On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, Ed Burns, CEO of Burns Logistics, sat down with Jeremy Reymer, founder of DriverReach and Project 61, to discuss the importance of building relationships and being a connector in the trucking industry in order to help solve problems.
Burns was raised with family in the trucking industry. His father was a salesman at a freight company and would often bring the children along with him on sales calls. “We’d go to manufacturers, we’d go to lunches, we’d go to entertainment events, and we got to know the people our dad knew from a very young age,” Burns said. “He’d become friends with these people, and we’d become friends with their kids, so we as a family built long-lasting relationships throughout the industry that way.”
When his children were young, Burns Sr. would bring a truck to school every year to educate students about the trucking industry. “He would talk about the no-zone and a driver would talk about what it was like to be a truck driver,” Burns said. “For us growing up, it was normal to see the inside of trucks and go to driving competitions, but most kids around the country don’t get exposed to trucking.”
Burns’ father started his own business in 2008, and that effort was impactful to the whole family. “I really admired that, because it was a lot of work,” Burns said of his father. “He really went after anything that was good for us.”
Describing the relationship he now has working alongside his father, Burns said he considers himself more fortunate than many people in multigenerational businesses. “My dad is very humble, kind and caring,” he said. “We have a very good relationship, and I think it’s important that we always continue to work on that relationship, because things are more contentious when we can’t spend a lot of time together.”
“If he’s traveling one way and I’m going another like two ships in the night, we feel it after a couple months of that,” Burns said. “So taking the time to be together socially is immensely important to any business relationship, but particularly a family in business.”
Burns says his father was always a phenomenal relationship builder, and that formed his philosophy on what it means to make connections and sales.
“When I went to college for marketing, I figured that would be a good skill for any industry, but of course, I wound up going to more trade shows and events with my dad and kept making connections,” Burns said.
Burns Logistics serves as a direct extension of that philosophy. “We’re professional connectors,” Burns said. “Some people mistake us for freight brokers, but that’s not the space we play in.”
Burns Logistics specializes in outsourced sales representation for trucking companies. The company works with midsize asset fleets and connects them with the right shipper accounts, primarily in the contract space.
“If a small carrier has 100 trucks, the owner is probably in charge of doing sales, which means they are just putting out fires all day,” Burns said. “The reality is that most small to midsize trucking companies do not work on their business as much as they should.”
“It’s such a demanding workload that they often have to spend their energy managing the day-to-day. We help bridge the gap of that problem for them by taking care of the sales aspect and forming relationships with shippers,” Burns said.
Shippers are often eager to work with those small to midsize fleets, according to Burns, but they don’t necessarily know where to find them. “In a way we’re kind of a procurement team,” he said.
Connecting people and finding win-win scenarios are the goals that drive Burns. “It’s always so much easier to approach someone with a smile, and I love connecting people,” he said. “People solve problems.
“There’s a lot of great technology out there. I remember when the big buzzwords were ‘big data’ and ‘the internet of things,’ and ‘blockchain.’ These things are still important, but they always disappear from the conversation. But what hasn’t disappeared is the importance of relationships.”
At the end of the day, Burns says, it’s a person who solves your problem. “When we can connect other people, the problems get solved a lot quicker.”
“Our industry does have a lot of opportunity for improvement, and many businesses are going bankrupt,” Burns said. “The fact is, a lot of these problems are avoidable, so we should be focused on working together as closely as we can. The right connection can change your whole trajectory.”
Book recommendation: “The Greatest Salesman in the World”
Click here to learn more about Burns Logistics.
Sponsors: DriverReach, The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infinit-I Workforce Solutions, WorkHound, Asurint, Arya By Leoforce, Seiza, Drive My Way, F|Staff, Trucksafe Consulting, Seated Social, Repowr
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