The Freight Pod
The Freight Pod is a deep dive into the journeys of the transportation and logistics industry’s brightest minds and innovators. The show is hosted by Andrew Silver, former founder and CEO of MoLo Solutions, one of the fastest-growing freight brokerages in the industry. His guests will be CEOs, founders, executives, and leaders from some of the most successful freight brokerages, trucking companies, manufacturers, and technology companies that support this great industry. Andrew will interview his guests with a focus on their life and how they got to where they are today, unlocking the key ingredients that helped them develop into the leaders they are now. He will also bring to light the fascinating stories that helped mold and shape his experiences.
The Freight Pod
Ep. #75: Chris O'Brien, President, Sunset Armada Holdings
A 23-year-old with a pager, a bag phone, and a point to prove—Chris O’Brien takes us from apologizing for not owning trucks in the early days of his C.H. Robinson career, to shaping one of the most influential commercial engines in logistics, then into a new play: One Armada. We dig into the early days of brokerage at Robinson when check calls ruled and service meant relentless follow-up, and we unpack the moment that rewired Chris’s approach—working on-site at a shipper and learning to think outward first. From opening Raleigh and hiring for mission, to selling in French while integrating an acquisition, this is a masterclass in how hustle matures into scalable systems without losing its edge.
We also get a rare look inside Armada’s unique model. Chris lays out why restaurant supply chains are different—SKU velocity extremes, temperature control, and LTO shocks—and how redistribution, inventory visibility, and engineering create leverage. Then we zoom into managed freight: a curated carrier base treated like strategic partners, long-term commitments that outperform spot-market whiplash, and the power of behaving like a good shipper. Add Sunset’s LTL and truckload brokerage and ATEC’s export specialization, and the strategy gets clearer: combine capabilities to win complex, multi-modal, multi-temperature flows where savings and service matter most.
One Armada isn’t just a new logo; it’s a deliberate way to sell and deliver—aligning brand, enablement, and go-to-market so customers can say yes faster and teams can sell more without losing what already works. Chris shares how he designs change—listen broadly, anchor on growth, and build collaboratively—and what success looks like in two years: greater scale across industries, tighter integration, and customers and carriers saying the experience got better because Armada got smarter.
If you care about freight brokerage, managed transportation, restaurant logistics, or building a sales engine that actually helps customers win, this conversation is a roadmap. Subscribe, share with a teammate who leads sales or operations, and tell us: where would you place your bet—redistribution, managed freight, or both?
Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.
*** This episode is brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services. Visit gorapido.com to learn more.
A special thanks to our additional sponsors:
- Cargado – Cargado is the first platform that connects logistics companies and trucking companies that move freight into and out of Mexico. Visit cargado.com to learn more.
- Greenscreens.ai – Greenscreens.ai is the AI-powered pricing and market intelligence tool transforming how freight brokers price freight. Visit greenscreens.ai/freightpod today!
- Metafora – Metafora is a technology consulting firm that has delivered value for over a decade to brokers, shippers, carriers, private equity firms, and freight tech companies. Check them out at metafora.net. ***
Hey FreyPod listeners. Before we get started today, let's do a quick shout out to our sponsor, Rapido Solutions Group. Rapido connects logistics and supply chain organizations in North America with the best near shore talent to scale efficiently and deliver superior customer service. Rapido works with businesses from all sides of the logistics industry. This includes brokers, carriers, and logistics software companies. Rapido builds out teams with roles across customer and carrier sales and support, back office administration, and technology services. The team at Rapido knows logistics and people. It's what sets them apart. Rapido is driven by an inside knowledge of how to recruit, hire, and train within the industry and a passion to build better solutions for success. The team is led by CEO Danny Frisco and COO Roberto Accaza. Two guys I've worked with from my earliest days in the industry at Coyote. I have a long history with them and I trust them. I've even been a customer of theirs at Molo, and let me tell you, they made our business better. In the current market where everyone's trying to do more with less and save money, solutions like Ropido are a great place to start. To learn more, check them out at goropido.com. That's goropido.com. Welcome back to another episode of Free. I have not said those words in a long time. I've taken off maybe about two months of recording, and um I almost spent a ton of time explaining why. I let me just say I got a little frustrated with the process of this, the commercialization of it, the number of inbound people treating it like it's a marketing tool for their business and just telling me like I should get to go on because this other person went on, and our business is better than them. And once you start to feel used is is once I start to feel used, I um I withdraw. So I took a little bit of time off. Um and I'm back now doing this because I want to do it and because I find people like my guest today very interesting and their stories interesting. And uh so that's why we're here today. And my guest today is Mr. Chris O'Brien. Welcome to the show, Chris. How are you doing? Thanks a lot, Andrew. I'm great. Glad to be uh part of your uh welcome back to the podcast world. Thank you. Um, and you know, this is gonna be interesting for a number of reasons. I, you know, just a quick backstory on Chris's career. He spent 31 years at the CH Robinson, um, which is a company that is I find fascinating and I have yet to be able to crack in on it. Um, you know, I can't even get Dave Bozeman to accept my LinkedIn request, uh, let alone come on the show. Um, but with your illustrious career there, there's so much we can talk about there. And then now your new venture coming into Armada, uh, another fascinating business that I want to learn about and educate our audience on. So I think those will be the two primary uh focal points of the show today. We'll see where we go with things. Um to start, why don't you take me back all the way back to what was it, 1993, when I was a three-year-old boy and you were getting your career career started in freight. Um, what did the business what was that like? What was the business like back then? What do you remember about those kind of early days? And give me just kind of a contextual backdrop of what the business looked like. Sure. Yeah, I was 93.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, I'd recently moved with my uh girlfriend, my wife now, Annie, to Chicago. She had a job. I we both just finished up undergrad. Uh, had moved to Chicago. I went to Alma College in Michigan and we were connected to DePaul. And DePaul had um a relationship with C. H. Robinson's recruiting at the time, and they told me about what was uh uh a produce brokerage job. And the office uh was in Alsop, Illinois, uh, and it turned out to be a transportation uh brokerage job. C.H. Robinson was maybe 50-50. Uh, you know, they they just transportation had just passed off, uh, passed uh produce brokerage as the largest part of the business. And this was later called the Chicago South office, uh, was a super high growth office, but it was maybe six people in the office at the time that you know at one point was a couple hundred. Um and uh truck brokerage was not exactly new. Uh people have been doing it for a while, and CH Robinson had been doing it for decades by that time, but you know, this is you know 10 years beyond uh deregulation, so it was starting to take off, but it was definitely a different world. He didn't run into too many other brokers. In fact, I I hardly knew any. Uh you were selling against asset-based carriers for the most part. Um you came in. Uh I what I really liked about that experience is you did everything. And so I had the carrier side, I had carriers, um, I was dispatching drivers, you know, at dinner, you know, uh uh you know, working all hours. I had customers. Um you so you did a little bit of everything from collect the money or pay it on your share of the profits of the business. So it was this a thousand-person company about at the time. They just passed a billion dollars. I was one of the first employees hired that didn't get to go to the billion dollar party. I had to stay in in book freight and answer the phones. Oh, well, everybody else took off. But uh it was it was a good time. Um the industry was kind of going in our direction at that time. It we know, I didn't know what was ahead. Um, the name certainly wasn't that as well recognized. You know, you know, think you know, think a thousand employees and a billion dollars. Um, and most, you know, almost half that business in the produce space. But uh third-party transportation was about to take off. Uh, but I remember you, you know, selling in those early days, you almost had to apologize for not having trucks, you know, for being a yeah, first you had to explain what a broker is. Like, what do you mean you do this without having trucks? And how do you make that work? Um, it's just so funny how it's gone from not only so accepted and the technology that's a part of it, to you know, even my friends at some of the biggest asset-based carriers today say, well, now we lead with brokerage. I was like, man, you if I rolled that clock back 32 years ago, um, you know, that didn't last long. You didn't have to apologize for not having trucks for very long. You know, it's somewhere in the late 90s that you know it that that model for many reasons uh started to accelerate. But uh it was certainly a different world back then. Yeah, so it all started in uh our Chicago South office.
SPEAKER_00:So apologizing for being a broker is such an interesting concept, and there's still some of that kind of there are definitely people who when you when they answer the phone and you tell them you're a broker, they uh they aren't happy to know that that's who you are. Um but I'm curious, like was it hard to get the business then as a broker? Or you know, people were like, oh, you know what? I guess it makes sense. You know, it's it's assets, there's a finite number of assets a carrier has. If you're telling me that you can always find me a truck, here, take my load. Was it that simple? Or it was still kind of frowned upon how they looked at it.
SPEAKER_01:It wasn't frowned upon, I wouldn't say apologize as much as explain. Um, in that the model just didn't, there wasn't that it was a really small share of the marketplace. And I think Armstrong's tracked this growth over the years. It was in the low single digits. I'm not sure exactly when they started uh that measurement, but it's gone from like zero at some point to the single digits, probably when I started to the mid-20s now. Um so it it was more about having to explain how you can service. Um, and we had decent scale, you know. That that's not a small company at that point. It was really us, and Mark 7 at the time was kind of the other C. H. Robinson. Uh they later got bought up um and through a series of acquisitions that now um uh it you know it that business doesn't exist. Some of those some of the parts of it are still out there, but that was sort of our core competitor at the time that had some scale, about the same time as same size as us. They came out of the intermodal space. But you were mostly explaining how you're gonna be able to service it. But yeah, I think the the fundamentals made sense. We talked about having rubber walls of capacity versus fixed. If you have 10 that goes to 20, we're gonna say yes to all of those. Uh, but you really just needed to get in. You needed a chance to prove that um that this model was more flexible, uh, you know, more dynamic. Um and I would say that we tried to outcompete the marketplace on hustle and sales. You know, that uh the fit the assets uh you know they're in a certain place, they're fixed. They can't wish that they had 10 more, they can't wish that they were somewhere else. Uh so I I respect that model and rely on them every day. Uh but but at this point it was something that was new, it was it was a little bit different. Um you know, we um we pretty quickly went from getting transactional business to uh selling full outsources and uh and I think the growth of you know our competitors helped too. It just became more of an accepted model, and C. H. Robinson themselves drove you know drove a lot of that market share growth for the model. So over time, yeah, it got easier. But um once you got in and you proved that you care more, you're gonna hustle. I think that was the difference regardless of model. And a lot of the people that you're competing against then might have been like you know, uh uh a non-incented clerk from uh from an asset-based carrier or uh or LTL in some of those cases. But it I think it came down to people, and that I think that's one of the things that we got right in those early days. Yeah, the business model has has its advantages too.
SPEAKER_00:It's so interesting for a couple of reasons. One, you know, I think about the the comparison of selling against assets, and you know, I just I imagine you getting hired. Well, how old were you? I was probably 23 or 4. Exactly. That's the number I was thinking. So you know, 23-year-old kid hired into a job, and there's really endless opportunity in front of you because you know, as many trucks as you can find, you can book loads, right? So there's no limit to what you can do, which is why hustle becomes such an important credential of success there versus an asset-based carrier who one, I don't think are hiring 23, 24-year-old highly motivated kids to do that dispatch clerking job. At least it's not what it looks like at many of the asset carriers I know today. Um tends to be a different kind of character. Um, and so I see how you can win there. Um, but I also think it's just fascinating that the very thing that you were selling in 1993 that helped grow Robinson into what it is today is exactly what I was selling in 2018 to get my business off the ground in such different settings against different competitive landscapes with different tools available to us. And I just think it's fascinating that at the end of the day, like this business is about hustle and grit, no matter how much technology you apply to it. That maybe will always be the differentiator. And who knows, 30 years from now, uh I won't have the hair you do, but maybe I'll be sitting on a show talking to some 35-year-old and he'll ask me about it and he'll tell me that his business in 2050 that he started uh was successful because of hustle. And I think that'd be cool if that's the case.
SPEAKER_01:I I hope so too. You know, the marketplace changes, the competitive sets change, technology certainly changes it, but you know, to fast forward that 32 years, you know, we're we're in the middle of a deal right now and uh a very competitive process, and we're winning. And the customer prospect said, Hey, I can just tell that this is a bigger deal to you. I can just tell that you care more. And that's what I remember selling in in those days, too, is you know, we're not waiting for you to call. I'm here, I showed up at your dock, I set up this meeting, and I'm gonna be calling you every day until you say yes. Um, that shines through. And uh and I'm glad that it still does today. And I'm with you on 30 more years out there. I you know, that's where you can really differentiate. And I thought that's what you know, the model helped. Uh the the model was financially a great one, and it was a bit ahead of its time, and that there was a huge market share advantage that uh C. Robinson took from uh that. But I think the thing that they got right was uh that hustle and hiring the right people and sort of getting out of their way and letting them go out there and prove that they care more.
SPEAKER_00:When you say the model worked, can you explain a little bit of that and and why why it was important that the model was the way it was?
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh, I just uh by that I just mean you know this business was ripe for some for some disintermediation. Uh the the the trucks needed help getting backhaul. Um you you know in this business the math's always been pretty simple to me. You don't move any freight without a truck. And so I I I've always focused on you know building those relationships with both. Um so the the carriers needed uh ways to get back home and um ways to get to their next shipment. Um and then there's you know the financial model, the uh um our our biggest uh uh expense at the time was people, you know, followed by technology. And so you know that, you know, I I think I've always said in this model, if somebody could prove that you know it's better to just have assets or be a carrier that people, you know, people choose the model that that works best for them. And you know, being both always seemed like a bit of a challenge. You know, that there was a lot of resources at C. H. Robinson at the time, and they could have gone out and bought a large fleet if they wanted to, but the feedback from customers was hey, this is something different. It's filling a niche with the biggest companies. You know, it was maybe more the transactional business that changed you know throughout the 90s and that we were competing on core and getting you know core allocations. And you know, I focus personally a lot on the integrated outsource parts of the business at that at that point and you know, a lot of my career. But there's you know, if you do it well, it's not easy. You have to build those carry relationships and build those customer relationships. But if you do it well, um the financial model works and um from a net income standpoint is really what I meant there.
SPEAKER_00:Gotcha. And last point on on 90s brokerage before we talk about your move into kind of leadership and and building an office. Um what did the expectations look like for service back then? There were no cell phones, right? Like drive, there certainly was no tracking of loads through macro point or forkites or any of those tools. I mean, as far as what I feel I remember or have been told, it's like guys, you'd give someone a load and then you'd wait for them to call you from a payphone a day or two later and let you know where they were. Like, how did that work?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the 800 number and payphones was a big part of the model. And um, so there was tracking and tracing. Um, we made check calls to carriers at the time, you know, to see see where they were at um uh as much as we could. Uh again, that was mostly pre-cell phone. Remember uh the the C. H. Robinson office at the time, uh, this is 93, 94. That's when cell phones came out, basically. When they got more popularized. And and we had one. It was in a bag. I remember taking it uh back. Uh so I lived in um in Lakeview at the time, my first couple years in Chicago, and I'd be driving around Lakeshore Drive. I can remember calling my mother-in-law saying, 'You'll never guess what I'm calling from. It's the car. And it was the it was the office shared phone. Uh, and the person who was on call that night took that.' But um, and before that, and throughout that period, pagers too. So the office, you know, number for for you know, dispatch at night or issues would ring through a pager. You jump, you know, if you're on the road, you jump on a payphone and call and see what, you know, seven up or whoever your customer needed help with, and um, and then a lot of landlines. But there was an expectation of certainly service delivering on time. Uh, there weren't you know outside technologies uh for tracking, but we relied on uh the requirement to have the carrier do do calls in to us for the most part. You're picked up, uh you're loaded, you're in transit, and you deliver it. Those were kind of, if I recall, sort of three common expectations that C. H. Tropinson and probably most of the industry had, but it was done, it was done through calls from docs and um early on from um from payphones. And was there a real distance was a long distance was a pretty big part of your expense at the time. I mean that was like a major negotiation yet at the corporate level is negotiating your MCI contract. And uh obviously that's completely gone away.
SPEAKER_00:That's fascinating. Never thought about that, but interesting, interesting anecdote. One last point there. I mean, were there metrics that that customers could hold you accountable to that they were like, you know, you're at 92% on time, or like there was not really an easy way for them to even do that back then with analytics?
SPEAKER_01:There were you know, I wouldn't say it was as dialed in as it is now with scorecarding. Uh, you know, I think that evolved as the industry got smarter, but I think it happened for the third-party industry and the carriers at the same time. Got it. Um, you know, EDI has been there forever. I mean, that goes back, you know, predates the 90s. So um in that period, um EDI updates started to come out and um but no on-time pickup and on-time delivery was maybe measured by most of your uh important customers. And you had to perform too. I mean, you couldn't you weren't gonna get freight and not perform. You had to be at market rates. And I always thought of it as, you know, in the early days, you needed your service to be a little bit better. That hustle and care that I talked about needed to come through and being more proactive, you know, uh talking to them more about you know process improvement and you know, taking over other parts of their business, controlling their inbound, you know, converting to prepaid. So um the the metrics were there, they just just wasn't as automated, and and of course you didn't have uh you know all the geopositioning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I think it was 96 that you took on your first leadership role to open an office in Raleigh, is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I did I did. So it right before then I went on site, um, we had a major um opportunity with a retail of ours. So I was on site in Salisbury, North Carolina for uh right through a good chunk of 1996 uh at Food Lion. Yep. And that was a pretty meaningful step for me in my career getting to see how a customer thinks about logistics and freight. And um, but that was because I was on my way to open up a new market at that time, Siege. Robinson opened a few new offices a year. Um, and I had the good fortune to be able to go to Raleigh, North Carolina, and open up uh a new office for the company then.
SPEAKER_00:Are you looking to grow your brokerage? Are you struggling to land new customers in these challenging market conditions? Look within. So many companies that tender you freight throughout the domestic United States also have business coming out of Mexico. A year ago, I understand why you might not have seen that freight as an opportunity. But today, Cargato exists. And that means any load coming into or out of Mexico is now an opportunity for you to support. In just over a year, I've been able to see Cargato go from ideation to launch to rapid growth. It's amazing to see how many logistics companies have been able to use Cargato to expand into Mexico to grow their business. Cargato is the first platform that connects logistics companies and trucking companies who are moving freight into and out of Mexico. If you move Mexico Freight or are planning to, reach out to Cargado Today at cargado.com. That's C-A-R-G-A-D-O.com. Was that on site in Raleigh because you were a like just a large carrier of theirs, or was there an outsource type deal that you guys were managing for them? Uh at that point, so uh C.
SPEAKER_01:H. Robinson had uh produce business with Food Lion on the retail side, and it was a major produce relationship, and the opportunity was to help them uh with controlling more of their inbound freight. So I I was I was an on-site representative for the transportation side of CH Robinson, helping them, you know, looking at all their freight allowances and almost like cold calling the major CPGs of the world to say, hey, we'd like to pick this freight up, and you know, here's what our freight discount would be. And um, you sometimes the math would work out great, and they would just say, great. Um, but it was a it was a complex negotiation of helping uh, you know, a major retailer who was a produce customer uh take more control of their transportation freight. And uh it worked for me because I was, you know, my bags were at that point were halfway packed for Raleigh, and it was a little bit of a timeout. Hey, could you could you do this in the meantime? And um, at first I was like, oh man, I I want to get to Raleigh and get this office open. But I'm so glad that uh a leader at CH Robinson pushed me uh to do this first because just that experience of being on site and understanding what matters to a customer is not your own stuff. You know, it's just how do you help them with their goal, their bonus check, you know, their and getting to learn in other culture too. It sort of pushed me on this path a little bit of always thinking about C. H. Robinson, Armada, my whole career through the lens of a customer. And you know, it's all you know, what's relevant is only what's relevant to them. So I was so glad I did that.
SPEAKER_00:So I don't know if you know this, but I also spent a year working on site when I was 21. I took a year off of college after my junior year and worked on site at Kraft. Uh back then it was Kraft, certainly not Kraft Heinz. Um, Kraft and what became Mondelez were one company, and they had their transportation center in Madison, Wisconsin, where they also, I think that's where they slaughtered all the pigs or something like that. But um that if you asked me what the five most meaningful points of my career were, I would absolutely include that in the top five, maybe the top three. Um, you know, I'd like to talk about that for just a couple minutes between you and I, of like why was that? I mean, you mentioned being able to kind of get into the mind of the customer and understand what they care about versus you know living in your own world. And and I hope anyone who's listening, like a major takeaway should be if you ever get a chance to go work on site at a shipper, do it. Don't ask questions, just say yes. And then once you get there, ask all the questions, lead with your curiosity. You know, I remember specifically, I just dug into every piece of information, every computer tool I had. I tried to make a relationship with every person that worked at Kraft to understand what they were doing, why they were doing it, what they cared about. At one point, I got so deep into the system because I had access to OTM. Just I just was poking around and I one day found this file that just had all of the spot quotes from every carrier uh on all the loads for the last month. And I let them know so I didn't have access for long. But I I just I pointed out to say that like there's so much you can learn sitting on site at a shipper that you will never get that opportunity to learn like that from somewhere else. I'm curious what your experience was like there and and what kind of takeaways you had from it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm I'm I'm glad you agree and had that had that experience. You know, I I diagnosed a lot of this afterwards as I was thinking about it, but uh, because when you're doing it, you're just doing it. Hey, I'm here and this is my mission, and um, but you're you are learning things in a different way. I later used that experience. I was meeting other people that have been on site. You just could sort of notice a little bit of a difference. You know, they had a different message. If you're in front of a customer or a carrier someday, you've got you know a broader experience. You know, you've walked in their footsteps a little bit as a as a shipper, if you will. Um so I thought um, one, it helps you understand sort of the math of freight and how different organizations make money. You know, it's not just the the carriers and it's not just the you know, the three PLs out there, a shipper or a receiver, if they're doing it right, essentially is trying to you know at least cover their cost and be as efficient as they can. And for many of them, that was a profit center, too. So uh you get into the PO. I thought that was good to understand, you know, collect, prepay, just all the terms. Um and I mean the project I had really made you get super hands-on with how the core of transportation and the money associated with it flows. And that helped me throughout my career. Uh I just think the the biggest one was it it immediately put me thinking a little bit more external, and it helped me, I think, push my company to be more externally focused and that if bring the customer into those conversations. Um things, things like you know, you get really proud when you start, you know, at a company, you're excited about it. You know, and I love the business model. Um, I I loved what we were doing, and I could not wait to get you know the ability to impact and build a team in Raleigh. Uh, but you are immediately thrown into now, you're the only person. I was you know, there wasn't even like a community of other on-site people. And so that forces you to you know learn another culture, and you get to be a part of a new team that wasn't all just the same, you know, it wasn't a you know a group that was hired in kind of similar ways. Um I still, you know, I still keep in contact with a few people from from that experience. But you know, things like jargon, you know, you grow up with your acronyms and your jargon. Nobody cares. The things that you are the most proud of, and and there were certainly many throughout my career, um, the size of your company, the number of shipments you did, it helped me like push that stuff later on, you know, when I had the opportunity to lead marketing at CH Robinson. It was more of, you know, it helped me think they don't care how big you are, they don't care about your stats, they care about how do your solutions help them with their job. And um sitting in that chair and having to add value every day, being on sort of on the spot for all right, what are you doing here? How have you helped Foodline today? Um, it was never, you know, you had to get out of your own sort of like company speak a little bit. And I I just think it's so much faster to learn that in an environment like that. Um, so I later started a program. I made on-site a pretty uh a larger deal at CH Robinson. We you know, we supported it. We we went from, you know, in sales calls when they would ask, from saying, Yeah, we think we can to leading with it. No, we have an on-site program. We had people sign up, they were ready to go. We knew where people were going to be able to be on-site. And you know, that's a huge part of Armada's business model today on-site teams. And um for such a short period of time, I was I wasn't even there a full year. Uh, it was just left a huge mark on me that I feel like I've used to make companies better since then.
SPEAKER_00:That's brilliant. And I'm kicking myself for not doing the same thing coming out of my own experience there because I never pushed for it at Molo. We had somebody on site at A B, but like that was they asked us versus leading with it as an opportunity. I mean, just the amount of freight opportunities you get before everyone else just by being there are substantial and probably pays for it itself.
unknown:For sure.
SPEAKER_00:Because like who wants to send an go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say, and the and the impact it's having on all of those people's careers that are also getting that experience, and they come back and they're more capable of doing more. But I I think when you make it up, when you lead with it, they don't they notice there's no hesitancy. Yes, we do that, it's our program. In fact, we'd like to. And uh, here's the you know, the number of people that have been, you know, that want to be in you know X City. It's it was a it was a big difference maker.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I I actually sat next to Mike Schoenhall's, who was the on-site rep at craft for CH Robinson. Um, and all I did was just try to uh beat him up, uh, not physically, but just I was always like, How many loads you get today? I'm gonna get five more than you just constantly talk and smack.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, those are interesting rooms when you know at the bigger shippers and retailers, where it's just a whole you know pit of competitors together. I'm I'm I'm sure you learn different things, and like you said, in in environments like that. And you just you just get more exposure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and the relationships carry on for for you know as long as you're willing to carry them on. I mean, I think, you know, especially in a business like craft, but like so many, so much change over time. And this happens in every business that change takes place and people go from one company to the next. Um, but those are potential businesses and opportunities for you as you know, I think there are maybe. 10 or 15 customers that I worked with 10 years later because I spent just a year working side by side by some of these folks. Um so yeah, um great experience and and I think enough on that. Let's then now let's get into Raleigh. So you you spent a little time there and then you you moved into Raleigh to open that office, which I believe was your first um kind of real leadership experience. So I'd love to just get into kind of the mind of you yourself from from that perspective of building an office from scratch. And also I'd like to understand a little bit about the culture of Robinson and having a billion offices and uh the pros and cons of that. I think I'd like to talk a little bit about as we get into this part of the story.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Yeah, so um at that point, you at CH Robinson, it there was um a certain number of offices that were opened and based on sort of opportunity and and people ready to go. I had been a part of a really large sales process and a company that came to us and said we uh we're gonna outsource all of our transportation, which again was what I focused on a lot of in Chicago, and uh it was big enough that I needed to go get some help and willingly from you know more senior officers in the company, and that led to um a potential on-site at that customer, uh, which led really to this. So uh at that point, you started with one experienced C. H. Robinson person, and I, you know, you don't really know. They will select, hey, here's the person who's ready to go in your market area. I got really lucky, this guy, Sammy Fallon, uh, you know, now still a leader in in transportation today, but he was amazing booking freight. Um and the the two of us start. I I think I talked the company into saying, hey, three's probably a better number, but you go, you you're starting from scratch, you're out there. Um Mitch uh you've had Mitch Luciano on the uh podcast before. Yeah. So we we just we hired a lot of kind of stars in there. Lane Turner was you know uh had a long career at you know, he's president of Blue Logistics now. There's there's some presidents, and Matt Cornyn was the third one that came in, and he opened two more markets for C.H. Robinson had had a great career. So um Rich Clark and Mitch Wilson both have had these these strong careers. Mitch is CEO of Trailer Bridge now. Uh we even had Evan Armstrong as a part of the office for a while because uh we had this really big opportunity uh with a warehousing piece. It was way overhead, but we said yes, we'll do this. Um and Evan came in uh for a brief period of time as a as a C. H. Robinson employee as a part of Raleigh to help us with this um big this really big outsource. But we I was interviewing for people that you know identified with this mission, you know, at the time, again, now there's more 3PLs in place. Um uh American Backhaulers had a pretty good customer presence in in uh in North Carolina. I think that was probably the Campbell's business and Maxton. Um but still C. H. Robinson was one of you know the one of the biggest ones out there. And you're we were trying to be the largest office in the Carolinas and the largest in the southeast. And um so uh we hired uh uh aggressively and early and uh just had a ton of fun. Um I'd say if you talk you know to any of those people, it was such a short but sweet experience. Uh for me, I was you know, I was only there two years before this became knocking, and so there's an opportunity in Europe. But we we set some company records, we hired some great people. Um every day you go home and you know you know what the score is from what you did in that office. And um I was you know I was proud to be a part of that expansion of the office network. You mentioned it did get really, really big and technology probably changed the need to have so many, but um something about being close to those customers was an advantage. And I I don't know that you know needed as many. I I don't know what the cut the the office count might have been around 100 or something there, but after one full year, we were in the top 20 um and uh just had a blast. Um you're starting with getting there with zero freight. Um you could think you know, you've got the systems, you've got the back office, um, you've got the carrier relationship. So it's you know it's different. You know, people would say entrepreneurial, well, yeah, but I wasn't taking this the same type of risk as somebody uh at that point, but you're taking a lot of career risk, and um the answer could be that you're still sitting at zero months later, and we just said that's that's not what we're here for. And uh we hired people that had that same mission of wanting to dominate a marketplace and uh and just just had a blast there building up your own team. That was my kind of first experience with leading people. I was a supervisor, maybe. I had a small pod, if you will, in in Chicago before this, but uh uh a very unique experience starting a market from zero.
SPEAKER_00:So a couple things stand out to me. One, um, you know, growing in the office as quickly as you did to be a top 20 after a year, there's there's clearly something there I'd like to dig into to understand how you make that happen. Um so let's start there actually. And then the set the other question I have is separate to that. So, like, oh, and and the other piece of this that I'm curious about is you mentioned, I don't know, five, six, seven people who you hired that became presidents, CEOs of other companies. There's something there. So, you know, try to get in your head a little bit on the why and the how. Um what is it about your you and your group that allowed you to grow so quickly? And and two, if there's anything beyond hustle, obviously. And then two is like, how did you how were you able to identify like what stood out about these certain people or what stood out about the way you and your team develop those people that would lead to them being these all-stars down the road?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll start with the the people and and recruiting piece. You know, you're you are talking to people, um you're looking for people who want have something to prove. And um early on, it's Matt and Sam and I, and we're we did group interviews, and we would bounce off of them this mission. Hey, we you know, this isn't a job. Uh, we're here on we're here on a mission, and here's our mission. We are trying to grow, we're trying to set records, uh, we're trying to be the largest office in the southeast. We uh here's what we're trying to do with customers and carriers. And I remember that just hearing their reaction, they would either identify with that or they would answer your questions about something that showed you that what they really want is a job. And so we used that for selection. Did they identify with that aggressive mission? Um and that helped us hire the right people. We got lucky too. You don't, you don't always you don't always know. Some people are really good at interviews. Um, it's interesting. I, you know, I did hear Mitch on your podcast, and he was talking about that experience and he just kept calling me and calling me because we weren't ready to hire another person because there was there were metrics in place of, you know, I was already pushing them. You know, I I started with three instead of two. But as you grow, you earn the right to hire more people. And I wasn't at that metric yet when I interviewed Mitch and really liked him, but the guy just never stopped calling. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm this this guy understands it and he's gonna fit in well. Um so you know, I think there's a little bit of luck, uh, but there's also sometimes you can just tell just is this person going to fit in this environment? Not everybody did. You know, we had some turnover. Um it will, you know, and so I you know, I think that has something to do with the fact. I hope that um you know they would all look back at that and say there was something about the early part of their career and being a part of some of that success and fun that helped them later on in their careers become CEOs and presidents and other office leaders. Um so the other, so the the other part of your question is is how did we grow? Again, I'd go back to that same story, great people. Uh getting out of the way, understanding who's great at what. Um, you know, we had people that were gonna be great at, you know, building our carrier base. Um I personally spent a lot of time selling as I'm learning to be a manager at the same time. I didn't always get that right. You know, I remember coming back after being on the road for weeks. Um I mentioned, you know, that we we had this huge outsource, this huge warehousing opportunity that happened in uh Winston-Salem. And so I'm constantly going back and forth, and we're helping a major retailer, you know, with their distribution centers, and we're digging trailers out of the mud and just trying to get them caught up and sort of make a mirror uh a twin warehouse to help them with their growth. And it it took a lot of time on site, and I remember coming back out and thinking, man, I you know, now I need to be the manager. You know, I there's things we need to deal with. This this office has grown this aggressively and this quickly, and uh so so it was a balance, but um I've always liked that combination of being customer-facing, um, committing. We you know, we said yes to some things that uh that others were saying maybe to, both within the company and externally. So everything when you're four or five people seems like it's over your head if you think that way. But if you think about where you're going, then you're like, yeah, of course, this is the type and size of customer that we need to go figure out. Um, and we developed a reputation in the marketplace and internally uh for an office that would commit. Um, there was a lot of shared freight at the time. Uh, so you know that keeps you busy. I you know that was important, uh, the the shared freight out of the area that we covered it better than anyone else. But uh we really spent a ton of time on business development. And before we knew it, we had most of the major shippers in the Carolinas uh inside the house.
SPEAKER_00:Attention freight brokers and three PLs, greenscreens.ai is transforming how freight professionals price and quote freight. With AI-powered pricing and real-time market intelligence, green screens delivers accurate, reliable predictions to help stay competitive in a constantly shifting market. Whether managing spot rates or long-term contracts, green screens empowers brokers to quote with confidence and boost profitability, removing the guesswork from freight pricing strategies. Trusted by over 220 brokerages, green screens is leading the way in the future of freight pricing. And now there's Illuminate, green screen's latest product designed to shine a light on deeper freight market insights. Illuminate provides unparalleled visibility into spot and contract freight trends, giving users a clearer view of pricing fluctuations and market conditions to inform smarter, more profitable decisions. Visit greenscreens.ai/slash the freight pod and discover how green screens and illuminate can help win more business more profitably. So this is so fascinating to me. As someone who also I opened Coyote's Denver office, so I have a little understanding of starting from scratch and the competitive nature of one office against another. But our our our background, we've we've got some similar history for ourselves. Um, but in just listening to you, and we've only talked about the first six years of your career, actually, I think three or four years of your career this far. Probably by the time I'm done in Raleigh, it's probably about uh seven years. Yeah, six, seven years. Um but I I think I'm I'm hearing these micro lessons that I'm gonna call out that I think give me a good understanding for why you would become the commercial leader of the largest brokerage in the industry that grew from a billion to 15 or whatever it is now. And I think it's a mindset. Um a never say die, a never say no, like we can always figure it out mindset of like committing, not knowing if you could do it, but knowing that you you you you believe in your team's ability to figure it out is one piece. But two is this always kind of pushing, pushing the envelope. I mean, just just looking at how you're like, yeah, you're supposed to start with two, but I pushed to start with three. It's such a small thing. But if that's the way you think about everything in life, and that's the way I think about most things, is and I always, you know, my yin, my the yin to my yang was my business partner, Matt Bogrich, and he always was trying to temper my aspirations in the right way. But it's always like, okay, I know we think it the number should be five, but I think it should be six or seven or eight or nine, because why not? Because let's I want to do big things, and and you know, starting at a the moderate level that people expect doesn't lead to doing massive having massive success. You gotta push and you gotta you gotta keep pushing. Um, so I'm just I the little things that you're saying that I think are adding up for me to explain why you know 25 years from now you'd be the the chief commercial officer of this business. Um I don't know if you agree or disagree with what I'm saying, but no, I I do.
SPEAKER_01:I think the other thing too is finding like-minded individuals. And I I mentioned that I got lucky in hiring. I also got lucky in where I started too. I'm really proud of that company and that career. Um, but I never felt like I had to swim upstream to take these chances. Uh and you were trained to say yes. You and so um it was part of the company culture too, um, to embody that. And so at a very early age, you know, which is very formative too. You know, like I always think of like first jobs kind of like childhood in a way, and it's it's formative, the influences that you get. But um going back to Chicago, um, the company always had this mission mentality and um and that we're gonna create a ton of space for this third-party you know truck brokerage thing and keep innovating and making good decisions. And I got empowered to make those choices while I was down there. So it yeah, it did it start with it started with us and and having that you know that mentality we're gonna take risks, uh hiring the right people. But the company had a lot to do with it too. And that uh it was it was the preferred way to do business, is say yes and figure it out.
SPEAKER_00:So from Raleigh, you make the move across the pond to Europe. And I think I want to give Europe maybe five or six minutes of our time because we're 40 minutes in and we're only seven years into your career. And I want to spend a lot of time on our MATA too. So um, I don't I don't want to go too deep on Europe, but it's obviously a very kind of fascinating part of the journey, um, even if it was short. So talk to me a little bit about what it was like, give a little context on what what you actually did going there and what the mission was and uh what the experience was like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so uh overall, uh this was sort of the next six years uh uh of my chapter of my career was in Europe, uh, first in Belgium and then in France. Um Raleigh was short, Raleigh was only a couple years, but uh amazing. Um but we were doing well, and uh I was asked to go over and uh lead Europe. That was kind of some mostly uh one large customer in Europe, uh an American CPG company, uh, where we had some people on site. Um we we were almost you know too much the integrated 4 PL and hadn't really learned how to broker yet, uh, you know, taking their carriers and you know, cleaning up, adding some value. But um there was a small air freight acquisition maybe at the time. So uh a couple of offices in the England, the UK, Poland, um, five or six offices, maybe 50 or 60 people. Um, but it was a bit um go over there and figure it out. I think I don't think we knew at the time exactly what the opportunity was. A similar size market from a truck standpoint, that was the objective. Is there's gotta be something for us here in this market. Yeah, actually, more third-party intermediary business, you know, in Europe than there was in North America at the time. So it started out more grow it. Um uh we made an acquisition um uh of a company in France, and that's when I had two kids in Belgium, and um my wife was pregnant with our second when they said, Hey, you know, at the end of three years, you're not going back. Why don't you go to France? Because we just made this acquisition, um, which is a good one. It really helped us become more uh helped us with carriers. What acquisition was that? Uh it was a company called Normanter at the time. Okay. Um, and they were uh headquartered in Caen France in Normandy. They had a nice office network, they had thousands of carriers. It helped us take that step back that I said we needed. Um, great people, still many, many great friends. Um uh but the integration, you know, it's that's a lot of work. It was hard for me to do from Belgium. And um I needed to get hands-on, get get more directly involved with that team, uh, and ended up um ended up leading that business and integrating it in with the rest of Robinson. But that was that was so that was a major jump uh for the company in Europe at the time. And uh I moved to France to uh to help with that and lead lead that team.
SPEAKER_00:How is brokerage in Europe different than it was in the States? In what ways was it maybe better? In what ways was it more challenging or worse?
SPEAKER_01:Uh it was more accepted. It was easier to sell it because all the trucking companies had a lot of third-party business anyway. Uh it was a very fragmented business like North America, so it was ripe for the model. It was not as good in the way as that you couldn't earn the same type of margin, um, shorter distances, uh, a little bit more competitive since everyone was doing it. Um so we were trying to figure out how to do it on a slightly lower uh margin percentage. Um labor is a little bit more expensive at the time on uh on average, but it was really similar. And that's what that's what we found in the company that we made the acquisition is a cultural fit, and that they thought that you know there's a better way, and that better way is focusing on the flexibility of staying pure to the to the third-party model. Um but uh but we made it work, that acquisition went well. We um we developed a good, fun uh culture and a profitable business at the same time over there.
SPEAKER_00:Would you say the the labor market was it as easy to find people that would be as bought into the mission and and believed in the hustle and Brit? You know, I'm just curious if that same type of environment existed.
SPEAKER_01:I met a ton of great people. Um I always thought there was really not that much of a difference that those people want to be successful, um, that those people were hustling. It felt really similar to me, especially after the acquisition. And you know, now all of a sudden we're not just you know an outsourced logistics company at one large shipper. We are multi-customer, again, multi-carrier. Uh I thought that it felt really familiar to me. Of course, there's differences, there's lots of languages. Um the tech, you know, we we needed work on the tech. Uh but um from a hustle standpoint, you find the right people. It's I I don't know if it's how much harder it is there, but we we that group had the right people, and we kept up that mentality of continuing to to hire people that had that had the interest in and just hustle. And is this when you met my father? Oh yeah, yeah. So uh your dad and I are good friends still today. Uh he um I I was in Europe for the acquisition of American Bachaulers. Probably a good time to be there because there's a lot of change, a lot of integration. I get to sort of watch that, you know, uh a little bit from Europe and try and learn as much as I could. Um so Jeff came over uh to help us with uh technology integration. So uh when we made the acquisition, that was one gap that we identified is uh we didn't have the right platform for sharing all the freight, uh, for bringing in the Robinson and the Normature offices together. Um and Jeff uh at just at the right time for me uh came over and was leading an integration of um of the express technology that was going, you know, was being launched throughout C. H. Robinson, but at the time he took a really special interest uh in helping us in Europe, um, which is Andrew. I think I pointed this out. I think the time I met you, you were probably I don't know how old you would have been in the late 90s. Nine. Nine, okay, yeah. So the whole uh large silver family uh was over, and he had rented uh a home for the summer, and uh I remember getting together and meeting what seemed like 20 or 30 of you. Yeah, there's seven kids. Uh so that makes sense. Yeah, so so Jeff, uh Jeff was a part of that uh uh and uh a big influence on uh the technology and the acceleration that pulled that business together, and we we still keep in touch a lot.
SPEAKER_00:What what would you say, just kind of you know, closing out the Europe chapter, what would you say was kind of the most pivotal moment of of your European journey?
SPEAKER_01:I think it was probably uh in the middle of the integration, in the middle of the acquisition, we had a founder owner um who was gonna stay on, and I was going to lead the commercial stuff. He was gonna have the operations, um, and that didn't always go well. Um it's hard to it's hard, it's hard to go from an owner to a part of a part of a bigger thing. Yep. Um and uh that was part of the the request for me to go down to France. And um uh I would just say uh I remember you're trying to lead a European organization. It's one thing when you've got this large outsource. Now I've got all these people uh in half the business in France. I had to learn, I never got great, but I learned the language. Um, but I remember just like that doubt of okay, well, now this is for real, because we he left the business at that point, and that was part of um I I went down there before he had left, but uh I think it was sort of looking around the room to at those leaders and saying, we we can do this. Um and that um finding out that they believed in themselves, it's never about one person, it's about your shared commitment. Um and in what was a pretty challenging situation to have just moved to France, just learning the language, and now you're leading the business. To, you know, there's self-doubt roles in there, right? Like, okay, this is good this is different. Um and I had to just buckle down and and and learn and you know, learn to help them. You know, I remember going on sales calls, I was so proud of the first one I was able to do mostly in French, and um they they tolerated my terrible French, um, but still good friends today uh throughout that organization. But I think it was just that commitment to you but you barely even think of it at the time, but when you look back on it, it's uh staring challenges like that down, saying, I can help. We're going to make this work, and uh great people on this team want to help us pull together and be successful. And we retained all of those leaders throughout that transition and and and many more years and turned it into a successful business.
SPEAKER_00:So this is the first time I've ever contemplated trying to sell in a language, in a non-native language for yourself, especially one that you you self-admitted is you weren't great at, because like so much of selling a lot of it is you know, obviously the words and and this the substance of what you say, but sales is also a feeling you create for the person on the other side of the table. And to have to try to create that feeling of trust and confidence in what you're preaching must be so hard if you can't speak the language as effectively as you'd like to. Because in English, you know, it's your language. You you exactly the tone you want, how you say, like everything will come off how you want. If you're trying to piece together, and I your French probably sounds like how my Spanish was at a point. I could never sell in another language, at least with with without like you know, I just feel like it would be really, really hard.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I for sure. And if and if I was on my own and I had to make that whole thing work without the support of my friends, we probably wouldn't have gotten any sale. But part of it was just that you know, this this was actually a large important customer meeting, uh, and they're trying to figure out who you are. And um, and for me, part of it was just that commitment and saying, uh one, I'll be comfortable. Because yeah, I'm not getting any nuances right. I'm not even getting the all the words right. Exactly. But it was I think if I you know look back on it, it was more just that commitment to I'll I'll I'll go in a place that's super uncomfortable. I'm going to get more and more comfortable with it over time. Um you know, I just buckled down. Every morning I would be, you know, I uh every drive was tapes online. In fact, your your dad turned me onto this pimsler system for learning the language. Yep. Um and I did not have an open moment for a couple years. You know, I apologized to my family uh for the for some of the hours at that period of time. But um my first meeting down in France, there was an interpreter in there for me and my senior leaders. Because in Belgium I had not hit the language very hard. I didn't need to. And I just remember saying to myself, I don't she I don't know exactly how long she's gonna be in the room, but it's not gonna be very damn long. I need to be able to communicate with these people. And I think like the the large customer at that moment, they they appreciate the effort.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I I would say that makes sense. I I I can understand that. All right. So we're closing the European chapter. You're coming back to Minneapolis, to the mothership. What what year is this now? We're in early 2000s?
SPEAKER_01:This is about 2002, I think. Uh uh 2000, yeah, spring of 2003. Um, yeah, back back joined the executive leadership team. Um, throughout this European process, I had you know the benefit of one leader for you know 17 years, John Weehoff, who was later the CEO. By the time I got back, he was CEO of the company. Um and so he brought me back uh after I think like just around six years in Europe uh to what was the senior leadership team, focused mostly on the transportation side of the business, um, where you're a bit of a generalist, you know, working working with a lot of different offices. Um, but it was yeah, my first time living in Minneapolis. I've been there ever since, you know, 20, 23 or 4 years now. Um and um that so so the job left like like a lot of my jobs, it left some openness for where I wanted to focus on. And I slowly started gravitating towards the this is before there was a chief commercial officer, but those were just the gaps that I thought you know I would I was best uh served to to work on and and focus on for the company. But it was a there was one senior leadership team that really had you know supervision of all the different office bit uh offices.
SPEAKER_00:So you would eventually become the chief commercial officer. And and I would argue that's the most influential sales leadership role in our industry. And in go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say like that that means I want to spend some time talking about sales, but I also want to spend time talking about kind of the I feel like the real growth and maturity of Robinson happens during these last 10 to 15 years here. And so there's a lot I want to spend a little bit of time there, but let's start with sales in general. Um I guess simple question. What makes a great sales great salesperson?
SPEAKER_01:I think someone who can listen, uh, who can diagnose problems, who can I here's what's easy. It's easy to advocate um for your own company. Uh sometimes some people have a better, a harder time at you know, easier time advocating for the customer, like, hey, everything we do is wrong and we need to change everything just for them. Or you uh I think the people I find that are the best at it are more balanced and they can do both. You have to advocate for yourself, you have to advocate for that customer in the deal uh and drive change. Um there's there's been a lot of studies on what makes great salespeople. Um one of them is being able to push back appropriately on the customer, you know, especially as more and more deals involve multiple people, buying committees, five and six people. They have they haven't made up their mind on exactly what they want. And it's an uncomfortable position for a salesperson sometimes to force out that lack of comfort and clarity. You don't all seem to be aligned on this. You know, you know, let's let's let's talk about what we really want out of this. And I don't know if there is a I've always debated this. There's a sales personality, and they're you know, they don't like conflict and they need extra special treatment. I never thought of it that way. Um I think to me, sales is this high art form. And uh just like people leadership is, uh, I've always been somebody who liked it. Do you know a little bit of both and bring both to that table? But I think there's you know it's kind of that maturity to be able to say, hey, not all deals are the best deals. Um people don't want to be sold, and people, you know, that wasn't a recent change. People say, okay, you know, traditional sales ended in the 90s. Like, I don't think it really ever existed. Nobody ever wanted to get pushed into you know something they didn't want, right? So there wasn't some point where humans evolved and no sales has to change. Um so I think it's these balanced individuals who will listen. Um, and again, I I go back to that on-site experience of of thinking externally and being able to come back and advocate and come up with the best deal and push your company too. Some of the best sales are not something that you can handle right now, but but you're gonna figure it out.
SPEAKER_00:At Molo, we built a great company and I'm proud of the work we did. We knew when to ask for help, and sometimes that meant going outside of our own company. I'm proud we built an ecosystem of trusted partners like Metaphora. When we needed differentiated industry expertise in business consulting or technology services, we looked at Peter, Ryan, and the team at Metaphora. They've consistently delivered value in the transportation and logistics space for over a decade for mid-market and enterprise brokers, for shippers, carriers, private equity, and freight tech companies. At Molo, we use Metaphor to solve problems we simply couldn't on our own. Metaphor is the only partner you should trust to help you win, whether that's doing ops and tech diligence, growing revenue, optimizing spend, or selecting and building software. Go check them out at metaphora.net. That's M-E-T-A-F-O-R-A.net. Yeah, I mean, those those are the deals that mature a business. Those are the deals that teach you not what you're not what you were capable of, but what you can be capable of. And from those, there's like so much growth that can come. Um, opens new doors and helps you realize like, wait, we actually can do this. Like, let's start selling it as a core competency. For example, being on site, you know, uh, one experience turns into a sales platform and and an opportunity to grow across the entire organization.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So my opportunity there in that role was I I used my sales experience, I used my customer-facing experience, I used being uh the global, I used leading a team. Um, and the the the benefit was I had a leader who wanted to keep evolving the company. You know, that that company had never grown by sitting still. Um and so I worked, and sales was a very you know, a bit of a disorganized job family at C. H. Robinson. They were just kind of starting up full-time outside sales. Well, I'd been in those, I've been in their footsteps. And so I started listening, like I had with customers, to our salespeople. Uh started a sales contest with a team uh of leaders, Jason Lidke now and James Santee, who both lead companies out there today uh in the space, and we just started getting more organized around measuring across the whole company. Let's now, all right, let's take the winners. And some of my favorite meetings is when we started this rewards trip and listened to the things that were in their way. You know, it started with five or six people that it had X number of revenue. And probably one of my most meaningful meetings was them talking about things that get in their way internally. And I always saw my job was not to supervise anything or manage anything, it was to grow, fix, improve, listen to customers. And so we started a more organized sales force. We we did a few go-to-market changes around getting the company um more customer-centric, more coordinated for some of the biggest customers. I, you know, I'd been in that seat of trying to work with you know a network of offices to serve a greater, larger customer more than we could have done on our own. And um my some I always saw executive leadership was about doing that more by design. Now I had this chance to go help our customers, our care, you know, our salespeople and our account managers by making the company, you know, by by making changes that made their job easier, make made us easier to do business with and a little bit more coordinated, if you will.
SPEAKER_00:Couple thoughts that are coming to my mind. Um, one, you mentioned the rewards trip. Are you telling me that a rewards trip is more than just a chance to go to a beach in Puerto Vallarta for three days spending hundreds of thousands of dollars or a cruise in the Caribbean? Yeah, it was for me.
SPEAKER_01:Um I that's certainly part of it. That drives some of the motivation. Um but our first one, uh, you know, we set a threshold for uh a sales number. Again, we didn't, you know, this is pretty new. There, you know, there's you know, think you know, hundreds, not thousands in this in this job group. And um the first year was five, I think that went. Um many of them came back for many, many more years. That got to be a much bigger trip over the years. But yeah, I we would use it to get feedback. We would use it to test changes. Hey, we're thinking of this. There was always business content uh at those meetings uh as how we designed it. Um but my favorite time, I remember John saying the same thing uh was listening to these people that had been successful more than others. And it's easier to listen to a group like that, too. Oh, yeah. You know, you're getting not everything's gonna be a great idea. But but when you hear those things that are thematic of what gets in their way, what they wish they had, uh, that was hugely impactful for me. And I made sure that it happened for every single trip that we did.
SPEAKER_00:So you just gave me part of the answer to the question, but I'm gonna ask it anyways to see if there's more more gold nuggets in there. Um making changes for commercial for a commercial organization of Robinson's size is is a big deal and can be a massive opportunity, and it can also be a terrible disaster if done poorly. So I'm curious what your general mindset is to approaching big changes in a commercial organization, how you think about approaching it, and I'll leave it at there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, it's a great question because I'm I'm looking at things like that now as we you know go to one armada. Um and I'll I'll I'll tell you some of the things that I think are important from a guideline standpoint as I'm putting teams together to look at multiple options for us. Um one, it's think externally. And you have when you're thinking about major change like this and how you can be better organized, uh, you have to start by getting outside observations. Talk to your customers, talk to your carriers. Uh each time I modeled other companies. Uh Chicago, Minneapolis, you know, we traveled around, we saw companies that we thought were had solved some of the challenges. And we would usually say, hey, here's some of the things we think we do well. Would you like to have this chief commercial officer to chief commercial organization get together? Here are the things we're curious about. And I still have some of those relationships from doing that. You find the non-competitive models and we are customer-based vendors. Um, and I there are good ideas out there that you don't that you can borrow from others and learn from. Um the other thing I think that is key, and I would call it sort of a design parameter for change, is make it about growth. This isn't about like a neater org chart or something that you feel you know looks nicer. Uh, it is how do you unlock the potential for growth? And um that's you know, that has to be at the heart of it. Um, and then the last one I would say is doing it collaboratively. I never thought when someone said, hey, Chris, we you know, we here's the challenge we want to solve, let's get let's get a little bit more coordinated is how I'd sort of capture what's much, much bigger and deeper than that. It's a um but we called it you know go-to-market changes. Um I never thought that that would be something though that all I had to lead that I was ever going to do alone. So I pulled in people from all different levels, some of them that had new jobs out of this, but the field, sales, account managers, other leaders, um do that very, very collaboratively. You know, have the courage to be let people challenge you. There's no bad answers. Um, those I think are some of the keys that stick with me and how I still try to drive change today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love that answer. Um, you know, my my experience, you know, we we had a commission program for our salespeople at Molo that was the same program we had started with. And four years in, my partner and I wanted to change it. And just a couple of the principles that we thought about was one, the collaborative nature you bring up. I I made sure before before we had even considered our first plan of what it would change to, we told our entire sales force, hey, we need to make a change. And explaining the why of why we wanted to change it. And it I agree with you, it's centered on growth. And when you center it on growth, everyone should be aligned that like growth when everyone wins when the business grows. Like there's there's not someone who loses because the business is growing, right? It's it's either helping everybody make more money or it's creating more job opportunities, more promotions, more new teams, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think being intentional and proactive about communicating that and then taking feedback, those are so instrumental in getting buy-in from the team. Like at the end of the day, they might not agree with the change you make, but they won't be surprised by it. And their feedback will have been heard and they will understand the why. They can always disagree and they can always make a change for themselves if they disagree, because you can't always make everybody happy. For us, one of the things I wanted to change was having people become stagnant with their book of business over time, not focused on bringing in new opportunities because they had five good customers and that's all they cared about. And so what I wanted to do was essentially say over time, you'd get paid less on accounts that were supported by the rest of the business because as the account grew, the support you needed on the account grew. And somebody that that that's money that comes out of the business's pocket, and somebody's got to pay for that. Um, but being upfront about it and explaining the why and getting opinions and feedback from people, like you said, they're not always the right opinions because some people are like, Yeah, you should just pay us more. It's like, yeah, we'd love to like get make us more money, like happily. Um, so I just want to share that because that that was kind of my perspective, and and I think it aligns with what you're sharing. Yeah, for sure. All right, so just a couple more minutes of Robinson, and then let's move on to Armada. Um and I guess I should be prepared with a question to ask as I say that. Um I guess when you think back on your time at Robinson, especially in the last you know, decade or so as chief commercial officer, what would you say were like the most important things that you accomplished or that you and the group did to help drive the business forward?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was just I would go, but maybe maybe based on things I heard from customers. Perfect. Um that's the right way to think about it. Yeah, and I would say over the years, I knew we were doing something right when I was hearing things like you've you've empowered that account manager more so than they were in the past. That we you know, that the how decisions are made and the control points needed to be a little bit more, the customer needed to be in there a little bit more, and those those jobs needed to be more powerful, a little bit more creative. Um, and I you know was talking to one of them recently about the fact that um, hey, you know, you you helped make the company a little bit more customer-centered, or and and they were talking about people, people on our teams, uh, more so than the company. And that hey, they had they uh they added a great account manager behind the scenes. We had to make changes to empower those people. Um but I think the thing that you know there's a lot I'm proud of. I stayed there for 31 years because it was a great company, and it was you know time for me to try something else, and I can't wait to talk about Armada. But uh I would say uh you know, I'm just the most proud of finding change that was rational, that made sense, that drove growth. It wasn't for the sake of just change, it was for um, and if you know, if I was leading on the carrier side, I would have been driving you know similar things, making it easier for our customers to do business with us and for our account-facing people to sell everything that we had uh and to sell to those customers. That's that's what I'm the proudest of. It's you know, I I thought, you know, and then having that chance to later in your career at a company you know so well, create some of the things that you wish you maybe had earlier on. And um when I get feedback from some of those people that reach out or or those customers, it was um it m my favorite is if they had no idea what that change was, but they just thought, hey, this is just how you guys work and it's great. So that that's probably the most satisfying.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Thank you so much. All right, all right, it's time. So 31 years and you say it's time, time to move on, and eventually you find Armada. Two questions. First, why Armada? Second to that, what is Armada? I would love to hear that directly from you.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Okay. Well, first, why? Um, I had known um uh the the founder, uh the two leaders here, John Burke uh and Joe Dominajani, who is the CEO of Armada. Uh John's the chairman. Uh I'd known them for probably seven or eight years. Um I'd seen them at conferences. Uh we always found each other, it seems like, and ended up talking. And uh and so I I had a sort of appreciation for who they were as people. Um in my uh after I left CH Robinson, I uh they found out that I was available, and we ended up starting a conversation that allowed me to come to Pittsburgh, uh, Armada's headquartered in Pittsburgh. I'll talk a little bit about you know the next part of your question of who we are. Um but I had a pretty good feeling, based on knowing Joe and John, that the company was going to be great. I knew uh about them, their reputation, uh, especially in that restaurant space, that it was very hard to unseat them if, you know, the with the way they have relationships. So super curious as to how they had such tenure uh with these large restaurant customers. Uh but uh one of the first things they did is said, well, we'd like you to come in and meet more people, which one that said something to me about them again. You know, let's find if there's a cultural fit with Chris and this team. And I just had a great conversation in Pittsburgh with that next level of leadership. We talked, you know, the meeting went on and on, you know, past when it was supposed to. We just found like kindred spirits. Um so that that was a part of it, a cultural fit. Uh and nine months later I would say, you know, so glad I did this, uh, because cultural fit's even more than I had expected. Um two, I was um I was I I got to learn some what some of their advantages were. Um, and uh I'll talk about those. Uh I'll come back to that in a minute. But I I um it was pretty easy to see, man, this is something unique and different. Now you you know you shared that like in our very first conversation. Hey it's hard to classify exactly you know what they are, so I'll talk about that next. But um so there was a cultural fit, there was the unique advantages that they had, and then there was the map the mix of what they were looking for and what I do. You know, I've I've had broad strategic leadership in a lot of different areas. I've you know I've I've I grew up on you know both the customer and the carrier side, but the common theme for me is driving growth. Um and uh Armada's been a growth company, but they were looking to accelerate that growth, you know, looking to jump into other spaces and build the commercial engine, if you will. And so um the third piece of it for me was the particular type of leader they were looking for matched the things that I like to spend my, you know, the largest percentage of my time on. So that's the why.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:I'll talk about the who. Um Armada is the largest part of the business. They've made a a couple of acquisitions that I'll talk about, but uh about a thousand people and uh spread between inventory, engineering, managed freight. The the two main areas of revenue are managed freight uh and inventory services, redistribution uh at Armada. Those are sort of the two main ways that we make uh make our money as saving companies money in those two spaces. Um again, about the same size as C. H. Robinson when I joined, um, privately held. Uh it was you know, I'm all in, I'm you know, now you know committed and one of the partners in the business, but uh amazing people. You know, you you asked about what it is. So, you know, part of it, you know, one of the largest services is this inventory. We have about two million square feet uh across four centers that we call our hubs, you know, large, large distribution centers where we help you know primarily our restaurant customers. That's the largest, you know, of this this business started in the restaurant space. It's been in uh it's been around many years. Uh you know, it started out as actually a food company, Northside Foods, and it goes back a hundred years, the story. The last 20 have more been about logistics, technology, and engineering as at uh as a Zore Management buyout that made that its own business and became Armada. Um but um so really deep engineering. Um uh the uh the inventory piece is basically taking, you know, it's it's I would call it sort of a play on LTL consolidation. Redistribution is about taking the goods that you know couldn't normally go truckload into uh a customer's distribution center. Um so we're consolidating, we're managing the inventory, we're doing some unique things like owning that inventory. Um I I would call it, you know, it I it's it's more complex than than LTL consolidation because of the inventory. And we're do we're we're accountable for visibility for our customers for some of the you know, we we're a part of their teams for planning. So that's you know, that's a big part of it. Then the next part is this managed freight piece.
SPEAKER_00:Um before you go to managed freight. Go ahead. Before you go to managed freight, I think it's important. I don't think the average listener understands the nuance of restaurant supply chain relative to Walmart, Kroger, or you know, any normal freight brokering or movement of goods for a CPG or a retailer. So I think if you could touch on a little bit why there's a need for redistribution in the restaurant supply chain and the low inventory levels that most of the restaurants keep, I think that's I think it's an interesting nuance that will help the audience understand why this business even needs to exist.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yes, that's a great question. So, you know, why how do we save our customers money in this space and what's unique about the restaurant space? You know, one, I I would start with the fact that in general they've got their final mile distribution because of how many stores you know they have, they've got final mile distribution generally outsourced to just food distribution companies. We're handling that first and second mile into them. Uh another uniqueness is that they've got a much wider variety of skews in terms of the speed that they move through uh versus retail. Uh if you think about the different SKUs on a shelf, they you know they all move a little bit differently, but you think about the restaurant space, uh French fries and hamburgers move really quickly. Um, all the accessories and sauces and straws and you know, you know, gloves, that moves very slowly. So it's ripe for uh some direct truckload and some consolidation. Uh that that combination of a large, larger variety of speed uh through the system than you would have in the retail space. Um a lot of temperature controlled and perishable, so that makes it unique. Um and when you get into the distribution and consolidation of those spaces, again, there's fewer players out there that do that well while we specialize in and do it great. Uh and then the last thing I would say is limited time offers, LTOs, um to drive growth uh uh and the McRib. When something like a McRib comes around, um that's sourcing something that you didn't have in your space that you immediately need to get going. The planning, the management for something like that is not just good for redistribution. You know, that's that yes, that's a huge advantage force, but for people and engineering and inventory planning, that plays really well into the strength of our MATA. Um so those would be some of the main differences in the in the restaurant space that make our business unique, relevant, uh, and uh and so so strong at driving you know improvement, availability, and savings for our customers.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. I appreciate that. I think the audience will too. Um now you can move back to you were getting into the managed freight piece. Managed freight.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I I talked about these advantages that we have. One is this combination of both, managed freight and these inventory pieces. These are weapons that you know combined, I've never really had at my disposal. And um, and the company pulls them together so nicely uh that you know where that you know where we can do both, you know, our our ability to win is is really, really high. Um and um so then you know let's talk about what you know what managed freight is for us, what's unique about it. I'll talk about Sunset and ATEC are uh two divisions of the company next, but core Armada Managed Freight, it's powered by a really unique carrier base. You know, um we for most of our customers, we are the sole source of managing their carrier selection. And it's the one way that you get access to those large retail chains that we work with today. Um because of that, the company has operated a lot more like a shipper with those carriers. Deep long-term relationships. I was just at our carrier summit talking to them about them and reinforcing how much you know that was part of what attracted me here. Um, carriers that you know I hadn't been able to even work with in the past to that level, um, have senior leaders in the room. Uh, and and that's because of the way our mod has uh been great and built strong relationships with them. Uh something I would say you know, I had a high bar for coming in, but it's but it has been surpassed. Um a smaller pool, you know, we're not talking thousands, we're talking hundreds of these mostly larger and medium-sized carriers uh that we don't chase the market up and down with, uh, that we hold, you know, hold accountable for service and rate. You know, we don't, again, you don't we're saving our our customers money on managing that freight very, very well. But the prioritization of at one point I've said, hey, we act more like a shipper, but in some ways it's even better because we act like a good shipper that understands how carriers want to be treated, how they want to be paid. Um and just some of my just core philosophy, spending a lot more time in the past on the more dedicated programs and the larger customers, it just fit the way I look at the carrier model really well. And I saw just what a great job the team has done over the years. Um, you know, a lot of the freight emanates from our hubs. Not, you know, most of it doesn't, but a lot is going through our hubs. But that's not what makes us more like a shipper. It's really just we make long-term commitments to these carriers. Um, once you're in, if you perform, you're in. Um there's a recognition that short-term market changes, you can you're never really going to win that game. We are rewarded for that approach with a ton of loyalty from uh amazing carriers. Some large, some medium who've built their business around Armada. Uh, but it is I would I would it is unique in the marketplace and maybe part of your question, hey, what exactly is Armada? You know, the from the from the managed freight piece. So it's um you know that that gives us you know the ability to punch way above our weight as we go to expand this business. We've got this broad, you know, this this set of super unique contracted carriers.
SPEAKER_00:And what Paul's there, Andrew. Yeah, what does that kind of carrier pool look like? I mean, because Sunset, as I understand, is like a true freight broker. Is that right? Yes. Yep. So how do they kind of fit into the kind of picture of your carrier pool or network? Are they a provider or the what how does that work?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, that they are. Uh the company has long worked with multiple 3 PLs, you know, for for growth. And you know, again, there's strong loyal relationships there. Uh, but Sunset is one of them. So yeah, so think about you know, on the Armada side, a more limited pool of carriers uh that have growth opportunity because they're all you know generally larger carriers. Uh let's talk about Sunset, an acquisition uh in 2002. You know, today um uh a really successful company. I did not, I was I knew who they were, but um uh it was a competitive process from uh from when the company went to market to I think in 2022 to go to find more capacity and enter into this this brokerage model. Um traditional, but also untraditional in some ways. Uh also a very pretty high percentage of um outsource freight. Uh uh, one of the very first three PLs in the LTL space. So really good LTL operator, uh really strong culture. Lindsey Graves, uh their father ran that business for many years uh and that sales. So Lindsay runs that for us today. They have built just a great team. Again, I've been I've been so impressed with what they do. But yeah, a broader carrier portfolio, think you know, thousands now instead of hundreds across all industries, you know, like a you know a typical you know uh broker in that space. A part of our story of taking this whole thing and you know and expanding beyond our restaurant strength is this group. But uh main office in St. Louis with offices in uh St. Paul, Nashville, and uh Grand Haven, Western Michigan. Uh few agents, uh part of that network, a growing agency network. Um it's my first time in sort of the agency space. That's been a lot of fun. Um but really strong people uh that fit the culture really well, uh going in the right direction, growing our volume this year in spite of the marketplace. You know, we've uh doing a lot of the right things to make that business great. So that's sunset. And then how about ATEC? ATEC uh is our um it it it's it's oversimplifying to call them an ocean forwarder. They uh a restaurant specialist, long-term partner in the restaurant space. Armada and ATEC knew each other for many years as co-suppliers to different restaurant chains, uh, an amazing executor in Orlando, uh ocean and air focused, export primarily, uh helping a lot of uh restaurant customers, franchisees in other markets. Uh Latin America, uh uh real you know, high specialist there, but it but again, international, they um like our motto. We'll do some things differently, talking about our competitive advantages. You know, we own a lot of our inventory. Uh, they'll do that on the export side too. Some things that the uh a small franchisee in Puerto Rico might not be able to do to get buying power with some of these large North American food suppliers. Uh they'll uh handle that great synergies in that a lot of that freight will be consolidated through our hub centers. So real cost advantages for our customers as we export and consolidate and build really nicely consolidated containers for export. So uh again, they meet the cultural uh high bar uh across Dharmada. Uh amazing people doing doing great things in uh in our Orlando throughout the world.
SPEAKER_00:I'm I'm curious about a sales process for a business like this. You know, I feel like it's it's definitely not the way that your old sales guys at Robinson or mine at Molo would be calling. I mean, maybe for Sunset's business, the traditional brokerage part it would be, but you know, you're selling redistribution, you're selling inventory management, the managed freight piece. What does that commercial effort look like in terms of you know, is it is it cold calling and you know, trying to bang on doors to be like we can do all of this for you? Or and because I mean there's a limited number of opportunities, I imagine, right? We're talking about the major fast food brands primarily, but also are there other kind of restaurant brands that that I'm not thinking of that have this kind of wide ranging network that needs this level of support?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, let's let's take that in pieces. First, you're right. The the the sunset piece, probably from a sales standpoint, looks a little bit more familiar to you. Everybody's got some truckload and some LTL right. Right. And so we've got SDRs, outside sales, a little bit more cold intro on the Armada side. There are many restaurants that we don't do business with, but we feel this business is extremely portable. There's a lot of companies that have a mix of need and wear distribution service and engineering. The managed freight piece of it, again, I talked about that advantage that we have with this carrier group that can apply outside of the restaurant space. So our managed services, you know, especially if you look at the power of what we have at Sunset plus Armada, those two sort of unique carrier models, there's probably something in between how we leverage those as we think about integration that makes that even more applicable. You know, I mentioned things that I, you know, weren't available to me in the past, like with some of these larger carriers and the inventory piece. Um we see that that Armada solution uh expands nicely outside of the restaurant space too. We went to convenience stores. Um most companies need some type of inventory control and engineering and support as well as manage freight. So that's a part of our growth story is expanding that. Um and then you think about how they all come together the international, the you know, the more slightly more transactional truck brokerage, the more integrated model, plus that. You pull these all things together and put them together pieces in the right way. Um, it is a more complex sell. It's maybe not for everyone, but it was part of why we made the decision to bring these businesses together is uh rather than cross-training everyone on these different things, let's make it what we do. And I think when we pull these things together, our future is about something that doesn't exist in the marketplace, uh, that has unique advantages that no one else has in a sort of a crowded space of managed freight or brokerage. Uh, we're bringing these things together for growth and to make a statement that uh that that we've got we've got things that others don't. And it's it's time for us to bring it together and start telling that story.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So I have two questions. One, I guess it's probably time for us, given you just lead led us right into the one armada concept. So let's let's sit with that for a minute. Talk about that strategy, what that business will look like, or what your intent is for that business to look like, and how you actually execute on that vision and integration process.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll I'll start with the fact that um you know it's been something I've had my eye on uh since you know, since coming in is hey, what is the right way for us to be organized? Um it's not the brand is one part of it. I would say going to one Armada brand is more associated with the decision to go to one larger, more integrated, competitive company. And that, you know, when when we asked ourselves some of the questions is hey, do we have a common buyer across these three different businesses? Mostly, yes. Uh, is it a similar service? Yeah, you know, there's very variations on how we get it done, uh, but they're all supply chain and transportation services. Um so the decision was made uh really to make it easier for us to grow and to grow faster. Um and a lot of our sales lately, some of the biggest sales deals we're doing right now, take advantage of you know all three parts of this business in different ways. Um there's an international component to it. Um the TMS at sunset, you know, might be a stronger play for us. And then there's the large dedicated carrier base. So the different parts that the teams were already working together to bring the pieces together for customers. Uh, this is just about making it easier. Let's do this by design. Let's train everyone to do it. Let's go figure out the different parts of the business that we want to be as strong as we are in the restaurant space. Bringing us together instantly makes us pretty much puts us into every vertical. Um so it's you know, it's one of those things like um there's a ton of rational reasons to get this done. Um, but it comes down to, like I said before, it starts with growth. Uh, we're gonna be thoughtful about it. Um, you know, just just like John and Joe were about you know bringing me in and having a leadership transition. We're going to make sure that we stay focused on our our customers and our carriers as we make some of these. They're gonna be involved in you know in how we how we pull these things together. But it it just started with the the premise that um what we do is unique. These advantages that we have, um, we could better tell our story. Uh we wanted to do that across one platform, you know, invest in one brand versus three. Uh and the last thing I would say about that is each of these businesses brings something unique, both from their brand, their culture. And this isn't about jamming things together as much as it is thinking about hey, how can we best organize and get the best of all these different things that we have? Each each of the three companies has some amazing advantages and people. Let's create a new armada that's one.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm it's it's a fascinating concept and process. And I don't want to use the word caution, but I'm curious I've seen companies try to take do this do an integration process where you know, maybe maybe call it LTL was their bread and butter, and and you've got salespeople who've been selling LTL for 30 years, and now they're saying, well, these people can sell brokerage too, why not? You know, similar customer base. And and what I saw was you know, someone who's been selling LTL for 30 years against five competitors nationally now is going to start selling truckload brokerage against 30,000 competitors, and you can't always teach an old dog new tricks. Um, at least that's what I've seen before. And I'm curious how like you mentioned being thoughtful, which I you know I could tell without you telling me that that was that's how you're approaching it, but how do you generally think about that concept of having people with different historical experience and skills and bringing them into one maybe sales force, but also well, just just start there. Um, and then I have a separate question about kind of the different services you offer and how you think about that structurally.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll just say that that that sales decision is a really important one, and I think the caution you bring up is a good one that we have thought about uh and that we will plan around. Um, we don't have a preconceived destination of where we're going. Um, it is a small enough sales force that we know just from talking to them they would like to be able to offer more in the marketplace. Um but but from a design standpoint, it could be that our, you know, again, teams right now are just starting to look with me at what are what are some options in terms of the best way for us to grow? Um it could be some combination of, hey, you're really good at you know ocean services, um, but here's how we can make sure that you know everything that there is to know about the rest of the enterprise. It could be an integrated Salesforce from a leadership standpoint that still is focused at the division level, and it could be fully integrated. You know, that that's that's the good thing. And and what to go back to thoughtfulness, this isn't a race either. You know, we're we're going to you know protect this culture, protect uh the legacy. These are three you know well-run companies that were doing the right thing for amazing uh clients out there and amazing carriers. So that has to be job one is keep that up while we figure some of these things out. But I go back to some of the things we talked about earlier. It's evolve a lot of people, talk to your customers, talk to your carriers, get great opinions, um, and don't have an idea in advance of how it has to be. You know, I I'm talking to the people that do this today and letting them take some of the next steps in terms of what we were to start from scratch on on some of this stuff, knowing that here's the things that we can't change and need to protect. What could this look like? And there's no there's no predefined answer, but you your caution is what you know it is one that you know we need to keep in mind. Let's this is about growth. So let's do it in a way that helps people sell more, not less.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And and how do you think about like the idea that this business has these specific functions that play really nicely for the McDonald's of the world and companies like that? And maybe that's the ICP, like one ICP. Like the ideal customer probably is tapping into all of the services you offer. But you obviously don't want to shut out. You mentioned managed freight. A company like Heineken is a great example that has always or historically always had an outsourced managed transportation provider. Um, Robinson has hundreds of companies that use them for managed transportation, and there are plenty of other companies that are also in that field. Yeah, you want to be best in class, I'm assuming, at each of these things individually. So I'm just curious if there's a specific way you have to think about the commercial model or structure so that yes, you know, the McDonald's of the world who touches all of them is great. But also if it's a Heineken opportunity that shows up, that you can be best at just that function, or if it's you know, just inventory management that someone needs. I'm just curious if there's a specific way you have to think about that, if you're understanding what I'm getting at.
SPEAKER_01:That yeah. Yeah, it's it's exactly the types of things that we need to keep in mind as we solve for. Managed freight's a good example. You know, I think we can be better in the broader managed freight space, you know, outside of the restaurant space. We'll keep we'll keep you know we'll keep growing that space, but there's some unique combination of these services. You know, one of the very strong cultural components of our MATA too is a ton of partnership and transparency with these customers. Um and I'm not just talking like to fees and carrier rates, you know, for many of our customers, we have a shared PL. If that's what they want, that's what they get. So I think that's another unique advantage in the managed freight space. Um, just like there is the propensity and the, you know, we've got the flexibility to go out and do some things financially that others might not like, you know, owning that inventory and you know, take advantage of a strong balance sheet. Um this these deep relationships that we've had in the restaurant space have evolved into a lot almost like supply chain financial services, if you will, that again, I just don't think others have. So it's using that strong base, uh, this combination of the three companies and their great cultures to figure out other places that we can be great. You know, and it's and it's probably not going to be all of them. There's some things, you know. The international space is a really big question. We're really quite good at export to Latin American countries, uh, and it's primarily in that food service and restaurant space. Well, we're, you know, we have a lot of choices to make. The choice to be a you know a dominant global forwarder across all export and import markets, that's a big one. You know, that we we need to know what we're great at and figure out what the next adjacencies are uh that we will approach geographically. But then what are the areas that these combinations of services just would allow us to take this huge leap forward in the North American logistics space? To me, managed freight is one of them. You know, we're where we've we've got tremendous advantages, we're already in multiple industries, the business is extremely portable, and we can use distribution and the export knowledge and some of the financial services that we do to beat people out. And um, the other thing I feel lucky about is I found another culture that people just care more to, and that they the hustle is still there and the scrappiness is still there. We're not, you know, we'll never be too big for that. Uh, and I don't think any company should be. Um I, you know, that's part of my cultural commitment, is I came here because I appreciated that in the culture. Uh, and uh it's always been something I've appreciated and tried to drive, and I'm gonna continue that here.
SPEAKER_00:So I just a couple more questions as we're coming up on time here shortly. Um two years from now, what does success look like to you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, two years. Um, you know, we I would start with, you know, this is an integrated business. Uh the percentage of our freight, you know, our our business that's in you know more services uh and more industries is much higher. Uh our customers and carriers would say, congratulations, Armada. You've uh you've pulled together something that is unique in the marketplace, and we are as committed as ever to continue on this journey with you. You you had something unique and you've protected that, but you've also grown it into something that's better. Uh and when it comes down to you know measuring that success, those will be the first people that I'll talk to. They'll be a part of our plans in terms of you know what would they say about us in a couple a couple years down the road? They say amazing things right now. You are a partner, you think of us first and you second. Those are the things I'll want to maintain, and that the business is much larger. Uh we have people in the right places and they're enjoying their careers. They see that you know, that this bigger story that's available to us is out there, and they're even more proud to be a part of this one bigger thing. Um so yeah, I think it would come down to primarily that you know the customers and carriers saying, you know, congrats, you know, you you you're providing more opportunities to us from a freight standpoint, you're providing more services to us as as customers, uh, and you've maintained that great culture that you have in doing it. You know, that those are things, again, I I came here for this culture. Uh I came here for the nimbleness, the scrappiness, uh, you know, the and I I'm here to protect that. But you know, it takes change too. And uh and I'm just so happy that I landed here with a bunch of people that are that are they up for that change and they're excited about about coming together now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, if I could buy your stock, I would. Um, because I just it the the the way that it so naturally comes to mind for you. The I mean, this is a leadership lesson for anyone listening that that you don't have to even deliberately say, but the fact that you so naturally trend towards the feeling you create for the customer as like the first thing you're thinking about, I think about it the same way. Like that to me will always be the greatest measurement of how we're doing is making sure that the customers feel like we're doing a great job. And you know, if someone asks me that question, I think I'd think about it the same way. Like that's the first person I'm thinking about is like, what does the customer think of what we're doing? And if if they are happier and and more satisfied with what we're doing, then I know we've done a great job.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally agree. And and if they're happy and you're doing a great job, that's what great people care about too. And there's great people here that would say the exact same thing. Let's keep this about our customers, our partners, our carriers. Uh, let's design these changes with them, around them, and for them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and the and the important inverse of that too is understanding the notion that happy employees make happy customers. And as long as you can maintain or build on the culture you've created, you can have a high level of confidence that your employees will continue to deliver on the promises you expect them to deliver on. Um, because that's how it works. You know, people want to stay at companies that make them happy. And ultimately they're happy because you know the customers are are are supporting them in a way that allows them to make money and and do their job in a way that that you know is satisfying.
SPEAKER_01:Totally agree. To me, this is that's been the common denominator is are you having fun? And I'm on year 34 of having a lot of fun. And I it I we talked about a lot of those jobs, they were all a blast in different ways, and I I miss them all. Uh, but I'm also amazed that uh the fun just keeps increasing, and I keep meeting great people. I'm I'm just so excited about this next chance to have uh an impact on a new team and in a different way.
SPEAKER_00:We're gonna end it there. I I like that. I don't want to ask another question that might not get as great of an answer. Even though most of them would be great. Um listen, I I really appreciate how much depth you gave us into kind of your mindset, your experience at Robinson, and now what you're gonna do at Armada. I think I would love, you know, maybe two, three years we have another conversation about the results, and uh I'll be excited to watch the journey.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I I will do it. Thanks a lot, Andrew. Really appreciate the opportunity to tell the story. It's been it's been fun. I'm excited about it, and uh thanks for being a part of it.
SPEAKER_00:Sounds good. And to our listeners, uh, I can't say we'll see you next week because I don't know when I'll record again, but I will find another great guest like Chris and I'll get recording and get just more content. Thanks everyone.
