Dock Stars

Out of space with no room to expand? Amy Conn buys for Precision Fabrics Group and explains what earns her business, and what loses it.

Most Dock Stars episodes hear from the people who run the yard. This one comes from the other side of the table. Amy Conn (Procurement Manager, Precision Fabrics Group, Greensboro, North Carolina) buys for a company that makes engineered fabrics for surgical gowns, wound dressings, filtration, and parachutes. PFG is a customer of B&W Trailer Rentals, part of Warehouse on Wheels.

Dr. Mark Mann asks her what earns a supplier her business. From there: how she scores suppliers, why she puts price at about 50% of the deciding factor, why poor communication is the fastest way to lose her, how PFG uses storage trailers as warehouse locations on its yard as large fabric rolls move between its Greensboro plant and distribution center, why she values right-sizing that fleet month to month instead of taking on a long-term lease, how she plans when input costs keep moving, what separates a partner from a vendor when something goes wrong, and the advice she gives anyone starting out in procurement. Short-term storage. Long-term strategy.

What you'll learn:

• How Amy weights her supplier scorecard: on-time delivery about 40%, customer service about 20, quality about 20, plus a risk factor for single-source suppliers
• Why she puts price at about 50% of the deciding factor, and what she calls the "bait and hook"
• Why poor communication is the fastest way for a supplier to lose her
• How PFG treats each storage trailer on its yard as a warehouse location, tracked on a grid board
• Why rolls she describes as 13 feet wide and about 3,500 pounds are hard on storage trailers, and why a repair crew on the yard within the hour matters to her
• Why right-sizing a storage fleet month to month made sense for a site with no room to knock out a wall and expand
• What a partner does on a bad day that a vendor doesn't
• Her advice for new procurement pros: learn the business before you learn the numbers|

Chapters:
(00:00) Precision Fabrics Group, Greensboro

(01:31) How procurement found Amy

(06:29) What procurement really does

(08:57) What PFG makes

(12:38) Three sites, constant movement

(16:55) No room to expand

(18:33) Storage trailers as warehouse locations

(21:35) Inside the supplier scorecard

(24:27) Bad news beats no news

(25:02) Planning when costs keep moving

(29:09) The pandemic swing

(31:06) Where capacity comes from

(32:48) What she didn't know about trailers

(33:33) Partner versus vendor

(34:19) What we could do better

(35:33) Who else should use trailers

(36:09) Lightning round with Amy

Subscribe for more logistics and operations strategy:
@WarehouseOnWheels

Connect with Warehouse on Wheels on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/wowtrailers/

Show notes and episode resources:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/podcast

Learn more about Warehouse on Wheels:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/

Record container volume, negative rent growth, and hurricane season. Shane Walker runs the busiest port market in the company.

Port Houston just posted its best six months in history at 2.23 million containers, with June alone up 18% as tariffs pushed freight off the west coast and into the Gulf. Shane Walker, general manager at Advantage Trailer Rentals in Houston, can tell you exactly when that shows up in his yard, and it is not the week the headlines run.

Dr. Mark Mann opens on a market full of contradictions: industrial vacancy in the 6 to 7% range, asking rents negative for the first time in more than a decade, oil and gas employment down almost 7% year over year, and roughly $50 billion in active petrochemical capital projects. From there: why cheaper warehouse space still does not compete with month to month capacity, the one month lag between a port surge and a phone call, what a Texas customer expects that an Ohio customer does not, and the advice about a fishing rod that he still uses on the worst days.

What you'll learn

• Why a port surge takes about a month to reach a storage yard, and how Shane uses the news as a forecasting calendar
• Why negative rent growth on 250,000 square foot Class A space does not threaten a month to month storage product
• How a loosening warehouse market still leaves customers locked into year long or three year leases they only half fill
• What Texas customers expect before they sign, from a one trailer deal to a two hundred trailer deal
• Why nearly every first phone call is an emergency, and the one question customers cannot usually answer
• How to get ahead of Q4 retail buildup instead of calling with your hair on fire
• Whether volume actually moves the rate, and why transport and back end support matter more than the per trailer number
• The real difference between storage and cartage, explained in one question about crossing a public road
• What a direct hurricane hit means for a Houston yard, and why disaster relief is guaranteed money you cannot build a business on

Chapters

00:00 Record Containers, Negative Rents
01:54 Liquor Store To Trailer Yard
03:18 Ready For The GM Chair
03:58 Option Paralysis
05:29 Nine Cities Slammed Together
06:31 Cheap Warehouses Still Lose
08:02 The One Month Port Lag
09:37 Hurricane Season Math
11:26 Who Rents Trailers In Houston
12:18 Texas Wants A Handshake
13:09 Every First Call Is An Emergency
14:20 Getting Ahead Of Q4
15:51 Retail And The I-45 Corridor
17:08 What Flexibility Actually Means
18:39 The Twelve Year Customer
19:38 What Does A Trailer Cost
20:26 Does Volume Move The Rate
22:03 Pricing Against Across Town
24:20 Storage Versus Cartage Explained
25:45 The Mission In His Own Words
27:12 Three Things That Decide It
28:03 Lightning Round: Bring A Fishing Rod

Subscribe for more logistics and operations strategy:
@WarehouseOnWheels

Connect with Warehouse on Wheels on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/wowtrailers/

Show notes and episode resources:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/podcast

Learn more about Warehouse on Wheels:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/

Spot rates are up 25% and rejections tripled. Robb Foltz explains why that shows up as a storage problem, not a trucking one.

Robb Foltz went to school for audio production and planned to tour with rock bands. He now runs 12 Warehouse on Wheels markets across the North Region, from Evansville and Indianapolis to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago, and he is the call that gets made when a load goes sideways.

Dr. Mark Mann opens on the backdrop: truckload spot rates running 20 to 25% above last year, tender rejections near 14% against 4.75% a year ago, diesel at $5.35, and an FMCSA enforcing rules at roadside that sat quiet for a decade. From there: why storage demand tracks inventory decisions instead of freight rates, the four things that separate a great general manager from a mediocre one, the question customers almost always get wrong on the first phone call, and why complacency worries a career safety guy more than any compliance item on the list.

What you'll learn

• Why storage demand moves with how much inventory shippers hold, not with spot rates, and what shippers do when capacity tightens
• How buffer stock, early and bulk ordering, and drop trailer programs all end in freight that has to sit somewhere
• The four traits Robb looks for in a general manager, including a genuine disgust for the word no
• The difference between a storage trailer and a cartage trailer, and why customers ask for the wrong one
• Why "what does a trailer cost per month" is a harder question than it sounds
• Where diesel at $5.35 a gallon actually hits the operation, from deliveries and spotting to the shop
• Why there is no off season across 12 markets, and how weather changes the job without stopping it
• Why complacency, not hours of service or cargo security, is the compliance risk that keeps a safety veteran up at night

Chapters

00:00 Spot Rates, Rejections, And Diesel
01:42 Rock Bands, Then Dispatch
03:18 Household Goods To A Whole Region
04:35 Trailers Are Not All The Same
05:12 Every Market Is Unique
06:07 Touring The North Region
09:12 Four Traits Of A Great GM
11:14 The Call Customers Get Wrong
11:48 Why There Is No Off Season
13:00 Winter In Detroit And Cleveland
13:39 What Does A Trailer Cost
15:12 Tight Market, More Buffer Stock
16:12 Where Fuel Prices Actually Hit
16:59 Holding The Line On Rate
17:33 One Load, Start To Finish
18:27 A Human Answers Every Time
19:08 Complacency Is The Real Risk
21:26 Warehouse Space Without The Warehouse
22:23 Character, Drive, And A Little Humor
23:11 Availability, Service, Partnership
23:48 Ownership On A Bad Week
25:06 Lightning Round: Toughest Yard

Subscribe for more logistics and operations strategy:
@WarehouseOnWheels

Show notes and episode resources:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/podcast

Learn more about Warehouse on Wheels:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/

Out of space and staring down a five year warehouse lease? Brent Meadors sells industrial storage capacity, not trailers.

Most people hear trailer rental and picture a moving truck. Brent Meadors (COO, Warehouse on Wheels) would rather not use the word trailer at all. He describes the business as industrial storage capacity, an alternative to warehouse space, delivered 450 square feet at a time and picked back up the moment you are done with it.

Dr. Mark Mann opens on diesel, which moved 74 cents in 21 days, and the warehouse manager in Spartanburg, South Carolina trying to figure out where to put 40 pallets. From there: why price is the wrong first question, what separates a storage trailer from a cartage trailer on your invoice, why buyers freeze the week the headlines move, and where the value "people matter" actually came from. It closes on the part nobody expects from a rental company, which is what happens to a trailer that is already ten years old.

What you'll learn

• Why Brent describes the business as industrial storage capacity rather than trailer rental, and what changes when you frame it that way
• How 450 square feet at a time compares to a warehouse lease where landlords want five years minimum and ideally seven to ten
• The difference between a storage trailer and a cartage trailer, and why it changes what you pay
• Why Brent will not answer the price question first, and what discovery he runs instead
• How sales pipelines fill and then freeze in step with the headlines, and what that pattern looks like in the order data
• Why one master agreement covers capacity at every location in a national network, with no new paperwork
• The full life of a semi trailer: ten years over the road, then rebuilt and rented for roughly another thirty
• How Warehouse on Wheels scores its own environmental footprint, and why 51 out of 100 is not the grade it sounds like

Chapters

00:00 Fuel Prices And 40 Pallets
01:52 Twenty Years In Fleet Management
03:19 What COVID Changed Forever
04:54 Not Trailer Rental, Storage Capacity
07:39 Storage Versus Cartage Explained
10:54 Why Price Comes Last
12:56 Storage Trailers Versus Warehouse Lease
15:42 Reading Orders And Headlines
24:34 Where People Matter Came From
34:19 Scale, Contracts, And Doing Nothing
38:24 The Forty Year Trailer
47:31 Lightning Round: Strongest Market

Subscribe for more logistics and operations strategy:
@WarehouseOnWheels

Connect with Warehouse on Wheels on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/wowtrailers/

Show notes and episode resources:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/podcast

Learn more about Warehouse on Wheels:
https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/

The show has a new name. What started as The WOW Factor is now Dock Stars, because the people worth pointing at are the operators, not the company.

To open it, we went back to the first conversation we ever recorded. Dr. Mark Mann sits down with Jonathan Brooks (CEO, Warehouse on Wheels) for the origin story: a finance and private equity career, an MBA finished during the Arthur Andersen collapse, and a warehouse so overflowed that Brooks was renting 150 storage trailers as somebody else's customer before he ever built the business.

What follows is the operating logic underneath everything this show covers. Brooks explains elastic warehousing with a real deployment, walks through the math a GM should put in front of a customer's CFO, and describes why he runs general managers as local market CEOs with their own P&L.

Then he turns the mic on the host, and Dr. Mann lays out what he wanted this show to be. That answer is the reason it is now called Dock Stars.

What you’ll learn:

• Why Brooks was a Warehouse on Wheels customer before he was its founder, renting 150 trailers to absorb container overflow
• What "elastic warehousing" means in practice, using a plastics manufacturer that flexes between 900 and 300 trailers
• How a customer parks finished goods 300 yards from the plant and cross-docks straight to the 3PL
• The math a GM takes to a customer's CFO: two to four times less per square foot, a 30-day evergreen contract against a 5, 7, or 10 year lease
• Why Brooks structures GMs as local market CEOs with a discrete P&L and an equity position
• What happened when a customer's production line exploded and trailers rolled within hours
• The mentor feedback that changed how Brooks leads, and why every new hire gets his personal cell number
• Dr. Mark Mann's three goals for the show: unify the network, preserve tribal knowledge, and move customers from reactive to strategic

Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini have more in common with warehouse logistics than you'd think. In this episode of The WOW Factor Podcast, Dr. Mark Mann sits down with Rodney Barge, Associate Technical Director at the Atlanta Opera, to break down how a world-class arts organization moves 20-foot castle walls, delicate costumes, period furniture, and full theatrical sets — on immovable deadlines, with zero room for error.

Rodney manages 45,000 sq ft of warehouse space and eight docks in Austell, Georgia — and it still isn't enough. He explains why he plans backwards from opening night, why Georgia humidity dictates what can and can't live in a storage trailer, how mobile storage / drop trailers from Advantage Trailer Rentals let the opera say yes to a pandemic big tent series, a new film studio, and the upcoming 56,000 sq ft Molly Blank Center for Opera and the Arts — plus the one storage myth he wants retired for good.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why 45,000 sq ft of warehouse space still runs out (and what to do about it)

Load-out day: "the worst game of Tetris you can ever imagine"

How to plan production logistics backwards from a fixed opening night

Why he always books one more truck than he needs

What Georgia humidity means for storing painted scenery and costumes

The 24-hour "hair on fire" call: two trailers, next day, no drama

The first three things to audit in your yard (lot capacity, a reliable driver with a day cab, one open dock)

Roll-up door vs. swing door — why inches matter on an 8-ft scenic flat

The biggest myth in mobile storage: "it all fits"

CHAPTERS

00:00 Wagner, Mozart, and mobile storage

01:03 From Cirque du Soleil to the Atlanta Opera

02:29 His most memorable production

03:45 Why 45,000 sq ft still isn't enough

05:17 Load-out day: "the worst game of Tetris"

06:33 Planning backwards from opening night

08:17 Georgia humidity and what you can't store

09:22 The big tent series and a new film studio

11:18 Two trailers in 24 hours

13:43 The Molly Blank Center transition

15:14 What to audit in your yard first

16:26 Why entertainment never throws anything away

18:14 The biggest myth: "it all fits"

If you manage production, warehousing, events, or supply chain operations — and you're tired of paying for fixed space you don't always need — this one's for you.

Subscribe for more logistics + operations strategy: @WarehouseOnWheels

Learn more: https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/

What does it actually take to keep people safe at work — every shift, across every location, in every language?

In this episode of The WOW Factor, Dr. Mark Mann talks with Brennan Neville, Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Manager at Warehouse on Wheels, about building a workplace safety culture where "safety first, safety always" is more than a slogan. Brennan leads safety, health, and training across 40+ locations and 40,000+ trailers spanning the US, Canada, and Mexico.

They cover the real work of EHS: investigating incidents down to the root cause, the difference between leading and lagging indicators, why close calls and near misses deserve attention, and the worst injury Brennan has seen — a grinder kickback — and the action plan it sparked. Brennan also breaks down what a strong PPE standard and in-house training program look like, how safety gets standardized across countries and languages, and how OSHA, DOT, and FMCSA compliance differ across North America.

If you care about safety leadership, operations, or building a team culture where people genuinely look out for one another, this one's packed with practical insight.

Topics: workplace safety · safety culture · EHS leadership · OSHA compliance · PPE standards · incident investigation · safety training · trailer & fleet maintenance · DOT & FMCSA regulations

Warehouse space in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is scarce, expensive, and locked into multi-year leases — so how do the region's biggest operations keep freight moving? Dr. Mark Mann talks with Kelly McCane, GM at FITS Trailer Rentals, about the "warehouse on wheels" model that's quietly powering one of North America's most critical freight hubs.

Home to CVG (the 6th-largest cargo airport on the continent), the $1.5B Amazon Air Hub, and the DHL Global Super Hub, the Ohio Valley runs on tight margins and even tighter space. Kelly breaks down how mobile storage trailers help companies avoid demurrage and detention fees, dodge expensive warehouse leases, and flex instantly when 152 rail containers show up early.

In this episode:

• The "where, when, and how long" of warehouse space problems
• Scaling from 20 to 95 trailers in 7 days
• Cutting $160K/year in port demurrage charges
• Warehouse lease vs. mobile storage: the real cost-per-square-foot math
• Keeping warehouse crews safe in peak season — and the strangest things ever stored in a trailer

A must-listen for supply chain pros, warehouse managers, logistics leaders, and anyone curious how global commerce moves on the ground in the Tri-State.

Evansville, Indiana and St. Louis, Missouri are two of the Midwest’s most resilient manufacturing markets—but when production disruptions hit, safety audits tighten up, or facilities consolidate, warehouse space disappears fast. Inbound materials keep coming, aisles get blocked, and yard flow breaks down.

In this episode of The WOW Factor Podcast, Dr. Mark Mann sits down with Brian Cain, General Manager at Meisler Trailer Rentals (Evansville + St. Louis), to share a real-world playbook for managing warehouse overflow using mobile storage / drop trailers—plus the “whiteboard math” that helps teams avoid expensive long-term warehouse leases.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

The 3 recurring space headaches in Midwest manufacturing: production pileups, safety/fire marshal pressure, and consolidation overflow

A true “hair on fire” response: a Toyota plant shutdown and how overflow capacity got deployed fast—at night

Why trailers aren’t a band-aid: turning mobile storage into a repeatable JIT + seasonal capacity calendar

The real cost comparison: warehouse leases (plus triple-net/NNN overhead) vs ~450 sq ft of flexible trailer capacity

How teams reduce demurrage (often ~$200/day) by cross-loading containers into trailers and returning equipment quickly

Simple yard organization changes that improve speed and safety (full vs empty zones, staging discipline)

If you manage manufacturing, distribution, or supply chain operations in the Midwest and you’re trying to stay agile without paying for fixed space you don’t always use—this episode is for you.

Subscribe for more logistics + operations strategy:

@WarehouseOnWheels

Learn more:

https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/

Denver’s industrial market is shifting fast—vacancy is up, but functional space is still hard to find. When operations outgrow the floor, yard flow breaks down, docks clog, and inventory timing gaps turn into daily fire drills.

In this episode of The WOW Factor Podcast, Dr. Mark Mann sits down with Angelo Cruz (GM, Colorado Trailer Rentals — Denver + Colorado Springs) to share a practical playbook for handling warehouse overflow with mobile storage: month-to-month flexibility, faster capacity adds, and real-world examples—including a customer scaling to 110 trailers on-site.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

The 3 biggest “space headaches” Angelo sees in Colorado: outgrowing space, yard flow, and timing gaps

Why storage trailers aren’t a band-aid—they can be a long-term supply chain asset

How to avoid expensive multi-year warehouse leases (and only pay for what you use)

A real surge story: “one trailer a day” turning into 15 trailers—and moving overflow to a storage yard

How teams reduce detention/demurrage by cross-loading containers into trailers

The first step before calling: walk the yard, find dead space, and identify bottlenecks

If you manage warehouse ops, distribution, retail, or inbound flow in the Rocky Mountain region, this episode is a tactical guide to building flexible capacity without locking into long-term overhead.

Subscribe for more logistics + operations strategy:

@WarehouseOnWheels

Find Colorado Trailer Rentals / Warehouse on Wheels:

https://www.warehouseonwheels.com/