Trucking and technology BROADBAND: HELPING YOU WORK

Trucking and technology BROADBAND: HELPING YOU WORK

Local company utilizes high-speed internet for more efficiency

Story by LISA SAVAGE

Brandon Franklin learned the trucking business from the ground up working for his father years ago.

“I would ride in the truck with him when I was just a little boy,” Franklin says. “This is all I’ve ever known.”

Back in the day, Franklin’s dad used a metal clipboard, and he wrote everything down. “He used a paper log, and then he wrote out a deposit slip and took his cash to the bank,” Franklin says.

A lot of things have changed since those days.

Franklin went to work for his father at age 18. They expanded their business over the next few years, purchasing additional dump trucks. In 2011, Franklin bought his father out and continued to run the business from his home in Farmington. His father was ready to slow down, but he eventually returned to work for his son.

TRAGEDY STRIKES

In 2017, as the two were driving in separate trucks to Gleason, Tennessee, Franklin’s father went around a curve in the first truck, lost control and overturned. Franklin drove up on the wreck soon after it happened to find his father severely injured. Eddie Franklin died in the hospital. “I said after he died I wasn’t getting back in a truck,” Franklin says.

Franklin took a job at a truck dealership in Mayfield, but he continued to run his trucking business by hiring drivers. He learned the computerized business systems at the dealership, and he began using some of the same concepts in his own business.

As his trucking business grew and certified truck drivers became harder and harder to find, he returned to the business full time. He also got back in the driver’s seat. “It’s still not one of my favorite things, but I do it,” he says.

TECH SAVVY

Franklin transformed the home-based shop he and his father built to a state-of-the-art facility utilizing WK&T’s fiber internet network to update all the equipment.

Tracking technology makes the location of the trucks visible on a large TV screen used to monitor deliveries. Franklin uses a mapping app linked to an iPad in the trucks or a driver’s smartphone.

“It’s helping our logistics become more efficient,” he says.

He uses the internet to pay bills, collect many of his payments and do numerous other business-related tasks. Franklin, like most 32-year-olds, is tech savvy, and it’s made a difference in his trucking operation. “We’re really lucky to have internet service that’s better than what they have in most big cities,” he says. “It’s changed the way we do business.”

But some things will never change, and he believes his father would be proud. “I’ve done this all my life, and it’s all I’ve ever known,” Franklin says. “I love it, and technology is helping us to do things more efficiently now.”

Brandon Franklin is following in his father’s footsteps.