Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Building Trust Through Transparency: Denis Gallagher's Operations Leadership

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Building Trust Through Transparency: Denis Gallagher's Operations Leadership · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:15
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Dennis Gallagher, Senior Vice President
0:21
of Operations at Student Transportation of America STA,
0:26
one of North America's leading school transportation providers.
0:30
Founded in 1997, STA has grown to employ over 23,500 people and
0:37
operate more than 17,000 daily routes, all while maintaining a
0:42
deep commitment to student safety, reliability, and a
0:45
family oriented culture. As a senior leader at STA,
0:50
Dennis plays a key role in shaping field operations,
0:53
supporting thousands of employees across the US and
0:56
Canada. His leadership has been marked
0:59
by a focus on cultural transformation, operational
1:02
excellence, and talent development, helping the company
1:06
stay resilient and mission driven in a rapidly evolving
1:09
industry. With a background in finance and
1:12
strategy, Dennis brings a grounded yet forward thinking
1:16
approach to leadership in one of the most critical sectors in
1:19
public service. Now before we get into all that
1:22
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2:02
All right, back to our guest today, Senior VP of Operations
2:05
at Student Transportation of America, Dennis Gallagher.
2:08
Junior, I appreciate you making the time to Share your story
2:10
today. Yeah, thank you for inviting me
2:13
on here. This is great.
2:14
So, Dennis, I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile here.
2:17
It looks like you briefly worked at STA for nine months, 2004 to
2:22
2005, as a financial analyst and researcher.
2:26
Then you left to work at Marriott Vacation Club
2:28
International for a few years in a similar role and then came
2:31
back to STA, where you've been now for 16 years.
2:35
Walk us through how the opportunity first came about at
2:39
STA, why you left, and then why you came back.
2:43
So my father started this organization that I worked for
2:47
back in 1997. I'm actually 5th generation in
2:50
this industry. So my father had worked for a
2:53
company called Laidlaw and left Laidlaw in 1996 and then started
2:57
this company in 1997. I had grown up in the industry.
3:02
It's really been all, all I've known and it was all that I knew
3:06
for most of my childhood life. Then I went to college, got a
3:10
degree in finance and marketing and I met my wife at, in, in
3:14
college at Boston College and she's from the Central Florida
3:17
area. So after we graduated, she moved
3:20
back home, I moved back to New Jersey.
3:22
I was looking for jobs, looking for ways just to try and enhance
3:26
some of my knowledge, some of the things that I had learned in
3:29
college and had an opportunity to help out with some things at
3:32
the office in New Jersey. So did that for a few months
3:37
like you had mentioned, and then have the distinct opportunity to
3:41
be fired by my father, but in the best way possible in, in so
3:45
far as you need to find what it is that you want to do.
3:50
You need to start to sort of carve your own path in life
3:53
here. And so it took that advice.
3:55
So that's fire. For performance reasons, more
3:57
like go spread your wings a little bit kind of a thing.
4:00
Yeah. OK.
4:01
Yeah, so. My wife, like I said, is from
4:04
Central Florida and she asked what I ever think about moving
4:06
down here. And I thought, OK, well, cost of
4:08
living is lower and the weather is wonderful and there's
4:13
opportunity. So I did some networking amongst
4:15
the alumni for Boston College through a series of of wild
4:20
networking opportunities, was able to get in touch with
4:23
somebody who was finance director down at, at Marriott at
4:26
the timeshare Resort in Orlando. And so I, I flew down on a flew
4:31
down on a Sunday after my sister got married the day before,
4:34
interviewed for the job on Monday and got offered the job
4:37
on Wednesday. And two weeks later moved down
4:39
to Florida and started down here working for Marriott doing
4:42
accounting for golf operations at timeshare resort.
4:46
So did that for a little while, transferred over to the
4:48
corporate office to do financial analysis and financial planning
4:51
and development for, for new project development.
4:55
And did that for a few years. Now.
4:56
One of the things I had developed in my relationship
4:59
with my parents through college was to call them every Sunday
5:03
just as a check in. And I've continued that practice
5:06
actually to this day. And so all the while, while I
5:09
was down here and working for Marriott, I used to still talk
5:12
to my folks every weekend. And my dad, he, he just loved
5:16
talking shop. That's, that's all he did.
5:18
It was it was the thing that he did best, right?
5:21
And so for many years, it was just absorbing all of this
5:24
information from him, all these stories.
5:26
And, and back in 2008, he had said that, you know, the company
5:30
got a contract with Duval County in Northeast Florida.
5:33
And he started floating out the idea, you know, we could we
5:37
could use somebody to do the books here for this location.
5:40
And I thought, OK, well, if I do that, I'm going to have to move
5:43
back to New Jersey. And I really don't want to do
5:44
that. But then the possibility became
5:47
real that I could stay in Florida, sort of travel up to
5:50
that location from Orlando to Duvall every so often and do
5:55
accounting for for them. And so I, I took that
5:58
opportunity and I had a career coach at the time.
6:00
And the career coach asked me, you know, would your, would your
6:02
dad ever steer you in the wrong direction?
6:04
Because I think like many people, you have on your, your
6:06
show a little bit of a chip on your shoulder.
6:09
You know, you don't, you don't want to lean into that nepotism.
6:13
But when they framed it that way, I thought, you know, my dad
6:17
would not steer me wrong. This sounds like a great
6:19
opportunity. And so then in the summer of
6:21
2009, I jumped at that opportunity and I've been with
6:26
STA ever since. And so how has your role evolved
6:30
since you've been back there? I started out doing accounting
6:33
for a single site in Northeast Florida and then grew that into
6:38
multi site responsibility across a region and just kept raising
6:43
my hand and asking, you know, can I do more, can I do more?
6:45
So when we would do acquisitions, even though it
6:47
might not have been really geographically relevant, I said,
6:52
OK, I have the capacity to take on more, so just let me take on
6:54
more. And they were nice enough to
6:56
say, OK, you can take up more. And so started doing that and
7:00
like I said, grew into an area, a region responsibility for
7:04
finance and accounting. And then in 2016 someone had
7:09
told me, you know, I think that you know, operations more than
7:14
you think. And I think that you might make
7:16
it a halfway decent operator. I said, I don't know anything
7:19
about operations. All I know is finance and
7:21
accounting. And they said you spend a lot of
7:24
time in the offices, right? You spend a lot of time at the
7:26
terminals, which I did. I spent a lot of time in the
7:28
dispatch offices just trying to figure out how do, how does
7:31
information move around here? How do processes work?
7:34
What are the people dynamics? I said, if you can figure that
7:37
out, you've got 9/10 operations down.
7:40
So just lean into that, you know, pray about it, figure out
7:44
what it is that you want to do. And I realized this was going to
7:46
be an opportunity with a much higher ceiling for me.
7:50
So I made the transition into operations and I've been in
7:54
regional operations management since 2016.
7:58
So let's take a step back and you know, there was the intro
8:01
that I gave, but kind of tell a little bit more in plain English
8:04
what STA does. 2/3 of school districts around the country
8:11
use, own and operate their own school bus fleets to take kids
8:15
to and from school. The other third use a vendor
8:18
partner like us. So we are one of the the largest
8:22
contractors of school bus services across North America.
8:26
Like you had mentioned, in 23 States and six provinces in
8:29
Canada, there's a weak contract with school districts to take
8:33
kids to and from school safely and on time every day.
8:38
I think what sets us apart? One of the things that my that
8:42
my dad used to say, and he's retired now, he retired in 2018
8:47
or maybe it was 19, 2019, he retired.
8:50
One of the things that he used to say is that this is a family
8:54
business. It's not a family business
8:56
because it's my family who started it.
8:58
It's a family business because it's about the families of the
9:01
18,020 thousand people that work here everyday.
9:05
And I think that that mindset combined with a hyper focus on
9:11
putting yourself in the shoes of the customer.
9:13
So how do you take care of your people?
9:16
How do you take care of the customers?
9:18
Not ironically, those things are related, right?
9:22
Take care of your people. Your, your people will take care
9:26
of the customer and the customer will take care of you.
9:30
And I think that attention to detail, that attention to making
9:34
this organization like a family culture while also being a
9:38
trusted partner for school districts is something that's
9:43
unique to US versus many other contractors.
9:46
I'm not saying that no one else in the industry tries to do that
9:49
too. They do, but the emphasis here
9:53
is, I think, what sets us apart from many other companies that
9:56
do the same work in this industry.
9:59
How do you compare sort of I don't know in terms of
10:02
geographical coverage or a size to some of the other players in
10:06
the industry because that, you know, I'm hearing it for 23,000
10:10
employees. I mean, this sounds like a
10:11
pretty sizable operation. It is.
10:15
We are the second largest I believe in the industry.
10:18
So there there's one company that's a competitor for ours
10:21
who's about double our size. They're larger than everybody
10:24
else by a country mile. Then after that there's there's
10:27
us, there's a handful of players around the same range and then
10:31
it shifts into a lot of mid size regional kind of companies.
10:34
And then there's a million and a half mom and pop providers who
10:38
own one buses, 10 buses, things like that.
10:42
So yeah, we are on the larger end of the spectrum relative to
10:45
to most other companies in the industry.
10:48
Do you find it challenging to sort of keep that family
10:53
business mindset in an operation that size?
10:56
I mean, you want to take care of your employees, they take care
10:58
of the customers who then in turn take care of you.
11:01
Like, how do you sort of instill that in an organization that's
11:07
so large in spread out across so many different locations?
11:12
It's not the easiest thing in the world to do as as you can
11:15
imagine, but we place such a heavy emphasis on relationship
11:20
building at the local level. And so we're a fairly
11:24
decentralized organization. We place a lot of emphasis like
11:29
I said on relationship building and that has to be instilled.
11:33
So the the level that I'm at in terms of senior management where
11:36
I oversee a region of operations, it is dependent
11:40
largely on people in the role that that I'm in and my
11:44
counterparts to be able to filter that message down to, you
11:50
know, VPS and journal managers and filter that message down to
11:53
terminal managers. You have to keep an eye on it
11:56
though. You have to not just be have
11:59
relationships necessarily from me to my direct reports, but
12:03
relationships all the way down the line.
12:05
And you have to put your ego aside a little bit, in my
12:08
opinion, in terms of, yes, there is a direct report chain of
12:11
command, but you can talk to anybody in the organization that
12:15
you want to. So if a terminal manager wants
12:17
to reach out to me, they should be able to.
12:19
If I want to reach out directly to a terminal manager, I should
12:23
be able to without anybody's feelings getting hurt.
12:25
If I want to go check on a customer, I have to be able to
12:27
do that. It's so important to be
12:30
transparent, whether it's with your own employees or with the
12:33
customers. There's sometimes where you'll
12:35
find people don't want to give people information because it's
12:38
inconvenient or because it's not the most positive news.
12:43
But you have to get past that. And like I said, you have to be
12:46
transparent. You have to be able to provide
12:47
good information, bad information, good feedback, bad
12:50
feedback so that we can continuously improve those
12:54
relationships which will ultimately lead to us doing a
12:56
better job for you. Makes sense.
13:00
It strikes me that your business is almost certainly very
13:03
seasonal. And we're recording this in, you
13:05
know, June of 25. Schools are out of session.
13:10
You guys have a lot of idle buses.
13:12
Or, you know, are your folks sort of employed, sort of like a
13:15
teacher would be where they sort of take the summers off?
13:18
Are there opportunities to put them to work in other ways
13:20
during the offseason? There's some opportunities for
13:24
work during the summer. Most districts run summer
13:27
school, whether it's extended year programs or whether it's
13:31
just straight summer school programs.
13:32
There's some camps that that are available.
13:35
Largely a lot of our employees like this, like this job because
13:40
it provides them an opportunity to take unemployment during the
13:44
summer time. So the unemployment during the
13:47
summer time allows them to collect a paycheck still, but be
13:50
able to spend time with their families.
13:53
Most of our employees are retirees.
13:56
Most it shifted maybe somewhat a little bit, but it's still
14:00
largely retirees. And it's a lot of grandparents,
14:03
a lot of parents that like to spend time with their families.
14:06
They work during the school year, but then they like to take
14:09
summers off. So there are opportunities for
14:12
people that want to work and want to collect a paycheck
14:14
through the summer, but largely our employees will take the
14:17
summer off becomes a challenge to keep them engaged during the
14:21
summer, right? How do you stay in touch with
14:23
them? How do you make sure that
14:24
they're coming back? And so we have to be cognizant
14:27
of that. But yeah, a lot of them that
14:29
that's kind of their plan for the summer time.
14:32
Yeah. I'm curious.
14:33
With such a, a large workforce and with that sort of unusual
14:37
break time there in the summer, you know where you're going to
14:40
have, you know, some turnover that you're not aware of until
14:43
sort of the moment arrives. What, what kind of programs have
14:48
you guys put in place to recruit folks on the front end and then
14:53
to sort of maintain that retention whether it's
14:55
throughout the year or during the sort of unusual summer
14:59
months? So I would say two different
15:02
parts of that answer. There's we have to place a
15:05
focus, a strong focus on retention throughout the year.
15:10
Recruiting has become a it's the thing everyone wants to point
15:15
to. There's been a driver shortage
15:16
in the industry since before COVID, but it's really been
15:19
exacerbated by COVID. And so, so most times when you
15:24
talk to people, whether it's from outside the industry,
15:26
whether it's at the school district level, they always ask
15:29
you, how are you recruiting? How are you recruiting?
15:32
And recruiting is important, don't get me wrong.
15:35
I don't find necessarily that we have a recruiting problem, that
15:39
there are plenty of applicants that come that come in.
15:42
And we've done a pretty good job as an industry at stepping up
15:46
wages to be more market competitive.
15:49
Wages previously usually lagged versus other employers, but it's
15:54
gotten better more recently, especially post COVID.
15:57
So the wages are there. I think you can sell it as an
16:01
opportunity to drive your kids to work.
16:03
There are different ways that you can sell the opportunity to
16:06
potential applicants. Like I said, there are some
16:09
appealing parts of it. It just gives you a lot of
16:12
flexibility in your schedule. So there are recruiting programs
16:16
that we do, whether it's through Indeed, whether it's on radio or
16:19
billboards, sort of traditional recruiting methods.
16:23
What I find is the more important part of the
16:25
conversation is that retention, because honestly it doesn't
16:29
really matter how well you recruit.
16:31
If you're recruiting and you're getting in 1234 people a month
16:36
or 10 people a month, if you are losing them out the back door,
16:41
it doesn't matter. And so the emphasis has to be on
16:44
retention. Now, there's a couple of things
16:48
that we need to do in terms of making sure that we're setting
16:50
ourselves up for retention. 1 is making sure that we're
16:54
recognizing our employees for the job that they do year round.
16:59
The other is you have to make sure you give them proper
17:02
training, set them up for success on the bus.
17:05
And that's with respect to accidents and and safety, but
17:09
it's also with respect to student management.
17:12
You can't shortchange the training on the front end and
17:16
then expect that that's going to pay off for you in the back.
17:18
So it is a significant investment in time to get school
17:22
bus drivers trained weeks. But you have to do that.
17:27
And if you shortchange it, those people, the first time that they
17:32
have an incident on the on the bus with students, the first
17:35
time that they have an accident, even if it's a mirror clip or
17:39
something like that, they're going to say, this is too much
17:41
for me. But you have to instill in them
17:43
the training and the confidence to be able to do the job so that
17:46
when these things happen, they feel prepared to do the job and
17:49
to stay. It's not the easiest job in the
17:51
world, but it's a significantly rewarding 1 So I think that is
17:55
really the importance throughout the years in terms of retaining
17:59
people. Throughout the summer, we do
18:01
some social gatherings, whether it's, you know, a picnic or a
18:06
beach gathering or an ice cream social, something like that, to
18:09
try and physically keep your eyes on people throughout the
18:12
summer. But then we also keep in touch
18:14
with them through text messages and we try and ask them before
18:17
the school year ends. You know it is your intent to
18:20
return or not. But even beyond that, you have
18:22
to still keep on them throughout the summer until you get to that
18:25
kickoff meeting before school starts, when you're introducing
18:29
routes back to them and everything.
18:31
Just as a little sidebar, I'm kind of curious what the
18:33
training for dealing with how did you, I think you called it
18:37
student management. Dealing with tough kids is like
18:40
because I rode a school bus and it was, you know, mostly a
18:43
pretty good experience. But you know, there, there were
18:45
some kids who got rowdy who were, you know, out of line.
18:48
And I remember I still her, her name was Sue and I can still see
18:51
her face. She she was fantastic.
18:54
You know, she she she had a firm hand, but she wasn't like
18:57
overboard. And so I think she just kind of
19:00
had the right mix of the personality.
19:01
But like how, how do you sort of instill that training in folks?
19:06
Honestly, if you get to the point where you're at, where Sue
19:09
was at you, you've done a good job.
19:11
You can't be afraid of the students, right?
19:14
You don't want them to necessarily be afraid of you,
19:17
but you have to let them know that there are rules on the bus
19:21
and as long as you operate within the confines of the
19:24
rules, everything's going to be great.
19:26
You also have to introduce accountability to them in terms
19:29
of here are the rules that we're setting.
19:31
And if you go beyond these, there is a process with which we
19:35
can refer hand in a referral note to the schools and the
19:38
schools will discipline you. We're not allowed to discipline
19:41
the students, but we can write them up and hand it in to the
19:45
the school so that the schools can discipline them.
19:48
So again, it's that perfect combination of being patient for
19:52
one, but that because they are kids, right?
19:55
If you think about it this way, traditional school bus type C
20:00
anymore 7277 passengers, you know, that can range between if
20:06
you're if they're smaller kids, you might be able to get a full
20:08
7277 kids on vehicle and the older kids, you might be able to
20:12
get 4550 kids on the vehicle just because you know those 3
20:15
seaters, you might sit 2 to those and the two seater you can
20:18
sit 1. So traditional classroom would
20:21
have what? 20 kids in it, 30 kids in it, in
20:25
inside the school, right? You go on the school bus, you're
20:28
talking about two to three classrooms worth of queers that
20:33
you're turning your back to and trying to navigate the road in
20:37
front of you while not getting in an accident.
20:41
So you have to. I just picture like I've been a
20:45
part of it, but I'm just sort of picturing like this 3 ring
20:47
circus and you're juggling all these different things.
20:50
Basically, yeah, 100%. And, and so they have to be able
20:55
to have the confidence to speak with the kids and tell them that
21:01
these are the rules of the bus. But also, like I said, introduce
21:03
accountability measures that you can have fun as long as it's
21:07
right within here, right? Just stay within here and then
21:10
everything's going to be fine. These are your guardrails kind
21:14
of going back to more of like a, you know, because I, I know
21:16
you've got a strong background in finance.
21:18
You've kind of been a part of really impressive like 400%
21:23
expansion in the STA operations while simultaneously keeping,
21:27
you know, margins where they need to be.
21:31
I'm curious to hear what were the most important pieces of the
21:34
puzzle that had to come together to allow for such substantial
21:38
growth. So this was back when I first
21:43
started in operations back in 2016.
21:47
They had tasked me with growing the region.
21:50
So at that time I had two locations.
21:52
One of them was that large location in Northeast Florida
21:56
and the other one was a small operation in Charleston, SC.
22:00
And so my first year in 2017, I I won a contract of of of
22:05
similar size to the large 1. So effectively doubled the size
22:08
of the region. Following year won another one
22:11
again in Florida, same size, so tripling the size of the region.
22:15
The following year, another one in 2019 in North Carolina,
22:18
similar size and then in 2020 another one similar size.
22:23
As far as how, how do you make this happen?
22:25
Well, part of it is you have to be very intentional about the
22:29
contracts that you're going to bid.
22:31
There's a couple different ways that you can grow.
22:33
One of them is through acquisitions, one of them is by
22:35
bids and then one of them is by trying to convert in house
22:38
operations to the contracted model.
22:40
All of these particular ones were about bids.
22:44
So in some ways it's it's not like you can go proactively out
22:50
to the market and try and sell a widget and increase sales.
22:53
It's a bit reactive in terms of the contract comes out to bid
22:57
and then you bid on it. But the process to prepare for
23:00
it doesn't have to be reactive. If we know these opportunities
23:04
are coming available, how do we position ourselves in our
23:07
current operations so that we can use our current operations
23:12
as referrals both from the school districts, but also just
23:16
so you can see this is how we operate.
23:18
You can speak to our employees, you can speak to our customers
23:21
and you have to be, again, very cognizant of that because that
23:24
speaks for itself larger than anything.
23:27
One of the contracts that I had won in in North Carolina was one
23:31
that had come out I think a year or two before they actually
23:35
imported the contract and it came out just as a request for
23:39
information, which is a precursor to any sort of public
23:43
bid. And so we knew at that time, OK,
23:46
this is not an opportunity for us to bid, but this is something
23:49
that long term we might be able to take advantage of if we build
23:51
a relationship. So we built a relationship with
23:54
the people at the school district level.
23:56
Answer a whole bunch of questions.
23:58
Again, transparency. How do you go to them in
24:01
transparency and position yourselves as subject matter
24:05
experts so that when they put this contract out to bid, they
24:09
already know you, They already know you can, they can trust
24:12
you. They know that you're going to
24:13
give them good information. So as this contract came out,
24:16
two years later, we find ourselves responding to the bid.
24:19
We find ourselves in a negotiation and then we find
24:22
ourselves with a contract award. So some of it is reactive, but
24:26
it doesn't mean the entire process has to be.
24:28
There are definitely ways in even a reactive environment that
24:32
you can be proactive about your customer engagement, but also
24:35
about your own current performance.
24:37
So you're setting yourselves up in a reactive environment to be
24:40
able to respond accordingly. So most of the growth that you
24:43
just talked about there came about because of bids that you
24:47
won, significant bids. You mentioned that another way
24:50
to grow is through acquisitions. How big of a part has that
24:54
played in the overall operations growth?
24:58
A pretty significant part and especially post COVID, they're
25:03
generally in the industry. There's been some consolidating
25:06
of some of the mom and pops or the regional players into some
25:11
of the larger organizations in the industry.
25:14
So acquisitions is more prevalent than bids.
25:19
The bids is a, it's part of doing business in this industry.
25:24
It's just shifting share from one company to another.
25:28
So it's this natural competition between you and the other
25:32
organizations. It's an OK way to grow, but I
25:37
don't think it's anybody's favorite in particular because
25:39
it's a 0 sum game. As you win someone else loses,
25:42
right. The conversion side and I'll get
25:45
to the acquisitions in a moment. The conversion side would be
25:48
that would be the the best opportunity for the entire
25:51
industry because it really just grows the the size of the pie,
25:54
right versus you know, it's might be 2/3.
25:57
Now, when you're converting somebody from using their own
25:59
internal operations to a contractor like yours.
26:02
Yeah. And we all believe in the
26:03
contracted model. We believe that, you know, the
26:06
school board should keep their dollars inside the classrooms
26:09
and focus on teaching kids. Let us get them there.
26:13
You worry about teaching them when we get them there.
26:15
So we all believe in the contracted model.
26:17
And if we could increase the size of the pipe would be better
26:20
for the entire industry. Obviously, the acquisition side
26:23
has been, I think, the the largest source of growth for
26:26
most of the larger organizations in this industry.
26:30
We try to take the approach again of finding who are going
26:34
to be the companies that fit with us culturally, who has
26:38
similar values to us. You know, you can do 100 Harvard
26:42
Business Review case studies to learn how acquisitions fail when
26:47
you don't assimilate culture properly, right?
26:50
It, it falls apart instantly. So we do a lot of diligence on
26:55
finding out who are the owners of these organizations and if we
27:00
were to succeed in acquiring them, how would it fit
27:04
strategically, but also how would it fit culturally?
27:07
They think that is really important.
27:08
You can't just go out buying up every company just to to hit an
27:12
embedded growth obligation. You really need to be smart
27:15
about making sure that you're onboarding the right group of
27:18
folks. And I think we've done that by
27:19
and large. Going back to how you really
27:23
grew the business in your region there by winning those bids, was
27:26
there something special about, you know, the pricing model that
27:30
you brought into place that allowed for you to have so much
27:34
success in in the bidding? So this is kind of interesting
27:39
because I, I'm, I love Microsoft Excel, probably probably too
27:46
much, but I'm the kind of. Spoken like a true finance nerd.
27:50
I love it. I'm the kind of person that, you
27:52
know, when I was a kid, I used to use Microsoft Excel to track
27:57
hockey statistics just because I just like tinkering.
28:01
I just love tinkering with Excel.
28:03
And so even before I took formalized classes with it in,
28:07
in college. And then after I got out of
28:09
college, I took a proficiency test and was certified as a, a
28:12
master user in Microsoft Excel, which I quickly realized if you
28:16
have that and two Dimes on nickel, you have $0.25.
28:21
So I, I've always kind of had a, a hobby of just tinkering.
28:26
What could I do? How can I maximize this?
28:28
So when I had started with STA, I'm not going to sit here and
28:31
say that I revolutionized this whole thing, but I found that we
28:35
were probably not optimizing on the most efficient frontier when
28:38
it came to our financial modelling in two ways really.
28:43
I think 1 is there's probably information in here that doesn't
28:48
necessarily need to be be in here because it's not a driver
28:51
for decisions, but there's definitely other information
28:55
that is not in here that should be.
28:57
So in terms of content, I think it was a little bit of a
29:00
redoing, you know, how do we redo the current model to make
29:03
sure that relevant drivers are in here for decision making.
29:07
The other thing that I learned was very important and I learned
29:10
this from one of my bosses at Marriott was just simply about
29:14
presentation. She was was very, very, she
29:20
emphasized that that presentation and Excel modeling
29:23
a lot. So like when you would hand off
29:26
a send your boss a document, make it easy for them to read,
29:30
make it aesthetically pleasing. You have to realize, especially
29:32
in the school bus business, a lot of the bus operators are not
29:36
Microsoft Excel master users like I am, right?
29:40
And so how can you create this thing in such a way that it's
29:44
aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate?
29:47
Because the last thing I want to do is create a strain on the
29:50
people who had to make decisions about these contracts and where
29:52
we're going to bid. You don't want to add a strain
29:55
to them by figuring out by making them figure out how it
29:58
how it is. Is it that I use this model make
30:01
it easy for them to use, right? Decrease that burden for them so
30:04
that the decision making capacity grows and we can just
30:08
be much more efficient in our process for making decisions and
30:12
make much more educated decisions.
30:14
So I think that was kind of my approach with financial
30:17
modelling as I approached STA. Are you guys union shop?
30:23
Non union? How does that work?
30:25
It depends throughout the country.
30:27
There are some places where we do have, where we do have
30:31
unions. I would say it's probably a
30:33
third unionized and 2/3 not. So where we have to, we come up
30:38
or we negotiate with the Teamsters and we we maintain
30:42
labor peace. Yeah.
30:43
Is that a process that you personally get involved in kind
30:46
of negotiating those contracts? Yeah, a couple of the locations
30:49
that I operate in have organized employees and most of the times
30:54
it's through the Teamsters. I have one contract with the
30:56
ATU, the Amalgamated Transit Unit.
30:58
Most of them are with the Teamsters.
31:00
And what I find is that, again, I'm going to sound a bit like a
31:04
broken record here, but it's relationship building.
31:08
You know, you go into negotiations and you sit across
31:11
the table most times from the union president or the business
31:16
agent and then usually a couple driver stewards, right, The
31:19
couple drivers that represent the rest of the collective
31:22
drivers in that, in that bargaining unit.
31:25
And you just have to listen to what it is that they say,
31:29
because a lot of times they might have been burned by one
31:32
particular instance and now they want to take this one particular
31:35
instance. They feel like no one listens to
31:37
them. And now they want to introduce
31:39
it into contract language. You know, it might be an issue
31:42
that somebody had with a manager.
31:45
It might be an issue that somebody had with the facility.
31:47
And you realize, OK, we don't need to, we don't need to
31:52
memorialize this in contract language.
31:54
All we need to do is address your problem.
31:57
And you could do that so often just by, again, building human
32:01
relationships with people, encouraging the drivers to have
32:04
the open door or the managers to have the open door with the
32:07
drivers. So you can resolve a lot of
32:08
these things. The same goes largely for the
32:12
whole union process. They're not bad people.
32:15
We're not bad people. We're all good people trying to
32:19
achieve an outcome, right? We have a business to run.
32:22
They're trying to make the most for their employees.
32:24
They're trying to give their employees good places to work
32:27
that are safe and clean and that they can provide for their
32:30
family. And if you just view it in that
32:33
perspective, it becomes so much easier to negotiate.
32:36
And you can cut out so much or not so much, but if there's
32:40
hostility, you can cut through that by just stepping back and
32:42
realizing they're out to achieve an outcome.
32:45
And so are we. There's always a middle ground.
32:48
How do we get there without thinking the worst of each
32:51
other? And again, once you take that
32:53
perspective and build relationships especially too, it
32:56
becomes easier. A lot easier.
33:00
You know, one of the things I like that you just said there,
33:02
Dennis, was, you know, this idea about sometimes there was one
33:06
thing that they feel burned by and right now they want to
33:09
memorialize it in a contract, somehow put something in place
33:12
to, you know, prevent a reoccurrence.
33:14
But if you've got the ongoing relationship with them ahead of
33:19
the negotiations, chances are you've heard about this instance
33:25
and you can address it and it it you can prevent it from even
33:30
coming to the negotiating table in the 1st place, right?
33:35
People just have a desire to be seen and to be heard.
33:39
And when you don't, it bubbles all the way up to now we have to
33:44
memorialize this in, in a, in a contract.
33:47
So just listen to the people, acknowledge them and see them
33:52
and you can avoid much of that. You know, we've talked a little
33:55
bit about the training that you guys provide, kind of briefly
33:58
referenced safety training, but I'd like to go into a little bit
34:02
more in detail because I know that that's something that's
34:05
really important to STA and I want to hear how you guys kind
34:08
of implement that system wide. I, I get in trouble when I say
34:14
stuff like this, but my boss has let me, you know, talk to
34:19
people, whether it's customers or whether it's the public or
34:23
whether it's stuff like this. And I trust I'm not going to say
34:25
something stupid because I, I, what I do is I say that our, our
34:31
organization is, is large enough now that there are many people,
34:36
many processes. And I can't sit here and
34:40
guarantee that every, every process that we have is good,
34:44
every that we do all of these good things.
34:47
But I know that we do one thing really well.
34:50
And it's the thing that you have to do well in this industry,
34:52
otherwise you could be disqualified from doing it.
34:56
And it's the thing that we happen to be the best at.
34:58
And that thing is safety. We are just better at safety
35:01
than everybody else. And I feel confident in saying,
35:04
I'm not saying other people don't find it important.
35:06
I'm just saying that we have the metrics back up that we do
35:09
safety better than anybody else. Now.
35:12
Safety has to be at the forefront of everything it is
35:16
that you do. Everything has to start with,
35:20
has to end with and has to point back to safety.
35:24
So that begins with the interview process of the
35:27
drivers. There's a series of questions to
35:30
make sure that we're initially wedding out people who don't
35:32
seem like a good fit. And that goes to the significant
35:36
amount of training that we have to do before people even get on
35:39
a bus. And then it goes to monthly
35:42
safety training that's required. There's our safety meeting that
35:46
we have before the year starts. There's refinement training.
35:49
Whenever there's an accident, it doesn't matter if it's your
35:52
fault or somebody else's fault. So there's just a significant
35:55
investment in training, in safety training, even if it
35:58
means we have to get a route covered because we have to keep
36:02
a driver off the road in order to test them because they just
36:05
had an accident. So there are sacrifices.
36:08
And again, as long as you're up front with your customer to say,
36:10
hey, this person got in an accident and this route
36:13
yesterday afternoon, we have to pull them off for today, do some
36:16
additional refinement training to make sure that they're not
36:18
going to do this again. So in, in, in the meanwhile, we
36:21
need to cover that route. Otherwise customers, I've never
36:24
heard a customer necessarily complain about that.
36:28
But everything, like I said, has to point back to safety.
36:30
And this is, this goes to regular daily operations and
36:35
route running, but it also goes to things that have nothing to
36:38
do with safety. You know, why is it important
36:42
that you pay your people correctly?
36:44
Because if you don't pay your people correctly, they're going
36:47
to walk into the payroll person's office and they're
36:49
going to ask why they're not being paid correctly.
36:51
And if they don't like the answer that they get, they're
36:53
going to go out on the bus all flustered, all hot.
36:57
And the, and what happens inevitably, you've seen it 100
37:00
times, if you've seen it once, is that people get distracted
37:04
while they're on the road and it leads to accidents.
37:07
So everything we do, whether it's in the shop, maintaining
37:11
vehicles, whether it's the dispatch, how we talk to people,
37:14
whether it's getting people's pay correct, everything has to
37:18
point back to safety. Everybody has to be invested in
37:21
it. If you don't, if you don't have
37:25
everyone pointing back to safety, everybody investing in
37:28
it, people are going to know it that you're not serious about
37:31
it, and then it's going to show and your accidents will start to
37:34
creep up and then your retention goes down and it just snowballs
37:39
from there. So it has to just be a
37:41
commitment from every single function in the business back to
37:44
safety. You know, I like the fact that
37:47
you guys will take somebody who's just had an accident, take
37:50
them off the road, provide them training right away while
37:54
everything's sort of still fresh to address whatever the issue
37:58
was. And, and I also appreciate the
38:00
confidence in saying, hey, we do safety better than anyone.
38:03
I'm curious, I'm kind of putting you on the spot here.
38:05
I don't know if you've got this at your fingertips, but any
38:08
stats that kind of back that up? There's two key metrics in the
38:13
industry where we track safety. One of them is accident
38:18
frequency ratio and the other is lost time injury frequency
38:22
ratio. Now those numbers because of all
38:24
the different acquisitions that all of the different companies
38:27
have, they're all tracked separately by dot numbers.
38:29
So we keep those internally. Those are not numbers that are
38:32
published publicly, but those figures that we record
38:37
internally, we're able to look across the spectrum and say,
38:40
yeah, we do this better than anybody else because of of how
38:43
we track or how we stack rank in these couple different metrics.
38:47
I. Like that, you guys doing
38:50
anything with alternative fuels in STA?
38:55
Yeah, we, yeah, we've. Been doing things with
38:57
alternative fuels for quite a while.
38:59
I mean, when I started back in 2009, shortly thereafter, I want
39:02
to say it was in either in 2009 or 2010.
39:06
So let's say, yeah, 16 years ago, my first introduction to
39:09
alternative fuels was somebody in Jacksonville had come to us
39:13
and said, hey, we, we would like to sell you a, a bio diesel
39:17
blend. I said, OK, well, what is it
39:19
blended with? I said chicken fat.
39:22
OK, so it's part diesel and part chicken fat.
39:27
And so we set up a few tanks on the location and we, we would be
39:30
able to fuel. We set aside 10 buses or so and
39:34
it smells like chicken. You get really hungry and start
39:37
wondering where's the closest Chick-fil-A after your fuel?
39:40
Also, I love Chick-fil-A. I would eat it everyday.
39:45
And so it, but it was price comparable to diesel.
39:49
You know, it was maybe a little bit cheaper than diesel.
39:51
The efficiency was about the same and it burned cleaner and
39:56
the drivers appreciated that. So Fast forward then to I'm
40:00
probably getting the year wrong, but somewhere around 2014 or so
40:05
we end up having the largest propane fleet in the country in
40:10
Omaha, NE. We ran over 400 vehicles, all
40:13
propane for Omaha Public Schools.
40:16
Fast forward then to today and and we do some some CNG stuff
40:21
out in California. I don't have a ton of experience
40:23
with that myself now that the push is more toward electronic.
40:28
Electronic school buses or electric school buses.
40:32
And so, and I can talk about EVs as well.
40:35
What's interesting to me is, you know, whether it's the chicken
40:38
fat, whether it's the propane, whether it's EVs, there's always
40:44
been this desire, whether it's from the customers or the
40:48
drivers to find some alternative to diesel.
40:53
And it's mostly due to, I would say, health reasons in terms of
40:58
the drivers really appreciate the cleaner burning fuel.
41:04
We've been around school buses enough to know that it's not the
41:07
most pleasant thing to inhale diesel fumes.
41:10
And the drivers appreciate it so much when you put them on a
41:15
vehicle with alternative fuel. Now, some just like their old
41:17
diesel bus and they don't like change, and that's a thing too.
41:21
But there are a lot of people that appreciate that you're
41:24
going out of your way to try and create a safer driving
41:28
environment for them. And so between the interest from
41:31
school districts here and there and the interest from drivers,
41:34
that's kind of never gone away for the last 16 years.
41:38
And it makes me think, OK, I especially the last few years
41:41
there's been this, you know, push toward cleaner living
41:45
generally that I don't think this, you know, this
41:48
consideration for alternative fuels is really ever going to go
41:51
away. On the electric vehicle school
41:55
bus side of it, I have 10 electric vehicles that are being
41:59
delivered to one of my locations in January.
42:01
So it'll be my personal first foray into it.
42:04
We do it here and there throughout the the country, but
42:08
this will be my first experience with it.
42:10
We have the charging station set up.
42:11
We're just waiting for the vehicles to be delivered.
42:14
What I've heard, which will be a really fun social experiment too
42:17
on the EVs, is that the EVs are, are quiet, right?
42:22
I'm sure you've driven an electric car or been around
42:25
they're quiet. So there's, there's a theory
42:28
that the kids don't have to yell over the sound of the diesel
42:33
engine. And so if you're not yelling to
42:35
talk to your friend, you can keep your voice down.
42:38
And that's going to lead to temperatures rising a little
42:42
less emotionally, right. And so is there a link between
42:45
electric vehicles and student management, not even for
42:50
anything that necessarily that the driver is doing, but is it
42:52
going to lead to perhaps better behaved kids?
42:55
I don't know, maybe I. Believe theoretically on paper,
42:59
it makes a lot of sense. As soon as you started talking
43:02
about and I'm like, oh, it's going to be quieter.
43:05
The kids are probably going to, you know, whether it's 1% or 20%
43:09
calmer. It makes sense to me.
43:12
There's something there, so we're going to test it out and
43:14
we're going to see how that goes.
43:16
But yeah, I mean, there there are some school districts
43:19
throughout the country who are hard line against it.
43:23
They just want their traditional diesel school buses and that's
43:25
fine. But there's always a content,
43:27
there's always been a contention of the population that's got an
43:30
interest in it, and I don't think that's going to go.
43:33
Away. Why are some districts bent on
43:37
staying with the old diesels? Is it because their rates are
43:41
lower if they're using a a traditional diesel bus versus
43:45
electric? Because the electric buses are
43:46
going to cost you more, right? Electric buses are going to cost
43:50
you a lot more. We've been assisted by some of
43:52
the government grant programs in order in order to get those
43:56
funded. I think there's two reasons to
43:58
answer your question. One of them, the state of Texas
44:01
comes to mind just with the prevalence of oil and they don't
44:04
think that they're interested much in electric vehicles.
44:07
And that's OK. That's how they get their bread
44:08
butter. That's fine.
44:11
The other I think is more because I think generally our
44:15
industry is a laggard in tech. And I would I would consider EVs
44:20
as, you know, sort of a tech implementation, which we kind of
44:24
have to be because we transport kids to and from school every
44:27
day. We have to make sure that the
44:29
technology is right and it's safe because if it's not, we
44:33
have more on the line than almost every other employer out
44:37
there. And so I think that right now
44:40
it's the EVs have gotten a little bit more prevalent over
44:44
the last five years. The the implementation has
44:47
stepped up somewhat. But there's a lot of school
44:50
districts even who I've been partner with who have been
44:53
awarded grant money to be able to get them.
44:55
And they sit back and they say, well, we want to see everybody
44:58
else use them first. We want to see how the
45:00
efficiency on them is. We want to see, can you run them
45:03
on long routes or do we have to charge them in the middle of the
45:06
day in between routes? There's a lot of operational
45:08
questions that people have that are making them a little bit
45:11
more hesitant to Sign up today. So it's not necessarily that
45:15
they're hard line against the usage of it today.
45:18
They just want to see more data. They just.
45:20
Want to see how it works, which is fine.
45:23
Where do you see the future of STSTA going and say I don't know
45:27
the next three to five years. What do you think the the
45:29
organization looks like and and it changes here in the next few
45:32
years? I think the changes largely to
45:38
the industry are going to be the same changes to the
45:41
organization. It seems like the most impetus
45:44
for change right now is through onboard technology.
45:49
And again, like I said, we're, we're a little bit behind many
45:52
other industries and especially within transportation as far as
45:55
implementation of technology. And right now there are so many
46:00
different options. I mean, I'm sure if, if, if you,
46:03
if I told you about all the different tech that is available
46:06
on the buses, you would think, Oh my goodness, like how much
46:09
it's changed since we wrote the bus, right?
46:11
It's almost like an entirely different vehicle.
46:13
You wouldn't believe it. And so there are so many
46:16
different tech options even, you know, even within the same
46:20
subset, right? So there's all different kinds
46:23
of GPS units. There's cameras inside the bus,
46:26
there's cameras outside the bus, there's cameras on stop arms,
46:30
there's, there's technology that you can implement at the
46:33
facilities in terms of pre and post trip inspections of
46:37
vehicles. There's AI, I mean
46:41
implementation in the cameras so you can monitor the driver's
46:45
behavior, so you can try and get ahead of driver driver error.
46:48
There's a whole bunch of these opportunities and, and I love
46:52
the vendors in this industry. It seems like they're really
46:56
getting after it in terms of student safety and efficiency.
46:59
So I, I really applaud the vendors in the industry for
47:03
keeping efficiency and student safety in mind, because that's
47:05
where most of the tech is going. Think where this needs to go is
47:12
having more of a, a single solution that encapsulates all
47:16
of those different things. And I think we're kind of on the
47:19
precipice of that. But there's, like I said, so
47:22
many different tech offerings. How do you get them all
47:25
implemented and all to work together?
47:27
Because a lot of times they're with different vendors and
47:29
there's not always open opportunity for those pieces of
47:32
tech to work together without some other, you know, third
47:35
party solution to talk together. So how do you create this, you
47:39
know, single pane of glass, as I've heard people say, the
47:42
single platform that pulls together all the technology.
47:46
I think too, there's so much tech and there's, there's
47:52
really, I don't know if there's a great ability right now to
47:58
measure the return on tech. And so I think that whoever
48:02
figures out the best way to measure the return on tech is
48:06
going to have a leg up in terms of implementation and
48:08
scalability of that tech. Interesting.
48:12
Shifting gears, Dennis, whether you choose something personal or
48:16
professional here, I'd be curious to hear about a serious
48:19
challenge that you've overcome, what it was, what you learned
48:24
going through it, and and how you got to the other side.
48:29
Sure. So this one's going to go back
48:33
quite a bit. When I was 10 years old, I had a
48:38
pretty serious eye injury to the point where I'm still blind in
48:44
in one eye about 90%. It's kind of a miracle that they
48:48
let me drive anywhere. But so I had this injury happen
48:54
at the time I was, I was pretty avid basketball player.
49:00
And so, you know, I was in the hospital for a few days and then
49:04
had to to rest and not really move for for a little while.
49:08
And then as soon as I was cleared to be able to kind of
49:10
get up and move around, my parents had me back out in the
49:15
driveway, shoot hoops. And my mom would go out and
49:19
rebound for me. And I don't know if you followed
49:22
basketball in the, in the in the 1980s or 90s, but there was a
49:26
guy named Kurt Rambis who played for the the Phoenix Suns.
49:29
Yeah, he had. Glasses and the strap and I
49:32
remember. Right.
49:33
So we bought a pair of glasses just like the Kurt Rambis
49:36
glasses, and my mom had taped over the lens for my good eye.
49:41
So I'm out there practically blind at the free throw line.
49:46
But in practicing dribbling, by the way, you can get a lot
49:49
better at dribbling when you can't actually see anything.
49:52
And then, you know, go to the free throw line and start just
49:55
taking shots. And my mom would rebound for me.
49:58
So like I said, I'm out here practically blind getting back
50:02
to shooting. And I'm not going to say that,
50:04
you know, I was hitting buckets blindfolded.
50:08
What I'm saying is that to be able to get back out there and
50:13
shoot and I kind of would move around elbow corner 3 point
50:17
line, but you start to to learn to shoot based on feel instead
50:23
of depth perception and sight. You know, like I like I said, I
50:28
have, I've not very good depth perception anymore.
50:31
You know, The Muppets 3D movie is a lost cause for me.
50:35
So I don't make me try and watch that.
50:37
But it was just this, this resilience.
50:41
I don't think I ever gave my parents enough credit for
50:45
pushing me to get out there. I had a serious physical
50:47
challenge, a serious physical limitation, but a lot of
50:52
potential in terms of athletics. And my parents weren't allowed,
50:56
but weren't about to let something like that be a hurdle
51:00
that I wouldn't be able to clear.
51:02
I didn't want to create an opportunity for me to mope
51:05
around and not be able to do what it is that I love to do.
51:10
And so that kind of pushing me despite this pretty significant
51:14
hurdle is something that I don't think has ever left.
51:19
And I have such a low tolerance for complaining.
51:23
And I get in trouble with my wife and my kids a lot about
51:25
that because that's such a low tolerance for complaining.
51:28
But we are just capable of so much more than we even realize.
51:33
And all it takes is a little fortitude, and sometimes it
51:36
takes somebody pushing you and telling you that you can do
51:39
these things that you don't even think you can do.
51:43
Can you, as you think back to that time, can you think how
51:46
willing were you to sort of participate in those drills with
51:50
your mom or did it take a lot of effort on her part, kind of
51:54
strong arm you into it? No, it didn't take a ton of
51:57
effort. I think it was a little bit,
52:00
what are we doing? Again?
52:02
I'm not allowed to see anything, but that was the only way that I
52:05
was going to be able to learn how to do this.
52:07
And so, yeah, maybe a little bit of resistance at first, but I
52:11
loved getting out there. It was my favorite sport to
52:14
play. And if it was an opportunity for
52:16
me to do that, by the way, when you can't see, you also can't
52:19
see how bad you are at the time either, so.
52:24
Is that helping with your golf game too?
52:28
No, I have friends to tell me how bad my golf game is.
52:30
Don't worry about, but yeah. So yeah, it wasn't a ton of
52:36
resistance. I think it was something I knew
52:38
I had to to knew I had to lean into and I enjoyed doing it and
52:42
I was better for it. I ended up being a very, very
52:45
good shooter and I played throughout my high school career
52:48
and got a couple letters to play at different colleges.
52:50
Didn't end up doing it, but I don't think that I would have
52:52
had the career that I've had that I had in athletics.
52:56
I don't think I would have that little thing that I have always
52:59
kept from that if I didn't have my parents to be out there not
53:03
letting me give up just because of something like that.
53:06
Do you think your basketball career would have been as
53:09
successful as it was if you hadn't had the vision issue?
53:15
That's a great question. I hadn't ever thought about
53:18
that. I don't know the answer to that.
53:22
You know, I was always pretty bad at defense, so it wouldn't
53:26
have helped me be a better defender.
53:30
And I I don't think it that I would have been necessarily any
53:34
better. I'm just glad that I wasn't
53:36
able, you know, that it ended up being worse.
53:38
I think it kind of reached my potential.
53:42
But again, if I think there was a serious challenge that easily
53:47
could have prevented me from reaching my potential, and I
53:50
didn't let it stop me from reaching my potential, would I
53:54
have been better? I don't know.
53:55
I think I was about as good as I could have been.
53:59
As a father, as somebody who manages people, have you ever
54:05
thought, I don't know if you've sort of connected the dots in
54:07
this way about how you can sort of take, you know, that
54:11
experience and what your mom did to sort of encourage you through
54:15
it? To put something similar in
54:19
place for any employees or your kids to sort of give them that
54:23
same like get up and go. I, you know, I try with my kids,
54:30
they fight me on this, but I try to, I try to match, you know, a
54:36
level of pushing them. But also I lean on my wife a lot
54:40
for empathy. It's something that I don't
54:42
necessarily lead with. And so I need to have her help
54:44
me and I'm very involved with my kids lives in terms of coaching
54:49
sports and what not. And so I think that they think I
54:52
could probably go a little bit easier on them.
54:54
But again, I'm just trying to get the best out of them in
54:58
terms of work. I think you always need to be
55:01
pushing people and you need to have that conversation with
55:03
people up front to say, I recognize that there's something
55:08
there and I'm going to, I'm going to push you if I feel like
55:12
you need to get better. And again, just let them know
55:16
it's, it's because you care. It's not because you're trying
55:20
to be out there yelling at them. It's because you want them to
55:23
meet their potential. I, I'm admittedly not the best
55:27
at giving people that proactive feedback to say, hey, you know,
55:31
had a boy, had a girl, you're doing a great job.
55:34
I admittedly could be better at that.
55:36
And I probably need to take that, you know, from my own
55:38
life, my own experience, and use that more going forward so that
55:42
more people are aware. I, I think it exists up here.
55:45
I just need it to exist out of my mouth so that others can
55:49
understand. Here's where I'm coming from
55:51
when we're having these kind of conversations.
55:53
Yeah. You know, I think about because
55:56
I've got two kids, 9 and 10 year old boys, and I think a lot
55:59
about the things that I learned from them and the interactions
56:04
with them and how they sort of respond to the things that I
56:08
say, the coaching that I try to provide.
56:11
And as I understand sort of the psychology of the responses that
56:16
I'm getting and the resistance that I'm getting.
56:18
How can I take those lessons and sort of apply them to sort of
56:21
adult interactions, right? Because I think like deep down,
56:25
like, you know, the psychology of grown-ups is we're all little
56:30
kids still inside, right? And so the same things that
56:33
trigger my children and get really big reactions are, are
56:38
probably triggering, you know, adults that I'm interacting
56:42
with. And, and it's harder to detect
56:44
because, you know, we sort of all developed our coping
56:47
mechanisms and, you know, we sort of hide our emotions.
56:51
I don't know if you ever sort of think about interactions with
56:54
kids and like how you can sort of learn from that and apply it
56:57
sort of in the adult world. I do.
57:00
I feel like I say that to people all the time in terms of I'll
57:06
end up saying to someone at work, like, goodness, I have to
57:09
treat. I have to treat this
57:10
relationship like I was talking to one of my children.
57:14
Again, it sort of goes back to everything that we've talked
57:16
about. How do you listen to people?
57:19
How do you see people? Let them know that they're
57:21
heard, that they're seeing, that you understand their
57:25
perspective. Because again, I think they all
57:27
just want to be recognized. I think that there's so much of
57:32
that in adult interactions. But again, how do you be
57:36
transparent with people? How do you tell them I'm doing
57:38
this for you because I want the best for you?
57:40
I think that applies to, that applies to children, it applies
57:44
to parenthood, but it applies every day in so many
57:48
interactions that you have with people at work.
57:51
Yeah, I like that a lot. Dennis, how would you
57:54
characterize your superpower? Oh, my superpower.
58:00
So I have probably 2 superpowers.
58:03
One of them is one of my, a couple of my friends call me
58:06
Rain Man because I have this just innate recall for events
58:11
and things that people say at seemingly seemingly meaningless
58:15
things that people say and do. And I just have this innate
58:18
ability to recall them. So that's one, my other one that
58:21
I really like. This is going to sound funny to
58:24
say, but is, is doing roasts for people.
58:29
I it's this, I don't know if it's an Irish thing or a New
58:35
Jersey thing or a Boston thing, but you know, we're only
58:39
cracking on people that we like, right?
58:41
And I've been invited to do roasts for my college friends,
58:46
for my home friends, for family members, for my current friends.
58:51
And I don't think that they would be asking me to do this if
58:55
they didn't appreciate it or they didn't enjoy it.
58:57
But it's this perfect combination of putting people at
59:01
ease and public speaking, which by the way, I love.
59:06
So public speaking, putting people at ease, building
59:08
relationships and friendships. People enjoy it so much.
59:13
I've never, I've never been in an environment that I enjoyed
59:16
more than giving a good roast of people and just seeing people
59:19
crack up. And again, you're not doing it
59:21
to be mean spirit it. It's doing it because we're we
59:24
really like you. It's such an.
59:26
Interesting choice to offer up there.
59:30
I are these like what's the question I want to ask here?
59:35
Are these like pre planned activities or is it sort of like
59:38
on the spot like Dennis, can you like just fry me here for the
59:42
next 60 seconds or or is this like an event where like you're
59:45
planning for it weeks ahead of time?
59:48
It it's a little bit of both. It's mostly the pre planned
59:51
type, whether it's a best man speech, which I've done a couple
59:54
of those, but for a while it was a fantasy football requirement.
59:59
We had started out by whoever finished the last place had to
1:00:02
roast the rest of the group. And I did finish the last place
1:00:05
and did it so well that everybody's like, you're just
1:00:07
going to keep doing this. And so every year I would come
1:00:10
back and we would have our draft and I would roast everybody with
1:00:13
the same exact jokes, but just told different ways.
1:00:16
And my goodness, we had so much fun doing that.
1:00:19
So yeah, I, I put a lot of work into these things, but it pays
1:00:24
off. I love it so much.
1:00:26
Oh, maybe we'll have you back on and you can do one on me.
1:00:29
Maybe to know each other? Whenever you watch that, maybe.
1:00:34
How about a resource that you could recommend for our
1:00:37
listeners? A course, a book, a podcast,
1:00:39
something that's been helpful to you rather in sort of just like
1:00:43
personal development, professional development that
1:00:46
others might find useful. If there's an opportunity for
1:00:50
anybody to do a public speaking class, I couldn't recommend that
1:00:54
any more highly. I had to take one in my MBA.
1:00:59
I did my MBA at University of Florida.
1:01:02
Go Gators. And it was a a semester long.
1:01:06
They got one grade for it at the end of the course.
1:01:10
And I got the best grade in the whole class, which was unusual
1:01:13
for me because I hated public speaking.
1:01:15
I was afraid to do it. But I really worked at it and
1:01:18
became, you know, rather rather good at it.
1:01:21
And I can singularly point to that part in my career where the
1:01:28
trajectory of my career changed. Because if people know that you
1:01:33
can be trusted to talk in front of whether it's thousands of
1:01:37
people, whether it's in front of a board meeting of eight people,
1:01:41
whether it's one-on-one with a Superintendent.
1:01:44
If people can trust you to speak publicly and in, you know, with
1:01:50
customers in in varying capacities, the opportunities
1:01:55
open up for you so much more broadly.
1:01:57
And I had been started to give this, started to be given this
1:02:00
opportunity when I was even in finance and accounting.
1:02:03
So not even in operations, but I just found myself being invited
1:02:06
to go do presentations for school district customers or
1:02:09
prospective customers. So the opportunities just open
1:02:13
up more than you could ever imagine if this is something
1:02:16
that you can get proficient in. So find a class, find a way to
1:02:20
be measured, some accountability, record yourself
1:02:24
doing public speaking. It is a nightmare to watch.
1:02:28
It's like watching yourself swing a Golf Club.
1:02:31
You know, you get up there and you're like, I look like Rory
1:02:33
McIlroy. And then you watch yourself and
1:02:35
you're like, I think I look like Rory Mcilroy's mom probably more
1:02:38
than I look like Rory McIlroy. So it's painful to do, but it's
1:02:43
the only way to get better. And I promise, if you can get
1:02:46
proficient at it, opportunities will open up in your career more
1:02:49
than any other opportunity. Boy, that's something I can
1:02:52
really echo. You know, my kids have asked me
1:02:55
in the past, Dad, what was the your favorite class growing up?
1:03:00
And I don't know about favorite, but certainly the most useful as
1:03:05
I took two different speech courses in high school, one in
1:03:08
freshman year, one in senior year.
1:03:10
Mr. David Brunner is a teacher and that had such an impact on
1:03:15
me going forward. I started that first class just
1:03:19
a mess. Didn't know.
1:03:21
I, you know, I forgot part of my speech the first time I got up
1:03:23
there. I just, you know, I, I bombed it
1:03:28
and, and I was so uncomfortable and felt so, you know, out of my
1:03:31
skin up there and just, I just stuck at it and it just, you
1:03:35
know, committed myself to, I'm going to get better at this.
1:03:38
And part of it was probably just the vanity of like not wanting
1:03:41
to, you know, be in front of a group of people and look like a
1:03:44
complete fool. And that first class alone, even
1:03:48
if I hadn't taken the follow up course years later, Yep,
1:03:52
transformed my life exactly like you're you're talking about.
1:03:54
Just it opened up more opportunities, more doors for
1:03:58
me. It made me comfortable when
1:04:00
opportunities came about because I knew that I had proven myself
1:04:03
in that way. So I echo that completely for
1:04:07
listeners, if you're, if you're not comfortable with public
1:04:10
speaking, if you haven't, you know, taken a course on that
1:04:13
before, put yourself in that position.
1:04:14
It's it's a big game changer. One of the things that really
1:04:20
changed my perspective on on public speaking as well as you
1:04:23
guys, once you get out of the class environment, you're not
1:04:26
going to be put in front of a group of people to speak
1:04:29
professionally unless they know that you have the answers.
1:04:33
They know that you have the information and they want you to
1:04:35
be the one to relay that information.
1:04:38
And once you realize that people in the crowd don't want to see
1:04:41
you mess up. I think we have this fear that
1:04:43
people are want to laugh when I mess up, they want to see me do
1:04:46
poorly. And that's not the case at all.
1:04:48
People want information from you and it's your job to give it to
1:04:51
them. And it's not that hard once you
1:04:53
realize I am a subject matter expert in this thing I'm being
1:04:57
asked to talk about. Now I just need to learn how to
1:04:59
communicate it. But if you can get over that
1:05:01
fear part of it, people want you to succeed.
1:05:04
They want you to communicate to them.
1:05:09
Just one more question for you, Dennis, But before I ask it, I
1:05:11
want to do 2 things. First, I'm going to invite
1:05:13
everyone listening today to hit the follow button on your
1:05:15
favorite podcast app. It's been a really great
1:05:18
conversation today with Dennis Gallagher at STA Student
1:05:21
Transport of America, and I want you to get more great
1:05:25
interviews, more great content with some more great guests like
1:05:27
Dennis. Dennis, I don't want to let
1:05:29
people know the best way to get in touch with you or STA
1:05:33
directly. Maybe follow your story.
1:05:36
What would that be? I'm moderately active on
1:05:40
LinkedIn, I think, So if people want to connect, you know, you
1:05:42
can send me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn.
1:05:45
It's probably the best way, professionally at least.
1:05:48
The company has likewise social media pages student
1:05:51
transportation of America on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram,
1:05:54
Twitter. But yeah, if people would like
1:05:56
to get in touch with me, LinkedIn would probably be the
1:05:58
best way to do that. Great.
1:05:59
And we'll include a link to your profile on the show notes for
1:06:02
everybody. So last question, Dennis, we've
1:06:06
had a nice conversation here. Hope we stay in touch.
1:06:09
A year from now, we reconnect and you're excited because
1:06:12
you're celebrating one thing. What's that thing?
1:06:17
I would say The Jets win in the Super Bowl, but I don't think
1:06:20
that's gonna happen in my lifetime.
1:06:24
There's a there's a contract that we're starting up in Texas
1:06:28
that I'm particularly excited about and this is a a new bid in
1:06:33
win for us this year. I would love a year from now to
1:06:36
look back and say we absolutely nailed it between the startup
1:06:41
and we made the experience for student transportation safer and
1:06:44
more reliable in that school district than it's ever been.
1:06:47
So I would love to have a successful year one in June
1:06:50
2026, looking back at the last 12 months.
1:06:52
What specifically about this particular contract are you so
1:06:56
excited about? This is a school district that
1:06:59
had one provider for a long time and when they selected us, many
1:07:04
people in the room looked around and said why exactly are we
1:07:06
changing again? And so it's an opportunity for
1:07:09
us to go in as a vendor there and and we have a pretty large
1:07:13
presence in the state otherwise. But it's an opportunity to go in
1:07:17
and show people that just because the student
1:07:19
transportation has been done for you this one way by this one
1:07:22
vendor for such a long time, there are that's not the way
1:07:25
that it always has to be done. We already have some safety
1:07:28
measures that we're introducing and implementing.
1:07:30
And I think it's just an opportunity, again to showcase
1:07:32
some of the things that we do here when school districts take
1:07:36
take a chance on us and select us to give their kids rights to
1:07:39
school. Well, best of luck with that.
1:07:43
Dennis Gallagher of Student Transport Transportation of
1:07:45
America, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both
1:07:48
your time and your story with us today.
1:07:50
I really appreciate it. Yeah.
1:07:52
Thanks a lot, Anthony. I appreciate it.
1:07:54
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
1:07:57
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:07:58
today.