On Air with AirFreight.com
On Air is a short-form interview podcast from AirFreight.com focused on the fast-moving world of emergency freight and expedited shipping. We talk to people in the logistics and supply chain industry who deal with the pressure of time-critical freight every day.
On Air with AirFreight.com
The Real Difference Between a Broker and a Logistics Partner
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John Mark Peterson, one of AirFreight.com's top expediting agents, joins Kevin Carpenter to talk about what it's really like inside a traditional truckload brokerage, and why he left it behind. From "boiler room" sales culture to carrier accountability to what happens when a shipment is actually time critical, John Mark breaks down the differences most customers never see.
They cover the vetting process behind AirFreight.com's carrier pool, why "somewhat time critical" doesn't mean the same thing everywhere, and how a company built for the most urgent loads operates differently from a volume-driven brokerage. The episode closes with a fast round of personal questions on the On Air Gauntlet.
Chapter Markers
00:00 Welcome and introducing John Mark Peterson
00:41 Life before AirFreight.com: the truckload brokerage world
02:22 The "boiler room" sales culture
05:22 Broker liability and why the vetting process matters
06:40 Fighting on two fronts: customer and carrier
06:57 Why almost nobody is accountable in that market
09:47 Culture shock moving to AirFreight.com
10:32 How AirFreight.com's leads actually work
11:25 The AI chatbot story
12:20 How shipment updates really happen (or don't)
13:52 What "time critical" means at a volume brokerage
14:23 "You can pick up in 3 to 4 hours?"
15:36 Why some customers accept the risk anyway
16:15 30 hours late and nobody called
19:00 Telling customers when we're not the right fit
21:02 Company mindset vs. solo mindset
23:09 The On Air Gauntlet
Welcome to On Air with Airfreight.com. I am your host, Kevin Carpenter. I'm joined today by one of the top expediters here at Airfreight.com. His name is John Mark Peterson. John Mark, thank you very much for joining me today. How are you doing, buddy? Dude, I'm pumped. Thanks for having me on, neighbor. You're welcome. You are absolutely welcome. Thank you for coming. We thought that this podcast could use a little southern flair, and here you are. John Mark, go ahead. I was gonna say you're southern now. You live in Alabama. Yeah, that's true. We we don't want that getting out, but yeah, that is true. John Mark joined us in 2021 at the beginning of the year. Um he immediately excelled as one of the top guys here in terms of freight booked, customers handled. Um he really has demonstrated amazing work ethic and willingness to learn. I mean, he's probably our most uh our our most accomplished pupil. I'm very proud of him. Uh John Mark came from why don't you tell us what you came from uh prior to airfreight.com.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I worked at a um it was just kind of your run-in-the-mill uh truck brokerage, mainly full truckloads. Um you know, there's a dime a dozen. There's I mean, in in where I live alone, there's probably two or three dozen uh different offices, different brokerages. Um I I was able to kind of bring that over here. It's a little bit of a different attitude here though, than it is uh at at some of those places. You know, I when you're kind of in that community, you you meet a lot of people, obviously, who do it, and you know, stories get told and kind of share experiences, and they're all kind of similar. Um, you know, it's kind of funny, actually. I when we were talking about doing this, I was thinking back to like when I was over at that place. Um and it like that the whole attitude is is kind of different at places like that than it is here. And so like it's kind of a funny story. On on the guy who owned the one I worked at, he like he really wanted it to be like a Wolf of Wall Street office. And so he like Friday mornings, he would like pick someone out and they'd have to like dress up and they'd come in and for 15 minutes at the beginning of Friday, they'd do like a pump up thing, and you know, and it was but it was all it was all based around money. It was all based around how much money you can make. And the pump ups would be like, you know, let's go out there and get that money today, and there'd be like music in the background. But it was like like the the owner, like his his philosophy was he wanted it, he called it the boiler room. He wanted it to be like Wolf of Wall Street, you know, that scene where they're like they got the person on speakerphone, they're making a sell, and like they're all making faces, and like like that's what he wanted it to be, and that's kind of like the attitude on that side of the market. It's just sell, sell, sell, sell. And so it was like a pretty big switch coming from there to here, you know.
SPEAKER_01Would you say the biggest difference? Well, one of the biggest differences right off the bat is volume. Is that fair to say? Volume, what do you like? Volume of loads being booked, volume of loads being uh booked and you know, managed, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I I mean your your entire job is to sell the the handling of the freight after you get a sell at secondary, you know?
SPEAKER_01So looking at it's looking at our service more like a commodity uh versus uh versus what we do at airfreight.com, which is more of a service. I would say yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was that was that I'd say full truckload brokerages, like your average brokerage is a cold call boiler room. Whereas here it's like it's a service. We're providing a service. Which was good uh good for me. I I mean I if I if I didn't come over here, I was probably six months from jumping out of the industry. Um you know, you just kind of feel gross, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean I think that that's when people hear the word freight broker in general, I think it carries some sometimes negative connotations based on those types of those types of places that you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00Definitely, definitely.
SPEAKER_01And I think and I've never I've never been in that environment, but we you and I have talked at length, you know, especially when you first started, uh, about, you know, again, like you said, it's all about making that sale. And the the big difference is you're not selling anything that nobody else is selling. You're you're literally offering the same trucks, the same um horse, you know, low quality service that the other 10 freight brokers in the area are offering. Um so it's a red bottom for price-wise, is what I'm getting at.
SPEAKER_00And and it's actually gonna be interesting, you know, they like they passed this this bill now, or the courts came down with this ruling um about like trying like you have to a broker be can be held viable uh for negligence. And I was thinking about that, and man, like we're in a good spot here because we are if there's one thing we're not, it's it's negligent. You know, we the vetting process is crazy here, and like we have like a pool of carriers that we work with, right? Uh and we've worked with for you know 10 years or something. But like I was thinking about all these guys I know who work at these other brokerages, and they've got to be terrified because there's there's just there's no vetting. Um if you don't mind, can I can I kind of go into like what's interesting or what's different, I guess maybe like to like pull the curtain back a little bit, is like so at these at these brokerages like that, it's like they're put they all do the same thing. They all use the same load boards, they all it they all post on these load boards and they all have the same carriers calling. Like they're looking at these load boards and going, oh, so and so also has this load posted, they must be talking to this customer. They they have full they see all of that, and so they're fighting to get these, you know, oh, I gotta be $50 above this guy, and then that guy sees you and they're like, oh, I gotta be, you know, and so they drive the price.
SPEAKER_01You're fighting on two fronts, right? You're fighting on the customer front, trying to trying to be the lowest price, and then on the on the on the carrier front, you're fighting to be the the broker that the carrier is willing to give their truck to, to you.
SPEAKER_00So you're fighting two fronts. And these carriers are playing that game too. They see, oh, so and so they're calling all the brokers that have it posted and trying to get a little bit more money, you know, and so like the carriers and the brokers all see all this, the customer doesn't. And so, and you know, another thing too is like they'll just go, it's like, oh, we just need to sell. We don't care if it's you know a bad carrier or whatever. And um, if the carrier, uh, you know, on the flip side, there's so many brokers these carriers can get loads from, they can do a bad job, they can lie, they can be dishonest, they can not just not show up, and like it never affects them. There's just there's so many brokers.
SPEAKER_01There's so many other brokers that will award a shipment to them.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And the same for very little betting with very little uh due diligence. And the same with brokers. You know, there's so many carriers out there that they're using on these load boards, they can they can be dishonest to a carrier, and you know, so what? They never have to use them again. Um yeah, so that that's what's interesting. It it it is like like that's the biggest difference, I think, from like having like a group of guys you you've cultivated over years and work with, they know us and we know them. And so it's it's like that is the biggest difference because you've got if you've got three people in the ladder, if you've got the customer, the broker, and the carrier, and there's a thousand carriers and a thousand brokers, they can be dishonest and not do a good job, and it'll never affect them. There's just too many more people to choose from on either end to that. Whereas here you're held accountable a little bit more because of the group of guys, you know, we all know each other. You word would get around if we treated carriers bad, and word would get back to us if carriers were dishonest, you know. So sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, in fact, uh Todd Anderson and I did a podcast at length about the airfreight.com, you know, our vetting process, but then our carrier selection on an individual load. We got, you know, we drilled down quite a bit on those relationships that we have formed with these carriers over the years, which is like totally opposite of what's going on in what what we call truck load brokerage. Right. Yeah, so that's that's cool. And I think it's interesting how you, you know, you joined us at airfreight.com because you were one of the brokers that we, you know, talked to once or twice, and we trusted you with some loads there, and you did a phenomenal job, and something about you stood apart, and uh, you know, one thing led to another and we brought you on. So let's talk about the biggest, you know, the the culture shock, you know, that you probably kind of felt when you came over here. What what would you say right off the bat, just doing the job, what are the biggest differences?
SPEAKER_00Um, the the serve like we talked about earlier, the fact that once you make a sale, it's not done. You know, like it's uh a bigger focus is on doing this, doing our service and doing it well, more so than getting the sale. You know, um one thing that that as a company, Air Freight's done really well is like cultivated the sales pipeline. So it's like the the service is more important than the sale, you know, because we're not having to make 60 cold calls a day to go out and get these guys, you know, and so it's like it's like look, we've we've we've narrowed this down, this pipeline down to where we'll get you the work, you just have to do it well, you know. And so that that changes, it kind of changes the whole dynamic of how we do our jobs, which is Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And to give our inner our listeners some insight, our leads come from people who are looking for our service. Right. Our leads come from the major search engines, and we're well positioned to be the top options that the customer sees whenever they're in that time critical freight situation. They see our five-star trust pilot rating, they see our well-designed website and you know, well-explained website that that details our services. They call our number, or they can submit a quote online, but they call our number. They don't experience a phone tree where they have to hit one to do this or two to do that. The phone gets answered by a human right off the bat, uh, which takes people off guard and immediately um adds a comfort level to the customer. I'm sure you've noticed that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's funny. It's like when we were talking earlier today, and I was trying to get in touch with the customer to confirm something, and we called and it was like an AI chatbot. Yeah. And we were talking about how frustrating that is because it's like they they couldn't even transfer me through to the person I wanted to speak with. I still haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_01You called your customer, your customer had an AI chat bot uh answer, and I listened to you talk to the chat bot. It was pretty funny. You weren't very nice to her. Well, she wasn't very nice to me. I still hadn't got a call back. Okay. So let me ask you this. In the truckload world, how much updating happens? How much, how much do the care do the does the broker um keep track of the carrier as they're as they're you know picking up the shipment, moving it down the road and delivering? And then, you know, in consequence, how how often does the broker update the customer?
SPEAKER_00So that you know, that's actually that's totally different too than what we do. So that's kind of a hard uh question to answer because it's like the way we do it here, you know, it's like if if a customer to call, if you answer, you're gonna you're gonna get the load covered with them. And then if they have any update needs or questions for you, they call you directly. You let them know when it's you know, you give them all the updates, it's all you um at these full truckload brokerages places. Part of it's because I think they don't want people, they don't want brokers to steal their customers and leave, but also part of it, I think it's just a cost-saving measure. But like they'll have like teams, and so it'll be, you know, like say me and you are on a team, and then we'll have someone, you know, you say there's a guy named Matt, he's our dispatcher. And so, like, we book the load and then we just give it to Matt and we forget about it. And then Matt, you know, will tell him maybe, maybe when it's been picked up, probably not. Really, his main job is to just like collect the PODs after delivery, but like they're not why he's not watching the loads. His main job is to just keep paperwork in line. So really, like nobody's updating. I mean, maybe a couple updates, but not many. That's totally secondary, you know.
SPEAKER_01How often did customers have shipments that were obviously time critical to them, obviously important to them, and they're using one of these, you know, run-of-the-mill uh truckload brokers?
SPEAKER_00Uh I mean, so to be honest, it's kind of it's kind of a different type of like just because of the nature of how it works, a lot of times it's not as time critical stuff. Um, also just because I think they know you can't really do it as a, you know, in that position. And so like occasionally you have something that's like somewhat time critical, you know, they need it picked up tomorrow and then delivered in a in a couple days. And like that would be considered probably somewhat time critical over there.
SPEAKER_01Um which is a big contrast to us because many of our many of our customers are calling for something they need picked up yesterday.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Which we can't do, obviously, but we can pick it up within a couple hours.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, and and so and it it actually is interesting, it's especially right now when rates are going crazy uh due to fuel prices, you know, like you have a lot of uh these brokers that can't keep they can't cover their loads for what they've committed to. And so we have calls from these customers who are like, oh, you know, I had a a broker fall off on this and we need need it covered. Um they're they you constantly kind of hear them go, whoa, you can pick up in three or four hours. Yeah you know, like they they they don't expect it, I don't think, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it doesn't seem like they put the same premium on their on their word and follow through. And I think it it's almost like it's this well understood um thing that, and I guess I suppose there's customers are savvy about this and they know what they're gonna get, but they also know that you know they have a budget and this shipment isn't necessarily a priority, and they just need to get this 40,000 pounds of freight moved as cheaply as possible.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you know, and there's some outliers to that, like, but not really. I mean, that's 98% of it. That's kind of what it is.
SPEAKER_01And so therefore, when the broker calls them back a day later or or even you know, two hours before it's supposed to pick up, or maybe sometimes not even at all, right? And then the truck doesn't show up when they're supposed to be there, it's less I mean, I guess the broker doesn't take that as seriously. As an expediter, as someone that's been in the expedited freight world, and that's the only side of the freight world that I've been in, I cannot fathom dropping a load on a customer that has that, you know, that has something set up with me.
SPEAKER_00I can't tell you. That's you know, that's funny because like I can't tell you how many times like I I had a I had people, they would like when I worked there, there'd be people and they'd just go, oh man, this load was supposed to pick up yesterday and the try and like they they never did it. And it's like yesterday, you're you're 30 hours past pickup time. How did you you're just now realizing this? You know, like it's in it's in it's pretty crazy. Uh uh like, especially from here, like that's insane. 30 hours late, that is all the time.
SPEAKER_01But it makes sense when you think about you know the volume mindset, the commodity volume mindset that these people have. So I mean, uh from a if you're a customer, if you're a freight customer and you're listening to this, know what you're getting into with uh, you know, with a commodity or a volume freight broker, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I mean, but sometimes uh look to be fair, I guess sometimes that's what people want. Like, you know, you got like steel kind of for instance was like like big steel steel, yeah, sure. Where they're doing 30 truckloads a day. Uh, you know, that's kind of what they want. They need just because of the amount of trucks they're shipping out, like every dollar counts, you know, when you have 30 loads a day.
SPEAKER_01And so, like, in that instance, one truck not showing up isn't right the same magnitude when there's 30, 30 trucks that are already leaving that place. Okay, that makes sense. Um when you're talking about the individual guys in that in that truckload broker environment, I imagine it would get pretty cutthroat.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Um I I mean it's constant stories about so-and-so stole my customer or you know, like these these brokerages, people leaving and um, you know, stealing customers and you know, whatever else.
SPEAKER_01It's um it's uh because it is an eat what you kill me, it is an eat what you kill, quote unquote, model where you know you're you're making commission on the loads that you handle. So therefore, this is this is your money, and and then this is this guy's money, and you guys are trying to make as much money as you can in that in that setup.
SPEAKER_00And you have different managers like like managing different teams who also get paid off of what their sales guys do. And so like these managers will somehow try to like you know hide stuff so that they their guy makes more money, so they make more money. I mean, that's like in inside the company, which is interesting. So you've got like a lot of guys inside the company, managers and sales guys who are like, you know, trying to to back in somebody and steal their customer, and then the manager will try to go to bat for their guy after they just stole someone's customer because that's good for them, you know.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. That's a perfect segue into if we could just briefly talk about um when you started with airfreight.com, what what did you notice that was different about that? And I'll and I'll talk a little bit first. Yeah, you know, we had Steve Janssen on earlier uh on an earlier episode, and we talked about how far we've come as a company in not just our technology, but also figuring out where we fit in to this freight equation. Um so we didn't, you know, the things that we're talking about right now where we, you know, we openly are willing to tell people, hey, you're probably not our customer. You're probably looking for a volume truckload provider, you're probably looking for a partial load, you're probably looking for something else that's not us. We are here for the most critical load, the one where if it fails, there's a problem, there's a major problem. And therefore, the premium that you're paying for our service is is is kind of well worth it. So we it we didn't just know that right off the bat. Um, we figured that out. We put together our best practices, we put together a very good technology stack and processes and all that jazz before you came, before you started with airfraight.com. Um, so when you started, it was very much like, and and this is why you know you're you're special to me because we just downloaded all of this stuff that we had, you know, um learned over the years and figured out, and we downloaded that to you, and you were the perfect guy to take the mantle on that because you came from this boiler room um mentality, this boiler room setup where you were willing to just hit it hard um because these leads that you were getting were you know way better than the leads that you know you're gonna get in that environment. So here's where I'm going with this. We didn't just throw you to the wolves either. We didn't just say, hey, you know, do your thing. Yeah, I would say, you know, we we spent a lot of time, and and what I'm getting at is the culture here is like night and day different from a truckload broker. Can you scarce that at all?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, you know, I like like you we talked about, it's kind of like you eat what you killed there kind of deal. So it was it was very much so everybody was out for themselves. Um, and then you know, I came over here and it was like every it was like all hop on the phone with so and for the first, I mean what would you say? It was like three or six months at the entire day. I'm like, I'm I'm also talking to a coworker here and like getting their feedback and you know, and people billion questions, tons of questions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but we were happy to uh you you showed uh the hunger and the willingness to learn, you're very teachable, so we were happy to like be there for you, and I mean it's paid off, it's paid off for everybody, I would say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's much more of like a uh a company mindset than like uh the solo mindset. You know, it's like so you or Steve, y'all are all like still, like you ask me, hey, we're we're considering doing this for the company. Let's see how it affects you, how it affects our customers, how it affects me, you know, whatever, how it affects the company as a whole. What do you think about that? You know, which is cool. Like, because like really I'm just kind of a sales guy here, and like I like a or I and I handle the shipments. Like I'm I'm kind of just like the ground, like boots on the ground type of employee, you know what I mean? And so like it's cool that you guys, it's considered, it's like, hey, how do you think this would affect you? How do you think it would affect your customers? How do you think it would affect the company? And so like that's totally different than where I came from, you know.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, awesome. We appreciate you. We look forward to more uh more success, more more uh yeah, more success with you and as a company. So we are gonna wrap this up with what I like to call the on-air gauntlet. I'm gonna hit you with three rapid fire questions. I don't want you to think too much about it. I want you to just whip whip off an answer as fast as you can. Are you ready for the on-air gauntlet, John Mark? I don't think so. All right. Question one. What is your dream? I can't hear you. Okay. What is your dream vacation? Ooh, uh, New Zealand.
SPEAKER_00What's something you've learned from freight that applies to life? Uh, communication. Uh like being able to ask questions and trying to think for something, like think a solution through instead of just like, oh, I'm gonna go my way, you know.
SPEAKER_01What is your most controversial food opinion? Ooh, mayonnaise is horrible. Wow. It's horrible. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty controversial. John Mark, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much for being on air with airfreight.com.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you, man. Enjoyed it.