July 22, 2025 • 32 mins
If outdated payment methods are slowing down your operations or costing you money through fraud, you must listen to this episode with Relay Payments’ co-founder, Spencer Barkoff!
Spencer shares how they’re modernizing freight payments across the board and reshaping how carriers and brokers handle transactions. Learn more about Relay’s innovations in this episode because they’re not just solving problems—they’re setting new industry standards!
About Spencer Barkoff
Spencer Barkoff is the President and Co-Founder of Relay Payments, a fast-growing fintech company modernizing payments in the trucking industry. Under Spencer’s leadership, Relay is delivering much-needed innovation to an industry that has long relied on cash, checks, and manual workflows. He can speak to the larger movement to digitize legacy industries, the challenges and breakthroughs in reaching drivers and fleets at scale, and current trends in the industry.
Most recently, Relay announced Relay Pulse—a major step forward that gives fleets real-time visibility into spending across fuel, parking, and now, nationwide repair services.
Connect with Spencer
- Website: https://www.relaypayments.com/
- Phone: (877) 735-2910
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencerbarkoff/
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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 yelling now money anything hey oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm get to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the blame moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them hate them Make a bigger boss hey.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What is up, ladies and gentlemen?
We are back.
We are live.
It is the free coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30 in 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.
(00:46):
And I do 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, I. 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, so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life.
Happy Tuesday, everybody.
I got a very special guest for you guys here today.
(01:07):
I am on an absolute, like, business financials kick here because it is frankly, so vitally important to manage your cash flow properly and stay on top of that and just have a better understanding of what to do with your money.
I think that there's so much talk out there about how do I get customers, but there's not enough talk about, like, once you get the customers, how do you ensure that you stay in business?
(01:28):
That's a very, you know, critical step out there in the world.
And I got my friends over at Relay Payments on the show here today.
You guys, we're going to break all of this down.
I got Mr. Spencer Barkoff.
He is the co founder and president.
He's been in business now for over seven years, and we are going to rock this all down.
So, Spencer, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Hey, Chris, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No, man, I'm looking forward to this because, you know, I. I think this is one of the greatest lessons that I had to learn in business is actual business financials and how different it is from your personal and really keeping that in line to help manage your cash flow and.
And stay on top of all of that.
And, you know, so, like, what.
(02:08):
What was it, man?
What.
What happened with you and Ryan where you guys were sitting down?
You're like, dude, let's start this company.
Let's, let's start at the beginning of relay.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Sure.
So the company's now seven years old.
We're about 150 people based in Atlanta, Georgia.
We were rocking for about seven years now.
We actually met a freight broker, and that freight broker showed us all the issues that he had when paying for lumper fees, paying his drivers, paying for fuel when it came to fleet checks and cash.
And we didn't.
(02:36):
After spending, you know, hundreds of hours at truck stops and at warehouses talking to carriers and brokers, shippers, drivers, we didn't understand why, you know, you and I can go to Kroger or Publix or a grocery store and tap our phone, or we can pay our kids or friends on Venmo or PayPal.
But in logistics, we're still using, you know, cards without chips that can have fraud or checks that require lots of phone calls or cash.
(03:05):
And we wanted to bring that consumer, like, payment experience into trucking and logistics.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So, you know, what was it like in the early days?
Kind of like having those conversations and like, how do you start from there?
You know, you do all the market research, you talk to all the people.
What's like step one look like in going out there and starting.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, good question.
We, after all these conversations, we learned that the most painful payment that the carriers and drivers had were lumper fees.
L U M P E R and I don't know if you're familiar with those, but those are a.
Okay, those are the payments that a driver has to make at a warehouse to get their truck unloaded.
(03:48):
And a lot of times those payments are happening at, in the early morning because a lot of the grocery deliveries are between midnight and 8am and they were.
You don't know how much that payment is going to be.
And so the driver actually has to call their company to get approval to make that payment.
And it can take anywhere up to 20 to 45 minutes.
(04:09):
I've seen it take up to eight hours.
And then once you make that payment, you get a paper receipt and you actually have to return that paper receipt into the shipper in order to get reimbursed.
And if that receipt gets lost, it becomes an issue on who's going to actually front that payment.
Is it going to be the driver?
Is the company going to eat it?
And so once we learned and heard over and over that the lumper payment was the biggest problem, even though there's only about a billion dollars out of a trillion dollars of volume of lumper Fees and fuels, about 200 billion.
(04:43):
Even though it was a small volume play, it was such a headache for these companies that's where we started to make our way into the industry.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, it's.
I would say, you know, early on in my career, you know, I only did food and beverage for like the first seven years that I was brokering freight.
And lumpers were definitely the, you know, do we use com checks, whatever, cash, credit card.
It doesn't like we.
There was.
So there was no rhyme or reason to a structured kind of like one size fits all approach to it.
(05:11):
And then you're right, man.
If there was no receipt that came along with that, there was no reimbursement.
Right.
And customers are very vocal about that.
Like, hey, we need the actual receipt from the lumper service to actually reimburse you from that.
So all of my driver friends out there who are listening to this because I see their posts out there, customers definitely reimburse for lumper fees.
All right?
You have to invoice them for that.
(05:33):
You have to have the receipt.
You have to do a lot of that.
That's actually one thing, Spencer, that I, I think shocked me the most going into, like the media side of things as well is it's hearing from the drivers who are like, yeah, man, there's.
There's people out there who don't reimburse us for lumpers.
And I, and I.
That was so foreign to me because I'm like, hey, somebody's pocketing that money because they're definitely billing their customer for that.
(05:55):
Because like, that is.
Especially when you're going into those large grocery retailers, that's a conversation on the front end.
Like, hey, if you're going to deliver into, you know, Kroger or any of these other large ones, there's a lumper fee that's going to come with it.
You have to get the receipt and you have to have all of that before you can even get reimbursed for it.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah.
And I remember back in 2019 when we first started running these transactions and our first customer on the brokerage side was Coyote Logistics, we partnered with the largest unloading company as well.
And once we ran a couple transactions, I remember we took what was a phone call to get approval for Express code, writing that down on a check, handing it over to the unloader, calling that 800 number if the Express code was wrong, restart the process, then that paper receipt, submitting it back to the company.
(06:44):
We took all that and turned it into an instant transaction.
Right.
That I remember the computer turned green and they all looked at me and they were like that's it.
And the driver and the unloader, I was like, you know, that's it.
And then the carrier started signing up, right?
And the carrier start telling us, hey, go out and get the rest of the unloading companies.
And so went out and built the entire market and took us about four years and now we're about 30% of all unloading payments United States.
(07:12):
We automate all the payments and the receipts.
It's a win, win for the unloader, for the carrier, for the driver.
And you know, the story of the warehouse manager at a Publix facility told us, hey, now that I don't have to deal with these checks, I get to get home to my family earlier and don't have to drive to the bank.
(07:33):
You know, those are the kind of things that kept us going and kept us innovating.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So how do you guys go from there to.
I mean, I know this is probably going to be a very open ended question, Spencer, but how do you take something like lumpers and expanded out into like where you guys are today?
Right?
Is it like one step at a time?
Because I mean you guys are integrated with like literally everybody out there, pilots, cat scales, all of that stuff.
But it's like I, you know, back to kind of like those early times when it's like when you started with lumpers, what was that kind of aha moment where you're like dude, if this is a thing with lumpers, what other niche services can we get into for the driver community and the broker community to help out with this?
(08:13):
Because that is just one portion of a bunch of stuff that people are paying for and transacting on every single day.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, you know, the first thing we had to do was build out that initial network.
Right.
And when we became 30% of unloading payments in the United States, we work with now, you know, 10 of the top 30 for hire carriers, nine of the top 10 LTLs and about 100,000 owner operators.
And what happened was went back to those carriers and we said, hey, where else do you make payments?
(08:42):
Where else are your some of your biggest pain points?
And in late 2022, early 2023, we heard from them and we heard from some of the fuel merchant that fuel fraud was becoming rampant.
Right.
These cards do not have chips on them and you can't insert them or tap them.
And in the back of the house of the fuel islands, you actually have to swipe in order to make a fuel payment.
(09:07):
Well, organized crime rings were installing card skimmers on the pump.
A lot of that information was getting lifted off of the magstripe.
And when a fuel card has fraud on it, the card gets locked and the driver actually has to go figure out how they're going to pay for fuel.
And then you have to get that driver a new card.
And when there's fraud, it's not like you and I, right?
(09:30):
If we have fraud on our American Express card, we log into American Express and click dispute in logistics.
If you have fraud, it becomes a challenge of who's going to cover that fraud.
Is it the merchant, is it the card company, is it the carrier?
It can take 30 days cash is leaving your account before that dispute is resolved.
And so we heard from the industry that fuel fraud was a big problem.
(09:53):
So we had a good brand.
We were doing automated digital payments and we just took what were doing in the lumper market and moved it into fuel.
Listening to our customers, partnering with Pilot loves ta a lot of the other large truck stops in the US to facilitate all of their fuel payments as well.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So you know, because I mean, that is right.
I mean especially if you look at a fleet out there, fuel is, I mean I would assume outside of insurance, their largest expense out there.
And you know, and it is like, I mean this is just coming from somebody who's got their debit card stolen from a chip reader at a fuel pump for my trip, my pickup.
(10:33):
And then that led to four years of fighting with a credit reporting agency because somebody stole my identity and went out there and opened up a bunch of stuff in my name.
And you know, I didn't even find that out Spencer, until I went to go buy my first house.
And they're like, dude, your credit, like you have a bunch of stuff on there.
I'm like what do you mean I have a bunch of stuff?
I thought I was running clean financials and turns out that's what it was.
(10:55):
My debit card was stolen from a pay at the pump scheme that was going on out there.
So you know, for the, for the drivers in the fleets that, and you know that are listening to this man.
Like, so how does this work?
Are you going directly to a trucking company and then are you seeing like, hey, who's your fuel program?
Who you guys go through?
If they're like exclusively like with like a loves or a pilot kind of like walk me through how does that transaction Go down.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, that's exactly right, Chris.
So essentially you can apply your what's called merchant negotiated discounts, right?
If you have a discount with Pilot or Loves or TA or Maverick or any of the other truck stops out there, you can actually use Relay to facilitate that discount.
Today, if you're a larger fleet, you can set what are called policies for your drivers where you can control gallons and limits and other security measures that you want to put in place before the carrier or the driver can transact.
(11:52):
And we facilitate not just fuel, but cash advances if you want to get your driver's cash or in store purchases like oils and additives or scale tickets or repairs.
Anything that you would use your traditional billing card or fleet card, fuel card for, you can use Relay for.
And it's the best thing about Relay is it's not a card, right?
(12:13):
It is integrated into your TMS or your ELD system and it's basically a relay code.
And what you do is once you unlock that code through the security, the limits and the prompts, you can go straight to the pump.
You enter in that code, the pump turns on you fuel and you're on your way.
And so it eliminates any of the issues with cards lost cards fraud, and it's all digital and fraud free.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So, you know, essentially with, you know, this just comes to mind is this essentially stops a disgruntled employee from giving out a fuel number to somebody.
Because you can set those daily limits in those daily thresholds.
You know, like again, hey, the driver stops for fuel every 800 miles.
This is just a hypothetical example here, you guys.
So if that, you know, and then it cost, you know, 800 bucks to fill up your truck for whatever reason, that's the thresholds that carriers can set on a per driver basis then.
(13:06):
And that stops them from, you know, essentially accessing any additional fuel funds out there without.
Would there be like a, a call in?
Would there be like a secondary, you know, like a multi step authentication?
Like, no, hey man, this is what happened.
I need to get more fuel.
Is that how that works?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah.
So essentially we protect against what we call first party fraud and third party fraud.
Right?
Third party fraud is a card skimmer.
Right.
First party fraud is a bad actor within the company actually trying to steal fuel fraud.
And so not only can you set all those limits and controls on your policy to ensure that drivers are fueling when they should, but we also use algorithms to detect and alert potential issues that may come up.
(13:50):
An example, if you're driving from California to Texas, and you're fueling too much more than you should.
We would detect that and send an alert to the company.
Right.
Where they could override and allow the fuel.
So it's not only just the integration into your ELD system, your TMS system, controlling for first party and third party fraud, the limits and controls that you set as a fleet, but we're also monitoring things in the back end and sending you alerts if something looks odd.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Okay, no, I mean, that makes sense.
Right?
And I feel like that's, you know, that's the thing is you, you protecting those internal parameters in there to essentially minimize any of this stuff from happening.
Right.
Because I mean, I just like, I think when individuals out there, and I'm not placing blame on anybody, have access to funds that they may have never previously had access to and there's no real control mechanisms in place out there, I think it does bring out some, you know, not the best behavior at times.
(14:47):
I think we've all probably borrowed money from somebody or borrowed money to somebody at some point and all of a sudden you never hear from them ever again.
And you know, how much like, have you guys done any studies?
Like what is like the actual economic, like the actual financial number that most fleets deal with in fuel fraud?
Kind of throughout a year or, you know, any given couple years?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah.
So we've seen and heard about 4 to 5% of transactions can end up being fraudulent.
And from an ROI perspective, it's not just the hard savings, right.
On the lumper side, eliminating those 10% of lost receipts or giving back the 45 minutes that it takes to run a transaction or eliminating the late night phone calls.
(15:30):
And fuel, it's eliminating the fuel fraud, it's eliminating the cards getting lost or having to get your driver a new card or the operational headaches on the back end.
And through all this work, right, we're able to quantify the value and the savings by adopting a digital payment solution instead of your traditional fleet cards, checks, cash.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
So I mean, you guys took this and you know, the thing that I love about you guys, Spencer, is you guys are very well rounded and seemingly always expanding into like other services that affect fleets out there.
You know, you guys, you know, into the like service and repairs and maintenance and stuff like that, because that's another major area of the industry that I feel like gouging has really got a lot of coverage here lately, like with predatory towing and stuff like that.
(16:19):
And you know, when you're going out there and you're getting repairs on your trucks and stuff like that.
I mean, that's another thing too.
So it's like you guys are doing that for all things on like the service side of things as well now, right?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, so we just expanded into that area.
Right.
So the way we build product is we listen to our customers.
Right?
We listen to the carriers, we listen to the fleets.
That's how went from lumber to fuel, to scales to in store purchases, to cash and to now repair and tows.
Right.
So repair and heavy duty maintenance.
We heard from the customers, hey, I still have to use checks for these payments.
(16:53):
Hey, I don't know whether a service center or provider is legitimate or good.
How can you help me with those services?
And so what we've done is we've started to build out our repair and tow network.
We provide a service to the repair and tow network by helping them process all of their payments.
(17:14):
We also help them get discovered by our network.
Right.
So because we have over 100,000 carriers on our platform, we have a, what we call the Explore map where carriers can see and search and find verified repair and tow shops that are within our network that they can trust.
And so we allow the carrier, we allow the business, the merchant to be discoverable, to generate new business for them and to process all their payments.
(17:41):
And we give the carrier the ability to make a digital seamless payment to that repair shop and to verify that repair or service or tow shop is legitimate and good.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
No, I think that's, I mean that's crucial because I mean not everybody breaks down in a major metropolitan area or access to the dealer network that they maybe bought the truck from.
And you know, I mean, dude, I've dealt with that.
You know, I think everybody's dealt with that at some point on a road trip or anything.
And you find yourself in an area where you need to repair.
How do you know?
You know, or then on top of it too, man, how do you know that?
(18:13):
A, they have the access to fix what you need or B, they can do it in a time frame.
Right.
Because time is money, as you know, right.
Speed will literally kill any and all deal out there.
And you know, if there's, if you're in a part of the country where you don't know of, you know, an available place, are you going to send your truck to the wrong facility and stuff like that where you end up sitting for a few days?
(18:33):
So I think it opens up some additional things where, you know, you can make a couple of phone calls to some of those repair shops in that area.
Like you're talking about, you guys have already done the legwork for them, verified that they can do a lot of that stuff, man.
So, like, with a lot of this, how important is it for you guys to have that end to end solution?
Because, I mean, you guys are seemingly taking all of this and then on top of it, are you on the back office side of the fleets?
(18:57):
How much time are you guys saving them from, like keeping, you know, those expenses in line and then keeping clean financials for those businesses?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah.
So, I mean, we, in the era of the ELD mandate, right, it is 11 hours of driving, 14 hours on duty.
And it is more crucial than ever to keep your assets to be the most efficient that they can be.
And when it comes to ROI on the back office side, you know, we've heard from our companies that we're able to help augment a lot of what these folks are doing when it comes to actually reconciling these payments and processing these payments allowed those folks to do other things within the company to be more efficient.
(19:37):
And so when it comes to the end to end solution, it is crucial to help a carrier with any payment, anywhere, anytime.
Right.
And that is our.
We have teams that are working to add more and more nodes to our network.
We continue to listen to the carriers to tell us, hey, where do they want to make payments?
Where do they have the biggest issues with payments?
Where is the time getting sucked out of their operations?
(20:01):
And as you said, time is money.
Right.
And so the more and more we can help these drivers get in and out of these facilities to make payments instantly.
The more time that the trucks are actually running, the better customer experience they can provide to their carriers.
The better the driver experiences.
Right.
In the world where there's a lot of turnover when it comes to truck drivers, how can you provide them a better experience on the road?
(20:27):
So I like to say we solve the micro value props and the macro value props.
Right.
Instant payments, digital receipts, no more phone calls.
And then it's the bigger picture things in the industry, right.
Like the EOD mandate and making your assets more efficient.
It's contactless payments and continuing to move with that trend.
And it's increasing the driver experience to hopefully reduce turnover and provide them a better life on the road.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah.
How do you guys assess new partners, Spencer?
Because that has to be probably a big thing for you guys on is like, are you guys partnering with the right fuel companies?
The Right.
Repair companies and everything else.
Because I mean, you guys are servicing both ends of the industry at that point.
Right.
So how are you, how are you guys out there assessing who should we integrate with, who should we partner with?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah, it's a good question, right?
Because when we do integrate, it's, it takes a lot of work.
Right?
You're integrating into really old systems.
Right.
Point of sale.
Systems that are 20, 30 years old, pumps that are old.
And so it takes a lot of work to actually integrate with these folks.
A lot of the times it really comes down to where the carriers want to fuel or where they're having issues.
(21:35):
Right.
And so we have processes where we talk to them about hey, what percent of our, your payments are we covering for you today?
And where else do we need to build out our network?
And so that's where we go.
Build out is based on our carrier feedback.
We do a lot of work when it comes to integrating with different ELD and TMS providers.
So we have over 180 different integrations today.
(21:58):
I would say that is a lot of the work that we have to spend in order to get it right.
And so we assess, hey, what types of partners do we want to bring into our network.
But again, it all comes down to where do the carriers need a fuel, where do they need to pay or what systems when it comes to TMS or ELD do they use?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, no, I mean, you guys just had another, I mean you guys have been like these last 90 days, Spencer have probably just been a whirlwind for you because you guys have had a bunch of stuff kind of rolling out here.
And I mean, just recently, earlier this month, you know that you guys partnered with racetrack as well out there.
And so it's like when you guys are going with racetrack and raceway, what about them was appealing?
(22:38):
Where you know, was it that customer feedback?
Like hey man, we're in this area, we want you guys, we want to see more of that.
Is that how you guys really assessed on, like this is where we should go and you know, integrate with.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, so it's funny, Racetrack is actually right next door to us.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
We can see their, their building and their logo.
But no, that wasn't the reason.
They have made a big push into diesel.
Right.
And so they now I believe have about 100 high flow diesel facilities and truck stops that are processing diesel fuel for trucking companies.
And so we've heard.
(23:15):
To your point, we heard from our network that we had to continue to grow in this area.
And Racetrack came up along with a couple other really large merchants here that we're going to roll out in the next three or four months that we're really excited to our network.
So can continue to look out for those announcements because we got some big ones coming.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
No, definitely man.
I love that.
And like so when you're out there and again if I'm a small fleet, you know, I might not have the purchasing power of a mega carrier or a large carrier.
When it comes down to fuel.
When we're signing up for something like relay, are there any discounts that we are afforded by being a user of your guys platform out there with the truck stops and the maintenance stuff?
(24:02):
Is there any of that comes along with it?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah.
So for a smaller owner operator fleet you can easily download our mobile app in the app store Relay Payments and we have something called our clutch network and there are certain truck stops that are part of the clutch network where we actually go pre negotiate discounts with those folks ahead of time and that we can pass along to owner operators or smaller fleets for the midsize and larger fleets.
(24:28):
Right.
A lot of those guys have pre negotiated discounts directly with one of the majors and that's where we can apply their merchant negotiated discount to the relay platform and then give them all the control and the limits and the prompts that they need in order to facilitate and run their business.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
No, I mean that's crucial for the small fleet and owner operator guys out there.
Right.
Because I feel like you know, like that's one of those things and I'm sure you got a ton of stories about this Spencer, when you were starting out your guys company about like man, I wish I would have known this four months ago.
How much money would we have saved if we would have known that?
Right.
And it's like it's these little things like this and to me this is like why I do the show every single day man is to have conversations like this to put more information out there for the industry as a whole man.
(25:13):
Because it's like how many drivers, owner operators, small fleets are out there right now that aren't aware that signing up for something like relay can get them access to a fuel discount to out there in the world and like.
And how much of a savings can that bring their organization out there?
Because I mean contrary to popular belief most businesses operate off of razor thin margins at the, you know and then any savings that they can go to help lower their fixed costs, you know Every single month.
(25:38):
I mean, you got it.
You got to explore that.
And this information should be in front of everybody.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Right.
As you said, I think the largest expense for a trucking company is paying their driver.
Right.
And then the second largest is fuel, and it's between 20 and 40% of their spend is fuel.
And that really is dependent on the cost of diesel.
Right.
And that's why fuel discount.
I believe 80% of diesel is sold at a discount in the country.
(26:04):
A lot of people don't know that.
But to your point, if you're able to cut the spend on your second largest expense in a world where your margins are super tight, it makes a really big impact for you and your company.
And so that's one of the main reasons why we offer what we do now.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I love that, Spencer.
I think that, you know, I'm a.
Anybody who's out there who's fighting for, you know, the driver community to help keep them in business.
Right.
Like, because it's just one of those things.
Like I said when we first started, man, there's so much I didn't know about, like, the business financial side of things and running clean books.
And, you know, I talk about this often.
The two smartest decisions I made in business was hiring my CPA and then hiring the bookkeeper that he recommended that I use.
(26:50):
And what that has done for me on the whole level about, you know, just being starting my company five years ago and being able to like, purchase my first home because, and I quote from my mortgage lender, we're lending you this money because you have clean financials is like, to me, it's like that.
That needs to be out there in front of anybody and everybody.
And there's the time save as well.
(27:11):
Right.
When you get off the road, you're out for two weeks or three weeks or whatever.
The last thing you want to do is sit there and organize receipts and everything else to make sure that they're, you know, in the right order.
I mean, I remember my mom doing that for my dad for the majority of my youth, you know, so it's like there's.
There's tools at our disposal now to where it's like you shouldn't be spending your time on anything other than doing what you love.
(27:35):
And you can automate the overwhelming majority of the stuff that you hate doing.
I personally hate doing a lot of the accounting stuff, and that's why I love having all of that stuff automated behind the scenes.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Yeah, totally agree.
If I remember Your dad was an owner operator, right?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah.
Yep.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, that's right.
And Chris, I've always loved your show.
Right.
I think I remember about six, seven years ago you were on a podcast with Cassandra Gaines talking about the lumber fees and some of the challenges.
And I, I actually use that podcast in a, in the employee onboarding.
Right.
To show them how the industry talks to each other and what it's like for folks out there when it comes to these payments.
(28:12):
So appreciate what you're doing and how you're helping educate the industry and just happy that you brought us on to be part of it now.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I appreciate it, Spencer and man, thank you for your time today.
How does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more about what you got going on at Relay?
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, so relay payments.com you can come there.
All of our offerings are on the website.
You can download the mobile app Relay Payments or you can reach out to us at 877-7352-910877 relay 10 and give us a call.
Right.
We, we really focus on our three core tenets of great technology.
(28:51):
Transparent pricing and fees.
Everything is month to month because we know if we're not adding value, you know, don't work with us.
Right.
But we stand by it, which is why everything's month to month and 24 7, 365 US based customer service.
If you give us a call on that number, we will pick up the phone in 10 seconds or less.
And that.
(29:11):
And we stand by that.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Dude, I love that.
Spencer, thank you so much for your time.
If you guys can't find Relay out there at all, hit me up.
I will gladly put you guys in contact with them, but that is going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
As always, if you got value in which you heard, subscribe to the show, you guys.
And for feeling really ambitious after this one, rank the show on itunes and Spotify.
Because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well.
(29:33):
I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys.
And we'll be talking to you.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Came back with a bank moving fast.
Hey, hey.
Let them all cross.
If they hate, then let them hate them.
(30:00):
Make a bigger ball.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Hey, F.
Came back with a bank window down yelling now money anything hey oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm get to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the blame moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them hate them Make a bigger boss hey.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What is up, ladies and gentlemen?
We are back.
We are live.
It is the free coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30 in 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.
(00:46):
And I do 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, I. 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, so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life.
Happy Tuesday, everybody.
I got a very special guest for you guys here today.
(01:07):
I am on an absolute, like, business financials kick here because it is frankly, so vitally important to manage your cash flow properly and stay on top of that and just have a better understanding of what to do with your money.
I think that there's so much talk out there about how do I get customers, but there's not enough talk about, like, once you get the customers, how do you ensure that you stay in business?
(01:28):
That's a very, you know, critical step out there in the world.
And I got my friends over at Relay Payments on the show here today.
You guys, we're going to break all of this down.
I got Mr. Spencer Barkoff.
He is the co founder and president.
He's been in business now for over seven years, and we are going to rock this all down.
So, Spencer, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Hey, Chris, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No, man, I'm looking forward to this because, you know, I. I think this is one of the greatest lessons that I had to learn in business is actual business financials and how different it is from your personal and really keeping that in line to help manage your cash flow and.
And stay on top of all of that.
And, you know, so, like, what.
(02:08):
What was it, man?
What.
What happened with you and Ryan where you guys were sitting down?
You're like, dude, let's start this company.
Let's, let's start at the beginning of relay.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Sure.
So the company's now seven years old.
We're about 150 people based in Atlanta, Georgia.
We were rocking for about seven years now.
We actually met a freight broker, and that freight broker showed us all the issues that he had when paying for lumper fees, paying his drivers, paying for fuel when it came to fleet checks and cash.
And we didn't.
(02:36):
After spending, you know, hundreds of hours at truck stops and at warehouses talking to carriers and brokers, shippers, drivers, we didn't understand why, you know, you and I can go to Kroger or Publix or a grocery store and tap our phone, or we can pay our kids or friends on Venmo or PayPal.
But in logistics, we're still using, you know, cards without chips that can have fraud or checks that require lots of phone calls or cash.
(03:05):
And we wanted to bring that consumer, like, payment experience into trucking and logistics.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So, you know, what was it like in the early days?
Kind of like having those conversations and like, how do you start from there?
You know, you do all the market research, you talk to all the people.
What's like step one look like in going out there and starting.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, good question.
We, after all these conversations, we learned that the most painful payment that the carriers and drivers had were lumper fees.
L U M P E R and I don't know if you're familiar with those, but those are a.
Okay, those are the payments that a driver has to make at a warehouse to get their truck unloaded.
(03:48):
And a lot of times those payments are happening at, in the early morning because a lot of the grocery deliveries are between midnight and 8am and they were.
You don't know how much that payment is going to be.
And so the driver actually has to call their company to get approval to make that payment.
And it can take anywhere up to 20 to 45 minutes.
(04:09):
I've seen it take up to eight hours.
And then once you make that payment, you get a paper receipt and you actually have to return that paper receipt into the shipper in order to get reimbursed.
And if that receipt gets lost, it becomes an issue on who's going to actually front that payment.
Is it going to be the driver?
Is the company going to eat it?
And so once we learned and heard over and over that the lumper payment was the biggest problem, even though there's only about a billion dollars out of a trillion dollars of volume of lumper Fees and fuels, about 200 billion.
(04:43):
Even though it was a small volume play, it was such a headache for these companies that's where we started to make our way into the industry.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, it's.
I would say, you know, early on in my career, you know, I only did food and beverage for like the first seven years that I was brokering freight.
And lumpers were definitely the, you know, do we use com checks, whatever, cash, credit card.
It doesn't like we.
There was.
So there was no rhyme or reason to a structured kind of like one size fits all approach to it.
(05:11):
And then you're right, man.
If there was no receipt that came along with that, there was no reimbursement.
Right.
And customers are very vocal about that.
Like, hey, we need the actual receipt from the lumper service to actually reimburse you from that.
So all of my driver friends out there who are listening to this because I see their posts out there, customers definitely reimburse for lumper fees.
All right?
You have to invoice them for that.
(05:33):
You have to have the receipt.
You have to do a lot of that.
That's actually one thing, Spencer, that I, I think shocked me the most going into, like the media side of things as well is it's hearing from the drivers who are like, yeah, man, there's.
There's people out there who don't reimburse us for lumpers.
And I, and I.
That was so foreign to me because I'm like, hey, somebody's pocketing that money because they're definitely billing their customer for that.
(05:55):
Because like, that is.
Especially when you're going into those large grocery retailers, that's a conversation on the front end.
Like, hey, if you're going to deliver into, you know, Kroger or any of these other large ones, there's a lumper fee that's going to come with it.
You have to get the receipt and you have to have all of that before you can even get reimbursed for it.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah.
And I remember back in 2019 when we first started running these transactions and our first customer on the brokerage side was Coyote Logistics, we partnered with the largest unloading company as well.
And once we ran a couple transactions, I remember we took what was a phone call to get approval for Express code, writing that down on a check, handing it over to the unloader, calling that 800 number if the Express code was wrong, restart the process, then that paper receipt, submitting it back to the company.
(06:44):
We took all that and turned it into an instant transaction.
Right.
That I remember the computer turned green and they all looked at me and they were like that's it.
And the driver and the unloader, I was like, you know, that's it.
And then the carrier started signing up, right?
And the carrier start telling us, hey, go out and get the rest of the unloading companies.
And so went out and built the entire market and took us about four years and now we're about 30% of all unloading payments United States.
(07:12):
We automate all the payments and the receipts.
It's a win, win for the unloader, for the carrier, for the driver.
And you know, the story of the warehouse manager at a Publix facility told us, hey, now that I don't have to deal with these checks, I get to get home to my family earlier and don't have to drive to the bank.
(07:33):
You know, those are the kind of things that kept us going and kept us innovating.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So how do you guys go from there to.
I mean, I know this is probably going to be a very open ended question, Spencer, but how do you take something like lumpers and expanded out into like where you guys are today?
Right?
Is it like one step at a time?
Because I mean you guys are integrated with like literally everybody out there, pilots, cat scales, all of that stuff.
But it's like I, you know, back to kind of like those early times when it's like when you started with lumpers, what was that kind of aha moment where you're like dude, if this is a thing with lumpers, what other niche services can we get into for the driver community and the broker community to help out with this?
(08:13):
Because that is just one portion of a bunch of stuff that people are paying for and transacting on every single day.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, you know, the first thing we had to do was build out that initial network.
Right.
And when we became 30% of unloading payments in the United States, we work with now, you know, 10 of the top 30 for hire carriers, nine of the top 10 LTLs and about 100,000 owner operators.
And what happened was went back to those carriers and we said, hey, where else do you make payments?
(08:42):
Where else are your some of your biggest pain points?
And in late 2022, early 2023, we heard from them and we heard from some of the fuel merchant that fuel fraud was becoming rampant.
Right.
These cards do not have chips on them and you can't insert them or tap them.
And in the back of the house of the fuel islands, you actually have to swipe in order to make a fuel payment.
(09:07):
Well, organized crime rings were installing card skimmers on the pump.
A lot of that information was getting lifted off of the magstripe.
And when a fuel card has fraud on it, the card gets locked and the driver actually has to go figure out how they're going to pay for fuel.
And then you have to get that driver a new card.
And when there's fraud, it's not like you and I, right?
(09:30):
If we have fraud on our American Express card, we log into American Express and click dispute in logistics.
If you have fraud, it becomes a challenge of who's going to cover that fraud.
Is it the merchant, is it the card company, is it the carrier?
It can take 30 days cash is leaving your account before that dispute is resolved.
And so we heard from the industry that fuel fraud was a big problem.
(09:53):
So we had a good brand.
We were doing automated digital payments and we just took what were doing in the lumper market and moved it into fuel.
Listening to our customers, partnering with Pilot loves ta a lot of the other large truck stops in the US to facilitate all of their fuel payments as well.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So you know, because I mean, that is right.
I mean especially if you look at a fleet out there, fuel is, I mean I would assume outside of insurance, their largest expense out there.
And you know, and it is like, I mean this is just coming from somebody who's got their debit card stolen from a chip reader at a fuel pump for my trip, my pickup.
(10:33):
And then that led to four years of fighting with a credit reporting agency because somebody stole my identity and went out there and opened up a bunch of stuff in my name.
And you know, I didn't even find that out Spencer, until I went to go buy my first house.
And they're like, dude, your credit, like you have a bunch of stuff on there.
I'm like what do you mean I have a bunch of stuff?
I thought I was running clean financials and turns out that's what it was.
(10:55):
My debit card was stolen from a pay at the pump scheme that was going on out there.
So you know, for the, for the drivers in the fleets that, and you know that are listening to this man.
Like, so how does this work?
Are you going directly to a trucking company and then are you seeing like, hey, who's your fuel program?
Who you guys go through?
If they're like exclusively like with like a loves or a pilot kind of like walk me through how does that transaction Go down.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, that's exactly right, Chris.
So essentially you can apply your what's called merchant negotiated discounts, right?
If you have a discount with Pilot or Loves or TA or Maverick or any of the other truck stops out there, you can actually use Relay to facilitate that discount.
Today, if you're a larger fleet, you can set what are called policies for your drivers where you can control gallons and limits and other security measures that you want to put in place before the carrier or the driver can transact.
(11:52):
And we facilitate not just fuel, but cash advances if you want to get your driver's cash or in store purchases like oils and additives or scale tickets or repairs.
Anything that you would use your traditional billing card or fleet card, fuel card for, you can use Relay for.
And it's the best thing about Relay is it's not a card, right?
(12:13):
It is integrated into your TMS or your ELD system and it's basically a relay code.
And what you do is once you unlock that code through the security, the limits and the prompts, you can go straight to the pump.
You enter in that code, the pump turns on you fuel and you're on your way.
And so it eliminates any of the issues with cards lost cards fraud, and it's all digital and fraud free.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
So, you know, essentially with, you know, this just comes to mind is this essentially stops a disgruntled employee from giving out a fuel number to somebody.
Because you can set those daily limits in those daily thresholds.
You know, like again, hey, the driver stops for fuel every 800 miles.
This is just a hypothetical example here, you guys.
So if that, you know, and then it cost, you know, 800 bucks to fill up your truck for whatever reason, that's the thresholds that carriers can set on a per driver basis then.
(13:06):
And that stops them from, you know, essentially accessing any additional fuel funds out there without.
Would there be like a, a call in?
Would there be like a secondary, you know, like a multi step authentication?
Like, no, hey man, this is what happened.
I need to get more fuel.
Is that how that works?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah.
So essentially we protect against what we call first party fraud and third party fraud.
Right?
Third party fraud is a card skimmer.
Right.
First party fraud is a bad actor within the company actually trying to steal fuel fraud.
And so not only can you set all those limits and controls on your policy to ensure that drivers are fueling when they should, but we also use algorithms to detect and alert potential issues that may come up.
(13:50):
An example, if you're driving from California to Texas, and you're fueling too much more than you should.
We would detect that and send an alert to the company.
Right.
Where they could override and allow the fuel.
So it's not only just the integration into your ELD system, your TMS system, controlling for first party and third party fraud, the limits and controls that you set as a fleet, but we're also monitoring things in the back end and sending you alerts if something looks odd.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Okay, no, I mean, that makes sense.
Right?
And I feel like that's, you know, that's the thing is you, you protecting those internal parameters in there to essentially minimize any of this stuff from happening.
Right.
Because I mean, I just like, I think when individuals out there, and I'm not placing blame on anybody, have access to funds that they may have never previously had access to and there's no real control mechanisms in place out there, I think it does bring out some, you know, not the best behavior at times.
(14:47):
I think we've all probably borrowed money from somebody or borrowed money to somebody at some point and all of a sudden you never hear from them ever again.
And you know, how much like, have you guys done any studies?
Like what is like the actual economic, like the actual financial number that most fleets deal with in fuel fraud?
Kind of throughout a year or, you know, any given couple years?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah.
So we've seen and heard about 4 to 5% of transactions can end up being fraudulent.
And from an ROI perspective, it's not just the hard savings, right.
On the lumper side, eliminating those 10% of lost receipts or giving back the 45 minutes that it takes to run a transaction or eliminating the late night phone calls.
(15:30):
And fuel, it's eliminating the fuel fraud, it's eliminating the cards getting lost or having to get your driver a new card or the operational headaches on the back end.
And through all this work, right, we're able to quantify the value and the savings by adopting a digital payment solution instead of your traditional fleet cards, checks, cash.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
So I mean, you guys took this and you know, the thing that I love about you guys, Spencer, is you guys are very well rounded and seemingly always expanding into like other services that affect fleets out there.
You know, you guys, you know, into the like service and repairs and maintenance and stuff like that, because that's another major area of the industry that I feel like gouging has really got a lot of coverage here lately, like with predatory towing and stuff like that.
(16:19):
And you know, when you're going out there and you're getting repairs on your trucks and stuff like that.
I mean, that's another thing too.
So it's like you guys are doing that for all things on like the service side of things as well now, right?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, so we just expanded into that area.
Right.
So the way we build product is we listen to our customers.
Right?
We listen to the carriers, we listen to the fleets.
That's how went from lumber to fuel, to scales to in store purchases, to cash and to now repair and tows.
Right.
So repair and heavy duty maintenance.
We heard from the customers, hey, I still have to use checks for these payments.
(16:53):
Hey, I don't know whether a service center or provider is legitimate or good.
How can you help me with those services?
And so what we've done is we've started to build out our repair and tow network.
We provide a service to the repair and tow network by helping them process all of their payments.
(17:14):
We also help them get discovered by our network.
Right.
So because we have over 100,000 carriers on our platform, we have a, what we call the Explore map where carriers can see and search and find verified repair and tow shops that are within our network that they can trust.
And so we allow the carrier, we allow the business, the merchant to be discoverable, to generate new business for them and to process all their payments.
(17:41):
And we give the carrier the ability to make a digital seamless payment to that repair shop and to verify that repair or service or tow shop is legitimate and good.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
No, I think that's, I mean that's crucial because I mean not everybody breaks down in a major metropolitan area or access to the dealer network that they maybe bought the truck from.
And you know, I mean, dude, I've dealt with that.
You know, I think everybody's dealt with that at some point on a road trip or anything.
And you find yourself in an area where you need to repair.
How do you know?
You know, or then on top of it too, man, how do you know that?
(18:13):
A, they have the access to fix what you need or B, they can do it in a time frame.
Right.
Because time is money, as you know, right.
Speed will literally kill any and all deal out there.
And you know, if there's, if you're in a part of the country where you don't know of, you know, an available place, are you going to send your truck to the wrong facility and stuff like that where you end up sitting for a few days?
(18:33):
So I think it opens up some additional things where, you know, you can make a couple of phone calls to some of those repair shops in that area.
Like you're talking about, you guys have already done the legwork for them, verified that they can do a lot of that stuff, man.
So, like, with a lot of this, how important is it for you guys to have that end to end solution?
Because, I mean, you guys are seemingly taking all of this and then on top of it, are you on the back office side of the fleets?
(18:57):
How much time are you guys saving them from, like keeping, you know, those expenses in line and then keeping clean financials for those businesses?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah.
So, I mean, we, in the era of the ELD mandate, right, it is 11 hours of driving, 14 hours on duty.
And it is more crucial than ever to keep your assets to be the most efficient that they can be.
And when it comes to ROI on the back office side, you know, we've heard from our companies that we're able to help augment a lot of what these folks are doing when it comes to actually reconciling these payments and processing these payments allowed those folks to do other things within the company to be more efficient.
(19:37):
And so when it comes to the end to end solution, it is crucial to help a carrier with any payment, anywhere, anytime.
Right.
And that is our.
We have teams that are working to add more and more nodes to our network.
We continue to listen to the carriers to tell us, hey, where do they want to make payments?
Where do they have the biggest issues with payments?
Where is the time getting sucked out of their operations?
(20:01):
And as you said, time is money.
Right.
And so the more and more we can help these drivers get in and out of these facilities to make payments instantly.
The more time that the trucks are actually running, the better customer experience they can provide to their carriers.
The better the driver experiences.
Right.
In the world where there's a lot of turnover when it comes to truck drivers, how can you provide them a better experience on the road?
(20:27):
So I like to say we solve the micro value props and the macro value props.
Right.
Instant payments, digital receipts, no more phone calls.
And then it's the bigger picture things in the industry, right.
Like the EOD mandate and making your assets more efficient.
It's contactless payments and continuing to move with that trend.
And it's increasing the driver experience to hopefully reduce turnover and provide them a better life on the road.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah.
How do you guys assess new partners, Spencer?
Because that has to be probably a big thing for you guys on is like, are you guys partnering with the right fuel companies?
The Right.
Repair companies and everything else.
Because I mean, you guys are servicing both ends of the industry at that point.
Right.
So how are you, how are you guys out there assessing who should we integrate with, who should we partner with?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah, it's a good question, right?
Because when we do integrate, it's, it takes a lot of work.
Right?
You're integrating into really old systems.
Right.
Point of sale.
Systems that are 20, 30 years old, pumps that are old.
And so it takes a lot of work to actually integrate with these folks.
A lot of the times it really comes down to where the carriers want to fuel or where they're having issues.
(21:35):
Right.
And so we have processes where we talk to them about hey, what percent of our, your payments are we covering for you today?
And where else do we need to build out our network?
And so that's where we go.
Build out is based on our carrier feedback.
We do a lot of work when it comes to integrating with different ELD and TMS providers.
So we have over 180 different integrations today.
(21:58):
I would say that is a lot of the work that we have to spend in order to get it right.
And so we assess, hey, what types of partners do we want to bring into our network.
But again, it all comes down to where do the carriers need a fuel, where do they need to pay or what systems when it comes to TMS or ELD do they use?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, no, I mean, you guys just had another, I mean you guys have been like these last 90 days, Spencer have probably just been a whirlwind for you because you guys have had a bunch of stuff kind of rolling out here.
And I mean, just recently, earlier this month, you know that you guys partnered with racetrack as well out there.
And so it's like when you guys are going with racetrack and raceway, what about them was appealing?
(22:38):
Where you know, was it that customer feedback?
Like hey man, we're in this area, we want you guys, we want to see more of that.
Is that how you guys really assessed on, like this is where we should go and you know, integrate with.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, so it's funny, Racetrack is actually right next door to us.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
We can see their, their building and their logo.
But no, that wasn't the reason.
They have made a big push into diesel.
Right.
And so they now I believe have about 100 high flow diesel facilities and truck stops that are processing diesel fuel for trucking companies.
And so we've heard.
(23:15):
To your point, we heard from our network that we had to continue to grow in this area.
And Racetrack came up along with a couple other really large merchants here that we're going to roll out in the next three or four months that we're really excited to our network.
So can continue to look out for those announcements because we got some big ones coming.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
No, definitely man.
I love that.
And like so when you're out there and again if I'm a small fleet, you know, I might not have the purchasing power of a mega carrier or a large carrier.
When it comes down to fuel.
When we're signing up for something like relay, are there any discounts that we are afforded by being a user of your guys platform out there with the truck stops and the maintenance stuff?
(24:02):
Is there any of that comes along with it?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah.
So for a smaller owner operator fleet you can easily download our mobile app in the app store Relay Payments and we have something called our clutch network and there are certain truck stops that are part of the clutch network where we actually go pre negotiate discounts with those folks ahead of time and that we can pass along to owner operators or smaller fleets for the midsize and larger fleets.
(24:28):
Right.
A lot of those guys have pre negotiated discounts directly with one of the majors and that's where we can apply their merchant negotiated discount to the relay platform and then give them all the control and the limits and the prompts that they need in order to facilitate and run their business.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
No, I mean that's crucial for the small fleet and owner operator guys out there.
Right.
Because I feel like you know, like that's one of those things and I'm sure you got a ton of stories about this Spencer, when you were starting out your guys company about like man, I wish I would have known this four months ago.
How much money would we have saved if we would have known that?
Right.
And it's like it's these little things like this and to me this is like why I do the show every single day man is to have conversations like this to put more information out there for the industry as a whole man.
(25:13):
Because it's like how many drivers, owner operators, small fleets are out there right now that aren't aware that signing up for something like relay can get them access to a fuel discount to out there in the world and like.
And how much of a savings can that bring their organization out there?
Because I mean contrary to popular belief most businesses operate off of razor thin margins at the, you know and then any savings that they can go to help lower their fixed costs, you know Every single month.
(25:38):
I mean, you got it.
You got to explore that.
And this information should be in front of everybody.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Right.
As you said, I think the largest expense for a trucking company is paying their driver.
Right.
And then the second largest is fuel, and it's between 20 and 40% of their spend is fuel.
And that really is dependent on the cost of diesel.
Right.
And that's why fuel discount.
I believe 80% of diesel is sold at a discount in the country.
(26:04):
A lot of people don't know that.
But to your point, if you're able to cut the spend on your second largest expense in a world where your margins are super tight, it makes a really big impact for you and your company.
And so that's one of the main reasons why we offer what we do now.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I love that, Spencer.
I think that, you know, I'm a.
Anybody who's out there who's fighting for, you know, the driver community to help keep them in business.
Right.
Like, because it's just one of those things.
Like I said when we first started, man, there's so much I didn't know about, like, the business financial side of things and running clean books.
And, you know, I talk about this often.
The two smartest decisions I made in business was hiring my CPA and then hiring the bookkeeper that he recommended that I use.
(26:50):
And what that has done for me on the whole level about, you know, just being starting my company five years ago and being able to like, purchase my first home because, and I quote from my mortgage lender, we're lending you this money because you have clean financials is like, to me, it's like that.
That needs to be out there in front of anybody and everybody.
And there's the time save as well.
(27:11):
Right.
When you get off the road, you're out for two weeks or three weeks or whatever.
The last thing you want to do is sit there and organize receipts and everything else to make sure that they're, you know, in the right order.
I mean, I remember my mom doing that for my dad for the majority of my youth, you know, so it's like there's.
There's tools at our disposal now to where it's like you shouldn't be spending your time on anything other than doing what you love.
(27:35):
And you can automate the overwhelming majority of the stuff that you hate doing.
I personally hate doing a lot of the accounting stuff, and that's why I love having all of that stuff automated behind the scenes.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Yeah, totally agree.
If I remember Your dad was an owner operator, right?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah.
Yep.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, that's right.
And Chris, I've always loved your show.
Right.
I think I remember about six, seven years ago you were on a podcast with Cassandra Gaines talking about the lumber fees and some of the challenges.
And I, I actually use that podcast in a, in the employee onboarding.
Right.
To show them how the industry talks to each other and what it's like for folks out there when it comes to these payments.
(28:12):
So appreciate what you're doing and how you're helping educate the industry and just happy that you brought us on to be part of it now.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
I appreciate it, Spencer and man, thank you for your time today.
How does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more about what you got going on at Relay?
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, so relay payments.com you can come there.
All of our offerings are on the website.
You can download the mobile app Relay Payments or you can reach out to us at 877-7352-910877 relay 10 and give us a call.
Right.
We, we really focus on our three core tenets of great technology.
(28:51):
Transparent pricing and fees.
Everything is month to month because we know if we're not adding value, you know, don't work with us.
Right.
But we stand by it, which is why everything's month to month and 24 7, 365 US based customer service.
If you give us a call on that number, we will pick up the phone in 10 seconds or less.
And that.
(29:11):
And we stand by that.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Dude, I love that.
Spencer, thank you so much for your time.
If you guys can't find Relay out there at all, hit me up.
I will gladly put you guys in contact with them, but that is going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
As always, if you got value in which you heard, subscribe to the show, you guys.
And for feeling really ambitious after this one, rank the show on itunes and Spotify.
Because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well.
(29:33):
I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys.
And we'll be talking to you.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Came back with a bank moving fast.
Hey, hey.
Let them all cross.
If they hate, then let them hate them.
(30:00):
Make a bigger ball.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Hey, F.
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