The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect: Meet the Hosts Part 1: Robert Bain
In this clip, Bain introduces himself, shares about his background, his family, and what he wants this podcast to make you think about.
Meet the Hosts Part 1: Robert Bain Episode Transcript
[Bain]
And welcome back, or should I say, welcome everybody to The Extra Mile Podcast or the EMP as we like to call it, presented by CarrierDirect. My name is Robert Bain and normally I’ll be joined by my co host, Adam Perlmutter. Adam however, is on paternity leave and so we want to say congrats to him and his family on the new edition. Can't wait to have you back buddy.
So, what are we doing with this EMP podcast? The whole point of this is to talk about us, ourselves, the logistics industry, transportation, and really get you thinking about your business.
Just so you kinda know who I am: As I said, my name is Robert Bain. My professional background: I started my career in logistics at a large trucking company out in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It’s called CRST. Back in 2010 my family and I made the move to Chicago, Illinois, and I really started going down the path that I have now taken when it comes to logistics, transportation, and trucking.
I got involved with the start-up brokerage and helped to grow that, and then had a great opportunity to take my talents north to Waukegan, Illinois and work with a couple great organizations within the Visual Pak companies. Visual Pak Logistics or VPL, Visual Pak Express or VPX. I was able to actually grow my career there. I got to the point I was a general manager. I was running a decently sized trucking fleet, hiring drivers, ran with a very lean staff. We only had 3 folks in the office. And it was a really awesome opportunity to grow my career.
From there I had the opportunity to move on to Uber Freight. There I really started to dive into the tech side of logistics and really see some of the cutting and leading-edge what was happening in the industry.
Later on I moved on from Uber Freight and I was the Director of Operations at a large brokerage out in Naperville, Illinois. From there I actually moved over to tech sales, and leveraged some of that experience I had at Uber, with a fantastic opportunity I had at Shipwell selling their tech platform, as well as their up brokerage services. Which then takes me to CarrierDirect, where I am currently. Getting to leverage that entire background and then some. And help organizations transform and grow their business and grow their bottom line.
Once Adam is back, he'll give his intro and his background.
So you know me on the personal side: my wife Nicole and I've been married over 15 years. We reside in the Chicagoland area. We have four beautiful children. In my spare time I power lift and coach strength sports with multiple others, as well as my children. My wife is a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. So that’s kinda us, and me.
So why are we doing this? Really, there’s a ton of other logistics and transportation podcasts out there: Why do you want to listen to us? Well, one, you get to hear my sultry voice. So that’s a positive. But really what we’re trying to do, is we’re trying to make you think. We want you to think about a lot of different topics when it comes to logistics, transportation, whether you are a business owner, whether you are an employee, seat-level, director, executive. Wherever you fall on the spectrum.
We want you to think about tech: Where should you invest? What should you keep looking at? What should you stay away from? And what are some of the pitfalls when you start to make that transition into a tech-forward type of organization.
So really logistics technology has a massive amount of investment going on right now. There's a lot of opportunities to get lost in the quagmire that is various start-ups and those that are trying to be disrupters. Versus trying to do things that are very simple, very efficiently, and then let the disruption evolve on its own. That’s a little tip there.
We want you to think about your team: How do you grow your team? How do you attract and retain top talent? That’s a really big thing right now when it comes to organizations that are looking to scale. How do you make your team care? By the way, you can't make them care, but you can certainly incentivize them to care more about the business.
Think about training: The training you're receiving, the training you want to give your team, the training your team needs to get to the next level. For those of you that are leaders: How do you train your leaders that are going to be coming onboard? Your leaders that are going to be coming up in the organization? How do you make yourself ready for the next evolution of your leadership journey?
Think about transportation, logistics, supply chain. How do things move to and fro? How do we get that to happen better? How can we do it with more visibility? How can we do it more efficiently? How can we reduce the friction and wasted motion and make sure that everything still gets to where it needs to go? And overall, what does this mean? How do we get better?
Logistics, let’s be real here, since deregulation is an industry that has really needed an eye on it that is going to help make it better. What I mean by that is efficiency, technology, training, people. There’s a lot of things going into that, and a lot of folks have made investments in various places of this. But what really needs to happen is, you have to have a concerted effort by the industry itself to push into those arenas. To raise the level and raise the bar, so that there is no shipment left behind. I know terrible political pun, but that’s what you get sometimes with The EMP.
We’re going to cover a lot of different topics, going from emerging trends, historical events - because that’s important. Knowing your history is really important when it comes these industries. Why these things still matter.
We’ll have interviews with industry experts and those leading the charge and a whole lot more. Again, what we’re trying to get you to do, the listener, and when I say “the listener” I’m talking about anybody who hears this - if you hear my voice - that's who I'm talking. If you hear these words right now: What do you think about your business? What I mean by “your business”: I mean your book. Whatever it is that you do, whether it is you have a billion-dollar brokerage or you’re a carrier sales rep or even a track and trace individual that is just getting their foot in the door and trying to make a name for themselves. This is incredibly rewarding industry and it’s a great place to be if you take the time to learn it, to grow in it, and honestly get your teeth knocked in a little and learn some tough lessons.
We're hoping you can avoid some of those landmines with some of the stories we’ll talk about, and some of the things that will share from our experiences. I'll tell you this, at CarrierDirect, and Adam and I specifically, we’re incredibly passionate about logistics and supply chain and about this industry and what it can provide for you, what it provides for the general public, and what it can provide as a career.
Everything that surrounds it is super exciting, though you do have to peel the layers back, because at the end of the day, ordering stuff and getting it shipped to you doesn't sound exciting on the surface...
We’re excited to bring you a whole lot more with this, with The Extra Mile Podcast.
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