 days to get them up to speed, and then they got to start getting their own motion. I get that. Yeah.
Will – 00:29:56:
Yeah. And then also when you take into account just, I mean, if you prorate rent per head, their equipment, the subscription services, everything. So it adds up and then like health insurance. I mean, all that kind of stuff just kind of goes into it. And on that same token, right? 69 months and also a credit degree is most, I don’t want to say most, but a lot of them don’t make it. It’s not for everybody.
Brent – 00:30:17:
Oh yeah. It’s a tough job. Yeah.
Will – 00:30:18:
Yeah. Well, now what we can do is we hire somebody as cradle to grave and it’s just not for them, right? We can usually look at an individual like, okay, hey, they do ABC very well. We can put them in this position and they can be an asset. It’s very rare that we ever have somebody where we look at them and if they’re showing up on time, they care. They’re trying to do a good job and we can’t look at them and say, hey, we can use you here. But the first big decision is, okay, we need room. We can’t scale this company out of nothing. We need an office, right? So we got an office and then we started hiring. And then as the business kind of picked up at that point, it’s just how do we grow sustainably, right? Because again, it kind of picked up quickly. So it was, we’re moving quick and all that good stuff where we had to get. Kind of some structure. It was all our first time doing it, right? We’ve never…
Brent – 00:31:03:
Oh, really? Nobody else, this is all three of you?
Will – 00:31:06:
Yeah. Well, I mean, the dispatching company was our first real company. We’ve all kind of done some, I had a lawn care company for a little while when I was 16 or so, but it was just me riding around with a trailer and a lawnmower. I’ve never scaled a company and had employees and had people relying on you. It was all new to us, right? So we’re figuring it out. I mean, it’s hard for me to recall the big decisions early on. It just kind of felt like every day it was our roles and what we were doing. There’s just such a wide spectrum. These days, it’s kind of honed in. We have been able to delegate a lot of stuff. Back then, it’s just, man, I don’t know what I’m getting into when I show up to work or what I’m going to be asked to do or need to do or figure out. But I love that. I love that so much. It’s very exciting. It still is, but back then, it was a little bit more exciting.
Brent – 00:31:50:
Creating predictability, it helps create profitability. So that’s not a bad thing, knowing exactly, well, more or less what’s going to kind of happen. It’s always a good thing for a pocketbook that way. All right. So you guys are growing BlackBox. And so I want to talk about what’s next. We’ve got about six minutes left. So I want to talk a little bit about what’s next for BlackBox. How do you continue to grow it? And then I want to talk a little bit about your podcast. It’s a great name. 2 Dawgs, 1 Pod. So is that right?
Will – 00:32:17:
Yeah, you got it right.
Brent – 00:32:18:
You have to tell a little bit about that, but talk a little bit about growing BlackBox. You guys obviously, young company, you’re hustling, you’re bringing everything to it. You’re collaborating with each other as friends and solving problems and solving conflicts with each other. But there’s always a challenge to grow. And there’s always this sort of thing. So, and we’re in a marketplace that’s normalized out. So how do you and your partners look at BlackBox and say, this is how we’re going to grow it?
Will – 00:32:45:
Yeah, so again, what we spent the last 18 months to two years, we really honed down on systems processes, getting everything documented. So it’s a little bit more turnkey, right?
Brent – 00:32:53:
You say systems, you mean you brought technology into your platform?
Will – 00:32:56:
Yeah, we leveraged some technology, but what I was really referring to is just our systems processes roles within the company. So if I want to hire 10, 15 people, I’ve got their training manual, what they’re going to do, all this stuff before. We’re winging it, right? Take you in and learn as you go.
Brent – 00:33:10:
So you’re putting in some systemization into the training of new people that come in.
Will – 00:33:15:
Yeah, and then even past one to three months, three to six months, what do we do in certain situations? Why do we do it? What are our values? All that kind of stuff. We’re able to document everything. And from the documentation, it provides a lot of direction. If we’re unsure, it’s like, well, this is what we found in the company off of what we value. So all that stuff’s good. And then, yes, we do leverage some technology. I’m extremely bullish on automation, not necessarily AI. A lot of times AI and automation are used interchangeably. They’re not.
Brent – 00:33:42:
That’s different. There’s a difference there. That’s all right. Yeah.
Will – 00:33:45:
And you can have intelligent automation, which has characteristics of both. So we really just use automation. We don’t use automation to replace employees. We use automation to increase efficiencies and make their life easier so we can get more out of them. Right? I love automation, actually. I know you don’t read the questions, but they asked me who you should interview next. And I met Chadd Olesen, the godfather of freight automation. Man, he’s one of my favorite people. He’s super intelligent, and he’d be a good one. But for us, again, we’re moving from 5,500 square feet to 15,500 downtown.
Brent – 00:34:15:
Yeah, that’s impressive. Now, look, you said you’re in Birmingham, and I’m a Birmingham kid. I grew up in Centerpoint. So I know Birmingham pretty well. Where is the location going to be?
Will – 00:34:23:
It is where Kerrigan’s is. Not the beer garden, but the public house.
Brent – 00:34:26:
I do.
Will – 00:34:27:
It’s across the street from the Intermark building.
Brent – 00:34:29:
Oh, is that on the north end of downtown?
Will – 00:34:31:
I mean, I know it’s ironic because I own a freight brokerage, but I’m awful with direction. I don’t know. It’s downtown somewhere.
Brent – 00:34:37:
It’s in the industrial part of downtown. I kind of know where it is. Yeah, absolutely. It’s been re-gentrified. So that’s exciting, man, that you guys are bringing more and more really legitimate businesses and breathing life into a city, into that part of town that’s really needed.. And so that’s exciting. All right, so we’ve got a few minutes left. So 2 Dawgs, 1 Pod. All right, so first off, how’d you get to the name?
Will – 00:34:59:
Man, you’ve probably seen some of it just around the whole dog mentality. That’s a big thing that I, I don’t know, I’m big on mindset, right? And on LinkedIn, sometimes I’ll talk about being a dog or bringing the dog out of somebody. I put a few things on LinkedIn and then Matt had asked me to do this podcast with him, and I agreed. He made a post, hey, how can I start going to do a podcast? What do you guys think we should name it? And a guy named Brandon Payne actually commented, 2 Dawgs, 1 Pod. And then we just, we ran with it. So we just interviewed people from different sides of the industry. Pretty much all the episodes are interviews, but not so many interviews where we’re asking questions. We just bring people on and just kind of talk to them about their experience and see where the conversation goes. Then on Fridays, we usually do a big group, usually some people on the asset side and then some, some more polarizing like broker figures that they kind of create some excitement and good conversations and good to hear a lot of, for viewpoints and learn a lot. So it’s been fun. It’s early on, but I’ve enjoyed it thus far.
Brent – 00:35:56:
Yeah, it’s always good to kind of continue the conversation about how to create success. And so that’s pretty cool. So I remember you said that you like to just keep it very open-ended on your podcast.
Will – 00:36:07:
Yeah, we don’t go in with any, we don’t ask any questions before. And honestly, so I do the stream. So we do it live.
Brent – 00:36:13:
Oh, that’s right. Yeah, I remember you saying, now it’s all recorded. It’s just, it’s coming at you raw. I love it.
Will – 00:36:18:
Yeah, so thankfully we’re linked up with My Trio Services, the staffing company out of the Philippines, and they do all of our backend stuff for free. So all we do is we line up the guests. We tell Trio who it is. They do all the graphics, all that good stuff. I create a stream link, add them, and then they invite, join. We’re in there for 30 seconds. We’re just like, hey, this is, I’m going to add Matt and I to the stream and then we’ll introduce you. And then we just get right into it. It’s live. It’s kind of exciting because, yeah, we don’t have anything to refer to. I mean, we do look up the guests. I get to know them and their streams. I want to talk about it. I’m not going in blind, but you just keep it very organic. And it’s also, yeah, it’s live. So like, we don’t really know where it’s going.
Brent – 00:36:54:
I got you. Well, that’s super cool, man. Well, Will, this has been great hearing your story. It’s really cool, Will, to see. And this is one thing I love about logistics is there’s always new blood coming in. There’s new people coming in. There’s new ideas coming in. There’s new energy coming in. And certainly with growing up in Jackson and then moving to Baton Rouge and learning along the way and continuing to improve yourself and sharpen the saw and continue to do things. And then kind of as you developed your really mature entrepreneurial mindset, you just weren’t going to give up. And so Freight Nation, if you take anything away from Will’s story, I think that would be my guess that it’d be like, okay, you can do it. Have confidence. You can do it. Just go for it. Get after it and go do it. And don’t give up on it. Don’t think you have to have all the answers along the way because usually you can figure it out. I’m going to guess that’s a little bit kind of like the Will Hopkins story right there.
Will – 00:37:43:
Sounds good to me. It sounds better than I could. So yeah, I love it.
Brent – 00:37:47:
Well, I just listened to your story, man. And so it was really fun. I really appreciate you being on Freight Nation today. It means a lot that you would give us your time and be a part of it and tell your story. So thank you so much for being on Freight Nation.
Will – 00:37:57:
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. It’s been an honor.
Brent – 00:38:00:
Well, Freight Nation, look for BlackBox to continue to do stuff out there. And hey, man, take your shot. If you’re out there in freight somewhere and you’re working for somebody else, you feel like, I need to do this. And anybody that owns a business certainly loves great people working for them, but they also want what’s best for their employees to go out there and create their future for themselves. And so what a great story of what you’ve done, Will, and what you and your partners have done at BlackBox. And thanks for sharing that, man. Well, Freight Nation, that’s a wrap for today. Appreciate you watching and listening again, we do appreciate you guys just giving us your time and your attention as far as what we do here at Freight Nation and bringing great stories to you. And as we always like to end, don’t forget to work hard, to be kind, and to stay humble. All right, Freight Nation, we’ll catch you on the next story. Take care and keep on trucking. On behalf of the Truckstop team, thanks for listening to this episode of Freight Nation. To find out more about the show, head to truckstop.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. Until then, keep on trucking and exploring the open roads with Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast.
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