We already know that a lot of owner-operators, small brokers and a lot of others in the trucking industry are going to lose their business. It's already happening. They're going to go bankrupt and it has to happen. It's just part of the cycle. We know there's too much supply. I want to make sure that the people who want to survive have what they need. Now, a lot of people believe that just work hard enough and it'll work out. Unfortunately, that's not even close to being true. It's a given. You've got to work hard in business. It's why most probably shouldn't be in business because they're not willing to work that hard and sacrifice that much. And that's fine. But when you do the hard work, then working hard will pay off. Now you're probably wondering what is the hard work? I'll give you a clue. It's usually the one thing you don't want to do. It's usually the thing we know we should be doing, but we put off.

Here's an example. I don't know if this number is going to shock anybody in the audience or not. When I look at one truck owner-operators, and I've been speaking to them from the stage since about 1999, and that very first seminar I did, I asked a question. I said, how many of you that own a truck in this room right now could tell me what your profit and loss statement looks like right now without opening it up and without looking at it? And my thought was, I just wanted to know if they really knew their numbers without looking at their numbers. But I was shocked because with a couple more questions, what I found out was over 90% of that room did not have numbers. Their accounting system was throw their receipts in a Walmart bag and take it to their accountant at the end of the year to get a tax return done.

And I was shocked, how do you run a business like that? So I realized then we had a lot of work to do for those owner-operators. Sometimes the hard work is just taking the time to get those numbers together. So I have a book recommendation. I'm a big reader. I read about two books a week and I have for most of my life, and I still keep that pace up today. So I've got a book recommendation. I got a question for you, David. You're a golf pro. Have you ever seen the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance? So the man who wrote that screenplay also wrote one of my favorite books ever. And I would've never read this book except somebody else recommended it. The first bestselling author I ever had on my show was Larry Wingett. What an amazing guy, very colorful Larry was on my show and we became good friends.

We've done some programs together over the years. But on that first show, when Larry was all done, when the interview was just about over, I said, Larry, I know you're a big reader. I said, what should I be reading right now? And he said, you should be reading the War of Art. And I said, I read that The military manual. And he said, no, listen closely. You should be reading the War of Art. And I said, what? That's backwards. The book's called The Art of War. And he said, no, look it up. And I went to get the book and the book was about writing. I thought I would Larry recommend this to me. I'm not writing anything, but I read it. And that's where this concept of the hard work comes from. And it was just an incredible book for me. It really changed my life. I highly recommend that. Before I get started on our plan, how many of you in the room owned trucks prior to 2010? Oh boy. Not many. Okay, here's why I say that. If you didn't own a truck prior to 2010, you really don't know what's coming.

We haven't had a significant downturn in trucking since the 07, 08.W e started to climb out of that pretty well in 10 and 11 and it's been pretty smooth sailing ever since. Just in the last couple of years, we were setting records. I had owner-operators making more money than I had ever seen, more money than I had ever dreamed they would make.

And I started saying in about 2017 after I attended an event and listened to an analyst speak, Noel Perry, who's also become a good friend of mine, and he said, it's coming. We're going to have a downturn. We know we will. It always happens. He said he thought it was probably going to be deeper than the last and that was logical. But the only thing he got wrong was the timing. He thought it was probably going to happen around the end of 2019, 2020. But we know the world changed. And because of that, we got another couple of really good years in trucking. I'm a real optimist, but we also have to face reality that that party's over.

And the hangover's here for a lot of people. I want to make sure you don't feel that pain. So where did my journey start? Like I told you, I had a plan, wanted to be a pilot. It didn't work out, ended up buying a truck. But before I did and I grew up around trucking, I could drive a truck. There was a local truck driving school, two week program. I didn't have any money, but the VA paid for it for me. So I went to it. Here's how bad things were. You know what I was thinking? I was living in my brother's basement, a small family at the time, and I had to borrow a car because mine was broke down to get back and forth to the truck driving school. And the car I borrowed had a leak in the gas tank. Now it wouldn't have been that hard for me to fix it. For some reason I didn't. And I knew it was costing me more money. And on the last day, the leak got worse, all leaks do they never get better. And I came out at the end, the class is over. I actually have a driving interview set up already,

And I walked out and I got in the car and turned on the key and the gauge was just about dead empty. And I thought, I certainly can't make it to the interview. I hope I can make it to the gas station. I didn't have any money.

I had to go back in and borrow $10 from the owner of the truck driving school to get to the interview. And it worked out. It was my first driving job, but I had to rent their truck until I could figure out how to buy one. I was running local, which is an awesome introduction to trucking. You do 30 to 35 stops a day, learn an awful lot about how to drive a truck and how to back up in traffic. And I had a great time doing that, but that was a rough start. I would not recommend starting a business in those conditions. It's a long way out of that hole. So the next big lesson for me in trucking was I thought I hit the lottery. I thought I had the magic beans and the golden goose because what I was doing, I bought that first truck totally broke before a year was up. I bought a second truck. Somebody actually gave me some money and let me buy a second truck and I put a driver in it. And at first I thought, well, that really works. Now I've got more money. Why don't I just do it again? So I did went bought another truck and they let me

And I looked at my wallet. That was about the only thing I was judging things on. And I said, boy, seems like I even have more money now. Let's just keep doing this. So I did, and then I combined my trucks with my brothers and I think we had about 15 trucks. We were running a small brokerage. I put together a service truck because we had our trucks scattered all over the place doing all kinds of goofy stuff. So I put together a service truck that could do the washes and the oil changes, and then I started realizing I'm having a hard time covering the bills in the business. Where'd all that money go? And at home, I was living on credit cards to try to pay the bills and I thought something happened to this plan. It's not working very well. It got to the point I was about $60,000 in debt, hadn't paid my taxes in a couple of years, didn't even know how much that was going to be,

And I thought, well, something's got to change. And really at that point I thought, I'm not sure what to do. I actually consulted with a bankruptcy attorney and being a bankruptcy attorney, of course, he told me, well, yes, you need to file bankruptcy. That's exactly what it's for. You need a fresh start. And I said, but what happens to that money that I owe everybody? And he said, well, they won't get it. They'll just write it off. I said, well, something doesn't sound right about that. I said, isn't there a way we can do that? I can pay 'em back.

And he said, no, you should just file bankruptcy. Just start over. I went home and I thought about it and I thought, there's got to be another way to do this. I just couldn't stand the fact that I just was going to walk away from that and not pay those people back. So I started reading more business books. I had said I read two books a week, but up until that point in my life, most of those books were just novels. So I started reading some business books and they talked about numbers and I had a computer at the time, and this is late eighties, and I taught myself how to write spreadsheets and I wrote these spreadsheets and I put all the numbers from my operation into those spreadsheets and I looked at it and I said, well, no wonder why I'm going broke. I was spending more money than I was making. You can't run a business like that. I know that old saying, we're losing a little money on every sale, but we'll make it up in volume. That's kind of what I was trying to do. The math doesn't work. Then I went one step further. I took each individual truck and I broke out all the receipts in the revenue and I calculated a profit and loss statement for each individual truck, and that's where I found the solution.

At that point, we had already dropped down to 11 trucks by necessity, and I looked at those 11 trucks and I said, nine of these are losing money and two are profitable. I can make this work. I can sell the nine. Not going to get a whole lot out of 'em, but I at least get rid of the expenses and I can run these two trucks. And I went back to driving myself and I went back. I took the job that I had a local overnight run so I could run overnight and I went back to school during the day. I became a certified financial planner to learn numbers and business and money and I was able to with those two trucks and I added another one not long after once I knew how to do it right and I was able, it took me about four years, but I paid off every penny of that debt and it was the best lesson I've ever had. That is what taught me how to teach all the things I've been teaching over the years. So sometimes those worst moments turn out to be our best. Those spreadsheets, by the way, turned into an accounting program that is really designed for one truck, one owner, and that's probably the way it will always be and it's something I'm proud of. That's

Todd Dills:  Rutherford's ProfitGauges program housed on his letstruck.com site today.

Kevin Rutherford: The other thing I learned throughout that process, like I said, I was driving at night, was going to school in the day, had another truck and a driver to take care of, and I learned about audio books and back then there were actually these audio programs on tape, like seminars on tape. These things were like three and $400 I think. I haven't paid a thousand dollars for one of those programs once, but it was all I did. Every minute I was in that truck, I was listening and learning. I've been saying for years, truck drivers and owner-operators should be the most well-informed, knowledgeable people in our industry. They should have a PhD in something thing and they could do it for next to nothing. Who else has that ability 60 hours a week for them to listen and learn? What a great thing that was probably the best lesson I ever learned.

Now, one of the things I like to talk about, I may mention this several times throughout this plan. This is a bonus by the way. I am about to give you the secret to success in every business, any business. And here it is. It's really, really simple. By the way, I'm not sure why we call this a secret. I went to Amazon once and I looked up books with secret to success. There's like 18,000. Not much of a secret, but I read a lot of those books and I never really read this one thing. I honestly don't remember where I learned this. I'm sure I didn't make it up myself. The secret to success in any business is so simple. You simply serve your customer better than anybody else can. That's all there is to it. Now figuring out how to do that might be a little more difficult, but that's all it is.

You serve your customer better than anybody else can. Here's one of the things that makes me crazy about my world in the industry, the one truck guys, the small fleets, I am shocked and I tell 'em all the time, you don't use the word customer. I mean, I don't think we use it enough in this business. We just don't use the word customer enough. I actually had, I spent a lot of time on social media unfortunately, and I had somebody arguing with me about something, which is about what happens on social media most of the time. And I said to them, you have to serve your customer. And in this case, the particular case I was talking about, the customer was freight broker. And I tell people all the time, if you're confused about who your customer is, and we seem to be sometimes in this industry, it's really simple. Whose check did you cash? That's it. Who paid you? They are your customer. And he said, those damn brokers are not my customer. What did you cash their check? I did, but they're not my customer. And I said, oh, really? Who is them? And honestly, he didn't have an answer. And then he said, well, the shipper and the receiver. I said, well, you've got a problem. You don't have a relationship with any of those guys. They don't pay you. They paid that broker. The broker serves them. You serve the broker. That's who pays you.

I love this industry, but there's some things about it that make me a little crazy and this is one of 'em. I don't know of any other industry that calls their customers assholes, but we seem to have no problem doing that in this industry. I hear it all the time. It just makes me a little crazy. David, I love what you've done with that broker program. It's an idea I've had for years. You and I have talked about it. You've been doing it all this time. It's fantastic.

Todd Dills: Kevin Rutherford's making reference there to David Owen and NASTC's Best Brokers group, which has been the association's way of highlighting the honest among brokerages with a vetted group for the NASTC membership. Owen, earlier that day, detailed some work put into a load board-like system called LODESTAR, that's L-O-D-E-S-T-A-R. It's an acronym that stands for Load Operations Data Exchange Shipper Terms and Rates. It aims to turn the best brokers directory into a database and website for load opportunities for members. Also hoping within that to standardize items like detention pay for brokered loads, likewise fuel surcharges as a line item. Fairly uncommon in spot broker freight today of course.

Kevin Rutherford: Alright, before we get started on the plan, one of the things you have to have, and I'm not so sure how to teach this, I wish I was better at teaching this, but it really comes down to just mindset and attitude and that attitude that I just had to deal with that broker's not my customer. I don't know how you survive in business if that's how you think, but it gets worse. I was talking to somebody else on social media and I was talking about cutting costs. It's really where I focus most of my time when I train on our operators in small fleets, cutting costs, we have way more opportunity and control over our costs than we do our rates. I tell people this isn't any kind of scientific number, but I tell people all the time about 90% of that rate, I just made that number up. By the way, about 90% of that rate is just supply and demand. I mean that's just how this works. And it's supply and demand in whatever lane you happen to be in at the moment, the other 10%. It's a combination of your ability to understand those rates in length and negotiate a better deal. But more importantly, it's about how well you serve customer. So if your attitude is I don't have a customer, I don't think about a customer, you've already lost 10%. Right off the top,

We were talking about cutting costs and this person actually looked at me. I'm not speechless very often, but I was kind of speechless after he said this. He said, why the hell should I have to work hard to cut costs? The rate should just cover it. How do you even respond to that? I don't know how. That's just insane to me. Here's what I started thinking and I realized that I see this attitude a lot

Not just in trucking, but I see it a lot in the owner-operator world. Here's what it is. They really believe some of them, clearly we've got a lot of great owner-operators that because they started a business, they're entitled to a profit. What a crazy way to think. So when I talk about mindset, I just want to ask you a couple of questions. Do you ever, anybody in business, did you ever think that you deserved a profit just because you got up that day? I hope not. Here's another one that makes me crazy. When they say the rate should cover it, the next thing that'll come out of their mind or their mouth will be, well, I won't pull freight for under X. Some random number that they just pulled out of nowhere. I don't even know where they come up with these numbers. Well, the rate needs to be that. Well, how do you think that's going to happen? You have almost zero control over that, but they spend so much time focused on it. Another attitude I've seen a lot lately, well, the brokers are controlling the rates. I don't know how to deal with that either, but there's a big belief. I actually had somebody accuse me of working with them to control the rates.

My god, what a compliment. I wish I was that smart. And then the final one in this mindset is that everything about their operation that was going wrong was somebody else's fault. And I don't care if it is somebody else's fault, look in the mirror and take responsibility anyway because then you can change something. But if you believe that your problems are somebody else's fault, you just lost all control.

The only attitude I've ever been able to adopt that seems to work well for me and seems to work well for others is this, I will do whatever it takes to succeed. Now, I don't mean cheating people, I don't mean being corrupt. I don't mean neglecting my family, but within reason, I will do whatever it takes to succeed and how long will I do it until it works. I also realize that when you're struggling or when you're trying to build things you should stay away from, I won't, and I don't statements, and I hear this all the time in the trucking world from the owner-operators, I don't go to New York City. I don't pull that. I won't pull freight for less than X. Again, I don't even know where they come up with the number.

At some point in your business, if you're successful, you can do those kinds of things. You can then get a little pick about what you want to do. But in the beginning, I think you should avoid those kinds of statements. The idea of well, I'm not going to pull cheap freight. First off, every time I ask somebody the question, can you define cheap freight for me? They have all kinds of answers. None of 'em ever make any sense. We actually have an organization in this industry that promotes that idea. They have a slogan, say no to cheap freight. What a horrible mindset. It just doesn't make sense to me. I was willing, in fact, I wouldn't be here right now today if I wasn't willing to work for free. How much cheaper does it get? I knew if I wanted to reach people and help people, I needed to get up on a stage and do this as much as I didn't want to do it.

And the first seminar I did, not only did I do it for free, I paid my way to get to the Louisville Truck Show to do that seminar. And then eventually that same seminar, by the way, that started in 1999 by Overdrive Magazine, Partners in Business. I was there the first year. I still do that one once in a while, still around. It's a great program. After a while, I got paid pretty well to do that. But that happened because I was willing, I had to go up and do it for free. Nobody was going to pay me. I didn't have any credibility. Nobody knew who I was. I knew I had a message and I was willing to take a chance. So let's talk about the plan since I changed my open, and I'm known to get wordy sometimes, so we're only going to be here for another two or three hours or so. It'll be all right.

I was going to do something with this crowd that I do at my events and I'm going to skip it, but I'll tell you what it is. And boy did I catch hell the first couple times I did this. And I just stood up onstage and said, I don't care, do it. Don't do it Doesn't matter to me. I actually walked up on stage and I said, all right, before we get started this morning, Larry Wingett was with me at the time, by the way, the bestselling author. And Larry was getting ready to come up on stage, do some things with me, and I said, before we start, we're going to meditate. And Larry looked at me and he said, what did you just say? And I said, we're going to meditate. And he said, you're going to get a bunch of truck drivers to meditate.

Are you kidding me? So we did. Look, if I came up here and I said, going to clear our mind and focus, nobody would think any big deal, but that's all the meditation is. So the plan itself, we can make business really, really simple in business. You should have money coming in and you have money going out, and all we really need to do is make sure there's more coming in than going out. It's really that simple. It's in the execution that it can get a little more complicated. So here's the outline of the plan and then I'm going to come back and we're going to talk a little bit about each step. So step number one, it's that mindset I'm talking about. If you find yourself falling into any of those traps like that and your attitude kind of sucks, you got to work on that mindset.

It really does control the rest of everything you're going to do. The second one, I'm going to say, I know I'm people are going to groan. Nobody wants to hear this. I've got a big history of this with my show. Now you've got to get healthy. I am a big believer in living healthy. So much so that I went back to school again about eight years ago and became a functional nutritional therapy practitioner. Is that a mouthful or what? And I did it because my tribe came to me and said, you help us with our money. You help us with our business and we're really sick. And truck drivers are. It is a horrible profession for your health. Everything about it, the hours, the food or lack of food, the vibration all day long, the diesel fumes, the diesel fuel sitting all day long. So I said, look, I get it.

I know you need help with that, but I don't do health. I do business and I do numbers. And some of 'em knew my story because I tell my story on the air all the time and they said, but you owned a gym once and you coached high school wrestling and you got to be able to help us. And I said, but I don't really know what I'm talking about. And I had an employee who kind of took it up and she just kept bugging me and she said, you got to do this. And I said, well, no, I don't really have to, but if you feel that strong about it, why don't you do it? Why don't you start a podcast? I'll help you get it started, but why don't you do it? And she did and she proved to me that it really was needed and our tribe really wanted it.

And she did that podcast for about a year and then we started doing it together and then it became day of my show. Wednesday's our Destination Health Day on our show. They have been for about eight years now, and the success stories are just incredible. I've got driver. It is not unusual, you'll hear it almost every week, at least once or twice, A truck driver who lost a hundred pounds or more got off multiple prescriptions, was in danger of losing their medical card and had to go back every three months for a physical, and we now have them healthy and back to a two year medical card. It really is one of the most gratifying things I do. What finally convinced me was when my employee said, if they don't have their health, why would any of this other stuff that you helped 'em with matter? And I said, you're absolutely right. A healthy human being has thousands of wishes. An unhealthy human being only has one. Step number three, build a winning team.

Step number four, talked about a little bit already. Know your numbers. Step number five, develop that customer driven mentality and it just doesn't exist much down at the bottom of our industry. It's just not talked about a whole lot and I'm going to keep pushing it. Number six, kind of like preaching to the choir for the people here. Network more. Seven, this is a big one for me. Never stop learning.

I've got another book recommendation. How many of you have read the book? It's a classic. I think I read it 30 years ago. I read it again when the 25th anniversary of the book came out, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. How many people have read that book? Wow, you got to read it. I actually have two book recommendation. I'm going to do 'em right now.

I will tell you this, if you're not a reader, that's a tough book. That's not one of the easier books to get through, but I would encourage you to just work on it. It's a book I still go back to. I still use those processes all the time. The other one is the exact opposite. It's a really quick easy read. It's almost a cartoon. It's a parable. Anybody ever read the book? Who Moved My Cheese? Yeah, I love that book. What a great lesson. And I'll tell you what, that book has become so much more important because the book, there's cartoon characters in it, there's a couple little mice and there's some people, and one day somebody moves their cheese and for some of 'em it just throws their whole world off. And the parable is about being able to adapt to change. And I know a lot of people struggle. I thrive on change. I'm glad that I do. If things don't change, I'll probably change 'em. But a lot of people don't deal with change. Well, and unfortunately the only thing that's changing about changing is it's coming faster and faster all the time. I don't know how we're ever going to slow that down so you better figure out how to adapt to it, and that's a wonderful book for that.

Seven was Never Stop Learning and I brought up the seven habits. It's actually why I put that number seven to remind me. The seventh habit in that book is called Sharpen the Saw. There's a quote that says, if you give me four hours to cut down a tree, I'll spend the first three sharpening my ex. I love that quote. That's what sharpening the saw is all about, except in this context, you are the X. It's sharpening you that is constant and never ending learning. There's a phrase, can I-C-A-N-I constant and never ending improvement? Number eight, give back. And I loved the example of that from Bill and his crew. He learned something from me, he taught it to somebody else. That's how we make this industry better from the bottom up. Now let's talk about these in just a little more detail and then I want to tell you one of my favorite stories to end tonight.

Number one, make gratitude a habit. If you want to improve your attitude and your mindset, make gratitude a habit. And here's one of the ways I could teach an entire seminar on habits. They're powerful things. We all have them. We're not very good at creating habits that serve us well. One of the things you need for a habit is a trigger. So you remember to do it until it becomes a habit. So for gratitude, I came up with a trigger. When I down in bed at night, I think of three things that I'm really grateful for. It's a great way to fall asleep and then when I wake up in the morning, I do it again before I get out of bed and start the day, I think of three things that I'm really grateful for. And you know what? It doesn't matter if you use the same three things every time.

It's not the things, it's the gratitude. It's a really great way to start and end the day, and it's a great habit to develop, get healthy. I do lots and lots of talks and seminars on, I could talk for weeks about this. I'm not going to tonight, but I will say it is really important for drivers or really anybody, but I am going to be doing this for drivers. I will be launching a group health coaching in the next couple of weeks and it will just be an ongoing program for me for now on. We're kind of in the middle of a little bit of a revamp on our business and I'm doing it this time so that I start spending all of my time doing what I love to do and it's not running the company. My wife does that. I have a business partner.

This is what I love to do. I love to talk to people and help people, and I like to spend time with owner-operators and I will be spending almost all of my time doing that going forward. I'll be launching a group health coaching and I'll be launching a group business and money coaching program as well shortly after that. So there's lots of resources out there to get healthy. It is important. It's really important for our drivers. Develop a winning team. I have a list of people that I always want on my team, whether it's a business, a project, whatever it might be. First off, if we're going to run a business, we've got to have a customer. We've talked about customers, we're going to talk about customers a lot until I start hearing it being talked about more on this end of the industry, figure out who you want your customer to be.

Many times that's the first step they miss. They buy a truck and then they just do whatever pops up and it's not that hard. You can go lease it to all kinds of people. You can go get on a loan board and get a load, but they don't have a plan. Maybe that's why they don't see these people as customers and they don't appreciate them as customers. They never really chose them. This is one of the few businesses I know in my world with single truck owner-operators that you really don't have to do any kind of sales or marketing whatsoever. Every other. I've started a lot of businesses in my time and one of the biggest challenges, how do you get people to pay you? That's not that difficult in this world. You buy a truck and there's a load somewhere, somebody's willing to pay you. You just log on, say, I'll take that load.

That seems easy, but I think that's a bad thing. I think that's how we got to this place where we don't think about the customer. The freight's just there. I'll just go grab some and somebody will pay me. But I try to get people to choose their customers. Chew. Do you want to be leased to a carrier? I had trucks leased to a carrier for a long, long time. I did really well like that and then sold the contract for quite a profit when I left. I've heard this phrase over and over. If you're a lease a carrier, you're not a real owner-operator. I don't even know what that means. Of course you are. And if that's your choice, it's a good one. If you want to have your own authority, your customers could be direct shippers. It's a tough way to go, but I've seen people do it and I've seen people be really successful at it. Your other customers are going to be brokers and that may be your only customer. I've got some thoughts on that. And again, David's been doing this. I've been telling people forever. Here's how I came across this one. I've done thousands of tax returns for owner-operators. It's one of the ways I really learned the ins and outs of all the numbers and all kinds of different operations. I worked with those numbers every day.

I got a tax return once and there was a hundred and forty two 1099s. And I thought, what is it? That was how many brokers that one truck owner-operator had worked with in a single year even. I couldn't even figure out how that was possible. What a horrible idea. I can't even imagine all the work, the onboarding, the trying to figure out somebody's system. No communications, no relationship whatsoever. And this is one of the guys that was always complaining to me that he couldn't make any money and the brokers were screwing him. And I came up with a strategy and I teach owner-operators, find yourself three to five. The number might be a little different, but three to five good brokers, and you should be able to get about 90 or 95% of your freight from those three to five businesses, your customers, and then use a load board to fill in the other stuff. It's a great strategy. It works well. So a couple other relationships you should build. Customers are important. You should have a good accountant, a good tax preparer, a good financial planner. When I did that, I was all three. I would do their accounting, I would do their tax return. I could help 'em with financial planning. Find somebody

You need that help. You really do. It gets more and more complicated every year. Focus on what you do best, which is driving the truck and moving freight and serving your customers. Let somebody else do your numbers for you, but make sure you have that relationship and you know your numbers. Another really important relationship that I've been talking about for years is a relationship with a good shop.