September 25, 2025 • 33 mins
How much money is your fleet leaving on the table by not managing trailers effectively? What if a simple, one-minute install could turn a $50,000 asset into a profit driver instead of a liability?
In today’s episode, Carl-Christoph “CCR” Reckers shares how FleetPulse has stepped into the market with practical trailer telematics that solve real problems instead of just throwing “dots on a map” at you. With its data-driven preventive maintenance, CCR discusses how technology is reshaping trailer utilization, safety, and security.
Plus, we cover why today’s higher interest rate environment is forcing fleets to rethink trailer-to-tractor ratios, how theft prevention and cargo monitoring tech protect your reputation and bottom line, and why automation is the key to stopping unpaid dwell time from eating into revenue!
About Carl-Christoph “CCR” Reckers
Carl-Christoph is a full-stack, hands-on tech leader with strong go-to-market and product instincts, adept at aligning product, sales, marketing, and customer experience teams while empowering strong ownership to achieve common goals. He’s focusing on recruiting, developing and retaining top talent and fostering a values-driven, entrepreneurial high-performance culture.
Carl-Christoph is known for creating an environment conducive to experimentation and rapid learning by balancing collaboration with decisiveness and moving fast, and has a track record of launching B2B products and businesses from zero and scaling profitably to $MMM.
Currently, he’s focusing on digital transformation in B2B, digital supply chain, product, electrification, and AI.
Connect with CCR
- Website: https://fleetpulse.com/ / https://greatdane.com/fleetpulse/
- Email: sales@fleetpulse.com
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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 at that 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 lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them hate them make a bigger.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Balls 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.
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve.
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.
I got a very special guest for you guys here today, and I'm going to bring him up in a minute.
But my team always likes to remind me at the beginning of the episode, I need to say this.
If you get value in what you hear today, you guys, and you're not subscribed, do me a favor, you guys, subscribe to the show, whether you're watching it on YouTube, you, iTunes, Spotify, just do that.
Drop that on there.
If you're feeling ambitious after this one as well, rank the show on those platforms as well.
(01:29):
Because if you saw value, your network's going to see value as well.
And then also, you guys, our weekly newsletter, it dropped yesterday.
I need you to go to the Freight Coach.com to auto register for that.
Because like I always say, I don't just auto sign people up for it.
So if you want to get in on it drops once a week, every single Wednesday.
It just needs you to go to thefraycoach.com though, to register for it.
(01:49):
But that being said, you guys, like I said, I got a very special guest for you guys here today.
Data analytics, everything, you guys, it's growing in every facet of this industry, and especially when you're looking at equipment out there, your trucks, trailers, and everything else, it all tells a story now.
And there's a lot that we can break down.
So I have CCR fleet pulse on the show today.
(02:10):
So the fortunate son has joined.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Let's rock the fortunate set.
Is it the fortunate sun or is it bad moon?
Great to be here, Chris.
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
No, I'm looking forward to it.
And I'll try and keep all the.
The CPR references down to a minimum out there, but I've reached that phase in my life now where I just, like, I'm really digging into dad jokes and everything at this point.
It annoys my son so much at this point.
So now I've just like, kind of become infatuated with making that uncomfortableness that comes with it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
That's totally fine.
I got kids myself.
I make dad jokes all the time.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, hey, man, I appreciate you taking the time to join me today.
So how'd you get your start in the industry, though?
Like, what brought you into transportation?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
You know, it's funny, transportation is actually my second career, if you will, and I kind of stumbled into it about 10 years ago.
And by now I've, you know, I've brokered loads of dispatched trucks.
I've dropped trailers of, you know, booked spotloads, you name it.
But it really started with.
In my first career, I worked a lot with either shippers or on the industrial side, a lot with OEMs, and was working on a project for an OEM.
(03:25):
Started really looking into the business of trucking.
So how do trucking companies operate?
What drives their P and L?
And this is 10 years ago, specifically, the booking of freight stood out to me.
So actually, how does brokerage work?
And back then it was still, you know, you would send in a pod on a fax machine.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Right?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That's how it worked back then.
And I, you know, I just, I felt so inspired by just, you know, applying technology to these problems.
So I started a company really focused on digital brokerage, or back then it was called Digital Freight Matching, a company called Freight Star.
And we focused on really brokering transportation for equipment.
(04:10):
So if you bought a new combine and needed to move it to your farm, you could use Freight Star to do that.
So that was my start, and it kind of went from there.
You know, that company eventually was acquired and, you know, you can still move your combine with Freight Star, so encourage folks to check it out.
(04:30):
But then personally, I went to Uber Freight as they were really expanding and growing and had a chance to.
To build a couple of businesses.
One of them was.
Was a trailer pool program called Power Loop.
Oh, yeah, I. I actually had my hands on trailers, you know, years ago.
And, you know, believe it or not, I was.
I was a Great Dane and a Fleet Pulse customer before I even knew about Fleet Pulse.
(04:57):
Yeah, and that was.
That was a great ride and a wild ride and, you know, and that led me eventually then to a point where.
Where I came across Fleet Pulse.
And it was.
We'll talk more about what FleetPulse actually is, but in a nutshell, trailer technology that Great Dane had developed in house to Great Dane, the big trailer oem, they've been investing in smart trailers and adding sensors to trailers and so forth.
(05:22):
And they got to a point where they wanted to spin it off and really, you know, have Fleet Pulse stand on its own two feet.
So that's.
That's when I joined and, you know, that's where I am now.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So, like, let's start with that.
Matt, what is Fleet Pulse at the end of the day, right?
Like, we're hearing a lot of it, you know, with sensors and a bunch of stuff that's coming out with trailers.
Like, what is Flea Pulse?
And then how does that really work into the industry here?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, it's, you know, the space we play in is trailer telematics or smart trailers, but what we actually do is we solve trailer operations problems to improve and.
And unlock the profit potential of every trailer.
So that's like I say that as a nuance, and it may seem as a nuance, but I think what's important, and I hope we get a chance to talk about it today, is trailer telematics has been there for a while, and it's been about giving you more data, and it oftentimes meant dots on a map.
(06:20):
At the end of the day, that doesn't really solve any problems or that doesn't impact your P and L as a trucking company.
So we really focus on solving these trailer operations problems with data, with analytics, with.
With AI.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So what is trailer telematics, though?
And like for the.
For the modern fleets that are out there, why is this becoming essential?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
It's a great question.
Right, and you said becoming essential.
If you look at the market, it's not essential yet, or it hasn't hit mainstream yet.
And that's actually puzzling to me.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
If you think about it, trailers are $50,000 asset, and many fleets don't manage these trailers actively.
There's no technology on them, and the fleets sometimes don't know where those trailers are, certainly don't know what state they're in, whether they're roadworthy, they're safe, whether they're loaded, not loaded.
(07:20):
And it's almost like running a football team and ignoring the defense.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
It doesn't make any sense to me.
So trailer telematics is really about digitizing these trailers and this has recently become more and more relevant.
If you think about what's happened over the last, call it five years Covid times in Covid, everyone bought trailers and freight really shifted towards drop.
(07:46):
So the trailer all of a sudden became a very strategic asset.
But you still had zero interest rates.
So people could just buy trailers, put them on their yard.
Trailer to tractor ratio didn't really matter five years ago.
But that's changed as well, right?
The freight market is not where it was a couple of years ago in terms of rates and interest rates have just gone up.
(08:12):
So if you have these assets out there that are not being used, that are not generating revenue, you've got a real problem on your hand.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
So that's one really definitely the way the industry thinks about trailers and the rise of drop freight.
I also want to say the tech has come a long way.
Even the hardware where it was cumbersome to digitize your trailers and you never wanted touch your trailers or really install a whole lot.
(08:45):
Just an example, here's a little.
This is one of our products.
You know, it's the size of a hockey puck and then it can give you the location for a trailer for 10 years.
Right.
You install that, you install that in less than a minute and your trailer is online and you never lose a trailer again.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
These things were just not possible years ago.
And I'm excited, right, because it opens up really the, you know, a quicker path for fleets to digitize their trader pools.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So at what size fleet do you think should have these telematics in it?
Right.
Because like with, you know, 90 some percent of the industry being small business here, some people, like I, I know where I stand on this, but I know some people out there might be like, we're not big enough to like require this.
Right.
Like we know totally where our trailers are.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, they, you know, there's value in trailer telematics for every fleet.
I honestly believe that.
And the use cases differ though from size, from business model.
If you just think about it.
For use cases, we really talk about four key use cases.
(09:55):
One is utilization and location.
Another one is automation, safety and security.
You said for small carriers, if I only have one or two trucks and the same number of trailers.
You're right.
I always know where my trailer is.
So probably don't really have that location use case where I need to find my trailer.
(10:21):
But there's still plenty of information for safety.
For example.
And for a small fleet, a roadside call to get your trailer pulled can be extremely costly and can really hit your P and L. Same with security.
Any carrier really gets hit with cargo theft, right?
(10:42):
That's not limited to the big carriers.
So investing in technology to protect your cargo, make sure that you're not targeted, you don't actually get hit with an insurance deductible, I think is key.
Again, I think for any fleet that makes sense, what we do see is, you know, the, among the larger fleets, so private fleets really invest in trailer telematics for safety.
(11:11):
They want to have, they want to operate the safest equipment, they want to increase uptime.
It's one of the key use cases and then for, you know, call it the high volume fleet.
So whether it's a dedicated shipper, dedicated fleet or an LTL fleet, those fleets tend to really focus on driving utilization, driving automation.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
What are processes that I can essentially I can, you know, automate the data capturing and I can give a few examples as well.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So do you think that we're at a point now where people need to start looking at more of the data to increase the life cycle of their businesses?
And because like I look at it, you know, like a lot of people when you get into business and when you start something like your sole thing is I just need to make money because I have all these payments that I'm committed to.
(12:02):
I gotta make sure that I'm making enough money to pay that.
But I feel like in today's day and age, with advancements in technology and everything that's out there, I feel like you're.
Every business of every size tells a story through their data.
And I think as an operator, you know, a lot of us when we go out on our own for the first time, were a really good driver, right?
(12:23):
Or you know, you're a really good broker and you're like, you know what, I got some good customers here.
I want to go out and take a shot of my own here.
And, and it's a big transition to go from operator in your job, in the job that generates the revenue and then operator of a business where there are actual assets and you need to utilize them to, you need to utilize that data that every business tells to increase the life cycle of that.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So, so the key to it is to make that data actually simple to use and you know, very much Tied to an ROI or to a business problem that you want to solve.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Because if you're making this transition from, you know, actually from generating the revenue yourself to managing the business, it's very easy to get inundated with data.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Completely overwhelmed.
And we hear this from fleets of this by the way.
This is not just for the medium sized carriers.
These are the largest carriers as well.
They say we don't actually need more data, but what we do need is we need help.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
We need to find these.
You talked about, you know, making money or like I always talk about the P L because the P L has two sides, right?
You got to find these loose ends that you haven't tightened up and you know, in today's day with very tight, very tight margins for carriers.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Look at where, look at the low hanging fruit, look at the parts of your business that you haven't touched and most times that is trailers.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Right?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
It's again, it's crazy to me that you're haggling over cents on spot rates or you know, you're willing to like, you're willing to take absolute rock bottom rates but then when it comes to managing your cost, you've got these assets that you just leave completely unmanaged and as a result you just have all these downstream costs.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
No, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
No, by all means, I think you were going to make a good point there.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well, I was just saying the key to it all is no one needs digitization for digitization's sake.
No one needs data or more data.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
It's.
So how can the telematics companies actually really make it easy for fleets to drive a business result very quickly, solve a problem, solve a process and that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, I mean you brought up profit potential earlier.
And I'm also thinking of with a lot of businesses out there who may not look to reinvest in new equipment right now because of interest rates and other financial parameters that are out there where they're looking to increase the life cycle of their equipment.
(15:21):
Maybe they were trading in trailer medically every five years.
They want to keep them for eight years now and then go on a new rotation and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
See that all the time.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, yeah.
And I look at, from a preventative maintenance standpoint, right, because like my only real frontline experience in, on the asset side of things, CCR is My dad owned a trucking company, right?
He was a driver.
I saw him do all of his own maintenance.
I was that guy who had to hold the flashlight for my dad.
So if you say, if you think you can offend me, I used to hold the flashlight for my father while he repaired his truck when I was younger.
(15:53):
But with that being said, preventative maintenance is key, right?
And it's keep.
It's those little things that I even see in my own vehicles at my house, right?
Like it's those little preventative things making sure your oils change, you know, everything's greased up, all of that stuff.
Are you seeing that?
And is that where some of these, all of this data should be telling, like, hey, these are the things we need to do to get an extra two to three years to, out of.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
This piece of equipment, 100%.
You got to take better care of your equipment if you want it to last longer, period.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I'll give you two data points of how like a digital trailer can really, you know, change the game on maintenance and safety.
So data point one, most fleets run on a, like, on a periodic preventive maintenance interval, right?
So bring the trailer in every six months, every 12 months.
(16:46):
And that's like, they pick their sweet spot of like, at what point am I going to catch enough issues so that you know that essentially the maintenance dollars are well spent?
But I do prevent, again, prevent the issues.
If you have sensors that, for example, tell you the status of the ABs, the status of, you know, whether a light is out, and give you real time alerts on these things, you can stretch your PM intervals without risking additional safety incidents and that increases your maintenance effectiveness.
(17:23):
That's point one.
Point two, fleets that rigorously deploy telematics on their trailers reduce the out of service violations on their trailers by 40%.
And that's crazy.
That's real money right there because you pay fines, you pay higher insurance rates.
(17:43):
For some shippers, you even drop out of their carrier mix.
So these things are important and you've hit it on the head, right?
Especially if you want your trailers to run longer, you're going to put more years on them.
You just got to take better care of them.
And the cheapest way to do it is actually to install sensors.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
So is that the, like how can you explain that when you're saying like, you can save it, you know, 40% there through telematics?
How is that, Is it so you know where trailers are so you can schedule preventative maintenance checks if it's out of, you know, out of route or something like that.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
We.
So yes, you can.
So first of, you can detect issues as they happen.
And you know, typically if you look at violations, right.
We've done this analysis of fleets that actually get caught in a violation or get cited.
(18:43):
So how soon does the telematics or how much in advance does the telematics actually catch whatever is wrong with that trailer that was sighted on of course, you know the answer to this, right?
So the trailer will have something wrong with it and then for days it's still on the road and that's when you get the inspection and that's when you get sighted.
(19:07):
So if a fleet has the technology to get that real time alert, they can bring the trailer into the shop next time it hits the dock and make sure that they don't get sighted before it happens.
But the key is actually to know what's wrong with the trailer.
And for that you need telematics.
Now the.
(19:28):
I think that's the main point.
What we also see in our data is we see issues getting worse, right.
If you look at, we do this great thing where we, for example, with atis on a trailer, we see these patterns, ADAS kicks in, refills your tire and that happens once, no big deal.
(19:51):
That's exactly what the ADAS is for.
But if you see that recurring, you've got a problem, right?
And if you see the ADAs continuously running, that's when you have a fast leak, you want to pull the trailer in.
And if you can manage these processes and bring that into your maintenance approach, you're going to avoid the roadside assistance, you're going to again reduce your violations and you make sure that you spend the dollars where the most effective rather than just peanut buttering it across your entire fleet.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Do you think that, you know, with, and especially like the fleets who, you know, they might be larger or out there really in, you know, a company of any size is.
I feel like I'm drawn to a lot of parallels here.
Obvious there's a system that should be implemented by a lot of companies that might not be there.
And this is where telematics and sensors and data is going to help you stay more on top of this stuff.
(20:47):
And again, it's about getting ahead of it so it doesn't cause it to be towed.
Right.
There's no major incident that happened.
You can kind of get ahead of a lot of this stuff.
And you know, again, I draw a lot of parallels between like the airline industry, for example, Right.
Like they're not going to take off if there's even a remote thing that there might be something that's going to be wrong with it.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
There is no rolling the dice.
But I feel like with where things are in the industry right now with technology, those exact same things are afforded to us now.
It is just making a couple of small investments inside of your equipment because I look at it as, you know, like, you might not have the purchasing power out there to get Discounts from the OEMs if you know you're not going to buy a thousand trailers, for example.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
But you might want to go in there and buy three or four at that time.
And then you look at it, how do I get these things paid off as soon as possible?
How do I keep these things rolling for as long as possible?
And it is just these little tweaks like this that you're really describing here.
Because, like, and I also look at it too, with like, some of the larger fleets that are out there.
How many of them have trailers?
(21:48):
Like, anybody who's driven through any industrial area of any city in this country sees the large logos with a hundred trailers at a warehouse.
How many of them sit.
How many of them?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
So that.
Let's talk about that for a second, right?
Because this, what you're really talking about is dwell time.
And what we see is dwell time is unmanaged, right?
For many carriers where you have trailers sitting there for months at a time, we talked earlier about the shift towards drop freight.
(22:22):
In general, you have trailers that sit there loaded for days and days at a time.
And for the carrier, what that means is if you're not managing that stuff, you're missing out on detention that your shipper should be paying you.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You certainly miss out on being able to pull that trailer to make more money elsewhere with that same trailer.
But you're also missing out on revenue dollars because your shipper is simply keeping your trailer as mobile storage, and you want to get a grip on that.
Other things we see if you don't manage that are these big yards with hundreds of trailers.
(23:03):
They're not putting trailers into rotation in a way that actually keeps the trailers healthy.
If a trailer stands for a long time, all the issues compound.
And what you actually want to do is you want to rotate trailers.
And then I mentioned automation.
There's on big yards, you have people driving around and actually counting the trailers or marking down which trailer is in my yard.
(23:31):
These are things that we're solving, right?
We're Solving for fleets.
And it's the 21st century.
You shouldn't be doing that anymore.
Right.
You shouldn't be walking around with a clipboard.
There's better ways to do it, and that's what we're all about.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
I also look at it from security in theft as well here, how many trailers that.
Because people can't be that naive to think that people aren't watching.
How long is this equipment sitting there?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
You know, people, there's people, there's plenty of people with sticky fingers out there.
How is this.
Do you guys have any real world examples of like you guys were able to recover 10 trailers or you know, hypothetical number there because they went missing for, you know, from a specific drop yard.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
So the whole trailer.
Absolutely right.
And you know what we see many fleets actually per 2,000 trailers, they have eight trailers stolen a year.
So if you have a 10,000 trailer fleet, that means five trailers go walkabout every year.
(24:34):
And were able to locate these trailers.
We're able to help fleets recover them.
But did you know you can look inside trailers as well?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So we deploy technology.
It's essentially cameras that keep eyes on the cargo.
And you know, we've built a nest cam, like experience right where you know, you look at your trailer and some of these freight theft patterns or cargo theft patterns, you know, it happens that, you know, that trailer that has the TVs on it, you know, that's the one that actually gets broken into or where cargo gets taken off.
(25:15):
And you know, you got to understand what's actually going on because the trailer that has the less attractive freight, for whatever reason, does not get touched.
As a fleet owner, you actually want to understand who's touching my cargo and where and when.
Again, it's about real time alerts, it's about recognizing patterns and then making the right decisions based on that.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, I think a lot of it is, you know, from at least from a cargo theft perspective and everything.
Now it's very commodity driven.
You know, how fast can somebody liquidate it?
It's not necessarily the cargo value anymore.
It's like, how fast can we get rid of this truckload of, you know, cotton swabs or whatever we want to look at.
But you know, another thing too is how much damage does your fleet sustain throughout the year that it gets pinned on the driver.
(26:06):
When it was a loader error, somebody came in, damaged the sidewall, then they want to blame you again, like I Understand some people's, you know, opinions on cameras and stuff, but like, I, if I own a fleet or when I own a fleet, one day my equipment will have cameras on it because I want to be able to pin it on whomever is responsible.
Because how I've seen this happen so many times throughout my career.
(26:29):
Driver was getting loaded, loader ripped the sidewall of the trailer out, and then they blame the driver.
Oh, that was there when it.
And then there's no way to prove that you didn't do it.
And that's the.
I hate that we're here as a society, but, like, at the end of the day, you need to protect your business.
You need to protect that investment because again, if you want to increase the life cycle of your trailer, if you want to haul specific commodities long term, you cannot have any repair patchwork on the side of your trailer and stuff.
(26:56):
You got to keep that integrity of the, of your unit in place at all times, 100%.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
And I love these examples that you bring.
And as a fleet owner, you got to ask yourself, you can make these problems go away for a couple dollars a month, right?
Is that worth it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Of course.
Of course.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Save yourself the headaches.
And again, it's about tying up loose ends in your P and L, where these things, they do add up.
And you talked about claims ratios or how often do you actually get hit with damages, with claims.
These things are manageable.
And the trailer is where the cargo is.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Right?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
So that's like, that's the place to invest or to digitize.
And having that be analog is completely crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
As we're kind of wrapping up here today.
Ccr, what's the future of smart trailers looking like here, man?
Like, what can people expect as things to, you know, obviously technology is always advancing out there.
Where do you see this trending in the next, you know, three to five years?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
You know, I, I see every trailer, every single trailer having some kind of basic telematics on it.
And we're really, I think we're moving there very quickly.
And you know, by that I mean, at a minimum, you got to know where the trailer is.
And then, you know, you can build automation on top of that.
I, what I also see is the most sophisticated fleets, they, you know, they really want to leverage technology to solve these problems.
(28:32):
So what you're going to see is, you know, fleets deploying cameras, fleets deploying, like, full sensor suites.
So where you actually have your, you know, all Your maintenance data, brakes, lights, tires, whatnot.
And, and I think this is like, this is happening right now because of all of the trends and, you know, pressures that carriers are under that we've talked about today.
(28:59):
I think this is happening rapidly.
There is always the question of how do you scale, how do you roll this out, how does a fleet actually start adopting these technologies?
And that in the past, that's been a holdback.
I do want to just briefly talk about Fleet Pulse.
(29:20):
We partner with OEMs, we make it easy for fleets to simply on a new trailer.
Simply put, fleet Pulse on there with a couple of clicks.
It's one discussion with your trailer sales rep, and then you're all set.
For us, that's very important to make it easy for fleets to at least try this technology then.
(29:44):
I've said before, the hardware has gotten easier to deploy.
So if you're looking at a larger scale retrofit or something that was a huge undertaking in the past, you can actually do these things rather quickly.
And we do, you know, we work with fleets that, you know, that digitize thousands of trailers a month.
(30:07):
So it's.
I think this is like, again, this is coming much more quickly than, you know, that any of us would have thought.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So essentially the best way for people is to go to you guys or on it, or do they go through their OEM or their local truck dealership, whomever they're purchasing their equipment from, and go that route.
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah, both of those are great, you know, great avenues.
So we at fleet Pulse, we're available 247 at sales fleetpulse.com and always like to have a conversation with fleets of, like, what are the problems they're trying to solve?
And then for OEMs, you know, we partner very closely with Great Dane phenomenal trailers.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:49):
And you know, those Great Dane reps that, you know, selling trailers, they're actually very well versed on telematics nowadays.
So, you know, carriers can talk to their reps about telematics as well.
And then, you know, we typically get tacked into the conversation.
We work with other OEMs as well.
But again, you know, always happy to have the conversation live and really, you know, explore together what's hurting your P and L and how might that be solved with telematics.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Perfect ccr.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for joining me.
That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
If you guys can't find CCR or flea pulse out there, hit me up, I will gladly put you guys in direct contact with them.
But that's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
As always, if you got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show.
You guys.
And if you're feeling ambitious after this one, rank the show on itunes and Spotify.
Because if you saw value, your network's going to see it as well.
(31:42):
I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys, and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
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 getting to the back?
Hey?
Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast?
Hey, hey?
Let them all cross if they hate, then let them hate them?
Make a bigger balls?
(32:12):
Hey.
Came back with a bank window down yelling now money at that 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 lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them hate them make a bigger.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Balls 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.
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve.
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.
I got a very special guest for you guys here today, and I'm going to bring him up in a minute.
But my team always likes to remind me at the beginning of the episode, I need to say this.
If you get value in what you hear today, you guys, and you're not subscribed, do me a favor, you guys, subscribe to the show, whether you're watching it on YouTube, you, iTunes, Spotify, just do that.
Drop that on there.
If you're feeling ambitious after this one as well, rank the show on those platforms as well.
(01:29):
Because if you saw value, your network's going to see value as well.
And then also, you guys, our weekly newsletter, it dropped yesterday.
I need you to go to the Freight Coach.com to auto register for that.
Because like I always say, I don't just auto sign people up for it.
So if you want to get in on it drops once a week, every single Wednesday.
It just needs you to go to thefraycoach.com though, to register for it.
(01:49):
But that being said, you guys, like I said, I got a very special guest for you guys here today.
Data analytics, everything, you guys, it's growing in every facet of this industry, and especially when you're looking at equipment out there, your trucks, trailers, and everything else, it all tells a story now.
And there's a lot that we can break down.
So I have CCR fleet pulse on the show today.
(02:10):
So the fortunate son has joined.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Let's rock the fortunate set.
Is it the fortunate sun or is it bad moon?
Great to be here, Chris.
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
No, I'm looking forward to it.
And I'll try and keep all the.
The CPR references down to a minimum out there, but I've reached that phase in my life now where I just, like, I'm really digging into dad jokes and everything at this point.
It annoys my son so much at this point.
So now I've just like, kind of become infatuated with making that uncomfortableness that comes with it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
That's totally fine.
I got kids myself.
I make dad jokes all the time.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, hey, man, I appreciate you taking the time to join me today.
So how'd you get your start in the industry, though?
Like, what brought you into transportation?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
You know, it's funny, transportation is actually my second career, if you will, and I kind of stumbled into it about 10 years ago.
And by now I've, you know, I've brokered loads of dispatched trucks.
I've dropped trailers of, you know, booked spotloads, you name it.
But it really started with.
In my first career, I worked a lot with either shippers or on the industrial side, a lot with OEMs, and was working on a project for an OEM.
(03:25):
Started really looking into the business of trucking.
So how do trucking companies operate?
What drives their P and L?
And this is 10 years ago, specifically, the booking of freight stood out to me.
So actually, how does brokerage work?
And back then it was still, you know, you would send in a pod on a fax machine.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Right?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That's how it worked back then.
And I, you know, I just, I felt so inspired by just, you know, applying technology to these problems.
So I started a company really focused on digital brokerage, or back then it was called Digital Freight Matching, a company called Freight Star.
And we focused on really brokering transportation for equipment.
(04:10):
So if you bought a new combine and needed to move it to your farm, you could use Freight Star to do that.
So that was my start, and it kind of went from there.
You know, that company eventually was acquired and, you know, you can still move your combine with Freight Star, so encourage folks to check it out.
(04:30):
But then personally, I went to Uber Freight as they were really expanding and growing and had a chance to.
To build a couple of businesses.
One of them was.
Was a trailer pool program called Power Loop.
Oh, yeah, I. I actually had my hands on trailers, you know, years ago.
And, you know, believe it or not, I was.
I was a Great Dane and a Fleet Pulse customer before I even knew about Fleet Pulse.
(04:57):
Yeah, and that was.
That was a great ride and a wild ride and, you know, and that led me eventually then to a point where.
Where I came across Fleet Pulse.
And it was.
We'll talk more about what FleetPulse actually is, but in a nutshell, trailer technology that Great Dane had developed in house to Great Dane, the big trailer oem, they've been investing in smart trailers and adding sensors to trailers and so forth.
(05:22):
And they got to a point where they wanted to spin it off and really, you know, have Fleet Pulse stand on its own two feet.
So that's.
That's when I joined and, you know, that's where I am now.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So, like, let's start with that.
Matt, what is Fleet Pulse at the end of the day, right?
Like, we're hearing a lot of it, you know, with sensors and a bunch of stuff that's coming out with trailers.
Like, what is Flea Pulse?
And then how does that really work into the industry here?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, it's, you know, the space we play in is trailer telematics or smart trailers, but what we actually do is we solve trailer operations problems to improve and.
And unlock the profit potential of every trailer.
So that's like I say that as a nuance, and it may seem as a nuance, but I think what's important, and I hope we get a chance to talk about it today, is trailer telematics has been there for a while, and it's been about giving you more data, and it oftentimes meant dots on a map.
(06:20):
At the end of the day, that doesn't really solve any problems or that doesn't impact your P and L as a trucking company.
So we really focus on solving these trailer operations problems with data, with analytics, with.
With AI.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So what is trailer telematics, though?
And like for the.
For the modern fleets that are out there, why is this becoming essential?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
It's a great question.
Right, and you said becoming essential.
If you look at the market, it's not essential yet, or it hasn't hit mainstream yet.
And that's actually puzzling to me.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
If you think about it, trailers are $50,000 asset, and many fleets don't manage these trailers actively.
There's no technology on them, and the fleets sometimes don't know where those trailers are, certainly don't know what state they're in, whether they're roadworthy, they're safe, whether they're loaded, not loaded.
(07:20):
And it's almost like running a football team and ignoring the defense.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
It doesn't make any sense to me.
So trailer telematics is really about digitizing these trailers and this has recently become more and more relevant.
If you think about what's happened over the last, call it five years Covid times in Covid, everyone bought trailers and freight really shifted towards drop.
(07:46):
So the trailer all of a sudden became a very strategic asset.
But you still had zero interest rates.
So people could just buy trailers, put them on their yard.
Trailer to tractor ratio didn't really matter five years ago.
But that's changed as well, right?
The freight market is not where it was a couple of years ago in terms of rates and interest rates have just gone up.
(08:12):
So if you have these assets out there that are not being used, that are not generating revenue, you've got a real problem on your hand.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
So that's one really definitely the way the industry thinks about trailers and the rise of drop freight.
I also want to say the tech has come a long way.
Even the hardware where it was cumbersome to digitize your trailers and you never wanted touch your trailers or really install a whole lot.
(08:45):
Just an example, here's a little.
This is one of our products.
You know, it's the size of a hockey puck and then it can give you the location for a trailer for 10 years.
Right.
You install that, you install that in less than a minute and your trailer is online and you never lose a trailer again.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
These things were just not possible years ago.
And I'm excited, right, because it opens up really the, you know, a quicker path for fleets to digitize their trader pools.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So at what size fleet do you think should have these telematics in it?
Right.
Because like with, you know, 90 some percent of the industry being small business here, some people, like I, I know where I stand on this, but I know some people out there might be like, we're not big enough to like require this.
Right.
Like we know totally where our trailers are.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, they, you know, there's value in trailer telematics for every fleet.
I honestly believe that.
And the use cases differ though from size, from business model.
If you just think about it.
For use cases, we really talk about four key use cases.
(09:55):
One is utilization and location.
Another one is automation, safety and security.
You said for small carriers, if I only have one or two trucks and the same number of trailers.
You're right.
I always know where my trailer is.
So probably don't really have that location use case where I need to find my trailer.
(10:21):
But there's still plenty of information for safety.
For example.
And for a small fleet, a roadside call to get your trailer pulled can be extremely costly and can really hit your P and L. Same with security.
Any carrier really gets hit with cargo theft, right?
(10:42):
That's not limited to the big carriers.
So investing in technology to protect your cargo, make sure that you're not targeted, you don't actually get hit with an insurance deductible, I think is key.
Again, I think for any fleet that makes sense, what we do see is, you know, the, among the larger fleets, so private fleets really invest in trailer telematics for safety.
(11:11):
They want to have, they want to operate the safest equipment, they want to increase uptime.
It's one of the key use cases and then for, you know, call it the high volume fleet.
So whether it's a dedicated shipper, dedicated fleet or an LTL fleet, those fleets tend to really focus on driving utilization, driving automation.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
What are processes that I can essentially I can, you know, automate the data capturing and I can give a few examples as well.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
So do you think that we're at a point now where people need to start looking at more of the data to increase the life cycle of their businesses?
And because like I look at it, you know, like a lot of people when you get into business and when you start something like your sole thing is I just need to make money because I have all these payments that I'm committed to.
(12:02):
I gotta make sure that I'm making enough money to pay that.
But I feel like in today's day and age, with advancements in technology and everything that's out there, I feel like you're.
Every business of every size tells a story through their data.
And I think as an operator, you know, a lot of us when we go out on our own for the first time, were a really good driver, right?
(12:23):
Or you know, you're a really good broker and you're like, you know what, I got some good customers here.
I want to go out and take a shot of my own here.
And, and it's a big transition to go from operator in your job, in the job that generates the revenue and then operator of a business where there are actual assets and you need to utilize them to, you need to utilize that data that every business tells to increase the life cycle of that.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So, so the key to it is to make that data actually simple to use and you know, very much Tied to an ROI or to a business problem that you want to solve.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Because if you're making this transition from, you know, actually from generating the revenue yourself to managing the business, it's very easy to get inundated with data.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Completely overwhelmed.
And we hear this from fleets of this by the way.
This is not just for the medium sized carriers.
These are the largest carriers as well.
They say we don't actually need more data, but what we do need is we need help.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
We need to find these.
You talked about, you know, making money or like I always talk about the P L because the P L has two sides, right?
You got to find these loose ends that you haven't tightened up and you know, in today's day with very tight, very tight margins for carriers.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Look at where, look at the low hanging fruit, look at the parts of your business that you haven't touched and most times that is trailers.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
Right?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
It's again, it's crazy to me that you're haggling over cents on spot rates or you know, you're willing to like, you're willing to take absolute rock bottom rates but then when it comes to managing your cost, you've got these assets that you just leave completely unmanaged and as a result you just have all these downstream costs.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
No, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
No, by all means, I think you were going to make a good point there.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well, I was just saying the key to it all is no one needs digitization for digitization's sake.
No one needs data or more data.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
It's.
So how can the telematics companies actually really make it easy for fleets to drive a business result very quickly, solve a problem, solve a process and that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, I mean you brought up profit potential earlier.
And I'm also thinking of with a lot of businesses out there who may not look to reinvest in new equipment right now because of interest rates and other financial parameters that are out there where they're looking to increase the life cycle of their equipment.
(15:21):
Maybe they were trading in trailer medically every five years.
They want to keep them for eight years now and then go on a new rotation and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
See that all the time.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, yeah.
And I look at, from a preventative maintenance standpoint, right, because like my only real frontline experience in, on the asset side of things, CCR is My dad owned a trucking company, right?
He was a driver.
I saw him do all of his own maintenance.
I was that guy who had to hold the flashlight for my dad.
So if you say, if you think you can offend me, I used to hold the flashlight for my father while he repaired his truck when I was younger.
(15:53):
But with that being said, preventative maintenance is key, right?
And it's keep.
It's those little things that I even see in my own vehicles at my house, right?
Like it's those little preventative things making sure your oils change, you know, everything's greased up, all of that stuff.
Are you seeing that?
And is that where some of these, all of this data should be telling, like, hey, these are the things we need to do to get an extra two to three years to, out of.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
This piece of equipment, 100%.
You got to take better care of your equipment if you want it to last longer, period.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I'll give you two data points of how like a digital trailer can really, you know, change the game on maintenance and safety.
So data point one, most fleets run on a, like, on a periodic preventive maintenance interval, right?
So bring the trailer in every six months, every 12 months.
(16:46):
And that's like, they pick their sweet spot of like, at what point am I going to catch enough issues so that you know that essentially the maintenance dollars are well spent?
But I do prevent, again, prevent the issues.
If you have sensors that, for example, tell you the status of the ABs, the status of, you know, whether a light is out, and give you real time alerts on these things, you can stretch your PM intervals without risking additional safety incidents and that increases your maintenance effectiveness.
(17:23):
That's point one.
Point two, fleets that rigorously deploy telematics on their trailers reduce the out of service violations on their trailers by 40%.
And that's crazy.
That's real money right there because you pay fines, you pay higher insurance rates.
(17:43):
For some shippers, you even drop out of their carrier mix.
So these things are important and you've hit it on the head, right?
Especially if you want your trailers to run longer, you're going to put more years on them.
You just got to take better care of them.
And the cheapest way to do it is actually to install sensors.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
So is that the, like how can you explain that when you're saying like, you can save it, you know, 40% there through telematics?
How is that, Is it so you know where trailers are so you can schedule preventative maintenance checks if it's out of, you know, out of route or something like that.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
We.
So yes, you can.
So first of, you can detect issues as they happen.
And you know, typically if you look at violations, right.
We've done this analysis of fleets that actually get caught in a violation or get cited.
(18:43):
So how soon does the telematics or how much in advance does the telematics actually catch whatever is wrong with that trailer that was sighted on of course, you know the answer to this, right?
So the trailer will have something wrong with it and then for days it's still on the road and that's when you get the inspection and that's when you get sighted.
(19:07):
So if a fleet has the technology to get that real time alert, they can bring the trailer into the shop next time it hits the dock and make sure that they don't get sighted before it happens.
But the key is actually to know what's wrong with the trailer.
And for that you need telematics.
Now the.
(19:28):
I think that's the main point.
What we also see in our data is we see issues getting worse, right.
If you look at, we do this great thing where we, for example, with atis on a trailer, we see these patterns, ADAS kicks in, refills your tire and that happens once, no big deal.
(19:51):
That's exactly what the ADAS is for.
But if you see that recurring, you've got a problem, right?
And if you see the ADAs continuously running, that's when you have a fast leak, you want to pull the trailer in.
And if you can manage these processes and bring that into your maintenance approach, you're going to avoid the roadside assistance, you're going to again reduce your violations and you make sure that you spend the dollars where the most effective rather than just peanut buttering it across your entire fleet.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Do you think that, you know, with, and especially like the fleets who, you know, they might be larger or out there really in, you know, a company of any size is.
I feel like I'm drawn to a lot of parallels here.
Obvious there's a system that should be implemented by a lot of companies that might not be there.
And this is where telematics and sensors and data is going to help you stay more on top of this stuff.
(20:47):
And again, it's about getting ahead of it so it doesn't cause it to be towed.
Right.
There's no major incident that happened.
You can kind of get ahead of a lot of this stuff.
And you know, again, I draw a lot of parallels between like the airline industry, for example, Right.
Like they're not going to take off if there's even a remote thing that there might be something that's going to be wrong with it.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
There is no rolling the dice.
But I feel like with where things are in the industry right now with technology, those exact same things are afforded to us now.
It is just making a couple of small investments inside of your equipment because I look at it as, you know, like, you might not have the purchasing power out there to get Discounts from the OEMs if you know you're not going to buy a thousand trailers, for example.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
But you might want to go in there and buy three or four at that time.
And then you look at it, how do I get these things paid off as soon as possible?
How do I keep these things rolling for as long as possible?
And it is just these little tweaks like this that you're really describing here.
Because, like, and I also look at it too, with like, some of the larger fleets that are out there.
How many of them have trailers?
(21:48):
Like, anybody who's driven through any industrial area of any city in this country sees the large logos with a hundred trailers at a warehouse.
How many of them sit.
How many of them?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
So that.
Let's talk about that for a second, right?
Because this, what you're really talking about is dwell time.
And what we see is dwell time is unmanaged, right?
For many carriers where you have trailers sitting there for months at a time, we talked earlier about the shift towards drop freight.
(22:22):
In general, you have trailers that sit there loaded for days and days at a time.
And for the carrier, what that means is if you're not managing that stuff, you're missing out on detention that your shipper should be paying you.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You certainly miss out on being able to pull that trailer to make more money elsewhere with that same trailer.
But you're also missing out on revenue dollars because your shipper is simply keeping your trailer as mobile storage, and you want to get a grip on that.
Other things we see if you don't manage that are these big yards with hundreds of trailers.
(23:03):
They're not putting trailers into rotation in a way that actually keeps the trailers healthy.
If a trailer stands for a long time, all the issues compound.
And what you actually want to do is you want to rotate trailers.
And then I mentioned automation.
There's on big yards, you have people driving around and actually counting the trailers or marking down which trailer is in my yard.
(23:31):
These are things that we're solving, right?
We're Solving for fleets.
And it's the 21st century.
You shouldn't be doing that anymore.
Right.
You shouldn't be walking around with a clipboard.
There's better ways to do it, and that's what we're all about.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
I also look at it from security in theft as well here, how many trailers that.
Because people can't be that naive to think that people aren't watching.
How long is this equipment sitting there?
Speaker 4 (23:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
You know, people, there's people, there's plenty of people with sticky fingers out there.
How is this.
Do you guys have any real world examples of like you guys were able to recover 10 trailers or you know, hypothetical number there because they went missing for, you know, from a specific drop yard.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
So the whole trailer.
Absolutely right.
And you know what we see many fleets actually per 2,000 trailers, they have eight trailers stolen a year.
So if you have a 10,000 trailer fleet, that means five trailers go walkabout every year.
(24:34):
And were able to locate these trailers.
We're able to help fleets recover them.
But did you know you can look inside trailers as well?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So we deploy technology.
It's essentially cameras that keep eyes on the cargo.
And you know, we've built a nest cam, like experience right where you know, you look at your trailer and some of these freight theft patterns or cargo theft patterns, you know, it happens that, you know, that trailer that has the TVs on it, you know, that's the one that actually gets broken into or where cargo gets taken off.
(25:15):
And you know, you got to understand what's actually going on because the trailer that has the less attractive freight, for whatever reason, does not get touched.
As a fleet owner, you actually want to understand who's touching my cargo and where and when.
Again, it's about real time alerts, it's about recognizing patterns and then making the right decisions based on that.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, I think a lot of it is, you know, from at least from a cargo theft perspective and everything.
Now it's very commodity driven.
You know, how fast can somebody liquidate it?
It's not necessarily the cargo value anymore.
It's like, how fast can we get rid of this truckload of, you know, cotton swabs or whatever we want to look at.
But you know, another thing too is how much damage does your fleet sustain throughout the year that it gets pinned on the driver.
(26:06):
When it was a loader error, somebody came in, damaged the sidewall, then they want to blame you again, like I Understand some people's, you know, opinions on cameras and stuff, but like, I, if I own a fleet or when I own a fleet, one day my equipment will have cameras on it because I want to be able to pin it on whomever is responsible.
Because how I've seen this happen so many times throughout my career.
(26:29):
Driver was getting loaded, loader ripped the sidewall of the trailer out, and then they blame the driver.
Oh, that was there when it.
And then there's no way to prove that you didn't do it.
And that's the.
I hate that we're here as a society, but, like, at the end of the day, you need to protect your business.
You need to protect that investment because again, if you want to increase the life cycle of your trailer, if you want to haul specific commodities long term, you cannot have any repair patchwork on the side of your trailer and stuff.
(26:56):
You got to keep that integrity of the, of your unit in place at all times, 100%.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
And I love these examples that you bring.
And as a fleet owner, you got to ask yourself, you can make these problems go away for a couple dollars a month, right?
Is that worth it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Of course.
Of course.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Save yourself the headaches.
And again, it's about tying up loose ends in your P and L, where these things, they do add up.
And you talked about claims ratios or how often do you actually get hit with damages, with claims.
These things are manageable.
And the trailer is where the cargo is.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Right?
Speaker 3 (27:38):
So that's like, that's the place to invest or to digitize.
And having that be analog is completely crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
As we're kind of wrapping up here today.
Ccr, what's the future of smart trailers looking like here, man?
Like, what can people expect as things to, you know, obviously technology is always advancing out there.
Where do you see this trending in the next, you know, three to five years?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
You know, I, I see every trailer, every single trailer having some kind of basic telematics on it.
And we're really, I think we're moving there very quickly.
And you know, by that I mean, at a minimum, you got to know where the trailer is.
And then, you know, you can build automation on top of that.
I, what I also see is the most sophisticated fleets, they, you know, they really want to leverage technology to solve these problems.
(28:32):
So what you're going to see is, you know, fleets deploying cameras, fleets deploying, like, full sensor suites.
So where you actually have your, you know, all Your maintenance data, brakes, lights, tires, whatnot.
And, and I think this is like, this is happening right now because of all of the trends and, you know, pressures that carriers are under that we've talked about today.
(28:59):
I think this is happening rapidly.
There is always the question of how do you scale, how do you roll this out, how does a fleet actually start adopting these technologies?
And that in the past, that's been a holdback.
I do want to just briefly talk about Fleet Pulse.
(29:20):
We partner with OEMs, we make it easy for fleets to simply on a new trailer.
Simply put, fleet Pulse on there with a couple of clicks.
It's one discussion with your trailer sales rep, and then you're all set.
For us, that's very important to make it easy for fleets to at least try this technology then.
(29:44):
I've said before, the hardware has gotten easier to deploy.
So if you're looking at a larger scale retrofit or something that was a huge undertaking in the past, you can actually do these things rather quickly.
And we do, you know, we work with fleets that, you know, that digitize thousands of trailers a month.
(30:07):
So it's.
I think this is like, again, this is coming much more quickly than, you know, that any of us would have thought.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
So essentially the best way for people is to go to you guys or on it, or do they go through their OEM or their local truck dealership, whomever they're purchasing their equipment from, and go that route.
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah, both of those are great, you know, great avenues.
So we at fleet Pulse, we're available 247 at sales fleetpulse.com and always like to have a conversation with fleets of, like, what are the problems they're trying to solve?
And then for OEMs, you know, we partner very closely with Great Dane phenomenal trailers.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:49):
And you know, those Great Dane reps that, you know, selling trailers, they're actually very well versed on telematics nowadays.
So, you know, carriers can talk to their reps about telematics as well.
And then, you know, we typically get tacked into the conversation.
We work with other OEMs as well.
But again, you know, always happy to have the conversation live and really, you know, explore together what's hurting your P and L and how might that be solved with telematics.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Perfect ccr.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for joining me.
That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
If you guys can't find CCR or flea pulse out there, hit me up, I will gladly put you guys in direct contact with them.
But that's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen.
As always, if you got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show.
You guys.
And if you're feeling ambitious after this one, rank the show on itunes and Spotify.
Because if you saw value, your network's going to see it as well.
(31:42):
I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys, and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
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 getting to the back?
Hey?
Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast?
Hey, hey?
Let them all cross if they hate, then let them hate them?
Make a bigger balls?
(32:12):
Hey.
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