Reading The Freight Market with Dean Croke

TMSA’s On the Move Podcast – Dean Croke

In this economic-update episode of On the Move, Jen sits down with freight-market authority Dean Croke of DAT to break down what’s really happening in the transportation economy, and what’s coming next. Dean shares the key data points that matter most right now, the early signals pointing to the next market turn.
But most importantly for our audience, Dean translates the state of freight into practical guidance for sales and marketing professionals.

Check out the Transportation Sales and Marketing Association (TMSA) website or engage with us on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello, everyone, and welcome to On the Move, a show where we share transportation sales and marketing success stories. I am Jennifer Kurpis Romain, Executive Director of TMSA, a trade nonprofit, educating and connecting marketing and sales professionals inside the industry. And today I'm very excited to have Dean Croak, Principal Analysis at DAT with us on the show. How are you doing today, Dean?

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Great, good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

So excited to see you again. You've been a part of the last two Elevate Economy panels. So it's always great to hear your feedback, your knowledge about the economy, what's going on. So I thought here we are, beginning of December. We haven't heard from you from TMSA standpoint, at least since June. So let's check in. We already trust your outlook on things. Let's jump in.

Longest Freight Recession On Record

SPEAKER_00 1:08

How do you characterize the state of the freight market today?

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Yeah, I'm going to sound like a bit like a cracked record again. This has been the longest freight recession on record. Nothing much has changed. I will say though, our worst fears haven't been materialized. So again, that was something that we probably didn't talk about, but we were most concerned about when we spoke in June. So things haven't fallen off a cliff. They haven't got markedly worse, but they haven't got any better either. So I think that's probably great news for all of us. But the outlook doesn't look great either. And I think that's probably the worst news. We were hoping for the market to improve in 2026. It doesn't look like that's on the cards, but it doesn't look like it's going to fall apart either, which I think is somewhat that's that's better news. I think we're all worried about the market falling into um, you know, sort of this demand destruction mode. So I think everybody has pulled back, got into some sort of uh a wait and see type mode. Um, but I think the fact that our worst fears haven't materialized since uh Liberation Day when this trade war sort of really started to take hold in April is the best news that we could have hoped for as we end

Early Peak Season And Inventory Shift

SPEAKER_02 2:27

the year. But that's really impacted our shipper behavior, how the truckload market reacted, and how uh consumers and logisticians and marketers are behaving right now as we get to the end of the year, because when we were talking in June, uh we'd already, as it turned out, we were in peak shipping season. I don't know that we'd realized it back then. We'd surmised that we were in peak shipping season or it was going to be earlier. In fact, July turned out to be peak shipping season uh on the import front because importers were banking on the fact that if we could bring all of our more critical imports in that were most likely to be impacted by tariffs, let's do it now and put it into warehouses. And that's exactly as it turned out that they did. So it meant that we had a lot more inventory sitting in warehouses that for a lot of uh middle mile trucking companies, that freight had already been hauled and uh and is now starting to trickle out of those warehouses into those final mile markets. So it really disrupted and it create uh disrupted a lot of our trucking supply chains. So that's really the big story is that we had an early peak season again, which is something that we'd seen during the pandemic. Um, but we uh we as as we as we became very good at during the pandemic, um we we readjusted our supply chains on the fly. Yeah, we we the the world didn't collapse, we just readjusted everything, we became very good at it. I think that's the one lesson that we did learn from the pandemic is we became very good at adapting to you know a changing environment in real time.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

There's a lot to unpacked, but um, yeah, I think that that update from Dune, what we were expecting, where we go from now.

Capacity Thinning And 2026 Outlook

SPEAKER_00 4:16

What are then the two to three indicators that you're watching most closely right now that kind of signal where the market is actually heading, not just where we've been?

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Yeah. Well, I think it's pretty clear that you know we're in a we're in a goods recession. Um, a lot of people have been talking about the freight market being in a recession. I think consumer spending, if you separate out consumer spending on the services side, that's been pretty steady. But we don't transport a lot of services. So we we transport things related to services, like you know, we fly on planes, and then there's you know, jet fuel that's related to services that planes use. But most of the freight that we're involved in in the trucking side of the industry is the good side of it. And that's been pretty flat. You know, freight demand has has been pretty stagnant, mainly because of domestic manufacturing. So that's been the big story is that the the good side of our economy has been very stagnant. Um, the ISM PMI, the purchasing management that came out yesterday, again, another pretty bad data point. But I think the broad, if you sort of pull back and say, where is the freight market right now and where is it headed? I would say to you that you know, I think the headline for 2026 is going to be freight recovery meets constrained supply. Because the big story for 2025 has been we've had this excess recovery, so excess supply, and and we've been talking about recovery. Um and and the problem's been is the recovery has been sort of this elusive target because the market hasn't been recovery because demand has been slipping further and further away, because no one's really known what's been happening. But all the time we've had this excess capacity in the market for lots of reasons, and it hasn't been disappearing out of the market for a whole lot of reasons. But I think what's happening is that there's there's a lot of fleets have been decreasing the number of trucks they've got on the road. A lot of marginal carriers are disappearing from the market. Um, uh driver and carrier supply is clearly under pressure. There's new regulations, there's attrition, operating costs are thinning out the carrier pool. Um, there's new regulations coming in. There's lots of talk about uh non-domicile CDL carriers. There's a lot of rhetoric coming out of Washington about drivers that should or shouldn't be in the industry. They're tightening up restrictions around uh what they call CDL mills or schools that allow drivers to come in with questionable qualifications. So there's lots of things happening that are tightening the net around who should or shouldn't be on the roads driving our large tractor trailers. So I think what you'll see in 2026 is this smaller pool of available capacity, which is a good thing, I think, for the industry. And then as we get to that point where freight demand starts to improve, again, that's an assumption that freight demand improves, um, it's going to meet constrained supply. And that's what you call equilibrium, right? And that means that anytime you get a freight surge, um, so think cold weather in January, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, any of the road check week, anytime you start to see an event, you'll see a spike in rates. So that's called market volatility. And I think that's what you'll start to see uh characterize the freight market next year, where any sort of market event where there's a demand surge, you'll see rate volatility return. So I think that'll be the the feature of 2026. Now that's been absent mostly for the last few years because there's been this phenomenon that we talked about at our last Elevate conference called um latent supply where or capacity, where every time there was a surge in volume, this these um armchair carriers that were sort of sitting around waiting for freight to appear would just sort of jump out of their living rooms and get into their trucks and race out and haul some freight. And then when the when it died off, they'd go back home. And that's been a feature of the freight market for the last few years. And it's still out there, but it is thinning out. And I think that's been something we've been watching. Is there are fewer and fewer carriers we we get in, but the rate of attrition's been very slow. Um, I just did the numbers for November. Uh, for there was about 6,600 carriers left the industry um in November. Um so again, we're uh we're we're losing carriers at a rate uh 6,600 left, um, and we had about 6,000 joins. So the the we're losing carriers, but it's a trickle, and it's not enough to flip the market. Um the other feature I think for shippers and and those of in the marketing side of the industry is that dedicated fleets have been one of the few bright spots in the last quarter. And I think shippers have been locked into dedicated capacity and enjoying the benefits because of the consistency that they they offer. So that's been one of the things that I've been seeing that's been um one of the more consistent things in the industry is the dedicated side of the industry.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Thank you for sharing all that. I know um it's always just interesting looking at those trickles and if things line up where we think they are, or or you know, we can only process what's going to happen next so much.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

But with that, how are then the current kind of macro factors or interest rates, your housing starts, your consumer spending, how are those showing up in freight numbers right now? Which ones are mattering the most?

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah,

Spot Vs Contract Rates And PMI

SPEAKER_02 9:56

um, it's interesting. Um, the government shutdown kind of threw us a bit of a curveball because we still are waiting on some of those numbers. Um I would say to you that we're seeing a few things. Uh I mean, the big headline numbers are the ISM PMI. So when you look at our data, so our spot rate data, our our spot rates that represent about 20% of the loads being hauled, um, remember spot rates are a leading indicator of what's happening in the freight market. They lead contract rates, which are about 80% of all the loads hauled on the market, they lead contract rates by about four to six months. So if you said where is the freight market in terms of rates four to six months out, you look at where are spot rates today. Well, spot rates today are you know kind of flat to you know, slightly maybe up one to one and a half percent compared to this time last year. So largely the same as where they were last year. Why is that the case? Well, to answer your question, the the one of the leading indicators that strongly correlates to spot rates is the IS, the Institute of Supply Management Purchasing Managers Index, and that's tied to domestic manufacturing. It's it's what are our manufacturers doing? And those numbers that yesterday came out, that's the that's the big number that I watch mostly that's telling us about uh what are our manufacturers thinking. And that's not a good story. Our um manufacturers came out yesterday talking about um you know new orders, for example, you know, what a manufacturer is doing in terms of new orders, that it dropped for the third straight month. So manufacturers are you know facing some pretty strong headwinds, the broader economy remains. Um, you know, there's pockets of strength, but business condition conditions are suffering from high tariffs, the government shutdown. Um, there's a lot of global uncertainty. When you look at what the respondents of those that fill in the survey for the ISMPI, so remember this has got a, if you go back over the last few decades, the spot rates correlate really strongly to the ISM PMI reading. Like if you said, where are rates going, you've only got to look at the ISM PMI. And a lot of truckload carriers use this data point. So the respondents that fill in this survey tell us that you know new orders remain weak. Um, and I'll read you some of the comments. You know, they say that most firms are managing headcounts, they're not hiring. Um, you know, they're broadly cautious, demand is weak, new orders are contracting, shrinking employment numbers. You know, they're more concerned about managing downside risk. Um, they're optimistic about a rebound, but the rebound in manufacturing remains elusive. So there's a lot of uncertainty. When you read the words and the sentiment going into 2026, they're still very uncertain about where the where they're going from manufacturing. And that just means that the things that go on the back of our trucks and trailers is uncertain. So we don't know where the freight market really is going to look. And if you think back to the FTR conference that was about three months ago now, large truckload carriers were talking about, and this was a really big shock to me, 2027 as being a recovery year for the freight market, which which I wouldn't have thought possible because I thought this year might have been a year that we saw some sort of a turnaround. They were adamant that 2026 was going to be a year that we were going to see some improvement. This year, I think, is going to be a fairly flat year, and that's why our rate forecast has rates up low, you know, flat to low single digits this year. So again, if you if you look where the flat the freight market is, and when we say that you know a slight freight recovery meets constrained supply, you can see a market that's sort of bouncing along the bottom again for another year. And that's a really tough market for a lot of carriers because they've already been battling high inflationary costs on their operating side of their businesses. This will be a tough market, but I think that just underscores a lot of the marginal capacity that's going to be exiting the market. So uh I'm looking at a couple of things. I think housing's important. We're not seeing a lot of um data again. Uh, we haven't got much data since September because of the government shutdown. We actually don't know what housing numbers look like. I was trying to find out from the Census Bureau what the housing release data um schedule looks like, and they're they're telling us that they don't know when the next housing release will be. But residential construction, in particular, single-family and multifamily housing data, is a big driver of freight demand. Like every single family home generates

Housing, Ton-Miles, And Flat Demand

SPEAKER_02 14:38

some of between five and seven truckloads of freight. So you know that's a that's a huge driver of truckload demand for lumber and furniture and electrical appliances. That we need to see that data before we can make some um some serious uh numbers. Jason Miller's truckload ton mile index came out this morning. The Federal Reserve Board have just revised their annual industrial production data. His ton mile index um came out and said that the truckload demand he pegged at about August 2019 levels. And for those that remember, August 2019, we were in the grips of a freight recession post-the 2018 bull market that we all live through. So that kind of feels about right. If you think, where is where are we in November of 2025? It feels like the freight recessionary period of 2019. So that that makes me think that's about right, but we still have this excess capacity hanging around in the market. And uh and it's an interesting time. The industry is doing its best efforts to try and jettison a lot of this excess capacity because of all the headlines we're reading about um non-domicile CDL drivers, which again is a really bizarre situation that we find ourselves in, that the industry is after three decades of actively recruiting immigrant truck drivers, they've now decided that they're not the right type of drivers that we should have on our roads. Uh, the industry is giving itself multiple up cuts every day. Even the own trucking media is going after its own. It's the most bizarre thing to watch. And I I'm I'm reminded of the movie The Equalizer, where Denzel Washington's sitting out on the on the step with his former boss, and and she says, uh, sometimes we make the wrong decisions to get to the right place. I don't know if you remember the movie. And I think that might be the case here. I think we're probably making the wrong decisions to get to the right place, and the right place is the right type of drivers on the road. I don't agree with the way we're going about it, and that's going after immigrant truck drivers, but I do agree that we need to have the right type of drivers qualified to drive our trucks because I'm an immigrant CDL holder, and I have to go through all of the right processes to get and hold my CDL. I'm about to go through my annual DOT physical, and it's an arduous process. Um, so I want to make sure that people have all the right qualifications and skills to be behind these trucks, and nobody should be cutting corners driving these big vehicles. So, and no state government or licensing agency should be cutting corners, and nor should any CDL training school have lower standards than any other state. So, yes, we need we need consistency across the board. So I think we'll get to the right place, assuming the rhetoric that comes out of Washington turns into action. Like I think that's what we're all hoping for in 2026. So when I say constrained supply, we want to make sure that all of what we're hearing right now, all of that noise, actually ends up in something that's meaningful. And that's what we're all hoping for, I think, when you read about all of this activity. So if that happens, I think we'll actually end up with a trucking industry that helps all of us because underlying all of that, what I've just been talking about is, of course, this big subject of fraud and cargo theft. Because a lot of the cargo theft and illicit activity that we're talking about comes from this soft underbelly that the industry has created, where a lot of carriers can masquerade as

Regulation, Driver Quality, And Fraud

SPEAKER_02 18:15

uh you know dubious characters and using all sorts of technology to secure freight and steal cargo and present themselves as carriers that um, of course, they're not real carriers. So that's the sort of stuff we need to get much better at in the industry. And I hope I think 2026 is a year where we actually get a really good handle on that. So that's what 2026 promises. I'm not sure, you know, of course, that's remains to be seen if we get there, but shippers have got a really big challenge on their hands because I think they they sit here at the end of the year thinking, well, this they might be breathing a sigh of relief, thinking, well, our worst fears didn't materialize, but we're really not sure where we're gonna land next year. We just hope things get a little bit better. Um, and and again, they don't know um if tariffs are going to be on again or off again, but I think they probably feel more like things are going to improve than get worse, but they're still not at a point where they're going to be thinking they're going to be hiring more people and doing more. They're in more in a in a wait and see mode. And of course, that means that the people that make more freight that goes on our trucks aren't in the do more mode just yet. That's where we sort of sit at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

And I know we talked about this a little bit, but are there external pressures like global trade shifts, infrastructure disruptions, regulatory changes? I know the government shut down, threw some loops in there, but is there anything that you think the industry is underestimating when it comes to those bigger external pressures?

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Um underestimating is an interesting one. I think part of what we've just been talking about, I wouldn't underestimate the potential impact of some of these regulations that the government's talking about. I think that could have a big impact. The um the Department of Homeland Security is actively having audits of all trucking companies in California right now. We are seeing that impact some lanes as it relates to uh um truckload capacity out of some freight markets. I would not underestimate that if I was a shipper sending out um RFPs for some lanes. I think that's something you have to watch. Um I also watch um the impact of uh mergers in the railroad industry. I think there's some, you know, anything that where the talk of uh mergers and transcontinental rail, I think that's a potentially big issue that could offer some advantages for some shippers in particular. That will impact the trucking industry. But it doesn't also mean that if you have a transcontinental railroad, that you'll also see cost advantages because less competition doesn't also mean cheaper rail rates necessarily. That's not all not always a given. But there's also a big push to avoid anything to do with Chicago because it's being such a massive rail hub. So I think that's something I would be looking at on the international side because so much of our international imports have been built around freight coming into Los Angeles

Rail Mergers And Network Effects

SPEAKER_02 21:20

and then being railed to Chicago and Kansas City and Memphis and other ports like that. So that's one thing I'd be watching because of the um cost advantages of uh shipping freight to the West Coast.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

And so one of the reasons why we love having you come to the economy panel at Elevate is because I feel like sales and marketing professionals need to be paying attention to what's going on in the market too. And we always don't customize that type of language or information to sales marketing professionals, which is what TMSA is all about. So shifting gears just a little bit, how should sales and marketing professionals be interpreting today's freight data and then using it as a guide for the conversations that they're having with prospects, with customers, putting in their messaging?

SPEAKER_02 22:07

It's a great question. I think um, you know, the market is soft now, um, and it's kind of been a shipper's market. Um, but I wouldn't be, I think that's a false sense of security. I I still do see some shippers playing the market down, and I think that's a dangerous game because you're gonna end up in trouble at one point. Um I think the market the market is going to turn based on historical trends. I'd be asking questions to determine you know what shippers' pain points are and how you're going to solve those. Um we did a survey um a little while ago with our shippers, and uh it was pretty clear that shippers were um starting to talk about

Sales And Marketing: Rethinking Shipper Needs

SPEAKER_02 22:53

um buyer beware. They were they were very interested in um talking about carrier survivability, which I thought was fascinating. We hadn't really seen that because um uh they were talking about things like uh uh that was one of the things they said to us was very interesting. They said, stop talking about the driver shortage, you know, like so it was a very interesting point because that doesn't resonate at all with shippers anymore. Right. And I was struck because when I first came to the United States in 1996, um I met with the CEO of a large truckload carrier who said, we've kind of invented this driver shortage narrative because we tell our shippers at 9:30 in the morning we don't have any more trucks, because that creates the idea that we don't have any capacity and we're going to keep rates high. And of course, that driver shortage narrative lasted for many, many years, and and now they're being called on it because it really was never about driver shortage, it was about driver retention. And um, and of course, that's created a whole raft of problems as we're now reading about um that we're seeing that the problems of it today with too many drivers in the marketplace. And and of course, shippers have now realized, I think, that the driver shortage narrative really wasn't about a net driver shortage. So I think that's one thing you'd you'd want to be uh not talking to about uh shippers, but what shippers are now realizing is it's more about carrier survivability. And one thing we've seen with shippers is they're very concerned about having the enough capacity to meet um their volume demands on their core lanes next year. So the what thinking about data and how you interpret um what you need to be thinking about next year, the hardest part for carriers has always been um for them, there's always been someone willing to haul it cheaper, right? And I think um that's that's going to be a different story next year. I think you're gonna see that become less um, and while while there's all been there's while it's you know there's always been this idea of run it cheaper, um uh you're also buying risk when you do that, right? And I think we're getting to a point now where shippers are starting to realize that. I think they still care about cost, um, but but the sentiment from our survey that we did with shippers is they're less interested about chasing uh rock bottom rates, and they're now focused on working with carriers who still want to be there when it counts. And I think that's going to be the story of 2026. So to sort of answer your question about how I'd interpret data and work with shippers, I think that's where the discussion needs to be with marketers in particular, is um the viability of the carrier is very, it's not just about the rate. It's like, will you be there when it counts? Right? Because a rate is one thing, because I can assure you that there are so many carriers out there now that are on the edge. They are struggling to get by. 2024 was a really tough year. 2025 has been even harder for these carriers, and we are projecting rate increases of low single digits. Their costs have gone up far higher than rates went up this year. So a lot of carriers have really been asking for rate increases this year. They haven't got them. Um, rate increases on our recent RFPs and bids that are coming in right now, based on recent rate discussions, are coming in 2% lower than the rates they were replacing from last year. So carriers aren't even getting rate increases in the last few weeks. So if you're not getting rate increases now, it sets up a scenario next year where it makes profitability and survivability even tougher. So for shippers, that means that you've got to be really careful that the capacity that you're working with is going to be there, let alone what the rate is that you're negotiating with. So that's you've got to be thinking about how you work with your capacity because the rate is one thing, but it could cost you a whole lot more if that capacity just fails to even exist next year.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

And in terms of like sales teams, I know you said you know, the narrative around the driver shortage isn't what the shippers are interested in hearing about. Is there anything else that you find that salespeople

Beyond Transactions: Build Carrier Networks

SPEAKER_00 27:14

um are talking about that no longer reflects the market that they should shift their narrative around?

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Um yeah, I think the notion that um that they're you know overly transactional. I think shippers tend to be, there's an idea that people that build products in the market think that shippers are super transactional. I think they're not. Um we we've tended to see products come in the market that um, you know, think that shippers want to race out and dump a whole lot of freight into the spot market. I I just don't I don't see shippers behaving like that. They're they're more longer-term players, they have more repetitive long-term freight needs. That doesn't mean they don't, they're not opportunistic, and when they have surge volume, they might have a need to use the brokerage side of their business or use API carriers to you know find test the market. Um, they're just, I just don't see that. They're a very different type of market um player. So that would be the one thing that I see that people overestimate is the amount of transactional needs that shippers have. I think the other thing that um that they tend to not appreciate is the amount of uh drop and hook freight that shippers that they have. You know, it's a it's most of our contract freight in DAT's business is all drop and hook freight, whereas our spot market freight is all live load. Like there's a very clear distinction between the two. And I think a lot of people appreciate the different worlds that that we operate in.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

And then I know you talked about this a little bit too, like right now it's all about the shipper and what they want, but you know, they can't just assume that's the way it's always going to be. But for our carriers, for marketers who are kind of struggling with this when the market is sluggish, uncertain, what do we then highlight in our marketing? What do we put out there? What themes, what insights should those marketing teams leverage to differentiate themselves and build that trust? Because it's not always transactional, it is about relationship.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

That is a really good question. And I think I would say to you, think more like a carrier, because in in the trucking world uh we tend to think transactionally. And in DAT, everybody thinks transactionally, they they tend to think one load at a time. Um and most shippers do too. Most shippers and brokers, brokers in particular, think one load at a time. That's not how carriers think. Carriers think network, density, utilization, uh, revenue, miles per tract a week. So, and and right down to an owner operator, he's thinking, how do I get home Saturday? Like it gets very simple. And and the question is like, how do I go from A to B to C to D to A? It's not it's not a rate per mile on a load. So when you're talking to carriers, if you're in the marketing business and you're working with somebody, it's it's not how do I, it's not how much can I get you, how cheap can I buy your truck to go from Atlanta to Phoenix? It's how do I get you to go from Atlanta to Phoenix for me today for that rate? And then how do I get you to Atlanta to Phoenix to Portland to Chicago back to Atlanta within my network and get you 3,000 miles for the week and get you home on Saturday? If that if you can do that within your network, you'll have me for life as a carrier partner. So that's how you because that's what carriers want, and that's where I think most people fall down, is because they don't think like the carrier. The carrier wants that partner, but he's he's loath to open up to you because he's worried that you'll use him. He he doesn't have the trust. If you can build the trust to help, if you can help him build that network of freight and meet his mileage targets, because what he's worried about is if you screw him down to $1.40 on that Atlanta Phoenix lane, he won't make it up to get his $3 target for the week. Because in your network, you may have a great paying load out of Portland back to Chicago. But nobody's thinking like that. Everybody's thinking transactionally one load at a time. And I think that's where the industry falls apart because you're leaving it to the carrier to chase that high value paying load from somewhere else in the network. And that becomes very hit and miss. And it's and that's why everybody kind of struggles and we worry about margin compression because we're trying to do it one load at a time. Whereas if you build network density with a private carrier network, you can actually make this really work because that's how carriers think. That's how a successful carrier runs his business.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Excellent. Thank you for all of that insight. I want to move it again just a little bit to talk about.

Wreaths Across America Logistics

SPEAKER_00 32:05

So it's um, I feel like because we're talking about the economy, it's always good to know today is the morning of December 2nd. So this episode goes live on December 3rd, but it's Giving Tuesday. And so we were talking and chatting before we jumped on about a um organization that we both care about and are involved in in our in our own ways, and that's Wreath Across America. And we're entering into the big two weeks of that organization. I have um been able to lay the wreaths one year and I'm doing it again this year. Really excited about it. But let's talk about your journey with it because you're about to embark on your portion of Wreaths Across America.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Yeah, second year I'm involved. Um, I went down to Arlington last year and I was kind of moved by it, moved by the fact that uh I was asked by people on social media to lay wreaths because they physically couldn't get there. And I thought that was fascinating. That through Facebook and Instagram, I could connect with people who physically were unable to get there to lay wreaths for their loved ones, people I didn't know. And um, and I was there for the trucking side of it and uh because some truckers I knew were veteran truckers. This year I'm actually connected with the Radio Nemo folks, and we're going up to Columbia Falls, Maine, where the wreaths are all manufactured, to the driver's lounge where a few hundred truckers will meet on Saturday night. Uh, Tyson Foods are doing a big catering event for the driver's dinner on Saturday night before. They all depart for 800 locations across the country with some 5,500 deliveries that will be then used for the wreath slaying ceremony across the country on December 13th. Part of which will be the 14 trucks that are all um wrapped in the uh livery of um each of the individual truck companies, and the drivers are all um veteran truckers, and they will be part of that convoy that drives to Arlington. Um that I I won't be I'll be traveling with them on the Sunday as we head to Arlington. I'll be flying down on the Friday, the 12th, to be part of the ceremony at the Pentagon and then going to Arlington on the um Saturday. I'll be also with um uh the the folks, um Brad Bentley and the crew. There's a big event um uh that's on the third on the Friday, actually, where a Kenworth truck is given to a military veteran trucker who's one of 12 finalists. He gets to receive a Kenworth truck um um as a and then that's his truck then that he gets to take away from Arlington as a driver for the rest of the year. So there's lots of things that are military driver focused that go on in Washington outside of the wreath laying ceremony. So it's a big event, but it starts this uh we drive up on uh Friday to Columbia Ford, it's about five and a half hours from where I am here in Boston. Um there's lots of uh there'll be lots of media coverage, but of course, the the big event is the convoy. There's 14 Chevy Tahoe's wrapped in gold star family livery. Uh there's 33 law enforcement officers that are on motorbikes that will lead the convoy. There's 14 Chevy Tahoe's wrapped in Gold Star families with gold star families in them, and then there's the 14 trucks that have all of their wreaths. Um, there are 540 boxes of wreaths, and there's 12 wreaths to a box, so you can do the math. Each of the trailers have that many wreaths, and then each of those trailers gets parked at different locations around Arlington Cemetery, and then all the volunteers uh go into Arlington and then they meet at the back of the trailers and they go around and put wreaths all over the cemetery um over the course of what will most likely be a very cold Saturday, the 13th of December morning.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Yes, I um got to lay the wreaths and volunteer two years ago. I couldn't, I had that day just unfortunately was booked last year, so I couldn't do it and doing it again this year. It is um one of the most just impactful moments that you don't realize. You know what you're doing, but until you do it and you stand there and you put the wreaths and you look around, you don't understand what that feels like until you're there. And um, it's I knew from that point it's something I would want to be a part of, and so excited that I was able to block my calendar. That's just what I'm doing now, blocking the day now, yeah. Um, so that I could be a part of it.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

And it's all voluntary, it's all everyone gives all of their services. Like so the the 200 trucks, there are there are trucks that have deadheaded um thousands of miles to be there in Columbia Falls, Maine this weekend to take freight another few thousand miles cross-country. And the people offering crosstalk facilities are all trucking companies that have donated their services. So all of this is donated. Like the to watch

Personal Lesson: Embrace Mistakes

SPEAKER_02 36:55

the logistics behind this is absolutely fascinating. So I'm looking forward to diving a bit deeper into this um this coming weekend.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Well, absolutely. Good luck to you, good luck to all of the routes across America. It is a lot, a lot of logistics and a lot of volunteers, which I know on a much smaller scale how hard it is to navigate a bunch of volunteer time too. So um excited to be a part of it in my small way, excited to hear more about uh your journey with it later on. Um, and that takes us to the last question that I asked everybody who comes on the show. And that's if you could go back in time and advise a younger version of yourself, and this could be anything, personally or professionally, when would you go back to and what would you say?

SPEAKER_02 37:35

Um, I was thinking about this a bit earlier, and and of course, if you changed anything, you wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't be here talking to you today because I wouldn't have made the same decisions or the same mistakes. So, in one sense, I wouldn't change anything, but I what I would change is I I would I wouldn't be as reticent to make um mistakes. I I would I would I would want to make more mistakes earlier in life. I wouldn't be as afraid to make mistakes. I think that would be my advice because when you're younger, when I was younger, I was reluctant to make mistakes and I was afraid of being embarrassed. That was my biggest holdback. And uh, because I'm I'm a hard-wired introvert. That may seem like a shock to you, but I I am a hardwired introvert, and and so I'm very reluctant to make conversation in public. So I'm very shy. So I uh I was very reluctant to ask questions for afraid of being embarrassed. So that would be one thing I would do very differently is not not be afraid to ask questions and be wrong, uh, because there's no harm in that. Uh you know, there's nothing horrendously bad is going to happen if you if you make a mistake. And I think that would be my advice to anybody is don't be afraid to be wrong. Ask those questions because the more questions you ask and the more times you are wrong, and the more mistakes you uh you make, the closer you will get to where you want to be. That would be my advice because it's taken me a lot longer to get to where I am because of that.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I love that advice. I agree. I think sometimes we are afraid of being silly or um looked down upon because we don't know the answer to something, but you're never gonna learn the answer. And sometimes we too often fill in the blinks with the answer we think is correct and it is not. So it's always better to get the right one.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

So I think exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Well, thank you so much for your time. Um, it's always a pleasure to chat with you and to learn more about what's going on in the industry. Um, for anyone watching the show, catch us next week where I will chat with Gary Cornelius. He's always a great fun one to use advice from and to hear from. I was like, I actually

Closing And Listener Invite

SPEAKER_00 40:00

know you guys know there because you guys work together for the economy panel. So it's great. And then anyone that would be interested in being on the show in 2026, you can scan that code. I realize it now says that we'll be back in September. We'll be back in January. We have um Gary's episode and then one more um TMSA HQ episode to end the year. But go ahead and shoot me an email or um comment on any of the TMSA stuff. We would love to get more voices on the show. Dean, thanks again so much for coming on and um I will see you next year. Thank you. All the best. Bye bye.