{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Freight Show","title":"Steve Wineriter (American Diamond) on Going From Stuck at $45M to a $100M Run Rate","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3761,"description":"Most brokerages that stall in the $40-50M range never get out. The math is unforgiving: growing means hiring, onboarding, and training faster than the volume arrives, but staffing ahead of volume burns cash you don't have yet. American Diamond Logistics sat at $44-45M for three straight years. Then, in a matter of months, its run rate jumped to nearly $100M.\nSteve Wineriter has been in freight since 2002, when he joined his dad's 3PL out of college. After founding American Diamond, he made a decision that had no business working: in 2016, as a roughly $5M company, he built his own TMS and GPS tracking platform, sketched out on an actual bar napkin after a chance meeting on a shuttle bus. Navigator and Freight Tracer went live January 1, 2017, and within five years the company had scaled past $50M. One of the largest 3PLs on the planet later subcontracted American Diamond on one condition: don't show the client your technology, because it's better than ours.\nIn this conversation, Steve breaks down what it actually takes to break through the revenue ceiling: why the plateau is a staffing math problem rather than a sales problem, how automating carrier calls, load sheets, appointments, and track and trace turned a floor that sounded like the New York Stock Exchange into a quiet one, and why his agent department went from zero to over $20M in three years. He also gives his read on the strangest freight market of his 25-year career.\nWhat you'll learn:\n- Why the $50M ceiling is a staffing math problem: the chicken-or-egg trap where 3PLs wait for volume before hiring, then can't onboard fast enough when it arrives\n- The bar-napkin TMS: how a $5M brokerage built Navigator and Freight Tracer with outsourced developers and why owning the roadmap became the business model\n- Why Steve wanted a sales-centric TMS when everything on the market was a back-office data placeholder, and how it changed his reps' first 60 seconds with a prospect\n- The Starbucks meeting where one of...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/f0lw4441guZC8PqbG1LeEKiz-6dFl98YZjNUQNRMTjU/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80M2Vl/NThjZmRkZTYyNWU2/YzkyNGYyZmNiZjU2/ZWIyOC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}