The Pullsure Origin Story
Cameron Pechia grew up in a trailer park in Spokane. His mom worked two, sometimes three jobs to raise four kids on her own. His dad was a welder. His aunt and uncle drove trucks. Nobody in his world wore a suit to work, and nobody was coming to help if something went sideways. He mowed lawns, shoveled driveways, picked up pine cones for pocket money. At 18, he and a friend bought a bunch of vending machines off eBay and started placing them in offices and mechanic shops.
No playbook. No investor. Just two guys figuring out sourcing, logistics, and cold-calling from scratch.
He got into insurance in 2007. Commission only, right in the middle of an economic collapse. But Cameron had grown up around blue-collar operators (trucking companies, construction crews, manufacturers) and he understood what they were up against. What he found surprised him: he could actually help people keep their doors open. He brought products and pricing to the table that made a real difference in whether a business survived the recession or didn't. Some of those companies are still clients today.
Then came the turn. A friend in the industry offered Cameron his entire book of trucking accounts. He took the deal, but made himself one promise: if he was going all-in on trucking, he was going to do it better than everybody else. Not just competitive quotes. Not just fast certificates. He wanted a team that understood what trucking companies actually deal with every day. The contracts, the cargo types, the routes, the compliance pressure, the 2 AM breakdowns, the cash flow stress of running a fleet. He built that team.
He got the designations. He got access to insurance carriers that most brokers can't touch because the volume requirements are too high for a generalist shop. And he made a rule: every client gets treated like a relationship, not a number. That team is Pullsure. Greg Gaston, who once spent weeks negotiating contract insurance requirements so a trucking company hauling aggregate wouldn't have to spend an extra $50,000 on coverage designed for general contractors building skyscrapers. Morgan Treece, who knows her clients' kids' names and picks up the phone even when she's been sick for two weeks. John Marienau, who ran his own trucking company and freight brokerage before joining, and is now building a technology platform that gives fleet operators the same real-time safety and compliance data that Pullsure's internal team uses. And Cameron, who still tells the blueberry story.
A client was hauling temperature-sensitive loads. A shipment got rejected because it went out of temp. The freight broker told him insurance would never cover it. Said he'd never seen it covered in 30 years, and to just run a tab and pay it down. Cameron told the client to file the claim anyway. He'd written that policy specifically for reefer and temp-sensitive cargo. The claim was covered. $60,000 that would have come straight out of the operator's pocket. He paid his deductible and kept running. The freight broker started referring all his trucking companies to Pullsure after that. Not because of a sales pitch. Because the coverage actually worked when it mattered.
That's what Pullsure was built for. Not the cheapest policy. The right one.
"Owning our mistakes, immediately, front and center. I'm the first one on the phone. If something goes wrong, I own it. It falls at my feet."
Cameron Pechia
Founder Pullsure Trucking Insurance
