This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Scotty Crisco & Russell Vallance, Operations Managers at Oakley Trucking. During the episode, Scotty and Russell discuss the importance of customer service in the trucking industry. The group digs into the challenges and complexities of maintaining high standards of service, anecdotes about logistical hurdles, the significance of clear communication, and the impact of adhering to protocols. The episode highlights how meticulous planning, teamwork, and proactive problem-solving are crucial for meeting customer expectations and building long-lasting relationships in the trucking business. Don’t miss this great conversation!
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- The Importance of Customer Service (2:21)
- Examples of Customer Service (4:08)
- Understanding Customer Expectations (7:02)
- Visualizing Customer Relationships (9:07)
- Balancing Competing Interests (11:36)
- Specific Customer Service Failures (12:26)
- Handling Customer Complaints (18:28)
- Learning from Mistakes (20:22)
- Transflow Technology Overview (24:55)
- The Importance of Communication (27:25)
- Communication Failures (34:40)
- Customer Expectations (38:12)
- Safety Compliance (40:02)
- Customer Service Challenges (45:05)
- Feedback Loop for Improvement (49:27)
- Driver’s Attention to Detail (50:02)
- The Team Effort in Customer Service (51:13)
Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com
Transcription
Scotty Crisco 00:12
You can sell one of two things, you can sell price, or you can sell service, and I don’t like selling price, and if we sold price and if that was our product, then we wouldn’t be able to afford to pay our owner operators. What we do, there’s a lot of things that go into us, securing or booking a load. I mean, when you think about it, there’s a trickle down effect. Somebody hundreds of miles away has a product that they need to sell to another customer. That transaction has to happen, then they have to decide, well, who’s going to bring that material from point A to point B? But there’s a lot of work that goes into that. So there’s a lot of trust. Somebody is entrusting us to take care of their baby, being the material that they’ve sold during their transaction, to get it delivered, and then you know us out here on the floor, following through on the transaction, and the driver essentially finishing the race, running across the finish line.
Jeremy Kellett 01:08
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. Hi, this Jeremy Kellett, Director of recruiting here at Oakley trucking, and I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. We are bringing you another episode here from our North Little Rock studio, which I might add, is pretty nice. And today, you know, we’ve got a topic here that is discussed constantly at Oakley trucking. It is brought up every day, if not every hour. It is brought up all the time. It is something that we have been instilled in my brain by MAC Holleman, mainly Denton, Benny Weatherford, since 1994 and it’s something that I feel like has played a huge part into what Oakley Trucking is all about these days. It has carried on over. We have done a good job of installing it into these younger guys as they come into the company, and instilling it into our owner operators and that topic is customer service. It’s something that we’re sensitive about. I got Scotty Crisco, Russell Vallance, sitting in here with me. Operation guys. Russell’s with the hopper division, Scottie with the dumps. And we’re gonna, we got a couple examples. We’re gonna talk about that, how little things affect customer service. So we’ll get to it here in just a minute. First, I want to talk a little bit about driver appreciation week. Matter of fact, we got a special guest we’re recording next week with the president of the Arkansas Trucking Association, Shannon Newton’s coming over and going to visit with us a little bit. We’re going to talk driver appreciation and a few other things that are going on that she’s dealing with. But first, back to our sponsors. You know, I can’t say enough about aero truck sales, Keith Wilson, Amy Trey, how they really do good at taking care of our operators? I can just tell you example after example of what they’ve done to help guys that are getting in bad situations, that have truck problems, that help warranty, you know, kicking in all kinds of stuff with an arrow and lube zone, of course. I mean, they’re like the silent killer. You know, you don’t, there’s not a lot of them, but what you do when our guys use them, it’s good stuff, it’s good information, it’s appreciated for the lube zone. And I just can’t say enough about those two sponsors hanging with us all these years. So it’s worked out great, and we really appreciate it. All right, guys, I’ve got, I’ll tell you, give you an example of I get good customer you know how hard it is find good customer service, pretty hard. All right, so I got a mechanic, mace’s garage there, down the road, Russell, you’re familiar with Jeff mace, and I brag on him, because I get excellent customer service from Jeff. Now he’s a little talks over my head, kind of, when we get I take my vehicle there, get something worked on. It’s like, he’ll have a five minute conversation with me. And I was like, Man, I need some new brakes, I mean. And it’s like, well, you know, he but he’s so good at it, but, I mean, he gets it done. He is cost a little bit more, but I don’t mind paying for good service, and that’s just a good example that I mean, he’s got my business. I take everything to him. It’s because he’s provided me with good customer service. Y’all had any good service or bad service lately?
Scotty Crisco 04:53
Yeah, I think we went out to a local restaurant down there in Saline County. As a matter of fact, just a couple nights ago, and got some pretty poor service. You know, in our industry, when and what? You know what? Russell and I’ll deal with every day, every single day, where you can either sell one of two things, you can sell price, or you can sell service. And I don’t like selling prices. And if we sold the price, and if that was our product, then we wouldn’t be able to afford to pay our owner operators. What do we do? So, you know, there’s a lot of things that go into us, securing or booking a load. I mean, when you think about it, there’s a trickle down effect. Somebody hundreds of miles away has a product that they need to sell to another customer, probably hundreds of miles away, that transaction has to happen. Then from that point, they have to decide, well, who’s going to bring that material from point A to point B? So they may go out and shop, and they’re probably going to get what they pay for. I know they’ll get what they pay for if they come to us, but there’s a lot of work that goes into that. So there’s a lot of trust. Somebody is entrusting us to take care of their baby, being the material that they’ve sold during their transaction, to get it delivered, and then, you know, us out here on the floor, following through on the transaction, and the driver essentially finishing the race, running across the finish line, if you want to.
Jeremy Kellett 06:20
Yeah, it’s, well, just like I was talking a while ago, how it’s been instilled in us since day one. How long have you been here? Scotty, 11 years. Russell, 2020, years. Congratulations. So y’all know, I mean, how important has customer service been since the day you got here?
Russell Vallance 06:38
That’s, you know, that’s the number one thing. It supports all of us, our families, our drivers, families, you know, without the good service, we don’t have the customer, you know, and and they’re looking for like Scotty said, they’re wanting it loaded when they want it loaded, and they want it delivered when they want it delivered. And that’s what we have to do,
Jeremy Kellett 07:01
and that’s a whole lot easier said than done, because there’s a lot of factors that play in part to this, providing good customer service, customer service, and a lot of moving parts that gotta add up. And it can be the simplest of things that messes it up. You know, whether it’s a communication from a driver, whether it’s a communication from a dispatcher, whether it’s putting a load in a computer, got the wrong pickup dates, whatever things happen. But I think more than anything, I want my our audience to know from this episode. I want them to know, especially our owner operators specifically talking to those guys that they’re representing us out there with everything we promise to these customers, and we sell, and we go in these offices, and we go in these high rises, and we take these people out, and we try to get their business, and it is very difficult to Get, and I want our own operators to see that whole process, you know, from making phone calls to trying forever to get your foot in the door, and then you get your foot in the door, and then something happens that messes it up. I just and a lot of our own operators know this, but I think it we’re going to give some examples here in a minute, but I think it just when they can see the big picture too, and that’s both sides us, seeing their side of it too, with what they got to deal with, which we’ll touch on a little bit too. But you know, I think if they’ll get a grasp of the big picture of what we’re trying to do here, you know, we are trying to uphold our reputation for what we’re known to be, and that’s good customer service and safety. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. You know, to pick up a load from point A and take it to point B and get it delivered on time. Sounds simple, but Why don’t y’all tell us a little bit about what goes into the front end of that, maybe some customers that are particular, that you wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t think are particular.
Scotty Crisco 09:07
Well, I think, I know the listeners can’t see what I’m trying to say. But I think the best way to visualize it is during meetings from time to time. But if you could have visualized three circles drawn on a chalkboard, and all three of them slightly overlap each other, but there’s one small area where all three overlap each other right in the middle. And if those three customers, if you could visualize those being the customer, the driver, and then Oakley trucking. You know, those are the three parties involved in every transaction. So the idea is to throw darts and hit the center where the transaction works for all three parties involved, the customer, the driver. And then, of course, Oakley trucking. So. At that little center where those circles are tough, so also
Jeremy Kellett 10:02
known as Big Mama, right? Big Mama.
Scotty Crisco 10:07
But, you know, it’s a constant. It’s like moving targets, almost like a circus game. You know, you’ve got a driver dumping in Birmingham, and you know, he’s trying to get to Fort Smith. And you know, a customer needs a load picked up on a Friday in Birmingham and delivered in Tulsa, Oklahoma on a Monday. Well, that transaction right there, is the nail in the middle of that. You know, the driver gets home, he gets good miles. The customer gets the load picked up when they want to and delivers when they want to. That is a rare scenario, because there’s so many factors that are, you know, drivers need, you know, he doesn’t have hours to make it home. He’s not going to get home till Saturday, and the customer closes at two o’clock, and the driver’s not going to make it to load. So, you know, you’re constantly changing, and now you have to put a driver on it that’s going to take it 250 miles out of route. And you know what I mean. So it’s a lot to balance. But there are certain scenarios where the driver is gone, you know, the driver will, you know, will be like, Yeah, I can make it home Saturday. That’s fine. I can do that load. So there’s a scenario where maybe the driver, his little circle, didn’t get hit as well as Big Mama and the customer. You know what I’m saying. So as far as from Jump Street, on how a load actually gets booked and in the computer, you know, yeah, I think
Russell Vallance 11:26
those three areas that you’re talking about, the owner, operator, Oakley and customer, you know, all three of those have two main interests. One is making money, and you know, the two are not having any problems. Whether it’s a problem going home, like scotty’s talking about, or, you know, the customer just giving us a load, and we load it and deliver it, and there’s no issues at all. You know, that’s what we’re interested in, too. Nobody wants to deal with problems. But at the same time, making money for all three parties is important, and we deal
Jeremy Kellett 11:59
with problems every day we come to this place. That’s our job. That’s part of it, is problem solvers. But let’s give some specific examples of maybe a customer failure, where we failed. I had one, let me see, oh, I used this in orientation the other day. The loads that Nick was working on out of Alabama, going to the Carolina, you know what I’m talking about. So
Scotty Crisco 12:26
it’s just a lane that, you know, we’ve been chasing for a while. And I think sometimes the younger dispatchers, and especially the drivers, because, you know, they’re not in here seeing, you know, sometimes it takes a long time to catch that fish, you know, you can maybe you may be working on a lane that, you know, another carrier is hauling. You may be working on that lane for weeks, months or, you know, I mean, we are living longer.
Jeremy Kellett 12:51
How long are we working on that? You know,
Scotty Crisco 12:53
oh, months since, or since winter, since January, you know. And it’s not a huge volume, but, I mean, it’s a few loads a month going in, coming from an area where we tend to have a good number of trucks going to an area where we need a good number of trucks. And, you know, the deal gets secured. And the problem with the receiver is they’re kind of a small operation so they are extremely particular about their delivery dates, because they don’t have a lot of bin space and whatnot. Well, our very first load got loaded a day early because someone at the shipper picked up the phone and told the driver that he didn’t care if he came in and loaded. Well, that guy who’s loading the truck, he’s not aware of what all goes, you know, he’s just thinking, that’s one molest truck I’ll have to load tomorrow, and then the truck delivers a day early, and they’re not ready for it. And, you know, so, and it’s just, it’s, there’s a lot of gray area there, because, you know, you know, we’re, you’re talking landscape, rock and lightweight and whatnot, you know, there are some things that have some serious flexibility. But then in our industry, there’s also a lot of things that are very Date Specific and time specific, you know, I mean, well, in
Jeremy Kellett 14:16
that specific situation, that’s the frustrating part, where you work so hard to get your foot in the door. And then the owner operator, I mean, great guy, been here years, you know, all good. And he simply thought he was doing something good. Thought he was doing good, but he was he, you know, I want to say dispatch told him these dates, you know, when to load, took it on himself to load early and deliver early for whatever reason, whether he’s trying to do good or I don’t know, but it was the specific requirements that had to be done by the customer that we didn’t get done. And we don’t look at it, we can’t look at it as it was the owner operator’s fault because. Because he’s rolling in there with Oakley decals all over his truck and pulling our trailer, and the customer, all they care about is Oakley screwing this one up. I give him the first load, and I screwed it
Russell Vallance 15:11
up. And that’s the thing. It’s the first load, and he probably
Jeremy Kellett 15:15
didn’t know it was the first load, which we should have communicated better with him. Whatever I mean, it is, those are the things that I’m glad you explained that kind of was leading up to that, you know, and what all is taking place behind the scenes to try to get that freight, especially
Scotty Crisco 15:30
in today’s market, you know. You know, it’s no secret, and the drivers know this, and most of our drivers have been in the trucking game long enough to know that it can tend to be cyclical. But, you know, today’s market is competitive. Currently, you know, there’s lots of competition. They’re knocking our door on our doors, and we’re knocking on theirs. So, you know, we’ve had to, we’ve got more trucks and more availability, so that’s allowed us to maybe be more competitive on rates in certain areas and whatnot. But when you finally land the deal, man, you just want to do it right, you know. And that goes all the way down to are you dressed professionally or you? Do you have your steel toed boots on? Do you have your hard hat, your safety glasses and your high vis vest? You know what I mean?
Jeremy Kellett 16:18
Because, you know, I think that’s part, that’s probably part of the issue is a lot of our customers are really laid back. Come on in, take care of business, drive, do your thing over there. And then the next one you go into, you have to watch a video. You can’t get out of your truck. You can’t go over five miles an hour. I mean, all that kind of stuff. And I can see I would get a little lax, probably because I’ve been all week and hadn’t had a whole lot of requirements, and then bam, I go to the next one, and they’re like, you know, I can’t get out of my truck. I gotta have all my PPE. I’m getting in trouble. So it can be a lot of that, you know, I think plays a part in it, but that’s why they got to be on our game every day. Absolutely,
17:02
yeah, that’s right. What
Jeremy Kellett 17:04
about in a hopper division? Russell, what kind of stuff do y’all run into? Well,
Russell Vallance 17:08
like, probably a good example for that is, about a month ago, we were going doing some grain loads out of Illinois, going to sulfur springs Texas. The driver that was doing it has delivered to sulfur springs Texas before, but we go to about four different customers in sulfur springs, Texas. So he took it to the place he went to last time, which unfortunately was not the place it was supposed to deliver to. So we delivered to the wrong, you know, the wrong customer on that end, and he unloaded, and he unloaded. So thankfully, the people we build for those particular loads, that’s they have both of those customers, so they were able to sell it over to the other side, you know, and we were able to get another load to go to the right place in sulfur springs, Texas. But, you know, obviously the details matter. It’s pretty easy to do if you’ve been there before. You know all you know you’re going from Illinois to sulfur springs, Texas. Yeah, it’s like I did before, yeah. And you go right on in there and, you know, they unloaded them, of course. So
Jeremy Kellett 18:15
how do y’all handle the customers when they call in with complaints, other than ready to explode. Your head explodes. How do you handle talking to the customers that call in and we’ve done something wrong?
Russell Vallance 18:27
Well, probably the first thing you just got to listen, listen, hear them all the way through, and try to sort out where the issue really is, you know, is it something we did or, you know, is it something they left out, they didn’t tell us. You know, it could be a lot of factors that cause that, you know, but we try to smooth that over the best we can, depending on what the issues are.
Scotty Crisco 18:52
I think Russell makes a good point a lot of times, not just with dealing problems with customers, you know, as at home, I’ve learned over the years, and, you know, I’m not wise, but I have learned sometimes it’s just good to listen. Yeah, you know, let them get it out. And then you also got to realize that at that point, you know, even though you know, blood starts to boil because you can’t wait to get off the phone and talk to the dispatcher or whatever, you also got to step back and realize that at that current moment, you’re really only hearing one side of the story. Do your research. Get all your facts straight before you, you know, decide to rebuttal or have to say whatever you need to say. Sometimes, you know, a lot of times customers will get to talking and be like, Oh, you’re right. You’re right. Here’s that ticket. I got it, you know. Or here’s the truck, you know. So, but yeah, Russell’s right. Just listen, hear them out. You know, I’ll give you a perfect example of one that happened today. We do some loads out of Alabama going over to a facility in Louisiana. We typically do one to two loads a week. Well, this past week. On Friday before Labor Day, she had asked me for a delivery on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, when she called me this morning on my way to work. So three deliveries, she says, hey, my fourth truck just showed up. Oh, I was like, oh. So immediately, the way my brain works is like somebody in the office put in extra load and didn’t tell me. No, it was me. I called Garrett and said, Hey, look in there and see who built those loads. And I’d built all four of them, so I got fat fingered. I had to call her back and be like, Yeah, I made a mistake, and I’m sorry. Let us, you know, if we need to, she ended up. No, that’s fine. Go ahead and bring me two more for you know, sometimes you just listen, they’ll just keep ordering. Yeah. I mean, everybody, like you said earlier, everybody makes mistakes.
Jeremy Kellett 20:43
And I know a lot of times, though, it can be more serious, like on the pneumatic side, you know, a mistake on that side can be just absolutely costly, plus all the, I wish we had a pneumatic guy in here, but all the paperwork they have to go through, all the what was it called that they’ve gotta fill out, you know, the manifest. No, it’s when they screw something up. Oh, the NCRs, yeah, the NCRs, they want an explanation of everything. They want to know what action we took, you know, with the driver. They want all this stuff, you know, see, I want to see your safety manual. I want to see your handbook. I mean, that stuff can get deep. Now, absolutely, real deep when you’re talking about the pneumatic side. But, you know, I’d say some of it in the end up Hopper too. You know, it can be very costly with what we’re trying to do here. And, I mean, and I think, you know, we’re talking about some of these problems. I mean, we do 99% of the stuff, right? Our owner operators do 99% of them, right? But it’s that one that you do that, man, they just cannot forget. I mean, they can’t forget it.
Russell Vallance 21:50
Yeah, they always remember. Everybody remembers, yeah, the failures and the bad stuff more so than the good. I
Jeremy Kellett 21:56
I want to touch on it. Oh, I want to go back to one more. Scotty, do you know about this? I can’t remember who told me about this one, but it was unloading at night, and we were able to leave the paperwork there. We could dump, but nobody was working. But they were letting us come in at night. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, we then got kicked out.
Scotty Crisco 22:15
Well, fortunately, we didn’t get completely kicked out. They just limited guys, limited us to daytime deliveries only. But you know, and some of this, you know, sometimes you got some of this probably comes from dispatch, you know, and us not being thorough in our communication with the driver. But listen, and we are in the dry bulk industry. So to any of the owner operators listening, whether you’ve been here six months or six years, anytime you don’t have a scale ticket in this industry, that is a major red flag, because I would say 95% of the loads we haul are on a per ton or some sort of weight basis. So this particular facility just needed, you know, a copy of their scale ticket. And we were having trucks deliver and dump without scaling, you know. So they, you know, don’t have a good record of inventory on what they have on property, much less how much they owe the vendor they bought it from.
Jeremy Kellett 23:23
So we would have so during the day, we’re going in, somebody’s there, we’re getting a scale ticket, right, and leaving them a copy, leaving them a copy, and then the driver’s turning in a copy. Well, so at night, you’re saying they let us come in with the requirement of, hey, you got to leave a copy of the scale ticket. Think it
Scotty Crisco 23:44
was a, I think it was a scale where you can, you know, have a kiosk, and you can print your own, okay, when I’m, you know, I think there was personnel running around just, you know, probably telling trucks, come on back and unload and whatnot. And guys were unloading, not getting scaled. And then if they did scale. We weren’t leaving a copy of the outbound ticket and, you know, and that man just goes back to it’s nice to have facilities that are that will let you dump after hours, you know, especially on the outskirts of Atlanta, you know, because who wants to drive through there during the middle of the
Jeremy Kellett 24:17
day, you know, well, and that’s just an example of one or two guys doing it wrong and then messing it up for the rest of them that would love to go in there and unload at night and continue on with their day. I mean, that’s just a prime example of that. That’s what can be frustrating. And you know, then I don’t know the customer, and it looks like we’re not, you know, we can’t do it, do our job like we should. So thank goodness they just cut us off at night, not completely out exactly, Okay, where was I going next? Oh, I was going to the TransFlo stuff we were visiting with a little bit earlier. Russell, this got my attention. I don’t guess I really realized how much of that happened. And explain to our listeners what I’m talking about, Russell with the loading and the TransFlo.
Russell Vallance 25:05
So we have a lot, well, not a lot. We have a few on the hopper side. I don’t know if they do on the dumps, and I know the pneumatics have quite a few to where the drivers have to swipe in real time when they arrive to a facility swap what they’re in the TransFlo, TransFlo app, or geotabs, they have to they swipe showing they arrived, and then they get loaded, and then they swipe again as they depart. Arrive on a departure. Same thing on the delivery end, you have to do it when you arrive to the customer to deliver when you depart, you know, complete the load. And I guess what some drivers are doing is they’re going in and they just double swap, I’m here and I’m departing when they’re actually in real time, still there and not left. So those companies, they have people that’s all they do is track loading and unloading times, basically. So if you don’t do that in real time, they send us a report saying, Hey, you’re not doing this, which goes back to the customer service. We’re not providing that service that they want. So it just gives an opportunity for someone else to knock on that door and say, hey, we’ll do that. You know, if Oakley is not going to do it, we’ll do it. So
Jeremy Kellett 26:25
some customers have access to this technology that can see real time, when our guys loaded, yep, the facility, their facility, they loaded at it, and then he’s left, and then on the other end, when he delivered, they That’s right, our customers have the ability to see that
Russell Vallance 26:44
stuff. Then they know, hey, and they grade us on it. Yeah, they took, they can look in there and say, hey, it took this guy an hour and 15 minutes too low. Took this guy 30 minutes. You know, they track all those stats on that, and you know what? They grade us on that or so. Yes, we get a grade weekly on how we’re performing, but it’s important for them for some reason, so we gotta make sure that we, you know, we’re taking care of that. It’s just a push of a button.
Jeremy Kellett 27:15
I mean, accurate information. Yep, they want
Russell Vallance 27:17
accurate information, and to know when their loads are loaded and when they’re delivered and how long it took
Scotty Crisco 27:25
not to dog pile on that what y’all just talked about with the Geotab and this, this is slightly off subject of customer service, but the replying to your messages on time is so important, even for the driver himself, because I ran into a situation today, we have a dispatcher out, so I went through his settlements. I made sure they were correct, I made sure the deadhead was correct and whatnot. But I also wasn’t aware of exactly the drivers when you’re not dispatching a truck week or day in day out. You know, you’re not really in tune with what he’s been doing. So I’m going through settlements, and I see, you know, his settlement looks right. He’s got a couple loads on there. Send it through. His paycheck was low. And he, you know, he called just a few minutes ago and he said, Well, you know, I got, there’s two, three loads on there that weren’t on my settlement. So I went back and looked and what had happened was he didn’t reply to any of the messages until he got done on Monday. So when you reply to those messages on Monday, even for loads he did on like Wednesday and Thursday, it shows in our computer that you loaded them on Monday and delivered them on Monday. Load them on Monday and deliver them on Monday. So therefore they didn’t fall in our date range on his paycheck. They were
Jeremy Kellett 28:45
going to be on the following week, right? Yep. So
Russell Vallance 28:47
a handful of loads right on his check, custom money for that week. Yeah.
Scotty Crisco 28:52
So we’re applying to those messages. Is I
Russell Vallance 28:55
catch some of that too, when guys are their last load of the week and they might be off for a Monday and Tuesday for whatever reason, and they didn’t complete their load, their last load, before they went home. It’s just sitting there in limbo, unless we go in and catch it beforehand.
Scotty Crisco 29:14
I didn’t mean to get no on a rabbit hole there
Jeremy Kellett 29:16
no because I mean that that’s exactly what you know. Kobe had sent me some bullet points talking about some stuff on this episode, and he said, scanning paperwork and as soon as you’re unloaded, we need to be able to provide in-house customer service to our accounting team. So that’s a whole nother
Russell Vallance 29:36
Oh, yeah, and that’s important to those girls, and important to us too, because if everybody waited till the last minute to send them in, they’ve got, what, 25 to 3500 loads that they have to build in a week’s time. You know, if everybody waits to the last minute, then that’s going to delay everything. You know, we don’t want to. Plus, we have customers that will call and say, Hey, I need you to. Send me a proof of delivery, yes, and we can’t send it immediately, like they won’t, because the driver hasn’t scanned the paperwork. And
Scotty Crisco 30:08
then that’s going to cost the driver time, because dispatch, we’re going to start hollering at the dispatcher, hey, I need you to get the driver on the phone. He needs to pull over at his next exit and scan in this paperwork, and you know, and then, you know, yeah, so, I mean, he could have done that when he dumped and he it’s just better for everybody involved to reply to your messages when the load is delivered, go ahead and scan in your paperwork. Well, I
Jeremy Kellett 30:32
think it’s eye opener to a lot of them that, like I said, customers see this stuff, you know, a lot of, not all of them, but a lot of them use that technology to know how long it takes to get loaded facility, how long it takes to get there, to how to unload. Are we on time? All that, and then greatness. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, you know. So that’s what our owner operators need to hear. And in the paperwork, it’s, it’s a whole nother episode. I mean, you know, and you got to
Russell Vallance 30:55
scan all the documents, like the Scotty was talking about, on the scale tickets. The driver doesn’t turn in a scale ticket. You know, we’re having to chase it and chase it till we get it. And sometimes that takes more than a few days before you get the right person. And then that delays that load hitting the driver’s settlement, Oakley bank account too.
Jeremy Kellett 31:17
And I don’t want you to know that we’ll finish this episode on a positive note, I don’t want to, I don’t want our owner operators listing, thinking we’re, you know, beating them up on some stuff, because that’s not the case. We’re all in this together. You know, they’re pulling an Oakley trailer. Got Oakley on their truck. We’re all one here. We’re just trying to make sure we’re not. None of us are making as few mistakes as possible, and to be as efficient as we possibly can with this. And this is some of the small stuff that makes a big difference, that I think that they need to hear, because this is stuff we’ve talked about every meeting that we’ve ever had. You know how this paperwork, customer service, communication is the next one we need to talk about. It’s just a constant weekly thing. And I want our listeners to know we care. I mean, we care because we want to get better, because we’re going to, I mean, charge for good customer service. And the reason we can charge, like you said earlier, Scotty, was so we can pay. Then they pay, because we pay so well, we attract good people, good owner operators, good equipment. It’s a full circle deal that is working here, and it’s just our owner operators and people that any owner operator that’s thinking about coming over, you’ve got to buy into the program. If customer service is not important to you. You’re going to be miserable at Oakley trucking. I mean, it’s just you’re going to be fighting a losing battle, yep, because that’s what we’re all about. If you don’t want to provide good customer service, if you don’t want to provide a good appearance, if you don’t want to provide a good truck, do not work at Oakley. Don’t even think about coming here, because that’s what separates us, and that’s what gives you guys a confidence on that phone to give that rate that I know we can take care of you, customer when you call me, we’re going to get it done. And that gives you confidence in the owner operators at that point, you know, because we’ve made that full circle. And to me, that just makes a huge difference. I would hate to know that I worked at a trucking company that had a bunch of losers. I shouldn’t say losers. Had a bunch of people that didn’t represent the company. Well, the trucking company, I mean, didn’t have had a bad reputation that all that, man, I was just, I’m so thankful to be working at a place like this that we got confidence, and we got good people in the office, good people in the trucks, and we’re able to provide that, that top tier, level service, and a lot of moving parts. So go into it,
Scotty Crisco 33:57
Yeah, I say it all the time. I mean, it’s, this is the big leagues here, you know, you come over to Oakley, this is, you know, I’m not a Yankees fan, but you kind of look at the Yankees and, you know, they’re got the pinstripes and shaved faces. And, you know, I remember when Johnny Damon went to go play for him, he had to cut that long hair. And that’s right, but, I mean, that’s kind of how we are, and we’re, like you said earlier, like Russell and I can get on the phone and tell a customer with the utmost confidence that we’ll get the job done, because we know that. You know, the truck drivers, the players on our team, are top notch, yep. So
Jeremy Kellett 34:34
what’s some communication failures that have cost us? Examples? Well,
Russell Vallance 34:40
I kind of had one that happened this morning with a driver. He was coming out of the house this morning to go to work. Had to be in a particular place in Georgia at 9am this morning. That’s his load time. They were very specific on their load times. You know, they schedule them out for the entire day every time. Hours, and if you miss a load time, it causes backups for that customer for the rest of the day. Well, you know, he left the house. I don’t know if he left on time or not. I believe he probably did, but he got stuck in some traffic, and the driver did call us to notify us, you know, and give us that communication that we needed, so that we could call the customer and say, Hey, man, you know, I’ve got a guy that’s going to be late, so they can make some adjustments on their end. Instead, we find out, you know, that our guys two hours late from the dispatcher, Jack, called the guy and because he saw where he was at on the map, on the geo tabs, and realized he’s running behind. So he, you know, called him and the driver ran into some issues. But you know, the problem with that is not, you know, it’s not good that we met, you know, missed our appointment time at 9am but the even bigger issue is that, you know, we didn’t get that communication so that we could communicate with our loading customer and say, Hey, we’re going to be running a couple hours behind here. We’re stuck behind an accident or whatever it might have been. But here’s all
Jeremy Kellett 36:11
right, I’m going to put myself in our operator’s shoes. Well, y’all got that stuff, you know where I’m at, that geo tab, you can look on it and see where I’m at. How do you respond to that?
Russell Vallance 36:21
Well, there’s a lot of truth in that. We can look in there and see, but you know, we don’t know what’s going on. You know, we don’t know if the driver’s sick, not feeling well. You know, we don’t always see the traffic situation, not to mention we have multiple drivers that, you know we’re trying to keep up with, from a dispatcher standpoint, you know, anywhere from 30 to probably 60, you know, on certain boards. So, you know, without that communication, we don’t always see that, you know. And I think that’s where I was, and there’s, you know, we’re looking at, you know, Scotty and I are looking at hundreds of drivers from our standpoint. Well, that driver’s only got one person he has to call, and that’s his dispatcher and say, Hey, running late, you know, for whatever reason. And we can communicate that with the and
Jeremy Kellett 37:11
That’s what I was trying to get at, to ask that question, is, we don’t it’s a whole lot simpler if he just makes a phone call than it is for you trying to monitor all those you know where their whereabouts, where they’re supposed to be. I mean, that’s not as simple as it sounds to somebody outside in the truck, where you know where I’m at. I mean, you can tell I’m late. Well, to me, that’s not the right attitude. We
Scotty Crisco 37:35
are. If we’re not hearing from you, we, you know, from a dispatch standpoint, if we’re not hearing from the driver, then we tend to assume that. And assume is a terrible word inside this office, but by human nature, if we’re not hearing from you, then we take care on time. Everything is going okay,
Russell Vallance 37:55
and the guy didn’t leave his house this morning to actually be like, yeah, he didn’t do that on purpose, you know, not at all. But you know, things happen throughout the day that cause problems, especially with the drivers. They deal with tons of stuff that goes on, but the customers don’t want to hear about traffic. Yeah, it’s back to what we said in the beginning, that the customer wants us to be problem free, you know, but they do understand that. You know, problems do happen for the most part, but if you let them know, it’s sure a lot easier than you know, them noticing the problem. And you know, then the trucks get jammed up. Other trucks get jammed up because we have a late one. And what are they? What are those guys going to want? They want to get detention pay, you know, so it kind of messes with other guys that are trying to do things the right way too. So it’s kind
Scotty Crisco 38:45
like going to a restaurant and ordering an appetizer, and you sit there, and you sit there, and you sit there, and then the appetizer comes out with your main course too. Am I the only one that irritates? I want my appetizer before my dinner gets here, you know? And then there’s like, you know, well, we’re understaffed, and I forgot to put the order in, you know, for my and I don’t mean to sound crass, but I just really don’t care, like, you know, like, and the customer doesn’t care. They just want their truck on time, you know.
Jeremy Kellett 39:12
Well, the worst now, and this is really getting sidetracked, is enterprise renting a dang car. Yeah, I mean, and then you get there, well, sir, we don’t have any cars. Yeah, I reserved, I rented a car, I reserved a car, and you took my reservation. Yeah, well, I’m sorry, sir, we’re, we’re gonna have any right now, yeah, really. I mean, that drives me insane, because that happens, oh yeah, several times.
Scotty Crisco 39:36
There’s a great Seinfeld episode on that. Oh, is it? And yet, he said he gets there, and the lady tells him, No, I understand what a reservation means. He says, I don’t think you do.
Jeremy Kellett 39:46
Yeah, evidently not. I know, man, but it, you know, there’s just so much to cover when it comes to customer service. And I think plant rules are a big deal. We covered it. We touched on that a little bit earlier on. It. And I gave this example a couple weeks ago, one of our customers over here across town in Little Rock North Little Rock, that those people over there were having a fit because our own operators were going in there, and they were rolling a stop sign, and they were going above five miles an hour. Now, Annabel looks at me like, is that a problem? And that’s what typically, most people think. You know, roll the stop sign. I’m going above five miles an hour. You know, I’m sorry. But in this, in the customer’s world, that safety man that manages safety on that facility, that’s his life. That’s what he gets up in the morning to make sure everybody abides by the safety rules at my facility. And we had to get to the point where we were bringing the owner operator in the office before he went over there and loaded. And have a face to face of hey, you can’t roll a stop sign. You can’t go above five miles an hour. There might have been more to it now, but that was the gist of it. And we had to bring them over here and tell them that until we got back into good graces of that customer, that safety man over there, and just simple things that people don’t think is important. Well, it’s important to that man over there. And that’s the kind of stuff that our owner operators, man, I don’t know how they do it, but they go into these new places every day with new rules that they got to figure out, and not all the time being received. You know, truck drivers. I mean, some people just try to get them riled up, but it’s tough when I get to do that. We’ve had some instances with the trains lately, you know. And we just, like you just did, shake our heads, and how do we get hit by a train, you know, in a facility? And it happens, doesn’t it? It had to be done in one day.
Scotty Crisco 41:57
I think it happens because of things like what you just said, the five mile an hour that seems, you know, that seems ridiculous, the rolling through a stop sign, as long as you’re slowed down, real good. That seems like, come on, that’s not that big a deal. But then you step back and you think about it like, well, if you don’t draw the line in the sand, then six miles an hour becomes eight miles an hour, and eight miles an hour becomes 12 miles an hour, and rolling through a stop sign becomes, I didn’t stop at the stop sign, and I got hit by a rail car. You know what I mean? So you just, you know, yeah, tuck your shirt in and do things right? I mean, just, you gotta be strict. And then, you know, I mean, we just gotta abide by it. And it’s just, there’s always eyes watching. Customer service is so important. Little things like that add up and matter. Yep,
Jeremy Kellett 42:51
it does. It affects everything. And I think that was the purpose. I don’t know how long we’ve gone on here, but if y’all about ready to wrap it up, but I, you know, I
Russell Vallance 42:59
got one more eye. Tell me like that. It’s kind of a positive one instead of the negative one on communication. You know, we’re big on the weights, like Scotty mentioned, we’re paid by the ton in most every case of low we’re hauling. So Ed Robeson, being here for a while, does a good job for us. You know, Jack told him, Hey, if you have trouble putting on weight, give me a call. So he gets to a place and he’s loading rice, and he gets on a gross weight. I don’t remember what his gross weight was, but the net was 48,000 and he could easily haul another ton, you know. So he calls Jack. Jack calls the customer, and, you know, they, of course, they wouldn’t let him load anymore. You know, Ed did the right thing. Ed stepped up and called us and let us know, and then we could make the phone call. You know, sometimes we might be able to gain more weight, and then we’re all making more money. But, you know, Ed was looking out for himself, because he makes more money, but he’s also looking out for us at the same time, you know, to make us more money, and to add on top of that, to get the customer on the other end, a better level. You know, as much as they can get, too, in most cases. So, you know, that was more of a positive than a negative on that one.
Scotty Crisco 44:13
I’ve got one more here, Jeremy. And if this story is, this actually occurred before I even came here. I think Russell was working here, so I wasn’t part of this transaction. And if this story has been told on a previous podcast, and you know, y’all can just cut it, but Shane Smith was, you know, we’ve got notes here. Says give some examples of giving good cut, where drivers have given good customer service that have led to a long, lasting relationship. Shane has an alloy customer, and they called in a bind back in, I don’t know, 1314, years ago, they needed a truck to load, and somewhere in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Arizona, yep, and they needed it like in 48 hours or something. Yeah,
Russell Vallance 44:59
it was. Was a really short amount of time. I don’t remember the exact reason, but I know that, you know, one guy obviously couldn’t do it, couldn’t be legally done, couldn’t be done. So we had, I think we staged four trucks, maybe three, three to four trucks along that route. So the guy loaded in Pennsylvania, who took it as far as he could, you know, and I forgot what state. The second guy got it, and he gets it and he takes it as far as he can with his hours, swap and dump trailers, swap and dump trailers the whole way, you know, and the load itself in that trailer really never stopped, more than long enough for guys to hook up to it. But, you know, we jumped through a lot of hoops in that case. And we got it done for the customer. You know, we got it delivered when they needed it. You know, I don’t know how many states are in between. There were several states it had to go through. So
Scotty Crisco 45:49
There’s an example of a handful of drivers who went out of their way. Because, I’m assuming, in order to be in position and have your 10 hour break in, there’s a good chance that you got short hauled that day before you started your 10 hour break, not to mention you lost your trailer, which I know is a big deal to the drivers, once they get used to a piece of equipment. And they all lost their trailer, they was all so anyways, you know that that customer still and that customer still sends us loads every month, you know, so
Jeremy Kellett 46:22
We’ve got so many of those praises. Yeah, I was just talking to one of our owner operators up in St Louis this morning, and he was telling me how he and another owner operator delivered 300 tons of something material to this customer. And they, he was telling me, he said they had, the guy bragged to him. Said they did so well that customers ordered another 300 tons from the St Louis terminal. So it was, you know, the benefits of that just helped the terminal, helped our owner operators, got them more freight to haul, you know, up there, and it’s just, there’s so many praises, you know, we should put them out, to be honest with you, more than anything, because we get, you know, we don’t do that enough, because we have so many good owner operators that help us get in that door. You know, I know we told a story about one about got us knocked out of it, but there’s countless other ones that mean we know when we got a new customer, we typically going to brief a guy and send him in there and, hey, this is critical information, and that’s another side of it. I mean, you touched on a little bit Russell, from the driver’s standpoint, of them getting all the right information. And I get a few complaints occasionally, of, Hey, I didn’t, you know, I didn’t get the right address, I didn’t get the right phone number. You know that they sent me. It’s not the right stuff, and then they end up going to the wrong place, and it not only makes Oakley look bad, but the driver’s embarrassed, you know, because we didn’t give him the correct information, and we need to. We’ve talked about this in the past, of making sure that stuff’s right in the system that we’re going to send to them. Hey, what suggestions do y’all have to an owner operator that’s having those problems that we’re trying to work through?
Russell Vallance 48:10
First thing is to call your dispatcher, you know, and go from there. But you know, like you said, we’ve got to do it right on our end when we get the information from the customer. You know, put it in like it’s supposed to be. But sometimes we don’t get all the good information. We don’t get all the information either. You know, we get half, half, if half the information we need. You
Jeremy Kellett 48:34
Now, the yard would take the information from the owner operator that went in there. Sometimes, yes, and then update the computer. Yep, sure.
Scotty Crisco 48:41
Oh, absolutely, especially on our side, you know, from time to time, we’ll do job site work or whatever. You go, going to a new ball field, or going, you know, a rail site or whatnot. And, you know, like we started off the podcast with, we were talking about the transaction of booking a load, you know, a lot of times whenever, whoever’s sending us that information, the information they were given is dependent upon, you know what? I mean, it’s just a trickle down effect. And the driver wants, you know, their boots on the ground, they can call us and be like, All right, here’s what’s really going on, yeah. So then he’ll listen to that absolutely, yeah, because that’s going to make that next dispatch that much easier for the next driver. So, yeah, feedback like that really helps.
Jeremy Kellett 49:28
Yeah, because, I mean, it’s, we’re all making mistakes, and we all have to improve in our own areas to make this thing work. When it comes to, you know, booking a load with a customer, or dispatching the driver then the driver taking care of the customer on his end, I mean, and doing his things right, all those have to work together for that customer to seem like that was seamless.
Scotty Crisco 49:51
Speaking and I gotta brag on a driver. And you know, I hate to say it, I don’t even know his name, because he called his dispatcher, and his dispatcher turned around and asked me a question. But a driver actually. Save my rear end today, he picked up a load at a shipper. Well, you’ve had a lot going on today. Oh, man, I could probably sit here and have a podcast of all the mistakes I’ve made today. But I got to the shipper, got loaded, and looked at his bills. His bills were different from what we had in our computer, what I had built in the computer. And although they’re in the same town, like what happened with the sulfur springs deal, I had built this load incorrectly to deliver to the wrong customer across town. And he said, Hey, this, you know, these bills don’t match what y’all sent me in my load information. I just want to double check that so before he got loaded, no, after he got loaded, before he delivered? Okay, you know he’s delivering tomorrow, and he said, I just want to double check if I’m going to the right place, because these bills show something different. And so I went back and checked the email from the customer, and sure enough, I had built the load completely wrong. No, yeah, so man, check your paperwork, pick up the phone. It’s like you said, this is a symbiotic relationship. We can’t do our job without y’all, and the drivers can’t do their job without us, and we’re all in this together. So
Jeremy Kellett 51:11
I appreciate things like that more than you know. Yeah, good information, man. Everybody plays a part, and that’s something that I want those owner operators to know, the dispatchers to know that. Listen to this. You guys know we all play a part in this, to make this thing go around, and being as error free as possible, and still keeping our good reputation and being able to do what we’re doing. Because, you know, for a long time ago, we have been instilling that in everybody’s brain that customer service is important, and can’t stress it enough, it’s what we do, it’s what we talk about. And we got to have the owner operators on board to do it. We got to have the dispatchers on board to do it right. We got to have you guys booking, and we got to have the recruiters talking, to talk about, this is what we do here, and it’s worked. With, as I’ve said before, we’ve created a monster here. This thing is a machine, and it takes a lot of people to make it work. So anyway, customer service, fantastic episode. I get excited talking about it, providing it, being proud, you know, of the company I work for. So anyway, thanks to all our listeners out there, to all our own operators and what y’all do every day, it does not go unnoticed. We, even though we’re not in that truck with you and see the obstacles you’re going through every day, we sure appreciate everything you do to help us have a good reputation and be known for that 81 customer service in the trucking business and the dry bulk business. So thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you again next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Oakley podcast: trucking, business, and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show on the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience, so if you’ve got a question, comment, or just want to say hello, head over to our website, theoakleypodcast.com, and click the “leave a comment” button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.