Every freight agent career looks a bit different. Some agents come in with an established book of business, while others are starting from scratch. Some agents are ready to build their team on day one, while others need a few years under their belt before they’re ready to take that step. At Tallgrass, we don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all model, and agents Chelsea and Maclain M. illustrate that better than anyone.

Maclain spent nearly a decade at his previous brokerage before he and his wife, Chelsea, launched their own agency under the Tallgrass umbrella. Since then, the pair have built a home office in Oregon and brought on a team, growing from two freight agents into genuine business owners. We caught up with them recently to talk about what that journey looked like, and how Tallgrass showed up for them at every turn.

Laying the Foundation

As anyone who has started a book of business knows, the task is no small feat, and Maclain remembers those early days vividly. “For the most part, it felt like running around with my head cut off, just trying to get everything going,” he laughs. 

What stood out immediately for him was that Tallgrass didn’t try to box him in. “There wasn’t a single account where they said, oh, someone’s already working that, you can’t touch it. Everything was available to me.” 

That openness, paired with an office phone system and a CRM that beat anything he’d used before, gave Maclain the room he needed to focus on what would move the needle for him: consistency. “Every day I would call as many people as I could, then followed up with those people as often as I could,” he says. 

He also leaned into something less obvious than simple call volume: investing time in getting to know his customers. “I focused a lot of energy on trying to build a more personal relationship instead of just being the textbook, script-reading broker. Do they have a family? What kind of hobbies are they into?” 

“Over time,” Chelsea adds, “those are the things that make customers feel comfortable and confident referring you to other people that they do business with as well.”

In addition to the support that’s always just a call away and the regular mentorship, Chelsea shares that the Roundtables played a big role in helping them form those good early habits. “Much of what we’ve learned has come from having conversations with other agencies about the day-to-day problems they’re running into,” she explains. “That’s been so beneficial for us in establishing the everyday habits and planning and execution that go into building a book.”

Support That Fits Your Business

Maclain and Chelsea have four kids, and when they wanted to prioritize family, Tallgrass supported that. When they were ready to shift into growth mode, that support shifted with him. “I told everyone, this is the year,” he says, and things started moving fast with a new office, a growing team, and a business that finally looked like what he had always pictured.

Whether they needed stability or they were ready to chase that growth, Tallgrass met them where they were. “We didn’t really feel ready to hire employees,” Chelsea reflects. “But people around us saw what we were doing and wanted to be a part of it. We were never left to figure it out alone. They helped us think through how to structure our team and business in a way that made sense for us.” Chelsea also shares how the Tallgrass CRM, especially the franchise mode feature, was a big help and a propeller of their growth.

The Roundtables played a role here too — not as a seminar, but as a network. “Agents are from all over the country, so the Roundtables allowed us to get to know them and actually collaborate,” Chelsea says. “When you’re learning a different part of the industry, being able to connect with others who have been in your shoes and say, hey, I’m trying to do this, how do you do it? That’s huge.”

Once the team was in place, the support didn’t stop there. Running a team in Oregon comes with its own set of rules, and Maclain says Tallgrass never tried to force a Kansas-shaped solution onto an Oregon-shaped problem. 

“They’ve helped us figure out the hoops we have to jump through here that other states don’t deal with,” he says. “The biggest part is how open and understanding they are, instead of telling us we have to do it one way.” That shows up clearly in how their team is set up, with each employee working on a 1099 basis rather than a fixed schedule. “We know this industry can be randomly busy, so we want our team to be able to work around that,” Maclain says. “Tallgrass has been able to work with us to figure out ways to make that fit within our company.”

Why They’d Tell You to Stop Waiting

Looking back, Chelsea says having an office and a team under them wasn’t originally on their radar. Maclain credits Tallgrass with pushing that mindset shift. “When they bring you something new, like parcel or warehousing, it makes you a multi-stop shop. It forces you to grow as a business owner, because you realize you don’t have to do only one thing.”

When asked what they’d tell someone who was on the fence about Tallgrass, Maclain doesn’t hesitate, sharing, “You don’t feel like just another number. They bring you in and treat you like family.” That extended to Chelsea being welcomed as a full partner in the business from day one, no explanation required. “They mutually treat both of us with the same amount of respect.” 

“We often talk about how we wish we’d found Tallgrass sooner,” Chelsea shares. “It’s made such a difference in the quality of life we get to build for ourselves.” And Maclain’s closing advice? “If Tallgrass is already sparking any interest, you should have already done it.”

If you’re ready to build a business that grows the way you want it to, reach out to our team and let’s start a conversation.