Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in a fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough Find nothing but grit Cause I made rugged blood sweat and spit yeah, like a horse I fly Then a pussy self in for a bumpy ride I like to play hard but I work harder and I weather the storm because I'm building 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, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central, to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of 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 Thursday, everybody. We're going to jump right in. I don't know where this conversation is exactly going to go. We're going to talk a little bit about truck parking. We're going to talk a little bit about entrepreneurship. And you know, this guy, he's a really good friend of mine, first and foremost. And, you know, we just happen to know each other through business and everything, and he's been through a lot. He's been on the show before.
His story is phenomenal. And I have nothing else to say about this besides welcome to the show, Mr. Anthony Petit, ladies and gentlemen. Anthony, what is up, my guy?
Hello, hello. I am so excited to be back, Chris. It's been actually a really long time since I've been on the show. I think it's been like a year. But in any case, I am excited to be here.
Dude, it has been a year. You have had a lot go on here over this, you know, out here down in Florida. Now you're officially a snowbird, which I love. Get out of that crappy weather in the upper Midwest. See guys like us earned it. Anthony, you grew up in Chicago. I grew up in Wisconsin. We've paid our dues in that and we have made the conscious choice to move south to fairer weather.
We did. I mean, praise God, we did. It's seven degrees right now in Chicago, and I am so grateful I'm not there, dude.
My, my business partner, he's out doing site visits today in Minneapolis. It's 4 below zero. 4 below zero. Talk about dedication. What other freight broker prospects of mine who are listening to the show. What other freight brokers going out and knocking on doors when it's four below out? Come on. That's dedication.
I love it. That's. That's actually what we just talked about. Like who is going out doing the cold calls? Who's going out knocking on doors? This guy's doing it negative 4 degrees. I mean, God bless him.
Yeah, dude, it's. But you know, that's, man, we can just jump right into it. I think, like, that's just what. That's like the level of stuff that you have to do to get anything off the ground and up and running, right? Like, you have to be willing to get extremely uncomfortable, whether it's with cold calling site visits. You have to do anything to get in front of individuals because it's contrary to what you see on the Internet right now. It's not easy at all. It's very hard. It's very hard for me. It's very hard for me to develop business, to get sustainable business, to kind of grow and scale with. It's not. Snap your fingers and all of a sudden you're a millionaire. Like, it kind of seems out there. And I mean, you've. Dude, you've built companies before.
You've been building Fin park now for a couple of years, I think, and you know what it's like to, you know, it's a lot of work to get something off the ground.
Yeah, it's. It's definitely a roller coaster. That's like the metaphor I always talk about. It's the ups and downs. It really has to do with so many factors. First of all, obviously, the just getting in front of customers in today's age, which I just said, I think it's really difficult to do. So. I mean, you can make as many cold calls as you can. You get a ton of no's, you get a ton of voice messages, and then you. Even if somebody does reply back, they're usually not interested. So it's definitely been up and down. Then there's been the market, right? The freight market is finally upticking. But for the last two years, it's been very tough. We've experienced a lot of challenges. I mean, of course there has been good opportunities for us, but on the challenge side, it has been tough.
I think it's been tough for almost Everybody, I mean, I advise a couple companies invested in a couple companies. Everybody's kind of feeling that same thing. But you know, back to, you know, what we've built and I've been here now actually for about two years. When we first started, it was just like I, you know, kind of first started Truck park all over again. Yeah, you know, it was getting into the motions. You know, it was just myself, I had to go out and hire a team, which there's now indirectly in Fin park there's I believe eight of us. And so we've grown, we've built the company, we're generating revenue, we're going after the right customers, but still we're still facing some of those challenges that everybody else's.
What's some of the biggest things that you have had to overcome in those building stages? Whether it's with your previous company that you founded or kind of like what you're going through right now. What's some of those biggest hurdles, do you think?
You know, so the difference is between Truck park and Finpark is a little bit different because Finn park is a division of a kg of Canadian companies and seven to be exact. There's not a financial aspect here where in Truck park there was certainly a financial aspect because getting up and running when I was 26 years old, I had no money. Absolutely. And I was just trying to make something when I didn't even really understand. I knew the business, but I didn't really have the, I guess financial but also entrepreneurship acumen as I do today. There was two differences but there is still of course challenges or hurdles that we, that I have had to face. I believe those hurdles, again, it goes back to the market, goes back to competition. I would, in terms of market landscape is a better word.
And the market landscape from the time I sold truck park 2021 till today has been saturated. So there is 12, I believe 12 different parking aggregators in the US Canada. There is about six different parking related applications that are not necessarily directly our competitors, but still in the truck parking market. So I believe when you bring all of these players into the market, they eat a lot of the market share. And I think that we had to adjust, we had a pivot to be a little bit different than we did when I built at Truck Park. And that is how we're essentially addressing those challenges and facing those hurdles.
Yeah, you know, bringing up the financial aspect of things, you know, when you're kind of getting that stuff off the road. And my favorite, Dan the driver Row, my favorite driver he's out there, he's waiting in the door past two hours, past his appointment time. It's going to be a long day. I appreciate you stopping in, Dan, but you know, like, the money side of things obviously is. I mean, that's kind of like the, probably the biggest talking point in the industry right now besides truck parking and paid parking is, you know, what are brokers making on freight and all of this stuff that's kind of coming in. But it's just like I look at it as, you know, getting that financial acumen inside of your business and, you know, and especially when you're bootstrapping it.
Like, I understand where drivers are coming from in that aspect of things, right? Because like, when you're getting compressed in every single way, a lot of these guys think everybody's out there, you know, taking advantage of their situation and everything else. And, you know, when I talked about this a couple weeks ago and I had said, I'm like, knowing what somebody else makes does not make you a profitable company, you know, and that's a very hard pill to swallow. That's something that I've had to go through now over the last five years of being self employed, was learning how to actually run my business. As a business, it is a completely different mindset as you're going out there and you know, like, it's nobody else's fault if you have bad terms on your loans.
You know, it's nobody else's fault if you're, you know, not managing your business properly. All right, it's yours. And that's a very, very tough pill to swallow. I've had to swallow that pill. I've overextended myself. You know, when you're going in there and you experience a little bit of success, you like to, you know, especially the first time around, you like to think it's always going to be this way. I'm always going to have this money. You don't necessarily think it's ever going to end. And then reality sinks in those situations, right? So it's like the fragility of getting anything up and running and off the board. It takes a lot of capital. It takes a lot of trial and error. And, you know, I personally think the best thing you can invest in when you're starting a company is outside of like mentorship.
I'm talking about like strengthening yourself mentally because it is the biggest roller coaster you will ever be on. And, you know, I was listening to a dude. If you, I'm Sure. Have you heard of the founders podcast?
Yes. Great podcast.
Yeah. So I've been really getting into that here recently. And one of the best lines I heard on it is from Marc Andreessen. He's a very famous vc and you know, he's obviously built companies, he's very successful. But he had said there's only two emotions that entrepreneurs experience. That's euphoria and fear. And that is it. Those are the only two emotions. So it's like, you know, the market, everything that you're going to be faced with, it's always going to be there. So it's like you need to learn how to manage through that. But you know, I actually just listened to an episode this morning about Ikea and the founder of Ikea and how they are constantly like, we have to keep our costs down because if we keep our costs down, our customers save more money and then they will make more money.
And it's like that kind of that customer focus that comes along with it and it's really kind of, you know, it's got my mind wandering about where things are, you know, kind of in the industry as a whole. And it's like, how are you going to go out there and put the most competitive price out there to where you can stand in business? Because it's not cheap to operate anything, whether it's a truck, a brokerage, a SaaS company, it costs money. And it's like, dude, that's like the biggest puzzle that you really need to put together.
Yeah. You know what, when you're bringing that up, you know, I actually listened to, I think it was the acquired podcast. I listened the full story of Sam Walton. You know, you, he wrote his book Made in America. But really listening to that entire podcast was interesting. First of all, it was three hours, but it was the best three hours of my life spent. Listen, I learned so much because I mean, again, reading the book and understanding Sam Walton, living in Bentonville, Arkansas in my full time home, but just going back to reducing costs. But it's not just about price reduction. It's not just about staying sustainable in the industry. It's not just about, you know, all the financial hurdles, market hurdles, et cetera.
It's really like you said, it goes back to investing yourself, being true to who you are from the very beginning and never changing. I think that's one of the biggest things. The second biggest things is the experience. I've always talked about it on this podcast, on any podcast I've been in. I've talked about it when I first started Chuck Bark, not even knowing anything about entrepreneurship, not knowing anything about business. But I always wanted to build a company that was predicated on experience. So I think experience is the bolded, italicized word of the day. Experience. Creating experience for your customers or for your partners is what is actually going to move that needle. It's going to help you and help yourself too. Because you said fear and euphoria, those are two things that every entrepreneur faces.
And those two things can bring you down or they can actually bring you up. But in order to bring you up, you also want to create that, the opposite of the fear and the euphoria for your customers. And if they can trust you, that trust that comes together, that bridge, then you're going to immediately have more confidence in yourself and your business will also grow as well.
I would highly recommend everybody read Made in America by Sam Walton. That book is probably one of the best books I've ever read. Kind of getting that inner workings behind a lot of those things. And you know, and it's like, dude, because it, you know, price is always going to be a factor in literally everything that you do when you're going out and you're building anything, right? Because, like, you could have the greatest service in the absolute world, but if you. But you can't double charge everybody else out there, right? And I think, like, that's where, at least from the freight market perspective, what's going on out there, you can't gouge right now. Like, there's no, like, I'm not saying that people don't get away with it in certain times out there. I'm. I'm sure it is.
There's way too many transactions that goes on to not have that happen. But like, man, when I'm. This is just coming from somebody who's developing business in this market, hands down, this is the hardest market I have ever experienced from a new business development standpoint. Okay? I've been doing this for 15 years. I've made tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of cold calls over the entirety of my career. This is the absolute most pushback I have ever seen out there. But on top of that, though, you know, my mindset is, dude, this is the greatest opportunity that there's ever going to be inside of this market to develop new business. Because I truly feel that in my core, I mean, I just believe it in my core. I'm the best freight broker in North America. There's no denying.
You're not going to change my opinion on that at all. But I just know that from a pricing perspective, from a service perspective, I know the product that I can deliver that goes on out there. And then it's going to be that balancing act that comes along with it. Because like say the market does recover, there is not going to be a rapid ascent to rates at all like this. That's not going to happen. Barring a catastrophic event that goes on in the world, it will be a gradual rise in volume and a gradual rise in rates. All right. I mean, there's no denying President Trump is going to be the, is the most pro business president probably in our lifetime. And I truly feel like that we are. There's going to be a reinforcement, reinvigoration.
I don't even know if that's a word I went to public school, but of, you know, people building and building businesses going on out there. So I think that obviously with our industry being in transportation, that is going to be a natural benefit to our industry. But just because freight volumes increase and just because rates increase, that doesn't mean that anybody's going to make any changes inside of their business. Right. And again, that always boils back down to that doesn't mean that you are going to run a profitable business. You know, like, you need to focus on the fundamentals of this stuff. How much do you think that's overlooked by a lot of people, Anthony, is just like they don't focus on the fundamentals of their business, of actually treating it as a business.
And they're more like out there just chasing revenue for the sake of chasing revenue.
I would say, I mean, anywhere between 80, 90% of people, it's a very high number because I mean, I do it myself. You know, I can't say that it's everybody else to blame. I blame myself for it. I mean, it just, it happens. Like you just want to chase revenue. You don't want to chase anything else in your business. You want to focus on like, how much money can I get in the door? Sometimes a lot of these companies even focus on. It's not even, I should say, they're not focused on profitability. They're focused on just revenue in general. And I think that could be a huge issue for not only yourself, but for your company. If you're trying to build a company, you need to be profitable, need to be sustainable.
It's all going to work out in your in the end as long as you get there. But again, it goes back to. And I'm going to beat a dead horse with it. But it goes back to the experience. If your customers are having the best experience with you, why would they leave you? Why would they go to your competitor? I was thinking about market landscape earlier. Why would they go to your competitor? There's no reason to, because they're having a good experience with you. That good experience is going to bring productivity.
It's going to bring, have them have more interest and not only making transactions themselves, but then also deliberately going to others and having that conversation say hey, you have to use Spent Parker or hey, you have to use ABC Company or hey, you have to use the Freight Coach podcast or be on the podcast because it's going to bring you more followers to yourself. So I think there's, it goes always back to the experience but then it also allows you to essentially grow your business in the process. So yes, that's what I would say.
So how are, you know. Because I, I view with the, you know, and again this is just purely the social media stance feedback that I see out there is I kind of feel like paid truck parking and freight brokers are lumped into the same category out there right now. Is there's not a lot of positive light, not by everybody but you know, but I also view it as, you know, kind of talking about that experience, that customer experience where me as a broker, I don't know, I can only speak for myself, my drivers, the people who haul freight for my customers are my customer as well. Right? It's 1A and 1B of importance. I need to give them a higher experience to want to work with me. All right?
Just because I have freight doesn't mean that they're going to want to work with me. Anybody can book a truck one time, but how do you develop that relationship out year over year, month over month, shipment after shipment, where you are actually a direct extension of them and they view it that way. Right. And I feel like, you know, again, I've said this before, man, brokers, we're our own worst enemy for the most part out there. The way that some people operate is it's despicable. But again, that's my opportunity, right? Like that's my opportunity to go in there and show people that we're different time and time again, no matter what.
And you know, when it comes down to that as well, for you guys on the parking side, how are you guys making sure that the drivers have the absolute best experience when it comes into utilizing some of your guys facilities.
So we, I mean the whole business on being a parking aggregator, it's all built on technology.
Yeah.
So you really have to make sure your tech is the best. You have to make sure that there's no bug issues with the tech. There is the driver. Once the driver goes in, the driver comes out, meaning the driver goes in and has the undeniably the best experience they possibly can have. They're not needing to call technical support or operational support because something doesn't work. So number one is having your technology in place and be robust enough where it's easy to use. When customers go in and it's super complex, they're going to let you know that I can't figure this out. This doesn't work for my business. There's a just high number of questions that they will have or of even feedback that they'll have for you. And feedback is good. You should always take constructive criticism.
But again, if you have best tech in place, you really don't have to do much manual labor or manual processes. It's going to be mostly automated. The next thing I would say is for a driver, or at least for fitbark drivers, to have the best experience is to constantly call them. I think even Dan the driver row. I think you could attest to this. Where if Fin park, for example, any other parking aggregator, let's just throw it out there and make it completely anonymous. But any parking aggregator called you specifically and said, how could I help you, Mr. Driver? How can I solve your pain point for today? Where are you driving to? Were you at the area at a dock door waiting for two hours? Where are you exactly and how can I help you during those two hours?
Maybe I can send you a song to listen to. Maybe it could just talk to you because you're bored. Right. I think it's the cut. So it's the technology. But then that's number one is the customer service. It's the conversation you have with that driver and making that driver feel like, okay, I'm not just going to a system where it's all automated. And like today, when you try to go through customer service yourself and it's like, go here, go there. And there's. You can never get anybody on the phone. It's so aggravating and frustrating. So really my point in all this, and this is where I digress, is that if you talk to somebody, if you just talk to the driver, that is where we're finding the most success at Finn Park. It's just having those conversations. Simple.
Yeah. No. And, you know, and as Dan says here, it's, you know, he's been saying it's not the margins that matter, it's the value that matters. And that's the 100% truth. Right? What value are you adding to the experience, you know, as you're going on out there? And that's all that it is, right. I'm a service provider as a freight broker, all right, I'm going out there, I'm cold calling manufacturer, shippers, whatever you want to call them. That's what I'm doing all day long. I'm trying to develop business inside of the niche that I operate in, which is primarily full truckload with a focus in on open deck transportation. That's really where we roll for the most part. And I'm trying to find that freight that matches up.
And then once I get that freight right, I'm going out there and I'm trying to find that trucking company that runs between Charlotte and Fort Myers, Florida. We'll just use that as a hypothetical example. All right, I'm going out there and I'm trying to match that up to find them that freight that works out best for them and find that why? All right. It's having an actual conversation with your driver. All right. When we're out there working loads, especially if it's a new lane, for example, because this is where a lot of people find themselves in is, you know, because unlike, you know, in. In the real world, when you actually develop a new customer, you get your first lane, chances are you probably don't have a ton of capacity on it.
You're going to go out there and you're going to go to a load board to try and develop that capacity. How are you selling that? Right. Like, the very first thing we do is we ask them this. Do you run this lane often? Are you in this area often? How many days a week? How many trucks do you have in your fleet? This is what we want to find out. Because again, I want to get them freight that they want to run, right? Like, we just onboarded a new customer here recently, and we found seven trucking companies who are like, I'm actually in that area three times a week. So we have 21 trucks now a week in this area. They all run back down to the Midwest. All right, that is legitimately in the region that this customer ships.
And all because we had a minimum of a three minute, you guys, three minute conversation that is not that long. But again, you're able to find out a bunch of stuff out there. Because as much as I love load boards, I don't want to use them forever, all right? It is a tool that I can develop capacity with, and then I can go out there and then I can use that same trucking company time and time again. They are in my. Then my drivers are in my inbox. Hey, man, I'm going to be in this area on this day of this week. Do you have any freight?
Boom.
Then I'm going out there to my shippers. Hey, the driver who picked up for you two weeks ago, he's going to be there next week. Are you going to have anything for them? It's a lot different conversation. And again, a lot of this is perfect world stuff. Stuff, you guys. But all that's all that it boils down to. I really wish more people as a broker would put the driver experience with you into focus because it might not matter to you right now, okay? Because we're still in a broker's market. But one day you're going to listen to this podcast or you're going to remember this podcast. You're going to be like, I should have listened to Chris. Capacity's tight. There's no trucks. They don't want to work with me because they don't want to deal with my bullshit. All right?
That inevitably will happen to you as a broker. Okay? And I've been literally talking about this for the last couple of years. And I'm telling you, if you're. Don't wait. All right? Don't wait. Take this into consideration. Because again, as a broker, I'm still waiting for you to come to me with that business plan where you can make money as a freight broker and not need trucks.
I love it. I love it. I do want to hone in on something that's very important, too, especially when you're talking about, you know, talking to these drivers, finding out their. Or talking to these in the freight brokerage world, having these conversations with the fleets, understanding getting. Ascertaining the data, really, but understanding getting feedback, right? Getting the feedback from these companies so that you understand where the drivers are in a certain and specific geographical location. But that's. That's important, right? Because you're saying in the future, once you come back to this podcast, you know, rewatch it, learn from it, understand it. Don't get so caught up in the weeds. Don't get so caught up into the automated processes. So this is where I'm going with all this.
I'm saying that we need to focus on the Human element, because we're getting pulled away further and further from it. Why? Because in 2025, when you asked me to jump on this podcast, I know we got a couple minutes left here that the Trend is in 2025, that AI and automation, it's going to be adopted more and more. You're going to see more of it, which means we're going to be pulling away from the human side, pulling away from the experience, pulling away from the conversations and the customer service. Everything we discussed today is going to go out the window. I don't know if you follow Brent Ladd, but today he was talking about. He was talking about literally, AI creating a movie. Like, you don't need Hollywood anymore.
You don't need, you know, to go out and find actors and producers and directors and spend all this money. You could use it through AI. That's scary stuff. So we got to make sure that we know in 2025, in terms of business trends that are going to be happening, this is all obviously predictability. So this is not going to happen. I don't want to scare anybody, but you can see it already today, we need to focus on the human element. Let's not forget that. That is my note.
No, dude, I'm. I'm in 100% agreeance with that because I truly feel that as a broker, as a small business, as somebody who's trying to develop my American dream, that is what's going to make me competitive over the next couple of years, is showing face, showing that I'm a real human being. Because as everybody pushes to automate, and again, there's a time and a place for automation. All right? But as people are starting to push towards automating the customer experience and the carrier experience, I'm going to do the opposite of that, because that's how I'm going to compete. That's how I'm going to stand out. Because eventually, at least, I mean, I feel this way to my core, people are going to eventually be like, all right, enough is enough with the tech. Where are the real human beings?
I want to talk to an actual person. So I feel like in the interim, you might not have the tech budget. I can't compete with Amazon on price. Right. Like, I think nobody can, but I can compete with Amazon. And the fact that I'm an actual human being, when you have an actual concern, I'm the one who's going to pick up the phone or somebody from my team is going to physically pick up the phone. And that is where the automation will always die inside of my companies is the customer experience and the carrier experience. When people call us, they will get a real human being on the phone. All right, I can even FaceTime with you and do some push ups to show you that I'm real.
But that will never be automated because I feel like that is going to be my competitive advantage moving forward for the foreseeable future as I'm going on out there. Because everybody pushes to remove it to reduce overhead headcount. I get it. But I'm going to continue to invest in real people to push that out there because I truly feel like that's what's going to be the next frontier of all things in business, man. Especially from the small to mid sized market. I mean you can see it back in like retail, man. Like, dude, I want to go to a retail store. I want to see a real human being.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean consumer behavior is all AI today. So I absolutely agree. We want to make sure that we bring back the human element. We want to see people when we go out to the store and not robots, which is another thing. That's another conversation, another day. I am freaked out for that, dude.
I refuse to. I will wait in line for a physical cashier as opposed to go to one of the automated ones because like I, I'm right there with you. I don't want to go into a grocery store and yeah, I get the self checkout couple of items. That's cool. But like if I have actual stuff, I'm going to a real human being. I'm not going to do the self checkout from that. Regards. Because I like, I just envision in my head, Anthony, that they're pulling data right now who uses the actual person and who uses the automated service and they're going to make their decisions and I feel like that's going to cost somebody a job. So it's like, man, I'll wait an extra five minutes in line to let these individuals have, you know, have a real person check down at the store.
But that's gonna have to be a conversation for another day on that. Anthony. Dude, I always appreciate you having me on, man. How does anybody reach out to you guys? You guys got something you want to give out to the viewers as well with Finn park on like a discount code or something? I believe it was.
I believe we do. It's fin. I think it's F I N P R O D. So we are Finn park, but it's Finnprod. F I n p r o d 15. I'll go ahead and give it to you, Chris, at the end of the show. You could probably put it out there to your viewers so that they actually have the, I guess the written version of it. It'd be a lot easier. Fin prod. I believe that's what it is.
You guys, we're gonna put it up there in the show notes and everything and we'll put it out there in the. The description on the audio only replay. So if you're listening to this in the future, probably over your Christmas break because you're going to miss my voice a little bit. So you're going to pull up this episode in particular. Fin pod 15 it'll be down in the show notes. You guys, my Anthony and my friends over at Finn park, they're out there. Gotten a little code for you guys to use out there for the viewers of the show. But that is going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. We'll be back tomorrow. We got a guest coming on tomorrow. We got guests coming on next week as well. We're going strong here, you guys.
We're not slowing down because you guys shouldn't be slowing down either just because it's the holidays. I got a lot of big, audacious goals out there and I'm going to achieve them. But I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. Dude, was that. What was that?