Finding Trucks, Crossing Borders, and Growing Your Customer Base | Final Mile 109

Broker Basics course . If you are looking for an educational option for you or your team , team and check out the sponsors down below to help support the channel . Ben , we're going to get right into it this morning . Man , all right .

First question and I think this came from , I think someone just emailed us or did a form on our website which you can do right at Freight360.net . They said here's my question . I've got about 10 customers , but they're all very small . The largest one might give me three loads a week at most . I'm trying to scale past the 10K a month mark .

I've quoted for one or talking brokerage profit there , or brokerage revenue , some people call it . That's what you're retaining after you pay your carriers , right ? So we're not talking 10K and customer invoicing , we're talking after we pay the trucks . Here's how much we're able to work with

as a brokerage . So 10K a month , I think is a great benchmark for folks to you know , to kind of aim for that's . You know , I would say you made it per se . If you get to that point , first thing I would say is great job having a diversified book with 10 customers , three loads a week for one . I think you know .

The positive there is that if you lose any one of those customers it doesn't ruin your business . But how do you get bigger customers ? There's probably two ways to look at it . How do you get more business out of your existing customers so they become a larger part of your book ? And there's also how do I get customers that just do more business .

There's really no change to your prospecting methods other than the types of companies that you're targeting . Ben , you've had kind of a benchmark of loads per week that a customer is shipping for them to be a good candidate . What would you say as far as the size of customers for this person to prospect ?

And then I'll kind of talk about how to leverage what you're already doing . But what would you say as far as size to be prospecting ?

It does not mean this always holds true , but it's like a rule of thumb If a company's not shipping at least 20 to 25 loads a week , they're not going to rely on a broker too often because they can coordinate with trucking companies . They usually sometimes have enough lead time to get the load so the trucks can reposition themselves for the shipper .

So they'll occasionally have a load that they need covered because they come up last minute . And those are probably the three loads a week that maybe this person's getting right . The other ones are probably going directly to trucking companies or they could be going to other brokers . But I mean most of the time . That pretty much holds true .

And if you think about it , if you're a one person cradle to the grave brokerage , if you're booking five loads a day , five days a week , that's 25 loads . One or two loads every other day falls off which requires you to scramble to recover that load .

That's what the shipper's doing , except the shipper doesn't have the ability to access that in the open market as quickly as you do , which is why those loads come to the broker right . So again , there's lots of other variables of planning . It's like the staffing at the shipper .

If there's three people there and they're moving 25 loads a week , like maybe they still don't need a broker that much because they've got enough people over there to call trucking companies . But usually a company of that size , shipping that volume , probably has one person and that's really where they'll need to rely on a broker for time to time .

Trucks that get held back , delayed incidents over the road you know traffic , whether they need somebody who can get them capacity in a short period of time , frequently enough that it makes sense to work with them .

So whoever's given them three loads a week , I would and and your other nine customers , right , I'd be asking them about other opportunities that they've got , other lanes that they're running , because you're likely not moving 100 percent of their business If you are here's here's a trick to that .

However , if I give them a reason why they should tell me this , the whole thing changes . Hey , I know you have these facilities in these cities . We've got guys delivering for other customers that are in these areas pretty frequently . Do you guys have any other lanes during the week where you might need some capacity ?

Because , like I , literally already have drivers in some of these areas . Maybe we can match up some of the dates and times where I can either get you some better service or maybe some better pricing . Is there anything else you guys are moving that we can discuss to see if it makes a fit ? Now I'm giving them a reason why they should tell me about other

lanes instead of just asking what else I can have and what else I can price and what else I can get out of the situation .

And when you sort of get that feedback , then you can , you know , assuming it's good feedback hey , you know how am I stacking up against your other providers ? Right , and you could crack the egg open on . Actually you're doing a great job .

I just I wish I can get so-and-so over at TQL , you know , to have the same kind of service you do , or whatever the case might be .

Just take what you're getting to multiply by the number of other brokers are working with . It's not going to hold up 100% , but it gives you some insight into probably how that person is divvying up what they have and actually what they do have , that you might have an opportunity to service better .

You can go to like chat , gpt or Google and just say like hey , who are the midsize widget manufacturers , united States or you know ?

Replace widget with whatever commodity and Google right up top now has like the Gemini AI thing or you know just sort of standard search or chat , gpt or any of the LLMs out there will help you or any other prospecting tool that you're used to using . Just look up the same type of commodity or manufacturer and search a higher revenue size .

So that will you know that will tend to get you the results you're looking for , because the key here is , if you're succeeding in a certain area , lean into that . There's no reason for you to pivot to a totally new commodity or equipment type or region if you're already doing well and have a carrier network that works well with those commodities .

Or like use oil rigs . Like okay , my niche is shipping crane mats and pipe to oil rig companies , right ?

What I do is look exactly for what you said here's my company , put all the details in into ChatGBT and give me like a comprehensive list of companies that compete in the same commodity and service the same industries that are of similar size is where I always start . You can always go bigger and smaller , but I always start with what is working .

And then what I do is , like you need a piece of information to use in those calls to help speed up the trust , right ? So then what I would do is I would call , like the project managers for the oil companies the ones that are on site or managing the actual oil rigs and ask them hey , name , drop who I'm working with .

Hey , I'm shipping crane mats and pipe for ABC Pipe and XYZ Crane Mat Company to a bunch of sites out in West Texas . I know you guys are in that industry too . Just out of curiosity , could you point me in the right direction ?

Who handles like coordinating with your vendors when you guys need crane mats for your oil rigs and when you're getting new sites off the ground ? Those people don't get prospected much because they don't ship anything . Their vendors do . But you can call the people that are actually purchasing the stuff from your customer .

But you can call the people that are actually purchasing the stuff from your customer . They'll tell you who else they buy from . Then you get their name and their company name . Then you call the other companies in your niche , like the other Craymac companies in Texas , for instance , just to make one up and you go .

Hey , I was talking with Brian over at BP Oil . He manages a bunch , brian James . He runs a bunch of the oil projects out for BP in West Texas . He said he sources most of your crane mats from you guys . We ship a lot of the crane mats out to these other projects for XYZ Crane Mat Company .

Just out of curiosity , are you guys have any projects coming up ? This is something that might be a good fit , because we've got already carriers that are kind of lined up servicing that area . Now I've connected all of these dots and guess how quickly that conversation turns into something . Now they're like receptive they probably know that company .

If they don't know that person , they know . There's a small group of companies that put oil rigs up . They know who their competitors are when you name drop your shipping for their competitor and you're in contact with their customer . Now all of a sudden , in 30 seconds they start talking to you .

Reach to me in a few weeks and let's see if there's something that we might be able to line up . That's how you can like expedite that whole process from . I've got trucks in the area . Can I talk to who's in charge of shipping ?

To playing like expert level , to get directly to these people , name dropping who you need to to be able to get that conversation moving a hell of a lot faster .

So , like for me , micah , the meat importers council of america right , that's an association most people don't know about , but that's where all my customers are , um , and not only do they give out articles on , like the industry , so you can learn more and have that expert level information when you go to prospect , but then you have a list of prospects as long

as you're updating those things . So when you're a prospect Trade show , associations , just trade associations in general .

How do I find a truck ? Now I won't go too deep into this one , but some of your general carrier sourcing tools the obvious one for a new broker is the load boards . So , posting a , posting a load and

you know , that way you can field some inbound calls . You can also search for posted trucks . The load board , I would say , should be your , your last resort , just based off the fact that you have limited information on them .

Building rapport and relationships with carriers over time is going to be your best bet , but again , if you're brand new , you're probably going to be using load boards . There's other tools as well . You can use any of the carrier sourcing tools , like Highway . You can source carriers that way .

Dat's directory will let you know fleet size , equipment type and their domicile location . People do it in our Facebook group literally all day long Any of the tools I'm missing ? I mean , there's a whole bunch of paid for capacity tools out there , but they're all marketplaces essentially . Is there anything that I'm missing there , ben ?

Yeah , cabotage laws .

So like you can't send an American carrier that's in Canada , well , first of all , you can't send them into Canada to haul a intrastate Canadian load . You need a Canadian only or a Canadian domiciled carrier that can do that , and that's all cabotage . Domiciled carrier that can do that , and that's all cabotage .

The same thing happens with , like , airlines , cruise lines and motor carriers . So it's all . It's all to prevent foreign . It's basically to prevent foreign labor from competing against the country's internal workforce . If I can you know , break it down ? Barney style is that . Would you explain it any other way ? Cabotage , how that works .

So Canada if it's a Canadian carrier , they can pick up and deliver in Canada , or pick up in Canada and deliver to the US , or pick up in US and deliver to Canada . A US company cannot run Canada to Canada and a Canadian company cannot run US to US . Same thing for Mexican carriers .

we have the USMCA where you can do cross-border stuff that way . But a question came up to me earlier this week . Someone wanted to import something from I think it was Sweden , and what I said is , when that container hits the US ports , the drayage moves and the inland repositioning or inland transit is where we come in as brokers .

But we cannot clear customs on and you know we can't do the import or export portion of it . What I ? I actually have someone at our company who is both an agent for our brokerage and he's an agent for a freight forwarder . So he is able to do both parts of it .

But the import and the export part of it and I think it's India to US , us to India that actual import leg or export leg does not run through our brokerage . It runs through his freight forwarding company that he works under their license . I had a guy in the past at another company who did the same thing .

He worked as an agent for a forwarder in New Jersey and a broker agent for a company in Buffalo and the domestic stuff ran through the brokerage . The international stuff ran through the forwarder , again with the exception of US , mexico , canada , again as a broker . We're not doing the customs clearance for that .

That shipper still is going to probably have a customs agent that's handling their paperwork and the clearance . But you can coordinate the truck for that case .