Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/441527
28 | Overdrive | January 2015 Broker/agent Though he's only 28, Bryan Lundberg has run as an own- er-operator and managed a small fl eet. He and his father operated the fl eet, KAL Logistics, which at its height had 18-19 trucks, eight of them company-owned. Lundberg recalls the purchase of his Cat-powered 2005 Kenworth W900L when he was 19 or 20, shy of the 21 years required to drive interstate legally. "I just continued to do custom work on it," he says. On the eve of his 21st birthday, Lundberg wasn't out partying with friends. Instead, he was parked off Interstate 90 in Luverne, Minn., waiting for midnight so that he could cross into South Dakota. "I pulled a step deck," he says. "It was really good money, but you had to go where the freight went." Weeks out became months out. After Lundberg and his wife moved to Arizona, with a new set of lanes to tackle, getting back home got harder, clouding the anticipation of starting to grow his family. "I thought, 'Well, I've built up a lot of contacts. Maybe I'll get into more of the customer side of things.' " Well before joining the all-employee Allen Lund Co. brokerage last year, Lund- berg became an independent agent for a carrier-affi liated brokerage, thinking he might be able to use those contacts. Former owner-operator Lindley Johnson did similar in 2006 following about a decade of trucking, the fi nal years leased to Landstar System. Johnson's now own- er-operator of the Land- star-dedicated LKJ Agency in Iron Mountain, Mich. "In late 2006, I decided to take all those business cards and names and contact numbers that I'd saved over the years and try to do some- thing with them," he says, starting up the agency as a one-man show. The brokerage agent mod- el is akin to the leasing model at carriers, and Landstar's agent model fi ts the mold to one degree or another – its agents, like its owner-op- erators, are independent businesses operating under the larger entity's authority in a dedicated relationship. "I didn't do a single drop of business with any of those guys," Johnson says of The traditional career advancement route for leased owner-operators has been to get operating authority and run as a full independent. Yet many driv- ers and owner-operators have prospered in other jobs within the industry. While there's no guarantee a nondriving job will boost your earnings, plenty of truckers have found good money, opportunity for advancement and better quality of life after coming off the road. Here are common industry opportuni- ties where over-the-road experience gives you a leg up. BY TODD DILLS Roads not taken