Episode 5: Modern Pipeliner Nico Logistics with Matthew Nicholas

NICO LOGISTICS
A company that listens, learns, and surpasses the needs of its customers. We know every client and vendor are different and adhering to the specific requests of each one is what sets us apart from the rest. If we discover our services are not the best fit for you we believe in offering solutions that might be, even if it's not with us.  Building trusting, lasting, relationships are the foundation of our business.

Contact Matt for hauling quotes:
https://www.nicologistics.com/contact

Nico Logistics was founded on the idea of building trusting, lasting relationships with its clients and vendors. Combined with market knowledge, carrier leverage and over a decade in the industry our goal is to offer every customer specific solutions in all aspects of shipping and logistics.  We believe in listening and learning the needs of each client in order to understand if and how we can be the best fit.  Our loyalty, attentiveness, and hard work make Nico Logistics the "Leader Of The Pack"!

Chapters
0:00 What do you do Dad?
0:25 Welcome to Modern Pipeliner
0:38 Who is Matt Nicholas?
1:03 How did you get to here?
9:03 When did you become passionate about your focus?
10:07 Challenges?
12:40 Life Lessons?
13:37 Who were the greatest contributors to your character?
16:03 Worst project and best project?
17:38 Challenging?
20:19 Big news or projects?
22:00 What's NEW?
22:46 New Energy Powering Freight?
24:00 Positive about you that most people wouldn't know?
25:23 Upcoming networking event (May 5th)?
26:23 How do we get a hold of you?
27:35 Conclusion

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Transcript

Welcome everybody to the Modern Pipeliner podcast. Today's guest is Matt Nicholas. He is joining us from Nico Logistics. He's a. Big hauler in the energy space. And so if you need some freight solutions, you can definitely reach out to him. But we're going to go right into this interview here. And so, Matt why don't you tell us. 

what's your story, your resume, and how did you get to hear?

Tim, I appreciate you having me on your podcast, man. Appreciate everything you guys do, ma'am. So I started actually in transportation back in 2015 while I was attending college. Believe it or not, I was at a fraternity event and a fraternity brother asked me if I wanted a internship for college during the summer.

So at that time I was just kind of hanging out by the pool every day. So I thought, heck, why not? Let me dive into something. So I went to an interview actually that very next day and got the internship for a large brokerage company. I did that throughout the summer. Worked there for again, yeah, about three months.

And upon the end of my, I guess the end of the internship, they asked me if, when I graduated, if I'd like to have a full-time employment. Of course, I said, yes. You know that. A lot of time, I know a lot of people during college are looking for jobs and applying. So I was that monkey was off my back for sure.

So that made me feel a lot, a lot better. But upon graduation, I actually graduated on a Saturday and I started work on a Monday. So my uh, break was only one day, but, you know, start the hustle, man. So get into it. Yeah. For about five years wore a lot of different hats. Started as a dispatcher, just kind of learning the.

Stuff, dispatching trucks learning pricing, learning the market. I eventually evolved into more of a customer service role where I was able to be more hands on with customers, kind of learn the daily operations of what they need, and then what I need to do to help those customers succeed. I eventually transitioned that into more of a sales role.

Once I did more sales, I kind of got my feet at wet as far as learning the industry more, learning how to talk about the industry, learning how to sell the industry. But, you know, none of that would have been possible if I didn't know the nuts and bolts of it. Learning the operations, learning the dispatch, learning basically how the trucking industry works.

Once I got my feet wet at that industry you know, I pinched off something else for a little while. It was still in the trucking industry, but it was just a different company with that company. I had more of a role as far as managing bigger accounts and projects. That's really where I kind of found my niche, I would say.

You know, I had some customers, we grew substantially with them such as project management, lot of oilfield, lot of rig sites pipelines obviously. So once I ventured into that, I figured, hey, this is something I really like doing. I like the project management side of it. I like the sales side of it.

I like the, the whole, I guess the industry as a whole. But what really got me is tackling these projects. And once I learned how these projects work and what it took to hope these customers succeed you know, it just really kind of grounded me and said, Hey, this is what I want to do. So I did that for a little while and then, I had the opportunity to venture with another company and I had a great opportunity to grow with them.

So I was a kind of the same role managing large accounts helping grow the company overall, grow the business. So I had a lot of great experience there. A lot of great people at everywhere I've worked with. And then in 2018, I had the opportunity to venture out of my own and I created logistics.

You know, one of the things Creating a company try to overthink things. I think one of the hardest parts of me was coming up with the names. So I had so many different names, so many different ideas, and then I just thought, you know, how about Nicholas Company or Nico? And Nico turned into Nico.

Nico and then everyone just called me Nico. So I said, let's stick with that. That, that was simple. I liked it, it was catchy and the rest is history. Been doing Nicos again since 2018. lot of oil and gas, chemicals, anything and everything, honestly. A lot of rig sites projects, obviously that's my niche and we've been happy to grow every year.

The pandemic was tough, you know, as for everybody. But you know, we have some low customers and we've really just grinded down and helped those customers succeed during tough times, and we got through it. Now we are continuing to grow and I'm happy to say that Nico Logistics is doing very well as far as our customer base, our client base.

You know, we take care of everybody and we try to do the best we can to help each customer and adapt to their needs. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and freight is so important for the industry and, you know, with all this up and down with gas prices and the oil crisis, et cetera, you know, it, it's you know, and then trucker strikes and all kinds of stuff happening, you know, all over the place.

You know, having the right kind of trucking partner is just so important in, in energy and definitely in in pipeline industry for. And I know you've had some big pipeline operator companies that you've done a lot with as well, hadn't you? Mm-hmm. You know, one of the, of that is learning from those pipeline companies is understanding the driver situations as well, like you mentioned the strikes and the oil and Yeah.

Fuel and all. One of, one of the I guess biggest advantages in my career is being able to talk to the drivers and the customer. So often you get a sales role or you get just an operations role. I was fortunate to be able to learn both. So that way when I talk to a driver, when they're asking me, Hey, this is what I'm looking to do, this is my situation, this is what I'm struggling with.

I can go to the customer and say, Hey, I understand your need, but in order to make that happen, here's what we need to do. Yeah. Both ways. And I know when the customer has a need and they need to get something there on time, I'm realistic with these drivers. These drivers know if it can be done, if it can't be.

You know, being honest is one of the biggest, I guess, strengths of any company. And I think that it's something that you have to do honestly. We aren't used car salesman. You know, everything does come out, so you say you need to get somewhere at a certain time, you just need to be honest. There's weather again.

Anything strikes, anything anything's going to happen. Yeah. So about being upfront with customers and letting 'em know. These are the issues that could happen and here's why, and here's what we can do about it. Yeah. Yeah. And you've always been a very square business guy. I've dealt with you over many years here and, and you know, and we have a past history as well, but, you know having a good freight partner in your corner is just so important.

But you know, even dealing. You know, like I said, the, the gas prices and the fluctuations of the pricing, I mean, that affects truckload so much. The cost of it. And I feel like you've always been a fair partner to work with. Yeah. No, I appreciate it. I mean, again, it's, it's being transparent. I mean I think last summer some of the line halls that we were doing doubled in price.

Yeah. It's about being up front to those customers and you know, I know some situations where customers say, Hey, that, that sounds too hot. Let me go shop around and hate it as I'm much saying it or as much as I hate to say it, I would say go shop around. Yeah. It's the market. It is a market.

Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about that. But you know, the best we can do is we relay that information to our customers and whatever that customer or customers had that feedback, present that to the drivers, and then we sit on equal ground and try to help everybody. Just educate 'em.

Yeah, pretty much. Now when did you become passionate about your focus? I guess when I became passionate is during, I guess right when I started in his career I learned that what I do as far as transportation, trucking people always ask me, what do you do? I say, I help make the world go around.

Yeah. Those things where it's like, you know, My kids used to ask me that, what do you do? I'll be like, well, you see, you see that piece of steel over there on that building being put up? I helped move that. Yeah. See some of those boxes of cereal, I helped chip those. Yeah. It's kind of one of those things where you feel like you're impacting society.

So, you know, you're, you're helping the whole chain move again in the supply chain. But yeah, it's just, I fell in love with it because it was one of those things. Again, I was helping the world move and I really enjoyed it and I helped getting customers their needs taken care of. I help drivers keeping their trucks running.

Everyone keeps moving. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Now what is something that has been more challenging than you had expected? Well, Tim, kind of like you mentioned earlier, You know, last year with the fuel prices I've been doing this since 2016. We had a little bit of situation in two, 2018 that was kind of similar, but never, like I saw last summer.

I mean, it was, I mean, some of these rates were crazy. The, the fuel just weight increased. I guess that was probably the biggest challenge. You know, at least for, for us personally, Nico you know, the same amount of business was there. Just unfortunately margins. Yeah. You know, we wanted to keep our customers happy but we wanted to keep our drivers happy as well and keep carriers running.

But with that price of that fuel, it just kind of impacted everybody. So it wasn't just me, it was across the board. I mean, drivers weren't making more money, they were just paying more for fuel. Yeah. Yeah. So that was probably one of the biggest hurdles. I would say that the strikes were a big deal.

But, you know, will we, we were able to have some carriers that. Weren't really, they were part of it, but you know, we did a lot into Canada and I guess it just, they wanted to keep running, honestly. And we treated, we, we tried to treat them fair. You know, we supported their agenda, what they were, you know, looking to accomplish.

So we, we backed them on that side of it. But you know, we also understood and they understood that, you know, we all need to work, ma'am. So they kept running. They kept pushing on. So I would say the biggest hurdle has been this fuel It's one of the things I've learned, especially in this last year.

Again, just be transparent, man. I had to tell these customers upfront. I mean, they're fueling their cars just like me and you are, so they know the price. But once it online then becomes a real situation. So yeah, that's probably been the big other than that you get some crazy one-off stories, you know truck breakdown d o t pulling truck's over for, you know, inspections, stuff like.

You know, I always tell my wife that pretty much work 24 7, especially since starting Nico. I mean, I'll get a call at two in the morning and Driver will be telling me, hey, I'm going to be late for your 7:00 AM delivery and I got to wake up really quick and figure out who's talking to me and what's going on.

And then you know, let my customer know, hey, that 7:00 AM delivery is not going to happen. Know, yeah. Not really a hurdle, but it's just part of the job. Yeah. Try and give 'em as big a heads up as you can. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What good life lessons have you learned? Again, can we talk about earlier?

Man? Be honest. When, when I first got into this industry, I was a, I was a young kid, so I was confident and I always just tried to put my salesman hat on and try to tell the, tell the customer what they wanted to hear. One day early on in my career, that bit me in the butt and I learned, hey man, this is a can't, try to sell your way out of it. You got to just be up upfront. This is, this is the industry, this is trucking trucks are on the road. And eventually anyone's going to find out what's going on. So being transparent and being honest was probably the best way, I guess, that I learned early on is to approach my business.

You know, if, if something needs to be there at a certain time or they're looking for a certain price, if I can't do that, I'm just going to tell 'em, hey, I can't do that, but here's what I can do, here's why it might help you. And then I let them.  What coworkers or mentors were the greatest contributors to your character?

There's a lot to mention, to be honest. There was a few early starting on in my career. Guy that was a, a salesman above me. He taught me a lot. Again, about being honest, just being upfront with customers. You taught me about just how to present yourself in front of customers and the importance of the carrier side as well.

Again, I. I've been doing this for a long time, and you know, none of this is possible without the drivers. So I mean, we, I, I can talk to customers all day and tell 'em, we'll get this from point A to point B, but we don't have a truck on the road. None of this means anything. Yeah. So taking care of the carriers is number one.

Then once we're able to do that, we can help our customers. But I guess what they taught me is just, again, being upfront with people how to present yourself. At another company I worked for I. Manager that was very stern I guess you could say. But it taught me a lot of discipline. There's a lot of things I took away from his style.

It was just the way as he carried himself. He was a very number oriented guy and just the way he knew everything, like to a pinpoint, even in meetings, he would just spit these numbers out and have everything, and I thought, Okay, I need to get to that level. Cause he can spit out those numbers. I'm sitting there just taking notes down, like, I'll get back to you on that number.

He knew those numbers. So he studied, he studied, and I, I looked at him one day, I was like, how do you know that? He looked at me, he goes, Matt, he's like, I do my homework. And I was like, okay, do your homework. So that was one of the biggest things I learned. And then more recently had an employer you know, I got good guidance from some people that, you know, that worked there.

You know, about managing people learning. The difference of people and how different people like to be managed. Different people's style of working and then really just what makes people happy. And I think the biggest part of anytime you work with somebody is you want to feel important. You want to feel like you're doing a good job, you want to feel like there's growth and you want to feel like basically what you're doing has a purpose.

So I took that away a lot as well. So there's been a few people but it's, you know, it's all been different areas throughout my career as I've gotten. That I've learned. So they've all been pretty important. Yeah. Yeah. What you know, and you don't have to use names or anything, but let's talk about your worst project and then on the inverse of that, what's your best project?

You know, what does that look like? Yeah of course. Yeah. I can't get the names, but yeah. I would say my worst one without getting too much into details, we had a. We were hauling a crane, and the crane was on the way to a job site to offload for a rig site. And on the way the truck veered off into a ditch and the crane fell off of the truck, hit a light pole, and knocked the lights down, knocked all the power lines down.

Oh man. I got the rig site manager calling me saying, Hey, where's my truck? I got all these guys waiting. And I was like, and where's the crane? I. I'm going to tell you a story about both of those. Oh no. I had to break that news and that was a bad situation on my part. The customer's part. The driver's part.

Everyone's part. Yeah. So that would probably be the worst because it just kind of snowballed. Yeah. You know, one truck going off into that ditch, in fact of so many other things. Yes. That company's bottom line, theirs, like their rig was down. That driver, his truck was messed up. The crane company, their crane was messed up.

Oh man. And, and me. I'm the man there telling everybody in the middle of it. And it was just one of those deals where it was not good for anybody, but I did learn a lot. Just again, being up front with people. I didn't try to sugarcoat it. He asked me where the truck was, and I told 'em straight up trucks in a ditch.

Sold the crane. Yeah. They didn't go over too well. We were eventually able to get that customer back, but yeah, that was probably one of the biggest hurdles I've had to go with. Yeah. Yeah. One of the biggest I. Projects I've been doing recently is for a very large company it's a big name, but again, I can't, can't talk about names, but we've done a lot with them over the past four years and it's just been great being able to learn from a big company like that, how they work, some of their internal processes, some of the behind the scenes work, kind of what they do.

So it's been really good just to get our hands on that kind of stuff and understand how they work and what they. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, everybody's got there, their bad project and nobody ever talks about it, you know? But yeah, I, I mean, I could probably go on a few more. I. Podcast be. Yeah. No, you don't have to do that.

But, but no, it's just it's, it's just good for people to know, hey, there's bad things that happen and, and here's how you overcome that and, and you survive. You survive the worst of things, and, and you feel so sick in your stomach as it's going on, but, oh, yeah. But you knock that shit out and you become so much stronger because of it.

Right? Yeah. I mean I lost some sleep over that crane one, I could tell you that. Nor ordeal. Yeah. What's something about your industry that surprised you in recent years? And maybe we already touched on it, but yeah, we, I mean, we kind of touched on that a little bit. I would say, I mean, not really surprising, I guess kind of just learning how things are evolving a little bit.

Again, I mentioned one of the mentors when I first began my career. He would tell me looking up leads and calling customers. They used to use a ro. And they just go there and have all these cards on it. And I'll, while I'm sitting there just scrolling through my emails and just piping emails and picking up my cell phone and calling people.

And it was one of those things I was like, wow, that, that's come a long way. Technology yeah, that's for everybody. I guess more related to trucking, but you know, obviously using integrated CRM systems, tracking systems you know, ways to pinpoint what's working, what's not working for certain companies.

And in regard to freight that's been a big thing.

Honestly. Yeah, we kind of touched on that a little bit, like you said, but it's, you know, everything's always evolving, so I think one of the important things is to stay ahead of it and stay on top of it. I mean, yeah, you know, I have to, you know, know everything right away. But again, like I said earlier, do my homework.

So I try to get my feet into everything and study a little bit of everything that's related to my industry, my customers, and my drivers. And you know, that's, that's probably the biggest takeaway. Good. Good. What big projects are on Horizon, or you got some big news coming up?

I mean, again, some of the, the customer related stuff, I can't really, you know, speak about names and whatnot, but we, we do have some big projects on the way. We are getting into a lot, a lot more stuff with the Port of Houston, which is nice. So that's a, a. Potential project that we had that's going to be on the horizon.

Again, some of those bigger customers we've already been moving for. They're stepping up a lot. Good. We are working with some customers right now about getting into Mexico. So that's a, a big thing that's, you know, that's going to help out, again, shift a lot into Canada over the past few years. So, getting on the Mexico side of it will be another, I guess notch on our pole to add something that we've been able to do.

Yeah. But as far as like big. Rolling steady and trying to grow with the current customers we have. Build new customers and keep going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've, I've dealt a little bit with customs in Mexico on a few, few of our projects, but it, it's, you know, it's different animal, you know. I'm sure it's a lot different than Canada.

It is, it is. And so, you know, us with Nico, we do mainly domestic. Since we do Canada, obviously we've done that as well, but going into Mexico, yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a different ballgame, man. Especially dental customs. So, we all know that that side of it is a little different as far as, the domestic side of it.

So again, we're learning. But you know, it's, we have some partners that we work with that are experts on this, so it's helped us a lot and, you know, that's why we're continuing to grow. Good man. Good. Now, what is your vision? What do you see energy in the future? You know, how's it affecting your business, and what's the coolest inventions that you've seen recently?

As far as the moon, we, and it relates to energy, obviously price of fuel you know, that, that drives everything. Oil that drives, that drives the oil and gas industry, especially here in Houston. So the busier they are or the busier we are so you know, that that all correlates. So that's, I guess, one of the biggest, I guess, interactions between oil and gas and trucking.

Now, now, do you have any do you have any trucks that, that are, let's say using other kind of fuels or battery, or, or hydrogen people looking like electric trucks? So I've been speaking with some companies who do that. At this point we have not physically moved any loads that are, you know, self-driving trucks or electric trucks, anything like that.

I know that there are some companies that are doing that. It's something that we are looking into though. Yeah. Again, people that do that. But me personally, no. I have not yet. Yeah, it. Yeah, I was just wondering, if that was like a different pricing structure. I'm sure it would be something, I wouldn't know if it'd be more expensive or less, I wouldn't even know.

Yeah. I would think it'd probably be less in the, in the long run. I know there's a lot of ideas out there as far as building roads with, you know, basically charging, charging electric currents underneath it where they keep the trucks running. It'd almost be like trains where they just have their set lanes and they go back and forth.

So I. After you build that infrastructure, it would eventually be cheaper upfront. That cost will probably be a lot. But again, that's something we're on the early stages of looking at, so I, I can't speak on the cost. Yeah. It's exciting, I can tell you that. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting for sure.  What's something positive about you outside of work that most familiar with you wouldn't know?

I'm pretty transparent man, as you know. I know. I, I, I love sports basketball, football, baseball. I love music. I love attending, you know, as many conferences as I can. Time with my kids. I mean, that's you know, our kids keep us busy, man, so all in their own activities end and seems like they all went different activities.

So Weekends and weeks tend to be pretty busy. Yeah. But I mean I guess, I mean, most people know about my faith as a big deal. You know, I think everything in life is for Jesus before, for the man upstairs. None of us or any of this is possible without him. So I'm, I'm a firm believer. And I think just you know, again, there's not way too much to hide about me.

I, I talk to a lot of people and one of the things I like to do, Get into it, man, you know. No, no, no. BSing around. Hey, how's the weather? Let's just, you feeling all right, man? I'm not, not talk about it. Yeah. You know, we go from again, you know, that's just my faith. You know, I'm, I'm comfortable talking about people like that, and I think, you know, people are comfortable talking to me that, you know, let me know what, what's on their mind as well.

Very good. Do you have let's say a, you know, of course your service, what can we help you promote to the audience? Do you have any book or anything that you, you're working on or networking events or et cetera that are coming up? We do have some networking events. So recently we just were published in an article of Voyage Magazine.

Okay. So just, they reached out to me as far as more about my history we were able to do an interview about that. That was really cool. We've actually done a few various articles over the last few years. I can post that on your link or model link as well. Just give the audience some a brief description of that.

We do have a networking event coming up May 5th which will be very cool. At Alabama Ice House. We're going to do a crawfish boil. We're hosting that with a couple of my customers and we are going to be, Pro in good times, man. So very good, very good. What is the best way for the audience to support you and your company and get in contact with you?

Various platforms. I mean, you can reach me on Facebook at logistics.com. All the same handles for everything. Twitter, Instagram LinkedIn. Uh, you can look me by Matt Nicholas. Or you can find our company page at Nico Logistics. Nico logistics.com. So we're pretty much available everywhere.

One of the ways obviously they can support me is just if you have questions or you have shipping needs just to reach out. You know, one of the things that we try to do is discover we're a good. If we're not, I'll tell you why and who I think might be a good fit. Cause maybe down the line we'll be able to work together again one day.

I think I'd mentioned to you know, before we got on I had a customer that I've been calling on for years and recently they told me they have a big project and we've been working together. So when I first started calling on them two years ago, we weren't a fit and I told 'em why, and now we are a fit, so that's good.

I guess just reaching out if you have a shipping need and let me know and then we'll go from. Very good. Hey, it's been a blessing having you today. I appreciate your time and we're going to wrap this up and, share you with the audience here.

Yes, sir. Well, Tim, I appreciate it, man. Uh, Thanks for all you're doing, man. All right. Have a great day. Yes sir thanks.