Inside PDQ America’s office off U.S. 80, just west of Longview in White Oak, dispatchers and account managers are communicating with customers and freight carriers all over the country.
A customer might, for instance, need to move 45,000 pounds of a dry chemical from North Carolina to West Texas, and it must be delivered by 4 p.m. on a specific date.
“We have a network of carriers across the country that we work with,” said Michael Clements, the company’s owner and founder. His employees will get all the information about the load as it searches for a carrier to move it — where will the load be picked up and where will it be delivered? What special needs does the company have for that load? Does it include hazardous materials or is it over-sized?
“What we offer our customer base — instead of you having to call 15 people just to be told no, you can call us and we can call 250 people,” Clements said.
Earlier this year, PDQ America received the “Rising Star” award during the Longview Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Solutions luncheon.
Clements, who grew up in Liberty City and graduated from Sabine High School, started what was first PDQ Trucking out of a need at his family’s manufacturing business.
“I was seeing trucks go in and out every day,” he said. At some point, they became unhappy with the service the company was receiving to move oilfield freight.
He was “naive and 25,” he said, and thought “I can be in trucking.” In 2013, he started with an F450 truck, a 32-foot gooseneck trailer and a driver named Lester, Clements said. Then he began adding more and larger trucks and trailers, working up to 13 trucks in less than about 17 months.
“It was pretty rapid growth, but it was expensive,” Clements said.
Then the oil and gas industry began to decline in 2015 and 2016. Drivers started looking for new jobs. He had to make a decision about the next step for the business. He was about 26 or 27 years old.
“I got stuck with a lot of equipment,” Clements said, and as he considered his options he thought he knew more about computers than diesel engines.
“We became a freight brokerage,” he said, and PDQ America was born, providing trucking and logistics services.
But don’t look for a large fleet of trucks at PDQ’s facility. (Clements started Texas Semi-Trailers with the trailers from his original trucking business, leasing the equipment to other businesses.)
“I always thought I would have a trucking company of 20, 30, 40 trucks,” Clements said. Instead, PDQ America works with businesses around the country to secure the carrier services they need. The company also works with an owner-operator of four trucks that provides hot shot services.
“We move more freight now than we ever did,” when operating the trucking business. Clements said. “I love it because there are good families here in East Texas that need these loads.”
The experiences of starting a trucking company and then shifting its focus came with heartache and frustration, Clements said. That led to the start of PDQ America’s podcast “Trucking for Millennials.”
“I thought to myself, ‘How can I save at least one person that heartache,” Clements said. The podcast tries to provide content that helps other people understand the industry is hard, but it’s all about “resilience and sticking with it.”
” ‘You can get through it,’ is what I had to tell myself,” Clements said.
The podcast started in August 2019 and has now produced more than 200 episodes that are released every Monday morning. Clements and Aaron Dunn, sales and marketing director, lead the podcast, with interviews with truck drivers, people who work in compliance and sales, business leaders and industry experts.
When the trucking company was founded, its name stood for “pretty, darn quick.” Now, it means “Purpose. Driven. Quality.,” Clements said.
PDQ America has 10 employees — dispatchers and account manager.
“It’s crazy because this team will move a half million to a million-plus pounds of freight a day,” he said. “We rely on very good carriers, trucking companies. We rely on the trucking companies of East Texas to make it so we can do our job well. I can’t say that enough, that it’s the trucking companies of East Texas that allows us to be great at what we do.”
His team probably coordinates 250-350 loads a month, but his business is not just about quantity, but also “the quality of the load and the expertise it takes to move that load.”
He compared the types of loads to either a simple hamburger with a thin patty between two buns or gourmet hamburgers.
“We feel like we play ball best in that gourmet burger category,” he said or coordinating more complex loads than could be handled by booking trucking services online.
Online booking is the biggest threat the company faces, he said. But that kind of service doesn’t provide the relationship that PDQ employees develop with carriers.
He said at 10 years old, the company has been successful, helping move loads in the oilfield and construction industries, for instance, and moving everything from tanks to mowers and vehicles across the country. PDQ America has handled loads to 48 states, Canada and Mexico.
“I feel confident if anybody calls in from any state today, our team is going to be able to help take care of them,” Clements said, adding that his team works hard for customers. PDQ America has low employee turnover, he said, with employees who work hard for their customers.
“I think that’s why we’ve been successful,” Clements said of his employees.
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