Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: You're listening to the Zipline Logistics Truck. Yeah. Podcast where we explore all kinds of hot topics in the logistics industry.
Get ready to learn, laugh and get your freight on.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Zipline Logistics Podcast. My name is Jesse Jewett. Joined with me as always, our director of training and development, Teddy Lee Knox. Teddy, good afternoon.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Happy 104 days.
For day, our internal zip line holiday, we're going to be talking all things 104 today. On the back end of this episode, we're going to talk about our ten four day carrier partner winners. Very excited about it. We also have a special guest.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yes, we do.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Regional manager of the west coast region, Sean Buckle.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Hey, how we doing?
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Wonderful, Sean, thank you. Welcome. But first off, we're going to talk about the history of 104 day. So 10 4, it's a common trucking term. It is CB radios, if you will. Basically means agreed or understood, right, Sean?
[00:01:15] Speaker C: That's correct.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Do you ever use 104 on the, on the phone when you're talking to anybody? Driver?
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Too much. But I hear it. Yeah.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: For good money.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: Copy.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I am around the office, I feel like a lot more than we do with our carriers.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: I'd have to agree there.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: 10 4. Someone will say something and we respond. 10 4. Oh, we do.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: On the floor.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: On the floor.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Put it in your training zip capular, Teddy. But back in the day, October 4th, 2016. 10 4, October 10th month of the year for those listeners. 2016. We started it. We recognized the date internally and with our carriers actually since our inception in 20 2007.
Right. So one of our taglines when we were founded, 2007 is improving the lives of transportation professionals. A great way to do that, create a holiday. Recognize your carrier partners who are going above and beyond outside of these walls and within these walls, quite frankly. But that is the history of 10 four days. They're gonna get a nice treat basket.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Something special from Zipline Logistics. We're very excited.
Had a lot of good commentary from our carriers who've won in the past.
[00:02:26] Speaker C: Yeah, our guys still have the T shirts.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Great T shirts.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: It's nice to be able to celebrate them with something tangible.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: It's. It's great to get the email of. Thank you so much. It was great support. But being able to see how often that we use these specific carriers and all of our carriers and how much we appreciate them and hopefully kind of helps them see how much effort and thought we do put into the carriers that we use often per region.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Love our Carriers.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: We love our carriers.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Partnership is one of our. Our values that we're founded on. It goes with our customers and our carriers. Carriers are the backbone, baby. They move the freight.
[00:03:00] Speaker C: I just gave my carrier a heads up today that he won.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. Again, listen, on the back of this,
[00:03:07] Speaker C: so not back to back winner, but two years ago he won it.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Nice, nice.
[00:03:11] Speaker C: So he stuck around with us.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Well, that's. That's great to hear. Great transition as well. So we're going to talk to Sean Buckle. Sean's from Dayton, Ohio.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: That's correct. Kettering Altar.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Kettering Altar High School. Bowling Green University.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Falcon Pride. BGSU almost took down Penn State.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Shout out. Maxion, you've been with Zipline nine years?
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Little over ten.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Ten years.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Officially ten years.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Oh, my.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Ten and change.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Ten change. Okay. We've worked together. You've always been on the west coast, right?
[00:03:43] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah, always.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Started with the spot team.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Started in the spot pod.
[00:03:48] Speaker C: Spot pod.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Ripping spot freight.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: Spot freight. Furniture. Selling the furniture.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Selling the furniture. Dream.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Okay, very close.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Very, very light. Okay. Yeah. I put Sean through the ringer, if you will, but you've morphed into one of our regional managers, one of our leaders. That has to do with tenure, but it has to do with, I think, your demeanor. Sean, you've always been a steady Eddie as far as I'm concerned. Nothing getting. Not getting too high, too low.
Talk to me about some of your carrier relationships in honor of 10 four day and how that's evolved in your. In your 10 years here.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: Yeah, we've developed quite a few carry relationships. A lot of them like to text me instead of calling me. And it's getting to the point where I've tried stepping out of more of the day to day, but we've been so busy lately. Can't complain about being busy, but that's true. A lot of these carers have my personal cell phone and. Or reach out to me, whether it's about freight or just about life in general. Checking up? Yeah, developed quite a few of those. Still working with a lot of them since day one. Still so glad to know that the trucking companies are still around.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Fortunately, some have told me they're shutting the doors one in particular this year. But other than that, things are. Seem to be going pretty good too.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: That's great to hear. It's been a challenging couple years here in transportation since basically April of 2022. Talk to me about. So we talked about partnerships, talked about consistent carriers. Right. One of the things you mentioned the spot pods. That's what I would call inconsistent freight. It's spot freight. Right. It gets thrown on the board. It's maybe not a steady lane, we've talked about it before, but feeding carriers that we've established relationships with and who, who value the fact that they get maybe two to five loads a week on the same lane, or maybe we keep them rolling, keep their drivers going out to California and then coming back to Ohio or things like that. Right. So tell me a little bit about either the, the carrier that you nominated for or another carrier that you have a relationship with who've. That you've grown over the years.
[00:05:51] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. Like you mentioned, round trips, especially from the Columbus, Ohio area back to Cali.
Got quite a few of those guys that hit us up every day. Where's the freight? Where's the freight? But you know, you have, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. But it has been nice throughout the years seeing these guys grow with us.
More and more customers show up on that lane. So we have a good backbone there. And a lot of these guys have started off with two trucks and raise all the way up to 20 or so. 20 plus.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: And you would say that's the majority is coming from our business or our relationships, right?
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Majority of it, yeah.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, obviously.
[00:06:29] Speaker C: So watching them grow with us has been pretty cool. Nice to see.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Some of those guys start from like driving the trucks themselves and, and then moving on to more of like a dispatch or like a leadership role.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: One of the guys that my boy Jimmy Angus, he does, he was, he started off doing local Cali for us and then started doing California to Nevada. But he was a one man show and talked to him recently. He's got six other drivers under him now.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, that's awesome to hear. That's, that's, you know, like you said, the fun part of the job, certainly with customers or brands that we see who are starting out, you know, one to two pallet LTL shipments delivered into retailers, then boom, they get into a Costco deal.
We had one recently that had a Super bowl ad. That's pretty cool.
So it's very similar on the carrier side. Right. He was starting out small and then, and then building it up, working together by just doing a good job.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's awesome to see because that obviously develops more lanes for us too. Get them on more freight. We know what type of service they provide.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: That's where the partnership happens, Teddy.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Yes, it is.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: We like that.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: We do.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: You Got any funny, other funny stories, Sean, that you want to share that are podcast appropriate? This is going out into the Ethernet or the Internet world.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: I'll keep those to myself off the podcast. We'll follow up.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: I love this holiday, Zipline holiday. It's actually the only other holiday that we actually like observe that's like a zipline one other than Zipline's birthday.
So that's kind of cool. But I also remember starting out here and I would call a lot of the carriers and a lot of the drivers and that's how I learned a lot. Whether it was over the road, ltl, even Drayage made a huge difference. They knew a lot about the different facilities that we went into.
And so I think this is really fun because it allows me to still be able to celebrate them even though I'm not necessarily on the that side of the floor anymore.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. We've talked about it before on having the consistency of the same carrier and in some cases the same driver going to the same pickup spot or delivery spot, in and out, sometimes multiple times a week.
That makes a big difference.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Certainly agree with you there.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Certainly makes your life easier. John, like, all right, I know Jimmy's gonna get this. He's picking up in Reno.
He knows to talk to Tina at the dock. He's going to get it in Dock 47. They're going to take him 45 minutes to load those 26 pallets of snack food. He's going to get out. He knows exactly where to go.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, consistency is very nice. And the carriers like it too. They get to know the dock workers.
We were running some loads from SoCal to Arizona going to Costco. This carrier has been delivering there so many times a week, they're getting empty before they're an appointment. Don't hear that very often with Costco, but they must be doing something right.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Yeah, he knows all the ins and outs. Well, that's awesome. Like I said, the back end of this podcast, you're going to hear our 10 four day winners.
[00:09:34] Speaker D: What's up, truckers? I am just popping in to announce our 2024 top carrier partners. For 10 four day, we've selected five, five different carrier partners for their overall performance, their commitment to high quality service, their personal relationships with us here at Zipline and their load volumes.
So our 2024 top carrier partners are Syndicate Transport LLC, Nanic Carrier Corporation JC and Raina Transportation LLC. Woody Bogler and Rue Ease Trucking.
Congratulations to our top carrier partners. Thank you so much for everything that you do for us and our customers. Now let's get back to the episode.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Thank you to Sean Buckle, our regional manager of the west coast region. If you need to get in touch with him. 888Go zipline I'm not going to give out your personal cell phone number. It sounds like you got enough people that have that anyways. 888go zipline www.ziplinelogistics.com reach out to us like and subscribe on Spotify or Apple. I'm being told those are the only two places they can actually do that leave you. Correct helps our reach and reminder. Celebrate 104 day express some appreciation for our hard working carriers in the trucking industry.
Don't get upset while you're driving on the road and see a bunch of trucks. They're they're doing good work getting products to where they need to be for manufacturing, for groceries, etc. Etc. They make the world go round, especially the United States of America.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: How about that Truck yeah.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Truck yeah.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Happy 104 day.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Thanks everybody. Happy 104 day.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Thank you.
