Brian DeFrain, President D&L Transport
Three years ago, attorney Brian DeFrain left his transportation law practice for the practice of actual transportation at D& L Transport LLC. The initials D&L stand for owner DeFrain and the company’s 2005 founder, Jim Langenbach, now an agent recruiting consultant. D&L offers LTL, intermodal, heavy-haul, and specialized trade show service, though its bread and butter is truckload — dry van, refrigerated, and flatbed. Brian is growing D&L successfully by carefully adding effective agents.
“The thing they love about us is our attentiveness, the flexibility we have for their operation. We were built from the ground up by a broker. He uniquely recognizes the little things brokers need to succeed,” Brian explained. “For instance, fast carrier activation, fast carrier setup, fast customer setup, fast credit decision. Immediate attention to those issues. “From an agent perspective, three years ago we probably had 15 to 18 agents. Right now we’re at 58,” he said.
Brian proudly points out that the Kansas City Business Journal ranked D&L among the area’s top private companies and fastest-growing businesses. D&L is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, just southwest of Kansas City. They also have an office in Punta Gorda, Florida.
GROWING D&L – D&L was using Aljex when Brian took over operations. “I had a talk with Tom (Tom Heine, Aljex CEO) about our growth and needs. Tom said “Tell us what you need and we’ll build it for you.”
“We’ve done three or four projects. That flexibility has been great,” Brian said. “The agents we train on Aljex have come from brokers that tout themselves as technology leaders from a TMS standpoint, and they love Aljex. I think that agents are sales folks first and foremost and they don’t want to feel they’re wrapped around a big technological machine. Aljex is fairly simple and straightforward. It has the bells and whistles we need, but it’s intuitive. The folks we’ve trained on it are impressed,” he noted.
“I’m skeptical by nature and I’m always evaluating other technology to see if there’s something out there that’s better. We come back to being comfortable with Aljex. Quite frankly,” Brian said, “our agents love the software.”
