When Logistics Goes Wrong | Ep 50

Brian: 00:00:00

On today's episode, we're going to go over what to do when you get benched as a brokerage. All right, man. Everybody wants to talk about the wins, the successes, the achievements. Let's talk about some of the things.

When logistics goes wrong, I'd say that's.

Justin: 00:00:23

More common than not. When we're comparing wins to losses, I think you're taking on the chin a lot more than you're actually to come out on top.

But you mentioned the losses and when it gets messy. Logistics is crazy.

And I think a lot of shippers, I'm sure you've heard this plenty of times, but a lot of shippers know we pay you to fix issues, solve problems. Solve problems.

Brian: 00:00:44

That's it, man. I think, you know, I've heard this, you know, time and time again, but if you want to make the most money, you solve the most problems. Yep.

And that's pretty much our business on a day to day basis. We are master problem solvers and that's the service we provide to our customers.

Over the past, I mean, not even several years, but like, even your path, like career in logistics, are there times that stick out to you that are, man, this was a very challenging time in the moment and you got through it. You look back at it, you're like, okay, like, I conquered that or I overcame that. What comes to mind for you, man?

Justin: 00:01:19

Yeah, there's, there's some big ones that still pain me, but me personally, I have a handful that stick out, but also some as a team, even since we started Veritas, there's a handful there as well. For me, this is something that I think we do a really good job of, more so last couple years than anything.

But any issue or problem, challenge, turn that into an opportunity. We preach this a lot to our team and we try to change that mindset where people lose their minds, like, oh, the world's caving in on me.

I'm going to lose my, I'm going to lose all my clients or I'm going to lose this client, this and that. And the fact of the matter is it's part of what we do.

There's so many things, and logistics is always evolving, but there's so many things that are completely out of control on the shipper side, but also on the carrier side that you have to roll with the punches. And I think that builds that mental toughness and the ability to overcome adversity when it does happen.

But one in particular, and I would love to hear from you too, I think I know A couple of years. But we had a client that was a food manufacturer, did a lot of proteins and we had a couple trucks with issues.

You know, claims we were moving some stuff. I would, wouldn't feed myself or my kids. But we had a pretty big claim when the truck got hot. It was refrigerated proteins. Yeah. Truck got hot.

We didn't handle it the best way. It was a 40 or $50,000 claim and it was the second one in like two weeks. So they put us on the bench. At the time was about half of my business.

And I was 25, 26 at the time. And I thought I was going to have to look for a new job.

But what I did, and you know, when your backs against the wall is I had a strong, very diverse book of business that forced me to go back to my other clients and really put that work where I was somewhat, you know, putting them on the back burner and them.

Brian: 00:03:07

Yeah.

Justin: 00:03:08

So the opportunity of, hey, you know, let's say I was doing 20k a week in margin. That's half my book. I'm thinking I'm back down to eight to 10.

Brian: 00:03:18

Right, right.

Justin: 00:03:18

But in the end, after, you know, four or five weeks, I was still doing the same amount.

Brian: 00:03:23

Yeah.

Justin: 00:03:24

That I was previously.

Brian: 00:03:25

Right.

Justin: 00:03:25

It's because I was re engaging with those clients that I had.

Brian: 00:03:28

Right.

Justin: 00:03:29

And what that showed me is like, yes, I lost half my book, but now I know what the real opportunity is. Instead of doing 20, you know, bumping up to 30, 40K.

Brian: 00:03:36

Yeah.

Justin: 00:03:37

By maximizing all the accounts that you have.

Brian: 00:03:39

And I think that's, I mean, you mentioned it, but I think even from like your work capacity perspective, there's only so much work that you can do in a day and you focus on the clients that appreciate your service and the, you know, that pay well and you know, you have the best relationship. Now if somebody. And I've been put on the bench or put on the back burner a million times. Right.

Justin: 00:03:57

If you haven't, you're not broke.

Brian: 00:03:58

Yeah. You're not, you're not officially a broker, but yeah.

I mean those scenarios re engaging with some of the clients that have been on the back burner, kind of like on the C list in your eyes and getting them back to that A list and building up that relationship, I think is huge. Yeah. I mean there's multiple stories where, where, you know, we had one of my best clients years ago.

We had like three late trucks in a row to a big time retailer and you know, the point of contact There was like, listen, if you're late again this week, we're going to put you on the shelf.

And literally it was, I'll never forget, a driver was going into Whole Foods in Cheshire, Connecticut and there was just around the time that Elogs came out.

Justin: 00:04:34

Oh boy.

Brian: 00:04:35

And the driver, oh my God. This was a, this was a driver that he literally got within 20 miles of the receiver shut down and he pulled off to the side of the road.

He said, you know what, my appointments at 9am we call him at 7:30. We thought he was good for delivery because he's only a couple of miles out. He said his clock doesn't start or his hours are running up.

He pulled off to the side of the road. Here we are. He was late to his Cheshire, Connecticut location at 9:00am I had to deliver that news of the customer and we got put on the shelf.

So how do you, Are you making.

Justin: 00:05:46

Calls on the side, like deliver the load?

Brian: 00:05:48

Yeah, I mean, I pretty much did everything I could to try to persuade this driver.

You know, I think it was right around the time the E logs came out and they didn't know the ramifications of what that meant if they were to, you know, kind of mess with their books or whatever. So it was very tough.

And I think you mentioned it because the piece about mental toughness and I think when things go wrong in logistics, like to me the qualifier in logistics has to be. You have to be mentally tough. To me that's just like table stakes to get in the game.

But you know, with that, that like, I think a lot of times, like, and I've seen it within our industry lately is things might happen or something happens that's very small and we have to have the ability to let it roll off our back and focus on the next thing. And having that mental toughness is hard.

Like you mentioned a few minutes ago, going back to these other clients and trying to build back up that book or build up those other clients to a sustainable level. Because at the end of the day, you said it, people get stressed out, they get worried. It, it's our livelihood, right?

So us, you know, brokering freight and putting our livelihood in a driver's hands, that's hard to do sometimes, especially when they, when they screw up. But you know, I love that piece you said about, you know, going back to other clients and reengaging with the process.

Justin: 00:06:56

Well, I think we won't get into this today, but maybe another topic we'll discuss and the importance of diversifying your book of Business.

Brian: 00:07:02

Yeah.

Justin: 00:07:03

You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. We've seen that. God, you can't count how many times.

Brian: 00:07:07

One client and that's all. And then all of a sudden we, you know, they lose it or whatever. Yeah.

Justin: 00:07:12

And then our unemploy or moving on. But I am curious, like, what'd you do with that client? Did you.

And I think this is like what people want to know and like you learned through your experiences whether you learned the hard way or not.

Brian: 00:07:24

Yeah.

Justin: 00:07:25

Like, how do you handle those types of issues and how do you bounce back from it?

Brian: 00:07:29

I mean, I think it was hard.

Justin: 00:07:30

Right.

Brian: 00:07:30

I mean, when you look back at it, it was, you know, my best client at the time. And to me, what saved that partnership was the deep connection and the relationship I had with that client. So yes.

Was our service very shitty at the time? It was. And we had three or four late drivers in a row and unfortunately that happened.

But the relationship that I had with the points of contact and, you know, the track record before that saved us. So three, four weeks later, they gave me an opportunity to get back in, start moving some shipments again on the spot board.

We did that and we did everything we could to make sure that, you know, drivers were on time and we were picking up loads on time and all that. So.

Justin: 00:08:07

Have you ever filled out a corrective action form?

Brian: 00:08:11

Yeah, it's funny you say. Yeah, filled one out. Yes. Created multiple also. And yes. And we had, I mean, hell, even a situation last year where real quick.

Justin: 00:08:20

For people that are listening, what is it?

Brian: 00:08:22

Corrective action form is, you know, what steps am I going to do or what steps are we going to do as a company that we're taking to help out the client and service the business. Right.

Justin: 00:08:30

Here's the issue, here's how we're fixing the problem.

Brian: 00:08:32

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. The situation happened last year where one of our best clients, we had an issue with trailers getting rejected at the shipper often.

So we have an awesome operations team. They went in, they got the situation handled. Now we have a step by step process and we alleviate, alleviated all those issues.

So unfortunately, it's not easy when you're going through it. But at the same time it's. I look back at it now, it's like, oh man, I'm. I'm glad I went through some of those scenarios.

So we know how to handle the adversity moving forward.

Justin: 00:09:01

Absolutely. I think that's part of what we do is like if you're just status quo and you're not improving on certain, you know, departments or processes, then.

Then you're never going to grow. And I think that's the beauty. If you change your perspective on what we do and how many issues and all the BS that you deal with.

Brian: 00:09:16

Yeah.

Justin: 00:09:17

The way you get better is by getting your teeth kicked in and, you know, punch in the gut and sometimes learning the hard way. Like, you may have setbacks, but how do you use those setbacks to propel yourself forward?

And I think, I think one thing that you do very well, it's become part of our culture and the client experience overall, the number of clients that we have, we all want to make sure that we're giving them the same client experience, regardless of the size, regardless of volume. Yes. But you're going to gravitate towards those top clients who are paying their bills and they're putting up revenue, investing in the company.

Brian: 00:09:50

Yeah.

Justin: 00:09:50

One thing you do very well is engaging with those clients.

You're not necessarily managing their account from day to day from an executive standpoint, managing those clients and staying involved and making sure they have a lifeline besides their account manager that they can reach out to and make sure things are online, issues are being handled, whether there's a claim or invoicing issue or, or we had a service, whatever it may be. But I know there is one example. We had a client down in Louisiana or Arkansas.

Can you elaborate on that and how your engagement with them was able to fix an issue for one of our top clients?

Brian: 00:10:26

Yeah, years ago we stopped working with them due to a couple claims. Carriers stepped out of some claims, they went bankrupt. We were stuck with the bill. Our point of contact, his hands were tied.

So we stopped working together. And then after hell, 18 months of trying to get back in the door, we finally gotten back in the door with them and continued on that trend.

But yeah, I mean, it's hard, man. It's that those are the hard things.

And I think a lot of people out there are not willing to do the hard work and not willing to put in that legwork to re engage in the relationship.

Just like you mentioned a few minutes ago, it's like, okay, I could sit there and feel sorry for myself or I can go and get reengaged with these clients and try to build back up my book of business or continue to do work with people that we like.

Justin: 00:11:09

Absolutely. And we haven't talked too much about the carrier side, but networking with those carriers, invest in those carriers as well.

Brian: 00:11:14

Yeah.

Justin: 00:11:15

To build on that relationship that you have that partnership you have will help build that consistency into your day to day with your clients, with your carriers. Like they want consistency as well, for sure, just like we do.

Brian: 00:11:25

Yeah.

Justin: 00:11:25

I think one thing that I would encourage listeners to do, you know, if you're in this industry or even if you're just, you know, in sales in general, set up like a cadence with your clients.

Yeah, I call them temp checks, but whether it's quarterly, monthly, biweekly, you know, we have them with our, all of our top accounts, but you set those up, make sure that the right contacts are involved. But block off 30 minutes, maybe once a month or an hour, whatever it is, and cover certain items. Open feedback, transparent. What can we improve on?

Here are the outstanding issues. Here's where we're at with them. It goes both ways.

Give each other feedback, you know, hey, like I need faster response time on accessorial requests or whatever it may be, but also accept that feedback as well and put those things into action, whatever feedback it may be.

Brian: 00:12:13

No, I love that. I always feel like, man, I feel like we can always do a better job there. Right.

It's like we try to stay in touch with all the high level clients that we have.

I think you do a great job of this where you're using your calendar to remind yourself, hey, I need to check in with customer A, B, C and D, reengage with them or whatever that looks like. So yeah, I love that piece of it.

I think going back to your comment about the carriers, I think in our industry, yeah, we're the middleman between the shipper and the carrier and how do we make it as seamless as possible and how do we get these carriers to trust us and like us and want to do business with us over and over. And I think you mentioned it, but just treating them with respect and treating the carrier side of it with yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am.

Those are the things that go a long way more than anything else. I think, you know, we look at the trucking industry or drivers in general and they get disrespected all the time.

And if you can just be, you know, a little bit better than kind of the status quo and, you know, show them a level of respect and show them that they are valuable to our business, it will go a long way.

I have a scenario where one of our clients, they move shipping locations often and they'll ship out of Dallas and then a couple hours before pickup, it'll say, hey, you know, we actually need to go 200 miles south to Houston and with those carriers, relationships, very convenient. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's not the easiest conversation in the world. Right. You gotta build up that mental toughness.

But with that, you know, with the carriers that we use, often you'll go to them and say, hey, listen, I know this isn't easy, but we need you to go to Houston to pick up. And the carriers that know and like us and appreciate the business, they'll say, yeah, no problem.

Just pay me a little bit extra money to go down there, I'll do it. You know, we'd be more than happy to do that just to make things easier.

So, you know, if anybody's listening to the show, you know, take care of your carriers and treat them with a level of respect just like you would, you know, with customers. So. And we get it. There are carrier partners out there that are tricky and don't do the most ethical things from time to time.

At the same time, I think we have an opportunity in our industry to rise above that and be the better broker, be the better person overall.

Justin: 00:14:18

Yeah, it's a big buzzword and you just touched on it. But integrity, yeah, you have integrity, do the right things, regardless of how difficult that may be, and just over communicate.

I think what we do, yes, it's extremely stressful, it's very fast paced. But at the end of the day, you can always control communication.

So when you have issues, don't let your customer find out before you're communicating that with them.

But also when there is an issue, it's been discussed, it's been addressed, follow up, over communicate on the follow up and make sure that things are smoothed out. Here's what we're doing moving forward and here's how we're going to improve from that.

Brian: 00:14:51

So love it, dude. For listeners of the show, two things that you can do in our messy.

Justin: 00:14:56

Industry are over communicate in all aspects and stay engaged with your book of business, because once you let go of the steering wheel, that's when things get messy.