Joseph J. Beacom
Analyst · Longbow Research
Sure. Matt, this is Joe. I think that the BCOs that come to Landstar, right, they're out there running their own business or running for somebody else, and they make a conscious decision to come here. So we're not starting somebody from scratch. So they're out there and they're -- they've been out there and operating for a year, because we don't take them if they don't have a year's worth of experience, right? So they're making a conscious decision to come here. What I think happened, and we've been good about this, I think going backwards, but in this environment I think it makes the job even easier. Once we get somebody to take a look at what the opportunity is here, get them a look at our load board, get them to look at our LCAPP program, get them to look at the agent network and all the opportunity, our closure rates improve. I think that's what's been part of it. And retention, we're just not, I think my staff was 20% fewer terminations year-over-year in the quarter. I mean, the environment just bodes well for that. And it's not any one thing, it's a multitude of different things. We've got some pretty mature programs around our recruiting and retention efforts, and I think in this environment, that just is being seen a little bit more significantly. And on the carrier side, the number that I focus on, the overall approved counts going up, that's great. But we really focus on growing that active count. And that number has grown pretty significantly. So not only do we have carriers that are approved, but we're actively reaching out to every new carrier to make sure that they continue to be active within the network, working not with maybe the agent that loaded them the first time, but maybe another agent, so we can keep them active in the network. Those are the 2 things that I think are clicking pretty well right now here and have kind of lead to that growth, both in brokerage capacity as well as BCO.