Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Love bombing is something that it's a real thing. It's actually, it's not funny, it's not nice, but it happens in business brokers.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Promising the world and the answers to all your problems and then something happens and they don't.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: A partnership and love bombing are two very different things.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: So it's kind of the opposite of under promise, over deliver fines, angry retail buyers out of stock fees, poor communication and just a generally poor experience overall.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: Calling all CPG shippers, truckers and logistics pros, welcome to the Truck yeah Podcast. Your ultimate cheat code for smarter shipping, smoother logistics and dominating the shelf where it matters most. Buckle up. It's time to learn, laugh and get your freight on.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Zipline Logistics podcast. My name is Jesse Jewett. Joined with me as always, Teddy Lee Knox.
Hello Teddy.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Hello. How are you?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Happy Valentine's Day.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Happy Valentine's Day.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: It's very topical topic that was appropriate topic for this time of year. Valentine's Day we're talking love bombing 3 PL something that we've talked about before but we figured we'd run it back here in 2026 due to the Valentine's Day holiday.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: I love this topic. I think it's fun, it's kind of funny, but it's really relevant and love bombing is something that is, it's a real thing. It's actually, it's not funny, it's not nice, but it is, it happens in business.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: It does. What is a love bomber as far as you're concerned, Teddi?
[00:01:39] Speaker A: So a love bomber is someone or I guess multiple people in the situation that it uses excess flattery, praise and over communications over communication. And it's very early stages usually in dating and this is used manipulate someone into a relationship kind of with overall some. Some false feelings of what is going to. How this relationship is going to sustain and then that love bombing will kind of ebb and flow to the love bombers. I guess preference of when they, you know, like need something or from you or want to essentially kind of like fit you in a certain box or situation or have you be isolate you to isolate. That's the word.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know as you said this is very applicable to situations outside of business.
Now it's translated to a love bombing3pl a third party logistics provider to me I hear. I think of like brokers promising the world and they're going to have the answers to all your problems and then something happens and they don't.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: What's up? Truckers Zipline Logistics is heading back to Natural Products Expo west once again this year. We'll be there in Anaheim March 3rd through 6th and we are really hoping to see you there. Since Zipline exclusively serves CPG shippers, showing up for the CPG community is kind of our thing. And that's why in 2026 we are proud to be the only platinum level logistics sponsor of the event. Still need your Expo pass? Use our discount code 10953for 10% off or just click the link in the show, not below. Let's link up at Expo West. We are so excited to see you there.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: I feel like it's using very vague terms. We adhere to the market which that's a lot of different things that could be anywhere. So that's very vague. The market fluctuates a lot. Same things as far as I will always book a truck for the same rate for the same low rate. We'll give you the lowest rates that we can find.
You're. We're going to always be available for you.
Things that are kind of hard to promise when we think about that with a relationship you can't promise that you're gonna be. You're gonna answer the phone every single time someone calls because you have a life, you have a job, things are going on. Same thing with logistics. You can't promise that you're never gonna have a surcharge because if you look at a market cycle, there's at least two or three natural disasters that happen within a market cycle. Like you can't, you can't promise those things. So it's, it's promising things and setting things up for a very specific picture that's not going to be possible to happen. But then also when those problems happen, the, I guess the, the empathy, the problem solving, the ability to help someone through that is not there with goes away.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Yes. That's like a, A partnership and love bombing are two very different things.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: So it's kind of the opposite of under promise, over deliver. It's over promise and under delivering. So you're thinking like a classic one to is oh, our rate's gonna be dirt cheap on this. And then you get to the actual day and there's. Well we needed an accessorial for a Friday night delivery or we needed an accessorial for over the weekend transit. It's like well that's not, I mean.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: You, you gave us the ship date, we figured you knew, right?
[00:05:02] Speaker B: We just kind of tag tagging these additional charges on not adhering to mabd percentages and that leads to obviously fines, but then angry retail buyers out of stock fees, poor communication and just a generally poor experience overall after feeling these warm and fuzzies based on the Love Bombing.
So I guess what's the challenge and what we've been working on in our time together here at Zipline is if you were a shipper, how can you tell who's sincere and who's not?
[00:05:41] Speaker A: I think that's all in the details and being able to ask questions and feel like your questions are answered. So when someone says I will always give you dirt cheap rates. Yeah, okay, well how are you getting those? Are you going to the spot? Are you posting these loads somewhere? What's your carrier qualification?
How far in advance do you book these shipments?
How often do you have to recover them? Being able to ask those questions or have someone talk you through their process, being willing to do that. Nice think is really important.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: That was what I was going to say is that, you know, to me Love Bombing focuses on a lot of the outcomes where I think the sincerity and the actual meat and potatoes comes from the process.
Right. So I think that's super important.
Being able to talk to like what are we doing? Why are you different? Why? You know, all we, like you said, we posted on the load board and we'll take anybody.
Well, you know, we have a region based carrier system and we're developing relationships with carriers that deliver into those regions and they deliver into the retailers every single day. And that's why they want to work with us, because they value our relationship and we're feeding them and we're, you know, getting them back to their, to their home base. So those are the kind of the details, like you said, are driving our partnerships on both the shipper side, our customers and the carrier side, our carrier partners.
So it has, you know, we're in the early stages of 2026. You know, we're still in Q1. You know, quite frankly, I think it came out in our podcast around the market updates. You know, things have shifted a little bit here at the end of Q4, 2025 into, into 2026 there we talked about it that there was a pretty serious crackdown on non domiciled CDL drivers which took a pretty decent sized chunk of drivers off of the road which impacted capacity. The supply side of things, we saw a relatively robust Black Friday and beyond in terms of spending for the consumers domestically which helped on the demand side of things. And so that created, you know, tender rejections which we haven't seen in probably three to three and a half years.
And so what that means is essentially, you know, truckers, carriers have been taking on contractual freight because that freight, those prices were more appealing than going out to the spot market. Right. So tender rejections were below 5% for probably two or three years, mid-2022, until really around Thanksgiving 2025.
And we saw them spike as high as 14%.
So what that means is that like, hey, we've got a rate from Columbus to Chicago for, let's call it a thousand dollars. I'm going to reject that rate as a carrier because I can go out into the spot market and get a rate for 12.50 because someone's desperate to move it for that.
And so how does that, you know, thinking about how that market has shifted since the last time we talked about this, how does that play into like love bombing? How is that different from what we, we talked about?
[00:08:57] Speaker A: So, okay, the love bombing response would be, hey, the market has, has shifted. I don't have the available capacity, but I could do. I, you know, like, thanks. Whereas the partnership, you know, a solid relationship would go in as, hey, the market has shifted. This is what I'm seeing going into the next couple weeks.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: This is what the option is, is this. Can we discuss this rate? Can I show you what this is? And I expect it to go back down to these levels and give that transparency to allow other options. Not. I don't have a truck buy. I have this truck for this. We, here's our options. We can do this rate, we can split it. We can talk about what that means for you down the road as far as your goals and keeping everything in mind, not just thinking of the one side because again, when you're in that relationship, it's. Both sides have to be able to communicate and you have to be able to talk about it in a way that makes sense for both parties. Everybody's obviously needs to make a profit, so we have to discuss that and see what makes sense. But it's not going to be a situation that is an ultimatum and it's not going to be a situation that leaves the shipper in a situation where they have no options and just have to go to the spot market, end up paying twice as much.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: It provides visibility into what it's going to look like over this shift time period, holiday, whatever that might be.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: You're left high and dry as a shipper because you feel like you're kind of backed into a corner with this person who's this, let's call it three pl who's love bombing you? He's telling you that they've got all, all the world's problems are solved no matter what, when they're not providing consistent updates on, like you said, the weather or which we're dealing with right now in, in the early stages of Q1 and we're in Q4 as well. The market shifts, the, you know, tariff updates or anything that can potentially impact the, the state of freight.
Right. And, and it changes. It's, it feels like it changes almost daily right now, but I mean, it's changing probably weekly. But I can tell you this, it.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Changes for us daily because we're working on different, different lanes, different situations, different products for the shipper. It prob.
Monthly.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's, it's shifting and it's, you know, compared to, you know, mid-2022 and beyond, 23 and 24 and most of 2025, you know, it's different. It's a different world out there. And we just need to continue to stay the course and do the, do the little things right, do the ordinary things well, communicate, have integrity, stick to our rates and try and stay ahead of it. And I think we're doing a good job with that here at Zipline. I think that's one of our foundational principles, you know, staying connected to the customers and providing those updates.
It's very easy to do that when the market's not shifting. It takes on a, to me, more importance when it does start shifting. And that's why having that consistency of staying connected even in the easy times is easy for us, easier for us here at Zipline to fall into those habits. Right.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: And I think speaking about like, the communication and that with our, our customers, that's not just the shippers, that does include the carriers. And I think that's a really important piece of the entire network that you are building for the partnership for this customer, for the brand.
And I'm always amazed by our carrier team's way to qualify carriers.
But also, I mean, we do, you know, shadowing every once in a while where we kind of reestablish with what other people's roles are. And I am always amazed to the point where I'm listening to a conversation, I hear it sounds fine, it sounds like nothing. And all of a sudden they're like, yeah, no, I, I think that's a double broker situation. Yeah, I don't, I don't get it. Like, I don't know how they hear these things, but they're able to pick up on those little things and be able to avoid fraud, be able to avoid issues because they have such great relationships with their carriers and they understand the way they communicate. They understand if there's a bad actor with an email. And I think that's important and impressive as well because that's real problem in society.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you want to make our Valentine's fantastic, if you want to break up with your current 3 PL partner, come on over to Zipline. We'd love to have you. Www.ziplinelogistics.com 888go zipline. Give us a call. We had a recent kind of win with one of our customers, you know, talking to them through these market shifts throughout Q4.
And the reality was we came to an agreement. It's not going to work for everybody but like, hey, here's how we are navigating things. We get into this position where we feel bad.
It's a challenging conversation to talk to someone and say hey, I told you it was twelve hundred dollars. It's, we're seeing eighteen hundred dollars on moving your freight right now. It's different, it's changed because we've had a relationship for a year plus because we've excelled in service. You know, this is coming off of feedback of where like you guys are one of our best performing carriers and you know you're doing a great job. Appreciate your communication. It's daily, it's almost hourly at this point. Your visibility with your canopy system has created efficiencies with our shipper. You haven't had a load stolen and ever. Yeah, all of positive things.
Go ahead and take that rate, keep us updated on that.
Just provide us visibility if you need any more money during this difficult time. We understand we're seeing the kind of reading the tea leaves of the market right now. We're staying up to date. We trust you to continue to do that. So just know from now forward we know, we think, we understand that you're not going to take advantage of us, which is true. And we'll provide full transparency to them. That is a service offering that we've provided to a lot of our long standing customers. We show them where the market is, we stick to it, we provide the data. We're not just saying it, we're providing the visibility and the transparency. So it goes a long way. And that leads to 95% on time in full world class customer satisfaction, five times industry average. How about that Teddy?
And then one of our, I think that I'm most proud of is our carrier qualifications. So we have 50,000 carriers qualified. 50,000 plus it's closer to 60,000 but 50,000. They're vetted specifically through a number of tools to haul CPG products high value goods. In some cases that certainly narrows down the 50,000. But we're qualifying them daily, if not minute by minute through our API, EDI connections with these services and then we're talking to them on the phone. We're working with the right people on the shipper side who value that type of commitment and we're working with the right carriers to deliver on those expectations.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: And I think that if you are in a situation where you're trying to build that trust to your example of giving the information of where the market is, if you as a shipper are in the situation where it doesn't feel comfortable or your current partner is upset by the fact that you want to double check that you want a second opinion, that is your cue to really start looking for a more serious second opinion that you can move to. That trust is not built in a day and it has to be, it has to be understood. We need the feedback just as much as anybody else. So I think that that's really important. If you are in a situation where you feel like you can't get that second opinion or you feel like it's uncomfortable to go back with that, that's a good cue that maybe you need to look at your, your current relationship and think about getting out of a love bombing situation.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: How about it? Give us a shot. Happy Valentine's Day everybody. Head on over to Apple and Spotify. Leave us a review, a comment 5 star hopefully 888-go-zipLine www.ziplinelogistics.com thank you again for joining us in another edition of the Zipline Logistics Podcast. We will see you next time. Happy Valentine's Day.
