I'm Quitting - Again

[Pablo]

Great discussion

I thought for sure I was going to get all kinds of negative responses to my comment. But alot of great respectful discussions... love it.

Thanks guys. As for salespeople... I've hired my share of bad ones too. It seems out of 10 there are only 1 or 2 that can really sell. However, they are critical to your business.

The way I see most companies start up, it trucking or elsewhere, is they have a client first. They may have a connection or a buddy that is willing to give them a good chunk of business to get the ball rolling. This is how a lot of businesses are able to start up and thrive.

It's a scary thing to say ok open for business, I hope some customers show up.

Starting up as a broker first is a good idea, but why a broker would want to by trucks is beyond me (that's a joke by the way no need to yell at me) My preference is to leave trucking to trucking companies who are experts at what they do.

 

[theman]

I agree with Pablo. I've seen A LOT of salespeople come and go as peers along the years, and yes, I'd say 80% are no good.

The good ones listen to what their carriers need and give them solutions that fit that need, priced correctly. There is no shame on making a profit doing so, but I'm always fair about it.

I've been selling for 13 years, before that several years in Ops. I've never paid anyone off either with actual cash or even by offering 'perks', if you will. The odd meal or something like that, sure. But I've always strived to be the best, and over the years I have consistently been either the top producer or among them wherever I was.

I know it's not the case always, but it sure is here.

As far as buying trucks goes, in my opinion even if one is primarily a broker, these days there needs to be some sort of asset base behind the scenes. One can only get so far without assets, and also in a slack market, larger shippers in particular flock to those with an asset base because they feel it's more stable.

With all the stuff going on now with imbalance in supply, there are too many players out there who are scouting the Link and charging way more than they should for lanes ... we know our costs, trucks can be run round trip and make a profit for less than we end up paying out sometimes. There are definitely times where carriers don't respect brokers because they feel they don't 'know the business'. There's a different level of respect for a player that brokers freight but is also a carrier.

That said, even though where I am now and where I was were considered asset-based players, my portfolio has been predominantly for non-asset based services.

 

[Dave in London]

This thread is kinda fun.

Freight_Broker: I came from ops and management, not sales. Without the assets, I couldn't make or deliver on promises/accounts. I got the trucks and went tramping. My % of broker freight is still higher than I want it to be, but it drops every month. I use brokered freight as filler. It just started as 100% filler lol.
I cannot see how I could walk into an account with a brand new company, no track record and no equipment, and lure him away from his current carrier, unless I just promised cheaper, and cheaper was never my intent.

I had a bit of an advantage, my name was well known to drivers that worked under me previously, and I got the ones I wanted, and still have 'em.

We have worked hard to develop a favorable reputation with customers and some of the better brokers (heck...some are so regular I don't consider them brokers, just another good customer), and we keep improving our bottom line.

Sales is only part of the business equation. Without my past operational/financial experience I couldn't possibly know enough to be a successful operator, or afford to learn it. I could make 4 bucks a mile, have 25% empty miles and piss away whats left with bad expense control, and still go broke. In my mind, expense control and utilization is just as important as, or more important than top line gross.

Finally, yep, I invested a fair chunk of cash. down pmts on some used equip, getting it going, and oh yeah, carrying a 40 day average dso receivable list, but I knew what it was going to cost. If I wasn't able to back the startup, I couldn't have, and more importantly, shouldn't be able to be in business in the first place. Costs money to make money.

Cheers and keep this thread going. Its more fun to read than "XYZ broker stiffed me-again"

 

[Freight Broker]

Good point Dave, and your way is as good as any. It prove's there's more than one way to start in the transportation business. I tried to get started as a carrier a few years back but couldn't quite coordinate my sales and my operational capability. For example, I'd get a customer who wanted 6 skids picked up from Waterloo and shipped to Lethbridge... so I'd feverishly look for other freight that could go with it, to no avail. And on the ops side I tried to higher owner-operators who wanted mostly steady lanes to and from the Southwest or Canada only.

Finally I started brokering, and it has been a good run so far although my goal is still to go asset based. The reason at this point is to secure capacity in lanes that are well balanced and profitable. But in a way brokering is kind of neat...the ONLY way to make any real money at brokering is to THINK. The real money is in looking at a shipper's problems and coming up with solutions that save him money, improve service levels while at the same time ensuring that revenues to the truck are maintained or go up even. The trouble with brokering is that many go about it the wrong way..They try to compete on price without really identifying any problems the shipper may have, and any traffic manager will tell you that problems are plentiful.

 

[loaders]

Freight broker is correct, customers want solutions to shipping problems, not just low rates. In most cases it really doesn't matter to them if you are assest based or not, just make their headaches go away. In the 22 years that I have operated my business (entirely non-asset based), our most successful relationships have been built by allowing our customers to concentrate on their business while we take care of moving their product. Any customer worth keeping will understand that yes, they could move some lanes a little cheaper by going direct to a carrier, but the value added service a good broker provides more than makes up for the small difference. As a side note to carriers when they are examining whether or not to deal with a new broker - look at the broker's customer base, are they solid businesses that you have heard of? Any broker worth his salt will have a least a few "name" customers and is usually, not always, an indication of a well run operation.