April 28, 2025 • 23 mins
For this week’s first episode, we’ve got Joe Ohr and Mark Davis to discuss NMFC changes effective July 19, 2025, and simplifying LTL freight classifications!
Joe and Mark covered new guides, webinars, and a lookup tool developed to assist brokers and shippers in understanding impacts and pricing, utilizing multiple outreach channels to educate about changes, industry demand driving changes, and more!
Visit the Links Below!
- https://info.nmfta.org/2025-nmfc-changes/nmfc-item-lookup-tool
- https://info.nmfta.org/2025-nmfc-changes
- https://info.nmfta.org/classitplus
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Okay. All right, let's go up here. And then if you want to come in as well. And then we will have you guys. And then Marley, can you just instruct the. How does it look on the screen?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
What's good?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Are we all in the shot? Should I stand this way?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
You're good right there.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And Mark, you can come closer to Joe. And you want us to pass them on?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, we'll have you guys pass the mic back and forth. I'm Chris, by the way. I'm Mark. Mark, pleasure to officially meet you. That looks good right there. Okay, perfect. All right. Nope, it says recording on there. Right upper left hand corner. Okay, perfect. All right, this is for my team, Christian. We're going to start in 3, 2 and 1. What is up, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome back. We are live. It is the Fray Coach podcast. We are doing a recorded series here today. We're at the TIA Capital Ideas Conference out here in San Antonio, Texas, and we are talking about probably one of the biggest things that is coming down in the industry here that I feel like a lot of people need to get prepared for.
(01:10):
And both of you guys were just speaking on a panel about this, but Joe, Mark, thank you guys so much for joining me here today to really break this down. So what was your panel about, Joe? And kind of how are people not prepared for what is kind of coming down the path here?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, thank you and thanks for having us. What the panel was about was the NMFC changes for LTL classification changes. So it's 2025 1, and those take effect July 19th. And what these changes are is changes to classification and how these changes will affect the not only the shippers, but also the carriers and also the brokers. So really what the panel is talking about is how to prepare for these classification changes. And really the reason the NMWTA did these changes is to simplify classification. So we had on the panel Mark from Averitt, and we also had Keith Peterson from NFTA that spearheaded a lot of the classification changes. And then we had James from Schneider who represented the broker. And so, Mark, anything you want to add to that?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well, I think we had good discussion. I think that it's apparent that many shippers are ill prepared for the changes. And what we're trying to do is educate them to the best of our ability. NMFTA is doing a fine job of putting information out. Individual carriers better be. Yeah, I know that we at Averitt are.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So how are you? You know I'm a broker, right? So I Feel like this is the time when a lot of us service providers need to be bringing a lot of this information to our customers to get them better prepared for it. Obviously, you guys understand that at Averitt, the misclassification of freight dramatically can change stuff for your customers. So how are you guys as a provider going out there and really educating them and getting them more prepared for these changes that are coming down in July?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, we've posted tools on our website. We've made marketing collateral for our sales team to share and use as teaching tools. We've done podcasts, we've done videos. You know, we're trying, just trying to get the word out.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
It's, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, I, as a broker, you know, our window of opportunity to really get in the door with people, to really show our worth are kind of defined in moments like this. Right? Like, this isn't something that comes around very often out there. So Joe, what is something that, you know, how can a broker access this information? Like, because this is obviously inevitably going to be a where did this come from? Moment for a lot of people out there because not everybody is, you know, tuning in. They're not coming to these conferences, they're not going to websites and stuff like that. Is there anything that you guys have prepared where people can jump on, find this, print this documentation off and bring this to their current providers, customers?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, that's a great question. So if you go to our website, nmfta.org, you'll see a lot of links to the classification changes we've got where you can sign up to updates to the 2025 one. You can look at the full docket, but you can also look at guides that we've created. So we've created guides for the brokers, we've created guides for the shippers. We've also done webinars. We've created webinars specifically for the brokers, specifically for the shippers. And we're not done. Part of this is also creating tools. In the past we had class it and it was a complicated tool. It was basically taking the NMFC book and making it designed into software. It was over 10 years ago. We've really listened to the feedback from the brokers and we've taken the modern technology and we've created a new class IT plus.
(05:05):
And we think that will really help the brokers. The other thing with that is APIs. A lot of the brokers come to us and said, hey, we're using APIs, please develop new modern APIs. So we've met with the brokers and said okay, what would you like out of these APIs? So we think that will help. And then you know, Mark came to us, I think it was what about two weeks ago and said, hey, we're hearing a lot of people say how do we get information that's easy to understand about these changes? And I think that was on a late Thursday, Friday morning. And so it kind of got exciting because it's like hey, I think we can create a tool on this because we have the information.
(05:52):
So we created a lookup tool that we just finished that we ended up doing kind of a draft of proof of concept over the weekend and met with Mark and a few others and said hey, what do you guys think? Is this easy? It's just a front end tool, we're not going to charge for it. And it's like, hey bro, if you're a broker, go put in an item number and it'll tell you whether or not the item is impacted by 2025 dash 1 did it change from 11 sub 13 sub did it go to density? Is it something that all of a sudden the number has changed? Because that's one of the things they want to do. They can take this information and say okay, how's it going to impact the price? And so the brokers are saying give me more information.
(06:41):
I want to get educated. So we're trying to create the tools, we're trying to educate. So go to our website, sign up for our update so you can get that education.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Now Mark, is there any commodities that you have seen that come to mind right away that are going to be the most affected by this reclassification that's going out there? Is it increasing, decreasing the price? How can some of these manufacturers and suppliers that are out there, how can they better prepared to know is my commodity at risk from potentially doubling price? Hypothetical example. But you know, taking into consideration what.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
They do well if they've got the sophistication then they can use re rate tools and take a before and once they've determined the classification or the change given the docket, they'll have to calculate their density first to know what freight class. But if they can do that then they can run a comparison rate comparison. But you know, it's pretty tedious.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Task now with you guys going in there and how you guys are quoting your freight and other ltl providers that are out there. Did you guys go to them last year and say, hey, guys, there, this is coming down the pipeline here. You guys need to be prepared for this, for when this classification change comes in. As a provider, were you guys ahead of this months in advance to make sure all of your customers were aware of this?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Well, were way ahead of it. But. But how much of that message was heard and by whom? So we're. We're not letting up. And, you know, we're. We're trying to arm our salespeople with as much information and let them be the. The consultants, if you will, with our. With our shippers.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah. And I feel like, because, you know, no matter what, right, like, you can sit here and preach all of this stuff day in and day out, week in and week out, leading up to it, but inevitably there is going to be a group of people who are going to come and be like, why didn't anybody tell us this stuff? Right? And that's why I feel like, you know, the power of social media and podcasting and everything right now is getting information out in front of people because, you know, there's enough uncertainty going on right now with the current administration, tariffs, everything else. There's a lot of stuff that could potentially positively or negatively impact the freight market, materials, commodities and stuff like that are going on.
(08:51):
So it's like another change coming down the pipeline that could blow people's budgets out of the water again here, and it's going to be 20, 20, 21 all over again, type of pandemonium, essentially, that could potentially trickled down. And now that obviously there's some ulterior factors that are coming on here. So it's like, you know, what is something that you think as an industry we should be doing now when we're, you know, 60, 80 days out from this actually going live?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, just what we said this morning on the panel is it's all about communication and education. And it seems like we've touched almost every. Every channel we can for that communication, but not let up and just keep on keeping on.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yeah. And is this something where it's like, you know, the NMF TA can go out there, you know, and put on more, you know, is it like through content? Right. Where we're going to do a breakdown on some of these classifications that, you know, you guys collaboratively have came up with, like, hey, these are the most effective. And then maybe there's some targeting approach where we can start going out to some of those direct manufacturers and saying, you guys are going to be affected by this. Here's a, you know, obviously you can't give out any potential rate increases and stuff like that, but like commodity is at risk from happening.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
That. That's a lot of what we're going to do with the lookup tool. We are going to look at, okay, what's being looked up and hopefully that we can take that information and say, hey, we're getting a lot of lookups on this. We're going to use that data and say, hey, make sure if you're shipping this commodity, you're looking at this information. You know, there's so many shippers out there. We really depend on the brokers, we really depend on the carriers to help communicate that out. And I think that's the message we really started in January is to the carriers, hey, we need your help. We're not getting to the shippers, Please help us communicate this out to the shippers. And I think the carriers have done a good job.
(10:51):
We started to see with the carriers and some of the brokers, them talking about it in their newsletter, them talking about it in social media on their LinkedIn, them sharing posts that we're doing and then NMF TA. You know, we are like for example, at the conference this week, we're at a lot of conferences. We typically don't go to, for example, Home Delivery World and a few others trying to hit that community. But yeah, we are going to use that data and say, hey, this is something that we're going to do. We're also hitting some of the shipper publications we normally don't advertise to just in an effort to really make sure folks are understanding. And if we do see a commodity that's not typically, that's being heavily searched, we're going to make sure we hit that market.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
A question that comes to my mind here is what was the driving force behind a lot of these changes? How necessary were these to really simplify a lot of the processing? Right, because you know, as a broker moving freight, like I don't tend to do a lot of ltl out there, but as a broker, the freight class change at time of pickup or the density, if anything's off, it obviously affects price at that point. Was this more of a simplification approach to it to make it very clearly easy to understand what was going to happen, you know, with these commodities? Do you feel like prior to this it was a little too confusing out there and this is just kind of a way to streamline a lot of it?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
That's exactly what our customers have told us for years. Like I've said, if not decades. And this is finally we're going to do something about it. And yes, simplification. And with commodity, with density being so important, the most important characteristic, then classifying freight based upon that density in large part does simplify the process. There's no guesswork. It's those items that still have handling and stowability and liability issues. That density is not by itself capable but at the end of the day, by and large, far more commodities will be based on density. And yeah, it's a little confusing up front as we change over, but we'll get through that.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And I think we'll, our industry will better and those customers that were complaining about the classification, after they get over complaining about the change, then we'll all be happy.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, no, and I feel like that's, it's very important.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I think it's very important to know that this wasn't a spur of the moment style situation. Right. Like this was as you said. Exactly right Mark. Like as you said this is like years and years of feedback from your guys, customers. And as a service provider we got to take that to heart. Right. If our customers coming to us and saying like hey, this is confusing to us, we don't like this, eventually it has to get to the point. And that's why it's like you have to rely on the organization of the NMFTA to make these changes, break this data down to kind of have a sweeping change. And I'm just like from my standpoint as a broker, I want, I'd rather have it all happen at once than any like slow scale back approach.
(14:00):
Like hey, we're going to start here at hypothetical class 85 and work our way back. It's like no one sweeping change all at once. There's obviously going to be some pain points here as the transition happens but six months time from now everybody's gonna look back and probably be like that was A way more smoother than we thought and now B, it's a lot easier to run our operation.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah. And that was the goal. I mean simplifying this has been in the works for a couple years and when I joined about two years ago and spent some time on the docs, I've been in the industry, the technical piece of it for a long time and ltl was always oh, it's so confusing classification. And I know in talking to people it's like it's going to go away. This is why it's just too confusing. And as I talk to people, it's like, hey, this is why it's confusing. And so as we got feedback, it's like, you got to do it fast. You got to do it fast. And so it's like, okay, what's preventing it? And it's like there was a hesitancy to embrace dimensions. It's like nobody wanted to. It's like a word you couldn't use.
(15:14):
And so we came out in a conference and said, hey, dimensions is okay. We're going to embrace it, we're going to use it and we're going to add it. And I know that was a little bit of a shock to people because even a dimension company, one of the big fours came up to me is like, do you know what you just said? I'm like, yeah, it's like it's facts. I was like, either we do it or everybody's going to run away from us. And so, but that's the way you have to do it because it simplifies what it is. If not, everybody's going to come up with a different way to do it. And we do think with the four different characteristics, the handling, the stowability, the liability, you know, that does have a place.
(15:58):
And if you just say, hey, we're going to ignore the dimensions totally, then something else is going to come up. It's not going to be as good for the industry. And this is a one or two year process, but this is the biggest change that we'll do all at once.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah. Now Mark, are you guys working with your guys customers potentially? You know, obviously being able to consolidate a lot of the shipments that are out there. Are you working with them now with this changes coming down about possibly repackaging, redoing anything on their loading and unloading process to make it more efficient for your customers at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yes, but we've always been talking to our customers about packaging because were concerned about the safety of their goods in transit. And so we've got a really good team that counsels and teaches our customers to how they can improve their packaging. And with these changes, we know too, you know, density is weight per cubic foot and if you have a over packaged and a lot of air in a package, then you know you're hurting yourself there.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
So we're showing them and helping them learn how to package smarter but without affecting the integrity of the Safety of the.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
No, absolutely. And I mean, I'm sure you've had this conversation numerous times throughout your career about like it being a game of inches at the end of the day, right? Like how big of a difference it makes out there for your customers to more efficiently package their product out there. I mean, I just, I know I deal with that, you know, in the full truckload space all the time. Right. It's just like, hey guys, it makes a big difference if we're talking about a half a truckload, you know, 36ft of deck, the price difference that comes with that, as opposed to 20ft in a full truckload. I mean, there's a certain point where it's like, hey, you guys, like there's a such a small probability that we're going to be able to add anything onto that. That's why our rates are what they are.
(17:57):
Because the driver's not going to like, yeah, I know we look at it as, oh, it's only 36ft of the deck, there's still 18 more feet available or whatever that looks like. And you're like, yeah, but do you know how improbable it is that a 18 foot partial in that route is going to marry up with that and everything's going to work out? So it's like having that information out there again, that's what's going to. It's going to make a more efficient sales rep on, you know, whether you're a broker or a direct carrier like yourself there, Mark, to be able to bring that information out there. Because again, I hear this time and time again from all of our customers. Listen, I'm a manufacturer. I'm not a transportation company. That is why I work with you.
(18:33):
I expect you to bring this stuff to me. I expect you, if there's any legislation or changes to come that are coming down to bring this to our attention so we are better prepared. So it doesn't ultimately affect their customer, which is all obviously ultimately the end user of all these shipments.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, couldn't agree more. We're selling space.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah. And that's the thing, right, Is it's. I mean, that was one of the things that I was a big learning curve for me early on. And it's kind of one of the reasons why I don't really like to do ltl all that often was is, you know, it's that grasping effect of it, you know, and there's a lot of brokers out there who want to say, offer ltl or say they do ltl, but again, there's a big difference between offering it and actually executing upon it as a service. And that's why it's like for, you know, at least for me, anytime a customer comes to me with an LTL and I'm like, if you're set up with an LTL carrier, go directly to them. They're going to give you the best when it comes down to it. Because that's just not my wheelhouse.
(19:26):
And again, like you said, you've been coming to your customers for months, if not longer, about a lot of these sweeping changes that are coming about. And this is why people need to get out there now. Again, like it's going to come a point in time where the flow of information is at such a high level that it is on you as a service provider to bring, break this down and bring it down to your individual customers.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, one customer at a time.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
No, and that's exactly it. And you know, Joe, from your guys standpoint here, what is, you know, another piece that you guys are doing to really get more like, why should people be coming to you guys more now as opposed to waiting here any longer?
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I think it's proactive. You want to start having those communications now while there's something you can do about it. Because right now you want to start figuring out your classification. You want to make sure you're looking at your packaging, you want to start having those communications with the carrier. You want to make sure you're the thing, you're palletizing things properly. You want to make sure your processes are in place for the changes. Because we heard in the panel people say, is there going to be a grandfather phase? And that's like, nope, yeah, no, there's not. But we'll work with you as long as you've put some effort into it.
(20:51):
And so if you do it now, you know, and you're really taking it seriously and you've used the resources that we've put out there, you can go ahead and adopt the changes and learn from it and hit the ground running when those changes hit place where if your total reactionary, it's going to catch you off guard. You also want to see, okay, what's the effect? Effect to the billing? Some may go up, some may go down. You want to go ahead and do that analysis kind of like Mark said, you know, you want to get into the details of this.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So just to confirm there's no extension, there's no grandfather period. July 19, 2025, these are going into effect industry wide. People need to be prepared. Now we have, I don't know, 60 days up until that, you know, 80 days or whatever it is leading up to that. So July 19, that's the day, that.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Is the date for us for nmfa. Correct.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I love it. Mark, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to break this down, you guys. July 19, 2025, we're going to make shirts, we're going to make social media posts out there and we're just going to blanket it so there is no, like, there is no confusion about when this is going to happen and why people need to be prepared. Thank you guys so much for joining me here today. That's going to be it for this episode, you guys. As always, if you got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show, ladies and gentlemen, which after this one, you better share this out there to more people. Because if you saw value out of this, your network's going to see value and most importantly, your customers are going to see value in this as well. I appreciate you guys.
(22:27):
I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon. And cut.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
All right, all right.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Appreciate it, sir.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Appreciate it, Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Thank you so much. You should make literal thumbnails. Marley. And just start blanking it on social media.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And then just put NM and then just put your website at the bottom and then just start putting that out there and just that date. Just that date. Yeah, change is coming. And then put your link. Yeah, do something like that. And then just get people to start sharing it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Maya. So, Christian, it.
Okay. All right, let's go up here. And then if you want to come in as well. And then we will have you guys. And then Marley, can you just instruct the. How does it look on the screen?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
What's good?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Are we all in the shot? Should I stand this way?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
You're good right there.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And Mark, you can come closer to Joe. And you want us to pass them on?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, we'll have you guys pass the mic back and forth. I'm Chris, by the way. I'm Mark. Mark, pleasure to officially meet you. That looks good right there. Okay, perfect. All right. Nope, it says recording on there. Right upper left hand corner. Okay, perfect. All right, this is for my team, Christian. We're going to start in 3, 2 and 1. What is up, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome back. We are live. It is the Fray Coach podcast. We are doing a recorded series here today. We're at the TIA Capital Ideas Conference out here in San Antonio, Texas, and we are talking about probably one of the biggest things that is coming down in the industry here that I feel like a lot of people need to get prepared for.
(01:10):
And both of you guys were just speaking on a panel about this, but Joe, Mark, thank you guys so much for joining me here today to really break this down. So what was your panel about, Joe? And kind of how are people not prepared for what is kind of coming down the path here?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, thank you and thanks for having us. What the panel was about was the NMFC changes for LTL classification changes. So it's 2025 1, and those take effect July 19th. And what these changes are is changes to classification and how these changes will affect the not only the shippers, but also the carriers and also the brokers. So really what the panel is talking about is how to prepare for these classification changes. And really the reason the NMWTA did these changes is to simplify classification. So we had on the panel Mark from Averitt, and we also had Keith Peterson from NFTA that spearheaded a lot of the classification changes. And then we had James from Schneider who represented the broker. And so, Mark, anything you want to add to that?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well, I think we had good discussion. I think that it's apparent that many shippers are ill prepared for the changes. And what we're trying to do is educate them to the best of our ability. NMFTA is doing a fine job of putting information out. Individual carriers better be. Yeah, I know that we at Averitt are.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So how are you? You know I'm a broker, right? So I Feel like this is the time when a lot of us service providers need to be bringing a lot of this information to our customers to get them better prepared for it. Obviously, you guys understand that at Averitt, the misclassification of freight dramatically can change stuff for your customers. So how are you guys as a provider going out there and really educating them and getting them more prepared for these changes that are coming down in July?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, we've posted tools on our website. We've made marketing collateral for our sales team to share and use as teaching tools. We've done podcasts, we've done videos. You know, we're trying, just trying to get the word out.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
It's, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, I, as a broker, you know, our window of opportunity to really get in the door with people, to really show our worth are kind of defined in moments like this. Right? Like, this isn't something that comes around very often out there. So Joe, what is something that, you know, how can a broker access this information? Like, because this is obviously inevitably going to be a where did this come from? Moment for a lot of people out there because not everybody is, you know, tuning in. They're not coming to these conferences, they're not going to websites and stuff like that. Is there anything that you guys have prepared where people can jump on, find this, print this documentation off and bring this to their current providers, customers?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, that's a great question. So if you go to our website, nmfta.org, you'll see a lot of links to the classification changes we've got where you can sign up to updates to the 2025 one. You can look at the full docket, but you can also look at guides that we've created. So we've created guides for the brokers, we've created guides for the shippers. We've also done webinars. We've created webinars specifically for the brokers, specifically for the shippers. And we're not done. Part of this is also creating tools. In the past we had class it and it was a complicated tool. It was basically taking the NMFC book and making it designed into software. It was over 10 years ago. We've really listened to the feedback from the brokers and we've taken the modern technology and we've created a new class IT plus.
(05:05):
And we think that will really help the brokers. The other thing with that is APIs. A lot of the brokers come to us and said, hey, we're using APIs, please develop new modern APIs. So we've met with the brokers and said okay, what would you like out of these APIs? So we think that will help. And then you know, Mark came to us, I think it was what about two weeks ago and said, hey, we're hearing a lot of people say how do we get information that's easy to understand about these changes? And I think that was on a late Thursday, Friday morning. And so it kind of got exciting because it's like hey, I think we can create a tool on this because we have the information.
(05:52):
So we created a lookup tool that we just finished that we ended up doing kind of a draft of proof of concept over the weekend and met with Mark and a few others and said hey, what do you guys think? Is this easy? It's just a front end tool, we're not going to charge for it. And it's like, hey bro, if you're a broker, go put in an item number and it'll tell you whether or not the item is impacted by 2025 dash 1 did it change from 11 sub 13 sub did it go to density? Is it something that all of a sudden the number has changed? Because that's one of the things they want to do. They can take this information and say okay, how's it going to impact the price? And so the brokers are saying give me more information.
(06:41):
I want to get educated. So we're trying to create the tools, we're trying to educate. So go to our website, sign up for our update so you can get that education.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Now Mark, is there any commodities that you have seen that come to mind right away that are going to be the most affected by this reclassification that's going out there? Is it increasing, decreasing the price? How can some of these manufacturers and suppliers that are out there, how can they better prepared to know is my commodity at risk from potentially doubling price? Hypothetical example. But you know, taking into consideration what.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
They do well if they've got the sophistication then they can use re rate tools and take a before and once they've determined the classification or the change given the docket, they'll have to calculate their density first to know what freight class. But if they can do that then they can run a comparison rate comparison. But you know, it's pretty tedious.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Task now with you guys going in there and how you guys are quoting your freight and other ltl providers that are out there. Did you guys go to them last year and say, hey, guys, there, this is coming down the pipeline here. You guys need to be prepared for this, for when this classification change comes in. As a provider, were you guys ahead of this months in advance to make sure all of your customers were aware of this?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Well, were way ahead of it. But. But how much of that message was heard and by whom? So we're. We're not letting up. And, you know, we're. We're trying to arm our salespeople with as much information and let them be the. The consultants, if you will, with our. With our shippers.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah. And I feel like, because, you know, no matter what, right, like, you can sit here and preach all of this stuff day in and day out, week in and week out, leading up to it, but inevitably there is going to be a group of people who are going to come and be like, why didn't anybody tell us this stuff? Right? And that's why I feel like, you know, the power of social media and podcasting and everything right now is getting information out in front of people because, you know, there's enough uncertainty going on right now with the current administration, tariffs, everything else. There's a lot of stuff that could potentially positively or negatively impact the freight market, materials, commodities and stuff like that are going on.
(08:51):
So it's like another change coming down the pipeline that could blow people's budgets out of the water again here, and it's going to be 20, 20, 21 all over again, type of pandemonium, essentially, that could potentially trickled down. And now that obviously there's some ulterior factors that are coming on here. So it's like, you know, what is something that you think as an industry we should be doing now when we're, you know, 60, 80 days out from this actually going live?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, just what we said this morning on the panel is it's all about communication and education. And it seems like we've touched almost every. Every channel we can for that communication, but not let up and just keep on keeping on.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yeah. And is this something where it's like, you know, the NMF TA can go out there, you know, and put on more, you know, is it like through content? Right. Where we're going to do a breakdown on some of these classifications that, you know, you guys collaboratively have came up with, like, hey, these are the most effective. And then maybe there's some targeting approach where we can start going out to some of those direct manufacturers and saying, you guys are going to be affected by this. Here's a, you know, obviously you can't give out any potential rate increases and stuff like that, but like commodity is at risk from happening.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
That. That's a lot of what we're going to do with the lookup tool. We are going to look at, okay, what's being looked up and hopefully that we can take that information and say, hey, we're getting a lot of lookups on this. We're going to use that data and say, hey, make sure if you're shipping this commodity, you're looking at this information. You know, there's so many shippers out there. We really depend on the brokers, we really depend on the carriers to help communicate that out. And I think that's the message we really started in January is to the carriers, hey, we need your help. We're not getting to the shippers, Please help us communicate this out to the shippers. And I think the carriers have done a good job.
(10:51):
We started to see with the carriers and some of the brokers, them talking about it in their newsletter, them talking about it in social media on their LinkedIn, them sharing posts that we're doing and then NMF TA. You know, we are like for example, at the conference this week, we're at a lot of conferences. We typically don't go to, for example, Home Delivery World and a few others trying to hit that community. But yeah, we are going to use that data and say, hey, this is something that we're going to do. We're also hitting some of the shipper publications we normally don't advertise to just in an effort to really make sure folks are understanding. And if we do see a commodity that's not typically, that's being heavily searched, we're going to make sure we hit that market.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
A question that comes to my mind here is what was the driving force behind a lot of these changes? How necessary were these to really simplify a lot of the processing? Right, because you know, as a broker moving freight, like I don't tend to do a lot of ltl out there, but as a broker, the freight class change at time of pickup or the density, if anything's off, it obviously affects price at that point. Was this more of a simplification approach to it to make it very clearly easy to understand what was going to happen, you know, with these commodities? Do you feel like prior to this it was a little too confusing out there and this is just kind of a way to streamline a lot of it?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
That's exactly what our customers have told us for years. Like I've said, if not decades. And this is finally we're going to do something about it. And yes, simplification. And with commodity, with density being so important, the most important characteristic, then classifying freight based upon that density in large part does simplify the process. There's no guesswork. It's those items that still have handling and stowability and liability issues. That density is not by itself capable but at the end of the day, by and large, far more commodities will be based on density. And yeah, it's a little confusing up front as we change over, but we'll get through that.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
And I think we'll, our industry will better and those customers that were complaining about the classification, after they get over complaining about the change, then we'll all be happy.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, no, and I feel like that's, it's very important.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I think it's very important to know that this wasn't a spur of the moment style situation. Right. Like this was as you said. Exactly right Mark. Like as you said this is like years and years of feedback from your guys, customers. And as a service provider we got to take that to heart. Right. If our customers coming to us and saying like hey, this is confusing to us, we don't like this, eventually it has to get to the point. And that's why it's like you have to rely on the organization of the NMFTA to make these changes, break this data down to kind of have a sweeping change. And I'm just like from my standpoint as a broker, I want, I'd rather have it all happen at once than any like slow scale back approach.
(14:00):
Like hey, we're going to start here at hypothetical class 85 and work our way back. It's like no one sweeping change all at once. There's obviously going to be some pain points here as the transition happens but six months time from now everybody's gonna look back and probably be like that was A way more smoother than we thought and now B, it's a lot easier to run our operation.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah. And that was the goal. I mean simplifying this has been in the works for a couple years and when I joined about two years ago and spent some time on the docs, I've been in the industry, the technical piece of it for a long time and ltl was always oh, it's so confusing classification. And I know in talking to people it's like it's going to go away. This is why it's just too confusing. And as I talk to people, it's like, hey, this is why it's confusing. And so as we got feedback, it's like, you got to do it fast. You got to do it fast. And so it's like, okay, what's preventing it? And it's like there was a hesitancy to embrace dimensions. It's like nobody wanted to. It's like a word you couldn't use.
(15:14):
And so we came out in a conference and said, hey, dimensions is okay. We're going to embrace it, we're going to use it and we're going to add it. And I know that was a little bit of a shock to people because even a dimension company, one of the big fours came up to me is like, do you know what you just said? I'm like, yeah, it's like it's facts. I was like, either we do it or everybody's going to run away from us. And so, but that's the way you have to do it because it simplifies what it is. If not, everybody's going to come up with a different way to do it. And we do think with the four different characteristics, the handling, the stowability, the liability, you know, that does have a place.
(15:58):
And if you just say, hey, we're going to ignore the dimensions totally, then something else is going to come up. It's not going to be as good for the industry. And this is a one or two year process, but this is the biggest change that we'll do all at once.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah. Now Mark, are you guys working with your guys customers potentially? You know, obviously being able to consolidate a lot of the shipments that are out there. Are you working with them now with this changes coming down about possibly repackaging, redoing anything on their loading and unloading process to make it more efficient for your customers at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yes, but we've always been talking to our customers about packaging because were concerned about the safety of their goods in transit. And so we've got a really good team that counsels and teaches our customers to how they can improve their packaging. And with these changes, we know too, you know, density is weight per cubic foot and if you have a over packaged and a lot of air in a package, then you know you're hurting yourself there.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
So we're showing them and helping them learn how to package smarter but without affecting the integrity of the Safety of the.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
No, absolutely. And I mean, I'm sure you've had this conversation numerous times throughout your career about like it being a game of inches at the end of the day, right? Like how big of a difference it makes out there for your customers to more efficiently package their product out there. I mean, I just, I know I deal with that, you know, in the full truckload space all the time. Right. It's just like, hey guys, it makes a big difference if we're talking about a half a truckload, you know, 36ft of deck, the price difference that comes with that, as opposed to 20ft in a full truckload. I mean, there's a certain point where it's like, hey, you guys, like there's a such a small probability that we're going to be able to add anything onto that. That's why our rates are what they are.
(17:57):
Because the driver's not going to like, yeah, I know we look at it as, oh, it's only 36ft of the deck, there's still 18 more feet available or whatever that looks like. And you're like, yeah, but do you know how improbable it is that a 18 foot partial in that route is going to marry up with that and everything's going to work out? So it's like having that information out there again, that's what's going to. It's going to make a more efficient sales rep on, you know, whether you're a broker or a direct carrier like yourself there, Mark, to be able to bring that information out there. Because again, I hear this time and time again from all of our customers. Listen, I'm a manufacturer. I'm not a transportation company. That is why I work with you.
(18:33):
I expect you to bring this stuff to me. I expect you, if there's any legislation or changes to come that are coming down to bring this to our attention so we are better prepared. So it doesn't ultimately affect their customer, which is all obviously ultimately the end user of all these shipments.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, couldn't agree more. We're selling space.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah. And that's the thing, right, Is it's. I mean, that was one of the things that I was a big learning curve for me early on. And it's kind of one of the reasons why I don't really like to do ltl all that often was is, you know, it's that grasping effect of it, you know, and there's a lot of brokers out there who want to say, offer ltl or say they do ltl, but again, there's a big difference between offering it and actually executing upon it as a service. And that's why it's like for, you know, at least for me, anytime a customer comes to me with an LTL and I'm like, if you're set up with an LTL carrier, go directly to them. They're going to give you the best when it comes down to it. Because that's just not my wheelhouse.
(19:26):
And again, like you said, you've been coming to your customers for months, if not longer, about a lot of these sweeping changes that are coming about. And this is why people need to get out there now. Again, like it's going to come a point in time where the flow of information is at such a high level that it is on you as a service provider to bring, break this down and bring it down to your individual customers.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, one customer at a time.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
No, and that's exactly it. And you know, Joe, from your guys standpoint here, what is, you know, another piece that you guys are doing to really get more like, why should people be coming to you guys more now as opposed to waiting here any longer?
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I think it's proactive. You want to start having those communications now while there's something you can do about it. Because right now you want to start figuring out your classification. You want to make sure you're looking at your packaging, you want to start having those communications with the carrier. You want to make sure you're the thing, you're palletizing things properly. You want to make sure your processes are in place for the changes. Because we heard in the panel people say, is there going to be a grandfather phase? And that's like, nope, yeah, no, there's not. But we'll work with you as long as you've put some effort into it.
(20:51):
And so if you do it now, you know, and you're really taking it seriously and you've used the resources that we've put out there, you can go ahead and adopt the changes and learn from it and hit the ground running when those changes hit place where if your total reactionary, it's going to catch you off guard. You also want to see, okay, what's the effect? Effect to the billing? Some may go up, some may go down. You want to go ahead and do that analysis kind of like Mark said, you know, you want to get into the details of this.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So just to confirm there's no extension, there's no grandfather period. July 19, 2025, these are going into effect industry wide. People need to be prepared. Now we have, I don't know, 60 days up until that, you know, 80 days or whatever it is leading up to that. So July 19, that's the day, that.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Is the date for us for nmfa. Correct.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I love it. Mark, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to break this down, you guys. July 19, 2025, we're going to make shirts, we're going to make social media posts out there and we're just going to blanket it so there is no, like, there is no confusion about when this is going to happen and why people need to be prepared. Thank you guys so much for joining me here today. That's going to be it for this episode, you guys. As always, if you got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show, ladies and gentlemen, which after this one, you better share this out there to more people. Because if you saw value out of this, your network's going to see value and most importantly, your customers are going to see value in this as well. I appreciate you guys.
(22:27):
I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon. And cut.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
All right, all right.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Appreciate it, sir.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Appreciate it, Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Thank you so much. You should make literal thumbnails. Marley. And just start blanking it on social media.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
And then just put NM and then just put your website at the bottom and then just start putting that out there and just that date. Just that date. Yeah, change is coming. And then put your link. Yeah, do something like that. And then just get people to start sharing it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Maya. So, Christian, it.
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