Episode 65: From Freight Frustrations to Industry Innovations with Shelli Austin, President of InTek Freight and Logistics, Inc.

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, Freight Nation. I hope wherever you are today in our great country that you are being prosperous and you’re enjoying the drive and that you’re beneficially moving freight for the United States citizen. And I know that at Truckstop, we really appreciate everything you do. And so this podcast is a whole lot of fun. We launched it a while back to just talk about the great stories in freight. And I know you have a lot of things you can do with your time, Freight Nation. So thank you so much for joining in. And we always want to be a benefit to you. We want to be a benefit to you on a lot of levels. We want to be a benefit to you on an understanding of maybe a different part of the marketplace. We want to help you think about business in a greater way. And we also want you to hear a story that maybe could motivate you to make some additions, some changes, some things, like some nuances in your life and in your business that can help you be more successful in moving freight around the United States. And today is a sort of, you’re going to get a really good, cool, deep dive into a part of the marketplace that I didn’t know hardly anything about, but until I got to work at Truckstop. So I’d been 15 years in the marketplace and another part of trucking.. But I didn’t know anything about the drayage marketplace, the intermodal marketplace. I didn’t know anything about this. I just assumed, yeah, that all hits a truck and yeah, it all handles by the same people. Well, pump the brakes and hold on because it doesn’t. And I was at a show in Houston, Texas, this session of this show that talked about intermodal. And there was this person on stage talking about intermodal. And I was like, that is a cool person. Not only were they explaining it tom me, where I could understand it. They were really fun and entertaining, and on top of that, she’s an engineer. So joining me today is one of my dear friends and one of my favorite people in the marketplace because she can help my brain understand drayage and intermodal. Ms. Shelli Austin, president of InTek. Thank you so much, Shelli, for joining me today.

Shelli – 00:02:11:

Well, thank you, Brent. I’m glad to be here.

Brent – 00:02:12:

That’s a big introduction, but I’m serious about this, Freight Nation. So the intermodal and drayage part of our marketplace, obviously, is super valuable, super important part of what we do as far as goods being able to move back and forth. But it is different. It’s way different. So I’m super excited that Shelli’s going to talk a lot about that. She has deep knowledge, deep experience over a quarter of a century. I’m not trying to date her or anything. My point about this is that it’s always good to get a deep dive into this, and I know you’re going to benefit that today. All right. So, Shelli, you and I have a long, a long history together. We actually met, I think it was either 2013 or 2014 that I got to meet and become friends. You’ve had a long history in this marketplace, which is a wonderful thing. Back when you were Indiana Purdue graduate engineering, did you say, I can’t wait to get into freight? I want to hear the story about how you got to the freight industry and what lined it up for you that you said, oh, wow, I can have a career here and I can create significance for myself.

Shelli – 00:03:08:

Houston was really hot. Do you remember Houston? It was like extremely hot. That conference was amazing. But that particular one, I remember just because opposed to me being in Jacksonville last week when it was freezing. When you go to Florida, it’s supposed to be warm. But when we were in Houston, it was just terribly hot. But yes, and speaking of did I know I was going to do this? Absolutely not.

Brent – 00:03:29:

No.

Shelli – 00:03:30:

I have a really funny story, actually. My degree is not engineering, although I did take some engineering classes, and I would like to say that I’m an engineer in the intermodal space for sure. But when I started out in school, oddly enough, I started out with a Fulbright scholarship to Butler University with theater technology. So I actually did it on my own. I trained on how to do pyrotechnics. I did most of the backstage stuff. I learned how to cast people’s faces, made masks, like a witch’s mask and a wolf’s mask, and all these different things. And so I really enjoyed it. I felt like that was my focus because I was able to learn something that was different that other people weren’t doing. And so I was so excited with this. Now, keep in mind this very small high school that I went to, and yes, I was a Speedway Spark Club. Yes, Spark Club, right?

Brent – 00:04:18:

Indianapolis thing.

Shelli – 00:04:19:

It’s an Indianapolis thing, yes. So in that smaller school, you could do everything. So I was an athlete. I played basketball. I ran track. I ran cross country. I was a band nerd. I played the drums. I was the lead drummer in the band.

Brent – 00:04:34:

You sat behind like a drum kit. Did you do standard drums or were you like the performance drums where you’ve got like the one out in front of you and y’all in a line?

Shelli – 00:04:42:

Oh, Brent, why pick one? I did it all.

Brent – 00:04:44:

You did it all?

Shelli – 00:04:44:

I did it all. Yes. Yes. So I did have my drum set. We called it a set. And so I did jazz band, which jazz band was my heart. I love jazz band. And so I had a drum set. And then also we did marching band. And so I was the snare drummer. And the thing is, when you’re a drummer in band, you play the whole time. Everybody else gets a little break when you’re marching. The drummers, they play the whole time. They got to do all those cadences. You throw your sticks and do something funky and fun. And so we had concert band, we had stage band, and we had marching band.

Brent – 00:05:12:

So you’ve been the foundation of a lot of things that you’ve worked on. Here’s what I want you to know, Freight Nation, about being the drummer. And I’ve learned it because I’ve got several musicians in my family. The drummer is the foundation of the band. They keep the timing. They keep the pace. They keep the energy. They keep every part of it. So if you don’t know that about the drummer, it’s very important to the timing and the performance of the entire band.

Shelli – 00:05:32:

Absolutely. Now, my kids, they’re band nerds, too, but they didn’t take on the drums. One’s a saxophone and one’s a trumpet. Carrying on the band tradition. So this is good. So anyway, back to this story. You would think with all that, that I wouldn’t have chosen Freight. And I didn’t.

Brent – 00:05:45:

Yeah. Theater pyrotechnics and Freight. Yeah, they’re synonymous. I think so.

Shelli – 00:05:50:

I’m telling you. Yeah, they are. So to do that, I had to perform to get the scholarship. So I did perform and it was in a musical and I had all kinds of songs that I had to do.

Brent – 00:05:59:

Oh, my gosh. What musical was it?

Shelli – 00:06:00:

It was Brigadoon. I was Meg Brokey in Brigadoon.

Brent – 00:06:04:

I love it. When I was a freshman in college, I was Roy in Chorus Line. I had two lines. It was just a clap class. I was a football player in college. And so I thought it would be like an easy A. It was more work than football practice.

Shelli – 00:06:16:

Telling you.

Brent – 00:06:17:

Oh, my gosh.

Shelli – 00:06:18:

It’s hard stuff. So go to Butler and I start doing classes for theater. And what I quickly realized was unless I wanted to live out of a box and not have any money for the first very long part of my career, it probably wasn’t what I was looking for. Once you get into that, you feel like this is great. I taught myself how to do this stuff, but it’s a little different than what I think I want to do. So I then decided that I was going to get out of theater. And that’s when I chose to get into business. I transferred from Butler over to IU, what at the time was IUPUI, Indiana Kelly School of Business. And I got my bachelor’s degree from IUPUI, basically IU though. And I leaned toward the IU side. If you’ve got two schools here in Indiana, you’ve got IU and Purdue, so you’ve got a state.

Brent – 00:07:06:

Right.

Shelli – 00:07:07:

You got to take a stand. So I got my bachelor’s degree there. And then I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. At one point in time, I wanted to be a teacher. And then I had some really crazy, very scary instructor that said, if you’re into teaching to get your summers off, you’re in the wrong place. And I’m like, oh, was that why I went into teaching? I don’t know. So I did some student teaching and I did it in the grade school. And I just wasn’t really into stringing the fruit loops. And I just didn’t have, I don’t think I had the patience for the young’uns. So I decided very quickly to move from that. So again, I hopped all over the place.

Brent – 00:07:41:

I got to ask you a question with this. So you started out on the creative end of your post-high school education. Is this sort of trying to figure this out and weaving this? Is this the creative side of you that is like, you’re like trying to design it? You know what I mean? Like I’ve several creatives in my family and there I see that in them, where they’re just, it’s the world is every option to them.

Shelli – 00:08:02:

Oh, absolutely.

Brent – 00:08:03:

Yeah.

Shelli – 00:08:04:

I can’t sit still. You know me. You’ve known me long enough.

Brent – 00:08:06:

Yeah, that is true. You do have a tough time sitting. That’s a good thing.

Shelli – 00:08:10:

I do have a tough time sitting still. So with that, you want to do everything until you find that one thing that you think you’re decent at. So I just went out to the work world and I got a job and it was a temp job. I was so not popular or noticed in this job that my badge didn’t even have a picture. Everybody else had a picture. I had a blue box. That was my first job, right? And it was with a company called BrightPoint. They were the largest cell phone wireless distributor. Lots of fun. And I just started out auditing freight bills. I know everybody says this. It’s almost like the parents saying they walked up both ways on the hill or something. I can’t remember what that saying is. Terrible at sayings. But that’s what I did. I started out auditing paper freight bills. And most of them were LTL freight bills. Oh, terrible. So that’s where I started. And then I just worked my way up in that company. So I was on the shipper side of the business. I had a tremendous amount of mentors in the space that really wanted to see me grow in that area. And that’s why I chose transportation. Because I had all these wonderful people that showed me the different things that you could do in transportation. I got to work with the LTL service. I got to work with the truckload service. We were very large in parcel freight. So the FedEx and UPSs of the world. And so I moved up to the director of transportation.

Brent – 00:09:31:

How long did that take you to move up to the director of transportation?

Shelli – 00:09:34:

Probably about three years.

Brent – 00:09:35:

Wow. Who was the first mentor that you went, that person helped me see what I could become? Who was that person? You said you had some great mentors. I did.

Shelli – 00:09:45:

I did have some, and I still am fortunate enough to be associated with a couple of them. The very first one would have been David Ladd from FedEx. He was the one that found me while I was staring over stacks of paper freight mills. And he just showed me different things in the transportation industry and how they could be exciting and got to network me through the FedEx organization, which was really cool because they do so much. And so he was probably the first one. I would say the second one is my business partner, Rick Lagore, that I am still working with.

Brent – 00:10:17:

Yeah, Rick Lagore, yeah.

Shelli – 00:10:19:

Yeah, I’m very fortunate to still be working with him. And he came into BrightPoint layer. As a matter of fact, this is a funny story. I hated him. I didn’t like him at all. And I didn’t want to have a thing to do with him. Fast forward, we’ve been business partners for 28 years. So I think we finally figured out how to get along. But he came in. So I had been working at BrightPoint for a while. And they had this thing where they unfortunately would lay off groups of people all at once. And so you got very scared of that. And they had this one huge layoff. And so then he came in with the group that replaced the folks that got laid off. And they were from Macmillan Publishing. So as the culture does in the industry, because culture is so big, us BrightPoint folks called them BrightPoint folks. So they had a connotation. We didn’t want to deal with them. They came in and took the place of people we loved and adored and worked with and so on and so forth. So Rick came in and he was tasked to run the transportation department. Do good things and build it and so on and so forth. And I had transitioned to resource planning because of all the uproar. And so he had heard that I knew things about transportation. And so he tried to hire me. And I said, absolutely not.

Brent – 00:11:33:

No, I’m out of that.

Shelli – 00:11:34:

And he would tell you, so I’m sure if you were telling him, he would tell you that I was in my Speedway coach’s jacket because he thinks it’s so funny that I used to wear Speedway stuff. So with my spark plug.

Brent – 00:11:43:

When you say Speedway, tell Freight Nation, the Freight Nation watchers what you’re talking about. When you say Speedway coach’s jacket, what is the Speedway coach’s jacket?

Shelli – 00:11:50:

That’s my high school Speedway spark plugs.

Brent – 00:11:52:

I brought the Speedway spark plugs.

Shelli – 00:11:53:

Yeah? I was wearing it proud.

Brent – 00:11:56:

The reason she’s referring to Speedway is Indianapolis has a very famous track there called the Indianapolis 500.

Shelli – 00:12:03:

See my background?

Brent – 00:12:04:

That’s the reference point.

Shelli – 00:12:06:

There’s some 500 there. Yeah.

Brent – 00:12:07:

That’s right.

Shelli – 00:12:09:

That’s how we met. And once I finally gave in and went to work with Rick, that’s where it all started and moving forward. He moved on and went to another company and started some great things. And I stayed back for a little while. And then I went to another company, spent some time in China, did some warehousing and transportation for a small widget company and did the overseas. And then he called me a couple of years later and said, hey, you want to start up a transportation company?

Brent – 00:12:35:

Right. Yeah. I was going to ask you what got to that point of you moving out of someone else’s structure in their business and saying, nope, I’m ready to take the plunge and do it all myself. A big day, right? That’s a big day in your brain. And what year was that? What I think the Freight Nation watchers and listeners always want to know is what motivated you to do it?

Shelli – 00:12:57:

Oh, geez. And a year, I don’t know, we’re early 2000s, somewhere around there. And what occurred was Rick called me and said, do you want to help me start up a transportation company? And I think that what motivated me to do it, Brent, was I had spent the time on the shipper side of the business. And you deal with things where you’re frustrated with the providers and you wish you could make a change and you wish you could make it better. And Rick and I would always talk about that. And so when he called me up, I’m like, well, this is my chance. I can go in and I could make a difference and I can do things better for the people that are working with us than what we get today. And it’s all that creativity, right? It was something I could create. I didn’t have to go in and sit in someone else’s position and do exactly what they did or expectations to do what they did. I can go in and build and create. And that has truly been a driving force for me in my entire career is wanting to constantly build something new, provide something new to our customers. I don’t like doing just the same old thing. So that’s how it all started. And I said, yes. And we went over there. And at the time, we were part of a warehousing organization. And then as we transgressed, Rick and I bought the company from the other two owners.

Brent – 00:14:07:

Prodder is involved. Okay.

Shelli – 00:14:09:

Four owners. And this is where you see us today. Rick and I are still, we just took the transportation piece. So we focus on the transportation, but the good thing is we have all that background. So that’s why we’re a strong 3PL because we can do other things. We have the expertise and other things to our customers to where we’re not just doing one thing for them.

Brent – 00:14:26:

Yeah, for sure. All right. So we back up one little half step here. And I want the Freight Nation watchers and listeners to hear you comment on this. How much did your relationship and trust in Rick, weigh on your decision to go do this?

Shelli – 00:14:43:

Oh, quite a bit.

Brent – 00:14:44:

Because nobody accomplishes things alone. I know sometimes people think, oh, there’s these rugged cowboys or cowgirls out there or whatever else. There’s not. We all need each other. So the idea of having somebody you trust, to me, I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that, about how the heck you make the decision, and then how that helps you in the beginning of being able to get things how you wanted them.

Shelli – 00:15:04:

Yeah. So I mentioned to you that I didn’t want to have a thing to do with right at the beginning. I think that was good, right? Because it wasn’t like I immediately accepted. There had to be proof on both sides. So with not just immediately accepting, I had to prove to him that I had the skills and the ability to do what I thought I could do. And then likewise, he needed to prove to me that he was going to be that strong, reliable resource that I thought he was, but trustworthy and have the same fix. It’s just, it’s really important. But what we realized, what has just been super helpful throughout all the years is we compliment each other. We really don’t have the same strengths.

Brent – 00:15:46:

So key. Yeah.

Shelli – 00:15:47:

Yeah. We don’t have the same strengths. He is a financial genius, honestly, a financial genius. I don’t know what goes on in that head. And if I did, it would scare me. And so he just is amazing on that. He’s amazing on the structure of business, managing business, and has been the reason that we’ve continued to grow and thrive. Me, I’m that getter bone kind of gal. Like I’m out there. If there’s a solution, I’m going to find it. I am on that operational sales solutions, business development. That’s me. Like I want to create and build and do everything that I possibly can.

Brent – 00:16:20:

Right. Yeah. That’s fantastic. When did you launch InTek? And then when did you buy the other two partners? So it just became you and Rick. And then how’d you get the name InTek?

Shelli – 00:16:30:

So I mentioned early 2000s. We started in 2016 is when we bought out the other two.

Brent – 00:16:35:

Oh, okay. Wow. You were a very young person in 20’s. You were much younger.

Shelli – 00:16:40:

Oh, you’re so kind.

Brent – 00:16:42:

Well, you started these things here in 2000, right?

Shelli – 00:16:44:

Yeah. Can we do more of these? You can make me feel so much better when you give me compliments and the gap. So, and then how did we get the name? That’s fun. We did this and we had a very short window of opportunity to buy the company. It amazes me. We were able to pull it all off in 30 days. How we did that, I don’t know. I would say it’s because of Rick. That’s all him. Not financial genius, but we did it. And then we had to find a space to put all the people in because we were so fortunate that we didn’t lose a single customer and we didn’t lose a single employee when we did this. And that was really fortunate. And so we found a space and it didn’t, I mean, it was one of those things that you see in a cartoon. I used to love to read the funnies in the newspaper and it was, you know, this wide open space. And we had wires hanging from the ceiling and card tables. And Rick and I had to sit next to each other at this one card table.

Brent – 00:17:35:

What do you mean? Did you say you had the proverbial card table where they did the standard?

Shelli – 00:17:38:

No. They were long and rectangle. Yeah.

Brent – 00:17:40:

The standard folding table that you put out. Oh yeah. You’d be surprised how many businesses start on the old folding table.

Shelli – 00:17:46:

Absolutely. Yeah. Our conference room, which was not a room, but our conference table, I remember we had like some kind of old Thanksgiving thing on it to cover it up because it was so gross looking. But anyway, this is how we started. And one night we had a different name to start with. And it was R-squared Freight and Logistics. We did a lot of research before we did it, but unfortunately we missed something when we were doing the research and that there was an R2. And so we got a very kind letter letting us know that there was an R2. And so we had to quickly decide we were going to change our name. We were in this wire hanging crazy office. Like, what are we going to name the company? We got to do this. We got to get it done. The street that building was on was Intech. And it was Intech Boulevard, but it was I-N-T-E-C-H. And we thought if we name it something like Intech, it’s going to make us look really big. Because we’ve got a street named after us. But we didn’t do the same spelling. We decided that we were going to spell it the way we did here, the I-N-T-E-K, and with the T-E-K at the end, because we were very tech forward. Like we are a technology transportation companies. We want to have the most advanced technology to help support our customers. And so hence, that’s how we came up with it was the street name. And then also we want to be a tech logistics company.

Brent – 00:19:08:

Right, which is the modern logistics company involves a lot of technology. So you started your own business. And I want you to talk a little bit about. Starting your own business, what are some of the things that you would not do the same way? And then I want you to talk about how starting a logistics business. In drayage and intermodal is different than, say, standard long-haul full truckload freight. And so talk a little bit about that because I think, to me, this is what’s fascinating about it because I’ve done a lot of investigation into the marketplace. And yes, it’s trucks, it’s ships, and so it’s moving freight, but it has a lot of nuances that are different. So I’d love for you to talk about that. You educated me on this. So talk a little bit about those two things. What are some of the things that you do a little differently? And then fundamentally, how’s drayage, the application different? Or drayage and intermodal? I know, I’ve got to say both.

Shelli – 00:19:57:

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m sure there’s things that potentially maybe we would have done a little differently. But I am the big believer in you learn from the bad and the good. So I’m not sure that we would have benefited from doing anything differently because no matter what we did, we learned from it. And that’s how you do better and you succeed through that. And I tell my kids this the same time. They’re so tired of hearing me because they’ll come home and complain about a bad professor or a bad teacher. And I’m like, you learn just as much from that bad professor and teacher that you do from the ones that you really like. And so that’s the way I feel about it in the business world as well. One of the key points that I feel like in our industry, we used to think, or I’m just going to say, that’s not a pronoun problem because this is what I thought. But that you could just hire strong people and teach them the business. And I think that actually is possible in different industries, but in our business world, and we’ll get into why this is when we talk about the dray and the intermodal, trying to make our niche in the marketplace in that business, it’s not as easy to just hire good workers and teach them the business. That I would say is something that we learned, or that I learned later on was it’s really more beneficial to try and find folks within the industry. Now you could find folks that are doing different pieces of the industry and trainee them how to do it. It’s just a little bit bigger of a learning curve. Cause you gotta have the love and the passion for this. We’re talking planes, trains, and automobiles. There’s nothing sexy about that, right? You gotta have the passion for this. And so if you find folks that are not in this industry and you try and trainee it, they don’t inherently come with that passion.

Brent – 00:21:40:

Right. That and you need them to stick around. Anyways, keep going. That’s a phenomenal point that Brent Hutto makes all the time to the industry about the need, not the need just to have industry experience, but the first part. You got to really love it. You got to want it. And if you do that, it’s hard not to find success.

Shelli – 00:21:59:

It is. It is. And we are a large industry, but a small one. And we all connect. Once you get into this, it’s really hard to get out of it.

Brent – 00:22:06:

Amen. It’s like the mafia a little bit.

Shelli – 00:22:08:

It is like the mafia. Yes. That’s a good stepping stone into the drayage and the intermodal. So we actually started out, when Rick and I started the company, we started out doing regional truckload brokerage. We did not do any intermodal. And we found that it was really hard to make money in small regional truckload brokerage. And this is funny. We come back full circle and Rick told me he wanted to get into intermodal. And I said, you’re crazy. I said, I don’t want to do that. I said, it’s a slow boat to China. It’s damage. It’s terrible. I said, no, we’re not going to do that. And he was like, no, I really think we need to do that. So again, just like I said, I didn’t want to work with Rick. And then I ended up working with Rick. And then I tell him we’re not doing intermodal. And guess who sits on the board of the IANA Intermodal Association?

Brent – 00:22:55:

I was going to bring that up in a minute about, oh yeah, isn’t that, that’s very interesting how you were against it. And now you’re on the board and you were the past chairman. Now the intermodal, the International Intermodal Association. So crazy.

Shelli – 00:23:08:

Yeah. So here’s what made me just totally dive in. And it’s my absolute passion now. Like Intermodal is that I want to bring every service we possibly can, even new ones to our customers. And further on in life, I want to educate on it. Like I love this service. And the reason why I’m so passionate about it is going back to the theater, it’s not easy. And I love it because it’s not easy. And I love the fact that for our customers, we can do something that they can’t just do on the internet. They can’t just go find an Intermodal solution on the internet. They have to work with what we call an IFC, which is what we call ourselves an Intermodal marketing company. And it’s not easy for them. They can’t go direct to the railroads because the railroads are a wholesaler, not a retailer.

Brent – 00:23:52:

Yes, yes.

Shelli – 00:23:53:

Yes. And so this is what made me just completely pivot and turn and agree with Rick’s vision was that we can do this and add value to whatever we’re doing. And instead of just putting money in the middle of it, we’re adding value. And that helps me sleep at night that we’re actually adding value to what we do. And it also is fun because we can create different services. So intermodal, so just for our truck friends that are listening to Freight Nation, which are a lot of them, intermodal is this, I call it the puzzle. There’s all these different parts and pieces, but you’ve got the bridge, which is the trucking portion of it on the front end. So that’s where you do your pickup. And then you have the rail in the middle. So we’ve got all of our good friends at the railroads, which I enjoy thoroughly working with the railroads. And so we’ve got all of our friends at the railroads. So that’s the middle part, right? It runs on rail. And then the final delivery, which is truck again. So you got truck, rail, truck. And there’s different providers, different ways, different box types, different, all kinds of different things on all three of those pieces. So you have to be very knowledgeable on how you’re going to execute those three pieces to make sure that the intermodal solution is still cheaper than truck, because that’s the whole point, right? People want to do truckload conversion to intermodal because it should be cheaper. Now there’s some other pieces on intermodal throughout the years. It’s sustainability. That sustainability is really big because everybody is looking for sustainable solutions in the truck space. We’ve already got it. If you’re a broker and your customer is saying, I need to mark that box of sustainability and I need to have a solution. If I were a truck broker and never got into intermodal, that would be the first thing I would figure out how to do is how do I get intermodal solutions to add to my truck solution so that I can help my customer get to that sustainability goal.

Brent – 00:25:42:

Yeah. So you’re talking about like carbon footprint reduction, that sort of thing. Freight Nation, that’s what Shelli’s talking about. She’s saying that, and it’s true because I’ve heard this from many other really large players that are in the intermodal stage type segment. They talk about lowering the carbon footprint. The fastest way to do it is to find the most efficient way within the intermodal movement that all the way across the board to lower that. And a lot of it applies to scale. But if you’ve got that as a goal, then certainly. So keep going. That’s a fantastic point of view.

Shelli – 00:26:09:

Yeah. So that is one thing that I think is a huge win. Some of the other things that are a huge win on the rail is everybody’s into this fraud and theft, and it’s really big in our industry right now. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s not an intermodal, but I can tell you that there’s different versions of an intermodal that are a little less impact. So fraud is a little less an intermodal. I think fraud and theft are two different things. And so I’m going to state them as two different things. The fraud is more opposing as somebody you’re not, and then taking the cargo, whereas straight theft to me is like, I want that. I’m breaking into that, and I’m getting that. You’ve got a lot of fraud in the truck industry. And then in the intermodal space, you do have some theft. The railroads are working really hard on that, but you have less theft as long as it keeps moving. So where you see the theft on the cargo and with the railroads in the intermodal is if it’s moving and then it stops, then it’s easy for somebody to peg it and get into it. But if you find solutions where you keep that moving, think about it. It’s really hard to steal something on a moving trainee. It’s not very easy. And especially if it’s in the bottom well of a trainee. When you talk about cross-border, we’re big on Mexico. We want to grow Mexico this year in all kinds of ways. And if you think about that’s one huge issue in Mexico, right? It is theft and they’re having troubles keeping draggers and everything else. So if you think about the intermodal is moving on that trainee, it’s not stopping. And we have steel wheel services. So it’s not stopping at the border. It’s going all the way through. So it’s safer. It’s cheaper. And the transit times on the railroads right now for most really good intermodal lanes, you’re talking one truck plus one day. Or let’s go back to Shelli Dunlun to it because it’s the slow boat to China. Here I go getting proved wrong again. But it’s great. And then some of the, I kid you not Brent, some of them are meeting truck transit. So you got some of your California to Chicago that probably beat truck a little bit. Because if the truck stopped at the J&J and spent a little too much time there, that trainee is beating it. So the transit times have really improved. The railroads constantly work on their service capabilities. And so it’s a lot of fun to see the growth of intermodal from when we started in it and I was opposed to it to where it’s at today. And it has so many growth opportunities. It’s not landlocked. Intermodal is not landlocked. Like literally that you can continue to grow it. You can continue to build routes. And we just talked about Mexico. You’ve got Mexico to, you know, that cross border. And you’ve got Mexico and Canada. And you can do Mexico all the way to Canada all the way to Mexico. Or you can do vice versa. But there’s all kinds of cross border opportunities. So it’s the puzzle. If you don’t want to do the same thing every day and you want to put something together and create a new solution, intermodal is the place to be.

Brent – 00:28:56:

Freight Nation, can you see why I enjoyed listening to Shelli as many years ago? She just brings it and she does it with a smile and she makes it fun. And I’m sorry that I really thought you were an engineer for some reason.

Shelli – 00:29:08:

Because I like building the solutions.

Brent – 00:29:10:

I’m finding the creative side of my friend here.

Shelli – 00:29:12:

Yes.

Brent – 00:29:13:

So I want to talk about a couple of things. And so we’ve got about seven or eight minutes left. And I want to talk about your involvement with the Intermodal Association and about your involvement there and about why you’re involved. And then I want you to close with this because you talked about the mentors that helped you. And so I want to know, how are you applying your level of expertise as a mentor to others and how is that helping others? So let’s talk a little bit about why be involved in associations and your involvement and those sort of things. And then I want to talk about you being a mentor to others and how that shaped you and your mentorship and how you’re helping others, because I know you do.

Shelli – 00:29:53:

So. I’ll talk about IANA.

Brent – 00:29:55:

Define it for us. It’s IANA, which is?

Shelli – 00:29:59:

Intermodal Association of North America.

Brent – 00:30:01:

There we go.

Shelli – 00:30:01:

I would have been really in trouble if I got that wrong, by the way.

Brent – 00:30:05:

Past chairman and board member, yes, you would.

Shelli – 00:30:07:

Yes, yes, I would have. So you talk about mentors, and there were a couple other mentors later on in my career, and they’re the ones that got me started in the organization work. So to start off with was Sam Ennis from the Norfolk.

Brent – 00:30:21:

Oh, thank God. I met Sam the same day I met you.

Shelli – 00:30:24:

You did. And the reason why is because we were at TIA. And my first board activity was with the TIA. And I replaced Sam on the board and TIA. And then TIA didn’t used to have an intermodal committee. And Sam and then the next person I’m going to mention, we all took the charge and created the intermodal committee that is very strong right now and very impactful with the TIA. That other person is Jeff Brashears.

Brent – 00:30:52:

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Shelli – 00:30:53:

And Jeff Brashears is one of those just awesome. Most people know him. If you’re in the railroad industry and you don’t know Jeff Brashears, you’re missing out. And he is an expert and has taught me so many things in the intermodal space. And so I’d say as far as industry networking in my career now, I would attribute to Jeff really putting a whole lot into sponsoring my growth. And furthermore, not just mine, InTeks growth. He is a huge fan of InTek and really wants to help support us. He’s currently with CMA and he runs a domestic repo program. So as we talked about intermodal, most people think it’s 53 footers, but they’re the small boxes. So the 40s and the 45s that are used for international business, they need to get those back to the coast, to the West coast and East coast. So if you find that sweet spot in the Midwest or the east where those boxes are, and you can load those boxes and help the steamship lines, get them back to the coast. You are talking great rates and your customer is going to think you are just the most amazing, smartest person ever. So it’s a neat program. So Sam and Jeff, they got me started at the TIA. And that’s when we started doing our panels and talking where you met me. And we just carried that on. And then transitioning from the TIA, Jeff was on the IANA board. And he had asked me to, once I rolled off of the TIA board, he asked me to take his spot on the IANA board. And so that’s when I started with IANA. And I will tell you, my passion for intermodal grew substantially from being on that board. The board is small but mighty. I say small. It’s just smaller than other boards I’ve been on.

Brent – 00:32:36:

Smaller boards are better.

Shelli – 00:32:37:

I like them better. Yes, because you can actually have a say. You can make an impact. You can literally do things and have an opportunity to make a change. And IANA has so much growth ahead of it. We’re super excited. Joni Casey, who was the previous CEO, took it to such a great level. And now she has retired. And we have Anne, who was at TIA. And she is now the CEO and has just amazing opportunity ahead to let us all put IANA on the map and make sure that we’re doing great things for the intermodal industry. So a lot of why I love it so much is because you’ve got the railroads on there. So I get to see and talk with our railroad friends. You have the steamship lines and the marine on there. So we get to deal with kind of the port side of intermodal. We haven’t talked much about that, but that is a piece of intermodal. And we get to deal with the equipment. Providers. So your chassis and all those things that I told you about the puzzle. Those are all the parts and pieces that make it work. And then us, the 3PL side of the business, and I’m probably missing one, but you’ve got these different modes. So you get to literally associate with everybody that makes intermodal work. There’s not one group on that board that doesn’t have to come together and collaborate. And that’s why I love it. Everybody has to collaborate. You don’t compete. You collaborate.

Brent – 00:33:54:

That’s one of the themes of just trucking in general. It’s amazing how we’re all in the same marketplace, but you would think we’d all compete, but it’s more collaboration than anything.

Shelli – 00:34:02:

And that’s why we love this industry. And that’s why we have such a great network. It’s all about your network, right? So with that being said, and to transition into your last question. So one of my favorite things on the IANA board is to chair the scholarship committee. And I’ve been doing that for a while. And one of my favorite activities on that is at Expo every year, we have a student case competition. And so the scholarship committee, we actually give scholarships to the colleges. And then those colleges come together at the Expo. They travel there and they have teams. And we give them a case that’s related to intermodal. And they literally have five hours to come up with a solution for that case. And it’s very real world stuff. It’s so cool. And then I get to judge it. So I love that. We get to judge and see what creativity they come up with and how they execute their response. In the first part, they get those five hours. But then there’s a round two where it’s literally off the cuff. We get to ask many questions. And they just have to be able to come up with it on their own. So absolutely love that. So that’s part of giving back. I’m on the IU Kelley School of Business Transportation Board and get to work with phenomenal people there that have all been in the industry. And so I enjoy working with the students there. I get to mentor some of the students there and talk to them on a regular basis and help them with where they’re going in their career. And what I love, Brent, about talking to students, as a matter of fact, I get to talk to their class on Friday. I get to, present and talk to the class on Friday for IU. But what I love about it is these students are not just doing transportation, right? They’re doing accounting and supply chain. They’re doing engineering and supply chain. They’re doing. And this is what I tell everybody. I’m like, it doesn’t matter what your degree is in. There is a job for you in logistics.

Brent – 00:35:49:

Oh my goodness, I say that all the time. Say that again. Just say it again, please.

Shelli – 00:35:53:

Yeah, it doesn’t matter what degree you’re in. There is a job for you in logistics. And it is a fun one. And it is different. This is why accounting and logistics is not bank accounting. There’s so many tech positions. There’s engineering. Anything you go into in college, there is a place for you in supply chain.

Brent – 00:36:13:

Yeah. Amen to that. Amen. All right. So let’s close on this point of view. So we went through a very unique time during the pandemic where everybody was in transportation was making a pretty good living and then it corrected all the way back down to normal. We’ve had a couple of years of just the normal ups and downs and bumps and drags in our marketplace. So 2025, I just got back from a conference and there was a lot of talk about 2025 and maybe into 2026. How does Shelli see that? And then we’ll close on that.

Shelli – 00:36:40:

2025. Well, I don’t think we’re going to break the records that we all want to break in 2025. But I had this feeling in my gut that it’s going to be stronger than the past couple years. That is a good feeling. I think, though, that everybody has to be don’t accept what you have always done and what your solutions have always been. And 25, the way you’re going to grow and the way you’re going to succeed is you’re going to get and do things for your customers that you probably didn’t do before, because nothing is the same as what it used to be. And every time we turn around, there’s some new thing disrupting our market. And so we have to learn to pivot and create new solutions on the fly the entire year. It’s not what we used to think as a traditional transportation cycle. That’s no longer.

Brent – 00:37:32:

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic closing words. I’ll include as well, a quote from Albert Einstein. And this goes along with your creative brain. You can’t change the system using the thinking that created it. You got to keep reinventing things. So, Shelli, I tell you what, I know the Freight Nation watchers and listeners are now fully in the Brent Hutto camp of being a Shelli Austin fan. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk about your history, about advice. Like the number one thing, just look for people to build your business on people that know and love and want to be in this industry. And that’s really could be for any industry. You got to want to be there to grow things and always be creative and not let anything stand in your way, no matter what it is. Because life has a way of throwing curveballs at you. You got to learn how to hit the curveball as well. So thank you so much for telling your story and talking about the intermodal outrage part of the market. And helping the Freight Nation watchers and listeners understand it better.

Shelli – 00:38:27:

Thank you. I appreciate it. It’s been fun.

Brent – 00:38:29:

Well, you’re the best, man. I tell you what, Freight Nation, I’m lucky to be friends with her. And now maybe somewhere down the road, if you get to meet Shelli, you’ll be better off because she is a great mentor. She’s been a good friend to me and a good mentor to me and things. So Freight Nation. That’s a wrap for this time. That’s a special episode on the intermodal and drapes part of the market. I hope it was a big benefit to you. And as always, if you’re out there in the marketplace, please like us. And we’re on Apple and on Spotify and on, we’re everywhere. We’re all over the place. The team does a good job in promoting it. Thank you for letting us bring these great stories to you. And as we always like to close with Freight Nation, don’t forget to work hard, to be kind, and to always stay humble. All right, Freight Nation, we’ll catch you the next time. 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.