Last2First Podcast

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

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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

Most fans know Earl Bennett as one of the greatest receivers in SEC history.

In just three seasons at Vanderbilt University, Earl became the SEC's all-time receptions leader before being drafted by the Chicago Bears and spending six years in the NFL.

But this episode isn't just about football.

It's about resilience, reinvention, and what happens when you refuse to let your circumstances define your future.

In this episode of Last to First, Jason Burns sits down with his longtime friend, Dr. Earl Bennett, to discuss his journey from humble beginnings in Birmingham, Alabama, to Vanderbilt University, the NFL, and ultimately back to Vanderbilt as Executive General Manager of Athletics.

Earl shares lessons on leadership, education, personal growth, life after professional sports, and helping shape the future of college athletics in the NIL era.

Whether you're a sports fan, Vanderbilt supporter, athlete, entrepreneur, or someone pursuing your own next chapter, this conversation is packed with insight and inspiration.

Topics Covered:
🏈 Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama
🏈 Becoming Vanderbilt's all-time receptions leader
🏈 NFL career with the Chicago Bears
🎓 Returning to complete his education
🎓 Earning a Master's Degree and PhD
🎓 Life after football
🏆 Leadership and the future of Vanderbilt Athletics
💡 Lessons on resilience, reinvention, and success

Subscribe for more conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, and individuals who have transformed challenges into opportunities.

#EarlBennett #VanderbiltFootball #ChicagoBears #NFL #CollegeFootball #Vanderbilt #Leadership #PersonalDevelopment #LastToFirstPodcast

At FMF360 during the CLDA 2024 Conference, Jason Burns sits down with four of the industry's most respected leaders for an unfiltered discussion on growth, technology, acquisitions, driver recruitment, customer pricing, profitability, and the future of logistics. 

What does it take to build, scale, and lead a successful final mile delivery company in today's market? Is final-mile the same as TWO years ago?

Featuring:

✅ Rosslyn Ellerbe – Express Errands & Logistics
✅ Matt Silverberg – Associated Couriers
✅ John Oren – Hotshot Final Mile & Two Year Technologies
✅ Sean Spector – Dropoff

Topics include:

• Scaling from startup to multi-million-dollar logistics company
• COVID lessons and business pivots
• Customer pricing strategies
• Driver recruitment and retention
• Acquisition growth vs organic growth
• Technology investments and delivery platforms
• Independent contractor challenges
• Insurance cost increases
• Drone delivery opportunities
• Final mile industry trends for 2025 and beyond

Whether you're a courier owner, logistics executive, transportation entrepreneur, or final mile operator, this conversation delivers valuable insights from leaders managing thousands of drivers and hundreds of millions in delivery volume.

Subscribe for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of final mile delivery.

#LastMile #FinalMile #Logistics #Transportation #SupplyChain #CourierBusiness #DeliveryBusiness #CLDA #FMF360 #Dropoff #AssociatedCouriers #HealthcareLogistics

What if the hardest part of building a logistics company was not the drivers or the routes, but getting a pharmacy to trust you with their patients' medications? Kunal Vyas figured that out, and then he built the infrastructure so nobody else has to.

Kunal started as a pharmacy technician counting pills at 26. By 29, he had a logistics problem he could not outsource his way out of. So he built the technology himself, sold the pharmacy for a strong exit, and launched DeliverStat and RxMile. Today, RxMile is integrated with platforms covering 85 to 90 percent of the 22,000 independent pharmacies in the US, and was acquired by Red Sail Technologies in May 2025.

In this episode, Kunal breaks down:

• Why prescription delivery is the most compliance-heavy segment in logistics

• How RxMile integrates with pharmacy management systems so couriers never have to touch the software

• The courier network model and how operators can plug in without reinventing the wheel

• How DeliverStat does 5,000 deliveries a day in two counties in South Florida

• The mindset shift that changed everything after the acquisition

If you are a courier operator looking for a sticky, high-value niche with real infrastructure behind it, this episode is for you.

Learn more at deliverstat.com or reach out directly: [email protected]

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📌 Shoutout to our Sponsors!
Dropoff Inc.
https://www.dropoff.com/
[email protected]
+1 888-376-7633

GigSafe
https://www.gigsafe.com/
+1 407-496-9882

Deliver Different
https://deliverdifferent.com/

SCI
https://sciadmin.com/

CXT
https://cxtsoftware.com/

Most final mile operators think their IC contracts protect them. They do not.
Transportation lawyer Doug Grawe breaks down what actually keeps your business safe and what quietly puts it at risk.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Intro and Welcome
03:45 - Doug's Path Into Transportation Law
09:30 - No Single IC Definition
17:00 - How TPAs Actually Work
25:00 - Government Audits: What to Do
34:30 - Arbitration and the Supreme Court
44:00 - Lease-to-Purchase Programs
52:00 - Uniforms and Control Issues
58:30 - Two Things That Protect You Most
1:02:00 - Where to Find Doug

Doug Grawe is the founder and CEO of The Grawe Group, a legal and consulting firm focused on the transportation industry. With 15 years as in-house general counsel for a major trucking company, Doug now works with carriers, DSPs, and final mile operators to protect their independent contractor programs from misclassification claims, government audits, and legal exposure.

In this episode, Jason and Doug cover the full landscape of IC legal risk in final mile delivery, from the basics of classification tests to Supreme Court cases currently in progress.

Key takeaways:
There are up to five different definitions of "independent contractor" per state, varying by agency
TPAs are a powerful tool, but only if you actively use them to build proof
Government inquiries, even small ones, should go to a designated person immediately
Lease-to-purchase programs carry hidden legal risk if the economics do not hold up
The two things that reduce your legal risk more than anything: treat people well and pay them fairly

Connect with Doug at thegrawegroup.com. Listen to The Grawe Pod for more expert content on transportation law, finance, and operations.

📌 Shoutout to our Sponsors!
Dropoff Inc.
https://www.dropoff.com/
[email protected]
+1 888-376-7633

GigSafe
https://www.gigsafe.com/
+1 407-496-9882

Deliver Different
https://deliverdifferent.com/

SCI
https://sciadmin.com/

CXT
https://cxtsoftware.com/

Matt Silverberg walked into a failing $10M courier company with six months of runway, $100,000 in monthly losses, and zero logistics experience. He walked out years later as CCO of a $250M global healthcare logistics powerhouse. This episode is the full story.

In this conversation, Matt takes us from his days as a clinical psychology student covering radiopharmaceutical routes at night to building one of the most recognized brands in last-mile healthcare logistics. He breaks down the M&A strategy that took Associated Couriers from $30M to $100M in two years, what it really costs to over-promote loyal employees, and why he believes most business owners leave serious money on the table when they exit.

Episode highlights:
• The $2,500 payroll crisis: how Matt handled $350,000 in payroll due with almost nothing in the bank

• Special Permit 8308: the rare certification only 3 companies in the US hold and why it matters for the radiopharmaceutical market

• The M&A playbook: how Matt structured rapid acquisitions across the US and Europe

• Exit planning: what buyers look for and how to position for a premium valuation years in advance

• Why loyal employees can become your biggest operational liability if you are not paying attention

If you are building a courier or logistics company and thinking about what comes next, this episode is required listening.

Connect with Matt and explore exit strategy support at the L2F Huddle: l2fhuddle.com

📌 Shoutout to our Sponsors!
Dropoff Inc.
https://www.dropoff.com/
[email protected]
+1 888-376-7633

GigSafe
https://www.gigsafe.com/
+1 407-496-9882

Deliver Different
https://deliverdifferent.com/

SCI
https://sciadmin.com/

CXT
https://cxtsoftware.com/