Trinity Logistics Grew From $100M to $1B Under Doug Potvin’s People-First Leadership

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Doug Potvin, the Chief Financial Officer at Trinity Logistics. Established in 1979 and headquartered in Seaford, Delaware, Trinity offers freight solutions on a global scale.

remaining focused on core values like company culture, innovation, and outstanding customer service. Their commitment to excellence has helped them grow into one of the top logistics companies in the nation, boasting over 400 team members across more than six locations and over 150 agent offices located throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and overseas. Doug has served as CFO since 2006, ensuring the company’s financial integrity

also leading diverse teams in finance, administrative functions, risk management, IT, and marketing throughout his career. He also plays a key role in identifying opportunities for acquisitions and partnerships. With years of experience under his belt, Doug brings a wealth of knowledge to the table, balanced by a genuine passion for supporting people and processes that fuel Trinity’s success. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

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One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Now results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CFO of Trinity Logistics, Doug Potfin. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Doug Potvin (02:12)
Hey, Anthony, I appreciate the invite and such and look forward to this conversation.

Anthony Codispoti (02:17)
So Doug, you’ve been with Trinity for nearly 20 years. Did you always work in the transportation industry or is there something that came before this?

Doug Potvin (02:24)
Now, something came before this. I worked for the federal government for about six years prior. I graduated from college and small college, 800 people. And I’d worked for the government during my summer months. And prior to my senior year, offered me a job and that was in the seafood industry, financing seafood industry. After six and half years with the federal government, I worked 10 years for a clam company on the Eastern shore of Virginia who was sold to SeaWatch in Milford, Delaware.

And then I started my work with Trinity Logistics, located in Seaford,

Anthony Codispoti (02:57)
What were some of the lessons that you learned from working in the seafood industry that you were able to carry forward to your work in Trinity?

Doug Potvin (03:03)
Well,

I would say to Seaford, the job for 10 and a half years that I had with the Clam Company was basically family owned, had a father, mother, son. I was part of the executive team, became general manager down there. We were a flat organization. We didn’t have a plant manager. And so basically I did everything at that plant, everything at that company, with the exception of sales. And the son and I were both collaboratively working on the manufacturing in the back.

and how diverse it was from HR to insurance. mean, it’s where I cut my teeth for 10 and a half years and really learned. First thing I did when I got for the job was read the insurance, which was about four inches thick because they’re just going through an insurance renewal. And so the most diverse thing I did with them is I actually ran the farming operations. We got rid of race water. So I would purchase seed, contract the seed out or contract to harvest out. So again, just went to plant. It was just such a fun job learning.

I went about and I asked a lot of questions a lot of different people so that I’d get a broad understanding what was going on but that fried at the base of going forward in any career on that was just broad knowledge.

Anthony Codispoti (04:13)
you get to

wear a lot of different hats while you were there, which is something that you continue to do today as I understand.

Doug Potvin (04:19)
Correct. And what you do is simply, mean, and then what I find myself is I’m a very curious individual, a lot of questions, want to know why they operate. I’m also very analytical. And so again, it’s such that I question when we start doing things, because again, it doesn’t make sense. Does the analysis hold true? And so I want to know from that perspective. And it was really fun that once they could see that I wanted to continue to do more, it just continues going forward like that. And that’s what I’m saying. If you’re curious and you want to

continue to exceed in what you’re doing, just ask. They’ll be more than happy to give you additional responsibilities and roles as they see you’re able to do it.

Anthony Codispoti (04:57)
And see, that’s interesting to me. And I find that from a lot of type A, like highly successful people where constantly raising their hand, I want to understand how this works. I want to learn more. I want to be part of this. And there are some people that seem to be, I don’t know if they’re wired differently or maybe the fear inside of them is just stronger. Like, I don’t understand that. That’s scary to

Doug Potvin (05:18)
Well, you know, I think it’s interesting. would say, and this is this is one of the things we’re all wired differently. We are all wired differently and we’re going to have made for a purpose at a time and such. And so it just so happens falls in the same type of things. Sometimes there’s fear and apprehension. Those people may be solid as something else. And it doesn’t in their mantra to do that. But somewhere along the line, you can also say, hey, it’s also about me and I do want to grow and reach out of your comfort zone. That’s the biggest fear.

is reaching out of your comfort zone or the person you’re talking to may think, what’s this guy doing? Why are they doing this and stuff? And it doesn’t matter what people might think if you’re doing what’s right.

Anthony Codispoti (05:58)
So how did the opportunity to join Trinity come about?

Doug Potvin (06:02)
Well, the interesting thing about that is it came about because of our accounting company at the Clamp Company was the same accounting company up at Trinity Logistics. And so when the company was being sold, in other words, Eastern Shore Seafood Products, where I work, was being sold to a company in Milford, Delaware. ⁓ Accounting company knew I was looking for a job and they mentioned my name to Jeff Banning, the owner of Trinity Logistics at the time. Him and I got together in…

May of the year we were selling. And at that point in time, we talked and he said some things. And I just said, well, figure out what’s going on with you first before I jump into another boat like that. And then in November, we sold the Eastern shore in December. In November, I reached out to him and he said, no, I’m all set right now. And so actuality, what happened is I went to work for another clam company up in New Jersey for three months. And then off chance,

I sent an email to Jeff Banning saying, hey, would you like to talk now? He said, yes, something must have happened. And in July of 2006 hired at Trinity as the first and so far only CFO of the company came on at a hundred million and now a billion dollar company.

Anthony Codispoti (07:17)
Wow. What was it that made you send that email three months later? I he told you the last time you spoke, hey, we’re all set. We’re good right

Doug Potvin (07:25)
You know, Anthony, got a strong faith and I believe it was just the God’s purpose and will that set upon my mind send this email at this point in time. Because again, last time I talked to Jeff was in November and hadn’t reached out and all of sudden this day just said, hey, why don’t you just send Jeff an email? And it was at the right time, not my time, but God’s time on it.

Anthony Codispoti (07:52)
Yeah, you talk about your faith. Probably a lot of people who know you well obviously know this, but our listeners don’t because we didn’t mention it in the intro. You’re actually a pastor. How much does that influence the way that you approach work?

Doug Potvin (08:06)
You know, being a pastor, it’s interesting. I approach work with the simple fact that I realize things happen for a reason and purpose. Sometimes I don’t see it clearly and I think I’ve done something wrong or someone else has done something wrong and I realize in actuality there’s purpose behind it, whether it’s for me or whether it’s for someone else. So, and it’s typical of the nature of simply it’s God’s will and I believe that. And so things happen. So it allows me to rest a little bit more assured.

that things are going to work out in the end for his purpose on there. But the other piece that’s really interesting for me as a pastor is I let my life hang before the congregation. And what I mean by that is when I’m preaching, sometimes I’m just preaching to myself, maybe something going on at work that’s causing me some angst or something like that. And I truly believe a pastor that’s bivocational ⁓ is speaking

that may be more relatable to the individual person. Not to say that full-time pastors aren’t doing a great job because they do, it reflects on me. Bivocational meaning, it’s a word they use in the ministry, bivocational meaning you’re pastor plus you’re working another job. I don’t believe in the bivocational word. I simply, I work a job and I work it well, and then I got a call in from God to go pastor at this one church, a small local church. If they said, hey, Doug,

Anthony Codispoti (09:11)
Sorry, use that word again, bivocational.

got it.

Doug Potvin (09:33)
You’re fired. It’s not like I’d put out an application to become another pastor somewhere else until God told me this is where I want you to go, if that was the case. But I’ve been doing that, oddly enough, I’ve been doing that for the same amount of time I’ve been at Trinity Logistics.

Anthony Codispoti (09:49)
I was going to ask, is that coincidental? Obviously, the name of the company was there before you were, so you had no influence on it.

Doug Potvin (09:55)
Had no influence on that, I’ll tell it was a mother and ⁓ sorry, a husband and wife, ⁓ older, who started this business and they went into separate rooms at night to determine what the name was. They came out the next morning, both with the word Trinity. Yeah, so yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (10:13)
Okay, so you came

in when the company was at 100 million, very respectable company. Today it’s a billion dollars. When you first came in, what was, I don’t know, the biggest project that you’re like, oh, we’ve got to address this, we got to tackle this now.

Doug Potvin (10:27)
Yeah, I think the biggest project was ⁓ trying to sort through some of HR type of related matters, particularly the 401k audit had a difference from what was in being reported, what was actually in the funds. And so looking at that process, we got that reconciled. But then I realized a lot of stuff we were doing was based on spreadsheets and stuff instead of letting technology and efficiencies drive the piece of

And I think that’s what I could see from that standpoint is that we needed to become more technology driven and allow the errors to go away across the board, across the board. And that has started the journey for myself and working on the admin functions and such to come as efficient as possible and really try to focus on getting to a role in which we’re exception management base on there. But that was the first big.

Anthony Codispoti (11:17)
Yeah.

Doug Potvin (11:20)
tackle is just the coming in and doing a little work in HR. And I was prepared to do that. Why? Because of the well-rounded work experience I had at the seafood.

Anthony Codispoti (11:29)
Like we said, you got to wear so many different hats there that you got to see sort of front office, back office, operations, everything in between. Yeah.

Doug Potvin (11:36)
Correct.

⁓ the interesting thing about that was at Eastern Shore Seafood Products, actually contracted with Trinity to move our freight.

Anthony Codispoti (11:44)
Okay, all right, so let’s talk more about what Trinity actually does. Who do you service? ⁓ Some of the core ⁓ services that you offer to folks? What geographies that you’re in? Help us understand.

Doug Potvin (11:56)
Yeah, so Trinity Logistics is a third party logistics company. We own no assets per se. Well, we do is arrange freight shipments with customers who have freight to move United States or internationally cross border with carriers who have capacity to be able to do that. And we’re the 20th largest in the United States of America. We do this day in and day out, moving about 600,000 shipments a year.

We do not only the arrangement of freight of truckload, we do less than truckload. We do intermodal, we do drayage, we do expedited, all with third party carriers. We also use third party partners for moving freight internationally as well. We also offer a transportation management system to customers where they can choose as much as they want. They can just have software as a service. They can have software as a service and we broker the freight for them, or they can have software as a service and we will actually put staff.

in their offices. Today, Governor, we call on free transportation.

Anthony Codispoti (12:55)
Wow, this is fascinating. So you

own no assets. So the trucks aren’t yours. You’re using people who own their own trucks to move the freight now. And so we mentioned in the intro, 400 team members, but most of those folks, it sounds like are probably independent contractors. There’s probably very few that are actually like W2 on your payroll.

Doug Potvin (13:04)
Correct.

Now, actually on the payroll, on the payroll is 400 team members. But in addition to the 400 team members, something that Trinity does that is done in the industry, but not an awful lot. We have our own offices, Trinity offices across the United States. We also have what we call 150 freight agents who are independent contractor 1099s who do the same thing an office does with respect to find customers, find carriers. And then Trinity provides the back end support services for them, all the admin functions.

Anthony Codispoti (13:19)
Okay.

Doug Potvin (13:45)
the insurance and such. So a freight agent comes on, they get a commission of what they make on a particular load, which is a brokerage net margin. And then we provide all the backend services to them. And they provide a split on that commission that they receive.

Anthony Codispoti (14:01)
In the back end, the support that you’re providing is billing functions.

Doug Potvin (14:06)
It’s

a host of Technology, we have a TMS, a proprietary built and such, so all the technology functions is coming out of our office. The billing, credit collections, claims management, both freight claims as well as bodily injury type of claims are managed by us in the process. Our insurance product that we have to offer to place in nature. So just about every back end function you can think of with the exception of really human resources. So we’ll offer some.

advice but not very, but because there are 1099s they’re not actually employees. Correct. Correct.

Anthony Codispoti (14:41)
You’re not the employer of record for them.

Interesting. So is that how it works for most independent carriers, most independent drivers? Is that they’re working with somebody like Trinity to provide that backend function or is this a little unusual?

Doug Potvin (14:55)
Well, this is unusual in that these are not drivers that we’re talking about. These are just freight agents, again, who don’t have assets. Some may have their own trucks on their side. What we do, so what we do do is, of course, the industry is filled with the, you go on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, you’ll see there’s hundreds of thousands of carriers who are registered under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to provide the actual transportation services. And 80 to 90 % of those are single owner operators.

or own two trucks or maybe three trucks. You don’t have a large fleet type of size thing. So what we do as a middleman is basically provide their sales in that we’re looking for shippers and provided them for as opposed to them going out and hiring people to do that or living off the load board. We try to get dedicated carriers, committed carriers who want to work with us with some of our shippers on there.

But we do go through a number of carriers because again, we’re trying to provide purpose to the shippers.

Anthony Codispoti (15:57)
So when you started, you guys were at 100 million. Now you’re a billion dollar company. How much of that growth has taken place through acquisitions and how much of it has been through kind of just your own internal growth?

Doug Potvin (16:11)
The bulk of it’s all been through organic growth. We’ve had ⁓ one acquisition of ⁓ an office out in Arizona. We just happened to be, ⁓ did not have a place located out west. Came across this entity that had a similar culture and decided to make that purchase. And we’re very selective in our acquisitions targets. We’re looking for someone who can, ⁓

continue to provide value to us in niche markets, whether it’s Drainch or LTL. Maybe they’ve got some expertise there or got a customer base that would help us grow that. Or they’re strategically located in an area which we may not be in from a company ⁓ office perspective. Or it could be potentially a smaller office that’s next to one of our offices, we call it Tuck-In, that we can put the people right into the office and grow from that standpoint.

We’re not out there looking just to buy business. That’s not what we want to function on. Our first thought in the entire process is who we’re acquiring, are they a culture fit? Because the culture is very important to us, and we want to make sure that we’re bringing on the right fit from a cultural standpoint. then, like I said, if it fills a niche market or a strategy that we’re looking to achieve, that’s the second biggest thing.

Anthony Codispoti (17:25)
And before we went live on our recording here today, you were telling me about a new company, sort of tangentially related to what you do that you’ve recently acquired. You want to give voice to that?

Doug Potvin (17:35)
Yeah, so BERS Logistics, about two years ago, I had the opportunity, I had a strategy meeting with BERS and a bunch of other people. They were figuring out what’s the next business unit. And so I raised my hand and I said, you know what, we should start a factoring company. And of course, a factoring company, just for you listeners there, buys receivables from motor carriers at a discounted rate and then is responsible for invoicing and also collecting the money from the debtor.

So they pay them upfront and it’s, yep, absolutely. And typically most of time it may be non-recourse so the carrier is not responsible because in the transportation industry, again, with own operators, unexpected things happen and they can’t wait that 30 to 45 days for the debtor, the broker or the shipper to pay them. And therefore this sprites a mechanism that is really good. And again, it eliminates some of their back office staff with regard to invoicing and collections and it removes their credit risk on that.

Anthony Codispoti (18:06)
Good for cashflow for your client. Yep.

Doug Potvin (18:33)
And so we got involved in that because Trinity pays out approximately 50 to 60 % of motor carriers out to motor carriers that factor. And so we thought this would be a great addition to offer that synergy. And I’m going to tell you this real good is that ⁓ when we went this, we thought about starting our own realize we can make a lot of mistakes. So we said, you know what, instead of getting financially in the hole right off the bat, why don’t we look at by a small factoring company came across a great company, Eagle Business Credit.

their transportation arm is Cashway. They do general factoring, non-transportation related, and they also do transportation factoring. And I’ll tell you, I was really, really sad. This is the company we want to buy. Ian Varley, who’s the president there, came up to meet with us. And when he was leaving, this was on July 2nd, he’s an ex-pat Brit. So he’s from Great Britain, came over about 20 years ago. And so on July 2nd, he said to us all,

I want to wish you all a happy Traders Day. And I said, you know what? The guy’s a fit, and he has been. And the team has been a fit culturally and everything else. And it’s been a great addition for us. And we continue to look to see that the continued growth there. And it allows us to offer a service to our carriers that is based on integrity, honesty, and great customer service, which sometimes is not always easy to find in the factoring space.

Anthony Codispoti (19:55)
So aside from this British gentleman making a funny joke around, you know, our Independence Day, what else was it that you saw? What is it you were looking for there to determine if this was going to be culturally a good fit?

Doug Potvin (20:08)
So we actually went down, myself and Sarah Ruffcorn, the president of Trinity Logistics, Jordan Jackson, ⁓ runs merger and acquisitions at Burris Enterprise, parent company, Burris Logistics, sorry, ⁓ runs the merger and acquisition. We went down there and spent time in the office talking with them. I went down when we were doing our due diligence and met with the team members and stuff and realized, you know what, they’re focused. You hear a phone ring, it rings maybe one time, two times, picked up someone again who’s offering that great.

customer service to the client. And their client for the most part, besides the general factoring, are transportation companies, carriers, mostly owner operators, small fleets. And we said, you know what, this is a beautiful fit and they offer the same type of thing. And, you know, they believe in what we would describe and that’s what we saw the core values that we have. we believe in as an enterprise, we not me, it’s not about an individual success, it’s about the team success, right? We believe in that, make it happen. We want to make it happen for our customers.

carriers, our team members, our agents. Let’s make it happen. And we all want to deliver that with personal service excellence. And that’s what we live every day. And so we saw that and we said that’s that’s the fit. And they were at the right size that said, you know what, we can get into this and not be at risk if doesn’t work out all that much.

Anthony Codispoti (21:30)
Okay. ⁓ So we’ve talked a little bit about how you’ve grown through acquisition, the internal organic growth that you’ve experienced over the years. What are some of the biggest growth levers that you’ve been able to pull to affect?

Doug Potvin (21:45)
Well, you the biggest growth leverage that we’ve pulled on that is regarding to our sales structure, our sales team. You know, we hired a few years ago, Mark Peterson as the senior vice president of sales and marketing. Greg Massey after the acquisition, a few years after the acquisition by Burris was promoted to lead the agents part. He’s done a great job of recruiting additional agents. The sales plan changed from just having an account manager to a really like

farmers cultivating accounts that came in. And so we really developed an arm around BDRs, business reps who go out and try to be the hunter and grab those accounts and stuff and build on that. And we also created a group of what we call senior sales executives and sales executives who do a little bit more echelon of higher caliber customers in the Fortune 100, Fortune 1000. And we’ve been fortunate. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve had good team members and good agents come on board and

you know, really excited about the future on there. But it’s really about changing the sales structure to drive that growth.

Anthony Codispoti (22:51)
Did you have experience putting in that sort of sales structure or did you bring in a consultant to help with that?

Doug Potvin (22:58)
That was a little bit of a mixture of internal thinking as well as some seeing what else was going on in the industry and stuff. really it’s a combination of a common sense, growth expectations and realize when you look back and see the larger picture, what am I missing? You know, in that portion of it.

Anthony Codispoti (23:19)
We ⁓ mentioned Burris a couple of times being the parent company. At what point were you guys acquired by them?

Doug Potvin (23:25)
So Burris Logistics acquired us in April of 2019. And the nice thing about that, it was a friendly merger. Burris family and the Banning family, Banning the owner of Trinity and Burris Logistics were family friends. And so Donnie Burris and Jeff Banning got together, shook hands, and we came away in April of 2019 with a merger. And the merger was so good because

effectively we were to become their brokerage division. They had a small broker division, learned a little bit about it, make an acquisition, learn a little bit more about it and determined they liked it. They understood the space a little bit more and acquired Trinity. And the beauty thing for us is no one had to threat of losing a job. There wasn’t any downsizing involved, nothing of that nature. And we’ve maintained that same staff for the most part and grown. And it’s been a…

win-win, but the acquisition itself was a win-win for every.

Anthony Codispoti (24:28)
And so what was Burris focused on prior to the acquisition?

Doug Potvin (24:31)
So Burris prior to the acquisition was involved in ⁓ cold storage warehouses. They were involved in that. They were also involved in ⁓ food redistribution, still is through their Honor Foods and companies there. They are also the major supply chain provider to BJs in a certain product mix and during COVID.

BJ’s decided they wanted to own the supply chain and hence bought out Burr’s from that. Burr’s also made the decision, business decision, hey, we want to get to an asset light model and divested the cold storage facilities. And that leads us to where we are with asset lights type of thing, food redistribution, transportation, and this factoring piece. And the interesting on factoring is that we do general factoring and sometimes we get

people looking to do some things on food redistribution. And guess what? We got a place we can put them, small manufacturers that are looking to get their commodity out into the marketplace. And so we’re able to hook them up with the people over on our foods.

Anthony Codispoti (25:41)
Doug, tell us about how the F in CFO has come to mean multiple things for you, not just financial officer.

Doug Potvin (25:46)
Yeah,

I know it’s interesting. In April of 2019, with the acquisition, already had a CFO. And so internally, I said to myself, well, I don’t want to be confused. So I decided to change from ⁓ Chief Financial Officer, and this is my own calling, right, to Chief Fund Officer. And I’ve said it enough that my accounts receivable team actually got me a shirt that says Chief

fun officer on that nature. And then so the name has continued to evolve with the factoring company. And I’ve had the opportunity to be largely involved with that and working with Ian and the team down there quite a bit that I become the chief factoring officer. In fact, I had a birthday birthday two days ago when I got a card from those guys down at Eagle Business Credit and they got me a cake and the cake said to our own chief factoring officer, happy birthday from the Eagle Business Credit team. So that was really cool.

And then the other thing, this is a title that I didn’t wish I had to have, but we’ve been working strong. The industry has been compromised since middle part of COVID, coming out of COVID with a lot of fraud going on. Basically people usurp and carry identities and stuff and quite a bit of fraud. As reported, as seen, think there was an article, actually 60 minutes had a report about alcohol loads being stolen. mean, just the nature of it.

Anthony Codispoti (26:57)
Yeah.

Doug Potvin (27:14)
Unfortunately, for the last year and a half, I’ve word the title the Chief Fraud Officer. And we’re putting some things in place that will help hopefully from our standpoint, a remedy to situation. Because again, it’s a drag on the economy. It’s a drag to our customers. It’s a drag to the good carriers out there. Because even the carriers are being perpetrated fraud by bad guys who rip off a rate confirmation and say, hey, this is so and so from Trinity. Here’s a rate confirmation. The guy hauls the load.

The guy gets paid and then he’s either factored and the factory company, Trinity, you haven’t paid this yet. I’m sorry, it’s not our load. And we’ve put some things in place that go to our website and through carrier, put in the load number and we’ll tell you right away or not whether it’s a valid load for it and stuff. so trying to help the carriers here as well, because again, they’re a vital part to our success. We couldn’t do what we do without the motor carriers and people don’t wanna lose light of that. They are very critical and very important to the supply chain.

Anthony Codispoti (28:13)
Can we walk me through how that okay, so I understand like sometimes people just steal a truckload, but I don’t know that’s sort of like old-fashioned like, you know the old west kind of ⁓ a theft but what you’re describing here is somebody calls up with like some kind of identifying number and pretends to be you

Doug Potvin (28:29)
Well, two things going on. So from our standpoint, for the motor carrier, what happens is, is that the carrier posts his equipment on DAT. That bad guy will go get ⁓ some load off, let’s say, CH Robinson’s website or load or something that they need hauled or something of that nature, get another load. And then he’ll pretend to be Trinity Logistics. Somehow he’s gotten ⁓ a copy of our ⁓ rate confirmation. He’ll change

the email address, change the phone number, change the load ID, and then put the load details in there. And it’s just a whiteout type of thing and retype or whatever. And of course, now with so much sophistication, you probably can do it on ChatGP, upload and say, hey, change this information, let’s put one back out. I don’t know. But then that goes out to the motor carrier, a legitimate motor carrier who bids on it, delivers it, submits his paperwork. The bad guy submits paperwork to wherever he got the load from. They pay him. He in turn doesn’t pay the carrier.

Carrier knows more and know more and says, hey, it’s a Trinity of logistic loads, gives us a call saying, hey, when you’re paying me, and we get the information, we say, sorry, that’s not a load. And unfortunately, most of those carriers are factored. So the factor may have paid to Carrier. He in turn is going to get his money back on a future load so that Carrier runs. And so it’s a vicious circle. So we said, hey, let’s put something out on our website. We’ve informed the Carrier community, hey, go here, put in the load number, and we’ll tell you whether or it’s a valid Trinity load.

Now the same thing happens with regard to us. Someone will call and say they’re a motor carrier. We will give them a load, comes find out he’s not associated with that motor carrier, puts another truck on it and then tells that truck, take it to this warehouse, which may only be five or 10 miles away. And then that product disappears. Well, that we are combating with through technology and I’m not gonna share what exactly we’re doing because again, I’m trying to stay ahead of them.

Anthony Codispoti (30:17)
How do you combat against that one?

Doug Potvin (30:27)
But we believe that what we’re putting together will take a huge, as the crime dog said, we’re gonna take a fight out of this crime, take a fight out of this fraud by doing what we’re doing. And we think we’ll eliminate quite a bit of the fraudulent activity with what we’re putting.

Anthony Codispoti (30:43)
So it’s not just things that start with F that you’ve had your fingers dirty with, marketing, IT, you’re working closely with those departments. Can you think of a specific story of how you collaborated with another function within the company that has helped to shape the overall business strategy there?

Doug Potvin (31:02)
Well, you

know, it’s interesting. Back, I had the opportunity, and I can’t remember, 2012 or something like that. So to run the IT department, and this was prior to our developer stuff. This is just when we’re doing infrastructure. And realizing that, you know, we had an office in Kansas City, and we got offices in Seaford, Delaware. And so you’re worried about natural disasters, whether it’s a…

tornado or hurricane that could impact the business. And our business is strictly relying on phones and emails and a computer. You can do the job from anywhere if you got this type of technology. So back before work at home became a thing, the COVID type of situation, I put together a plan with the infrastructure team and got the ELT and said, look, first thing we’re going to do, we’re going to switch everybody to a laptop. Well, why are we going to switch to a laptop? You know, they cost like $150 more.

because a laptop, you can go anywhere with it. Second thing I did when I came over from infrastructure, we immediately took our phone system that was an on-premise based system and put that into a cloud, such that now in a redundant cloud, so if one of their data centers went down, it would flip over to another data center and would be able to go on there. We also brought in some additional hardware with regard to our switch gear and such that allowed us, we also brought in two circuits into the offices.

So we’d bring, let’s say an AT &T circuit and a com-cap. Back up from the circuit, yeah. And so we set this all up and I said, okay, let’s say one of the circuits goes down, what happened? So this is what the switch gears did. So I went back there one night after work, about 5, 5, 10, we had still people on the floor. And I told the guy, pull the circuit out of the box. Just take the AT &T circuit and just pull it right out of the box. Did that, a blip, everything flipped over.

Anthony Codispoti (32:29)
What does that mean? Two circuits.

Okay, so you’ve got like a backup ⁓ internet connection.

Doug Potvin (32:58)
They hardly knew. Phone call didn’t drop. The internet didn’t drop just a blip and everything was fine. So then we focused on, okay, now that we have that, we can do our work from anywhere. And so in essence, the first time this occurred, was a snowstorm out in Kansas City. Got a call from Frank Lees, who was the head of the office, and it was a snowy December day out in Kansas City. And he said, Doug, you know what? I only got half the office in here. It’s very quiet, but we’re having a great day.

because half the office was working from home. And we’ve done that. And so when the COVID came around from that instance, and we’ve had a couple of CTOs and everyone’s approved upon that. But when we came to COVID, in essence, when COVID struck and people said, hey, you got to work from home. You can’t come into the office and such. We were ready to go the very next day when that came about. We were all set, ready to do it. The only thing we were waiting on was a couple of hotspots to come in so that people who didn’t have internet service

at their house had the ability to work. So that was preparing for a long time ago, but not because of COVID per se or something was gonna come up, but the simple fact you gotta worry about natural disasters. And because there’s 8,000 of us, there’s more than that, but 8,000 active brokers, if our phone line’s down and the customer can’t get through us, he’s gonna call our competitors. And he’s just getting, all he wants to do is make sure his freight gets moved. That’s what he wants. But he also, go ahead.

Anthony Codispoti (34:28)
Yeah, I think this is really interesting for me because a lot of people might look at the expense of bringing in that redundancy and be like, my gosh, how many hundreds or thousands of dollars is that, you know, adding to our expenses each month? You zoom out and you kind of look at the big picture. You’re like, how many hundreds of thousands, how many millions of dollars of business do we lose in the rare event? But it happens.

And I’ll tell you that the internet at my house was just out for 72 hours because a tree fell on the cable. And so, you know, being down for three days, catastrophe. Being down for an hour, still terrible, right? Because somebody’s trying to call in to get a, they don’t care what your technology problems are, they’re moving on to the next guy.

Doug Potvin (35:15)
correct. We arrange 2500 loads a day. So you can imagine what that’d you down for a couple of three hours and the guy’s waiting there with product he’s got to get moved so he’s gonna reach out to someone else. I mean what separates us, what separates us more so than just the technology are our people. They come back to us because we get involved. We don’t really be hanging. We’re certainly a people you know people centric free solution company and that’s what we offer. We are a differentiator.

is our people interaction, our relationships with not only the customers, but we care just as much as I said earlier for the carriers. Some companies may not care for the carriers as much, but we truly want to help them out as well because they’re bread and butter as well. They’re providing the service, the actual transportation service. But you’re right. When you go back to the cost, it’s the cost of not doing business that impacts the bottom line. You just want to be prevention for your preventable realizing

how quickly this industry can move.

Anthony Codispoti (36:18)
You know, you’ve talked about your people and the importance of the culture there. I think that part of your mission statement is actually improve lives. Might even be the first two words, am I right?

Doug Potvin (36:27)
That is correct. It’s improving lives and supply chains by solving tough problems. And, you know, and we kept that improving lives in place because it is simply what we do. We want to improve the lives of not only our customers, not only our carriers, but our agents and our team members. It’s highly critical to us, highly critical to me personally, you know, and I want to see lives improve, not just what they do at Trinity, but I want to see them improve those lives personally as well. And to be part of all that’s really helpful. When you think about it.

If you move a load, let’s say for a customer has a thousand employees with a carrier that has a family of five, and you take those thousand employees and say an average size of the family of three, 3,000 people plus the five at the carrier plus Trinity’s 400 plus our agents and their families in one transaction, we do 2,500 a day. We’ve affected the lives of

to 5,000 people. Take that with the larger companies you’re talking to. You’re that 2,500 loads a day multiplied by the different shippers and carriers we utilize. We’re tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives are impacted on a daily basis by what we do, which doesn’t include who we deliver to and their families and the incons… Hey, you just think about that. All supply chains out is about impacting lives on that portion of it. Get the product moved so that people can eat.

so people can have comfort in the disastrous situations being in the mood, bottled water. ⁓ It’s just a tremendous opportunity in the logistic industry. And that’s why improving life is so much important for us. And it’s important for us for our team members. We offer one of our team members one of the perks. You’ve been there a year. You can actually take our online education through the University of Arizona and we’re reimbursing you to get a degree. We’ve had a couple of people do that. In fact, one of my country’s seen them.

person, Brittany Murphy, got her degree in accounting. You know, I’m so proud of that. So proud she took the effort to get that done and we’re happy to provide the funds for her to better her life. And now, you know, she loves Trinity. She loved Trinity even before all that. But the point of the matter is that we’ve got a culture, we’ve got a long standing team member relationships, number of people that we have employed by us is length of service is great. Our executive team.

You know, Sarah Ruffcorn being the president, her only job has been with Trinity Logistics going on 22, 23 years. Our senior staff of six of us have been there. I’m the newbie of that one at 19 years. Our vice president of sales 10 years and our human resource four years. And I will say our brand new CTO, maybe seven days, but he’s already made a tremendous, tremendous impact in just those seven days for us.

Anthony Codispoti (39:18)
You know, I hear you talk about ⁓ investing a lot in your employees, you know, at the one year mark, they’ve got this park where they can go online, get, you free courses, they can work towards a degree. Some people look at that and man, that’s an extra expense. And man, if I’m like allowing that person to sort of level up to gain more education, what’s the likelihood that they’re going to then leave me? How do you approach that from a mental standpoint?

Like how do you think about the fact that you’re investing so much in these folks? And I mean, at some point, maybe they want to leave and they want to do something bigger.

Doug Potvin (39:54)
But you know, it’s interesting you say that. I just recently had my controller who’d been there 12, 13 years, good friend of mine. And it’s a good friend for a couple reasons on there. But you know what? When he left, he left me a card on my desk. And I opened the card and he said two important things to me. He said, Doug, he’s now the director of a school district, director of finance. He’s like the CFO of a school district in Delaware, closer to home.

He wanted the opportunity to help children. And he saw this was an opportunity to do that. And he said, you know, Doug, I feel more confident in my start there because of what we’ve done at Trinity. And he did a tremendous job for me. Absolutely. And he grew and he grew and that’s what I like to see that. Right. But you know what the second thing he said to me, and this is where you talk about the faith, right, is a simple fact is that God used me to get to him to become a believer.

And since then his daughter’s become a believer and they attend church and he’s part of the band and he led for the last several years. He does a weekly devotion, a weekly Bible study here at Trinity. to have that impact on him personally, that’s the legacy I want to leave. It’s not about the numbers, it’s not about this, it’s about the legacy left to people. That’s what matters the most. That’s why we’re…

That’s what we have. So again, if we invest in an individual and they decide to leave and they do something better that improves their lives and improves their family, how can you not rejoice for them in that nature? Again, and guess what? That door opens for someone else to come in and have the same exact impact and results.

Anthony Codispoti (41:35)
improving lives. It all comes back to that.

Doug Potvin (41:37)
It is.

It does. Every day. Every day.

Anthony Codispoti (41:40)
Yeah.

So what is the future of Trinity look like? What are some of the exciting things that you’re working on or that are coming? And I don’t know, call it the next 12 to 24 months.

Doug Potvin (41:50)
You know, what we’re working on is a lot of associated with the buzzword, right? In buzzword, think if you don’t mention AI in all the podcasts that you do nowadays when you’re talking about business or anything else, I think there’s, I think the focus is really on technology, how we drive efficiencies into the business, have AI doing some of routine tasks. Now people say, well, that will mean some jobs will be cut. I think jobs change in transition. More so.

and some will adapt and some won’t, but that’s just the nature of what technology has done way back when on there. You think about the car, you think about the Ray brothers, think that with the car, simply a blacksmiths all of a sudden were not shooing horses as much as what they were before, right? But they found other, so again, it’s the adaptation as technology comes along. But the one thing that we wanna continue that’s forefront is people-centric, people-centric, relationships matter.

For instance, Convoy, which was a big freight broker, thought they’re going to revolutionize everything and else, had a valuation of $2 billion. Bankrupt.

Anthony Codispoti (42:56)
What happened?

Doug Potvin (42:57)
What happened was simply what they realized is broker required relationships, required people, and the technology was not going to solve all the problems. And that’s true today. Technology will add value, no doubt about it. No doubt about it. It’ll make us more efficient. It allows us to focus on exceptions instead of routine tasks. But think about this as an employee. If you’re a worker and you say to your, you you’re not excited about your job, you’re just doing something clerical, right?

But all of a sudden you come back and say, you know what, I’m managing these exceptions. I’m making sure the customer is taking care of it. Make sure that care gets paid on time. You know, you’re a little bit more excited about what you do on a daily basis. So again, improving their lives by allowing for that to focus not on something that’s routine and dull and boring, but something that’s excitable and know that you’re providing an awful lot of value. And don’t, don’t misquote me here. The simple fact of the matter, every team member of Trinity is valued and appreciated.

No doubt about it, they are. From the bottom of my heart to my team members. And the simple fact of the matter is things are changing. Things are going to continue to change, but we’re not going to ever overlook the people and the fact that relationship drives business connections and relationships.

Anthony Codispoti (44:11)
You know, a lot of folks that I’ve talked to, and I think this is what you’re ultimately getting at, Doug, is they look at AI as a way to free up their folks to spend more time on the human part of the business interaction, right? You know, so many forms need to be filled out. So, so much admin stuff that needs to be done. If you can give more of that to a bot, you know, to a bit, a bit of technology, and that allows somebody to use your word.

to deal with more of the exceptions. something happened. We’ve got a crisis, something didn’t go according to plan. Now I can put my full attention on them. I can talk to the customer. can make whatever calls I need to make to troubleshoot this situation.

Doug Potvin (44:56)
Absolutely. And you’re building that relationship. You’re solving that problem for the customer. What AI will never be able to do. I’d say never, maybe ever.

There is no emotion in that. You can say, hey, do it this way or do it that way. I I just certainly have worked with some technology that says be suspicious, right? And so can take AI and all of sudden their wording changes, be suspicious. But what’s never you can program is a human element and the gut feeling. What I decide for one customer may have a similar situation when it comes to a credit matter or collection matter. What I decide for one customer may be totally different when I decide for another customer.

that is going to understand the same similar situations in that basis. But because of my conversation with key people at that company, I can make a decision based on those conversations. That’s what’s always, in my opinion, going to lack from this AI ability. Yeah, black and white, really good. Gray to a degree. But what it misses is that simple human element gut feeling type of deal.

Now with me saying that someone’s going to put chat GPT, hey, have them have gut feeling. And we’ll see what the results come out.

Anthony Codispoti (46:08)
That’ll be fun to follow. It’s going to unfold in ways we can’t even predict at the moment. But yeah, let’s shift gears a bit here, Doug. ⁓ We’ve talked about a lot of tremendous success that you’ve been a part of there. And sometimes people hear those surface level stories and they’re like, wow, everything’s just up and to the right for Doug and up and to the right for Trinity. But the reality of business, the reality of our personal lives is that there’s a lot of ups and downs.

Doug Potvin (46:11)
Ha!

That is from the…

Anthony Codispoti (46:37)
I’d like to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve had to overcome at some point in your life. How you got through that and what you learned.

Doug Potvin (46:45)
You know, we look back, there’s a situation I went through when actually the clam company is being sold to Sea Watch in the sense that I’d always been in control of my own destiny, control of what I was doing. I was in control when I left the government to work for the clam company. And all of sudden now I was no longer in control of what my future looked

And so it put a lot of uncertainty. I’ve never been, and this was at the age of 29, I’ve never been through that uncertainty, right? I never had that challenge before me where I couldn’t see what the end result was going to be. And so unfortunately my mind is wired. when I ever make it to heaven, ask God, why do I wire my mind like this? Because life could have been a whole lot easier. But I said, we’re wired and made differently for a purpose. But my point was is that all of a sudden I began to have

⁓ doubts about the future, about what I was going to be doing because I was getting no answer from the existing company that was acquiring us or from the owners that were doing it at the time. We also had a serious insurance issue on the owner’s yacht come up. And again, I did what I was supposed to do, but I was laid with the fact that it was an insurance matter that that I hit, but yet missed because they didn’t send out the right form. But again,

of the multi hundred thousand dollar. And I take extreme ownership in everything I do, whether it’s for a company or me individually, I take strong ownership and it rests on me. And maybe I do that way too much. I probably do, but extreme ownership. So my point was this was happening in the September and we sold the company finally in the end of December. And then what I finally got from the owners was, hey, you can work for us as an individual for a year and then you go find another job.

And when I started looking at that, I realized I wasn’t going to qualify for health insurance because I looked into it. So that was one thing that was going to change because no longer would health insurance be provided by the company. And the company that was buying us couldn’t tell me what I’d be doing. And so I had no certainty with that. In this period of time with the uncertainty, the insurance issue and stuff, I just think to myself, my mind plays a terrible trick on me. It says the worst possible outcome is going to happen. It’s going to happen tomorrow. And so I believe that it’s going to be unemployed.

moving back to my parents’ house, taking my family with me and all that. So my mind just told this thing. I would literally go to bed at eight o’clock at night because I was extremely tired, mentally tired, wake up at 1 a.m. and couldn’t shut the mind off. I would wake up in the morning and not want to get out of bed at all. I finally understood, and this is the deep that I got to, I finally understood why people could commit suicide.

Not that I had desire or was anywhere close to committing it, but the simple fact of matter, you just want…

And so, and that’s why the suicide rate gets because again, people just want out and they can’t see the way out of it, right? And so for me, I turned back to my faith. I started reading scripture, started reading about, you know, the three guys and thrown into the fiery furnace. I read about Daniel, and then I read about King David and the simple fact that here he was the nobunit king. And yet he’s being chased by his father-in-law, Saul, to kill him. And he has to be saying to himself, he’s eating bread. mean, he’s living in caves.

He’s got to be saying, wait a second, God, you said I’m the king. And yet I’m going through all of this, right? And so it’s that faith get really challenged, hung on a faith and sure enough, what do know?

another job became available. The one job I was looking for, but the job that I could take that allowed me to live in my house, I commuted up to New Jersey Monday morning, would come back on this happened in March, but I lost 50 pounds in that entire episode in that period of time. so, and you know, the faith of that, my family who put up with a lot of stuff during that timeframe was with me, my wife who never worries, she’s completely different than I am.

But I found, but another job came about, right? And it was God who brought that about again, through a mutual relationship of an accounting person, accounting company. And then, you know, how I got to Trinity was simply, I reached out to Jeff Manning, who I knew very well, who I’d met with a couple of times already a year ago and stuff. I reached out to him one day in June. I said, are you interested in talking now? And something happened. It was a God moment. And he said, yes. And since that time, I’ve never looked back. The anxiety is,

Lesson but it’s still there just because I’m our Lord but but but in the end in the end Anthony when I look back and because of my faith and I look at my life of dots which they all they are dots moment in times I Realize I’ve gone through all of this to be where I’m at now a much better person and a person who Understands that it’s not my will be done, but his above to be done

And it’s because of that that I realized that, you know what? I don’t control anything that I think I do control. We play a part in it. Don’t get me wrong. We play a part in all of this. But in the end, in my faith, God’s will will be done.

Anthony Codispoti (52:19)
So as you look back at that really difficult period, what do you think is the big takeaway for you? Is it the fact that you’re never in control? Like, how is your life better today because of that hardship?

Doug Potvin (52:34)
You know, I think because it pointed out two things, right? Is that one is you’re not in control situations, right? You know, people lose their jobs, right? Most of time people lose their job for the failure to perform correctly. But then you have another another aspect of that where companies make poor decisions and they either go bankrupt, they’ve got to lay off people not affected by the performance of that person. So the simple fact of the matter is sometimes you’re not in control, right? You’re not in control.

And then you’re thinking to yourself, what do I need to do to make sure I stay in control? Well, sometimes you gotta be patient. Sometimes you gotta hold back and wait. But you gotta realize the simple fact of the matter is you’ve gotta work. You’ve gotta work, right? You’ve gotta be part of the solution on that nature. But to me, it comes down to faith. How people do it without faith. And once you lose your hope, I don’t know how people get by. But for me, it’s just relying on the hope and realizing, guess what?

There’s always something better out there, though going through the valley is awfully hard for every.

Anthony Codispoti (53:42)
You know, just last night, one of my sons was having a bad day. ⁓ and he’s nine years old. He came to me and he’s like, dad, why does, why does bad luck happen to me? You know, those were his words for it. And I said, buddy, you know, you’re cause he’s like, what did I ever do to anybody? Almost like this was a punishment. Like, you know, why, why did he deserve to have a bad day? And I said, buddy, I said, I know this is hard to understand. I’m like, but

you know, you’re not being targeted. This isn’t a punishment from anyone, from God. I’m like, as you get older, I hope that you can realize that these challenging times, don’t happen to you. They’re happening for you to help you become a better person. Now, he seemed like he understood it in the moment. ⁓ I think it was just comforting that I was giving him a hug because

I think that’s a hard thing even for adults to kind of wrap their heads around that, man, I’m going through this point of suffering and this is just feels like suffering for suffering sake. And like you said, like some people just, I just want out. I just want a way out. I don’t see a way out. And so I think it’s helpful to remind yourself that if you can view it through the lens of this is happening for me, right? Not the world.

Doug Potvin (54:41)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (55:07)
trying to punish me, not doing it to me, but happening for me to help make me stronger, to help push me in a different direction, to help open a new door for me. I think that can offer a little bit of that hope that you’re talking about.

Doug Potvin (55:20)
It does, it does. that’s why, you know, realizing what I went through and I’ve had some other places of anxiety even after that, not to that degree, but realizing, you know what? I’m blessed. I’m blessed. When you figure there’s 8 billion people around this world and you look at your situation, 95 % of the people in America say I am far better off than 5 to 6 billion people around the world.

from a monetary standpoint or something of that nature. But I’ll tell you this, some of those 6 billion people have much more joy than what we do because of the faith they put on God above. And that I’ve experienced by going down to Columbia, South America and going out to the indigenous tribes in the jungles. And it’s just the joy they have and they’re living in a hut, no electricity, no running water, no flushing toilet and stuff, and they don’t know life any differently, but they have a sense of joy.

that’s irreplaceable. We’d send somebody down there and we’d say, how can you live like this? It’s not that, it’s what we know and we’re joyful for what we have. That I think is the biggest takeaway. Sometimes we gotta live to be content, continue to work, to strive to get better. I gotta tell people, you know what?

You gotta be one that wants to help people, even with what you may have. Because what you may have, it can just be a smile, a kind word, a hand, 15 minutes of your time. It’s not that you need to do something extraordinary. You just gotta show people you care and think how much better this world would be.

Anthony Codispoti (57:02)
that. What’s your superpower Doug?

Doug Potvin (57:06)
And it’s funny, it’s funny. We just hired a new VP of admin services and she asked that question on interviews and I sat in on, what’s your superpower, right? And it’s one of those tricky questions, right? What’s your superpower? If I was going to say what my superpower is, I’m a person who gets things done, but cares. I think putting those two together sometimes is not the easiest thing to do.

Sometimes getting things done for some people means you step on people, you get to where you want to get and that’s all you’re thinking about. Whereas simply, I can get things done but I care. I care. And unfortunately sometimes because of my directness and everything else, sometimes people got to get to know me to understand. People may think I don’t have empathy. I’ve got a lot of empathy. Sometimes I don’t show it in the right way but when it matters, I’m all about it.

Anthony Codispoti (58:04)
it’s really tough to balance those two things, right? I mean, when you’re getting stuff done, right? When you’re so operationally focused, there’s a, you you’re thinking step one, step two, step three, ⁓ fire to put out, okay, now step four, step five. And it can be really hard to shift gears into more of like a heart centered approach where, you know, you’re spending time with somebody, you’re giving them a hug, you’re holding their hand, you you’re giving them sort of that personal time. ⁓ And so the fact that

you have both of those things inside of you is a powerful combination. But yeah, it’s almost like ⁓ sometimes it feels like only one of those sides of your personality can show up at a time. Do you feel the same way?

Doug Potvin (58:46)
I do feel the same way. I mean, there’s times I get off a phone call or with a meeting of someone. And what I have learned at Trinity is that, know, Doug, you need to be humble. I used to have a high expectation of people because my own ex-

My of myself is so high and I set this high expectation and talking with Jeff Banning, I realized sometimes my expectation is so high no one’s going to meet it and therefore I’m not valuing and appreciating them for who they are. You recount John Maxwell’s book, The Law of the Lid. I do believe there’s a law of the lid. We are five, six, seven, whatever that is that God has purposely wired us to be, right? And I can improve it a little bit, but I can’t improve it a great deal. There’s some type of cap. That’s what I truly believe. There’s some people who have exceeded that, but in the same token though.

Every single person matters. And so I get off with a phone call or a minimum team meeting and I say something and I reflect on it and say, know Doug, that’s probably not the right way to do it, the right way to say it. And I remember talking to a young lady and I called her up and I said, I’m so sorry. I should not have talked about that at that particular time. I should have talked to you individually and I’m sorry for it. And she said, well, you don’t need to apologize for it. And I said, yeah, I do because it was not right.

in my perspective at looking at it. And I don’t know how you took it, but I’m just telling you, it’s not right. I’ve learned that matters more than anything else. doesn’t, shouldn’t matter to me. What do I care? However, if I have harmed someone, hurt someone, and their perspective is a reality, and as I reflect, I want to make amends for it.

And then I also now begin praying before I interact with people and stuff. God, just give me the right words. Don’t let me do something that’s not in your will or perspective. And it helps. actually said that the other day. My faith continues to evolve and develop. You wouldn’t think that after 18 years of the pastor. But I don’t get it right. I’m just, as everyone else, I’m failure in his eyes. And it’s by the grace of Jesus that I’m able to come to work every day and everything else. And my point is that

And now I think through that and some of the conversations where I’m headed, I just stop. Change the subject or change my timeline before it gets to that point in time. And so it’s continued growth and development. mean, 19 years at Trinity, almost 35 years in the work environment, I still don’t get it right every day or every hour. And I happen to say, I’m not perfect. I’m not right. No, I’m just as wrong as everyone else is at times. But it’s being able to admit that.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:13)
We’re all a work in progress. And I think the important thing is to have that awareness that we’re all a work in progress and to have that awareness of when maybe you could have done better and take a step back and do what you can to amend it. Now, just one more question for you today, Doug. But before I ask, I want to do a few things. Everyone listening, if you want to get in touch with Doug, in directly. You can reach him. Give me permission to give out his personal email address, Doug.

Doug Potvin (1:01:25)
Correct. Correct. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:40)
dot pot then POTB IN at Trinity logistics.com. You can also find him on LinkedIn, send him a connection request there. Also, as a reminder, if you want to get more employees access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to add back benefits.com. And finally, if you’ll take just a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, we will be forever grateful to you. So last question, Doug, you and I reconnect a year from today.

and you’re celebrating something big, very exciting. What’s that big thing you hope to be celebrating one year from now?

Doug Potvin (1:02:20)
One year from now what I’d like to be celebrating is the continued growth of Trinity. Whether it’s number or whether that’s revenue or something like that, just the continued growth of Trinity. Because I know by the continued growth of Trinity we’ll have continued growth of team members. And lives improved and changed and celebrating that. But I’d say the one big thing a year from now that I’d really love to celebrate is the nature of is that, you know what?

We succeeded by what we’ve done. And because of that, lives are better. Whatever form that takes, that’s what I hope to be celebrating. The fact that we can look at and we can see the growth of our team members a year from now. That is huge.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:06)
Doug Potvin from Trinity Logistics, I wanna be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Doug Potvin (1:03:13)
Thank

you, Anthony. Again, I appreciate the opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:17)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.