BLP 371: His Dad's Dying Words: "You're Not Welcome At Page" | So He Earned It Back
Release Date: 07/30/2026
BLP 371: His Dad's Dying Words: "You're Not Welcome At Page" | So He Earned It Back
Bulkloads Podcast
On his deathbed, Keith Titus told his son: "You're not welcome at Page. I have a plan, and you're not part of it." Three years later, the plan had failed. The company was down from 230 trucks to 70, losing a million dollars a year, and the bank had cut them off. Then Dan's mom — a 27-year school bus driver who never worked a day in the business — made a decision that changed everything: she put every dollar of her husband's life insurance into the company. "I grew up on a dirt-poor farm. I've got no problem going back there." In this episode, Dan Titus of Page Trucking sits down with us in...
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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...
info_outlineOn his deathbed, Keith Titus told his son: "You're not welcome at Page. I have a plan, and you're not part of it."
Three years later, the plan had failed. The company was down from 230 trucks to 70, losing a million dollars a year, and the bank had cut them off. Then Dan's mom — a 27-year school bus driver who never worked a day in the business — made a decision that changed everything: she put every dollar of her husband's life insurance into the company. "I grew up on a dirt-poor farm. I've got no problem going back there."
In this episode, Dan Titus of Page Trucking sits down with us in upstate New York to share one of the most incredible comeback stories in bulk freight: five generations on the Titus family farm, a trucking company started in 1974 with $5,000 from his great-grandfather, losing his dad and grandfather a year apart, and rebuilding Page into 500 trucks, 900 trailers, and 650 families — hauling everything from grain to hazardous waste to 1,400° molten metal down the highway. Oh, and they heat their warehouses with Bitcoin miners.
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 Outgrowing the building (again)
01:56 Five generations on the Titus farm — Cato, NY, since 1809
02:32 Dad starts brokering freight without Grandpa knowing
05:28 $5,000 from Great-Grandpa to start a trucking company
06:00 Why it's called "Page" — the $250 authority
08:07 Why his dad chose trucking over farming
13:24 "You're not welcome at Page" — his dad's dying plan
15:21 Mom inherits a collapsing business
21:05 Betting the life insurance money on the company
22:37 Half the pay, twice the hours — Dan comes home
25:45 Buying the business back from Mom
26:40 Teamsters, a $3M pension liability & near-bankruptcy
29:00 From 230 trucks… to 70… to 500 today
32:37 Closed-loop hauling: scrap, dross & aluminum
34:27 Hauling 1,400° molten metal on the highway
38:24 Overweight permits & custom trailer designs
43:40 The Goulet Trucking acquisition
51:42 Why waste hauling is huge in the Northeast
56:22 Heating warehouses with Bitcoin miners
01:04:18 Keith Titus — the next generation
01:09:45 No handouts: earning your way into the family business
01:14:25 The chip on his shoulder — out-innovating $20B competitors
01:20:38 "I'm not ready" — why Page will never sell
01:24:13 Raising sharks, not minnows
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