Growth, Experience, and the ‘Simplicity of Factoring’ Brought Freestyle Transport Back to Apex
The Freestyle Transport story is one fueled by growth and the kind of trial-and-error learning experiences that lead to success. Based in Vancouver, Washington, Freestyle Transport started in business in February 2007 with just one truck. When Serge and his company began factoring with Apex in June 2012, Freestyle had 10 trucks hauling mostly reefer loads.
Eight years later, Serge decided to switch factoring companies. But a mere six months after that, in June 2021, Serge and Freestyle were back at Apex working once again with Account Executive Brenda Machos. We recently flew to Vancouver to sit down with Serge and get his thoughts on his journey with switching factoring companies. His responses underscore what we do daily here at Apex Capital Corp – we treat our clients like family and care about their success.
How Did You First Hear about Apex?
In 2012, a friend of mine introduced me to Apex. I wanted to simplify my invoicing process, my billing process. Instead of billing every customer, I wanted to focus on growing the company and having a company like Apex take care of me on that part and be able to also get the cash flow in time to be able to grow.
I had one factoring company prior to that in 2007. Then I steered away from it to billing customers directly, and once I was introduced, I liked everything that Apex had to offer. And how much easier it was for me to be able to grow and work with a company that’s very organized, has a good process, has an easy portal, and has a very easy system.
Why Did You Switch Factoring Companies?
As I was growing, I made the mistake of switching to a different factoring company for a little bit. The trucking industry is a low-margin industry, and I just wanted to minimize my expenses, and I thought that was the right move. Four months later, I decided to go back because that company put us in such a disorganized billing operation that we had to hire a separate person to just be able to figure it out. There were a lot of invoices and a lot of volume. So it was very hard for staff members to go through it. And if there were any discrepancies, which there were a ton, there wasn’t a portal that you could just log in to see your account like with Apex.
We got another person to organize things, but we realized that it was just too big of a headache. You almost needed a forensics accountant to come in and solve an issue, which shouldn’t have gone to that extent. So, I called my rep Brenda back and told her, “You know, we miss the simplicity of the factoring company,” and we came back.
Why Would You Recommend Apex?
Growing a company, and trying to scale, requires a lot of capital and you have to focus on being able to add assets. Trucks, trailers, especially our model, which we do a lot of drop trailers, so we require a lot more equipment, a lot more trailers. Growing a company requires getting paid for freight a lot quicker and, in that sense, Apex has been a big, big help for us.
How Important is Communication for Success?
It’s just building that relationship, being able to communicate and work together. With just one phone call and having a rep like Brenda, I’ve worked with the same rep since 2012, it was just very easy to be able to communicate and solve the problems. But I would say it’s Apex. Apex has been a big, big help for us to be able to operate and keep growing.
