Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in the fast lane when the light turns green Built tough, find nothing but grit. Cause I made rugged blood sweat and spit yeah like a horse I fly self in 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 at the separate coach podcast, the time top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30 in 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 Friday, everybody. And there is literally nobody more qualified to come on and talk about this topic today, which is the produce freight market. What's going on out there, what we can expect. And that, my friends, is Mr. Cody Kaylor with ANZ. What is going on today, brother? How are you?
I am doing well, buddy. How are you?
I'm doing fantastic, man. It's. I'm already like 30 cold calls deep today. And. Yeah, man, I'm just. Listen. I have identified that the early bird definitely gets the worm. And I think I. At least for me, I like that workflow of getting into it early in the day and knocking it out, because, you know, otherwise, man, you can get pulled in multiple different directions. And then you look up and see end of the day and you didn't do anything. Yep.
Yeah, it's. Especially in freight, right? Like you. I mean, no day is the same and. And every day there's a fire to put out. So, yeah, it can definitely eat. Eat your day away. For sure, dude.
That's exactly it. Right? And it's, you know, for me, it's. It's always just about structuring those things out and making sure that you get it in every single day. Because, I mean, I don't know about you, man, but, like, I can definitely feel a sense sentiment shift when I get people on the phone. It's not the. No, no, no. It's like, well, let's talk a little bit. You know, and now I want to be abundantly clear, this is not every single phone call that I make. But when I'm getting the people on the phone and I'm catching them, it. The. The receptiveness has. There's definitely a sentiment shift that's out there.
Oh, yeah, we're getting a lot more maybes and a lot more like, you know, let's talk the next quarter. Let's talk as this progresses through the year versus the last two years where it was basically, nope, don't call me again. Send me an email with your info and I'll talk to you if I need anything type stuff. Right. So we're definitely seeing a lot more, you know, maybes and quite frankly, yeses. You know, we actually, I mean, we onboarded five new customers for Q4. So, yeah, we're starting to. We're starting to feel it. I mean, you know, January was a rough month just because of weather and the capacity crunch from everything that happened in California. You know, those fires really screwed up the capacity and especially for us in produce. Right. Because Yuma seasons started.
A lot of those trucks come down from California. You know, there's, you know, this because you live in Arizona. There's not very many carriers based in Yuma. You know, like, there's. There's not a lot of trucks just sitting out there. So they're either coming from Phoenix or from California, a lot from Los Angeles. And with those fires, man, it really screwed up capacity. So this has been a. A weird month. And it definitely showed in the rates, obviously, it showed in the capacity crunch. Things are starting to level off a little bit, I feel out there. But I think that this market's it. I'm not gonna go out there and say that the market's gonna go, you know, gangbuster this year. I really don't think it'll go gangbuster.
I think we're gonna see a slow, steady up to the right, you know, a few cents here per mile, A few cents here per mile. Your normal seasonality. But I don't think it's going to be a crazy year one way or the other. But improvement, any improvement over the last two years is going to be good.
Yeah, and I'm seeing that and I'm hearing that from multiple people. Like, I was just texting the other day with a buddy of mine, he owns a large reefer fleet, and he was saying that as well. He was like, yeah, man. He's like, I Don't see any cataclysmic jumps in anything. He's like, but I have. We were awarded a, you know, slight price increase, you know, year over year, which he's like, I'll take anything that we can get right now.
So.
So, you know, again, and that's why I always want to caution when we're ever talking about recovery. What, what's going on out there is that like, I. I just don't see it. I do not see it jumping up and spiking up. Outside of them being a lot more weather related events throughout the year, I. I'm like. And I've been saying for a year is. I think it's going to be a slow and steady approach and it's going to come at some point, whether it's 12 months, 18 months from now. All the headlines. Freights up 48 cents a mile or 55 cents a mile, whatever that is. Look at all this, yada, yada. And I'm telling you it's gonna be a kind of a slow and gradual increase.
But I think like what I want more people to be aware of is as the year progresses. And this is, you know, from a business development standpoint, I mean, at least on my. In my operation here, the way that we're approaching it is we're trying to increase our output in any possible way because any service failures are not going to be welcome as drivers raise their rates throughout the year and brokers are going to try and continue to compress that down. Do you see that a lot in the reefer world?
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean it's, you know, just to echo what you're saying, our approach is the exact same. Our approaches get as much outreach as you can right now because at some point in time a carrier's going to fail or a storm's going to hit or something's going to change. But right now it's still kind of that like equilibrium stage, right? Where I don't think we're. I don't think we're losing as much capacity as we have been per month from what I've been reading. And I don't see volumes going up at a drastic rate at all. On the reefer side. We've actually seen it pretty tame. You know, Yuma season has been kind of a crapshoot outside of the issues that we had with the fires. From an actual volume standpoint. Yuma.
Yuma season's been down this year because of the drought we had. I don't know about you on the, the east end of the valley, but we got, you know, I've been here for eight years now in the valley and this was the second time that I got the level three drought alert during, I think it was July or August where they basically told you don't water your trees or we're going to come turn your water off, you know. Yeah, it was, but it was like a four week level three drought, like. But it did affect the crops out there from everything I've understood, especially the leafy greens. I talked to Dean over there at DAT about a month ago about that. In December, leafy greens were down like 65% or something. So.
Yeah, and so that's a big, you're talking romaine, you're talking spinach, you're talking kale, that type of stuff that's all grown out there right now. The demand's just not there. And the production wasn't there either. We're hoping for a better Salina season. I haven't heard any water issues so far, but you know, obviously we'll know a little bit more. As you know, February comes to a draw because the first cut usually happens in first part of April. So they're planting everything right now. So everything's seedlings right now. And you know, if we have floods like we did, what was it two years ago, that kills all the seedlings. If we have a drought that obviously kills a lot of the seedlings. If it gets too hot, it'll kill the seedlings.
So from now until April, it's kind of just like, just watch what's going on. Monitor the weather over there. We haven't had a normal Selena season in probably five years. We haven't had a normal Yuma season at least like five or six years.
Oh, wow.
It's always one way or the other. It's either we got too much water or I don't think in Arizona we've actually had too much water at least since I've been moving produce. But, you know, so it's been, it's been interesting. Even the apple crop, you know, the apple crop wasn't near as good this year up in Washington too. For, for those of you who move Pacific Northwest stuff, I think that was down high single digits. I think it was like 8 and a half percent or something like that. Potatoes have been the only, you know, stellar thing. They were actually up almost 10%.
Oh wow.
On their harvest. So Idaho's been a nightmare this year for capacity, but I mean, it's been good volume wise. So yeah, it's definitely, it's one thing or another. We're, we're literally what the major commodity that is so weather driven, it's not even funny.
So how are you, or maybe your customers approaching this? Because if, you know, if there's a drought here in the United States and we have to shift, you know, purchasing from Mexico and with any anticipated tariffs that could or couldn't be happening. I mean, I, I don't, I think some people are, I don't want to use the term overreacting with it because I feel like at the end of the day it's a bargaining chip to. That's kind of being floated around right now. But in the event that it does happen, in the event that they're like, hey, we have to start importing leafy greens from Mexico or, you know, anything from Mexico, how is that going to affect capacity? Like, are you guys having those conversations right now going into, you know, growing season and everything else?
Not really. Because unfortunately with produce, unlike a lot of other commodities, you can only harvest what's produced, right? So like if, and that's usually, you know, 90 to 120 days before. So if they're not pre planning that now on this, on the grower side, it doesn't make a lick of difference. All that, all that's going to happen is lettuce prices are going to double and you know, you may not get your let your salad at Olive Garden or something when, you know, when you go there. So unfortunately, when they run out. I mean, it's kind of a shitstorm when that does happen. I remember, I think it was three years ago when Salinas got hit Castroville, that whole area over there got hit really hard for about two weeks with like 105 degree temps, which never happens over there.
Yeah, there was no strawberries you could not find because it literally will melt strawberries as soon as they're picked, right. They just turn, they just turn to mush. And so it was like a two week period where there was just no berries. And you go to the grocery store and it was completely cleaned out and there's just, there's not a whole lot you can do. You know, they can't just automatically shift to purchasing stuff from, you know, Chile or, you know, Mexico or anything like that, because if the product's not there it's not there.
Yeah.
So, yeah, so, I mean, it's really tough to. To answer that one, because at the end of the day, it's all with what the growers are predicting and what they're planting.
No, I gotcha. And, you know, because that's obviously one of the bigger headlines out there right now is, you know, any tariff? Yeah, Tariff, this tariff. And, you know, at the end of the day, obviously, you know, I'm not naive to say that it won't have an effect on things, but, like, there's so much at that's kind of like floating in the wind, I would call it right now. Is anybody going to actually pull the trigger on this, or is this a major bargaining chip for a greater play in a lot of areas? And, I mean, obviously, Trump has made it very, very clear that he wants to put. Bring everything back here to the United States. He wants to, you know, reinvigorate manufacturing here and everything else, which I'm a fan of. I would love to see more manufacturing jobs here.
I would love to see less of a reliance on foreign countries to operate our country as a whole. And, you know, and then, you know, so it's like, I think that there's a lot that is yet to be seen. I think it's way too early in the year in the presidency and everything to make any foregone conclusions about what could happen. There's a lot of that could happen at any given moment of the day. Will it until it's signed. I don't take. I don't, like, I just don't pay attention to, you know, like. And a lot of it is. Is, you know, and I would put this out there in front of a lot of people from a business development standpoint as well. Do not celebrate until the inks dry, all right? It is not real until the inkstry. Otherwise, it's just all mouthpiece.
And I feel like that's kind of a lot of what we're hearing out there right now across the market. There's a false sense of shit being floated out there. And again, I'm not going to sit here and say that there aren't pockets of improvement. There aren't things that are. That are improving and maybe dropping or whatever that is. But, like I've been saying literally since I started creating content is. Is. There's so much that's outside of your control. What are you doing inside of your organization to build up somewhat of an immunity play from that?
Yep, I agree with You, I mean, at the end of the day, just stick to what you're doing. I mean, because even if gets signed tomorrow, who knows when it's going to take effect? Who knows when that's actually going to happen? Right. Like, if you look back at the first four years that he was in there, we really didn't see a tariff increase until what, 18. Right. 18 is when all the, you know, the freight market went crazy. But 16 and 17 were pretty tame.
Yeah.
So, you know, and the tariff crunch that we felt in 18 also happened to coincide with the ELD mandate. So you had two things happen at the same time that all of a sudden we're going to keep drivers honest. Not that they don't, you know, still figure out how to doctor their logs, but, you know, you were basically taking hours off the road and capacity. Some drivers just didn't want to comply so they just went to go work in the oil fields, for example. You know, I was talking to Jared over at E Carrier Check last week about it and there's always a shift when domestic oil production goes up. There's a lot of drivers that are going to just go drive tankers for that. Right.
They're going to be taken off the road for dry vans and flatbeds and reefers and stuff like that because they're going to go work for an oil company that's paying more and it's driving for them. It doesn't matter. Right. So all of that stuff is going to play into what's going to happen the next four years. None of us have a Magic 8 ball. If we did, none of us would really need a day job. Right. We'd be, we'd be trading stocks every day or something like that.
But no, that's exactly it. And I had, you know, also another Jared, but Jared Flynn from Bulk Loads and were, I had him on probably about two weeks ago now and were talking about something similar to that because he has a dude, you should follow him on YouTube because he's got a sick channel where he goes around to all these specialized across the United States and he goes in like interviews the founders of these companies. Like it's the real trucking of it, right. Like I'm talking like 20 to 50 fleet truck fleets and stuff like that. Not the Megas or anything. I mean he might like for the most part it's the smaller businesses that are out there.
And he goes to interviews and were talking about that and how a lot of those guys Shift commodities as they go throughout the year because like I was watching one of these carriers in southern Minnesota and they do like oil and stuff like that, and it's for like a juice manufacturer in southern Minnesota or in that area. And then how, if that's not going, then they shift to another commodity and everything else. So it kind of plays in line there. I think that you're going to see a lot of that and that, you know, again, it's a. Well, I think any disruption is a good thing for the freight market. I, I really do. Because we need somebody to come in and shake the tree a little bit here, break things up to cause more demand in one area.
Because that's exactly what's going to happen. Drivers will just switch, right? Maybe they're going to go from flatbeds to tankers or whatever that looks like or, you know, vans to flats. You just don't know anything like that is going to help things out.
Yeah. And I mean, interest rates always play a huge thing into. Right. I've always said the two major events that kick off every freight cycle is housing builds and produce. Right. And they both happen at the same time, which is springtime, you know, once the weather starts getting a little bit better and they're building outside of just the southern states, those two things drive capacity or they don't drive capacity. And from everything I'm reading right now, existing home prices or existing home sales is in the dumps like 40 or low. Right. Like nobody's buying homes because one, you got to have a crazy down payment right now. And two, like interest rates are so high you're going to get half the house that you would if you waited for interest rates to drop. Right. For. So yeah.
So with knowing that, I just don't see to. To your point earlier, I don't see anything cataclysmic happening this year outside of stuff we can't predict. Maybe there's a war that kicks off. Pray to God there's not. But like, you know, maybe there's something like that happens that is really a disrupting force. But outside of that, man, I just don't see the economy in shape right now to be able to drive economic demand because we've never had a major shift outside of seasonality or little blimps on the radar due to just capacity exiting. You know, capacity will exit until we hit equilibrium. And then when everybody's happy in equilibrium, rates are good enough that they're not going out and shippers are Happy with where the rates are at. We could be in that equilibrium until there's a disruption. Right. And that could be years.
We've looked at freight cycles and I know that you're a nerd like I am when it comes to this. You can look at freight cycles and we've been in equilibrium for two to three years sometimes.
Yeah.
And then it takes an event like an ELD mandate or tariff or, you know, God forbid, covet again, something like that really shakes things up. So we could be in this for a while. I, I, I don't think we're going to be in this for a while. I think it's going to just be a gradual uptick. Realistically, that's the nature of the freight cycles. You know, they should gradually go up and they should gradually come down. Unfortunately, the last, what, probably 10 years, we've had enough disturbances that we've seen the heartbeat monitor going. Right. And I'm hoping that we don't. But honestly, if it happens. Like, what are you going to do? You're a broker, you find a way to still, you know, turn a profit.
And at the end of the day, like I, I've been on the shipper side when the freight market flips, you still got to get your freight moved. If you don't have freight, if you don't have freight on the shelves at the stores, you're not going to make money either. So it's not like you can just hold tight on your rates and say, oh no, sorry, we got a contract in place. You have to stick to this, they're gonna, most your carriers are gonna say sorry, yeah, they do that.
I, you know, again, I feel like there's so much onus on, that everybody puts on other things from getting like, getting results. Right. And you know, I was just talking to another buddy of mine here the other day and he was just out there making, he was doing like site visits and like that, you know, and like when we'll chat back and forth, it's so different. Like, I get such a different sentiment, Cody, from the people who actually do the job instead of like, are on the sidelines and like used to do it and are now in a different role inside of the industry.
I get such a different sentiment from the doers and then the people who are just, you know, sitting back and waiting, you know, and I feel like there's a lot of people who think that a market shift is going to benefit them somehow. What if it doesn't? Like, and that's like the thing that just baffles me, bro, is like, nobody stops to think, what if it doesn't change? You know, nobody stops to think, what if these tariffs actually do benefit? Like, it's like people get so stuck in their ideals and they're so stuck in their, I better be right, they fail to try and see the other coin. And you know, and this is something that I work on a lot, like personally, because like I, as a business owner, as somebody who's trying to grow my company, I cannot get stuck in.
This is the way we're always going to do things. Otherwise I'm going to fail, I'm going to run out of money, we're not going to make it. And I'm trying to look at things from the other side of the coin. What can we do differently? How can I stay ahead of these things? I always try and look out on a 12 month basis. Right? Like I, I don't necessarily, yes, I pay attention to the now, but I try and see and forecast out into the future, like, all right, where are things going to go? And I feel like unless you are in the top 25 of freight brokers and trucking companies alike, everything else is irrelevant. But business development, because I like, there is so much opportunity that's out there.
Because I mean, if there's one constant on my business development calls that I hear is they're actually excited that you're not one of the larger providers. When they, when they hear, they're like, oh wait, you're not. Yeah, let's talk. You know, so again, like there is opportunities out there. Like no matter what. And even if there isn't, you better fucking find some because if you don't, what are you going to do? Sit around and wait?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, who wins in that race? Nobody. Like, well, your competitors win, it's certainly not you. So. Yeah, and that's, I mean, I don't know, I mean, I'm in the same boat. Like I happen to be in Texas a couple weeks ago with one of our customers and one of the things that stood out to me with the conversation were having was he, you know, he doesn't work with, he's a very large shipper. I'm not going to say who it is, but they don't work with the big guys either. And the reason they don't is his exact words to where I want my carriers to have skin in the game. I want to matter. Like, I want to be part of Your portfolio enough to where you guys are going to put me first. Right. You're going to staff accordingly.
You're going to. So if, you know, a lot of these guys want to make it, and I don't mean this in any negative way, but it needs to be painful if you lose them as a customer because they know that the service level and the attention is going to be there. If it's painful, if it's not, you know, if you're the 14 billion dollar elephant in the room that we all know and they lose a two million dollar contract, they don't get two shits. They'll find another two million with somebody else. Right. But for somebody our size, the small and medium sized brokers, that's a big deal, you know.
And so, you know, I think a lot of those guys have shifted their mentality especially through what we've been through the last going on now five years, which is crazy to say, five years is when, you know, the shutdowns happen. But I think that they realized the big guys are just the same as us, you know, when it comes to, we all have the same capacity, we all use the same trucks. You know, it's not like the big three letter guys have this magical, you know, amount of capacity that. Yeah, that we don't have access to. Right. It's, it's all the same carriers. And at the end of the day it, we've got to sell to both our customers and our carriers. If you don't have a relationship with both of them, you're screwed.
Because it's not like we're jumping in trucks and moving the freight.
Yeah, you know, no, I'm right there with you man. Like I, I think that there is always going to be an opportunity and you know, and I, I've thought about that man. Like I, over the last couple of years, as somebody who's had to fight scraping claw for every dollar of revenue that I've gotten, I approach it so much differently than when I did when I was just handed accounts. At times, you know, like you do, you treat it differently like and then, you know, everybody. Right. So I try not to make blanket statements but you know, I feel like it's just like the individual. When you're handed a book of business, you're not going to treat it the same as if you had to build said book of business from scratch.
You had to go through the rejections, the failures, all the, that comes along with it, as opposed to taking over, you know, and getting the keys to a Ferrari, where all the kinks have been fucking worked out and it's just ready to rock. I think that there's a completely different mentality and I think a lot of that comes with, you know, then you also, you look at like VC companies as well who go out, they raise capital. Not everybody, but you know, it's a, there's a difference out there between somebody who bootstraps up to a point and then takes on investment as opposed to somebody who gets investment right away. You don't treat a dollar the same. And this is just my personal experience and again, this isn't everybody.
But I think that you see a lot of that as you grow and scale businesses. Because I've worked for a very large company before. It's not the same give a fuck that's there. I'm not saying people don't care, but the give a fuck level is just not there. As opposed to if Cody cold called somebody for three fucking years to get their business and then they finally get it up and they get it doing 10, $20,000 a month in margin, he's going to treat that a lot different than if Cody went through that entire process. And then Chris all of a sudden gets a job and now Cody's like, hey man, I want you to run this account. I'm not going to treat it special because it was like, oh, I get this account. Let's roll.
Yep. Oh, 100%. I mean we're, you know, I always say that it's different because I can't, you know, I started my logistics career with the, at the time the largest company in the world, which was Walmart. Right. And that was forever ago. It was 20 something years ago. But you know, every dollar I spend now is a dollar I have to earn. Right. And when you work for a large company like that, you don't kind of don't have that same mentality.
Yeah.
You know, the endless supply of money changes the way that you actually do things. And, and to your point, when I started in this journey as a freight broker, I can still think back the day that stands out to me the most. The last six years of my life when it comes to work was getting my very first load for my very first customer.
Yeah.
And, and that was like, you know, I went home cracked, attract a couple beers, not just one couple beers and celebrated. Right. Because that's when you know, like it's on like. Yeah. It goes from every day of cold calling for eight to 10 hours and getting told no and getting hung up on and called every name in the book and, or getting those maybes that get your hopes up and then they never turn out to be anything but that first time that you land that load and you move that and you see your margin and you see your commission, it changes your mentality and then it's, you know, from that point on, it's on, it's just non stop.
So no, dude. And that's exactly it. Right? And you know, to ease anybody out there who's in the sales process right now, I had somebody answer my call and hang up on me today, literally before we jumped on. All right. Like my day isn't affected by it. Like, that's the literal worst case scenario as you're going out there and cold calling. I would say, like legitimately, 95 of the interactions I have with people are cordial. They're not you, they're not, you know, it's none of that stuff. So all of that stuff we build up in our head is just up in our head.
The overwhelming majority of people, as long as you're prepared, like, maybe it'd be different if I didn't know why I was calling people, but if you're prepared for it, you take a couple of minutes, you research their website, you get a little bit about them before you call and you ask them a qualifying question. Most people are very cordial with you on the phone and that's it. But the overwhelming majority of the time you're just going to get a voicemail for the most part. But it's all about those reps out there. Because again, you just never know, right? Like you never know. It's always a no until it's not, you know, and that's one thing that we say a lot internally here is everybody's good until they're not.
We have been told by every shipper that we move freight with we're good until they weren't. And then they hit us up and then now we have a, you know, pretty decent book of business that's rolling with it. And that's just the mentality. And you're right. All it takes is one. You get that one account, you get that confidence that comes along with it, and you're going to feel like you're on cloud nine because that's the way that you got to talk to yourself as you're going out there and putting in the reps. Like you're not going to convince me any differently this, I am the best fucking open deck freight broker in the United States of America. You will not convince me any differently than that.
And that's the mentality that all of you should have as you're going out there and trying to build shit up.
I agree. And just be patient. I mean to be honest with you, the majority of the new business we got this last, I'd say 18 months was with existing customers that had other brokers or carriers fail, right. And it's mid RFP cycle. It's like you know, if they, which by the way we have, I don't know if you've noticed it, but we've started to see RFP cycle started to increase now. And that's usually one of the first indicators that the shippers are starting to feel that the shift might be coming too, right? Say there's all these indicators that if you know, you've been in here long enough and you've seen them in the cycles like you start to know, right? But most of ours came from somebody failing midstream. And it's like, you know, the race to the bottom.
Nobody wins except for the shippers. And even that the shippers only win from a price standpoint. They, they usually don't win from a service standpoint. Right. But every single failure is an opportunity for you. Every single failure from somebody else. And guess what, it doesn't matter how big they are, they will fail. Everyone has failures. Trucks are going to break down, communication is going to break down. The only thing you can control is what you are going to, you know, do when that failure happens. You know, what's your plan B? I think, you know, you say that a lot like everyone has the same plan A, but what the hell is your plan B? Right? Like plan B is what separates you. So guess what?
If you're moving freight, you're going to have a flat tire, you're going to run into winter storms, you're going to have drivers that get sick. Happens. The only thing that you can do different than every other broker out there is your plan B. Yeah. How are you going to recover that? How are you actually going to still make on time delivery or as close to that as you can? How are you going to over communicate so that the shipper knows that their product is at least safe, it's protected, it's not going to cross the border into Canada and never be seen again? You know, just be patient out there guys. There's so many opportunities. Yes, but you can never leverage tomorrow or leverage your future for tomorrow's profits. Right?
Like, that's the one thing that I always have to stress, especially to sales reps, is don't ever abandon your long game. You know, is. Is stick to it, whatever that is. From a marketing standpoint, from a sales standpoint, from an outreach standpoint, plant your seeds. Always be planting your seeds. Your pipeline is the only thing that's going to save you and your pipeline. I mean, that could turn you and your company around. Anytime that there's any kind of shift in the market, you know, you're one phone call or one email away, you're one conversation away from somebody saying, hey, you're. You're my number two. As soon as my number one fails or my number one comes back with a giant freight increase or whatever the hell it is, you're gonna get a shot. And you're probably in the same boat as me.
I've had those shots last two years before I started moving freight, and I've had it be two weeks. You know, all of a sudden it's, you know, you have a great conversation with somebody, you feel good about it, but you know you're not going to start moving freight. And then in two weeks from now, they're like, oh, sorry. You know, I. I've had one of those Fridays where I had 20 loads drop on me and I need some help.
You know, that's all it takes, man. Like, straight up, bro. That is literally it. And that's why you always got to be prospecting. You always got to be present, respectfully, check in with people, everything else. And, and again, I just, I have like a thousand companies that we're in contact with right now. No joke about a thousand prospects that we're in contact with. I just want them to think of me first, right? Like, I'm not going in there and begging them for dollars on the very first couple of interactions with them. I just want them to know, like, hey, this guy right here actually knows what he's talking about. In the event that you need me, we're here for you. And I think, like, that's that to me, that's just a winning strategy long term. But, dude, I appreciate your time as always.
I on, because you just speak reality. And that's what we need more and more of out there is reality. But how does anybody reach out to you guys? Are you guys hiring, anything like that?
Yeah, we're hiring right now, actually, on the operations side in our Raleigh office. Nothing remote on the operation side sales side. I'm always hiring for good sales reps no matter what. So best way to reach out to me is either through LinkedIn or through our website, ANZ trucking dot com. You guys can hop on there, message me directly. But LinkedIn, I'm very active on LinkedIn. That's the easiest way to find me.
I love it. If you guys can't find Cody for whatever reason, hit me up. We're glad to put you guys in contact with them, but that's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. As always, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. If you're feeling really anxious, if you're feeling really motivated, which you should be, rank the show as well. You guys put it out there, give us five stars on iTunes and Spotify because if you saw value, that's chance or your network, you see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon. We got some cool stuff.