1114. #TFCP - Clean Fleet Mandate Dropped & Sean Duffy's Bold Vision!

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. If those of you who tuned in who are looking to speak with my and hear from my friend Ann Reinke, unfortunately she's having some technical difficulties here this morning. So it is going to be a complete impromptu solo show and I am going to pull some rabbits out of my hat and we are going to make this happened today.

This isn't the first time that it's happened that, you know, there's been some technical difficulties. But you know what, Ann's a really good friend of mine. I really am happy for her new role at iana and I'm going to get her rescheduled on here in the coming weeks to get it to, to have, make this up and we're going to talk about IANA and what that organization is out there and doing, you know, and kind of what the intermodal freight market, what are some of their legislative goals and everything for 2025 in the incoming administration and everything like that. So we'll get her to come back on. Unfortunately, things happen and you know, this is also, you know, just the reality of doing anything, you guys, it's not always going to be perfect and that's just part of it, Right?

But luckily for all of you guys, I've been doing this for a really long time and I got a lot of to talk about inside of this old dome of mine. So we're going to jump in we're going to do a little bit of a hybrid sales training today and then we're also going to be breaking down some. Actually, you know what? I want to talk about a very big thing that kind of came about here the other day. But before we get into any of that, you guys, I want to talk about this little old newsletter we got. It drops every single Wednesday. I don't auto sign people up for any of my content. I want people to want to actually hear and receive some of the stuff that I put out.

So if you go to thefraycoach.com and you register for it will just come into your inbox every single Wednesday. It's all market information, it's all transportation related content because that's all I talk about and really it's all I kind of know. So that's what we're gonna stay with. I'm not gonna try and be a life coach or anything like that for you guys. But yeah, if you guys want to register for that, hit that up. But yeah, let's go in. This article came out the other day and I was wanted to talk about this. And this is actually a very big deal. If any of you have been in the industry for a long time, you know the state of California can be an absolute nightmare to operate in.

And you know that is also seemingly going to start getting rolled back a little bit here. So this article was from ttnews.com this came out yesterday. And this, you know, it says Trucking touts win as CARB drops clean fleet mandate which is a very big deal. The CARB is. California Air Resource Board has backed down on a regulatory proposal that would have required trucking companies to gradually add zero emissions vehicles to their fleet. A dramatic shift that was welcomed by trucking leaders known as Advanced Clean Fleets rule. The law would have mandated for certain truck and bus. Bus fleets, excuse me, in a state. In the state a phased in deployment of ZEVs in their operations. Separately, California also has proposed an Advanced Clean Trucks rule that requires manufacturers only sell zero emissions trucks in the state beginning in 2036 model year. Both proposed.

Both proposals require the U.S. Environment Protection Agency to grant CARB a waiver of federal rules to proceed. The state has withdrawn the waiver. The Advanced Clean trucks regulation will still be in effect and it will likely put an onus on truck manufacturers to continue making zero emissions trucks, said Mark Tunnel, a California based senior director of environmental affairs at the ATA for fleets. However, Tunnel said the waiver withdrawal removes tremendous pressure to adopt a nascent technology that critics say is developmentally not far enough along to meet transportation company needs. And you know, I bring this up as not somebody who wants us all to, you know, breathe in shitty air and everything else for any of those environmentally friendly people who like to listen to this show.

But I just think that it is absolutely asinine the amount of level, like the level that they're kind of pushing this, right? And again, it just goes back to the age old saying, you give them an inch and you take a mile. I remember when carb first went into effect back in. I want to say, you know, somebody can fact check me on this. I want to say it was like 2012, 2013, somewhere around that time. And we all thought that was going to be like the end of the industry, right? Because like who the hell would want to jump through all of those hoops to move freight in and out of California? And you know, at the end of the day it has just been a slow, gradual increase, right? Give them an inch, take a mile.

It started with just a couple of things and now they're like you, we want you to completely meet these standards. And this is all within like a 20 year period of where this goal was getting right. So it's good to see them roll this back. I personally think this has everything to do with the incoming administration and what they are going to propose out there, right? Because again, like no matter what, you need to look at this as it's an industry, right? It, you know, electric, clean energy, green energy, however you want to put it, is an industry that competes with oil. And the incoming administration is all about drill baby, drill. And they are going to do that. So again, they're pausing this. I don't think this is anything that goes away for a long time.

I think this is something that's just put on pause until the next administration, you know, in 2028 if there's a change of guard and Democrats take back control, there will be an influx of all of this shit coming back in. I think this is complete administration driven only. And this is just a pause. I don't necessarily think we should tout this as this is going to go away for good. I highly doubt that it will go away for good. I just think this is a see you later as opposed to gone forever. And if you guys want to read up more on that One is from ttnews.com it talks about that. You know, again, this is information that you should be knowing about.

As a freight broker and you should take this to your customers and anybody else and you know, even if you're bringing freight in and out of there and the carriers that you're working with inside of the California and instead of the state of California, excuse me, I don't ever assume everybody knows everything. I like to do that because I like to be a partner in as many topics, you know, regarding transportation as a pod possibly can be. Tony Darnell, Happy Friday. He's watching over on YouTube. Corey Buchan, TGIF from the Snowy north. Yeah, dude, it's freezing down here in Arizona today, bro. It's only like 60. That's why I'm in a hoodie. Sunny Sharma, Good morning orange shirt gang. Steve Seca Bummer. Looking forward to the reschedule with her. I am too, man. I really like Anne.

Anne was great at the TIA and when she went and when she took the job at iana, I mean it said it's a great position for her because she's from the intermodal side of things. I believe it was CSX that she worked at for a long time. She can correct me if I'm wrong on that but you know, it'll be great to have her come back on. And again, I don't necessarily talk about intermodal because at the end of the day, you guys, I don't do that at all. And I like bringing subject matter experts on to educate me on that. Nick Erdman, Good morning. Happy Friday. It's fine, Tony, you could hate me, but we both want the Irish to win for national championship. So let's find some common ground there. That would be pretty cool. Mike Lombard, my guy, what is up?

He's coming in over on LinkedIn. Hammer down Friday. Amen to that. I also wanted to bring up another article that is very beneficial for the transportation industry as a whole that came out. It's Senate confirmation hearing week essentially this week out there on Capitol Hill going on right now, everything under the sun is being grilled and one of them is the transportation secretary nominee, Sean Duffy. This article came from ttnews.com and Duffy promises a bold vision as Trump's transportation nominee. He is a former Wisconsin congressman and I am all about badger country at the end of the day. So I will always want to see the state of Wisconsin get on the national map.

If confirmed, he said, you know, we will craft a clear, excuse me, went to public school. We will craft clear regulations that balance safety, innovation and cutting edge technology. Duffy said transportation impacts every aspect of our life, from efficiency and security of our ports to the ease of commuting to work, school and church. Together with President Trump, this committee and the entire DOT team will usher in the golden age of travel. And then throughout the hearing, Duffy also pushed back on the current administration's enthusiasm for inclusivity if it would hinder meritocracy. Responding to questionnaire from the committee, Duffy said he has a command of the federal budget process and his vision for the DOT would be to ensure safe vehicle standards and infrastructure as well as move dollars out of the door efficiently and accordingly, according to laws passed by Congress.

He also intends to foster an environment where innovation can flourish. Ted Cruz from Texas touted his credentials. And then in. And then Senator Ron Johnson, also from Wisconsin, he pointed that a freight centric legislative portfolio. He has worked to address the shortage of commercial truckers and introduce legislation to prevent trains. Block. Yeah, I think Ron Johnson is off a little bit there because I do not think that there is a driver shortage at all out there.

But then, you know, from the other side of the aisle, Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington, the panel's ranking member, congratulated Duffy for earning the trust of the President elect and called on the nominee to make sure that we're continuing to make the investment that the Congress has already appropriated and assigned because obviously building resilient systems that can't be disrupted help us drive an even bigger economy in the United States. It is crucial that DOT continues to implement the law of Congress as directed. And Illinois and every other state needed needs to receive all the funding that has been awarded to it on time without any due undue delay. I think that's a little hypocritical of anybody in Congress demanding that we do anything. But anyways, back to it.

I think that, you know, again, we need, like, from somebody who's worked in this industry for the entirety of my life, our infrastructure is garbage. All right, As a whole. The freeways, as a whole, all right, I know there's some good pockets that are out there, but like, we need to fix a lot of what is our current infrastructure is from the ports, airports. We need to update a lot of this stuff and we need to focus on the efficiencies of the entire flow of goods that are going on out there. I really hope that we actually tackle this. And this is not buried in typical bureaucratic BS which Washington D.C. Is notorious for out there. So I would love to see a lot of this get fixed.

I hope Sean Duffy, if confirmed, does a phenomenal job that's out there because, you know, at the end of the day, you guys, we have consist persistent problems that come up out there and we need to fix it, right? Our entire transportation infrastructure, highways, railways, ports, airports. I mean, let's be honest, Kansas City, Kansas, or Kansas City, Missouri, however you want to put it, has the nicest airport in the United States of America that I've personally flown in and out of in a very long time. It's one of the newest ones that's out there. And a lot of the other airports that are out there are old, they're falling apart, and they're trash. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I've seen some really shitty ones that just shouldn't be the case, right?

Not with our economic power that we have here in the United States. And then we can talk about the freeways as well. Most of them are garbage in the majority of this country. All right? They're not maintained properly. None of that stuff that goes on out there. And we need to fix that, right? Like, we also need to fix the port. Our ports are not even in the top 10, I believe, rankings worldwide for efficiencies. So again, why is that? Where do we go? We won't talk about the union in this one from that perspective, but our ports are old. We need to fix this stuff. We need to bring that back to come in here. So I think. And then also in wrapping this article up of the American Trucking association is also endorsing Duffy as secretary.

He will focus on DOT's attention and resources on the physical infrastructure projects. Representative Duffy's experience serving the House Financial Committee further reinforces that he will be a diligent and responsible steward of critical mission to deliver a globally competitive and safe transformation system. Ultimately, Chris Spear said a well maintained and reliable transportation network is crucial to the delivery of the nation's freight and vital to our economic well being. Again, this is another article that was from TT News, but this one came up as well. And I think it would be very beneficial for everybody to read up on this because Senator Duffy will be the ranking member overseeing our entire industry as a whole. So read up on that.

You guys get more educated on some of this stuff and then especially lining yourself up with some of these advocacy groups that are on Capitol Hill fighting for bills that directly affect your business in your industry. Just get well versed on that stuff, you guys. It's all public information. Mike Lombard said, Lee Schmidt for the head of fmcsa. I'll have to look into that, Mike. I've never, I've never heard of Lee Schmidt, but let me see. Mike Lombard said Sean Duffy was Lee Schmidt's congressman. Lee is a safe driver with over 30 years of safe driving and knows the green book better than chat GPT hoping, hopeful for Duffy putting in the right leadership and transportation. Amen to that, man. I think like at the end of the day that's my only hope.

In focus is that we can fix a lot of where we currently are as a country and as an industry and get going in the right direction. And that's going to be my main hope for a lot of this stuff that's going on out there. But I want to just kind of keep people up to date on sorry I had to drink some coffee there on a couple of big news stories that dropped this week. Obviously pay attention to all of the congressional hearings that are going on for the Senate or excuse me, the Senate confirmations that are going on this week. And then also stay up to date on the everything going on with carb.

You guys, if you guys have freight going in and out of California or if you're based in California and you're a fleet and you're not aware of that, you guys. Ttnews.com put a great article out there to kind of keep you up to date. And I am always going to be a fan of less red, less legislation affecting our lives, smaller government. Let us get back to doing what we do out there. But I'm going to spend the last couple of minutes talking a little bit about business development so far, freight sales, however you want to put it. And again, this is just live feedback from somebody who actually cold calls every single day. And I am a massive, massive proponent of cold calling. I'm a massive proponent of getting in front of people if they will allow.

And you know, that's just something that we have personally seen a lot of positive feedback in. You know, we have gravitated away from email only outreach. So essentially the strategy that we've implemented and that we are going to run with is it's going to be cold call. The only time we will transition to email is if the individual or we are instructed to email only at that time. But again, you know, I, I have found that when I talk to people, you know, and I go in with a singular purpose, right? Like our entire trajectory in our rollout, in our plan is full truckload, right? Primarily open deck. The there's, you know, like I've always said, there's. There's bleed over into, drive in when it comes down to a lot of that. So that's a service offering.

But like we're not touching reefer, we're not touching air, we're not touching intermodal, we're not touching ltl. And this is all like right now. And then, you know, this is something that you can really build and scale up off of. Because as I'm out there and I'm calling people, you guys, I have been given way more positive feedback on our outreach and that's even coming from the individuals who don't necessarily need us. Right. Like I've called a couple of places that are like 95% LTL and they've also ended the call with saying, hey man, I really appreciate the fact that you're very direct in why you're calling and the services that you're offering and that you're not trying to do everything. You know, I've heard that. And then I've also got that positive feedback from people who are interested in our service. Right?

Because I'm going in there and I have a different conversation when I'm talking to somebody who clearly does open deck freight. I'm not going in there asking to Jay, just let me bid, Let me do this, let me do that. I want to know more about their operation. I want to know are we going to an active job site, Are we going to a retail location, Is there going to be a crane? And you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm not asking them for money. A really great. I've been talking about her book a lot here, you guys. And you know, again, I would read this, pick this up right now. If you are in sales, especially within transportation, it's called the Revenue Engine by Kara Smith Brown. I got like maybe a couple more chapters left in the book.

It's a very, very good read. And it helped clarify something for me that I have personally, I always struggled with in sales because one of the things, like, I hate asking people for stuff, right? Like, that's just who I am as a person when I'm out there. Like, very, if very rarely will I ask somebody for anything because I would rather just do it on my own. And a lot of it was, is she framed something up in here and it's on page 103. And I would highly recommend all of you. And I actually underline. I never fucking underline or highlight anything in books. I actually stopped and did it like it is that it was that important for me. And it, you know, it talks about the top of the prospecting funnel should be the largest stage you have by record count.

Remember, we're executing a process of elimination. The top of the prospecting funnel is where you are looking for and tracking the smallest signal that your future customers know who you are. And when I read that, it was like all the light bulbs went off in my head where again, I hate asking people for something, but I have no problem trying to disqualify people, right? Like, how many times have you found yourself in that sales cycle where you're calling somebody and calling them or you're emailing them and then you find out they just do like small pack parcel and they just ship FedEx and UPS, which I don't want to do that. I want full truckload, right?

And so it's like sometimes when, like when I heard that and I flipped that approach, like I've almost gamified it now to where it's like, if I find out that they're not for us today. No, I'm not being an or anything like that, but it kind of like removes that beat down of business development. Because I will openly talk about how much it sucks when you get told no day in and day out on every single outreach that you put it is not easy. It is not for the faint of heart. But when I read that, it has now clarified it to me that it's like, no, it's not a no. It's just I, I don't even want that, right? Like, and that's because we're not going after everything, right? Like, if they're primarily ltl, I. I don't want them.

If they need an LTL broker, I'll just introduce them to Gabe Pinkin in it, rocket shipping. Because that's all they do. You know, if. If I call somebody, which I won't call a food person at all, but, you know, I got my man Cody or. Or I. I got my man Sonny Sharma as well. Those guys are. They only do Reaver, right? So it's like, I'll gladly put that out there. I don't want that. I want full truckload. I want open deck. And when I'm calling people and I'm finding out that they don't have what I'm looking for, at least for me, this works for me where I don't let it beat me up. It's not a rejection. It's actually getting me one step closer to the people that I actually want to work with. Right.

So I hope that helps kind of clarify some of these things for you all. Because sales is a very emotional thing for me. This is how I feed my family literally every single day. I'm out there trying to build my book of business because I'm trying to support my family as I know each and every one of you guys are as well. So I would highly recommend, as you're going out there, try and find that thing to remove that emotional connection to the call. And she also has another really good line in the book that you're selling to a business, you're not selling to an individual. And that was another thing that really resonated with me. And I also thought back on all the times that, yes, I might have had a relationship with the decision maker, but they left, right.

But I'm still moving that company's freight. And then I thought about all of those times. And that was another thing too, because I. I was like, ultimately I'm just selling to that business that. That business who manufactures pipe, they're going to do it. Whether Tim Jane, insert any name you want is the decision maker. But I want to establish that relationship with the company as a whole. So that also kind of helped me remove some of that emotional connection that I have out there at this stage of where I'm going in and trying to develop a lot of that business. So that helped clarify a lot of those things for me. It's a really good book. I think any freight broker as a whole. This book right here will help you out the revenue engine. And I've also talked about this book a lot.

I think if you're starting out in sales or if you've been in sales for a very long time, like I have the Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort. That book has exponentially helped me out on the straight line system that he breaks down in there. Again, I'm not associated with any of those books at all. Those are just some areas that I found some extreme value in building my business and everything. And I'm going to continue to talk about that, you guys, because, like, I'm just in the trenches with all of this stuff. But that is going to be it for this day today, and I hope you guys got value in this one. It's not very often that my guests have technical difficulties and have to jump. So this entire episode was complete rabbit out of the hat. I'm just gonna roll.

And we did that. But a couple of shout outs, you know, to my sponsors here today. You guys hit up green screens. I won the same day load off of them, off of the rate that they provided. Literally paid 10 within $10 of what they said I was going to pay. And then I built and tendered the load on Revenova. Tms, you guys, because I use Revenova every single day. So hit them up. But that is going to be it. As always, you guys, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there to your network. Because if you see value, your network is going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.