How Jesse Bounds 10X'd His Trucking and Hay Business and You Can Too

Jared Flinn: Jesse, thanks for coming on. Jesse Bounds: Hey. Thanks for having me. Jared Flinn: Well, my apologies. I think we've been going back and forth for probably 6 months trying to make this happen. But, it's 2025, my new year, and, super excited for this show. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. No. We got it. The thing is we got it done. Right. I was like, I was trying to book it because if I book out, if I try to schedule like 6 months out of my work. And so I was like, if you give me a time, it's like right now, I can usually just stick it in, you know, but whenever I schedule, it always falls apart on me. So but we got it done. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Well, you were we mentioned just before we started the recording about your people, and without a doubt, we are gonna be speaking to your people today. But for those who don't know who you are, give us the story because, man, I think you got a good story that centers right around agriculture and trucking. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. Thanks, Jared. I will just, like, cut to the chase for them because we've only got an hour. Right? And we wanna keep it short. But, basically, I'm from, Junction City. I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, so south of Portland, West Coast. I worked on a farm when I was 16. My dad's background's construction, so he was just they were custom home builders. Jesse Bounds: My dad had a couple of Peterbilt dump trucks, 10 dumps, you know, one excavator, one, you know, tractor type of a deal. So I worked with him obviously growing up. And we had a small farm, 10 acres. But my dad did not like to farm. It had nothing to do with the hay. He would have me go, like, deck mow it with, like, a 5 foot rotary mower. He wanted nothing to do with farming. So fast forward, I'm 16 looking for a job, high school job, go to work on a grass seed farm in Oregon. Jesse Bounds: And so for most of the, you know, the listeners don't probably know much about Oregon, but the area that I'm in is called the grass seed capital of the world. The majority of the grass seed that's used across the world is grown in Oregon. There is grass seed grown in other places, but we're known to be the capital. And so what what what happens is they we go for like a well, for July August is really our harvest. And so they cut the grass seed similar to what they would you would do with, you know, I mean, we eat you out, let it dry to harvest. We gotta cut it, wait 7 to 10 days. We combine it, but there's all this straw left over. And so I worked for this farm, and I basically started by doing, like, small fields, like, 5, 10 acres. Jesse Bounds: Like, say you had a house, you had 5 or 10 acres. It was a nuisance, you know, to get rid of this grass. That's how I started. I started by doing these small fields. And how I really got my start was I was working at this farm and they had a feed store at their grass seed warehouse. They did retail sales. And people would call all the time like, hey, we got 5 or 10 acres. Can someone, you know, come get rid of the grass? And my boss, you know, the fields had to be like 30, 40, 50 acres or wasn't worth his time. Jesse Bounds: He was farming probably 5,000 acres. And so he did custom hay and a lot of people would call because of your local feed store. And this was back before, you know, there was no face you know, this is 2,001 is when I graduated. So, you know, newspapers, that's how we, you know, we did advertising. You know, you posted your business card at a bar or something, you know, and hope somebody saw it, right? You made a flyer, you sponsored rodeos. That was marketing. So, you know, a lot of word-of-mouth and door knocking. So I I asked him. Jesse Bounds: I said, hey. Can I do these small fields of hay? And he said, yeah. Like, I can't do them. So my dad had some really shitty old equipment. I mean, we're talking like a Ford Disc Tera mower that had been used in probably 20 years, an old side delivery rig, and an old wire baler that had never had been used in probably, like, 20 years too. So I tried to start with that stuff, didn't work that well. Made a deal with my boss, and he basically let me start to use his equipment to do these side jobs. So I would do my stuff. Jesse Bounds: Like, we farmed 6, 7 days a week. So I do I tried to do my shit, like, at night. You know, I'd go stack in the middle of the night. So because I had to be at work. So I would basically just start making trades. And then I found another guy that, had old equipment too and needed hay done. He had a little nicer equipment. So I made a trade with him. Jesse Bounds: Said, hey. I'll do your hay because you need someone to do it. Can I use your equipment? So I did a lot of bartering and training when I started, and we use pickups like I had a Jeep, my like, a 74 GMC pickup. So we would literally, you know, like, do 50 pound wire bales, throw them in the pickup, take them to a horse barn, stack them in the barn. Just old school, you know, go to peep you know, go to with door knock, like, horse barns. And so then I needed a truck. Right? So, like, I didn't have a way of I didn't have a semi. And so I learned how to drive truck with my dad and learn how to drive truck on a grass seed farm. Jesse Bounds: And so I found my first truck, which is the 359 Peterbilt that I put, you know, the the orange one that was in the 10 4 magazine. So I bought that truck out of Raven Dale, California. Actually, it's funny here. I got a picture. Nobody will probably be able to see it. But, here's the it was Oh, yeah. Right. So here's the first hay barn I had. Jesse Bounds: And my boss, used to use this barn, and he stopped using it. So I went over to landlord and said, Hey, I need a hay barn because I didn't have a barn. I had nowhere to store anything. And so we actually it's funny. I didn't even think that I had these here. But there's Oh, yeah. There's the truck. And then a friend of mine squeezed. Jesse Bounds: I didn't have a squeeze. So, you know, the first problem, right, came up was like, okay, I started a business. I'm out doing this hay, but now I got nowhere to store it because it rains here. So then I needed a hay barn. So the whole thing was built off of everything everybody else threw away, literally, like from the fields we started with. In that second picture I showed you, actually, that's a wheat straw. So nobody wanted wheat straw back here. So I started going to the horse race track. Jesse Bounds: That load right there, I'm loading that to take it to Portland Meadows, which is closed now, but that was the only race track that we had. And so I think that track season 4. Jared Flinn: Hey, guys. We are getting so much interest for our bulk freight conference 2025. You know, we started this 2 years ago. We've had 2 phenomenal conferences. It keeps getting bigger. Our first conference, we had over 200. At this last one, over 500. And we have a lot of people that wanna show up. Jared Flinn: We wanna make sure that you can get your ticket reserved. It's gonna be the 3rd week of April. We hope that you can make it. But go ahead right now. Go to bulkfreightconference.com and put your email address in there, and we will notify you when tickets go on sale. That way, you will be the first one to be notified before they sell out. It's gonna be amazing show. We have a new venue that's gonna be even bigger. Jared Flinn: We're talking actually having show trucks inside the venue, breakout sessions, and, man, just a world best to get you connected. I was just talking yesterday. I had had, dinner with a lady that was at the conference last year and just talked about the connections that she made and the business that she's doing now by meeting those clients face to face. So we want you to be there, and go to boltfreightconference.com. Enter your email address. Get signed up. It's gonna be phenomenal. We'll see you there. Jared Flinn: God bless. Jesse Bounds: What do the freight Jared Flinn: tracks use them for? Jesse Bounds: That ain't out here. That's what they used them before. They've all, there's one in c I don't even know if the Seattle track's still running. They might not there there used to be some mushroom farms, but, honestly, like, we don't have mushroom farms anymore. We don't have racetracks. We've everything that I started with has changed. The majority of the feed stores I hold to are out of business. They're all closed down. Jesse Bounds: Like, it's it's, the whole entire time I went through this, I had to every 5 to 7 years, I had to pivot, like, pretty hard. Like, the business that I it's not that I couldn't do what I did, but I could have never if I would have done the same thing, it wouldn't I would never have been able to build what I have by doing the same thing for 20 years. So I could go back through, like, a roadmap and basic, every 5 to 7 years, we've made a pretty big pivot, or had to completely rekinda overhaul the business to keep up with, you know, these changes that we're all constantly going through. So, yeah, I started by doing, like, domestic retail. So grass hay to feed stores, wheat straw. So no one wanted wheat straw. I go to these grass seed farmers. The majority of them already had someone bailing their fields. Jesse Bounds: They already had a guy. So here, know, I hear of a lot of new farmers, like, in the Midwest or something like, hey. I can't get in. Well, I couldn't get in either. I got in by doing the wheat straw that the big the my competitors didn't wanna do the wheat straw at that point. That's how I got in with these guys. I'll come do the wheat straw. I'll come do all this shit that nobody wants to do. Jesse Bounds: Right? Then once so you're waiting for someone else to screw up, mostly. Right? The ball, and then you're in there. That's my first Feed store. I went up there and I said, hey. I got Wheatstone. They're like, we buy it from everyone. I kept going back, kept going back, and then he calls me. He's like, hey. Jesse Bounds: We actually, our guy ran out. Then it was, okay. We do you have grass? Yep. I got it. And then it was, oh, the guy that's on our alfalfa. I wanted to take the whole store over, but I had to wait until those guys screwed up. And And I just got a little bit more, a little bit more, and then that became one of my best hauls that I ever had. And then I thought there was days we're almost at that feed store every single day unloading because they were they were a really good store. Jesse Bounds: They went through a lot of products. So, you know, for a lot of the guys that are starting out or younger trying to get in, I think they just, you know, they look at, like, where someone's at. You know, I was referencing the the YouTube video that you, you know, you were over what, Idaho. Right? Jared Flinn: Yeah. Yeah. The yeah. We were right there in Sugar City. Yep. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. I mean and so like that like that company, I mean, I'm at yeah. I just keep I mean, they showcased it really well. I mean, they built that thing over a lot of years. This stuff doesn't happen overnight. You know, no one just fires up and tours the years are gonna build this massive company from from nothing. So, yeah, it's been, you know, the trucking. So I started by I drove truck. Jesse Bounds: I drove that truck. So I bought that truck in really early 2000s. And then I drove it for a couple years. And then I I don't know if you saw me post. I had a 69 Peterbilt narrow nose, and it's actually back in back in the Midwest somewhere going to shows. It's bright orange. It's all pinstriped. Someone tagged me in a TikTok, and I saw it. Jesse Bounds: I hadn't seen it in a long time. I built that truck. Oh, wow. And so it's rolling around at the shows. And, but I drove older trucks, and then I realized I was driving every day, and I was hauling lumber on a backhaul. And then I I deliver my products, like, you know, go to the horse racetrack. Well, then I'd wanna I backhaul roughing, building products, you know, back. And that was great from 2,005 till 2008. Jesse Bounds: Guess what happened? 2,008. All of my recalls. Right? All of my backhauls dried up. So I bought a couple more trucks. You know, I had drivers. And, basically, at that point in 2008, I had to go back to driving, like, so basically almost 7 days a week. You know, we can run active exempt and and the radius that we're in, I just I just I mean, 2,008 was a was a mass I bought, you know, brand new Peterbilt semi. I bought new pickups, a house, you know, my property where the bounce is at now. Jesse Bounds: I'd spent a pile of money, and then, you know, it just stopped, like, overnight. Jared Flinn: I was gonna say you're I mean, dating yourself, and I'm I'm older than you, but you're I mean, you're still pretty young at that age. I mean, like, 25. Jesse Bounds: Oh, yeah. I'm not even 6. Waited till 1. So this was all like, yeah, I was, like, mid twenties. Yeah. Yeah. So we I think I had 3 or 4 trucks running. And, yeah, I kind of feel like I haven't done anything lately. Jesse Bounds: I feel like I did all this stuff. You know what I mean? And then I'm like, I haven't really it's like, I haven't really been able to really grow. In the last, like, half a decade, and ever since COVID, it's been, I feel like we're kind of in this limbo. So, yeah, I was hauling. We're back hauling flatbed Maxi's is what we do out here, you know, a lot of like, 32 doubles 4024s. A lot of Oregon, Washington. And then I really, I kind of went back to my roots, I feel like in 2,008, and was like, trucking for us has always just been something we have to do, right? Like, it's been the hey, business has been the priority. Right? And then trucking, I just had to have trucks. Jesse Bounds: I can't seem to get rid of them. I've tried to hire some haulers, and then they don't you know, it's bad enough as, you know, having my own guys not show. But then I gotta try to keep a sub haulers truck running, and then they you know? And so we've kinda tried both, and we've just realized that, especially probably in the last 2 years, we we we had a fair amount of sub haulers kinda trying to haul off and on. And we just we do use guys here and there, but, like, we need control. Right? And so guys that are vertically integrated, you know, the reason why they have the trucks is the control. I mean, you look at, you know, even, like, Walmart or In N Out and Amazon. I mean, it's a control thing. We just have to we have to you have to get it there. Jesse Bounds: Right? And so, yeah, I mean, it's just, that's kind of the fast version. And then Jared Flinn: I guess let me ask you this. So you talked about up to up to 2020 or whatever. But, I mean, as of today, I mean, how how big is the fleet? Because you I mean, you run-in quite a few trucks. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. I've got 20. So we've got them numbered up to 23, but there's a couple missing in there. We've sold a couple, like, truck 89, I don't have. But I basically started with truck 1. We're at 23. I think there's 2 that aren't in there. We just bought 4 new 5.80 nines. Jesse Bounds: We're at we should be getting a couple of them this week. So, we'll be running, like, 25, but not every day. So we run we're trying to run 14 a day on containers, and then we're we're running 2 2 maxi flatbeds now. When we drag when we drop we drag all the shit out in the summertime when we go to straw season. I mean, I've got a 359 over here that's got a 400 big cam in it that's been sitting there for about 3 years, and we'll probably inframe it before summer because I think we might need it. So our truck has been finding drivers. I, you know, pre COVID, we had no issue finding drivers. I mean, I doubled my fleet in, like, 19 and 20. Jesse Bounds: We went from, you know, a couple a couple of trucks to a bunch of brand new ones. I bought a pile of trucks. We doubled our production, our Haycrest from 19 and 20. And so when I did that, we we had no problem getting drivers, you know, then ever since COVID's been, you know, been challenging to find drivers. So we're finding them now. We've got some, we've had we're running ads, and we have some automation. I've actually helped quite a few guys. I probably have built we gotta be 25 or 50 companies that the team has built to help find drivers. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Well, I wanna I wanna talk about that and segue into the the 10 foreign coaching, but Jesse Bounds: just Jared Flinn: just, yeah, just to finish though, on, like, today, you got the the the trucking going on the hay business. A lot of the finished product that you're doing, though, is gonna be the straw, the hay. Is is there's some of that exported or is it stay? Jesse Bounds: Majority of everything we do is export. So we do yeah. It's all going to South Korea and Japan, mostly South Korea. It's very for anybody listening to this, it's it really doesn't work anywhere else. I've got a lot of guys in the coaching groups there in the Midwest, East Coast. It has to be dry. Right? It's gotta be bone dry. Humidity doesn't work. Jesse Bounds: It'll sweat. Like, I get a lot of bill of message. Hey. You know, you stretch wrap. It doesn't sweat. No. Because we can't bring it in here. But we need our stuff. Jesse Bounds: We don't like to have anything over 14%, and it's dry when we bail it. I mean, bone dry. So, you know, in those 2 months, we in Oregon, we basically get no moisture. We really don't have any humidity. You know, May, June, it turns off. July August, it's dry. Mild dry compared to others, but there's no humidity. Right? So, when we take those bales, why that's important is we take those the big bales, we cut them in half, and then we press those in half again. Jesse Bounds: So we're taking and and we're basically taking everything to 50% of capacity. So when a load, yeah, when a load comes in here, let's say a set of axes, right, like a set of 30 twos or 40, 24. Let's say there's 27, 28 tons, you know, 30 tons of pound of bail weight. We're taking that and we're compressing that. We're putting that into a 50, you know, 40 foot shipping container. And, you know, a shipping container is not very big inside. It's not like a dry right? It's small. And there's gotta be room. Jesse Bounds: So there has to be a couple inches on the sides, and there has to be room. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Jesse Bounds: Because they actually we use the clamps, the package plant, like, the clamps that go on the forklifts to load it. A lot of the customers over there actually use forklifts, believe it or not. They go try to go under those packages with forklifts and try to drag them out. And if those packages and there's not room for them, it's a disaster. So that's really important for us is is having good bales, good weight, and then making sure that we get the the bales compressed for for them to load. And then, yeah, my truck so I have a the flatbed truck. So today, how it is, we've got flatbed trucks that are hauling into the plant, then we've got container trucks that are hauling the finished product to Portland and then to come Washington to the ports. And then from there, it's going overseas. Jared Flinn: And now just curious, and this is my own internal fascination of are you all selling to those end users or assume is it one company here domestically that then turn around and tell them that? Jesse Bounds: End users. Yeah. So I have contracts with the shipping lines directly. So, you know, Pony, Evergreen, all these shipping lines, the the same shipping lines that you'll probably see in the Midwest, a lot of the containers are actually repositioned out here. So, you know, the the containers will go into, say, Chicago or inland. Right? And then it's not a lot of export. And so then a lot of containers are rail back out to either the East Coast, West Coast. They call it repositioning. Jesse Bounds: Right? And then we'll pick those empties up. And we haul one way. A lot of people ask me. We don't haul anything from the port. We just pick up containers, bring them back. We load them that night or the next day. So our plant runs 24 hours a day, 6, 7 days a week. So we try to at least maintenance one day a week. Jesse Bounds: And so we get those cans back. They might be here a day or 2, and then we're returning them back to Fort Loaded. So my trucks are running, empty one way, but they still get really shitty fuel mileage on containers. It's clear. Like, what do you think those new 5 a nines are gonna get nice little? Their haul and containers are gonna get shit because it's it's there's no aerodynamics with those things. Jared Flinn: Wind traps. Jesse Bounds: Oh my gosh. They're horrible. So Jared Flinn: I I I guess it's no doubt. I I I think of, hey. You know, I was involved in when I lived in Kansas City shipping soybeans out via container, and it was all going to Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I remember that. And I can remember too, we had a rate of $600 from Kansas city all the way to Kao Sheung, which was just crazy. I mean, you can't even deliver a container to Wichita for that, from where we are, but I guess the point, so I think about that. I mean, that was soybeans, but I think a lot of that was going into, I thought human consumption is, Hey, like, why, like, why are we bailing hay and shipping it over there? Why can't they make their own hay? Jesse Bounds: Well, they don't have enough land, and they get you know, so think of it here like the dairies. The dairies here, you know, we've got look at all the land we have. We have more forage than like right now, there's more forage than we can feed. I mean, obviously, there's hay sitting around everywhere. Here. So the dairies over there, they don't have a landmass to grow along the forest, they grow rice. They use rice straw, they import Chinese rice straw. So So there's 2 things that really happen. Jesse Bounds: Number 1, they don't have the land mass to grow it, and it's not consistent. So they get a lot of typhoons. So their rice straw crop can get completely destroyed. So the best thing for us is a typhoon. It's bad for them, good for us. We want, if their whole crop's wiped out, they have to import more. Sounds horrible, but that's that's how it works. Right? So the quality of their crop isn't that great, and they do get government subsidies to use their own crops, which has been challenging, you know, for us as exporters, because we're kind of fighting against that. Jesse Bounds: There's, the alfalfa hay, China was where a lot of this, the alfalfa hay price really took off the last couple, you know, before COVID. It was fun. It was really high during COVID. China was built in mega dairies. China never had fresh milk. So a lot of these countries, like India, doesn't have fresh milk. They're not developed. They don't have refrigeration. Jesse Bounds: They don't have refrigeration. They don't have storage. They don't have transportation. Their infrastructure isn't there for it. So so China, when they became a developed country and they had a lot you know, had money, then they were like, oh, shit. You know, they want milk and ice cream. Right? They want these things. So they started building these mega dairies. Jesse Bounds: Let's say, the last decade, decade and a half, they built these mega dairies. Well, they they did what they do with everything, overbuild. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Jesse Bounds: Right? And so during COVID, because of the supply chain problem, right, rates went really high. You know, there's panic. The hay market reacted the same way. And so there was this huge you know, alfalfa hay went through the roof. There's a lot of Chinese companies that came, put a lot of hay pressing facilities out on the West Coast. And then, basically, it all just blew up. It all fell apart. And we're now seeing alfalfa prices I mean, they're they're where they were 15 years ago. Jesse Bounds: I mean, they're just you can just I mean, our grass straw is worth more than alfalfa right now. It's a mess. So Wow. But there's a lot. We'll change like everything. We've got the bird flu going on out here with the dairies and so milk. So milk's been okay. But domestically, our biggest problem is we haven't really had so we really haven't had enough demand for milk. Jesse Bounds: Like, our milk price just hasn't been and it's probably for you know, I don't look at what it is back there, but, like, it's been really hard for growers to move the hay. They've been relying really hard on export out here. But we're I think it seems like there's a what I've been told is the the the milk thing's gonna change. Milk prices is looks like it's gonna go up, and, hopefully, we can start getting some of this hay moving because the problem is the truckers. Right? The guys who are hauling hay and stuff, the loads aren't there. I mean, I usually have 2 or 3 flatbeds here at hauling alfalfa. I haven't had anybody in my flatbed trucks hauling alfalfa. We literally took a 2 year break. Jesse Bounds: I have never not bought Alfalfa since I started for Haul and Alfalfa. And so my whole business, like, once again, it completely changed in the last couple of years because these markets. Right? And so we're now we're buying a little through Follow Matt posted their day. You know, we had some pay come in, and we're starting to, you know, do that. And when I use social media to do that, I get farmers who are calling me. I have farmers just call me. Oh, I see you're buying pay through social media. He signs following me every day on my stories. Jesse Bounds: Right? So but it works. I mean, it it it it's crazy because we didn't have that before. Right? We didn't have that form of, you know, communication. But, yeah. So today, you know, we're we're, you know, we have a bailing crew. So we go out and we bail we bail about 25,000 tons of our own. We're exporting. We've done over a 100. Jesse Bounds: You know, we'll do 70, 80000 tons is, like, we don't wanna be over we don't wanna be under that. Ideally, we need you to be about 80,000 tons a year. And then so it's about 300 loads a month, truckloads. We need 300 in, 300 out. Our storage facility can hold we can we can almost hold about half of that. So we and then we so we we have off-site storage as well. And so we have trucks that are hauling. You'll see me post. Jesse Bounds: We have curt some curtain vans that we've built. I think that's we extended those for us. So we have 2 trucks that are hauling close by, moving product within, like, 5 or 10 miles. So we we haul in the summertime, we go out harvest. We use our field trucks to haul to the plant. We store on-site, but then we have probably at least a dozen barns that are off-site. They're within no farther than a 60 mile radius. And so we're pulling out of those barns constantly too to try to keep the plant full because we're running, you know, 15, 20 loads a day, depending on the week. Jesse Bounds: So lot of inbound, lot of outbound. The weather is challenging out here. We don't get the snow like you get like everybody else gets. So that's the the good thing. We don't get snow and ice really here at all. So, yeah, so that's kinda what we're doing today, I guess. And that's the the the core of the business is the hay exporting, the baling, and then the trucking to the plant, and then the trucking of the containers. And we don't haul for hire anymore. Jesse Bounds: We stopped haul and lumber. My my county wouldn't let me park or lumber is non agricultural, so they I had a neighbor turn me in for parking lumber trucks. So we we filed a commissioning improve use permit, got denied. So I said, fine. We're not I guess we're gonna softball on lumber. So but it freed up it freed up my time because, like, most of the guys are listeners, it was one more thing for me to do. I was dispatched to the lumber trucks. I was just I was doing all the stuff. Jesse Bounds: Right? And so it it a lot of the times that stuff happens and it it you know, at first, you're like, oh, shit. You know, this is a change and, you know, losing revenue. But then when you look back, you're like, but the time that I was spending doing it, was it really was it really making any money? Right? I was staying busy is what we were doing. Jared Flinn: And is it, like, part of your core vertical? Like, you mentioned earlier, like, it doesn't really support your your other entities, your biz your hay business and and all that. So I think it's almost a a blessing disguise. Jesse Bounds: It was because the trucks here's I was like, okay. The trucks are going that way. But I was by the time I pay the drivers their percentage, there was some deadhead miles that have to go preload lumber that you know, the insurances more money. We weren't holding enough the way to make it worth it. Right? Where we profit yeah. We might have made 5 or 7 grand, but it wasn't like we were losing 10 or I mean, I could go make 5 or 7 grand on one trade. That's something else. So Jared Flinn: Yeah. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. And that's where you know, and we'll lean into that later with the coaching group and stuff. But you just really got to look at like, what you know, like, you're talking about, it's great to be vertically integrated, like the bailing, and the pressing, and the trucking of that, hey, it's all vertically integrated, right? There's literally like 3 operations in one. And I think that's and I'm real it's really easy for me to get sidetracked because unlike most of the the guys that are probably listening, we're all entrepreneurs. Right? And so we wanna try all these new things, and then we're never good at once. And so I've really actually, this year, we're focusing on on getting rid of some more act of those activities and, you know, focusing more on back on the core part of the business. So Jared Flinn: Yeah. That's that's really, really good wisdom. I so last year, we did a show and somebody commented. I forget what show it was, but they're like, you need to have Jesse bounds on your show. Yeah. I started looking you up and then I think it was right about the same time you went on barn talk. I watched that episode and then obviously got onto your website, 104 coaching. And I was like, I started reading this. Jared Flinn: I was like, wow, this isn't really interesting. And I go, this really centers on what we're doing here. I mean, it's so the same audience, like we're dealing with agriculture, farming, and trucking, and started following you from there. So that was sometime last year, but I guess what, like, where did that idea come from? Because that's a whole another undertaking and a massive, you know, task on top of the regular businesses. But what I guess, really, what was the why behind that? Jesse Bounds: So the 10 4 coaching man, it's it's a lot to basically, what happened is we doubled. So from 2,000 and what I tell you, 19, 20, we put a new haypress in. And so I the old press that I had, it'll only do about 7 7 loads a day around 24 hours a day. We were working all the time. I put a brand new machine in in, like, 19, And we doubled our volumes, we doubled our trucks, we did all that stuff. And when and when we did that, so we were doing about $1,000,000 a month. And we're doing about 2,000,000 a month in gross revenue. And so when we did that, it was great because you're like, oh, I have all this volume on me. Jesse Bounds: I'm crushing it. Everything seemed to be working. Okay. It was kind of a shit show doing, you know, doubling like that. Like, we literally doubled, like, from 150 to, like, 300 some loads in a month. It was a mess. We got it done. And we were fucking stickering trucks and, like, trying to get plates on and, like, putting guys in them. Jesse Bounds: I mean, there was a truck would come in and I'm like, it doesn't even have a sticker on it. Like, do we forget it? Like, we just it was not how you should do things. But we got it done. Right? And so it was really done looking back on. But so what happened is, Jared, is I did did that, and it was like I was getting farther and farther behind on my bills. K? So I got 2,000,000 a month coming in. And my payables are like growing. So my bank's like, Hey, like, I need you to like, because I kept going to them, like, Hey, I need to increase my line of credit. Jesse Bounds: Like, I just can't get ahead of it. And they kept they did, they increased it for a little while. And then they said, we need to figure out what's going on here. And if you really need to get like, you've basically ran a, you know, $25,000,000 company, just the Hey business, and you really got to get your financials in order. And so I head hunted a CFO, I hired a couple of shitty ones. And then I found a good one. And he switched me to accrual accounting. And when he did that, he called me up and said our cash rate burn was about 250,000 a month. Jesse Bounds: And then in 6 months, we'd probably be out of business, and he was gonna call my banker and let him know. So he did that because they're not any good CFO is not gonna have you know, the blood's not going on there. Right? It is a true a true CFO or or an accounting person that's there for you and the business is going to be transparent. They are not gonna cook the books or do anything or and that's one reason why a lot of people don't like to have those people around is because they the the ones that are gonna keep you out of trouble are are not gonna let you get in trouble. They won't work for you, period. They won't do it. They're not going to jail. And so, you know, I didn't realize what basically, what it was is it'd be like someone hauling, right, for cheap and not lining stuff up. Jesse Bounds: And so, you know, the the 2 second version of accrual accounting is you're lining up revenue and expenses basically the same period. And, you know, I watched a TPAP, deal, and I was telling you about that on before. 1 of the guys in my coaching group who's in his sixties is a farmer, he posted in the 10 4 group, and I went back and watched it. And right at minute 18 on that video, it's on YouTube, and he's talking about Acrullo County. He's talking about farmers. You know? Even a lot of these are grain farmers I think he was talking to. You know? And you do prepaid expenses. You know? And you do this. Jesse Bounds: You do all these things that mitigate tax, but you have to have operational financial statements. You need to know your revenue for the month. You need to know the expenses that were associated with it. You need to know if you're making money or not, period. Because what happens when you're chasing revenue, especially if you did can double your revenue if you double your revenue that fast like we did, you know, you've got a lot of cash flow coming in. So you can slow pay bills. You can get by for a while. But at some point, it doesn't work forever. Jesse Bounds: Right? And so I went through all of that. Jared Flinn: I guess I'll stop you real quick. I just wanna ask, though, like, when that's happening because, yeah, like, you're more than double. I mean, you're doing a $1,000,000 a month. Mhmm. Jesse Bounds: I mean, Jared Flinn: very few people are generating $1,000,000 a month in revenue. Like, did you not have even an idea? Like, I mean, would you just assume, like, hey. I like, 20% of this or so. There's gotta be a certain percentage of this is profit, or was it just Jesse Bounds: Oh, I have no clue. And, honestly, I didn't I didn't I never have. I mean, you know, I you know, we did you know, we're trying to cut all you know, do all this in an hour. But, basically, I mean, I did like, most of the people in here, I mean, I just I drove I drove truck for, like so from 2,001 until 2,012, I drove truck. And I actually drove truck till about 14. So almost I only stopped about a decade ago. I obviously, we know we all know what income and expenses are. But when it comes to tax stuff and depreciation, all that stuff, like, I went through a so and and then in 2016, the whole place burned, which we left out. Jesse Bounds: So in 16, yeah, in 16, we lost almost everything. We saved the equipment, most of the equipment. But all the buildings we built all the buildings in 14, they all burned in 16. I was way underinsured. And, actually, looking back now, they had the insurance company had a forensic accountant come in and audit everything because I had a loss of income policy. It's supposed to pick up, like, you know, extra expense, trucking stores, things like that. But what they do, and they I didn't understand this time. They basically switch you to accrual account. Jesse Bounds: They look at your books the best way they can. They switch you to accrual because they only pay the profit that you're not making or expense. Okay? I didn't even understand what he was doing. I was fighting with him the whole time. But when I switched to accrual accounting with my CFO, I was fighting with him too because I'm like, none of this makes sense to me. And so I've really tried to cut it down when I went through all this with the coaching group because it it's really hard to understand. And when I was watching that video last night, even that guy said it takes 2 years for people to really understand accrual accounting. So you do have to have someone that's helping you lead you through that because it to to we only are taught cash based accounting. Jesse Bounds: That's revenue. You know, it's it's whatever went through the bank account. Right? So then everybody at the end of the year doesn't wanna take a check. Right? Or they wanna prepay expenses. You know, if you're doing that, you're not so you can still file your taxes on cash basis, but you need to have operation operating financial statements. And you you can't go into, like, QuickBooks and just hit accrual, and it's gonna produce accrual. There's a way that you gotta book your account. You know, your accounting has to be set up, and you need to be doing stuff daily. Jesse Bounds: It's really not that hard to do. You just have to have someone helping you and and leading them, you know, through that. So when I went through all that, Jared, I did I went I spent about a quarter $1,000,000 with Cardone. So you might know Grant Cardone. Okay. I about a quarter $1,000,000 with Cardone Ventures, which is a a business kind of consulting program. And I went through that. And but it's leadership and finance and and all kinds of different stuff. Jesse Bounds: So it's really like the core aspects of the business. And I learned quite a bit in there. But then when I came home, you know, and and really sad about, you know, thought about all this stuff. It was like but no one's actually, like they talk about it when you go to events. They do all this stuff. But then, like, how are we actually gonna now you're gonna actually do it. Right? Like, I can go watch a video on how to do a podcast, but you got 3, you know, what, 3 guys behind the scenes doing it. If I wanna have a podcast, I need to talk to those guys on a Zoom call right now after this call. Jesse Bounds: I need to figure out what are we using? Are we using LipSense? How are we doing the email change? Are you using CRM? Like, what are you actually doing? Right? And what I realized was, I went and did all this, spent all this money. And not I had good cash flow then. I was able to spend a quarter $1,000,000 on this stuff. And I've spent more than that. I mean, I've spent tons of money and so I was like, okay. How can I take this and help other people learn? You know, I can't be their account. I can't be their bookkeeper, but I can at least create an environment where they can come, you know, do this stuff. So I was actually well, I actually went to an event. Jesse Bounds: I went to one Andy Elliott's event. So I don't know if you know Andy. Yeah. Sales guy. So got done with the cargo and stuff. I wasn't in very good physical shape. I'd really let myself go because when I was losing all that money, I let myself go. I actually ended up in the hospital for a week. Jesse Bounds: We figured we'd file bankruptcy. So it was really challenging. So when I got out of it, I went to Andy's, went there 2 or 3 times. I told you I was on Bradley's podcast, which for anybody's called dropping bombs, was on his, went to some events. And I was like, I need to learn more about sales training. I need to get in better shape. So when I was at Andy's event, there was a guy named Sean Crane there. So you look up Sean, follow Sean. Jesse Bounds: He's an awesome guy. He helps the 10 4 group. I bet probably 50 or 50 50% or more of the guys that have came through 10 4 coaching have actually worked with Sean on mindset fitness, health, nutrition. So there's online coaching program. It's really reasonable. It's it's, and and he's and he gets he he he really helps these guys. So I I did a 1 on 1 coaching session with Sean on mindset, fitness, you know, understanding macros, nutrition. I'm still far away from where I wanna be. Jesse Bounds: But, when I was doing that, he you know, we're we're doing 1 on 1 calls, and he's like, hey. You know, one of the call so he has a fitness program, and then he helps people start online coaching programs. So there's 2 different calls a week. K? And so he said, you should start a online, like, coaching program. I'm like, coaching what? Like, like, what are you talking about? Like, most of these guys are doing health you know, they're doing fitness or they're doing Yeah. I don't know. Just random coaches. Insurance or something. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. That's a lot. Right? There's all kinds of and so his guy that was doing his CRMs, his dad actually is an owner operator. Jared Flinn: Oh, wow. Jesse Bounds: And so we were talking about this coaching deal, and he goes, we're going through donate you know, trying to figure out a name and stuff. He's like, shit. 10 4 coaching. And I was like, damn. That's a pretty good one. You know? And so then he looks in the domain. No one had it. It was wide open. Jesse Bounds: A bunch of 10 4 stuff was. So we went and snagged it all up, stuff that was relevant. And got all those domains, and we built a a web a landing page, a fire or CRM. And I just started doing post. Never really I never ran ads. Nothing. I think we had, like, 35 guys sign up the 1st month. So it was a $97 a month, a week ago. Jared Flinn: Year was that? Jesse Bounds: That was 2 years ago, I think. Not even 2 years ago. You're in a yeah. Like, this is our 2nd winner. So we started, like, Jared Flinn: so Jesse Bounds: yeah. 23. I think we started in September or October of 23. Yep. And then so we did just start we have a weekly call. We've held it the same. It's Thursday. It's 5 o'clock Pacific Standard Time. Jesse Bounds: So I was biggest thing was find a date to work for guys. I know a lot of guys that are, you know, East Coast. So it's you know, there's certain times of the year that's, you know, that's 8 o'clock at night. And these are farmers and truckers, and I've got construction concrete. I mean, it blows me away how wide of a range of business owners we have in there. We have guys that are wanting that work for farms, work they're working for, you know, guys that are, you know, in can in your area. Kansas, Illinois, Pennsylvania. They're on the they're working on a farm where their farm's 500 acres, and they're trying to figure out, do I do a side hustle? Do I buy a truck? You know what I mean? Like, what do I do? And so so there's just a lot of, like, different Jared Flinn: Well, what what I was gonna ask you to that Sorry. Jesse Bounds: I had one of my neighbors we, if a neighbor calls around here, I this whole place is burned. K? Jared Flinn: Oh, yeah. You gotta take that. You gotta look at that. Yeah. Jesse Bounds: I'm serious. Like, everybody gives me shit about I'm just telling, like, that changed my life. Like, those phone calls, those I those missed calls and that stuff is not that I could've changed anything. You know what I mean? But, like, I don't get very far away from that thing, and and it's hard because we feel like we need to step separation. But when you go through stuff like that, you know, trucks I had a truck there today that almost caught on fire 5 miles from here. Brake hung up. Jared Flinn: Right? And, Jesse Bounds: you know, so when certain people call, my office never calls me. The day that I had my fire, Jared, the guy that was running my plant told me I missed that call, and I never got back a hold of it until I drove here 30 miles and seen it. So, I never had to turn my phone off for podcasts and stuff, and I left it on. And when I seen they were calling, I was like, holy shit. Why are they calling? But then they text. So sorry. Don't live. But I just this is I I try to be really real with people because of Oh, Jared Flinn: I think yeah. I think that's great. I wanna ask so so expanding into the into the coaching, like, you now have, a summit or group where you bring these individuals out to your place. Right? Jesse Bounds: Yeah. So when we started the coaching group, we started the weekly calls. Right? And then we wanna do any first and events since I went to a lot of, like, workshops. So how I worked at Cardone is they have, like, a finance workshop, employee workshop, a leadership workshop. The first workshop we had was a finance workshop. Then we did a bookkeeping workshop. Then we've done masterminds, and then we created a bigger event, which is what we call the bizcon because I it was gonna turn into a trucking show. So everybody's like, hey. Jesse Bounds: So you're gonna have a farm show on a truck. I'm like, no. This is not a farm and a trucking show. Like, if you wanna bring your trucks, you can park them and, like, we can do that. But this is a business event to help business owners. Right? So we have that event, and that was in September. We're planning on having another one. We're trying to do something a lot bigger this year. Jesse Bounds: We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna kinda transition a little bit. But, basically, I flew in, you know, some pretty, I guess, high level speakers. And then I have, another group of speakers that I I use, you know, in the group that come back. Sean Buck Wise, who worked for Cardone, Jeff Jessen's a CFO that I work with. He He works for an $8,000,000,000 pharmaceutical company, so he helps me with the coaching group. So I've got a a core group of people that aren't from AgriTrucking. Okay. They're these are, you know, because what I found is that, like, AG and Trucking lacks what advanced, I should say, businesses have, like, the way that we find drivers, right, the way that we do our financial statements, like, like a big corporation, they the stuff we started about KPIs and all this type of stuff. Jesse Bounds: They they have all that. Right? But we don't talk about that. I mean, like, on a smaller level, you know, guys that are 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 trucks, you know, 20, 30 trucks. Like, they just don't they don't have all this stuff. And so, yeah, we created the the the events that we've actually when we do the workshops, you see me post about the workshops, those used to be a one day event. I'm actually rolling those, trying to roll those to a 2 day event because we just can't get everything in one day. Yeah. It's so much to try to teach someone. Jesse Bounds: I mean, we could spend 2 days on social media marketing alone. You know, it's like so and we just can't get through it all. So we're trying I'm trying to do, I've got a I've got a Baylor it's actually I just posted about it. We're gonna do a Baylor school, in March at my place. It's gonna be the 2nd week in March. And a lot of people think it's local people. The majority of the people coming will not be local. They will be from all over the United States. Jesse Bounds: Anybody that's, I actually even have people coming that are in 10 4 coaching, and they don't have pay they don't have bailers. They're coming for the community aspect of it. So what's really happened over the years, that coaching group has actually turned into a community. So we use a private Facebook group. We have 2 chats in there. We have a business chat. And then we have a health and fitness chat, actually. So every morning, guys are in there. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. I did my workout. I did this. I did that. I mean, I've got guys that never worked out in their lives. Never stepped foot in a gym, lost £60, £80. So but they they're getting, you know, they they're getting that camaraderie. They're getting that help. Jesse Bounds: And so, yeah, I mean, honestly, like, I started it, but they're key they're really, like, keeping it going. They're keeping that momentum, you know, that group. So we had 2 new people came in this week, and they were like, I don't know about this stuff. And I said, try it for a month. I'm not I mean, it is what it is. And then they get in there, and and they either if you're not you know, I've been in and out of a lot of groups, Jared. You and I I'm guilty of it. I've been into groups and not engaged. Jesse Bounds: You're you're only gonna get what you put into it. Right? If it's not for you, then it's not for you. But if you're really looking for for something, different and you're wanting to learn from other people, you know, one thing that we do in there too is, you know, obviously, you know, social media is a big part of how this all so it's just how it started. You guys are able to, like a lot of people in there will take, because we get them we want them to promote their business. We want them to use social media, you know, show people what they're doing. And it took a lot of that's building up self confidence. And so they're able to post in that group, take videos. Right? It's hard for a lot of people to turn the phone around. Jesse Bounds: And they're able to do that, post that in that community, and and and they can get used to it before they kinda go off to the world wide web. Right? And so, it's been interesting to kinda see how all that's transitioned. But, yeah, it's it's been it was a lot to do at first, but now I feel like it's kinda we did we did a lot of events that 1st year, and so now I'm kinda slowing it down a little bit. And then we're getting you know, it takes about a year to really understand your avatar and, like, who your people are. And we talked about the before we started the call is that, you know, if I said, you know, the app you know, people are like, well, who's in there? It's I've got businesses in there that are doing 30,000,000 or more revenue. And those owners are in there. It's crazy to me. And when they've came I know some of them I mean, I knew I had one local business. Jesse Bounds: He's got chip trucks. They're a 100 year old company. He's gotta be doing 30, 40,000,000 revenue, I would assume, just based on the unit size. When he joined, I said, why in the hell did you join this group? And he said, I wish there was a group like this 20 years ago. He's like, we you know, 7 years ago, we're gonna file bankruptcy. You know? And we're a, you know, a 100 year old company. And so he's like you know, he pays his subscription, and he is in the group to help guys. You know? But he likes the community side, but he's brought his kids. Jesse Bounds: His kids are just now entered the company. So they just got out of high school. I think they went to college. They just got out there entering the company as well. And so he, like, he brought them to our finance events because he wanted us to expose him you know, expose them to, you know, all the stuff that we talk about. So it gives people a place, you know, if they wanna bring their bookkeepers, you know, their spouse, a friend, you know, a a business partner. I've got one guy that's back in Missouri. I think he's he kinda makes his guys almost join his key guys. Jesse Bounds: He wants them, you know, to be on those calls and be engaged. So, yeah, I just there wasn't there wasn't anything out there for Ag and Trucking. And then it's like I said, it's expanded. So majority of people who listen here obviously are gonna be Ag and Trucking related. But if you listen and you're not, like I said, I've got guy I've got people from, man, almost every industry, I swear, it seems like when it comes to, like, a blue collar type, you know, it's got a motor and a, you know, something like it just yeah. I think about it. It's like construction concrete. We do an event. Jesse Bounds: It blows me away if I go around as, like, what they do. And I'm like, man, I how did I even I got a guy that re recycles appliances. Never thought of it. Right? Jared Flinn: Yeah. Jesse Bounds: And so what he did what he learned out of that was, he was not crushing those down. So we started talking about finances and KPIs. Right? And he realized, like, he he's hauling appliances from, like, Walmart and dry vans and stuff. And he was like, holy shit. Like, I need to compress these. Like, you're compressing your bales. It's gonna cut my transportation cost to, like, 75%. So he's like, oh, and buy an excavator. Jesse Bounds: Just sort of smash these things down. But it's just some of the simple things are right in front of us. Right? But we're so used to just doing the same thing over and over again. And so when you get around other people and you listen to this stuff, you get, you know, new ideas. So we record all of the calls. We put them into a program called Lightspeed, just an online platform, like, you could host, you know, hosting, of calls. So you can go in there and anybody that comes, they can go back and watch all the past call recordings. We've got CRM automation in their CRMs from social media marketing, the finance stuff. Jesse Bounds: So there's all kinds of tons of content, more than you can probably watch. Jared Flinn: No. I was gonna say so I, it was in 2021, 2020, 2021. I, I was on a trip, and I was next to this entrepreneur business executive. And this guy who was giving this speech, and I was along I was sitting from the sideline and he talked about that they were hiring their 1,000 employee. I was like, this guy's got a 1,000 employees. And so it was afterwards, I went and talked to him. I was like, how have you got to a 1,000 employees? And he does, they like subcontract for, like theme parks and stuff, but it's all kind of general contracting. And he goes, honestly, dude, he goes, I hired a coach. Jared Flinn: He goes a couple of years back and this guy helped me get this line. I was like, so I'm sorry, like, okay. So I started looking into him and he actually recommended, he put me in contact with his actual coach and that coach I I've used for 3 years. Actually, last year, I took a little bit of a lull, and, unfortunately, he's gotten busy. But, yeah, the the proof's in the pudding, and I can go on and on the number of ways, but, like, you just don't realize, you know, most of us start businesses because we have a passion for an industry. And, yeah, we wanna make money, but there's we know what we know and we wanna serve clients, but you don't realize until you have somebody else kinda looking at it from the side that, hey. Have you thought about this or have you thought about that? And for me, it took us, like, we went from in 2020 or 21 from 8 employees to now 70. I mean, it was just yeah. Jared Flinn: And we decided like, hey. We can we have a system and process by credit, not all, but a lot of his wisdom that, that instilled in us. So, yeah. But I was gonna turn that back to you. Like if you can sum up and, you know, we have about 15 minutes and we'll close out of here, but like, what is it like for those trucking companies that you're that you're talking to a lot, those farmers that you're talking to a lot, what are those same problems you hear over and over? Like, the same the the same thing you see that they're battling? Jesse Bounds: Drivers can't find drivers. And then just, they don't maybe some of them, like, don't know where to get loads don't know our own shitty loads or get stuff maybe off the load. I don't I don't know. I don't know, like, the like, how it works back there. Right? But, like, I had a group I'll just give you a quick example. I had a kid that came in coaching group. His dad, I think they had 10 or 15 trucks. They were basically bankrupt. Jesse Bounds: He came in. I got him hooked up with another guy out of Missouri that does over dimensional, holds a lot of equipment, transformers. You know? And they were able to be get hooked up with him and then basically almost became, like, business partners in a way. And now they have all of, like he has more work than he can do. So a lot of it is they maybe are, like, they just don't have good homes. They don't have good contacts. Right? Like, you know, or they don't know their cost to operate either. You know, they're they're, you know, they they run old old equipment, and they don't they don't know how much it's costing them. Jesse Bounds: Right? I mean Jared Flinn: Yeah. Jesse Bounds: So it's just they don't that's why I go back to the finance stuff. It's like, you can't you can't halt for a loss. We all know that. Right? But, you know, if you're going one way and you can get stuff another way, I mean, I've got a guy in my group that uses LinkedIn primarily. He hooks up with this. You know, when he got on the group, and I was like, I don't know your area, but I'm like, how's your I mean, because of what he calls, I gotta be hammering LinkedIn. And he's all he's finding stuff on there all all the time. And he but he has specialty calls as well. Jesse Bounds: So he uses certain things as a backhaul. Right? But either so they don't they just haven't thought outside the box, right, of, you know, is there opportunity out there that I'm not finding because I'm just in the same area, in the same bubble? But the struggles of the chain is I think they're the same for most of the you know, most anybody is, you know, drivers trying to manage that cost to operate. Insurance. Insurance is a big a big problem, especially a lot of the guys in the group that are in California. The cost of insurance. Right? If they have shitty CSA scores. Like, you're if you didn't you know, so you gotta do, you know, post trip, pre trips. Like, they when it comes to trucking companies, you know, if they don't have systems and processes, which we never had when I started, like, you just are your guys I mean, this is dumb stuff, but my CSA score got all screwed up because I had guys who were you know, they, you know, go through the sale with flat tire or light outer. Jesse Bounds: You know? And so we we have our pre and post trips around here, you know, to keep our CSA score because what's it do? It affects your insurance. Right? So, you know, I cut my insurance. It was $865,000 a couple years ago. We've kind of done almost in half. So we had to give some stuff up. Right? But that was the hey and then, you know, the whole policy. Right? But we had to give some stuff up. We had to give up the lumber hallway. Jesse Bounds: I I had to make changes. Right? But I but our CSA score was really high. Our CSA score wasn't good either. So it was a lot of it's been a lot of hard work. Right? And so it it's a it's a bunch of little stuff that they have problems with, you know, and then it compounds. And so if you got high insurance rates, you don't have good holes, you don't have good drivers, you can't find drivers, you got broke down trucks. Well, no good drivers want for a company that has broke down trucks. Right? So it's all, you know, there's not one secret sauce to it. Jesse Bounds: You know what I mean? Yeah. Jared Flinn: I guess what what I'm hearing you say, and, I mean, you can get in this bad cyclical effect, but it's like, you have to get out of the business, and you have to get working on the business, and you have to look at every element of it. But I think what you said, just when you're going back to when you guys were making a 1,000,000 a month, yeah, you're just in there just pounding away and not really looking at it from a macro view or from an outside view or having someone to coach you and say, hey. Look at this. You know, we need to make sure we're, you know, we're making a profit here. Jesse Bounds: So screw it. When I put that process, and when we did that, it was so messed up. I actually went to a friend of mine that used to work for a saw he was in the sawmill industry. And he used to actually when he's he's retired, but when when he would go to other countries and he would he was a consultant. They would hire him to come in in these 3rd world countries and try to fix these sawmills. The guys running around with no shoes on and stuff, like, cut lumber is a mess. So one of my friends who's actually from Kansas, who I bought that house from, he's from he's actually from Kansas. He recommended this this consultant to me who actually ended up being one of my neighbors at the house that I have the events. Jesse Bounds: So I hired this guy to come in when I when I was going through all that. I said, hey. I just need help, like, with production. Like, we were having problems with the machine producing and, you know, all of these different things as we expanded so fast. And I'm just, like, trying to play out fires. And so, yeah, I was just in there, like, working, like you say. And then when you step back and you start looking at the numbers and the data, you're like, okay. I can now make this change and it moves over here. Jesse Bounds: So, like, for us, we've been running, simple you know, we've been running to, Portland. We pay the truck 7.50. It's like a load. It's like 2, 250 miles of, a round trip. Well, for me, I can pay my trucks 1300 to go to Tacoma. It's twice as far, but I make my my I I my revenue wasn't where I needed to be at the current company for a month because there's a, you know, your overhead expenses. And then the when we're only when we're going to Portland, we can't get 2 loads every day. K? There's always a problem. Jesse Bounds: You know, the port screwed up or something happens. So but I only can see that looking at the numbers. And so I actually laid that out for my coaching group. When we did our last call for our last finances deal, I had my QuickBooks and my operational financial statements so they could see I showed them exactly why I was going to Tacoma. I said, you see each month because I'm adding trucks and I'm moving it. I said, you see the numbers? They're changing in the in the in, you know, in the right way. And I can only see that by trying it for a month. Right? Seeing how it works. Jesse Bounds: Look at the next month. Look at the next month. Well, most people aren't even looking at it in a 12 month period like that. So you're getting 12 years almost in 1 year. Right? Yeah. So you're just it's like it's it's more than 10 times. It's 12 times the effect. So it's it's once I now that I I've seen it, I'm like, guys, you gotta look at it like this. Jesse Bounds: You know, it's you're not gonna figure it out in a month or 2, but it's it's the way that big businesses run. That's why they they do this stuff. So, yeah, they just and it's a it's a, you know, it's a cycle for everybody. I think that, you know, it's really easy, such when things are hard. Right? And it's challenging that we, like, you know, we start cutting things that we shouldn't be doing, like maintenance or I and it's truck washing, stuff like that. That that's a little shit. That's not the stuff that's causing your problems. Right? There's there's other problems that are I've been there. Jesse Bounds: I've done that. We laughed. Like, when I was when you know? I'm like, oh, fuck. We'll skip washing the trucks. You know? We'll just skip every week, and my truck was just like, no. Because I wanna charge you more comes up. Like, you're just causing yourself problems right now. Right? So, a lot of, like, the books I've read lately and podcasts I've listened to, a lot of people will focus 95% of the work gets done. Jesse Bounds: Right? You need to focus on that 5%. That little stuff is what's eating you up. So, like like, let's say that I go out, like like I've been thinking about this like the Baylor School. Every single person that comes in there, Jared, that has balers, I guarantee you that they've all been able to successfully go out and bail a field. They get harvest done. We get harvest done when one way or the other. Getting harvest done isn't the problem. How much shit did we burn up or break down? Right? How much did how you know, did we have the, you know, machines set right? How much shit are we blowing out of the back of the combines? Right? How much you know, how are we you know, was stuff set up the right way? Were we efficient with our labor? Or is our guys showing up on time? Did we get the right people? Like, that's all the stuff it because we're we're gonna be able to go out and get the damn harvest done. Jesse Bounds: Right? Jared Flinn: Yeah. Jesse Bounds: Right? And it's the same with trucking. Right? My trucks my truck I like, if I go to 2 if I send 15 trucks to Tacoma, it's a 99.9% chance that they're gonna make it there and back. It's one turn. But if I send, you know, 7 or 8 trucks to Portland and they're gonna pull 2 turns, it's not 99% they're gonna all pull a second turn. There's problems. Right? And so you just gotta look at that business and until you look at the financial side of it, it's really hard to see that 5%. In my haypress, it's 3% shrink. K. Jesse Bounds: About so in a sawmill, you have sawdust comes off of a saw, you know, when you cut lumber, it's right? So we have this, we call it straw chaff. My average cost of product is so let's just say $100 a ton. K. I lose 3%. Well, that comes out to be 2 or $300,000 a year. I bought a machine. When I started running that press and I started looking at the numbers, the machine that I bought to repackage, it was a $150,000. It costs only a dollar a sleeve to put the little sleeve thing on the bail. Jesse Bounds: I paid for that machine in, like, 6 months. Right? That's that's the little stuff. Right? Jared Flinn: 5%. Yeah. Jesse Bounds: Yeah. It was totally like but it's like, it's 100 of 1,000 of dollars a year. So over 5 years, it's almost been 5 years, it's I've recaptured a $1,000,000 of waste off of that machine. None of my competitors in this state run on. And I'm like, you and that's the stuff that you need to look at. You know? You need to and you can't obsess over that little stuff, so there's a fine line. Right? You can chase the little stuff that doesn't matter. But you you have to analyze on that business, like, what is it worth chasing? You know, is it is it enough money to, you know, to to go after? And so, like, something like that was it was a nuisance for us, number 1. Jesse Bounds: And then 2, it was a it was a true cost. Right? So we needed to, you know, it was it was an expense on my on my p and l. But until I saw that, it wasn't real. Yeah. I mean, so yeah, it's just that and that's why I always I always end up at me and you can get into any conversation, and I'm gonna end up at finance every time. Like, I it just in 15 minutes, we're gonna end up back to numbers. So Yeah. Well, no. Jared Flinn: Like, I've never heard it said that way, but it makes so much sense. Like, the 95%, you know that it's gonna get done, but it's at 5% you gotta focus on because that's I think about me, that's when I get, like, the anxiety or the head fog knowing that, like, I probably need to look at this carefully or I need to focus here a little bit more, but I don't want to because I don't like it. Like, it's not fun. Yeah. But that's that's the difference maker right there, that little 5%. Yes. Jesse Bounds: And it can be like and and so I'm trying to think like, okay. Here's a good one. DAF. When we dub okay. When we when those I never had DAF trucks until we doubled the fleet or when we went from a 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 a month. K? So I had a couple of 2,000 sixteens, but then I bought a bunch of, like, 380 nines, a chunk of them. We weren't set up for DEF here. We've been buying some DEF at the CFN and stuff like that. Jesse Bounds: I had hired a guy that works for my fuel company, and he said, you're overpaying. It was either 5 or 10000 a month in DEF, overpaying or something crazy like that. Death was, at that time, like, ridiculously expensive. And so he says, we need to put a death tank in. Like, we need to be buying we're buying the pilot, the death. And he's like, I can get this stuff, like, a dollar 50, dollar 80 a gallon or whatever, and you're paying, like, dollars a gallon. And so just stuff like that. And it's like, I wasn't focused on the trucking. Jesse Bounds: Right? I was focused on the hay business. And I'm like, just get the trucks on the road. Who cares? Get you know, pilot. Next thing you know, they got they're in there getting corn dogs and hot dogs. We didn't even know that you could run your pilot card to buy that shit. So we're like, okay. This is a disaster. I mean, so it's so dumb. Jesse Bounds: But it's like, I wasn't focused in that. Right? And so then we get that under control. We have the press button on better, and it was like, oh, fuck. Hey. The trucking company is now losing a 100 and some $1,000 a month. So the HEY company and the trucking company is losing. So then it was like, so we have the HEY and the trucking companies combined. So then we split them. Jesse Bounds: And we said no. Because we just paid we here's how it works. And these are for the guys that, like, have a farm and have trucks. We never had it. So we never invoiced ourselves. So we we did have a 2 LLCs, but it was like, oh, it needs a $100. Right? The trucking we just transfer money to pay the trucking company's bills. The issue was we weren't we weren't because we were in an accrual, and we weren't we weren't billing the actual rate. Jesse Bounds: And what it really what it really became a problem for us was when we got into COVID and, like, fuel would go up and down, and we didn't like, there was a point where, actually, I was hauling some containers for someone. So we were pressing for them and then hauling the containers, and they said, well, we're only gonna pay $500. That's why we raised that rate to 7.50. My CFO came to me and we start well, we basically switched the hay company to accrual first, realized we had a major problem. Then he said, now we need to switch the trucking company to accrual. We have major problem, and now we gotta get both of them under control. And so he said the first thing is is you cannot haul containers for $500. Right? And so I went back to my customer, and I said, hey. Jesse Bounds: Just hire someone else to haul. Like, we'll press the, hey, but we can't haul the containers anymore. Just hire a sub hauler, And they can't use our trailers. They gotta bring on chassis and all that. And, like, why? I'm like, I'm losing, like, 100 of dollars every time I I haul on these. So they said, okay. We'll go hire someone. They couldn't they couldn't find any way to do it for that rate. Jesse Bounds: They ended up coming back, and then we ended up, you know, getting that the rate that we needed. It doesn't happen like that all the time. But when you're losing 200 or $250 a load, it doesn't take very long when you got 4 or 5 trucks on that tall to go, you know what? I'll just park them. And so for anybody that's listening to this, it's not easy to get more money. Obviously, we all know that. Like, it's hard to adjust the rate. But you need to understand if you're losing money or not. Because you might have a fleet of trucks. Jesse Bounds: Like, one thing is you might have, like, trucks that are on a grain haul, and then you have trucks that are hauling cattle. Like, I don't know, you know, how vertical you know, how guys are, but your cattle truck might be killing it, and your grain trucks might be the dogs. You gotta figure out what you're gonna do there. Right? And so that was where we saw you start, you know, tracking your revenue of the type of trucks. Right? And then you start that's the you know, you you gotta get looking at the whole operation, then you start separating it. So, like, Arc, if you looked at my profit and loss statement, you're gonna see container trucks. You're gonna see flatbed truck, where we track the revenue difference between the type of, you know, work that we're on, and then we track the trucks. You have your revenue, then you can go down the line and say, like a lot of guys probably do, you know, truck 14 gross, you know, $20 and their expenses were this. Jesse Bounds: So then you go down the same line and start tracking them by trucks, and then you know what truck you need to get rid of or what truck or drivers cost you about too much. And so that's when you start getting in the weeds. Right? But the first thing is just saying, okay. Are we making money or are we losing money? Right? And then try and understand, you know, find that 5%. Right? And, Jared, once we find it, like, our fuel bill and our driver's wages, it doesn't really fluctuate that much. Like, there's there's that stuff. You can get really caught up on a lot of that stuff. Like, like, the other day, they said, oh, the pipeline's gonna get all screwed up and fuel's gonna go up. Jesse Bounds: And I'm like, the thing is is that they tell me how much is gonna go up. And most, you know, big truck companies know this even better than I do. We can we know how many gallons we're burning. Right? We can count I can if it's gonna go up a buck, I know my consumption. I know what that's gonna how that's gonna impact my financial statement. Right? Same as it goes down. And we hear this about Gary's all the time. Like, a Gary knows if their breakeven's 14 and that's projected to be 18, they can go update their financial statements, go back to the bank and say, okay. Jesse Bounds: We're losing money now, but we all can agree that milk is projected to go up. This is what it's gonna look like. And we can guess. It's, you know, it's all a guessing game, but we go back and we reforecast and we update those financials. Right? And that's when we really get into the that side of it. You know, it's just what are we back at? Numbers. It's just a numbers game. Jared Flinn: So Jesse Bounds: This this has been Jared Flinn: so great. I think one of the biggest takeaways I personally have got out of this is just, like, I think you hit the nail on the head. So many people have so many things going on. You know, we talk about these, you know, farmers that are, have a trucking business or the farming operation and just all these, but you can get so much just trying to run the operation where you're not really looking at that 5%. And I think for me, it's just a reflection. Like, I can get so caught up in just making sure we're running everything. We're going, going, going, but, like, are we focused on those small pieces? So, yeah, this podcast has been