Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Trinity Logistics Grew From $100M to $1B Under Doug Potvin's People-First Leadership

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Trinity Logistics Grew From $100M to $1B Under Doug Potvin's People-First 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
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:16
today's guest is Doug Potman, the Chief Financial Officer at
0:20
Trinity Logistics. Established in 1979 and
0:24
headquartered in Seaford, DE, Trinity offers freight solutions
0:28
on a global scale, remaining focused on core values like
0:32
company culture, innovation and outstanding customer service.
0:36
Their commitment to excellence has helped them grow into one of
0:39
the top logistics companies in the nation, boasting over 400
0:43
team members across more than six locations and over 150 agent
0:48
offices located throughout the US, Canada, Mexico and overseas.
0:53
Doug has served as CFO since 2006, ensuring the company's
0:58
financial integrity, also leading diverse teams in
1:01
finance, administrative functions, risk management, IT
1:04
and marketing. Throughout his career.
1:07
He also plays a key role in identifying opportunities for
1:10
acquisitions and partnerships. With years of experience under
1:14
his belt, Doug brings a wealth of knowledge to the table,
1:17
balanced by a genuine passion for supporting people and
1:20
processes that fuel Trinity's success.
1:24
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2:09
All right, back to our guest today, the CFO of Trinity
2:11
Logistics, Doug Potthen. Thanks for making the time to
2:14
Share your story today. Hey Anthony, I appreciate the
2:17
invite and such and look forward to this conversation.
2:20
So Doug, you've been with Trinity for nearly 20 years.
2:23
Did you always work in the transportation industry or is
2:26
there something that came before this?
2:27
Now something came before this. I worked for the federal
2:30
government for about 6 years prior.
2:32
I graduated from college and small college, 800 people and
2:37
I'd worked for the government during my summer months and
2:41
prior to my senior they offered me a job and that was in the
2:43
seafood industry, financing seafood industry.
2:46
After 6 1/2 years with the federal government, I worked 10
2:49
years for a clam company on the Eastern Shore of Virginia who
2:52
was sold to See Watch in Milford, DE and then I started
2:57
my work with Trinity Logistics located in Seaford, DE.
3:01
What were some of the lessons that you learned from working in
3:03
the seafood industry that were able to carry forward to your
3:06
work in Trinity? Well, I, I would say to Seaford,
3:08
the, the job for 10 1/2 years that I had with the clam company
3:11
was basically family owned, had a fathered mother son.
3:14
I was part of the executive team, became general manager
3:18
down there and we were flat organization.
3:19
We didn't have a plant manager. And so basically I did
3:23
everything at that plant, everything at that company with
3:27
the exception of sales. And the son and I were both
3:30
collaboratively working on the manufacturing in the back and
3:34
how diverse it was from HR to insurance.
3:37
I mean, it's where I cut my teeth for 10 1/2 years and
3:39
really learned first thing I did when I got for the job was read
3:43
the insurance, which was about four inches thick because
3:45
they're just going through an insurance renewal.
3:47
And so the most diverse thing I did with them is I actually ran
3:50
the farming operations. We got rid of race water.
3:52
So I would purchase seed contract to seed out or contract
3:57
to harvest out. So again, just when to plant.
4:00
It was just such a fun job learning as I went about and I
4:05
asked a lot of questions, a lot of different people so that I'd
4:09
get a broad understanding what's going on.
4:10
But that fried at the base of going forward in any career.
4:17
You got to wear a lot of different hats while you were
4:19
there, which is something that you continue to do today, as I
4:21
understand. Correct.
4:23
And what you do is simply, I mean, I and then what I find
4:25
myself is I'm very curious individual, a lot of questions
4:28
want to know why they operate. I'm also very analytical.
4:30
And so again, it's, it's such that I question when we start
4:34
doing things because again, doesn't make sense.
4:36
Does the analysis hold true? And so I want to know from that
4:39
perspective and it was really fun that once they could see
4:45
that I wanted to continue to do more, it just continues going
4:48
forward like that. And that's what I'm saying.
4:50
If you're curious and you want to continue to exceed in what
4:53
you're doing, just ask. They'll be more than happy to
4:56
give you additional responsibilities and roles.
4:58
As I say, you're able to do it. And see, that's interesting to
5:02
me. And I, I find that from a lot of
5:03
type A, like highly successful people, we're constantly raising
5:07
their hand. I want to understand how this
5:08
works. I want to learn more.
5:10
I want to be part of this, and there are some people that seem
5:13
to be. I don't know if they're wired
5:14
differently or maybe the fear inside of them is just stronger.
5:17
Like I don't understand that. That's scary to me.
5:21
Well, you know, I think it's interesting.
5:23
I would say I and this is, this is one of the things we're all
5:26
wired differently. We're all wired differently and
5:29
we're going to have made for a purpose at a time and such.
5:32
And so it just so happened falls in the same type of things.
5:35
Sometimes there's fear and apprehension.
5:36
Those people may be solid as something else and it doesn't in
5:41
their mantra to do that. But somewhere along the line you
5:44
can also say, hey, it's also about me and I do want to grow
5:47
and reach out of your comfort zone.
5:48
That's the biggest fear is reaching out of your comfort
5:51
zone or the person you're talking to may think, what's
5:55
this guy doing? Why they doing this and stuff?
5:57
And it doesn't matter what people might think if you're
6:00
doing what's right. So how did the opportunity to
6:04
join Trinity come about? Well, the interesting thing
6:07
about that is it came about because of our accounting
6:09
company at the Clam Company was the same accounting company up
6:12
at Trinity Logistics. And so when the company was
6:16
being sold, in other words, Eastern Shore Seafood Products
6:20
where I work was being sold to a company in Milford, DE, I was, I
6:26
was accounting company, knew I was looking for a job and they
6:29
mentioned my name to Jeff Banning, the owner of Trinity
6:32
Logistics at the time. him and I got together in May of the year,
6:37
we were selling. And at that point in time, we
6:39
talked and he said some things and I just said, well, figure
6:42
out what's going on with you first before I jump into another
6:45
boat like that. And then in November, ever, we
6:49
sold the Eastern Shore in December, in November, I reached
6:52
out to him. He said, no, I'm all set right
6:53
now. And so axiality, what happened
6:56
is I went to work for another clam company up in New Jersey
7:00
for three months and an off chance I sent an e-mail to Jeff
7:05
Banning saying, hey, would you like to talk now?
7:07
He said yes, something must have happened.
7:09
And in July of 2006, hired at Trinity as the first and so far
7:16
only CFO of the company came on at 100 million and now a billion
7:20
dollar company. Wow, What was it that made you
7:23
send that e-mail three months later?
7:25
I mean, he told you the last time you spoke.
7:27
Hey, we're all set. We're good right now.
7:29
You know, Anthony, I've got AI, got AI, got a strong faith.
7:32
And I, and I believe it's just the God's purpose.
7:35
And will that set upon my mind, send this e-mail at this point
7:38
in time. Because again, last time I
7:41
talked to Jeff was in November and hadn't reached out.
7:45
And all of a sudden this day just said, hey, why don't you
7:47
just send Jeff an e-mail? And it was at the right time.
7:50
Not my time, but God's time. On it.
7:55
Yeah, you talk about your faith and probably a lot of people who
7:59
know you well obviously know this, but our listeners don't
8:01
because we didn't mention it in the intro.
8:03
You're actually a pastor. How much does that influence the
8:08
the way that you approach work? You know, being a pastor, it's,
8:12
it's, it's interesting approach work with the simple fact that I
8:16
realized things happen for a reason and purpose.
8:18
Sometimes I don't see it clearly and I think I've done something
8:22
wrong or someone else had done something wrong.
8:24
And I realized in actuality, there's purpose behind it,
8:27
whether it's for me or whether it's for someone else.
8:29
So, and it's, it's typical of the nature.
8:31
So simply it's God's will. And I believe that.
8:35
And so things happen. So it allows me to rest a little
8:37
bit more assured that things are going to work out in the end for
8:42
his purpose on there. But the other piece that's
8:45
really interesting for me as a pastor is I let my life hang
8:50
before the congregation. And what I mean by that is, is
8:54
when I'm preaching, sometimes I'm just preaching to myself,
8:57
maybe something going on at work that's causing me some angst or
9:00
something like that. And so and I truly believe a
9:03
pastor that's by vocational is speaking that may be more
9:08
relatable to the individual person.
9:10
Not to say that full time pastors aren't doing a great
9:13
job, because they do, but if I. Use that word again by
9:16
vocational. By vocational meaning that it's
9:19
word they use in the ministry by vocational meaning your pastor,
9:23
plus you're working another job. OK, I don't I don't believe in
9:26
the Bible vocational word. I simply I work a job and I work
9:30
it well. And then I got a calling from
9:32
God to go pastor at this one church, small local church.
9:36
If they said, hey, Doug, you're fired, it's not like I'd put out
9:39
an application to become another pastor somewhere else until God
9:42
told me this is where I want you to go.
9:43
If that was the case, I've been doing that.
9:47
Oddly enough, I've been doing that for the same amount of time
9:49
I've been at Trinity Logistics. I was going to ask, is that
9:54
coincidental? Obviously the name of the
9:55
company was there before you were, so you had no influence on
9:58
it. I.
9:59
Had no influence on that, but I'll tell her it was a mother
10:01
and sorry, a husband and wife older who started this business
10:06
and they went into separate rooms at night to determine what
10:10
the name was. They came out the next morning,
10:12
both with the word Trinity. About that, yeah.
10:16
So, OK, so you came in when the company was at 100 million, very
10:20
respectable company. Today it's a billion dollars.
10:23
When you first came in, what was, I don't know, the biggest
10:26
project that you're like, oh, we've got to address this, we
10:29
got to tackle this now. Yeah.
10:30
I think the biggest project was trying to sort through some of
10:36
HR type of related matters, particularly the four O 1K audit
10:40
had a difference from what was in being reported, what was
10:43
actually in the funds. And so looking at that process,
10:47
we got that reconciled. But then I realized a lot of
10:50
stuff we were doing is based on spreadsheets and stuff instead
10:52
of letting technology and efficiencies drive the piece of
10:56
it. And I think that's what I could
10:58
see from that standpoint is that we needed to become more
11:02
technology driven and allow the errors to go away across the
11:07
board, Across the board. And that has started the journey
11:10
for myself. I'm working on the admin
11:12
functions and such to become as efficient as possible and really
11:16
try to focus on getting to a role in which we're exception
11:19
management base on there. But that was the first big
11:23
tackle was just the coming in and doing a little work in HR
11:26
and I was prepared to do that. Why?
11:28
Because of the well-rounded work experience I had at the seafood
11:31
company. Like we said, you got to wear so
11:34
many different hats there that you got to see sort of front
11:36
office, back office, operations, everything in between.
11:39
Correct. Oh, the interesting thing about
11:42
that was at Eastern Shore Seafood Products, I actually
11:44
contracted with Trinity to move our freight.
11:48
OK. All right.
11:49
So let's talk more about what Trinity actually does.
11:51
Would you service some of the core services that you offer to
11:56
folks? What geographies that you're in?
11:59
Help us understand. Yeah.
12:00
So trying to do the logistics is a third party logistics company.
12:03
We own no assets per say. Well, we do is arrange freight
12:09
shipments with customers have freight to move the United
12:13
States or internationally across border with carriers who have
12:16
capacity to be able to do that. And we're the 20th largest in
12:19
the United States of America. We do this day in and day out
12:23
moving about 600,000 shipments a year.
12:26
We do not only the arrangement of freight truckload, we do less
12:29
than truckload. We do intermodal, we do drayage,
12:32
we do expedite it all with third party carriers.
12:35
We also use third party partners for moving freight
12:37
internationally as well. We also offer a transportation
12:41
management system to customers where they can choose as much as
12:46
they want. They can just have software as a
12:47
service, They can have software service and we broker the
12:51
freight for them, or they can have software service and we
12:54
will actually put staff in their offices.
12:58
Today, this is fascinating. So you own no assets, so the
13:01
trucks aren't yours. You're using people who own
13:05
their own trucks to move the freight.
13:07
Yeah, correct. So we mentioned in the intro 400
13:11
team members, but most of those folks it sounds like are
13:14
probably independent contractors.
13:15
There's probably very few that are actually like W2 on your
13:19
payroll. Now actually on the payroll, on
13:21
the payroll is 400 team members, but in addition to the 400 team
13:25
members, something that Trinity does that is done in the
13:28
industry, but not an awful lot. We have our own offices, Trinity
13:31
offices across the United States.
13:34
We also have what we call 150 freight agents who are
13:37
independent contractor, 1090 nines who do the same thing an
13:40
office does with respect to fine customers, fine carriers.
13:44
And then Trinity provides the back end support services for
13:47
them, all the admin functions, the insurance and such.
13:50
So a freight agent comes on, they get a Commission of what
13:54
they make on a particular load, which is a brokerage Net margin
13:58
and then we provide all the back end services to them and they
14:01
provide a a split on that Commission that they receive.
14:05
And the back end that support that you're providing is billing
14:09
functions. It's a it's a host of health of
14:12
that technology we have ATMs proprietary built besides all
14:15
the technology functions is coming out of our office.
14:18
The billing credit collections, claims management, both freight
14:23
claims as well as bodily injury type of claims are managed by us
14:27
in the process our insurance products that we have to offer
14:30
to place in nature. So just about every back end
14:33
function you can think of with the exception of really human
14:37
resources, the wall for some advice, but not very, you know,
14:41
but because there are 1099, they're not actually employees.
14:44
You're not the employer. Of record for that, correct?
14:46
Yeah, correct. Interesting.
14:48
So is that how it works for most independent carriers, most
14:51
independent drivers, is that they're working with somebody
14:55
like Trinity to provide that back end function or is this a
14:57
little? Unusual.
14:58
Well, this is unusual in that these are not drivers that we're
15:01
talking about. These are just freight agents
15:02
again, who don't have assets. Some may have the little trucks
15:05
on their side. What we do, so, So what we do do
15:08
is of course the industry is filled with the, if you go on
15:11
the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, you'll see
15:14
there's hundreds of thousands of carriers who are registered
15:17
under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to provide
15:20
the actual transportation services.
15:22
And 80 to 90% of those are single owner operators or own 2
15:27
trucks or maybe 3 trucks. You don't have a large fleet,
15:31
fleet type of size thing. So what we do as a middle man is
15:34
basically provide their sales in that we're looking for shippers
15:40
and provided them for as opposed to them going out and hiring
15:45
people to do that or living off the load board.
15:47
We try to get dedicated carriers, committed carriers who
15:50
want to work with us with some of our shippers on there.
15:54
But we do go through a number of carriers because again, we're
15:57
trying to provide purpose to the to the shippers.
16:01
So when you started, you guys run 100 million, now you're a
16:04
billion dollar company. How much of that growth has
16:07
taken place through acquisitions and how much of it has been
16:11
through kind of just your own internal growth?
16:14
The bulk of it's all been through organic growth.
16:17
We've had one acquisition of an office out in Arizona.
16:22
We just happened to be did not have a place located out West,
16:28
came across this entity that had a similar culture and decided to
16:32
make that purchase. We're very selective in our
16:34
acquisitions targets. We're looking for someone who
16:37
can, who can continue to provide value to us in niche markets,
16:43
whether it's drayage or LTL, maybe they've got some expertise
16:47
there or got a customer base that would help us grow that, or
16:51
they're strategically located in an area which we may not be in
16:54
from a company office perspective.
16:57
Or it could be a potentially a smaller office that's next to
17:00
one of our offices. We call a tuck in that we can
17:02
put the people right into the office and grow from that
17:04
standpoint. We're not out there.
17:06
We're not out there looking just to buy business.
17:08
That's not what we want to function.
17:10
Our, our first thought in the entire process is who we're
17:14
acquiring. Are they a cultural fit?
17:16
Because the culture is very important to us and we want to
17:18
make sure that we're bringing on the right fit from a cultural
17:21
standpoint. And then like you said, if it
17:23
fills A niche market or a strategy that we're looking to
17:25
achieve, that's the second biggest thing that we're looking
17:28
for. And before we went live on our
17:30
recording here today, you were telling me about a new company
17:34
sort of tangentially related to what you do that you know you've
17:37
recently acquired. You want to give voice to that?
17:39
Yeah. So, so Burse Logistics, about
17:42
two years ago, I had the opportunity at the strategy
17:44
meeting with Burse and a bunch of other people.
17:46
They were figuring out what's the next business unit.
17:49
And so I raised my hand and I said, you know what we should
17:52
get, we should start a factoring company.
17:55
And of course the factoring company, just for your listeners
17:57
there, buys receivables from motor carriers and a discounted
18:01
rate and then is responsible for invoicing and also collecting
18:06
the money from the debtor. So they pay them upfront and
18:10
good. For cash flow for for your
18:12
client. And typically most of the time
18:14
it may be non recourse. So the carrier's not responsible
18:17
because in the transportation industry again with owned
18:19
operators, unexpected things happen and they can't wait that
18:22
30 to 45 days for the debtor, the broker or the shipper to pay
18:26
them. And therefore this brides
18:28
mechanism that is really good. And again, it eliminates some of
18:30
their back office staff with regard to invoicing and
18:33
collections and it removes their credit risk on that.
18:36
And so we got involved in that because Trinity pays out for
18:39
actually 50 to 60% of our motor carriers out to motor carriers a
18:43
factor. And so we thought this would be
18:45
a great addition to offer that synergy.
18:48
And I'm going to tell you this real good is that when we went
18:52
this, we thought about starting island realized we can make a
18:54
lot of mistakes. So we said, you know what,
18:56
instead of getting financially in the hole right off the bat,
18:58
why don't we look to buy a a small factoring company came
19:01
across a great company, Eagle business credit transportation
19:05
arms cash way. They do general factoring, non
19:07
transportation related, and they also do transportation
19:10
factoring. And I'll tell you, I was really,
19:14
really said this is a company we want to buy.
19:17
Ian Varley, who's the president there, came up to meet with us.
19:21
And then when he was leaving, this was on July 2nd, he's an
19:24
ex, he's an expat Brit, so he's from Great Britain.
19:28
I came over about 20 years ago. And so on July 2nd, he said to
19:32
us all, I want to wish you all a Happy Traders Day.
19:36
And I said, you know what, the guys, the guy's a fit and he has
19:40
been and the team has been a fit culturally and everything else.
19:43
And it's been a great addition for us.
19:45
And we continue to look to see that the continued growth there
19:48
and allows us to offer a service to our carriers that is based on
19:52
integrity, honesty and great customer service, which
19:56
sometimes is not always easy to find in the factoring space.
20:00
So aside from this British gentleman making a a funny joke
20:03
around, you know, our Independence Day, what else was
20:06
it that you saw? What is it you were looking for
20:09
there to determine if this was going to be culturally a good
20:11
fit? So we actually went down myself
20:14
and and Sarah Roughcorn, the President of Trinity Logistics,
20:18
Jordan Jackson, who is the rent merger and acquisitions at
20:22
Burris Enterprise, our parent company, a Burris Logistics,
20:25
Sorry, runs the merchant acquisition.
20:27
We went down there and spent time in the office talking with
20:31
them. I went down when we're doing our
20:33
due diligence and met with the team members of stuff and
20:35
realize, you know what, they're focused.
20:37
You hear a phone ring, it rings maybe one time, 2 times picked
20:40
up someone against offering that great customer service to the
20:43
client and their client. For the most part, besides the
20:45
general factoring or transportation companies,
20:48
carriers, mostly owner operators, small fleets and we
20:51
said, you know what, this is a beautiful fit and they offer the
20:54
same type of thing. And you know they believe in
20:57
what we would describe and that's what we saw.
20:59
The core values that we have, we have we believe in as an
21:02
enterprise. We not me, it's not about an
21:04
individual success, it's about the team's success, right?
21:06
We believe in that. Make it happen.
21:08
We want to make it happen for our customers, our carriers, our
21:12
team members, our agents. So let's make it happen.
21:14
And we all want to deliver that with personal service
21:18
excellence. And that's what we live every
21:20
day. And so we saw that and we said
21:22
that's that's the fit and they were at the right size.
21:25
That said, you know what, we can get into this and not be at
21:30
risk. It doesn't work out all that
21:31
much. OK.
21:36
So we've talked a little bit about how you've grown through
21:39
acquisition, the internal organic growth that you've
21:42
experienced over the years. Doug, what are some of the
21:44
biggest growth levers that you've been able to pull to
21:47
affect that? Well, you know, the biggest
21:49
growth leverage that we've pulled on that is regarding to
21:52
our sales structure, our sales team.
21:56
You know, we hired a few years ago Mark Peterson as the senior
22:00
Vice President of sales and marketing, Greg Massey after the
22:04
acquisition, a few years after the acquisition by Burris was
22:08
promoted to lead the agents part.
22:09
He's done a great job of recruiting additional agents.
22:12
The sales plan changed from just having an account manager to
22:15
really like farmers cultivating accounts that came in.
22:19
And so we really developed an arm around BDRS business felt
22:24
reps would go out and try to be the hunter and grab those
22:27
accounts and stuff and build on that.
22:29
And we also created a group of what we call senior sales
22:32
executives and sales executives who do a little bit more echelon
22:35
of higher caliber customers in the Fortune 100 Fortune
22:40
thousand. And and we've been fortunate.
22:42
We've been fortunate that we've had good team members and good
22:44
agents come on board. And you know, we're really
22:47
excited about the future on there, but it's really about
22:50
changing the sales structure to drive that growth.
22:55
Did you have experience putting in that sort of sales structure
22:58
or did you bring in a consultant to help with that?
23:02
That was a little bit of a mixture of internal thinking as
23:06
well as some seeing what else was going on in the industry and
23:09
stuff. So really it's, it's a
23:11
combination of a common sense growth expectations and realize
23:16
when you look back and see the larger picture, what am I
23:18
missing, you know, and that portion of it.
23:22
We mentioned Burris a couple of times being the parent company.
23:26
At what point were you guys acquired by them?
23:28
So Bursa, the Burris Logistics acquired us in April of 2019.
23:34
And the nice thing about that, it was a friendly merger.
23:38
Burris family and the Banning family.
23:41
Banning, the owner of Trinity and Burris.
23:42
Obviously Burst Logistics were family friends.
23:46
And so Donnie Burris and Jeff Banning got together, shook
23:51
hands, and we came away in April 2019 with the merger.
23:55
And the merger was so good because effectively we were to
24:00
become their brokerage division. They had a small brokerage
24:03
division, learned a little bit about it, make an acquisition,
24:06
learn a little bit more about it, determine they liked it.
24:08
They understood the space a little bit more and acquired
24:11
Trinity and Beauty. Thing for us is no one had the
24:14
threat of losing a job. There wasn't any downsizing
24:17
involved, nothing of that nature.
24:19
And we've maintained that same staff for the for the most part
24:23
and grown and it's been a win win.
24:27
But the acquisition itself was a win win for everybody involved.
24:31
And So what was Burris focused on prior to the acquisition?
24:34
So Burris prior to the acquisition was involved in cold
24:39
storage, public cold storage warehouses.
24:44
They were involved in that. They were also involved in food
24:48
redistribution still is through their Honor Foods and companies
24:53
there. They're also the major supply
24:59
chain provider to BJ's in a certain product mix.
25:02
And during COVID, BJ's decided they wanted to own the supply
25:05
chain and hence bought out burst from that.
25:08
Burris also made the decision, business decision.
25:10
Hey, we want to get to an asset light model and divested the
25:15
cold storage facilities. And that leaves us to where we
25:19
are with asset lights type of thing, food redistribution,
25:24
transportation and is factoring And the interesting I'm
25:28
factoring is that we do general factoring and sometimes we get
25:31
people looking to do some things on food redistribution.
25:35
And guess what, we got a place we can put that small
25:36
manufacturers that are looking to get their commodity out into
25:40
the marketplace. And so we're able to hook them
25:42
up with the people over on our foods.
25:45
Doug, tell us about how the F and CFO has come to mean
25:49
multiple things for you, not just financial officer.
25:52
Yeah. No, it's, it's interesting.
25:54
In April 2019 with the acquisition, Burse already had
25:59
ACFO. And so internally I said to
26:02
myself, why? I don't want to be confused.
26:04
So I decided to change from Chief financial officer.
26:09
And this is my own calling, right, the chief fund officer.
26:13
And I've said it enough that my accounts receivable team
26:16
actually got me a shirt that says chief fund officer on that
26:21
nature. And then so the name has
26:22
continued to evolve with the factoring company.
26:25
And I've had the opportunity to be largely involved with that
26:28
and working with Ian and the team down there quite a bit that
26:32
I become the Chief Factoring Officer.
26:34
In fact, I had a birthday, birthday 2 days ago and I got a
26:37
card from those guys down at Eagle Business Credit and they
26:40
got me a cake. And the cake said to our own
26:43
chief Factoring officer, happy birthday from the Eagle Business
26:46
Credit team. So that was really cool.
26:49
And then the other thing, this is a title that I didn't wish I
26:51
had to have, but we've been working strong.
26:54
The industry's been compromised though, since middle part of
26:58
COVID, coming out of COVID with a lot of fraud going on.
27:02
Basically people usurp and carrier identities and stuff.
27:05
And you know, quite a bit of fraud.
27:07
It's Brad's reported as saying, I think there was an article
27:11
actually 60 Minutes had a report about alcohol loads being
27:14
stolen. I mean, just the nature of it.
27:17
And so unfortunately for the last year and a half, I boarded
27:19
the title, the chief fraud officer and and we're putting
27:24
some things in place that will help hopefully for from our
27:27
standpoint of remedies situation.
27:29
Because again, it's a drag on the economy.
27:31
It's a drag to our customers. It's a drag to the good carriers
27:34
out there because even the carriers are being perpetrated
27:37
fraud by bad guys who RIP off a rate confirmation and say, hey,
27:42
this is so and so from Trinity, here's a rate confirmation.
27:45
The guy holds the load, the guy gets paid, and then he's either
27:49
factor and the factor company, a Trinity haven't paid this yet.
27:52
I'm sorry. It's not our load.
27:55
And we've put some things in place that go to our website as
27:57
your carrier, put in the load number and we'll tell you right
28:00
away or not whether it's a valid load for and stuff.
28:03
And so trying to help the carriers here as well because
28:06
again, they're a vital part to our success.
28:08
We couldn't do what we do without the motor carriers and
28:11
people don't want to lose light of that.
28:12
They are very critical and very important to the supply tube.
28:16
Can't wait. Walk me through how that.
28:17
OK, so I understand, like sometimes people just steal a
28:20
truckload, but I don't know, it's sort of like old fashioned,
28:23
like, you know, Old West, kind of a theft.
28:26
But what you're describing here is somebody calls up with like
28:29
some kind of identifying number and pretends to be you.
28:32
Well, there's two things going on.
28:34
So from our standpoint for the motor carrier, what happens is,
28:36
is that the carrier posts his equipment on DAT.
28:39
That bad guy will go get some load off, let's say chapter
28:45
Robinson's website or load or something that they need hold or
28:49
something that nature get another load and then he'll
28:51
portray and to be Trinity logistics.
28:56
Somehow he's gotten a a a a copy of our rate confirmation.
29:00
He'll change the e-mail address, change the phone number, change
29:04
the load ID, then put the load details in there and it's just a
29:07
whiteout type of thing and retype or whatever.
29:09
And of course, now with so much sophistication, probably you can
29:12
do it on chat, GP upload and say, hey, change this
29:14
information, let's put one back out.
29:16
I don't know. But then that goes out to the
29:18
motor carrier, a legitimate motor carrier who bids on it,
29:22
delivers it, submits his paperwork.
29:24
The bad guy submits paperwork to where we got the load from.
29:27
They pay him. He in turn doesn't pay the
29:29
carrier. Carrier knows more and no more
29:31
and says, hey, it's a Trinity logistic loads, gives us a call
29:34
saying, hey, when you're paying me and we get the information,
29:36
we say, sorry, that's that's, that's not a load.
29:39
And unfortunately most of those carriers are factored.
29:42
So the factor may have paid the carrier.
29:44
He in turn is going to get his money back on a future loads
29:47
that carrier runs. And so it's a vicious circle.
29:50
So we said, hey, let's put something out on our website.
29:53
We've informed the carrier community, hey, go here, put in
29:56
a load number and we'll tell you whether or not it's a valid
29:58
Trinity load. Now the same thing happens with
30:00
regard to us. Someone will call and say
30:02
they're a motor carrier. We will give him a load, come
30:06
find out he's not associated with that motor carrier, puts
30:09
another truck on it and then tells that truck, oh, take it to
30:13
this warehouse which may only be 5 or 10 miles away.
30:16
And then that product disappears.
30:18
So it it it's how do you combat against that one?
30:21
Well, that we're that we are. Combating with through
30:23
technology. And I'm not going to share what
30:25
exactly we're doing because again, I'm trying to stay ahead
30:28
of them. But we believe that what we're
30:30
putting together would take a huge, yeah, as, as, as the crime
30:35
dog said, we're going to take a bite out of this crime, take a
30:38
bite out of this fraud by doing what we're doing.
30:40
And we think we'll eliminate quite a bit of the fraudulent
30:42
activity with what we're putting in place.
30:45
So it's not just. Things that start with F that
30:48
you've had your fingers dirty with, you know, marketing IT,
30:52
you're working closely with those departments.
30:55
Can you think of a specific story of how you collaborated
30:59
with another function within the company that has helped to shape
31:03
the overall business strategy? Well, you know, it's
31:04
interesting. Back I had the opportunity and
31:08
they can't remember 2012 or something like that.
31:10
So to run the IT department, and this was prior to our developer
31:15
stuff. It's just when we're doing
31:17
infrastructure and realizing that, you know, we had an office
31:21
in Kansas City and we got offices in Seaford, DE.
31:27
And so you're worried about natural disasters, whether it's
31:30
a tornado or hurricane that could impact the business.
31:35
And our business is strictly relying on phones and emails and
31:39
a computer. You can do the job from anywhere
31:42
if you got those type of technology.
31:43
So back before work at home became a thing, the COVID type
31:48
of situation, I put together a plan with the infrastructure
31:52
team and got the ELT and said, look, first thing we're going to
31:54
do is we're going to switch everybody to a laptop.
31:57
Oh, why are we going to switch to a laptop?
31:58
You know it costs like $150.00 or more because a laptop you can
32:01
go anywhere with it. Second thing I did when I came
32:05
over from infrastructure, we immediately took our phone
32:07
system that was an on premise based system and put that into a
32:10
cloud such that now in a redundant cloud, so if the one
32:15
of their data centers went down it would flip over to another
32:18
data center would be able to go on there.
32:21
We also brought in some additional hardware with regard
32:25
to our switch gear and such that allowed us.
32:27
We also brought in two circuits into the offices.
32:31
So what does that mean 2? Circuits.
32:32
So we'd bring in, let's say, an AT.
32:34
And T circuit and a combo. OK.
32:35
So you've got like a backup. Internet connection and so we
32:39
set. This all up and I said, OK,
32:41
let's say one of the circuits goes down.
32:43
What happened? So this is what the switch gears
32:45
did. So I went back there at one one
32:47
night after work about 5510, we had steeple still people on the
32:51
floor and I told the guy, hey, pull the circuit out-of-the-box.
32:54
Just take the AT&T circuit and just pull it right
32:56
out-of-the-box. Did that blip, everything
32:59
flipped over. They hardly knew.
33:02
Phone call didn't drop, the Internet didn't drop, just a
33:05
blip and everything was fine. So then we focused on, OK, now
33:09
that we have that, we can do our work from anywhere.
33:12
And so in essence, the first time this occurred, there's a
33:14
snowstorm out in Kansas City. Got a call from Frank Lees, who
33:18
was the head of the office. And it was a snowy December day
33:22
out in Kansas City. And he said, Doug, you know
33:24
what? I only got half the office in
33:26
here. It's very quiet, but we're
33:29
having a great day because half the office was working from
33:32
home. And we've done that.
33:33
And so when the COVID came around from that instance and
33:37
we've had a couple CTOS and everyone's approved upon that.
33:40
But when we came to COVID, in essence, when COVID struck and
33:44
people said, hey, you got to work from home, you can't come
33:46
into the office and such we were.
33:49
Ready to go the. Very next day when that came
33:51
about, we were all set ready to do it.
33:53
The only thing we were waiting on was a couple hot spots to
33:56
come in so that people who didn't have Internet service at
34:00
their house had the ability to work.
34:02
So that was prepared for a long time ago, but not because of
34:07
COVID per SE or something was going to come.
34:08
But the simple fact you got to worry about natural disasters
34:11
and you and because there's 8000 of us are more than that, but
34:14
8000 active brokers. If our phone lines down and the.
34:19
Customer can't get through US, He's going to call our
34:21
competitors and he's just getting all he wants to do is
34:24
make sure his freight gets moved.
34:26
That's what he wants, but he also go ahead.
34:30
Yeah, I I think this is. This is really interesting for
34:33
me because a lot of people might look at the expense of bringing
34:36
in that redundancy and be like, Oh my gosh, how many hundreds or
34:40
thousands of dollars is that, you know, adding to our expenses
34:43
each month you zoom. Out you kind of look.
34:46
At the big picture, you're like, how many hundreds of thousands?
34:49
How many millions of dollars of business do we lose in the rare
34:54
event? But it happens.
34:55
And I and I'll tell you that the Internet at my house was just
34:58
out for 72 hours because a tree fell on the the cable.
35:03
And so, you know, being down for three days, catastrophe, being
35:09
down for an hour, still terrible, right, Because
35:12
somebody's trying to call in to get a they don't care what your
35:15
technology problems are. They're moving on to the next
35:17
guy, correct. You arranged, We arranged. 2500
35:19
loads a day so you can. Imagine what that'd.
35:22
Be you're down for a couple three hours and the guy's
35:24
waiting there with product, he's got to get moved, so he's going
35:26
to reach out to someone else. I mean, what separates us?
35:29
What separates us more so than just the technology?
35:32
Our people. They come back to us because.
35:35
We get involved. We don't need to hang in.
35:38
We're certainly a people, you know, people centric freight
35:42
solution company and that's what we offer.
35:45
We are a differentiator. Is our people and interaction
35:49
our? Relationships with not only the
35:51
customers, but we care just much.
35:53
I said earlier for the carriers, some companies may not care for
35:56
the carriers as much. We, we truly want to help them
36:00
out as well because they're bread and butter as well.
36:02
They're providing the service, the actual transportation
36:04
service. But you're right when you go
36:06
back to the to the cost, it's, it's not the, it's the cost of
36:09
not doing business that impacts. The bottom.
36:13
Line you just want to be in prevention for Europe
36:15
preventable realizing how quickly this industry can move
36:20
you know you've talked about your.
36:21
People and the importance of the culture there.
36:23
I I think that part of your mission statement is actually
36:26
improve lives. Might even be the first 2 words,
36:29
am I right? That is correct, it's improving.
36:31
Lives and supply chains by solving tough problems.
36:33
And you know, and we kept that improving lives in place because
36:37
it is simply what we do. We want to improve the lives of
36:40
not only our customers, not only our carriers, but our agents and
36:44
our team members. It's highly critical to us,
36:47
highly critical of me personally, you know, and I want
36:50
to see lives improved, not just what they do at Trinity, but I
36:53
want to see them previous lives personally as well and to be
36:55
part of all that's really helpful When you think about it,
36:59
If you move a load, let's say for a customer has 1000
37:02
employees with a carrier that has a family of five.
37:07
And you take those thousand employees and say an average
37:10
size is a family of three, 3000 people plus the five at the
37:13
carrier plus Trinity, it's 400 plus our agents and their
37:17
families. In one transaction, we do 2500 a
37:20
day. We've affected the lives of 4 to
37:25
5000 people. Take that with the larger
37:27
companies you're talking to, you're taking that 2500 loads a
37:29
day multiplied by the different shippers and carriers we
37:32
utilize. We're talking 10s, if not
37:35
hundreds of thousands of lives are impacted on a daily basis by
37:38
what we do, which doesn't include who we deliver to and
37:42
their families and the income. Hey, you just think about that
37:47
all supply chains out is about impacting lives on that portion
37:51
of and get the product moved so that people can eat, so people
37:55
can have comfort in the disastrous situations being
37:59
removed bottled water. You know, it's it's just a
38:03
tremendous opportunity in the logistic industry.
38:05
And that's why improving life is so much important for us and
38:08
it's one for us for our team members.
38:09
We offer we offer one of our team members one of the perks
38:12
you've been there a year. You can actually take our online
38:16
education for the University of Arizona and we're reimbursing.
38:19
You get a degree. We've had a couple people do
38:22
that back in one of my accounts, receiver person and Brittany
38:25
Murphy got her degree in accounting and I'm so proud of
38:29
that. So proud she took the effort to
38:31
get that done and we're happy to to provide the funds for her to
38:34
better her life. And now you know, she loves
38:38
Trinity. She loved Trinity even before
38:40
all that. But the point of the matter is,
38:41
is that we've got a culture. We got a long standing team
38:44
member relationships number people that we have employed by
38:47
us is is is is length of service is great.
38:51
Our executive team, you know, Sarah rough Corn being the
38:54
president, her only job has been with Trinity Logistics going on
38:56
2223 years. Our senior staff of six of us
39:02
have been there. I'm, I'm the newbie of that one
39:04
in 19 years, our Vice President sales 10 years, our human
39:09
resource four years. And I will say our brand new CTO
39:12
maybe 7 days, but he's already made a tremendous, tremendous
39:16
impact in just those seven days for us, you know?
39:21
I hear you talk. About investing a lot in your
39:23
employees, you know, at the one year mark, they've got this park
39:26
where they can go online, get, you know, free courses.
39:29
They can work towards a degree. Some people look at that and
39:33
man, it's an extra expense. And man, if I'm like allowing
39:38
that person to sort of level up to gain more education, what's
39:42
the likelihood that they're going to then leave me?
39:44
How do you approach that from a mental standpoint?
39:48
Like how do you think about the fact that you're investing so
39:51
much in these folks? And I mean, at some point maybe
39:54
they want to leave and they want to do something bigger.
39:56
But you know, it's interesting to say.
39:57
That I just recently had my controller had been there 12-13
40:00
years, good friend of mine and it's a good friend for a couple
40:04
reasons on there. But but you know what, he, he,
40:08
when he left, he left me a card on my desk and I opened the card
40:11
and he said two important things to me.
40:13
He said, Doug, he's now the director of a school district,
40:17
director of finance. He's like their CFO of a school
40:19
district in Delaware. Closer to home, he wanted to, he
40:23
wanted, he wanted the opportunity to help children and
40:25
he saw this was an opportunity to do that.
40:28
And he said, you know, Doug, I, I feel more confident in my
40:32
start there because of what we've done at Trinity.
40:35
And he did a tremendous job for me.
40:36
Absolutely. And they grew and they grown and
40:39
and that's what I like to see that, right.
40:40
But you know what the second thing he said to me, and this is
40:42
where you know, talk about the faith, right, is a simple fact
40:47
is that God used me to get to him to become a believer.
40:51
And since then, his daughter's become a believer and they
40:54
attend church and he's part of the band and he led for the last
40:57
several years. Our our he does a weekly
41:00
devotion, a weekly Bible study here at Trinity.
41:02
And you know, to have that impact on him personally, you
41:08
know, that's the legacy I want to leave.
41:10
It's not about the numbers, it's not about this.
41:12
It's about the legacy left people.
41:14
That's what matters the most. That's what we're that's what we
41:17
have. So again, if we invest in an
41:18
individual and they decide to leave and they do something
41:20
better that improves their lives and improves their family, how
41:23
can you not rejoice for them in that nature?
41:26
I again and guess what, that door opens for someone else to
41:32
come in and have the same exact impact and results.
41:37
Improving lives. It all comes back to that.
41:40
It does. Every day, every day.
41:43
So what is the future? Of Trinity look like what, what
41:46
are some of the exciting things that you're working on or or
41:49
that are coming and I don't know, call it the next 12 to 24
41:51
months? Yeah, what we're working on is a
41:53
lot. Of associated with the buzzword,
41:55
right? It buzzword.
41:55
I think if you don't mention AI in all the podcasts that you do
42:00
nowadays when you're talking about business or anything else,
42:03
I think there's, I think the focus is really on technology,
42:06
how we drive efficiencies into the business, have AI doing some
42:10
of the routine tasks. Now people say, well that will
42:14
mean some jobs will be cut. I think jobs change and
42:17
transition more so. And.
42:19
Some will adapt and some won't, but that's just the nature of
42:22
what technology's done way back when on there.
42:26
You think about, you know, the the car, you think about the
42:30
Wright brothers, you think that, you know, with the car is simply
42:33
a blacksmith's. All of a sudden we're not
42:34
shoeing horses as much as what they were before, right?
42:37
But they found other. So again, it's the adaptation as
42:39
technology comes wrong. But the one thing that we want
42:42
to continue that the forefront is people centric.
42:45
People centric relationships matter.
42:48
For instance, Convoy, which was a big freight broker, thought
42:51
they're going to revolutionize everything and else had a
42:54
valuation of $2 billion bankrupt.
42:58
What happened? What?
42:59
Happened was simply what they. Realized is broker required
43:02
relationships required people and the technology that's not
43:05
going to solve all the problems. And that's true today.
43:07
Technology will add value, no doubt about it, no doubt about
43:12
it. It'll make us more efficient.
43:13
It allows to focus on exceptions instead of routine tasks.
43:17
But think about this as an employee.
43:19
If you're a worker and you can say to your, you know, you're
43:21
not excited by the job, you're just doing something clerical,
43:23
right? But all of a sudden you come
43:25
back and say, you know what? I'm managing these exceptions.
43:27
I'm making sure the customer is taking care of, make sure the
43:30
care gets paid on time. You know, you're a little bit
43:32
more excited about what you do on a daily basis.
43:34
So again, improving their lives by allowing for that to focus
43:38
not on something that's routine and and dull and and boring, but
43:42
something that's excitable and know that you're.
43:45
Providing an awful lot of value and.
43:47
And don't don't misquote me here.
43:49
The simple fact of the matter, every team member of Trinity is
43:53
valued and appreciated, no doubt about it, they are from the
43:57
bottom of my heart to my team members and the simple fact of
44:00
the matter is, things are changing, things are going to
44:03
continue to change, but we're not going to ever overlook the
44:05
people and the fact that relationship drives business
44:09
connections and. Relationships.
44:13
You know a lot of. Folks that I've talked to, and I
44:15
think this is what you're ultimately getting at, Doug, is
44:18
they look at AI as a way to free up their folks to spend more
44:23
time on the human part of the business interaction, right?
44:28
You know, so many forms need to be filled out.
44:30
So, so much admin stuff that needs to be done.
44:33
If, if you can give more of that to a bot, you know, to a bit, a
44:38
bit of technology and that allows somebody, you know, to
44:41
use your word to deal with more of the exceptions. 00 something
44:45
happened, you know that we've got a crisis, like something
44:49
didn't go according to plan. Now I can put my full attention
44:52
on them. I can talk to the customer, I
44:54
can make whatever calls I need to make to, to troubleshoot this
44:57
situation. Absolutely.
44:59
And you're building that? Relationship.
45:00
You're solving that problem for the customer.
45:02
Well, AI will never be able to do and it's I'd say never.
45:04
Maybe I'm wrong in that there is no emotion in that.
45:10
You can say, hey, yeah, do it this way or do it that way.
45:12
I mean, I, I just heard we have worked with some technology says
45:15
that be suspicious, right? And so it can take AI and all of
45:19
a sudden they're worrying changes be suspicious.
45:21
But what's never you can program is a human element and the gut
45:25
feeling what I decide for one customer may have a similar
45:29
situation when it comes to a credit matter or a collection
45:31
matter. What I decide for one customer
45:33
may be totally different when I decide for another customer that
45:36
is a going understand the same similar situations in that
45:42
basis. But because of my conversation
45:44
with key people of that company, I can make a decision based on
45:47
those conversations. That's what is that's what's
45:51
always, in my opinion, going to lack from this AI ability.
45:55
Yeah, black and white, really good grade to a degree.
45:58
But what it misses is that symptom, human element, gut
46:02
feeling type of deal. Now with me saying that
46:04
someone's going to put ChatGPT, hey, I'm have gut feeling and
46:08
we'll see what the results come out.
46:09
That'll be fun to follow. It's going to, it's going to
46:14
unfold in ways we can't even predict at the moment.
46:16
That's yeah. Let's let's shift gears a bit
46:19
here, Doug. You know, we've talked about a
46:22
lot of tremendous success that you've been a part of there.
46:26
And sometimes people hear those surface level stories and
46:29
they're like, wow, everything's just up and to the right for
46:31
Doug and up and to the right for Trinity.
46:33
But you know, the reality of business, the reality of our
46:36
personal lives is that there's a lot of ups and downs.
46:39
I'd like to hear about a serious challenge that you had to
46:43
overcome at some point in your life, how you got through that
46:46
and what what you learned, you know you.
46:49
Know we look back there's a situation I went through when.
46:54
Actually, the Clam Company is being sold to Sea Watch in the
47:00
sense that I'd always been in control of my own destiny,
47:04
control of what I was doing. You know, I was controlled when
47:07
I left the government to work for the clan company.
47:09
And all of a sudden now I was no longer in control of what my
47:14
future look like. And so put a lot of uncertainty,
47:18
and I've never been, and this is at the age of 29, I've never
47:20
been through that uncertainty, right?
47:22
I never had that challenge before me where I couldn't see
47:25
what the end result was going to be.
47:28
And so unfortunately my mind is wired and I, yeah, when I, when
47:34
I, when I ever make it to heaven, I'll ask God, why do
47:36
wire my mind like this? Because life could have been a
47:37
whole lot easier. But I said for wired or made
47:39
differently for purpose. But but my point was, is that
47:43
all of a sudden I began to have doubts about the future, about
47:50
what I was going to be doing because I was getting no answer
47:52
from the existing company of acquiring us or from the owners
47:56
that were doing it at the time. We also had a serious insurance
48:01
issue on the owner's yacht come up.
48:03
And again, I did what I was supposed to do, but I was laid
48:07
with the fact that it was an insurance matter that that I hit
48:11
but yet missed because they didn't send out the right form.
48:14
But again, it was a multi $100,000.
48:17
And I take, I take extreme ownership in everything I do,
48:20
whether it's for a company or me individually, I take strong
48:23
ownership and it, and it rests on me.
48:24
And then maybe I do that way too much.
48:26
I probably do, but extreme ownership.
48:29
So my point was this was happening in the September and
48:32
we sold the company finally in the end of December.
48:35
And then what I finally got from the owners was, hey, you can
48:38
work for us as an individual for a year and then you go find
48:42
another job. And when I started looking at
48:44
that, I realized I wasn't going to qualify for health insurance
48:46
because I looked into it. So that was one thing that was
48:48
going to change because no longer would health insurance be
48:50
provided by the company and the company that was buying us
48:53
couldn't tell me what I'd be doing.
48:55
And so I had no certainty with that.
48:58
In this period of time with the uncertainty, the insurance issue
49:00
and stuff, I just think to myself, my mind, the mind plays
49:04
a terrible trick on me. It says the worst possible
49:06
outcome is going to happen. It's going to happen tomorrow.
49:08
And so I believe that it's going to be unemployed, moving back to
49:11
my parents house, taking my family with me and all that.
49:15
So my mind just told this thing, I would literally go to bed at
49:18
8:00 at night because I was extremely tired, mentally tired,
49:23
wake up at 1:00 AM and couldn't shut the mind off.
49:28
I would wake up in the morning and not.
49:29
Want to get out of bed at all? I finally.
49:33
Understood and. This is the deep that I got to I
49:36
finally understood why people could commit suicide.
49:39
Not that I had desire was anywhere close to committing it,
49:43
but the simple fact or matter, you just want out.
49:48
And so and that's why the suicide break.
49:51
It's because again, people just want out and they can't see the
49:54
way out of it. Right.
49:55
And so for me, I I turned back to my faith.
49:58
I started reading scripture, started reading about, you know,
50:01
the three guys and thrown into the fiery furnace.
50:04
I read about Daniel. Then I read about King David and
50:06
the sinful fact that here he was anointed king and yet.
50:10
He's being chased by. His father-in-law, Saul to kill
50:13
him and he has to be saying to himself, he's eating bread.
50:17
I mean, he's living in caves. He's got to be saying, wait a
50:19
second, God, you said I'm the king and yet I'm going through
50:23
all of this, right? And so it's that faith got
50:29
really challenged, hung on the faith, and sure enough, what do
50:31
you know? Another job became available.
50:35
The one the job I was looking for, but it's a job that I could
50:38
take that allowed me to live in my house.
50:40
I commuted up to New Jersey Monday morning would come back
50:44
on this happened in March, but I lost 50 lbs in that entire
50:47
episode in that period of time and so and and you know the the
50:52
faith of that that my family who put up with a lot of stuff
50:56
during that time frame was with me my wife who never worries
51:00
she's completely. Different than I am.
51:02
But if I but another job came about right and it was God who
51:06
brought that about again through a mutual relationship of an
51:09
accounting person, accounting company.
51:12
And then you know how I got the Trinity was simply I reached out
51:16
to Jeff Manning, who I knew very well.
51:18
I met with a couple times already a year ago and stuff.
51:21
I reached out to him one day in June.
51:23
I said you interest in the talking now and something
51:25
happened. It was a God moment and he said
51:27
yes. And since that time I never
51:30
looked back. The anxiety is lesson, but it's
51:34
still there just because I'm our wired but but but in the end, in
51:38
the end, Anthony, when I look back and because of my faith and
51:42
I look at my life of dots, which they all they are are dots
51:47
moment in times I realize I've gone through all of this to be
51:51
where I'm at now a much better person and a person who
51:57
understands that it's not my will be done, but it's above to
52:01
be done. And it's because of that that I
52:03
realized that you know what I don't control anything that I
52:08
think I do control. We play a part in it.
52:12
Don't get me wrong, we play a part in all this, but in the
52:16
end, in my faith, God's will will be done.
52:21
So as you look back. At that really difficult period,
52:25
what do you think is the big take away for you?
52:28
Is it the fact that you're never in control?
52:30
Like, how was your life better today because of that hardship?
52:36
You know, I think. Because it it pointed out two
52:39
things, right? Is that one is you're not in
52:42
control situations, right? You know people lose their jobs,
52:46
right? Most of the time people lose
52:48
their job for the failure to perform correctly.
52:51
But then you have another, another aspect of that where
52:53
companies make poor decisions and they either go bankrupt,
52:57
they've got to lay off people not affected by the performance
53:00
of that person. So the simple fact of the matter
53:02
is sometimes you're not in control, right?
53:05
You're not in control. And then you thinking to
53:07
yourself, OK, what do I need to do to make sure I stay in
53:10
control? Well, sometimes you got to be
53:11
patient, sometimes you got to hold back and wait, but you got
53:15
to realize the simple fact of the matter is you've got to
53:18
work. You've got to work right.
53:20
You've got to be part of the solution on that nature.
53:24
But it but to me, it comes down to faith, how people do it
53:26
without faith and once you lose your hope, I don't know how
53:31
people get by. But for me, it's just relying on
53:34
the hope and realizing, guess what, there's always something
53:37
better out there. Though going through the valley
53:41
is awfully hard for everybody, you know?
53:45
Just last. Night one of my sons was having
53:47
a bad day and he's nine years old and he, he came to me and
53:51
he's like, dad, why does why does bad luck happen to me?
53:55
You know, those were his words for it.
53:57
And I said, buddy, you know, you're because he's like, what
54:01
did I ever do to anybody? Almost like this was a
54:03
punishment, like, you know, why? Why did he deserve to have a bad
54:06
day? And I said, buddy, I said, I
54:09
know this is hard to understand. I'm like, but you know, you're
54:11
not being targeted. This isn't a punishment from
54:15
anyone from God. I'm like, as you get older, I
54:19
hope that you can realize that these challenging times, they
54:23
don't happen to you. They're happening for you to
54:28
help you become a better person. Now.
54:32
He seemed like he understood it in the moment.
54:36
I think he was just comforting that I was giving him a hug
54:39
because I think that's a hard thing even for adults to kind of
54:43
wrap their heads around that. And I'm going through this point
54:46
of suffering. And this is just feels like
54:49
suffering for suffering's sake. And like you said, like some
54:52
people just, I just want out. I just want a way out.
54:54
I don't see a way out. And so I think it's helpful to
54:59
remind yourself that if you can view it through the lens of this
55:04
is happening for me, right? Not, not the world trying to
55:09
punish me, not doing it to me, but happening for me to help
55:12
make me stronger, to help push me in a different direction, to
55:15
help open a new door for me. I think that can that can offer
55:20
a little bit of that hope that you're talking about.
55:22
It does, it does. And that's.
55:24
Why, You know, realizing what I went through and I've had some
55:26
other places of anxiety even after that.
55:29
Not to that degree, but realizing, you know what?
55:32
I'm blessed. I'm.
55:34
Blessed when you figure. There's 8 billion people around
55:38
this world, and you look at your situation, 90. 5% of the people.
55:43
In American say I am far better off than 5 to 6 billion people
55:48
around the world from a monetary standpoint or something that
55:52
nature. But I'll tell you this, some of
55:54
those 6 billion people have much more joy than what we do because
55:59
of the faith they put on God above and that I've.
56:03
Experienced by. Going down to Columbia, South
56:05
America and going out to the indigenous tribes in the jungles
56:09
and it's just the joy they have. And they're living in a Hut, no
56:13
electricity of running water, no flushing toilet and stuff.
56:16
And they don't know life any differently, but they have a
56:18
sense of joy that's irreplaceable.
56:22
We'd send somebody down there and say, how can you live like
56:24
this? It's not.
56:26
That it's what we know. And we're joyful for what we
56:29
have. That, I think, is the biggest
56:31
take away sometimes. We got to live to be content,
56:34
continue to work, to strive to get better.
56:36
You got to tell people, you know what?
56:40
You got to be one that wants. To help people even with what
56:44
you may have, because what you may have, it's can just be a
56:48
smile, a kind word, a hand, 15 minutes of your time.
56:53
It's not that you need to do something extraordinary.
56:56
You just got to show people you care and think how much better
57:00
this world would be. I love that.
57:05
What's your superpower, Don? You know it's funny.
57:10
It's funny, we just hired a new VP of admin services and she
57:13
asked that question on interviews and I sat in on
57:16
what's your superpower, right? And I, you know, it's one of
57:19
those tricky questions, right? And what's your superpower?
57:22
You know, if I was going to say what my superpower is, I'm a
57:27
person who gets things done but cares.
57:32
I think putting those two together.
57:34
Sometimes is not the easiest thing to do.
57:36
Sometimes getting things done for some people means just step
57:40
on people. You get to where you want to get
57:41
and that's all you're thinking about.
57:43
Whereas simply, I can get things done, but I care.
57:48
I care. And unfortunately, sometimes
57:50
because of my directness and everything else, sometimes
57:53
people got to get to know me, to understand.
57:57
People may think I don't have empathy.
57:58
I've got a lot of empathy. Sometimes I.
58:01
Don't show it in the right. Way.
58:02
But when it matters, I'm all about it.
58:06
It's really tough to balance. Those two things, right?
58:08
I mean, when you're getting stuff done right, when you're so
58:12
operationally focused, there's a, you know, you're thinking
58:16
step one, Step 2, step 30, fire to put out.
58:19
OK, now step four, Step 5. And it can be really hard to
58:23
shift gears into more of like a heart centered approach where,
58:26
you know, you're spending time with somebody, you're you know,
58:29
you're giving them a hug, you're holding their hand, you know,
58:31
you're giving them sort of that personal time.
58:34
And so the fact that you have both of those things inside of
58:38
you is a powerful combination. But yeah, it's almost like
58:43
sometimes it feels like only one of those sides of your
58:45
personality can show up at a time.
58:47
Do do you feel the same way? I do feel the same way.
58:49
I. Mean there's times I get off a
58:51
phone call or with the meeting of someone.
58:53
And what I have learned at Trinity is that, you know, Doug,
58:56
you need to be humble. I used to have a high
58:57
expectation of people because my own expectation myself was so
59:00
high. And I've set this high
59:01
expectation and talking with Jeff Banning, I realized
59:04
sometimes my expectation is so high, no one's going to meet it.
59:07
And therefore I'm not valuing and appreciating them for who
59:09
they are. And I, I recount John Maxwell's
59:12
book, the law of the lid. I do believe there's a law of a
59:14
lid. We are 567, whatever that is
59:16
that God has purposely wired us to be right.
59:19
And I can improve it a little bit, but I can't improve it a
59:22
great deal. There's only there's some type
59:23
of cap. That's what I truly believe.
59:24
There's some people who have exceeded that.
59:26
But but but in the same token though, every single person
59:29
matters and so. I get off with a.
59:32
Phone call our men on the team, meaning I say something and I
59:36
reflect on, I say, you know, Doug, that's probably not the
59:38
right way to do it, the right way to say it.
59:41
And I remember talking to a young lady and I called her up
59:44
and I said, I'm so sorry. I should not have talked about
59:46
that at that particular time. I should have talked to you
59:48
individually. And I'm I'm sorry for it.
59:51
And she's like, well, you don't need to She don't.
59:53
You don't need to apologize for it.
59:55
And I said, yeah, I do because it was not right in my
59:58
perspective at looking at it. And I don't know how you took
1:00:00
it, but I'm just telling you it's not right.
1:00:02
I've learned that matters more than anything else.
1:00:05
It doesn't it shouldn't matter to me.
1:00:08
What do I care, however, if I have harm someone, hurt someone
1:00:11
and their perspective is a reality.
1:00:14
And as I reflect, I want to make amends for it.
1:00:17
And then I also now begin praying before I interact with
1:00:20
people and stuff. Yeah, just give me the right
1:00:21
words. Don't let me do something that's
1:00:23
that's not in your will of perspective.
1:00:25
And it helps. I actually, as I said that the
1:00:28
other day, and you know, it's my faith continues to evolve and
1:00:30
develop. You wouldn't think that after 18
1:00:32
years of the pastor, but I don't get it right.
1:00:35
I'm just as everyone else. I'm a I'm a failure in his eyes.
1:00:38
And by the grace of Jesus that I'm able to come to work every
1:00:41
day and everything else. And my point is, is that, and
1:00:45
now I think through that and some of the conversation where
1:00:47
I'm headed, I just stop. Change the subject or change my
1:00:51
tone. One before it gets to that point
1:00:53
in time. And so it's continued growth and
1:00:56
development. I mean, in 18 years at Trinity,
1:00:59
almost 35 years in the work and I still don't get it right every
1:01:02
day or every hour. And I happen to say I'm not
1:01:05
perfect, I'm not right. No, I, you know, I'm just as
1:01:08
wrong as everyone else's at times, you know, but but it's
1:01:12
being able to admit that we're. All a work in progress.
1:01:16
And I think the important thing is to have that awareness that
1:01:18
we're all a work in progress and to have that awareness of when
1:01:22
maybe you could have done better and take a step back and, you
1:01:25
know, do what you can to amend it.
1:01:27
Correct? Correct.
1:01:28
Absolutely, absolutely. Just just one more question.
1:01:31
For you today, Doug. But before I ask, I want to do a
1:01:33
few things. Everyone listening, if you want
1:01:35
to get in touch with Doug Potvin directly, you can reach him.
1:01:39
Give me permission to give out his personal e-mail address,
1:01:42
doug.potvinpotvin@trinitylogistics.com. You can also find him on
1:01:48
LinkedIn. Send him a connection request
1:01:50
there. Also, as a reminder, if you want
1:01:52
to get more employees access to benefits that won't hurt them
1:01:55
financially and carries a financial upside for the
1:01:58
company, reach out to add back benefits.com.
1:02:01
And finally, if you'll take just a moment to leave us a comment
1:02:04
or review on your favorite podcast app, we will be forever
1:02:07
grateful to you. So last question, Doug, you and
1:02:10
I reconnect a year from today and you're celebrating something
1:02:14
big, very exciting. What's that big thing you hope
1:02:17
to be celebrating one year from now?
1:02:22
One year from now, what I believe.
1:02:24
To be celebrating is the continued growth of Trinity and.
1:02:30
What that is? Whether?
1:02:31
It's number or whether that's revenue or something like that,
1:02:34
just continued growth of Trinity because I know by the continued
1:02:38
growth of Trinity, we'll have the continued growth of team
1:02:40
members and lives improved and changed and celebrating that.
1:02:43
But I say the one big thing a year from now that I'd really
1:02:46
love to celebrate is the nature of is that you know what we
1:02:52
succeeded by what we've done and because of that, life's a
1:02:56
better, whatever form that takes.
1:02:59
That's what I hope to be celebrating.
1:03:00
In fact, we can look at and we can see the growth of our team
1:03:03
members a year from now. That is huge.
1:03:08
Doug Potvin from. Trinity Logistics, I want to be
1:03:11
the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your
1:03:14
story with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:03:15
Thank you, Anthony. Again, I appreciate.
1:03:17
The opportunity folks, that's. A wrap on another.
1:03:20
Episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:03:22
Thanks for learning with us today.