How the Trevor Randall Agency Built a Commercial Trucking Book at 10x ROI

Marketing cannot sell a bad price.

That sounds obvious written down, and it is the thing most agencies never say out loud, because saying it means admitting that the problem sitting in front of you is not the one you were hired to solve.

When the Trevor Randall Agency came to us wanting to open a commercial trucking line, the marketing was not the blocker. The rates were. So before we ran a single campaign, we went and fixed those.

The line of business now produces 25 to 40 qualified leads a month at better than 10x ROI, and it supports a full-time staff member who works nothing else.

A Real Opportunity With Two Real Obstacles

The Trevor Randall Agency in Edmond is one of the top producing Farmers agencies in Oklahoma, and they had spotted something worth chasing.

Commercial vehicles carry far higher premium value than personal lines. A single trucking account can be worth many times a typical auto or home policy, which changes the math on what an agency can afford to spend acquiring one. The opportunity was legitimate. Reaching it was the problem.

Two things stood in the way.

The rates were not competitive. New Venture trucking companies, meaning carriers still in their earliest years of operation, were getting quotes that could not beat what their existing insurance partners were offering. This is a known hard spot in commercial lines. A carrier with no loss history is difficult to underwrite, and plenty of markets simply will not write them. No agent, however good, sells a rate that loses.

They could not find the carriers. Traditional lead sources and network marketing are built to find people, not to find a specific type of company. There is no networking event that reliably produces New Venture motor carriers. The agency was fishing in the wrong water with the wrong gear.

So this was never only a marketing problem. Fixing it meant fixing the product and the pipeline at the same time.

Fix the Rate, Not Just the Funnel

We obtained counsel from an insurance company in our portfolio to understand which outlets would actually underwrite New Venture quotes at competitive numbers.

Rates started coming back much more competitive with the same coverage options. A Deferred Down-Payment program came out of that work as well, which matters more than it might sound. Trucking startups run thin on cash, and a large insurance down payment in month one is a genuine barrier to a carrier staying in business at all. Removing it helps young carriers survive, which is good for them and good for the agency’s retention.

Most marketing agencies would have called this out of scope. It sits outside anything resembling a marketing deliverable, and nobody would have blamed us for running campaigns against the existing rates and reporting on the lead volume.

That would also have failed, slowly and expensively. You can generate all the trucking leads in Oklahoma and close none of them if the number you quote loses every time.

If you take one thing from this case study, take that. Before spending money on lead generation, be honest about whether you can actually win the business once the phone rings. Marketing that feeds a broken offer just produces a more efficient version of losing.

Target the Carrier, Not the Crowd

With the product fixed, the pipeline work could actually pay off.

We built a lead generation strategy specifically for this agency, refining social media targeting down to individuals rather than broad audiences, with creative written for those people and ads built around it. The goal was capturing the right people rather than the most people.

That distinction shows up directly in cost. Broad targeting in a category this specific means paying to reach thousands of people who will never own a truck, then paying again to sort them out.

Exclusive Leads, Delivered in Real Time

Every lead is captured through a lead form and sent to the agency the moment it is submitted, exclusive to this agency alone. Nothing shared, nothing delayed.

Anyone who has bought insurance leads knows why that matters. Most of the industry runs on shared leads, where the same prospect is sold to four, six, or eight agents at once. The prospect gets buried in calls, everyone competes on speed and price, and the lead quality degrades with every agent who dials.

In a market where a carrier is actively shopping several quotes at the same time, being first with a competitive number is most of the job. Real-time and exclusive is what makes first possible.

The Results

The program produces 25 to 40 qualified leads a month, and hundreds across the life of the engagement, at better than 10x return on investment.

The accounts those leads represent carry $17,000 to $39,000 in average annual premium. That is the value of the book at stake, not revenue per lead, and it is why a line of business that started as an idea now justifies a full-time staff member dedicated to working these leads and nothing else.

But the number that says the most is 75%.

That is the share of lead volume arriving as direct phone-in calls. Three quarters of these leads are people picking up the phone and calling the agency, not forms sitting in a queue waiting for somebody to chase them.

Chasing form fills is where insurance agencies lose their days. Call, leave a voicemail, call again, email, wait. A phone-in lead has already decided to have the conversation. The team spends its hours quoting live prospects instead of trying to reach dead ones, and the effective cost per closed account drops even though the cost per lead has not moved.

“This program is working so well! It may even be a situation where we have to occasionally pause it so we can get caught up with our opportunities.”

Trevor Randall, Farmers Insurance

Having to pause a lead program to catch up is not a complaint we mind receiving.

What Transfers to Your Agency

Check the offer before you fund the funnel. If you cannot win the business at the price you quote, lead volume makes the problem bigger rather than smaller. Fix the thing that is actually losing.

Higher-value lines change the math. When one account is worth many times a standard policy, you can afford acquisition costs that would be absurd in personal lines. Most agencies apply personal-lines thinking to commercial opportunities and underinvest by an order of magnitude.

Exclusive beats shared, every time. A lead sold to six agents is a race. A lead sold to one is a conversation.

Track how leads arrive, not just how many. Phone-in and form-fill leads are not the same product, and the difference in your team’s hours is enormous. Twenty-five calls will outperform a hundred forms.

Nobody networks their way into a specific company type. If your target is defined by what a business does rather than who someone knows, relationship marketing will not find them at scale. That requires targeting, not attendance.

Have a Line of Business You Cannot Reach?

We do lead generation and social media management for insurance agencies, and we will tell you when the problem is the product rather than the marketing.

See more of our work, call 405-766-6169, or contact us to talk through the line you have been trying to open.

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Results reflect actual outcomes for the client and engagement described. Performance varies by market, budget, competition, and category. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome for any other business. Client names and marks are used with permission.