CAMP SOAPBOX

Stop Faking It. Find Your People.

by JR Elrod

Ok everyone, pull up a log, grab your coffee cup, and let us talk.

This one is for the small carriers. The mom and pop outfits running on grit and no sleep. You know who you are.

Let me ask you something. How do you do it? You are not a mega carrier. You do not have a legal department down the hall, a compliance team, a back office full of people whose whole job is to already know the answer. It is you. You are the dispatcher, the safety director, the accountant, the mechanic, and the guy who still has to go move the truck. All of it lands on your desk.

So what happens when something rolls in that is just past what you know? Do you sit there and grind it out alone? Do you fake it and hope it shakes out? Or are you the way I used to be. Too proud to ask. Too stubborn to admit there was a thing I did not already have figured out. Because I built this with my own two hands and my own blood, and asking for help felt like admitting the whole thing was held together with tape.

I was that guy. For a long time I was exactly that guy.

Then about five years ago something in me shifted. I quit pretending I had it all handled and I looked the truth dead in the eye. I am not a computer. I am not AI. I am a human being who makes mistakes and then lays awake at 3am hitting himself in the head over them.

So I did the hardest thing a stubborn man can do. I went and found people. Not yes men. People who understand this company, understand where I am trying to take it, and are not scared to tell me flat out when I am wrong.

The People In My Corner

Let me start where I should have started years ago. Rebecca. My wife. My best friend. My CEO. She reads over my shoulder without me asking, and when something is off she gives me the Gibbs slap to the back of the head and says, are you sure you want to do that. She is the one person in my life who pulls zero punches. Thirty four years and she still keeps me honest.

Then there is my brother, Don Elrod. Don is not in transportation, but he is one of the sharpest business minds I have ever sat across from. He built his company up from nothing, same as I did. Don is the one who sat me down and made me see it plain. I needed people in my corner, and my pride was the only thing standing in the way.

Howard Hayward. You are my projects guy. I can call you or email you at any hour with the hard questions and you give it to me straight, every time. And Howard does not do this for free. When he puts in the groundwork, I pay him what he is worth. Every time. No haggling, no runaround.

William Phillips. You are my government guy. You walk me through these certifications we hold, and more to the point, how to actually put them to work. Our Monday calls run long and get spirited, and half the time they are funny as hell.

Dale Prax. You are my fraud guy. Every time I bring you a question, you do not just answer it and hang up. You stay on the line until you know I actually understand it. That is a rare thing.

Robert Poage and James Utley. You two answer my DOD questions every single time. No dodging, no runaround. And here is the part that will surprise some people. Sometimes we are bidding against each other on the very same project. And they will still stop and help me understand what I am looking at. That is a level of respect you do not run into much out here.

Adam Spencer. You are the one who helped me claw my way back in at Landstar after one of their own agents double brokered a load onto us. And now you are one of the guys I can just pick up the phone and call to talk through where this industry is headed.

Here is what all of them have in common. Not one of them lets me off easy. And that is the whole point.

So here is the challenge. Stop faking it. Find your people. They are out there, and they are closer than you think. Asking for help is not weakness. It never was. It is the thing that keeps you standing long enough to build something worth keeping.