June 2, 2025 • 33 mins
What’s the key to maintaining a core competency in freight and succeeding for a multi-generational family-owned trucking business? Today, we’ve got an incredible guest, Pamela Polyak of Polyak Trucking, and hear her real-world experience, business strategies, and commitment to industry improvement!
Some Takeaways From This Episode:
- Strategic Company Focus: Polyak Trucking, a family-owned business, has evolved from milk delivery to specialized in dry van, reefer, and intermodal operations. Customer base diversification strategy—ensuring no client exceeds 25% of total revenue to mitigate risks.
- Business Development Strategy: Diversifying shipper relationships and maintaining a core competency in full truckload services. The Midwest is the main geographic focus, with flexibility for dedicated lanes. Avoiding service overload improves operational efficiency and profitability.
- Compliance and Education: Compliance with FMCSA and DOT regulations is becoming increasingly complex. Pam Polyak's consulting firm focuses on mock DOT audits and compliance education for small fleets, addressing common gaps and enhancing knowledge in regulatory requirements like driver qualification and drug testing.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Came back with a bank window down yelling now money anything Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm get to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them hate them Make a bigger boss hey.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What is up ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It is the Freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show.
(00:48):
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve so you can take this information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Monday everybody. I got a very special guest for you guys here today. Anytime somebody from the great state of Wisconsin wants to come on the show, I always want to talk to them because that's where I'm from. And frankly, you can't argue. We are the trucking capital of the world out there.
(01:16):
And especially when it comes down to family owned trucking companies and building those up over multi generations and everything that they've seen out there and what they've had to do to adapt over the years to keep their business growing and everything. So I have Pam Polyak with Polyak Trucking on the show today. Pam, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Happy Monday.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Happy Monday to you as well. And you know, it's such an interesting time out there right now. And you know, you guys have been around for a long time, right? Like multi generation. And you guys have seen a lot of stuff out there. But before we get to kind of any of that stuff, Pam, how did polyac trucking come about? How did it get started?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Back in the day, grandpa was a door to door milk salesman and then moved into ice cream. So those old like glass bottles. Oh yeah, I've got pictures of those. And then he moved towards ice cream. So we started with refrigerated. He would do ice creams to hospitals and those little styrofoam cups with the wooden spoons. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I love.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So grandpa did that. Then dad worked alongside of him for several years and then started changing into a little bit more of the intermodal fleet when I was very young and then moved into dry van type stuff. I would say at this point, probably 30 years ago, 25, 30 years ago, we really started hammering into dry van. So we've done reefer, intermodal and dry band as kind of some of our more key things. We've dabbled in flatbed and things like that throughout the years. But right now, reefer, intermodal, dry vans still kind of our niche per se.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Okay, so do you think that has led to sustainable success and growth? Is this kind of having that niche? Right. Because I feel like as an entrepreneur myself, you know, a young entrepreneur at the end of the day. I've only been self employed for five years now, but I see a lot of people jumping up and especially inside of transportation and there's, you know, you hear trillion dollar industry or 80 trillion, whatever they want to throw out there and people see a ton of opportunity and there is. But at the end of the day, how do you establish something like consistent revenue coming in when you're out there talking to people? Because obviously you're talking to other trucking company owners and stuff all the time. Pam, is it, hey, choose one thing and just repeat that till you're undeniably better than everybody else.
(03:46):
And then maybe look at changing.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well, I think we've learned a few things the hard way. One being we had a lot of eggs into a particular intermodal customer back in 08. And if you remember, oh, 8 was not exactly. We were headed knee deep into the recession, that kind of stuff. And so we took a hard lesson in 08 by having more than one or a customer have more than 25% of our overall revenue. So that's the golden rule we live on. Not necessarily the niche of what we do, but a wide range of customers so that not one customer could take us under if we needed to. You know what I mean? Or if there's something going on where they just were like, nope, just kidding, we're done using you.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Or that lane went away or that lane got receiver paid for now or anything like that. Whatever combination of things that happen throughout the year and RFPs and all that stuff. It's the golden rule of don't let any one customer be more than 25% of your total revenue. But we all Seen those messages and emails that you get like, oh, I specialize in. And then they list like 20 different things. Step Deck LTL Full Truckload Ocean freight. You know what, how do you specialize in every single one of those things? Like, I don't know. I don't know. They know the definition of specialized. So, I mean, I don't. I'm not out here bidding on LTL freight.
(05:10):
That's not what we do, you know, and so why would I saturate that market with something that I'm not educated enough on in pricing and how to make it work and make it even profitable for my customers?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
So we definitely stick to that full truckload realm of things. And it's been working.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. And. And that's what we do. Right. At the end of the day, it's not that we can't do ltl, but like, from a core competency standpoint and from me going on out there and really trying to develop business. Because at the end of the day, what you said prior to all of that is the thing that's constantly in my mind because I've been. Again, I haven't been in business that long, but I've been around long enough to know that you cannot have all your eggs in one basket. So it is that diversification of customer base. And I feel like that's kind of like where my business is right now. That's our main focus.
(05:58):
Because from a new business development perspective, right now it's been a little bit slower than I had anticipated to onboard new customers, but we've done a good job of keeping our operating. Like at. I don't want to say it's at 25%, but, you know, we have out of our six shippers that we work with consistently every single month, I'd say we have two of our primaries and then everybody else kind of filters in throughout the month like that. But we are actively working to get that at that 25% mark. Because, you know, at the end of the day, we can't go out of business because we got one customer and we stopped selling.
(06:34):
And one area that we have found a lot of success in the business development front hasn't been, hey, we're onboarding a ton of new shippers, but we're progressing down the sales cycle now because we have our core competency. Right. We are like, we're full truckload at the end of the day. That's what we do. 95 of our freight is open deck. Yes. We do some dry band freight because there's some natural bleed over that comes along with it. But we're not doing ltl, we're not doing intermodal, we're not doing ocean, any of that stuff because like from a repeatable, scalable build out for my business, when I bring in people to train them up, we need to replicate ourselves and we need to have that process kind of built out. And there's just so much opportunity inside of those niches.
(07:15):
So with you guys having your assets and everything. Pam, are you guys primarily running upper Midwest? All the Midwest. Do you guys have some core regions that you guys are primarily operating in?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah. So right now, Wisconsin obviously for sure, because we're based in Wisconsin, but we run a lot of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana. So kind of greater Midwest. We've done throughout the years dedicated freights to St. Louis area, to Nashville area, western Ohio. We were in Columbus running Avon products for years. We did that for a long time out of Zanesville, Ohio. So our niche is what we're willing to do and when we're willing to do it type thing. So my drivers typically are home every night, although we are quickly growing into a, or back to a one night overnight stand. Like hey, go there, sleep tonight, come on back. Go there, sleep the night, come back. So we had reigned people in, meaning were running more OTR probably from 2010 to 2015 or so.
(08:24):
And then as ELD started to mandate, were kind of decided, hey, there's a pretty good niche here between Chicago and Milwaukee market. Yeah, right now I'd say it's saturated. And so we are kind of branching out into other, more over the road type mentality, but not gone all week mentality. We'll. But if a lane comes up and dedicated and drop trailers and things like that, we're willing to kind of look at anything when it comes to what that dynamic looks like. And, and then it's finding the drivers that fit that. You know, there are drivers that need to get home every night and be home every night for their kids and wife and their kind of home life situation. And then we gotta find the right drivers that are willing to stay overnight, you know, and use that sleeper that they bought.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, I think a lot of the drivers that I talk to out there, whether they're owner ops or maybe it's, you know, they got a couple small fleet, you know, two, three trucks out there, they want to find that consistent business. Right. How would you advise somebody to find that direct freight Whether it's from a broker that has consistent lanes or going direct to that local shipper or somebody in their area where they can go and get consistent business to where they can keep their wheels moving.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Closed mouth doesn't get fed.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
If you don't, if you don't tell people that's what you're looking for, if you don't tell people that's what you need, that's what you would like, then how do they know the reality of like a random broker calling you up while you're sitting at a shipper saying, hey, I have this dedicated run, you know, and just taking a guess that you have the capacity, the willingness, whatever to do it, you start putting yourself out there and marketing yourself like, hey, I can do drop trailers or I'm looking for this specific lane every day, or I have regular backhauls out of this location. I can advertise the opposite. Whatever it is, it's just letting people know, it's building up that formula.
(10:15):
So what we do and have done for years is any broker that we work with, as soon as we haul a load for them, they kind of, they go on that spam list, right? That this is where our available trucks are, this is what we're looking for. But it also kind of cues in some of the marketing that says, hey, I'm looking for some dedicated backhauls out of Iowa, back to Wisconsin. That's what I'm looking for. I've got the one way with the customer, but now I want to get off the load boards as much and start trying to see if I can get another customer to match that lien. And that's where just my dispatchers, my customer service person, they're all responsible for making sure that those follow ups happen. And then keep those conversations going like, hey, we're still looking for this.
(10:53):
You know, we're always looking for the Milwaukee to Chicago range and backwards and forwards. And sometimes you have more outbound than you have inbound and sometimes the opposite. So you just gotta keep telling people what you need and what you want and what you're looking for and what your niches. You wanna be the carrier ones to California every week. Cool. Say it. Yeah, there's a lot of people don't want to do that late. So go ahead and say it. If you have a special niche of okay, I can do drop trailers, I can give you a couple drop trailers. Well, that's very beneficial for a lot of people. And then being a one to Even five truck ratio, that's not very common that they're able to do drop trailers. So advertise that. Make it, yeah, make it sound beneficial to them.
(11:34):
You want to be their asset, their problem solver, you know, and if that's what they need, then let them know so that they, you guys can connect on the freight.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
No, I'm right there with you. And I feel like whether you're a broker or a carrier, like, you have to know what, like why you're calling people. And I feel like back in the day when I first started brokering and making sales calls, you could kind of be a generalist, Right. You could kind of be like, hey, we can go out there and you know, do whatever. And now I've just seen almost like a seismic shift of. And again, this is just coming from somebody who actually prospects every single day. The receptiveness from my, the peep, the shippers, everybody answering my calls, vastly better. When I'm like, hey, we do this, we'd like to run this region. This is where. This is kind of our specialty.
(12:22):
And they'll, they will, they'll trip you up a little bit and be like, well, do you guys do ltl? No, we don't. Because I tell them I don't do ltl. And they're checking you on that stuff. But again, we know what we're trying to build and it's seemingly plug and play kind of on the asset side as well. You have to know what you want to do out there because otherwise like no one's going to come find you. And I think like, that's the, A very big fallacy out there in the business world inside of transportation is because you started a business like all of a sudden all of this revenue is just going to come your way without actually doing anything to get it. And then once you do find it, you got to keep it. Right.
(12:56):
And what you said there about the load list that comes on or like your truck list, about letting your, you know, the brokers and everybody else know where your fleet is. I've actually seen a massive regression in that over the years that used to be kind of common where like, hey, here's our fleets now. I would say we have two trucking companies that send us one in a week. And it used to be like 15 a day. Yep.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
But that's where you ever, you ever heard the phrase don't stop doing what's got you to where you are? Yeah, it to me It's a little bit more of, you know, like write the thank you card. Don't just send the email, see if you can mail it. See if you can actually write out a thank you card. And it's the idea of like still doing things that got us to where we are. Yes. It's outdated. Yes. Some of the responses are like, make sure you're posting to our load board. Well, yeah, all these 150 brokers that are on this list all have, I would say most have their own app now. Have their own load board, have their own whatever. Do I have the capacity to have my dispatchers sitting there for hours posting to all the different individual load boards? Absolutely not.
(14:03):
Absolutely not. So the people who respond to those emails are the ones we want a relationship with. Right. There might be some that we don't hear from and there might be some that are just few and far between. There might be some that respond saying, I don't have anything right now, but I'll keep it in mind. And those are the ones that we care about. I would say probably 25% respond.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
To the emails. And then there are a lot, I'm sure that just delete it and it gets sent to the spam box. But it still works, it still gets the job done. So I'm not going to have my team stop doing it. Is it the most ideal? No, I mean, I get where they're from a broker standpoint, they would much rather us go onto their lower board and hit the book now button. But call me old school, I want the relationships. I want somebody to respond to the email. I want them to know that if they've got something out of Milwaukee, they can call us and we're going to answer and we're not a robot and you know, we're not clinking and we're going to have a real conversation about what the rate looks like, you know, and that's a key part too.
(15:06):
I hate those book now buttons.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I am old school like that as well, Pam, because like I want to know how many trucks are in your fleet. I want to know when you're available. And we let people know like, hey, we have Daily Weekly freight out of this market. The next time you're coming back, hit us up, let us know about that. And again, I mean, we got probably five emails this morning from carriers. Hey, I'm going to be here this day, this week. And again, it's top of mind for us because a lot of the freight that I see inside of my business is your technical spot market freight where it's last minute, it's same day. Even though I know there's a high probability I'm going to have freight out of this shipping location this week. It's all last minute.
(15:44):
Now who do you think I'm going to think of first? I'm going to go right to those guys because it's top of mind. They emailed us, hey, we're empty in this area. And so I just feel like it is kind of that closed loop capacity is really what you want to work for and brokers need to do the exact same thing. Once you have those carriers that are doing a great job for you, why are you even posting that load? Right? Why aren't you going direct to that carrier and letting them know? And we have our top five that we reach out to in every market that we ship. As soon as we see a load come about, boom. That that's just who we hit up and run with it.
(16:15):
Because there's just so much stuff that's going on out there right now with everything. And I kind of want to transition to that for like the back half of the conversation here is you know, making sure these carriers are compliant and when you know everything is legit. Right. Like why are you risking and going on out there and you know, and speaking of compliance, how are you guys staying in front of the ever changing rules and regulations that seem to be happen? I feel like that's almost a full time job now Pam, for most fleets out there.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yep, absolutely. And it is for me too. I mean one of the big things is kind of following some of the more key articles and that kind of stuff. People put out articles obviously like freight waves being one of them. Stay on top of some of the data that's getting put out there. Just following FMCSA Federal Motor Carriers, you know, their websites, their LinkedIn posts, following their kind of stuff. I love what they just did with the verification process for the new entries. I was excited to see that they're talking about doing that for all current carriers by the end of the year. I would love to see that happen. But staying on top of all of those different types of articles.
(17:26):
Yeah, it can be a full time job because especially right now with Sean Duffy playing and playing his cards and I believe he's a great fit for our industry. Staying on top of everything he's doing right now and him just kind of eliminating those 50 laws where some of the, some of. If you go through and read the whole list, some of them are quite entertaining where it's just like this is old language. It doesn't even, it doesn't even make any sense.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
But that also means that there's probably going to be some new stricter laws coming down the pipeline, which I hope will be the benefit. Our president had stated that 10 to 1 ratio, you get rid of 10 laws, I'll let you have a new one.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And so him getting rid of 50 last week is certainly going to, my opinion would trigger some new laws coming in, but hopefully it's to the benefit. I really think him going back to reinforcing the language barrier law is going to be a good move for some of these things. The verification process is a good thing, but staying on top of all of those ever changing things, especially with a new administration, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. You got to stay on top of it as much as you can. Find the articles, watch the podcasts, read the stuff and try and weed out the fact versus fiction.
(18:41):
I know some of it's very lawyer talk ish type stuff, but that's where it's like surround yourself with the right people who understand what it's saying, you know, because there can be a lot of those where you're like 395.5 RAB, what law does that say? And you just gotta work through it, but have the right people. A lot of times insurance brokers, they can be very helpful. Some of the bigger brokers I know have compliance people on staff. But now I also have the consulting business. So I started that to really help the under 10 truck fleet operations be compliant in their everyday things, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I mean, because like that's what I see. Again, I do say this often on the show. I'm like, hey, you're a business owner. It is on you if your business is not compliant. Right. Like you can't blame anybody but yourself in that situation. But again, I feel like the overwhelming majority, I would argue 95% of the carriers that I've worked with in my career are great people that just want to do the right thing. They work hard and they want to provide for their families. Right. And I feel like the, like with where things are now with vetting, onboarding and all of that stuff, some of these individuals that are out compliance didn't even know that they were out of compliance. Right.
(19:55):
Because there was another new rule that kind of came down and if somebody was like, man, I've been driving for 40 years. I have always done it, you know, so how. How do people, you know, set themselves up for success with this? And I mean, obviously I always like having individuals like yourself on the show because you got skin in the game, right? You have, you own trucks. You're doing this thing out there. So when you start a consulting business to go out and help that small fleet, you're the type of individual I always want to talk to, because you have to do this on your. Your front as well to make sure you're businesses compliance.
(20:30):
So, like, what's a common thing that you've seen so far, Pam, where you're like, this is kind of where everybody should start if they're looking at their compliance. This is what I've seen out of the people that I've talked to, where almost everybody's been, not aligned with where they should be.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
So here's how I always start. I start with a mock DOT audit.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
So they come in, we kind of have our first initial conversation. They answer just kind of some general questions. Do they even know what the FMCSA or the SMS scores are? Do they know that they need a driver qualification file? Some real basic 10 questions? It's on my website. It's just kind of to see where you would grade at during a rough audit. But then the first step of really digging in is doing a full mock audit. Do you have everything the way that the DOT would. Would require it in the setting? And here's your timeline. You've got 48 hours to do it, which is the same 48 hours or 72 hours that the DOT would give you. And that really gives me an understanding of where they're at and what they know and don't know. Are they more focused on?
(21:35):
Okay, they got everything perfect for the vehicle, but nothing for the driver files. Or they have everything perfect for the drug and alcohol, but nothing for the equipment. They don't, they don't even know that they needed a dot on the truck. I've seen that. One of the big ones that I've seen a lot of far too many, in my opinion, mainly because the DOT puts a lot of emphasis on it, is that there's not a lot of people who understand the difference between a clearinghouse and a consortium. Yeah, two different things. And you need to do both or you face huge penalties. And so I see that a lot. Like, oh, my God, I had everybody signed up for the clearinghouse, but I didn't. I had no idea. We weren't on a consortium. I wasn't getting a list.
(22:16):
I was sending them for pre employment but I wasn't sending them to the consortium or vice versa. They didn't even know that clearinghouse was a thing. But they've got the randoms on the consortium and it's like you need to have both. And there's. To your point, they're good carriers, good people providing for their families, providing for their driver's families and not even realizing that they're making a mistake until somebody comes in and digs into their files and figures it out. The problem is that nine times out of 10 it's the dot doing it and then at that point it's too late. You, you don't want to go to the DOT and be like, just kidding, I had, don't even know what the clearinghouse is. You'd much rather tell me that, like, let's figure this out together.
(22:55):
Let's be honest about where you're at and let's figure out how to get you to the next step and get this cleaned up as much as we can.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Is there like a checklist out there? I would assume that the DOT would have that on their website. Like, hey, here's these 20 items. You need to make sure this is all done on annual basis, otherwise you are out of compliant. But in my opinion it's the government, so that's probably not out there at all.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
They have, they have a checklist for like new entry and kind of the things that you need to do as a new entry, but it's not necessarily your ongoing, you kind of have to. What I found is you kind of have to know what you're looking for in order to figure out like if you know, hey, I need a driver qualification file. You can find the list of things that go on the driver qualification file. But if you don't know what to look for, where do you find it? And so that's literally where I come in. That's literally where it's like, okay, in 2020, all these guys went out, we had a bunch of owner operators and I helped them get their own authority. It was the new coolest thing to do. You can make six figures. Everything was great.
(23:54):
The world was, the world was round at that point. And so once I started realizing that they weren't doing it the right way or their brother's cousins, stepdad told them how to do it this way and you find out it's not right at all, you know, like, who told you to do that? Yeah, who told you that's how it's supposed to be? Or you know, things like your accident registry, your, you know, you're just guessing. Hey, do I need to send them for a drug test? Well, be careful because not all the time do you want to send them for a drug test. Can be more incriminating than good if you do it the opposite way. So it's teaching them how to operate in that realm when sometimes they have bad information.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
So much of the insurance world and in itself don't spend the time with the small carriers until they get to 10 or more. Yeah, well, you got to get through 1 to 10 before you get to 10, you know, and if you have got bad habits by the time you got to 10 trucks, the owner's probably out of the truck right now. They probably are inching towards an, either a dispatcher or an arap person or some form of. You got one to two people in the office or you're starting to get there. But if you've got bad habits in the beginning, by the time you get to the 10:15 range, now you're fixing things. But at that point you're probably on the DOT radar.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
As it is, you know, if you've got 10 trucks, there's probably things. Some things going on. So it's understanding and getting to them early rather than too late. And that's where it's. This whole thing started. It's like I didn't even know that because we've always from. I've been in this business for 20 years, but for the last 30 years we've had well over that 10 fleet trucks. So I'm like, how do you guys not have DOT audits? And then I've learned that it's like, no, they don't do the audits or the insurance people don't bring people in until they're over the 10 fleet. And it's like, well, wait a minute, how do we get from point A to point B? I feel like the industry in itself is missing this gap of the 1 to 10 truck operations and getting in front of them.
(25:57):
And as big carriers, they blow them off. Oh, they don't know anything. They don't, they don't get this industry. They don't know what they're doing. Well, why can't we teach them? We can't teach them.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I'm right there with you. And if people actually paid attention to data, Pam, they would see that I Believe it at least has an 8 in front of it. 80 plus percent of the trucks on the road are 10 truck or less fleets out there, right? So if you look at your sample size of potential opportunity, and again, most people chase dollars and they're like, oh, they don't have the money to do any of this stuff. So why would I go after them when I could go after this company who could actually pay it off? But they don't see the long game with that is if you want to go after somebody who has 15, 20 trucks in their fleet, maybe you should focus on helping the people in the 5 to 10 category get up to that.
(26:43):
And then you have a pipeline of business coming down your way. Because there is, there's so much stuff that is out there that is not at your disposal from an information standpoint. And again, it's everything you're saying right now, Pam, it gets me fired up because that's like 99% of the reason why I do this show. Because there is so much information out there and I don't want people to have to like go searching for all of this stuff where there's like, boom, there's an actual library of information inside of this podcast where it's not behind a paywall. There's enough people where you can reach out to them directly. You know, like, if I was a fleet and I was hearing you talking right now, I would want to reach out to you. Because I'm like, hey, Pam's invested in this.
(27:23):
She's a third generation transportation professional. Her family owns trucks. Still, she. I should probably listen to her than the person who's got a flashy Instagram page that might not have ever actually driven a truck before trying to sell you on some stuff, right? Because it's like, there's such an opportunity to put real, tangible education out there for people. Because I don't just want clicks. I want to make an impact on this industry. I want people to be like, damn, we listen to the Fray Coaches podcast. I learned this about my business and now look at where we've been able to go with that information. Because no one is like, there's no playbook to this, right? And then with today in social media and what it is, there's so much bullshit that's out there and it's compiling by the day.
(28:08):
And ultimately there's a bunch of people who are trying to sell you stuff that isn't actually legitimate. And it's like you do surface level research, right? Where it's like, oh, hey, they got a cool Instagram or they got this awesome TikTok. I should probably go sign up for all their stuff. And then a couple of layers and thousands of dollars later, you're like, wait, you never taught me anything. It's because it's a multi level marketing scheme essentially.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Well, you remember in 2012, well, this was big in my world in 2020, I would see all the time, oh, I'm offering a dispatch software. Oh yeah, I'm offering a dispatch class.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Like what a what? And then I literally had, and I won't say names obviously, but I knew somebody whose wife had set up this dispatch class and she was offering this eight hour session for thousand dollars. And I'm like, but you guys don't have your stuff, right?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Like you guys have only been in business for like two years and it was just the new cool thing to do. But that's where the misinformation is so easily found. You know, it's like, who's actually teaching you? Who's actually the one that's got the history behind you? You know, to me, and this is gonna make me sound kind of old, but like if you're post Covid, you have a completely different mindset than the people that are pre Covid. Yeah, we've been through some of this before and especially if the people who around in 0809 when the recession hit that time, like we've done the grit, we've done the hard work, those are the people you should be listening to, not the ones that, you know a year in or two years in.
(29:37):
And because right now we're in a really unsure time and I think everybody can feel it financially, but how are you going to make it out of this? And everybody's like, oh, let's wait till the rates go back up. Well, the rates going back up doesn't miraculously fix things.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
What if they don't though? That's one thing that I always challenge everybody. What if they don't go up?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
What if it doesn't change for the next six months or a year? Are you going to make it or are you going to quit? Right. Because like that's where I see a lot of this stuff. And that's what like really irritates me when I see a lot of these headlines and a lot of these posts that are out there. It's like, well, what if it doesn't you guys? Like, how are you going to feed your family if it doesn't? Are you Just gonna. Because like again, you could sit here and wait and wa. But is it actually going to change? I don't know if it, if it is right, like it could very well. The freight market today could very well look identical to this in 12 months from now. It very well could. Nobody actually knows.
(30:29):
It's all an educated guess at this point.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yep, Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Pam, I was gonna say I, I'm gonna have to have you back on. Like I could go for another hour with you minimum right now easily. But we will have to have you back on because like all my guests, everybody's got a day job as well. And how, but how does anybody reach out to you though to find out more about what you guys got going on?
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Well, I've got two websites. The consulting business, if you're interested in that from a small fleet operations is polyet consulting.com and then from a freight standpoint we have polyactrucking.com that's where the brokerage is based as well assets emails. Pam, polyactrucking.com I'm always open for a conversation and just kind of seeing where everybody's at and seeing what the, what's making their wheels turn and how I can help and go from there.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Perfect. Pam, thank you so much for joining me. That is going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. If you guys can't find her out there at all for some reason, hit me up. I will gladly put you guys in contact, but that will be it. As always. If you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. You guys, if you're feeling really ambitious after this one, which you should be. And you haven't ranked the show yet on itunes and spot rank it because if you saw value, your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Came back with a bank hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the blame was fast hey Let them all cross if they hate them let them hate them Make a bigger ball Hey.
Came back with a bank window down yelling now money anything Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm get to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them hate them Make a bigger boss hey.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What is up ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It is the Freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show.
(00:48):
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve so you can take this information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Monday everybody. I got a very special guest for you guys here today. Anytime somebody from the great state of Wisconsin wants to come on the show, I always want to talk to them because that's where I'm from. And frankly, you can't argue. We are the trucking capital of the world out there.
(01:16):
And especially when it comes down to family owned trucking companies and building those up over multi generations and everything that they've seen out there and what they've had to do to adapt over the years to keep their business growing and everything. So I have Pam Polyak with Polyak Trucking on the show today. Pam, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Happy Monday.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Happy Monday to you as well. And you know, it's such an interesting time out there right now. And you know, you guys have been around for a long time, right? Like multi generation. And you guys have seen a lot of stuff out there. But before we get to kind of any of that stuff, Pam, how did polyac trucking come about? How did it get started?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Back in the day, grandpa was a door to door milk salesman and then moved into ice cream. So those old like glass bottles. Oh yeah, I've got pictures of those. And then he moved towards ice cream. So we started with refrigerated. He would do ice creams to hospitals and those little styrofoam cups with the wooden spoons. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I love.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So grandpa did that. Then dad worked alongside of him for several years and then started changing into a little bit more of the intermodal fleet when I was very young and then moved into dry van type stuff. I would say at this point, probably 30 years ago, 25, 30 years ago, we really started hammering into dry van. So we've done reefer, intermodal and dry band as kind of some of our more key things. We've dabbled in flatbed and things like that throughout the years. But right now, reefer, intermodal, dry vans still kind of our niche per se.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Okay, so do you think that has led to sustainable success and growth? Is this kind of having that niche? Right. Because I feel like as an entrepreneur myself, you know, a young entrepreneur at the end of the day. I've only been self employed for five years now, but I see a lot of people jumping up and especially inside of transportation and there's, you know, you hear trillion dollar industry or 80 trillion, whatever they want to throw out there and people see a ton of opportunity and there is. But at the end of the day, how do you establish something like consistent revenue coming in when you're out there talking to people? Because obviously you're talking to other trucking company owners and stuff all the time. Pam, is it, hey, choose one thing and just repeat that till you're undeniably better than everybody else.
(03:46):
And then maybe look at changing.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well, I think we've learned a few things the hard way. One being we had a lot of eggs into a particular intermodal customer back in 08. And if you remember, oh, 8 was not exactly. We were headed knee deep into the recession, that kind of stuff. And so we took a hard lesson in 08 by having more than one or a customer have more than 25% of our overall revenue. So that's the golden rule we live on. Not necessarily the niche of what we do, but a wide range of customers so that not one customer could take us under if we needed to. You know what I mean? Or if there's something going on where they just were like, nope, just kidding, we're done using you.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Or that lane went away or that lane got receiver paid for now or anything like that. Whatever combination of things that happen throughout the year and RFPs and all that stuff. It's the golden rule of don't let any one customer be more than 25% of your total revenue. But we all Seen those messages and emails that you get like, oh, I specialize in. And then they list like 20 different things. Step Deck LTL Full Truckload Ocean freight. You know what, how do you specialize in every single one of those things? Like, I don't know. I don't know. They know the definition of specialized. So, I mean, I don't. I'm not out here bidding on LTL freight.
(05:10):
That's not what we do, you know, and so why would I saturate that market with something that I'm not educated enough on in pricing and how to make it work and make it even profitable for my customers?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
So we definitely stick to that full truckload realm of things. And it's been working.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. And. And that's what we do. Right. At the end of the day, it's not that we can't do ltl, but like, from a core competency standpoint and from me going on out there and really trying to develop business. Because at the end of the day, what you said prior to all of that is the thing that's constantly in my mind because I've been. Again, I haven't been in business that long, but I've been around long enough to know that you cannot have all your eggs in one basket. So it is that diversification of customer base. And I feel like that's kind of like where my business is right now. That's our main focus.
(05:58):
Because from a new business development perspective, right now it's been a little bit slower than I had anticipated to onboard new customers, but we've done a good job of keeping our operating. Like at. I don't want to say it's at 25%, but, you know, we have out of our six shippers that we work with consistently every single month, I'd say we have two of our primaries and then everybody else kind of filters in throughout the month like that. But we are actively working to get that at that 25% mark. Because, you know, at the end of the day, we can't go out of business because we got one customer and we stopped selling.
(06:34):
And one area that we have found a lot of success in the business development front hasn't been, hey, we're onboarding a ton of new shippers, but we're progressing down the sales cycle now because we have our core competency. Right. We are like, we're full truckload at the end of the day. That's what we do. 95 of our freight is open deck. Yes. We do some dry band freight because there's some natural bleed over that comes along with it. But we're not doing ltl, we're not doing intermodal, we're not doing ocean, any of that stuff because like from a repeatable, scalable build out for my business, when I bring in people to train them up, we need to replicate ourselves and we need to have that process kind of built out. And there's just so much opportunity inside of those niches.
(07:15):
So with you guys having your assets and everything. Pam, are you guys primarily running upper Midwest? All the Midwest. Do you guys have some core regions that you guys are primarily operating in?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah. So right now, Wisconsin obviously for sure, because we're based in Wisconsin, but we run a lot of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana. So kind of greater Midwest. We've done throughout the years dedicated freights to St. Louis area, to Nashville area, western Ohio. We were in Columbus running Avon products for years. We did that for a long time out of Zanesville, Ohio. So our niche is what we're willing to do and when we're willing to do it type thing. So my drivers typically are home every night, although we are quickly growing into a, or back to a one night overnight stand. Like hey, go there, sleep tonight, come on back. Go there, sleep the night, come back. So we had reigned people in, meaning were running more OTR probably from 2010 to 2015 or so.
(08:24):
And then as ELD started to mandate, were kind of decided, hey, there's a pretty good niche here between Chicago and Milwaukee market. Yeah, right now I'd say it's saturated. And so we are kind of branching out into other, more over the road type mentality, but not gone all week mentality. We'll. But if a lane comes up and dedicated and drop trailers and things like that, we're willing to kind of look at anything when it comes to what that dynamic looks like. And, and then it's finding the drivers that fit that. You know, there are drivers that need to get home every night and be home every night for their kids and wife and their kind of home life situation. And then we gotta find the right drivers that are willing to stay overnight, you know, and use that sleeper that they bought.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, I think a lot of the drivers that I talk to out there, whether they're owner ops or maybe it's, you know, they got a couple small fleet, you know, two, three trucks out there, they want to find that consistent business. Right. How would you advise somebody to find that direct freight Whether it's from a broker that has consistent lanes or going direct to that local shipper or somebody in their area where they can go and get consistent business to where they can keep their wheels moving.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Closed mouth doesn't get fed.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
If you don't, if you don't tell people that's what you're looking for, if you don't tell people that's what you need, that's what you would like, then how do they know the reality of like a random broker calling you up while you're sitting at a shipper saying, hey, I have this dedicated run, you know, and just taking a guess that you have the capacity, the willingness, whatever to do it, you start putting yourself out there and marketing yourself like, hey, I can do drop trailers or I'm looking for this specific lane every day, or I have regular backhauls out of this location. I can advertise the opposite. Whatever it is, it's just letting people know, it's building up that formula.
(10:15):
So what we do and have done for years is any broker that we work with, as soon as we haul a load for them, they kind of, they go on that spam list, right? That this is where our available trucks are, this is what we're looking for. But it also kind of cues in some of the marketing that says, hey, I'm looking for some dedicated backhauls out of Iowa, back to Wisconsin. That's what I'm looking for. I've got the one way with the customer, but now I want to get off the load boards as much and start trying to see if I can get another customer to match that lien. And that's where just my dispatchers, my customer service person, they're all responsible for making sure that those follow ups happen. And then keep those conversations going like, hey, we're still looking for this.
(10:53):
You know, we're always looking for the Milwaukee to Chicago range and backwards and forwards. And sometimes you have more outbound than you have inbound and sometimes the opposite. So you just gotta keep telling people what you need and what you want and what you're looking for and what your niches. You wanna be the carrier ones to California every week. Cool. Say it. Yeah, there's a lot of people don't want to do that late. So go ahead and say it. If you have a special niche of okay, I can do drop trailers, I can give you a couple drop trailers. Well, that's very beneficial for a lot of people. And then being a one to Even five truck ratio, that's not very common that they're able to do drop trailers. So advertise that. Make it, yeah, make it sound beneficial to them.
(11:34):
You want to be their asset, their problem solver, you know, and if that's what they need, then let them know so that they, you guys can connect on the freight.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
No, I'm right there with you. And I feel like whether you're a broker or a carrier, like, you have to know what, like why you're calling people. And I feel like back in the day when I first started brokering and making sales calls, you could kind of be a generalist, Right. You could kind of be like, hey, we can go out there and you know, do whatever. And now I've just seen almost like a seismic shift of. And again, this is just coming from somebody who actually prospects every single day. The receptiveness from my, the peep, the shippers, everybody answering my calls, vastly better. When I'm like, hey, we do this, we'd like to run this region. This is where. This is kind of our specialty.
(12:22):
And they'll, they will, they'll trip you up a little bit and be like, well, do you guys do ltl? No, we don't. Because I tell them I don't do ltl. And they're checking you on that stuff. But again, we know what we're trying to build and it's seemingly plug and play kind of on the asset side as well. You have to know what you want to do out there because otherwise like no one's going to come find you. And I think like, that's the, A very big fallacy out there in the business world inside of transportation is because you started a business like all of a sudden all of this revenue is just going to come your way without actually doing anything to get it. And then once you do find it, you got to keep it. Right.
(12:56):
And what you said there about the load list that comes on or like your truck list, about letting your, you know, the brokers and everybody else know where your fleet is. I've actually seen a massive regression in that over the years that used to be kind of common where like, hey, here's our fleets now. I would say we have two trucking companies that send us one in a week. And it used to be like 15 a day. Yep.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
But that's where you ever, you ever heard the phrase don't stop doing what's got you to where you are? Yeah, it to me It's a little bit more of, you know, like write the thank you card. Don't just send the email, see if you can mail it. See if you can actually write out a thank you card. And it's the idea of like still doing things that got us to where we are. Yes. It's outdated. Yes. Some of the responses are like, make sure you're posting to our load board. Well, yeah, all these 150 brokers that are on this list all have, I would say most have their own app now. Have their own load board, have their own whatever. Do I have the capacity to have my dispatchers sitting there for hours posting to all the different individual load boards? Absolutely not.
(14:03):
Absolutely not. So the people who respond to those emails are the ones we want a relationship with. Right. There might be some that we don't hear from and there might be some that are just few and far between. There might be some that respond saying, I don't have anything right now, but I'll keep it in mind. And those are the ones that we care about. I would say probably 25% respond.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
To the emails. And then there are a lot, I'm sure that just delete it and it gets sent to the spam box. But it still works, it still gets the job done. So I'm not going to have my team stop doing it. Is it the most ideal? No, I mean, I get where they're from a broker standpoint, they would much rather us go onto their lower board and hit the book now button. But call me old school, I want the relationships. I want somebody to respond to the email. I want them to know that if they've got something out of Milwaukee, they can call us and we're going to answer and we're not a robot and you know, we're not clinking and we're going to have a real conversation about what the rate looks like, you know, and that's a key part too.
(15:06):
I hate those book now buttons.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I am old school like that as well, Pam, because like I want to know how many trucks are in your fleet. I want to know when you're available. And we let people know like, hey, we have Daily Weekly freight out of this market. The next time you're coming back, hit us up, let us know about that. And again, I mean, we got probably five emails this morning from carriers. Hey, I'm going to be here this day, this week. And again, it's top of mind for us because a lot of the freight that I see inside of my business is your technical spot market freight where it's last minute, it's same day. Even though I know there's a high probability I'm going to have freight out of this shipping location this week. It's all last minute.
(15:44):
Now who do you think I'm going to think of first? I'm going to go right to those guys because it's top of mind. They emailed us, hey, we're empty in this area. And so I just feel like it is kind of that closed loop capacity is really what you want to work for and brokers need to do the exact same thing. Once you have those carriers that are doing a great job for you, why are you even posting that load? Right? Why aren't you going direct to that carrier and letting them know? And we have our top five that we reach out to in every market that we ship. As soon as we see a load come about, boom. That that's just who we hit up and run with it.
(16:15):
Because there's just so much stuff that's going on out there right now with everything. And I kind of want to transition to that for like the back half of the conversation here is you know, making sure these carriers are compliant and when you know everything is legit. Right. Like why are you risking and going on out there and you know, and speaking of compliance, how are you guys staying in front of the ever changing rules and regulations that seem to be happen? I feel like that's almost a full time job now Pam, for most fleets out there.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yep, absolutely. And it is for me too. I mean one of the big things is kind of following some of the more key articles and that kind of stuff. People put out articles obviously like freight waves being one of them. Stay on top of some of the data that's getting put out there. Just following FMCSA Federal Motor Carriers, you know, their websites, their LinkedIn posts, following their kind of stuff. I love what they just did with the verification process for the new entries. I was excited to see that they're talking about doing that for all current carriers by the end of the year. I would love to see that happen. But staying on top of all of those different types of articles.
(17:26):
Yeah, it can be a full time job because especially right now with Sean Duffy playing and playing his cards and I believe he's a great fit for our industry. Staying on top of everything he's doing right now and him just kind of eliminating those 50 laws where some of the, some of. If you go through and read the whole list, some of them are quite entertaining where it's just like this is old language. It doesn't even, it doesn't even make any sense.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
But that also means that there's probably going to be some new stricter laws coming down the pipeline, which I hope will be the benefit. Our president had stated that 10 to 1 ratio, you get rid of 10 laws, I'll let you have a new one.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And so him getting rid of 50 last week is certainly going to, my opinion would trigger some new laws coming in, but hopefully it's to the benefit. I really think him going back to reinforcing the language barrier law is going to be a good move for some of these things. The verification process is a good thing, but staying on top of all of those ever changing things, especially with a new administration, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. You got to stay on top of it as much as you can. Find the articles, watch the podcasts, read the stuff and try and weed out the fact versus fiction.
(18:41):
I know some of it's very lawyer talk ish type stuff, but that's where it's like surround yourself with the right people who understand what it's saying, you know, because there can be a lot of those where you're like 395.5 RAB, what law does that say? And you just gotta work through it, but have the right people. A lot of times insurance brokers, they can be very helpful. Some of the bigger brokers I know have compliance people on staff. But now I also have the consulting business. So I started that to really help the under 10 truck fleet operations be compliant in their everyday things, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I mean, because like that's what I see. Again, I do say this often on the show. I'm like, hey, you're a business owner. It is on you if your business is not compliant. Right. Like you can't blame anybody but yourself in that situation. But again, I feel like the overwhelming majority, I would argue 95% of the carriers that I've worked with in my career are great people that just want to do the right thing. They work hard and they want to provide for their families. Right. And I feel like the, like with where things are now with vetting, onboarding and all of that stuff, some of these individuals that are out compliance didn't even know that they were out of compliance. Right.
(19:55):
Because there was another new rule that kind of came down and if somebody was like, man, I've been driving for 40 years. I have always done it, you know, so how. How do people, you know, set themselves up for success with this? And I mean, obviously I always like having individuals like yourself on the show because you got skin in the game, right? You have, you own trucks. You're doing this thing out there. So when you start a consulting business to go out and help that small fleet, you're the type of individual I always want to talk to, because you have to do this on your. Your front as well to make sure you're businesses compliance.
(20:30):
So, like, what's a common thing that you've seen so far, Pam, where you're like, this is kind of where everybody should start if they're looking at their compliance. This is what I've seen out of the people that I've talked to, where almost everybody's been, not aligned with where they should be.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
So here's how I always start. I start with a mock DOT audit.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
So they come in, we kind of have our first initial conversation. They answer just kind of some general questions. Do they even know what the FMCSA or the SMS scores are? Do they know that they need a driver qualification file? Some real basic 10 questions? It's on my website. It's just kind of to see where you would grade at during a rough audit. But then the first step of really digging in is doing a full mock audit. Do you have everything the way that the DOT would. Would require it in the setting? And here's your timeline. You've got 48 hours to do it, which is the same 48 hours or 72 hours that the DOT would give you. And that really gives me an understanding of where they're at and what they know and don't know. Are they more focused on?
(21:35):
Okay, they got everything perfect for the vehicle, but nothing for the driver files. Or they have everything perfect for the drug and alcohol, but nothing for the equipment. They don't, they don't even know that they needed a dot on the truck. I've seen that. One of the big ones that I've seen a lot of far too many, in my opinion, mainly because the DOT puts a lot of emphasis on it, is that there's not a lot of people who understand the difference between a clearinghouse and a consortium. Yeah, two different things. And you need to do both or you face huge penalties. And so I see that a lot. Like, oh, my God, I had everybody signed up for the clearinghouse, but I didn't. I had no idea. We weren't on a consortium. I wasn't getting a list.
(22:16):
I was sending them for pre employment but I wasn't sending them to the consortium or vice versa. They didn't even know that clearinghouse was a thing. But they've got the randoms on the consortium and it's like you need to have both. And there's. To your point, they're good carriers, good people providing for their families, providing for their driver's families and not even realizing that they're making a mistake until somebody comes in and digs into their files and figures it out. The problem is that nine times out of 10 it's the dot doing it and then at that point it's too late. You, you don't want to go to the DOT and be like, just kidding, I had, don't even know what the clearinghouse is. You'd much rather tell me that, like, let's figure this out together.
(22:55):
Let's be honest about where you're at and let's figure out how to get you to the next step and get this cleaned up as much as we can.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Is there like a checklist out there? I would assume that the DOT would have that on their website. Like, hey, here's these 20 items. You need to make sure this is all done on annual basis, otherwise you are out of compliant. But in my opinion it's the government, so that's probably not out there at all.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
They have, they have a checklist for like new entry and kind of the things that you need to do as a new entry, but it's not necessarily your ongoing, you kind of have to. What I found is you kind of have to know what you're looking for in order to figure out like if you know, hey, I need a driver qualification file. You can find the list of things that go on the driver qualification file. But if you don't know what to look for, where do you find it? And so that's literally where I come in. That's literally where it's like, okay, in 2020, all these guys went out, we had a bunch of owner operators and I helped them get their own authority. It was the new coolest thing to do. You can make six figures. Everything was great.
(23:54):
The world was, the world was round at that point. And so once I started realizing that they weren't doing it the right way or their brother's cousins, stepdad told them how to do it this way and you find out it's not right at all, you know, like, who told you to do that? Yeah, who told you that's how it's supposed to be? Or you know, things like your accident registry, your, you know, you're just guessing. Hey, do I need to send them for a drug test? Well, be careful because not all the time do you want to send them for a drug test. Can be more incriminating than good if you do it the opposite way. So it's teaching them how to operate in that realm when sometimes they have bad information.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
So much of the insurance world and in itself don't spend the time with the small carriers until they get to 10 or more. Yeah, well, you got to get through 1 to 10 before you get to 10, you know, and if you have got bad habits by the time you got to 10 trucks, the owner's probably out of the truck right now. They probably are inching towards an, either a dispatcher or an arap person or some form of. You got one to two people in the office or you're starting to get there. But if you've got bad habits in the beginning, by the time you get to the 10:15 range, now you're fixing things. But at that point you're probably on the DOT radar.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
As it is, you know, if you've got 10 trucks, there's probably things. Some things going on. So it's understanding and getting to them early rather than too late. And that's where it's. This whole thing started. It's like I didn't even know that because we've always from. I've been in this business for 20 years, but for the last 30 years we've had well over that 10 fleet trucks. So I'm like, how do you guys not have DOT audits? And then I've learned that it's like, no, they don't do the audits or the insurance people don't bring people in until they're over the 10 fleet. And it's like, well, wait a minute, how do we get from point A to point B? I feel like the industry in itself is missing this gap of the 1 to 10 truck operations and getting in front of them.
(25:57):
And as big carriers, they blow them off. Oh, they don't know anything. They don't, they don't get this industry. They don't know what they're doing. Well, why can't we teach them? We can't teach them.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
I'm right there with you. And if people actually paid attention to data, Pam, they would see that I Believe it at least has an 8 in front of it. 80 plus percent of the trucks on the road are 10 truck or less fleets out there, right? So if you look at your sample size of potential opportunity, and again, most people chase dollars and they're like, oh, they don't have the money to do any of this stuff. So why would I go after them when I could go after this company who could actually pay it off? But they don't see the long game with that is if you want to go after somebody who has 15, 20 trucks in their fleet, maybe you should focus on helping the people in the 5 to 10 category get up to that.
(26:43):
And then you have a pipeline of business coming down your way. Because there is, there's so much stuff that is out there that is not at your disposal from an information standpoint. And again, it's everything you're saying right now, Pam, it gets me fired up because that's like 99% of the reason why I do this show. Because there is so much information out there and I don't want people to have to like go searching for all of this stuff where there's like, boom, there's an actual library of information inside of this podcast where it's not behind a paywall. There's enough people where you can reach out to them directly. You know, like, if I was a fleet and I was hearing you talking right now, I would want to reach out to you. Because I'm like, hey, Pam's invested in this.
(27:23):
She's a third generation transportation professional. Her family owns trucks. Still, she. I should probably listen to her than the person who's got a flashy Instagram page that might not have ever actually driven a truck before trying to sell you on some stuff, right? Because it's like, there's such an opportunity to put real, tangible education out there for people. Because I don't just want clicks. I want to make an impact on this industry. I want people to be like, damn, we listen to the Fray Coaches podcast. I learned this about my business and now look at where we've been able to go with that information. Because no one is like, there's no playbook to this, right? And then with today in social media and what it is, there's so much bullshit that's out there and it's compiling by the day.
(28:08):
And ultimately there's a bunch of people who are trying to sell you stuff that isn't actually legitimate. And it's like you do surface level research, right? Where it's like, oh, hey, they got a cool Instagram or they got this awesome TikTok. I should probably go sign up for all their stuff. And then a couple of layers and thousands of dollars later, you're like, wait, you never taught me anything. It's because it's a multi level marketing scheme essentially.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Well, you remember in 2012, well, this was big in my world in 2020, I would see all the time, oh, I'm offering a dispatch software. Oh yeah, I'm offering a dispatch class.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Like what a what? And then I literally had, and I won't say names obviously, but I knew somebody whose wife had set up this dispatch class and she was offering this eight hour session for thousand dollars. And I'm like, but you guys don't have your stuff, right?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Like you guys have only been in business for like two years and it was just the new cool thing to do. But that's where the misinformation is so easily found. You know, it's like, who's actually teaching you? Who's actually the one that's got the history behind you? You know, to me, and this is gonna make me sound kind of old, but like if you're post Covid, you have a completely different mindset than the people that are pre Covid. Yeah, we've been through some of this before and especially if the people who around in 0809 when the recession hit that time, like we've done the grit, we've done the hard work, those are the people you should be listening to, not the ones that, you know a year in or two years in.
(29:37):
And because right now we're in a really unsure time and I think everybody can feel it financially, but how are you going to make it out of this? And everybody's like, oh, let's wait till the rates go back up. Well, the rates going back up doesn't miraculously fix things.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
What if they don't though? That's one thing that I always challenge everybody. What if they don't go up?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
What if it doesn't change for the next six months or a year? Are you going to make it or are you going to quit? Right. Because like that's where I see a lot of this stuff. And that's what like really irritates me when I see a lot of these headlines and a lot of these posts that are out there. It's like, well, what if it doesn't you guys? Like, how are you going to feed your family if it doesn't? Are you Just gonna. Because like again, you could sit here and wait and wa. But is it actually going to change? I don't know if it, if it is right, like it could very well. The freight market today could very well look identical to this in 12 months from now. It very well could. Nobody actually knows.
(30:29):
It's all an educated guess at this point.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yep, Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Pam, I was gonna say I, I'm gonna have to have you back on. Like I could go for another hour with you minimum right now easily. But we will have to have you back on because like all my guests, everybody's got a day job as well. And how, but how does anybody reach out to you though to find out more about what you guys got going on?
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Well, I've got two websites. The consulting business, if you're interested in that from a small fleet operations is polyet consulting.com and then from a freight standpoint we have polyactrucking.com that's where the brokerage is based as well assets emails. Pam, polyactrucking.com I'm always open for a conversation and just kind of seeing where everybody's at and seeing what the, what's making their wheels turn and how I can help and go from there.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Perfect. Pam, thank you so much for joining me. That is going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. If you guys can't find her out there at all for some reason, hit me up. I will gladly put you guys in contact, but that will be it. As always. If you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. You guys, if you're feeling really ambitious after this one, which you should be. And you haven't ranked the show yet on itunes and spot rank it because if you saw value, your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Came back with a bank hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the blame was fast hey Let them all cross if they hate them let them hate them Make a bigger ball Hey.
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