[Music] this is cents per mile featuring Charles Gracie Paul Gibson and Josh Haynes everyone knows the trucking industry has issues but most people are afraid to talk about it someone's got to do it with loads of recruiting and marketing experience and backed by the largest driver audience in the world we deliver carriers the driver perspective find Solutions and help make sense make sense thank you for tuning in this cents per mile I'm your host Charles Gracie and I'm your co-host Paul Gibson hey I'm Josh haes what are we talking about today we're talking about should or shouldn't you use a marketing a agency that's uh hi everybody can you going spicy can you say Agency for me one more time Charles say it like three times fast because that was really good agency agency agency oh see he does fine is it like Beetle Juice where they show up if you say it three times oh God I hope not love him to death but also that'd be weird um cool so before we make it awkward with a lot of our friends in the industry um yeah we got to talk about the things we always talk about so uh we are available as a podcast uh pretty much anywhere you get your podcast Amazon music Apple music uh Spotify YouTube Etc so if you could like subscribe rate wherever you check out our content that would help us out greatly and help get us some momentum and get us a little bit further out there know what else can help go to sens perile podcast. com where you can suggest a topic to be a guest or even to become a sponsor sponsor uh who's our sponsor today Charles well it's taffs and you can check them out at ts. com where they make factoring fun all right well that means it's time for the news okay so it's time for 10 two news where we go over some of the most relevant exciting interesting and whatever stories from the past couple weeks so right now we're going to talk about Google's codec cracking Quantum Leap here's what it means for business so basically Google created this Quantum Computing chip that if you look at it the way it works is like so the best supercomputers in the world right it computed um something in five minutes that would take 10 sub ion years uh which is essentially a one followed by 25 Z somewhere around the ballpark I guess if you had to you know make that relative it would be uh about the estimated theoretical length of the entire universe uh and it did it in five minutes no no big deal um you know and that's even got some scientists who are hypothesizing that essentially it's pulling potentially information from parallel universes which follows quantum mechanics and that sort of thing so they obviously can't prove that but theoretically uh the idea of multiversal math um you know and the idea that what's happening is essentially so normally computers run off bits which is where you always hear ones and zeros you watch The Matrix that's kind of a reoccurring theme I know I had the wallpaper uh and the screen saver but you know what this does is essentially everything can exist as a one or a zero at the same time um but also like a combination of both which is crazy but Forbes when talking about it talked about different things that it could affect and one of them was Logistics and transportation so the idea that you could optimize complex Logistics and transportation networks to increase transparency reduce costs emissions and improve efficiency so whenever your looking at the data to try and you know shrink costs or you know maybe help a driver get somewhere the best way they possibly can with the highest fuel economy etc etc you could use this and like instantly have an idea of all the variables put it together and have a more realistic prediction of what things could look like on the other end uh or hear me out here here hear me out here we're talking about data analytics and how this chip can help do you think we can test them out with the FMCSA or the ATA help them with their data on the truck driver shortage maybe well um I don't know that so it gets you data it can't create something it can't create a driver shortage so that all of their stuff makes sense I mean they got that part covered but when they have the data support it that might back it up or debunk it either way it's a step forward well I mean we definitely know instantly you know or maybe it can find a you know if if the hypo is right maybe you could find a timeline where that actually exists you know that's interesting how far that's coming and so when we were deciding on what news to do today I saw one where the FMCSA was sitting there uh trying to debunk uh the traffic uh warning triangles for broke down vehicles for autonomous trucks and I was really leaning towards that one but then I found this one and this one was pretty good uh plus involved 10 so on cdllife.
com I found Tennessee Trooper catches a big rig hauling an excavator with no securement of any kind and the picture on this is priceless you got it sitting sideways on a low boy uh flags on both sides but no change no straps no nothing just going down the highway like nothing's wrong uh rate that strap work yeah uh epic fail uh and Tennessee stopped them uh so the Tennessee Highway Patrol nabbed the trucker for a serious load securement violation according to the article January 13th from uh Tennessee Highway Patrol the motor carrier officer stopped a commercial vehicle in Raa County Tennessee and suspected for unsecured load I mean suspected there's clearly no straps there's no suspect there it's definitely a violation uh Troopers inspection uncovered multiple violations um this is one of those things where I think we just need to do better like at some point this driver thought it was I'm just going down the road maybe I had a brain fart but I have this escavator on a trailer and I'm going to drive down a public Highway with it unsecured well so a couple things looking at that picture um I can't really make out what's in front of it but is that another piece of equipment that's on there too and it seems like those red flags aren't just for the wide load um but the best part is is you could use quantum Computing to show that driver every possible scenario that could possibly go wrong with the terrible choices they're making I mean and it is if you look at the other pictures in the article uh right in front of it uh there's another piece of equipment but if you just look at how this thing's sitting on there they turned it sideways had the scoop hanging off the back uh and then the track in the base of it is sitting sideways overhanging so it's a not only is it oversized load it's not secured uh yeah I mean guys just be better take pride in your job I just don't I also don't I mean I wasn't there um uh uh why is it why why are the tracks sideways like why why did the track stability stability reasons uh you have the weight distributed so it's not just sitting in the middle um oong so by I mean it it was a choice I think it's how they get it up there too to be honest with you yeah but I mean it looks like it's about the same width as the TR trailer I I don't know man that's nuts yeah I mean it's 2025 in trucking yeah yeah that's definitely um that's definitely a choice well speaking of choices we have a choice to uh go behind the desk with T Street [Music] do you want to grow your Fleet but get buried by paperwork slow hiring processes and outdated systems all while struggling to comply with changing safety regulations enter 10 Street the all-in-one platform that simplifies driver life cycle management by bringing marketing recruiting onboarding safety and retention together in one place 10 Street coordinates and streamlines all your operations post to dozens of job boards at once speed time to hire with pre-population at AI to get more full applications faster and manage the entire post higher process from cutting cost with online onboarding to integrating all safety data into One dashboard to improving retention through thoughtful engagement whether you have one truck or 1,000 our expert team is here to help sleep soundly knowing you can pass an audit attract needed drivers and achieve your business goals join the thousands of carriers using 10 Street sign up for a demo today at taffs we offer unparalleled Trucking excellence and service enjoy exclusive benefits like fantastic tire discounts and 1hour advances for Quick Cash recognized as the top factoring company in 20123 we're your partner for Success access business loans manage finances with ease through our client portal F2 fuel card and mobile app contact us now to see how we can help your trucking business Thrive now it's time to make sense make sense and we're talking about agencies should you use them what do they do what's the good what the bad and uh you can make your choice so Paul you know you and I have covered a lot of topics one of them we have not talked about is how it's more prevalent nowadays for people to be using agencies in some scenarios and less than others you know you seen a big shift especially over the last year when budgets got reduced agencies were kind of hurting a little bit here yeah well I mean I think everybody was kind of hurting in a lot of ways you know whether it was vendors uh whether it was agencies whether it was the trekking companies themselves you know I mean everybody um slowly coming off you know all the the the time when when everything popped up but with with companies being more selective about who they're hiring and who you can recruit and you know their requirements and that sort of stuff you know it it made it a lot tighter as you know being you know in recruiting um so that that I feel like that kind of happened across the board now that's one thing that is interesting I can tell you one time when I interviewed for a recruiting director job um because I have such a background in marketing I I brought that up as a perk and one of the things that they pointed out to me was I would rather pay an agency to do our marketing um and give you 100% of your time to recruiting so basically they were like hey I'd rather pay however much percent uh to open up an additional 50% for you to be able to do your job that much better and focus on that but and I think it's depending on the scenario uh you know if you would have when I was on the carrier side there was no uh scenario where I could justify using an agency we had set Lanes they did not change if anything we expanded I could not justify the amount of time that was being spent to go pay someone 15% of my marketing budget to handle it for me now that's that scenario uh through time and experience I have learned that there are situations out there where carriers have lanes that are always evolving or so many that it's hard to maintain and then you have a full-time person or an agency doing that for you uh unless you leverage technology for direct feeds to your partners um but that's what we're here to discuss you know what scenarios doesn't make sense so I tell you from my experience I couldn't justify it but there are people out there that say hey it's worth the 15% markup to have you handle it all and then I've also heard some clients and friends say hey I like having an agency because when everything goes to I have someone to blame that's not me and I and that is in the spirit of trucking let's do this all day long um but then there's times where there's disadvantages in my opinion like I know from my personal experience that the more I work with a client the more I get ingrained in how their processes work and have a better understanding the more I can support them when I'm getting something from an agency I lose that there's a middleman now so if you're going to use an agency I would suggest making sure it's someone that you can depend on to properly communicate to your vendors otherwise you're doing yourself a disservice for a 15% markup yeah I think there's there's another side of that though too you know having been uh in that situation you know as a recruiting and marketing manager but then also having been a vendor and now working for a vendor um I think there's sometimes too where sometimes a trekking company might not have someone on staff who can actually do the job as well as somebody who's you know had experience with it you know for instance like if you've never placed ads before as you know a recruiting director and you have somebody you don't have somebody in the house who can you're G to get better results from an agency if you there's a lot of companies with bad messaging you know and some a lot of times those those agencies you know whether you know you like it or not that agency's messaging is probably going to be better than yours um now my punchline opportunity I was going to make a jab at the fact that sometimes people not having an experience might be what we need they won't list respect is a job perk well I mean and that's it's it's one of those things too where that I could I could see that you know it does go both ways and I think that's the the important part is if you are going to use an agency is to have those conversations you know because you might not be good at at ad placement or exploring spaces where you know drivers are but you also might have your messaging down to a science and then it makes sense you know because you could say no I know for a fact this messaging works I need exposure or you might have done in and gone and gotten yourself exposure but your messaging just isn't connecting um there's there's different scenarios where it becomes a trade-off I don't think it's necessarily black or white I I think you have to weigh it out on what you're trying to accomplish how much that workload is and how much of it are you willing to do it's kind of the same thing uh the mentality I take on with home projects uh time and money is the time I'd spend on this project better spent on the project or better spent on work and what's the value assigned to it and am I willing to pay someone else to do it and generally for me I'm going to weigh more time for me to work is worth the money to pay someone to do it um now from a marketing perspective you should apply that train of thought you should decide hey is this something I'm willing to do and some vendors it's plug andplay some vendors working direct is pretty easy it's seamless and then there's other ones where it's tedious uh for those of you that consider yourself tedious be a better partner be better um try to I like having those relationships with my with my clients like I value those I get to know their pain points and sometimes instead of going there and trying to give them my entire shopping catalog of services I can sit there and when the opportunity presents itself and something that can solve a problem I present it um you kind of lose that so I am always for the direct relationship now there are some agencies out there where they do a really good job of plugging those two sides together for that communication and then you have others where it's kind of like the Iron Curtain and you never know other than the ad that you're producing yeah well and I've even experienced some people whove used agencies who had never seen the ads um and I've experienced companies who they played a huge part in the ads and I mean part of that comes from you know me doing video work for for trucking companies sometimes agencies would have me out there would be someone from the agency there overseeing the whole thing with the client and then sometimes they would hire me send me out there and then it's just me and the client kind of trying to figure out what they want um but I think a big part of that too is it does come down to like lift and training I think is huge like so training a recruiter how long would you say it takes a recruiter to get good at their job like you had to do it in months uh to get good at their job is going to be dependent on the pipeline and it takes a recruiter time to build that pipeline not even that just getting good at being on the phone talking to drivers oh well I can generally tell if you're going to be good or not within the first month if if you don't have a personality to talk to people and open up conversation you're going to fail but I mean like the ability to close generally you can know that within a month and have someone trained up within a month on it now they're going to grow over time but I mean they'd have the basis to be able to do the job right but like that's I guess what I was getting as the the overtime same thing with marketing you can go hire someone to Market but they've got to learn the trucking industry in order to be good in the trucking industry because it's different than every other industry um you know and you have to you know pay that person you have the time you have the training you have the cost of giving them everything they need and the tools to do their job um Etc whereas an agency you can bypass that um so that is that is one perk is the time that it takes the research the person that you'd have to train up but I think you've got someone um who has a little bit more recent real life experience that you want to talk to yeah you know uh we're bringing on my friend Kylie Ericson from pts worldwide Kylie welcome to Sun perow thank you uh you know I I'm going to start this off with a question you know you're you're running recruiting you're treat your job like it's a bus going downhill do you give that wheel to someone else and trust them to drive that bus down the hill or do you grab the wheel yourself I have to grab the wheel myself I can't trust somebody else to do it um you kind of had made the the comment earlier about being a being able to blame somebody else unfortunately I do not have the ability to do that um so I definitely need to maintain that control so when it comes to driving your marketing would you prefer in your experience given the type of job that you guys are hiring for and especially because you're in a niche market you're looking for a specific type of driver hauling a specific type of freight with a specific time to hire that's lengthier than many so do you trust marketing to be done by with a middleman in between or a middle person in 2025 terms in between or do do you work directly with your vendors to make those relationships and ensure your own success um I always work direct I just feel like I pivot a lot so you know my hiring process is long it's running about six weeks um from start to finish so in order to engage in order to find the right drivers I have to be involved in it um you know I typically will get anybody that I do work with about 45 days and I'll know right then and there if we need to adjust if we need to Pivot and how things are moving forward um and so it's for me everything has to be direct now I want to give a little context to this because six weeks might seem long to some people if you're listening to this and you don't know the niche type of driver that's needed here that might seem a little lengthy uh so can you tell us a little bit for context purposes what type of driver you're looking for and why yeah so our drivers do have to be um Hazmat Twix certified were're uh contracted with the Department of Defense so there are some different levels of security and screening that have to be done with each of our drivers so that tends to kick out that hiring time quite a bit all right and because of that and because they're going through government clearance and all that fun stuff it makes it a lengthy process so in your specific experience not only are you combating getting your brand out there but also a lengthier time to hire do you ever leverage your vendors your marketing team to try to help with that uh is that something that you guys can leverage to maintain their interest during that process um with some vendors yes with others no with others it's a here you know we're going to put it out there good luck to you here we go so here's your lead best of luck closing it EXA like say you're 10 hail mares and come back and give me a report at the end of the month exactly like oh look um it's the same like what ti time to hire right like um you know we get the well how many hires did you get from us this month well to be honest I won't know for two months so I'll get back to you on that um so it just makes that process a little bit harder which is why I really have to be involved in the messaging because my messaging today is going to get me those drivers two months from now and so I'm constantly looking back and looking forward to see how to adjust and pivot to get the right drivers at the right time so knowing that you have that lengthy time to hire attribution and stuff like and Reporting has to be key to what you're doing yes it is going back in time quite a bit yeah it is very very frustrating to not be able to have the data to support what I'm looking at currently so that's another reason why I have to work direct with whoever I work with so they understand exactly what my expectations are and can provide me with the information I need so if you're deciding on a vendor or an agency uh say you were evaluating agencies and weighing them compared to a direct vendor what would be some of the things that you as a carrier are looking for in either one of those experiences or Services being offered so it would have to be very personal so I would have to have one person and not 20 right I don't need like 18 people that are involved talk to this person about this this person about that um they would have to be able to show me the data and show me exactly what they're doing which I have found in the past difficult when it comes to agencies I hear a lot well we're going to try this but I don't really see the trying right like sometimes there's a mixed message there uh but really it comes down to you know are you doing it properly are you getting it out out there where are you putting it which is another issue that um comes into play um and then is everybody getting the proper information at the proper time to make it happen so I think a lot of it comes down to that communication and to that you know show me don't tell me type situation that I always look for it's interesting one of the points you brought up is the fact that you don't want an army of people to try to decipher who you need to talk to about I know a lot of setups where they're like hey you got a person for this person for that and they think that's beneficial because they're giving you a direct communication for each specific instance but that's also a burden from the car side trying to remember you know uh got to break out your decoder to sit there figure out who you're shooting an email to or it's about passed around several times um one of the things I I've come to realize is there's several scenarios where it's beneficial for someone to use an agency you don't have the time as Paul mentioned um maybe your time's better spent but in a lot of scenarios there's also perks to work in direct and I've seen Hybrid models where maybe hey the the standard stuff goes through an agency and then they reserve a part of their budget to Work Direct with specific vendors that they know they're going to get a bigger Roi from being Direct on some sometimes it's simply the 15% that you're keeping in your budget sometimes it's added values uh and sometimes it's be a personalized relationship that you know maximizes that effort uh um have you ever seen any of those or considered any of those from your perspective where you might be able to offload things uh to either your vendor or your agency or things that you wish you could offload that you can't right now um no I think that we have a pretty good um we have a pretty good mix I am definitely not a creative ad marketing person I'm not that person so I know that I need help there um but we're also very small so budgeting is definitely um part of our issue as far as you know do you pay um do you pay for a big agency to be able to do that marketing and do you have that budget um I think that that always comes into play especially with us but we have you ready to have some fun I'm gonna put my best friend and co-host Paul on the spot because I have a creative person and he has no idea this bus is coming but it's coming down the hill and uh you got the wheel so Paul what yeah yep yeah it's kind of like under under the truck but it's definitely under the truck um Kylie in a couple sentences describe your job my job yeah the job that you're hiring for the drivers oh okay so uh I need team drivers they have to have at least two years of verify experience tractor trailer OTR preferred they have to have Hazmat they have to have twick they have to be willing to team and they have to be able to obtain national security clearance at a secret level we run all 48 States military base to military base and they haul I'm going to add in a caveat they haul explosives and Munitions cor Paul Quick Pitch oh my God what come on like a like a like a Creative Marketing pitch yeah Quick Pitch like how are you going to get drivers to apply for that job well I would imagine like what kind of exper what kind of experience do you guys require two years over the road two years over the road and you're looking for a team oh wow and going to hire bomb on Wheels well yeah so you got yeah that's um traffic is the scary part about that um so I would probably lean into because one thing that I've learned about drivers uh is one of their favorite pastimes is to poke fun at other drivers um so I would probably I would probably lean in really hard on how you need the best of the best but almost do it in like a fun uh not everybody can do this job not everybody's up for it kind of thing um but then also kind of an element of like the gravity of it it would also be really interesting to have like an ad where you got a hold of one of the explosives and then blew it up and like films the blowing up of the explosive and being like are you a good enough driver to have a thousand of these behind you if not don't bother applying but if you think you could do it and you have a friend that thinks they could do it let's talk I I'm going to kind of pivot off your idea that I think it'd be cool to like have one of those like video montage like Uncle Sam we want you and like to go through like all the different Notions of what you're looking for and at the end we don't want this and have something going boom yeah well I almost think I don't I I don't know I think there's an element of it you know like if if you want uh like to to get veterans I think that's huge but I think going through that kind of almost like what you were talking about like the we want you Uncle Sam kind of thing um I think with how divided the country is and people's different takes on different things I don't know that that would be the route you would want to go just my opinion maybe not in Kansas City in general either way uh so before we let you go I I'm going to start off this new year if you had to pick one of your favorite people on the show who would it be oh I have to go with Charles but Paul will get to know each other a little bit better throughout the next year or so and maybe next time it'll be you but maybe you all right I will I will absolutely accept a a lack of uh information how can people find you if they want to get a hold of you or pts worldwide um they can go to our website at www. pts worldwide.
