Building a Freight Business from Zero with Relationship-Driven Sales

Steve Zambo grew up in a logistics household, left to explore other industries, and eventually came back to freight on his own terms — as the CEO and founder of AGL. In this episode of The Journey Podcast, Will Jenkins sits down with Steve to trace that path and pull out what it teaches about entrepreneurship, relationship-driven sales, and the specific kind of grit that freight brokerage demands from the people who build in it.

Steve talks about interning at a freight forwarding company as a young person and then deliberately stepping away to try other industries — marketing, telecom, IT recruiting. He shares what each of those worlds taught him and why the communication and relationship skills he developed there became the foundation he built AGL on when he moved to Los Angeles to open a branch from scratch.

The conversation covers what it actually looks like to grow a freight operation from zero — the early customer conversations, the discipline required to build a pipeline while also running operations, and the specific challenges of selling to major companies like Disney and Paramount when you're new and they have no reason to trust you yet. Steve is honest about the role that showing up consistently, communicating clearly, and genuinely caring about the customer's problem played in building the kind of gross profit that makes a branch worth running.

This episode is for freight entrepreneurs and logistics operators who want a real look at what building from scratch requires.

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