June 29, 2026 • 35 mins
GenLogs operates a nationwide network of cameras that captures the movement of trucks and commercial vehicles across America. Collecting over 15 million images daily, GenLogs applies artificial intelligence to transform raw visual data into powerful intelligence about the trucking supply chain. The result is the Truck Intelligence™ platform, a single source of truth that answers the questions every stakeholder in freight needs answered: Who is real? Who is running the right lanes, with the right equipment? Who can be trusted?
By exposing bad actors and elevating the carriers who do things right, GenLogs serves logistics service providers, freight brokers, carriers, shippers, insurers, and public sector partners alike, all united by the same need for reliable, verifiable ground truth. That shared need drives GenLogs' core mission: building unbreakable supply chains to make our world safer and stronger.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeartMedia presents CEOs you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Let's meet Ryan Joyce.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
He is the co founder and CEO for Genlogs, a
truck intelligence platform that uses artificial intelligence and a nationwide
network of roadside sensors to visually track commercial trucks. Before
we get into Ryan's company and all the amazing things
they're doing, I first asked him to talk a little.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Bit about himself, where he's from and his origin story.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, I was born in southern California in San Diego.
My dad was a Navy fighter pilot, so he was
flying the F fourteen Tomcats. The movie Top Gun was
focused on that plane, and we moved all over as
a kid, East coast, West coast until we finally settled
in Virginia where he ended his tour in the Navy
at the Pentagon, and I grew up there for right
(00:45):
outside of Washington, DC, in the northern Virginia area.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You know something that I might ask you a little
bit later on leadership Rune, I'm a person that moved
a lot too. Even though my dad was a military
we moved a lot. And then because of my business
and radio and television, I moved a lot again and
I've always talked about this with my family, especially my
daughter who lives in New York now, and about change.
And we talked to so many people in the series
that have had a lot of change in their life
(01:11):
and that leads them to run these companies and all
the changes that happen and makes you kind of prepared
for that. So I want to talk to you about
that in just a little bit. But let's talk about school.
What you wanted to do while you're in school, and
then coming out what you did do well.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I'll tell you. As I was preparing to figure out
where I was going to go to school, where I
was going to go to university, it was my senior
year in high school, was when September eleventh, two thousand
and one happened. Wow, and my dad within the Pentagon
that day. His office actually got hit by the plane
that smashed into the Pentagon. And my dad narrowly made
it out alive that day. I mean, he just by
(01:46):
the skin of his teeth, and thank God that he did.
But I'll tell you that morning, when I went to
school on that Tuesday morning, all I wanted to do
was play basketball and flirt with girls. I had no
direction for what I was going to do with the
future of my life. But when I went to bed night,
I remember thinking, I'm going to do everything I can
to make sure this never happens again. I'm going to
learn about the history, culture, language, religion of the people
(02:07):
that would do this, try to understand the why behind
why would they board these planes to do that, but
most importantly, make sure it never happened again. So I
ended up going to James Madison University in Virginia. I
studied political science, but most importantly I studied abroad in
Egypt for about a year, where I started to learn
about Middle East politics and philosophy and studied Arabic at
(02:28):
the time. Too.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Wow, well, listen, our listeners and fans of CEOs, you
know are going to really in for a treat because
you have such a diverse resume. And of course, the
one that stood out to me that people I'm sure
want to talk about with you but you can't talk
much about.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Is your work in the CIA.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Tell us how that all came about, why you wanted
to join, and what was the experience.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Like, Well, I didn't know exactly how I wanted to
make sure that September eleventh were to never repeat itself
in the US. But I figured, look, let me go
study the people, study the Arabic. And when I came
back and was graduating, there just wasn't a ton of
jobs out there for someone that was a political scientist
that studied Arabic study in the Middle East. So it
wasn't too long much long after I graduated that a
(03:12):
friend of my father's who was in the CIA kind
of came knocking on the door and said, Hey, I
heard you speak from Arabic. We're running a program we
need someone to help with. Long story short, He encouraged
me to go through the whole hiring process at CIA
to come on as a full time staff officer, which
I did and joined the specific titles called case officer
(03:33):
or operations officer. Essentially, my job was to recruit foreigners
to spy for the United States, to provide secrets and
information to us so that we could stay ahead of
what was happening on the global scale. And specifically I
focused on a lot in the counter terroism area, so
recruiting sources inside of ISIS or al Qaeda that would
(03:56):
let us know about the plans and intentions of those
terrorist groups so that we could stop the next September
eleventh from happening.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
You know, it's extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I mean, it could be its own podcast to talk
to you about all the adventures that you had and
what you could and could not talk about. But I
do want to ask you about this. You know, we
watch movies and TVs all the time, and I love
a good CIA show. It's one of my favorite kind
of things to do out there. What does the industry
get right about the CIA and what does it get
really wrong about it?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I'm curious about that, you know what.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I think it makes for a really good story when
you have these Jason Bourne or you know, Jack Ryan
type stories. I think what they get right to an
extent is that a lot of the skill sets that
those main characters have are encompassed across the CIA. So
you do have sections of the CIA that specialize in
breaking and entering to get into foreign locations. They you know,
(04:47):
you have others that are kind of the paramilitary officers
that are the ones that are trained and kind of
all the weaponry and all the above. US as case
officers are trained in all the advanced and aggressive driving,
medical kind of care, and so Hollywood often gets pieces
of what the CIA does and then just amalgamates them
(05:08):
into one core character. But I think it's important that
we do pay homage to the fact that a lot
of those capabilities do exist within the CIA writ large.
Where I think a show that really got it right,
even though it was telling from the other optic. The
other story is a show called The Americans, which focused on,
you know, Russian spies living in the US during the
(05:29):
Cold War. But I think that they got really right
a lot of the tradecraft. I think they nailed looking
for surveillance, making sure you know, you have your aliens documents,
and you know, specialized places and this and that. But
this whole concept of living two lives. You had your
day life where they were travel agents and this and that.
For me, I was working in an embassy. I had
(05:49):
duties that I was working while I was there, and
then at night was when all of the true trade
craft and the spy work went down. And so I
think they got that show right and ready many respects.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well, it's absolutely fascinating. I could fanboy with you too,
because that's actually one of my wife and it's one
of our favorite shows, and it was intense.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
All the time.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The acting, the writing was great and it was Carrie
Russell and her husband Matthew Reeves were just fantastic and
that I highly recommend people lots because that was a
great effects show. Well, listen, I want to talk a
lot about gen Logs. This is something that you started
three plus years ago. So this is fascinating too because
I imagine that your service and thank you for what
you did for us and all Americans in the CIA.
(06:31):
But you were leaving the government sector wanting to go
into the private sector. And before we hear about the
origin story about gen logs and why you created it,
was there something that was paramount in your life that
you want to get out of the CIA and do
something in the private sector. What was the impetus of
trying to move from government to private sector for you?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, you know, by the time I moved out of
the private sector or into the private sector, we were
almost twenty years after September eleventh, and I joined to
make sure it never happened again. God, two decades later
it hadn't. We had been successful. I'd been a part
of a lot of operations that prevented some pretty massive
scale attacks. That were being planned by the bad guys.
(07:10):
And I also knew, deep down inside there was an
entrepreneurial side to me that even though the CIA is
great about operating in small teams and giving a lot
of delegating a lot of autonomy, they were just at
the end of the day, it is still a bureaucracy,
and if you're trying to build something from scratch zero
to one, doing anywhere in the big government is really
difficult to do. And so I kind of got to
(07:32):
the midpoint of my career where if I was going
to retire, I was going to have to stay, you know,
fourteen fifteen more years, and I said, I don't want
to be on my deathbed and look back and wonder
what if what if I had left and started my
own company and actually scratched that itch. And so having
kind of come what I can, accomplished what I came
to do at the CIA, I decided to that point
(07:52):
it was time for me to go ahead and start
the second career.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Well, I know this is not going to surprise you,
but just about every CEO and founder we talk of
a company that has started and had incredible success like
you have.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
It's a giant leap of faith that you have to take.
You just don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
You just don't know if you have a brand new
widget or you're doing a different kind of widget out
there that everybody else is. You just don't know. So
I did want to talk a lot about genlogs today.
Let's do this, so first before we talk about mission
and vision and what you do as you were leaving
the CIA and all the things that you had your
hands on and you knew about, especially when it came
(08:27):
to technology, and I'm sure AI was starting to come
up quite a lot in the agency when you decided
to start this company. What was that that origin about?
You know, I think I've got an interesting idea here.
Don't know if I can, you know, pull it through
and across the finish line. But how did everything kind
of start the idea of.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
The company, Well, I think i'd just seen a pattern
happening where folks from the intelligence community, often at CIA
or NSA, We're leaving and taking a lot of the
methodology or skill sets that have been applied to you know,
address or terrorism, or maybe some of the Russia or
China during the Cold War and beyond, a lot of
(09:05):
those methodologies and kind of saying, hey, I know this,
I really understand these core problems inside the intelligence community.
Where might this apply outside into another industry to solve
some key problems there? And I had just seen that
happen a number of times, and it just so happened
that the first step that I took coming out of
the agency was in a company where Ross Pero Junior
(09:28):
was one of the investors in the company. His father
ran for president back in the nineties, and we were
able to chat with him about what he was working on.
And Ross Pero Junior is big in the logistics space,
and there was one day that he said, you know,
I really need some better data on trucks. Despite it
(09:48):
being twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three at the time,
there just as seemed to be a dearth of information
on trucks on the roads, and trucking was not in
any industry that I ever thought about before. I never
thought about the clothes that I'm wearing, or food that
I'm eating, or anything got to my front door into
the stores. But I knew that he was a moderate
(10:09):
important I should probably pay attention with someone's that is
in that industry. Is saying, hey, there's a data issue
on trucks. We'll come to find out that it's one
of the most highly fragmented industries in the US with
such high turnover of trucking companies. You're about seven hundred
and fifty thousand trucking companies out there on the roads,
and no one really knows where all of the trucking
(10:31):
companies operate, in the types of equipment that they have.
And that was the core kind of aha moment that
I realized, you know, a lot of my background may
be able to apply to this space. But it was
just frankly from listening, just hearing from someone saying, hey,
I'm having this pain point in an industry that I
know nothing about but wanted to learn more about.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
All right, and you said a key word that we
always like to reinforce on this program here is folks,
and not just for kids.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You don't always have to yap and talk all the time.
When you listen, you can take in a lot. Well,
that brings me to gen Logs and starting your company
three plus years ago. I want to talk about mission
and vision because I know those are always very important
in every company. And then we'll talk about what you
do exactly, so we can really kind of cooon our
lists are the fascinating different things that you offer your
(11:22):
clients out there. It really is remarkable, Ryan. But when
it comes to mission and vision, tell us about that.
When it comes to gen logs.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, with gen Logs, we summarize it in one way.
We are building unbreakable supply chains to make our world
safer and stronger, and that has a lot of different
elements to it. But at the end of the day,
we're trying to make sure that an item can always
get on a truck, and it can get safely on
a truck from point A to point B without being
stolen or manipulated, and that those same trucks are not
(11:50):
being used for I listed activities such as federal trafficking,
human trafficking, weapons trafficking.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well that's really what got my attention.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I think there is a moral and ethic component to
your company too that I'd love for you to expand
on a little bit.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
But I want to do this first, and they're kind
of leading into it.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Ryan.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
If you were to give a thirty thousand foot.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
View to our listeners, that'll brand new to gen logs,
and you would tell them exactly what you do?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
What would you say?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I often summarize it for my friends and family by saying,
if I ask you to move a full truckload of anything,
it could be Apple pot watches, it could be Nike
shoes or whatever, from Dallas to Chicago, how would you
do that? And they would say, well, I'd go to
Google and I said what would you google? And they
would say, well, trucking companies that go from Dallas to Chicago,
(12:35):
And I say, why don't you do that? And they'll
do it right now and get no discernible results that
are actually helpful because that high fragmentation that had turnover
means that there's a lot of chaos of trucking companies
operating on the roads but no central repository by which
they mark where all of their trucks are and the
lanes that they like to service, the origins and destinations,
or the equipment types that they have. And so what
(12:57):
gen Logs does is help everyone that wants to work
with trucking companies out there understand what those trucking companies
where they operate, what they call If you think about
it from an insurance perspective. Insurance companies want to know
that so that they can price in risk, how much
risk they're taking on by ensuring those trucking companies. The
(13:18):
government wants to regulate those trucking companies. Everyone has an interest,
and even ros Baro Junior, working in the logistics space
with warehouses, wants to understand well which trucking companies are
frequenting certain markets, to understand should they be building more
refrigerated warehouses or not refrigerated warehouse, Like, what are those
patterns that they're seeing. There's just was no way to
(13:42):
search that data on the internet until Genlogs came along
and decided to aggregate all of this data in a
way that could give you those answers instantly. Right.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You know Ryan in this series, and I'm sure I
view experienced this, and I love to get your take
on everything. But every time I talk to a CEO
that either is a disruptor or comes up with a
new and invented idea, the industry that's been doing the
same thing for at least fifty years and a half
a century says, you know what, we don't need you.
We're just find everything's good here. Move along with that said,
(14:12):
as you started to pitch gen logs, exactly what you
were going to do out there, and once again we'll
get to the different buckets of programs, the capabilities that
you offer your clients, because it is fascinating the.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Industry as a whole.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Just in general terms, what was the feedback when you
told them your idea and what you have to offer them.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I think people early on thought we were a little crazy,
and they really doubted that what we were saying was
going to be possible. Because what I was telling them, Dennis,
is that we were going to build a nationwide network
of cameras that we were going to put on every interstate,
every highway, every place where trucks are, and collect data
(14:48):
on all of the trucks from the sides of those
the roads. We weren't going to try to put stuff
on every truck in America, and we knew that would
be a fool's errand, but what we thought is if
we could put these static locations out there that could
pass simply collect on all of the trucks, well, then
we could aggregate all the data. And I think early
on a lot of people laughed and they were like
this will never happen, huge execution risk for venture capitalists
(15:10):
or investors like that just seems like a daunting task
to make that happen. But you know what, I think
one of the breakthroughs is when we only had three
of our cameras that we had deployed really just in
a test capacity, and I ran into one of the
largest shippers in the world at a conference and they
bumped in. They asked me what I was doing, and
I told them, and once again they had that incredulous look,
(15:33):
like this will never happen. I said, why don't we
just test it? Are you missing any trailers in your fleet?
And they said, yeah, we have a list. I said,
send me the top ten that been missing the longest,
and they sent it over to me. Then, is the
very first trailer that I searched in our data We
had a hit on. We had seen it on the roads,
we had seen it connected to a truck out there,
and I emailed them back within five minutes. And when
(15:54):
they send me the list saying, oh, you mean this
trailer over here on this road, and it opened their
minds to the power that collecting all this data, indexing
this data, and being able to instantly recall this data
could have And from that point on, the tone and
tenor really changed both from customers and investor perspective because
we were actually proving that this data was that powerful.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, it's absolutely incredible, and I'm curious and I'm sure
our listeners are too if you couldn't Layman's terms, Because
when you have a camera, well you're seeing thousands of cars,
thousands of trucks all the time.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
How does the technology work?
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, it's a great question. And one thing that I
was pretty resolute on was that we wanted to build
what we call privacy enabled AI, meaning it wasn't just
going to be the cameras collecting on everything that was
out there in the roads. We were going to train
a computer vision model, essentially artificial intelligence to determine what
was a truck or a commercial vehicle and what was
(16:51):
their private vehicle, what was someone's Tesla or Toyota that's
out there in the world roads. And that's what we built.
So on every one of our camera it is essentially
in real time as the images are coming through, saying
is this a truck or not? If it's not a truck,
those images are instantly deleted. If it is a truck,
(17:11):
then the very next thing we do is apply blurring
technology to the windows and the windshields, because we don't
care about who the driver is. In fact, a lot
of times we're watching autonomous trucks out there on the roads,
which is as whole other can of worms now, but
we are essentially filtering out all the private vehicles, blurring
all the windows of the actual truck, and then collecting
every unique identifier that is on the truck from the
(17:35):
cab number, from the US Department of Transportation or motor
carrier numbers. We're getting the types of equipment that's attached
to it. Are there any logos on there is a
Walmart trailer, what's the Walmart trailer number? We then extract
all of that out with computer vision as well.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
All right, I tease the different kind of programs and
capabilities that you offer, and they're wide ranging. And also
there's a really big component that you work with law
enforcement that just fascinated me, and you kind of let
in that as we're talking about what the company does,
can you talk about some of your programs and capabilities?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Sure? So, at its core, we're collecting on about twenty
million images of trucks per day. In fact, right now,
a few months ago we surpassed over a petabyte of data.
To give you an idea of how much data that is.
It's now more data that we hold up truck images
than Netflix has in all of its movies and TV
shows for pository So it's real, it's an enormous amount
(18:25):
of data. Now from that that allows a customer going
back to kind of the insights or how I explain
it to my friends and family early on. Now they
can say, hey, what is a trucking company that operates
repeatedly between Dallas to Chicago and has a refrigerated trailer
or maybe a flatbed, whatever equipment type is going to
be needed for the job, and we within seconds can
(18:47):
give them every single trucking company that operates between there.
They can then filter down by certain compliance requirements or
safety requirements and find the right trucking company that operates
between there. But I'll say, you know, another area, gets
back to that large shipper where we found one of
their missing trailers there. Unfortunately, every day in America there
(19:09):
are a number of cargo thefts that are going on.
A lot of those is what's known as straight theft,
you know, the truly wild wild West stuff where someone's
at a truck stop and they pull out one truck,
attached another truck to the trailer and drive away with
the contents. And then the other is more of a
cybercrime where they're essentially acting as a trucking company and
setting themselves up to be able to get an expensive
(19:31):
load from a shipper in America and steal it. Either way,
there's kind of an investigation that needs to happen, and
genlogs is really the only capability now where we can
go back in time up to three years and look
through all of our images that's all been referenced in
a way that you can search by a partial trailer
(19:52):
number or a full truck number or whatever it might be,
and find where that was and then find where it
is going now. In fact, last week, a truck was
stolen in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Law enforcement reached
out to us, We set an alert in our system
and then systematically watched as it went from Virginia into Kentucky,
(20:13):
than Tennessee into Texas, and then we're able to work
with Texas Department of Public Safety to then go ahead
and do an intervention there.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
That's absolutely incredible. And as we continue to talk about
your relationship with law enforcement, I can see why they
would need your help and whether this is a federal,
a state or a local issue. You mentioned, you know,
the fentanyl and that coming in trucks, human trafficking, I'm sure,
and then of course the theft, and I'm sure there
are a lot of other different buckets when it comes
to law enforcement. Tell me about your relationship with law
(20:42):
enforcement across the US. They're either reluctance or their acceptance
to work with you. And what's been the results.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Now, Yeah, it's been nothing but positive and it continues
to grow with more relationships happening all the time. You know, previously,
it's not like they are trying to ignore the issue
of RGO theft or a feneral trafficking. They just haven't
had the tools to fight it. The other issue has
always been that some of the tools that are out
there are a little bit invasive. That there's a lot
(21:10):
of pressure from city councils and state governments to not
collect on license plates otherwise, and this is where genlogs
a little bit different. We actually don't need to collect
a license plate at all to really understand the specific
movements of trucks around the roads, and we can therefore
do so in a way that truly protects the average
citizen that's out there on the road by completely deleting
(21:33):
an of their data but collecting just the trucking data.
I think when people come to join gen logs, they're
really inspired by that mission that goes beyond just helping
insurance companies or freight brokerages get better data on the
trucking companies, but also how we are able to address
societal issues. And last year we had a case in
(21:53):
which there was a female, unfortunately underage female that was
snatched up at a truck stop forcibly put into the
cab of a truck, and it took off and someone
only caught a partial number of the trailer, didn't know
what the truck that was actually pulling the trailer, didn't
have any data there, but a partial number. Well, law
enforcement on the East Coast where the truck was taking
(22:17):
off in that direction was able to use our software
search that partial trailer number start to go through the
pictures of the trucks to find one that matched the
description and then track that truck down in real time
and actually rescue that underage female out of the truck.
And that was like man, That is why we built
the company. Yes, it's very profitable, but at the end
(22:37):
of the day, that young lady was reunited with her
family and saved. Because this technology exists pretty extraordinary and.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
It allows you to sleep a lot better at night.
With a lot of other people that technology out there,
it's really incredible. I'm curious, without getting into any kind
of proprietory information about the company and exactly your tech,
is anybody else in the country doing this, because it's
sounds revolution or what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You know, certainly people have some of these capabilities when
they're on the actual ship or facilities or distribution centers
when a truck comes in or out, they might get
logged in or checked in or out. But that's almost
going to be those edge nodes, and there's millions of
them all over the country. We've built this middle mile
network that now is collecting in about ninety six percent
of all trucking companies on the roads. We've seen regularly
(23:25):
in our data, and that really is because we have
a censored deployment team that has painstakingly tracked down all
of the real estate that we need to be on.
We have to be in a certain proximity of the roads.
We got to have clear lines of site, You've got
to have enough five G or startlink coverage to get
the data. I mean, there's a whole host of things
that go on to it. And really what we've learned
(23:47):
in doing this is that gen Logs is a real
estate play almost more so than it is a technology play.
That the technology these days, things to AI has kind
of become the easy part. The hard part is physically
have access to locations where you could put these cameras
up to do the collection. And we have snatched up
all of the choice real estate across the country first,
(24:08):
which has really made it difficult for anyone else to
come in there and do it, especially because we have
most of the top customers in every category already, So
not only would they have to start behind, they'd also
have to catch up with us to build that same
data library to have the longitudinal data over multiple years.
And I think customers are just really happy with the
service for providing they.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Got to jump on everybody and that's sometimes it's timing
and luck and all those other things that go with
it and a great idea. I did want to ask
you about some challenges and also great story. I know
a lot's going on right now in our world and
it's on fire, and you know, it's complicated out there.
It sounds like things are going good in the company
and we're very happy for you and your team, But
(24:49):
are there any current challenges that you're experiencing.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
You know, for us, it's always finding the right people
and the best people to work at gen Logs. We
give a lot of our time me to the people
when they come in the door, and we expect them
to be hungry, humble, smart and hit the ground running
working on this great mission. You know, the last four
years have been really difficult in the trucking industry. It's
been in what's known as the Great Freight Recession, where
(25:15):
you know, the rates have been terrible. It's been really
difficult to be a freight broker, a motor carrier in
this industry over the last few years. That has flipped
in recent weeks, and actually a Supreme Court decision just
came out two weeks ago that now makes freight brokers
open to negligent lawsuits if they hire an unsafe carrier
(25:36):
to move an unsafe trucking company to move their goods. So,
man talk about a lot that's going on, and there's
chaos in the industry, and gen Logs is just continuing
to faithfully put out more of these cameras, collect more
data and then leverage that data to the highest use
possible to keep all of our customers safe, but also
all Americans on the road safe as well.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
That's outstanding.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Ron I did want to put a pin in word
just for a second and talk to you about philanthropic
and surity work. And I know you're super busy and
we will always get that, but when you have time
to be a part of anything personally, what do you
like to be part of?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, you know, I have such a heart for people
that served their country and really gave some of their
best years to the country. My brother heeded the call
as well and joined the army and he was a
Purple Heart recipient in an attack in Afghanistan. It killed
two of his close friends there, and you know, my
brother's family has had to come back and heal from that.
(26:30):
The gold Star families are trying to heal from that,
and so I love to put my time and energy
outside of gen logs into really helping people that came
out of the intelligence community or the military transition into
the next parts of their career in the same way
that I saw others come before me and help me
make that jump, helped me give the tool sets and
(26:51):
really the industry vernacular and all of that. I love
to do that for others, and so I do that
in a few ways. I started a few years go
the CIS Alumni network that really helps people make that transition.
And on the military side, I run. I have a
farm out in the Shenando River that's arrested for families
that are trying to reconnect after deployments and otherwise, and
(27:13):
let them come out there for free for a few
days and just like reconnect as a family or do
the healing that they need to do.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Well. It's really cool, Ryan, I think it's pretty easy
for people like you and I that kind of grew
up a little bit, went to school and worked in
the DMV. The military is all around us, and so
are the government people. And I've talked to another enough
nonprofits in another series that I do in a podcast
where you know, these veterans that are coming back, you know,
don't have a lot or you know, the PTSD and
(27:41):
all the mental health and not having the finances, and
it's truly incredible with people like you and all the
other organizations that help them because we need them to
help them. So I'm really glad to hear that you
do that. And having somebody military in your family, and
then of course your father's service makes a lot of sense,
and then yours of course two being a part of that.
So thanks for sharing that. I did want to ask
you about the future. I realize that AI is moving
(28:03):
very quickly. I'm a Laman like everybody else, and we're
using in my industry too for different reasons, but mostly
it's been helpful, and I imagine it's extremely helpful, but
still moving fast, which means you and your team have
to keep up with technology. Tell me in the next
three to five years, because I know you're looking down
the road at AI technology and everything else.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
What does it look like for you?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, Well, already AI is making our ability to build
the software components of our business a lot of user
and a lot quicker. But it's also cementing this whole
thesis that we had from the beginning that the future
is really going to be this beautiful interaction between hardware,
software and AI. And that's what geen Logs is in
a nutshell. We have these cameras everywhere. That's the hardware.
(28:45):
It's collecting the data that then the software is able
to use to make it accessible either by a human
or by an agent, an AI agent, And more and
more of our customers are saying, Hey, I just need
your data feed because I want to ask questions or
I want to essentially have this AI copilot that's going
to help me complete my day to day business using
(29:08):
the data that you have. And so we're leaning in
heavily into this concept that AI is going to drive
a lot of the future of automation and workflows and
how do we make sure that we have the information
that AI is going to need in order to make
the most efficient and optimized decisions in the future.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
All Right, one of my favorite questions that I like
to ask, and it's really open range and you can
go whatever way that you want to run. But that's
about leadership and it's well documenting. You've done some amazing
things you know, you went to a good school, You've
had some great jobs, you had your work in the CIA.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Now in the.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Private sector with your own company. With that said, you know,
once again just knowing enough to be dangerous, you know.
I imagine when you're working for a government organization, there are
a lot of rules, regulations and people that you have
to answer to, So there's a lot of structure.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Will that be fair?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
That's fair?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So now you're in the private sector, you have co
founded and running your own company as CEO, and I
imagine there are some similarities and there are some things
that are vastly different. Can you talk about that, especially
from a leadership standpoint for us?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah, I will. I mean in the early days of
a startup can be absolute chaos where it's like, hey,
what are we trying to do? What does the customer need?
Who is our customer?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Like?
Speaker 3 (30:19):
All of these questions that are coming. And this is
really where I dug back into some of the best
leaders that I work for at cias at CIA, especially
in areas where we were in war zones or other
places where it was absolute chaos all around us and
we knew where they were there for a bigger mission.
To make sure that America wasn't attacked again, but the
day to day, like what are we doing? What are
(30:40):
we trying to do? The best leaders I work for
were really consistent about written communication out to the workforce. Hey,
here's the overarching mission in just a few sentences. Now,
let me break that down into what we need to
do tomorrow and the next day, three months from now,
and then individually what I'm expecting from each and every
one of you to help us all get there. It
(31:01):
was a drum beat that I kind of saw that
the best leaders, like every week was sending out communication
to the workforce, and so I've really taken that on
at Genlogs, where every Monday morning at seven am, an
email goes out to the workforce that I spend sometimes
six to eight hours over the weekend writing, and others
are contributing to it too. So it's a full snapshot
(31:23):
of what's happening at the company, all the way down
to how much money is on our bank account, and
we share that across all one hundred plus people in
our company now. But most importantly, it tells where are
we going the next thirty days, the next ninety days,
the next year, the next five years, and how are
we going to get there? And repeating that over and
over and over again so that everyone can recite our mission.
(31:44):
We are building a breakable supply chains to make our
world safer and stronger, and then the how behind that,
how are we doing that now and how are we
going to do that in the future. So I think
written communication has been so powerful in a startup capacity,
but I saw it be so powerful at CIA as well.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You know, one of the things that I'm getting from
your explanation on that, and once again, this is not
going to surprise you. With a lot of CEOs and
founders of companies, you're talking about great communication, but you're
also talking about transparency with your team, and I imagine
that in this day and age, people really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, you know, it has become quite a recruiting tool
for us as well, that if we get a really
great candidate and we're right at the end we're kind
of in those negotiations about whether it's compensation or otherwise,
I'll just tell them like, hey, I'm going to put
this pdf in your inbox. It's two thousand pages plus
now and it goes back three years of all of
those morning messages that ever come out. It has a
(32:37):
really detailed and juicy details about the company. So you
can see where what we're world class at and what
we're struggling and we're trying to get better at. And
I'm going to send that over to you to read
it over the weekend. You can read a few pages,
you can read all two thousand pages. I don't expect
you to do that, but I want to show you
that I trust you to have this information because I
also want you to look at it and say, Wow,
(32:58):
that's a company I want to join. That's company that
has their head screwed on right, that is transparent, that
trust their people, and that has been amazing time and
time again. Those people will come back from the weekend
and say, where do I sign? Like right, so amped
up and I want to join the next day.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Well, I imagine you take some people off guard by
sending that to them one hundred percent, and you know.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
We asked them to hold it tight. I hope it
never had leeks and gets out there, but if it does,
it will tell the story of an amazing group of
people that came together to really help save the world
and make it safer and stronger with regards to making
the roads and our trucking industry just function way better outstanding.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That's great stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Well, Ryan, let's do this. I want to get some
final thoughts. We want to give the website to everybody,
and it's a gorgeous website. It's easy to navigate. There's
a lot of information on there for all of our
listeners listening to CEOs you should know today. But what
we've talked about, if you could recap for us and
get some final thoughts, Ryan, the floor is yours.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Sure well. Gen Logs is out there focused on the
trucking industry in order to make our world safer and stronger.
You can find us at genlogs dot io ge nlogs
dot io. We do list any open vacancies we have there.
But one thing I'd like to point out for anyone
who might be in the trucking industry and listening. If
you've ever lost a trailer, had a truck, stolen, a load,
(34:16):
whatever might be, there's a button in the upper right
hand corner that says find lost assets. If you click
on it, you can report what you lost. We will
investigate it, try to find it and to return it
for you and we'll do that completely free. It's our
give back to the industry to make sure that we
can track down and get ahead of this fraud and
theft that's happening in order to show you that we're
there for you, we support you well. Ryan.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
It's an extraordinary idea and a concept and now three
plus years running, it's going very well.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
For here.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
We're just so happy for you.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And once again as a layman and having this conversation
with you, getting on the website and understanding the technology,
you're changing a lot of lives out there for the better.
I think it's really cool. And once again being able
to sleep at night for what you do. And listen,
folks always about making money when you have a company,
but you're also changing lives for the better and helping
a lot of people out there, thousands every year.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I think that's very cool.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Ryan, Thank you so much for your time, continue success,
give my best to your.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Team, and thank you so much. I'm glad we could
spotlight you on CEOs. You should know.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Thanks for having me, Dennis take care. You can hear
the whole conversation on this station's website.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Slash CEO and to nominate a CEO, you can nominate
a business leader for Iheart's CEOs you should know program
by submitting their details through the official nomination page of
your local iHeartRadio station.
iHeartMedia presents CEOs you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Let's meet Ryan Joyce.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
He is the co founder and CEO for Genlogs, a
truck intelligence platform that uses artificial intelligence and a nationwide
network of roadside sensors to visually track commercial trucks. Before
we get into Ryan's company and all the amazing things
they're doing, I first asked him to talk a little.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Bit about himself, where he's from and his origin story.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, I was born in southern California in San Diego.
My dad was a Navy fighter pilot, so he was
flying the F fourteen Tomcats. The movie Top Gun was
focused on that plane, and we moved all over as
a kid, East coast, West coast until we finally settled
in Virginia where he ended his tour in the Navy
at the Pentagon, and I grew up there for right
(00:45):
outside of Washington, DC, in the northern Virginia area.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You know something that I might ask you a little
bit later on leadership Rune, I'm a person that moved
a lot too. Even though my dad was a military
we moved a lot. And then because of my business
and radio and television, I moved a lot again and
I've always talked about this with my family, especially my
daughter who lives in New York now, and about change.
And we talked to so many people in the series
that have had a lot of change in their life
(01:11):
and that leads them to run these companies and all
the changes that happen and makes you kind of prepared
for that. So I want to talk to you about
that in just a little bit. But let's talk about school.
What you wanted to do while you're in school, and
then coming out what you did do well.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I'll tell you. As I was preparing to figure out
where I was going to go to school, where I
was going to go to university, it was my senior
year in high school, was when September eleventh, two thousand
and one happened. Wow, and my dad within the Pentagon
that day. His office actually got hit by the plane
that smashed into the Pentagon. And my dad narrowly made
it out alive that day. I mean, he just by
(01:46):
the skin of his teeth, and thank God that he did.
But I'll tell you that morning, when I went to
school on that Tuesday morning, all I wanted to do
was play basketball and flirt with girls. I had no
direction for what I was going to do with the
future of my life. But when I went to bed night,
I remember thinking, I'm going to do everything I can
to make sure this never happens again. I'm going to
learn about the history, culture, language, religion of the people
(02:07):
that would do this, try to understand the why behind
why would they board these planes to do that, but
most importantly, make sure it never happened again. So I
ended up going to James Madison University in Virginia. I
studied political science, but most importantly I studied abroad in
Egypt for about a year, where I started to learn
about Middle East politics and philosophy and studied Arabic at
(02:28):
the time. Too.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Wow, well, listen, our listeners and fans of CEOs, you
know are going to really in for a treat because
you have such a diverse resume. And of course, the
one that stood out to me that people I'm sure
want to talk about with you but you can't talk
much about.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Is your work in the CIA.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Tell us how that all came about, why you wanted
to join, and what was the experience.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Like, Well, I didn't know exactly how I wanted to
make sure that September eleventh were to never repeat itself
in the US. But I figured, look, let me go
study the people, study the Arabic. And when I came
back and was graduating, there just wasn't a ton of
jobs out there for someone that was a political scientist
that studied Arabic study in the Middle East. So it
wasn't too long much long after I graduated that a
(03:12):
friend of my father's who was in the CIA kind
of came knocking on the door and said, Hey, I
heard you speak from Arabic. We're running a program we
need someone to help with. Long story short, He encouraged
me to go through the whole hiring process at CIA
to come on as a full time staff officer, which
I did and joined the specific titles called case officer
(03:33):
or operations officer. Essentially, my job was to recruit foreigners
to spy for the United States, to provide secrets and
information to us so that we could stay ahead of
what was happening on the global scale. And specifically I
focused on a lot in the counter terroism area, so
recruiting sources inside of ISIS or al Qaeda that would
(03:56):
let us know about the plans and intentions of those
terrorist groups so that we could stop the next September
eleventh from happening.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
You know, it's extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
I mean, it could be its own podcast to talk
to you about all the adventures that you had and
what you could and could not talk about. But I
do want to ask you about this. You know, we
watch movies and TVs all the time, and I love
a good CIA show. It's one of my favorite kind
of things to do out there. What does the industry
get right about the CIA and what does it get
really wrong about it?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I'm curious about that, you know what.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I think it makes for a really good story when
you have these Jason Bourne or you know, Jack Ryan
type stories. I think what they get right to an
extent is that a lot of the skill sets that
those main characters have are encompassed across the CIA. So
you do have sections of the CIA that specialize in
breaking and entering to get into foreign locations. They you know,
(04:47):
you have others that are kind of the paramilitary officers
that are the ones that are trained and kind of
all the weaponry and all the above. US as case
officers are trained in all the advanced and aggressive driving,
medical kind of care, and so Hollywood often gets pieces
of what the CIA does and then just amalgamates them
(05:08):
into one core character. But I think it's important that
we do pay homage to the fact that a lot
of those capabilities do exist within the CIA writ large.
Where I think a show that really got it right,
even though it was telling from the other optic. The
other story is a show called The Americans, which focused on,
you know, Russian spies living in the US during the
(05:29):
Cold War. But I think that they got really right
a lot of the tradecraft. I think they nailed looking
for surveillance, making sure you know, you have your aliens documents,
and you know, specialized places and this and that. But
this whole concept of living two lives. You had your
day life where they were travel agents and this and that.
For me, I was working in an embassy. I had
(05:49):
duties that I was working while I was there, and
then at night was when all of the true trade
craft and the spy work went down. And so I
think they got that show right and ready many respects.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well, it's absolutely fascinating. I could fanboy with you too,
because that's actually one of my wife and it's one
of our favorite shows, and it was intense.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
All the time.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The acting, the writing was great and it was Carrie
Russell and her husband Matthew Reeves were just fantastic and
that I highly recommend people lots because that was a
great effects show. Well, listen, I want to talk a
lot about gen Logs. This is something that you started
three plus years ago. So this is fascinating too because
I imagine that your service and thank you for what
you did for us and all Americans in the CIA.
(06:31):
But you were leaving the government sector wanting to go
into the private sector. And before we hear about the
origin story about gen logs and why you created it,
was there something that was paramount in your life that
you want to get out of the CIA and do
something in the private sector. What was the impetus of
trying to move from government to private sector for you?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, you know, by the time I moved out of
the private sector or into the private sector, we were
almost twenty years after September eleventh, and I joined to
make sure it never happened again. God, two decades later
it hadn't. We had been successful. I'd been a part
of a lot of operations that prevented some pretty massive
scale attacks. That were being planned by the bad guys.
(07:10):
And I also knew, deep down inside there was an
entrepreneurial side to me that even though the CIA is
great about operating in small teams and giving a lot
of delegating a lot of autonomy, they were just at
the end of the day, it is still a bureaucracy,
and if you're trying to build something from scratch zero
to one, doing anywhere in the big government is really
difficult to do. And so I kind of got to
(07:32):
the midpoint of my career where if I was going
to retire, I was going to have to stay, you know,
fourteen fifteen more years, and I said, I don't want
to be on my deathbed and look back and wonder
what if what if I had left and started my
own company and actually scratched that itch. And so having
kind of come what I can, accomplished what I came
to do at the CIA, I decided to that point
(07:52):
it was time for me to go ahead and start
the second career.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Well, I know this is not going to surprise you,
but just about every CEO and founder we talk of
a company that has started and had incredible success like
you have.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
It's a giant leap of faith that you have to take.
You just don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
You just don't know if you have a brand new
widget or you're doing a different kind of widget out
there that everybody else is. You just don't know. So
I did want to talk a lot about genlogs today.
Let's do this, so first before we talk about mission
and vision and what you do as you were leaving
the CIA and all the things that you had your
hands on and you knew about, especially when it came
(08:27):
to technology, and I'm sure AI was starting to come
up quite a lot in the agency when you decided
to start this company. What was that that origin about?
You know, I think I've got an interesting idea here.
Don't know if I can, you know, pull it through
and across the finish line. But how did everything kind
of start the idea of.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
The company, Well, I think i'd just seen a pattern
happening where folks from the intelligence community, often at CIA
or NSA, We're leaving and taking a lot of the
methodology or skill sets that have been applied to you know,
address or terrorism, or maybe some of the Russia or
China during the Cold War and beyond, a lot of
(09:05):
those methodologies and kind of saying, hey, I know this,
I really understand these core problems inside the intelligence community.
Where might this apply outside into another industry to solve
some key problems there? And I had just seen that
happen a number of times, and it just so happened
that the first step that I took coming out of
the agency was in a company where Ross Pero Junior
(09:28):
was one of the investors in the company. His father
ran for president back in the nineties, and we were
able to chat with him about what he was working on.
And Ross Pero Junior is big in the logistics space,
and there was one day that he said, you know,
I really need some better data on trucks. Despite it
(09:48):
being twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three at the time,
there just as seemed to be a dearth of information
on trucks on the roads, and trucking was not in
any industry that I ever thought about before. I never
thought about the clothes that I'm wearing, or food that
I'm eating, or anything got to my front door into
the stores. But I knew that he was a moderate
(10:09):
important I should probably pay attention with someone's that is
in that industry. Is saying, hey, there's a data issue
on trucks. We'll come to find out that it's one
of the most highly fragmented industries in the US with
such high turnover of trucking companies. You're about seven hundred
and fifty thousand trucking companies out there on the roads,
and no one really knows where all of the trucking
(10:31):
companies operate, in the types of equipment that they have.
And that was the core kind of aha moment that
I realized, you know, a lot of my background may
be able to apply to this space. But it was
just frankly from listening, just hearing from someone saying, hey,
I'm having this pain point in an industry that I
know nothing about but wanted to learn more about.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
All right, and you said a key word that we
always like to reinforce on this program here is folks,
and not just for kids.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You don't always have to yap and talk all the time.
When you listen, you can take in a lot. Well,
that brings me to gen Logs and starting your company
three plus years ago. I want to talk about mission
and vision because I know those are always very important
in every company. And then we'll talk about what you
do exactly, so we can really kind of cooon our
lists are the fascinating different things that you offer your
(11:22):
clients out there. It really is remarkable, Ryan. But when
it comes to mission and vision, tell us about that.
When it comes to gen logs.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, with gen Logs, we summarize it in one way.
We are building unbreakable supply chains to make our world
safer and stronger, and that has a lot of different
elements to it. But at the end of the day,
we're trying to make sure that an item can always
get on a truck, and it can get safely on
a truck from point A to point B without being
stolen or manipulated, and that those same trucks are not
(11:50):
being used for I listed activities such as federal trafficking,
human trafficking, weapons trafficking.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well that's really what got my attention.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I think there is a moral and ethic component to
your company too that I'd love for you to expand
on a little bit.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
But I want to do this first, and they're kind
of leading into it.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Ryan.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
If you were to give a thirty thousand foot.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
View to our listeners, that'll brand new to gen logs,
and you would tell them exactly what you do?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
What would you say?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I often summarize it for my friends and family by saying,
if I ask you to move a full truckload of anything,
it could be Apple pot watches, it could be Nike
shoes or whatever, from Dallas to Chicago, how would you
do that? And they would say, well, I'd go to
Google and I said what would you google? And they
would say, well, trucking companies that go from Dallas to Chicago,
(12:35):
And I say, why don't you do that? And they'll
do it right now and get no discernible results that
are actually helpful because that high fragmentation that had turnover
means that there's a lot of chaos of trucking companies
operating on the roads but no central repository by which
they mark where all of their trucks are and the
lanes that they like to service, the origins and destinations,
or the equipment types that they have. And so what
(12:57):
gen Logs does is help everyone that wants to work
with trucking companies out there understand what those trucking companies
where they operate, what they call If you think about
it from an insurance perspective. Insurance companies want to know
that so that they can price in risk, how much
risk they're taking on by ensuring those trucking companies. The
(13:18):
government wants to regulate those trucking companies. Everyone has an interest,
and even ros Baro Junior, working in the logistics space
with warehouses, wants to understand well which trucking companies are
frequenting certain markets, to understand should they be building more
refrigerated warehouses or not refrigerated warehouse, Like, what are those
patterns that they're seeing. There's just was no way to
(13:42):
search that data on the internet until Genlogs came along
and decided to aggregate all of this data in a
way that could give you those answers instantly. Right.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
You know Ryan in this series, and I'm sure I
view experienced this, and I love to get your take
on everything. But every time I talk to a CEO
that either is a disruptor or comes up with a
new and invented idea, the industry that's been doing the
same thing for at least fifty years and a half
a century says, you know what, we don't need you.
We're just find everything's good here. Move along with that said,
(14:12):
as you started to pitch gen logs, exactly what you
were going to do out there, and once again we'll
get to the different buckets of programs, the capabilities that
you offer your clients, because it is fascinating the.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Industry as a whole.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Just in general terms, what was the feedback when you
told them your idea and what you have to offer them.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
I think people early on thought we were a little crazy,
and they really doubted that what we were saying was
going to be possible. Because what I was telling them, Dennis,
is that we were going to build a nationwide network
of cameras that we were going to put on every interstate,
every highway, every place where trucks are, and collect data
(14:48):
on all of the trucks from the sides of those
the roads. We weren't going to try to put stuff
on every truck in America, and we knew that would
be a fool's errand, but what we thought is if
we could put these static locations out there that could
pass simply collect on all of the trucks, well, then
we could aggregate all the data. And I think early
on a lot of people laughed and they were like
this will never happen, huge execution risk for venture capitalists
(15:10):
or investors like that just seems like a daunting task
to make that happen. But you know what, I think
one of the breakthroughs is when we only had three
of our cameras that we had deployed really just in
a test capacity, and I ran into one of the
largest shippers in the world at a conference and they
bumped in. They asked me what I was doing, and
I told them, and once again they had that incredulous look,
(15:33):
like this will never happen. I said, why don't we
just test it? Are you missing any trailers in your fleet?
And they said, yeah, we have a list. I said,
send me the top ten that been missing the longest,
and they sent it over to me. Then, is the
very first trailer that I searched in our data We
had a hit on. We had seen it on the roads,
we had seen it connected to a truck out there,
and I emailed them back within five minutes. And when
(15:54):
they send me the list saying, oh, you mean this
trailer over here on this road, and it opened their
minds to the power that collecting all this data, indexing
this data, and being able to instantly recall this data
could have And from that point on, the tone and
tenor really changed both from customers and investor perspective because
we were actually proving that this data was that powerful.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, it's absolutely incredible, and I'm curious and I'm sure
our listeners are too if you couldn't Layman's terms, Because
when you have a camera, well you're seeing thousands of cars,
thousands of trucks all the time.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
How does the technology work?
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah, it's a great question. And one thing that I
was pretty resolute on was that we wanted to build
what we call privacy enabled AI, meaning it wasn't just
going to be the cameras collecting on everything that was
out there in the roads. We were going to train
a computer vision model, essentially artificial intelligence to determine what
was a truck or a commercial vehicle and what was
(16:51):
their private vehicle, what was someone's Tesla or Toyota that's
out there in the world roads. And that's what we built.
So on every one of our camera it is essentially
in real time as the images are coming through, saying
is this a truck or not? If it's not a truck,
those images are instantly deleted. If it is a truck,
(17:11):
then the very next thing we do is apply blurring
technology to the windows and the windshields, because we don't
care about who the driver is. In fact, a lot
of times we're watching autonomous trucks out there on the roads,
which is as whole other can of worms now, but
we are essentially filtering out all the private vehicles, blurring
all the windows of the actual truck, and then collecting
every unique identifier that is on the truck from the
(17:35):
cab number, from the US Department of Transportation or motor
carrier numbers. We're getting the types of equipment that's attached
to it. Are there any logos on there is a
Walmart trailer, what's the Walmart trailer number? We then extract
all of that out with computer vision as well.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
All right, I tease the different kind of programs and
capabilities that you offer, and they're wide ranging. And also
there's a really big component that you work with law
enforcement that just fascinated me, and you kind of let
in that as we're talking about what the company does,
can you talk about some of your programs and capabilities?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Sure? So, at its core, we're collecting on about twenty
million images of trucks per day. In fact, right now,
a few months ago we surpassed over a petabyte of data.
To give you an idea of how much data that is.
It's now more data that we hold up truck images
than Netflix has in all of its movies and TV
shows for pository So it's real, it's an enormous amount
(18:25):
of data. Now from that that allows a customer going
back to kind of the insights or how I explain
it to my friends and family early on. Now they
can say, hey, what is a trucking company that operates
repeatedly between Dallas to Chicago and has a refrigerated trailer
or maybe a flatbed, whatever equipment type is going to
be needed for the job, and we within seconds can
(18:47):
give them every single trucking company that operates between there.
They can then filter down by certain compliance requirements or
safety requirements and find the right trucking company that operates
between there. But I'll say, you know, another area, gets
back to that large shipper where we found one of
their missing trailers there. Unfortunately, every day in America there
(19:09):
are a number of cargo thefts that are going on.
A lot of those is what's known as straight theft,
you know, the truly wild wild West stuff where someone's
at a truck stop and they pull out one truck,
attached another truck to the trailer and drive away with
the contents. And then the other is more of a
cybercrime where they're essentially acting as a trucking company and
setting themselves up to be able to get an expensive
(19:31):
load from a shipper in America and steal it. Either way,
there's kind of an investigation that needs to happen, and
genlogs is really the only capability now where we can
go back in time up to three years and look
through all of our images that's all been referenced in
a way that you can search by a partial trailer
(19:52):
number or a full truck number or whatever it might be,
and find where that was and then find where it
is going now. In fact, last week, a truck was
stolen in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Law enforcement reached
out to us, We set an alert in our system
and then systematically watched as it went from Virginia into Kentucky,
(20:13):
than Tennessee into Texas, and then we're able to work
with Texas Department of Public Safety to then go ahead
and do an intervention there.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
That's absolutely incredible. And as we continue to talk about
your relationship with law enforcement, I can see why they
would need your help and whether this is a federal,
a state or a local issue. You mentioned, you know,
the fentanyl and that coming in trucks, human trafficking, I'm sure,
and then of course the theft, and I'm sure there
are a lot of other different buckets when it comes
to law enforcement. Tell me about your relationship with law
(20:42):
enforcement across the US. They're either reluctance or their acceptance
to work with you. And what's been the results.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Now, Yeah, it's been nothing but positive and it continues
to grow with more relationships happening all the time. You know, previously,
it's not like they are trying to ignore the issue
of RGO theft or a feneral trafficking. They just haven't
had the tools to fight it. The other issue has
always been that some of the tools that are out
there are a little bit invasive. That there's a lot
(21:10):
of pressure from city councils and state governments to not
collect on license plates otherwise, and this is where genlogs
a little bit different. We actually don't need to collect
a license plate at all to really understand the specific
movements of trucks around the roads, and we can therefore
do so in a way that truly protects the average
citizen that's out there on the road by completely deleting
(21:33):
an of their data but collecting just the trucking data.
I think when people come to join gen logs, they're
really inspired by that mission that goes beyond just helping
insurance companies or freight brokerages get better data on the
trucking companies, but also how we are able to address
societal issues. And last year we had a case in
(21:53):
which there was a female, unfortunately underage female that was
snatched up at a truck stop forcibly put into the
cab of a truck, and it took off and someone
only caught a partial number of the trailer, didn't know
what the truck that was actually pulling the trailer, didn't
have any data there, but a partial number. Well, law
enforcement on the East Coast where the truck was taking
(22:17):
off in that direction was able to use our software
search that partial trailer number start to go through the
pictures of the trucks to find one that matched the
description and then track that truck down in real time
and actually rescue that underage female out of the truck.
And that was like man, That is why we built
the company. Yes, it's very profitable, but at the end
(22:37):
of the day, that young lady was reunited with her
family and saved. Because this technology exists pretty extraordinary and.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
It allows you to sleep a lot better at night.
With a lot of other people that technology out there,
it's really incredible. I'm curious, without getting into any kind
of proprietory information about the company and exactly your tech,
is anybody else in the country doing this, because it's
sounds revolution or what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You know, certainly people have some of these capabilities when
they're on the actual ship or facilities or distribution centers
when a truck comes in or out, they might get
logged in or checked in or out. But that's almost
going to be those edge nodes, and there's millions of
them all over the country. We've built this middle mile
network that now is collecting in about ninety six percent
of all trucking companies on the roads. We've seen regularly
(23:25):
in our data, and that really is because we have
a censored deployment team that has painstakingly tracked down all
of the real estate that we need to be on.
We have to be in a certain proximity of the roads.
We got to have clear lines of site, You've got
to have enough five G or startlink coverage to get
the data. I mean, there's a whole host of things
that go on to it. And really what we've learned
(23:47):
in doing this is that gen Logs is a real
estate play almost more so than it is a technology play.
That the technology these days, things to AI has kind
of become the easy part. The hard part is physically
have access to locations where you could put these cameras
up to do the collection. And we have snatched up
all of the choice real estate across the country first,
(24:08):
which has really made it difficult for anyone else to
come in there and do it, especially because we have
most of the top customers in every category already, So
not only would they have to start behind, they'd also
have to catch up with us to build that same
data library to have the longitudinal data over multiple years.
And I think customers are just really happy with the
service for providing they.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Got to jump on everybody and that's sometimes it's timing
and luck and all those other things that go with
it and a great idea. I did want to ask
you about some challenges and also great story. I know
a lot's going on right now in our world and
it's on fire, and you know, it's complicated out there.
It sounds like things are going good in the company
and we're very happy for you and your team, But
(24:49):
are there any current challenges that you're experiencing.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
You know, for us, it's always finding the right people
and the best people to work at gen Logs. We
give a lot of our time me to the people
when they come in the door, and we expect them
to be hungry, humble, smart and hit the ground running
working on this great mission. You know, the last four
years have been really difficult in the trucking industry. It's
been in what's known as the Great Freight Recession, where
(25:15):
you know, the rates have been terrible. It's been really
difficult to be a freight broker, a motor carrier in
this industry over the last few years. That has flipped
in recent weeks, and actually a Supreme Court decision just
came out two weeks ago that now makes freight brokers
open to negligent lawsuits if they hire an unsafe carrier
(25:36):
to move an unsafe trucking company to move their goods. So,
man talk about a lot that's going on, and there's
chaos in the industry, and gen Logs is just continuing
to faithfully put out more of these cameras, collect more
data and then leverage that data to the highest use
possible to keep all of our customers safe, but also
all Americans on the road safe as well.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
That's outstanding.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Ron I did want to put a pin in word
just for a second and talk to you about philanthropic
and surity work. And I know you're super busy and
we will always get that, but when you have time
to be a part of anything personally, what do you
like to be part of?
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, you know, I have such a heart for people
that served their country and really gave some of their
best years to the country. My brother heeded the call
as well and joined the army and he was a
Purple Heart recipient in an attack in Afghanistan. It killed
two of his close friends there, and you know, my
brother's family has had to come back and heal from that.
(26:30):
The gold Star families are trying to heal from that,
and so I love to put my time and energy
outside of gen logs into really helping people that came
out of the intelligence community or the military transition into
the next parts of their career in the same way
that I saw others come before me and help me
make that jump, helped me give the tool sets and
(26:51):
really the industry vernacular and all of that. I love
to do that for others, and so I do that
in a few ways. I started a few years go
the CIS Alumni network that really helps people make that transition.
And on the military side, I run. I have a
farm out in the Shenando River that's arrested for families
that are trying to reconnect after deployments and otherwise, and
(27:13):
let them come out there for free for a few
days and just like reconnect as a family or do
the healing that they need to do.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Well. It's really cool, Ryan, I think it's pretty easy
for people like you and I that kind of grew
up a little bit, went to school and worked in
the DMV. The military is all around us, and so
are the government people. And I've talked to another enough
nonprofits in another series that I do in a podcast
where you know, these veterans that are coming back, you know,
don't have a lot or you know, the PTSD and
(27:41):
all the mental health and not having the finances, and
it's truly incredible with people like you and all the
other organizations that help them because we need them to
help them. So I'm really glad to hear that you
do that. And having somebody military in your family, and
then of course your father's service makes a lot of sense,
and then yours of course two being a part of that.
So thanks for sharing that. I did want to ask
you about the future. I realize that AI is moving
(28:03):
very quickly. I'm a Laman like everybody else, and we're
using in my industry too for different reasons, but mostly
it's been helpful, and I imagine it's extremely helpful, but
still moving fast, which means you and your team have
to keep up with technology. Tell me in the next
three to five years, because I know you're looking down
the road at AI technology and everything else.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
What does it look like for you?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, Well, already AI is making our ability to build
the software components of our business a lot of user
and a lot quicker. But it's also cementing this whole
thesis that we had from the beginning that the future
is really going to be this beautiful interaction between hardware,
software and AI. And that's what geen Logs is in
a nutshell. We have these cameras everywhere. That's the hardware.
(28:45):
It's collecting the data that then the software is able
to use to make it accessible either by a human
or by an agent, an AI agent, And more and
more of our customers are saying, Hey, I just need
your data feed because I want to ask questions or
I want to essentially have this AI copilot that's going
to help me complete my day to day business using
(29:08):
the data that you have. And so we're leaning in
heavily into this concept that AI is going to drive
a lot of the future of automation and workflows and
how do we make sure that we have the information
that AI is going to need in order to make
the most efficient and optimized decisions in the future.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
All Right, one of my favorite questions that I like
to ask, and it's really open range and you can
go whatever way that you want to run. But that's
about leadership and it's well documenting. You've done some amazing
things you know, you went to a good school, You've
had some great jobs, you had your work in the CIA.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Now in the.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Private sector with your own company. With that said, you know,
once again just knowing enough to be dangerous, you know.
I imagine when you're working for a government organization, there are
a lot of rules, regulations and people that you have
to answer to, So there's a lot of structure.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Will that be fair?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
That's fair?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So now you're in the private sector, you have co
founded and running your own company as CEO, and I
imagine there are some similarities and there are some things
that are vastly different. Can you talk about that, especially
from a leadership standpoint for us?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah, I will. I mean in the early days of
a startup can be absolute chaos where it's like, hey,
what are we trying to do? What does the customer need?
Who is our customer?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Like?
Speaker 3 (30:19):
All of these questions that are coming. And this is
really where I dug back into some of the best
leaders that I work for at cias at CIA, especially
in areas where we were in war zones or other
places where it was absolute chaos all around us and
we knew where they were there for a bigger mission.
To make sure that America wasn't attacked again, but the
day to day, like what are we doing? What are
(30:40):
we trying to do? The best leaders I work for
were really consistent about written communication out to the workforce. Hey,
here's the overarching mission in just a few sentences. Now,
let me break that down into what we need to
do tomorrow and the next day, three months from now,
and then individually what I'm expecting from each and every
one of you to help us all get there. It
(31:01):
was a drum beat that I kind of saw that
the best leaders, like every week was sending out communication
to the workforce, and so I've really taken that on
at Genlogs, where every Monday morning at seven am, an
email goes out to the workforce that I spend sometimes
six to eight hours over the weekend writing, and others
are contributing to it too. So it's a full snapshot
(31:23):
of what's happening at the company, all the way down
to how much money is on our bank account, and
we share that across all one hundred plus people in
our company now. But most importantly, it tells where are
we going the next thirty days, the next ninety days,
the next year, the next five years, and how are
we going to get there? And repeating that over and
over and over again so that everyone can recite our mission.
(31:44):
We are building a breakable supply chains to make our
world safer and stronger, and then the how behind that,
how are we doing that now and how are we
going to do that in the future. So I think
written communication has been so powerful in a startup capacity,
but I saw it be so powerful at CIA as well.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You know, one of the things that I'm getting from
your explanation on that, and once again, this is not
going to surprise you. With a lot of CEOs and
founders of companies, you're talking about great communication, but you're
also talking about transparency with your team, and I imagine
that in this day and age, people really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, you know, it has become quite a recruiting tool
for us as well, that if we get a really
great candidate and we're right at the end we're kind
of in those negotiations about whether it's compensation or otherwise,
I'll just tell them like, hey, I'm going to put
this pdf in your inbox. It's two thousand pages plus
now and it goes back three years of all of
those morning messages that ever come out. It has a
(32:37):
really detailed and juicy details about the company. So you
can see where what we're world class at and what
we're struggling and we're trying to get better at. And
I'm going to send that over to you to read
it over the weekend. You can read a few pages,
you can read all two thousand pages. I don't expect
you to do that, but I want to show you
that I trust you to have this information because I
also want you to look at it and say, Wow,
(32:58):
that's a company I want to join. That's company that
has their head screwed on right, that is transparent, that
trust their people, and that has been amazing time and
time again. Those people will come back from the weekend
and say, where do I sign? Like right, so amped
up and I want to join the next day.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Well, I imagine you take some people off guard by
sending that to them one hundred percent, and you know.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
We asked them to hold it tight. I hope it
never had leeks and gets out there, but if it does,
it will tell the story of an amazing group of
people that came together to really help save the world
and make it safer and stronger with regards to making
the roads and our trucking industry just function way better outstanding.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That's great stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Well, Ryan, let's do this. I want to get some
final thoughts. We want to give the website to everybody,
and it's a gorgeous website. It's easy to navigate. There's
a lot of information on there for all of our
listeners listening to CEOs you should know today. But what
we've talked about, if you could recap for us and
get some final thoughts, Ryan, the floor is yours.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Sure well. Gen Logs is out there focused on the
trucking industry in order to make our world safer and stronger.
You can find us at genlogs dot io ge nlogs
dot io. We do list any open vacancies we have there.
But one thing I'd like to point out for anyone
who might be in the trucking industry and listening. If
you've ever lost a trailer, had a truck, stolen, a load,
(34:16):
whatever might be, there's a button in the upper right
hand corner that says find lost assets. If you click
on it, you can report what you lost. We will
investigate it, try to find it and to return it
for you and we'll do that completely free. It's our
give back to the industry to make sure that we
can track down and get ahead of this fraud and
theft that's happening in order to show you that we're
there for you, we support you well. Ryan.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
It's an extraordinary idea and a concept and now three
plus years running, it's going very well.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
For here.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
We're just so happy for you.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And once again as a layman and having this conversation
with you, getting on the website and understanding the technology,
you're changing a lot of lives out there for the better.
I think it's really cool. And once again being able
to sleep at night for what you do. And listen,
folks always about making money when you have a company,
but you're also changing lives for the better and helping
a lot of people out there, thousands every year.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I think that's very cool.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Ryan, Thank you so much for your time, continue success,
give my best to your.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Team, and thank you so much. I'm glad we could
spotlight you on CEOs. You should know.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Thanks for having me, Dennis take care. You can hear
the whole conversation on this station's website.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Slash CEO and to nominate a CEO, you can nominate
a business leader for Iheart's CEOs you should know program
by submitting their details through the official nomination page of
your local iHeartRadio station.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.