The Community, Connections & Commerce Podcast, presented by OUE & St. Clairsville Chamber - Community, Connections, & Commerce Episode 14 with Trevor Sebring & Eric Conner

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

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Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Welcome back to Community Connections and Commerce. I'm Drake Watson, your host, along with my co-host, as always, Wendy Anderson. We are joined by special guests today from Valiant Logistics, Trevor Sebring, the owner, and Eric Conner. Guys, we really appreciate you coming on this morning and talking to us and taking the time out of your day to spend some time with Wendy and I and hopefully provide some good insight as to what you guys do. Yeah, good morning.

We're happy to be here. Thanks for having us. This is really cool. We've never been on a podcast before. This is a first, So excited to be here. So Trevor and Eric or whomever wants to tell us, where did you come up with this concept of Valley Logistics and why? So the concept, you know, my background, you know, at a professional level is, you know, I work in fire and EMS as a paramedic, and I'm a nurse too by trade. So combining, you know, my pre-hospital experience with working

in the hospital and like the critical care setting, I've seen we have a major gap in transportation and having patients get access to health care. It's not only a problem here in the Ohio Valley, but it's a problem everywhere. So on the ambulance, I was encountering patient care situations where people were utilizing the emergency service to be transported to the hospital just to go to a regular doctor's appointment. So that being said, you know, some resources were being tied up for this type of transportation rather than providing, you know, the critical access emergency service. So that was problem number one. And then problem Problem number two is the patient population were being diagnosed with illness, and they couldn't find adequate transportation to get them to their appointments to get the necessary care.

So things were getting worse. It's a snowball effect. So I started looking at some of the cases I was taking care of in the hospital, and I figured I might be in a position to do something about it. So Eric Connor here with me is my partner in crime in this business world. So discussed this idea with him, and we figured we need to step up. The Ohio Valley is very important to us. It's what we consider to be our home. I consider everyone here my people. I don't work locally anymore. I work out of town in Washington, D.C., but I still have a very soft spot for the valley, and I want to be able to help

everybody. So Eric and I had this idea that we were going to start utilizing courtesy cars, transporting people to medical appointments with the hopes of getting into stretcher transportation with an ambulance service, which we've accomplished. Our vision in the beginning was, let's consider someone who is elderly in age, where their family has all moved away. They may not have any friends that live locally anymore and they're sick. So put yourself in their shoes where they need to get to the hospital or they need to see their doctor, but they simply have no way of getting there. That keeps me up at night. So that was why Eric and I decided to do what we do.

I love that you mentioned that the Ohio Valley is home to you and it's so important to you because you mentioned you had an idea of something that could help out people not only in this area but all across the country. People are struggling with this. And you obviously, I'd imagine, could have taken this to a larger market with more of a population. But you decided to stay local and help out the folks from the place that's home for you guys.

And I think that's incredibly important. And, you know, I appreciate it just as a Valley resident that that kind of care is being put into the Valley. And, yeah, I think that's incredible. So you guys are private, correct? Correct, yes. All right. Do you have contracts with the local hospitals? So yeah, we partnered up with a billing company in Ohio to handle the financial side of what we do for reimbursement.

And we have drafted up contracts. We've sent them out to local facilities. Eric has been instrumental in that, meeting with all the local hospitals and, you know, the long-term care facilities. That way, we can come in and do whatever we can to not only help the facility, but the residents there as well. Okay. So what about, like, the local volunteer fire department? They all know about you uh i believe so yeah okay because i know personally um my my husband's an emt and um he's a volunteer fireman and i know that there are people in our neighborhood that call just to go like you said to the hospital for just an appointment because they don't have another way, transportation, to get there, that they know that when they call the ambulance

because they feel like they're in good hands. But it sounds like you guys, do you have an ambulance? Is that what you have? So you are all prepared. Do you know how to take care of these patients. Yep. We're trying to look at it holistically. You know, we began with the courtesy car,

and we realized that we didn't take into consideration all of those that just simply can't walk, whether that's because of their illness, age. It doesn't matter. Some people just simply require a stretcher. So that was when Eric and I said, okay, we have to take this, you know, a step further and acquire an ambulance. Okay. So I know, again, I have personal experience because my dad was in the hospital, like I told you. And they gave me a list of transports transport companies to call and that

was it they just said okay here you go you get you call these people get somebody to take him to a rehabilitation center well I was dealing with not only that then my dad and all the things that come with it I was his person um my mom had passed and, you know, my brother wasn't able to help me. But it was it was tough on a family member because not only do you have patients, your your parent, whatever, aunt, uncle is, you know, in that type of shape that they need a transport that you got to deal with that emotional you got to deal with everything so i thank you guys for what you do that is um so have you seen your business grow has it grown from the onset yeah i mean it has definitely grown um you know when we started we were primarily doing all the work for one facility. Um, you know, now we get calls to go to Morgantown, Columbus.

Oh, um, we actually had a very large hospital in Columbus reach out to us, uh, to possibly be able to assist them. Nice. Um, so yes, it's definitely growing. And you have to, I mean, what's your, how many people do you have helping you out? Because I'm imagining you would have to grow your roster a little bit to be able to execute those things. Yeah, we're pretty small right now. There's only about eight of us that are doing the bulk of the work.

We're definitely actively hiring, and we're looking for people that are committed to our mission, that, you know, want to honor what we're trying to accomplish. Eric is the one that receives the phone calls. It's funny you mentioned, like, we have to consider the family members that are dealing with all this too. And some of the cases that we get are pretty heartbreaking. Exactly what you said. People are desperate. You know, they'll do anything, pay anything uh they just don't know where else to turn and eric gets those phone calls and and works with all of them and we do the best that we can well the hospital gives you a timeline like you only have a half hour because then your

loved one is being discharged so you have to run and you have to just figure it out. And it is very emotional. So what you guys do is very important. So you mentioned these are your people. This community is your people, right? So are you both from here? So I was born and raised in Adina, Ohio. I still reside there with my family

uh and you know i went to college here in wheeling uh i worked here in the city of wheeling so my entire life has been on this river right here right and you know eric yeah i i'm from wheeling and uh i've lived there my whole life and within the last year i actually i live in adena now but you know the area it's home uh the ohio valley it's i don't think it really necessarily means you know just wheeling um i i think here when we say ohio valley you know it's it's everywhere it is yeah yeah moving to to adena you added to the, to a list of, of great people in Adina. Um, but, uh, you guys, what were the challenges when you guys first started out? Obviously, you know, you guys have things rolling now, it seems, and you do just incredible work for the families of the Valley. But when you first started out, was there ever that moment where you felt

like you were stuck and you're just scratching your head trying to figure out what's next? Absolutely. So this was the hardest thing I've ever had to do at a professional level. You know, Eric and I run a different business, a whole different ballgame. So we had some experience on the administrative side. But meeting the standards to be 100% compliant, legal legal that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of money so there was a lot of personal investment in this to get rolling everything that we do we want to be the safest we want to be the most reliable we want to have the best

equipment that there is to offer because that's what the people deserve so in order to do that there was a lot that eric and i had to do to get this going in the beginning much more than i call it red tape yeah you know there's just a lot of things we had to check off of the list to make sure we were 100 good to go yeah because you just you can't just let someone in the back of your impala and say you're a taxi driver, right? So you have to, what, what, what, if you could speak more specifically to what the challenges were or what kind of guidelines you guys have to adhere to as far as compliance and things like that, like what kind of, you know, I don't want to say handcuffs because it's important, but you know, what kind of restrictions do those place on you guys and how does that difficult to navigate? So number one, when it comes to, you know what kind of restrictions do those place on you guys and how is that difficult to navigate so number one when it comes to you know just the courtesy car side we have to have very

strict insurance requirements so you know those policies have to be uh pretty large when it comes to our staff there's specific training obligations that they have to go through when they get hired. So that's kind of hard. Everyone has lives. So there's a lot of things we have to get them certified in first. They have to have super clean driving records, which is hard with speeding tickets and other parts of life. So that's just that aspect aspect a little piece of it and then for the ambulance side you know to meet state guidelines there's specific equipment that has to be on there has to be tested

certain amounts expiration dates it's just a whole lot of work behind the scenes that people don't really think about when they see, you know, our vehicles going down the street. So if you could, just saying, if you could tell your younger self something, like a bit of wisdom that you wish you would have told yourself when you were younger, what would it be we'll let you guys both go on this one yeah for me personally uh i probably would have done this sooner because seeing that we've been able to help people and i read some of the feedback from families that we've assisted i think we could have helped a lot more people for a longer period of time leading up to this point. That's number one.

Should have rolled the dice and took that risk a long time ago. But the biggest piece of advice that I have, just on a personal level, not even considering my business adventures, would be to save more money. When you're young and you have a job you know i had a job when i was like 12 years old and i've you know made money since it's easy when you're young and you're getting money in your hand to go blow it so i try to emphasize this to

those who are young and motivated and have jobs save your money because you can do more with your life when you're a young adult, when you have money in your pocket. Absolutely. And I would say, um, you know, it's don't give up. Um, you know, there, there's so many times just, you know, say this journey. Um, you know, there were so many times that things got hard. We, you know, we could have easily just said, you know what, this is too much. We're done. But it's always push forward because there's always that road. And I think that's important.

So, does this make you guys closer? Like, how did you guys meet? So, you know, I own a different transportation business, totally different world, different responsibilities. And I was hiring. And I did an interview with Eric. And I could tell in the first five minutes that this is somebody that had the same mentality as me. And it was obviously incredibly driven. So I hired him right on the spot. And we just,

our values align and pretty much everything that we do, whether that's professional or personal. So we've just made a good team. I'm sure the mission that you guys are, you know, that you guys are working for helps you stay motivated and driven and helps you along in that process. You mentioned don't give up. It sounds kind of cliche, but when you think you're not trying to sell hamburgers, you know, if that's too hard, just give up, do something else. But, you know, you're really doing something that is good for the community. So it speaks to no matter how difficult it gets at times, there's still good to be done. And that you almost feel like you have an unfinished business in that sense.

We go against every business principle when it comes to the financial reimbursement side. To us, it's about people. It's not about money. And most businesses, it's the complete opposite. Finance rules. For us, we're here to help people. We're not trying to get rich. So that is what's made things difficult on our end. You know, it was very easy to walk away many times. And we still have hard times today. We're definitely not perfect, but we're not going to give up because the people deserve to have a service they can rely on that's safe, trusted.

So we're going to keep doing what we've got to do. We actually lowered our prices just yesterday so we can help a bigger population. Wow, that's great. How do you balance that helping out people in the way that you do, but you also have to pay the bills? How do you find that perfect balance? And then you mentioned adjusting your prices. Is that something that keeps you up at night or something that there's a lot of thought that goes into? I mean, how does that, how is that controlled? I would say it keeps both of us up at night for sure. We have to make a lot of tough decisions throughout the week, but I think we've developed

a pretty good system every morning. We take time out out of our day no matter what we're doing and we look at numbers and we're very very organized when it comes to our documentation so we have a pretty good idea where we're at where we're going but there's definitely some tough decisions that we have to make regularly so you guys used the word driven several times so how did your when you were little when you were younger what made that entrepreneurial spirit like how did you come up with I mean did you always want to be an, did you always want to be an entrepreneur? Did you always want to be a nurse? Did you always want to be a small business owner?

I mean, I would say initially, no. You know, I think at a younger age, you know, everybody has thoughts and ideas. But I think, you know, over the years, you just kind of grow. And you start getting ideas. And, you know, when you're 20 versus when you're six, you can make a lot more things happen. Sure.

And, you know, that's kind of where we were at. And I don't think I'd ever do anything else. I mean, I love what we do. And I think that we will always have some form of new business ideas being populated. Is that your age when you started, when this started going on with 20? Or was that just? No, not this. How old were you?

With this business, I would have been 28. That's still. Okay, I got some time before I get as impressive as these guys. Yeah, because you feel like your life is just, I'm 63. So I feel like my life is not over. And someone had told me, well, you're going to look at retirement. And I'm thinking, no, no not really i just can't wait to see what's the next what the next chapter is going to bring i don't want to stop i and and i think that spirit and you guys um and you drake, we can't stop because there's a lot of people that depend on us doing what we do.

And let's just take it to the next level. That's what I want to do is just take it to the next level. And that's what you guys are doing. Do you have it? What are your plans for the future with this business venture? I always answer this by saying we're on a mission. That's like my catchphrase. And that's how I would sum everything up. We are on a mission. And our plan, health care systems are growing in the Ohio Valley and throughout the tri-state area. My vision is to speak with more members of the administration of all of these facilities and try to see what we can

do to assist them and their clients. For our courtesy car business, I mentioned, you know, we lowered prices yesterday. I have a vision to be able to help more people, more vehicles on the road, bigger staff. I want to be able to sit at a red light here on Main Street in Wheeling and see my fleet drive by helping somebody. You said take it to the next level. And that's exact. We're on the same page. Yeah, that was my whole, you know, professional pathway has been the same way. I could never settle. I wanted to help more people in a different way. And that's exactly what Eric and I are going to keep doing. We have meetings pretty much every week. And it's funny, we call it the war room. But we sit down and we look at everything. And we're always looking not this day or the past 24

hours. We're looking at what we're going to do in the next six months. And we do that weekly. And I hope that in the next year we can double in size and help more people. Have you always kind of been wired that way where, you know, what you've done and what you're doing, that's great, but you just can't get your mind off of what it could be, you know, the next level that you could take it to? Is that something that's kind of always been the way you've thought about things? I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse. I agree. I understand that. That is exactly how I'm wired. That was actually my follow-up question. That is. Now, do you have any age restrictions? How young do you go? How young can you transport or how old you can transport? There's some requirements for you know we call them pediatric cases but typically at least in the ambulance service world you have to have a guardian or you know a parent

on board so we will haul our pediatric cases but we do require a guardian or parent or that makes sense somebody to be on board just to stay compliant and we don't have an age restriction in terms of how old people can be and we'll help anybody and uh it's funny you know eric gets the phone calls and every day it's there's just a huge mix it's never the same well talking to you eric out in the hall there you said you have stayed with patients and i think that is amazing because how many times have i seen in during in the hospital patients sitting there by themselves but you stay with them. Absolutely. So we, you know, we're not just a, I guess you'd call it a typical cab service, you know, pick up, drop off, see you later.

A lot of these patients, especially elderly, you know, they require assistance walking. Some of them have some cognitive issues. You know, they don't know where they're at. They don't know why they're at that appointment. So our staff does stay there the entire time. We make sure that they get checked in, you know, registered, seen, and then obviously assisted back to the vehicle to where they need to go. We also take it a step further. Like we just talked about moments ago, the next level. You know, if you are older and you have these mobility issues or cognitive issues, sometimes just your regular activities of daily living are difficult. So, you know, Eric will have our staff stop at the pharmacy for them on the way

home, stop at the grocery store for them on the way home, go to the bank, whatever they need to make it the next few days, we're willing to do that. That's awesome. That's what we do. That is what's needed because our population here in the Ohio Valley is older. That's what our population is, the most, you know, older folks. So I really think what you guys are doing is amazing. So thank you for what you're doing. Yeah, that shows that shows that you that you care about what you're doing. And I don't I don't know that, you know, of course, actions speak louder than words. You guys have talked about it for 20 minutes that, you know, you're driven and you want to help people. But but things like that, little actions that you do, that really shows people.

And I imagine you guys hear amazing things from the people that you help out and the families of the people that you help out. So as we wrap this up, how can people find you? Tell us how to find you, get a hold of you. So when you call and request a transport or a quote eric is going to be the guy you talk to as soon as the phone is picked up and he's going to guide you through that process until the end he's definitely committed and i'll let you speak on that getting you where you need to be and making sure you're taken care of and all these circumstances. In order to reach out to us, you can call us on our business line, 740-827-5770.

You can go to our website and you can request a trip that way, and then Eric will get back with you. You can apply for a job if you're interested in joining our team on our website that is at www.valleylogistics.org and you can also send us an email if you prefer and that is at admin at valleylogistics.org and And then Eric, you know, he handles these cases and picks up the phone and he can tell you what information he will need when you call that will speed up the process and make it much more organized and easier. I also want to mention that we do have a Facebook. You could look us up on Facebook just under Valley Logistics. We will pop up that way. When it comes to the phone calls, you know, really we just need some basic information. You know, the date of the appointment, the time, the location. Something that i think is important is uh we we always show up early uh so if if your

appointment is at 9 30 uh we're getting to the hospital no later than 9 15 okay um and i think that's important because, you know, time is an essence. And I think that's a good thing to have. And we will always do that. You know, sometimes it's a downfall when you're sitting there for a little while, but better early than late. Absolutely. Well, another good thing to have was you two on with us this morning. Yes, thank you. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, another good thing to have was you two on with us this morning. Yes, thank you. We really appreciate your time.

Yeah, thank you. And we would like to remind the listener that if there's anything, any feedback you'd like to give us, suggestions, or any other kind of comment, you can reach us at ouepodcasts at ohio.edu. Again, that is ouepodcasts at ohio.edu. Valley Logistics, 740-827-5770. They do incredible things. And if you are somebody who is in need of what they can provide, they are the ones for you. Thanks, Trevor. Thanks, Eric.

Thanks, Wendy. I'm Drake Watson. Thanks for listening to Community Connections and Commerce. you