Sunny Gill · Freight
I learned freight from my dad's comeback.
My dad built a successful trucking company, then lost nearly everything between 2008 and 2011. Instead of walking away, he went back to trucking with one or two trucks and built again. In 2012 I joined him on the billing, and I have been in freight ever since: ten years in cybersecurity alongside it, and in 2018, a brokerage of my own. This is how it happened.
My dad built it once.
Before I ever looked at a bill of lading, my dad had already built a successful trucking company. Anyone who has run trucks knows what that takes: early mornings, drivers who count on you, shippers who remember the one load that went wrong, and margins with very little room for mistakes. He made it work. A few years before 2008 he sold the company and moved into hospitality, a new venture he had more than earned the right to try.
Then the economy collapsed. From 2008 into 2011 the losses kept coming, and by the end he had lost his properties and nearly everything he had worked for. A lot of families lived through some version of that. Ours was one of them.
Then he built it again.
The properties were gone, but what he knew about trucking was still his. Around 2010, while the economy was still in bad shape, he went back to it. He started a dispatch business with one or two trucks of his own and about ten owner-operators he kept loaded, week after week.
It was a smaller operation than the company he had sold, and in some ways a harder one. Every week he had to find the freight, settle the rates and keep his drivers moving. But it was his, and it worked. By 2011 the business was on its feet again. Of everything I have watched anyone do, starting over like that is what I respect most, and it is the reason I ended up in this industry.
Billing taught me trucking.
In 2012 I was studying computer science at Kansas State when my dad needed help with billing. Every load produced a stack of paper, and that stack had to become a clean invoice packet before anyone got paid: the rate confirmation, the bill of lading, the proof of delivery and any receipts, checked against each other and sent out. It was computer work, and I was good with computers, so I took it on.
It turned into my education. Within a few months I knew our lanes and what they paid without looking anything up. I could glance at a BOL or a POD and see the problem before I finished reading: a weight that didn't match the rate confirmation, a missing receiver signature, a delivery date that came before the pickup. I learned how lumpers, detention and fuel really work from the paperwork of real loads, where every mistake meant a driver waited longer to get paid.
- Weight doesn't match the rate con
- No receiver signature
- Delivery date before pickup
- Lumper receipt missing
Your turn. Four things are wrong on this one.
It is the same kind of packet that crossed my desk in 2012. Tap anything you would flag before the invoice goes out, and be careful, because some of these fields are fine.
- Mistake 1
- Mistake 2
- Mistake 3
- Mistake 4
Sharp eye. My dad would have put you on billing.
Then I started finding the freight.
About a year into billing, I moved to the other side of the desk and started booking loads with brokers. At first that meant the load boards: refreshing, calling and competing with every other carrier for the same posts. Over time I built relationships with brokers directly, until more of our freight came through people we knew than through the boards.
Each of those relationships meant one less load my dad had to chase. For a small fleet, steady freight from people you trust is the difference between a good week and a scramble. Brokers give their best loads to carriers they already trust, and that trust only comes from doing the loads right.
How do these guys have all these loads?
I talked to the same brokers several times a day, and over time I noticed something that stayed with me. Most of them had never driven a truck, and many had never been inside one. They couldn't tell you the difference between equipment types or what can go wrong with a truck between pickup and delivery. They worked from a laptop, held the freight and took their cut, while the drivers did the hauling.
I didn't hold it against them. Finding freight and keeping shippers happy is real work, and I could see that. But I had also watched my dad carry the other side of every load: the drivers, the breakdowns, safety, ELDs, fuel and detention. Trucking is harder than most people in an office ever see, and I knew running a fleet was not the life I wanted.
Behind a laptop
- the loads
- the rates
- the cut
Behind the wheel
- drivers
- breakdowns
- safety
- ELDs
- fuel
- detention
From that point on, I set my eyes on being a broker one day.
I already loved working behind the screen. I was good with computers and good at reaching out to people, finding leads and making connections. And I had something most of the brokers I called did not: I knew the truck side of every load. I knew what a late appointment costs a driver, what a missing lumper receipt does to an invoice, and why a carrier picks up for one broker before another. I decided I would be a broker who understood both sides of the deal.
Freight was never my only job.
For ten years, alongside freight, I worked in cybersecurity, in security operations centers on the monitoring and response and incident response teams. A lot of that work happens in the middle of the night: an alert fires, and someone has to decide in minutes whether it is noise or the start of an attack.
I started with the Department of Defense at Fort Belvoir and the Pentagon. Then I moved to the private sector to help protect a leading California utility that serves more than 20 million people.
My job was keeping critical infrastructure secure, and on my watch we never had a compromise. I brought those habits with me into freight, where fraud works the way attacks do: it goes after trust and urgency.
In 2018, I built my own.
Six years after my first invoice, I founded NFL Logistics in Lathrop, in California's Central Valley. I built it on what those years had taught me: know the truck side, get the paperwork right, and build your systems before you need them.
We grew into a brokerage moving about $9.5 million of freight a year: dry van and reefer for food, consumer goods and industrial shippers across the West. We built our own billing, carrier settlement and payables platform, with AI in the workflow, run by an offshore team of five. Billing is where I started, so it is where I built first. Behind every one of the loads below was a driver and a truck, like the ones my dad dispatched in 2010.
Records from Dec 2023 to Oct 2026.
The road keeps going.
Next, I am building an independent freight agency, with the same freight and the same respect for the people who haul it.
My dad taught me that a setback does not have to be the end of the road. He lost nearly everything and built again, and he knew more the second time than the first. I carry that into every chapter, including this next one.
What I'm reading this week.
Freight moves fast, and I read the trades to keep up. These headlines load live from the desks I follow and link straight to the source.
The feeds are quiet right now. These are the desks I read; go straight to the source.
Notes from the trucking side.
Lessons from the billing desk, the load boards and the security console. Three posts to start, with more on the way.
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01Oct 2026 · 3 min
Billing taught me trucking
What the paperwork teaches you about lanes, rates, mistakes and money, and why a broker should learn it first.
Read -
02Oct 2026 · 3 min
Respect the truck
The day I noticed that many of the people holding the loads had never been inside a truck, and what that taught me about being a good partner.
Read -
03Oct 2026 · 3 min
What a decade in security taught me about freight fraud
Fraud in freight works the way attacks work everywhere: it goes after trust and urgency. The same boring habits protect loads.
Read
Eight words that run the industry.
Flip a card. If you already knew all eight, you have spent time on the truck side too.
Grab 30 minutes.
I am always up for a conversation about freight, security or building with AI, or just trading stories from the road.
Pick a day and a time that works for you. You will get a calendar invite with the details as soon as you book.
Say hello.
Whether it is freight, a partnership, a security question or just a good story from the road, I would like to hear it. Send a note here, or reach me directly.