🎣 From Basement Office to $70M Brokerage

Will Hopkins is the Co-Founder of Blackbox Logistics, a Birmingham, Alabama-based 3PL. He breaks down how he scaled the company into a $70M business, how using LinkedIn and mentors helped him learn faster, hire better, and why adaptability is key to success.

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The 27-Year-Old Building a $70M Freight Brokerage Out of Birmingham

At 18 years old, Will Hopkins walked into a brokerage office thinking logistics was basically finance.

Eight years later, he’s on the right track to build a $70M freight business.

Like many freight success stories, it started with a phone, a sales floor, and no clue what brokerage actually was.

“I thought it was just finance. Brokerage? I didn’t know anything about it. I picked up on it pretty quickly and realized how big a role brokerages play in the larger ecosystem.”

From Horse Farms to Freight Sales

Before then, he had worked odd jobs - on a horse farm, as an umpire, even selling beach chairs - the concept of buying low and selling high, he says, came naturally.

What pulled Will into logistics wasn’t operations — it was sales and the idea that effort directly translated into results.

That mindset would eventually become the foundation for Blackbox Logistics.

Learning the Business From Both Sides

Before Blackbox officially launched in March 2020, Will and his two coworkers started a small dispatching operation, Compass Dispatching Services.

That experience gave them something many brokerages never fully understand: the carrier perspective.

“By working with carriers, owner-operators, and small fleets, it was a new perspective- even understanding the market’s full cycle. A lot of people don’t have that side of the industry.”

This would later help Blackbox scale through one of the wildest freight markets in modern history.

Building Through the Boom — and the Bust

Blackbox officially launched in March 2020 in a basement office- no VC funding, no giant credit line. Just hustle.

“Post-Covid, for the first two, three years, we’d hire anybody, just give them a phone, give them the basics. They’re just landing customers and pumping out margin.”

Then the market shifted, the easy money disappeared, and they had to get strategic in how they operated. Like every brokerage that survives long enough, the company also learned hard lessons the expensive way.

“You can do everything right, and then this customer that hasn’t been financially stable for so long just goes under. In hindsight, there were signs, but it happens, it’s life, you don’t control the way the ball bounces.”

Why 60% of Their Book Is Open Deck

Blackbox isn't a generalist brokerage. Roughly 60% of their freight is open deck (flatbed, oversized, and heavy haul), with the rest split between dry van, expedited, and almost no reefer. Will traces it back to what he and co-founder Logan learned at Ascent Global.

"You can have a good value prop with open deck — it's much easier to differentiate than dry van. A lot of dry van is just dock-to-dock, get a truck. But open deck, depending on the commodity, it's going to need different accessorials. We're able to speak that language fluently."

That specialization shapes how they prospect today. Blackbox can handle intermodal or LTL, but won't pretend to do it well. Open deck and dry van are where they compete. Everything else gets referred out.

LinkedIn: The Driver Behind Growth

One of the more underrated drivers behind Blackbox’s growth wasn’t technology or funding. It was LinkedIn.

Will started consistently posting his thoughts online and talking to people in the industry.

“Getting connected to some people that are very smart and have done things differently, and borrowing that, for lack of a better term — stealing an operating model or how they run things.”

Those online relationships turned into mentorships, introductions, and guidance from people willing to help without expecting anything in return.

The Competitive Advantage Is Adaptability

When asked what advice he’d give to others building a company, Will didn’t talk about raising money or chasing trends- he spoke about the power of adaptability.

“You can have a plan, but you don’t know what the future holds. You’re gonna pivot. You’re gonna make changes.”

And at just 27 years old, with Blackbox approaching a $70M revenue run rate, that ability to adapt may be the company’s biggest competitive advantage.

Since 2020, the brokerage has expanded to a team of 40+, and recently moved into a newly renovated office space in downtown Birmingham — a major milestone for a company that started with no outside funding and a basement.

Watch it on YouTube now. Listen to the full episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts shortly.

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