BLP 363: The $500K Lesson: Inside Blackwell Trucking's Pivot to Hopper Freight
Release Date: 05/04/2026
BLP 370: Rolling Coal, an $18M Fine, and Redemption: The PDI Story
Bulkloads Podcast
They fined him $18 million. He built a diesel empire anyway. Jerad Wittwer grew up the son of a St. George milkman and rancher, overhauled his first engine at 13, and turned a passion for horsepower into Performance Diesel Inc. (PDI) — one of the most recognized names in diesel performance. But the road there ran straight through one of the most controversial chapters in trucking: EPA investigations, deleted trucks, and an $18 million federal fine. In this episode, Jerad sits down with Jared Flinn for an unfiltered conversation about the whole journey — the rise, the reckoning, and the...
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BLP 369: 1 Gas Station to 1,400 Employees: How Wallis Built a Fuel Empire
Bulkloads Podcast
Bill Wallis went to work at 13 to help his family. He served in the 101st Airborne, came home, and bought a single gas station in Cuba, Missouri in 1968. Today Wallis Companies runs 67 stores, a 42 truck bulk fleet moving 120 loads a day, and employs around 1,400 people. In this episode, Matt and Alan take us inside the fuel hauling world most truckers never see: the predictive dispatch tech, the back to back state safety awards, why their turnover is almost zero, and the tribute show truck they built for Bill called "Blue Collar Roots." CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro: Meet Matt and Alan 0:41 From a K9...
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BLP 368: We Doubled Our Trucking Company, Then 2025 Hit
Bulkloads Podcast
Watch on YouTube: Rob and Kate have been together since high school. Years ago they took over the family farm and trucking operation, doubled the business, and then watched 2025 turn into the hardest year of their lives. In this episode they get honest about what it actually takes to run a trucking company as a husband and wife team. The 16-hour days through the freight recession. The financial calls that kept them up at night. The hardest decision they ever had to make. And how they protected their marriage and their kids while fighting to keep the trucks moving. If you run a fleet, drive...
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BLP 367: The $1 Million Bet That Built a Trucking Dynasty
Bulkloads Podcast
Tom Keller spec'd his first truck at 20 years old to haul watermelons off his family's farm. He'd drive a load to Indianapolis, not like the price, keep driving to Detroit, sell them, and set the cash on the kitchen table — then do it again the next morning. That hustle became Keller Logistics Group: 350 trucks, four divisions, and $200 million in sales out of Defiance, Ohio. In this episode, Jared Flinn sits down with Bryan Keller and Jonathan Wolfrum to unpack how a melon farmer's instinct for finding the next opportunity built a company that's survived every freight cycle since —...
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BLP 366: $10,000 to Replace a $300 Part? The Dealership Trap Explained
Bulkloads Podcast
Watch this episode on YouTube: Fleet maintenance isn't sexy — but it's one of the highest expenses in trucking, the most controllable, and by far the most ignored. Justin Brevik of Bosch FleetMe returns to the BulkLoads Podcast to break down exactly where fleets bleed money on maintenance and how to fix it, whether you run 3 trucks or 3,000. Host Jared Flinn and Justin cover the real cost of letting a truck sit at a dealership, the oil-change myth costing you thousands, why tires are your #1 maintenance expense (and the cheap fix almost nobody does), and how to move your operation...
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BLP 365: For This Business, Success isn't Measured in Trucks
Bulkloads Podcast
Watch this episode on YouTube: For Matt and Sharon Kill, the goal was never to have the biggest fleet. But it took growing to 21 trucks — and nearly losing what mattered — to figure that out. The family started with nothing: one truck, a borrowed belt trailer, and a 1950s pay loader that lost steering every time you let off the throttle. After Matt got let go from John Deere, they accidentally built a four-way ag operation — trucking, manure spreading, farming, and feed commodity trading out of Saint Mary's, Ohio. 🎙️ Brought to you by BulkLoads — the bulk freight...
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BLP 364: Why This 31-Year-Old Says Fancy Trucks Are Killing Owner-Operators
Bulkloads Podcast
Watch on YouTube: Craig Broerman left a corporate mechanical engineering career, sold the money meant for his grandparents' farm, and bought a belt trailer in 2019. Six years later, he and his cousin Alan Lennartz are running 7–10 trucks across the Midwest hauling DDGs, soybean meal, cottonseed, and industrial products — and they did it before either of them turned 32. In this episode, Jared sits down with Craig and Alan on location in Portland, Indiana to talk about the BulkLoads find that changed everything, the phone call in a North Carolina cornfield that made Craig get out of the...
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BLP 363: The $500K Lesson: Inside Blackwell Trucking's Pivot to Hopper Freight
Bulkloads Podcast
Watch it on YouTube: What does it take to run a four-generation family business through cotton, cattle, pipeline restoration, AND a 7-truck hopper fleet — all at the same time? This week we sat down with Bob Blackwell and his son-in-law Jared Reaves at Blackwell Trucking in Wayne, Oklahoma. Three generations of Blackwells have worked this land. Bob started chasing pipeline restoration jobs 25 years ago when one came across his field — and built Blackwell Trucking on the side just to keep his own equipment moving. Then the last four years took a swing at them. Pipeline work went...
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BLP 362: From a Coin Flip to 750 Trucks: Inside the 75-Year Wayne Transports Empire
Bulkloads Podcast
Check this episode out on our YouTube: https://youtu.be/hc33VvhAS_I In 1950, a teenager who'd dropped out of school to save the family farm bought one truck and started hauling gasoline. Today, Wayne Transports runs 750+ trucks, moves nearly 290,000 loads a year, and posts driver turnover rates a fraction of the industry average. In this episode, we sit down with the next generation of Wayne ownership to unpack the full story — the Korean War tragedy that almost ended the company before it started, the bank loan that gave it its name, the move from Milaca to Rosemount that unlocked...
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The Heavy Haul Operator Riding the AI Data Center Wave
Bulkloads Podcast
Watch episode on YouTube: He started with one truck at 18 years old — and went bankrupt within a year. Most people would have quit. Kendal Mast didn't. Today, KM Wood Products runs 60+ trucks, hauls some of the heaviest freight in the country, and has quietly become one of the biggest players in AI data center freight — with 65% of their entire fleet dedicated to it. But the road here wasn't straight. Kendal rebuilt this company from zero multiple times, survived COVID with his family living in the truck, fired his entire driver pool to save key contracts, and learned million-dollar...
info_outlineWatch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xnLyii6krVg
What does it take to run a four-generation family business through cotton, cattle, pipeline restoration, AND a 7-truck hopper fleet — all at the same time?
This week we sat down with Bob Blackwell and his son-in-law Jared Reaves at Blackwell Trucking in Wayne, Oklahoma. Three generations of Blackwells have worked this land. Bob started chasing pipeline restoration jobs 25 years ago when one came across his field — and built Blackwell Trucking on the side just to keep his own equipment moving.
Then the last four years took a swing at them. Pipeline work went quiet. Solar customers walked off with over half a million dollars of unpaid work. Flatbed rates collapsed. And the family that had survived everything from boll weevils to a 1970s farm bankruptcy was looking for a way forward. Then Jared heard a podcast in his pig barn that changed everything. In this conversation we get into the full picture: how pipeline restoration actually works, why Bob won't buy stockers, the brutal economics of cattle and cotton, why he calls solar "a shell game," the wreck-truck rebuild, the engine that came apart in the shop, the role of faith in their business, and the very human moments behind the family's "GIG, GAP" philosophy — God Is Good, God Always Provides. If you're a carrier wondering whether there's a more consistent path than flatbed, a shipper looking for hard-working family operators, or a farm-and-ranch family trying to figure out the next chapter — this episode is for you.
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▶ Are you a shipper looking for family carriers like the Blackwells? https://bulkloads.com?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=Blackwell+Podcast
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CHAPTERS 00:00 — Meet the Blackwells: 3 Generations on the Same Land
00:55 — How a Pipeline Across Bob's Field Started Everything
02:30 — Why They Started Blackwell Trucking
03:00 — Today: 7 Trucks, Goal of 10
04:34 — The Podcast in the Pig Barn That Changed Everything
05:30 — Why Hoppers Are More Consistent Than Flatbed
06:00 — Working with Chris & Michael at RFG
06:50 — The End Game: Cutting Out the Middleman
07:30 — "It's a Turtle Race"
08:00 — Cattle, Wildfires, and What Bad Land Management Looks Like
09:30 — The Engine That Came Apart in the Shop
10:00 — What Pipeline Restoration Actually Is
12:53 — Inside a 100-Mile Pipeline Project
13:30 — The $500,000 Solar Disaster
14:30 — "Solar is a Shell Game"
17:30 — Three Generations of Blackwells
18:00 — Why Bob Won't Buy Stockers
20:40 — The 8-Cent Brangus Lesson That Changed His Cattle Operation
22:00 — When Bob Got Into Rodeo Stock
23:30 — Where He Markets His Cattle Today
25:40 — Cattle Prices: Then vs. Now
28:20 — Cotton Country: How an Entire Region Dried Up
29:30 — Milo, Sorghum, and Fallow-Ground Decisions
31:42 — "The Only Difference Between Farming and Vegas..."
32:30 — Why Weather Is 95% of the Business
33:30 — What They Do for Fun: Lake Murray
34:30 — How Jared Got Here: Saint Louis → Mizzou → Bartlett → Springfield
37:00 — Why Joplin Stockyards Surpassed Oklahoma City
38:30 — "The Wealthiest Companies Got Wealthy off the Backs of Farmers"
39:50 — Why Cotton Doesn't Pencil Anymore
41:00 — The Peanut Program and Government Subsidies
43:00 — The Soybean Crop That Paid for His Son's Birth
45:30 — Why Equipment Payments Don't Work Anymore
46:30 — Converting Cropland to Bermuda Grass
47:04 — How Faith Holds the Whole Operation Together
48:30 — "GIG. GAP. God Is Good. God Always Provides."
48:50 — The Check-in-the-Mail Moments
CONNECT WITH BLACKWELL TRUCKING Wayne, Oklahoma
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