Nobody wants to haul “cheap freight,” but there’s value in knowing your audience when you’re putting on the salesman’s hat any small business owner inevitably wears. At this past Spring’s edition of the Broker Carrier Summit event, ICV Express owner-operator Ilya Denisenko did the unthinkable — literally offering to haul for a broker for free.
With just months with his authority, and brokers circling the wagons, increasingly demanding inspections and completely locking out new authorities, he found himself more or less shut out from working with all but two: TQL and C.H. Robinson.
He certainly wasn’t pleased with his options.
To break the ice with brokers, Denisenko did two things a little differently, and another downright backward:
- He began documenting his day-to-day business down to the load on social media,
- He emphasized his tracking and communications bona fides, and
- At the Broker Carrier Summit, he presented brokers there with his business card, emblazoned with a deal: 50% off a load over 500 miles. Under 500 miles: First load’s free.
“One of my things is, whoever you’re speaking to, put yourself in their shoes,” he said.
Denisenko was speaking as part of an Overdrive roundtable August 22 on building business for trucking’s down cycles with 2021 Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan of Silver Creek Transportation and Overdrive contributor and business coach Gary Buchs. The online event was supported by the now-combined companies of Bestpass, Fleetworthy Solutions, and Drivewyze, expanding on Bestpass’ well-known toll collections utility to offer safety, compliance and efficiency solutions in a single technology suite.
Owner-operator Denisenko was well aware of his business’s limitations. Brokers were seeing it for what it was, “brand-new coming into the industry while the whole freight fraud thing skyrocketed,” he said, “and brokers started extending” their requirements for age of authority “longer and longer.” He started opening conversations with brokers by illustrating how willing he is to participate in load tracking systems, and how quickly he communicates.
“If I order something on Amazon, I want to know where it is too,” he said.
[Related: ‘Stop dealing with brokers who treat you like garbage’: Broker Carrier Summit set for October]
And drawing on prior business experience hustling in the low-margin restaurant industry, he offered a free sample bite of the apple.
“I took my business card and I said the first load we do with you, if it’s over 500 miles, it’s 50% off, and if it’s under 500 miles, we’ll do it for free,” he said. The broker’s first question, always, was obvious — why would you do this?
“That’s where you get into the good conversations,” he said. “I’m here for long-term relationships. Even if I do it for free, it’s a small price to pay. It gets my foot in the door and shows them how I stand out from other” owner-operators.
In the end, nobody took Denisenko up on the free loads, but by the time he left the Broker-Carrier Summit, he had onboarded with “five or six” brokers, opening up new freight and lanes and jumpstarting his business. It was a gambit that works face-to-face, expertly executed by the owner, no doubt.
Today, Denisenko’s averaging more than $2/mile revenue, and pays himself a salary he set up to mirror what he was making before he went out on his own, when he hauled locally as a company driver. On top of that, he’s socking away profits to the business, too. Three-quarters of the way through his first year, he hasn’t used a load board yet. For more of a play-by-play on his business, follow him on social media.
Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes to compete
From Silver Creek Transportation owner Jason Cowan’s vantage with 40 trucks, bringing a little shock-value factor to putting yourself in the customer’s shoes can indeed set your business apart. Rather than focus on X load or Y lane or Z percentage of rate increase, Cowan more often opens a conversation with a shipper this way: “How can I help you? What do you need that I can do to make your life better or easier?”
He added, “We’re in transportation. People want solutions. Everyone wants to go home with their family and go to ball games. So just be direct.”
An open-ended approach to conversation more often than not “kicks [a customer] back on their heels a little bit,” he said. “Nobody’s ever asked them that.”
Cowan, especially, needs to be on his game with sales as he’s competing with brokers and 3PLs who might have nothing else to do but chase freight. How does he do it? “We throw them under the bus,” he joked. “We have to sell, ‘why would you want to be with us instead of them,'” he said. If Silver Creek has two loads it needs covered and only one truck, which customer gets the truck? “Always the direct customer,” Cowan tells them. “Always lean back on service.”
Another selling point: If you call Cowan at 2 a.m., he knows where the truck is. With a 3PL, “they may get them on the phone,” he said, but like as not “they have no idea” whose truck your freight is on.
[Related: Direct freight: Delivering a modicum of consistency in a topsy-turvy market]
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Finally, with all the talk about the superior service of mid- and small-size fleets, what exactly does that mean in practice? When he was an owner-operator, Gary Buchs made it a routine to attach his business card to the BOL, signing his name and leaving his cell phone number. “When I leave here, call me direct if there’s an issue. It can take an hour or more to get through the chain of brokers” if the shipper does have any problems, he’d tell them.
After a long haul, hitting the shipper on time can feel like a load off. After a long time in the cab, dealing with people at the warehouse who, let’s face it, might get some things wrong, it can be appealing to just cocoon yourself off in the truck, but Buchs thinks that’s a sales opportunity wasted.
“You don’t want to hide from your customer,” said Buchs, whether that’s hiding in the truck or refusing tracking requests in today’s world.
To get in with big shippers when his fleet was smaller, Jason Cowan said that, anytime a shipper told him his fleet was too small for them, he’d go ahead and give them his card anyway, saying, “if something happens, if someone drops a load or misses, give me a shot to cover it.”
With all that effort, sales, and service “I promise you, it will happen” that things break in your favor, he said.
All three panelists held no doubt that this market was tough. All three spoke about how trucking’s fraud problem has snarled broker-carrier relationships and given professionals on all sides of the freight game cause to be angry, to be frustrated. But Cowan, Buchs and Denisenko agreed that with careful planning and some study (Overdrive‘s long-running Partners in Business program could help), success in a tough market is possible.
If you’re succeeding in a time like the present, you’re among the best and brightest that move America’s freight, and bound for truly green pastures when the market flips.
In conclusion, Gary Buchs stressed the preventive maintenance that will keep you out of the repair shop, but also out of the hospital. “I’m seeing drivers losing their business because their health has deteriorated and they haven’t prepared for it,” he said.
Take care of yourselves, and keep pushing.
Register to catch the replay of the hour-long roundtable in full here.
[Related: How to recognize the high business risk of failing health]
Find more information on a myriad of owner-operator and small fleet business topics in the updated Overdrive/ATBS-coproduced “Partners in Business” book for new and established owner-operators, a comprehensive guide to running a small trucking business sponsored for 2024 by the Rush Truck Centers dealer network. Follow this link to download the most recent edition of Partners in Business free of charge.