Intro – 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.
Brent – 00:00:26:
Well, all right, Freight Nation, welcome back and welcome to Freight Nation, a podcast by Truckstop. We love bringing these to you. I love bringing these to you. I love anything that I can do or Truckstop can do to help this market get better and enjoy what they do even more is something I’ll just line up every day and be happy to be a part of. So this Freight Nation podcast has been a whole lot of fun. It’s just been fantastic. And so we thought it would be a really fun way to end the year and talk about next year. So this Freight Nation podcast is going to be a lot of fun because my favorite friend in all the transportation is going to join me on here. And it’s going to be a lot of fun talking about what’s going on for the big picture in 2025. So I don’t even hardly have to introduce him. I just have to say, welcome to the show, Kevin. He always welcomes me to his. He always says my co-host, which has been a lot of fun being on Let’s Truck for as long as we’ve been together. But thanks for being on Freight Nation again today, Kevin. Time with you seems to fly like two best friends just catching up, which is a luxury that I get to enjoy this friendship. And have for a long time. But thanks for joining us today.
Kevin – 00:01:27:
Well, great to be here. And I love the topic. Talking about next year.
Brent – 00:01:31:
Yeah. Well, one of the things that the Freight Nation, I’ve learned from Kevin is that there’s almost no limit to what topic that he will talk about. He just talks about everything and you don’t even need to give him a script. You don’t even have to give him questions. You just say, hey, what do you think about this? Because he’s an avid reader, he’s an avid learner. He’s just a curious guy and he continues to learn all the time. He always has something really compelling to say that you could add to your business that could fundamentally help you. Today’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to talk about the big picture. We’re not going to talk about anybody’s story or anything like that because Kevin’s story, and I hope you know mine, and we both have been in this market and been friends for more than two decades, almost three decades, which means we probably had more hair when all this started, maybe a little more, I don’t know. But the big picture, so Kevin, there’s some topics we’re going to talk about the freight cycle, we’re going to talk about fraud, we’re going to talk about the administration, we’re going to talk about all these things. Let’s talk about the value of thinking big picture because I know one of the things that you love to talk about, and of course, I love to talk about as well as a leader at Truckstop is when you own a business, you need to think strategically. You’re thinking about the next year that’s going to come at you as the big picture. So talk a little bit about the value of thinking big picture or strategically.
Kevin – 00:02:37:
One of the things about this, I am a good big picture kind of guy. I get the big picture. I use the big picture a lot for planning and knowing where we’re going. I’m horrible at details.
Brent – 00:02:50:
Maybe that’s why we like each other so much. I’m exactly the same, Freight Nation.
Kevin – 00:02:54:
Yeah, I can talk about the big picture all day. I get excited about it. I understand it. The details make me crazy. I have to hire people to handle the details. And I study business and I study business people. You and I have a mutual friend, and he’s probably one of the very few people I know that is really good at the big picture and will crank out details all day long. It’s usually one or the other. When you have that ability to do both, it’s pretty rare. Todd Amen.
Brent – 00:03:22:
Yeah. Oh, he’s lights out great at it.
Kevin – 00:03:25:
Just so good at, he gets the big picture. He understands it. He can explain it. He sees where we’re going, but he’s got every little detail nailed down. That’s why he’s been so successful.
Brent – 00:03:35:
This is true.
Kevin – 00:03:36:
Yeah, I think that’s pretty rare to have that, be able to do both of those really well.
Brent – 00:03:41:
Right.
Kevin – 00:03:41:
I live in that big picture world. When I get down to details, it’s with individuals. Here’s a specific thing you can do. But, you know, when I do opens on my show or podcasts like this, I would prefer to talk about the big picture. Here’s another reason why in this industry, we have to do that somewhat. How many different segments and situations and scenarios, when we say trucking, what does that really mean? It’s a huge industry nationwide with so many different segments and situations. And it’s one of our challenges. How do I teach somebody how to do things? And as soon as I do, somebody goes, oh, well, that doesn’t work for me.
Brent – 00:04:19:
Right. Yeah.
Kevin – 00:04:20:
So big picture is a way for all of us to communicate the direction we’re heading.
Brent – 00:04:26:
Right. Yeah. And one of the salient points while we’re talking about this is that many things have changed in the last couple of months with having a new administration coming in and having a resurgence of what maybe you and I might refer to as common sense. And I know trucking loves a lot of common sense. So absolutely. So I love the idea. I love what you said about, hey, look, focus on your strengths. If your strengths is big picture, fill in the gaps and the spots that you don’t have with people that can do that for you, whether it’s somebody on your team or whether it’s somebody you might be married to your significant other, or if it’s hire a service to do it, that you pay an amount because it’ll always pay off because there’s always a balance between the sort of high level things, the strategic things, and then actually managing the details and what’s called executing. Those that can really execute are the ones that usually benefit the most.
Kevin – 00:05:14:
We have another good example, another mutual friend of ours. You’ve had Joel Morrow on the podcast.
Brent – 00:05:19:
Oh, yeah. He’s been great. So what details, man?
Kevin – 00:05:22:
Yeah. Yeah. And Joel, really, you mentioned details, but Joel’s more of a big picture guy. And he gets the details, but he can’t stay immersed in them all day long. So have you ever met his partner, Alec?
Brent – 00:05:34:
I haven’t.
Kevin – 00:05:35:
So Alec is the detail guy.
Brent – 00:05:38:
Is he? Okay.
Kevin – 00:05:39:
Alec can juggle 72 spreadsheets at the same time. And he’s a numbers guy and he’s a numbers geek. And so those two work really well together. And we were just talking about it this morning because they’re both on my show on Fridays. And it was interesting that they get into, knock down, drag out arguments about stuff. And then they realize they’re not disagreeing at all. They’re just looking at the problem from two different perspectives. One is big picture, one’s detail. And he says, we always work it out. We’re never angry. He says, but we fight a lot because we have to understand each other.
Brent – 00:06:16:
Yeah. Let me give a quick story and I want to shift to the first topic. So when I started a Truckstop in 2013, it was me and three introverts, the detail people. A technology guy, a finance guy, then the operations guy. I’m over there going, big picture. They’re going, could you boil it down to a bunch of details and give me a report on that? I’m going, no, no, I can’t. So one of the reasons why Paris Cole, our chief financial officer, and then he became our CEO, got along so well was I was big picture and he was the detail guy. He was the report guy. He’s the proof guy. If it makes sense, it should make sense when you put the details to it. Yeah. So Freight Nation, if you’re a big picture, person and you get a detail person, expect arguments. And if you’re a detail person and you need somebody to help you with the strategy, expect arguments. Remember, conflict is not bad because usually you come up with the best solution on that. Great points, Kevin. Super great points. All right. So let’s talk about this one of the first sort of pseudo topic here. There’s lots of talk about where are we in the freight cycle? And you and I talk a little bit about this on your program quite a bit. And so I’d love for you to give your perspective on like, when someone says that word, what should they think? What should they think about freight cycles? So what’s Kevin’s thought on that?
Kevin – 00:07:28:
So I would say, and I’ve been saying this for a long time and we have, we’ve all talked about this. This is one of the oddest cycles we’ve ever been through. Starting at around 2017 or so, when we expected a normal kind of downturn, a little bit of freight recession, never happened. We could point to all the reasons ELDs had an impact there right when we thought it should happen. Just as the ELD effect was fading, we had COVID and that just changed everything about our economy, our world, our everything. And we’re still dealing with that. Normally we look at the freight cycle and the economy. It seems like this time the freight cycle has almost detached itself from the economy. They’re not moving in the same ways. I believe we absolutely had a freight recession, but it doesn’t really seem like we had an overall economic recession. The stock market never pulled back, the real estate market. So that’s what feels confusing about this one. But it feels to me like we’ve found the bottom. We’ve been there for a little while. And just really recently in this last couple of weeks, the indicators are all good. It’s almost more of a return to normal as far as seasonality and we’re up and things are climbing. And most indications seem to be that 2025 should be a pretty solid year. I’m not expecting gangbusters, but I think if we just have a nice slow growth out of the bottom. That’s about the best we could hope for right now. I would rather not see us go gangbusters again. It’s almost like I would rather see a nice slow climb out of this bottom. And I think 2025, I’m looking at it as a year of opportunities. One of the things I think is going to happen, and if you look historically, this does small, mid-sized brokers, carriers. As the economy gets better, we’re going to watch more of them. And I know that sounds odd, but if you look in the past, that continues to happen. As you’re first coming out of the recession, you start losing carriers. It doesn’t just stop overnight. So I think we’re going to wash some capacity out of the market still. And I think we’re going to see a nice slow increase. And I’m telling people to get ready and watch for opportunities.
Brent – 00:09:52:
Yeah, well, great way to put that. And I think I would agree with you. I think the idea of a freight recession, what I call it is a freight correction, where things just corrected back to normal. Recession being like if freight volumes were down, actual freight availability was down, then I would definitely be in the court of a total sort of freight recession. But volumes have been up. Rates have been down. Inflation has been up. So that’s devaluing dollars. If you build inflation back into this marketplace, then you see where everybody’s been feeling that pain. And if you’re a small carrier, you feel that pain. But I agree with you. The indicators are all that we’re going to have a solid market. For 2025, I think that’s going to be solid. It’s going to start to build back some strength in the rates in different areas. But look, you still got to keep your eyes open. There’s still going to be some areas in which they will not be as favorable. So make sure you’re looking in the right areas to find those rates in those areas.
Kevin – 00:10:42:
Another factor here that’s confusing this one is a lot of the carriers that are in the market right now either started or expanded during COVID.
Brent – 00:10:54:
Yeah, sure did.
Kevin – 00:10:58:
The problem was, there was about a six-month period there, maybe even almost a year, where equipment prices were more than double what they should have been. I tried to tell people, here’s the problem with this. The minute you sign that contract, you created a problem that you can never solve.
Brent – 00:11:12:
Yeah, yeah, you’re right.
Kevin – 00:11:14:
Prices are going to go back down and you’re going to be screwed. This equipment is too expensive. You can’t afford to operate in a normal market with costs like this, but you’re going to lock in these costs. Think about these numbers Brent, I looked at a trucking company in California that went bankrupt this week. Yeah, and there wasn’t a lot of detail. I wish I could have gotten more. But just this one number alone, they have 800 trucks. You’re familiar with 800 truck leads?
Brent – 00:11:41:
That’s a big number.
Kevin – 00:11:43:
That’s a big number. They grew like crazy during COVID. They admitted it. But listen to these numbers. 800 trucks, $325 million in debt.
Brent – 00:11:55:
That’s almost being upside down.
Kevin – 00:11:57:
Those are horrible numbers. You can’t generate enough to service that debt. And rates are high. We’re in a high rate environment.
Brent – 00:12:05:
For an 800-track fleet, the rates have been on the plus.
Kevin – 00:12:08:
I meant interest rates. Think of the debt service on $325 million and what that does to carriers. They filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize. They’re not going to make it. I can promise you that they’ll reorganize. They’ll make it a couple more months, maybe some of the creditors get a little money back. But you can’t make those numbers make sense.
Brent – 00:12:29:
Yeah, so Freight Nation, here’s what Kevin’s saying. Be careful of your fixed cost.
Kevin – 00:12:33:
Yeah.
Brent – 00:12:34:
It’s on that agreement. It’s a fixed cost. You’ve got to manage it. You’ve got to depreciate it. If you overpurchased it and the price of the value has dropped, you can’t get the benefit of the depreciation expenses. Therefore, you’re going to struggle across the board. Okay, Kevin, all super important things to talk about when we talk about the freight cycle. Listen, I want to go into what might be affecting that freight. I want to talk about the incoming administration. Obviously, we had a big election and conservatism or what maybe you and I have been talking about for a while. Common sense won.
Kevin – 00:13:03:
Common sense.
Brent – 00:13:04:
That old saying, it’s always about the economy, stupid. It’s always about the economy. And we vote with our pocketbooks. And boy, did we. So let’s talk a little bit about the administration before we move into some of the other topics. About your point of view on what, if you’re an owner-operator or small fleet owner, what you can expect from that administration as it pertains to your business.
Kevin – 00:13:23:
So, I’m looking forward to what we saw in 2016. Just bigger, better. Trump himself, I believe, understands the job better this time than he did. We love the fact that he was a businessman and he came in to drain the swamp and he wasn’t a politician. But you still have to know how to be a politician.
Brent – 00:13:45:
How to play the game. A little bit.
Kevin – 00:13:46:
A little bit. And if you compare his first term till now, in his first term, he got off to a slower start. He appointed a lot of the wrong people in the beginning and had to reappoint people and start over. And by that time, the media was all over him. And this time he is laser focused. Doesn’t it feel like he’s already the president?
Brent – 00:14:09:
When you consider that our existing president is really having some health issues and look, no matter what I feel for.
Kevin – 00:14:16:
I do too.
Brent – 00:14:16:
I’m attending to a mom who’s going through these diminishing capacity issues and it’s hard. That’s not a part of life. None of it’s easy. So I feel for him as a human being and it’s our president. I feel for him. However, we still have a country to run. Yes, I agree with you. It’s felt like he was the president even before the election. With these Titans of industry going, I’m putting my flag behind him because I just think he’s got a better solution.
Kevin – 00:14:40:
So I expect what we saw then more of it. And what we saw was one of the best tax plans for small business I’ve ever seen. We saw him. Eliminate regulation after regulation. And it worked. Here’s the thing. Regulation doesn’t help anybody usually. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t have them. Some are necessary, but we have way too many. And most of them, if you look at it, most regulations, I’m not going to say they favor big business, but they hurt big business less than they hurt small business.
Brent – 00:15:13:
Well, well, sure.
Kevin – 00:15:14:
Yeah. Big business can absorb it. It’s a cost. You hire somebody, you put a program in place, you ignore it and you move on. You keep doing business.
Brent – 00:15:21:
Well, and you can put upwards pressure to your customers saying this is the cost of doing business. And you’re so important to your customer that they absorb it. They’re like, okay, I’ll take that. But right. So, we’re players. It’s really hard to push upward towards your customer and say, I got to get a higher rate because the cost.
Kevin – 00:15:37:
Yeah. So now when we see that again, which we’re already seeing it, that benefits the small side of the market, the most freedom to just go operate without all the regulations. And so I’m excited again. I don’t think we’re going gangbusters, but I think we’re going to have a solid market with lots of opportunities for growth and a lot less hassles. I just saw a post and it was basically, it said, why would we let the richest man in the world decide my grandmother’s Social Security check? And my approach is this is a big financial decision. I want the richest man in the world working on it because he knows how to make good financial decisions. In fact, I went on to say, if we actually taught our kids how to manage their own money, we wouldn’t need Social Security at all. But who better to run these big, complicated programs that people that know how.
Brent – 00:16:34:
Right. And I agree with you. The thing I think you’re talking about is you’re talking about one of the co-leaders of the Doge, Musk. And so I heard him talk one time about engineering processes. And he said, basically, you engineer a process and then you remove everything that’s not needed because that’s inefficient in the process. And so if you’re trying to create an efficient process, and he’s talking about rocket ships going down to outer space, he says you have to remove all of the unnecessary. And I think I believe that he and DeVay are going to probably take the approach to that, to getting rid of the unnecessary things that are within a marketplace. I don’t think they’re going to eliminate the necessary. They’re not going to take things away and ruin people’s 401ks and their family legacies. I think they’re going to just take the things away that are actually draining things away from that. I’m interested to see what’s going to be the approach to it. And I’m with you. I’d like to trust somebody who’s had that point of view not we just need to get bigger and bigger as a government to that’s one of the fallacies in this.
Kevin – 00:17:34:
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I made the statement, I was on a panel at a conference, and I made the statement that my wish going forward is that we get to a government that’s small enough that I can stop talking about it.
Brent – 00:17:48:
Well, our founding fathers would agree with you. They warned us about the government ever being the largest employer in the nation. They said this is a surefire way to create a country that can’t financially take care of itself. And it allows the government leaders to continue to get elected, even if they’re not good at what they’re doing, because you’re, in a sense, buying votes. So that’s another topic to talk about. So let’s keep talking about the idea of the administration. So we’re getting a more conservative point of view. Trucking usually likes conservative points of view because of lower regulations and maybe an ease on the ability to operate. Anything else when you think about the administration coming in that would be an impact that if you’re a if you’re a small owner operator, you’re a small fleet owner, they need to be aware of?
Kevin – 00:18:28:
One of the things that a lot of people seem to agree on is that we should see some short term bumps that should be good for transportation. The threat of tariffs alone, just the threat is already. Increasing buying ahead of time in case the tariffs reoccur. So we’ll get a short term bump there, which is always good for transportation. And then I like this idea that bump will carry us a little while and then we should start to see new manufacturing kicking in in the United States. Some people argue whether the tariffs are going to be a part of that or not, even if they’re not. It’s just the technology we’re in. Technology is changing. And almost everybody agrees we’re going to be doing a lot more nearshoring and manufacturing. And I’ve heard some predictions of a 10-year prosperity cycle coming, which sounds really positive to me.
Brent – 00:19:26:
Well, it sounds like a great thing to me as well. I believe and as you and I both studied our basic economics book and we understand tariffs a little better. There’s two ways to utilize tariffs. I believe that Trump and I’ve heard him talk about this as well, about how he’s using it to keep other large countries, from trying to hurt our economy. Because in tariffs, there has to be trade back and forth. And it used to be our biggest partner was China, but it was all one way. It was all one way. Now, look, our manufacturers benefited from that. Right. And we as a pricing standpoint benefited from it. But it hurt our country in general. So the idea of balancing that back out and not allowing any foreign entity have enough influence in our country to put us at risk at anything is to me a solid way to utilize tariffs for the benefit of our country.
Kevin – 00:20:13:
Yeah. And whether it’s tariffs or technology or all of it combined brings me with lecturing back here. The reason that’s such a real positive for transportation, even more so than what people think, you might think, okay, we used to produce a widget over in China and now we’re going to produce it here. What they don’t realize is how many more freight moves that creates here. If the product is produced somewhere and sent over here on a container, we might get one move out of that and that might be it. We might take it from the port to the distribution center. We’re done. If we manufacture the product here, you’re going to bring raw materials into a manufacturer. They’re going to produce things. You’re going to take parts to other manufacturers. They’re going to put things together. You’re going to move it to a distributor. So it does more than just bring the product back here. It brings many more freight moves back.
Brent – 00:21:04:
Yeah. I didn’t think about that. That’s a great thing. Freight Nation, Kevin just gave you a little insight into something. Maybe it creates more. It should create more opportunities to move product because it’s going to move more than one time. So that’s a, I can’t even think about that. That’s a great observation to that. So either way, I think the idea that our new administration is going to be potentially more pro, obviously we know they’re going to be more pro-trucking because they’re going to have less regulations. They’re going to be more pro-independent business commerce so that we know that. And so the idea of putting more pressure back on to solidify the strength of our economy is in your opinion, it sounds like in my opinion, that could be a good thing for trucking, but here’s the thing, Freight Nation, pay attention to where those tariffs are being applied, how they’re being applied, what they’re being applied on and understand where you can have opportunity there because you got to keep your eyes open.
Kevin – 00:21:52:
Great point because the changes aren’t universal. They’re not across the board. And that’s why I was touching on that. You just said it better. Watch for opportunities. If you’re paying attention to what products are going to have tariffs and we’ll do that. That’s something you and I are going to do on our show every Monday and help people understand that. But there’s going to be opportunities that you need to be looking for because they’re not there now, but they’re going to be created.
Brent – 00:22:16:
Yeah, for sure. So you talked about regulations and there’ll be less regulations in the marketplace, but there’s some that are already in place and have been in place for a few years. And the big one that I want to talk about, something that you and I talked about, I’ve talked about it with Noel Perry as well. The drug and alcohol clearinghouse recently took 178,000 carriers and said, you are now out of service because you failed the test. And so that was all in one big release to the marketplace. And I think that brought the numbers of failures in testing at the drug and alcohol clearinghouse to about 400,000 over the last period of time. Now there’s new truckers that have come in, but it’s going to make, it’s going to have an impact on us. Let’s talk a little bit about the drug and alcohol clearinghouse. And look, I’m all for free choice and a free economy. I get that. And you’ve got the major offense in the drug and alcohol clearinghouse is not alcohol, it’s marijuana. So what is your advice to truckers out there as we continue to move into this country that is in some ways more free to choose? Regardless of what you think about it. What’s your advice to truckers? Because you have to get tested. It’s a requirement. There’s no way around it. You don’t get tested, you’re not driving a truck. So if you do get tested and fail, you’re not driving a truck. And by the way, Kevin, only about 30 to 35% are coming back and getting recertified to drive again. So we’re losing a lot of truckers from it. So I want to get your opinion on what impact that’s going to have on the marketplace.
Kevin – 00:23:36:
So it’s interesting because if I could wave the magic wand all of this, the way drugs and alcohol and testing and all that is handled, I would change all of it. That’s not going to happen. So we don’t need to talk about it. So as much as I don’t like what’s happening and how it’s happening, I do realize that even if I don’t like it, there’s a benefit here. Supply and demand is a thing. We talk about it all the time. This idea that I’ve always struggled to understand why drivers spend so much time talking about the driver shortage. What does it exist is not exist. We can’t. My point is, why do we even spend any time talking about this? It’s just semantics half the time. Is there a shortage? Is there too much turnover? Are you not paying enough? We go back and forth all the time. But from my point of view, shortages are always good. If there is a driver shortage, great. If this just made it bigger, great. That just means there’s more demand for the people who are here. There’s more opportunity. So as much as I hate the whole program, I’m not going to change it. If anything, to me, this is just a net positive. Look, if you got washed out of the market over this, just one of two reasons. One, you either were doing drugs when you shouldn’t have been and you got caught, or two, you haven’t even bothered to follow up to fix it and you’re just going to leave the industry. Well, if that’s the case, I didn’t want you here in the first place. If that’s all your commitment is it takes one thing to derail you and wash you out of the industry, then you don’t belong here anyway.
Brent – 00:25:02:
Right. And as much as we would like to be on the other side of that, following the rules that we all agree to follow, it’s pretty important because our primary responsibility. Then making sure the freight gets there on time and in full of safety on the roads to make sure that we’re being safe on the roads. If you have a cavalierness against that, I guess the point to the Freight Nation watchers and listeners is this is a reality. Understand how to adjust the reality, live as free as you possibly can, but know how to adjust to the reality because these are the rules that we have to follow.
Kevin – 00:25:29:
Brent, the way you just said that, I’ve been spending a lot of time on social media and even a little bit. I did a space the other day. I did it on my show this morning. Talking about broker transparency again. Because it’s back in the news. They’re going to make a decision on it. They’ve said some things.
Brent – 00:25:45:
So that’s another regulation.
Kevin – 00:25:46:
Yeah. And the real point I’m trying to get across to people that this matters to is don’t get so stuck on what’s right or wrong because it’s just a waste of time. What I try to get them to focus on is you have to understand reality and deal with it. You don’t get to kick and scream and throw a tantrum and change reality. And what I mean on that issue is the reality is brokers are not going anywhere. They are a huge part of our transportation system. They make it more efficient and shippers want them. So stop thinking that somehow the brokers are going to go away or you’re going to chase them out of this industry or we’re going to regulate them even more. It’s not going to happen. That’s not the reality. In fact, I don’t see anything changing in the way we do day-to-day business between carriers and brokers because the FMCSA says something. The business will always find a way around it. If they manage to put some more restrictive rule in here, business is going to find a way around it.
Brent – 00:26:49:
Yeah. I think that’s a good way to look at going into 2025. There’s going to be more attention to it because the FMCSA said they’d put some attention to it. And I’m thankful for that. But I think you’re right about when you just think about, you’ve said this many times and I’ve glommed on to what you said, control what you can control. Right. You’re not going to control this. You’re not going to control somebody else’s business. And so the idea is. Look, whatever enforcement that they put towards the regulation, you have to deal with it as it’s going to be applied into a marketplace. Not just how it’s said, but how it’s applied into a marketplace. So if you’re an owner operator, I think it comes back to the end, Kevin, the same thing you and I’ve always said, which is you probably don’t have any issue with transparency if you have a relationship with that partner that you have or that customer that you have, because there’s a level of trust that you feel like you’re not getting screwed. Goes back to that again, know your partners. And so I agree with you on that. So I want to shift it since we brought that up about trust and transparency. I want to talk about something that helps with that as well, which is the present scourge on our industry, which is all this organized crime coming into the marketplace, causing fraud and theft and all of the heartache that it’s causing for trucking. I would love for Kevin Rutherford to give a few minutes on how do you do with that? By the way, Freight Nation, if you haven’t noticed, I’m in a hoodie today too, just like Kevin is. Just I’ve got my Truckstop hoodie. It’s my favorite hoodie that I own. It’s a Nike, I really like it. It feels really good. If you don’t know anything about Kevin, he’s a meat eater. He’s introduced me to a lot of great meat, a lot of crazy meats, but let’s get back to this. All right. So the rise in fraud and theft in this marketplace. So Kevin, talk a little bit about 2025. It’s not going anywhere. What’s your advice to toner operators and small fleets about how to continue to deal with it?
Kevin – 00:28:30:
We can just continue on this theme of you’ve got to accept reality for what it is. You can’t fight reality. People always tell me, well, you have a big platform. You have influence. You should be helping out with these issues. But what they really mean is they want me to use my influence to go to Washington and try to lobby you for something. It’s never, ever going to happen. I do use my influence. But if you look at many of these problems that we’re fighting today, you know what my approach is to running one truck profitably and all my strategies and all that. If you just look at the model we’ve put together and you run it, you’re run your business like that, you could just ignore Atchery’s list of top 10 problems. They do it every year. What are the top 10 problems for the drivers? What are the top 10 problems for the carriers? And we go over this every year and we struggle over it and we say, boy, we haven’t made any progress in that area. When do we ever make progress on any of this stuff when it’s the government? Almost never. We’re fighting the same stuff we were fighting basically when I got into the industry, hours of service, speed limiters. But yet, if you look at if you run this like a good small business and it’s not just stuff I’ve created, this is just common sense stuff about how you run a business. Many of these problems just disappear. The idea of having a couple of good brokers that you work with takes away the transparency issue, takes away the freight fraud issue. These things become non-issues. And that’s my focus is to try to get people to understand. You said something earlier that I teach people to control what you can control. And in reality, we have a lot of control, a lot. And yet we don’t exert it. And instead, we waste our time screaming that somebody else should fix something. But just take the time to look at your own operation and realize if you do the right stuff, everybody else might be crying about these problems. You won’t be.
Brent – 00:30:32:
Right. Yeah. And I agree with you. And I think that it’s not that we’re not concerned about these things for others and we’re not concerned about them for our businesses. Just find your way to as with any industrious person does or business entity does is find a way to protect yourself against them by not being in the middle of them and not having to deal with them.
Kevin – 00:30:51:
I’ll go a step further. Not only that, use the problem to your advantage.
Brent – 00:30:56:
Wow. Yeah.
Kevin – 00:30:57:
If I can do better, I can actually create better results because this problem exists.
Brent – 00:31:03:
Right. Oh, wow.
Kevin – 00:31:04:
And here’s a good example. We. Know how the typical owner operator talks about brokers, right?
Brent – 00:31:11:
Right. Right.
Kevin – 00:31:12:
Is it flattering?
Brent – 00:31:13:
Let’s just say it’s less than flattering.
Kevin – 00:31:15:
Less than flattering would be a good way of putting it. Doesn’t that create an opportunity? It does.
Brent – 00:31:20:
Sure. It does. Hundred percent.
Kevin – 00:31:21:
If I’m that outlier that shows up at a broker’s office in person with lunch and says, hey, let’s sit down and talk about how we can work together. I’m now over the top. Better than 90 percent of the- So there’s an advantage there. Freight fraud is a big problem, isn’t it? This is costing people money. It’s headaches. It’s time. Well, if I can come in and say, hey, look, if you and I are working together on every load you book with me, you can forget about freight fraud. It’s not a problem anymore. So not only do we just have to acknowledge the problem, we can actually use it to our advantage.
Brent – 00:32:01:
Yeah. Well, what a great piece of advice. I love that. Now, thank for our nation. So. Okay. He’s saying, take some time to invest in the future of your business. And if you’ll take some time to go meet with these providers to you or your customer, the between my customers, because they are customers and go invest in that. It always pays off long term when you invest in the short term. It always does. You just continue to invest in that. That is great advice. Kevin, that is fantastic advice.
Kevin – 00:32:28:
One of my regular listeners called this morning, the show right before he called me his show. He sent me a receipt for hundreds of dollars worth of pies. And he sent me the receipt with no explanation. And then he called me on the show and he says, you know what that was for? And I said, I have a pretty good idea, but why don’t you tell me? He said, I’m spending the day today, just going to visit with my customers. And he was taking pies. He’s a car hauler. Here’s something else though. As of right now, 2024 at what we mostly consider the bottom of this freight market. This has been his best year ever.
Brent – 00:33:02:
You know, that’s not an uncommon statement from a lot of the people that call into your show and talk, and it’s not an uncommon statement from the owner operators. I know that have been this market for a while because they follow the standard principles. It’s not rocket science. It’s just standard principles on these things. All right. So we’ve got about six or seven minutes left. I want to talk a little bit about how there’s some changes in the actual marketplace. And then I want to talk about our webinar series that we’re doing Trucking Mastery: Navigating the Road to Success. And I was going to get a brief few moments through that to talk about it. But our marketplace got a little bigger during the pandemic, got a little more competitive during the pandemic. I think most truckers don’t think about this as a competitive market, you know, because we’re in trucking. We like each other. Right. But you’re against competition. I want to get your advice about how you compete against friendly, compete against things. And then I want to talk about the webinar series.
Kevin – 00:33:49:
Yeah, I absolutely love competition. I have my whole life. I was always actively involved in sports. Now, the one thing I don’t do, I don’t watch sports. Never have. There’s not a single sport that I watch, none. But I love competition, but I want to be actively involved in it. I don’t want to just be watching it. So I love competition in business. And honestly, over the years, most of my competitors in business I’ve been friends with. But competition makes us all better. And there are times where I actually, and I say it all the time about my business. Brent, you have a good handle on what my business is, and it’s not easy to describe to people sometimes. But in a sense, I don’t have any competitors.
Brent – 00:34:33:
No, I don’t know anybody that does what you do.
Kevin – 00:34:35:
And that sucks. People would think that would be awesome, except it’s not. Do you know why there’s always two drugstores on every corner? Or sometimes three? Or why all the car dealers are on the same street? Or they always build a Burger King next to a McDonald’s? Or they do that because there’s a benefit. If you put one McDonald’s out by itself, you’ll get a certain amount of business. Put another fast food restaurant next to it, and all of a sudden, both of them get more business.
Brent – 00:35:03:
That’s right.
Kevin – 00:35:03:
And that’s the same thing with all business. So for me, I feel like I’m at a disadvantage because I don’t have competition. I wish I had 10 other companies doing what I do, because that would make more people aware of what I do, and then I could compete for their business.
Brent – 00:35:21:
Yeah.
Kevin – 00:35:22:
So I’m a big believer in competition. I want more of it.
Brent – 00:35:25:
Yeah, so Freight Nation, I love what Kevin’s saying here. Competition is a good thing. It means that there’s deep waters of opportunity of that.
Kevin – 00:35:34:
Here’s another example. When I coached wrestling, wrestling is extremely competitive. It’s why I love wrestling. And the other thing I love about it, you can’t blame anybody else when you lose. You get to take all the credit when you win. But when I coached wrestling, I coached high school wrestling. And in the offseason, I coached club wrestling. And I wanted to build my club as big as I could. And we brought in lots of kids from outlying schools that during the season we would be competing against. And people used to ask me, why do you have those people in your club? You’re teaching them to be better. And then they might beat you in the season. That’s my point. I want them to beat me in the season. I want my kids.
Brent – 00:36:17:
You’re learning how to beat them.
Kevin – 00:36:18:
Right. Right. That kind of competition makes it all better.
Brent – 00:36:23:
Yeah. Well, no doubt. I love that. So take that away, Freight Nation. Competition’s good. You want competition. If not, you’re just finding a way to work yourself out of a position in the market. Let’s talk about the webinar series to close it out. So you and I came up with this idea. It’s the same age old idea that we’ve been talking about. How do we continue to talk about the message about how they can coordinate and organize their trucking entity, their trucking business? To get out of it what they want out of it. We call it trucking mastery. And I love that name, man. That’s such a great name. That’s a Kevin Rutherford name, if I’ve ever heard one. Trucking Mastery: Navigating the Road to Success. So we did the big picture first webinar. Let me go through these real quick. So we’ve got a series of six webinars. They’re called the big picture, Pathway to Independence, How to Survive Your First Year, which, man, that’s an important one. Using Data to Your Advantage, How to Choose Profitable Freight, super important. And then brokers Creating Value for Spot Carriers. And so, Kevin, I want you to close it out. And just talk about the value of continuing to learn, the value of digging into these things and the benefit to their business.
Kevin – 00:37:24:
So let’s talk about the value. And I am a big believer in competition. We just talked about that. I’m a bigger believer in education. Competition is going to give us the motivation to get better. Education is going to give us the ability to get better. So I love those two things together. One of the things I can say about this particular program that kind of goes along with the theme of today. What we’ve been talking about. I consider the first one we did was titled the big picture, but I consider the whole program a big picture look.
Brent – 00:37:55:
Yeah, right. It’s a total overview. It’s just an overview. And so if you want to be great at it, you got to go through the course.
Kevin – 00:38:01:
Yeah. So one of the things that I have been working on in the last year or two, and it’s really starting to come together now and truck stops a big part of it. It’s why we partner with you. I want to be able to offer people education from the big picture all the way down to every little detail about their particular business. And we’re doing that through multiple programs. So we have this program we’re doing with you, which is a really good big picture introduction into these concepts and how beneficial they are and what they’re going to do for your business. We have the CMC, which Truckstop is also a big part of, and you are too. We’re going to get down to the nitty gritty teaching you exactly. How you do all of these things step by step. Then I went even further. I now do my coaching program year round and in coaching program, we will get down to the specific details of your business and I’ll help you fix them and make them better. So I’m pretty excited with the partnership with Truckstop and what we’ve been doing. I feel like I can help a small business owner in this industry from cradle to grave.
Brent – 00:39:14:
Right. Wow. What a great way to put that, man. So Freight Nation, here’s the thing, man. Put your seatbelt, buckle in, get your pencil out, sharpen it up. Make sure you got plenty of coffee and you got plenty of sleep and get ready because we’re going to continue to bring this opportunity for you to learn. Some of it’s free, some of it’s not, or some of it’s just part of being part of the program. If you’re a Truckstop customer or Let’s Truck customer. But the whole point is we want to continue to help the industry be better at what they’re doing. And this is why we’re doing it. So just pay attention. We’ll keep letting you know when these things are coming out. Kevin and I are going to be doing, I think it’s one a month for six straight months. And then we’re going to do the CMC is going to be at Mid-America this year. So that’s super exciting. And so I’m just, again, always just happy to be a part of it. Truckstop, happy to be a part of with Let’s Truck and with you, Kevin, to continue to help the industry.
Kevin – 00:40:01:
Love that. Looking forward to a very exciting year.
Brent – 00:40:03:
Yeah, man. All right. Well, Freight Nation, we’re excited too about it. Kevin’s excited. I’m excited about a year. He’s typically always excited about bringing new things. So Freight Nation, that’s a wrap on the big picture, looking forward to what’s 2025 going to look at. Take these pieces of information that Kevin’s talked about and I’ve talked about it and think about them. How does it apply specifically to your business? Because that’s really where the rubber meets the road and you can get a benefit from it. All right, Freight Nation. Well, that’s a wrap. Thanks for listening this time. And thank you for giving us your time and attention. We appreciate it. We hope that you get through the holidays well and 2025 is an optimistic, great year for you. And as we like to say, don’t forget to work hard, to be kind and to stay humble. We’ll catch you next time. Freight Nation. Thanks a lot.
Outro – 00:40:45:
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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