September 16, 2025 • 37 mins
It takes more than just good relationships and customer service to be a successful freight brokerage in today’s technology-focused world. In this Talking Transports podcast, Robert Bain, director of partnerships and senior consultant at GLCS, joins Lee Klaskow, Bloomberg Intelligence senior transportation and logistics analyst, to share what freight brokers will need to be successful in the ever-changing landscape. Bain shares his three principles to succeed in the industry: extreme ownership, customer experience and free cash flow. Getting these pillars right can create a flywheel effect as brokers reinvest in their businesses to drive more growth. The conversation also covers trucking conditions, basic technology requirements and how smaller brokers can remain competitive. He also shares he applies the lessons learned as the strongest man in logistics to the freight-brokerage industry.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hi everyone, this is Lee Clasgow when We're Talking Transports.
Welcome to Bloomberg Intelligence Talking Transport podcast. I'm your host,
Lee Clasgow, senior freight, transportation and logistics analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence,
Bloomberg's in house research arm of almost five hundred analysts
and strategists around the world. A quick public service announcement
before we dive in. Your support is instrumental to keep
(00:27):
bringing great guests and conversations to you, our listeners, and
we need your support. So please, if you enjoy this podcast,
share it, like.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It and leave a comment.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Also, if you have any ideas, feedbacks, or just want
to talk transports, I'm happy to connect. You can find
me on the Bloomberg terminal, on LinkedIn, or on x
at Logistics. Lee, I'm very excited to have with us today.
Robert Bain, Director of Partnerships and Senior Consultant at GLCs.
Robert has nearly twenty years of experience in the transportation industry,
(00:57):
from leadership and employee management to business processes and technology.
As GLCs is senior consultant, Bain is responsible for developing
the organization's three pl and intermediary clients Welcome to the podcast, Robert,
thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thanks for having me on. It's an honor.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And you know, we met sometime this year at tmsa's
June conference. I heard you speak and I thought you'd
have You would be a great guest to have on
the Talking Transports podcast because not only do you have
insights about the industry, but you're also an interesting person.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Thanks. I appreciate that. I try to be all right,
So why don't.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You tell us a little bit about GLCs before we
move on.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Sure, JLCS we're nine years old as of June, so
we've been around for that time. We've also had our CEO, Nate,
has been in the space for almost thirty years. Our
entire organization is all transflation professional, so our focus is
technology around the space, specifically for trucking and logistics companies,
so everything for your operating systems integrations, and so we
(01:57):
do with that as we do managed IT, so that
we kind of come in and support IT firms or
IT T arms of the organizations as well as the
operations teams. So my role specifically is focused on not
like recommending IT solutions, but also on process assessment and
organizational design and organizational upkeeping.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
All right, Well, you have an interesting perspective because you know,
you see what's going on in the freight markets and
also specifically you see what's going on with technology in
those markets. What are your customers and clients telling you about,
you know, the current state of the trucking market and
where they see it going from here.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
No surprises, It's tough. It's hard up there right now.
Rates are down definitely, Freight volumes, frey volumes are actually
at a pretty decent level. The downside's capacity is still
very very high. You see what a lot of things
going on with carriers that started in the industry very recently,
so you know, twenty twenty and on. You know, they've
taken out loans, they are working to get their trucks running,
and so there's a lot of capacity. It's out there,
(02:54):
and there's just not a lot of new opportunities that
are coming through. So a lot of folks are trying
to do more with less and trying to keep business
as people continue to undercut and kind of drive prices down.
This ultimately works great for the shippers. Hopefully it passes
on to consumers one of these days. Inflation is telling
us u's not. But ultimately that is the challenge right
now is where's the freight and how can we ultimately
do more with less with both our employees and also
(03:16):
with the customers that we're getting right.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And you know, you also work with the brokerage industry.
Technology is extremely important to them, so you know they
can be more productive. Can you talk about the solutions
that a lot of brokerage firms, because I'm assuming do
you deal with like the h Robinson's of the world.
Are you dealing with the mom and pop freight broker
you know, down on main.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Street all the buff So we work with quite a
few folks. We certainly have a lot of large enterprise clients.
Our sweet spot is usually going to be that fifty
million to two and fifty million dollar top line brokerage.
Typically they've got a lot of great talented people. Their
focus is moving freight and technology is not always their focus,
and so there's a lot of times when things fall
through the cracks. You look at like a ch and Echo,
(03:58):
a Redwood now not XPO, but formerly XBO, they typically
have very large staff of IT and technical professionals, and
we still come in and we help them not as much.
We may come into some of these you know, small
enterprise and mid market organizations. So with them, what we
typically look at is we look at their operating systems
or TMSs, and what we typically find is that a
(04:19):
lot of things that worked as the business grew does
not work as the state they are in now. And
so there's a lot of that reassessment of is it
the technology, is the process, and then how can we
make sure that these people are able to go from
moving ten loads a day to twenty to fifty to
one hundred and so that's where the technology comes in,
where it's going to be automated quoting whether it's going
to be automation on the back end or get integrations
(04:40):
and streamlining the entire process right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And the vendors that provide those services are their names
that you know folks would know, or are they big
technology firms or these really niche players that are you
know that created I guess the niche service for themselves.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So there was a time where there was a big
push for a lot of the big names. So you
look like your trimbles, your Mcloud's really to kind of
be the one stop shot. We want everything in one
on one bill. We want everything like that. What we
have found and what they have found, is that it
is really hard to be all things to all people.
Every brokerage comes in or every trucking company comes in,
they've all got different needs. And so what folks have
(05:18):
found it's a lot easier to go out and build
small niche products like you're talking about. A great example
like everest Ai who has built an amazing product with
agenta AI that comes in. It can do automated tracking calls,
it can do bill collection. Another great one is like
upwell everything on the back end, so once a load
is delivered, all the way up until basically payment acceptance,
(05:38):
everything can be automated throughout Bulls platform. And so we
see these very niche players that come in and they
do very very well. Another great example was green Screens,
who recently was acquired by Triump Financial, where all the
automated process they dealt with was around pricing. So when
a rep would potentially get you one hundred quote requests
from a customer from a series of customers, green Screens
can come in and they can provide all the data
(06:00):
you need it and you could actually automate that whole process.
So you could have rates already in, you could already
have profit margins built in, and that person can be
much more effective. And all they're really doing at that
point is send everything comes back and they're able to
start building and executing on the freight of self.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And from a technology standpoint, when you're looking at the
brokerage industry, what's the bare bones that a brokerage has
to have, you know, as opposed to, oh, we're going
to automate you know, ninety eight percent of our transactions.
You know, what do they need to have just to
be competitive out there?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So I'm going to tell you this right now. If
you are under twenty million dollars in revenue, all these
different companies I'm talking about, don't worry about them. Just
don't because they are great. They're awesome. Because your margins
are going to be so thin. That's not some need
to think about. You need to look at you needed
operating system, you ATMs. You're already something on the accounting side, typical,
it's going to be quick books, and then you need
some way to track things and a repository that you're
(06:52):
gonna have access to at all times. The best thing
I can tell people is look at Microsoft or the
Google Suite because you'll have access to this. And then
as you grow and expand, now you start looking at
do I need a data lake, Do I need to
have some type of streamlined integration of data? All those
things will be as you grow, but up until about
twenty million that you basically need a TMS, a finance system,
and an extension, not a Gmail address, So the t
(07:13):
suite that you can just buy the spend the extra
four dollars a month and get your own extension.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And can you just tell our listeners, because you know
not everyone is as hip as you and I are.
What a TMS is and what does it do?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Certainly a transportation management system. Now all of my TMS
friends are going to get mad when I say this.
It's a very spread fancy spreadsheet, is what it is.
But it does have some extra bells and whistles to
it that allow you to operate your freight. So it
will track what is open, what is covered, what is delivered,
what has not been collected on. It will then hopefully
connect to your finance system so that you can create invoices.
(07:47):
You can also then create agent reports all the things
you would need to actually run your business. But the
execution of the freight that you win from your customers
is all going to be done through your TMS, your
transportation management system.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know, I know you talk about the three pillars
of six tests and the freight brokeer. Can you tell
me what your three pillars are?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
So these are very simple, and this is to be fair.
This can work in almost any operation, but I focus
them on obviously my industry, because this is in our industry.
Is this what I do first things versus extreme ownership.
The second is going to be customer experience, and the
third is free cash flow. Extreme Ownership is exactly what
it says, you own everything. If anyone wants to truly
understand that, read the book by Jocko Willink. By the way,
(08:23):
I'm not endorsed pain of these people that I'm talking
about right now. I just have either free friends of them,
or I really like the products I put out. Jocko's
one of them. The book Extreme Ownership is one of
the best books on business in life I've ever read
any person that I mentor that I talk to, any
person I've ever managed, all for my children that eventually
my granddaughter. All have been given a copy of this
book and I expect them to read it and I
typically will quizzle on it. So the concept behind extreme
(08:44):
ownership is every piece of your life you own. If
something happens, if I'm in a car accident and somebody
who ends me, what could I have done different to
make sure that didn't happen. It's a very different way
of thinking about things. So again it's not a nothing's
ever good enough? Is that I can always be better,
slight shift customer experience. This all stems from these last
two stem from the book The Amazon Way. So if
(09:07):
you ever listened to Jeff Bezols talk about the early
days of Amazon, and obviously the success there was incredible.
They were never worried about profits, which drove their investors insane.
I believe you guys actually had some fun with them
a Bloomberg early on when people were really unsure are
they going to make it or not? And what they
did with is everything is focused on customer experience because
if customers keep coming back, everything fixes itself. So make
(09:29):
sure the customer experience is paramount. They didn't say the
customer is always right, but the customer experiences paramount. And
then from that free cash flow, your top line, your
bottom line, honestly, your bank balance. None of that matters.
Is your free cash lial. That matters when it comes
to business. How much money can you actually spend. I
don't care if I sold a widget for one thousand
dollars and I made two hundred bucks on it. Until
that money's in the bank and I can actually use it,
(09:51):
It's not real. It's just on paper. And so Besis
always focused on free cash flow. And you look at
Amazon's business, and that business is now They're incredible, They
are very incredibly profit and they are the bill of
the ball for the most part. And so those three things,
when you focus on that, they all then become this
flywheel where if you own everything, you create an incredible
customer experience. Your customers pay your bills, and that free
(10:13):
cash flow continues to get. Then invest in your people
who are now incentivized to own everything they do, and
that just continues to be gad itself, and that builds
an incredible business. Everything else that you do, whether it's
investing in technology, where's customer acquisition, all that comes down
to these three things. Own the experience, create a great
customer experience and make sure your money's right.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And so you know when you go into these brokers,
is there something that you see that is a common
mistake that a lot of brokers make.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Believing you're the magic. The CEO tends to believe they're
the magic. And it's not that you're not a great person.
Now that you have done great things, you hustle, you've
done like you've taken the step that the majority of
people will never do, and you started the business right awesome.
To scale it to what the majority of these individuals want,
you have to pass awful lot of things and that
is very difficult. And then you have to imbue these
three pillars to people and really find the ones that
(11:01):
are going to do it. And it's not always the
people you think are going to and so believing you're
the magic and believing you think you know everything is
really the mistake that we see and the ones that
humble themselves to that, whether it is listening to us
or someone else, it's not always a GLCs or Robert
Bain thing. It is understanding that you are not the secret.
Those people are the ones that go very very far
in this industry.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Got youa so on the brokerage industry. You know, I
guess it's good for you guys, because there's a highly
fragmented industry and there's a lot of smaller to mid
sized players out there, but it seems to be at
the top that is getting a little more consolidated. Kind
of what's your view on on consolidation with the industry.
Do you think it's going to be just the top,
Do you think that there's room like the market's going
(11:43):
to be consolidated or to your point, it's a lot
of it has to do with relationships, so it's kind
of easy to start a brokerage. So maybe it's always
going to be fragmented.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Right, So what I tell people with this is there
is always going to be a need for very specialty
type of movements. C. H. Robinson is not going to
go out and move human corpses as an example. I
make that joke only because that is actually a piece
of the business that people do specialize in, because I
mean move military folks. You have people that maybe they
passed away in New York, but they're from California and
(12:12):
there's a whole special process for this, and there are
folks that specialize in that, whereas Robinson may not do
that because it's not consistent and it's not something they
can really automate. So there's always gonna be an opportunity
for people to do very unique and special things. The
top will continue to kind of ebb and flow and consolidate.
We are very much in the age of consolidation, however,
because it is easier to fight together than it's to
(12:32):
fight alone, so you'll see consolidation. I also believe over
the next three to five years you're gonna see a
lot more strategic partnerships for actual murders acquisitions because people
do want to maintain the autonomy they built for their business,
and so you're gonna see a lot of these where
you'll see a brokerage and maybe a three pl warehousing
system that will combine their expertises and builds a cheat
(12:55):
to partnerships to help shippers or help maritime or whatever
they're going to do. Have you seen that to see
that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, I unfortun you can't
speak to too much of it, but yes, we are
seeing some of that. A good example is in Ryal, Illinois,
in Romeoville, there is a two huge warehouse districts out there,
and you're starting to see a couple of three pls
put up brokerage offices of there, then partnering as an
(13:17):
agent with some of the larger brokerages some of the
midsized ones.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So, you know, fraud's a big issue in the industry,
in brokerage and trucking. You know, how are you how
are you advising your clients to protect themselves from fraud
and fight fraud? What advice are you giving the brokers
out there?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So if the bad guys want to get your stuff,
they're kind to get it. We have found that throughout,
you know, the entirety of human existence. You just want
to make it more difficult for them to get it,
because then they'll go out to the person that's not
taking the precautions. So what do you do? You incorporate
different vetting systems. I think we're gonna talk about that
here in a little bit as well, specifically, so I
won't go two down that path yet. Do you want
(13:57):
to vet the carriers? You want to continue to vet
the carriage, You want to continue to monitor them, I
know them. You want to actually build relationships. It's not
the worst thing in the world to go to a
carrier's office and actually meet these people. There is a
difference in talking to someone on the phone or via
email versus breaking bread with them, and so that's an
important piece. The other thing, too is to look at
what are the high risk areas. You cannot control that
(14:17):
your shipper has a warehouse in Victorville, California. You also
cannot control that they're going to be in Fort Worth, Texas.
So knowing that, knowing where the high risk areas are,
take the precautions, take the extra time to vet the carriers,
but also put those precautions in place. For instance, you're
going into a either high visibility or high risk or
high value area. Good example, there's a large warehouse around
(14:37):
the Dallas area that is a lot of electronics. That
warehouse and all of their shipping partners all have these
same requirements of you cannot stop two hundred miles in
or two hundred miles out. They tell you simply what
fuel stops to not stop at. Because these are ones
that are already tracked and people are watching. Do I
see this specific type of seal cool? I know you've
got these electronics on. We're going to bust you down.
(14:59):
So knowing that they put these precautions in place, it
takes a little extra time, and there are carriers that
will say, well, I just don't want to deal with
all that extra mess. No problem, because you not wanting
to take the extra steps puts all of my free
am I relations with my customer at risk. So slowing
down to speed up is the overall theme of that
process of fraud prevention. There are a ton of great
(15:20):
tools out there, from fate Validate to Highway to care
for and one carriers. Sure, a lot of great products
out there, but ultimately it comes down to are your
people actually doing the process. And what you'll find is
you kind of peel back the onion is a lot
of folks do the very surface level where they checked
out three years ago when we set them up great.
What is changed in three years a lot and change
(15:41):
in three years.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Is there a story that you've heard of or come
across with about fraud that kind of like you scratched
your head or you were just like, oh my god,
I can't believe that happened.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, So a carrier, not a very well known carrier,
but a very reputable carrier, their information got hacked on
the fmcs website and so through that someone was able
to go in and change and they changed the email
to one letter difference, and now it was coming to
the bad guys, we'll call it that. And so they
were getting all this information about the freight and they
(16:13):
would send trucks in for their customers and they would
just steal stuff. And they were doing consolidation for Amazon,
for Temu, for some other different large retailers, and within
about ten days, about twenty million dollars for the product
was retail value was stolen. Yeah, before folks figured out that,
oh my gosh, like all this stuff go into this
(16:34):
email because it got changed on the FMCSA website and
so that passed through all of the different vetting tools
are out there, and that then led to the change
that I believe IOWA was the first one to put
in place of you get an alert every time your
main contact email changes through the FMCSA website. So then
you go and you track, hey, did you change this
you know bob it Bob's trucking. No, I didn't change anything.
(16:55):
Well cool, the FMCSA thinks you did, so you need
to check into that. But again that was a twenty
million dollar issue. Another that I saw was the bad
guys were working in conjunction with the shipping warehouse, and
so what they would do is they would actually split
an order as it would look like it was one
hundred TVs on the on the bol However, when the
(17:18):
truck arrived for delivery, it was only seventy and they
would just scratch it out and they would change it.
This went on over two years. And actually heard this
through a truck and company that we partnered with up
in Minnesota. And finally when it was found out what
had gone on, the truck coming done everything right, all
the b well, everything matched, everything was done perfectly. Unfortunately,
as it went through the legal system, they were on
(17:39):
the hook for approximately twenty two million dollars initially and
then it got whittled down to it was a small
seven figure settlement they paid out, but ultimately you've got
hundreds and hundreds of pieces of electronics that got stolen
and no one had any idea until finally somebody didn't
scratch off a number all the way right.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And you know, I asked you the question earlier, like,
you know, what is what is the minimum that a
broker needs. So the minimum are one of these platforms
that kind of you know, prevents fraud. Whether you know
you mentioned Highway, which we we had someone from their
executive Mia Michael Chani, Yeah, on the on the podcast.
So if you're interested to hear more about fraud, you
(18:17):
should go back and listen. So that's kind of like
the basics that that people need.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yep. Absolutely, But it comes down to that the technology
is incredibly important because that's going to help you continue
to monitor. But those initial steps of like do you
actually know who you're doing business with? That is incredibly
important and.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
To vet a carrier, So what is that process like?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
So we do with that. We actually have a whole
process with this. I won't give away all the secret
sauce with GLCs, but we look at, you know, who
the carrier is, doesn't match up with the FMCSA information.
We match it up alongside care for on one carrier
sure and with Highway UH. And then we actually go
through and we have different ways to validate this with
UH with our proker clients. So you do a v email,
(18:57):
VYF phone number and again we ultimately tell people once
you start doing business somebody when you hit a certain
number of loads. Again, that's going to be a threshold
that every brokerage decides on go meet these people or
invite them to your office. One of the most important
things I have found is that if someone's not willing
to sit down with you and discuss business and how
to grow together, it's not a deal breaker, but it's
a red flag, right And especially a lot of these
cares who are they're all clamoring for business. If someone's
(19:20):
willing to say, hey, I'll give you more, if you're
kind of come a meet with me, and they're not
willing to do that's usually a bad sign.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And you know, shifting gears a little bit about the
trucking market. You know, the rates have been pretty depressed
for a long time. You know they've gone up a
little bit, but it's mostly sideways for a while. You know,
what do you what do you think needs to happen
for rates to move higher? Is it going to be
on the supply side or the demand side?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Demand? Right now, we have such a glut of capacity
that what we need to have, and I've been talking
about this for a couple of years now, is is
a calling of capacity. So I don't like to see
businesses go down and people go out of business. That
unfortunately what we need to have We need trucks off
the road. Yeah, I have a shortage truck drivers. We
have an underutilization of them which is terrible. But also
(20:05):
we have we have so many trucks that around the road.
And the reality is this is there are a lot
of financial institutions that are not calling notes on I
think we act to talk about this at TMSA that
are not calling notes on trucks. And so there are
trucks out there that are not being paid for that
they would rather just keep them running because at some
point the industry will turn well, that continues to extend
out this recession and we keep bouncing along the bottom
(20:26):
like you talked about. Because if I don't have to
pay my truck pay I mean that's anywhere from twenty
five hundred and four thousand dollars a month I don't
have to pay. I'm not paying it right Why what
goes right to my bottom line?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And you know, the Trump administration has been pretty adamant about,
you know, increasing or improving the enforcement of English proficiency
amongst truck drivers. We had Derek Leathers on the podcast
last week, and he's thought that it's going to take
out five to fifteen percent of capacity. What do you
think about that? Do you think it's going to make
(20:58):
a dent or you just don't think Maybe much is
going to change in the enforcement side.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
I don't know that much will change the enforcement side,
because ultimately enforcement comes down to the individual unless are
real We've all seen how different individuals will execute enforcement
and no pun intended. You know. I'm not trying to
make light of how law enforcement sometimes interacts with the public,
but ultimately it does come down to that individual. If
they believe this person has good intention, they may still
(21:24):
let them go. Yeah, because who ultimately is going to
call them out of that? Nobody got and so we'll
take out some Where I do think we may have
potential issues with a large drop off in a driver
capacity is if visas start being rescinded. We've talked about already,
and this administration has talked about stopping new visas for
professional drivers. If they start rescinding visas, that's a whole
(21:46):
different issue where you have depending on the numbers you read,
thirty to sixty percent of professional drivers or immigrants, and
whether it's from Eastern Europe, South America, from Asia. So
knowing that if all of a sudden, even half of
those suddenly have a visa risc ended, that is a
large number of people that are some that behind the wheel.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Wow, that's that is very interesting. So what are your clients,
whether it's on the brokerage side or even your trucking
friends telling you about peak season.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
The last two to three peak seasons have been very muted,
and they anticipate a very muted one this year. Consumer
spending is not great, consumer confidence is not great. Let's
call it what it is. We we all walk through
the grocery store and we probably pick out less things
at the checkout aule that we used to. So we're
worried about money. We talked about Larry, you know, we
both got older kids. College is not getting be cheaper,
(22:39):
and so knowing that we are as Americans, we are
very much kind of holding on to a little bit
of cash. So that said, we're not going to spend
as much during the holiday season. And you also see
a large you know, if you look at social media
and kind of how some of those trends are people
are pushing away from things necessarily, it's very much more
about experiences. Well, experiences don't write on trucks necessarily, though
I will recommend aybody who ever liss go ride in
(23:01):
a truck some time. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Absolutely, I've done a couple ride along in the past.
So I'm gonna gonna shift gears a little bit about
yeah little now and talk about something else. You know,
you have an alter ego within the transportation space. You're
known as the strongest man of logistics. So let's and
for those listening, you know, I'm the seventh weakest man
(23:24):
in logistics. So can we Can you talk about you know,
how you got that name and kind of your passion
outside of the transportation world.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Sure, you know, it's always kind of funny to talk
about it because I don't mind talking about myself. But
I came up with this whole concept of the strongest
man logistics because I didn't want to as be an
operator for the rest of my life. So I looked at,
you know, kind of where my life was, what I do,
and you know, what is it unique about me and
the realities? I am strong. I am very very strong.
I started powerlifting gosh twelve thirteen years ago. I'd always
(23:58):
lifted weights. I played college and high school soccer. I
plt a little professional soccer after that, and I always
have to wait for sport. And then as I got
done with that, and it's kind of continued all with
my life, I continued to be in the gym. I
liked being strong. The whole concept of it was always
neat to me. And I got bulleting to do my
first powerlifting meet in twenty fourteen, and the rest is history.
(24:19):
I fell in love with the sport. It was a
phenomenal experience, and I turned out I was pretty good
at it, and I got around a great team that
has helped me progress in that. And it comes to
twenty twenty, where you know, the world shuts down, but
as I like to joke, that strength didn't. And so
after the first two weeks to quote unquote flatten the curve,
(24:40):
we knew we were gonna be home for a lot longer.
So I went and rented equipment from my friends that
had gyms so they could keep revenue coming in during
the pandemic, because all especially in Illinois, all of the
gyms were shut down. So I could go, So I
rented a power rack I ran a bar, so rented bleats,
a bench, all the different things I would need to
train for as long as we were home right, And
(25:01):
on April twenty ninth of twenty twenty, I was deadlifting
to my garage and deadlifting against bands and got to
the very top of the movement and in my inner
ear heard a and that was my left distal tendant
rupturing off my forum. And yeah, that didn't hurt as much.
It was then when the muscle tried to roll up
(25:22):
that hurt. That did not feel good. Did not feel good.
And so that's kind of set me into this bit
of a depressive cycle because I had not ever been
injured before, and I knew from an athlete perspective my
advanced age in my late thirties, this could have spelled
the end for a highly competitive career because even at
that time, I was one of the best powerlifters in
the raw community at the time, and so I was
(25:43):
very depressed. I was, to be fair, I was drinking
a lot, I was barely doing my work, and I
remember sitting in my garage crying one night and I
got a phone call from a friend of mine. His
name was Tray Griggs. Another great guy in the space,
and he was just being a good friend. And Trey
said to me, he man, you're going to get through this.
The world's going to open again, and I'll be okay,
And you're like the strongest guy I know, and you've
(26:04):
got to be the strongest mand Logistics. And it was
like a freight train hit me like that, That's what
it is, that's who I am. And I mold on
that for about a year and then just changed my
LinkedIn title, got some flag for it, which is fine.
But then I started telling people the numbers and I
started actually posting some of my training, some of my
(26:26):
competition lifts on LinkedIn. I would did this on other
social media platforms because that was what I was doing.
And I told people very openly, if you have anybody else,
and I'll update the numbers now, if you have anybody
else that can squad eleven fifty one, bench six eleven
or deadlift seven to ten, more than happy to have
my title over. But now for the last four years,
no one, no one's done it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
So I don't mean to impress you. The other day
I benched ninety pounds.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I love it. I love it. Yeah, So that became
a whole thing. And so then I made a decision
in twenty twenty three that I was going to post
something on LinkedIn every single day. I wanted to make
use of the platform. As I started doing that, and
I created this whole Fitness Friday thing, and I started
equating different things in my training, two different business concepts,
(27:10):
which actually was working on one before we came here today,
on kind of the overall operation of a brokerage over
a truck and company, how that relates to the operation
of a powerlifter so you're training, and how it relates
to sales and operations, nutrition, and how that relates to
like technology. And so I had this whole series of
posts and I'll be doing so about that. But being
(27:32):
able to pull those things together it helped kind of
humanize me, but also it connected a lot of business
leaders to oh, like, these are very simple concepts, and
I've now got any signific number people to say, hey, like,
I've actually been motivated to get back in the gym
because I see you doing it. It's now become a
whole thing of like a brand and there's a logo
and there's now some financial, you know, pieces to it. Too,
which has been really really fun of and as you saw,
(27:54):
have been called in to speak and talk about the
brand itself and building a personal brand and how that
intertwines with a corporate brand and how it has helped augment
GLCs because again that notoriety that I have and so
it happens to be a very unique skill that I
have of being strong, but I've been able to parlay
that into something that then also augments my career. And
so it's been an incredible experience so far. And it
(28:15):
was interesting as we were in the hotel kind of
prepping for today, the kind of stage two of that
you know, Strongest Manalytics two point zero is really starting
to take off right now and it's very very exciting, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
So do you have a goal of how much you
want to be able to lift?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So the goals always change? Yeah, So right now again
to give I like to give context where I can.
So in my weight class, I compete the two seventy
five pound weight class one hundred and twenty five kilos
for all of our friends overseas, I am the number
seven all time squad ever in human history, which is cool.
All weight classes, I am the number twenty nine all
(28:52):
time squad and I take great bride in that I
want to continue moving up that list. Ultimately, it's a
spreadsheet online, so we joke about like powerlift is not real,
It's just a bunch of numbers on the internet.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Take at TMS.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Basically, yeah, it's a really fancy spreadsheet. Is all openpowerlifting
dot org is. But yeah, so I want to get
into some of these very elite clubs. So the thousand
Pounds Squad Club, which I joined in twenty twenty two,
I was the three hundred and eighty seventh member. Again,
context over a million people finish a marathon every single year,
and less than foreigner people have ever squaded one thousand
(29:26):
pounds in competition. Last year I joined the eleven hundre
pound Squad Club. I was the eighty second person to
ever do it. And right now I am. And I
took my swing in July. I was hoping I was
going able to talk about that here today. But I
am looking to become the twentieth member of the twelve
hundred pound Squad Club, and very soon I will also
be the fourth member of the thirteen hundred pound Squad Club.
(29:48):
So I'm very very focused to on my squad because
I was pilled for it. Yeah, I'm very very close
to a seven hundred pound bench and then eventually we
will take a run at an hundred pound deadlift. So
when it's all said and done, you know, I will
have a at least in my weight class, a top
five all time total, and if I do the things
I'm supposed to do in all weight classes, I will
be in the top ten all time.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Awesome, awesome man. And this is an audio podcast, so uh,
for the benefit of those Uh, Robert could break me
in half very easily. It's probably you could probably squat me.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I could squtch. I can definitely squatch a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, maybe we'll do that at the time.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
You know, you talked about the books that you like
from but you know, are there books specifically about transportation
that you've read that you think are interesting? Because you know,
you gave some great examples you know that we're going
to share, you know, in addition to this podcast. So,
but are there any ones about the trucking industry that
are like close to your heart?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
So a couple and feel free to laugh at this
supply chain for dummies. Okay, phenomenal. What a great overview
of just everything when it comes to transportation, supply, chain, warehousing.
It was great.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
And then a Trucker's Tale told from the point of
view of a professional driver. I've been driving for I
believe it's almost sixty years. Unbelievable. Obviously some of the
stories from that, you know, the things you want one
would see on the road, and but just the thoughts
and the way that these individuals go about their life,
(31:17):
it is incredible. Yeah. And then talk about ultimately, and
it boils down to what does this person want. I
want to get up in the morning, make a living
for my family and make sure that I can see
them when I get home. No different than any of us. Yeah,
And that was a very important and connecting moment for
me with professional drivers. I've always been very passionate about
the American professional driver and it was just really really
(31:42):
cool to to why listen to it as an audiobook,
but then went and read it to and it was
just very very moving stories.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
All right, And thank you for all those professional drivers
out there, because you know, you ensure that the shelves
are full, and you know they make our lives the
heck of a lot easier, absolutely, with a lot of
sacrifices with not being home every night to their own family.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
So, is there anything on your radar about the freight,
transportation and logistics world that we haven't talked about that
he thinks either interesting or concerning?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
There are some concerning things the way this administration goes
about transportation. I do have some concerns. So there's just
inconsistencies right now. When it comes to the enforcement of
the English language, it comes to the visas, certainly there
are some concerns there. But until things actually play out
me personally, I just continue to monitor it. I'm extremely
interested to watch how AI continues to imbue itself into
(32:39):
just overall humanity, but specivilly into transportation. There is so
much nuance to transportation that I believe AI can actually
do a lot of things to kind of break that
up and help people understand that ultimately, what are we
doing moving things from A to B, and then how
to do that the most efficiently, because I do believe
that there is a lot of money lost by inefficiency sure,
and that AI machine learned. What I love though, is
(33:02):
that AI actually is It's so much more than just
a you know, a bot behind the screen. There. There
are a lot of different verses of AI. I am,
by no means an expert on that, but I'm learning
more about it. I'm a very special person that helps
educate me on that. That has me sitting in that room
over there, because she works on this constantly for her profession.
When you have agenta AI, large learning models, if you
(33:23):
have machine learning in there, and then you got rpas
as well, all those things are typically thought of in
the same vein, but they're very much not And so
how that continues to play out, I'm very interested, and
then how it continues to augment individuals in the space. Again,
I'm very interested in watching this. I'm learning more about it.
I won't say I'm excited, but I'm not scared of it,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, you know, I think you know. I've been covering
freight transportation for about twenty years as an analyst, and
there's been a lot of technology trends that have come
and gone with a lot of height. I think AI
is one of the few that are real. I don't think,
you know, I don't think we're going to live in
dystopian society where you know the robots are doing.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Is not coming anytime.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So, but that being said, you know a lot of
people believe that we are going to be a world
where there's going to be you know, over the road
heavy duty trucks without any drivers in it.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
And where do you where are your.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Thoughts on autonomous trucks.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
So autonomous trucks, they are real, they are here, they
are being tested, they are working. Here's the issue that
is going to come up. What happens when that truck
rolls over and kill the family? For we are ready
technologically for autonomous vehicles, we are not ready societally or
legislatively for it. Because who's going to go to jail?
If you're the engineer who built that truck, are you
(34:41):
going to jail?
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
If I'm the person who came up with the algorithm
that maybe it make that decision to change lanes? Am
I going?
Speaker 1 (34:48):
No?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Why should I? I'm just doing my job. So there's
there's a lot of things that have to happen before
that is fully implemented but also fully accepted. There is
a significant amount of fear amongst the general public of
like a tribalist vehicle like I mean, I don't know
if you've actually been in a driverless taxi yet I have.
It's a trip, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, it is. And
(35:11):
the first time you get in, like, there is some
trepidation there. Now put that into an eighty thousand pound
missile going down the road. I'm still not fully comfortable
with that. But knowing that again, as a society, we
are not ready to accept that. Nors are any of
our laws ready for that, because this is America. Somebody dies,
someone's going to jail. Yeah, And so that's that is
where we're not quite ready. I do believe in our
(35:33):
lifetime though, we will see that as scale.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, yeah, I think that you're going to see it
in some major trucking lanes, like you know where the
weathers tends to be better.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
And it's almost going to be set up like an
intermodal network where you have a human doing the pick
up and delivery part and the robot does in the
line hall if you will so.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
And I could very easily see the convoy system as
well of you know, you have one man vehicle in
the front end, anywhere from two to ten behind it
coming through. I could very easily see that as well.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, it's very interesting that there's also a lot of
pushback for you know, one man let alone zero man
locomotives on the rail industry and those are those are
fixed ye network. So it's very interesting to see what
the driving public well willing to accept. Well, Robert, I
really want to thank you for your time and your
(36:23):
insights today catching up with you and seeing you again,
and thanks so much for coming in studio. Yes, definitely
it was awesome and also want to thank you for
tuning in. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and
leave a review. We've lined up a number of great
guests for the podcast, so check back to hear conversations
with C suite executives, shippers, regulators, and decision makers within
the freight markets. Also, if you want to learn more
(36:44):
about the freight transportation markets, check out our work on
the Bloomberg Terminal at BI and on social media. This
is Lee Clasgow signing off. Thanks for talking transports with me.
Talk to you next week.
Hi everyone, this is Lee Clasgow when We're Talking Transports.
Welcome to Bloomberg Intelligence Talking Transport podcast. I'm your host,
Lee Clasgow, senior freight, transportation and logistics analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence,
Bloomberg's in house research arm of almost five hundred analysts
and strategists around the world. A quick public service announcement
before we dive in. Your support is instrumental to keep
(00:27):
bringing great guests and conversations to you, our listeners, and
we need your support. So please, if you enjoy this podcast,
share it, like.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It and leave a comment.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Also, if you have any ideas, feedbacks, or just want
to talk transports, I'm happy to connect. You can find
me on the Bloomberg terminal, on LinkedIn, or on x
at Logistics. Lee, I'm very excited to have with us today.
Robert Bain, Director of Partnerships and Senior Consultant at GLCs.
Robert has nearly twenty years of experience in the transportation industry,
(00:57):
from leadership and employee management to business processes and technology.
As GLCs is senior consultant, Bain is responsible for developing
the organization's three pl and intermediary clients Welcome to the podcast, Robert,
thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thanks for having me on. It's an honor.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
And you know, we met sometime this year at tmsa's
June conference. I heard you speak and I thought you'd
have You would be a great guest to have on
the Talking Transports podcast because not only do you have
insights about the industry, but you're also an interesting person.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Thanks. I appreciate that. I try to be all right,
So why don't.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
You tell us a little bit about GLCs before we
move on.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Sure, JLCS we're nine years old as of June, so
we've been around for that time. We've also had our CEO, Nate,
has been in the space for almost thirty years. Our
entire organization is all transflation professional, so our focus is
technology around the space, specifically for trucking and logistics companies,
so everything for your operating systems integrations, and so we
(01:57):
do with that as we do managed IT, so that
we kind of come in and support IT firms or
IT T arms of the organizations as well as the
operations teams. So my role specifically is focused on not
like recommending IT solutions, but also on process assessment and
organizational design and organizational upkeeping.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
All right, Well, you have an interesting perspective because you know,
you see what's going on in the freight markets and
also specifically you see what's going on with technology in
those markets. What are your customers and clients telling you about,
you know, the current state of the trucking market and
where they see it going from here.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
No surprises, It's tough. It's hard up there right now.
Rates are down definitely, Freight volumes, frey volumes are actually
at a pretty decent level. The downside's capacity is still
very very high. You see what a lot of things
going on with carriers that started in the industry very recently,
so you know, twenty twenty and on. You know, they've
taken out loans, they are working to get their trucks running,
and so there's a lot of capacity. It's out there,
(02:54):
and there's just not a lot of new opportunities that
are coming through. So a lot of folks are trying
to do more with less and trying to keep business
as people continue to undercut and kind of drive prices down.
This ultimately works great for the shippers. Hopefully it passes
on to consumers one of these days. Inflation is telling
us u's not. But ultimately that is the challenge right
now is where's the freight and how can we ultimately
do more with less with both our employees and also
(03:16):
with the customers that we're getting right.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And you know, you also work with the brokerage industry.
Technology is extremely important to them, so you know they
can be more productive. Can you talk about the solutions
that a lot of brokerage firms, because I'm assuming do
you deal with like the h Robinson's of the world.
Are you dealing with the mom and pop freight broker
you know, down on main.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Street all the buff So we work with quite a
few folks. We certainly have a lot of large enterprise clients.
Our sweet spot is usually going to be that fifty
million to two and fifty million dollar top line brokerage.
Typically they've got a lot of great talented people. Their
focus is moving freight and technology is not always their focus,
and so there's a lot of times when things fall
through the cracks. You look at like a ch and Echo,
(03:58):
a Redwood now not XPO, but formerly XBO, they typically
have very large staff of IT and technical professionals, and
we still come in and we help them not as much.
We may come into some of these you know, small
enterprise and mid market organizations. So with them, what we
typically look at is we look at their operating systems
or TMSs, and what we typically find is that a
(04:19):
lot of things that worked as the business grew does
not work as the state they are in now. And
so there's a lot of that reassessment of is it
the technology, is the process, and then how can we
make sure that these people are able to go from
moving ten loads a day to twenty to fifty to
one hundred and so that's where the technology comes in,
where it's going to be automated quoting whether it's going
to be automation on the back end or get integrations
(04:40):
and streamlining the entire process right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And the vendors that provide those services are their names
that you know folks would know, or are they big
technology firms or these really niche players that are you
know that created I guess the niche service for themselves.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So there was a time where there was a big
push for a lot of the big names. So you
look like your trimbles, your Mcloud's really to kind of
be the one stop shot. We want everything in one
on one bill. We want everything like that. What we
have found and what they have found, is that it
is really hard to be all things to all people.
Every brokerage comes in or every trucking company comes in,
they've all got different needs. And so what folks have
(05:18):
found it's a lot easier to go out and build
small niche products like you're talking about. A great example
like everest Ai who has built an amazing product with
agenta AI that comes in. It can do automated tracking calls,
it can do bill collection. Another great one is like
upwell everything on the back end, so once a load
is delivered, all the way up until basically payment acceptance,
(05:38):
everything can be automated throughout Bulls platform. And so we
see these very niche players that come in and they
do very very well. Another great example was green Screens,
who recently was acquired by Triump Financial, where all the
automated process they dealt with was around pricing. So when
a rep would potentially get you one hundred quote requests
from a customer from a series of customers, green Screens
can come in and they can provide all the data
(06:00):
you need it and you could actually automate that whole process.
So you could have rates already in, you could already
have profit margins built in, and that person can be
much more effective. And all they're really doing at that
point is send everything comes back and they're able to
start building and executing on the freight of self.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And from a technology standpoint, when you're looking at the
brokerage industry, what's the bare bones that a brokerage has
to have, you know, as opposed to, oh, we're going
to automate you know, ninety eight percent of our transactions.
You know, what do they need to have just to
be competitive out there?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So I'm going to tell you this right now. If
you are under twenty million dollars in revenue, all these
different companies I'm talking about, don't worry about them. Just
don't because they are great. They're awesome. Because your margins
are going to be so thin. That's not some need
to think about. You need to look at you needed
operating system, you ATMs. You're already something on the accounting side, typical,
it's going to be quick books, and then you need
some way to track things and a repository that you're
(06:52):
gonna have access to at all times. The best thing
I can tell people is look at Microsoft or the
Google Suite because you'll have access to this. And then
as you grow and expand, now you start looking at
do I need a data lake, Do I need to
have some type of streamlined integration of data? All those
things will be as you grow, but up until about
twenty million that you basically need a TMS, a finance system,
and an extension, not a Gmail address, So the t
(07:13):
suite that you can just buy the spend the extra
four dollars a month and get your own extension.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
And can you just tell our listeners, because you know
not everyone is as hip as you and I are.
What a TMS is and what does it do?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Certainly a transportation management system. Now all of my TMS
friends are going to get mad when I say this.
It's a very spread fancy spreadsheet, is what it is.
But it does have some extra bells and whistles to
it that allow you to operate your freight. So it
will track what is open, what is covered, what is delivered,
what has not been collected on. It will then hopefully
connect to your finance system so that you can create invoices.
(07:47):
You can also then create agent reports all the things
you would need to actually run your business. But the
execution of the freight that you win from your customers
is all going to be done through your TMS, your
transportation management system.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know, I know you talk about the three pillars
of six tests and the freight brokeer. Can you tell
me what your three pillars are?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
So these are very simple, and this is to be fair.
This can work in almost any operation, but I focus
them on obviously my industry, because this is in our industry.
Is this what I do first things versus extreme ownership.
The second is going to be customer experience, and the
third is free cash flow. Extreme Ownership is exactly what
it says, you own everything. If anyone wants to truly
understand that, read the book by Jocko Willink. By the way,
(08:23):
I'm not endorsed pain of these people that I'm talking
about right now. I just have either free friends of them,
or I really like the products I put out. Jocko's
one of them. The book Extreme Ownership is one of
the best books on business in life I've ever read
any person that I mentor that I talk to, any
person I've ever managed, all for my children that eventually
my granddaughter. All have been given a copy of this
book and I expect them to read it and I
typically will quizzle on it. So the concept behind extreme
(08:44):
ownership is every piece of your life you own. If
something happens, if I'm in a car accident and somebody
who ends me, what could I have done different to
make sure that didn't happen. It's a very different way
of thinking about things. So again it's not a nothing's
ever good enough? Is that I can always be better,
slight shift customer experience. This all stems from these last
two stem from the book The Amazon Way. So if
(09:07):
you ever listened to Jeff Bezols talk about the early
days of Amazon, and obviously the success there was incredible.
They were never worried about profits, which drove their investors insane.
I believe you guys actually had some fun with them
a Bloomberg early on when people were really unsure are
they going to make it or not? And what they
did with is everything is focused on customer experience because
if customers keep coming back, everything fixes itself. So make
(09:29):
sure the customer experience is paramount. They didn't say the
customer is always right, but the customer experiences paramount. And
then from that free cash flow, your top line, your
bottom line, honestly, your bank balance. None of that matters.
Is your free cash lial. That matters when it comes
to business. How much money can you actually spend. I
don't care if I sold a widget for one thousand
dollars and I made two hundred bucks on it. Until
that money's in the bank and I can actually use it,
(09:51):
It's not real. It's just on paper. And so Besis
always focused on free cash flow. And you look at
Amazon's business, and that business is now They're incredible, They
are very incredibly profit and they are the bill of
the ball for the most part. And so those three things,
when you focus on that, they all then become this
flywheel where if you own everything, you create an incredible
customer experience. Your customers pay your bills, and that free
(10:13):
cash flow continues to get. Then invest in your people
who are now incentivized to own everything they do, and
that just continues to be gad itself, and that builds
an incredible business. Everything else that you do, whether it's
investing in technology, where's customer acquisition, all that comes down
to these three things. Own the experience, create a great
customer experience and make sure your money's right.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And so you know when you go into these brokers,
is there something that you see that is a common
mistake that a lot of brokers make.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Believing you're the magic. The CEO tends to believe they're
the magic. And it's not that you're not a great person.
Now that you have done great things, you hustle, you've
done like you've taken the step that the majority of
people will never do, and you started the business right awesome.
To scale it to what the majority of these individuals want,
you have to pass awful lot of things and that
is very difficult. And then you have to imbue these
three pillars to people and really find the ones that
(11:01):
are going to do it. And it's not always the
people you think are going to and so believing you're
the magic and believing you think you know everything is
really the mistake that we see and the ones that
humble themselves to that, whether it is listening to us
or someone else, it's not always a GLCs or Robert
Bain thing. It is understanding that you are not the secret.
Those people are the ones that go very very far
in this industry.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Got youa so on the brokerage industry. You know, I
guess it's good for you guys, because there's a highly
fragmented industry and there's a lot of smaller to mid
sized players out there, but it seems to be at
the top that is getting a little more consolidated. Kind
of what's your view on on consolidation with the industry.
Do you think it's going to be just the top,
Do you think that there's room like the market's going
(11:43):
to be consolidated or to your point, it's a lot
of it has to do with relationships, so it's kind
of easy to start a brokerage. So maybe it's always
going to be fragmented.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Right, So what I tell people with this is there
is always going to be a need for very specialty
type of movements. C. H. Robinson is not going to
go out and move human corpses as an example. I
make that joke only because that is actually a piece
of the business that people do specialize in, because I
mean move military folks. You have people that maybe they
passed away in New York, but they're from California and
(12:12):
there's a whole special process for this, and there are
folks that specialize in that, whereas Robinson may not do
that because it's not consistent and it's not something they
can really automate. So there's always gonna be an opportunity
for people to do very unique and special things. The
top will continue to kind of ebb and flow and consolidate.
We are very much in the age of consolidation, however,
because it is easier to fight together than it's to
(12:32):
fight alone, so you'll see consolidation. I also believe over
the next three to five years you're gonna see a
lot more strategic partnerships for actual murders acquisitions because people
do want to maintain the autonomy they built for their business,
and so you're gonna see a lot of these where
you'll see a brokerage and maybe a three pl warehousing
system that will combine their expertises and builds a cheat
(12:55):
to partnerships to help shippers or help maritime or whatever
they're going to do. Have you seen that to see
that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, I unfortun you can't
speak to too much of it, but yes, we are
seeing some of that. A good example is in Ryal, Illinois,
in Romeoville, there is a two huge warehouse districts out there,
and you're starting to see a couple of three pls
put up brokerage offices of there, then partnering as an
(13:17):
agent with some of the larger brokerages some of the
midsized ones.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So, you know, fraud's a big issue in the industry,
in brokerage and trucking. You know, how are you how
are you advising your clients to protect themselves from fraud
and fight fraud? What advice are you giving the brokers
out there?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So if the bad guys want to get your stuff,
they're kind to get it. We have found that throughout,
you know, the entirety of human existence. You just want
to make it more difficult for them to get it,
because then they'll go out to the person that's not
taking the precautions. So what do you do? You incorporate
different vetting systems. I think we're gonna talk about that
here in a little bit as well, specifically, so I
won't go two down that path yet. Do you want
(13:57):
to vet the carriers? You want to continue to vet
the carriage, You want to continue to monitor them, I
know them. You want to actually build relationships. It's not
the worst thing in the world to go to a
carrier's office and actually meet these people. There is a
difference in talking to someone on the phone or via
email versus breaking bread with them, and so that's an
important piece. The other thing, too is to look at
what are the high risk areas. You cannot control that
(14:17):
your shipper has a warehouse in Victorville, California. You also
cannot control that they're going to be in Fort Worth, Texas.
So knowing that, knowing where the high risk areas are,
take the precautions, take the extra time to vet the carriers,
but also put those precautions in place. For instance, you're
going into a either high visibility or high risk or
high value area. Good example, there's a large warehouse around
(14:37):
the Dallas area that is a lot of electronics. That
warehouse and all of their shipping partners all have these
same requirements of you cannot stop two hundred miles in
or two hundred miles out. They tell you simply what
fuel stops to not stop at. Because these are ones
that are already tracked and people are watching. Do I
see this specific type of seal cool? I know you've
got these electronics on. We're going to bust you down.
(14:59):
So knowing that they put these precautions in place, it
takes a little extra time, and there are carriers that
will say, well, I just don't want to deal with
all that extra mess. No problem, because you not wanting
to take the extra steps puts all of my free
am I relations with my customer at risk. So slowing
down to speed up is the overall theme of that
process of fraud prevention. There are a ton of great
(15:20):
tools out there, from fate Validate to Highway to care
for and one carriers. Sure, a lot of great products
out there, but ultimately it comes down to are your
people actually doing the process. And what you'll find is
you kind of peel back the onion is a lot
of folks do the very surface level where they checked
out three years ago when we set them up great.
What is changed in three years a lot and change
(15:41):
in three years.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Is there a story that you've heard of or come
across with about fraud that kind of like you scratched
your head or you were just like, oh my god,
I can't believe that happened.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, So a carrier, not a very well known carrier,
but a very reputable carrier, their information got hacked on
the fmcs website and so through that someone was able
to go in and change and they changed the email
to one letter difference, and now it was coming to
the bad guys, we'll call it that. And so they
were getting all this information about the freight and they
(16:13):
would send trucks in for their customers and they would
just steal stuff. And they were doing consolidation for Amazon,
for Temu, for some other different large retailers, and within
about ten days, about twenty million dollars for the product
was retail value was stolen. Yeah, before folks figured out that,
oh my gosh, like all this stuff go into this
(16:34):
email because it got changed on the FMCSA website and
so that passed through all of the different vetting tools
are out there, and that then led to the change
that I believe IOWA was the first one to put
in place of you get an alert every time your
main contact email changes through the FMCSA website. So then
you go and you track, hey, did you change this
you know bob it Bob's trucking. No, I didn't change anything.
(16:55):
Well cool, the FMCSA thinks you did, so you need
to check into that. But again that was a twenty
million dollar issue. Another that I saw was the bad
guys were working in conjunction with the shipping warehouse, and
so what they would do is they would actually split
an order as it would look like it was one
hundred TVs on the on the bol However, when the
(17:18):
truck arrived for delivery, it was only seventy and they
would just scratch it out and they would change it.
This went on over two years. And actually heard this
through a truck and company that we partnered with up
in Minnesota. And finally when it was found out what
had gone on, the truck coming done everything right, all
the b well, everything matched, everything was done perfectly. Unfortunately,
as it went through the legal system, they were on
(17:39):
the hook for approximately twenty two million dollars initially and
then it got whittled down to it was a small
seven figure settlement they paid out, but ultimately you've got
hundreds and hundreds of pieces of electronics that got stolen
and no one had any idea until finally somebody didn't
scratch off a number all the way right.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And you know, I asked you the question earlier, like,
you know, what is what is the minimum that a
broker needs. So the minimum are one of these platforms
that kind of you know, prevents fraud. Whether you know
you mentioned Highway, which we we had someone from their
executive Mia Michael Chani, Yeah, on the on the podcast.
So if you're interested to hear more about fraud, you
(18:17):
should go back and listen. So that's kind of like
the basics that that people need.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yep. Absolutely, But it comes down to that the technology
is incredibly important because that's going to help you continue
to monitor. But those initial steps of like do you
actually know who you're doing business with? That is incredibly
important and.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
To vet a carrier, So what is that process like?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
So we do with that. We actually have a whole
process with this. I won't give away all the secret
sauce with GLCs, but we look at, you know, who
the carrier is, doesn't match up with the FMCSA information.
We match it up alongside care for on one carrier
sure and with Highway UH. And then we actually go
through and we have different ways to validate this with
UH with our proker clients. So you do a v email,
(18:57):
VYF phone number and again we ultimately tell people once
you start doing business somebody when you hit a certain
number of loads. Again, that's going to be a threshold
that every brokerage decides on go meet these people or
invite them to your office. One of the most important
things I have found is that if someone's not willing
to sit down with you and discuss business and how
to grow together, it's not a deal breaker, but it's
a red flag, right And especially a lot of these
cares who are they're all clamoring for business. If someone's
(19:20):
willing to say, hey, I'll give you more, if you're
kind of come a meet with me, and they're not
willing to do that's usually a bad sign.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And you know, shifting gears a little bit about the
trucking market. You know, the rates have been pretty depressed
for a long time. You know they've gone up a
little bit, but it's mostly sideways for a while. You know,
what do you what do you think needs to happen
for rates to move higher? Is it going to be
on the supply side or the demand side?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Demand? Right now, we have such a glut of capacity
that what we need to have, and I've been talking
about this for a couple of years now, is is
a calling of capacity. So I don't like to see
businesses go down and people go out of business. That
unfortunately what we need to have We need trucks off
the road. Yeah, I have a shortage truck drivers. We
have an underutilization of them which is terrible. But also
(20:05):
we have we have so many trucks that around the road.
And the reality is this is there are a lot
of financial institutions that are not calling notes on I
think we act to talk about this at TMSA that
are not calling notes on trucks. And so there are
trucks out there that are not being paid for that
they would rather just keep them running because at some
point the industry will turn well, that continues to extend
out this recession and we keep bouncing along the bottom
(20:26):
like you talked about. Because if I don't have to
pay my truck pay I mean that's anywhere from twenty
five hundred and four thousand dollars a month I don't
have to pay. I'm not paying it right Why what
goes right to my bottom line?
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And you know, the Trump administration has been pretty adamant about,
you know, increasing or improving the enforcement of English proficiency
amongst truck drivers. We had Derek Leathers on the podcast
last week, and he's thought that it's going to take
out five to fifteen percent of capacity. What do you
think about that? Do you think it's going to make
(20:58):
a dent or you just don't think Maybe much is
going to change in the enforcement side.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
I don't know that much will change the enforcement side,
because ultimately enforcement comes down to the individual unless are
real We've all seen how different individuals will execute enforcement
and no pun intended. You know. I'm not trying to
make light of how law enforcement sometimes interacts with the public,
but ultimately it does come down to that individual. If
they believe this person has good intention, they may still
(21:24):
let them go. Yeah, because who ultimately is going to
call them out of that? Nobody got and so we'll
take out some Where I do think we may have
potential issues with a large drop off in a driver
capacity is if visas start being rescinded. We've talked about already,
and this administration has talked about stopping new visas for
professional drivers. If they start rescinding visas, that's a whole
(21:46):
different issue where you have depending on the numbers you read,
thirty to sixty percent of professional drivers or immigrants, and
whether it's from Eastern Europe, South America, from Asia. So
knowing that if all of a sudden, even half of
those suddenly have a visa risc ended, that is a
large number of people that are some that behind the wheel.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Wow, that's that is very interesting. So what are your clients,
whether it's on the brokerage side or even your trucking
friends telling you about peak season.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
The last two to three peak seasons have been very muted,
and they anticipate a very muted one this year. Consumer
spending is not great, consumer confidence is not great. Let's
call it what it is. We we all walk through
the grocery store and we probably pick out less things
at the checkout aule that we used to. So we're
worried about money. We talked about Larry, you know, we
both got older kids. College is not getting be cheaper,
(22:39):
and so knowing that we are as Americans, we are
very much kind of holding on to a little bit
of cash. So that said, we're not going to spend
as much during the holiday season. And you also see
a large you know, if you look at social media
and kind of how some of those trends are people
are pushing away from things necessarily, it's very much more
about experiences. Well, experiences don't write on trucks necessarily, though
I will recommend aybody who ever liss go ride in
(23:01):
a truck some time. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Absolutely, I've done a couple ride along in the past.
So I'm gonna gonna shift gears a little bit about
yeah little now and talk about something else. You know,
you have an alter ego within the transportation space. You're
known as the strongest man of logistics. So let's and
for those listening, you know, I'm the seventh weakest man
(23:24):
in logistics. So can we Can you talk about you know,
how you got that name and kind of your passion
outside of the transportation world.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Sure, you know, it's always kind of funny to talk
about it because I don't mind talking about myself. But
I came up with this whole concept of the strongest
man logistics because I didn't want to as be an
operator for the rest of my life. So I looked at,
you know, kind of where my life was, what I do,
and you know, what is it unique about me and
the realities? I am strong. I am very very strong.
I started powerlifting gosh twelve thirteen years ago. I'd always
(23:58):
lifted weights. I played college and high school soccer. I
plt a little professional soccer after that, and I always
have to wait for sport. And then as I got
done with that, and it's kind of continued all with
my life, I continued to be in the gym. I
liked being strong. The whole concept of it was always
neat to me. And I got bulleting to do my
first powerlifting meet in twenty fourteen, and the rest is history.
(24:19):
I fell in love with the sport. It was a
phenomenal experience, and I turned out I was pretty good
at it, and I got around a great team that
has helped me progress in that. And it comes to
twenty twenty, where you know, the world shuts down, but
as I like to joke, that strength didn't. And so
after the first two weeks to quote unquote flatten the curve,
(24:40):
we knew we were gonna be home for a lot longer.
So I went and rented equipment from my friends that
had gyms so they could keep revenue coming in during
the pandemic, because all especially in Illinois, all of the
gyms were shut down. So I could go, So I
rented a power rack I ran a bar, so rented bleats,
a bench, all the different things I would need to
train for as long as we were home right, And
(25:01):
on April twenty ninth of twenty twenty, I was deadlifting
to my garage and deadlifting against bands and got to
the very top of the movement and in my inner
ear heard a and that was my left distal tendant
rupturing off my forum. And yeah, that didn't hurt as much.
It was then when the muscle tried to roll up
(25:22):
that hurt. That did not feel good. Did not feel good.
And so that's kind of set me into this bit
of a depressive cycle because I had not ever been
injured before, and I knew from an athlete perspective my
advanced age in my late thirties, this could have spelled
the end for a highly competitive career because even at
that time, I was one of the best powerlifters in
the raw community at the time, and so I was
(25:43):
very depressed. I was, to be fair, I was drinking
a lot, I was barely doing my work, and I
remember sitting in my garage crying one night and I
got a phone call from a friend of mine. His
name was Tray Griggs. Another great guy in the space,
and he was just being a good friend. And Trey
said to me, he man, you're going to get through this.
The world's going to open again, and I'll be okay,
And you're like the strongest guy I know, and you've
(26:04):
got to be the strongest mand Logistics. And it was
like a freight train hit me like that, That's what
it is, that's who I am. And I mold on
that for about a year and then just changed my
LinkedIn title, got some flag for it, which is fine.
But then I started telling people the numbers and I
started actually posting some of my training, some of my
(26:26):
competition lifts on LinkedIn. I would did this on other
social media platforms because that was what I was doing.
And I told people very openly, if you have anybody else,
and I'll update the numbers now, if you have anybody
else that can squad eleven fifty one, bench six eleven
or deadlift seven to ten, more than happy to have
my title over. But now for the last four years,
no one, no one's done it.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
So I don't mean to impress you. The other day
I benched ninety pounds.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I love it. I love it. Yeah, So that became
a whole thing. And so then I made a decision
in twenty twenty three that I was going to post
something on LinkedIn every single day. I wanted to make
use of the platform. As I started doing that, and
I created this whole Fitness Friday thing, and I started
equating different things in my training, two different business concepts,
(27:10):
which actually was working on one before we came here today,
on kind of the overall operation of a brokerage over
a truck and company, how that relates to the operation
of a powerlifter so you're training, and how it relates
to sales and operations, nutrition, and how that relates to
like technology. And so I had this whole series of
posts and I'll be doing so about that. But being
(27:32):
able to pull those things together it helped kind of
humanize me, but also it connected a lot of business
leaders to oh, like, these are very simple concepts, and
I've now got any signific number people to say, hey, like,
I've actually been motivated to get back in the gym
because I see you doing it. It's now become a
whole thing of like a brand and there's a logo
and there's now some financial, you know, pieces to it. Too,
which has been really really fun of and as you saw,
(27:54):
have been called in to speak and talk about the
brand itself and building a personal brand and how that
intertwines with a corporate brand and how it has helped augment
GLCs because again that notoriety that I have and so
it happens to be a very unique skill that I
have of being strong, but I've been able to parlay
that into something that then also augments my career. And
so it's been an incredible experience so far. And it
(28:15):
was interesting as we were in the hotel kind of
prepping for today, the kind of stage two of that
you know, Strongest Manalytics two point zero is really starting
to take off right now and it's very very exciting, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
So do you have a goal of how much you
want to be able to lift?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So the goals always change? Yeah, So right now again
to give I like to give context where I can.
So in my weight class, I compete the two seventy
five pound weight class one hundred and twenty five kilos
for all of our friends overseas, I am the number
seven all time squad ever in human history, which is cool.
All weight classes, I am the number twenty nine all
(28:52):
time squad and I take great bride in that I
want to continue moving up that list. Ultimately, it's a
spreadsheet online, so we joke about like powerlift is not real,
It's just a bunch of numbers on the internet.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Take at TMS.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Basically, yeah, it's a really fancy spreadsheet. Is all openpowerlifting
dot org is. But yeah, so I want to get
into some of these very elite clubs. So the thousand
Pounds Squad Club, which I joined in twenty twenty two,
I was the three hundred and eighty seventh member. Again,
context over a million people finish a marathon every single year,
and less than foreigner people have ever squaded one thousand
(29:26):
pounds in competition. Last year I joined the eleven hundre
pound Squad Club. I was the eighty second person to
ever do it. And right now I am. And I
took my swing in July. I was hoping I was
going able to talk about that here today. But I
am looking to become the twentieth member of the twelve
hundred pound Squad Club, and very soon I will also
be the fourth member of the thirteen hundred pound Squad Club.
(29:48):
So I'm very very focused to on my squad because
I was pilled for it. Yeah, I'm very very close
to a seven hundred pound bench and then eventually we
will take a run at an hundred pound deadlift. So
when it's all said and done, you know, I will
have a at least in my weight class, a top
five all time total, and if I do the things
I'm supposed to do in all weight classes, I will
be in the top ten all time.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Awesome, awesome man. And this is an audio podcast, so uh,
for the benefit of those Uh, Robert could break me
in half very easily. It's probably you could probably squat me.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I could squtch. I can definitely squatch a couple of times.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, maybe we'll do that at the time.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
You know, you talked about the books that you like
from but you know, are there books specifically about transportation
that you've read that you think are interesting? Because you know,
you gave some great examples you know that we're going
to share, you know, in addition to this podcast. So,
but are there any ones about the trucking industry that
are like close to your heart?
Speaker 2 (30:43):
So a couple and feel free to laugh at this
supply chain for dummies. Okay, phenomenal. What a great overview
of just everything when it comes to transportation, supply, chain, warehousing.
It was great.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
And then a Trucker's Tale told from the point of
view of a professional driver. I've been driving for I
believe it's almost sixty years. Unbelievable. Obviously some of the
stories from that, you know, the things you want one
would see on the road, and but just the thoughts
and the way that these individuals go about their life,
(31:17):
it is incredible. Yeah. And then talk about ultimately, and
it boils down to what does this person want. I
want to get up in the morning, make a living
for my family and make sure that I can see
them when I get home. No different than any of us. Yeah,
And that was a very important and connecting moment for
me with professional drivers. I've always been very passionate about
the American professional driver and it was just really really
(31:42):
cool to to why listen to it as an audiobook,
but then went and read it to and it was
just very very moving stories.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
All right, And thank you for all those professional drivers
out there, because you know, you ensure that the shelves
are full, and you know they make our lives the
heck of a lot easier, absolutely, with a lot of
sacrifices with not being home every night to their own family.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
So, is there anything on your radar about the freight,
transportation and logistics world that we haven't talked about that
he thinks either interesting or concerning?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
There are some concerning things the way this administration goes
about transportation. I do have some concerns. So there's just
inconsistencies right now. When it comes to the enforcement of
the English language, it comes to the visas, certainly there
are some concerns there. But until things actually play out
me personally, I just continue to monitor it. I'm extremely
interested to watch how AI continues to imbue itself into
(32:39):
just overall humanity, but specivilly into transportation. There is so
much nuance to transportation that I believe AI can actually
do a lot of things to kind of break that
up and help people understand that ultimately, what are we
doing moving things from A to B, and then how
to do that the most efficiently, because I do believe
that there is a lot of money lost by inefficiency sure,
and that AI machine learned. What I love though, is
(33:02):
that AI actually is It's so much more than just
a you know, a bot behind the screen. There. There
are a lot of different verses of AI. I am,
by no means an expert on that, but I'm learning
more about it. I'm a very special person that helps
educate me on that. That has me sitting in that room
over there, because she works on this constantly for her profession.
When you have agenta AI, large learning models, if you
(33:23):
have machine learning in there, and then you got rpas
as well, all those things are typically thought of in
the same vein, but they're very much not And so
how that continues to play out, I'm very interested, and
then how it continues to augment individuals in the space. Again,
I'm very interested in watching this. I'm learning more about it.
I won't say I'm excited, but I'm not scared of it,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, you know, I think you know. I've been covering
freight transportation for about twenty years as an analyst, and
there's been a lot of technology trends that have come
and gone with a lot of height. I think AI
is one of the few that are real. I don't think,
you know, I don't think we're going to live in
dystopian society where you know the robots are doing.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Is not coming anytime.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So, but that being said, you know a lot of
people believe that we are going to be a world
where there's going to be you know, over the road
heavy duty trucks without any drivers in it.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
And where do you where are your.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Thoughts on autonomous trucks.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
So autonomous trucks, they are real, they are here, they
are being tested, they are working. Here's the issue that
is going to come up. What happens when that truck
rolls over and kill the family? For we are ready
technologically for autonomous vehicles, we are not ready societally or
legislatively for it. Because who's going to go to jail?
If you're the engineer who built that truck, are you
(34:41):
going to jail?
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
If I'm the person who came up with the algorithm
that maybe it make that decision to change lanes? Am
I going?
Speaker 1 (34:48):
No?
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Why should I? I'm just doing my job. So there's
there's a lot of things that have to happen before
that is fully implemented but also fully accepted. There is
a significant amount of fear amongst the general public of
like a tribalist vehicle like I mean, I don't know
if you've actually been in a driverless taxi yet I have.
It's a trip, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, it is. And
(35:11):
the first time you get in, like, there is some
trepidation there. Now put that into an eighty thousand pound
missile going down the road. I'm still not fully comfortable
with that. But knowing that again, as a society, we
are not ready to accept that. Nors are any of
our laws ready for that, because this is America. Somebody dies,
someone's going to jail. Yeah, And so that's that is
where we're not quite ready. I do believe in our
(35:33):
lifetime though, we will see that as scale.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, yeah, I think that you're going to see it
in some major trucking lanes, like you know where the
weathers tends to be better.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
And it's almost going to be set up like an
intermodal network where you have a human doing the pick
up and delivery part and the robot does in the
line hall if you will so.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
And I could very easily see the convoy system as
well of you know, you have one man vehicle in
the front end, anywhere from two to ten behind it
coming through. I could very easily see that as well.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, it's very interesting that there's also a lot of
pushback for you know, one man let alone zero man
locomotives on the rail industry and those are those are
fixed ye network. So it's very interesting to see what
the driving public well willing to accept. Well, Robert, I
really want to thank you for your time and your
(36:23):
insights today catching up with you and seeing you again,
and thanks so much for coming in studio. Yes, definitely
it was awesome and also want to thank you for
tuning in. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and
leave a review. We've lined up a number of great
guests for the podcast, so check back to hear conversations
with C suite executives, shippers, regulators, and decision makers within
the freight markets. Also, if you want to learn more
(36:44):
about the freight transportation markets, check out our work on
the Bloomberg Terminal at BI and on social media. This
is Lee Clasgow signing off. Thanks for talking transports with me.
Talk to you next week.
Host
Lee Klaskow
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