Last2First Podcast

Labor is one of the biggest costs in this industry, and in Part 3 of the Remotely+ series, Jason Burns and the team get to the heart of it: trust, and the strategic reason nearshore talent is the one cost a logistics owner can still cut. Learn more or find talent: https://www.remotelyplus.com As Matt puts it, a mid-sized logistics owner is stuck. You can't get your trucks any cheaper, you can't pa...

Tyler Thatcher didn't come from transportation. He built his early career in technology, riding the software wave through the dot-com crash, then spent time in private equity before buying a small final mile courier company in 2011, knowing almost nothing about the industry. Days after closing, DHL dropped them, wiping out about 20% of the revenue overnight. That was his introduction to logistics....

Wayne Posten spent 32 years in home delivery before building the company he runs today. He started on a truck in Atlantic City in the early '90s, became a contractor, and worked his way up to Chief Operating Officer of his own company and final mile Vice President for a billion-dollar operation. He knows exactly what it costs to be a small operator, because he spent decades as one. Now, as Managin...

Labor is one of the biggest costs in this industry. In Part 2 of our Remotely+ series, Jason Burns and co-founders Steve Schoeffler and Matt Cohen get into the economics, exactly how the savings work and where the up to 70% actually comes from. Learn more or find talent: https://www.remotelyplus.com The founders break down the real math. A customer service or dispatch role runs a flat $2,400 to $2...

In this episode you will learn how a passion project became the biggest media brand in trucking, how to grow a niche audience that advertisers actually pay for, why relationships open more doors than resumes, and what most brands get wrong when they sponsor a podcast. In a role reversal, host Jason Burns turns the mic on Rahmel Wattley, founder and CEO of Truck N' Hustle, the number one media plat...

Labor is one of the biggest costs in this industry. In Part 1 of this three-part series, Jason Burns sits down with Steve Schoeffler and Matt Cohen, co-founders of Remotely+, to break down how nearshore talent from Central and South America can cut hiring costs by up to 70%. Learn more or find talent: https://www.remotelyplus.com Remotely+ places bilingual, screened, and vetted remote professional...

In this episode you will learn how to build client relationships that outlast contracts, when to say no to a customer to protect your business, how a national delivery network is testing robotics and AI, and what it really takes to stay relevant as the industry changes. Host Jason Burns sits down with Kevin Truett, EVP of Business Development at Speedy Delivery, a company that started with one blu...

Alex Winston started Reefer Van Network in 2022 as a piece of internal software. Four years later it moves hundreds of loads a day across roughly 400 refrigerated trucks and 11,000 total drivers, essentially an on demand network for small, temperature sensitive, time critical freight. He built it in a niche most large carriers ignore, and he came to it from an unlikely place: a career as a lawyer....

Most logistics companies treat marketing as a reactive afterthought, something you scramble to prep before a trade show. Stephanie Alter argues that mindset is now costing them business they never even see. Roughly 80% of logistics buyers research and vet partners online before any contact, and a growing share start that discovery inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. If your company is not gett...

When Tom Jowers joined ADL in 2003, the company could not afford to pay him. He worked for free for a year. By the time he and his partners sold to private equity in March 2022, ADL had grown from roughly 4 million dollars in top line revenue to just shy of 50 million, with 18 offices across the Southeast. Today, as Regional President of ADL Final Mile, he helps run a network of more than 80 facil...

From bartender to President of a 700-driver courier operation - Liz Klein shares exactly how she did it. Liz Klein went from bartending and printing her résumé onto a CD at the public library to running Crossroads Couriers a super-regional operation with 700 independent-contractor drivers across five markets and nine acquisitions. In this Last2First episode, she and host Jason Burns get specific a...

Most fans know Earl Bennett as one of the greatest receivers in SEC history. In just three seasons at Vanderbilt University, Earl became the SEC's all-time receptions leader before being drafted by the Chicago Bears and spending six years in the NFL. But this episode isn't just about football. It's about resilience, reinvention, and what happens when you refuse to let your circumstances define you...

At FMF360 during the CLDA 2024 Conference, Jason Burns sits down with four of the industry's most respected leaders for an unfiltered discussion on growth, technology, acquisitions, driver recruitment, customer pricing, profitability, and the future of logistics.  What does it take to build, scale, and lead a successful final mile delivery company in today's market? Is final-mile the same as TWO y...

What if the hardest part of building a logistics company was not the drivers or the routes, but getting a pharmacy to trust you with their patients' medications? Kunal Vyas figured that out, and then he built the infrastructure so nobody else has to. Kunal started as a pharmacy technician counting pills at 26. By 29, he had a logistics problem he could not outsource his way out of. So he built the...

Most final mile operators think their IC contracts protect them. They do not. Transportation lawyer Doug Grawe breaks down what actually keeps your business safe and what quietly puts it at risk. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro and Welcome 03:45 - Doug's Path Into Transportation Law 09:30 - No Single IC Definition 17:00 - How TPAs Actually Work 25:00 - Government Audits: What to Do 34:30 - Arbitration an...

Matt Silverberg walked into a failing $10M courier company with six months of runway, $100,000 in monthly losses, and zero logistics experience. He walked out years later as CCO of a $250M global healthcare logistics powerhouse. This episode is the full story. In this conversation, Matt takes us from his days as a clinical psychology student covering radiopharmaceutical routes at night to building...

What does it take to grow a family-run logistics business from just a handful of drivers to nearly 2,000 across the U.S. and Canada? In this episode of Last2First, Jason Burns sits down with Michael Frankel, President of Sir Lancelot Courier & Delivery and COO of PDX, for a conversation packed with real operator insights, lessons learned, and plenty of laughs. Michael shares his journey from w...

65 years. Three generations. One leader's turn to modernize or get left behind. In this episode of Last of First Podcast, Jason Burns sits down with David Hardy, President & CEO of Bonnie Speed Logistics, one of the longest-running courier companies in Ohio, founded in Cleveland in 1959. David's path was anything but straight. Hampton University. Purdue chicken processing lines. New Jersey foo...

33 years. One partner who went bankrupt. Millions left on the table. And zero regrets. In this episode of Last of First Podcast, Jason Burns sits down with Steve Howard — 2026 CLDA Hall of Fame inductee, former owner of Esquire Express in Miami, and current Director of eCommerce Solutions at WCA, the world's largest freight forwarder network with 13,500 members across 197 countries. Steve built hi...

Zero experience. Zero contacts. Zero clue how to run a courier business. He bought a $1M last mile logistics company anyway , and 14 years later walked away with a private equity exit. In this episode of Last of First Podcast, Jason Burns sits down with Walker Allen, founder of A3 Holdings and former owner of Specialty Freight & Courier — a logistics entrepreneur who built a medical courier ne...

What if you could build a profitable business from scratch—without experience, tech skills, or a huge investment? In this episode, Rebecca Massicotte, founder of Red Fox Medical Courier, shares how she went from Wall Street burnout to building a multi-city healthcare logistics company —serving critical patient care operations across the U.S. You’ll discover: How she started with just a website and...

What does it really take to take over a family business and scale a logistics company? In this episode of Last2First Podcast, we dive into last-mile logistics, delivery service businesses, and business growth with a second-generation owner who stepped into leadership and transformed operations. We talk about: •Taking over a family business the right way •Scaling a logistics company in a competitiv...

Amanda Factor is a third-generation logistics leader, sales expert, and now VP of Sales & Business Development at Hackbarth Delivery Systems. In this episode of the Last2First Podcast, she breaks down what it really takes to grow, price, and scale a last mile business in today’s market. From growing up in the Chicago Messenger legacy to helping scale a $50M operation, Amanda shares real-world...

In Part 2 of this Last2First Off-Season Mini Series, we go deeper with Chuck Moyer, President of Task4Pros, into a topic most operators overlook: 👉 Risk. Liability. And the true cost of labor. From workers’ comp exposure to OSHA compliance to misclassification risks, this episode breaks down what’s really at stake when you don’t have the right labor model in place. In this episode, we cover: Why...

In this special Last2First Off-Season Mini Series, we sit down with Chuck Moyer, President of Task4Pros and CLDA Hall of Famer, to break down one of the biggest challenges in logistics today: labor. This isn’t just about staffing. It’s about building real operational capacity in your warehouse and supply chain. In Episode 1, we cover: Why labor shortages are getting worse in logistics ✅The differ...