Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in the fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough I ain't nothing but grit cause I made rugged blood, sweat and spit yeah like a horse I fly for a bumpy ride I like to play hard but I work harder and I weather the storm cause I'm built stronger.
What is up, ladies and gentlemen, we are back. We are live. It is the Freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday 08:30 a.m. Pacific, 1030 Central to break down some industry headlines, but most importantly, provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. This is your first time tuning in. Welcome. This is the real souda freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show. And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve.
So you can take that information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Friday everybody. I got a very special guest and I'm just going to bring him up right now. He's been on the show a bunch of times and we're going to talk about winning some dedicated freight, RFP style, contracted freight for carriers out there. So my man Adam Wingfield is back on the show. Adam, what's going on?
What's up my guy? How you doing man?
Oh dude, we'll get into everything at a later date out there, man. We got, we got a lot going on over here. But this is the fun part of frighten, you know, it's this is, I mean these are the scenarios that you work for out there, right? Because it's like ultimately it's never going to be perfect, it's never going to be easy. But nobody needs you when it's easy. They need you when situations arise and they need a partner and partners need to step up and you need to work with carriers that you have full trust in. And I, you know, I practice what I preach out there and you know, we'll talk about this at a later date.
But I'm in a, you know, I'm in a situation right now that is getting resolved because I work with the same carriers that I didn't find on a load board. So I'll just leave it at that.
That's what we talked about this morning, right before we got on here, man. The best freight doesn't find the load boards and the best relationships are not made on load boards, man. You got to get in there and you got to do the work. And that's one of the things that from a small carrier perspective, that's what would truly differentiate you. And I think a lot of them have those issues in the beginning, but we'll get into all of that here in a second.
Yeah, man. So, dude, what's been going on in the carrier world? It's, you know, I really don't pay attention too many headlines out there because, you know, it's always all these companies are going out of business and, you know, all these mc's or whatever, yada, yada. That doesn't help my business at all. Ultimately, I have to go out there and build a company. So, like, what's going on out there though, from your perspective?
So it's a lot of mixed information, you know, obviously with what you'll see, and you'll see a lot of data out there that kind of points to the carrier revocations which you're talking about. Hey, we see a large net negative, which is meaning that we have more carriers exiting the market than we have entering the market. And then you have economical, you know, constraints that's there. And as well, you know, just a few days ago, we hit a two year low in the price of diesel fuel. So obviously it's a little cheaper to move a truck up and down the highway. But then yesterday, the lumber futures came out and indicated that, hey, you know, lumber is at a low as well, which indicates what the housing market looks like.
And the housing market is a direct reflection of what the freight market looks like as well. There's a lot of noise that are coming out there. And then you got your final data that says, hey, you know what? Demand is at an all time high on the west coast ports. So we're seeing much more import and export activity on the west coast side. So there's a lot of news and a lot of things that's kind of swirling around, but truly there's no true crystal ball when it comes down to it. As you know that in freight, there's so many dynamics that join into it. You got to really control what you can control. But there's a lot going on right now.
Yeah, I think that there's, I think there's always a lot going on. To be honest with you, man, I think that there's an, there's always an opportunity if you want to find one. And that's what you got to be focused on, right? And that's honestly why I, you know, I kind of changed up the structure of all this stuff. I'm like, I'm just going live now. I'm just talking about stuff that, you know, people can actually do in their business instead of even breaking down industry headlines. And that's not to say that I'm not going to talk about them, you know, because it's only a matter of time before I'll pull something up. But, like, I want my focus to only be on what people can actually do to put into their business, right?
Because it's like I see all the headlines, I see all the economic indicators, I see everything, right? Like, I did go to school, you guys. Like, I can read and I can decipher information, but ultimately 99% of the stuff I see out there does not apply to my business. And here's why. I need customers, right? I need freight, I need revenue in my business. I can't look at anything and deter me from doing what I need to do. And that's business development, man. I need to cold call, I need to do site visits, I need to send sales emails. I need to generate revenue because I got a family to feed ultimately, right? Like, I got all of my life savings tied up into making this work.
And if I paid attention to other people's opinions, I might as well just go back and get a job with somebody, man. I might as well just toss in the towel. But like, I'm not going to do that. I got to find a solution and I'm going to. Right? And so it's like, that's why it's like, I want to talk to the practicalities of this stuff. What are you applying in your business today? That's working? What's not working? So we can go and actually put information out there that small carrier or that broker can do to get revenue because I would say overwhelming 99% of this industry is in the same boat that I am. We need revenue, we need business. And that's what we need to focus on now.
That's absolutely correct. And you talked about controlling what you can control. And when it comes from a call, a small carrier perspective, a lot of times, small carriers and owner operators, they get caught up in all of the things that are swirling around. They get caught up in the narratives, they get caught up in the things that they can't control. Well, let's talk about some controllable things. And that's the reason why we got together today to talk about how can a small carrier go out there and start looking at other opportunities and keeping their truck full instead of just using the load boards and these apps that are making it very convenient for them. Let's go back to the old mom and pops way of putting business in behind a truck and putting some direct freight behind it.
Because I'll be honest with you, Chris, this year and over just the last couple of months, I've seen more shippers soliciting small carriers. I've seen more shippers handing out RFP packets to small carriers. But as small carriers that I have that I see, they're not really prepared for that. They don't know what they need in order to position themselves correctly. And that's the reason why it's so important that we have these type of conversations and we just outline those things that they can control. So really want to just kind of talk about the things that a small carrier can do to position themselves from direct freight. How do you get prepared for that? And that's the reason why we're here today and that's what we want to talk about.
No, I'm right there with you, man, because it is a big shift, right? Because when you go from a spot market style of relationship where it's like, oh, hey, you're getting one load here and one load there, it's a very different approach to, hey, you got four of these a day, every day for the foreseeable future. If you mess it up, you lose all of your business, right? Like, it's a very different strategy and tactic out there. And, you know, from a broker's perspective, like this is ultimately why I preach the core carrier base so much, right, because it's like there's only two of us inside of my brokerage. It's me, my co founder. We're going to probably move like 75 loads this month, man. It's just the two of us, right?
How are we doing that with the same group of carriers who are coming in time and time again? Same lanes, same stuff? We built the system around it, right, because you can build a system around anything, you know? And this is ultimately like, this is just something that I always struggled with because I'm more of a shoot from the hip kind of guy and I'll figure it out. But like, the longer and longer I get into the world of unknown, of, you know, entrepreneurship and everything, I realize that there's a system for everything. You got to build that system, you got to follow that system in that process.
So it's like, as you're going out there and, you know, because I've been having, I've had a couple of large enterprise shippers come on this show for shipper Q and a because that's one thing that I'm implementing on a monthly basis now where one Friday a month, I'm going to have a shipper come on the show and answer sales and operations questions from a shipper's perspective for the audience, not Chris's perspective, nothing like that. It's going to be a shipper. And these guys, both of them are like the enterprise of enterprise level shippers that came on the show. And I asked them that because I know I have a lot of drivers who watch this show. So I asked them, I'm like, hey, from your perspective, what could an owner operator or a small fleet do to get set up with somebody like you?
And they both said the exact same thing. They're like, listen, we look at volume only for a lot of our providers. It's if we have our KPI's that we have to follow. And one or two trucks doesn't necessarily move the needle for us, but one or two trucks works great for the company down the street who has seven loads a week on the exact same lane where you could drop and hook or whatever, go back and forth on them for those lanes. Those are the style of shippers that you guys need to go in and plug your fleet into, because they're like, I move 500 loads a day out of one of my facilities.
That one truck might not do anything for me, but there are a lot of shippers out there because it's like, if you break it down, man, the minority of shippers are the enterprise level shippers. You know, there's only a handful of manufacturers out there that can sustain at that level. But the overwhelming majority of the shippers that are out there, they need that style of relationship. Man, I cold call shippers every day. I just cold called somebody yesterday. Guess what they told me? Hey, man, we've been working with the same three trucking companies for the last ten years. We're not adding anybody in right now. So they have contracted freight that they're working with.
So here's the thing, and I'm glad you mentioned that, too, because when you talk about shippers and when it comes from a small carrier perspective, I want to walk through the journey a little bit. You know, just like you said, hey, we got enterprise shippers. And those are enterprise shippers that obviously they serve the majority of the community that they serve. But as a small carrier, if I'm a small carrier and I've got less than ten trucks or if I got less than five trucks, the way I'm going to find my shippers is the very first thing is I'm going to utilize Google. I'm going to go into Google and I'm going to leverage the Google technology that's out there, the free technology to leverage Google.
When I go in Google, I'm going to look at Google Earth, I'm going to type in keywords like manufacturer, distributor, and I'm going to look at my zip code. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go directly and I'm going to take my eyes and I'm going to put my eyes on that shipper by using the Google Earth, right? I'm going to look at them and what I'm looking for is a couple of things. Number one, I'm looking for the number of doc doors that I can see. So if I see like three or four, okay, I got a chance.
But you know what the other tell times, telltale sign for me is if I don't see a mega carrier that's backed up to the dock and one of those images, if I see a mom and pop truck, I know I've got an opportunity. So from an investigation standpoint, just from, you know, doing my homework, that's the first thing. But you know what, Chris? In order for me to get there, I have to be prepared. And there's a couple of things that I wanted to point out from a preparation standpoint because I reviewed a couple of rfps just this week for small carriers, right, to position themselves with the, with a shipper, make sure that you do things like simple, get smart way certified, right, the EPA smart way. Just go online. You can get certified with smartway.
There's rfps that I have in my box that ask specifically for it. Make sure that you go in and you get any type of certification you can get, whether it be MBE, WBE disabled veteran, whatever certification that you possibly can get from a business perspective, go ahead and get that. The next thing you want to make sure you do is you absolutely have a brand presence. And when I say a brand present, very minimum have a website and it doesn't need something, maybe something that you spend thousands of dollars on. But get a website that talks about what you do, who you are, what lanes you service, and the type of service that you bring to the table. Then you want to make sure that you have differentiators that are keyly specific to you.
And when I compare that to having a job application and a job resume for a particular job that you want. Typically you're going to formulate it that way. So for example, if I'm going to go work with a shipper that ships out flowers, then guess what? We provide tailgate service. We provide back to the tailgate service. We provide driver assist services. These are services that you're going to want to be able to offer because you know that small shipper is going to go after you. You also have to be prepared, and you got to be able to be prepared to grow with that shipper. What if that shipper needs to get to that point where they may need a couple of extra trailers? So financially, you as a small carrier need to be able to provide them with, hey, you know what?
I need to be able to go out and lease a couple more trailers. I need to be able to do that. And then when you look at it from a financial perspective, you need to make sure that you can handle that shipping because there's shippers out there that I saw, rfps, net 60, net 45. What are you going to do as a small carrier when you're not able to get paid for those 1st 45 days? So that selection process and that homework process important, ensure that you have your homework done. Ensure that you have a carrier profile established, ensure that you're prepared to have those conversations. And then once you get to the next phase, and the next phase for me would be business requirements, right?
So understanding exactly what that shipper ships, understanding what their insurance requirements are, I've seen a shipper this year that they had a general aggregate requirement of $3 million. Are you as a small carrier, are you able to provide that? And probably not. Are you able to add that? If you can, would you turn that off or you turn that on to them? And then you got to also know your cost structure, because there's two types of cost structures that you can take when you're pitching to a shipper. You've got your cost plus, right? So as an owner, operator or a small fleet, you have to understand what your break even costs are and then say, hey, what kind of margin do I want to operate under? You have that cost plus opportunity. Then you also have a value based pricing.
And when you pitch in those two pricing, you got to determine what that looks like for you or that shipper, which works best for you. And then, you know, once you get that, you got to understand the project scope. You got to look at the scope of what they offer and how that scope would impact you from a business perspective. Are you able to be able to grow with them? You know, Chris, I was talking to one of our clients a couple of months ago, and they had us, they landed a shipper. They went from two units to seven units. They landed a shipper. And when they had two units, the shipper was a small shipper, right? But they had a, you know, they had their own, their trailers, and we had a partner that actually can wrap.
And I was like, you know what? Let's do some creative. Let's see if we can get that, those trailers wraps. Get that shipper. Some initial impressions, some additional impressions as the trucks going down the highway provide free advertisement and see if that can help that shipper grow. Well, guess what? Because of the commodity that the shipper was offering, having those type of impressions, going down a highway actually absolutely brought value to that shipper. And they provided that carrier with more lanes, and the carrier was able to go from two trailers to seven trailers. So these are things that we have to look at as small carriers because, listen, you have an asset. At the end of the day, you have an asset. Your asset is in high demand. That's the only way that their product can move from point a to point b.
But the problem is that a lot of small carriers confuse your assets with egos, and that ego is what gets in between them from being able to have the conversations that are necessary. And, you know, when I look at that, too, not everybody is good. Not everybody is good with people. And carrier, you are the CEO of your company. That brand that's on the side of your door, you are the CEO, and you represent that company. Can you sit down and have a conversation with a high level executive at that shipper that you really want to land?
So I definitely recommend just going through the basic steps of that real, for me, from my perspective, too, I've got to be able to be prepared to do a handshake deal with anybody that's around me as a shipper because I want to be able to provide them with the ability that if there's something goes wrong, we can go meet up at Starbucks down on main street if we need to have sit down and hash this thing out. Those are the things that bring value from a small shipper. There's a lot of shippers that just want to work with someone that they can put their hands on, because when they bring in three pls, you know, sometimes when they bring in a three pl, they're gonna get a different truck every week.
Like you said, you know, you got shippers that are putting out 500 loads a week, got shippers that doing that. And even on those large enterprise shippers, I'm gonna tell you, don't be scared as a small carrier to approach an enterprise shipper and see what their low volume lanes are. See if run those low volume stuff.
Yeah, man. I look at it like this, Adam, as if you're the owner of your business. No one's gonna sell your company but you. No one's gonna. No one's gonna advocate for you but you. And, you know, and I'm a human being, too. You guys. Like, I don't like rejection just as much as the next individual that's out there. You know, I have all of those same thoughts that go through my head, but I also look at it as no one is gonna sell me but me. And especially in the startup phase, right? Like. Like I said, it's me and my business partner. I don't want any confusion out there about how large of a company people might think I have compared to what I do have, okay? I want that to be abundantly clear. We got to do everything right.
We both got to sell. We both have to operate. We both have to do accounting. Yeah, we're very fortunate with SPI. So SPI handles all of our back office. They do all of that stuff for us, but it still requires us to double check, triple check all of our stuff. We're doing multiple roles. You're doing multiple hats. If you're building your company up, you're a one truck fleet, two truck whatever that looks like. You have to sell for you. You have to know what you want to do, because, you know, again, I cold call every day. Number one thing I hear, hey, we only work with trucks. I got three rejections this morning, Adam. What did they all say? Hey, man, we're asset only. Okay, well, if they're asset only and these aren't small companies, why aren't more assets out there selling?
That's what I. That's what I want to know. Why are. Why are so many assets? Why are so many trucking companies? I was stuck on the load board, and I. And I've always wondered that, because I'm like, man, if. Because I see this comments on social media just as much as you do, Adam, I'm always like, why don't you have direct freight, then? Why don't you go direct to the shipper and cut the broker out if you hate brokers so much? And again, brokers suck for the most part, right? I'm not, I'm not going to sit up here and say that brokers are great, because they're not. I know how most brokers are. But that being said, no one's going to advocate for your business and no one's going to care about your business as much as you should.
And if you have that delusion out there, hate to break it to you, ladies and gentlemen, no one gives a shit about your company failing or succeeding.
You know, and, you know, the thing is that, and to your point as to why more carriers are not going after the direct freight for number one, they don't know how to. But number two, everything is a narrative. You have all of these, this noise on social media. I was, I was, I got in a great argument with somebody the other day, made a post about dedicated freight. There was like, yeah, shippers don't work directly with carriers. That because carriers don't have enough trucks. I was like, well, how many shippers have you actually worked with? Well, all shippers are like that. Well, how many shippers in the United States? All shippers are like that. Shut up. This is what I mean. Like when you, when you become, when you listen to what most people talk about, you become most people.
And I assure you I 100% will stand here and guarantee you there is enough freight. When I say 85% of the freight that moves in America move by contract and not by just occasional spot, I assure you there is enough freight that if you got your sleeves rolled up, put your ego behind you, stop getting out your comfort zone, put your phone apps down and get on the phone. I got my first direct freight, my first dedicated customer out of the yellow pages. Yellow pages. I use the yellow pages myself with my assets. I use the yellow pages and my quarter telephone and I got my first direct shipper. I didn't have the dats and the truck stops.
And even if you wanted to go direct, there's eprocurement methods that you can use, like emerge technologies that you can use, that you can go eat procurement even if you're not that person. But here's the thing. When you start a trucking company, it's no different than when you start a barbershop, a restaurant, a clothing boutique, eyelash salon. There is no different. Why do I say that? Because at the end of the day, it has one common denominator. It is a business. In order for a business to succeed, it has to be financially stable. You have to gain customers. And when you gain customers, you have to be the one to go out and do the sales part. You got to go out and do the accountant things. But the thing is too many people start trucking companies because they can drive a truck.
Just because you can drive a truck doesn't mean you can run a trucking company. I don't care if you've been driving a truck 45 years, if you want to start trucking company today, there's no guarantee that you're going to succeed. And more than likely, the guarantee is that you're going to fall in the bucket of the 80% of the people that fail. Because you have to start a business first. Trucking is a business. And when you start a business, you have to focus on a business first. The asset is the easy part. Anybody can go out here and buy and truck a trailer. Like anybody, literally, to start the barrier. Entry is so low that when I say anybody, I really mean virtually anybody can start a trucking company.
Dude. Like, no joke, Adam. I could go in eight weeks, have my CDL, I could go find financing for a truck and a trailer, and I could start a trucking company within the next 80 days max.
Up and running. Up and running.
Right.
You know what, and the crazy thing about it is that I would put your truck up next to Schneider truck, and it gets me the exact same thing. It gives me 53 foot of space. Right? But what truly differentiates me is from you is what I provide. When I go back and I do my homework about my business, what do I want? I've got to beat you, Chris. Right? So when I think about the trucking industry is competitive, just like any business. And my goal as an owner operator, my goal as a fleet owner is to beat your ass. That's my goal. Because in competition, that is what it's about. But you know what?
How am I going to beat you if I've got a truck that looks just like yours, that moves just like yours, has the same crack in a windshield like yours, how am I going to beat you? Oh, you know what? I give up. I'm just going to go on a load board. I'm just going to go bitch about brokers taking all the money. I saw. You got to understand that in competition, all is fair in love and war. And what makes people different and differentiate them is with the burning passion behind you that you can do better than somebody else. Right? Whether you offer an expedited service, whether you offer a white glove service, whether you offering multi stops, you know, you can brag about multi stops because most people hate it.
So if I got a shipper down the street that says, hey, Adam, man, you know what? We got to use our own trucks because most of the time we're moving out 1819 stops on a route. And then I'm thinking in my mind that why is everybody turning that down? Because that sounds like more money to me. But you got to do the things that you're not comfortable doing. You got to get outside your comfort zone.
Yeah. And that's the thing. Even from a business development standpoint, man, if you look at it from a competitive nature. Right, because it is, you guys, welcome to the real world. People will slit your throat out here because this is competition. As Adam said, it's all love and war, but, like, people got money to make and, you know, people are going to do whatever they got to do. But if you look at it from an overall opportunities perspective, who do you think, how many people are calling shippers and saying that we can run between Atlanta to Chicago or Atlanta and Dallas, right. How many people out there are doing that? Overwhelming majority. Right.
How many people are going about 100 miles outside of every major metropolitan area and focusing in on those cities from a business development standpoint, because a lot of customers out there have a facility and say Atlanta. And then they got another one down in south Georgia, for example, as well, like 150 miles away. But everybody gravitates towards the big city because that's the easy part. Right. Then they're all looking for one pick, one drop, and broke. I mean, I'm lumping brokers in on this, too. From a business development standpoint. They all want the one pick, one drop. They all want the first come, first serve. They all want the 25,000 pounds. You know, easy, easy. Easy doesn't pay well. As my man Andy Frisella says on the real Af podcast all the time, easy does not pay well.
And if all the competitors out there are going after that, where do you think the opportunities ultimately fall down to? Right? And I think that, and then again, because, you know, I'm not a sales guru or anything like that, but, you know, I've got a little bit of success under my belt from a business development standpoint. And, you know, from building a couple of businesses up here, I know a little bit about it. Like when Adam, the thing that most people are going to listen to this episode and gloss over, Adam, is the point that you said about being prepared. All right? And I put a post out about this the other day. I put a post out there and I said, hey, guys, I made some cold calls today. Here are some direct feedback from my prospects that I got.
One of them said, they stopped me, and they said, you know what? I just want to thank you, because you were prepared. You know what we do here. You weren't pushy. You didn't beg for anything. You had questions, and you were ready, and you were prepared. You weren't pushy. None of that stuff. Thank you for that. So if. And they. And then they told me, they're like, I wasn't going to give you 30 seconds when you. When I picked up your call, but you were prepared for this call. Did that lead to instant business? No, it didn't. This is going to be one that I got to follow up. Gonna, you know, we're gonna actually sell it because that's what you got to do out there. But it's preparedness, and most people go in of, hey, let me bid on this. You got freight.
Let me bid on. I'll do anything. I'll do everything for you. Just give me this. Give me this. Give me this. Gimme, gimme, gimme. They don't even fucking know what this person manufactures. They don't know anything about this shipper. So it's like the fat. And I think that ultimately, if it boils down to anything, if you take away anything from this call, prepare yourself prior to calling these guys. Take 30 seconds. What Adam brought up there, I wrote that down, man. I had never thought about. Because I do the Google earth thing. I like to see how many doctors they have, but I never thought to see if they had, like, an enterprise or a large fleet, mega fleet in their doors. I never even thought, I'm going to start looking for that shit right now. That's like. That's right there. That's gold.
That's what you need to follow. Because if they only have swift trailers in their door, chances are, I don't know if they're going to want to work with you. You might not be able to compete with that pricing right now. Not to say that you don't introduce yourself, because I'm on a mission to introduce myself to literally every shipper out there that moves full truckload freight, because that. That's my jam, man. That's what I like to do. So I think that. But again, I'm prepared for that stuff.
You know, I wanted to give one more thing to just what you said off of that, too. From a small carrier perspective, if you're a small carrier that's on this call right now and you're listening and you're taking it up, all this knowledge, I hope you've taken notes, because if you're not, you're missing out. But what I will tell you is that not only you need to be prepared in terms of coming to the call with the things that you need to be prepared to come to the call with, but you need to be prepared for no. And you need to be prepared to hear no more than you hear yes. And when I say more, you need to be prepared to hear the word no. 99.9999-9999-9999-9999-9999-9999-99 percent of the time because you missed a night. I missed it. Right.
What I will do, and I will challenge anybody that's on this call, that's a small character, I will challenge you to make 100 phone calls out to shippers in your area over the next two weeks. But not just that. My second point is that if you're a carrier on this call and if you were on a call with me right now, and I was evaluating your business in terms of why you don't have direct freight, and I pull up your zip code, so I pull up Chris's zip code and I'm on a call with him. If I pull up his zip code and I go to a google earth and I start talking about the shippers in his area, and they don't know who he is, and he don't know who they are, get off my phone. Because you're not prepared.
You didn't do the work. You expected it to be easy. Get out there. And I want you to go on google right now. I want you to get a Thomas net thomasnet.com account, which is free. And I want you to compare those two. And what I want you to do is I want you to get on google Earth. I want you to take all those zip codes that are in your area, that are less than 5 miles, then ten, then 15, then 20. And if I see a truck, Chris, that goes past my window, right. And then they're pulling up to a shipper that's right around the corner from my house. And I'm not saying it literally, though, but if I've got a truck that I see, that's going by in my neighborhood. Then guess what? We got some problems.
Because why is that truck picking up my freight was picking up my freight because I didn't do the work and making sure that the person in my area knows about me. You got to get involved with these networking events. You got to get involved with a chamber of cameras. Somebody knows somebody, who knows somebody. And you got to be prepared to hear the word no because all you need is one shipper. You don't need all hundred of them. But I'm going to tell you this, if you start calling shippers and you get to number seven, and then number seven is a no, and you say, you know what, Adam? All these shippers, they want the same thing. Get off my phone because you ain't made enough phone calls and you're too afraid to hear them. The word no. You belong on a low board.
So you stay on a low board and leave the rest for everybody else. Let the big dogs eat.
Yeah, dude, I mean, it's here, Nick says this, he's got a fleet as well. He says, be willing to eat shit every day and show up again the next day and do it all with a smile on your face. That's what winners do. And that's the truth. You guys, like, you know, and again, I will say this, you don't have to just jump in and make 50 calls in a day right away. Built, build it up right? Cause that's something that I had to do and that's something that I'd still do. Because again, you guys, I'm a human being too, right? When I get beat down, injected, sometimes I scale my phone calls back. But I'm like, hey, I'm going to make 15 phone calls a day, every day this week. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to preset my calls.
Like I say, I break it down by commodity. I go out there and I'll call 15 food grade shippers today. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to research them a little bit, find out a little bit about them, and I'm going to call them. All right, here's what I say. Literally, this is legitimately what I say. You guys, you guys can plug and play this any way you want with any terminology. Hi, my name is Chris Jolly. I'm the founder of freight coach Logistics. We're a third party freight broker that specializes in full truckload, food grade transportation. I'm just calling to introduce myself to see if there's some synergies between how we operate and what you guys might look for in a service provider. That's it. That's all I say every single time. That's my voicemail. That's my introduction line.
I say that every single time I leave a voicemail. Every single time. Does not matter if it's with the main operator line. It's the habit, you guys. It's the discipline of doing that. And then, fuck, you could strap a gopro to me, bro, and I would look like a psychopath because I walk around my office and I just. I spout that off, man. I practice my pitch single time because you never know when someone's going to pick up the phone and you can't go and then you hang up right away. Practice your pitch, you guys. Practice your pitch. Everything I just said there, you can plug and play your company's name, your name, what you specialize in, whether you're ltl, drayage, whatever you want, plug it in, use that. That's what I do every single day.
I love it as gold is to elevate a pitch, and you got to have it. But in order to do that, you got to go back to what we just talked about in the very beginning. Is that p word again? You got to be prepared. Don't get out here with an expectation again. Put the ego to the side, put the assets to the side, and you need to focus on the win. You're in sales now. You got to take the CEO hat on and put the director of business development on hat and sell your company. Nobody cares about it the way you do. Stop listening to what these other people are saying.
These negative nancy, these doom and gloom is these idiots that are on social media telling you that you can't have direct freight with a small one truck because it's all you need is one truck. And every shipper is not the same. It's up to you to find a shipper that's there for you.
That's it, my man. That's gonna be it for today, you guys. We will be back. Leo Martinez, the best beginner course to become a freight broker. Pay attention to this show every single weekday, 08:30 a.m. Pacific. All right? I talk about freight brokerage all the time. Do not pay for a course. Anything you have, man, come on the show, ask questions. That's what this entire show is designed for. I've been doing this for 15 years. A lot of my guests who come on the show have been brokers for a very long time. They own very successful freight brokerages. This is the only spot I got toot my own horn, man, all right? I'm sick and tired of seeing people going out and paying for these courses from people. We haven't brokered fucking freight before.
But, ladies and gentlemen, we will be back on Mondays, 830 in Pacific, 1030 Central. As always, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. Ladies and gentlemen, share it out there. Because if you see value, your network's gonna see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. And we'll be talking to you soon. Did we just.