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Investing in relationships — Tips and an amazing story

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Updated Sep 29, 2018

Knowing your primary customers, and cultivating relationships with them, has been a big theme of Kevin Rutherford’s in recent years.

Trucking radio host Kevin Rutherford, speaking at an Overdrive’s Partners in Business seminar, stresses the importance of knowing precisely who your customer is.Trucking radio host Kevin Rutherford, speaking at an Overdrive’s Partners in Business seminar, stresses the importance of knowing precisely who your customer is.

Since for independent operators those customers are often brokers, it’s a message that doesn’t always sit well with his listeners, whether it’s those for his satellite radio broadcasts or those in the audience at Overdrive’s Partners in Business seminars, where the video below originated.

Brokers will always be a part of the trucking industry, Rutherford said. “Shippers love them. You should start loving them.”

The video covers excerpts from Rutherford’s presentation at last month’s Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. It concludes with a vivid story from Rutherford’s owner-operator days, when he practiced what he now preaches: proving yourself to be of extra value to your customer (in this case, the fleet he was leased to) and then reaping the fruits of that sacrifice.

Partners in Business is sponsored by TBS Factoring Service and produced by Overdrive and ATBS, the nation’s largest owner-operator financial services provider.