Why the Business of Trucking is Harder Than the Driving with Adam Wingfield

Speaker A: I just remember how uh, people would just avoid the classroom, remember to sleep in the owner operated classrooms. They would challenge the teachers and what the teachers would try to teach them. Like man, this is probably one of the biggest reasons why we see 85% failure rate in the industry.

Speaker B: Hello, welcome to behind the Freight podcast. On today's episode, we're coming to you on location from the Mid America Truck show, the largest annual gathering in the trucking industry. Carriers, brokers, industry leaders connect, learn and find real solutions. We're joined today by Adam Wingfield, founder and Managing Director of Innovative Logistics Group. Adam has spent over 20 years helping small carriers build smarter, more profitable businesses through compliance, education and operational strategy. Today we're going to talk about compliance, especially with international road check week coming up. What carriers need to know about ELDs and how emerging tools like AI are starting to shape the future of, of the small trucking business.

Speaker C: Welcome Adam.

Speaker A: Well, thank you for having me, man. I love the introduction. I appreciate that.

Speaker B: Absolutely. What number of mats is this that you've attended and how's it been this week?

Speaker A: So this is going to be my 15th over the last 10 years. It's really changed a lot. I think pre Covid it was definitely different. Post Covid was different, but this thing's really, really different because of the things that's going along the industry and also the direction of the masters becoming more of an educational platform and I really enjoy it. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: So I heard a little story. I heard you came up with your company name while napping at a petrol truck stop in Joplin, Missouri.

Speaker A: Yeah, I never forget it, man. I just woke up in the middle of the night, man. It's almost like you woke up and I had like a, it wasn't a nightmare, but it was like an epiphany and I just woke up and it said innovating and I'm like, you know what? As soon as I wake up, I went inside, you know, in the truck stops and got my logo printed out. All it was is with like a little I, just a uh, letter I. That was it. And it's evolved over time. I don't have my shoulder in the day but yeah, it came in a dream and that's why I always believe in. And I'm gonna give you a weird thing that I do. On my nightstand I have a, a pad. And the reason why I have a pad on my nightstand is that when I wake up. Cuz you know, a lot of times you wake up, you got thoughts and sometimes you forget those thoughts.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: So I got a pen and pad that's always by my. Even in my hotel room right now. So if I wake up in the middle of the night and something comes to my mind, I write it down and go back to sleep. That's awesome.

Speaker B: And you had the logo and business cards made right then and there.

Speaker A: Didn't even know where it was going to go. That was back in 2003, 2004. Didn't know where it was going to go on, but, you know, here we go. Still.

Speaker C: Still. That's amazing.

Speaker B: That's such an awesome story for listeners that don't know who you are. There's so many people that do. You've been mentioned by name on this podcast and by others, but tell us about what you do for the industry and in the industry and tell us a little bit more about your business.

Speaker A: Yeah. So one of the primary things that I focus on is I focus on helping small carriers operate better businesses. Because the thing about this is, is this trucking industry is the lonely. Think it's easy to go out there and buy a truck? Anybody can go out, buy a truck. Anybody can drive a truck. That's not the Golden Tate anymore. The thing that really gets people is the business part of it. So my passion is teaching people how to be better business owners, how to run their business better, how to start better businesses, and how to execute. So we've been doing that for quite some time. I've been doing this 26 years in total. And the thing that really, really kind of gets to me is that seeing small areas that get into the business and really don't understand that it's a contact sport and they don't really understand the things and the dynamics of it. So our whole model is to help small carriers understand those.

Speaker C: That's awesome. Now, I assume it's in a dream or something, but I'm going to ask it. Was there a special or specific moment that you can remember where you're like, hey, these owner operators need to know more about compliance and operations? Like, where did that come from, man?

Speaker A: I took a load from Laurenburg, North Carolina, to Louisville, Kentucky. Actually, it was really funny. It was like my first load way back in 2000. And I'll never forget parking at the TA here and getting out and just walking inside. It just felt like, and I hate to say it, but it felt like an underwhelm. Like I was just looking around. Everybody was so depressed. Everybody was so upset. And the conversations that are happening right now where, hey, the brokers, the fall through they're the same conversations that we were having 22. And so I realized that a lot of people get started in business, man, and I remember going through owner operator training when I was with Brian and I just remember how people would just avoid the flags a little bit. They'll go to sleep in the owner operated classes. They would challenge the teachers and what the teachers would try to teach them like, ah, man, this is probably one of the biggest reasons why we see a 85% failure rate in the industry.

Speaker C: What would you say, one misconception that maybe small owner operators have about compliance that could hurt them in the long run.

Speaker A: Less is more when it comes down to it. But you got to think about that. The CFR manual is about that thing. So you can think about that. You're responsible for everything. And what they say is the ignorance is not a substitute of understanding the law. So I mean you can get, you know, regardless of getting pulled over to something, even if you say, oh well, I didn't know about it, it's not going to get away from you. So I think what the biggest misconception is sometimes is thinking that, you know, just because you don't know, you're not going to be held accountable for those things that you don't know about. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker B: So if we talk about compliance a little bit, especially with International Road Check, we have, uh, one of the well known, probably most celebrated holidays in the transportation industry. Let's start with, for carriers that might not be as familiar, what is International Road Check Week?

Speaker A: Open book tests. So every single year the CBSA announces International Road Check Week and they tell you exactly what the focus is going to be on. And see, here's the thing is that as the years that went by, we shifted more towards, you need those inspections from back then, hey, I got to park my truck. Because we're having CBSA Road Week. CBSA is just a heightened awareness week where inspectors are going to be looking for a specific thing that particular week. Sometimes it's break, sometimes it's hours of service. They're going to tell you what they're looking for. And the problem between the CBSA Road Check week is that it is, it's an open book. It's an open book test. It's one of those things that everybody knows what the outcome is going to be. And then again we'll still go into weigh stations and people get put out of service for the things that they were already told that's going to happen. Test.

Speaker B: So what tends to keep Our catch carriers or drivers off guard in that week.

Speaker A: Well, I think the biggest thing is if you don't think it's going to happen to you, you don't think you're going to get pulled in. You know, and there's a lot of things, you know, especially like on break tech week, man, there are people don't know how to adjust slack adjusters. Some people don't know how to do some of the thing and they just think that it's not going to happen to them. They're not willing, everything's going to be fine. And those are things that you get dinged on. And then the second thing is sometimes you get pulled in the way station thinking that your brakes are good, but all of a sudden you got depth that you on the trail tires. So it's like, hey, just because they're focused on that doesn't mean they're going to avoid that. Yeah.

Speaker B: What are you seeing from an ELD perspective? Are there a lot of ELD violations? What's the most common one that you're kind of seeing and how are you seeing drivers kind of attack that issue or prepare for that?

Speaker A: The most common one is false log of duty status. So it's basically you're going in PC A lot of times PC overused personal conveyance is one of the biggest things that gets overused within that sometimes you have dudes that are just, you know, from a duty status, you're not even logged into the eld. Sometimes you got disconnect issues. So, you know, obviously there's a way for an officer to go by and understand if that ELD has been disconnected or say, hey, you know what, the last time you connected you was about 175 miles ago. What happened over these last 175 miles? This electronic technology that they have available to us now, it's much more intuitive to where you can understand that. And now it's coupled with artificial intelligence. It's hard to hide behind it. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: One of the things I talk about a lot, you mentioned the personal conveyance. And one of the components in transportation that's so tricky is that there's multiple pressure points putting pressure on the different parties and that all then weighs down on the driver.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And so you have a shipper's requirements and expectations, you have the broker's requirements and expectations, and then you have the law and then you have the tracking. And you previously had maybe multiple logbooks depending on your situation.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How does it driver balance all of those expectations yet remain compliant it's so

Speaker A: much on a driver, and that's one of my biggest problem is so many regulations that are geared towards the driver. That compresses your driver behaviorally. It's always a race against the clock. You know, when rates are compressed, you still got to get the job done in the same amount of time. So it's more and more pressure on the driver. That's one of the unfortunate things when it comes down to it, because when you're paid by the mile, but you're monitored by the hours of service regulations, it's unfortunate. That's one of the nuances about the industry that I'm not a fan of. I mean, you got to look at it like, you know, back then we had logbooks. When I started, I was on logbooks, we had logbooks. And even back then we were running two logbooks. Just because you're doing as much as you can to get by. And it's just, it's just unfortunate, man. It's a couple of weeks ago, I was on an airplane going to Chicago and the pilot comes on and he's like, yeah, I need everybody to listen to this announcement. It's an urgent announcement. We need everybody to get seated as fast as possible.

Speaker C: Jesus.

Speaker A: Listening. They wanted us to get seated as fast as possible because if we didn't pull off the gate, the pilot was going to run out of hours and we would have been stuck and he would have to cancel a flight. So I get it. But the problem is that these hours of service are so rigid. I'm almost 50 years old. I only need four or five hours of sleep to not function. I don't need 10 hours of sleep. I don't need 10 hours of rest. I can take me four or five. When I was driving, we used to do five on five when I was doing a team driving. And I don't need that much sleep. And with the amount of technology we have, the amount of information we have about the human body and we have to have a better, more flexible regulations when it comes to hours and service. That's my opinion. You know, that's my opinion. I mean, obviously everybody's going to have their own, but I just think it's too rigid. And I think that, you know, you give me a 10 hour break, I'm a waste 5 hours goofing off because I don't need all the time.

Speaker C: Yep, yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Now I will say, I'll admit, I went to your little show yesterday with Todd and Todd, you, by the way, you killed it. Uh, that was great. That was great. So I want to talk about AI a little bit, if that's cool. Now first off. Yeah. What do you think about trucking and then what do you think for a smaller carrier owner, operator, the most practical use of AI is going to be.

Speaker A: So I think it's here to stay. It's not going anywhere. Is only going to become more and more involved into the truck. One of the things I'm super excited about is getting more involved with the actual mechanical components and the maintenance behind the truck to help the decision making process with techs. Because obviously truck goes down now, takes too long to get it repaired because from the decision making process, the decision trees, it's a long process. It keeps our drivers out there away, ah, from the road far too long. It occupies equipment much too far. So I'm excited about that component of it. There's other components of AI with the dash cameras and things like that to help lower some of those insurance rates. And so I'm looking forward to that from a practical standpoint. We talked about this yesterday. One of the most practical things that you can do as a driver, as an owner operator, is to take and collect as much data that you have on what you're doing with your operation. Take your rate cons for the last two, three, four weeks, take your fuel receipts from the last two, three, four Weeks. Say, hey, Mr. AI, this was my last three, four weeks. What can I do to have a better three or four weeks coming up? Using that AI to help you make better decisions and not necessarily from a, uh, replacement process and using it to help you make better decisions is what I would really love to see us do.

Speaker C: What a softball for me, by the way, off script here.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: In the very, very, very near term, obviously Truck stop, we're looking and do as much in AI as we possibly can. Yeah, we are very soon going to have something along the lines of exactly what you described to where a truck driver is going to be able to say, hey, based off of everything you know about me, I'm going to be in Louisville, Kentucky in four days. Find me the best paying load that does this, this and this from this type of, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it will automatically dispatch, meaning it'll automatically have our AI bot reach out, secure that load for that broker, hands free, hands off. And you're only going to have to talk to your phone. It's coming.

Speaker A: That's good. But you know, one of the things that I do want to say about A.I. uh, is you do not want A.I. to make the decision, you need to be the final decision maker. AI can be a support and it can give you all of the information, but don't allow AI to make the decision.

Speaker C: Now, from a broker's lens, just for a second, how can brokers and other shippers and partners support carriers who want to try to start, uh, to adopt and modernize with the AI?

Speaker A: I think the big thing with that, people want to hear it all the time. And I get it, but you got to have better relationships, first of all, because I'm going to trust you to advise me on, hey, Mr. M carrier, we want to help you become a little bit more technologically advanced when it comes down to artificial intelligence. First of all, I got to trust you. I got to trust that you're not trying to screw me over. I think that's one of the biggest things that comes down to it, is a trust gap between broker, shippers and carriers too. Hasn't gotten much better. The more technology that you put in between us, the further off we're going to be. One of the things that we did really, really good during COVID you know, we did really good during COVID We distanced ourselves. We got really, really good at saying, hey, hey, John, too close six feet. And then mentally, from a mental perspective, we did that from a vision perspective too. So instead of, you got these, some brokers out, email only, you got email only, you got some, hey, instant quote, send a ring. That's not the same M Shake relationships. So in order for me to really want to do business review and trust you to help me make better decisions, then I got freshman. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: You talked about data. Data essentially powers AI and it's my brain thinking about one. There's so many components of data. Like we're literally recording new aspects of data that AI can analyze and then help you learn from the wisdom of Adam Wingfield from that data.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So then it begs the question, who owns the data? For me personally, we had our, uh, mobile devices continue to capture our location. Um, so a lot of people would turn off their privacy settings or their location. But for me, because Google Maps could tell me what the traffic is, how long till I get there, and everything else, I was like, I don't care. Take my data all day long. This value is greater than the risk or my fear of being watched. What's the that balance? How can drivers balance that between value, but then security or safety and data

Speaker A: ownership, man, that's tough. Uh, because if you think about it, so for example, my iPhone that I've had for I don't know how many years I've had an iPhone now, but it's been learning my habits over the entire time I've had this iPhone. So now Siri is so smart in terms of what time out of wakes up, what time does he take phone calls, how much does he text, how long does text message to really kind of know who you are. And obviously that's going to give some security concerns for some, I think that, you know, Big Brother is always watching now. I get it. Absolutely. You got to be careful on what you need. We talked about this in our class yesterday. Do not put your Social Security number, don't put credit card numbers, things that you wouldn't want the public to know about. Like don't ask for advice for certain things that may not be one of the things you want to come back up because it's constantly learning who you are. And there are certain LLMs, there are certain models that use your information to train that model and they'll tell you that we're using your information and training the model. So you just gotta be careful. Just gotta be careful.

Speaker B: How far out are we from an Atom robot being able to walk around that's trained off of all that data, man.

Speaker A: It's so yourself. Yeah, you can, you can. But you know what I'm saying this, man, is that at the end of the day, anybody can do what you can do, but there's nobody that can do what you can do.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I'll say too. I mean, AI still seems. Scares me a little bit, overwhelms me tremendously. I'm not sure when to use it,

Speaker A: when not to use it.

Speaker C: Right. There's a lot of nerves around the whole thing. So one last question by hand, and then we'll get into some fun stuff. Is for those small carriers, owner operators, when it comes to just, you know, being overwhelmed and those sorts of things, what do you think? Something they can do that's small to maybe start dabbling in it. Because you said it's not going anywhere.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: What's something they can start doing? Maybe just to test the waters a little bit with AI.

Speaker A: So whatever you're not really good at, whether it be, hey, I'm not good at filing my ifta, or I'm not good at evaluating, ah, my logs, or I'm not good at evaluating how well I'm navigating, whatever you're not good at, challenge AI by doing three different steps. The first step is you want to tell the AI exactly What you want it to do right? So say I want to improve my rates. I'm going to tell the A.I. uh, hey, you are an expert evaluator of low negotiations. That's the first step. Tell it what you want it to be. Second step is to give it the information. I am going to provide you my last X amount of rate comments. Third step is the output. How do you want the information back to? I need you to evaluate this information and then find out where my gaps are and tell me what I need to do to improve what I'm doing. Just do something small like that. I dare you to have it a evaluate your raycon. Love it. Uh, start from that perspective and I watch this. I promise you you'll make more money next month.

Speaker C: Awesome. That is awesome. Are we ready for lightning round?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.

Speaker C: All right, here we go. This is what I told you. I'm going to try and trick you here.

Speaker A: All right? All right, I'm game.

Speaker C: No cheating.

Speaker A: I ain't cheating.

Speaker C: If animals were to jump behind trucks and start driving these things around the road, what animal would be the best driver?

Speaker A: What animal would be the best driver? In my opinion, a lion. Uh, and the reason why I say that because obviously your truck's the largest on the highway. Lions is the king of the jungle. No matter how many little Toyota Corollas are blowing horns and no matter what, all it takes is that lion to roll one good time and everybody else shuts up.

Speaker B: Yeah, sir. The king of the jungle.

Speaker C: All right. Now we told you at the beginning, you are a very popular man. Half of the people we talked to, uh, when we asked them this question, they said you. So I'm curious if there's one person out there, owner, operators, logistics experts, anybody should or could listen to you to get some good advice, who would that person be? Somebody out there doing good things in the industry.

Speaker A: There's so many people doing good things out there. Neil Fax, right here. It's a huge advocate, Kevin Rutherford, huge advocate, uh, huge fan of uh. And the thing is, is, man, like, I think we're all doing the same things. We're trying to help. People are not going to agree on everything. We're going to have different approaches and respects. But there's some folks out here that really, really know the industry. There's some people that really, really want to teach it really, really well. From my perspective, it's who you're most comfortable listening to. But yeah, certainly those two are definitely some people that I really, really have highly guard respect for.

Speaker C: And I'll plug you right now, too. And Mr. Winfield, he is a stud

Speaker A: when it comes to a wealth of knowledge. All right, a couple more.

Speaker B: The freight industry will be meaningfully better when.

Speaker A: Oh, that's not a fair question. What I will say about the freight industry is that many times you have a industry that's based on economic cycles, it's always going to be a roller.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: The freight industry is never going to be sustainably great. It's never going to be sustainably bad. It's always going to be sick.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was just talking with somebody the other day. It's like, yeah, you can build the best relationships, you can have great experiences, but your expectations have to be limited to the fact that we're still in a market environment.

Speaker A: You are in a market environment. And it's like this. And, um, I'm, and I use this analogy a lot. It's like, have you ever been to a cookout? I know everybody's been to a cookout and say, you go to this cookout and it's all of us, we're all going to this cookout and there's food there. But nobody that's coming to the cookout is bringing food. They're all doing what we're all eating. And here's the thing. If nobody else is bringing more food, at some point, what's going to happen? The food is going to run out and we're all going to be standing hungry. Um, well, that's how the market cycles work. We're supply and demand during the market cycle. And here's the thing, I want to cautious everybody on that's listening to this. The market's going to turn around. Yes. The one thing I want to cost you on, it's not going to be permanent because the market cycle is only on average 18 months. So just like we just came out of a recession, now we turn the market around, it's going to be a downturn probably 18 months after that. And I'm not being negative. I'm letting you know that's reality. I've been doing it since 2000, October 2000, and it's not changed. You just got to prepare yourself for those.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: One tool or system that each small carrier should be using today.

Speaker A: Truck stop dot com.

Speaker C: I love it.

Speaker B: The best answer today.

Speaker C: Amen, man.

Speaker B: It's been such a pleasure having you on and I consider your friend, a mentor, someone that I just advocate for

Speaker A: and it's been great to, uh, be able experience this and work with you. I appreciate. Yeah, absolutely, man.

Speaker B: Have a great day. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: If today's episode helped you think differently about your operation, share it with someone in your network who needs to hear it.

Speaker C: And if you're looking for tools to help keep your truck rolling from finding quality loads getting paid quicker, well, truck stop.com is here to help.

Speaker B: Go visit truck stop.com to explore the load board rate insights and risk management solutions built specifically for carriers and brokers.

Speaker C: Thanks for listening to us at behind the Freight.

Speaker B: Until next time, keep the wheels turning and the bad loads burning.