Justin Lu: Building A $20 Million Trucking Empire

this is Justin a second generation trucker who scaled his dad's company from 1 to 20 million in Revenue but it was not easy he knocked on many doors to get more customers after numerous rejections he finally found dedicated shippers to scale his trucking company from 3 to 50 trucks in 2021 he ended up selling the trucking company and he then decided to help other truckers with a software called truck pedia [Music] all right guys we have Justin Lou the founder and CEO of truck media and today we're going to be talking about how Justin is disrupting the trucking industry so how you doing Justin today good good how are you it's good to have you on the show so Justin how did you get into the trucking industry I actually never wanted to be in the truck industry I never knew what I wanted to do as a kid but I knew it was not trucking U because seeing how old school was my dad being the trucker himself always always on the road and when he comes back it's always stacked with paperwork and just didn't seem sexy to me I didn't want to be in the industry that's so old school fast forward graduates from college join Amazon to launch robotic warehouses sounds cool but then what I realized is like I actually got myself into Logistics anything you order from Amazon let's say you know a water a water bottle you order from order from Amazon two days you get them for the truck that carry hundreds thousands of those we have zero visibility and where they at until they arrived to our warehouse we sh about so this was 20188 at the time no visibility that made me realize wait a minute my dad isn't a LW right everybody just like him in his industry is a dinosaur so I decided to dive deep into the industry realized wow this is almost a trillion dollar industry in the us alone so left Amazon joined my dad he was struggling in the business running about three trucks and I decided to get tired of my dad right and they also see what I can carve out from the industry so left Amazon joined my dad and help them scale the company from 3 to 50 trucks uh in a little less than 3 years and my original goal was was stay in 3 years 24 at the time I left by the time I reached 27 3 years later so not too old I go go to business school or just go back to the corporate world do something else but little did I know once you get into Trucking you never get out so I stay Trucking since then since I left Amazon being in the industry since 2018 yeah so I'm an immigrant myself so I kind of want to step back and talk about how your dad got into Trucking and how did he come from China to here and it must have been really hard for him with the language barrier so can you talk a little bit about that absolutely I I mean that's kind of like a you know living the American dream for better education system for us the kids and better life uh in the US to live that American Dream he was a driver he owned a trucking company even in China back then before moving to the US after coming here when he saw on the road people driving truck he's like wait a minute I want to do this I don't want to work on the other job of being a truck driver a certain company so this is like 2006 he became a truck driver and started driving trucks and about a decade after being a being a driver he decided to buy his own trucks and for him it just he was saving all along he was saving all along you know feeding the family uh there's a family we we had a family of four of us uh my mom was home taking care of kids my dad working before my sister's finished College he couldn't really take out of risk to his own business what if it doesn't go out right there's a whole family waiting for him to feed so he waited until the time is right right kids graduate from college working on their own he doesn't have the financial pressure anymore Burg anymore so he started running his own business and it was not going well not going the way he expected to go consistently going between one truck three truck five truck back to one look up to three always it's like the stock market right when when the market is doing well everybody decides to buy he's like I'm going to jump in yeah the moment you jump in the market just dicks and you get out similarly people do the same thing tring so let's talk about you joined your dad company and he had three trucks yeah how did you scale to 50 trucks can you walk us through the step by step of that Journey so how we go from 3 to 50 was I brought the outside perspective to trucking is you know I start challenging the industry wait a minute I'm a huge fan of how you know the first principle that Elon Musk brought from what interview he mentioned you know by building the batteries I think it's also important to reason from first principles batteries are so expensive you apply the first principle where you break everything down to the most fundamental element and do the backward right so kind of same approach what BR tring is now let's break it down do I really need to have a third party to help me if I afraid no I don't I can reach on myself so I Lally just decided to drive around my neighborhood and see warehouses wait a minute why am I seeing trucks from out of state pick out for my neighbor that I never introduce myself to why am I allowing myself to not say hi to them introduce myself to my neighbor so start driving around the neighborhood introducing myself my name is Justin I run a trucking company I'm your neighbor can we work together right after getting about you know 20 50 rejections finally you you run to the yes sure as you know get to know each other follow up and that's how London my first C were happen to be shipping medical equipment and then I'm like you know what this actually makes these easier if you search on Google direct shippers shipping companies nothing's going to populate because there's no such thing but then if you type in medical equipment conferences medical equipment uh manufacturers warehouses there's a TP so that way by narrowing down by niching down to one commodity it actually made my message much more powerful and I say I'm not going to knock on any people's door besides the medical equipment warehouses and my website talks about medical equipment trucking company and when I approach though I'm a trucking company I hold nothing but medical equipment right away I stand out there's they get so many people knocking the door calling for business they always say oh we're a freight broker oh we're a trucking company very big but I approached them oh I'm a medical equipment expert this is what I like a niche Trucking Company trucking company but medical equipment so they like that ling a couple customers turn them into loyal standard by service and then ask them hey we're growing our business do you have Fran industry ask them for R throw know truckers know a lot of truckers and shippers they know a lot of shippers so if they need shipping have a shipping needs their friends have one too did you go to trucking conferences absolutely well here's two type of trucking offers P back right inbound outbound markting there's different channels knocking on door is one channel CO's one channel conference another channel right you don't go to conferences depends on what you're going for if you want to find the most recent technology you go to truck and Conference but if you want to let's say you do plastic you go to plastic conference to find shippers to sell your product to so you got to think really outside the box how do I find where my customer is and then want pitch to I stand out right if you're just a trucking company reach out to them versus someone who I ha nothing but Plastics you come in as an expert yeah so they're more likely to talk to you and trust you because this is your expertise okay let's talk about truck pedia now explain it to me like I'm five because it seems either like a Marketplace or it's like a CRM to what it is exactly tredia it's it's it's both it's an operating system in some way Trucking owners mostly you're too busy focusing I call the $5 task data entry invoicing dispatching record keeping all everything do manually is a system that automate as much of this process as possible so that you always know your profit margin and you automate all those tasks where delegate to your team where you as a leader never lose sight and keeping track of everything on top of that it's a Marketplace Marketplace allow trucking company to share their capacities these are the lanes I run this is how much I want to charge and then Market that to their customers so that they can scale their business how do drivers get paid they get paid per mile right there's normal only three ways of pain driver by m percentage or six salary like yeah salary yeah exactly so different type of way and truck pia has them all oh nice you can track them you can track their pay and that's that's another part of thing that take away a lot of trucking companies a time is Imagine got 50 drivers if you have to randomly calcul every driver once every week that's almost a part-time job of 20 hours per week to do that so tredia automates that whole thing for you did you guys raise money for truck pedia we did there's actually a story to it okay let let's talk about it so I was ready to post a LinkedIn because I wanted to attract customers trucking companies and by sharing my story on how I skilled the company how I find shippers how I increased my profit margin but little did I know by writing stuff on LinkedIn it also brought in investors I was going to VC's uh messaging me probably one hour or two every week so I started talking to them okay sure why not let's see what you got right by talking to VC initially I was you know this is like like everything that you learn you don't know what you're doing what you're talking about you don't even know the valuation you don't even know the valuation you don't know about any just going through I need to on the pitch pitch during every conv I just going through the pitch talking about what I wanted to do at the end of the conversation you always go okay I'll bring back to my team I'll let you know what if there's the next step and you never hear back from the game and that's why realiz wait a minute I'm doing something clearly there's something I'm doing that's not right and I started learning about the power of Storytelling so how can you tell a compelling story that to hook people in fundraising is storytelling it really is how well can you tell a story to make people believe in what you do while you explain what you're working on with such passion is that this is the person right it's not about what you're building it's about who's the one behind it building that to make that happen I ditched the pitch stack entirely bit te just something I sent it to them hey go take a look if you don't if you don't look at them before our conversation they're probably not the VC I want to talk to you but if you already did that on our conversation I shouldn't probably talk about that right so then everything changed when I start talk about story I then now want just like how we talk about earlier right hey second J trucker another want do Trucking and then going to scale from 3 to 50 7% profit margin 20% to20 million right throw those numbers at people to make them oh this is interesting right and they're telling the problem about fixing is I fix it for myself now I'm trying to help all the 90% of other people fix the same thing and through that through through friends refer talking to people uh we got our first check actually very fast within like I I said within one month of people talking to us we got an offer on the check and leveraging that check to get a hire check so that's that's kind of how we raise check I did not put too much effort fortunately into fundraising what's the business model of tredia so is it like a SAS company where you charge both sides like monthly fee to list I love what you mention right tredia is not our favorite broker what really makes tredia unique is we don't mark up any single shipment what we do charge is we don't charge shippers we don't charge Brokers we don't charers who we do charge is trucking company right usally normally around depends on the size of the company uh it's starting probably around $200 to $300 per month be a platform to have everything running your business which is cost effective effective you cannot hire anyone for a few hundred bucks right now regardless from where the system can do much more than what a person can do for your business so it's very from a from a Roi perspective we want to make sure that our customers are getting at least 10 times in return from what we're charging up let's quickly talk about what's the future of truck pedia truck pedia our goal is not just to help trucking company and shipper in the US we want be worldwide right we already have a lot of request from our customers from Mexico shippers want to get their World Shi from Mexico to the US and also from us to Mexico and also to Canada so truck pedia expanding really fast Beyond just the us we onboarding trucking companies fir Mexico to our platform boarding shippers free forwarders are platform so that we can connect them all to facilitate the shift beds anywhere everywhere what advice do you have for other young entrepreneurs starting how should they pick an idea for starting a business and like let's talk about hard work for a second take the most unsexy industry nobody SE though they're right to be the Dr second part is don't wait there's never never a good time to get started just get started doesn't matter what idea is start talking to customers talk to your customers see if they test the idea out but to see if they're willing to pay don't be embarrassed about your first launch of your software even if it's not ready that's okay bring it to Market first if people want to pay for it that means you're solving the right problem if you don't have a paying customer you're not solving the right problem and I think the most common mistake people make is we're in stealth mode to me me like regardless what idea you have your product a year down the road is going to be very different from your original idea right so don't be afraid to to share your idea most people will not copy your idea even if they are it's all about execution how well can you execute how fast can you talk to your customers and how much can you make the impact to change your customer life right just ignore the outside voice and get started all right guys thank you so much for watching we filmed another beautiful interview today be sure to hit a like And subscribe and go follow Justin Lou where can people find you actually Linked In I'm most active on LinkedIn just typing Justin Lou tredia you you see me over there and I share a lot of buys especially for trucking companies for people who have shipping needs connect with me would love to share more resources to help people become more and if you know any shipping company or trucking companies go tell them about truck pedia help someone out all right guys thank you so much I'll see you in the next one