September 18, 2025 • 31 mins
Today, Bill Holaday of EBE Technologies joins us to talk about productivity in the trucking business and the role of automation in driver retention, cash flow, and safety compliance!
We dive into how automation, document scanning, OCR, and AI integrations are helping fleets, from small operators to truck carriers, to unlock measurable ROI, Bill's real-world insights from visiting over a thousand trucking companies across North and Central America, and a driver-friendly tech that simplifies workflows and accelerates billing.
If you’re evaluating technology investments, this conversation can give a straightforward framework for demanding proof of concept, validating vendor claims, and ensuring your tech dollars drive efficiency, accuracy, and long-term business growth!
Connect with Bill
- Website: https://ebeships.com/
- Email: billh@ebe-inc.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-holaday-8a70814
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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 made them make a bigger balls.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey what is up, ladies and gentlemen?
We are back.
We are live.
It is the Frick Coach Podcast, the top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central, to break down some industry headlines.
But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information.
If this is your first time tuning in, welcome.
(00:45):
This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen.
And I do say that before every single show.
What I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve, so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life.
(01:05):
Happy Thursday, everybody.
It's great to be back in studio.
I was out at IANA these last couple of days down in Long Beach.
Got some really good interviews recorded.
We're going to be doing some mashup episodes from that we'll be releasing out here in the coming weeks.
But today's guest, you guys, I'm really looking forward to speaking with him.
You know, as somebody who is getting deeper and deeper inside of how can I do more with less, especially with technology, as a founder of a business and how can I, you know, kind of automate a lot of this stuff out there?
(01:32):
And there's so many tools that are at our disposal now.
So we're going to talk about that.
Today I got Mr. Bill Holiday on the show.
Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Oh, thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I'm really looking forward to it.
So, Bill, I always start out every single show the same man.
How'd you get your start in freight?
What brought you into trucking?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So what brought me to trucking?
Yeah, this is a funny story.
So, you know, back in, let's call it the late 80s, so I've been around a while.
So long time.
I was literally working at a bank.
Literally there was a change in kind of what they were doing in the direction they were going.
I was literally Laid off.
There was a carrier in town looking for someone to run their IT infrastructure.
I knew the hardware, the person who had already left I was, they would hired anybody at that point.
(02:15):
So I was hired on even know what a bill of lading was at the time.
And now here I am 37, 38 years later.
You know, I spent 16 years with the carrier sales operations, safety compliance, the GM at the end then moved over into a TMS company, so a technology company selling TMS and mobility.
(02:35):
I spent about 22 years there and I've made my way over to EV Technologies not long ago.
And so I'm happy to be here.
So that's kind of how I got into this.
It's sort of like, you know, I know that anybody grows up going I'm going to be, you know, get into transportation.
But once you get into it, you know, you, it's hard.
It just gets in your blood, right.
And I was like I was talking earlier, even my daughter is a freight broker.
(02:55):
You know, I took my kids to work with me during their summer breaks and they worked at the trucking company and you know, doing settlements, writing billings and things like that.
So they had a lot of exposure to the business.
So anyway, that's kind of how I got into that.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So no, I mean I think transportation is such a vast industry, right?
Like there's so many opportunities that are in it and especially now with, I mean I want to call it a rise in technology but like technology is at the forefront of every single business and industry out there right now.
And you know, so like what EBE Technologies, how did that get all started?
(03:28):
Kind of like what are your guys's core service competency?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
So core services.
So EBE started back in the 70s, right.
And they really kind of reinvented themselves a few about 25 years ago.
So Larry Kerr, president owner, he started working into the freight business, transportation carriers they say about 25 years ago.
(03:52):
So our core competency is everything.
Transportation, that's our customer base.
We probably have a little over 600 customers and all transportation related.
Where they got their start was really just scan retrieval, document scanning, imaging systems and then integrating those into tmss.
So it's kind of where they got their start.
(04:13):
So then over time they became very good at the OCR piece, character recognition and learned AI around the forms and things like that.
So that's really where that kind of got started.
So.
And it kind of really blossomed into this big business for them around.
We do so many other things on top of that now we get into driver services, safety and compliance.
(04:34):
We have deep integrations into mobility companies.
We have, you know, web portal products services that we do that, you know, automatic updates and things like that.
So got a wide variety of these kind of called point solutions around what you would kind of hook into a TMS if that makes sense.
No mobility products.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So you know, I want to because like it's very timely with it being driver appreciation week out there for a lot of this because I feel like there's a lot of things of, you know, how can we go out there and like.
And honestly this is the whole purpose of this show is putting best practices out there for people to apply into their business.
Right.
Because it's like there's no playbook to entrepreneurship.
(05:16):
There's no, hey, you started your business, you're going to have everything figured out.
But there's a lot of people out there who want to become more efficient, right.
Like I don't know anybody who goes into business with the intent of like how do I burn all of my capital and crush my dream within a couple of months.
Right.
Like I don't know of anybody who's going to do that.
And you know, I look at with where technology is now and you know, as somebody who started a freight brokerage, we're trying to pack a larger punch in the market.
(05:44):
And I look at it as, it's like with the right technology now, we're able to, right.
Like we're able to go out there, become more efficient.
And then for me it's like I feel like most young entrepreneurs and young business owners, revenue producing activities are the top of mind.
Right.
Like I do not have hours a day to waste trying to figure out a lot of stuff.
(06:06):
Right.
Like my focus is on business development.
It's on servicing my current customers.
And there's now there's ways behind the scenes where you can automate a lot of the paperwork and a lot of that stuff out there.
And you know, on the driver and the carrier side as well, that's another big time suck out there.
You know, I know my dad back in the day when he'd come home from a couple of weeks out on the road, he'd have a stack of receipts and him and everything, trip settlements, all of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
And I remember those days.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
And it's like.
But it's not too far off from where things still kind of currently are.
Bill is.
Is there.
There's a lot of people out there who still operate in that capacity.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah.
And So I want to tell a story around kind of that just a little bit.
So I was thinking about coming on the show and you know, my background, what I've done industry and some things like that.
And so I was at some driving time last night coming back from the Intermodal Expo in Long Beach.
In Long Beach.
But I figured out that I've been on site inside the carrier operations over a thousand different trucking companies over the course of my career.
(07:08):
So I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people.
I was kind of looking at the map.
I've been down to Guatemala.
I've been at the Prudhoe Bay, Mexico, of course, Canada, U.S. but literally, and I think that's a low estimate.
If I go actually count it's probably north of 1200 over the course of the last 23 years or so.
And I kind of went back to like, what were some of the meaningful conversations that I had around, you know, just in general with these owners and these people operating these companies.
(07:34):
And one out of all of those visits, out of all of them, over a thousand, one comes to mind in a way ahead of all the others.
And it really is a president, owner of a trucking company.
They're about 1400 trucks, probably 4000 trailers.
But he's also a race car driver.
And what he does, because everyone's focused.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
On the top down, right?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
They're like, okay, my insurance, my trade cycle, my deadhead, my loaded miles, my empty miles, how do I purchase fuel?
Everybody's doing that, right?
And you have to be good at that.
That's, you know, we're talking about cost, right?
So that's, you know, you have to know how to do that and, you know, and be good at it.
But, but let's turn that upside down for a minute.
(08:17):
Let's.
Let's start at.
Not at the bottom, but if you turn upside down and think about that and where I'm going with this, his commentary around this was take it from the general ledger and look at from that point back up.
And so, which is very interesting in his mind, he said, look, Bill, he goes, if I can increase productivity or save 1/10 of 1% with one small move or process change in my operation.
(08:44):
And he relates that to the race car, right?
He goes, all I do is one small minor tweak that could be the difference of winning and losing, right?
So in his mind, he's like, okay, look, if it's 1 10th, 1%, I do that 10 times.
If it meant 1%, I do it 100 times.
I'm at 10%.
And he's like, those are huge dollars if you think about it in those terms.
And I'll never forget that conversation because he was hyper focused on the small things.
(09:07):
The big things are, you know, table stakes.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Okay.
You have to be good at those things.
But start from the Gl, work your way back up considering the customer.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
You got, that's gotta be paramount in those, your decisions.
But he felt like that was his advantage.
He goes, they spend time on the little things to make them a big thing, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
No, it makes perfect sense.
And that's one thing that my, you know, I have a couple of friends that are CFOs out there and my CPA said that to me.
In my business, they've alluded to pay attention to the small expenditures that you don't notice.
Right.
And I feel like that's one of those things inside of, you know, whether you're, you know, paying for some service out there as a business owner, it's $40 here, $80 there.
(09:46):
You don't notice it.
Right.
Because it gets buried by your thousand dollar fuel purchase and stuff like that.
It's the death by a thousand cuts analogy that I think is perfectly applicable here.
And you know, I want to talk though about that like with those non op, like those non fuel operating costs that are like crushing carriers out there right now.
(10:06):
Where do you see some of those biggest cost strains in relation to like automation and where can solve.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Great question.
So I'll give you an example.
We just signed up a customer.
I'll back up a second around time and time to value and just your time in general.
I mean if I can come in and say, look, I can save you three hours a day.
Okay, Is that, how meaningful is that?
So that's three hours.
But honestly, if someone showed up today and said look, I can automate three hours of your day, I would take that in a heartbeat.
(10:35):
I mean think about the time back.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
But.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And of course it's not for everybody, right.
It's more of the tasks that are kind of we'll call mundane or repetitive, you know, that we can automate.
But those are big, right?
So you know, the time savings.
We've taken a true LTL or city P&D hub and spoke 14 terminals.
We're going to roll out our driver app and scan the paperwork.
We're going to turn that paperwork into bonafide orders before the paper actually gets back to the terminal.
(11:02):
Right.
So Those are actually like a 204 going into the system ahead of time.
So something like that.
Those guys are going to save on annual basis roughly across the 14 terminals about 10,000 hours a year.
All of a sudden that, oh that 10 hours at 20 hours and people go is that, how meaningful is it?
Think about that.
That's incredibly meaningful.
It's like those are big numbers.
(11:23):
Now that's not for everybody of course.
And it's, you know, that's, it's a good example.
But, but some are smaller but the accuracy of the data, how important is that?
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
That's super important.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
As you know, right.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Getting the freight bill out correctly, right.
The right bill to the right customer, you know, and build correctly.
Getting the drivers pay, correct.
The driver pay is, it's one of the biggest things because there's drive come payday, the driver knows exactly to the penny, right.
What they should be getting paid.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
And that's wrong.
You're going to hear about, right.
And all of a sudden you, then you've got a problem with your drivers if you don't do that correctly.
So, and paid on time, right.
There's all those things that we automate the entire process, right.
So it's really, it's ensuring a better customer relationship, right.
Because we're got a better connection to the customer.
We're deeply integrated with them.
(12:09):
We have a better relationship with the driver because we're more accurate like in their pay and things like that.
And so, you know, those are some things that we're doing that makes our customers relationship, their customer better.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, no, I was just talking about this on a show here recently where I would argue your ability to properly invoice your customers, whether you're a carrier or a broker is more important than your ability to service them at the end of the day.
Because like if you look at it from an overarching like side effects of this, if you can't bill somebody properly pay you on time, slow payments will kill most businesses.
(12:49):
Right.
Like it's a very well known fact.
Like I, I don't know the exact percentage, but it's a very high percentage of businesses are within 30 days of going out of business every single month due to cash flow constraints.
So it's like with these slow billing cycles that come up and a lot of people struggling with them because they can't invoice their customers properly for one example.
(13:11):
How can automation help, you know, maybe cut invoice times, improve cash flows and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah.
So we're very good at that.
So give me an example.
So in our driver app, if I've got a driver up and you know, doing their deliveries, you know, whether it's one drop or multiple drops, what they do at the end of the trip, scan the paperwork, right?
And once we've scanned the paperwork at the end of the trip, we can literally send out a freight bill within five, ten minutes of that delivery.
(13:39):
And that's.
We're checking the paperwork, we're making sure everything that's required is there.
You know, the drivership sheet, the bill of lading, the signed pod.
We're looking for signatures, you know, all those things.
But if we get the green light that those are all good and we've validated that those are good, we can send the freight bill out right then and there.
So literally right there and accurately feed that back into the tms.
The billing goes out, it's good to go.
(14:01):
So we're.
You're very good at that.
And, and things like in a manual world where we have a customer that they, their drivers come back with a manual trip sheet, that what they did all day, right?
Kind of an outback.
And their turn all day is an example where, hey, they come back to the office at the end of the shift, they give someone a piece of paper.
Now they got to go key all this in.
But we can actually scan that document and just turn that into 204s, bring those into the TMS and handle it that way so we can automate that process as well.
(14:31):
So we can do the billing as quickly as anybody really wants to.
So there's no limitation.
The only thing would be is, hey, if we find an exception or if there's something missing, right, That'll go into hold queue.
Someone needs to look at that.
But otherwise the freight bill is going out immediately.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So, you know, I want to switch to, you know, because like, when people hear there's so many buzzwords out there right now, Bill within technology, you know, so it's like, you know, you hear about rpa.
So, you know, for those of you who are listening who do not know what an RPA is, Robotic process automation.
I, I look at it and I hear that and again, I like, I look at myself as a small business owner and it's like, what are some of these things?
(15:08):
Like, where could I put an RPA to automate my workflows, right?
Like, what can I do to build that up?
And I'm looking at it from a driver's perspective as well.
And you were talking about the trip settlements and all of that.
How are RPAs helping with like the manual busy work that most drivers and small fleets are dealing with on a day to day basis?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah.
So what we run into a lot is our customers have to go and update a web portal.
It's a great example.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
They have to upload paperwork, they might have to download something, they have to give status updates and this goes back to, may even have an effect on their scorecard with their customer.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
If this isn't done timely.
But those things we can completely automate.
So we've run into folks that have a team of maybe three or four people that are full time FTEs that are, that's what they do all day long.
We can literally automate that entire function as an example.
So if you're doing cast logistics or things like that.
But we can go to these web portals, whether they're status updates, tendering orders, updating orders, pulling orders back in, bringing them into the tms, we can do all of that.
(16:08):
We can take, like I said, manual paperwork, inbound emails, spreadsheet, any of those things.
We can adjust those into the EB system and we could turn those into 204s and make those modified order in a TMS and where that kind of comes in, what's very helpful, especially I'll folks on the LTL world for just a minute.
If we're scanning those documents as we do the pickups, we can turn those into orders immediately and then the terminal can start pre planning the outbound while the driver's out doing the pickups in a different world.
(16:39):
They don't know anything about the pickup yet back at the terminal.
So they don't, they can't pre plan anything.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So that could, they could build those trailers out within, you know, maybe six, seven hours ahead of schedule versus the paperwork getting delivered at the dock.
And then they pre plan to do that.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
How has some of this stuff transitioned into like driver retention?
Right.
Because I feel like that is one side of this industry that isn't talked about a lot is like how are we out there working to make the driver's lives easier?
You know, whether you're a fleet owner or you're building your fleet up, you know, everybody that I know of that owns a trucking company at any given moment, Bill, are going to be like, yeah, we're always looking for drivers, we're always looking to do that.
(17:19):
But it's like, I look at it as it's like, how are we.
How are some of these tools going to improve the driver experience?
Because you brought up money earlier and that like, that kills, I would say, like 99% of employees to the money.
Right.
If you, if you mess with their money, they're right.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Don't mess with the money ever.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
How are automating, like settlements and all of this stuff, how is that leading to a higher retention rate?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah.
So as we process the paperwork with the app, right, that feeds back into the tms, we're figuring out what settlement should be or the driver pay.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Whether it's an owner, operator, carrier or a company driver.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
That all gets automated ties back into the system.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So we know exactly what to expect.
Like, like say the carrier invoice as an example.
So let's say it's a, an outside carrier.
We know exactly what we should be paying them.
They should know exactly what to get paid.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
We can validate that.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
It falls in like an exception cube because it's out of compliance with, you know, a threshold of, you know, maybe, let's call it 2 or 3%, whatever it might be.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
So we can take care of that as well.
So, but for the driver themselves, they're looking for something easy, right.
They don't want some complicated app.
I got to log into this app, I got to look in this one.
I got to do this.
You know, we have deep links into a number of different mobility platforms.
And so we've.
We're able to get into, you know, these different systems and tie into the devices they're using today for their ELDs, right.
(18:45):
So it's like a one sign on for all, but also it's ease of use.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So, you know, I don't know if you've ever used an app.
I'll give you an example.
This is, it's not a driver example, but I was.
My wife has had to go to a different dentist recently and they had, they sent her this link to an app.
She had to fill this information out and she was just, you know, fit to be tied because it just wasn't user friendly.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
It was just, you know, she finally handed it to me, hey, can you do this for me?
Like, they just want it to be easy and that's what we've done, right?
It has to be easy or they won't use it.
And then we tie that back into our recruiting piece, right, where we've had a database of over.
I think it was 3 million drivers.
If we've seen them before and they're applying for any of our customers in the past that use our system, then it's just the name, put it in.
(19:25):
And were able to do that.
We can take their cards, upload those so we can auto fill some of those things in.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's just easier.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So they just want easy.
They don't want to be bothered.
They want to dive the truck.
They want to deliver the freight, you know, because, you know, what's important to them is getting there on time, getting there safely.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
No damage.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
And all this other stuff is, you know, we kind of put it on the drivers.
So it's got to be easy.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, I, again, I'm not a driver.
I'm not speaking for drivers, but my dad was a driver and I know his personality.
I know how he was.
And that is it.
Like, he didn't want to be bothered with any of this.
At the end of the day, Bill, he wanted to drive.
That was it.
Right.
And then, you know, I look at it as, you know, and I've said this on the show multiple times in the past, is, you know, a lot of these, you know, companies out there, like, they can't shut their business down for a week to go to a conference to learn about a lot of this new stuff.
(20:15):
Right?
That's out there because, you know, contrary to what a lot of people think, like, it is an investment to go to a conference and there has to be an ROI for your time.
And especially if you're a owner, operator or you own a small business, like, you're literally shutting your stuff down.
You're running on a skeleton crew for, you know, so it's like when we're looking at this and, you know, the driver piece, the.
(20:36):
The hiring, the onboarding, the recruiting, all of that's a process out there.
So it's like.
And you were talking about some of those things.
So it's like, is there a.
It sounds like there's a driver piece here where a.
Drivers can go in, they can have all of their, you know, medical records and, you know, CDL verification.
All of that stuff can be on there.
Is that in, like, in a portal where people can go in, start a lot of that?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah, the mobile app and a portal, we can do all of that.
So.
So everything from your applicant tracking, you know, the DQ files, you know, as we pro.
As you.
As you kind of bring that driver along through the recruiting process, that's all kind of automated.
We have drip marketing to reach back out to the drivers, like, okay, we haven't heard from you in a week.
You know, I thought were, you know, progressing here as we recruit you.
(21:19):
Right.
Here's what we're going to do.
We can do it by regions, we can do by state.
You know, you kind of define that, but yeah, so we, the key ultimately is the ease of use for the driver to use those tools.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
And if it's not easy, they're not going to use it.
We know that.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So, you know, down effects of this.
Right.
You know, hiring the wrong.
Like there's been a lot of highly publicized things here as of late about, you know, safety compliance and a lot of that stuff.
And you know, there's obviously there's real consequences if you hire the wrong drivers and stuff like that out there.
But, you know, safety and compliance is another thing.
And you know, every time I see a lot of this stuff that comes about, Bill, I'm like, it seems like it's a reaction in the moment, right.
(22:02):
And it's.
And it's like, you know, the outsiders looking in.
It's kind of like, how was, how did we get here?
You know, like, that's a lot of those things.
I don't, when I see a lot of this stuff, I don't necessarily blame the incident.
I blame the oversights that led to put somebody in that position to make that mistake.
Right.
And it feels like it with safety and compliance, this is more times than not.
(22:24):
Once you start seeing some of these carriers that are out there was a clear lack that led to this point.
Right.
So it's like, how are you guys out there and how do you see automation help carriers stay more, you know, up to date with all of their safety and compliance process?
Because that's going to ultimately lead to lower insurance.
And insurance is a whole other suck for most carriers.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, yeah.
So a lot, not a lot of people know this about eb, but what we've done is, and I mentioned deep links into mobility products, right.
The, you know, the mobility platforms of the world without naming all of them and camera systems.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
So what we've done is.
I'll go back to the deep links into these products.
We were able to extract all that information about the eld, the hours of service, the driver behavior from the cameras, you know, all of this.
So, and where we're really good is if there's a.
We'll call it a mixed fleet.
So in other words, if I've got a fleet that's got two Types of telematics and maybe two types of cameras as an example.
Maybe there was a merger, right.
(23:21):
So now they've got all this technology they're trying to figure out how do we combine it.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
We're able to bring that into one pane of glass for the fleet manager and the safety manager to view and then we look at the driver behaviors.
Is there anything that's concerning to us?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
And then we can pull them aside and have, or bring that to the attention of the safety manager.
Say look, here's some things that you need to be aware of that's happening with these particular drivers and maybe they need to, we'll send them some educational material, bring them into the terminal, you know, things like that.
But we're very good at getting, capturing that information.
And I'll go back to the one pane of glass that we're able to present to the fleet managers and the safety managers.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Which is a lot of people don't know that we do that and find that interesting concern.
We don't have an ELD or we're not a mobility company.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, I look at, it is as you know, I think if there's one underlying thing across every industry when it comes to technology and everything else, Bill is like this is just going to replace us.
Right.
Like this is going to replace people all of a sudden.
You know, nobody's going to have jobs and everything else.
But like for me, everything you're describing here, this just makes a company more dialed in.
(24:35):
Right.
Like this is going to make you better at your job.
How many safety managers again?
I, I, I, I would argue that probably everybody you would interview for this be like, oh I have so much going on.
This is why it's not done well.
This is why a tool keeps you so like you, because you like you can't have a, I forgot to do that moment when you're getting, you know, in a deposition, you know, like if you're a safety manager and you're you know the unfortunate fatality or accident that happens out there, you cannot say we don't have that.
(25:04):
Right.
Or the lawyers are, you're gonna, they're gonna bury you for that.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So it's like I look at a lot of the like what you're describing out here.
This just makes you a more well rounded company and like this is just going to keep you stay on task, keep you up to date because again I like it's never a matter if it's when you are in this position you're going to be in a position, you're going to be on the unfortunate end of a denied insurance claim or a lawsuit.
(25:31):
And then that could potentially bury your dream, your business, put tons of people out of work way faster than an RPA could.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Yeah, we help mitigate that.
Right, with this tool set.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
And so that's part of what we offer.
And so this really comes from, hey, what do the customers want?
EB is listening to their customers, you know, from the very beginning, you know, and these are the things that kind of came from that.
And again, I'll, you know, the, I think we have close to 30 different solutions that were, that we offer that, you know, around safety compliance or it's the, on the RPA AI stuff.
(26:03):
So it's, we're doing a lot in that area and mitigation of the risk is a big one.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
No, and I think like, you know, from my perspective, it's like there's always going to be something that's going to come up, right?
And, and you need to, you just like, I, I, I'm really going through, I don't want to call it like an identity crisis or anything like that, but like I'm going through this phase in business, Bill, where it's like, you know, we talk about the freight market being down.
(26:29):
We talk about like there's always something and then everybody's always looking to blame somebody else.
And I'm just at this kind of like reflective part of my journey of like, it's all on me.
At the end of the day, I have to figure this out, right?
Like, I can't look anybody else in the eye and be like, oh, it's a bad freight market.
That's why I'm going out.
No, no, I'm not going out of business.
I'm going to figure it out.
Right?
And I look at it with where technology is today.
(26:52):
Like, there are so many tools that are out there that help you way more than work against you.
And you have to go out there and you have to find them.
You have to find those blind spots in your businesses.
And the way that I see it, man, some of this technology is way cheaper than a consultant, you know, like a consultant come in and bill you hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell you what an RPA could probably tell you, right?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
And you bring up a really good point.
We have such deep domain knowledge at EB it's incredible, right?
20 plus years of experience with a lot of the folks that are there.
So we Got some industry veterans that just arrived.
So we've got a really nice mix of people there and it feels kind of honest a little bit as a.
They've been in business over 50 years, but it's kind of a startup vibe to it where we're doing all this stuff.
(27:37):
It's point solutions.
We're helping all these carriers with these big giant TMSs, kind of extend the life of their TMS, right?
With these point solutions adding on some functionality that they've never had before.
So you know, it has.
Because the freight's down, right?
People are watching every penny.
You know, at some point they may have a 25 year old TMS, but they're not ready to make that move yet.
They gotta wait.
It might be three or four years.
(27:57):
In the meantime, we can help them extend the life of what they're doing with their current solutions.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Bill, what is something that you think people should be on the lookout for in regards to tech and freight?
Or maybe.
What's one thing as we're wrapping up here that you wish more people were aware of when they're like vetting possible vendors out there to hire for their company?
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Well, I would say that because I've been doing this a long time, you know, TMS and point solutions, it's really when you're looking at people and solutions, my advice is, look, you've got to make them prove they can do it, right?
A lot of people go around talking about what they can do.
They, you know, there's an old saying, we call it vaporware, right?
You've got to be able, ask those people, prove to me that you can do this, show me that you can do it and truly walk me through the process, right?
(28:48):
And maybe to the point of, hey, take my data and show me how that works.
I need to know.
Because what I've learned very recently is a lot of people call them kind of burn victims out in the market where this new technology pops up.
We can do this and this, but can they really do it?
So my advice is really, you know, do your due diligence.
Make, make them prove they can absolutely do that, right?
(29:08):
And so that's probably the best advice I give.
Folks are out shopping for new technology because there's a lot of talk going on right now, but it's really, you know, it's delivering the freight, it's getting the bills out, it's getting the drivers paid, right?
That's the.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
And safely, right?
Speaker 3 (29:22):
So those are important factors and then streamlining the back office with this automation.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
These are, these are really good things now.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Perfect.
Bill, I appreciate your time today.
How does anybody reach out to you to find out more about what you guys have going on?
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, you can just find my LinkedIn, you know, Bill Holiday or just hit our website or Bill H. @ebe-inc.com Perfect.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Sounds good, Bill.
Bill, thank you so much for joining me.
That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
As always, if you got value in what you heard.
Thank you.
Subscribe to the show, you guys.
And if you're feeling ambitious after this one, which you should be, rank the show on itunes and Spotify because if you saw value, your network's going to see value as well.
I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Came back with a bank hey let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger boss Hey.
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 made them make a bigger balls.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey what is up, ladies and gentlemen?
We are back.
We are live.
It is the Frick Coach Podcast, the top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central, to break down some industry headlines.
But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information.
If this is your first time tuning in, welcome.
(00:45):
This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen.
And I do say that before every single show.
What I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve, so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life.
(01:05):
Happy Thursday, everybody.
It's great to be back in studio.
I was out at IANA these last couple of days down in Long Beach.
Got some really good interviews recorded.
We're going to be doing some mashup episodes from that we'll be releasing out here in the coming weeks.
But today's guest, you guys, I'm really looking forward to speaking with him.
You know, as somebody who is getting deeper and deeper inside of how can I do more with less, especially with technology, as a founder of a business and how can I, you know, kind of automate a lot of this stuff out there?
(01:32):
And there's so many tools that are at our disposal now.
So we're going to talk about that.
Today I got Mr. Bill Holiday on the show.
Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Oh, thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I'm really looking forward to it.
So, Bill, I always start out every single show the same man.
How'd you get your start in freight?
What brought you into trucking?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So what brought me to trucking?
Yeah, this is a funny story.
So, you know, back in, let's call it the late 80s, so I've been around a while.
So long time.
I was literally working at a bank.
Literally there was a change in kind of what they were doing in the direction they were going.
I was literally Laid off.
There was a carrier in town looking for someone to run their IT infrastructure.
I knew the hardware, the person who had already left I was, they would hired anybody at that point.
(02:15):
So I was hired on even know what a bill of lading was at the time.
And now here I am 37, 38 years later.
You know, I spent 16 years with the carrier sales operations, safety compliance, the GM at the end then moved over into a TMS company, so a technology company selling TMS and mobility.
(02:35):
I spent about 22 years there and I've made my way over to EV Technologies not long ago.
And so I'm happy to be here.
So that's kind of how I got into this.
It's sort of like, you know, I know that anybody grows up going I'm going to be, you know, get into transportation.
But once you get into it, you know, you, it's hard.
It just gets in your blood, right.
And I was like I was talking earlier, even my daughter is a freight broker.
(02:55):
You know, I took my kids to work with me during their summer breaks and they worked at the trucking company and you know, doing settlements, writing billings and things like that.
So they had a lot of exposure to the business.
So anyway, that's kind of how I got into that.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So no, I mean I think transportation is such a vast industry, right?
Like there's so many opportunities that are in it and especially now with, I mean I want to call it a rise in technology but like technology is at the forefront of every single business and industry out there right now.
And you know, so like what EBE Technologies, how did that get all started?
(03:28):
Kind of like what are your guys's core service competency?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
So core services.
So EBE started back in the 70s, right.
And they really kind of reinvented themselves a few about 25 years ago.
So Larry Kerr, president owner, he started working into the freight business, transportation carriers they say about 25 years ago.
(03:52):
So our core competency is everything.
Transportation, that's our customer base.
We probably have a little over 600 customers and all transportation related.
Where they got their start was really just scan retrieval, document scanning, imaging systems and then integrating those into tmss.
So it's kind of where they got their start.
(04:13):
So then over time they became very good at the OCR piece, character recognition and learned AI around the forms and things like that.
So that's really where that kind of got started.
So.
And it kind of really blossomed into this big business for them around.
We do so many other things on top of that now we get into driver services, safety and compliance.
(04:34):
We have deep integrations into mobility companies.
We have, you know, web portal products services that we do that, you know, automatic updates and things like that.
So got a wide variety of these kind of called point solutions around what you would kind of hook into a TMS if that makes sense.
No mobility products.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
So you know, I want to because like it's very timely with it being driver appreciation week out there for a lot of this because I feel like there's a lot of things of, you know, how can we go out there and like.
And honestly this is the whole purpose of this show is putting best practices out there for people to apply into their business.
Right.
Because it's like there's no playbook to entrepreneurship.
(05:16):
There's no, hey, you started your business, you're going to have everything figured out.
But there's a lot of people out there who want to become more efficient, right.
Like I don't know anybody who goes into business with the intent of like how do I burn all of my capital and crush my dream within a couple of months.
Right.
Like I don't know of anybody who's going to do that.
And you know, I look at with where technology is now and you know, as somebody who started a freight brokerage, we're trying to pack a larger punch in the market.
(05:44):
And I look at it as, it's like with the right technology now, we're able to, right.
Like we're able to go out there, become more efficient.
And then for me it's like I feel like most young entrepreneurs and young business owners, revenue producing activities are the top of mind.
Right.
Like I do not have hours a day to waste trying to figure out a lot of stuff.
(06:06):
Right.
Like my focus is on business development.
It's on servicing my current customers.
And there's now there's ways behind the scenes where you can automate a lot of the paperwork and a lot of that stuff out there.
And you know, on the driver and the carrier side as well, that's another big time suck out there.
You know, I know my dad back in the day when he'd come home from a couple of weeks out on the road, he'd have a stack of receipts and him and everything, trip settlements, all of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
And I remember those days.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
And it's like.
But it's not too far off from where things still kind of currently are.
Bill is.
Is there.
There's a lot of people out there who still operate in that capacity.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah.
And So I want to tell a story around kind of that just a little bit.
So I was thinking about coming on the show and you know, my background, what I've done industry and some things like that.
And so I was at some driving time last night coming back from the Intermodal Expo in Long Beach.
In Long Beach.
But I figured out that I've been on site inside the carrier operations over a thousand different trucking companies over the course of my career.
(07:08):
So I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people.
I was kind of looking at the map.
I've been down to Guatemala.
I've been at the Prudhoe Bay, Mexico, of course, Canada, U.S. but literally, and I think that's a low estimate.
If I go actually count it's probably north of 1200 over the course of the last 23 years or so.
And I kind of went back to like, what were some of the meaningful conversations that I had around, you know, just in general with these owners and these people operating these companies.
(07:34):
And one out of all of those visits, out of all of them, over a thousand, one comes to mind in a way ahead of all the others.
And it really is a president, owner of a trucking company.
They're about 1400 trucks, probably 4000 trailers.
But he's also a race car driver.
And what he does, because everyone's focused.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
On the top down, right?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
They're like, okay, my insurance, my trade cycle, my deadhead, my loaded miles, my empty miles, how do I purchase fuel?
Everybody's doing that, right?
And you have to be good at that.
That's, you know, we're talking about cost, right?
So that's, you know, you have to know how to do that and, you know, and be good at it.
But, but let's turn that upside down for a minute.
(08:17):
Let's.
Let's start at.
Not at the bottom, but if you turn upside down and think about that and where I'm going with this, his commentary around this was take it from the general ledger and look at from that point back up.
And so, which is very interesting in his mind, he said, look, Bill, he goes, if I can increase productivity or save 1/10 of 1% with one small move or process change in my operation.
(08:44):
And he relates that to the race car, right?
He goes, all I do is one small minor tweak that could be the difference of winning and losing, right?
So in his mind, he's like, okay, look, if it's 1 10th, 1%, I do that 10 times.
If it meant 1%, I do it 100 times.
I'm at 10%.
And he's like, those are huge dollars if you think about it in those terms.
And I'll never forget that conversation because he was hyper focused on the small things.
(09:07):
The big things are, you know, table stakes.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Okay.
You have to be good at those things.
But start from the Gl, work your way back up considering the customer.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
You got, that's gotta be paramount in those, your decisions.
But he felt like that was his advantage.
He goes, they spend time on the little things to make them a big thing, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
No, it makes perfect sense.
And that's one thing that my, you know, I have a couple of friends that are CFOs out there and my CPA said that to me.
In my business, they've alluded to pay attention to the small expenditures that you don't notice.
Right.
And I feel like that's one of those things inside of, you know, whether you're, you know, paying for some service out there as a business owner, it's $40 here, $80 there.
(09:46):
You don't notice it.
Right.
Because it gets buried by your thousand dollar fuel purchase and stuff like that.
It's the death by a thousand cuts analogy that I think is perfectly applicable here.
And you know, I want to talk though about that like with those non op, like those non fuel operating costs that are like crushing carriers out there right now.
(10:06):
Where do you see some of those biggest cost strains in relation to like automation and where can solve.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Great question.
So I'll give you an example.
We just signed up a customer.
I'll back up a second around time and time to value and just your time in general.
I mean if I can come in and say, look, I can save you three hours a day.
Okay, Is that, how meaningful is that?
So that's three hours.
But honestly, if someone showed up today and said look, I can automate three hours of your day, I would take that in a heartbeat.
(10:35):
I mean think about the time back.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
But.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And of course it's not for everybody, right.
It's more of the tasks that are kind of we'll call mundane or repetitive, you know, that we can automate.
But those are big, right?
So you know, the time savings.
We've taken a true LTL or city P&D hub and spoke 14 terminals.
We're going to roll out our driver app and scan the paperwork.
We're going to turn that paperwork into bonafide orders before the paper actually gets back to the terminal.
(11:02):
Right.
So Those are actually like a 204 going into the system ahead of time.
So something like that.
Those guys are going to save on annual basis roughly across the 14 terminals about 10,000 hours a year.
All of a sudden that, oh that 10 hours at 20 hours and people go is that, how meaningful is it?
Think about that.
That's incredibly meaningful.
It's like those are big numbers.
(11:23):
Now that's not for everybody of course.
And it's, you know, that's, it's a good example.
But, but some are smaller but the accuracy of the data, how important is that?
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
That's super important.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
As you know, right.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Getting the freight bill out correctly, right.
The right bill to the right customer, you know, and build correctly.
Getting the drivers pay, correct.
The driver pay is, it's one of the biggest things because there's drive come payday, the driver knows exactly to the penny, right.
What they should be getting paid.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
And that's wrong.
You're going to hear about, right.
And all of a sudden you, then you've got a problem with your drivers if you don't do that correctly.
So, and paid on time, right.
There's all those things that we automate the entire process, right.
So it's really, it's ensuring a better customer relationship, right.
Because we're got a better connection to the customer.
We're deeply integrated with them.
(12:09):
We have a better relationship with the driver because we're more accurate like in their pay and things like that.
And so, you know, those are some things that we're doing that makes our customers relationship, their customer better.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, no, I was just talking about this on a show here recently where I would argue your ability to properly invoice your customers, whether you're a carrier or a broker is more important than your ability to service them at the end of the day.
Because like if you look at it from an overarching like side effects of this, if you can't bill somebody properly pay you on time, slow payments will kill most businesses.
(12:49):
Right.
Like it's a very well known fact.
Like I, I don't know the exact percentage, but it's a very high percentage of businesses are within 30 days of going out of business every single month due to cash flow constraints.
So it's like with these slow billing cycles that come up and a lot of people struggling with them because they can't invoice their customers properly for one example.
(13:11):
How can automation help, you know, maybe cut invoice times, improve cash flows and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah.
So we're very good at that.
So give me an example.
So in our driver app, if I've got a driver up and you know, doing their deliveries, you know, whether it's one drop or multiple drops, what they do at the end of the trip, scan the paperwork, right?
And once we've scanned the paperwork at the end of the trip, we can literally send out a freight bill within five, ten minutes of that delivery.
(13:39):
And that's.
We're checking the paperwork, we're making sure everything that's required is there.
You know, the drivership sheet, the bill of lading, the signed pod.
We're looking for signatures, you know, all those things.
But if we get the green light that those are all good and we've validated that those are good, we can send the freight bill out right then and there.
So literally right there and accurately feed that back into the tms.
The billing goes out, it's good to go.
(14:01):
So we're.
You're very good at that.
And, and things like in a manual world where we have a customer that they, their drivers come back with a manual trip sheet, that what they did all day, right?
Kind of an outback.
And their turn all day is an example where, hey, they come back to the office at the end of the shift, they give someone a piece of paper.
Now they got to go key all this in.
But we can actually scan that document and just turn that into 204s, bring those into the TMS and handle it that way so we can automate that process as well.
(14:31):
So we can do the billing as quickly as anybody really wants to.
So there's no limitation.
The only thing would be is, hey, if we find an exception or if there's something missing, right, That'll go into hold queue.
Someone needs to look at that.
But otherwise the freight bill is going out immediately.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So, you know, I want to switch to, you know, because like, when people hear there's so many buzzwords out there right now, Bill within technology, you know, so it's like, you know, you hear about rpa.
So, you know, for those of you who are listening who do not know what an RPA is, Robotic process automation.
I, I look at it and I hear that and again, I like, I look at myself as a small business owner and it's like, what are some of these things?
(15:08):
Like, where could I put an RPA to automate my workflows, right?
Like, what can I do to build that up?
And I'm looking at it from a driver's perspective as well.
And you were talking about the trip settlements and all of that.
How are RPAs helping with like the manual busy work that most drivers and small fleets are dealing with on a day to day basis?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah.
So what we run into a lot is our customers have to go and update a web portal.
It's a great example.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
They have to upload paperwork, they might have to download something, they have to give status updates and this goes back to, may even have an effect on their scorecard with their customer.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
If this isn't done timely.
But those things we can completely automate.
So we've run into folks that have a team of maybe three or four people that are full time FTEs that are, that's what they do all day long.
We can literally automate that entire function as an example.
So if you're doing cast logistics or things like that.
But we can go to these web portals, whether they're status updates, tendering orders, updating orders, pulling orders back in, bringing them into the tms, we can do all of that.
(16:08):
We can take, like I said, manual paperwork, inbound emails, spreadsheet, any of those things.
We can adjust those into the EB system and we could turn those into 204s and make those modified order in a TMS and where that kind of comes in, what's very helpful, especially I'll folks on the LTL world for just a minute.
If we're scanning those documents as we do the pickups, we can turn those into orders immediately and then the terminal can start pre planning the outbound while the driver's out doing the pickups in a different world.
(16:39):
They don't know anything about the pickup yet back at the terminal.
So they don't, they can't pre plan anything.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So that could, they could build those trailers out within, you know, maybe six, seven hours ahead of schedule versus the paperwork getting delivered at the dock.
And then they pre plan to do that.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
How has some of this stuff transitioned into like driver retention?
Right.
Because I feel like that is one side of this industry that isn't talked about a lot is like how are we out there working to make the driver's lives easier?
You know, whether you're a fleet owner or you're building your fleet up, you know, everybody that I know of that owns a trucking company at any given moment, Bill, are going to be like, yeah, we're always looking for drivers, we're always looking to do that.
(17:19):
But it's like, I look at it as it's like, how are we.
How are some of these tools going to improve the driver experience?
Because you brought up money earlier and that like, that kills, I would say, like 99% of employees to the money.
Right.
If you, if you mess with their money, they're right.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Don't mess with the money ever.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
How are automating, like settlements and all of this stuff, how is that leading to a higher retention rate?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah.
So as we process the paperwork with the app, right, that feeds back into the tms, we're figuring out what settlement should be or the driver pay.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Whether it's an owner, operator, carrier or a company driver.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
That all gets automated ties back into the system.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So we know exactly what to expect.
Like, like say the carrier invoice as an example.
So let's say it's a, an outside carrier.
We know exactly what we should be paying them.
They should know exactly what to get paid.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
We can validate that.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
It falls in like an exception cube because it's out of compliance with, you know, a threshold of, you know, maybe, let's call it 2 or 3%, whatever it might be.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
So we can take care of that as well.
So, but for the driver themselves, they're looking for something easy, right.
They don't want some complicated app.
I got to log into this app, I got to look in this one.
I got to do this.
You know, we have deep links into a number of different mobility platforms.
And so we've.
We're able to get into, you know, these different systems and tie into the devices they're using today for their ELDs, right.
(18:45):
So it's like a one sign on for all, but also it's ease of use.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
So, you know, I don't know if you've ever used an app.
I'll give you an example.
This is, it's not a driver example, but I was.
My wife has had to go to a different dentist recently and they had, they sent her this link to an app.
She had to fill this information out and she was just, you know, fit to be tied because it just wasn't user friendly.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
It was just, you know, she finally handed it to me, hey, can you do this for me?
Like, they just want it to be easy and that's what we've done, right?
It has to be easy or they won't use it.
And then we tie that back into our recruiting piece, right, where we've had a database of over.
I think it was 3 million drivers.
If we've seen them before and they're applying for any of our customers in the past that use our system, then it's just the name, put it in.
(19:25):
And were able to do that.
We can take their cards, upload those so we can auto fill some of those things in.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's just easier.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So they just want easy.
They don't want to be bothered.
They want to dive the truck.
They want to deliver the freight, you know, because, you know, what's important to them is getting there on time, getting there safely.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
No damage.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
And all this other stuff is, you know, we kind of put it on the drivers.
So it's got to be easy.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, I, again, I'm not a driver.
I'm not speaking for drivers, but my dad was a driver and I know his personality.
I know how he was.
And that is it.
Like, he didn't want to be bothered with any of this.
At the end of the day, Bill, he wanted to drive.
That was it.
Right.
And then, you know, I look at it as, you know, and I've said this on the show multiple times in the past, is, you know, a lot of these, you know, companies out there, like, they can't shut their business down for a week to go to a conference to learn about a lot of this new stuff.
(20:15):
Right?
That's out there because, you know, contrary to what a lot of people think, like, it is an investment to go to a conference and there has to be an ROI for your time.
And especially if you're a owner, operator or you own a small business, like, you're literally shutting your stuff down.
You're running on a skeleton crew for, you know, so it's like when we're looking at this and, you know, the driver piece, the.
(20:36):
The hiring, the onboarding, the recruiting, all of that's a process out there.
So it's like.
And you were talking about some of those things.
So it's like, is there a.
It sounds like there's a driver piece here where a.
Drivers can go in, they can have all of their, you know, medical records and, you know, CDL verification.
All of that stuff can be on there.
Is that in, like, in a portal where people can go in, start a lot of that?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Yeah, the mobile app and a portal, we can do all of that.
So.
So everything from your applicant tracking, you know, the DQ files, you know, as we pro.
As you.
As you kind of bring that driver along through the recruiting process, that's all kind of automated.
We have drip marketing to reach back out to the drivers, like, okay, we haven't heard from you in a week.
You know, I thought were, you know, progressing here as we recruit you.
(21:19):
Right.
Here's what we're going to do.
We can do it by regions, we can do by state.
You know, you kind of define that, but yeah, so we, the key ultimately is the ease of use for the driver to use those tools.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
And if it's not easy, they're not going to use it.
We know that.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
So, you know, down effects of this.
Right.
You know, hiring the wrong.
Like there's been a lot of highly publicized things here as of late about, you know, safety compliance and a lot of that stuff.
And you know, there's obviously there's real consequences if you hire the wrong drivers and stuff like that out there.
But, you know, safety and compliance is another thing.
And you know, every time I see a lot of this stuff that comes about, Bill, I'm like, it seems like it's a reaction in the moment, right.
(22:02):
And it's.
And it's like, you know, the outsiders looking in.
It's kind of like, how was, how did we get here?
You know, like, that's a lot of those things.
I don't, when I see a lot of this stuff, I don't necessarily blame the incident.
I blame the oversights that led to put somebody in that position to make that mistake.
Right.
And it feels like it with safety and compliance, this is more times than not.
(22:24):
Once you start seeing some of these carriers that are out there was a clear lack that led to this point.
Right.
So it's like, how are you guys out there and how do you see automation help carriers stay more, you know, up to date with all of their safety and compliance process?
Because that's going to ultimately lead to lower insurance.
And insurance is a whole other suck for most carriers.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, yeah.
So a lot, not a lot of people know this about eb, but what we've done is, and I mentioned deep links into mobility products, right.
The, you know, the mobility platforms of the world without naming all of them and camera systems.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
So what we've done is.
I'll go back to the deep links into these products.
We were able to extract all that information about the eld, the hours of service, the driver behavior from the cameras, you know, all of this.
So, and where we're really good is if there's a.
We'll call it a mixed fleet.
So in other words, if I've got a fleet that's got two Types of telematics and maybe two types of cameras as an example.
Maybe there was a merger, right.
(23:21):
So now they've got all this technology they're trying to figure out how do we combine it.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
We're able to bring that into one pane of glass for the fleet manager and the safety manager to view and then we look at the driver behaviors.
Is there anything that's concerning to us?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
And then we can pull them aside and have, or bring that to the attention of the safety manager.
Say look, here's some things that you need to be aware of that's happening with these particular drivers and maybe they need to, we'll send them some educational material, bring them into the terminal, you know, things like that.
But we're very good at getting, capturing that information.
And I'll go back to the one pane of glass that we're able to present to the fleet managers and the safety managers.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Which is a lot of people don't know that we do that and find that interesting concern.
We don't have an ELD or we're not a mobility company.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
No, I look at, it is as you know, I think if there's one underlying thing across every industry when it comes to technology and everything else, Bill is like this is just going to replace us.
Right.
Like this is going to replace people all of a sudden.
You know, nobody's going to have jobs and everything else.
But like for me, everything you're describing here, this just makes a company more dialed in.
(24:35):
Right.
Like this is going to make you better at your job.
How many safety managers again?
I, I, I, I would argue that probably everybody you would interview for this be like, oh I have so much going on.
This is why it's not done well.
This is why a tool keeps you so like you, because you like you can't have a, I forgot to do that moment when you're getting, you know, in a deposition, you know, like if you're a safety manager and you're you know the unfortunate fatality or accident that happens out there, you cannot say we don't have that.
(25:04):
Right.
Or the lawyers are, you're gonna, they're gonna bury you for that.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So it's like I look at a lot of the like what you're describing out here.
This just makes you a more well rounded company and like this is just going to keep you stay on task, keep you up to date because again I like it's never a matter if it's when you are in this position you're going to be in a position, you're going to be on the unfortunate end of a denied insurance claim or a lawsuit.
(25:31):
And then that could potentially bury your dream, your business, put tons of people out of work way faster than an RPA could.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Yeah, we help mitigate that.
Right, with this tool set.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
And so that's part of what we offer.
And so this really comes from, hey, what do the customers want?
EB is listening to their customers, you know, from the very beginning, you know, and these are the things that kind of came from that.
And again, I'll, you know, the, I think we have close to 30 different solutions that were, that we offer that, you know, around safety compliance or it's the, on the RPA AI stuff.
(26:03):
So it's, we're doing a lot in that area and mitigation of the risk is a big one.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
No, and I think like, you know, from my perspective, it's like there's always going to be something that's going to come up, right?
And, and you need to, you just like, I, I, I'm really going through, I don't want to call it like an identity crisis or anything like that, but like I'm going through this phase in business, Bill, where it's like, you know, we talk about the freight market being down.
(26:29):
We talk about like there's always something and then everybody's always looking to blame somebody else.
And I'm just at this kind of like reflective part of my journey of like, it's all on me.
At the end of the day, I have to figure this out, right?
Like, I can't look anybody else in the eye and be like, oh, it's a bad freight market.
That's why I'm going out.
No, no, I'm not going out of business.
I'm going to figure it out.
Right?
And I look at it with where technology is today.
(26:52):
Like, there are so many tools that are out there that help you way more than work against you.
And you have to go out there and you have to find them.
You have to find those blind spots in your businesses.
And the way that I see it, man, some of this technology is way cheaper than a consultant, you know, like a consultant come in and bill you hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell you what an RPA could probably tell you, right?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
And you bring up a really good point.
We have such deep domain knowledge at EB it's incredible, right?
20 plus years of experience with a lot of the folks that are there.
So we Got some industry veterans that just arrived.
So we've got a really nice mix of people there and it feels kind of honest a little bit as a.
They've been in business over 50 years, but it's kind of a startup vibe to it where we're doing all this stuff.
(27:37):
It's point solutions.
We're helping all these carriers with these big giant TMSs, kind of extend the life of their TMS, right?
With these point solutions adding on some functionality that they've never had before.
So you know, it has.
Because the freight's down, right?
People are watching every penny.
You know, at some point they may have a 25 year old TMS, but they're not ready to make that move yet.
They gotta wait.
It might be three or four years.
(27:57):
In the meantime, we can help them extend the life of what they're doing with their current solutions.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Bill, what is something that you think people should be on the lookout for in regards to tech and freight?
Or maybe.
What's one thing as we're wrapping up here that you wish more people were aware of when they're like vetting possible vendors out there to hire for their company?
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Well, I would say that because I've been doing this a long time, you know, TMS and point solutions, it's really when you're looking at people and solutions, my advice is, look, you've got to make them prove they can do it, right?
A lot of people go around talking about what they can do.
They, you know, there's an old saying, we call it vaporware, right?
You've got to be able, ask those people, prove to me that you can do this, show me that you can do it and truly walk me through the process, right?
(28:48):
And maybe to the point of, hey, take my data and show me how that works.
I need to know.
Because what I've learned very recently is a lot of people call them kind of burn victims out in the market where this new technology pops up.
We can do this and this, but can they really do it?
So my advice is really, you know, do your due diligence.
Make, make them prove they can absolutely do that, right?
(29:08):
And so that's probably the best advice I give.
Folks are out shopping for new technology because there's a lot of talk going on right now, but it's really, you know, it's delivering the freight, it's getting the bills out, it's getting the drivers paid, right?
That's the.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
And safely, right?
Speaker 3 (29:22):
So those are important factors and then streamlining the back office with this automation.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
These are, these are really good things now.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Perfect.
Bill, I appreciate your time today.
How does anybody reach out to you to find out more about what you guys have going on?
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, you can just find my LinkedIn, you know, Bill Holiday or just hit our website or Bill H. @ebe-inc.com Perfect.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Sounds good, Bill.
Bill, thank you so much for joining me.
That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
As always, if you got value in what you heard.
Thank you.
Subscribe to the show, you guys.
And if you're feeling ambitious after this one, which you should be, rank the show on itunes and Spotify because if you saw value, your network's going to see value as well.
I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Came back with a bank hey let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger boss Hey.
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