Came back with a bank window down yelling now money anything hey oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm getting to the back hey Got the foot on the.
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Lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger balls a. 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. I got a very special guest. I'm going to pull him up here in a second. But got to drop my little reminder out there if you guys want to get in on the Freight Coach newsletter. We drop it every single Wednesday. You guys, I'm not going to auto sign anybody up. I'm not going to use your email address unless you want to get that.
So if you do want to receive it, just go to the freightcoach.com it'll auto prompt you to register again. It's all freight focused because at the end of the day, guys, it's all I know. I don't know anything else. I'm not trying to be a life coach or anything like that. So with that being said, you guys, we're going to talk some ocean freight, we're going to talk some current market data and there is nobody out there who's more qualified than my man Eric with Trailer Bridge. Eric, thank you so much for joining me again here, man. It's been a long time.
Yeah, I really appreciate you having me, Chris, thanks so much.
No, absolutely. I think the last time you were on is like when you came to Trailer Bridge. I think you had just started there and we had you come on at that time.
Yeah, I think it was like my role changed. But yeah, I mean, you know, every day is like my first day, it feels like here. So it's a. You Know, transportation is a fast moving business, dude.
It really is. And you know, there's so many things that I come up with or I get, you know, brought to my attention in this industry and I'm like, how have, like, how have I been doing this for as long as I have and this is the first time I've ever seen anything like that. Right? It's nuts man. And especially it's like there's so much stuff that's getting thrown at you at every given moment out there right now too. So it's just like, you know, I'm trying to build as predictable of a business as I can. You know, like, I understand there's going to be some things that happen, but like I want to build that consistency inside of it to where, you know, I at least have an idea about what I'm walking into every single day.
Without a, you know, and that's been a goal of ours at Trailer Bridge and the way we've done that is by kind of servicing different business units in the marketplace. So Trailer Bridge we have three core business units. We have our ocean business unit which we have ocean barge ass vessels that we ship between the port of Jacksonville and the port of San Juan that services Dominican Republic, U. S Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. And we have a trucking group here in Jacksonville that supports that group for pickup and deliveries. We have 3,053 foot containers that kind of go through eastern, east coast, Midwest through Jacksonville and that, you know, that's the Caribbean market is its kind of own niche market which you know, it's. When the US Is strong, it can be strong, but there can be some, some balance in that.
And then we have a North American division, truckload, intermodal, Drayage, ltl. And so you know, obviously that has had had some ups earlier in, in this decade, but obviously it's been an interesting ride. And then we have just an NVOCC group that does international kind of outside of our ocean assets. So you know, we've been trying to add different pieces to the puzzle in order to balance out our business. So when things are going well and not going well. And actually our most recent group that we've really been focusing on is our government division because the government volumes don't move exactly in alignment with commercial volumes which can provide, you know, some balance to the overall marketplace. So you know, we've tried our best. Like you said, you try with your business, but it's Never easy.
Yeah, it's. So at what point did you guys start getting away from. I, I want to call it your core competency because you guys were built on the Caribbean islands with your guys, you know, stuff like that. At what point did you guys try and diversify? Right. Because I think that's one thing, Eric, that I feel like a lot of individuals do. Like they try and do too much too soon, right? They don't actually have a core. They're like, hey, there's so much freight out there, I have to do everything. And you know, I, I talk about this often, right? Like we're open deck guys here at my company, right? Like that's all we do. We do flatbeds, man. Like that's.
And, and if you go out there and you look at the overall market, we're talking billions and billions of dollars worth of opportunity that there is. Right. So I don't feel the need to really break outside of that niche for a very long time. Was there a customer request that you guys, you know, were like, hey, we should probably look into adding this inside of our business?
Yeah, you know, so I would say that like, you know, everything kind of evolved to the next thing. At least you're trying to listen to what your customers need and how you can provide the best service for your customers. And that's led us to our different business units. So our core competency. Like you said, the foundation of the business was Caribbean trade. And so you started by Malcolm McLean. He's the, he's. This is his last business. He created the creator of the container that really shaped and changed obviously the entire transportation market as we know it. But part of that service is say we've got a container pool. And if a customer of ours wants to ship from Atlanta to San Juan, Puerto Rico, well, that's pretty easy.
And we can get the container up to Atlanta, load up the container off, it goes to Puerto Rico. If a customer shipping out of Los Angeles though, we have 3,000 containers. Well, we try to keep those where we have enough density. If I spread out my 3,000 containers all over the US to service that, then I just don't have any density of customer needs. 5, 6, 7 trip containers dropped, I lose that, that capability. And so having a domestic piece of that business where I can do transfer, so sending it from la, one way transportation could be truckload, could be intermodal to Jacksonville and loading it in there and then getting it to final destination, well, that became a service that was part of my Caribbean business.
So we started developing a network of carriers and partners that we could, that we could service that. And that gave us a heads up against our competition in the Caribbean. Because if we could provide that domestic, you know, when you're shipping via ocean, the domestic part of it, you know, it's a lot more expensive to ship on the road than it is on the ocean. So if I can provide solutions that can beat my competition on that domestic piece, then that can help. And a lot of those customers that ship to Puerto Rico are large Fortune 500 customers that, you know, you work with. And so a, the domestic piece made us better at the Caribbean. And then those same customers asked, hey, do you have capacity here? Do you have capacity there? And it kind of just evolved.
We just listened to the customers told us that. And then, you know, when we think about my nvoc, our NVOCC business, which is our international business outside of our assets, a lot of our customers were purchasers in the Caribbean of Latin American transportation. And so they're purchasing transportation for Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, but also Central and South America. And you know, they're like, oh man, we'd love to use trailer bridge. You know, we've developed a relationship. We developed great service. We'd love to use you for other lanes. And so, you know, we're like, well, we need to go out and get a service offering that we can compete with anyone in the world. And so we've been a, I mean, we'd like to be one of the, a, we want to be one of the best transportation companies in the world.
Like, that's what we want to do. We'd like to, we'd like to be one of the biggest too. Now. We want to be the best more than we want to be the biggest. But, you know, to do some of that, we have to have more services. So we've tried to go into service areas that kind of overlap with what we already provide.
Yeah, so it was primarily a vertical integration play at that point. Right. It was building off of your guys's core competencies and everything else and going out. And that's another thing too, that I wish more and more people would adopt. Right. Like, if you're going to offer a service offering and you're just kind of starting out, I think that instead of spreading yourself too thin and going after too much too soon is. It's, it's more of a customer need than anything. Right? Because it Like, I make. And I try and emphasize this every single time we talk about this on the show is like I'm actually making cold calls every single day to prospective shippers and customers of mine. Right.
I have already made some this morning, and I can tell everybody who's listening beyond a shadow of a doubt, the more singular my focus is when I'm going in there, the more of a return and the more they're willing to talk to me in the beginning stages of it. Right? Because it's like, that's the hardest thing. How do you catch somebody's attention in 15 seconds? You know, really, it's. It's 10 seconds at the end of the day. Like, you got 10 seconds to. And you better have that pitch down. And I, I just feel like the more singular focus you can be to begin with, the better off you can be. And then plant your roots and watch them spread out inside of their multiple opportunities that there might be otherwise. I feel like you're just going to be, you know, spinning around.
And then especially if you're talking about like a team development, a training and development plan, do you really want people doing 18 different things at the exact same time early on? I personally think it's extremely counterproductive at that point. I'd rather have my people doing the same stuff day in and day out, especially while we're getting our business off the ground.
Yeah, no, I, I think like, aim small, miss small. Like you. You really need to be an expert. And no one, I mean, maybe if you've done this business 40 years and you've seen everything, and those are the few select individuals that are like legends in what we do. But yeah, if you're going to try to make traction in the next three months, six months to 12 months. Yeah, like having a field that you are an expert in, obviously, like, you know, if you've been in transportation for four or five years, I would consider you an expert in transportation, but becoming an expert in a industry type or a customer type or a product type that can have such an impact because not only can you tell.
Talk to the customer about, you know, what's happening from a capacity, supply and demand and that section, but everyone in transportation can do some of that. Right? But if you can start talking about what their competitors are doing, what their industry is doing, how their vendors, because if you go in a specific industry, so many of their vendors are going to be similar because they're buying raw materials from similar people. Or they're buying packaging from similar people or so many other customers are going to be the same in that specific industry. And if you start having a ton of knowledge about that is so powerful for you and networking in that specific industry.
So how are you guys able to leverage kind of like, you know, I don't want to call it a market prediction, but like, you guys obviously have data. You guys are talk to people all the time out there. How, how much has that really played into, you know, maybe anticipating where things are trending? Right. I know obviously everybody wants to talk and post about tariffs right now. Everybody wants to talk and post about everything. But ultimately though, you guys, like, you got to bring a solution. So how are, how do you guys kind of sift through a lot of that noise there, Eric, and actually talk about, hey, this is the, you know, like you said, you guys have your own assets, you guys have all of that.
How, how are you really delivering that and really working with some of your customers right now to kind of get some of that stuff lined in?
Yeah, I, you know, there are a lot of questions in terms of where things are going. And I mean, you know, that leaves a lot of uncertainty. And that's just, hey, there's always uncertainty. So, like, this is not a new thing. That's, that's come and gone. You know, our business is a cyclical business. I mean, it's, it just is what. When demand goes up for ship goods, people buy a whole bunch of assets. The demand usually levels off at some point, and then there's too many assets. Well, then those assets disappear. The demand eventually goes up. And you know, we've seen the most like the largest peak of that here in the last few years. But in terms of, you know, I, I think we're in a nice, like, position in terms of the size of our organization.
So, you know, we're not a $2 billion plus. And we're also, we've got enough capabilities and services and assets that we can do a variety of things. So we try to be as best we can as a startup, so we try to be able to switch and move. And we've seen that in our business. So we've seen. Our Dominican Republic business has been the largest piece of increase in our business. There's been a lot of outbound, and so we've adjusted our capacity to handle that. Now that may change like to the point you're talking about tariffs, and that actually may increase volume there if you were going to give a guess in terms of what, because that has seen a lot of shipping increase since even Covid. As. As companies are making supply chain decisions, the Caribbean has been a somewhat attractive marketplace.
It's a pretty quick transit to the US From a tariff standpoint. Obviously, Puerto Rico, you know, is. Is part of America, and then we've got a Dominican Republic and some of those other island nations have great relationship with the United States of America. So, you know, I would just say a. We're making. We're taking current information and we're making. We're making decisions about where we place assets, where we focus, customer positioning. We had a lot of demand in our reefer, you know, for a long time we didn't have any reefers in our network. And were just man. And, you know, we had some customers that didn't have a ton of reefer demand, but they're like, man, we have to use our. Your competitors because, like, we just need to be able to service both those things. And so we're like, well, that's, that's.
We're not helping our customers. And so we've seen that demand increase. And I don't think five years ago we would have thought that would have been an area that went to. And that's been a focus and will be a focus. So. And that goes for all of our business units. You got to, you got to take the data, you got to look at it, you got to make decisions based on that, but you got to be ready to pivot to. If you get so fixated on what six months ago was happening and keep doing that, then I don't think it'll work in this business, do you?
I mean, you know, talking about fixation, you know, you're seeing a lot of, like I said, again, I'm not going to beat the tariff drum all the show, but like, there's a lot of that on Ocean Freight right now. What is it going to do? And then same with imports, you know, from Canada and Mexico and everything. What is it going to do? How is it going to affect the. The freight market and everything else that's going on out there? And, you know, I'm one of those, you know, individuals where I'm like, it's your job to find a solution no matter what. Right? Like that. It's. And at the end of the day, we can't control what happens in D.C. You really can't at all. No matter what, you want to sit here on social Media and bang that drum on.
You can't do it. So do you think that the ocean market right now is pretty much in flux? Like, we don't know. We're yet to see or are you seeing a stabilization out there?
So, you know, I was just talking to someone on my MVOC team and you know, we have seen like, if you're looking Trans Pacific of pricing, we've seen that come down quite a bit in the last five months. So, you know, I think maybe there was an increase towards the end of last year in terms of just trying to get stuff shipped in case there was a change in administration. But pricing, I mean, it was as high as 10 or 11 a container coming to the east coast and maybe it's down to 4,000 right now, maybe even a little bit less than that going to the East Coast. So we've seen prices come down on that end. But I say that.
And exactly, you know where these tariffs are going to go and what's going to happen and is there going to be additional reciprocal tariffs? What are the other, you know, this is all like game theory, if you take it any like MBA class or any of that, you know, I'm sure there's any, plenty of stuff like that online. It's, to your point, it's just really hard to predict. And you know, in some sense it's like an exciting time in transportation because there may be a lot of transportation lane changes in everyone's business because you know, they all impact each other. If, if the global trade lanes are changing, then the domestic trade lanes are going to change in balance of that. And so if you're someone that's like you said, Chris, you've made, you made sales calls today.
If you're focusing on that, you're going to find opportunity because this is going to lead to supply chain changes. Like that's the one certainty we have. What is the impact? How broad spread? What, you know, is it open deck? Is it, is it refrigerated? Is it van. But you're just, you're, you have to be ready and it's an exciting time. If you're trying to be a growing business, if you've been just trying to hold on to the same customers that you've had for a long time, I'd be really scared right now.
Yeah. Oh, dude. I am right there with you, Eric. I personally feel, and I, I honestly feel like any disruption that happens in the market and especially when that benefits domestic truckload, right? Because like, you know, Say everything comes in and then naturally, you know, again, like, I think a lot of the opposition to a lot of this talk out there, I, I don't understand why more manufacturing in the US More jobs in the US More freight in the US Is a bad thing by any means. But like, at the end of the day, everybody can have their opinion on it, but that positively affects domestic truckload eventually. Right.
It might not be today or anything like that, but you know, if we're out there looking and there's more commitments from some of these businesses that are headquartered in foreign countries to come and build manufacturing here in the United States to circumvent any tariffs, because that's kind of the whole talking point of a lot of it there. What is that going to ultimately lead? There will be an increase in domestic truckload at that point. Ltl. It's going to eventually come to our shores and improve our market. Right. And you're right. If you're sitting there playing defense, in my opinion right now and just holding on, I think you're, like, you're in a really rough spot because it's only a matter of time before the inevitability of this industry happens. All right? And something happens.
And I truly feel like tolerance for service failures will be at a literal all time low from the domestic side because it has been so easy to cover freight for a very long time. And everybody has short memories. I don't care if you've been doing this job for 15, 20, 25 years, you have a short memory and you're only basing it off of what has recently happened.
Yeah, I mean, without a doubt the domestic production of stuff is a great thing for the U.S. Now, does that end up happening as much as the source? The, the goods just get sourced from a different country where there's not, you know, I think obviously like there's cost of labor and there's all these kinds of things that go in the equation. So I, I wouldn't, it wouldn't be that just because it was in China, now it's coming to the US it would be, maybe it does go away from China, but where in the world does it go to? Right. I think some of it could go to the U.S. But you know, cost of labor in the U.S. Is what cost of labor is, and cost of the labor in other places are much lower. I mean, that's the reality.
So it, but again, that realignment will still cause domestic transportation changes Pretty dramatically because of how it, of how it comes in and where it goes. So how that all affects and impacts will be, you know, again I said it'll be fun. Now I can understand people's concern for, for what happens. You know, I'm a believer in, you know, kind of what the American ingenuity will do and, and how it's going to play out. And so, you know, we're just coming in and we're trying to provide the best service we can and trying to make sure that customers know who we are and what we do.
Yeah, I, I just look at it as. You can sit here and plan and hope and dream all you want, but the reality is it's the way that the chips fall are going to be the ways that the chips fall and are you going to be there to play? You know, and that's essentially it. Right. And I feel like there's, the more people sit on their hands, Eric, and wait for something to happen, I think you're going to be waiting for a very long time. And I feel like capital constraints are starting to show their face here in the industry and stuff like that. Not just trucking. Right. Like I'm talking business as a whole right now. You know, like if you just look at consumer debt and everything else, like that's rising and everything else.
So access to capital is going to be a very real thing coming up if there aren't any, you know, shifts out there. So like, is that something where, you know, you guys have had that conversation, are people concerned? Like, hey, how much longer are you guys going to be around? You know, because it's a very real thing. You're seeing headline after headline about businesses closing shop.
Yeah, I, you know, I mean, in some sense I'm excited about some of that. Listen, I mean with a business that's got lots of assets, I mean, you know, we don't want super expensive capital. At the same time, if you go to, you know, the domestic transportation market, man, the domestic transportation market was in my opinion was really hurt by all the capital that came in and all this private equity money and lots of people, we're trying to get customers and get loads and they did not care about margins and they really brought some of the financials down and that had an impact on the non asset players, that impact on the asset players because you know, the price of the good is the price of the good.
And so many people kind of had unrealistic expectations that they could either get so much market share so quickly that then they could control pricing and you know, some of that capital leaving and the market becoming more imbalanced with just what traditional supply and demand is exciting for someone in the business. I mean, I mean I don't want to say like last man standing because I. There, there's. They're still gonna, I mean it's a trillion dollar industry. Just the domestic transportation alone, there's still going to be thousands of providers. But I do like when the players are more rational in the marketplace. And I think we've seen that trend come over the last 612 months just through, unfortunately businesses going out of business or businesses changing strategies.
And so, you know, I, I hope and that continues because that's a much more sustainable situation and that can prevent some of the heartache that we've had where businesses have had to make really tough decisions where, you know, between offices and staffs and equipment and all those kinds of things.
Do you see more of a stabilization this year compared to years past? You know, from a market perspective? Right. Like I'm not going to ask you to predict exactly what Eric thinks is going to happen, but I, I personally feel that they're outside of any black swan event or like major events. I don't know if this year is going to be any different than last year from a volume perspective. I know that there's kind of a, a lot left to be seen, but I feel like it's going to be a very standard market this year.
Yeah, I, I famously do a very bad projection at the end of the year or predictions. So, so I'm, and I've done them for a number of years in a row and I've been, I, I've gotten like one random thing right each time which never related to the thing the year prior. So, so yes, I, I, prediction from me is very, is a very bad idea, Chris. But you know. Yeah. Do I think at this moment in time, do I think demand is just going to go crazy? I don't. I mean, I don't. But do I think that the, the capacity and demand are more in alignment with each other?
I do think that, so I, I do think as this year goes along again from a revenue per load from, for depending on what side of the business you're on or he'll yield margin per load, I do think that will continue to get more attractive for transportation providers assuming that balance is closer in Alignment.
Yeah, I'm right there with you. Right. Like, again, I don't think that there's going to be anything major that happens this year. You know, I, I think, like, I think more people than not are going to realize kind of how resilient everything is. And, you know, I feel like over these last, like a lot's changed over these last five years. Like, I feel like a lot of customers have exponentially changed the way that they plan for inventory, they run their operations. I mean, I've seen it on the open deck side. There's a lot more private fleets that are operating out there in the open deck space than there has been historically in the past. So again, like, there's, I think opportunities are always going to be there. And you have to optimistically approach it every single day like that. Right.
Because, like, I've just, I've been doing this long enough to know, Eric, everybody's good until they're not. Right? Like, everybody's good until they're not. And you just never know. So instead of sitting on your hands and waiting, because I feel like a lot of individuals who are in sales or, you know, or anything, they're just, they're waiting for it to get better and then better never comes. Right. It's a facade. You either take action or you don't. I think it's pretty cut and dry.
I mean, you make your own better, man. Listen, can the market be. Be better or worse? Of course it can.
Yeah.
Can you still find a way? You know, if were all on the same corner selling ice cream and it's the same, like, yeah, but this is a trillion dollar industry that there is opportunity. And you made the comment, unfortunately. Fortunately or unfortunately, you can do great job for 51 weeks a year and you do such a bad job one week of the year, you can lose that opportunity. So you have to better than the next day, every single day. But, you know, I mean, we still grew 7% last year in volume, which isn't a ton of percentage, but I know that, that from a market standpoint, that was pretty good. Our January, February started off slower than what it did in 24, but we have all. But, but our revenue per load, and those kinds of numbers are a little more exciting.
So, you know, like, we're just, we're trying to take the positive trends. We had our busiest day actually on Monday that we've had in probably five or six months. So, you know, hey, man, maybe March is the breakoff point. It's great.
I Think that, you know, at least for me at this point, you know, I like to look at it as. It's kind of like the kickoff to the actual freight year is around March, mid March. And you know, I think that it's going to be a very sign at the end of the day on where things are. But like, ultimately I'm never going to sit back and think like I don't control my own destiny because I truly feel like I do. I like. Because if you go, if you pay attention to any headlines out there or a lot of talking heads, nobody's doing anything, nobody's adding customers, nobody, you know, people are a lot more reciprocal than you think out there from a business development standpoint. Just the TR. That like the old method that.
The one thing that I've seen change the most from a business development perspective, Eric, at least on the domestic us side of things, is there's no more of a. You get a couple of phone calls with them and then they give you an opportunity right away. Like it is a drawn out process and you have to bring it every single time. You have to be prepared for every single call. Just as, hey, we can do everything. We're the best at everything. That methodology that was, that people leveraged for a very long time, that's not going to cut it anymore. It's really not with the amount of technology and data and everything that is out there. You have to bring some substance and you have to come in quick, efficient and then follow up, follow up.
Yeah, I agree. We do our sales kickoff meeting every year and we do it like at the end of February for the purpose of what you said. Like, like getting everyone super excited like the second week of January, I mean, isn't a bad thing, but it does take a little bit before our marketplace kind of gets going. And so you know, we want our sales teams which you know, I view pretty much everyone on our team part of sales. I mean you're either if you're talking to one of our drivers, you're talking to a carrier partner, you're talking to a customer, you're talking to just a shipper receiver. I mean you haven't, you have a chance to make an impact. And, and so. Yeah, so I mean, like, you know, it gets a little bit warmer outside.
I mean you're in Phoenix and I'm in Florida, so it's already pretty warm. But you know what, we're still excited about it.
No, I'm right there with you, man. And I, I just think like everybody's got an opportunity right now more than ever to really go out there and build something special. I think that, you know, a lot of the data that I see that's out there's a lot of growth opportunities in the small to mid sized provider market. You know, whether you're a smaller broker, transportation provider, trucking company, whatever, they've grown over the last couple of years compared to some of the top 50s that are out there. I mean again, if you don't believe me, you guys just go to transport topics, look at the top 100 and you will see there has been a pretty decent shift.
And that's a very telling sign out there where just because somebody's worked with somebody for a long time doesn't mean they're always going to be happy with them. And again, as like my motto is I'm going to follow up until I die or they die. And I want to be their first thought when their current network drops the ball. I want them to think of me. And I feel like that's how a lot of people need to provide or excuse me, attack this year out there, man. But Eric, I appreciate your time, man. We like to keep these shows at 30 minutes because you know everybody day job who listens to this and we like to bring it in, bring action pack. But how does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more if you guys are hiring?
Put all that out there man, so people can touch base.
Yeah, we, again, thank you for having us. I, I think 30 minutes of me is probably too much already. So yeah, we definitely don't need to go any longer. You know, I would say we have trailerbridge.com or also LinkedIn. We, we, our marketing team shout out to Whitney and the whole team that does a phenomenal job. So there's some kind of update in terms of either we have a new win from, from an award standpoint, a new partner that we've gone into business with or job opportunities. So, so please go there, check it out and yeah, thanks again. Thanks so much.
Absolutely. Eric, thank you so much for joining me. That's going to be it for today, you guys. We got guests coming on tomorrow and yeah, we're going to come back 8:30 in Pacific, 10:30 Central. As always, 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 saw 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. We don't have any cool outro stuff.