FreightWaves Today | September 28

Julie Van de Kamp (0:24)

Welcome to FreightWaves Today, I'm Julie Van de Kamp, joined by Malcolm Harris today. How was your weekend?

Malcolm Harris (0:30)

It was an amazing weekend. It was an awesome weekend. I saw some good football. My Tennessee volunteers are not the real UT, losing to Texas, but it's okay.

It was close though, right? It was close, right? It was close. Got a young quarterback and we'll see them next year. How was your weekend?

Julie Van de Kamp (0:48)

It was good. It was busy. It was very standard soccer bomb stuff. We had three soccer games, one of which was three hours away.

Malcolm Harris (0:55)

Excuse me, three hours away?

Julie Van de Kamp (0:57)

We did. We had to do a little drive-in for a Tennessee State League soccer game.

Malcolm Harris (1:02)

Okay.

Julie Van de Kamp (1:02)

And kids fall fast at school and then just getting ready for the week.

Malcolm Harris (1:08)

And you're coming off of travel in Green Bay.

Julie Van de Kamp (1:11)

Yeah. I mean, just one more time, I've got to talk about what a high I'm still riding from being able to do that. It was kind of a full circle moment for me to get to talk to Jen Filter, the CEO of Schneider, which it was amazing to get his insights on kind of the freight market and things that were happening there and what's going on at Schneider and to be there at Green Bay. Obviously, I grew up around Schneider. My dad was there for quite a long time, 11 or 12 years when I was young. So I went to take your daughter to work day there when I was young and oh, there we go. There's a picture. I was probably third grade, little Julie.

Malcolm Harris (1:47)

Look at little Julie.

Julie Van de Kamp (1:49)

And that was like a truly memorable time for me. I remember sitting in the sleeper and they drove us around the parking lot and took us through a truck wash, which we thought was like the coolest thing. And had one of the owner operators was a pen pal for my, this is when we still actually wrote letters and sent mail for one of my grade school classes. And he would send us postcards from like all the different places. He was around the country to my class, like just cool stuff, right? When I was younger and then to get to talk to Craig Dickman and I had interned at Paper Transport and my dad was president of Paper Transport when I was there. And I was like pretty emotional when he was kind of talking about like my dad's legacy and what he turned the dedicated fleet into there.

I grew up obviously around that and Georgia Pacific, which is now KBX was their huge dedicated client and president of, or he was over transportation then and then was the president of KBX. I like babysat for his kids when I was in high school and my parents very close friend, Kay Rice was transportation manager or traffic manager at GP, Fort Howard and then GP and when we moved to Green Bay, they were really our family.

We went to their home for Thanksgiving and Christmas because all of our family was so far away. So she was like a godmother to me. She passed away last year, but to get to just feel like connected to all of that again was very cool. All of the interviews were great, felt good to be in Green Bay. The weather was beautiful, the Packers lost.

Malcolm Harris (3:23)

That was a great thing.

Julie Van de Kamp (3:24)

But it was terrible.

Malcolm Harris (3:25)

Because it was to the Atlanta Falcons.

Julie Van de Kamp (3:27)

To the Falcons, I know.

One of our producers, Isaiah, was there as a Falcons fan. So I really felt like extra, like he actually didn't rub it in, he really could have. But the point of all of that is, what was cool to me was that it really felt like the best example of how small this industry can be, and what a family, like this transportation and supply chain group can be to you, right? And it was to me growing up, and it is to me now, even though I swear I was never gonna get in it, I am certainly in it for life.

Malcolm Harris (4:01)

You're in the thick of it now.

Julie Van de Kamp (4:02)

And yeah, so it was great. How was the show Friday?

Malcolm Harris (4:05)

Julie, that's awesome. Well, first off, I'm really happy that you guys had a great time.