Tyler Thatcher didn't come from transportation. He built his early career in technology, riding the software wave through the dot-com crash, then spent time in private equity before buying a small final mile courier company in 2011, knowing almost nothing about the industry. Days after closing, DHL dropped them, wiping out about 20% of the revenue overnight. That was his introduction to logistics.

Today, Tyler is President of Western Peaks Logistics, operating 17 facilities across six Western states with around 500 employees, and he does delivery work for more than half of the Fortune 20. In this episode, Jason Burns sits down with Tyler to trace how he built a regional powerhouse in the Rocky Mountain West, the market he calls a "black hole on the map" that the national carriers wouldn't touch.

In this conversation:

1. How Tyler expanded market by market, through both building his own facilities and acquiring competitors, always by solving a specific customer problem

2. Why he treats the business as a math problem, tracking route-level profitability every single day to make thin margins work

3. How healthcare and pharma grew to more than half the business, moving lab work, blood, and life-saving prescriptions where the delivery is only a fraction of the total service

4. His honest take on private equity in logistics, why some deals strip out the relationships and humanity that made the business work, and why he was selective about his own partner

5. Why rising insurance premiums nearly ended the company, and how a captive insurance program became a lifeline

6. The technology he's investing in, from AI driver-safety cameras that cut his claims to a data warehouse pulling profitability by route and by hour

7. The culture rules he refuses to break, respect and kindness as non-negotiables, and the leadership lessons that shaped how he runs 500 people

8. Whether you run a small fleet, operate in final mile, or want to understand how a regional carrier scales in a tight-margin industry, this is a detailed look at the business from someone who learned every part of it the hard way.

Wayne Posten spent 32 years in home delivery before building the company he runs today. He started on a truck in Atlantic City in the early '90s, became a contractor, and worked his way up to Chief Operating Officer of his own company and final mile Vice President for a billion-dollar operation. He knows exactly what it costs to be a small operator, because he spent decades as one.

Now, as Managing Partner of Final Mile Leasing, Wayne has built an alternative to the big truck rental companies, one designed specifically for the one-to-ten-truck owner-operator the larger brands overlook. In this episode, Jason Burns sits down with Wayne to unpack why ownership has become so expensive for small operators, and why leasing the right way can be the smarter path.

They get into why the cost of owning a truck, between financing, maintenance, insurance, and downtime, quietly eats into a small operator's margins, and how Final Mile Leasing runs 10 to 15% below the big brands by carrying less overhead. Wayne explains why he vets operators carefully instead of handing a truck to anyone who walks in, the difference between calling an 800 number and reaching a dedicated fleet manager who picks up on a Sunday, and the mentorship side of the business, including the young operator he spent three hours on the phone with who now runs 13 trucks. He also shares what 32 years in the field taught him about helping the next generation of owner-operators get in without sinking.

Whether you're an owner-operator weighing leasing against buying, a small fleet trying to control costs, or someone thinking about getting into final mile, this conversation is a look at the economics of the business from someone who has lived every side of it.

Labor is one of the biggest costs in this industry. In Part 2 of our Remotely+ series, Jason Burns and co-founders Steve Schoeffler and Matt Cohen get into the economics, exactly how the savings work and where the up to 70% actually comes from.

Learn more or find talent: https://www.remotelyplus.com

The founders break down the real math. A customer service or dispatch role runs a flat $2,400 to $2,500 a month through Remotely+, roughly $30,000 a year, with nothing on top. The same role hired domestically can cost $60,000 to $65,000 in salary, plus another 15 to 20% in burden for health insurance, workers comp, and tax match, pushing it past $70,000. That's before the cost they say almost nobody calculates: turnover. Rehiring, job postings, interview time, retraining, and fighting unemployment claims all add up, and none of it shows in the sticker price. They also share why retention on remote professionals has run significantly higher.

The founders walk through the roles they place, from customer service and dispatch to digital marketing, bookkeeping, and even software and CRM specialists, their multi-level vetting and English proficiency testing, and the fact that there's no upfront fee and no obligation if a client doesn't hire anyone.

If back office costs or constant turnover are draining your operation, this episode shows you the alternative and the numbers behind it.

Guests: Steve Schoeffler and Matt Cohen, co-founders of Remotely+

Listen to more episodes of the Last2First Podcast, and find the full video version on the Last2First YouTube channel.

In this episode you will learn how a passion project became the biggest media brand in trucking, how to grow a niche audience that advertisers actually pay for, why relationships open more doors than resumes, and what most brands get wrong when they sponsor a podcast.

In a role reversal, host Jason Burns turns the mic on Rahmel Wattley, founder and CEO of Truck N' Hustle, the number one media platform at the intersection of transportation, logistics, technology, and culture. Rahmel started with a CDL and a classified ad, built and sold a driver staffing company, then launched a podcast from his spare bedroom that has grown to over a million subscribers and more than 50 million downloads. This is his first official sit down interview as a guest.

They get into his path from CDL driver to dispatcher to terminal manager to founder, why he built and sold a driver staffing company, and how relationships drove every step of his career. Rahmel shares the origin of Truck N' Hustle and why he niched down to the business of trucking, the single YouTube video that caught fire and changed everything, and why a small, focused audience beats a big, unfocused one when it comes to monetization. He also breaks down the business of podcasting: why sponsors should be long term partners rather than one time ad buys, and why founders need to get on camera and be real instead of hiding behind vanilla, over produced ads. He closes with his last to first moment, meeting his wife, and why the whole thing has always been about the people.

Labor is one of the biggest costs in this industry. In Part 1 of this three-part series, Jason Burns sits down with Steve Schoeffler and Matt Cohen, co-founders of Remotely+, to break down how nearshore talent from Central and South America can cut hiring costs by up to 70%.

Learn more or find talent: https://www.remotelyplus.com

Remotely+ places bilingual, screened, and vetted remote professionals from countries like Colombia, Panama, Honduras, Bolivia, and Argentina. What sets it apart from traditional offshore staffing is time zone alignment, so your team works your hours instead of the graveyard shift, savings of up to 70% versus hiring the same role onshore, elite professionals with high retention, no long-term contracts with fast replacements if a hire isn't the right fit, and dedicated performance coaches who run weekly check-ins. Roles commonly placed include customer support, sales, bookkeeping, marketing, dispatch, and other back-office tasks, making it a fit for logistics, warehousing, manufacturing, and any operation looking to reduce overhead without sacrificing quality.

Matt Cohen spent 28 years in the promotional products space and used nearshore talent for nearly a decade before selling his company in 2025. Steve Schoeffler built and scaled large HR and staffing firms, selling one to private equity in 2018. Together with logistics operator Mike Frankel, they founded Remotely+ to bring nearshore staffing to the small and mid-sized companies the big agencies overlook.

In this episode, they cover why the real cost of labor isn't the wage but the turnover that never shows up on your P&L, how COVID permanently changed trust in remote work, and why once operators make the switch, they don't go back. This is Part 1. In Part 2, the founders get into the economics and exactly how the savings break down.

Listen to more episodes of the Last2First Podcast, and find the full video version on the Last2First YouTube channel.

In this episode you will learn how to build client relationships that outlast contracts, when to say no to a customer to protect your business, how a national delivery network is testing robotics and AI, and what it really takes to stay relevant as the industry changes.

Host Jason Burns sits down with Kevin Truett, EVP of Business Development at Speedy Delivery, a company that started with one blue truck and now runs white glove final mile and pool distribution across the country. Kevin is also a former pastor, an author, a professor, and a humanitarian who has built water wells and schools in East Africa, and this conversation moves between building a delivery business and building a life.

They get into what pool distribution actually is and why it changed the business, why white glove and big and bulky is the hardest work in last mile, and Kevin's Four Rs framework for relationships: real, relatable, relevant, relational. He explains why saying no to a customer, and even firing one, protects the business, how Speedy is testing warehouse robotics and what automation means downstream, and his take on faith, purpose, and staying relevant as the game changes. He closes with the Las Vegas story behind his book Upgrade and the last to first mindset that drives it.

This episode is brought to you by CXT Software, the intelligent delivery management platform for courier and last mile logistics, helping teams automate dispatching, routing, and customer updates.

Alex Winston started Reefer Van Network in 2022 as a piece of internal software. Four years later it moves hundreds of loads a day across roughly 400 refrigerated trucks and 11,000 total drivers, essentially an on demand network for small, temperature sensitive, time critical freight. He built it in a niche most large carriers ignore, and he came to it from an unlikely place: a career as a lawyer.

In this episode of the Last2First Podcast, host Jason Burns sits down with Alex Winston, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Reefer Van Network, to talk cold chain, niche strategy, and where the industry is heading. They get into how a software idea became an on demand network of 11,000 trucks, why staying in a narrow niche beats competing with the giants, what the 9-0 Supreme Court broker liability ruling actually means and who really loses from it, what GDP cold chain certification takes, and how Alex plans for the moment a refrigeration unit fails on the road. They close with a grounded take on AI and jobs, and Alex's own last to first moment: how starting a family gave him his sense of purpose.

Most logistics companies treat marketing as a reactive afterthought, something you scramble to prep before a trade show. Stephanie Alter argues that mindset is now costing them business they never even see. Roughly 80% of logistics buyers research and vet partners online before any contact, and a growing share start that discovery inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. If your company is not getting cited in those answers, you are being filtered out before the first conversation.

In this episode of the Last2First Podcast, host Jason Burns sits down with Stephanie Alter, founder and CEO of Alter Marketing, a niche agency focused exclusively on freight, transportation, and logistics. Before marketing, Stephanie spent over a decade teaching in New York City public schools, and she credits those soft skills for her success today. She breaks down how last mile and logistics companies should actually approach marketing, and why the ones who move now will own discovery for years.

They get into why 80% of buyers research online before any contact, how to get your brand cited in AI search through answer engine optimization, how to think about marketing as a percentage of revenue, why email delivers the highest ROI, and why the content marketing flywheel takes 9 to 12 months to work but compounds for years. Stephanie also makes the case for real people over stock photos, why founders need to show up on camera, and shares the proof point of a company that paused its full content spend for 18 months while the engine kept delivering the same volume and quality of leads. She closes with her own last to first moment: saying yes to the second account and learning to lean in before she had all the answers.

When Tom Jowers joined ADL in 2003, the company could not afford to pay him. He worked for free for a year. By the time he and his partners sold to private equity in March 2022, ADL had grown from roughly 4 million dollars in top line revenue to just shy of 50 million, with 18 offices across the Southeast. Today, as Regional President of ADL Final Mile, he helps run a network of more than 80 facilities across 27 states with over 3,000 independent contractor drivers.

In this episode of the Last2First Podcast, host Jason Burns sits down with Thomas "Tom" Jowers for a direct conversation on auto parts logistics, private equity, and what it actually takes to build something at scale.

They cover how two companies were acquired on the same day and merged into ADL Final Mile, a full breakdown of the automotive vertical, why staying disciplined about which verticals to chase mattered more than chasing growth, what private equity actually looks for in an acquisition, the agent trap that can quietly damage a company's valuation at exit, where industry consolidation is heading, and Tom's predictions on AI, autonomous vehicles, EVs, and virtual warehousing. He closes with the moment that shaped his career: taking the risk to work for free because he believed in where it would lead.

Connect with Tom Jowers: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-d-jowers-23224316/
Connect with host Jason Burns: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonburns-last2first/

Join the L2F Huddle, where final mile leaders connect and grow: https://www.l2fhuddle.com

Follow Last2First:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3gDS58wo6IWeLl48LHukdP
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/last2firstpodcast/

About Last2First: Hosted by Jason Burns, Last2First brings real conversations with the owners, operators, and experts shaping the future of logistics. This is where delivery businesses go from last to first.

From bartender to President of a 700-driver courier operation - Liz Klein shares exactly how she did it.

Liz Klein went from bartending and printing her résumé onto a CD at the public library to running Crossroads Couriers a super-regional operation with 700 independent-contractor drivers across five markets and nine acquisitions. In this Last2First episode, she and host Jason Burns get specific about how that happened. Liz explains why she stopped competing on price, how she keeps any single client under 10% of revenue to survive account losses, and why doing deliveries herself made her a better salesperson. She breaks down the vertical-market focus that pulled Crossroads out of the "jack of all trades" trap, how implementing EOS/Traction fixed the company's goal-setting and culture, and how she now uses AI to write SOPs and analyze 30,000-line RFPs. The back half gets honest about the industry: private equity's effect on drivers and rates, the gig economy undercutting professional couriers, the DDU-to-e-commerce shift, and why she believes the industry has to start valuing itself. She closes with her framework for tough conversations and the Valentine's Day floral run that shifted her from thinking like a salesperson to thinking like a leader.

• How Crossroads grew from 3 drivers to 700 independent contractors
• Why the best salespeople come from operations
• The vertical-market strategy that keeps any one client under 10% of the business
• Why Liz will never be the low-price leader again and how to protect margins
• How the book Traction (EOS) saved the organization
• Using AI (Claude and ChatGPT) for SOPs, training plans, and 30,000-line RFPs
• The truth about private equity, the race to the bottom, and the gig economy
• Her framework for tough conversations: no one you terminate should ever be surprised
• The Valentine's Day that turned her from a salesperson into a leader