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April 24, 2025 33 mins

In this episode, John Sutton of Sunset Transportation joins us to discuss tech adoption, essential tools for managing technology, and its current demand to prevent fraud in the industry!

John also covers the keys to broker value, the importance of consistency in service experience, and handling exceptions effectively as a broker!

 

About John Sutton

John C. Sutton is the Director, Corporate Strategy for Sunset Transportation. John’s life-long background in transportation fuels his passion for driving efficiencies, eliminating process gaps and finding ways to make the lives of every Sunsetter easier. After nine (9) years with Sunset, John truly has “diesel in his blood.”

John’s mission is to ensure all Sunsetters are consistently able to meet the needs and expectations of Sunset’s clients, carrier partners, and most importantly Sunset’s team members. All while constantly chasing a better way to do so. In his free time you’ll find John on a golf course, tackling a never-ending list of home improvement projects or spending time with his corgi, Winston.

 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Came back with a bank window down.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yelling now money in a day hey.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm getting.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
To the back hey Got the foot.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
On the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Bigger balls hey what is up ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It is a Freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show. And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve.

(00:59):
So you can take that information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Thursday, everybody. I got a very special guest for you guys here today. I'm going to bring him up in a second. I do want to just drop a little reminder, you guys. We got this little newsletter we started up a while back. I don't just sell out my contact list for this stuff though, because I believe in earnings, your guys's downloads and all of that stuff. So if you want to subscribe to the newsletter, just go to the freightcoach.com it will auto prompt you to register it. It only drops once a week. We talk about the industry, we talk about fuel prices, rates, all of that stuff in there.

(01:33):
So if you want to get in on that, go to the freightcoach.com again back to this very special guest here, this guy. You know, this is why I love this guy. He actually stopped on his drive in this morning, turned around, went home, changed, just to put Freight Coach Orange on today. So I got Mr. John Sutton with Sunset Transportation on the show. John, thank you so much for joining me here.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
No problem, Chris. And it's like we talked about backstage, you know, we are going to get Crayola to create Freight Coach Orange. That will be, I believe it needs to be in every elementary kids crayon box. I really do. Critical color, dude.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Especially if you're gonna, you know, every kid's playing with trucks in the sandbox for the most part. Right. So There should be something out there for it. And, you know, I was thinking, I'm like, man, I got to get. I got to make some, like, T shirts and stuff for people and, you know, like, the Orange shirt gang. Sonny Sharma with Zems Inc. He came up with this. Man, it was like four years ago. We were at a conference, and he was wearing orange as well. And this was before he, you know, him and I had become friends, and he was like, dude, we're the orange shirt gang. And I'm like, I got to the point now, John, where I'm like, I got to make some shirts for people. Just hand them out. That the orange Shirt gang is a thing.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Oh, safety vest. Like, Hunter safety vest. I would wear a freight Coach Hunter safety vest.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Dude, we actually have freight coach vests made. Safety vest made for when we go out and do job sites for our. For our customers and stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Think you're on the right track, dude?

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Absolutely, man. So let's. Man, what's new? What's been going on in your world? You know, I think, like, there's, man, it's like, there. It's. It's another week, it's another headline, it's another thing that's gonna end the industry or change everything or upend everything. And it's like, what's been on in your world, man?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Dude, it. The perpetual hype cycle, the drip feed of. Of what's next and how your business needs to be preparing for it. I still haven't got done preparing for whatever came across last week, so it. It's starting to, you know, create a little bit of numbness, right? I. You know, AI fatigue is a very real thing right now, and I think that we're on the downslope of that and. And starting to realize, you know, what's vapor and what is actually material in regards to that. But between having to. To navigate the. Keeping up with the Joneses of the tech side, you also have the headlines that are impacting, you know, buying behavior, both B2B and B2C that you also need to. You know, we're navigating right now and trying to insulate buying both ourselves and our clients against the.

(04:14):
The international shipping side of things. Right now is quite. Turbulence is a good way to describe it, to say the least. And it's just taking it a day at a time, an hour time, a minute at a time, you know, and just. We're. We're. We're in an industry where no two days are the same, but as of the past few months, no Two days have definitely been the same, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Dude, I'm right there with you. And, you know, I'm glad you brought up a lot of that stuff about tech because, like, you're out there, I'm sure you're getting hit up all the time with, you know, your title and what you're doing and everything for your role, but it's like, man, how do you decipher after you've demoed, You've seen a lot of stuff, John, how do you decipher what's real, what's not? Are there any, like, telling signs that you can give out to people who, you know, what, they might not be the most tech savvy, they might not have seen as much as some others, and they're like, man, I don't want to get duped or, you know, sold on something that might not even be a thing.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, you think traditionally like the quadrants, right? And for those who aren't watching the video, I'm actually making a quadrant shape right now, and it's really embarrassing. A lot of people try to look at it through the lens of a quadrant, and I actually look at it through the lens of a swim lane. As someone that's working to orchestrate a tech stack, I consider myself the lifeguard of what going on in this swimming pool of tech that we have every single day. In one lane, I have all of the swimmers that are providing me rate intelligence. In another, I have order life cycle management. That's primarily like the tms, right? What's going to help me get freight picked up and delivered and build.

(05:52):
Then we have carrier sourcing, carrier qualification, identity management, monitoring, onboarding, pretty much anything that helps to make sure that the carriers that you work with are, you know, behaving. And then any new carrier or how do you go about effectively sourcing a new carrier? That's the third one. The fourth one is visibility. How can you help me to make sure that I know where my trucks are at any given time? I, I do believe that the pizza industry has had a very large adverse impact on what we do in over the road, Full truckload. Because if I can see where the Jimmy John's driver or the Domino's driver is at any given time with pinpoint accuracy, why can't I see where my truck is? And so what are the tools that help you to facilitate that? And then the last is back office automation.

(06:41):
What happens after that shipment is billed and how can you get that invoice out the door with all the necessary collateral as quickly as possible. So we've got tech that's just swimming in those lanes all day, every day. And whenever you're going into a demo of a new product, you have to ask yourself, what lane do you primarily fall into and what are you doing different than the swimmers that I already have in that lane today? Because if you can't differentiate yourself from a solution that I've already implemented that's resilient and working very well, then there's little to no value in what you're doing to me today. Are you innovative or even better, potentially disruptive? Right. Like, we've seen some of these swim lanes have been heavily disrupted over the past three or four years.

(07:25):
Providers that were once considered the crown jewel of the space now maybe in third place. And it's been pretty fascinating to watch over the years. But as you. As you take these demos, what. What are they doing different relative to the space at large?

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Dude, you know, I'm like, I look at it where, you know, you actually need. I think most people need to start with, where is your business actually at and what are your customers actually requiring you have or suggesting that you have? Right. Because people are going to hear a lot of what you're saying there. And, you know, I know the size and scope of Sunset. I mean, you guys are a mature organization. You've been around for a while. You guys have, you know, you've got that stability that's out there. Right? So you guys are assessing things at a faster pace. You guys are probably getting way more requests from customers that are out there. What, from your stance, like, for. For the majority of the people that are out there, what do you actually need from a technology perspective?

(08:27):
Because for me as a broker, I'm like, dude, you can get away with a solid tms. I would suggest getting some rating software if you can afford it, and load boards and like, I'm talking bare bones. This is where we're starting. I'm not talking we have enterprise shippers. We have 100 weekly volume of shipments or anything like that. I'm talking for the people who are building their stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah. And this is. This is not paid promotion right now, by the way, what I'm about to say. But let's think about it from the perspective as John and Chris, we go and start our own brokerage right now, Sunset Coach Logistics. Okay. And you and I, from day zero, we have to ask ourselves, do we want to do paper packets or do we want to do digital onboardings? Right. For carriers and you know, if we're going to do digital onboardings, we can't just go out and get a large platform like a highway or like an rmis that we're out over our skis. In that regards we're getting, we're paying for a lot of horsepower that we're just not going to use. So you look at more straightforward, tried and true and again resilient solutions like my carrier packets for example, there are various tiers.

(09:40):
You're capable of paying a premium for any service that you want. But at the end of the day there are legitimate entry level basic solutions that are capable of helping to meet the needs that small brokers have. And a lot of Those needs in 2025 are customer imposed as well. We are sitting down with small mid size and large customers alike to have the conversation specifically walk me through your tech stack, show me the logos, show me that you're using today. And because I think that this has really started to pop up as of late due to the state of fraud at the turn of the decade with the black swan event that was Covid, we sat down with a lot of clients to walk through the concept of carrier qualification and the tools that are out there today to facilitate that.

(10:32):
And that kind of opened the door for them to want to know more and they want to go horizontal and they want to understand your stack to the best of their ability. And I think that's a good thing because any broker worth their salt, they have nothing to hide. I am more than happy to pull back the curtain and show you everything that's going on behind the scenes and everything that we've made strategic investments in to be able to support your business from day zero. Right. And I would be skeptical as a shipper of any broker that isn't willing to do that.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
I'm right there with you, man. I look at it as like the two things that customers shippers, however you want to, you know, they're hiring brokers to bring calm to the storm that is the supply chain. Right. And they need to, you need to be well versed, you don't need to be an expert in anything but like you need to be very well versed in fraud identity and a lot of that stuff right now that most people I don't know are, I think they're over investing in some areas. And again like if we're talking, you know, sunset Coach logistics, we're just starting out here, like we need something that a, we can afford. Right.

(11:42):
And there's a big thing out there where it's like, you know, I look at it and dude, I'll use my or my company as an example here, John, is we're going out here and prospecting shippers. Like, we're not going after enterprise level shippers because from the standpoint of this, the sales cycle is just way too long, you know, like, we need revenue, right? Because again, I operate in the real world and I operate on dollar in, dollar out. I'm bootstrapping my stuff up and we need money. So we need to go after customers that are a shorter sales cycle and we need to, you know, as we're kind of going out, we need to assess like, all right, what are the intangibles?

(12:18):
Visibility, I would say, is one of those ones that it is a phenomenal tool to have in your tool belt as a broker. Knowing where your trucks are in the event that somebody hits you up like, hey, we need a location. Where is this guy at? You don't want to blow up the driver's phone, so you just pull up a macro point, for example, and you're like, oh, boom, the guy's 20 miles out per 15 minutes ago, or whatever that looks like. Here's where it's at. And again, I think it's like it's being able to provide that solution for that question in the moment. And depending on the complexity and scale of the customers that you're working with, all of those requirements are going to vary out there at the end of the day.

(12:55):
But I feel like the ones that are universal across the board, they need to know where their stuff is. They want to, you know, and you're. Because at the end of the day, man, communication is about the only value add most brokers can deliver from like bare bones fundamentals across the board, letting your customer know where their freight is calling ahead to facilities, communicating. And that's really as complex as I feel like most people need to make it when you're starting out and really building stuff up.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
I agree. And at the end of the day, especially on the visibility example, the client, they don't care how you're getting the data as long as you have a trusted and reliable solution or way of getting that data and making sure that it translates to them in the manner that they're wanting. That can be as simple as over email or that can be as complex as over API. Project 44, similar integration. But at the end of the day, the data that you're furnishing to them has to come from Somewhere and between the various price points of a lot of those products out there, you're capable of getting it at an entry level cost. You just have to make sure that it's the right product for you.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, it's, you know, when you're going out there, you know, because, you know, I look at like, dude, we can sit here and talk about a lot of technology and all of that stuff out there, but like, when it comes down to like fundamentally building relationships, partnerships, all of that stuff, which is, you know, everybody posts about this stuff all the time, right? Like, oh, it's about relationships. It's about relationships. What does that word actually mean to you though, when you're going out there and you're building up a book of business?

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Oh my gosh. From the carrier perspective or the client.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Perspective, take it however you see fit here.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
I think that in a lot of scenarios, especially in the non enterprise space like you mentioned, the relationship is, you know, we've mutually agreed that we're getting value out of each other for the foreseeable future. Right. Especially whenever you're operating off of handshakes there. There are a lot of brokers out there that say that they're moving contractual freight without having anything in writing. And that's just a, that's a verbal, that's a handshake. We're mutually seeing value out of each other and that's the business that's most susceptible to churn, in my possible opinion. So it's really, there are kind of various tiers to relationship. How far are you willing to go to cement that this relationship is in fact capable of providing material value to both sides. And is that just an over the phone, Is that just a daily over the email?

(15:37):
Hey, I've got this load. Do you have this truck? Are you willing on both ends to be able to contractually lock in for 90 days, 180 days for a year? And I would challenge the quality of the relationship in scenarios where pen and paper and ink may be going too far in the eyes of one of the parties in that relationship? Because at the end of the day, you know, it takes three to tango in what we do. It's going to take a shipper, a broker and a carrier. And in scenarios where they're moving in lockstep, it's a beautiful thing to watch happen and how effectively those supply chains can be ran. But whenever you're, whenever the extent of your relationship was, I was happy with how you did on the last load. Let's do it again then.

(16:17):
Those are the ones that are most susceptible to, you know, volatility to churn, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
It's, you know, I look at it as a lot of this situations. A lot of the markets that we're in, they're always uncertain. Right. Because there is no guarantee of anything in. In life, really. Right. Like, especially in business, but there's no guarantee, man. And a lot of people are emotional creatures in the moment. It's how you made them feel. I. I have found that when things go wrong, that is my opportunity to shine with my customers. Because most people in adverse situations wait for the storm to pass where I've just developed up. I'm gonna rip this band aid off. I'm gonna go through this. I'm just gonna figure it out, right? Like, I will. I might not say the right thing at the right moment, but I will figure it out.

(17:07):
And from there, though, it's like, you know, how do you balance that out though, right? Where it's like, for me, one of the things that I'm really trying the hardest on in my business is to establish consistency across the board. A consistent experience that my customers have. Whether they move one load with us in a month or 500 loads with us in a month, they receive the exact same level of service and communication. Same with my carriers. I want to give them a consistent experience with us. I want them to know that we're taking care of them. They're not waiting for assessorials to come through. We're not waiting for a customer approval. If it's a layover. Here's your layover, man. I'll get the money approved from my customers.

(17:46):
It's doing that repeatedly, though, because there's always something that's going to be out there that people can point to as the boogeyman.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
I agree. And we're in an industry, you know, I'm God, Chris. This is my fourth time on here, and I think that I've said this every single time, but. But it's so important. We're in an industry where 4% of the time things go wrong 100% of the time. That is a very large exception rate. Right. For whatever reason or another, that appointment is no longer going to be able to be honored regardless of whose fault it is. Either the shippers, the receivers, the brokers, or the carriers. There's a lot of cooks in this kitchen, and that makes it really easy to screw up a recipe, but it's how you handle that. 4%, like you mentioned, is what clients remember, and that's how they interpret their working relationship with you.

(18:39):
And you know, you could have done that load the last 100 times, perfect 100 times, but now the one time that it's gone wrong, how are. It's very capable of souring your capabilities of how you're able to handle that lane and it opens up the door to explore, you know, replacement. Right. And I, you. You see the posts all the time and I do believe that there is a lot of credence to them. And it's not just noise, regardless of how hyperbolic some of the numbers may be. But you see the shippers that are keeping a notebook of the. The number of cold calls that they are getting a day and they just create a tally and there's like yesterday, 27, today 36. Like they are. They're coming out of the woodwork.

(19:25):
A lot of these brokers that are revenue at any cost are promising things that they quite frankly can't deliver on, but at least it gives them an opportunity. Right? And the best thing to protect you from that is your relationship and how you work with that shipper whenever the times get tough.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
You know, I, I really break it down like this, John, with. I mean, just to kind of summarize what you're saying here. I would rather lose a customer for telling the truth and keep one on a lie at this point in my life, you know what I mean? Like, all these promises because they are getting bombarded. They're getting absolutely bombarded. But I, I view it as is like, man, I want to be that kind of light in all the noise of like, damn, those guys were different, right? Like, they weren't that pushy. They. They had a purpose for the call. Right? And I was just talking to this with my friends, the e Carrier check. They got a podcast and I was on there yesterday with them with Nate and Jared.

(20:17):
And I'm like, you know, when it boils down to it, there's been a different response to cold calling now than there has been in the past, right. Like, I've actually found that the rejections are nowhere near as bad as they were when I was gunslinging for freight back in the day. And I do truly equate it to this, John. We call with a purpose, man. Like, we do open deck. We do full truckload. Like that's it. If you don't do that, if you're ltl heavy. Have a nice day. Thank you so much for your time. That's really the purpose of my call. I was trying to find that out, I'll remove you from our list. And it's having that intent behind why I'm calling, because I want to set the tone from day one. They might not remember the first conversation that we have.

(21:00):
I want to have everything set the tone day one. This is how we operate. We are upfront, we are honest. We might be honest to a fault, but good, bad or indifferent, you are going to know exactly what's going on in every single situation.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
I agree. And honesty to a fault, you know, that resonates so much with us. But I'm ready, you know, I think that were ready to jump on here today to talk about really the state of carrier identity solutions. Right. And just the state of your working relationship with your carriers today and how your customers perceive that.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah. And you know, I think like, were kind of jumping all over the place. I know, I know, but you know, were talking about that, right. You know, from a software standpoint, where do we go? And here's where I sit, right? Like, no matter what, the only real way to combat fraud in identity theft is to re utilize your in network carriers that you've already done the work with. Right. That's the only real tried and true method out there where you're going to minimize your exposure. And you know, I look at it as, anytime I get a load, I'm reaching out to the carriers who have done that load for me in the past. First and foremost, every single time, that's where I want to sit. Because like, load boards. And again, I love load boards.

(22:19):
I love Truck Stop, I love DAT from that perspective. But they're a tool for us to utilize, not to rely on entirely to operate our business.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
And you're at. I say it all the time. Load boards are a tool. They are not a crutch. And we see all of the memes right about the post and pray. And you can think that's funny, but I promise your shipper does not think that is funny. There is frequently five figures, six figures, maybe even seven figures worth of commercial value of cargo on that truck. And to hear that in most cases, you're entertaining, bringing in someone into your ecosystem that you have never worked with before to handle the majority of your shipments, that is very unsettling to a shipper. And this is why we're seeing a lot of the contractual verbiage pop up that shipments for certain shippers, especially Fortune 500 ones, from what we've been seeing, are not able to be posted onto a load board.

(23:26):
Going as so far, Chris, to actually have a compliance team member on site at that team member or at that shipper hawking the load boards, looking for their freight to be posted. This is not just one client. This is a theme that has began to pop up. A lot of folks have. Were burned. Actually, I think it's close to 100% of shippers in some capacity were burned over Covid due to fraud, deceptive, suspicious activity, you know, the. The works. And they're taking matters into their own hands. And what does that translate to me, Chris? My. You created so much disruption for me that I am willing to take on a salaried employee to try to prevent this from being able to happen, because that will cost me less than the downstream revenue impact that I had by falling victim to fraudulent or deceptive activity.

(24:25):
Let that sink in.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, I think a lot of people approach it, John, as how much money can I make on this load? You know, they don't look at the downstream effect.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
I hate the word ripper. I. Chris, that is. That is a word that I. I just absolutely cannot stand. I don't ever want to hear the word ripper.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Oh, dude, I'm. I'm right there with you. I. I look at it as, you know, every single shipment that we pick up. I mean, dude, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment that we're. That we're moving and product that we're moving out there. And it's. It's your responsibility, right? Like, I don't take any of this stuff lightly. I'm not going to sit here on. On a. On a pedestal and say I never did. You know, I was a young kid who thought I had everything figured out, too. But, like, now, man, I. I look at everything like, dude, I do not make any exceptions to anything that we do out there when it comes to servicing our customers. And you know that.

(25:18):
I guess that, like, for me, I think that it's the difference between somebody who's had to build something from day one, $1 and somebody who inherits something, right? Like, when once you have freight to kind of work you don't, you kind of think it's always going to be there, right? I'm guilty of this. I've built and I've seen this stuff happen over my career. But now, man, when I see something that has $250,000 in cargo value, I'm like, we got to, like, we got to make sure our eyes are dotted and our T's are Crossed on this one we're calling.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
You can't take a TEMU carrier, right? No. No offense, but there are TEMU carriers out there. You know who you are.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
It's, it's. Dude, I'm right there with you. And I think like at the end of the day, I personally think if there's any action item for a lot of organizations to look at is it's their incentivization model. How are they incentivizing their people to cover the freight? Are they again, yes. You want to make money. I am a capitalist. I want to make as much money as I possibly can. But at the end of the day, I'm not willing to risk a entire customer for 50 bucks. And I don't know if everybody shares that sentiment.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
It. No. And there are a lot of brokers that in that scenario would have just gave that load back. You know, I'd rather just make this my client's problem than me honoring my commitments. Right. And the incentivization is a big one. Right? The, the great Papa John business role model of mine. If it can be measured, it can be improved. And it can be improved. It can be incentivized. Okay, so incentivization is the final goal. But what are the measurables and can. What percentage of brokerages, Chris, do you think are capable of pulling the number out of their hat right now of the percentage of their freight that gets posted onto a load board?

Speaker 2 (27:09):
I bet everybody knows, but there few are going to admit.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
I agree. And you start to measure the percentage of freight that gets put onto a load board. And in my personal opinion, if it's over 30%, load boards are a crutch for your organization. If it's under 30%, it's a tool. And every broker has that toolbox. And you know, you need to pull your tools out in a certain order. And you mentioned it earlier, the first tool in your toolbox is history and active working relationships. Every single load should always start there within reason. Right? And then you start working your way through what rates do I have on file, who are my historical carriers, what opportunities do I have in my digital freight matching stack?

(27:57):
If I've invested in one of those platforms and then after you've demonstrated, you know that you've talked to at least three carriers, that you've talked to at least five carriers, then you can release that opportunity to begin transactionally sourcing a carrier. Now I want to add a very interesting caveat to there and I Spoke with the carrier recently and what we got on the load boards. Everybody like talks about load boards, right? Because they're such an interesting ecosystem. They really are. I think that the load boardization of our space is totally different than what you see in other segments like finance, accounting, healthcare, as to how we keep things moving in a free market on the transportation side. And we got on the topic of load boards and they this is a carrier that we work with daily, multiple times a day.

(28:44):
And they said, I haven't seen this lane getting posted. And I said, well, what do you mean? And they're just like, oh, we like to, you know, we understand that we can check our email and we understand that you have other portals that we can go to, but in reality our team members like to just go to the load boards and see what you have posted. And it's just like that is meeting that carrier in particular where they are. And I think that's a very interesting lens to look through the load board environment through is there are some carriers that don't feel like the relationship has been deteriorated because they see a load that they've historically ran posted on DAT that they prefer to run. They just use that as the signal that you have the load and will gladly reach out to you.

(29:31):
So that's definitely, you know, one lens that people need to be looking at it through. But make sure that you know what percentage of your freight is being on the load boards and look at your service levels as a function of those loads that got put on the load boards. You're on time percentage. Look at your claims rate as well. I think that one of the things that we had found, Chris, was there was a strong correlation between shipments that had been put onto a load board in some capacity and our inevitable downstream on time and claims rate compared to shipments that were not, let alone denied claims or scenarios where we had to make a client whole out of pocket as a result of that thing, as a result of that claim, look through it upstream.

(30:14):
And then one of the things that everyone should be measuring to see how frequently a particular team member or a particular client or a particular lane or how well it has been procured is the concept of a loads to carrier ratio. Over any given time frame for this user or for this client, how many carriers did it take me to handle all of their loads? Did it take me 25 carriers to handle 100 loads? Did it take me 66 carriers to handle 100 loads? And the closer that gets to a one to one relationship, the worse you stand to be able to represent yourself as someone that has a well procured carrier network to be able to support that CLient. That between those two metrics that can really help you to unlock some insights about what your transactional buying behavior is.

(31:06):
You can still be moving transactional freight on repeat carriers, you know, but it's the order and the madness by which you approach sourcing that carrier that is so critical right now in a space where that is very cost sensitive and service sensitive at the same time.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Dude, that I, I don't, I had nothing to add to that. You guys at all that right there, clip that out and re. Listen to that and you can hell with new AI tools. You can take that sound bite, drop it into an AI tool and it could create a process for you guys to follow from a carrier selection strategy. There's a little free tip for me for my man John here but dude, that I'm gonna rap with that man. Like there's nothing we can top from there, dude. How does anybody reach out to you though to find out more about what you guys got going on?

Speaker 1 (31:53):
I'm always available on LinkedIn. John Sutton on their director of corporate strategy for Sunset. Easy to find, ugliest headshot on LinkedIn so don't have to look too far.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Oh man, thank you so much for that.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Threw me off.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
That is going to be it for today, you guys. I'm actually going to be live tomorrow up in Vancouver, Washington for the SPI Agent Rendezvous Conference out there. We got a couple of guests coming on. We're going to be talking about a bunch of great stuff tomorrow morning, but that's going to be it for today. As always, if you got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. If you're feeling really ambitious after this one, which you better be, rank the show on itunes and Spotify. Because if you saw value, that's how your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon. We got no outro, man. We just end the.
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