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. Welcome back, Freight Nation. And I appreciate you joining us today for another wonderful story about the unique individuals that make up the transportation world. This is, again, as kicked it off, this is Freight Nation, a podcast by Truckstop. And I’m just glad you took the time to join us today because you’re going to get to hear something today from a person that is probably in the top 100th of a percent of people on the planet. And today’s episode is really to talk about a person that accomplished something. And when I meant by the top one-tenth of one percent, I said that he accomplished something with himself and for his life that most couldn’t even dream of. And so we’re going to talk a lot about that. You’re going to hear his story. And I think you’re going to be really motivated about what you can do to create the best you in your life. And so I’m going to leave a little bit of mystery in there because I’m going to let my guest today really unwind and unpack his story and tell you all about it because it is a fascinating one. One that once he got to these goals, life just started opening up and as he’ll probably tell you, the joy when he started coming back to his life. So joining me today on Freight Nation is the one and only Garrett Steenblik.
Garrett – 00:01:37:
That was a heck of an introduction. Wow. Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me, Brent.
Brent – 00:01:43:
Well, it is a joy to have you on, man. Freight Nation, you’re going to get to hear a story that has inspired me, and I know that it will inspire you. So Garrett, thanks again for joining me. So get ready, Freight Nation. I’ll strap it on because this one’s going to be full of a lot of great story and great emotion in this. So Garrett, listen, so I love for anyone when they come on Freight Nation. And tell a little bit about their story, like how’d you get into transportation? And then while you’re telling your story about how you got into transportation, talk about kind of that pivotal moment where things just changed for you. Because Freight Nation, you’re going to hear something that’s super important. So this is the story of Garrett Steenblik, who owns Trucker’s Body Shop, and that’s a little indication of kind of maybe where we’re going with this thing. So Garrett, tell me, like I said, when you get started in your life, how’d you get into transportation?
Garrett – 00:02:28:
Oh my gosh. So it’s because of a woman.
Brent – 00:02:30:
Because of a woman. Yeah, it makes sense.
Garrett – 00:02:32:
So I met my wife and both of us really didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives, but we knew that we did not want to be apart from each other. And her sister suggested that we get into team truck driving. And I was going to school and I stopped. I was a passionate. I wasn’t really interested in what I had, even though I had a free ride scholarship to go through nuclear physics. They were like, do whatever you want, whatever degree you want, buddy. Then I went to the dean and I said, well, I really want to truck drive with my wife. Let’s do that instead. And they said, no, you can’t do that. That’s not allowed. So I said, I’m sorry. I’m going to do it. I don’t want to go through the process of getting a doctorate. I’m going to get into trucking with her, and you’re not going to stop me.
Brent – 00:03:23:
Right. Wow. Now, why did you choose trucking? So nuclear physics to trucking, why did you choose trucking? Because you guys could team drive and be together? Or how did you end up there?
Garrett – 00:03:32:
Yeah, we really wanted to be together. We wanted to see the country. And I had this understanding because my father is an engineer, and he went through a lot of the politics and the processes of college and working with intellectuals. And he had all kinds of bad things to say about PhDs and the processes to get one. So in the back of my head, I had this understanding that I wanted to go create my life. I knew that trucking was the access to physical freedom and financial freedom, and I could have her with me at the same time. So like, it just makes perfect sense. I want to control my destiny now.
Brent – 00:04:10:
Yeah. And so now how old were you at this time?
Garrett – 00:04:12:
I was 23.
Brent – 00:04:13:
Wow. Okay. Fantastic. All right. So you guys kicked off your team. I’m guessing she was driving as well, right?
Garrett – 00:04:20:
Yes. Yes. So we started at me, Averitt Express, and her at rail. So we didn’t want to drive together right away because we tried that. We tried that at Covenant. And I couldn’t sleep with her driving in the back, and she could not sleep with me driving in the back. We trusted each other. But we didn’t have that level of trust. So we needed to develop our core competencies first, and then we felt comfortable trusting in our own skills and the developed skills of each other as a team.
Brent – 00:04:51:
Right. Okay. So you’re 23. Did you start driving together as a team at 23 or was it a couple of years down the road?
Garrett – 00:04:58:
It was about six months after 23.
Brent – 00:05:01:
Right. And so how did driving together work out for you guys as far as like the efficiency of your operation and you guys getting along? And obviously, so how did that all work out?
Garrett – 00:05:10:
So that’s a really great question. Our relationship was good before we got into trucking. And a lot of situations, people would say that trucking is a space where it can tear you apart or bring you closer together. And what we found was it really was a pressure cooker for our relationship. We experienced all at once, all the problems with our communication, all the problems with the way that we interact with each other. But what kept us going and the reason why we got a delicious relationship out on the other side of this was because every time something happened, we’d talk and come closer together.
Brent – 00:05:49:
Right. Oh, wow. Well, that’s good for anybody in your relationship, right? To resolve conflict very fast.
Garrett – 00:05:56:
Well, trucking makes you do that. I mean, right? You’re carrying behind you the full weight of 80,000 pounds of vehicle, right? And at the same time, you’re navigating, traveling cross country through all kinds of weather. There’s rules, there’s regulations, there’s expectations. And above all, there’s communication. And if you don’t enforce those things upon yourself and build that discipline, you’ll lose everything, especially with a team.
Brent – 00:06:23:
Right. Wow, that’s good advice there, Freight Nation. So listen to what Garrett’s saying about this. He’s talking about the ultimate communication between two partners where you’re really resolving conflict. And I love what he said, but he has a delicious relationship. It’s why I had to, Garrett, I’ve never heard anybody describe a marriage that way, but man, that’s a pretty good one. So you guys were driving together and your business started improving and you got to a pivotal point. So tell me what, you know, this episode of Freight Nation has a lot to do with truck driver health. All right. So, and your story is about truck driver health and your sort of really the way in which your purpose is really about bringing health to a marketplace. So tell me, you guys are working together as a team, you’re driving along. Where were you? What was going on? What caused this creation of creating more focus on your health?
Garrett – 00:07:13:
So what I recognize, I’ve been through many years of physical and sexual abuse. Well, before I met my wife, I had a really, really rough childhood. And when I met my wife, I was really trapped inside of the person that had happened to me, if that makes sense, right, that circumstances around me. And when I met her, I had a perspective to be something bigger than myself. I weighed 360 pounds. I’ve been through a lot of really bad relationships. I had a job that I wasn’t comfortable with. And even though I was going to school, I was purposeless. And what I got into trucking, the environment and the structure forced me to begin to develop this. And what I recognized as we were growing, as I was growing, as I was becoming the relationship, becoming something bigger than me. I became in touch with my spirituality. I became in touch with this understanding that I could take everything I was getting over here from trucking, over here from my relationship. And what I deserved to do, what I had to do was I had to turn it inward on myself. I remember the day I have really bad acid reflux because of being so heavy. I was in a Truckstop bathroom. I was puking into a toilet. And I got up and I realized there was so much about my life that I loved, but I did not love the guy looking at me. I didn’t forgive him. I didn’t accept him. And I wanted to love him. I wanted to love him so much. And I knew that I had to act like I loved him. And that’s when I started changing. I realized that I could take control. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I didn’t know where to start. I’m 70 hours a week. We’re teaming. How am I going to lose the weight? I’ll figure it out. I’ll make it happen. And so I did.
Brent – 00:09:03:
Wow. So would you say, Garrett, that you made your mind up first, this was something you were going to change?
Garrett – 00:09:09:
I did. It was a snap moment, but also a series of events that had led up to that point, where I understood that as my life was going, I was being left behind in the way that I treated myself. I was treating my career with integrity. I was treating my wife with love, but I hated myself. And I recognized that. And I didn’t want to anymore.
Brent – 00:09:31:
Right. Oh, wow.
Garrett – 00:09:33:
I trusted in God that I could figure it out one day at a time. And I let myself hate myself just enough to push through working out, push through taking on dietary changes, push through taking the uncomfortability of becoming a bigger person for myself one day at a time.
Brent – 00:09:51:
Right. Wow. So one day at a time. So that starts with like day one in the first week. So let me just set it up for the Freight Nation watcher. So you started out at 360. Was that right? Okay. Now, I want people to get an understanding of this. What are you today in your weight? I am
Garrett – 00:10:10:
160.
Brent – 00:10:11:
Okay. So he lost 200 pounds. Now, I weigh 200 pounds. So he lost the equivalent of me on this.
Garrett – 00:10:21:
My gosh, okay. There’s a really funny thing for that, Brent. So my dad, he’s my hero. What I lost the way he said, you’re half the man you used to be literally, Garrett.
Brent – 00:10:33:
Yeah, absolutely. So I love the way your dad put that. That’s pretty cool. So you made your mind up. You took the first step. What the first week look like of you? And I want to talk a little bit about this, Garrett, because I think so many people, we all want to be healthy. And trucking really struggles with this because the job doesn’t lend itself to it. A lot of hour out on the road in something that’s moving around and moving up and down. And then your opportunities for eating are not always the healthy. Preparation’s difficult, things like that. So your first week, let’s just give the Freight Nation watchers just a little idea with how’d you get started the first week?
Garrett – 00:11:11:
I started running on my 30-minute breaks and I stopped drinking soda. I tried to lower the amount of junk food that I was consuming. And just running in place had a tremendous impact on me because I was increasing the amount of calories that I was burning. I started losing weight very quickly. I think I lost five pounds of the first week. It was absurd.
Brent – 00:11:34:
Okay. And so you, in the first week you said five pounds. So now you were very heavy. So exercises was a challenge just in general. What were some of the things you did? Like you ran, you changed some of your liquid consumption habits. All right. So what was next? What did you do next from a standpoint of like, because once you kind of get comfortable with one thing, you move to another, what was next for you?
Garrett – 00:11:58:
Yeah. So the first step, obviously, taking soda out of my diet, a lot of empty calories, running in place. And then I slowly started to add more vegetables into my diet and eat fewer burgers, eat fewer carbs. And that worked for a while. I got down 100 pounds, but I ended up rebounding because I didn’t have a concept of how many calories I burned in a day, sitting inside the truck behind the wheel and running. At some point, right, the amount of calories that I was consuming was equaling the amount of energy that I was burning. I developed muscle, but I didn’t lose weight. I still had fat on my body. So I got really frustrated and I ended up rebounding quite a bit. And I gained about 80 pounds back. Yeah, I was rough. I was very upset.
Brent – 00:12:51:
Okay. Oh, wow. All right. So you tried something, you said you didn’t develop the right habits to maintain. And then, so you fell back into your, I’m going to guess maybe in some of your old behaviors and habits. And you started again, you restarted in the idea of getting control of your health. So what was your mindset then and what got you going?
Garrett – 00:13:13:
So when I lost control, I came across Bob Perry’s content that was centered around driver health and wellness. I came across it at Transport America, and then I came across some of it again at Boyle Transportation. And I had this innate understanding upon watching it. Here is this guy, like a bodybuilder, showing me that there are realistic ways for me to walk around the truck, to do bodyweight exercises, to have a real understanding of my diet and really common sense. And it hit me in that moment that I had come so far before and I could get back there and that I was not a failure. And I did that. And I incorporated keto. I incorporated intermittent fasting. I incorporated tracking my food intake versus my energy intake. And the weight just melted right off of me in a very short period of time. But it took me a while to get to that point. Where I had the willingness to take the chance on myself again. And the willingness could really implement the decisions and the information necessary to lose weight.
Brent – 00:14:24:
Well, so for the Freight Nation watchers, would you explain? I think everyone knows what fasting is. That means you don’t eat or consume food or even a lot of liquids. Some liquid, but very… Anyway, so would you explain to everybody just briefly what keto is? And then talk about how you documented it. Because you kind of got yourself into a structure on how you’re going to every day keep track of your results.
Garrett – 00:14:47:
Yeah. So one of the things I really enjoyed about trucking as a whole was that it allowed me to have structure that I could fit my structure into. And so when I’d wake up in the morning, I would have already had my food in the fridge ready for me to eat when I stopped for lunch. I pre-made my meals and I had an app at the time we’ve remade inside of Trucker’s Body Shop and improved. It’s called Lose It. So what Lose It does is it comes with a barcode scanner and you scan the food and it uploads the calories, it uploads the protein, the carbohydrates, it uploads the fat, and then you’re able to have it sit there and you can connect it to something like a Fitbit so that you have a reference of what is your basal metabolic rate, how many calories you burn in a day might exist. And so when you compare the two together and you do a little bit of research, you find that if you burn 500 calories a day for a week over what you take to survive in a day, then you’ll burn about a pound of fat in a week because there’s 3,500 calories in a pound. And so I implemented that. It was just, okay, I can guarantee the results if I follow the structure. But as far as your previous question, what keto is, keto is a diet, that at this point, wonderfully, a lot of people are familiar with. But for those who do not know, keto is eating a low carbohydrate diet. So it’s especially effective for weight loss in a similar way to how Ozempic, Wegovy, semaglutide are because you’re regulating your blood sugar. And at the same time, keto makes it easier for you to go longer periods without eating. And so what happens when you do, inside of intermittent fasting, inside of calorie deprivation, you’ll develop a process in your body called autophagy, where you’re breaking down the bad cells in your body. You’re burning your own fat to survive. And keto is especially effective for helping people undergo this process and consume their own fat as energy.
Brent – 00:17:04:
Right. Okay. So you got to moving pretty fast with losing weight. And so how quickly did you get from three? Cause you went back to like 340. So how quickly did you lose a hundred? And then how hard was it after that, after you lost a hundred pounds to get to where you wanted to be?
Garrett – 00:17:25:
So it took me about a year and a half to lose the first hundred pounds. And I was so proud of myself. I was kicking butt and then I gained the weight back. And that was over a period of about eight months. It felt like it happened so much faster and I just, it snapped and realized, oh, I’ve lost control. I need to get back. And so as I started trying to convince myself that I could do it, that took a period of time. I can’t remember exactly how long, but it wasn’t fast. Once I got into keto and intermittent fasting, it was a year and a half. All of it just came off. It was absolutely absurd because I controlled the structure.
Brent – 00:18:06:
Yeah. So, wow. Talk a little bit about that, because I think that’s fascinating. That might help the freight nation watchers who might struggle with this thing. When you said, once you got a hold of it, things happen fast. Tell me what you mean by that.
Garrett – 00:18:17:
So when I say I got a hold of it, what I mean is I developed the rails on which I was going to run my behavior every single day. Because I had an understanding of what I would eat, I had an understanding of where to get it, I had an understanding of the limitations of what I would and wouldn’t do, and then I had a set of actions that I would incorporate every single day. And I began to invest myself in the release of my workouts. I began to invest myself in how good it felt to push myself and to keep to my structure. What I recognized was in my spiritual connection that I was developing with God, I found that I felt lonely and I felt terrible when I didn’t allow myself. To be one with my goals and with my needs and with what I was creating. As if there was this absence in me when I abandoned the rails that I was creating to take control of my life. And I did everything I could to avoid that at all costs.
Brent – 00:19:29:
Yeah. So, well, that makes sense. So we’re really getting on the path. We started down the line. How long did it take you to lose all the weight? And then what happened, say, the last four or five months of getting to your ultimate goal of 160 pounds that you’re at today?
Garrett – 00:19:46:
That’s a difficult question for me to answer because I feel a lot when I answer it. I feel a whole lot. I feel that the whole journey of being successful, beginning to fail, becoming successful again, and finally meeting my goal and just being elated, feeling on top of the world. It was about a period of five years. It could have been so much faster if I knew exactly what I was doing. I’m glad I’m here now, but that’s a big part of why I founded Trucker’s Body Shop. You want people to have the information, the resources. They don’t want them to go through all this.
Brent – 00:20:22:
Yeah. You know, there’s a great statement that I’ve listened to you talk about your journey in this thing, Garrett. And I think about the statement that I heard a long time ago, and I think it applies with your journey in this, which is your misery becomes your ministry. In other words, your ministry of how to help other people. So look, you got about five years to get down to 160. I want to talk about your ministry of Trucker’s Body Shop. And then I want to talk about some of the other things that you have, your endeavors, your entrepreneurship. So how difficult has it been for you to stay at 160 or stay at the weight you wanted to achieve?
Garrett – 00:20:51:
That’s a really good question. So it has not been difficult. Once I got down to the way I needed to be, there was a period of time before my loose skin surgery that I really struggled, I struggled because, yeah, she struggled with someone of the opposite. I wanted to make sure that I was as skinny as possible before the loose skin cancer. What they’re going to do is they’re going to cut you open, tear your skin, pull it together, and then you have to heal. And what I found really difficult for me was that I went to the surgeon and the surgeon said, hey, listen, you can’t do this because what’s going to happen is your body is going to need as many nutrients as possible. And you need to give it that for as long as you can before the surgery so that you can heal properly. And I had done about it the wrong way. And then I found myself struggling because he was telling me to eat more than my body needed. And that was hard. It was hard because I had to go from being 160 up to 185 in order for me to be able to safely do this surgery.
Brent – 00:22:05:
Yeah. You developed five years of the habit to not do that, right?
Garrett – 00:22:09:
No, it’s not.
Brent – 00:22:10:
You’re a fairly tall guy. So 185 is not a lot of weight on your body. Are you, how tall are you? Six foot, six one?
Garrett – 00:22:17:
Six foot. Yeah, that was a good guess.
Brent – 00:22:19:
All right. So you go through the surgery, which is, I’m sure that was abdomen.
Garrett – 00:22:23:
An abdominoplasty.
Brent – 00:22:25:
Yeah. But I’m just saying that you went through the surgery to allow your body to fully recover physically from all the weight loss. So how long did it, once you went through the surgery, how long did it take your body to recover from the surgery?
Garrett – 00:22:36:
Oh man. Oh, that was rough. I was really grateful to have my wife there, of taking care of me. So it took me about two full months. I got the surgery last December, not December of this year, but the year previously. And as I was recovering, I had this really spiritual experience because I was forced to sit there with myself and everything that I’d ever done, everything that I’d been through. And when you ask me, what was it like to really achieve the goal? That was the moment I achieved the goal. I was at our house in Bellingham. I was looking over Puget Sound. I was watching sunsets, sunrises of unspeakable beauty every single day. And I felt really one with myself in the world. And it was amazing to have to go through that for two months, even though it was painful, even though I had drains in my sides, even though for the first two weeks I couldn’t move, it was worth it.
Brent – 00:23:36:
Yeah. Well, I’m glad you mentioned that about that you had the ability to look on beauty while you were recovering. There’s a well-known thing that people that go through depression and go through very difficult things in their life, just staring at natural beauty is a very healing influence on you. So that speaks really real volumes to me. All right. So you got to this place where you felt like you respected yourself and you respect who you are. And so you got there, you healed up completely. You’re at a point in your life where some things started happening, where you started thinking bigger thoughts. Tell me about Trucker’s Body Shop. Let’s talk about you because we got about 15 minutes. I’m going to talk about Trucker’s Body Shop. I want to talk about your involvement in growing your experience inside transportation with your brokerage. And then I want to talk about your new endeavor with Truck World. So let’s talk about Trucker’s Body Shop because once again, your misery is your ministry, right? So you’re giving back to people. You know, you unlocked it. So you want to help others unlock it. And you want to maybe help them get there faster and not have as many struggles as you did. Is that fair?
Garrett – 00:24:43:
That’s more than fair. And it’s become something way, way bigger than that. So what I’ll say is for a few years, up until the point that I got my surgery, I had been a contractor at Tri-State Motor Transit Co. I owned vesting. I’ve been saving my money. And after the loose skin surgery, I got back on the road. And as I was driving, I was looking, I was thinking, I knew that I needed to do something way bigger. And the inspiration came to me one day. I was at a Truckstop, Line J. And I got out of my truck. I started fueling. And I looked to my right, and there’s this driver that weighs well over 400 pounds. And he’s getting out of his truck. And I watch his body barely able to handle the stress of him coming over to the pumps, punching in his card, swiping, and then taking the pump and going over to the fuel tanks. And that was so intense. Because it was like watching who I was and who I could have been if I hadn’t made my decisions to change. He collapsed in a puddle of diesel and he’s banging on the side of the cab. And I watched his wife get out, stand on the top step, look down at him and the shock in her eyes, the fear on his, that was burned into my brain. And I realized in that moment that something could be done. I could do it. I had done it. And that there were tools and resources that existed to make sure that this didn’t have to happen anymore. And that we lived in a moral and ethical crisis where the hardest working Americans in the country are collapsing in a puddle of diesel in front of their significant others. And we’re all acting like it’s fine. We’re all acting like it’s their fault. And you know, I could have just wanted my way, right? Out of everything I did. But I came across people like Bob Perry. I came across content made by others who decided to make health and wellness their purpose. I came across people who inspired me. And I knew that in my pain, witnessing this man, this was what I was going to do. And I called up every doctor I could find. And I started asking a lot of questions. How can we fix this? What can we do? What are the laws? What can we build? And I found an FDA agent. I found advisors. I got a medical law firm. I got in touch with doctor networks. I got in touch with pharmacy networks. And I just started pouring my mind, pouring my time, pouring my money into building Trucker’s Body Shop into what it is. And it went from being, I want to help people lose weight and get healthy to, I want them to quit smoking. I want them to have a better sex life. I want them to feel like they can really control the outcome of their future because they’re investing 70 hours a week into their career at the sacrifice of their lifespan and life expectancy. They live 20 years less than the average American. That’s wholly unacceptable. And it doesn’t make sense that our free country is run off of people who take their health and grind it up in a woodshipper for all of us, so that we can enjoy a good life. And then we realized as we were growing, we could do something more. I came across a woman whose father had died of pneumonia in the truck away from home. And that’s why we created the Me Ready Kits .
Brent – 00:28:17:
Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, so the Trucker’s Body Shop, you guys have some products and stuff that you offer the marketplace on top of the opportunity for health insurance as well, right? So talk a little bit about what all Trucker’s Body Shop does to improve the health of truck drivers. Give us the story, man. Give us the details.
Garrett – 00:28:34:
Sure. So we see that truckers are moving targets for the healthcare system. So there’s what we do now, and then there’s what we do in the future. So what we do now is we’re able to provide education, we’re able to provide access to doctors, we’re able to provide access to health coaching, we’re able to provide access to being able to hit the moving target that is a truck driver with medication. So let’s say a trucker wants to lose weight. They come onto our website, they click on the option to lose weight, and then they go through a medical intake. And then the doctor decides if they’re eligible, and then they become a part of our program. In part of our membership, we give them tools and resources. So then what we do is we give them the ability to make sure that that medicine is where they need to be when they need it. And we just schedule those deliveries, we give them multiple months, we give them ongoing support and access to a doctor so they can text them when they need them. They don’t have to worry about setting up a difficult appointment. And then from there, what we’ve done is, we’ve built these urgent cares in a bag. And these urgent cares in a bag allow us to solve an even better issue. So this is where we are now, right? I told you where we started. Where we are now is we can prescribe 23 medications, pneumonia, flu, treat over 50 different common illnesses and infections, right? So we’re talking about staff, we’re talking about UTIs, we’re talking about kidney infections, we’re talking about serious stuff that truckers struggle with on a regular basis. So they can keep a field guide with that bag with them in the truck and have 24-7 access to a doctor so that they’re not putting their health in the backseat. So that’s right, that’s now, that’s where we are. It’s doing very well. We’re having to order a lot more inventory than we have right now. And so…
Brent – 00:30:24:
I was going to say, there’s been a lot of reluctancy among truck drivers to want to even, not just invest in their health, but even buy health insurance or health, you know, access to health insurance. So where does Trucker’s Body Shop, when they offer these services out there, where are you on like a pricing level with those sort of things? Because I mean, go ahead, they’re important, man. So talk a little bit about how you price it out, right?
Garrett – 00:30:45:
So the thing that I want everyone to understand is that investing in your health is the most important thing you can do, period. But the way that we built Trucker’s Body Shop was very intentional. So we don’t spend a whole lot of money off of big advertising budgets, and there’s a reason for that. A lot of health services have to increase their cost of acquisition because the market’s very competitive in a health space. So what we do is we market grassroots. We’re engaged with communities. We’re letting people know by word of mouth and getting referrals, as opposed to having to increase the price that we charge truck drivers in order to give them access to healthcare that they deserve. So we’re starting to take insurance now. We’re working with a lot of the PBMs. We’re working with a lot of the providers in order to make sure that we can do that. And we’re also setting up what are called wholesale acquisition agreements to be able to get medications at cheaper cost to truckers. Right now, what we’re in is this space of most of cash pay. In that cash pay space, what we do is we charge just enough to produce a medication, just enough to ship the medication, just enough to pay the doctor, and just enough to keep our doors open and the business growing. So we take pride in understanding that transparency and ethics guide our business and how we run ourselves as a healthcare entity. Because in the insurance space and the healthcare space, there’s a lot of predatory entities. When they’ve got you, they’ve got you. And they don’t care. They’re going to get their money because you need help, right? And we think that’s unfair and unacceptable. So we don’t run our business that way.
Brent – 00:32:31:
So you’ve got telehealth, you’ve got medical prescriptions, you’ve got health advice, you’ve got these medical bags that you send out for truckers to take on the road with them. So what other services do you offer?
Garrett – 00:32:45:
So I will say, I don’t want to cut too far ahead. And I talked about us being approached by venture capital. And inside that space, what we’ve been working on is something that goes well beyond the bounds of the solutions that exist inside of healthcare for truck drivers right now. I can allude to it, but it’s very stealth. It’s very top secret because what we’re doing goes beyond just our realm and it goes into the broader disruption of the healthcare space as a whole. So with all that teasing done, we’re building decentralized pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies. Because the medical space works in a couple of different ways, right? There’s places where it’s more centralized than it needs to be. And then it’s a struggle to get access to care. Truckers can’t fit a 72 foot long vehicle in every single clinic. They can’t always make time to do that. And they can’t always schedule the time for a telehealth appointment. And then there’s places inside of trucking and the industries at large where it’s not decentralized enough, right? Or it’s too decentralized. So what we’ve done is we’ve been working with a team of engineers to patent technology that allows us to make sure that wherever a truck driver is, whether it’s a Truckstop, whether it’s a motel, they have the ability to access their medications and they can do it through a mobile app. They can walk up, boom, there’s their med. It’s easy. They don’t have to worry about deliveries. And that way we can cover all angles of how everything caters to them because our industry isn’t designed for us, right? It’s designed for the average person.
Brent – 00:34:26:
So I love how your health journey, your challenges across the board, you’re making your mind up. You know, you got to a point and you experienced such great goodness in your life, just you said, I got to help others with this. I got to help others with this. And so what a phenomenal journey along the way for this. All right. So that’s one follow along business that is related to health. You’ve got another couple of endeavors in this marketplace that, you know, coming out of you getting back to fully back to health, you’ve got to get all sort of cylinders clicking here with your health. So you also have some ownership into a freight brokerage. And then so talk for just a second about that, about kind of like what’s your long range goals for that. And then I’m going to talk, the last thing I want to close with talking about Truck World. So let’s talk about the freight brokerage first.
Garrett – 00:35:10:
Absolutely. So I’m working with Freight Flex. We have an agency with them based out of Knoxville. So we’re their arm in Eastern Tennessee. And it’s been really amazing to work with the team there, to learn about brokering, to be engaged with providing shippers the value that they deserve. And we’re really specialized in LTL, FTL, drayage with transloading, hazmat. We have a lot of experience in pharmaceuticals and government freight. And we’re encroaching into that space. And we’re working on serving the needs of the troops. We’re working on serving the needs of government entities. And our long-term goal with this is to change how brokering is done. Work Cost Plus brokerage we want our shippers to understand. Hey, the Market’s up or down. Doesn’t matter. You’re going to pay us the same 15%. It’s not a big deal. You can keep working with us. We’re going to provide value. We have over 23k vetted carriers in our Network right now. So it’s very easy for us and what we also love going to shout out Truckstop here. Truckstop was wonderful for brokers.
Brent – 00:36:23:
I appreciate that. So you’re growing that business. You’re one of the first I’ve heard talk about a cost plus brokerage. And I think as things automate more, you may see more and more of that coming down the road. So that’s exciting. So how’s your business growing on your brokerage as everything’s progressing along?
Garrett – 00:36:37:
It’s growing really well right now. We just started working with Blue Water, and they’ve been giving us a whole lot of shipments coming in out of the ports. The ports are really active right now.
Brent – 00:36:49:
Yeah, they sure are. All right. So that’s exciting. So you’ve got a health initiative that you’re doing that’s a passion project for you. You’ve got inside the middle of transportation. You drove a truck for a while. Now you’re on a freight brokerage side. So you’re growing your business there. And then tell me about your endeavor, because you told me this. I was like, that’s amazing. I think about Truck World. So let’s close on Truck World, and then we’ll wrap up. So tell a little bit about Truck World, what’s going on there. We are going with it.
Garrett – 00:37:13:
I could barely control myself with this one, Brett. It’s so exciting. So as I started really getting involved with the trucking community as a whole, I started making fast friends and realizing that this entire industry is built on relationships. That’s all it is. And you can bring as much value to other people as possible. They’re going to bring as much value to you as they can. And you’re going to be working like an ops team together on everything. And these group chats, just building a foundation of an empire. So I started doing that with Truck World. I got in touch with Dee and Dee and I started collaborating.
Brent – 00:37:54:
I heard Dee, you say Dee, like that’s an initial in the alphabet. Who’s Dee?
Garrett – 00:37:58:
So Dee is the owner of Truck World. He is an amazing guy. He built Truck World, which is now a group on Facebook that has today 665,000 members in it. It is wildly active, wildly engaged. It gets 7 million impressions a week. This group is very active. And Dee is the owner of Truck World. And he hired me as the VP of business development. And what we realized, we had a community where 100,000 people would react and comment to a single post. And it was developing its own culture. It was developing its own customs. And this was a group of people that could be mobilized to make a difference. And that there isn’t per se an industry that solves the needs, I should say, organizations solves the needs of truck drivers. The ATA helps with trucking to an extent and trucking companies. OOIDA is very passionate about owner operators and contractors. The African-American Women in Trucking Association is very passionate about putting inspiring leaders forward for Black women so that they know that there’s something they can look forward to in their career success. And then there’s Women in Trucking, right? So there’s all these wonderful sectors. But one of the things that truckers still feel like is that, these organizations are corporate. They’re not theirs, right? And we wanted to build an app where we could centralize this giant trucking community, provide them the services that they deserve, work with partners like Truckstop, and for us to be able to take a portion of the money that we make off of the services sold on the free app in order to be able to invest in trackable initiatives inside of the trucking industry to show the progress that we’re generating. Because truckers are talking about rallying all the time. They’re talking about how unhappy they are. They’re talking about how they feel that people don’t stand for them. And the reason that exists is because it’s very hard to unify as an industry, as drivers, when our livelihoods and our families depend on our work. It keeps us on the road and it keeps us from using our voices. So if we have an app where everyone’s getting the best value possible, and their money is going towards initiatives that the community itself is voting upon, then we solve the gap. The gap in access to having a voice. And we’re really passionate. I’ve been passionate about access for healthcare. What we want now is we want access to community. We want access to value. And we want access to change for the trucking industry. The time is now for that, right? There’s so many people on social media talking about how difficult it is to be a driver. And we’re worried. We’re worried about things like self-driving trucks. We’re worried about things like broker transparency. We’re worried about things like, am I going to make enough money to feed my family against the cost of repairs and inflation? So that’s what we’re doing in Truck World. We’re bringing together the community, making an app by truckers, for truckers, of the community, to be able to affect the industry at an organizational and lobbying level, in addition to providing value.
Brent – 00:41:26:
Wow. You know, I’ll tell you, all right, Freight Nation, Garrett accomplished one of the hardest things to do in life, which is to radically transform his behavior, to do something, to change something in his life. And I say this about when you’re trying to lose weight in your life, you have to change your behavior in something you can’t stop doing, because you have to continue to eat in order to sustain your life. But being able to make those changes is one of the hardest parts in life. And that transformational change starts in the head, as he talked about, when he made his mind up to do it. And then the journey along getting there, the discipline along getting there, the taking it, making notes and keeping strict schedule on himself was able to help him accomplish something that few have ever accomplished in their life. And so I’m not surprised that you are doing Truckers Body Shop. I’m not surprised that the Truckworld is going to be a success, because once you set your mind to do something, and I think that’s really what I want you to take away from Freight Nation today, if you’re watching this. Your mindset in something is the most important thing, because once your mind is made up, your body tends to follow. Man, well, Garrett, thank you so much for telling your story and inspiring so many people in this industry, and then doing something about it to give them something that can be for them, like Truckworld. I mean, what a great entrepreneur, what a great representative of trucking right there, right here, Freight Nation, Mr. Garrett Steenblik. Garrett, thank you for joining us today.
Garrett – 00:42:45:
I’ve had a great time, Brent. Thank you. You are amazing. And I feel so, so good to be able to have this conversation with you.
Brent – 00:42:55:
Yeah. And me too.
Garrett – 00:42:56:
And it feels like an arrival.
Brent – 00:42:58:
Yeah, man. Well, I love it. You know, the inspiration on something to build even better to help more people. So, man, Garrett, really, I thank you for the inspiration that you are for this industry and just appreciate you joining me on Freight Nation.
Garrett – 00:43:10:
Thank you, Brent.
Brent – 00:43:11:
You’re so welcome. Well, Freight Nation, what a story. Ben, I hope you take a lot away from this one, that no matter what, it starts with just taking the first step, making your mind up and taking the first step and following Garrett’s example to create success in your life and in your health, the most important part of your life. Well, Freight Nation, that’s a wrap for today. As we always say at Freight Nation, don’t forget to work hard. That’s in all parts of your life. Work hard in all parts of your life. To be kind, because, man, that helps you people know you care about them and to stay humble. All right, Freight Nation, don’t forget those three things and don’t forget Garrett’s example. We’ll catch you the next time. Thanks a lot.
Outro – 00:43:46:
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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