Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/614640
BUILDING 12 www.FlatbedTruckingJobs.com January 2016 Building the customer base: Introducing Utah-based Brandt King of King Farms Trucking AMERICA by Todd Dills I n recent memory, I've written in-depth about negotiating with brokers, sharing thoughts, tactics, broader strategies from a variety of sources. All well and good for those irregular-route runners who chase truck-and-trailer demand around the coun- try wherever it may be and are happy with such an operation. But ironically, considering the venue, November's Truckstop.com user confer- ence brought up another subject in the area of freight negotiation and strategies toward business health. Brandt King is the owner of King Farms Trucking of Utah, a refrigerated fl eet of 34 trucks, he says. During a carrier "power user" session at the Truckstop.com confer- ence, King shared this tidbit about his business: Though he has benefi ted — and continues to from time to time — from brokered loads and the occasional shipper's direct freight posted to the Truckstop.com network, the large majority of all of his 23 drivers' and 11 owner-operators' loads both outbound and back are shipper-direct contract freight. How'd he get there? Hard work, generally speaking, and more specifi cally by keeping his eyes and ears open for opportunity everywhere he went from his earliest days in the trucking business as a one-truck independent. "In the early years, I started with an- other small trucking company," he says. "I worked for them about nine years" and that company ran loaded by focusing on dedicated lanes. King "learned under that business model," with its emphasis on build- ing out-and-back lanes loaded both ways with shipper-direct freight. When he went out on his own, with Internet Truckstop/Truckstop. com "we survived the fi rst couple years doing our best to stick to lanes" he was intent on learning. "This allowed me time to pursue a vision of having a bunch of direct customers," he says. "I worked on landing myself as a carrier within some organizations," keeping eyes open to nearby opportunities along his delivery routes. "Some shippers only deal with people under RFP [request-for- proposal] types of situations. I had to get my foot in the door whenever I could, wherever I could." Brandt King