Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in the fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough I ain't nothing but grit cause I made rugged blood, sweat and spit yeah, like a horse I fly for a bumpy ride I like to play hard but I work harder and I weather the storm cause I'm built stronger.
What is up, ladies and gentlemen, we are back. We are live. I'm going to save the entire intro. You guys know what to do because I got a guest who's going to come on here in a second and we only got him for like 15 minutes today. It's action packed, though. It's going to be in regards to all my drivers out there who listen to this show in that article that I broke down on Monday about the Atri report about the cost of truck operating. And my man Adam Wingfield here talks about this literally all the time, about knowing your cost and everything. But Adam, what's going on, man? It's been a while, man.
It's been like we said, man, it's been forever since I've been on here. So good morning, everybody. Hope everybody's doing good. Happy hump day to everybody.
Yeah, man, it's, dude. Because, you know, it was like, we'll text each other back and forth, but I'm like this. I saw this article and I was breaking it down on Monday and I believe I said in my stream, I'm like, I got to get Adam to come on and talk about this because, you know, I thought I saw a post of yours kind of talking about like, this is so dangerous to put it. Is this out there for people?
What?
Why is that?
Well, there's a couple of reason. ATRI obviously is a very, very broad based research institute. If you don't know who the ATRI is, their truck and research institute. The problem with the actual cost of trucking operations, it was just used as a blanket. Hey, this is what it costs to operate a truck. The biggest problem with that is that they only sampled 434 people. And out of the 434 people, it was a mixed use of carrier size. So you think about that, you think about the people that responded, you think about the people that were involved. And when I say mixed use, all from small all the way to large carriers, and they came up with 227. Well, here's the problem with that data. Obviously, 95% of the industry is comprised of small carriers that own and operate less than ten trucks.
But then also one of the bigger layers to throw onto it is that out of 434 carriers, there are over a hundred thousand. There are hundreds of thousands of active motor carriers that actually have fleets and vehicles that operate down in a highway that have not been pulled for the research. And also, and if you want to throw in another asterisk to make it even more fun, think about the fact that how many owner operators that they polled or how many small fleet owners that they pulled that don't know the true cost of operation when it comes to operating a truck. So now you have 227 that you may think that's a great point, like, hey, I won't move my truck for 227. I saw it in a post.
It was from a lobbying group that I will leave out and I won't name them here on this show, but it was a reckless pokes where they said, hey, Atri says it, don't move your truck for less than $2.27. That's what your operating costs are. Well, the issue is that if you use that as your own farm, your own operating cost, and you say, hey, that's what it cost me to operate, what if your operating costs are $2.37 or $2.47? Now you're thinking that you're doing well by, hey, you know what? I'll take 230. But you're not covering the cost of your operations. And you're slowly and surely eroding every little bit of profit that you're moving every single time that your wheels actually make a positive rotation. And that's the problem. You can't generalize numbers. You're in business.
And when you start a business, you're in business for yourself. And most importantly, you've got to be astute when it comes down to your own numbers. I've seen break even in operating costs range anywhere from $1.80. Like. Like today, a dollar 80, you know, paid off equipment, you know, great insurance, been in business for a while, got their own niches. Dollar 80 from a cost of operation. So all the way to $2.47. $2.57, sir. Range is very wide. If my cost operations is a dollar 80 and you telling me not to take a load for 227, then that's stupid, because at the end of the day, if 20%, I make 20% profit on a dollar 80, what's that like to, I don't know, 215, 216?
Ish.
You mean you tell me at 20% is not good and that's not sustainable. So you want me to say, hey, you know what? I'm just gonna sit my truck. I'm not GOnna do anything I'm gonna do something probably that's gonna cost me money then to move my truck to operate. And you got to have a long term vision. That's called your operational run rate. Your operational run rate is what your intention is and what you intend and what you plan on in terms of profits. So if I want to run my business and I want to make a profit, and I lay out, say, hey, you know what my operational costs are? $2, right? If I want to make a 20% profit, I can't move my trust for the truck for less than $2.40.
I need to plan on where those two hundred forty s. I need to find lanes, I need to run with brokers that can keep me around, that I'm not going to win everyone, and I'm not going to lose everyone. But most importantly, the biggest thing is that you have to know your own numbers. And one of the things that I said, and I'll never forget this is probably one of the. It's one of my favorite things that I've ever said ever, in terms of speaking to a group of entrepreneurs. Mind your damn business.
I love that line.
I can't focus on like that. 227 is not your business. That is the atri, which I'm not. Not bashing them. It's. Right. But it's a small, independent, controlled sample. And because of that, you weren't part of that. That research. They did. Not to you.
I look at it like this, too, Adam, and because I believe I followed up and fact checkers can fact check me if they want, I believe I followed it up on Monday with saying, like, that's my problem with national averages for rates out there and stuff like that, because I just paid $6 a mile for a drive in the other day. All right, $6 a mile. It was a hundred mile run, but I paid $6 a mile on it. So that's technically skewed compared to the national average of drive ran, saying 220 a mile and stuff like that. So again, it's like, it's identifying these markets that are out there. And really, I think, like, you gotta stop paying to the national. Paying attention to the national averages. Not like, don't ignore them. Right?
Like, data is data and you need to pay attention to that. But how you need to look at it is, how is this applicable to my business? Okay, how does this. How is this applicable? What? You know, like, again, you want to talk about, like, the. The amount of opportunities that are out there, man, where people are paying dollar six a mile or $5 a mile for stuff like that. And yeah, it might be a hundred mile run, you know, and it might take up a couple hours of your time that day, but it puts you into a good market and stuff like that. Again, like how many loads are you overlooking? Because it's like, oh, that's just a short haul. They're not going to pay anything.
Like you got to explore all this stuff and you got to find this stuff out and you got to pay attention to it as your business, not what other people are saying. Because I, my big fear with a lot of this stuff, Adam, and you talk to business owners and trucking company owners literally all day long, every single day out there. My biggest fear for a lot of people is not that the market is challenging because the market's always going to be challenging. Business is always going to be challenging, but they're going to take some of this information out there and then not actually look into what is it, how is it applicable to your business and how does it affect you.
Yeah, the biggest thing, just like I said, like if I just say, oh, whoo, I'm glad the Atri did the research for me. Now I can just run my business out. My cost operations $2.27 a mile. You may be blind to the fact that your operational cost might be even higher than that or it might be significantly lower than that. Your operational cost also changes its fluid. It changes all the time. The reason why I say this is that, Chris, if you run it at operational ratio, excuse me, your operational run rates at $2, your break even is at $2, right. But all of a sudden fuel prices go up by thirty cents and your station selection and how you select your stations adds another ten cents to that. Now let's layer on the fact that, you know what?
I'm over consuming because I've got a clogged up DPF filter that I don't have the money to fix. But now I'm going to have to deal with it. So now I'm sucking out more fuel than I need to. So now that's impacting my overall cost of operation even more. Your cost of operation is fluid. It changes. The only time that I use a national average for anything is on the national average of diesel fuel only as a benchmark. Only as a benchmark. That is the only reason why we use averages from a national perspective, because it's too broad brush. And if you run your business off of averages as a business owner, you're not being very studious when it comes down to operating your own business and you're setting yourself up for failure.
Yeah, I think that at this point, you know, there's so much stuff that's just being thrown out there, you know, to. I personally think a lot of it is. Is to deter people from actually remaining in business at this point. Right. Because still, man, like, I've been doing this media shit for four years now. I have yet to see a major news network out there break down, hey, mister and misses trucking company. This is what you need to do to stay in business. And I'm removing myself from this because I feel like I do a really good job of putting, you know, stuff out there on my podcast, and there might be other ones that I'm thinking about, but. Or that I'm missing. But at the end of the day, I don't see anything that's geared towards helping people stay in business. Right. There's.
There's a lot of information out there that I feel like is designed to make them do one thing or another and none. And they're both reckless decisions. Right. Because it's like, when has, you know, at this point in the year, I was talking about this last week. At this point in the year, it's the midway point when, if you haven't assessed your p and l this year to see where is your money going, where is the money coming from? What does that look like? You need to do that right now because, like, we got the back half of the year. Have you even thought about taxes for this year yet? You know, like, again, like, these are the things that you need to be thinking about to keep yourself in business.
Because at the end of the day, any major media people out there, they're just going to keep posting their shit. It's not their job to keep you in business. And. But I feel like at the end of the day, you have to take accountability for this stuff. And it was the same thing that I saw that there's some task force out there now about, like, predatory lease to own, stuff out there for, owner operators and stuff like that. And I was like, at the end of the day, if you can't afford $500 to have an attorney review that document before you sign it, or if there's a company out there that refuses to let you take that document to go, those are the two biggest red flags that you shouldn't be in business right there. Like, you should stop yourself in that moment.
No, I totally agree. And especially with something that's long term like that in business, you have to absolutely have either business oversight when it comes down to it from a legal perspective. And in any type, anytime you get into any type of agreement, any type of contractual exchange, you need to make sure you have an attorney present. Like, we cannot not wait on the government to create task force for us to help save us, because obviously we know how that works. And then you think about waiting on EF MCSA to bail us out of anything. You know how that works. You got to own your business, man. You got to mind your business.
And I think that's one of the biggest issues is that folks get in this trucking industry and they think that they buy a truck, buy a trailer, you know, get behind the wheel, however, and that's it. You know, hey, I was able to back up this trailer with the best of them. I can run a good trucking business. I know how it works. I know how to do this, that, and the third, and it's just not the case, man. And I think that as time goes on, especially in the data time and the way that the actual industry is shifting, I think it's going to be more and more difficult. And, you know, quite frankly, and quite honestly, I think we'll see failure rates increase just because, man, things is getting flushed.
And I think that the freight recession that we so elevately got ourselves out of or working ourselves out of really helped purge some of those ones that are not doing the things that they need to do. It purged them out, you know, really purged them out pretty quickly.
Yeah. I think that no matter what, if you got yourself into these situations, like, there's solutions to come out of it, right? Like, people are going to come out of this market, they're going to be winning. They're going. But again, it's like, you have to treat this as a business, right? Like it's personal, is personal businesses business. And you have to go in and you have to operate it that way. You're not an employee. Like, it's your name that's on the line. Like, just like with me in my business, I have everything on the line. I don't have any backup plan. Like, I literally have every dollar I've ever made in my life invested to make this work, just like you do, Adam. And it's nobody else's responsibility to come in and fix it but us.
So it's like, I just look at it as there are ways out there. And again, I think every business, brokerage, trucking company doesn't matter. You need to look at your p and l right now and see where is your money going. What are, what is the financial health of your business look like? How do you know, and again, know your numbers. Same thing as a broker, right? Like, you need to know your numbers. What is your break even? Just because you make a $100 in margin, quote unquote, doesn't mean you're making a $100. What's the cost to process that stuff as well? What do you actually need do just to break even?
And that was one of those things that I learned working for a big company early on in my career is, you know, I don't remember the exact number, but for conversation pieces, it was essentially, we have to make $75 on a load to break even. Because when you have the cost, you know, of acquisition and everything processed through that.
And I want to be clear too, because a lot of times, you know, you see a lot of owner ops and, you know, small fleet owners, they get confused with breakeven and what you really actually want to run for. A lot of times we're in a conversation like, hey, you know, your break even point, you need to know your break even point. It's, you know, let's just say it's 215. But then you'll get those folks like saying, well, I'm not moving my truck for 215. Who would want to move your truck for 215? You need to understand that your break even is your floor. It's not your ceiling. It is where you absolutely have to start. The ball bounces at the floor and everything goes up from there. But it's so important that you understand how to calculate your break even point.
It is not just fuel, it is not just insurance, it's not just truck payment. And that does not create profit. There are so many different lines because every time your wheel turn, all of your expenses are mortized within the movement of that truck. So it's so important that you, as an owner operator, understand that we cannot use the ATR, our ATR, our research in the small carrier community, we cannot use that because it is a blanket statement. There is so many different variables and different things that go into that break even point. If you need help calculating that break even point, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. I might just go live and just take a couple of carriers and just do it with, you know, do a little segment on that. But, we just have to make that known.
Yeah, dude, I think that would be awesome if you could do something like that. Show them what their break even is. And then show them, hey, this is what a 10% rate per mile is. Profit margin baked in at 20%, whatever that looks like. So they can actually look at that and see, because, you know, again, if they're like, oh, I need 215 a mile, then, you know, they're like, I don't know, man. I just think, like, laying this stuff out there for people to know their numbers so then they can sell. Like, if somebody says, like, oh, 250 a mile isn't a good. You're like, dude, it's stuff like that. But I know you got a jump here, Adam. You got stuff going on. I'll have Adam back on, ladies and gentlemen, and make that happen.
But how does anybody reach out to you? Quick to find out more.
Hey, you can find me here on LinkedIn. Just go ahead and I'm tagged into this post. Just go ahead and reach out to me in the private jack, go to our website, www.truckingconsultants.com. But then you also can find me other socials as well. But just. Just link me here in the private chat and I'll be more than happy to reach out to you and assist.
Perfect, man. I appreciate you, Adam. And we'll. We'll talk to you soon, brother.
Thank you.
All right. And hey, and if you guys need to get in touch with Adam and if you guys can't find him, just hit me up. I will gladly put you guys in contact with him. Cory Buchan over on YouTube. Dylan Turner over on YouTube. Sorry, guys, I'm just getting caught up here. Good morning, orange shirt gang. Sunny Sharma in the house. Carla is dead. Also in the house over on LinkedIn. I'm trying to get everybody over to YouTube, you guys. I'm trying to get everybody over there. I've just heard from so many people that the stream is exponentially better over on YouTube. And get over there and check it out, you guys. And, yeah, let's get into some articles here, you guys. The links to the articles are going to be put up on to the iTunes and Spotify for the audio only.
Replay to it as well as the YouTube channel, you guys. And as always, if you guys get value in what you hear, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out to Dairy network. If you guys want to rank the show as well, you guys. This is how we reach more people because at the end of the day, this is how we can reach them to help them with all of this information that we put on out there. But first article is from freight waves and it is Warner battling unions on two fronts. One fight may have broader significance. Warner Enterprises ECM unit is battling units unionization efforts on two fronts, one of which may be impacted by a recent legal precedent that observers could say or that say could boost union representation efforts.
With fewer than 50 workers involved in the unionization push, one of the group employees has already chosen to be represented by union, a campaign that ultimately brought Warner CEO Derek Leathers into the fray with a personal visit to New Jersey. That campaign resulted last year in approximately 25 workers at ECM units at three New Jersey for facilities cinnamon Sin Hamilton and Piscataway voting to be organized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. It was an effort that spurred leathers to travel to New Jersey to meet the workers, even though the size of the potential union was a drop in the bucket to the transportation logistics total workforce of more than 14 or, excuse me, 13,000 people out there.
Negotiations to turn that successful union vote into a contract, not always a guarantee, are progressing towards that, according to Mike Thompson, who is an organizer at the local level out there, talks in New Jersey are moving forward, Thompson said in an email. The freight waves that negotiations could go a little faster, but there has been fairly decent movement on both sides. Shortly after the unionization vote, the union filed an unfair labor practices claim with the National Labor Board relations against Warner, and they says that the complaint was withdrawn in May, which was confirmed by Warner. A potentially more significant battle is brewing in Erie, Pennsylvania, and then that effort could be impacted by the so called Cemex decision.
That NLRB decision from last year is seen as giving the agency power to order union recognition under certain circumstances if a unionization vote failed in the rank and file system. The dispute in Erie goes back to last year. Unlike New Jersey, the Teamsters union, not the UFC W, is seeking to organize its workers. Among the developments, the standoff involves the dismissal of four workers who union people were say were let go because of their organizing efforts. Warner's denies that claim. The Teamsters later consolidated check card check in favor of a union. And then it goes on. Let me see here. The teams representation check card is a controversy, is controversial. Critics say it's effectively eliminates a secret ballot because if a worker doesn't sign and submit a card, it is publicly known as a no vote.
And then it goes on to talk about ties to another. There's a lot of information in here from the unionization effort of it. And, you know, I've been very vocal, very, very vocal about my disdain for unionization efforts out there. I just think that at this point in time, I don't need to put my stance out there any. Any more than that, but I'm against unions. All right? I am. I think that, it benefits the union more than the employee. And I just truly think that it's just in a company, a group of individuals going against a company like that, where it's, you know, like, the. The free market, you guys, is the most beautiful market to operate in, because I look at it like this.
If you're looking at a situation where you're employed somewhere and you think you're worth more money, the beauty of the free market is you can go start your own business and compete. Right. I think that, you know, from. From my perspective, you know, a lot of people are out there talking about, you know, small trucking companies, and they're always in the news and everything else, but there's a reason why 97% or 95% of the trucks that are on the road right now are ten truck or less operations, right? The. The american dream. This. The creation of the small business and going out there and carving out your slice of it. You know, like, I'm not involved with Warner at all. I'm not here to advocate on their behalf or say anything. And they're, you know, but.
But, like, I just think, like, these unions are just going after businesses left and right. Like I said it last year, with yellow and yellow going out of business, the union should have bought yellow and showed everybody how great they are at operating a business. Like, why don't they, right? Like, they could make so much more money, okay, in the free market, if the union just went out and formed their own corporation and employed all their people across the. Across the United States and then competed against all the non union companies, right? You got to ask yourself, why don't they do that? Why doesn't the union, the teamsters in particular, who've been around for a very long time, why don't they just start a trucking company? Why don't they buy equipment?
Why don't they go and find their own customers, and why don't they do that? You got to ask yourself that at some point, because there's a reason why they're not doing this. There's a reason why it's easy to organize. And I want to be abundantly clear. I am not against people's rights to organize and do all of that stuff. I'm a very, very firm believer in the constitution. Of the United States and the voice of the individual and everything else. But I think that Athenae this point in time, they should just buy their own trucks, pay all of their employees what they want to get the wages raised for at other companies. Just do it. Just go out there and do it. It's way more lucrative to go out there and build your own business.
He's got, that's just a question that keeps coming up into the back of my mind is at this point in time, why haven't they started their own trucking company and why hasn't that happened? And why are they just going after all of these businesses that are out there? Because, you know, again, frankly, at the end of the day, again, back to the free market because the argument is, well, they're not paying us enough money. Okay, we'll go find a better paying job out there, right? Like, not everybody's colluding against each other. Be like, no, we're only going to pay cheap people $5 a day. That's not happening, you guys. That's not happening at all. I just think, like, it's just an attack on the free market is all it is.
I truly feel like most unions, not all of them, because I don't want to make it sound like not all unions are bad, but I truly feel like the majority of unions are just a, or just socialism in disguise. Right? It's, it's not, don't work hard. Don't work hard. Just continue to put in minimal efforts, you know, but that's my little rant on that. And then this next article, I don't know if we're going to have enough time to break down all of it, but it's talking about the EPA. Congressional Republicans target the EPA rule. This is from ttnews.com and it talks about that. It costs, the increase in costs for the american families, businesses and rural communities with fueling while fueling more inflation.
We need to give Americans a choice in cars and trucks that they drive and affordability and performance for the trucking industry is paramount. Again, the free market, you guys, if, like, if you want to buy an electric vehicle and an electric truck and every, go fucking buy it, right? But don't tell me that I have to drive one because you want to drive one, right? Like, I just think that at the end of the day, I've done enough of my own research on this. I've watched enough congressional hearings on Capitol Hill. There isnt a ton of data that says that its actually better for it. And again, like I said, google lithium mines. Go Google lithium mines. And tell me how thats better if youre going to put, you know, build solar farms out there.
How is putting a solar farm out there to charge some of these stations? How is that better for the native vegetation that is in some of these, areas that theyre building these out? Again, questions you just need to ask you guys, its, and I just again, will never, ever support the, any government body sitting here saying you can only buy this or you can only do that. That's not a free society at all. And it's, you know, again, last time I checked, you can shut off the power goes out, you can store gas in and keep your vehicles fueled for an extended period of time on that. But that is going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. I got to get back out and slang some more freight. I will be back tomorrow. We got a guest coming on tomorrow.
And again, we got a guest coming on Friday. It's a shipper coming on the show on Friday. So if you have any sales or operations related questions for a shipper, if you are looking to get more business and you don't know how to present yourself, I've already got a couple of questions. I got room for maybe one more question to be asked to this guy who's coming on dm me. You guys, again, you're not going to get any more business advice on how to improve your sales process than getting direct feedback from a shipper. All right, so check it out. You guys will be here on Friday for that. But as I was, you guys, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show.
If you're a small fleet out there and you want to talk to Adam and you can't find them for some reason, hit me up. I will put you guys in contact with them, but that is going to be it, you guys, we will be back tomorrow. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.