AI takes the helm to write another captivating episode description for us. Enjoy Episode 6:
Ever wondered how one man could turn a company from the brink of bankruptcy into a thriving venture? Enter Mitch Luciano, the CEO of Trailer Bridge who did exactly that. Our chat with Mitch goes beyond the usual corporate jargon and delves into his journey of securing the helm of a ship that was almost sinking. From his audacious move of joining a company going through its worst phase to transforming its toxic culture, Mitch's narrative is a testament to how leadership can make or break a company. Stick around as we unravel his transition from a "carrier guy" to a key decision-maker in the freight industry.
But that's not all. Our conversation takes an interesting turn as we explore the nitty-gritty of the freight industry. Unveiling the often blurred lines between brokerage and asset sales relationships, Mitch shares his insights on the significance of transparency and trust in these complicated dynamics. He also explains the unique challenge of owning assets, the cost involved, and how it often leads to the downfall of brokerage businesses. Intrigued? Buckle up for an enlightening discussion.
Lastly, we steer the conversation towards the softer aspects of business. Ever given a thought to how love could be a driving force in a business setting? Mitch's emphasis on people, accountability, and even his rather unconventional idea of getting an ice maker, paints a vivid picture of how trust and love can transform a company's culture. From writing birthday cards to his employees to revealing his decision-making process, Mitch's leadership style is a refreshing take on corporate leadership. So, if you're up for a candid chat about freight, leadership and even a secret pasta sauce recipe, this episode is a must-listen!
AI takes the helm to write another captivating episode description for us. Enjoy Episode 6:
Ever wondered how one man could turn a company from the brink of bankruptcy into a thriving venture? Enter Mitch Luciano, the CEO of Trailer Bridge who did exactly that. Our chat with Mitch goes beyond the usual corporate jargon and delves into his journey of securing the helm of a ship that was almost sinking. From his audacious move of joining a company going through its worst phase to transforming its toxic culture, Mitch's narrative is a testament to how leadership can make or break a company. Stick around as we unravel his transition from a "carrier guy" to a key decision-maker in the freight industry.
But that's not all. Our conversation takes an interesting turn as we explore the nitty-gritty of the freight industry. Unveiling the often blurred lines between brokerage and asset sales relationships, Mitch shares his insights on the significance of transparency and trust in these complicated dynamics. He also explains the unique challenge of owning assets, the cost involved, and how it often leads to the downfall of brokerage businesses. Intrigued? Buckle up for an enlightening discussion.
Lastly, we steer the conversation towards the softer aspects of business. Ever given a thought to how love could be a driving force in a business setting? Mitch's emphasis on people, accountability, and even his rather unconventional idea of getting an ice maker, paints a vivid picture of how trust and love can transform a company's culture. From writing birthday cards to his employees to revealing his decision-making process, Mitch's leadership style is a refreshing take on corporate leadership. So, if you're up for a candid chat about freight, leadership and even a secret pasta sauce recipe, this episode is a must-listen!
Welcome back to episode six of the Freight Pod. What's up, andrew, how you doing.
Speaker 3:I am some combination of refreshed and stressed. I just tried Doug Wagner's 100Breathscom. I did the full 20 minute. Listen to him, his guided meditation. It was very hard. It was hard. All it was doing was breathing. I couldn't get more than three, four minutes without having to stop because I was challenged. It was hard.
Speaker 2:You get a quick sample. We do like there. We go In and out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Two breaths in, two breaths out. Two musical notes to bring in, two to go out. I'm going to keep doing it. I text him. He said just commit for 30 days. I'm going to do that. We'll see if it gets better.
Speaker 2:If anything, how angelic is that voice of his.
Speaker 3:Is that not?
Speaker 2:legendary.
Speaker 3:He's a good guidance meditator.
Speaker 2:All right, guys, Like we said, 100Breathscom we're onto it. You should get onto it too. We're coming up on a big holiday. We got Halloween around the corner. Let's get back into thinking. A little story time here. I want to know what was the most interesting costume you've ever had.
Speaker 3:Most interesting costume of ever or whatever Just spookiest. I don't know that I've, so I went and I want to shrek. I remember one year in high school.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:But she just I was just wearing his entire costume over my body. It wasn't very creative. I bet you've got a better one.
Speaker 2:We're going body paint for a mask or are you talking like a mask?
Speaker 3:No, I wore a mask. Oh, that's lame. Yeah, listen, it wasn't good.
Speaker 2:What about?
Speaker 3:you. You've got to have a better one than I do.
Speaker 2:Remember? The running theme here is I'm a shipper, which means what, andrew? It means that I'm, and I'm speaking for myself, okay, I'm just lame is what that means.
Speaker 3:I don't think that you could just lump all the shippers in there with you? I'm not, it's just your lame, that's not a shipper issue. I know plenty of shippers that I'm friends with who are nice and not lame. They probably have great costumes. Let's talk about your kids, though. How about your kids? I know your kids have good costumes. What are they?
Speaker 2:wearing this, for yes, that's true. So, first of all, my best costume ever was Ghostbusters. Way back in the day, a kid born in the 80s like I was all about the Ghostbusters. But yeah, okay. So my son, so my youngest one, has been talking for months about wanting to be a Python. And so you know, with kids, you test them and you ask them a week later, two weeks later, same answer Python, python, python, all right, python it is. So get the costume we go for a test ride in it, puts it on, immediately gets on the floor and starts slithering around, just like all right, this kid is absolutely committed to this role, so he's pretty psyched about that, and the older ones going to be a scarecrow. So that's how we're rolling. You know we're already. You know, picking out the best houses, making sure we do our due diligence, make sure we avoid the houses that are passing out the Titsie rolls and all that garbage, and make sure we just stick with the good stuff. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:It's the number one candy.
Speaker 2:I mean we go Snickers K-Cats all day long.
Speaker 3:Okay those are great.
Speaker 2:I was this was.
Speaker 3:This was limited, but 100 grand was a was a great solid candy bar underdog, but a solid choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Anyway, man, let's get into the episode. Who do we have today?
Speaker 3:We have Mr Mitch Luciano, ceo of trailer bridge. This is going to be a great episode. I had a lot of fun talking to him, so let's get this thing going.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. Episode six let's go.
Speaker 3:All right, we are back. Episode six of the freight pod with Mitch Luciano. Before I jump into his background, his bio, I will say we are recording bright and early. It's a Monday morning, it is 6am Cali time. Paul, thank you for the early wake up.
Speaker 2:I need my beauty sleep, but I'm going to do my best.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we'll get started here. Mitch joins us with a long, illustrious career in transportation. He started out at none other than CH Robinson in 1997. I was a wheel out at the time. He moved on to NYK logistics for a few years before becoming president and COO at four elements, where he was for four years before also taking the role as president and COO at Magellan transport logistics I believe is how that's pronounced Before finally joining his current company, trailer Bridge, in 2012. And, mitch, as I said, it's bright and early. So you know I don't want to start us off with anything boring or slow. Let's jump right into the heart of it. When you joined this company in Trailer Bridge in 2012, I believe, if I'm correct, the company was not in good shape. I believe that maybe bankruptcy was on the horizon or had been talked about. Talk about that for us. Jump us in right into the meat of this thing. What was it like joining Trailer Bridge at the time you did? What was the environment when you joined?
Speaker 1:Well, I joined Trailer Bridge because in my personal life, I was going through some challenges and I decided to take a step back and just be a VP of logistics. And I'll never forget one of my after joining, november 9th of 2012, there was nine of us that joined. I'll never forget the. I was walking by one of the bathrooms we have two floors here downstairs and one of the head of HR said why do you always have a smile on your face? And I responded with after two weeks of being here, what the F am I supposed to do? And she looked at me and I was like oh shit, I'm about to get fired. I just dropped the F bomb to the head of HR and I can tell you that in the two years the first year we had four CEOs here and it was four CEOs over that two year period and a two year period From that time in 2012 to 2014, we have four CEOs and it was a lot.
Speaker 1:It was very toxic culture. It was one of those cultures where I went to board meetings because the chairman of the board is the one that hired me. So I went to board meetings and they would actually have the C-suite. Leave me as a VP, I'd stay and they'd say, hey, we have to ask you some questions. And they would ask me is anything they told us true, did they do all these things? I go. They did none of those things. It's everybody in the company that did those things. They take credit for all this crap they did not do. And it was a different experience, because I'm not used to that.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you, mitch, when you're kind of at the VP level and you're seeing that level of churn happening, how do you stick around? Was there something with the company that you just said? Hey, there is something here that it makes it worth it that I just got to figure out how to navigate through it. That just seems like a ton of churn to try to work through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it all came down to those nine people I brought with me. It was about them. I gave them a promise, I convinced them they should join me at this company, and I could not have created a logistic side of trailer bridge without them, and so there's no way I could have left, and at that time unfortunately in 2013, I went through a divorce and so I wanted some stability and not being an entrepreneur for a hot minute and not traveling a lot. I want to be there for my older girls I have three older girls and so that really, those two things between my kids and I made a promise to those other nine people that we were going to make this work. I couldn't walk away.
Speaker 3:What was delay? The land, so you come in. Obviously there's a trust issue within this organization. It sounds like financially there were challenges. Can you give our audience that aren't as familiar with trailer bridge and we will walk through the whole story, but give us just a lay of the land, of what you were walking into, what the business looked like in 2012 when you joined?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in 2011, the trailer bridge was a publicly traded company. They filed bankruptcy. They sold public bonds and they missed their first bond payment and so they had a file bankruptcy and there was two options at the time One of our competitors could buy us or the bond holders could take over, and in the Jones Act trade of ocean, having a competitor by you is a little challenging due to antitrust laws, and so that kind of got thrown out the window and so the bond holders took over. So we had these four major players kind of take over the company. And that's when one of them was the chairman of the board and he and I got connected and so he recruited me to join trailer bridge. And he knew they couldn't. I mean, we're a hundred million dollar company losing $20 million a year. I mean it's a lot of fun that math doesn't work.
Speaker 1:I mean math lose a fifth of your revenue. I mean so great.
Speaker 3:You lose a hundred million dollars. You call yourself a digital broker and you're worth like five billion at that point.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I could have easily, but I don't think that was around back in 2012. I?
Speaker 2:don't know why I figured it a little early. Mitch. How does a company find themselves in that situation?
Speaker 1:I think it's. There was some naiveness that was more important, because it's an asset-based company. That was more important to fill the barges, fill the vessels, be full, no matter what the cost, and what quickly happened was the revenue does matter. We sailed to Puerto Rico for a few thousand dollars a container. Back then it was 1400 bucks and it was more important to be full and look like you were doing something amazing. But the financials always. You know, hey, you can't lose $20 million. So what the hell are you doing?
Speaker 3:So clarify for the audience, I guess, the niche aspect. I think trailer bridge is a really interesting business because of this niche piece of what you do with Puerto Rico. Can you kind of walk the audience through that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was founded in 1991 by Malcolm McClain. Malcolm McClain actually was the father of containerization as we see it today in the international world. He owned a trucking company, mcclain Trucking, and he used to take truckloads of cotton from North Carolina to Pensacon, new Jersey, new Jersey ports. They would unload the cotton and they would do a breakball, they would sit it on the vessel and he finally said why don't you just take a whole container or trailer and set it on the vessel? And he was the very first person in history. In 1956, he had a vessel go from New Jersey to Houston half containers, half oil gas. And so he created this is the very last company he created.
Speaker 1:He created trailer bridge in 1991. And so it was to serve Puerto Rico with 53 foot trailers. It's unheard of like Ocean 53s, normally 40s or 45s. So he created this, and so trailer bridge evolved from there, with his family running the company up until, like I said, 2011 is when the family lost the company due to bankruptcy. So we serve Puerto Rico with 53 foot containers and now the whole trade is 53s, like our two major competitors. They also ship 53s and it's Jacksonville the same one and it's major customers like Walmart and Costco and Home Depot and P&G and all these Fortune 50 customers serving Puerto Rico.
Speaker 3:When you came into the company at that point, trailer bridge was primarily focused on servicing Puerto Rico. That was the main driver of revenue.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was all the revenue. It was all of it. I came in as VP of logistics to create a brokerage arm.
Speaker 2:Mitch, I wanted to ask. So a lot of times companies are saying, especially in brokerage or just on the carrier side in general, that it's hard to differentiate yourself, and it seems that trailer bridge has actually very effectively been able to do that. So can you just talk about what it's like when you're approaching prospective customers with a legitimate differentiator in your pocket? I mean, how much of a difference does that make during the sales process?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the very first thing I did when I took over was it's about the people. When the people are happy, the customers feel it. You call your credit card company, when I call AmEx, for the most part they seem very happy. When I call my cable company, they seem very pissed off. And I know it, I can sense it.
Speaker 1:And so the differentiator is making sure that people are taken care of. And when the people are taken care of, then it's a game changer on how the customer's experience is. And that experience is everything it starts at, especially the logistics side. It starts at five loads a week. And when the customer, you make their life because, paul, you've been on the other side of the equation when we make your life easier, you're 100% going to continue to give opportunities to that carrier that makes your life easier.
Speaker 1:And so when our whole goal is making sure that they're happy, so, from a sales standpoint, when I'm out there closing a deal because I suck at cold calls, I do. I've always been doing this for 26 years. I'm not very good at cold calls, but my chief commercial officer will tell you if I want to close a deal, you're going to bring Mitch in. He'll close it, because we talk about the personal side of things and you have to connect. What is my customer's dog's name? What is their kid's name? How old are they? Those are all the things that really matter to a potential client and really truly closing a deal.
Speaker 2:I've had this conversation many times. I've received, I'm going to say, thousands of solicitations over the course of my career. So I've seen everything in the playbook and I'd say Andrew is really unique in the sense that he's come up with some really unique sales approaches that really do stand out. But coming from my side, you see a lot of people that with very generic messaging and so it's very refreshing to hear you say what you talk about. You know their dog's name, you know their hobbies. I mean all those things make such a. I don't think people understand how big of a difference that makes.
Speaker 1:It's a huge difference. I heard in a previous podcast about Andrew going on a fishing trip because he found out one of his guys found out the guy did charters. It's too bad the guy wasn't still the head of logistics, but he was able to take him to the next level and make the introduction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's what it's about. I mean, we're humans, you know, I see this digital freight brokers thing and I always laugh, because we're humans. Truck drivers want to talk to people, people who make decisions want to talk to people. They want to go have lunch or shoot the shit, just have a good time. And that's still this business. It will always be this business as long as I'll be dead, before it becomes something not human.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I mean, I personally remember this and this is you know, my first foray into this business was on the carrier side. I was a carrier rep. My job was to develop relationship with carriers and I specifically was working with owner operators. It was somewhat on accident at first, but then it became preference, because, rather than working with 100 carrier fleet where I'm getting a different driver for each load, I was dealing with Peter, whose wife Catherine both of them had migrated here from Nigeria and built a little business in Atlanta, and every time I booked him on a load it was a half hour conversation, and every time he called in with an update it was a half hour conversation. Now it becomes challenging to manage 20 or 30 relationships like that, but it's so much more fun and the loyalty you develop with those carriers or, on the flip side, the customers is just. It's well worth that being the path you take.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll never forget when I started. I started at CH in 97. In the first six months I had a Kenny from ATL out of Florida and they had a terminal in Cherry Hill, new Jersey and Kenny and I just started talking. He was a dispatcher and he's like Mitch I can't make any money going to New Jersey out of Florida. So I'm just going to deadhead my trucks to North Carolina. And it was hilarious because there's always six to seven trucks a day and out of North Carolina, south Carolina, north Carolina to the Northeast.
Speaker 1:We never discussed, we didn't discuss rates early on. But once he trusted me and I trusted him, it was hey, just send me the six or seven loads. I got six trucks, send me six loads, pick them up. Because we built that relationship, we built that bond. I mean he was Italian and I was Italian and I think that kind of he appreciated Luciano side and had no bearing on anything but just getting six trucks. And it was funny because the office we got like, hey, how many of these Northeast Lowe's for international paper have you covered today? Look, just give me a minute, I'll get six cutter six covered in a hot minute. So it was great.
Speaker 3:So I guess that takes us back to your entry into the industry. How did you find logistics? How did you find Robinson? How did that come to be?
Speaker 1:So I was living in Western New York, south of Buffalo. I graduated college working for a Senator, a state Senator in New York, and I went to visit my one of my good friends from high school and college and he was living in Cary, north Carolina. He was right outside of Raleigh. He was a teacher. It was April of 1997. And we went, I went down there Rod Stanton was his name and we went golfing. It was beautiful, I loved it. I went back to New York after that. We had a snowstorm when it was late, late snowstorms.
Speaker 1:I'm like I hate this place, like why am I here? And so I decided to. I wanted to live in Raleigh, north Carolina, in 97. There wasn't jobs online. So I went to the local Wegmans and they had the Sunday paper and I would get the Sunday paper and I found this job. I applied for all these jobs and I found a job with CH Robinson Actually it was. I applied. They said I want you to go interview in a Buffalo office. I was like I don't want to work in Buffalo, I want to work in Raleigh. And so they said come on down for an interview. So I drove my ass down there. It was a 15 hour drive went for the interview. They had two positions open. It was Chris O'Brien, who's now the Chief Commercial Officer of Robinson. He was the manager at the time and I went down for an interview.
Speaker 1:They told me about a week after our interview that I didn't get the job. They hired it with two other people and so I started on a Monday. He told me on Friday. On Monday I called him and I was like hey, have you changed your mind? You can hire that third person. He's like he goes Nope, call them again on Tuesday. Call them again on Wednesday, call them again on Thursday. He goes you're tenacious. I want you as part of my thing, monday morning 7am, so that Thursday night I had to pack up all my stuff and move to North Carolina from New York for a Monday morning 7am start. I showed up at 7am and here we are 26 years later?
Speaker 2:And was this just a geography play? Were you delivered about one?
Speaker 1:Okay, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I had no idea what logistics was.
Speaker 3:I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then talk us through those first couple of days you walk in the office. What's that experience like?
Speaker 1:So the Raleigh office at CH Robinson had the Kmart account and so there was nobody in the office because they were at Kmart in Greensboro, north Carolina, taking trailers out of the dirt. They were doing everything for Kmart. So it was me and a guy by the name of Sammy Fallon, just the two of us out of a seven person office, just two of us and he goes and he gave me a list of carriers to call. He gave me a piece of paper and goes call these carriers and see if they have any trucks near Regalwood, north Carolina, where IP was. And so I started calling trucks and I go hey, I got a truck. We had a logo on the Racine, wisconsin.
Speaker 1:I was like I got a truck, now what the hell do I do? Like, what do I do now? Like he said he's got a truck, he goes, tell me you pay him, this is in the 97. Tell me you pay him 80 cents a mile. I'll never forget. And I was like, all right, 80 cents a mile. And he goes 90 cents minimum and I so I put him on hold. I go back to Sammy. I'm like, hey, 90 cents, you tell him to take 80 cents a mile. Go pound salt. It's 730 in the morning. So I'm like, all right, sammy says, take 80 cents a mile, go pound salt. And the guy goes. What the fuck do you say to me? I was like it's Sammy's. He's freaking out.
Speaker 3:Sammy's on me.
Speaker 1:I didn't say it, so that was my first experience in booking a load. I booked a load within the first 30 minutes of being there. So those first few weeks are a little interesting only because that office was, I think at that time was the fastest growing office in Robinson history. Up till then I think some offices had beat that, but it was. It was just throw you in. I mean, that was the Robinson way is pick up the phone and and you're going to learn by doing and were you just hooked immediately, Did you like?
Speaker 3:what about the job? Sucked you in?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it took. It took it probably took a year. I really, I really there's two guys that really impressed me. It was Chris was one of them and then Lane Turner was another one that was there and he had been there for about a year at that time. So the two of them really kind of brought me under the wing and and I I love the fast pace, I love that every day was different.
Speaker 1:I think anyone in brokerage knows that like you're going to walk in and and it don't ever say the phrase it looks like it's going to be an easy day, cause as soon as you say that, it's going to turn to shit really fast. And but it was really enjoyed the fact that it was different. All the time we would go I was, we were all single, most of us are single I mean, chris was married, danny and Lane was married, but most of us single and we would go out and you, you, you, seven to seven, that was your day. And then you go have some beers, you go home, go to bed, get up in the morning and you do it again and it was just fun, it was just a. It was fun.
Speaker 2:Mitch, I want to go back to your onboarding process, cause you did mention something that's quite unique, and that is, you know, some of the people we talked to, the industry is going so quick. It's like, hey, I just want to get a warm body in the seat. If you make a phone call, you got the job. Your experience was not that you had a call and call and call. So you know that kind of strikes a a cord of like. There's a certain tenacity that you had there to want to do that. So just talk us through. You know what was going through your, through your mind at that time. Is that a a hint into the? Just the type of person that you are, and that's just another way in which you've used that. Just talk about that tenacity.
Speaker 1:I think that Anyone in the logistics, specifically broken side, you have to have this competitive nature about you. If you don't, you're not gonna succeed. I mean you have to. You have to be willing to win and and not at whatever cost. But you got to win and so I think that for me personally, it was I wanted it and anytime I really wanted something, you just go get it. You know you do everything you can. It's gonna take some work. I mean you're gonna have to really study. You're gonna have to really pay attention. You're gonna have to know that you're gonna fail. You're gonna fail a lot. You learn from those failures, but you also learn from your successes and you just have to Kick ass. And that's honestly from from watching my mom be this amazing single mom badass mom is like killer I just learned that what it took to go to that next level and it was, I mean, I think, anyone that's successful in our industry They've got that killer instinct. They've got the ability Also kind and loving at the same time.
Speaker 2:You know, was that so, was it? Your mom was the example that, because a lot of people want a lot of things Right but it's not. No, no one goes out and necessarily goes and gets it. So to take that extra step is the key. Was that? Did that come from just watching your mom growing up, and that's how you got that tenacity? Or just taking that a little step further, like how did that happen?
Speaker 1:I think I know when I grew up, I was a soccer player. That was my sport and Watching my mom as a single mom making $20,000 a year, we always had her soccer shoes. My brother and I it was seven years younger than me we always had her soccer shoes, we always had a basketball shoes and I always I look as an adult somewhere around 30 I went back and I was like how, how the hell did you do this? How did you right, how did you support us the way you did? Like I still can't figure this out. But she was always there. You know, she's always there to make dinner, always made our lunches, always made our breakfast and we always had a house over a roof over our head and it was a nice house.
Speaker 1:That was something. It wasn't, you know, one bedroom apartment. I was like I don't, if she can do it With all the challenges of life, then shit, I should be able to do this. And so I just I worked just as hard as she did and she showed me the way, and so I, you know, would spend the extra hour practicing soccer outside of soccer practice. I would. I became, I became a cross-country runner over time. Um, I would go the extra two miles a day. It was just why not? If she can do it, I should be able to do it. And it just it impressed the hell out of me. Believe me, she lived her life for her kids, and so I was like how can I do that going forward? How can I show that in the work environment?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's incredible, just like I said, because even you know I think a lot of people have grown up with with single parents and Still don't turn out. You know the way that that you have in the career path that you had. So I think for that to play such a heavy role In your life is really incredible that you're able to do that. I'm I can only imagine you know what your mom must be thinking now or you know has seen your career Develop. It's got to be very rewarding for her.
Speaker 1:She, she's still working. My brother and I are both very successful and she still works to this day. She runs a, a men's clothing shop in Raleigh, north Carolina, and she's still at 70. What better not screw this up? So 72, 73 73 more 1950. Yeah, she's still working this day and she has employees that, like I've talked to some of her employees and and I love, I love the interaction.
Speaker 3:Mama Luciano set in the example.
Speaker 2:Love it there you go and we and we heard too through the research that she might be uh, I don't know if it's her Pasta sauce recipe or something. We heard something about some meatball. I don't know something like that.
Speaker 1:Grandma Luciano is, uh, my dad's side. His mom had a sauce recipe. My mom, um, made a little better, and then I believe I made it a little bit better. The, the process.
Speaker 2:Let's see. Yet there's always one secret. What is it?
Speaker 1:Well, the only secret I'll tell you is there's. There's lots of secrets, but the one I'll tell you is um, make sure you put bone marrow in your sauce.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a new one.
Speaker 1:True bones that are that marrow in it. Let it sit there for a hot hour and the bone marrow will melt into the sauce, All right you heard it guys bone marrow.
Speaker 2:All right, before we move on from the personal aspect, there's uh and since you've listened to the pods and you know I've asked this question, but a gpa very curious about you got it.
Speaker 3:Man, I'm curious how, how dedicated did it was? This lifestyle you led? You know, were you super disciplined in school as well, or How'd we do there?
Speaker 1:I was. You know, I was, uh oh, as an older brother, my, my younger brother's seven years younger, and as an older brother I had to be a good kid, like I didn't. I didn't actually get you know how personal we get here. I didn't get drunk, tells a senior, first time I ever got drunk. I was a senior, which I was like I think that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:I never smoked cigarettes and never on that Are we talking beers. What, uh, tequila it was?
Speaker 1:the ticket was uh, we were doing On there. We were at my buddy max house and his dad's camper and we were doing uh, uh, vaca shots with wine, wine chiller chasers gross wine cooler chasers it was. It was nasty so.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna put a guess out there. I'm gonna. I'm gonna guess 3.8 as your gpa in high school.
Speaker 1:Well, actually you know, I wasn't there was. I graduated with 80 people. I was 17th in my class and the only reason I remember I was 17th is my best friend Was 18th and we looked at the list and his mom goes you can't even beat him in grades Because I always we played basketball together in the cross country and I always beat him, um, but now my gpa was around 3.3. Okay, and it's so very common to what I've already heard it was no 3.3, but then college it was a hell of a lot different because I kicked. I got kicked out of my first college. So it was totally, totally different, I mean was that grades related or alcohol related?
Speaker 1:No, that was. That was great. It was university of Rochester. My sophomore year I got a. I got a letter saying um, if you get another 1.6 Going into your junior year, we're gonna kick you out. I was like you know, I want to save us awesome time.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna go ahead and leave now. So so you so, let's say, college derailed you a little bit in terms of that Little bit super ambitious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it did so. I, yeah, I went to college for a university of Rochester two years after I. It was back in 90s, you know, 1990. It's 20,000 a year was a lot of money. My mom my mom was flipping the bill. She was taking these loans out and so I was like, all right, I'm gonna go. I moved back home, I went to my community college. You got my associate's degree and then I went, graduated from a SUNY school in New York, suny Fredonia. They did not accept me. I applied there and they were like no, your grades are too bad.
Speaker 2:So there's a running theme here of not getting accepted to things. Exactly the tenacity is there, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so three schools and a bachelor's degree and I always joke with people is is my, my number one thing is I want to see a bachelor's, I want to see a college degree. Only because how hard did you fight to get this in hiring? You said it's not easy.
Speaker 3:That's what you're looking at hiring.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. Hiring when I, when I hire, I like to see a four-year degree only because I mean it took me five and a half years. So a four, four years is a long time. For someone who's 18 years old, that's a long time, and so if you can commit to something that long and come out of it, most people come out with is the insane amount of debt, and that just tells me something about you interesting, right, Okay.
Speaker 2:And then we heard through your education Was it after you got your undergrad that you then went into a pre-law degree? With how the hell.
Speaker 1:Do you know this? How do you we done?
Speaker 1:our homework man, yeah, so, yeah. So I applied to. I applied to Chapel Hill Law School and I the I took the LSATs. I think the LSATs at the time were like 180 was the highest score, I think, and I scored a 163 and so, and that's the way my mind worked. The LSATs are all about it is an English thing, it's. It's about that's the best way to put it but the process and how things work. And so I scored really well and so I got accepted. But when I started at Robinson, I was like, well, I'd like this, I'm just gonna put this on hiatus. And so then I I was like I'm not going to law school, that's just not. You know, I'm gonna do this right because I don't need any more debt. I graduated, I had, like my mom had debt and I had $80,000 of debt after graduating college. I was like I can't put any more debt on me. That's the lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so You're all in. On freight Yep, were you a carrier guy? At first you said you were focusing on coverage aspect and then, yeah, I was a carrier guy. And how long? How long did you work in a carrier facing role?
Speaker 1:Uh, I was pretty much a carrier guy the whole time. Um, there was one time when I got a phone call. I had an answer the phone. You know Scott Brown from VSA multi foods back in the day. He's no longer there, but he, he said hey, I have a load coming out of Morse, morseville, north Carolina, going to somewhere in New Jersey. I was like okay. I was like, well, how did you get our number? He goes you're your Dallas office, told me to call you. I was like, all right.
Speaker 1:So I we took the load, we covered the load, gave him a rate and he called me goes hey, I've got a load coming out of Minnesota, but can I have your Minnesota number? I go, you know you don't have to call these offices. He goes you tell me I can work with one person. I was like, yeah, you can work with one person and I go, I'm your guy. And so I took the account from Dallas, which pissed off the Dallas office. I remember chris having to have a call with some senior person going hey, uh, this is our account. He goes no, you, you, you had your account, call our office.
Speaker 1:And so I then it became a million dollar margin account and so over the course of the next couple years it took a lot of my time I'll still carry your guy because we were still at that point. 97 is right before we bought backhaulers. Robinson bought backhaulers. We were cradle grave, still right. So we were still that way Even three years after we bought backhaulers. And so it was. You handled your accounts as the account manager and you also book loads. You were responsible for 10 a day minimum on each side of the account.
Speaker 3:And is that the model that you think is most effective for building brokerage?
Speaker 1:I wait, you know your first 253 and load today. Yeah, because you don't have enough freight to build a carrier sales. And so we here at trailer bridge, we we just switched about a month ago to carrier sales really, where everyone's separated, because we finally got to 400 load today. You got to get to a threshold of so many loads of days you can actually give your carrier some freight. If you can't give your carriers freight, then they're not going to call you. They're not going to and I know the stories of people calling multiple. Multiple people call one carrier. But you got to get to a threshold because of the entrepreneurial aspect of having individual offices. They want to build their business and so you've got to get that. I say it's 400. It could be 500, could be 300, we did it at 400 loads.
Speaker 3:I'm a believer that it doesn't matter. I'm a believer that, like, the system is not going to be as efficient if you start from day one as as specialized model versus, versus credit of the grave, like I understand. Like when we start I mean we started Specialized and yeah, at the beginning the carrier reps, they don't have a lot to sell, but you do, they don't. You do build the right habits. You get reps calling the same carriers over and over again and starting to build, build the portfolio and it teaches them. You know you're a much better seller if you could sell when you don't have any freight than when you do have freight. So it certainly develops the skills in my perspective. But I do understand why people think about it the way you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't, I don't disagree with what you're saying. I, what I, what I would counter that with, is from a sales aspect. If you're selling in brand your brand new and you're selling a customer, it's much more valuable, in my opinion, to go. I'm not only the guy selling you, I'm the guy who's going to sit behind the desk and I'm the guy who's going to make your appointments and I'm the guy who's going to book the carrier. Yeah, I'm your guy. And so that's where I think it's valuable Early on, in the early stages.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100, I mean. Now we're getting into the nuance of how you sell into a customer, which I can, I I'll live in this pond with you all day if you want, because this is the fun part though.
Speaker 3:I mean this, you know Paul asked the question earlier and I don't know if we got the full answer of how do you differentiate? And I do think I think it's really interesting that you do have this Puerto Rico piece that you can lead with and it's so niche and it's so unique. But what I think about it as is that's a way to open the door, that's a way to secure the first meeting is if you can fill that little need they have of. Okay, yeah, I don't have a ton of Puerto Rico providers, I will take the call. But once you're kind of in that meeting, then it's the question of, like, how do you get their attention? How do you get their interest? And that's where you could go a number of different ways. It sounds like your focus there is on the people and the culture and emphasizing the human aspect of this right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know it myself and I tell myself we have a huge advantage over a lot of our competition on the logistics side. We have 3,000 trailers and containers, we have assets. And Andrew, you know if you can walk in. And one of the first questions, paul, you probably asked this question when you were. You know you had millions of dollars of freight are you asset or non-asset?
Speaker 1:And I can sit there and say you're right and I can say I'm asset, I'm asset based, and that immediately that checking that box get you a meeting way before the non-asset guys and so getting that meeting because of that, then you can sell the rest of your services, whether it's my domestic brokerage or my MVOCC or my government division that serves, we serve. We have a European division division, we have a Mexico division Serving all those elements. It gets their attention and I've got 3,000, not 100. I've got 3,000 containers.
Speaker 3:That's a big difference it is, and my perspective has always been as a guy who spent his life in brokerage never once had an asset to sell. I believe it's a cheat code.
Speaker 1:It literally is a cheat code. We hired a couple people from Snyder.
Speaker 3:And I remember when these guys started, I was there like, oh yeah, we have all these sales experience. So I'm like you got fake sales experience, you got that cheat code, asset based sales experience. It's a whole different ball game in brokerage and when you can't lead with yeah, I have assets, your job gets a lot harder.
Speaker 1:It does but like. But just imagine for a hot minute if you had 3,000 pieces of equipment and you could lead with that you lead with that.
Speaker 3:I mean listen, why do you think I sold?
Speaker 1:my company.
Speaker 3:That's what I was selling into is look our lives a lot easier to sell.
Speaker 2:Look at all these assets these guys have.
Speaker 3:This is going to make it easier.
Speaker 2:I'm getting this visual in my head because I'm listening to you guys talk as a shipper, right, I almost feel like you guys are. The way I'm visual I'm getting in my head is you guys are setting this trap is like hey, shipper, I got these trailers here for you, come on. And that's how you guys set the trap. That's what it feels like you're doing.
Speaker 1:So there are a lot of customers we use our assets for right. So we have a lot of freight inside a trailer bridge that is unrelated to Puerto Rico and so it fits our containers really well. So we'll do that. But at the same time, when we tell them like, hey, we need an asset contract and a non asset contract, we need both contracts because, listen, I think that JB Hunt said to stage, they're the ones that set the stage for all this. They've got what? 100,000 pieces of equipment, and Shelly's done an amazing job in growing their brokerage arm. And so they said to billion plus three billion plus dollars, they've set the stage for the asset guys to go hey, and it's.
Speaker 1:I think it started with Transplace back in the day. It started with them and it just evolved over time and then JB Hunt did their own. But it just gave us the opportunity to really leverage all those relationships that we have from the asset side to really build this. I mean, my non asset division is much larger than my asset side now because we can build upon that. So we're not trying to cheat it, paul, we're not trying to like give you the slip at the end, but it's bait and switch.
Speaker 1:The bait and switch.
Speaker 3:I want to be clear these are murky waters that we're talking about. It is not the cleanest way that I think a lot of companies operate in terms of deciphering the brokerage versus the asset. So what my perspective is and every customer, every company is different, so I'm not trying to say that one does it murkier or grayer than another, but there are definitely, and so I'll use this as the example. I spent a year working on site at Kraft Foods. This is back in 2000 and 2008 or 2009. I took a year off college.
Speaker 3:I was getting in trouble myself, similar to you, mitch and I worked on site at Kraft. It was right when Coyote got his first big contract with Kraft and they wanted an onsite rep, and all these big asset players had onsite reps as well, and I sat next to all of them and we talked a lot and a lot of them would often ask for asset freight to get sent over through their asset contract and then they were just brokering it under the table. So you know, every company is different, but those waters are murky and I don't think that shippers are always necessarily in the know on how it's being operated. I do know that a lot of companies will lead with the assets just to get the brokerage business and how honest they are about it. That's a different question I don't have the answer to.
Speaker 3:Well, I think you have to be honest, I think you start any business. You don't have to be, you should be.
Speaker 1:I think well, if you should be yeah, okay, you start a relationship. I'm not being honest. Let me tell you how that goes, and Paul knows Paul's probably been there. He's like I've been there and I immediately end that relationship, because how can you trust anything going forward? So you have to share in early on, like we do have assets. We are a broker, we're going to do both and if you accept it, great. If not, then you have to find another angle of building that relationship. Yeah, but you can't start a relationship, you're right, by being dishonest. You should, because five years from now there is no relationship.
Speaker 3:It's shant not, can't you can I mean we're in an industry that has notoriously had bad players, and I think that's why the reputation exists that it is. It's why it's so hard to get new opportunities to begin with, other than the fact that it's just crazy fragmented and there's thousands of brokers competing for options 15,000, right, 15,000 brokers licensed out there.
Speaker 1:Whatever the numbers, it's massive.
Speaker 3:It's just hard to get those new opportunities. And I'm curious, paul, have you run into distant genuine players before? How did you deal with that? How did you catch them?
Speaker 2:How much time you guys got First of all you guys are getting my blood boiling over here.
Speaker 2:I mean, notice, it's very early. I was still kind of getting ramped up the engines like full bore. I'm like sitting up in my seat because, yeah, this is a very sensitive topic, to be honest with you, and, yes, unfortunately, mitch people don't have the same mentality as you. They're perfectly happy coming in in line to people, I think, and you know, doing the whole bait and switch, and unfortunately, they set kind of a bad precedence for those that come after them. It makes you kind of. You know, when I train my people, a lot of it is how can I see through the BS? Right, because they've got their fancy slides and they're saying certain things. But now you have to know, as a really educated buyer, how do I read through the lines, how do I see through the BS, how do I ask the right pointed questions to make sure that I'm actually getting what they're selling to me? Because, yes, unfortunately we've been burned far too many times. So that is a thing and it's unfortunate.
Speaker 2:I will say, though, that some of these new companies that are coming into the industry now are doing a very good job of blurring the lines between what a broker and an asset is. So I think, historically you have thought of them as you know, very separate types of capacities and now more than ever, I think you know whether it's a non asset provider that's at least buying trailers, right, so that they've got a little bit of the mix and they're doing power only, things like that. So I do think that those lines are getting blurred in a good way. So there really should be no difference between whether it's a broker or an asset provider, and I think we're just now learning the playbook around how to do that. So I will give credit for that. But yeah, do not go in there and lead with lying and doing the bait and switch.
Speaker 3:That's not going to go over well, I think you made some great points there and I think that it is going to become even more challenging for shippers to really evaluate a provider, and I think that it's going to require a much more nuanced approach. I think that you shouldn't just say, okay, you're a provider, you're going to give me a rate and I expect 95%. It should be okay. You have this asset business. There's no for one. There's absolutely no reason an asset should not have a brokerage. Right, if you have assets, it means your customers will have opportunities that don't fit those assets. You 100% should have a brokerage because it's a low cost addition and it just provides more coverage. On the flip side, I don't know that it's necessarily true that every broker should have assets. You're you're this whole different cost model. It's way more challenging to manage.
Speaker 3:I do think that you're going to see more and more brokers get into the trailer owning process, because that does help blur the lines in a productive way. But I do think, at the end of the day, this mixing is going to require shippers to be way more diligent in understanding the true services they're being offered, because, again, I just think this comes back to the fact that there's there's, it's so competitive and it's really hard to differentiate and it's just. The conversation is so much easier if you have assets, which is why brokers will try to say whatever creative things they can. We're asset light and it's like what does the asset light mean? Do you own assets? Like no, I don't, but I'm asset light, I would. It doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1:So well, I think that these brokers that start buying trailers, they have no idea what they're getting themselves into and I think it's a it's a bad model. They're going to do it. I get why they're going to do it. Unless you're unless you really have some depth in your customer base there's, they're going to fail Because I'd listen, I'm looking out my window over here and there I've got containers sitting out here.
Speaker 1:People really don't know the cost of owning these things. I mean it's a huge cost. I mean the asset model says you're supposed to make 15 to 20% EBITDA. That's what you're supposed to because you have all this capital costs. The non asset model is you're supposed to make three to 5% EBITDA because you have no capital costs, right? And so these three to 5% guys, they start running assets at three to 5% and they don't realize they're actually losing their ass because they've got maintenance, they've got capital expenses, they've got to buy new ones at one point. So these non asset guys that are doing this, I'm like man, you better have someone who's really good on your team to understand what you're actually getting yourself into.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I don't know that we've seen a brokerage yet that's successfully built in, after the fact, an asset model, and made it successful in terms of profitability, scale, longevity.
Speaker 3:So it's probably possible. It just is going to be really, really hard to do, but it does make sense. You get to a point and I thought Molo was at this point because our business was so enterprise heavy and when you're working at the enterprise level, where you're working with the Niagara's of the world, these large shippers, if you're just purely a broker and you don't own assets, I can guarantee your ability to manage drop trailers is a fraction of what it could be if you did own assets. And if you're not doing drop trailer for these enterprise shippers, you're only touching 5% of their network. So, like that was the thing I struggled with is I'm like I got these huge bids with these large shippers that love working with us and yet we're only touching 5% to 10% of their freight spend. Like that doesn't make sense. We got to figure this out and yet I understand why it's so hard to figure out.
Speaker 1:It's so cost prohibitive because you can find move for Niagara, as a great example move their load from A to B. What the hell are you going to do at B? Because that's where these asset guys understand this and, like you got to get it from B, naturally, the natural broker says I got to move it back to A, no, you don't. You move from B to C. And then you move from C to A. Right, you build your triangle whatever it is, and the brokers guys, the mindset's not there. So you got to build, you got to build an asset frame mind and it's when you bring that into brokerage, that person doesn't naturally fit. They just don't naturally fit inside that brokerage model and so they're like the outcast, right as I was. When I started at Trailbridge, I was the outcast. I was a brokerage mind and an asset model and that's how most flip it and that's how most brokerage people, logistic people and the asset model are the outcast.
Speaker 2:Hey, mitch, we talked about that a few times, how rare it actually is for a shipper to go to the carrier side, for a carrier to go to the shipper side, for a carrier to go to the Like. More of this cross-pollination should be happening. I think we'd all be better for it, but it's kind of mind-blowing how it doesn't happen right, and so I'm curious as to why you think that is, because obviously you see the benefits when you do have that mixed background.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, this was so, coming here, starting logistics and then getting the opportunity to run the ocean, and our logistics at the time was when I finally got the opportunity to run. This was $30 million. It wasn't much. I applied all my logistics philosophies that I've learned over time to the asset side. Now, mind you, I ran a reverse logistics company at MYK and had six warehouses, and so I had a little bit of asset experience. But I applied all those logistics philosophies to the asset world and it blew us up right. So, you know, we went from like 17% market share to 25% market share, and when the economy was down and the utilization was down, it's funny, cause I could sit here and talk to my account manager on an asset side and talk to my account manager on the logistics side.
Speaker 1:The asset side expects things to happen a certain way, like it's going to happen this way and this is who's going to pick up the load and this is how, what time they're going to get there. But the non asset side, they fully expect, by one, two o'clock in the afternoon, all shit's going to hit the fan. Some guy found a better paying load, so he's not going to pick up my load Now I've got to. But this is why customers need the non asset side, because that stuff does happen and so, but we can flex, right, and so the non asset side can flex. The asset side doesn't flex at all. The asset side is like, it is like very strict and what has to happen. And when you sit down with customers and you try to explain why you need both, right, you need that asset side, you also need the non asset side. For those afternoons that just turned the absolute crap.
Speaker 1:It was tough for me in the beginning to really understand that as a non asset guy I've been a non asset guy most of my life. But seeing the asset side and applying some of the principles the account I always say the account management principles, the single point of contact Like at trailer bridge 10 years ago, we didn't have a single point of contact. If you wanted a piece of equipment, you called the equipment. If you wanted a question on AR, you called AR. If you had a question on AP, you called the AP division. If you had a question on pricing, you called the pricing division. I was like what the fuck are we doing? This is insane to me. Like one person, please one person and it changed. So there's some things we can apply both ways to really help develop the knowledge for asset, non asset, I mean I. I think I vaguely answered your question. It's. It is tough.
Speaker 2:No, it is tough, but let's do this. Maybe we can do it in the context of trailer bridge, right, Because I think what you just said is perfect. Let's use a case study. Right, we're talking college terms now, but that's effect effectively what you did. You went from the traditional brokerage model and then you now are applying that within trailer bridge. So maybe talk about it within the context of how you were able to take that mentality and apply it into trailer bridge and how that has allowed you to become successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want to be clear. I want to understand in the next 10 to 20 minutes how you transformed this company over the last 10 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we'll start with. When I took over in 14, it was number one thing was the people, and so we. In the first year we had 56% turnover.
Speaker 3:So when you say, the number one thing was the people. When you got there, the people were lazy, they were, they were, they were, they were, they were the people, weren't you mean the company didn't care about it? Okay, company didn't care about the people, they didn't give a shit about the people, and so the people didn't give a shit about the customers, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:100%. That's how it works. You know that and that's how it works. And so they were. Actually, I was in a town hall where they were like hey, you may want to find another job, we're about to lay off a lot of you. I was like what the fuck is happening?
Speaker 1:Like what just happened here. And so when I took over, I was like focus on the people, like focus on them. And so a lot of the people were hoarders. I call them hoarders. They had all this knowledge in their head. I'll never forget I had that my manager of pricing on my ocean side. I said, hey, do me a favor, can you write down how you do the pricing? Like how do you determine the price for a customer? And he's like no. I was like excuse me. And he said no. And I was like if I tell you, then I'm not any value to you.
Speaker 1:I go, if you don't tell me you're not value to me and I immediately fired him. I did, oh boy. So I fired him, I go. My next two weeks are gonna suck, but we'll figure it out. So we let him go.
Speaker 1:And so we had a lot of that 56% of that and so we just began to care about the people. We were still losing money. I didn't turn it from $20 million a loss to profit in the first year. We lost $10 million, $5 million, and then finally break even. And so it was get the right people in the right seats. And I think there's an author here, basically Basin Ponder.
Speaker 1:Vita Beach wrote a book, called something about the bus, and he said put the right people in the right seat on the bus. And so that's what we did, and we focused on that. And then it was like all right, now I want you guys stop not taking accountability. You have to take accountability for what you're doing and what we're doing as a company. If I ever heard the word no out of anyone's mouth, you're out. That's a common thing. Like I may not be able to do it the way you wanna do it. We're gonna figure this out, though you know it's that you want X to Y, we can do X to Z. We can find a way to make that happen, and so that's how the focus, that's where it really started and it just evolved. It just we were the ones.
Speaker 1:So there's three competitors in our Puerto Rico trade. This is only Oceanside. There's three competitors. They always set the standard and I'm like I'm tired of them setting the standard. Like we used to not have a fuel search heart, I was like who doesn't have fuel search hearts? Like I don't understand this and like so we started it. And then our competitors followed, and then the employees which I love they were like we're now setting the standard. I'm like, yes, we are, that's the exciting part of what we're doing. Like we can do that. And so they started like, oh, we're gonna be different. We're gonna like change this. And so it was really what they've done, not what.
Speaker 3:I've done, so you get there. How many people would you say were there in 13,?
Speaker 2:14?
Speaker 3:110. Okay, so you got a team of 110 people, 56 of which are not getting the done. You got a culture of no, a culture of not finding solutions and a lack of accountability. How do we change it, though? I mean, what is it that you, physically, are doing to get people to see the opportunity in front of them? I mean, it sounds like what you were just referring to was a little bit of belief, as people saw that, hey, we could set the standard. Look at this. Other people are doing what we're doing. That's certainly. I could see that that would get people excited, but talk more about the actual changes you had to make to get people to buy into this.
Speaker 1:So it's gonna sound really cheesy. I think it all started with an ice maker. I know it sounds like what how the hell is an ice maker changing? I was in a town hall, so the town halls before me were like someone standing up. Hey, I had a postcard, notes. And so I started changing the town hall and really took suggestions. Any suggestion you give me, I will put it on the town hall. It could be the craziest stuff in the world. One of them was can we please get an ice maker? And I just assumed. When I said yes, my dumb ass assumed someone would order an ice maker. No one did. Two days into it I was like where's the ice maker? And they're like what do you mean? I go. Oh, I said yes, that means we're going to do this. And so I went online and I ordered an ice maker. I screwed it up because I didn't order the Chick-fil-A ice. You know that great crunchy ice, that is good ice.
Speaker 2:I know it's great, that is good ice.
Speaker 1:And so it wasn't that, and so we had to order a second ice maker to get the Chick-fil-A ice Got it, but I ordered it and they installed it. So it started honestly, really from the beginning. It started with keeping your promise, like it's as a leader of a company, and I tell everyone who's, at any executive level, if you make a promise, you better follow that up, I don't care what. It is the hardest thing we do, like we all know, paul and Andrew. You guys know, you guys. We all know the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes right is a lot more work and it's going to require us to do a lot more. It has a lot more energy to it, a lot more time to it. Always do what's right 100% of the time, and I've made tough decisions, like in the last. In the last three months, I've gotten rid of my chief people officer. I've gotten rid of my director of recruiting. We're making more changes this week. You have to make tough decisions to continue to show the people that you're paying attention as a leader.
Speaker 2:You talk about keeping your promise, but you've also got to get your leadership and your management team on board. You mentioned going through some turnover, but what was it like to say? Hey guys, like I'm changing the way that we run this business. Here's what we're doing, here's the new philosophy. You're either on board or you're off board. You know, when you're turning at more of the frontline employee level, it's typically easier, but when you're churning at those higher levels, it gets really difficult. It can really impact the business. So talk through just the balancing act of being able to do those things simultaneously. That's a great point.
Speaker 1:When you build the trust of the people, then you can make very difficult decisions that they determine like oh my god, I can't believe you just done that. But they trust you, they, you've built it over time. It didn't happen. I told early on, I told my entire executive team it's going to take three years to change the culture here. You can't fuck up any day, like as soon as you screw up just once, they're waiting for you to screw up. They're waiting for that moment in time. So you have to be on your game all the time and listen.
Speaker 1:It's over the last, you know, two years that I've replaced my CFO. I replaced my chief operating officer. I've done things that I wanted to go to the next level and build it. So how do you do that? How do you make sure you get the right people? And I have listen, I've got a couple people on my team at an executive level my president, logistics, and Eric Masati and my chief commercial officer and Jeff Vaughn. We've been together a long time. And you also have to surround yourself with people you trust and that you genuinely love, like they are your best friends. The only way you can genuinely succeed is with people you trust around you, like you have to have that.
Speaker 3:So I think you're spot on and I feel like what you described and what you have with some of the folks, like Eric and Jeff, like I feel like I had that at Molo with our team. And I just want to ask about something that was a really challenging thing to navigate. You build this group of people that there's really high level of trust between it, the executive or high level leadership team, and then you know you, they have support and buy in from everybody within the organization. But there will be some people who feel like things didn't go their way, feel like a promotion didn't go their way or raised didn't go their way or whatever the account got given to this person instead of them. And then you start to get people who are questioning that tight group of leadership, like, oh, it's just, it's just, they're all friends and if you're not in with them, then then you have no chance of ever getting promoted.
Speaker 3:Have you dealt with that and how do you think? I struggled really mightily Because I trusted the how we made decisions. I knew because I was part of the. I was in the room making the decisions and I had confidence in our process, but people who weren't in the room were sitting there looking and being like there's, that's just. They only promote their friends or they only do this like. Have you dealt with that? How do you think about that?
Speaker 1:So that's, that's, that's real. I think that I think one of the things that Eric, jeff and I especially because Eric and I have been together since early 2000s and Jeff and I have been together the early 2000s is we make, we make our disputes public and our disagreements, we make them very public. And so I always and it's funny because it probably more Jeff than Eric, I was like are we talking as friends? Are we talking as your boss, I'm your boss, Like and so, and they're like oh, okay, I understand, but we were very, we're very public about it. We don't, we don't take it's not a favoritism thing and I think everyone sees that we, if we disagree, we will publicly disagree. It's okay, like I don't agree with him and he doesn't agree with me, but I have the final say. And so how this goes down is is it's my ass on the line, and but I appreciate the his opinion, I appreciate the opinion of all my executives. It means the world to me.
Speaker 1:I, you know, be the last one to speak, hear what they have to say, understand the full scope of everything that's going on. And but there is, listen, I can't tell. We have 300. And I think the last number I heard was 306 employees. There's absolutely some of those employees like, oh, we're not in the Mitch circle, we're not in the friend circle, we're not. I get that, but you have to do everything you can to be out there and like, I make this. You know, and you guys know, andrew, you know you make a decision, you let someone go and after you let them go, they're always like you saw what was happening, you, you like they were doing all these horrible things, right and so. And Paul, you're in the same boat and like it's kind of like I always refer, it's kind of like dating the girl in high school when, after you break up with her, your buddies go. You know she was cheating on you, she was doing all that Like why the fuck?
Speaker 1:wouldn't you tell me that ahead of time, like, why are you waiting till now? And so that's all that. As long as you pay attention to the business, understand what's happening, listen to the floor, the floor will tell you everything. Then you always make the right decision, and so that's how. That's how we get through it, working with good friends.
Speaker 3:I think that is one, definitely one point. Two things you said that I really resonate with. One is being out and listening to the floor. I used to go out of my way to schedule meetings with people. One on one is just so I could hear their perspective and their opinion and make sure they felt heard. I think that goes a million miles. That goes a long way. And two I like is the public dispute. I like the idea of allowing high level leaders to engage in a public format in front of the organization to show the depth of the conversations being had around these big decisions. Whether it's do we force people to come back to the office for work or whatever it is. You've got big decisions coming showing the thoughtfulness of having those discussions in a public forum for the entire company to kind of understand how you're thinking about. I think that goes a long way. So kudos to that. I think that's. I think that's a big win.
Speaker 2:I've heard you use the word love three, three times now, and in our time of doing this podcast and even, you know, in my time in the professional setting, that word doesn't come up very often unless you're talking about, you know, sports team or something like that. So I think it's really important that we touch on that. So I guess, where did this concept of being very transparent and vocal it seems like kind of wearing your heart on your sleeve sort of thing when did that mentality come from and what is how has that benefited you as a leader?
Speaker 1:I think it's benefited me like immensely, like it's been been showing that to people has, I think it's created my career. Honestly, the concept, from a tactical point, really started coming from when I read the book Radical Leap by Steve Farber and it talks about in the book how you can show love for people in different ways. It doesn't have to be the touchy, feely love. It can be the I respect you for who you are and where you've come from and you're having a little bit of compassion for their life. And so it really resonated here at Trailer Bridge because we started, we developed a leadership development program internally, we built it ourselves and it was around love and you can't give me any successful business that doesn't have love inside of it. You can't give me one and I can give you several businesses that fail because they don't care, they don't love their employees. I mean, paul, I imagine you love the people that work for you and they felt it right and so they would work harder for you.
Speaker 2:I do, but I think what's interesting is I would never use that word percent. You're absolutely 100% right. I care a lot about these people. We call them family. I mean right, like there is that depth of the relationship. I just wouldn't use that word. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. It is a scary word but why?
Speaker 1:Why the hell is it a scary word? There's 10% of the people that are way the heck over on one side and 10% of the people that weigh the heck on the other side. We have 80% of our world that needs just genuine care and love. Respect people for who they are, where they are in their life right now, and if you do that, they will go so far for you. I mean, I would tell you this is not me trying to pat my back About 306 employees there's probably 300 that would run through a wall because six don't know me yet and so and I would run through a wall for them. I would do it. I do it in a heartbeat, but just because I genuinely care and I think they care about me. If you make it comfortable and it's not weird, then God damn it. We should all do it. This is like we're humans. We need the interaction, we need to know we're love, we need to know we're respected.
Speaker 3:We should all disagree. I think the struggle is love is so long term and business is so short term and the decisions that we see most businesses make are short, so short term and short-sighted. There's just a lack of trust that you have with your employer that hearing them say love you just I get why that's hard. I've used it. I used to sign off emails that way. I signed off town meetings that way, I mean, and I felt what you felt. So I'm not denying it at all, but I do understand why it's a challenge to use the word and not deal with fallout in some way or another. But I do want to talk just a little bit about challenges that you've dealt with in your career. A trailer bridge, like some of the more difficult moments. Can you kind of walk us through what's been the hardest thing you've dealt with the last 10 years in building trailer bridge to what it is today?
Speaker 1:I will always tell people if you have a business partner, you should have a conversation of what you want to look like in five years. I made that mistake several times and it started three companies and I never had that conversation and all three times I walked away from the company. I'm like I'm out. We had a different vision and it's time for me to step aside and so, if you're going to be an entrepreneur and start your business with somebody, have that conversation. Where do you want to be in five years, 10 years? Do you want to be public? Do you want to sell? Do you want to live off your profits? What does that look like for everybody and I know it changes over time but you better have that conversation. And for me here, listen, this is the first company I've had 10 years of starting companies and running companies. This is the first one I've been at in a long time that I wasn't the owner. I wasn't the guy who was making all the absolute decisions. What's funny though I say that is, I feel like the owner and I've been fortunate to make a lot of decisions that have propelled us to who we are today, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:Challenge wise. Going back to your question. I think that it's just the people. The people make the people always a challenge, because you want to be there for everybody. It's tough to be there for 306 people. I have my backpack somewhere around here. I have all the birthday cards. I write a birthday card for every single employee of this company. That's why one of the biggest challenges I have is writing that it takes one birthday card every day. It doesn't sound like a lot. When you write a birthday card for somebody every day, it starts to sound like a lot. It begins when you're actually doing it and you have to make it personal and so making this business very personal. They know, in town halls I talk about my family all the time. I talk about my wife, my five kids all of them all the time and how I'm living my life and I'm opening myself up to a lot of potential criticism. But they don't do it because we're we have this, we're in love for each other. They respect it.
Speaker 3:I can't help but resonate with your comments about the birthday cards. So I'm curious. You have 306 employees. You're about at the cost where it gets really challenging to know all of them, or at least know them with any substance. So I'm curious do you cheat at all on the birthday cards to get insight, to make it oh?
Speaker 1:you have to. I will not deny. When there's a name I don't recognize, I will find out. I'll go to my outlook, I find out what officer in I can see by their address and then I say, hey, can you guys like I know I've met this person because we do onboarding for our employees, so I know I've met them. Can you give me a little insight? And that that happens probably 10% of the time. I'm not going to deny that.
Speaker 3:So the reason I say this? So my thing was Thanksgiving and I saw I read in a book that somebody I don't remember who this guy was, but he would write a handwritten card to everyone, all of his employees, on Thanksgiving. And this guy was doing it for like 1000 plus employees. So I started doing that when we had I don't know 30 employees on Thanksgiving I would spend the day writing an email to each employee. 30 employees was fine, 80 employees was was a long Thanksgiving. I think the last time I did it we had about 400 or 450 employees and by this year it was taking me two days to do it. So I would spend the whole day the day before Thanksgiving and then the whole day of Thanksgiving writing these emails, and the last one I would send about like midnight.
Speaker 3:But the way I kind of cheated was, you know, by the last year there were at least 150 plus people that I just didn't know that well. I'd met them in their training class but didn't know them beyond that. So two weeks before Thanksgiving I emailed every manager and said, hey, I have a homework assignment for all of you and not even knew the context for why I was asking this. But hey, homework assignment. I just want to make sure you guys are really getting to know your teams well. Send me a quick write up about every person on your team, how they're doing right now with their book of business something impressive they've done lately and I got back 400 emails of ever want something about every employee and just kind of spent two days going to town writing these. But people really really, really appreciate that. I mean, something like that goes a long way, but do birthdays?
Speaker 1:for spread over the year. Right now I don't have any employees, but I do now see how that would have been easier to do birthdays because you got to be on it all the time versus me just dialing in for two days ahead of Thanksgiving. What I like about Thanksgiving is.
Speaker 3:Thanksgiving is that kind of holiday of showing appreciation and gratitude. So I just I really connected with the fact that, like you know, these people helped me build an incredible life for myself. So you know, this is how I could give back to them, taking my time doing that.
Speaker 2:So All right, mitch, I think we're going to wrap up here, so let's see if I got this right. Okay, bone marrow and the marinara sauce. Yes, good culture starts with an ice maker, don't be afraid to tell each other you love them, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think yes, yes, it started. I would say the ice maker is keep your promises Good culture starts with an ice maker. Perfect. Sorry, sorry, let's be clear it starts with a Chick-fil-A ice maker.
Speaker 3:Chick-fil-A ice ice maker Ice baby.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the time. It was awesome Guys really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:Thanks for coming on. Thank you both. Thanks to everyone for listening into episode six. We'll be back next week with episode seven. Have a great week, see ya.