The Lombard Trucking Show

Noah Reinisch is a born and bred Chicagoan, no not a suburb, the actual city itself! Further proof no one really sets out for a career in logistics he had humble beginnings teaching kids baseball. As life moved on and dominos fell into place, a curious opportunity with a CBD company go him into the 3PL domain. Then some diapers got added! Making himself as proficient as he can with warehousing too...

On today's episode I talk with fellow freight twitter friend Jeff Wynn and his trucking story. Raised on a cattle farm in North Texas, Jeff went a different route in life by going to school to become an architect! He spent two decades working in design, and then he noticed a riff in his industry. At that point a friend told him about what he was doing with hauling cars. Intrigued, he made the...

Episode 76 is here and I provide an in detail update on why I am not yet driving. Once again customer service remains a dying characteristic in trucking as the body shop I have been dealing with keeps missing the mark. But with this time down I've doubled down on myself, it has expedited me into working towards pivoting the business to get me weaned off OTR and into a fixed position to lay hea...

Jamie Hagen aka MACK LOVIN is the owner/operator of Hell Bent Xpress out of Aberdeen, SD. Humble beginnings growing up on a farm, Jamie would ride along with his dad by the time he was just out of diapers. Fast forward to the 90's and Jamie bought his first truck, where he claims he did everything wrong, and eventually went out of business in 1998. But he didn't just give up, he kept truck...

Daniel Kao is a Jersey boy who attended NYU. Initially gung ho for finance he read between the lines and maybe saw that this wasn't the way to go and immersed himself into the tech world. Starting with Square who really innovated how small businesses collect payments, he then moved on to work at DoorDash at the ground floor when they had barely 50 employees. In theory DoorDash was his first ta...

Mark Manera grew up in the St. Louis area. A lover of both fitness and baseball he attended Maryville University of St. Louis where he was educated in physical therapy. Trucking found him the same way it finds many drivers, by accident. Some of his first patients walking through the door were drivers with tenure in the industry and he saw the damage done to one's body after trucking for severa...

Daniel grew up in Indiana and attended Purdue University for Agricultural Econ. While in college he obtained his CDL and his addiction to trucking spawned from there. He has entered and exited the industry, been a company driver as well as operate under his own authority. Primarily a flatbedder, advocacy for trucking fell into Dan's life essentially by accident. Through making friends over the...

Grace Sharkey is a professional in the logistics and transportation industry with experience in journalism, digital content creation and decision-making roles in the third-party logistics space. Prior to joining FreightWaves, Grace led a startup brokerage to more than $80 million in revenue, holding roles of increasing responsibility, including director of sales, vice president of business develop...

Dave is a veteran trucker in the industry who has a fascinating story. He was raised by the old school union truckers and aspired to have a career like they did. Unfortunately he came in at the end of the Teamsters hayday and saw the folding and consolidation of several carriers. An absolute whirlwind of career that you'll have to listen to yourself to see all the moving parts. But now in the...

Huge milestone for the show as we have reached 69 episodes! Isn't that NICE?! Former guests Reed, Dom Tullo, and Justin Martin from Freightwaves rejoin the show for an awesome conversation that goes from the ATA's fake driver shortage narrative, to Area 51. If you weren't bullish on freight communities before this episode, you will be after this one.

Blythe Brumleve got her start in freight marketing as an executive assistant working for a large  3PL  in North Florida where she would eventually be tasked with handling the company’s digital media strategy. This is where she earned her chops as a marketer forced to do it all with a limited budget around the time when the inbound marketing concept was born. It was this job and a side-hustle blog...

Reed came on the show several months back to talk about his SaaS product that is Lostfr8. I referred to it almost as a reverse load board, but really it has started to grow as a tool for these links in the supply chain to build relationships. We give the back story on the Please Advise hats, and go into the community we have been bringing together on Discord. Find Reed on twitter @Reedislost and j...

Desiree Wood began writing about her experiences as a single, Mexican-American female entering the trucking industry in 2008 on the “Ask the Trucker” blog. Using only a cell phone, her story entitled “A Day in the Life of a Lady Trucker” caught the attention of Dan Rather and became the basis for four of his investigative reports into truck driver training. In 2010, after realizing other trucking...

On today's episode I have an awesome conversation with Blake West from northeast Mississippi who owns his own brokerage called Dray Logistics. Blake has an interesting timeline from owning a pizza place, selling insurance, and then getting in with CR England on their brokerage side. That was his door into the logistics industry. We do a nice deep dive on what drayage freight is and how its a w...

I didn't record last week! I had a series of unfortunate events that kept me away from the recording lab, and I go into detail about those fun events. I've been getting more outside my comfort zone with being invited to speak on a few other podcasts and shows. I talk being welcomed onto the TruckCoinSwap Team as an advisor, HR 3039, and more!

On Today's episode I bring on THE Rookie Driver himself, aka the Border Bandit. Hailing from San Antonio, the Rookie Driver isn't actually a rookie! We started driving around the same time and actually share a similar story. His professional life after the Marine Corps left him feeling like he was lacking a purpose, and then trucking walked into his life. He calls himself the Rookie Driver and doc...

On today's episode I bring on Ahmed Bakheit, an owner of a small freight brokerage who has a carrier first mentality. Originally from Sudan he came to the United States and his first taste of logistics was serving in the US Army Reserves. He bet on himself and moved his family to Arizona and worked for a larger brokerage and learned the game and then went out on his own. We have a great conver...

G'day! On today's episode I bring on Kyle from the Canadian province of Alberta, and we talk about his unlikely journey into trucking. He came from a trucking family and like most, they warned him to run as far away as possible. So he did, spent some time as a firefighter, but the itch was too big to scratch. Starting off local, then over the road, he talks about how his career landed him...

It has been a year since I became an owner/operator so I wanted to review how the last year has been and genuinely talk about my experience having been leased on as a contractor with two Carriers. The main reason I wanted to record this episode was to really drive home a point that there are a lot of drivers out there who post mis/disinformation about being an owner/operator, and in a lot of ways...

On today's episode I bring on the Rust Belt Kid, a young hardworking gentleman from the midwest on a mission of spreading the hard truth on how we can truly make America thrive again. We met through our logistics network we've been growing organically via twitter, and knew he had a message worth sharing. We go into detail about where the disconnect happened between blue collar work and our...

Casey Litz is a newer driver originally from West Virginia. She spent the better part of a decade as a touring troubadour with a 6-piece bluegrass band. When she wasn't on the road she was in the restaurant industry. She eventually got the itch for adventure, and felt like trucking could be her calling. Not only did she just get her CDL, she dove headfirst and wanted to be a flatbedder, a nich...

I recently attended the Mid America Truck Show in Louisville, KY this past weekend 3/30-4/1, and it was such an amazing experience. I go into detail about a new organization I have been working with CDL Drivers Unlimited, compiled of excellent people who are going to be a driving force in some lobbying power in DC, as well as a resource for drivers. I will personally be helping in their crisis com...

I met Shannon Towell at the Love's in Des Moines, Iowa. He saw me working out and assumed I must have been prior military. We ended up hanging out that night and exchanged information. He's been very observant of everything as a new driver and has gone through the ringer of experiences and wants to pass on those do's and don'ts to new drivers. Shannon loves his job, and truly belie...

Thanks to my friends Gord and Reed who have roped me into trucker twitter, I was able to follow Quincy. He may have one of the funniest accounts I have seen on the platform, and some of his best work is done replying to people and posting reactions. Life had Quincy sleeping on other peoples' floors and furniture, but a phone call into a radio show ended up with him getting a free ride to CDL s...

Brian is a born and raised Iowan currently working as an owner/operator of not only a small trucking company, but also a 3000 acre farm around Cedar Rapids. An Iowa State alumni he got into the world of trucking in how a skilled tradesman would. He got his CDL at 18 and did farm work within Iowa only, the farm gave birth to their trucking enterprise, and now trucking helps keep the farm going. Bri...