🎣 Three Tips for Sourcing Carriers

Good morning and welcome back to our Tuesday-Thursday feature story. In today's newsletter, I will write about three tips plus an additional bonus tip I learned from sourcing great carriers as a freight broker (without using a load board).

My Freight Broker Background

In mid-June 2015, I started my career as a freight broker, shortly after graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology.

Fortunately, my fraternity brother, Danny Bazelon—son of Gary Bazelon (CEO of Trek Freight Services, which was acquired by Becker Logistics in 2022)—helped me land a job as a Carrier Sales Representative.

I spent 3 months in Trek's training group before moving on to the regular team. I hadn't understood at the time how great of a training program Trek really had. Steve Schneider, our training manager, did a phenomenal job teaching us the ins and outs of carrier sales.

Here are some tips I learned at Trek and also picked up myself along the way:

Tip #1: Write Down Every MC Number of Trucks You See on the Road & Call Them

During the first few weeks of training, Steve took us to a truck stop in Elk Grove Village, where we were tasked with writing down the MC numbers of all the trucks parked there. Once we got back to the office, we had to look them up on Carrier411 and make introductory calls. The purpose of these calls was to introduce ourselves, learn more about the carrier—what they haul, the lanes they run, and the equipment they use.

At the end of each call, I would always ask if they sent out truck lists. If they did, I asked them to add my email, and in return, I’d ask if they wanted to receive our load list. Most of the time, they said yes, so I took down their email and added it to my contacts.

I ended up doing this throughout my time as a freight broker and the amount of great carriers I found we're astonishing.

Why does this method work so well? Here are a few key reasons:

1. The best carriers often don’t post many of their trucks on load boards. Most of their loads are booked by brokers they already have relationships with. By using this technique, you’re building that relationship early.
2. If you saw the truck on the road, it’s a real trucking company. With all the fraud happening these days, this is a reliable way to verify a carrier is legitimate.
3. When a broker calls a carrier just to build a relationship, not to offer a load or lowball them, it stands out. Most brokers call only to push transactional freight, so this approach sets you apart.

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Tip #2: Collect as Many Carrier Emails as You Can & Send Them Load Lists

Building on the first tip—whenever I spoke to a carrier, I would always ask if I could add them to the daily load list email I sent out. Most carriers were happy to be added.

Important note: Always get permission before adding a carrier to your email list. The last thing you want is for a carrier to get upset because they’re receiving load lists they never asked for.

Why does this method work so well?

1. Email is a powerful tool—that’s why we send emails to you. It goes directly into your work inbox while you're on the job.
2. Carriers will start responding to your load lists right away or call you as soon as they receive them if they see a lane that sticks out.

Building a carrier email list takes time, just like building relationships. But over time, if you stick with it, you'll see the benefits. This strategy becomes especially valuable during a slow market like the one we’re in today.

Tip #3: Visit Your Carriers In-Person

Whenever I had the opportunity, I would visit the carriers I worked with regularly, and almost every time, we ended up booking more freight together afterward.

In an industry driven so much by phone calls and emails, we often lose the personal touch that used to be a core part of business relationships.

Why does this method work so well?

1. When you visit your carrier in person, you get to know each other better, which helps build trust and create memories.
2. By spending time together talking, you'll discover additional ways to work together.

You'll notice that as soon as you're back in the office, you'll talk more often and collaborate more.

In the photo above, I’m visiting one of my favorite carriers from my time as a broker: Bulls Eye Expedition, based in Elk Grove Village, IL.

Funny enough, I first met one of their owner-operators in the sauna at an XSport Fitness in Niles back in 2015. I called them the next day, and from that point on, they did an incredible job covering my loads at great rates. They rarely post their trucks on DAT, so if I hadn’t met their driver and called them, the chances of us working together for so many years would have been almost nonexistent.

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(Bonus) Tip #4: Learn a Second Language

One of the largest advantages I had of being a freight broker was my fluency in Polish. I was the only one in our office to speak Polish and since there are so many Polish run trucking companies in Chicago and on the East Coast, I was able to build great relationships with those companies.

Here are some of the most useful languages to learn in the freight industry (aside from Polish):

• Serbian/Bosnian
• Spanish
• Russian (spoken by many from post-USSR countries, like Lithuania, Ukraine, and Central Asia)
• Ukrainian

Learning a new language is extremely difficult, which is why I included this as a bonus tip. I don’t expect anyone to learn a language solely for this reason, but if I were running a freight brokerage, I would make sure to have at least one person on my team who speaks each of the languages listed above. Having that capability can significantly strengthen relationships with carriers from diverse backgrounds.

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🎧 The FreightCaviar Podcast: If you’re looking to learn more about the freight brokerage industry, I highly recommend The FreightCaviar Podcast. Every Monday at 5 AM CT, we release a new episode featuring interviews with founders, CEOs, executives, and other industry experts. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.