What They Don’t Teach You About Final Mile
Tim Cocchia, COO of Excel Delivery Services, joins Jason Burns for one of the most honest and insightful conversations we've had yet. From inheriting his family’s final mile business, scaling it to $20M, losing it, and rebuilding in tech and operations, Tim’s journey is filled with real lessons for operators at every level. We cover it all—pricing, IC vs. employee models, risk management, automation, warehousing, and how to navigate a family business. If you're serious about building a sustainable final mile company, this is required listening.
👇 Timestamps
02:40 – Intro: Why Tim Cocchia is the real deal
05:12 – What Excel Delivery Services does today
07:25 – Working in vs. working on a family business
10:10 – Tim’s origin story: from courier roots to law school
14:35 – Scaling the business to $20M before it all unraveled
17:25 – The cash flow mistake that killed the company
19:45 – Factoring: “A slower death”
21:00 – How they broke up and sold the business
23:50 – Lessons from the failure and the emotional toll
25:15 – Rebuilding: From ops to tech to COO
29:20 – The “race to the bottom” in final mile pricing
33:55 – Employee vs. Independent Contractor models
37:40 – Managing insurance risk for ICs
41:40 – Protecting your business for valuation or exit
44:10 – Why he believes in the CLDA
46:25 – What tech and automation should solve next
50:10 – How Excel grew without a sales team
53:20 – Lead gen, websites, and customer acquisition
56:30 – How to price across verticals and service types
1:00:00 – Making warehousing pay for itself
1:03:50 – Managing drivers, dispatch, and WhatsApp workflows
1:07:10 – Using remote workers to increase service + cut cost
1:10:10 – Advice on ownership, equity, and exit prep
1:14:10 – Where the final mile is going: AI, automation & remote ops
1:19:10 – Tim’s “last to first” mindset—and what his kids taught him about legacy
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