This is the entrepreneurs versus coronavirus podcast with your host Ryan Kononoff.

In this next interview I had the opportunity to speak with Damon Grill senior operations manager and co-owner of Centurion Trucking What I love about this interview was the mindset that Damon has maintained throughout much of this pandemic. 

From how he chooses to prioritize his people to how he's finding ways to improve communication with customers and staff alike. He goes on to talk about how they rapidly pivoted to service the greatest needs in the market today and touches on how they're not after making a quick buck, but rather have been focused on building trust long-term relationships and on doing the right thing best of All they've largely been able to maintain the revenues and of acquired new customers making this a story of how one business is thriving. 

Let's dive in. Game and welcome to the entrepreneurs versus Corona virus podcast For those that haven't heard of Centurion tell us a little bit about your business and a little bit about what you do and who your typical customers are. Thanks for having me. Ryan for centrifuging we're pretty much a trucking company that goes long distance into Canada and USA. 

So our trucks go all over from Miami New York California, Alaska Toronto. Montreal, pretty much anywhere and everywhere is where we go. We hold general's rate and some of the commodities that we try to go after is a lot of food products so that keep. S us fairly busy but we also do any sort of general freight which is considered like electronics. 

We do things like retail merchandise, like clothing shoes you name it. We've done things like bank machines. Louis Vuitton. So wide range of our products that can fit into our trailers enter our industry, there's the same called if you bought it a truck brought it. So to give you an idea. 

Yeah, and how large is your team how many staff do you have what's the makeup of office versus drivers owner operators and so on. For staff and the office we have about 12 to 14 people. And for drivers we have about 70 to 80 company drivers and about 13 14 lease operators. 

Okay, and a little bit about your revenue model. How do you generate revenue? A lot of it comes from our general freight work that we do so just working directly with customers retailers wholesalers manufacturers. We also work with their party, which is the companies. We also partner up with other trucking companies to move their freight. 

But yeah, a lot of it is just freight revenue just move in people's products from point. A to point B. And from that revenue base, what proportion would you call repeat business or the same whether it's a logistics or a freight company coming back or B2B moving their goods what proportion of that is repeat business. 

Definitely a good chunk of it. I would say anywhere from 60 to 80% is repeat working with the same clients on a repeat basis Okay and how did you get into the transportation space. What's your background that's got you to where you are today. It was definitely by accident nothing that we go to school to to learn about. 

I think I was pretty much trying to save money for school. I had some passport education scholarships before to to get into school. I grew up quite poor and one of my friends had come over and his dad was trying to get some help doing some trucking work and at the time I had a old school flatbed scanner and I was able to help them with some document. 

Work. Do you want to get done and he said hey what are you doing right now and I said well I'm going to school part time and I'm working at a propane company and he said hey let me get you an office job and so that was my introduction into trucking at the time. 

I thought it was just an office job. I was actually a safety manager you're training about a hundred drivers at the time so this is I was 18 19 years old training people three times my age, sometimes definitely it was a it was a different experience but again I was just appreciative for the job and I thought this is what office job looks like literally no going into the the workplace what to expect and what these types of jobs were but just being there as. 

Thought a lot of opportunity and a lot of it was just to help out the immigrant community and I noticed that a lot of these guys that were able that had a class one license and that were working across Canada and USA that they actually had pretty good lives they were able to buy like nice cars and and they they were building homes on the side they're able to put their kids through school and it's not hey if this is something that can actually give people equal opportunity, maybe this is something that I want to get myself into a little bit further. 

I tried to leave a couple times because yeah, I figured that it wasn't gonna be for me and I and I always wanted to be more on the accounting side of things maybe I wanted to be a police officer. One point but I didn't really think trucking was gonna be a career once. 

I figured out that I kept getting dragged back into it that I eventually went end up going to BCIT to get my education and international trade and transportation and at that point I was committed and knew I was gonna stick in this field for a while, although I never thought it was kind of oatmeal company, but eventually things led me to to do that as well and how long has Centurion trucking been around? 

Since we really was around in 2008 and just an interesting story I wasn't actually a part of Century I'm right when it started the original owner of that company was was trying to run that company on his own and differently have too much success in building the company although in the beginning. 

I was actually intox with him and his family on how to run the business had a lot of experience and growing companies and and helping them so I did actually lay out the framework for him, unfortunately just the way that their business went they weren't able to grow it and he actually eventually sort of working for for me with another company. 

I had and 2012 from there we had a lot of spare time on her hands and I kind of talked to him and said hey you know what's your plans with your company and I know there's a lot of class on operating a trucking company and obviously from from his situation where you wasn't able to actually make a salary for himself from the company that would actually allow him to sustain some sort of living for himself it was his dad that was working with him at the time and it said hey, you know, why don't you let your dad work somewhere else and you know, hopefully you guys won't have to have all this expenditures in the company and you can relax and if you have to go on vacation you can because just being an entrepreneur. 

Really get away either so when it when it comes to vacation or or any of those type of things that's very difficult to do especially when you have a company that operates 24/7 essentially unless you shut it down and go on vacation and come back and it wasn't at the point where you can actually afford to hire employees enhance, you know with him working with us. 

I saw that and I said okay, well, you know, if you don't want to close it down, do you want to grow the company that's what we kind of stepped in and and decide they're kind of, you know push forward on it and I was in 2012 and so we we actually try to grow the company in 2012, so at that point in time you invested in. 

The company or became. Part of it and it's still the two of you operating it today Correct yeah okay so let's pivot and let's talk a little bit about coronavirus what were your immediate thoughts when coronavirus and coveteen started to hit the news immediately. I think when it came in the end of 2019, I just thought there's another thing that's not a part of North America, so it's not really that concern us and I didn't really think too much of it until February I think it was and February is when when I saw it spreading more into Canada and USA and and definitely it gave me a little bit of a, Scare but I wonder right away kind of go and and see you know who are we aligned with when it gives our customers a good majority of the customers that we have our food and beverages but there was a good that maybe 30% to 40% that wasn't and I kind of started playing all these models into my mind and saying, okay, well what situations gonna come out of this and so there is about two or three different scenarios that I that I ran through and and I would you know, talk to our our sales team and discuss it and then also with our dispatching team to see who are we aligned with how we can get through closures that are going to come about and a lot of stuff we were planning about couple weeks. 

Before it became a pandemic I would say so those three sort of scenarios that you talked about internally were those different directions that you could see this going to either positively or negatively impact the business or can you get a little bit into that yeah definitely so one was just to take a look and say, okay, well what I'm predicting here is that a lot of the non-food companies are going to start shutting down because of closures that are going to start coming into Canada and US and this is when they were first starting to talk about social distancing or I was paying attention to more of what was happening in China and how everything. 

I was being shut down so again you just you take that same business model that was happening there and you applied here and you say well businesses are again we shut down there's going to be restrictions what are the essential goods that are going to have to move and so right away. 

I just told my sales team I said, hey, let's focus on the companies that are doing food beverages essential services like medical supplies, let's try to figure this out let's see which industries again get busy at which industry is they're going to start slowing down and we kind of went over our customer list and said, okay, well let's take a look to the customers that we're working with which ones can potentially slow down and so again. 

Just making everyone in the company create that awareness about hey let's think about what can actually happen instead of just doing the day to day a lot of times when you're in a business you just focus on okay what's happening right now and and what the current demand is right now and for me it's always let's think a couple months ahead because again, we don't want to be stuck on the downside of this crown of virus and really letting impact the company just because we have a lot of investments into our equipment a lot of overheads in this in the step of business, yeah that's super smart, do you have any data that you can share around what percentage of your revenue was? 

What would all just call general goods and how much that transition to what I'll refer to as essential goods over that the last few weeks or do you have a sense of what that looks like yeah if you want to put a 640 split and that's just made doing a little bit of guesstimate sure to stop our clients but I think that's what it was and and just in the last little while we've been trying to make it more by 80-20 split we're still predicting a more companies, especially the the ones that we're dealing with to possibly shut down as well, it depends it's really tricky so even when we look at produce or food products, now we look. 

Like okay, okay there's. Actually the food product itself but then there's also packaging the pallets that it has to be placed onto for transport the refrigeration supplies to kind of cool the produce or cool the food but there's a number of things that we think about okay, you know, what what what other commodities can be impacted which ones are going to be considered essential to actually keep the food supply chain going we also have to think about not just the product the self but you know where those products compose of and where the logistics of those products and where where will they come from so a lot of stuff is again trying to figure that out to see? 

You okay well because we service North America a lot of times when we're sending a truck out of here if we're not able to get food products to move out of BC now we have to look at what other commodities gonna get us into the place where we have to get the product that's gonna come back and if we can right then we have to talk to our customers and say okay, well we have may have to send that equipment down empty to pick up your product and there's a lot of information that we have to provide our customers with to explain that because a lot of people just automatically assume that hey trucks just show up everywhere and food just magically appears into our grocery stores, but there's a there's a lot of logistics that goes on. 

Being you know behind that of course yeah so let's backtrack to just before the crisis what was the biggest challenge you were facing as a business at that time that's a time I mean business was running fairly smooth we're always looking to see how we piss solidify our existing partnerships with our customers, we always want to be able to give our customers that the most valuable you. 

I think just some of the challenges are just getting that set up to so that you can almost put it on a cruise control and and make it almost automatic we're just focusing on building better relationships trying to see if we get higher volumes with those customers we're always trying to get. 

That good and talented staff into our office so those are things that we consistently try to work on even just this communicating with drivers and creating training programs or awareness programs for them but yeah, it was a regular day-to-day, it wasn't anything major that we were facing obstacles on now let's fast forward to post pandemic and now there's lots of new realities that are hitting and you've mentioned a lot of the challenges that you have been focused on recently, what would you pinpoint as sort of the key business challenge that you've been facing and have been working to overcome at this time so actually maybe I've never revisited the the previous question. 

To set tiny bit so when the sure models that I was actually considering or was talking about with our team was saying that hey once these closures happen what's gonna happen in this industry a lot of industries are gonna close down and there's gonna be an abundance of trucks and so this was my mindset going into it and saying okay, well, you know, there's gonna be a lot of trucks in the marketplace everyone's gonna try to go for the market share we made end up losing some of our existing business and so that was my first model that I played out there when it happened when the whole pandemic happened, all of a sudden there was a big surge on everyone. 

Trying to award a lot of the toilet paper or the the fluid products and the medical parts. I mean, the the system was just going crazy and yeah, we had such a demand for trucking that there was enough trucks in the marketplace to even move the stuff so definitely trying to work on that and and when that happened what I was trying to again tell our team is let's focus on the customers that are gonna have a steady demand of this product not the ones that are there's a lot of temporary demand that comes out of it. 

That's a lot of guys when you can't get their regular carriers to come out or the regular providers to come out and do the service they're looking for someone to fill the void temporary Now for us we we never want to be that temporary company we want to be that long-term partner that they see value and and so, you know again I was just telling everyone hey let's pick our customers wisely, let's make sure that we don't let any of our regular customers suffer if we're going to do any temporary work and with the temporary work what happens in a marketplace, whether it's supply and demand the rates will really high so you really can say, oh well I can make a few extra dollars but you know, again, my thing is always letting our staff know is don't go after them. 

Money rather go after that the long term customers that we work with and and make sure no one there suffers and those of these are times where we can actually show our service and initial on that extra value so that part was really important after that happened there was a lot of scare about the coronavirus something industry and so they ended to start losing a lot of drivers right away there was some a lot of false information that I was going out in the marketplace and there was one audio in particular where her drivers were telling each other to stay home for a couple weeks. 

I think it happens when a lot of People don't understand the supply chain and at that point when I start noticing that a lot of drivers we're starting to call in sync or we're telling us their problems about how they're getting a lot of social pressures to stay home and a lot of family members are also calling them from out of town and saying, hey, you know, you might want to stay home and tell this whole thing blows over. 

I mean, it's great advice but in the back of my mind I'm saying well, how are we gonna get food to people that really need it and how do we get food that's gonna be affordable for the people that aren't making high wages to be able to afford it right and and that's something that myself. 

Was dear to me is saying okay well you know great you know anyone that has money is always gonna get whatever they want because because money ends up buying whatever you you kind of need but when you're living on a fixed income on a low income and you start noticing that the grocery prices are starting to rise because there's no trucks to bring the freedom and now these guys are paying, you know, double triple whatever the cost is to get that product out here they have to raise their prices in the stores just they just to be able to to bring it in the grocery stores aren't gonna you know observe that much of that of that cost right that was a big challenge on our side because we get calls from. 

From different companies from different provinces and I realized that this wasn't just the brisk Columbia problem this was cross-can a problem and and into the end into the US and in the US and and so you know, where I thought there was gonna be a surplus of trucks now we're seeing a huge shortage of trucks even though industries were starting to shut down and that's because a lot of drivers were choosing to stay home and I think we're also seeing this in the medical system as well where it's kind of scary for some of the people to to be out and to be working when when they when they think that they're gonna compromise their family members at home and that was the real problem and still is a Pretty big problem that's still entering industry where we have to get our drivers PPE equipment so that they're they're able to go out on the road and feel safe when they're doing their job and we're competing against hospitals, we're competing against people that are panicked, you know, that that may just be sitting at home and anyone PPE just to get out into the grocery stores. 

I mean it, Been very difficult for us to source some of those supplies like the sanitizers the face masks We just recently got fish shields for our drivers, but there was so much commotion that happened with Corona virus. So with all that negative news now instead of focusing on the actual business as starting focusing on actual industry, which was okay, well there's a lot of negative premise in this industry, how do we make it positive? 

And so in a situation where I was on the city outside of things recently, I had to transition back into San okay, well let's get back into the business side of it because we lost employee. 's right Yeah where I was wasn't expecting to hire a rush of drivers we had to really get out and look at okay how do we fill these gaps How do we get drivers back on the road. 

How do we send out positive messages in the industry so we can actually support the entire industry to get back on the road? How do we create campaigns to fight this negative information that's out there? And so we put a huge emphasis on social media. We put ads out in our local community radio programs just supporting frontline workers, which include a truck drivers retail workers. 

I mean when I think about it just blows my mind, how many people are probably affected? You know and a lot of essential services that we that we expect I mean a lot of these people are also beginning a lot of pressures to stay home as well and at the state protected. 

But I think just being in this industry and now what the industry is actually being able to give us we were looking to return that favor and do it was a good time to step up enter industry step up for the community change this negative into a positive. So you touched a little bit on the workforce side of things, let's dig into that a little bit more. 

Can you talk about how this is impacted? I mean, you've got drivers all over North America or really starting to see the numbers. On the media and on news rising and other parts of the US and other parts of Canada how has this impacted your ability to actually do business and to continue to be able to generate revenue and have the people in place to facilitate that. 

It's definitely been difficult I think at a time like this I mean you know there's very few customers that could even approach sort of sales side has gone down quite considerably because there's pandemic going on people are worried people are stressed out. It's not the best time to be doing for sure. 

We're just trying to figure out how to help people that are in need just trying to see how we could leverage our relationships work with community work with government agencies. It's it's quite challenging so since we know that we can't really focus too much on that. So we try to focus on things that we have control over. 

Which is again drivers back on the road so point out to advertisements for that working with industry associations to get a better campaign going for positivity for industry. And so a lot of these campaigns say went out to customers just because our again our drivers were facing such challenges on the road. 

You probably heard on the news where these guys are or not able to attack this washrooms anymore. So many restaurants shut down that they they can't access food. They can't access those restaurants that they would normally go to to use a bathroom in. And so one side they're fearful of even getting this virus on. 

The second thing. Pounded on that was out there losing so many of the resources that they had on the road as well and so we had to go back and educate people and say hey you know what if you want your part and you're gonna have to allow these guys to be able to use some of these facilities to actually get them to do their work. 

I mean, they're on the road for seven eight days at a time so I mean, you know, the biggest challenge for us is is just getting that information out there and allowing these guys to be able to do their job properly and not having them impacted by people making rash decisions whether or not considering what these guys are doing and how vital they are to keep our our supply chains going, right? 

And can you share how this is impacted your business as far as revenue you have a percentage or anything you can share whether you've seen an increase in revenue or a decrease in revenue and what that looks like when you saw that start to hit and whether or not you've been able to acquire any new customers at this time we've had ups and downs crazily over the last little while so again in the beginning, there was a huge demand for trucking services, so we saw a big surge in business after when I was negative news came out and these viral audios came out telling drivers to stay home that we lost a bunch of drivers, so now we were down. 

Losing money or something but we had a lot of equipment I just sat for a while and that's something I totally did not picture happening now we've been working at getting those drivers back at the same time we've been also lucky enough to be able to pick up new customers even though we lost some customers that had the shutdown because they were not essential services, we were able to gain some of the essential service customers just because when we were losing drivers other companies were losing drivers into a large extent as well and now it's just a race on who can get those drivers back on the road and do the service these customers quickly and and properly, you know, and I was. 

That was a challenge right now I mean I'm just thinking about it now it's just it's very hard to explain but you're looking back in the same as a business owner like my head was everywhere it was in ten different spots at the same time yeah you know we had office employees that left as well and I was covering for those offices employees because they were too scared to come into the office because a lot of our groceries were going into the epicenters like New York and California and they're saying hey man, our drivers are going to States we don't want to get this buyers to our families and we're trying to set up, you know, the remote services for our employees and for some of them we had to have them come in for at least an hour two hour to set it up and There were two scared to do that so we lost our safety manager at the time we lost some of our logistics people that were organized in some of the loads so again I was trying to balance those out I was out there training drivers at the same time and trying to work with customers to see okay well which customers that we have to do have to work with at this time, so again it was a lot of running around but just going back to the revenue side everything's dependent on our drivers and it's also dependent on our customers if we don't have drivers we can't service customers so try to balance both of those out and then we also need the office staff to be able to maintain those customers. 

And to maintain the driver services that they that they vitally need at this time as well so yeah it was it was a lot of up-and-downs but I think you know we went from seeing a surgeon business to going down and now getting a lot of drivers back on the road right now and I think it's kind of leveled out a little bit where I think we saw a couple trucks that are still sitting in our yard looking for good driver set to come back we had a lot of drivers that went into quarantine something that were coming back from vacation, so again, we're short a lot of those drivers which which hopefully should be coming back on a quarantine, so yeah, it's a balancing act. 

For sure but. You have the ups add downs of that of the coronavirus This crisis there's been lots of different timelines thrown out and I think there's different timelines that we're seeing in different parts of North America as well as some areas are perhaps responding more quickly than other areas have responded. 

If this continues on beyond, you know, four or five six months, what do you see as your single greatest challenge? The greatest challenge is going to be one is just to keep this crime virus out of our company and to keep our drivers safe that's going to be first and foremost if we do have a spread in the company we know it they just spread quick. 

Ly So we're trying to take all the measures to make sure that we practice the social distancing We question the drivers every time to come in we try to pay extra attention just to see if they're feeling any symptoms the main thing is is getting the information to them making sure that they stay home if they feel sick whatsoever so it doesn't spread within the company. 

So number one is gonna be that. Secondly is if this gets worse before he gets better we also have to pay attention now to customers they're still certain customers that are operating right now that may not be deemed as essential services. We have to kind of run their models again to see okay well which customers are gonna be around. 

For five six months from now or if we get into a lockdown situation where they want to lock down more businesses, which ones are gonna affect us so we we have to run those models to keep track of essential versus non-essential providers. So Damian what's next for centurion trucking is we transition now or have transitioned into April. 

What do you see as the greatest opportunities and all this and how are you focusing on getting your team to continue to think around innovation and adapting to what you see as the future opportunities? For your business I think I see the greatest opportunity is being able to serve our community I think it's a there's a lot of emphasis put onto the trucking industry right now and to really showcasing companies that are able to handle stressful situations. 

So I think a lot of things that we do during this time is gonna actually set us up for future as well. So, you know, the first one is just just simple use know that you're taking care of them at this time. We're able to get those future drivers to come and join a company that takes care of their drivers and when business does seem to pick back up the company that's gonna have that. 

Drivers that's gonna maybe able to pick up the surge when the economy tries to get back up and running We're gonna see drivers choose companies that they actually want to work with. And I think customers on the other side we'll look and say, okay well which company was actually servicing us during the difficult times or when they saw surges in their products and who was able to help them with their fluctuations when it came to to certain peaks and that in their business even when their businesses went down what were companies doing to help them and their downtimes as well. 

Again, a lot of us just communication, but I think I see a lot of opportunities. That if anyone's able to handle this situation in the best way that they can I think customers and drivers are both gonna recognize those companies and and those are the ones that they're gonna choose to grow with. 

I think unfortunately I think we're going to see a lot of companies fall down that are unable to maintain their expensive payments and overheads. Yeah, I love what you said they're about looking after your people. It's this idea that you look after your people and they'll look after you and obviously that just helps with recruiting which you've mentioned is such a a key part of your focus right now is ensuring that you've got the right people in the trucks and that you're doing a great job of educating them. 

So really love that and I think that investment model is key in particular at a time like this. So for those that are listening and maybe they're struggling in their businesses and they haven't found a way to pivot or to shift or to innovate what resources or what suggestions could you make to them. 

Not basically is just adapt to a situation. You really have to have it years to the ground and just the people in your organization. Listen to what the feedback is and see how you can adapt some of the stuff that we did is just knowing even in our sales process that if we can't go out and fly and meet people because our customers are based on across North America, let's start making videos and sending them videos so we went into a video format. 

Of doing a sales presentation rather than trying to go through in person and trying to speak to somebody and we figured okay well you know understanding what they're going through that sometimes they're stressed out or you know, nobody wants to talk about sales. So we said, okay, well how can they watch something after their own time? 

How do we not bother somebody and so the easiest way to do that was to make a quick video ourselves and send it to them so that they could watch it after convenience. It's not intrusive into what they're doing. Let's sympathize about done in their situations. There's a lot of companies that felt so much strain that you really have to understand who your clients are. 

And what's appropriate and what's not appropriate but at the same time if you do understand what your clients are going through and you can put yourself in their shoes. There's a lot of ways that you can adapt and not be accompanying that's going to get rolled over by this grown-up virus but look at ways to thrive and excel and to be able to highlight what you do and, If you're an anonymous sexual business and you had to shut down there's so many ways that you could be creative I mean we saw stories with companies like Earls were a restaurant chain could have stayed closed but they decided to open their restaurants up for grocery now and prepared meals. 

There's a lot of ways to adapt at a situation even for when I looked at our company we could have easily just said let's just reduce the amount of trucks for the amount of customers that we have remaining and let's figure this out and and see if we stay alive but it's a chance for us to step up and be able to serve our communities. 

I do this personal training and and what did what to talk about is you know you could live in a in a fear and scarcity mindset or you could live in an abundance mindset. And I think if you get into that fear of we don't know what's gonna happen. 

Oh man, I'm gonna have to close my doors. I'm gonna have so many payments and you get stressed out for those facts. It's gonna put you into a hole and you're gonna eventually have your back to the wall, whereas if you're strong enough to go fight for it, you're gonna figure out ways to make a living. 

You're gonna figure out ways to change your business dynamic to move forward, but I think situation like this. There's so many. Opportunities. I've been at different tracking businesses and whether it was 9/11 whether it was a 2008 recession and this one now I think out of every one of those situations we've been able to really expand our businesses and a lot of it is just fighting for it so it's how bad do you want it you could take the punches and go down or you just get back up and fight back and I think there's just so much opportunity here. 

I love that mindset. I think that's such an important perspective to have on things right now thanks so much for being on the show. Damon what's the best way for people to reach you if they want to connect? LinkedIn Instagram Facebook, we're using those platforms you could look me up as century and trucking give me a call directly if you want a lot of people out there do have my cell number so I keep a open door policy with with our employees and enter customers, so I'm always available great thanks so much appreciate you being on the show, no problem, thank you bye. 

Thanks for listening to the entrepreneurs versus coronavirus podcast with your host Ryan Kononoff for complete show notes and additional information visit clearbridge.ca/podcast. Ryan is the founder of Clearbridge Business Solutions. To find out how investing in technology can help your business, especially during uncertain economic times visit lifewithclearbridge.ca connect with Ryan on LinkedIn or on Twitter at Ryan Kononoff, that's RYAN KONONOFF. 

Thanks for listening.