The Long Haul

Adam Wingfield's podcast, "The Long Haul," focuses on assisting small trucking businesses and independent contractors. The show features interviews with industry experts and successful owner-operators, offering advice and strategies for financial success. Its target audience is anyone in the trucking industry, from those just beginning to established fleet owners. The podcast aims to provide actionable insights and encouragement to help listeners improve their businesses. Ultimately, the podcast seeks to connect trucking professionals with opportunities for growth and profitability.

The Long Haul is a business podcast hosted by FreightWaves, Adam Wingfield, with 79 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

FreightWaves, Adam Wingfield hosts The Long Haul, a business show with 79 episodes published.

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  The Long Haul

  The Fuel Crisis Is Here. Do You Know What It's Actually Costing You?

  Sep 24, 202625 min

  Diesel just crossed $6.29 per gallon nationally. For the first time in history.That's not a headline to scroll past. That's a number that should stop every owner-operator and small carrier in this industry dead in their tracks and force them to look at their actual cost structure right now — today — before they take another load. Because most of them haven't. This episode is a solo. No guest. Just me, the data, and the math that too many carriers are avoiding because they don't want to know what it says.We're going to talk about where diesel is, how we got here, where it might go, and — most importantly — how to calculate what this fuel environment is actually costing you per mile, per load, and per month. Because the difference between a carrier who survives this and one who doesn't isn't which loads they take. It's whether they know their real numbers. Follow The Long Haul Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows

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  The Long Haul

  The Hidden Lane — What Most Truckers Don't Know About Drayage

  Sep 17, 202641 min

  Every load you've ever picked up from a warehouse got there somehow.Somebody moved it from a ship. Or from a rail yard. Or from a port depot. On a chassis. In a container. In a city like Chicago where the rail network is one of the most complex in the country and the congestion, the chassis shortages, and the steamship line politics can turn a straightforward pickup into an all-day event. That's drayage. And most truckers have never thought about it once.Sergio Manzo has been in it his entire career. Eight years as a driver moving containers through Chicago's rail yards. Now COO of Severo Trucking — the family business his family has been running for over three decades in one of the most demanding intermodal markets in the country. Today we're getting into a part of this industry that the load board crowd has never seen. And I think when you hear what drayage actually involves — the complexity, the discipline, the relationships you have to build — you're going to understand why the carriers who do it well are some of the most insulated operators in the business. Let's get into it. Follow The Long Haul Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows

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  The Long Haul

  The Detective's Guide to Protecting Your Trucking Company

  Sep 10, 20261h 2m

  Josh Lovan has seen how trucking companies die. Not slowly, from rates. Fast, from one crash. Before he became an advisor at J. J. Keller, Josh was Director of Safety and Security for a major carrier — the man in the room when the accident call came in, when OSHA showed up, when the lawyers started prepping for trial. He's sat in the depositions. He's watched a single wreck, with shared fault and complicated facts, turn into a verdict big enough to erase a company. And before trucking, he was a law enforcement detective running undercover operations — which is exactly the background you want advising fleets on security in the middle of a cargo theft epidemic. Here's what he'll tell you that most safety conversations won't. The lawsuit doesn't start when the crash happens. It starts years earlier — in the driver file you didn't complete, the camera footage you never reviewed, the coaching conversation you skipped because the truck was making money. When the plaintiff's attorney gets your records, they're not looking for the accident. They're looking for the pattern. And most small carriers are handing them one without knowing it.We get into what actually gets carriers destroyed in litigation, how to use dash cams to coach drivers instead of policing them, the safety management cycle that turns compliance from paperwork into protection, the hours-of-service exceptions most small carriers misuse, what a mock audit catches before the real one does, and — from a former undercover detective — how thieves and fraudsters are actually targeting carriers right now, and what stops them. Good drivers are made great on purpose. This episode is the blueprint. Follow The Long Haul Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows

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  The Long Haul

  Cut Out the Middleman — Easy to Say, Now Prove It

  Sep 3, 202645 min

  There's a pitch aimed at truckers on every platform right now. Brokers are eating your margin. Cut out the middleman. Get your own authority. It's not hard — you just need a mentor. And there's always a mentor selling. Trent Tulloh is one of them. He runs Forever Freight Broker, a Tampa training company that teaches drivers and dispatchers to become freight brokers. His reason is personal — his father was an owner-operator who lost his business to bad brokers, and Trent built his company to make sure truckers stop getting the bad end of the stick. I respect the wound. Today we test the remedy. Because this show doesn't platform pitches — it pressure-tests them. So Trent came in knowing the format: the claim goes on trial. Is brokering actually the answer for a struggling carrier, or is it a second business bolted onto a first one that isn't working? What does it really take — the bond, the credit, the shippers who don't know your name? And how does "it's not hard" survive a world where the Supreme Court just ruled that anyone selecting carriers can be sued for choosing wrong? He gets every chance to make his case. His numbers, his students, his story. And you get what this show owes you — the pitch, cross-examined, before you pay for it. Somebody's leaving this conversation with a different opinion. Might be him. Might be me. Might be you.

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  The Long Haul

  65 Trucks, One Standard — How to Build an Owner-Operator Fleet That Doesn't Fall Apart

  Jul 23, 202649 min

  Most carriers think their recruitment problem is a marketing problem. Post the ad. Get the calls. Fill the seat. Move on. Christian Martinez has managed over 65 owner-operators at Voyager Nation out of Mulberry, Florida — and he'll tell you straight up that recruitment is the easy part. The hard part is everything that comes after somebody signs on. He started at the bottom. Loading trucks. Warehouse operations. Port logistics. Last-mile delivery. Recruiting. Fleet acquisitions. He worked his way through nearly every level of this industry before landing in operations management — which means when he talks about why owner-operators leave, he's not guessing. He's watched it happen from every angle. The trucking industry spends millions trying to find drivers. It spends almost nothing figuring out why they leave. And most small carriers running two, three, five trucks are making the same mistakes the big fleets made twenty years ago — just on a smaller budget with less room to absorb the damage. This episode is about what actually keeps an independent contractor running your freight. Not the sign-on bonus. Not the percentage. The things that determine whether an owner-operator calls you a partner or a problem — and what that decision costs you either way. Follow The Long Haul Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows

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