The Titan of West Texas
BulkLoads
9,665 views
#trucking #agriculture #grain
Grain brokerage, dry bulk trucking and frac sand transloading all run out of Levelland, Texas, a town most people drive past without a second thought. Shannon Himango invited us down for a rare behind the scenes look at The Titan Company, the operation he has spent more than 30 years building. We walk the office floor, meet the dispatch, brokerage and commodity teams, and get out to the transload facility where unit trains once backed traffic onto the highway and filled the Walmart parking lot with waiting trucks.
Shannon came out of the grain trading world at Cargill, and he built Titan’s office the way Cargill built its bullpen, with everyone in one room so information moves between people. That layout is the whole strategy. The commodity side puts together trades, the dispatch side prices and covers the freight, and the two sides create their own loads instead of waiting for someone else’s. Along the way he explains where the boxing kangaroo logo came from, why the company is named after a hockey stick, and why he thinks trucking is harder than trading grain.
This one goes deep on how the business actually works. Trading the inverse, what it means to work for the market rather than take a side, trading paper, daisy chains of resellers, how a hay trade gets priced off freight, and why money is the only thing that brings trucks back to a region. We also cover West Texas agriculture itself: 440,000 acres of farmland in Hockley County alone, cotton and peanuts and milo and grapes, the Ogallala water problem, the Texas Triangle corn deficit, and how white sand from Wisconsin gave way to brown sand mined right down the road.
Chapters:
0:00 The Trains That Blocked the Town
0:23 Welcome to Levelland, Texas
1:20 The Cargill Bullpen, Rebuilt
1:58 The Story Behind the Kangaroo
3:00 Where the Name Titan Came From
3:25 Meet the Team
4:46 Creating Their Own Freight
5:34 Team First, and Why the Phones Stopped Ringing
6:50 Positioning Trucks for Backhauls
7:30 Fuel Volatility and Spot Freight
8:44 440,000 Acres in One County
9:35 Cotton, Peanuts, Milo and Grapes
10:00 The Water Problem
11:09 A Corn Deficit Market
11:55 Twenty Commodities and Counting
13:29 Why Trucking Is Harder Than Grain
14:16 Global Markets, Local Loads
17:24 Trading the Inverse, Explained
18:58 What It Means to Work for the Market
22:43 Trading Paper and Daisy Chains
26:02 Good, Fast, Cheap, Pick Two
27:35 Ten Businesses in One Town
28:50 White Sand vs Brown Sand
30:47 “We Can’t Get Our Kids to School”
31:33 400 Trucks Per Train
33:06 Picking the Right Partners
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Check out our companies!
BulkLoads - https://www.bulkloads.com/?utm_source...
Insurance - https://www.bulkinsurancegroup.com/?u...
Factoring - https://www.smartfreightfunding.com/?...
Transportation Management (TMS) - https://www.bulktms.com/?utm_source=y...
Insights - https://www.bulkfreightinsights.com/?...
Livestock Loads - https://www.livestockloads.com/?utm_s...
4 Comments
The Titan of West Texas
BulkLoads
9,665 views
#trucking #agriculture #grain
Grain brokerage, dry bulk trucking and frac sand transloading all run out of Levelland, Texas, a town most people drive past without a second thought. Shannon Himango invited us down for a rare behind the scenes look at The Titan Company, the operation he has spent more than 30 years building. We walk the office floor, meet the dispatch, brokerage and commodity teams, and get out to the transload facility where unit trains once backed traffic onto the highway and filled the Walmart parking lot with waiting trucks.
Shannon came out of the grain trading world at Cargill, and he built Titan’s office the way Cargill built its bullpen, with everyone in one room so information moves between people. That layout is the whole strategy. The commodity side puts together trades, the dispatch side prices and covers the freight, and the two sides create their own loads instead of waiting for someone else’s. Along the way he explains where the boxing kangaroo logo came from, why the company is named after a hockey stick, and why he thinks trucking is harder than trading grain.
This one goes deep on how the business actually works. Trading the inverse, what it means to work for the market rather than take a side, trading paper, daisy chains of resellers, how a hay trade gets priced off freight, and why money is the only thing that brings trucks back to a region. We also cover West Texas agriculture itself: 440,000 acres of farmland in Hockley County alone, cotton and peanuts and milo and grapes, the Ogallala water problem, the Texas Triangle corn deficit, and how white sand from Wisconsin gave way to brown sand mined right down the road.
Chapters:
0:00 The Trains That Blocked the Town
0:23 Welcome to Levelland, Texas
1:20 The Cargill Bullpen, Rebuilt
1:58 The Story Behind the Kangaroo
3:00 Where the Name Titan Came From
3:25 Meet the Team
4:46 Creating Their Own Freight
5:34 Team First, and Why the Phones Stopped Ringing
6:50 Positioning Trucks for Backhauls
7:30 Fuel Volatility and Spot Freight
8:44 440,000 Acres in One County
9:35 Cotton, Peanuts, Milo and Grapes
10:00 The Water Problem
11:09 A Corn Deficit Market
11:55 Twenty Commodities and Counting
13:29 Why Trucking Is Harder Than Grain
14:16 Global Markets, Local Loads
17:24 Trading the Inverse, Explained
18:58 What It Means to Work for the Market
22:43 Trading Paper and Daisy Chains
26:02 Good, Fast, Cheap, Pick Two
27:35 Ten Businesses in One Town
28:50 White Sand vs Brown Sand
30:47 “We Can’t Get Our Kids to School”
31:33 400 Trucks Per Train
33:06 Picking the Right Partners
.
.
.
Check out our companies!
BulkLoads - https://www.bulkloads.com/?utm_source...
Insurance - https://www.bulkinsurancegroup.com/?u...
Factoring - https://www.smartfreightfunding.com/?...
Transportation Management (TMS) - https://www.bulktms.com/?utm_source=y...
Insights - https://www.bulkfreightinsights.com/?...
Livestock Loads - https://www.livestockloads.com/?utm_s...