Jeremy Fairman on Solving Storage Problems in North Carolina

In this episode, host Mark Mann sits down with Jeremy Fairman, General Manager of B&W Trailer Rentals, Warehouse on Wheels’ brand in Burlington, North Carolina, to talk about the North Carolina trailer market, the seasonal and retrofit pressures on local warehouses, and why storage trailers can beat a long warehouse lease. Jeremy describes a nonwovens customer that calls for 75 trailers and turns them in as its stock runs down, a customer with about 400 trailers full of cloth masks, and 160 windows for a Charlotte hotel cross-docked in two and a half hours.

Key Takeaways

1. Seasonal containers, inventory changes and retrofits all need floor space fast. Jeremy says the most obvious need is the seasonal container: back-to-school and holiday freight comes in quick, and customers want to avoid demurrage fees. Long-established companies bringing in a new inventory procedure or software shut off inbound while they get everything buttoned up, and manufacturers retrofitting an existing warehouse have to empty the floor safely and quickly. In December alone, 127 trailers came back, and almost all 127 were back out again.
2. A customer’s new 300,000-square-foot facility still ran short of space. After a very large merger, a well-known customer built a facility of over 300,000 square feet next to one of its manufacturing plants and consolidated buildings into it, then found it didn’t have enough space. Jeremy explained that a warehouse means a long-term deal plus a transportation provider, a logistics provider and its own people to monitor it. More trailers kept the solution at home, and WOW can help manage inventory and trailer locations with GPS.
3. One customer who chose a warehouse now wishes it hadn’t. Jeremy says the customer told him it was locked into seven years, while his existing customers handle seasonal surges by taking trailers when they need them and turning them back when they don’t. He points to data from a fleet of over 2,400 trailers and over 150 customers to make the case to a warehouse manager’s higher-ups. His advice to a CFO is to test trailers for a while, because a triple net lease can hide costs, such as an HVAC system that comes back to haunt you.
4. A South Carolina customer needed 250 trailers overnight. The customer was redoing its entire assembly line in North Carolina, about a three-and-a-half-hour haul away, and transforming its parts distribution. After a couple of nights of late phone calls and weekend talks, B&W delivered the first 10 trailers within the first 48 hours. Jeremy says once the customer had its first 10 safe, dark, dry trailers, it knew it was in good hands.
5. Mechanics who know the warehouse team keep trailers rolling. Repair requests go to one email that reaches everyone in the B&W office and every mechanic, and mechanics ask for a picture of the repair so they arrive prepared. B&W also runs mobile mechanics, and many warehouse managers have their mechanic’s phone number. Jeremy expects brakes to lock up and dirt dauber nests to clog air lines, and says the people behind the trailers are what separates B&W.

Episode Chapters

Click any timestamp to jump to that section on YouTube.

• 00:00 — Introducing Jeremy Fairman
• 01:25 — Biggest Secret To Keeping A Logistics Team Successful
• 01:52 — Cold And Ice
• 03:19 — Path To Trailer Rentals
• 04:44 — What Does A Normal Day Look Like?
• 05:13 — Biggest Space Headaches
• 06:43 — Success Is A Problem
• 07:58 — Band-Aid
• 10:08 — Warehouse Lease Cost
• 11:37 — Space Crisis
• 12:24 — Mechanics Team
• 14:17 — Dock Flow
• 15:08 — Carolina Capital
• 16:52 — Hidden Savings
• 17:44 — Out Of Space
• 18:48 — Simple Yard Change
• 19:08 — Unusual Use Case
• 20:00 — Christmas Trees & Tobacco
• 20:54 — Best Cost Savings Story
• 22:08 — Getting Into Fleet Solutions
• 23:56 — Resetting
• 24:24 — Mentor Advice
• 25:24 — Retiring Myths
• 25:55 — Feeling The Squeeze

Transcript

[00:00] Introducing Jeremy Fairman

Mark Mann: Welcome back to The Wow Factor. I’m your host, Dr. Mark Mann. And for this episode, we turn our maps toward the heart of the Carolina logistics triangle. North Carolina is currently one of the fastest-growing freight corridors in the US, with truck-moved freight values projected to double by 2050. If you look at a map of the Southeast, you see I-85 and I-40 intersect right in today’s guest’s backyard. This isn’t just a stretch of highway. It is literally the backbone of the North Carolina Industrial Crescent. We’re seeing massive investments in this area, guys, from a new UPS hub, I think they’re adding 450 jobs, to the expansion of companies like Chick-fil-A Supply and Hannes and Lotus Bakeries.

Joining me today is the gentleman who leads our Burlington, North Carolina operations, with a background in fleet solutions and a leadership philosophy grounded in the idea that it is amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit. He’s the perfect guide for the North Carolina market. The general manager for B&W Trailer Rentals, Jeremy Fairman. Jeremy, welcome to the show.

Jeremy Fairman: Happy to be here, Mark. Thanks for having me.

[01:25] Biggest Secret To Keeping A Logistics Team Successful

Mark Mann: Now, Jeremy, you’ve spent nearly a decade in management within transportation in the fleet world. In one sentence, what is the biggest secret to keeping a logistics team successful in a high-demand market like the Triad?

Jeremy Fairman: Just maintaining a positive culture and making sure your co-workers want to be here every day. And on top of that, just practicing the golden rule. And I feel like that’s what really makes people want to be around and stay around.

[01:52] Cold And Ice

Mark Mann: Yeah. Now, you were just telling us a story earlier about all the snow and ice that you guys just had moving through the area. What kind of issues has that caused for you guys?

Jeremy Fairman: Well, we had a cross-dock, that UPS facility you mentioned. There was leftover pipe on a trailer, and we’ve had it at our facility until they could coordinate getting it back up to the Chicago area. So right now there’s an ice skating rink out there. The parking lots are clear. We had salt down on everything but where it’s like a shaded area. There wasn’t enough salt, I guess, and maybe the ground soaked it up, but it’s an ice skating rink out there, and to pull a rig back there that weighs somewhere in the midst of 80,000 pounds just wasn’t in the cards. So we kind of had to push it off.

Luckily, we had another trusted vendor in the area that had a cross-dock facility. He gladly took the reins. We’re very, very happy, and the customer got what they needed. They had two trucks here. We were communicating throughout the week about the weather and about the situation, but they had drivers actually south of us, so they were already en route, kind of on their way back up north, so he wanted to roll the dice. We were in conversation all this morning, and his guys were very gracious and very understanding, but the fact of the matter was we solved the problem and got them taken care of, and they’ll be heading back to Illinois with their load, hopefully here in a couple hours.

Mark Mann: That’s great. So the ice messed up a lot of things, but I’m telling you, you guys are really, really working together to make some great things happen there.

[03:19] Path To Trailer Rentals

Mark Mann: Now, you earned your degree at UNC Greensboro, and you spent years with another large fleet solutions company before joining the WOW team, I think in 2022, right? How did your path lead you from a degree in parks and rec studies to the world of heavy-duty trailer rentals?

Jeremy Fairman: Well, I mean, I really enjoyed parks and recreation, enjoyed my time in college, and I spent a lot of time out west with my internship and stuff. But our joke was always we were paid by sunrises and sunsets. And when I got to looking further on down the road, I kind of wanted to go after a little bit more money, and transportation logistics kind of seemed to be that. It wasn’t necessarily recession-proof, as everybody knows, in transportation logistics, but it’s been very, very generous to me and my family, and I haven’t looked back.

But had a very, very good run at Snyder Fleet Solutions. Shout out to them. Very good, well-run company. And I just was fortunate enough to have an opportunity here to, not really hit the reset button, but just continue to grow, continue to learn in a different aspect of transportation logistics, and I’m very fortunate to be here and happy.

Mark Mann: Yeah, I understand that story very well. My undergrad is diplomacy and foreign affairs, and here I am hosting a warehousing, storage, and supply chain podcast. So I can tell you that a degree can prepare us for almost anything if we’re curious, I guess, and willing to engage.

[04:44] What Does A Normal Day Look Like?

Mark Mann: Now, your office is in Haw River, right at the crossroads of I-95 and I-85. Between the textile history of Glen Raven and the modern hubs of FedEx and UPS, what does a normal Tuesday look like for you guys?

Jeremy Fairman: Well, we really try to avoid normal days. If the day is going too normal, I just feel like it means that we’re not getting after it. But normally, you know, the day starts every day with communicating with the team and just making sure that everybody’s rowing in the right direction.

[05:13] Biggest Space Headaches

Mark Mann: Great. So North Carolina is seeing kind of a rebalance in 2026, where population growth is driving the need for smaller, faster distribution needs. When you look at the Burlington and Mebane corridors today, what are the three biggest space headaches that local manufacturers and retailers are bringing to B&W?

Jeremy Fairman: The major one and most obvious, you know, just that seasonal container, avoiding demurrage fees, things of that nature. Everybody has their, whether it’s back-to-school time, holiday season, everybody has those containers coming in, and they’re coming in quick, and you’ve got to get ahead of them. So we obviously always have that.

Outside of that, there’s a lot of companies that have been here for a while. So oftentimes they might have a new inventory procedure or software where they have to kind of shut off inbound so they can just gather what they have inside, make sure everything’s buttoned up before they start flooding and bringing everything in and kind of creating a mess. And outside of that, we’ve dealt with new manufacturing, retrofitting their existing warehouse. So they have to completely shut down, empty the floor safely and quickly, get everything buttoned back up, and then that’s where our trailers come in. And oftentimes they don’t even decide to give them all back, which is good for us.

Mark Mann: That’s great for you. And so you’re seeing a lot of churn there with that growth, right?

Jeremy Fairman: Absolutely. And just in the month of December, we had 127 trailers come back, and I’m happy to report that we almost got all 127 back out as of today.

[06:43] Success Is A Problem

Mark Mann: Great news. And so we’re seeing record job growth in your neck of the woods. Also, tell me about a recent week where a customer realized their success was actually a problem because they’d outgrown their dock space overnight.

Jeremy Fairman: A very large merger occurred with one of our very well-known customers that a lot of our brands share in WOW. They built a very large, over 300,000-square-foot facility right next to one of their manufacturing facilities to help coordinate things, and they consolidated a couple of different buildings, but they realized very quickly they didn’t have enough space. They have space for trailers, but they really were researching warehousing and understanding what that entailed.

And I was able to describe to them, you know, it’s not only just getting the warehouse and that long-term deal, but you’ve got a transportation provider, you’ve got a logistics provider, and then you’ve got to have your own people monitoring that and making sure everything’s going smoothly. So more trailers definitely was a very easy picture to paint and very easy to manage. And we can also help manage with inventory and where trailers are if they wanted GPS. So I was able to paint a pretty good picture of the simple solution, keeping it at home and not opening up this big can of worms that would just — the expenditure can get very high very quickly.

[07:58] Band-Aid

Mark Mann: Absolutely. So I want to kind of switch gears and talk a little bit about long-term strategy in this industry. We hear about band-aid. You know, trailers are a band-aid. Short-term, short-term, short-term. And I kind of teed this up in our intro, but you once shared a quote from Harry Truman that said, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” And that’s a great philosophy for what you do, because you step in and save the day for these warehouse and operations managers, who then look like the heroes for their organizations, right? But a lot of folks still see storage as that creditless band-aid. How do you coach a Carolina operations manager or a warehouse manager to see mobile storage as a strategic win for their long-term supply chain plans?

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah, with such a large fleet and such a vast customer base, with over 2,400 trailers, over 150 different customers, we have large fleets, small fleets, manufacturing in all different styles. Whatever they’re storing, we do it, and we have the data to back it up. So it’s very easy to pull. We have great software, great people behind the scenes at WOW, that make this stuff just at our fingertips. So if somebody is even questioning it, I can get them all the data that they need to realize — hey, I have the data where this person, and we still have a friendship, partnership, where they went with the warehouse, and they said, you know, “I really wish we had thought against that, because now we’re locked into seven years.”

Where we have existing customers that just continue to do well handling the seasonal surges, getting our trailers when they need them, turning them back when they don’t, and just the seamless transition from really busy, bursting at the seams, to “Hey, the sea is calm right now. Let’s kind of take a step back and relax.” And we’re always there. And again, with that data, the data doesn’t lie, and we’re able to paint that picture really easy and make people understand. And also with that warehouse manager, giving him the comfort with that data and that ammunition to go to his higher-ups and say, “Hey, this is the right choice to make.”

[10:08] Warehouse Lease Cost

Mark Mann: Yeah, you hit on something there that’s really interesting when talking about a seven-year lease with a warehouse. We hear that all the time. You can provide a storage solution for a dollar a square foot, and some of these warehouses, and like we said, there’s a lot of growth in your area, some of these warehouses are charging $12 and $15 a square foot. So walk me through a time when a customer was ready to commit to going to a costly new warehouse lease in Greensboro or Raleigh, or they’re in the Burlington area, and your team helped them compare that to the flexibility of a drop lot strategy instead.

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah. So we had a customer all the way in South Carolina, which was about a three-and-a-half-hour haul, that was redoing their entire assembly line up here in North Carolina and completely transforming their parts distribution. So they had this happening rather quickly. Called us, and overnight they needed 250 trailers right now. So after a couple of nights with late-night phone calls, some weekend talks, we figured out what we needed to do. We delivered the first 10 trailers within the first 48 hours, and they understood real quickly, when they got their first 10 safe, dark, dry trailers, they were in good hands, and they could let their hair down a little bit and focus on what they needed to do to make sure that their plant and their distribution centers continued to run seamlessly.

[11:37] Space Crisis

Mark Mann: So you’ve mentioned your team shares in both the successes and the frustrations. What separates the customers who recover from a space crisis from the ones who just keep fighting the yard?

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah. Knowing too many of these stories, with the close relationship we often form with our customers, you see a lot of employee turnover. The frustration of showing up to work every day, just pulling your hair out. So there’s a huge, huge employee turnover, and then the unnecessary expenditures that just bury you and hinder your growth. So, seen it time and time again. Oftentimes, if we’re close enough and they trust us enough, we can get through it together, and it usually ends up really well. But unfortunately, yeah, there’s a lot of turnover and a lot of unnecessary costs involved.

[12:24] Mechanics Team

Mark Mann: Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the front line. So you’re a pretty humble guy, and whenever I’ve heard you talk, I hear you credit your success to your coordinators, to your mechanics, to your vendors, to the rest of your team. Think about a favorite warehouse manager or customer. How does the work that you guys do at B&W, your mechanics do or your coordinators do, quietly make that person’s day safer and more efficient?

Jeremy Fairman: Our mechanics, you know, when they go out. We have a repairs at B&W Trailer email that goes out to each and every person in our office, so they get a quick, timely response, but it also goes out to every single one of our mechanics. So oftentimes our mechanic makes that bond with the person in the warehouse who’s requesting the repair, and they’ll say, “Hey, can we get a picture of the repair?” So not only are we going to make it out there as quickly as possible, but we’re going to be prepared. We’re not going to go out there and just start scratching our head. We’re going to have a good idea what’s already going out there. Get out there, knock it out, and on top of that, where is the trailer positioned? Where is it located? Again, coaching them to make sure that we can avoid as much downtime as possible.

And then with our mechanic, the person that’s on site, having the trust in them to carry on that relationship, be very professional out in the field like that, it saves so much time for the operation and for the customer. And then again, a lot of times our warehouse managers will just have our mechanic’s phone number. So I just think to have that personal touch really sets us apart and keeps everybody rolling.

Mark Mann: Yeah. And now you not only have mechanics there in the shop, but you do have mobile mechanics, right?

Jeremy Fairman: Yes, sir. Yeah.

Mark Mann: Yeah. So anything a customer needs with a trailer that they’ve already got on rent, you’ve got a guy that can just shoot over there and help them out.

[14:17] Dock Flow

Jeremy Fairman: Absolutely.

Mark Mann: Yeah, that’s great. So share a moment when you were talking with a yard supervisor or a warehouse manager who told you, “Jeremy, having these 53-foot dry vans, they have completely changed our dock flow.”

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah. And they already had 53-foot dry vans on site. They just had the wrong ones in this instance. Tires going flat, brakes locking up. They just weren’t getting the service that they needed. Every 53-foot dry van trailer is not the same. A lot of times they are, but the people behind those trailers are what separates us. And keeping them rolling, again, you’re going to have brakes lock up. You’re going to have dirt dauber nests get in and clog up your air lines. You’re going to hit a nail. You’re going to do stuff. Your driver is going to curb a tire. But just making sure that you’re there, you’re understanding, and you do everything you can to get them up and rolling.

[15:08] Carolina Capital

Mark Mann: Yeah. So let’s switch gears, talk a little bit about money, right? The economics of this whole thing. We’ll talk about, what do they call it? Carolina Capital, right? And you’ve already mentioned demurrage fees. So without naming names, tell me about a North Carolina customer who saw a clear dollar impact on their demurrage or overtime cost by switching to a cartage or drop lot model.

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah. We’re very big in the nonwoven sector. There’s a lot of it here. Textiles, nonwovens, we do a lot of it. But a lot of that stuff, as everybody knows, comes from overseas. So as commodities drop, and they drop, they rise, they oftentimes have to buy at the right time, and they have to buy in the right amount. So they will oftentimes buy so much, and they’ll say, “Jeremy, I need 75 trailers.” We’ll get them up there, and they pay very good attention to their inventory, and they pay good attention to these commodity prices.

So as they’re dwindling our trailers down, they’re turning them in, saving their money, saving their yard space, where it’s making it safer to operate in their yard. And they’re just trickling down. They get down to, say, 20 trailers, and they’re like, “Okay, we’re getting a little bit too close. Commodity prices aren’t really fluctuating. Let’s go ahead and pull the trigger.” I’ve been here for four years, and we’ve had that customer do that every year, every year and a half. We’ve had that repeat business, and it’s amazing every time, and it runs smoothly.

Mark Mann: So you can almost put them on your schedule. Hey, they’re going to be calling. In three months they’re going to be calling us back.

Jeremy Fairman: No, and that’s the way we like it. We like to have those relationships, and we like to be ready for that seasonal stuff. Whether it’s Christmas trees or tobacco, we’re always there. We’re always ready, and we know when they’re calling, and we do what we do the best we can. And if we know we’re not going to be able to deliver, we’re letting them know.

[16:52] Hidden Savings

Mark Mann: Great. So if a supply chain VP or a CFO asks you to whiteboard the math of a local warehouse lease versus a B&W trailer plan, how would you show them the hidden savings?

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah, same as a previous question. We have so many examples with different customers of that data that just shows, you know, don’t handcuff yourself into this. Make sure you — even if you want to test this out for a little bit and see, the writing will be plain as day. Trailers are the way to go. Don’t lock yourself into that warehouse, that triple net lease, where you don’t know what’s maybe lurking behind those walls in that building that could come back to haunt you, that HVAC system or anything like that. There’s just not a lot of unforeseen cost with our trailers, and oftentimes, you know, we’re here to help, and that’s all we want to do. We don’t want to make our money any other way.

[17:44] Out Of Space

Mark Mann: Yeah. So these podcast episodes are shared on Spotify and YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. So there are listeners right now in the Triad, and I want us to speak directly to them for a minute. If a warehouse manager in Burlington, let’s say, is out of space today, what’s the first step you would tell them to make before they even call you there at B&W?

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah, the first thing we need to do is get our paperwork done and get it done correctly. We need to be able to conduct ourselves professionally and ethically, and the first way to do that is to make sure that all of our T’s are crossed and our lowercase J’s are dotted. And that’s all we got to do. So unfortunately, that’s usually not what people want to hear, but it’s the right thing to do, and it’s the right way to get the relationship started. And things can go sour real quick if somebody’s not able to get paid or if something’s unsafe and not signed for.

Mark Mann: Yeah, absolutely. And you guys are really quick at it. I mean, you roll trailers pretty quickly, again, because of those coordinators that you have and those folks behind the scenes that help with all that. It’s a big benefit for you guys there.

[18:48] Simple Yard Change

Mark Mann: What is a simple yard change you’ve seen your best customers make that others should start copying?

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah, it’s simple yard checks and inventory audits. Whether it’s every day, whether it’s every week, understanding what you got, where it’s at, you’re going to see problems before they arise, and you’re going to save yourself a lot of time and a lot of anguish.

[19:08] Unusual Use Case

Mark Mann: Excellent. So I recently interviewed Rosie Youngstrom, the GM out in the Phoenix market, and we discussed a container full from front to back with fleece footie pajamas in adult sizes. What is the most unusual use case for our trailers at B&W?

Jeremy Fairman: You know, it’s not extremely unusual, but I think the process of which is unusual. We’ll have a lot of customers whose cardboard baler’s down for their recycler. We’re in contact with another recycling company here. So their baler goes down, we send one of our 53-footers, they rent it from us, we send it over, we pay for it to get recycled, and we bill them right back. So it’s not as much unusual stuff, but anything can come up, and our trailers can solve that problem. I think that’s the beautiful thing about it.

[20:00] Christmas Trees & Tobacco

Mark Mann: Yeah. You mentioned Christmas trees and tobacco. So tell me about that.

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah, so late summertime they’re always harvesting tobacco. We have a very good customer. They load it up, and they smell exactly how you would think they would smell when they get back. So we got to air them out a little bit. We use coffee grounds. We pour coffee grounds and sweep them out and just let them air out. But it’s really not a bad smell. But I’m sure if somebody was loading clothing in the back of that, they wouldn’t want that smell of a cigar, maybe. But we have them, and they always return our trailers nice and clean. There’s just that aroma that we deal with. There’s never a charge to deal with it. It’s a very simple fix, and we’re happy to do it.

But then same thing with Christmas trees. Oftentimes it’s a long haul, so we got to make sure our pricing is competitive, because that transportation cost gets pretty heavy out in the Asheville area. So we try to stay competitive. That time is a busy season for us, but we like to help, and we like to make sure people get their Christmas trees every year.

[20:54] Best Cost Savings Story

Mark Mann: Yeah. Good. Chris Martin told me a story about a time when he saved a customer $1.4 million in the Louisville market by offering a couple hundred dry vans for storage instead of the customer leasing the warehouse space. What’s the best problem-solving or cost-savings story in your market?

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah, so going all the way back to post-COVID, everybody shifted to manufacturing masks. So we had a customer that had about 400 trailers full of those cloth masks and nowhere to take them. So we had these on just storage trailers that were FHWA exempt, so they couldn’t go over the road. So we had to figure out a plan to get them cross-docked on roadworthy trailers so they could get them off to their other facility to get repurposed for a whole another thing.

So we were able to talk with them, get our pricing right, and then, having an intimate knowledge of our fleet, knowing which trailers were available, getting stuff swapped out where it needed to be swapped out, really coming through for these guys. That’s 400 trailers. It’s a lot of acreage that we had to free up for them. And so we did it. It wasn’t overnight, but we got it done. We controlled the frequency to their liking, and again, controlled the cost for them and hit a home run for them.

[22:08] Getting Into Fleet Solutions

Mark Mann: Excellent. So it’s time for the signature round. I want our listeners to know about you as a person. So you’ve been in fleet solutions for over nine years. What was the specific day when you thought, “Yeah, this is my world. I’m a trailer and logistics guy”?

Jeremy Fairman: We had a really well-known glass company. They have a hotel being built down near the Charlotte airport, and they had 160 windows weighing 200, 400 pounds apiece throughout one of their trailers. And they hadn’t even broken ground on the hotel yet that they were supposed to be delivered to. So the guy called me up and said, “Jeremy, what can we do with these trailers? I need to get them off of this hauler’s trailer onto a rental trailer, and then I need to store this trailer for six-plus months before they get this hotel ready.” I was like, “Send it to our yard. We’ll figure it out.”

So I went out to the shop, tapped the guys on the back. I usually get them in some precarious situations, but as long as we’re doing the right thing for people, they always see. But after a couple of funny looks, I rallied everybody. We got some strapping that we needed. We got some carts that we needed to haul these heavy windows, and we backed these trailers — the guy arrived same day as the phone call, backed the trailer up to one of our trailers with a liftgate. So it’s going to be simple for those guys when they get it down into Charlotte. It’s going to be very simple for them to unload, and safe.

But we rallied the troops. We did all hands on deck. We got that thing cross-docked in two and a half hours. Got that driver out of here. Load was safe, secured, and now it’s stored on our lot for the foreseeable future. And I don’t want to wish ill upon anybody, but hopefully that hotel takes a little longer than six months to get built, and we’ll hold on to it for him.

Mark Mann: That’s great. And so, yeah, so you left that situation thinking, “This is my world. I can do this, my career.”

[23:56] Resetting

Mark Mann: So when you get home and shut it down, what pulls you away from freight? What do you do to reset so you can show up the next day with that can-do attitude?

Jeremy Fairman: My children. Just being around them, teaching them, guiding them. And my goal is, hopefully my kids never have to work a day in their life, because I guided them correctly and let them find something that they truly love to do. So every moment I spend with them is cherished.

[24:24] Mentor Advice

Mark Mann: Great answer. So you lead a humble group, as we talked about earlier. Who was the mentor who kind of taught you that leading with humility is the best way to get results?

Jeremy Fairman: Yeah, I don’t mind mentioning him by name. It’s back in my Snyder Fleet Solutions days, but anybody from Snyder that would hear this podcast would know Mike Stevens down in Georgia. The guy is just salt of the earth. I’ve never heard him say no. You know, everybody’s met that person that works, “Oh, I worked 60 hours this week.” Like, no, you didn’t. This guy didn’t. He worked, and he got stuff done. He was not only running a big tracks facility like I ran, but he was also running the retread plant. He was the backbone of the East Coast of that company. And again, if people were in trouble, this guy came to the rescue every single time. And I never heard a negative thing come out of this guy’s mouth. Just awesome dude. So Mike, if you’re listening, you’re the man.

Mark Mann: Yeah. And if he is listening, you could probably go to him today. He’d probably help you out right now if you need some.

Jeremy Fairman: Absolutely.

[25:24] Retiring Myths

Mark Mann: Yeah. All right. And as we wrap this up, what is one myth about storage trailers in the North Carolina market that you hope that we can retire and put to bed today?

Jeremy Fairman: Just people saying that these trailers are necessary evils. The more I learned, and the more that’s capable with this trailer, they can actually be the secret to your success. So if you have a bad opinion about trailers, really try to take a look and understand short-term and flexibility is the way to go.

[25:55] Feeling The Squeeze

Mark Mann: Great. For anyone listening who is feeling the squeeze on I-95, what’s the one thing they should do this week?

Jeremy Fairman: You know, just loosen your belt strap one, detach from whatever stress you had, and give B&W a call. We’re a problem-solving company. We’re not just trailering providers.

Mark Mann: Great answer. Jeremy Fairman, general manager at B&W Trailer Rentals, thank you for showing us the Wow factor in North Carolina.

Jeremy Fairman: Thank you, Mark. Pleasure to be here, buddy.

Mark Mann: All right, guys. That’s it for this week. I’m Dr. Mark Mann, and we will see you on the next episode of The Wow Factor.