The last few years have been unqualified positives for the business of Tommy Piluyev, owner of mostly dry van and refrigerated carrier Globex Transport, up to 26 total power units as of July this year. That is, until the most-recent period. Speaking in August, Piluyev was helping arrange repairs from his Boise, Idaho-headquartered fleet's location in Lincoln, California, for an operator stuck with an issue with a reefer trailer damaged during unload far away in Alabama.
Piluyev chalked it up to an unwritten rule he keeps in the back of his mind when the freight markets are on the way down. "Whenever the market is really hot, you’ll never have an issue, but the moment rates drop," he said, "trucks break down, stuff starts happening out of nowhere."
Variations on Murphy's Law -- anything that can go wrong will go wrong -- aside, Piluyev's been working through current market fluctuations with a stable of brokers and a few direct customers who've kept Globex's freight rates just below $3/mile across the fleet on average. Most of that rate on most of the loads goes to his owner-operator-dominant core of haulers, in addition to four company trucks he's invested in for the first time over the last year or so.
Among the trucks Globex has acquired -- buying used late last year, is this Freightliner.
All owner-ops are dedicated to Globex in lease agreements, paid on percentage, and based across the country, with a core in the state where the fleet was born, California, some out East and all the way up to Alaska, even. "He lives up there and flies down to California to work for about a month" at a time, said Piluyev of the last arrangement with an owner-operator based up north. "Then he flies back for a month and goes fishing."
Repeat.
"And I’m stuck here in the office while he’s sending me pictures" of the fish he's caught, Piluyev said. It might be enough to make some guys jealous, unsatisfied with their station in life. But Piluyev, in his late 20s, is still loving his work building the business, founded in 2017. It's grown fourfold in as many years, from just six trucks at the end of 2018, the first full year Globex was a business. "I love it," he said. "Every day there’s something new going down. I love what I do."
