Right, there we go. All right, we are going to start in three, two, and one. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of coffee with the freight coach. My name is Chris Jolly. I am your host and I am the freight coach. Before we jump into the episode, as always, thank you guys so much for coming out and listening to this podcast. 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 to transportation professionals on this show 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 this information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. I do have one small favor to ask. I know you will, but if you get value and you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there. Dear network, because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. I got a very special guest for you guys here today. We literally met and spoke for the first time about ten minutes ago and we are going to have an action packed conversation. We know we've briefly met at conferences in the past and talked in passing and everything. And you know, we're going to talk about some consulting services out there and kind of what's going on and everything.
So I have Mister Nate Johnson, he is the CEO and founder of GLCs. So Nate, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks a lot, Chris. Appreciate you having me on.
No, man, I'm looking forward to this. And you know, I start off damn near every single show like this. Nate, how'd you get your starting freight and what brought you into trucking?
Wow. So that's going back ways. I've been in it for 28 years and I went to college for law enforcement and decided that was not a career path for me and thought, hey, I'm going to jump in a truck and go see the world. And so back in the mid to late nineties, that's what I did. I jumped in a truck and went and saw the world and drove over the road for a while. Wow. And after a while I thought, you know, I like the industry, but the over the road world is something that's not going to work for a 22, 23 year old guy. And moved into an office and I started working safety and operations, and that graduated into a GM role at a pretty young age of a company.
And we grew that company from a small company to a large company over a short period of time. Always was involved in technology, always was edgy and technology going, you know, this is 20 years ago, so there wasn't a lot of technology and freight back then, but, yeah, so that's. That's kind of what got me in the industry was, you know, just, my dad told me many years ago that I, there's no way I could back a truck up. And I proved him wrong and always just loved the industry, loved the people in the industry, loved how the technology was evolving and just grasped onto that and loved the constant evolution that a trucking company, a growing trucking company offered. So in 2006, we sold that company, and I ended up starting my own company. I grew that to about 100 trucks.
And in 2009, that didn't go so well for me. So I got to experience a shutdown. So that wasn't a lot of fun. Learned a lot of lessons. I wouldn't say I made too many mistakes. Other than that I grew too fast. So were very profitable for almost our entire existence, except for the last three months. And 2009 had a lot of economic pressures to it. So I shifted from running that 100 truck fleet or growing that 100 truck fleet to then running refrigerated carrier for a little while. And then I shifted to technology in 2011 and worked for TMW Systems for about five and a half years, managing their consulting group. It was called strategic services. That, once again, five and a half years, kind of all business lines there.
And that was my first taste into actually working in technology and transportation logistics. It was a good move for me, and I haven't really looked back. I've been on the tech side, or at least the advisory side, technology side, since then. GLCs started in 2016.
So what are some. Because with you having experience back in zero eight and zero nine as a fleet owner, are there any similarities to what you're seeing today than what was going on right now?
Yes and no. So the difference between today, the healthy fleets today, and the unhealthy fleets today, and a lot of our customers that GLCs works with intimately today have similar characteristics to the healthy fleets from before. And spot market has a much larger footprint today than what it once did. And I think there's a lot more brokerages and a lot more companies that are moving spot market freight today than there was before. But that being said, in a strategy so let's define what I mean by spot market. Yeah, I don't know what I'm in a market, and I don't know what I'm going to do with that truck. Yep, I might have a relationship with you, and I know what I'm going to do with the truck. And maybe I don't consider that spot market anymore.
I'm calling you up saying, hey, I got a truck and we've got a pre negotiated rate and whatnot, and we've. That works for me. So I am not posting my truck. If I post a truck, I'm calling that spot market. So lets define it that way. So in 2008, 2009, if I was running more than 5% spot market on any of my fleets or previous to that, if I was running more than 5% spot market, I was typically pretty concerned with any operation, even going past that, any operation that I was running. And thats primarily you just look at the margins and whatnot. I might make more in an up market. I might have, I might make more in the up market when the spot market is strong, but the risk I take in a down market is just too high.
And the more trucks I have, the risk gets greater and greater. So that is the same that it is today, except I see, I know we have a lot more fleets that play in that space than what we had before. In addition to that, we have a lot more companies that are factoring, and receivables are good in transportation, especially if they're healthy receivables, meaning you have a net 30 to net 45 relationship, maybe net 60 if you're okay with that. But net 30 to net 45 or faster, fast receivables are okay, too. But receivables are good for an organization. And if you're factoring those receivables and you're getting paid in one, two, three days, you're carrying nothing.
So if you have a decision that you make that creates an economic impact in your organization, and you can't make payroll, you don't have anything coming down the pipeline to fix that. Yeah, there's no change down that. So while there's things for, for factoring can be healthy, but it can also be a poor decision as well. So there's a lot more of that happening today than what there was before.
I think that factoring gets a bad rap in the industry, but I don't know if people and, but I think it gets a bad rap, which I don't. I think there's a phenomenal, factoring, companies that are out there, and, you know, and when you can use them the right way. I think there's piss poor financial acumen out there, Nate, that leads to a lot of this. I think that's because, like, you know, again, man, I think when you start a business and you're figuring it all out, I mean, you know this just as well as anybody. There's no playbook to entrepreneurship, and I think that a lot of people don't actually understand how their money works, how factoring works, how you can leverage some of these things out there, and they don't even know what is.
You know, they don't know what business credit is. They don't know guarantee. So, like, I think it's a financial acumen issue that's really driving a lot of these problems out. And, you know, it's. It's also. Everybody has a. At least in the United States, has a really easy time spending $2 for the dollar that they make, and then they don't under. You know, then they're buried in debt on top of that.
Right, right. No, I agree with you there. I mean, it is, ultimately, it's not the factoring companies fault that you make a poor decision to. To grab that capital. It's certainly the business owner's choice to do that in all instances. So. And the same thing can be said for loans. There's good loans, there's bad loans. You see loans out there right now with 30% interest on them.
Yeah.
You know, and that's just not a smart choice. So, you know, there. There's. You also see poor choices in buying equipment. I mean, we saw. That's a lot of the reason that we're in scenarios that some of the people are in right now where they can't make their truck payments. Yeah. It just so happens the bank don't want. Doesn't want the truck back right now.
Yeah. And you're like, the fourth person that's told me and brought that to my attention here recently is I personally think this is the biggest threat to the industry that is truly out there is the fact that there's people driving down the road right now who aren't paying for their truck, they're not paying for their truck, and they're the ones who are like, I will take freight for whatever because they don't have any overhead.
Right. And that's. You tie all of these factors together, and that's what's different. Between 2008, 2009, while you may have had some leverage with the bank because it was in some cases that it wasn't like it is right now, where the bank just doesn't want it back. I mean, they cannot take the hit on their books right now, which it is a Rob Peter to pay Paul scenario, because this is going to come to roost. You have $200,000 trucks that were never worth $200,000. Yeah, or more likely $150,000 used trucks that were never worth $150,000. So this is going to be a problem somewhere down the road. And we have to have equipment, specifically, drivers most likely exit the industry in some way, shape or form, or the economy has to come up and that has to even out.
But I don't see that happening.
But how do we correct this? I think very glaring issue of people not paying for their truck if the banks don't want it, say the market does improve, are they going to all of a sudden repossess? And then, and then is that going to cause a major cause? Like, my assumption is this, there's probably way more trucks cruising down the road right now that aren't paying for their trucks then are.
Cause I think once the word gets out, you know, I don't want to make it sound like this is everybody thing like that, but I think that once that gets out and, you know, but again, it's like you do a couple here, a couple there, and then I'd like to see the data just be like, how many people aren't actually making their truck payments and then say things do improve and then what does the bank call all their notes and then they can't pay because they're underwater, 40 grand, and then they just get repossessed.
Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens. So. But that is, that's the debate. And everything's speculative there. So, you know, it's, I think it's going to come down to how many trucks you have and what's your capability of renegotiating that and what's the damage to your organization if that isn't renegotiated? If you don't need the trucks, then you're going to accept whatever sort of thing that's going to be. So if you're a single owner operator and you want to stay a single owner operator, you're going to try to renegotiate.
Yeah. How? Let's switch over to, like, a technology perspective here.
Sure.
How many people, fleets in particular, have way too much software for what they actually need.
So that's a good question. Sometimes you have a lot of software. Sometimes it's, are you utilizing your software? Lots of times you see organizations purchase software based upon a set of requirements that are ill defined. So I need something that's going to do these ten things, and they buy something that can do 100 things. And so they deploy based upon ten requirements, but they actually needed 30 requirements, so maybe they don't hit what they actually needed accurately. And I think that's what we see more often than anything else, is you have a piece of software and you have to, because you didn't buy the right thing, you bought 30% of what you needed or 60% of what you needed.
Now you're off here looking for another solution to meet the other 30% of what you need, which maybe is one or two or three different things, or maybe it's just the tried and true Excel spreadsheet. So that's what I think you see very often as companies end up with something that gets close, but then they have to purchase other pieces that maybe aren't even industry specific to close the gaps that they don't get there. It all comes down to those initial requirements to ensuring that they get what they actually need, and it's very common to hit that. It's also very common to see that someone has a tool that's extremely robust and they have other tools that they've used as crutches, but they're just simply not utilizing that tool that they have that's extremely robust.
Appropriately, they haven't learned it the right way or they've degraded their awareness of that tool. That skillset Billy has taught Tommy, who's taught Lisa, and they're at 70% of their awareness or 60% of their awareness of the capability of the solution that they bought 15 years ago.
So, yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of people need to do a, you know, I don't want to call it a tech cleansing, but that's what I think it kind of boils down to because, you know, again, like, this is all from my perspective. I signed up for a bunch of shit that I didn't need, man. I thought that because it's like, oh, it sounded cool and, you know, revenue was up. So I'm like, go, let's go, and, but then again, I think, like, you hit a certain point in time and I think, like, this is where we are right now in the economy. And then, just as you know, you need to be assessing your p and l multiple times a year, you know, at least annually, right? Like, what are you paying? Why are you paying that?
And, you know, and you find out, because I think, like, as technology in our industry continues to evolve, there's going to be more and more, a lot. There's going to be more and more companies that essentially offer the same thing, but there's going to be some gaps in their overall capabilities. And it makes you sign up for two or three platforms to essentially do one function.
Right. We see that already. You see that already in a lot of different spaces in the TMS space, especially the non asset TMS space. There's a lot of different players there. Some of them are really good, some of them are less than good. Some of them reflect that in price point. We're tracking well into the hundreds on the TMSD platform offerings right now. So that's a massive number offerings there. And then the supporting products around that are just numerous. So getting on the asset based side, there isn't that many because it's infinitely more complex to deal with the asset based side TMS. But as you go down market, you get out of the mid market side, you go down market. There's more and more there. But the supporting products are more numerous as well.
So but to your point, on maintaining your solutions, maintaining the processes, maintaining the health of it, we offer up a service called a business process assessment, and we're doing one at all times pretty much for various different clients, customers where we do a order to cash review of what they do from a process and a technology standpoint. And I can't think of one that we've done where we haven't found the value of that or far more than the value of the cost of that business process assessment. It's typically related to a large small market organization and above. So you're typically looking at an organization that's 35 million a year or larger. But we typically will find ways to save money or make more money far beyond the cost of that assessment.
Trey, so whats one of the biggest things from a structure standpoint, whether its with technology or not, that youre seeing out there where you would like more fleets to look into as a weakness in their operation.
So that varies depend upon market space? Well, let's, since, you know, we're your audience is most likely over the road, I'm guessing that type of a market. So, you know, when we, there's key points to it, right. The return on investments right now are forward facing cameras. If you're not deploying those, just go find them and put them on. You don't have to think too much about it. Massive return on investment there. Second one is fuel optimization products. And what I mean by that is the ones that are telling you where to purchase fuel. There's really two in market if you're a large enough fleet. So if you've got 100 trucks plus, and you're not using those fuels expensive, so you cannot do the math. And there's some asterisks to that if you're not static.
So if you have a static fleet and you're running the same routes over and over, and you have predefined fuel stops, there's probably reasons that you don't need to spend the money on that. But if you're in a regular out fleet, fuel optimization products are just a no brainer. Fleet maintenance software is another one that. So, you know, maintaining your fleet using software instead of Excel spreadsheets and paper is another one. And ensuring that you're using something modern there, something that tracks your warranties on your trucks. Those are our pieces as well. Those are probably three major ones. Not getting into people, but talking beyond that. I always talk about people and process and technology and sort of that trifecta.
You can have great people, horrible processes, and horrible technology, and still have a great company, but you can have the best technology in the world, and you can have horrible processes and horrible people and have no company. So you can never have a company with great technology, horrible processes, horrible people, or even great processes, great technology, and horrible people and expect to get anywhere. So it's all about the people following the people. It's the processes, right? You can have great people, mediocre people, mediocre processes, and virtually no technology, and still do business. So that lean process and ensuring that your process is well defined and built out appropriately. And that's where I think a lot of companies miss today, is their processes are degraded. You know, they get all over the place, especially in the mid market side.
Whether it's a brokerage, a truck line, it doesn't matter. People start doing what they want to do, and it's evolved over many years to whatever Billy wants to do.
One thing that I kind of come across a lot, and I see a lot of this out there, Nate, is I think people think technology fix shitty processes. And I. You can't, like, you're just. Then you're just automating shitty processes at the end if you're going to bring them, in that regard. And I think, like, that's, you know. Cause like, I'm taking an approach from, like, day $1.01 in my business of implement, process implementation, like, literally documenting everything. So as we grow in scale, we change our processes, we change how things are working and everything, and we build it up off of that. Because I have, like, I have a robust training platform already built up. Like, we could hire ten people tomorrow, Nate, and they're all going to receive two weeks classroom training and everything else on top of that.
And then it kind of grows and scales. I'm also a firm believer that training never ends. Like, if you've been working with ten years, you're going to be doing annual biannual or quarterly training. I haven't decided, but it's. I have decided that it will never stop. And because, like, for me is. It's like, I want to set the tone early about this. Like, hey, this is a business. At the end of the day, we will have KPI's, we will have things in place, we will have metrics to check everything. We'll even have KPI's against our processes to make sure shit is operating at a high level. Because at the end of the day, at least, what, like, if I fundamentally break this down, Nate, doing the job is the easy part.
Selling cold calling, doing all of that book and freight, that's the easy part. It's the human capital investment that I think is just, that's the challenging part of making sure you set the tone early on so everybody is rowing in the. The same direction. Right. As your boy Jay Fleck at the U of M says, you got to row that boat or whatever.
Row the boat. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And when you're deploying the process, we call it a business activity monitoring, or bam. But, you know, when measuring the process, right. You got to measure to manage. And that doesn't just include the KPI. That includes you. Called it out. You measure the process. So measure, ensure that what you're deploying is actually going to execute. And I agree, continued training is important. Ensure that the process that you're laying out is being followed and continues to be followed. And then you can only track so many numbers on a person at any given time. And you can only expect that they're going to track so many numbers. The higher that person is in your organization, they can start tracking more numbers.
But if you're going to have a frontline person track more than eight KPI's or eight numbers of some kind, you're probably going to become ineffective above and beyond that. So which you become less effective if you become above and beyond that, but if you give them eight targets to hit, you're going to do well with eight targets. But if you give them 30, it's like giving them zero. So you know they're going to pick the ones that are important to them, not the ones that are important to you. Yeah, so I agree with you.
How are you guys working with companies that, you know, the founder just got out of the truck and now he's, he or she's leading to and stuff like that? Or are you guys more coming in when they've been a little bit more established? They have a staff and everything else?
Yeah, typically it's more established on the startup side of a trucking company or a brokerage. That's fairly rare. There's very few instances of that. We maybe work on an advisory capacity. In some of those scenarios, we are looking to go down market. That's why we're involved and help advisory with broker carrier Summit. It's why we launched an organization called Freight Movement to just help network and put some thoughts out there into the industry. Our down market push largely is more consultative in groups, but on the upmarket side, we're typically going to be larger, more established organizations. We work with about 300 or so on a daily, monthly basis right now, and that's growing fairly quickly. So, Jeff?
Yeah. I think that, at least from my perspective here, and I like, one of the reasons why I love podcasts as much as I do, Nate, is because I like putting out the real side of growing the business and everything. Because I'm four years into building in entrepreneurship, I call it because I've, you know, I pivoted back into brokerage, a couple of years ago. It's coming up on two years. And I. Cause I was a broker for, you know, 1111 ish years, I think, at the time. And then I did sales consulting for a couple of years, and then I was like, man, all these people are just applying what I'm saying. I just need to get back in and do it for me so that I can coach and lead my people and grow it up. That was my whole thing.
So it's like I want to document the realities of building a business out because it's like when I say that the work ends up being the easy part as a founder, it is, right? Because it's like, just have to sell. Like, man, when I just get to go out and walk the docks at a facility and meet my shippers and stuff, that's the best job ever. But when it comes to. Because, like, I hate processes. At the end of the day, my business partner loves it. Fortunately, he loves to document shit because I hate it. I am a firm believer, Nate, where it's like, man, just let me sell, let me do my thing, and the business will. Will be whatever. And. But that's why it's like, you need those split responsibilities for that stuff.
No, I I'm right there with you. I would much rather be in the field, selling, doing my thing. Right now, I have a crew at a conference. It's. It's pretty rare for me not to be one of the people at the conference, but I've done. I don't even know how many. I've done 14 this year, and I'm. I'm needing to tap out for a little bit. So. So this one I tapped out on, but it. It almost itches at me wrong, because I, you know, I see them out there. I was talking to one of our leaders, and they said, I wish I was there. It's kind of. Kind of rubbing me the wrong way, but I need the. I need the peace and calmness of not being in the middle of it right at the moment. So.
No, I know what you mean, man. And I think that. That. I think that's what I naturally stalls out a lot of people at some point. But that's why it's, like, you do need to work with an outsider to come in and really stress test your business at the end of the day, because, like, I'm, you know, like, I actually, like, I think my greatest asset is my work ethic at, like, when it boils down to I will, you know, I know a lot of people say it, but it's like, man, I got that Midwest work ethic through and through. Like, I've had to work since I was, like, five years old, and nothing. Not just stand there with my dad. I'm, like, actually shoveling shit and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah, you get the midwestern work ethic. You get the transportation thrown into it, and then you work from sun up until it's, you know, you fall over. And, you know, I'm the same way. It's not uncommon for me to put in 11 hours a day, and that's not something I broadcast. It's not something I, I think is great, because I really don't want to work 11 hours a day, but I end up doing it. And then it's probably a negative when you get down to it, but as a founder, as a company leader. And as eight years old, I still call us a young company, because, in a lot of ways, we're still finding our way. We're still finding our way in a lot of ways. So, you know, 11 hours a day is what it is.
You know, you chug along and you do it. Some days are longer, but, you know, we try to do less than that. And every once in a while, I get some easy time. Hopefully next week will be, yeah, you.
Know, I look at it as I don't. If you're going to be a founder of a company, no, you don't have to work 24 7365. That's a lie. But I think that you have to work more than you. You think at times, and even with systems and processes, man, you. You really need. Because I'm just a firm believer, and again, maybe. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong. I'm a firm believer that if I have a crew of 100 people or 200 people showing up, they want to see their. Their leadership there. They want to see that there's that comfort that kind of belong with it.
And that's just kind of my mentality, man, where it's like, if it's my name on the wall at the end of the day, and if I got people working, no, I don't need to be there every hour that they're there. But I think that them seeing their leadership there, it brings a level of ease to your frontline workers, because I know growing up in the industry, man, when were working, but nobody in leadership was there, it's almost like, well, why the f. Why are we here for this? You know? Like, I truly believe in that. Leading from the front.
No, I'm there with you. You got to be out there. Always have been that way. You know, when I was running trucking companies, it wasn't uncommon for me to jump in a truck and go run a. Run a load here and there. Sometimes more often than not. When I had my trucking company, I'd work all week long and then run a few rounds to Chicago on the weekends. So that's just. That's just what I do. And, you know, meet. We'd run a lot of meets. I'd meet with drivers. They definitely knew I was out. They. They. They would see that, and they. That. That got me a few stripes with them, so it was important to do that. On the same hand, it kept me fresh with the feelings of the road. I've always loved to drive, too, so that. That.
That was important, but still love to drive today, you know, I'll jump in the truck and go along. This is not a class a truck, but, you know, I'll jump in my truck and take off and run.
So, so I, I think like that would be, I'm just a firm believer in Nate that you. I learn better from people who have actually done, like I said before, every single show, I want to, you know, people who've done what you're looking to do. And I think like, that has to just bring so much more validity to all of your guys'clients, knowing that, hey, Nate owned a fleet of 100 trucks. Nate drove. You've been, you know, like that. That's got to be out there because I think, like, that's one of the. There. Every industry is unique, right? Like at the end of the day, and I'm not saying trucking's any differently than that, but I truly feel like it just brings more of an ease when you can talk to somebody who's like, no, man, I've actually owned a fleet before.
This is what we did, this is how we operated. This is the why behind the decisions. Because I think consultants at time get a bad rap because they've never owned a truck or they've never sold freight before and stuff like that.
Yeah, no, I agree with that. And we get kind of tied into the c word a little bit, the consultant. But to a lot of extent, we look to become partners with our customers. And the consultant side is hard, you know, being that I came from that side of the industry, the operator side of the industry, I did not like consultants. And that's something I always said is we're going to provide value at all costs. And if you look at the team here at glCs, everyone, virtually everyone, we have a few developers on staff that maybe don't and a few support staff that maybe don't come from industry. But the vast majority of the people here have owned trucking companies, have been senior leadership at trucking companies, come from freight tech, have been senior leadership at brokerages.
You know, everyone has a path that came through a seat at a logistics company or a freight technology company in some way, shape or form. So when you call us, there's some depth of knowledge beyond just technology. And that was important as we're building out the company. And we still look at that as we add on new people as well. And it's extremely important that we do that way. When you're sitting down with a leader, that's a top 100 organization. You have that awareness of the industry. You can sit down and start talking about the struggles within the industry with authority, and you're not making it up. You can feel it right from the get go. It's important. And 100 trucks is one thing used to run a much larger organization than that. And the refrigerated carrier was closer to 250.
So that at one time, I had over a thousand employees.
So, yeah, and, you know. Cause it's like, I think as you reach different levels in business. Cause like that, what you're like, one of the most stressful things for me right now, man, is it's like I've never had employees before up until recently. And, you know, on, you know, growing these things out. And I think, like, that's the hardest. One of the harder parts of business is it's, it's experiencing it for the first time and not knowing, it's like that overwhelming feeling that kind of comes in of like, hey, am I making the right decisions? Did I hire too soon? Did I hire too many? And, you know, and then, because then naturally, revenue doesn't just go up when you hire people. Like hit.
Yeah, and I think that's a, I just was talking with somebody about that earlier today, and this is the longest I've owned a business. I have about four other businesses that I own right now as well. But this is the longest I've owned a business. And GLCs turned eight in June. And there's been lots of evolutions of it. And we've largely repositioned ourselves as a provider of managed IT services. And the reason, and it doesn't mean that we don't do consulting, but we help companies with their technology. To your point of adding on people, I think it comes down to the reason why I prefaced with that is you're constantly reinventing yourself. You're constantly, until you get to a certain size and maturity, you look at like a Ch. ROBINSON who's been around forever, constantly reinventing themselves eventually hit a particular point.
And now I think all of us are looking at this very mature organization that we all thought was the rock in our industry. We're all wondering, are they going to be here in the same position that they are in five years? So you are never the same, to my point, you are never the same entity that you are yesterday. It can always change. To my point, you know, we opened with a consulting organization. We're now presenting ourselves as a managed services organization. And part of that is consulting. Part of that's integrations and adding on the people in between is extremely, it's a dance. It takes a lot of time to understand what is okay, what is fiscally responsible to do.
And sometimes, you know, you just got to do that leap of faith, but you only know when to add on the person after you add them, in some cases as a young company.
So I feel you there, man. What's as we're kind of wrapping up here, Nate, what's one thing that you would like to see or like fleets should start looking at right now to improve their business to sustain through this market for as long as this continues the way it is.
So lane density is something I always tell everyone if you havent looked at your lane optimization. So for a midsize fleet, its very common for them to just be run into the wind. Doesnt matter if youre running a large amount of spot market freight or if youre running contract freight, if youre running spider lanes, if you're running, which means that you're kind of going to kingdom come, tighten that up, especially as you're getting closer to a market that's going to get more solid. Look at your stronger lanes and start saturating them with more trucks. Build better relationships in those lanes. Work your sales teams. If you don't have sales teams, work the brokers in that lane to start strengthening those relationships.
And you're going to have, not only you got to look at the fact that the rates are what they are, but your operating costs get reduced because you're staying in a saturated lane and your drivers are aware of it, they're going to operate more efficiently. So that's something that a lot of mid and small size fleets don't take into consideration is you might be operating at $2.25 a mile, but you're going to kingdom come. If you operate in the same lane over and over at $2.25 a mile, you're operating at a cheaper rate.
Yeah, no, man. I think that's great advice, Nate. Thank you so much for joining me here today, man. And how does anybody reach out to you to find out more about what you got going on?
Sure. Njohnson.net dot. You can check us out on LinkedIn, obviously, GlCs.net as well. Driving forward podcasts. We're on Thursdays at 01:00 p.m. Central time as well.
Perfect. Hit Nate up, ladies and gentlemen. If for some reason you cannot find him, just hit reach out to me. I will gladly put you guys in touch as always. You guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I know you got value, but if you did and you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there. Dear Network, because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys, and we'll be talking to you soon.