July 1, 2025 • 50 mins
If you're still relying on check calls and spreadsheets to track freight, you're already behind.
In this episode, Chain’s EVP of Sales, Kevin Coomes, joins the show to break down how his team is building AI-powered tools that make life easier for freight brokers, from exception management to proactive customer communication. We also dig into the origin of Chain, how their Autopilot tool works inside your TMS, and why eliminating noise is the real key to broker productivity.
Key takeaways:
- Most freight brokers still rely on outdated, reactive methods like manual check calls.
- Chain uses AI to centralize communication and automate exception management directly inside the TMS.
- Autopilot is designed to work in the background, taking care of low-value tasks so brokers can focus on what matters.
- Visibility doesn’t just mean tracking freight—it means proactively alerting stakeholders before problems arise.
- The freight future is about cleaner data, less busywork, and platforms that help you grow.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Blythe Brumleve (00:00):
So welcome into another episode of everything.
(00:03):
Is logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight. We are
proudly presented by SPIlogistics, and we are live at
TMSA elevate in Austin, Texas.
We've got Kevin Coomes here withus and you what's your job title
at chain now
Kevin Coomes (00:21):
I am EVP of sales.
And what does Chain do? So chainis AI. We just lost everybody
who stopped paying attention.
No, I'm kidding. No, actually,our core function is really
doing, like, OperationsManagement and trying to bring
all of the specifically on, likethe visibility side, but now
we're working in like, booking,offer management, carrier
(00:43):
engagement, that sort of stuff.
But specifically, we're tryingto automate all the low hanging
fruit. That's what we're tryingto do. So on the visibility
side, if you think about everyload you're geo fencing it,
you've got ELDs running, butthere's still like, seven to 10
touches on a load that you'vegot to get an ETA, you got to
get documents, you got to do acheck, call, whatever. We're
(01:05):
automating that stuff. We haveworkflow engine. We bring all
the communication into oneplatform so it doesn't matter if
it's email, text message,whatever, we centralize it to
the load so it doesn't get lost
Blythe Brumleve (01:20):
somewhere. So it's not a million. I mean, you
might have a million tabs open,but at least
Unknown (01:24):
exactly the dispatcher emails the driver. Text comes in
one place, and then the reps canjust chat back, and it can email
back to the dispatcher, and itcan text back the driver. But
the autopilot, our AI function,we build all the SOPs, so a lot
of that stuff they don't have todo. This happens. It's getting
(01:44):
to this location, the eta isthis, reach out and say, Hey,
did you arrive? Or are you goingto arrive on time? And it looks
like it came from the rep. Solike text the Driver. Driver
just gets to, Hey, did youarrive on time? Driver says,
Yeah, I just checked in. Andthen the autopilot actually
takes it and puts it back in theTMS, and they never touch it.
Blythe Brumleve (02:05):
So is this all, I guess, like a open source
effort, or is it all in house,like custom
Unknown (02:11):
built, some of it's custom built, some of it's open
source. So, like we're using, wehave our own model that we're
training for a lot of logisticstasks. So it can identify
exceptions, it can identifyassistance requests for a lumper
or, you know, something elsethat's going on. But then, yes,
like, we're using a lot of otherlanguage models to plug into it,
because certain ones are betterat certain things, certain ones
(02:32):
are better data imagerecognition.
Blythe Brumleve (02:35):
Oh, interesting. I would love to
hear it like, dive a littledeeper into that. Like, which,
which large language models arethe most beneficial.
Unknown (02:43):
Yeah, so we use, I mean, we use GPT. We use, what's
the other one that we're usingClaude or use clod, Gemini.
We use Gemini. I don't thinkwe're using grok right now yet,
but we've talked about it. Butthey all kind of do different.
They all like, like like, GPT isreally good with language stuff,
but like, other things, likeCloud and some others are really
(03:04):
good with more abstractingimages. There's like, so it just
really depends on the situation.
And that's kind of the coolthing about it, right? Because
you can use them for differentpurposes. So if it's like, an
image recognition, we can applythat concept. And for us, the
autopilot doesn't really matter.
It just gets the data. Oh,interesting,
Blythe Brumleve (03:21):
because I was going to say, like, how does a
user, one of the bigger, Iguess, complaints about,
especially with chatgpt, isthat, how do you know what model
to use and from what? Yes, sothe user,
Unknown (03:32):
right, exactly. So, like, that's the whole point.
Like, that's what chain does,right? Like, our our product,
our IP, we decide what needs tobe done when. Oh, interesting,
that sort of stuff. So, yeah,that's
Blythe Brumleve (03:42):
because I was listening to an interview with
one of the co founders. IsAnnalise, and she was great on
the
Unknown (03:49):
conversation. Param are, like, two of the smartest
people. And they
Blythe Brumleve (03:53):
used to have a logistics company, and they
built chain, they had a carrier,they had 15 jobs. Oh, okay,
okay. And so then they were inthe business, and then they
developed this technology tosolve that, which I think is a
little bit of like the inverseof maybe some other AI, you
know, that's come into themarket as of late.
Unknown (04:10):
Yeah, the story's wild, actually, like your story is
wild. So Annalise was in medicalschool. Param was a chemical
engineer, and not No, exactly,and they were together, but not
married. And at the time, andparam got bored with his day to
day doing chemical engineering,whatever, and he wanted
(04:32):
something different. And hisfamily is Punjabi. They're all
West Coast trucking, a lot ofthem, so he just quit his job
and opened a trucking company.
Wow, as you do. So you got 15trucks open a trucking company,
and then Annalise in her likespare time, like when she was
out of school, or, like summer,or whatever she was, helping him
dispatch do different things.
(04:55):
And then they're both from SanJose originally, and they you.
So they sat down and were like,this is just, like, broken,
like, all these things we haveto do to, like, deal with this
broker or that shipper orwhatever. Like, answer these
questions, do these things orlike, we need information, but
it takes us two hours to get itback, but we need an appointment
time or a pickup number. And sothat's kind of what led them to
(05:18):
do this. They literally werelike, we think we could fix
this. Priority One was actuallyone of their customers at the
time. This is like, actuallyeight years ago when they first,
like, formulated this idea, andPriority One was still
relatively small, comparative towhere they're at now today. And
they sat down with them, andthey're like, if you could just
build a workflow engine thatjust connected to our TMS,
(05:40):
brought all the data in. Whenthese things happen, just alert
our rep say, Hey, dummy, go dothis. You know, like, do
something. Don't forget aboutthis. So that's where it
started. And then two years ago,all kind of changed with all the
AI and all the language modelsand stuff. And so they applied
AI to it, and now it's just
Blythe Brumleve (05:58):
automated.
Well, I think that that is sowhen you hear about all of these
different workflows andprocesses, and I try to hammer
home with my audience of justhow much like process management
and process documentation,willingness to rip it all out
and start fresh with a whole newset of eyes on, you know, what
should work and what shouldn't?
(06:20):
I would imagine that, you know,working with chain that it would
alleviate a lot of that brainpower that you need to map out
all of those different processesin order to even figure out
where to put technology 100%
Unknown (06:33):
and that's kind of the thing, though. But when you come
into these things and like,that's what I always talk about,
like, I talked about this at BCSon a panel, actually, you still
need to know your business,right? Like there's only so much
chain or any automation solutionor AI solution can do for you.
You still have to understandyour business and your SOPs and
what you guys do and what yourcustomers require. But the goal
(06:56):
with chain and what we're tryingto do is facilitate that. So
it's easier, right? It's notlike we're going in and
programming all these. We havean engine. It connects to the
TMS. We have all the data, okay,what's the mapping? Right? Like,
this happens. These conditionsare met do this. And so it's a
whole engine that's easy toprogram or not program, but
(07:18):
like, basically, pick your, youknow, like a plug and play on a
dev, you know, it's like, yeah,and so, but when you're coming
into it change management, like,is important, like you have to
understand your processes,what's required. So it's also
about, like, it's aboutinternalizing those SOPs. But
it's not like, that easy thatyou just come in and it just
works. Like you do have tounderstand these customers
(07:39):
require these things, but you'reright at the end of the day.
Once you get that in, and theSOPs are there, there's no
person leaves. Another personcomes in. I don't have to
retrain them on all those SOPs.
There's no way. I have to forgetabout it, because it's all
there. And so the autopilot justgoes to work. A lot of our
customers, 95% of those touches,they just, they don't even, oh,
wow, don't even do anything.
Blythe Brumleve (08:00):
So what does a typical customer look like for
chain I for chain
Unknown (08:03):
brokers and three, pls, primarily, okay? Because that's
where a lot of that uplift is,right? A lot of that uplift is
on the broker three PL side,because they're having to fill
out those gaps to theirshippers. We could service
shippers and carriers. It's justnot our core function right now,
but they all have the sameproblems too. There's so many
(08:24):
solutions in our freight techenvironment where, I think
brokers get very concerned.
They're like, Oh, they're gonnago serve shippers are gonna put
us out of business. It's like,but they're already these are
all problems that you all face,right? Like, it's like, they
could, they can make your lifeeasier if a shipper uses chain,
because now you don't have towait for information, right?
Because they're using chain,you're automatically getting it
back out of their system. So forus, it's it's really about that
(08:44):
experience of broker, carrier,shipper, and making speeding
that up, right? The way I bringit up with people is like a
human being can't monitor 1000shipments at once and then have
1000 simultaneous conversations.
But a computer can do that, andthat's where, that's where the
(09:07):
AI stuff becomes veryinteresting, because that's a
lot of stuff that people areoutsourcing to Columbia, right?
Or whatever, after hoursweekends that people don't do
anyway.
Blythe Brumleve (09:17):
How do you find, I guess, the bound,
because logistics has alwaysbeen about relationships, but
we've also had just aninsurmountable like injection of
capital and businesses it goinginto logistics tech. So how do
you, I guess, walk that fineline of implementing tech but
also keeping your relationshipssolid?
Unknown (09:39):
Well, I think that's the interesting thing. It's part
of the reason when I left greenscreens and I was looking at
what I was going to do next,that I came to chain, because I
was looking at all thesedifferent solutions, and these
AI companies, and there's a lotof different things that are
going to work, but it was like,what are the, what are the one
of the low hanging fruitproblems that human beings don't
want to do? One and two, they.
It's not necessary. Nobody wantsto respond to a tracking No,
(10:02):
exactly right, just to get anETA and like, a driver doesn't,
like, pick up the phone, justlike, give you an ETA, right? Or
they don't want to pick up thephone. Have to call your
dispatcher just to get instantresponse, to get an appointment
time or something right. Like,it's there, it's in the TMS.
We've got to just get it back tothem. Don't wait on somebody to
do it. That's the learningfruit. The stuff that isn't is
that 5% of exceptions andassistance requests and stuff
(10:26):
like that that you might have toget involved, send a com check
or like, do something else. Theyblow a tire. You need to update
the ship, or you need to get onit. And we, we help with that,
because the autopilot identifiesall those things, oh, there's a
problem. Alert the rep. Respondand say, Cool, get us a new eta.
But then tell the rep, you needto go maybe make sure this is
all good for the shipper. Butlike, outside, outside of that
(10:50):
stuff, it's like they should betrying to drive more business,
right? Like the relationshipsare, how am I talking to my
customer, seeing it for theservicing more of their needs.
Can we get more of theirbusiness same side on the
carrier side, right? Coveringloads. Make sure you're
expanding your carrier base.
Make sure you're working withthe same carriers over and over,
(11:11):
with all the fraud stuff andstuff going on, right? Not post
and praying. So it's like, itfrees up their time to do
relationship stuff, right? Andthe way I think about it is it's
like revenue per head. How doyou get revenue per head from a
million to 2 million to 3million to 4 million without
having to hire more people to doall these menial tasks? So,
(11:32):
like, it actually, it actuallyadds to the relationship, when
you think about it, because itallows them to actually spend
more time on what's necessaryfor the relationship? Yeah, we
Blythe Brumleve (11:41):
were just recording with Mike make a lick
of SPI, and he was talking abouthow, you know, with a lot of
their technology, likerelationships still matter, and
going and doing site visits withyour customers, taking them out,
golfing like that, creates thatrelationship with them. And, you
know, just doing those simplethings that aren't scalable. And
I think with all of thetechnology, that's one thing
(12:03):
that there's a lot of, I guess,sort of fear around implementing
new technology. You're going tobe not hiring as much. You're
going to be. There's a lot of, Iguess, unforeseen circumstances
that might come from that. Butif you're in this to survive as
a business owner and as anemployee of a business like you
want to be as efficient aspossible, because salaries are
(12:25):
usually the first thing to getcut, and so yeah, when you can
free up that time and go golfingwith a customer that is doing a
lot of business with you, youknow that it's
Unknown (12:33):
weighing those relationship right? Well, and
that's interesting, too. Thesalary thing and the headcount
is, we're a low margin business,you know, like you, I work in
SAS now, and I have the lastnine years. Like the margins are
much higher, yes, but the grossmargins are higher because it
costs a lot of money to paypeople to develop these tools,
right? It makes a lot of sensewhen you break it down. But the
(12:57):
in our industry, on the truckingside and the like the brokerage
side of the carrier, side, it's,it's very low margin, right?
You're running 10 to 15% ontruck, if you're lucky. Yeah,
right. So it's how you know howto eke out more margin points
out of that. And then also,like, I said, like you said,
(13:18):
drive more revenue free moretime to go out and spend that
time with the people and dothose relationship building
tasks and that sort of stuff.
And, like, that's where it's,you know, it's not popular to
say, but like, yeah, we're notnecessarily gonna, like, it's
not about eliminating jobs, justabout repurposing people, you
know, into more revenue drivingthings or margin driving tasks,
because at the end of the day,track and trace tasks, that sort
(13:41):
of stuff doesn't. It's nothelping the bottom line, right,
right? If anything, it's onlyhurting the bottom line. Because
you bring on more loads, youbring on more customers, like,
oh, we need 10 more people justto manage the operational tasks.
It's like, that doesn't, doesn'thelp, doesn't move the needle.
It doesn't
Blythe Brumleve (13:59):
at all. And so you'd mentioned green screens
just now, because I think youhave such a fat and I think we
kicked off this conversationwith saying, like you have such
a fascinating background. Youactually opened up. I mean, you
spent time with a TMS provider,green revnova at the beginning.
I'm curious, how do you thinkthe, I guess, logistics
(14:22):
technology ecosystem is evolvingwith spending all this time at,
you know, two really bigheavyweights, and then now with
it, with chain.
Unknown (14:29):
Yeah, that's a good question. I'm a glutton for
punishment. I just keep goingback to the beginning, right? I
was like, the sixth or seventhemployee at revnova, and we had
eight customers when I gotthere. I was a fourth US based
employee at greens. Wow. We hadsix customers, I think when I
got there, and chains a littlefurther along, which is
(14:49):
interesting, because, like, theybootstrapped it, which is also
pretty cool. It's different inthe current environment, right?
Like the current environmentschange. There's a lot of I'm a
bootstrapper, exactly, right?
And that's kind of what I likedabout. A prominent lease because
they bootstrapped it. I thinkthe logistics landscape with
tech, though, has changed inthat we used to be so reliant
and like when I got to greenscreens almost 10 years ago now,
(15:10):
or whatever it was eight yearsago, nine years ago, it was so
heavily reliant on the TMSprovider, you know, like
anything you did, anything, youknow, like workflows, or, you
know, things you needed in thein the process of executing
freight, it was like, Hey, canyou guys go build this? Can you
(15:31):
go build this? Can you go buildthis? And I think traditionally,
if you look at the companieslike McLeod, mercury, gay, you
know, the traditional al Jax,those that were there ahead of
time, ahead of a lot of theseother newer solutions. That was
kind of just the way theyoperated, because that's what
was expected to them. Now youhave this capability of doing
what a lot of other industrieshave already done, and I liken
(15:52):
this to like things like Googleor Apple or whatever. It's like
Google and Apple don't go outand just build all these apps,
right? They leverage othercompanies, and then they
integrate like Google has Googlemeet, but they integrate with
Zoom and teams and all theseother things, like, so choose
your provider. Okay, Googledoesn't care, because you're
still using Google Calendar. Ithink we're kind of headed that
(16:13):
direction, and I think the TMSproviders are starting to get on
board with that. Last week, Iwas actually in Birmingham, at
McLeod, and they did theirimpact Summit, impact. And it
was very AI centric, but it wasvery partner centric. And the
idea was like talking about thecertified partners that they
have and their program, andleaning on companies like ours
(16:34):
and others, highway and D, a Twas there, you know, a lot of
other triumph was there,representing green screens and
all that, leaning on thosepeople to fill a lot of those
gaps, because McLeod's like, wecan't build all of this, right?
It's too expensive and too timeconsuming. So I think, like,
that's the direction that ispositive for our industry. Yes,
(16:57):
because, like, the more in, moreentrance to the market, more
innovation. It allows theexecution platforms to execute
and then us to go fill all thespace in between.
Blythe Brumleve (17:09):
I would think it too. It also creates that a
stronger relationship with yourcustomers, if you allow them the
tools that they're already usingand comfortable with and that
they want to connect more withthe data that they're using.
That is that's one thing exactlytaking advantage of from a
business perspective, right?
Unknown (17:25):
And we see that, I mean, we're at TMSA, right? So
you think about CRM, think aboutmarketing tools. You think about
HubSpot, Salesforce, they'vebeen doing that for years,
right? It wasn't go build apayments platform or go build
something like, go buildMailChimp, you know, like, just
integrate these things.
Blythe Brumleve (17:44):
Don't reinvent the wheel. And
Unknown (17:47):
they've acquired some things. And I think we'll see
that happening in the next fewyears. I think we're going to
see some of these companies thathave grown tremendously. You
think about companies likehighway that have grown so fast.
I mean, green screens gotacquired by Triumph, and they're
folding a lot under theirumbrella. They Acquired ISO,
whatever, but I think we'regoing to start seeing some of
that, which is also it scarespeople, because they're like,
(18:10):
but I like having my littleboutique tech company that I
work with outside of everythingelse. It's like, Yeah, but at
the end of the day, when youhave more integrated solution
with other solutions under oneumbrella. That's just the way of
the world, like, that's how tech
Blythe Brumleve (18:24):
versus, like, the closed ecosystem of what we
kind of came from exactly whereI remember trying to work in the
cloud for like, sales andmarketing efforts, or mostly
marketing efforts to assist thesales team. And it was a goddamn
nightmare. Good luck, I know,but it was a glorified, like,
export this email list? Yeah,that was what I had to work
with. But if I was able tointegrate McLeod into like, a
(18:45):
MailChimp or a HubSpot, like, itwould have been a game changer
for
Unknown (18:49):
me, right? And I think we're headed those directions,
yeah, I think we're starting tosee more of that. And again,
especially with, like, the AIsolutions and that sort of
stuff, I think we're just gonnasee it's too expensive to just
develop all like there isn't abig enough player in our space
on the tech side to just do thisall themselves. We don't have
(19:10):
Oracle, we don't have Google, wedon't have Apple, we don't have
SAP, whatever. It doesn't exist.
So you kind of have to lean onthe providers to integrate and
do that stuff we've
Blythe Brumleve (19:23):
I don't know how to segue into this, except
for the fact that you have hadother career background in,
especially with, you know, acountry that is a, you know, top
of mind for a lot of folks inthe US, and that's China. You
have an extensive experiencewith, not just like living
there, but doing business there.
Tell us about how that thatjourney started, because I'm
(19:43):
super fascinated by just runninga business in general. In China.
That
Unknown (19:49):
was the first startup trial by fire.
So I actually, I actuallystudied Chinese in school. So I
graduated K State, no seven. Igot my minor in Chinese. I lived
there for a year as a teacher.
Learned I wasn't a teacher. Iand I didn't go I wasn't a
teacher. By school, I wasprobably sci major and studied
(20:09):
Chinese, but did it to keepstudying Chinese so I could keep
learning. Came back in, oh,wait, economy crashed, so it was
back for a year and a halftrying to find a way to go back
to China, because I did reallyenjoy it. I enjoy the cultural
aspect, the learning, right?
Just being, you know, exposed toall that. And then I got an
opportunity with a guy that Iwent to Kansas State with that
(20:31):
was that was starting thiscompany over there. So I got
introduced to him. We startedtalking totally different world.
We were doing energy efficiency,like building efficiency
technologies, this sort of
Blythe Brumleve (20:44):
stuff, and that's why they're kicking their
ass on energy right now. Theygot in way
Unknown (20:48):
early, or Yes, I mean, they did because they knew they
had a problem, right? Especiallythey have way more people and
way more energy usage. But sothey, you know, a lot of these
companies, when they go over toChina, they don't want to do
like, it's scary to do businessthere. You're afraid your
technology is going to getstolen. You don't know the
landscape. It's very different,you know, in the way that you do
(21:10):
business and execute contractsand do all this stuff. And so
that's essentially what we weretrying to do for these people,
was like, take thesetechnologies in the US and other
company in Israel, and help themget in to China so that they had
a partner that wasn'tnecessarily, like a Chinese
company that they were not socertain about,
Blythe Brumleve (21:29):
like a liaison.
You're almost like a broker atthat
Unknown (21:31):
point, kind of, yeah. I mean, we were, kind of, yeah,
representative of theircompanies. This was like 2011
2012 right? So this is like,fast forward now, and it's like,
even, you know, like all of thisis blown up even worse with all
the attention. But yeah, it wasfascinating. Learned a lot.
Blythe Brumleve (21:48):
What do you think is it doesn't have to be
logistics related, but what doyou think are some of, like, the
cultural, I guess, interestingmoments that you were able to
learn about, or because, I thinkfor me, with China, like, I love
learning about history, and withChina in general, like they have
so much history, you know, 1000sand 1000s of years of us almost
(22:11):
a singular, you know, populationand culture and, yeah, yeah, how
what was all of that like? Like,the culture shock of from the
United States, where it's amelting pot versus over there
was much more uniformity, even,
Unknown (22:23):
even when you understand it and speak Chinese
like I can't imagine. I hadfriends that didn't speak any
Chinese, right, that wanted tomove, do something different,
whatever went over there. Ican't imagine what that culture
shock was like, like, because atleast I could, like, speak the
language and understand people.
And then when I was there, I gotpretty fluent. I was there for
three years in total, at twodifferent times, and so that
made it easier. But yes, theculture shock is still drastic.
(22:48):
It's it's interesting, becausewe have, like, our personal
lives and our business lives,right? Like, and a lot of it,
especially like, our industry isso small, it bleeds together.
Like, so we all we've known eachother for a while, right? Like,
it starts to bleed together alittle bit, but you still have,
like, your personal life andyour work life, and we kind of
(23:09):
keep separation of that and howthings work China, like, things
are so deeply and I think thisAsia in general, but
specifically China, it's sodeeply ingrained together their
cultural stuff and theirbusiness and whatever that it's
like. It's very hard for, Ithink, Westerners to come over
and understand that. I see allyou know, you see all this stuff
(23:32):
with tariffs. You see all thisstuff going on right now with
the trade tensions or the backand forth and whatever. And I
think part of what happens to usin the western world is like, we
don't understand the negotiationisn't just like hardball, it's
just very it's different forthem. Like, there's a very
distinct the government in Chinaspecifically, but then the
(23:58):
people, it's there's thisdistinct nationalism, right?
That surrounds everything thatthey do, and a lot of that has
to do with history, becausethey're Chinese, and they're
proud, and they're proud oftheir history. And, you know,
having, you know, they kind ofview the world as, like, infancy
compared to a lot of thecivilization that they had prior
to a lot of the rest of theworld, right? If you think
(24:20):
about, like, the Middle Ages,and prior to that, like, Europe
was still a mess, whereas, like,China was an empire at that
time, right? And had a lot ofadvancements, and had a lot of
civilization, money, gunpowder,you know, like, there's a lot of
that stuff that's alreadyhappening. Yes? Paper, yes.
Paper, writing, yeah, like,like, modern writing, right?
(24:41):
It's calligraphy and so, like,so, like, they see that as a,
you know, part of, not just partof the country, like, we're
proud of America, but like, it'sdifferent in that, like, they
see that as part integral tosociety, you know. So when they
do business as. Sort of stuff,relationships, it also leads to
problems, right? Because there'sa lot of corruption. There's a
(25:04):
lot of things that come out ofthis, because of my family knows
that family and connected tothese people, and we have
political connections, but it'sall China, so it's okay to,
like, do that. So, so it's,it's, it's interesting in that
regard, because I think there'sjust a very different outlook on
your like, day to day life inChina as a Chinese person,
(25:27):
because of that culture and thathistory, and so I think that's
what causes a lot of themisunderstanding, right that
goes on when you have thosethose political escalations,
that sort of stuff. Is it
Blythe Brumleve (25:41):
safe to assume that, like the majority of the
US is more like individualisticversus like China, that almost
moves like a unit,
Unknown (25:47):
exactly? That's a very good way of putting it 100%
that's what I've always
Blythe Brumleve (25:51):
gotten from their their culture, is that
they, what was the famousphrase, like they think in
decades, not, you know, electioncycles, yeah, or longer, yeah,
you know, or no, they think incenturies, decade, yeah,
Unknown (26:04):
centuries, yeah, yeah, they do, because that's just,
it's relative, right? And so, soyeah, they do. They kind of,
it's changed a lot. I mean,there's a lot of stuff that's
changed over there, even since Iwas there, politically and
politically it's, it's kind ofgone backwards, a little bit
right, where it's a little morenationalistic and communistic
(26:26):
than it was before, where, Ithink, like, when I was there in
1112, was very different. It wasa little more open, like, I joke
about this with people and like,as a foreigner that was doing
business, like you could havegot away with murder, because
really, it was more just likethey didn't want international
incidents. It was all economic,grow the country, grow the
money, whatever. Whereas, like,now it's kind of taking a step
(26:48):
back a little
Blythe Brumleve (26:49):
bit. That's because I've told people, like,
I want to, I want to go toChina, like I want to visit it,
and I get the apprehension,like, Oh, you're, yeah, I think
you're, you're not scared to go
Unknown (26:57):
over there. Safe. It's safe. It's always safe. It's
just more so, like, I think it'sjust a different atmosphere now,
yeah, right, they're a lot morescrutinizing foreigners in the
Western world and that sort ofstuff, because they've become a
little more closed off than theywere before. You know, I think
it's still, there's still tonsof expats there doing business
(27:18):
whatever. So it's not like, youknow, a scary thing. But I just
think, governmentally, whatever,I think the nature of it's just
changed,
Blythe Brumleve (27:27):
different landscape of problems.
Unknown (27:28):
Yeah, visas have changed. And getting over there
that used to be so easy to get abusiness visa and go, really
that stuff. Oh, yeah. And that'sall kind of changed. And that's
political, right? It'spolitical, but, yeah, again,
it's it. But you asked about,like, the cultural side of doing
business and that sort of stuff.
I mean, it's kind of how he gotinto freight, because they're an
(27:48):
export economy, they're all,they're all more focused ocean,
air, whatever. Like, peopledon't sit and talk about
trucking, like we talked abouthere, where we're more closed
off, like, in terms of that,right? Like we're more of a
centralized economy. They aremore, you
Blythe Brumleve (28:03):
know, I global.
I was talking to somebody, and Idon't know how accurate this is,
so I Well, whatever. But he wasfrom Germany, and he said that
in Europe, they don't have TMSsoftware. And I thought that
that was this. I was like, whydoesn't every country have a TMS
software? Like, does China havea TMS software? What is their
freight tech or logistics? Idon't know if you know the
answer to that. I'm just
Unknown (28:24):
spitballing they do.
They do because I learned aboutour Chinese partner of our
company was an importer,exporter, so he did a lot of
steel, timber, commodity stuff,which is how I learned logistics
a little bit, and then came backand ended up in it. But they do
have systems and stuff that theyuse. It's a little more
rudimentary. It's not ascomplicated as a lot of the
stuff we
Blythe Brumleve (28:45):
do. Like, are they working off of client, a
Chinese McLeod over there? Yeah.
Unknown (28:49):
Do have similar just like they do have, like,
software vendors and stuff thatwork on that particular stuff.
But again, they're very locallogistics in a lot of those
countries, well, specificallySoutheast Asia and China is
still very local logistics,right? It's pick up the phone,
call people, whatever. We alsohave 1.3 billion people, right?
(29:11):
You know, like, so there's a lotof people that have jobs. We
worked out of our Chinesepartner's office. The city I
lived in when I owned thecompany was called Shaman.
Shaman, subtropical, way south.
It's right near Taiwan. It'slike the closest mainland city
to Taiwan. Oh, interesting. Andwe worked out of like the Trade
Center area near the port,because that's where his office
was. And so we would walkdownstairs, and you'd walk
(29:33):
through the Trade Center, and itwas like, kind of like a
brokerage floor, a little bitlike a brokerage floor in the
past, maybe a little more likeboiler room, Coyote, original,
you know, that sort of stuff,1015, years ago. But, yeah. Or,
like, you think about like astock brokerage floor, right? Or
like a commodities exchange,like, where they're literally
(29:54):
all in these little pods andthese little desks, and it's all
different companies, but they'reall like. Moving freight
together, like gettingcontainers or getting
consolidation space or whatever.
So it's, it is. It's still verymanual in that way. But it is,
it's, it works.
Blythe Brumleve (30:14):
You know, what did you learn about logistics in
China that you brought with youto back to the states, well, so
Unknown (30:23):
the international stuff is, like, how I got into it,
right? And that's really where,where it differs, right? Like
there, I feel like, unless yougo work for a freight forwarder
or something, right, or you workin that world over here, we are
very, very more focused. We'reso much more focused on domestic
trucking across border, Mexico,Canada, like, a lot less focus
(30:47):
on international freight. Andover there, everybody's an
expert, like, everybody's anexpert on Container freight and
air freight and everything else,because that is the driver for
their economy, yeah, becausethey're mostly export economy,
yeah, most of their economy ison that, and we're a huge import
economy, but that's also whywe're bringing the goods in, and
then it's got to get trucked anddistributed and warehouse and
(31:09):
whatever. And so it's differentin that regard, like they're all
there's, you think about, like,how many brokers and carriers we
have in this country. It's likethe same there, but freight
forwarders. There's like, 5060,70,000 freight forwarders in
China, right? Because it's sucha massive part of their economy.
So it is very different. Andthat's, I got a huge crash
(31:29):
course in that. And that's,that's how I ended up in
logistics. Is I was working fora tech, small tech company when
I got back in Kansas City thatwas building freight forwarding
quoting platform deal. Gotintroduced to Joel Clum, who's a
CEO of worldwide Express, whostarted Carrie direct with jet
McCandless, who's P 44 now, butit was they were just doing
(31:50):
Carrie direct, just nowmetaphor, right? And Joel and I
met, he's like, Hey, we coulduse somebody that knows some of
the International stuff to workwith a couple people we teach
you all the domestic stuff.
Eight months later, after comingback from China, I moved to
Chicago and thenstarted work for them. Rest is
history. So that was like, therewere like,
five or six of us in that officein downtown Chicago. Do you
Blythe Brumleve (32:11):
think any of your experience in China has
helped you kind of navigate,maybe some of the education
that's going on or needed to goon in the first six months of
2025
Unknown (32:23):
Yeah, it definitely the tariffs. I mean, every you know,
you have that experience, andeverybody's text,
you, what do you think of this?
You're probably like, Oh,you're my local China expert.
What is happening right now? AndI haven't been there, and, you
know, I think the last I was inChina was like, 2016 but, yeah,
it does. It helps you understandit a little better, if anything,
(32:43):
what I've told people is like,it's not as scary as we think it
is, like it's a lot of blusterand brinkmanship and like,
making business deals, yeah,like, there's
no we're not equipped yet. We'rein a better position than they
are, because of Mexico and theyoung population and the ability
(33:07):
to manufacture and still havethat opportunity to do cheaper
goods, whereas, like China, isnot in an enviable position.
They have a lot of agingpopulation, and they have an
export economy, and so they loseExactly, they lose trade deals,
they lose that sort of stuff.
People don't want to work infactories anymore, right? Rising
middle class, that's, that's badfor them, like, it's bad for
(33:31):
their economy. So, like,there's, you know, it's, it's, I
think, when you boil it down tothe economics and the money,
that's really where it becomesmore important. And yeah, in
doing business over there, andunderstanding that you have a
lot of very wealthy Chinesepeople that are very, very, very
wealthy, that have made theirmoney on this type of economy
(33:53):
and this type of backbone thatthey have over there, in doing
trade with the West anddifferent things, right? And
that's been a huge central partto that. Government's not gonna
pull that rug out from underthem, because these people are
happy with their billions ofdollars, you know, like that.
They've been able to do thiswhen, you know, if your 50s or
60s in China, and you grew up asa kid, you lived in basic
(34:15):
poverty, you know, and so youmight be a billionaire now, so
you just think about that,right?
That's quite a leap. Yeah, it islike, we
don't have, I mean, we have somepeople that have done that, but
it's not, it's moremillionaires. Yeah, there's
people in China that grew up inabject poverty, because that was
(34:36):
just the way their world waswhen they were younger. If
they're in their 50s or 60s or70s, a lot of them are
billionaires now. So it's just adifferent it's a very different
dichotomy. How do
Blythe Brumleve (34:49):
you think I would imagine that, obviously,
tariffs are affecting everylogistics company, but how are
they affecting maybe some ofyour customers at chain, and how
are you helping maybe navigatethem through these difficulties?
Unknown (34:59):
It's. Tough. It's tough because, I mean, we've been in
this freight market for what 20I mean, I was at green screens,
right? So we watched all therates. This stuff happened
Blythe Brumleve (35:08):
2022 I think, yeah, yeah.
Unknown (35:10):
I got to, got to green screens in November of 21 so we
watched it
Blythe Brumleve (35:14):
in mid, oh, at the peak. So you got in at the
peak. And then, kind
Unknown (35:17):
of, and then August, I think it was August 23 and then
after that, it just reallytanked, right? So, it's, it's
we've been, we were alreadygoing through all that, the post
COVID stuff and what happened inthe over capacity in the market
and all that. So we're alreadyhaving these issues. And then
you introduce this stuff, withthe political stuff and the
tariffs and whatever, and thenthe the Pentium kind of
(35:37):
switched. It's different fromit's not rates as much as it is
volumes, right? Because then, ifyou're we had the volumes
before, but the rates were downbecause we had too much
capacity. Now, if the volumesaren't coming in, it could be a
silver lining, because it couldnot that I wanted anybody to go
out of business, but it couldput some of these trend
(35:58):
companies out of business thataren't operating well, that
still have trucks on the roadthat maybe shouldn't,
Blythe Brumleve (36:04):
the ones that came in during the came in
during COVID, Fast Money andyeah,
Unknown (36:08):
that we still need to get ready, because we're still
very loose. We still have toomuch capacity, so the volumes
come down even more, and we'regonna we've already seen it.
We're already seeing the effectof that a little bit. They pause
the tariffs. But it's still,you're still 30 days out, or 60
days out that they pauseshipments or whatever. So I
think that's been the difficultthing. I think people now like
(36:29):
they're just jaded at thispoint, almost three years in, or
whatever we are now, they'rekind of just getting jaded by
the fact. So it's tough. It'stough on everybody, because it's
still like, you know, depressedrates and tough to, you know,
loose market and whatever. But
Blythe Brumleve (36:45):
everybody's pointing the finger at each
other. You hear anybodyimmutable, yeah. But I think
we've
Unknown (36:48):
gotten to a point of at least stability, where we're
not, like, seeing the rates justgo down, you know, or, like,
fluctuate up for two days andthen go straight back to the
bottom. I think we've kind ofcome up a little bit. I think
the rates have come up, sothat's helped at least create
stability. Create stability sopeople feel better at least,
which is part of the battle.
But, yeah, I mean, it's stillbeen pretty tough, right? I
(37:09):
think, I think we've still seena lot of companies struggling,
either getting acquired or goingout of business. Hopefully, by
the back of the year, we seesome of that stuff change, if
this turmoil stuff and thetariff stuff kind of works at
some works itself out, which itseems like it will, again, with
some of the stuff that'shappened the last 30 to 45 days.
But yeah, I mean, on the brokersand three PLS, and the carriers,
(37:31):
it really puts that intensepressure on them. If your rate's
already low and then volumesdecrease, it's like, Okay, now
we're not moving any freight.
And there's some carriers
Blythe Brumleve (37:40):
that are saying, I'm just going to park
my truck during this truckduring this time and not move
anything and just wait foreverything to kind of settle
out. And it's like, you you gotto have a good cushion in order
to do that financially better.
Unknown (37:51):
Hope you do. You better. Hope you do in those
situations. But, but again,though, it's like, if they don't
have a good cushion, Far be itfor me to talk about anybody's
job. Well, it might not be. It'seconomics,
Blythe Brumleve (38:01):
right? And it's applicable to every business.
You have to have that safetycushion. You have to pay it. You
can't keep your head in the sandabout these things anymore. No,
I think a lot of folks triedthat and yeah, you know, tariffs
hit you over the head, andyou're out of business. And so
you have to pay attention tothese things. Is take
Unknown (38:19):
it full circle, though, the tech stuff, I mean, that's
where it makes it's going toimprove our industry with
efficiencies, yes, so that theseeffects, the acute effects of
having these rate fluctuations,or having these problems with
volumes or whatever, aren't asbad if you're in a 20 to 25%
margin instead of 10 to 15%margin, because you've improved
your efficiencies, And you'veraised your your lower to your
(38:42):
OTR, right? And you're actuallygetting more gross or net
margin, makes it easier toweather the storm than when
you're running razor thinmargins. And then this stuff
happens. So I think that's whereit's interesting, because the
investment in Tech has, like,kind of waxed and waned these
last couple years as this stuffhas kind of worked itself out,
but it's like, with that wouldbe my lesson to people, is like,
(39:06):
but, yeah, go invest in stuffthat creates efficiency, because
that's going to be your instantROI. If you can raise a few
margin points, then who market?
Be damned
Blythe Brumleve (39:16):
if it's a bottleneck. Now it's going to be
a bottleneck when business picks
Unknown (39:20):
up, doesn't matter, right? So create the
efficiencies. Raise your bottomline,
Blythe Brumleve (39:24):
especially with all you should maybe have some
extra time on your hands ifyou're not moving as much. And
so work on the processes,
Unknown (39:31):
transportation, marketing and sales. There you
go, go market, go sell and getmore business.
Blythe Brumleve (39:36):
Well, okay, couple last questions here,
because we are at, you know,TMSA elevate. What are you
hoping to learn from like, amarketing and sales perspective?
How are you kind of honing in onyour own, like person, because
you have a really great personalbrand, obviously, you're a
subject matter expert. How doyou kind of define what you're
going to invest in personally atthe, you know, personal branding
level, I'm
Unknown (39:56):
curious to see. So this is my first time in CMSA. Okay,
right? So. Um, thank you. AndI'm doing to a panel, and a
speaking opportunity got ropedin. It's funny how the speaking
thing happened. Jen, they'dasked me to do a panel, and
then, and I was like, No, I'mexcited, like new, new speaking
opportunity and like, new crowdand whatever, because I've been
(40:17):
and and then Jen and I were atBCS, and Jen was like, somebody
dropped Do you want to do thisspeaking? She goes, I told the
Education Committee, you'd begreat. Sure. So, and I don't
mind doing that stuff. It'll befun. But, you know, it's for me,
though, first time here andtalking to a lot of people that
I don't normally talk to, right?
Coming from tech, like I don'ttalk to a lot of the sales
(40:38):
people. It depends on thedifferent brokerage, or three PL
depending on how theirorganization is set up, and
whatever, and where the, youknow, the technology applies.
But I'm curious to see to talkto some of those people. Talk to
Mike, right, Mike's actually myTMSA buddy from SPI. But like,
talk to those people about,like, how, like, how are you
(40:59):
approaching this market? Right?
Because it's like, with chainnow I'm very much focused on the
operational efficiencies andthat sort of stuff. But how are
they approaching the market froma sales and marketing
perspective, how are theydifferentiating themselves?
Like, what are the opportunitiesthere for myself, from a tech
(41:19):
side to make that better forthem and improve that because
honestly, I don't think we getinto that much on the tech side,
right, like, they might use aCRM or something. But worse,
we're so inefficient. This isgonna sound so bad. We're so
inefficient in this industry. Onthe operational side, yes, we're
so great opportunity, whatever,right? Like, like, we're so
(41:41):
inefficient on that side that,like, we're so heavily focused
from a from a tech perspectiveon that part of the business,
that, like, we aren't reallyfocused on the sales and
marketing side as much from froma tech Avenue. And so I'm really
interested to talk to some ofthe different people about that.
And like, what their what theirmain focus is, how they're
differentiating their services,doing that sort of stuff.
(42:02):
Because even then, I mean, like,that's what I'm selling with
chain, to the people that I'mselling to on the operational
side, as well as, like, for yourpeople, get more people selling,
get more people driving morerevenue, right? Get more people
out there, differentiating yourbrand. But again, like, how are
they doing that is, is helpfulfor me to understand from our
perspective as a tech provider,but yeah, so I'm really
(42:24):
interested to have some of thoseconversations with people. Heck,
Blythe Brumleve (42:27):
yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of people
they hear that are eitherattending or speaking that are
going to be able to speak towhether it's the marketing one
person, marketing team in house,or the one that's building their
personal brand, it just is allover logistics and, like, a good
and a bad way, you kind of cancut your teeth on a lot of
things if you're a one personmarketing or a sales team. Well,
(42:48):
in the personal
Unknown (42:49):
brand thing is interesting too. Like, that's
what I've told a lot of, like,all the reps that I hired at
green screens, and, like,different people I worked with
at ravinova and whatever I'mlike, you really want to get you
really want to elevate yourselfin this industry, get network,
get to know people. And it's notabout like going out there and,
you know, being a influencer,but like you said, it's being a
subject matter expert and likehelping other people making
(43:14):
those connections, right? Orwhere to go to for certain
answers and that sort of stuff.
I think that personal brandingaspect has been really good for
our industry, right? We havepeople like yourself and others
that are like, come from thebackground of freight that are
now doing this stuff to helppeople market their personal
brand or like, do these things.
And in our industry, with itbeing a such a incestuous
(43:35):
network based industry, right?
Everybody's worked for everybodylike, that's
Blythe Brumleve (43:39):
trying to even get podcast guests who you know
haven't done the round. Yeah,
Unknown (43:44):
right, exactly. Oh, just I said to you, I'm like,
we've never done yourpodcast. Every couple years
Blythe Brumleve (43:50):
I'm excited about because you've made your
rounds. And when I know, I knowwhen the PR releases are going
out exactly, you can kind of seethe same, not necessarily you,
but you can kind of see the samepeople going,
Unknown (44:00):
Yeah, for sure, for sure, it's good. Like, no, it
is. It's good to like, have thatexperience, or, like, share that
background, and as again, theyounger people that are doing
this stuff, or in sales ormarketing in our industry, like,
that's funny, impart thatknowledge to like, build that
brand and do these things,because that will help you just
branch it. You'll get to writeyour own ticket and
Blythe Brumleve (44:19):
trust as well.
Like, you're developing thatlike and trust factor, and that
will be valuable no matter ifit's within your company or a
company you might, you know,join in the future. It's a way
to level up. Yeah, for sure. Allright, well, Kevin, any,
anything, anything that you feelis important to mention that we
haven't
Unknown (44:35):
already talked about, no, but, I mean, we're at TMSA,
so I feel like it's like, youknow, about to learn. We're
ready for the brand. We're readyto learn. I'm excited for the
panels. Awesome. You know, theopportunity to speak to
everybody, Heck, yeah, it'sthat's actually really fun.
Like, I have never done that.
I've always done, like, I'vedone like aI panels, or like,
stuff on rates, or things ontech or whatever. Now I'm
actually speaking to my actualcraft Conference, which is
(44:56):
different, weirdly. Been alittle nervous. Like, no, don't
be nervous. Don't be fine. I'venever done
that though. Oh, yeah, this ishow I do my actual job. Well, it
helps
Blythe Brumleve (45:10):
people understand your role and how it
could fit within theirorganization. And I think with
the beautiful thing about TMSAis that it's not going to have
the 1000s of people that youknow, maybe, like a larger
conference would have, yeah, sothis one just it feels less
like, it's like I have a certainlength people battery, and at
(45:30):
the end of some conferences,it's very, very low. This one, I
always come away feeling reenergized, because it's the
intimacy level of you know, lessyou know. It's around 200 people
that come to this conference,and you you build those more
personal, it's more personal,and you develop those lasting
relations. Yeah, some of these
Unknown (45:46):
conferences, you're right. It's just like, bounce
one to group to group to groupto group to group. And
Blythe Brumleve (45:50):
it's a lot, but it's a different it's a
different intensity level thatyou kind of have to, like, gear
up for. So I enjoy the, I don'twant to say slow pace, because
it still feels like we're doinga lot, yeah, but it's a lot with
people that you have built acore audience with. You know
Unknown (46:06):
for sure, I'm excited.
Awesome. Well, thank you somuch. Kevin, where can folks
follow you? Follow more of yourwork. Get
introduced to chain. They canfind me on LinkedIn. I'm always
on LinkedIn, building mypersonal Yes, but yeah, our
website is try chain.com Soexactly how it sounds, exactly
how it's spelled, try chain.com,reach out to us, get a demo.
(46:28):
People can always reach out tome directly. I'm pretty open.
People reach out to me onLinkedIn. I like helping newer
people in the industry, ormentoring. Like, how do I do
this? How do I get into this? Orwho can I introduce people to?
Again, it's trust factor, right?
It's how
Blythe Brumleve (46:43):
you build the network. Thank you so much.
Thanks for tuning in to anotherepisode of everything is
logistics, where we talk allthings supply chain for the
thinkers in freight, if you likethis episode, there's plenty
more where that came from. Besure to follow or subscribe on
your favorite podcast app so younever miss a conversation. The
show is also available in videoformat over on YouTube, just by
(47:07):
searching everything islogistics, and if you're working
in freight logistics or supplychain marketing, check out my
company, digital dispatch, wehelp you build smarter websites
and marketing systems thatactually drive results, not just
vanity metrics. Additionally, ifyou're trying to find the right
freight tech tools or partnerswithout getting buried in
buzzwords, head on over tocargorex.io where we're building
(47:29):
the largest database oflogistics services and
solutions. All the links youneed are in the show notes. I'll
catch you in the Next episodeand Go jags. You.
So welcome into another episode of everything.
(00:03):
Is logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight. We are
proudly presented by SPIlogistics, and we are live at
TMSA elevate in Austin, Texas.
We've got Kevin Coomes here withus and you what's your job title
at chain now
Kevin Coomes (00:21):
I am EVP of sales.
And what does Chain do? So chainis AI. We just lost everybody
who stopped paying attention.
No, I'm kidding. No, actually,our core function is really
doing, like, OperationsManagement and trying to bring
all of the specifically on, likethe visibility side, but now
we're working in like, booking,offer management, carrier
(00:43):
engagement, that sort of stuff.
But specifically, we're tryingto automate all the low hanging
fruit. That's what we're tryingto do. So on the visibility
side, if you think about everyload you're geo fencing it,
you've got ELDs running, butthere's still like, seven to 10
touches on a load that you'vegot to get an ETA, you got to
get documents, you got to do acheck, call, whatever. We're
(01:05):
automating that stuff. We haveworkflow engine. We bring all
the communication into oneplatform so it doesn't matter if
it's email, text message,whatever, we centralize it to
the load so it doesn't get lost
Blythe Brumleve (01:20):
somewhere. So it's not a million. I mean, you
might have a million tabs open,but at least
Unknown (01:24):
exactly the dispatcher emails the driver. Text comes in
one place, and then the reps canjust chat back, and it can email
back to the dispatcher, and itcan text back the driver. But
the autopilot, our AI function,we build all the SOPs, so a lot
of that stuff they don't have todo. This happens. It's getting
(01:44):
to this location, the eta isthis, reach out and say, Hey,
did you arrive? Or are you goingto arrive on time? And it looks
like it came from the rep. Solike text the Driver. Driver
just gets to, Hey, did youarrive on time? Driver says,
Yeah, I just checked in. Andthen the autopilot actually
takes it and puts it back in theTMS, and they never touch it.
Blythe Brumleve (02:05):
So is this all, I guess, like a open source
effort, or is it all in house,like custom
Unknown (02:11):
built, some of it's custom built, some of it's open
source. So, like we're using, wehave our own model that we're
training for a lot of logisticstasks. So it can identify
exceptions, it can identifyassistance requests for a lumper
or, you know, something elsethat's going on. But then, yes,
like, we're using a lot of otherlanguage models to plug into it,
because certain ones are betterat certain things, certain ones
(02:32):
are better data imagerecognition.
Blythe Brumleve (02:35):
Oh, interesting. I would love to
hear it like, dive a littledeeper into that. Like, which,
which large language models arethe most beneficial.
Unknown (02:43):
Yeah, so we use, I mean, we use GPT. We use, what's
the other one that we're usingClaude or use clod, Gemini.
We use Gemini. I don't thinkwe're using grok right now yet,
but we've talked about it. Butthey all kind of do different.
They all like, like like, GPT isreally good with language stuff,
but like, other things, likeCloud and some others are really
(03:04):
good with more abstractingimages. There's like, so it just
really depends on the situation.
And that's kind of the coolthing about it, right? Because
you can use them for differentpurposes. So if it's like, an
image recognition, we can applythat concept. And for us, the
autopilot doesn't really matter.
It just gets the data. Oh,interesting,
Blythe Brumleve (03:21):
because I was going to say, like, how does a
user, one of the bigger, Iguess, complaints about,
especially with chatgpt, isthat, how do you know what model
to use and from what? Yes, sothe user,
Unknown (03:32):
right, exactly. So, like, that's the whole point.
Like, that's what chain does,right? Like, our our product,
our IP, we decide what needs tobe done when. Oh, interesting,
that sort of stuff. So, yeah,that's
Blythe Brumleve (03:42):
because I was listening to an interview with
one of the co founders. IsAnnalise, and she was great on
the
Unknown (03:49):
conversation. Param are, like, two of the smartest
people. And they
Blythe Brumleve (03:53):
used to have a logistics company, and they
built chain, they had a carrier,they had 15 jobs. Oh, okay,
okay. And so then they were inthe business, and then they
developed this technology tosolve that, which I think is a
little bit of like the inverseof maybe some other AI, you
know, that's come into themarket as of late.
Unknown (04:10):
Yeah, the story's wild, actually, like your story is
wild. So Annalise was in medicalschool. Param was a chemical
engineer, and not No, exactly,and they were together, but not
married. And at the time, andparam got bored with his day to
day doing chemical engineering,whatever, and he wanted
(04:32):
something different. And hisfamily is Punjabi. They're all
West Coast trucking, a lot ofthem, so he just quit his job
and opened a trucking company.
Wow, as you do. So you got 15trucks open a trucking company,
and then Annalise in her likespare time, like when she was
out of school, or, like summer,or whatever she was, helping him
dispatch do different things.
(04:55):
And then they're both from SanJose originally, and they you.
So they sat down and were like,this is just, like, broken,
like, all these things we haveto do to, like, deal with this
broker or that shipper orwhatever. Like, answer these
questions, do these things orlike, we need information, but
it takes us two hours to get itback, but we need an appointment
time or a pickup number. And sothat's kind of what led them to
(05:18):
do this. They literally werelike, we think we could fix
this. Priority One was actuallyone of their customers at the
time. This is like, actuallyeight years ago when they first,
like, formulated this idea, andPriority One was still
relatively small, comparative towhere they're at now today. And
they sat down with them, andthey're like, if you could just
build a workflow engine thatjust connected to our TMS,
(05:40):
brought all the data in. Whenthese things happen, just alert
our rep say, Hey, dummy, go dothis. You know, like, do
something. Don't forget aboutthis. So that's where it
started. And then two years ago,all kind of changed with all the
AI and all the language modelsand stuff. And so they applied
AI to it, and now it's just
Blythe Brumleve (05:58):
automated.
Well, I think that that is sowhen you hear about all of these
different workflows andprocesses, and I try to hammer
home with my audience of justhow much like process management
and process documentation,willingness to rip it all out
and start fresh with a whole newset of eyes on, you know, what
should work and what shouldn't?
(06:20):
I would imagine that, you know,working with chain that it would
alleviate a lot of that brainpower that you need to map out
all of those different processesin order to even figure out
where to put technology 100%
Unknown (06:33):
and that's kind of the thing, though. But when you come
into these things and like,that's what I always talk about,
like, I talked about this at BCSon a panel, actually, you still
need to know your business,right? Like there's only so much
chain or any automation solutionor AI solution can do for you.
You still have to understandyour business and your SOPs and
what you guys do and what yourcustomers require. But the goal
(06:56):
with chain and what we're tryingto do is facilitate that. So
it's easier, right? It's notlike we're going in and
programming all these. We havean engine. It connects to the
TMS. We have all the data, okay,what's the mapping? Right? Like,
this happens. These conditionsare met do this. And so it's a
whole engine that's easy toprogram or not program, but
(07:18):
like, basically, pick your, youknow, like a plug and play on a
dev, you know, it's like, yeah,and so, but when you're coming
into it change management, like,is important, like you have to
understand your processes,what's required. So it's also
about, like, it's aboutinternalizing those SOPs. But
it's not like, that easy thatyou just come in and it just
works. Like you do have tounderstand these customers
(07:39):
require these things, but you'reright at the end of the day.
Once you get that in, and theSOPs are there, there's no
person leaves. Another personcomes in. I don't have to
retrain them on all those SOPs.
There's no way. I have to forgetabout it, because it's all
there. And so the autopilot justgoes to work. A lot of our
customers, 95% of those touches,they just, they don't even, oh,
wow, don't even do anything.
Blythe Brumleve (08:00):
So what does a typical customer look like for
chain I for chain
Unknown (08:03):
brokers and three, pls, primarily, okay? Because that's
where a lot of that uplift is,right? A lot of that uplift is
on the broker three PL side,because they're having to fill
out those gaps to theirshippers. We could service
shippers and carriers. It's justnot our core function right now,
but they all have the sameproblems too. There's so many
(08:24):
solutions in our freight techenvironment where, I think
brokers get very concerned.
They're like, Oh, they're gonnago serve shippers are gonna put
us out of business. It's like,but they're already these are
all problems that you all face,right? Like, it's like, they
could, they can make your lifeeasier if a shipper uses chain,
because now you don't have towait for information, right?
Because they're using chain,you're automatically getting it
back out of their system. So forus, it's it's really about that
(08:44):
experience of broker, carrier,shipper, and making speeding
that up, right? The way I bringit up with people is like a
human being can't monitor 1000shipments at once and then have
1000 simultaneous conversations.
But a computer can do that, andthat's where, that's where the
(09:07):
AI stuff becomes veryinteresting, because that's a
lot of stuff that people areoutsourcing to Columbia, right?
Or whatever, after hoursweekends that people don't do
anyway.
Blythe Brumleve (09:17):
How do you find, I guess, the bound,
because logistics has alwaysbeen about relationships, but
we've also had just aninsurmountable like injection of
capital and businesses it goinginto logistics tech. So how do
you, I guess, walk that fineline of implementing tech but
also keeping your relationshipssolid?
Unknown (09:39):
Well, I think that's the interesting thing. It's part
of the reason when I left greenscreens and I was looking at
what I was going to do next,that I came to chain, because I
was looking at all thesedifferent solutions, and these
AI companies, and there's a lotof different things that are
going to work, but it was like,what are the, what are the one
of the low hanging fruitproblems that human beings don't
want to do? One and two, they.
It's not necessary. Nobody wantsto respond to a tracking No,
(10:02):
exactly right, just to get anETA and like, a driver doesn't,
like, pick up the phone, justlike, give you an ETA, right? Or
they don't want to pick up thephone. Have to call your
dispatcher just to get instantresponse, to get an appointment
time or something right. Like,it's there, it's in the TMS.
We've got to just get it back tothem. Don't wait on somebody to
do it. That's the learningfruit. The stuff that isn't is
that 5% of exceptions andassistance requests and stuff
(10:26):
like that that you might have toget involved, send a com check
or like, do something else. Theyblow a tire. You need to update
the ship, or you need to get onit. And we, we help with that,
because the autopilot identifiesall those things, oh, there's a
problem. Alert the rep. Respondand say, Cool, get us a new eta.
But then tell the rep, you needto go maybe make sure this is
all good for the shipper. Butlike, outside, outside of that
(10:50):
stuff, it's like they should betrying to drive more business,
right? Like the relationshipsare, how am I talking to my
customer, seeing it for theservicing more of their needs.
Can we get more of theirbusiness same side on the
carrier side, right? Coveringloads. Make sure you're
expanding your carrier base.
Make sure you're working withthe same carriers over and over,
(11:11):
with all the fraud stuff andstuff going on, right? Not post
and praying. So it's like, itfrees up their time to do
relationship stuff, right? Andthe way I think about it is it's
like revenue per head. How doyou get revenue per head from a
million to 2 million to 3million to 4 million without
having to hire more people to doall these menial tasks? So,
(11:32):
like, it actually, it actuallyadds to the relationship, when
you think about it, because itallows them to actually spend
more time on what's necessaryfor the relationship? Yeah, we
Blythe Brumleve (11:41):
were just recording with Mike make a lick
of SPI, and he was talking abouthow, you know, with a lot of
their technology, likerelationships still matter, and
going and doing site visits withyour customers, taking them out,
golfing like that, creates thatrelationship with them. And, you
know, just doing those simplethings that aren't scalable. And
I think with all of thetechnology, that's one thing
(12:03):
that there's a lot of, I guess,sort of fear around implementing
new technology. You're going tobe not hiring as much. You're
going to be. There's a lot of, Iguess, unforeseen circumstances
that might come from that. Butif you're in this to survive as
a business owner and as anemployee of a business like you
want to be as efficient aspossible, because salaries are
(12:25):
usually the first thing to getcut, and so yeah, when you can
free up that time and go golfingwith a customer that is doing a
lot of business with you, youknow that it's
Unknown (12:33):
weighing those relationship right? Well, and
that's interesting, too. Thesalary thing and the headcount
is, we're a low margin business,you know, like you, I work in
SAS now, and I have the lastnine years. Like the margins are
much higher, yes, but the grossmargins are higher because it
costs a lot of money to paypeople to develop these tools,
right? It makes a lot of sensewhen you break it down. But the
(12:57):
in our industry, on the truckingside and the like the brokerage
side of the carrier, side, it's,it's very low margin, right?
You're running 10 to 15% ontruck, if you're lucky. Yeah,
right. So it's how you know howto eke out more margin points
out of that. And then also,like, I said, like you said,
(13:18):
drive more revenue free moretime to go out and spend that
time with the people and dothose relationship building
tasks and that sort of stuff.
And, like, that's where it's,you know, it's not popular to
say, but like, yeah, we're notnecessarily gonna, like, it's
not about eliminating jobs, justabout repurposing people, you
know, into more revenue drivingthings or margin driving tasks,
because at the end of the day,track and trace tasks, that sort
(13:41):
of stuff doesn't. It's nothelping the bottom line, right,
right? If anything, it's onlyhurting the bottom line. Because
you bring on more loads, youbring on more customers, like,
oh, we need 10 more people justto manage the operational tasks.
It's like, that doesn't, doesn'thelp, doesn't move the needle.
It doesn't
Blythe Brumleve (13:59):
at all. And so you'd mentioned green screens
just now, because I think youhave such a fat and I think we
kicked off this conversationwith saying, like you have such
a fascinating background. Youactually opened up. I mean, you
spent time with a TMS provider,green revnova at the beginning.
I'm curious, how do you thinkthe, I guess, logistics
(14:22):
technology ecosystem is evolvingwith spending all this time at,
you know, two really bigheavyweights, and then now with
it, with chain.
Unknown (14:29):
Yeah, that's a good question. I'm a glutton for
punishment. I just keep goingback to the beginning, right? I
was like, the sixth or seventhemployee at revnova, and we had
eight customers when I gotthere. I was a fourth US based
employee at greens. Wow. We hadsix customers, I think when I
got there, and chains a littlefurther along, which is
(14:49):
interesting, because, like, theybootstrapped it, which is also
pretty cool. It's different inthe current environment, right?
Like the current environmentschange. There's a lot of I'm a
bootstrapper, exactly, right?
And that's kind of what I likedabout. A prominent lease because
they bootstrapped it. I thinkthe logistics landscape with
tech, though, has changed inthat we used to be so reliant
and like when I got to greenscreens almost 10 years ago now,
(15:10):
or whatever it was eight yearsago, nine years ago, it was so
heavily reliant on the TMSprovider, you know, like
anything you did, anything, youknow, like workflows, or, you
know, things you needed in thein the process of executing
freight, it was like, Hey, canyou guys go build this? Can you
(15:31):
go build this? Can you go buildthis? And I think traditionally,
if you look at the companieslike McLeod, mercury, gay, you
know, the traditional al Jax,those that were there ahead of
time, ahead of a lot of theseother newer solutions. That was
kind of just the way theyoperated, because that's what
was expected to them. Now youhave this capability of doing
what a lot of other industrieshave already done, and I liken
(15:52):
this to like things like Googleor Apple or whatever. It's like
Google and Apple don't go outand just build all these apps,
right? They leverage othercompanies, and then they
integrate like Google has Googlemeet, but they integrate with
Zoom and teams and all theseother things, like, so choose
your provider. Okay, Googledoesn't care, because you're
still using Google Calendar. Ithink we're kind of headed that
(16:13):
direction, and I think the TMSproviders are starting to get on
board with that. Last week, Iwas actually in Birmingham, at
McLeod, and they did theirimpact Summit, impact. And it
was very AI centric, but it wasvery partner centric. And the
idea was like talking about thecertified partners that they
have and their program, andleaning on companies like ours
(16:34):
and others, highway and D, a Twas there, you know, a lot of
other triumph was there,representing green screens and
all that, leaning on thosepeople to fill a lot of those
gaps, because McLeod's like, wecan't build all of this, right?
It's too expensive and too timeconsuming. So I think, like,
that's the direction that ispositive for our industry. Yes,
(16:57):
because, like, the more in, moreentrance to the market, more
innovation. It allows theexecution platforms to execute
and then us to go fill all thespace in between.
Blythe Brumleve (17:09):
I would think it too. It also creates that a
stronger relationship with yourcustomers, if you allow them the
tools that they're already usingand comfortable with and that
they want to connect more withthe data that they're using.
That is that's one thing exactlytaking advantage of from a
business perspective, right?
Unknown (17:25):
And we see that, I mean, we're at TMSA, right? So
you think about CRM, think aboutmarketing tools. You think about
HubSpot, Salesforce, they'vebeen doing that for years,
right? It wasn't go build apayments platform or go build
something like, go buildMailChimp, you know, like, just
integrate these things.
Blythe Brumleve (17:44):
Don't reinvent the wheel. And
Unknown (17:47):
they've acquired some things. And I think we'll see
that happening in the next fewyears. I think we're going to
see some of these companies thathave grown tremendously. You
think about companies likehighway that have grown so fast.
I mean, green screens gotacquired by Triumph, and they're
folding a lot under theirumbrella. They Acquired ISO,
whatever, but I think we'regoing to start seeing some of
that, which is also it scarespeople, because they're like,
(18:10):
but I like having my littleboutique tech company that I
work with outside of everythingelse. It's like, Yeah, but at
the end of the day, when youhave more integrated solution
with other solutions under oneumbrella. That's just the way of
the world, like, that's how tech
Blythe Brumleve (18:24):
versus, like, the closed ecosystem of what we
kind of came from exactly whereI remember trying to work in the
cloud for like, sales andmarketing efforts, or mostly
marketing efforts to assist thesales team. And it was a goddamn
nightmare. Good luck, I know,but it was a glorified, like,
export this email list? Yeah,that was what I had to work
with. But if I was able tointegrate McLeod into like, a
(18:45):
MailChimp or a HubSpot, like, itwould have been a game changer
for
Unknown (18:49):
me, right? And I think we're headed those directions,
yeah, I think we're starting tosee more of that. And again,
especially with, like, the AIsolutions and that sort of
stuff, I think we're just gonnasee it's too expensive to just
develop all like there isn't abig enough player in our space
on the tech side to just do thisall themselves. We don't have
(19:10):
Oracle, we don't have Google, wedon't have Apple, we don't have
SAP, whatever. It doesn't exist.
So you kind of have to lean onthe providers to integrate and
do that stuff we've
Blythe Brumleve (19:23):
I don't know how to segue into this, except
for the fact that you have hadother career background in,
especially with, you know, acountry that is a, you know, top
of mind for a lot of folks inthe US, and that's China. You
have an extensive experiencewith, not just like living
there, but doing business there.
Tell us about how that thatjourney started, because I'm
(19:43):
super fascinated by just runninga business in general. In China.
That
Unknown (19:49):
was the first startup trial by fire.
So I actually, I actuallystudied Chinese in school. So I
graduated K State, no seven. Igot my minor in Chinese. I lived
there for a year as a teacher.
Learned I wasn't a teacher. Iand I didn't go I wasn't a
teacher. By school, I wasprobably sci major and studied
(20:09):
Chinese, but did it to keepstudying Chinese so I could keep
learning. Came back in, oh,wait, economy crashed, so it was
back for a year and a halftrying to find a way to go back
to China, because I did reallyenjoy it. I enjoy the cultural
aspect, the learning, right?
Just being, you know, exposed toall that. And then I got an
opportunity with a guy that Iwent to Kansas State with that
(20:31):
was that was starting thiscompany over there. So I got
introduced to him. We startedtalking totally different world.
We were doing energy efficiency,like building efficiency
technologies, this sort of
Blythe Brumleve (20:44):
stuff, and that's why they're kicking their
ass on energy right now. Theygot in way
Unknown (20:48):
early, or Yes, I mean, they did because they knew they
had a problem, right? Especiallythey have way more people and
way more energy usage. But sothey, you know, a lot of these
companies, when they go over toChina, they don't want to do
like, it's scary to do businessthere. You're afraid your
technology is going to getstolen. You don't know the
landscape. It's very different,you know, in the way that you do
(21:10):
business and execute contractsand do all this stuff. And so
that's essentially what we weretrying to do for these people,
was like, take thesetechnologies in the US and other
company in Israel, and help themget in to China so that they had
a partner that wasn'tnecessarily, like a Chinese
company that they were not socertain about,
Blythe Brumleve (21:29):
like a liaison.
You're almost like a broker atthat
Unknown (21:31):
point, kind of, yeah. I mean, we were, kind of, yeah,
representative of theircompanies. This was like 2011
2012 right? So this is like,fast forward now, and it's like,
even, you know, like all of thisis blown up even worse with all
the attention. But yeah, it wasfascinating. Learned a lot.
Blythe Brumleve (21:48):
What do you think is it doesn't have to be
logistics related, but what doyou think are some of, like, the
cultural, I guess, interestingmoments that you were able to
learn about, or because, I thinkfor me, with China, like, I love
learning about history, and withChina in general, like they have
so much history, you know, 1000sand 1000s of years of us almost
(22:11):
a singular, you know, populationand culture and, yeah, yeah, how
what was all of that like? Like,the culture shock of from the
United States, where it's amelting pot versus over there
was much more uniformity, even,
Unknown (22:23):
even when you understand it and speak Chinese
like I can't imagine. I hadfriends that didn't speak any
Chinese, right, that wanted tomove, do something different,
whatever went over there. Ican't imagine what that culture
shock was like, like, because atleast I could, like, speak the
language and understand people.
And then when I was there, I gotpretty fluent. I was there for
three years in total, at twodifferent times, and so that
made it easier. But yes, theculture shock is still drastic.
(22:48):
It's it's interesting, becausewe have, like, our personal
lives and our business lives,right? Like, and a lot of it,
especially like, our industry isso small, it bleeds together.
Like, so we all we've known eachother for a while, right? Like,
it starts to bleed together alittle bit, but you still have,
like, your personal life andyour work life, and we kind of
(23:09):
keep separation of that and howthings work China, like, things
are so deeply and I think thisAsia in general, but
specifically China, it's sodeeply ingrained together their
cultural stuff and theirbusiness and whatever that it's
like. It's very hard for, Ithink, Westerners to come over
and understand that. I see allyou know, you see all this stuff
(23:32):
with tariffs. You see all thisstuff going on right now with
the trade tensions or the backand forth and whatever. And I
think part of what happens to usin the western world is like, we
don't understand the negotiationisn't just like hardball, it's
just very it's different forthem. Like, there's a very
distinct the government in Chinaspecifically, but then the
(23:58):
people, it's there's thisdistinct nationalism, right?
That surrounds everything thatthey do, and a lot of that has
to do with history, becausethey're Chinese, and they're
proud, and they're proud oftheir history. And, you know,
having, you know, they kind ofview the world as, like, infancy
compared to a lot of thecivilization that they had prior
to a lot of the rest of theworld, right? If you think
(24:20):
about, like, the Middle Ages,and prior to that, like, Europe
was still a mess, whereas, like,China was an empire at that
time, right? And had a lot ofadvancements, and had a lot of
civilization, money, gunpowder,you know, like, there's a lot of
that stuff that's alreadyhappening. Yes? Paper, yes.
Paper, writing, yeah, like,like, modern writing, right?
(24:41):
It's calligraphy and so, like,so, like, they see that as a,
you know, part of, not just partof the country, like, we're
proud of America, but like, it'sdifferent in that, like, they
see that as part integral tosociety, you know. So when they
do business as. Sort of stuff,relationships, it also leads to
problems, right? Because there'sa lot of corruption. There's a
(25:04):
lot of things that come out ofthis, because of my family knows
that family and connected tothese people, and we have
political connections, but it'sall China, so it's okay to,
like, do that. So, so it's,it's, it's interesting in that
regard, because I think there'sjust a very different outlook on
your like, day to day life inChina as a Chinese person,
(25:27):
because of that culture and thathistory, and so I think that's
what causes a lot of themisunderstanding, right that
goes on when you have thosethose political escalations,
that sort of stuff. Is it
Blythe Brumleve (25:41):
safe to assume that, like the majority of the
US is more like individualisticversus like China, that almost
moves like a unit,
Unknown (25:47):
exactly? That's a very good way of putting it 100%
that's what I've always
Blythe Brumleve (25:51):
gotten from their their culture, is that
they, what was the famousphrase, like they think in
decades, not, you know, electioncycles, yeah, or longer, yeah,
you know, or no, they think incenturies, decade, yeah,
Unknown (26:04):
centuries, yeah, yeah, they do, because that's just,
it's relative, right? And so, soyeah, they do. They kind of,
it's changed a lot. I mean,there's a lot of stuff that's
changed over there, even since Iwas there, politically and
politically it's, it's kind ofgone backwards, a little bit
right, where it's a little morenationalistic and communistic
(26:26):
than it was before, where, Ithink, like, when I was there in
1112, was very different. It wasa little more open, like, I joke
about this with people and like,as a foreigner that was doing
business, like you could havegot away with murder, because
really, it was more just likethey didn't want international
incidents. It was all economic,grow the country, grow the
money, whatever. Whereas, like,now it's kind of taking a step
(26:48):
back a little
Blythe Brumleve (26:49):
bit. That's because I've told people, like,
I want to, I want to go toChina, like I want to visit it,
and I get the apprehension,like, Oh, you're, yeah, I think
you're, you're not scared to go
Unknown (26:57):
over there. Safe. It's safe. It's always safe. It's
just more so, like, I think it'sjust a different atmosphere now,
yeah, right, they're a lot morescrutinizing foreigners in the
Western world and that sort ofstuff, because they've become a
little more closed off than theywere before. You know, I think
it's still, there's still tonsof expats there doing business
(27:18):
whatever. So it's not like, youknow, a scary thing. But I just
think, governmentally, whatever,I think the nature of it's just
changed,
Blythe Brumleve (27:27):
different landscape of problems.
Unknown (27:28):
Yeah, visas have changed. And getting over there
that used to be so easy to get abusiness visa and go, really
that stuff. Oh, yeah. And that'sall kind of changed. And that's
political, right? It'spolitical, but, yeah, again,
it's it. But you asked about,like, the cultural side of doing
business and that sort of stuff.
I mean, it's kind of how he gotinto freight, because they're an
(27:48):
export economy, they're all,they're all more focused ocean,
air, whatever. Like, peopledon't sit and talk about
trucking, like we talked abouthere, where we're more closed
off, like, in terms of that,right? Like we're more of a
centralized economy. They aremore, you
Blythe Brumleve (28:03):
know, I global.
I was talking to somebody, and Idon't know how accurate this is,
so I Well, whatever. But he wasfrom Germany, and he said that
in Europe, they don't have TMSsoftware. And I thought that
that was this. I was like, whydoesn't every country have a TMS
software? Like, does China havea TMS software? What is their
freight tech or logistics? Idon't know if you know the
answer to that. I'm just
Unknown (28:24):
spitballing they do.
They do because I learned aboutour Chinese partner of our
company was an importer,exporter, so he did a lot of
steel, timber, commodity stuff,which is how I learned logistics
a little bit, and then came backand ended up in it. But they do
have systems and stuff that theyuse. It's a little more
rudimentary. It's not ascomplicated as a lot of the
stuff we
Blythe Brumleve (28:45):
do. Like, are they working off of client, a
Chinese McLeod over there? Yeah.
Unknown (28:49):
Do have similar just like they do have, like,
software vendors and stuff thatwork on that particular stuff.
But again, they're very locallogistics in a lot of those
countries, well, specificallySoutheast Asia and China is
still very local logistics,right? It's pick up the phone,
call people, whatever. We alsohave 1.3 billion people, right?
(29:11):
You know, like, so there's a lotof people that have jobs. We
worked out of our Chinesepartner's office. The city I
lived in when I owned thecompany was called Shaman.
Shaman, subtropical, way south.
It's right near Taiwan. It'slike the closest mainland city
to Taiwan. Oh, interesting. Andwe worked out of like the Trade
Center area near the port,because that's where his office
was. And so we would walkdownstairs, and you'd walk
(29:33):
through the Trade Center, and itwas like, kind of like a
brokerage floor, a little bitlike a brokerage floor in the
past, maybe a little more likeboiler room, Coyote, original,
you know, that sort of stuff,1015, years ago. But, yeah. Or,
like, you think about like astock brokerage floor, right? Or
like a commodities exchange,like, where they're literally
(29:54):
all in these little pods andthese little desks, and it's all
different companies, but they'reall like. Moving freight
together, like gettingcontainers or getting
consolidation space or whatever.
So it's, it is. It's still verymanual in that way. But it is,
it's, it works.
Blythe Brumleve (30:14):
You know, what did you learn about logistics in
China that you brought with youto back to the states, well, so
Unknown (30:23):
the international stuff is, like, how I got into it,
right? And that's really where,where it differs, right? Like
there, I feel like, unless yougo work for a freight forwarder
or something, right, or you workin that world over here, we are
very, very more focused. We'reso much more focused on domestic
trucking across border, Mexico,Canada, like, a lot less focus
(30:47):
on international freight. Andover there, everybody's an
expert, like, everybody's anexpert on Container freight and
air freight and everything else,because that is the driver for
their economy, yeah, becausethey're mostly export economy,
yeah, most of their economy ison that, and we're a huge import
economy, but that's also whywe're bringing the goods in, and
then it's got to get trucked anddistributed and warehouse and
(31:09):
whatever. And so it's differentin that regard, like they're all
there's, you think about, like,how many brokers and carriers we
have in this country. It's likethe same there, but freight
forwarders. There's like, 5060,70,000 freight forwarders in
China, right? Because it's sucha massive part of their economy.
So it is very different. Andthat's, I got a huge crash
(31:29):
course in that. And that's,that's how I ended up in
logistics. Is I was working fora tech, small tech company when
I got back in Kansas City thatwas building freight forwarding
quoting platform deal. Gotintroduced to Joel Clum, who's a
CEO of worldwide Express, whostarted Carrie direct with jet
McCandless, who's P 44 now, butit was they were just doing
(31:50):
Carrie direct, just nowmetaphor, right? And Joel and I
met, he's like, Hey, we coulduse somebody that knows some of
the International stuff to workwith a couple people we teach
you all the domestic stuff.
Eight months later, after comingback from China, I moved to
Chicago and thenstarted work for them. Rest is
history. So that was like, therewere like,
five or six of us in that officein downtown Chicago. Do you
Blythe Brumleve (32:11):
think any of your experience in China has
helped you kind of navigate,maybe some of the education
that's going on or needed to goon in the first six months of
2025
Unknown (32:23):
Yeah, it definitely the tariffs. I mean, every you know,
you have that experience, andeverybody's text,
you, what do you think of this?
You're probably like, Oh,you're my local China expert.
What is happening right now? AndI haven't been there, and, you
know, I think the last I was inChina was like, 2016 but, yeah,
it does. It helps you understandit a little better, if anything,
(32:43):
what I've told people is like,it's not as scary as we think it
is, like it's a lot of blusterand brinkmanship and like,
making business deals, yeah,like, there's
no we're not equipped yet. We'rein a better position than they
are, because of Mexico and theyoung population and the ability
(33:07):
to manufacture and still havethat opportunity to do cheaper
goods, whereas, like China, isnot in an enviable position.
They have a lot of agingpopulation, and they have an
export economy, and so they loseExactly, they lose trade deals,
they lose that sort of stuff.
People don't want to work infactories anymore, right? Rising
middle class, that's, that's badfor them, like, it's bad for
(33:31):
their economy. So, like,there's, you know, it's, it's, I
think, when you boil it down tothe economics and the money,
that's really where it becomesmore important. And yeah, in
doing business over there, andunderstanding that you have a
lot of very wealthy Chinesepeople that are very, very, very
wealthy, that have made theirmoney on this type of economy
(33:53):
and this type of backbone thatthey have over there, in doing
trade with the West anddifferent things, right? And
that's been a huge central partto that. Government's not gonna
pull that rug out from underthem, because these people are
happy with their billions ofdollars, you know, like that.
They've been able to do thiswhen, you know, if your 50s or
60s in China, and you grew up asa kid, you lived in basic
(34:15):
poverty, you know, and so youmight be a billionaire now, so
you just think about that,right?
That's quite a leap. Yeah, it islike, we
don't have, I mean, we have somepeople that have done that, but
it's not, it's moremillionaires. Yeah, there's
people in China that grew up inabject poverty, because that was
(34:36):
just the way their world waswhen they were younger. If
they're in their 50s or 60s or70s, a lot of them are
billionaires now. So it's just adifferent it's a very different
dichotomy. How do
Blythe Brumleve (34:49):
you think I would imagine that, obviously,
tariffs are affecting everylogistics company, but how are
they affecting maybe some ofyour customers at chain, and how
are you helping maybe navigatethem through these difficulties?
Unknown (34:59):
It's. Tough. It's tough because, I mean, we've been in
this freight market for what 20I mean, I was at green screens,
right? So we watched all therates. This stuff happened
Blythe Brumleve (35:08):
2022 I think, yeah, yeah.
Unknown (35:10):
I got to, got to green screens in November of 21 so we
watched it
Blythe Brumleve (35:14):
in mid, oh, at the peak. So you got in at the
peak. And then, kind
Unknown (35:17):
of, and then August, I think it was August 23 and then
after that, it just reallytanked, right? So, it's, it's
we've been, we were alreadygoing through all that, the post
COVID stuff and what happened inthe over capacity in the market
and all that. So we're alreadyhaving these issues. And then
you introduce this stuff, withthe political stuff and the
tariffs and whatever, and thenthe the Pentium kind of
(35:37):
switched. It's different fromit's not rates as much as it is
volumes, right? Because then, ifyou're we had the volumes
before, but the rates were downbecause we had too much
capacity. Now, if the volumesaren't coming in, it could be a
silver lining, because it couldnot that I wanted anybody to go
out of business, but it couldput some of these trend
(35:58):
companies out of business thataren't operating well, that
still have trucks on the roadthat maybe shouldn't,
Blythe Brumleve (36:04):
the ones that came in during the came in
during COVID, Fast Money andyeah,
Unknown (36:08):
that we still need to get ready, because we're still
very loose. We still have toomuch capacity, so the volumes
come down even more, and we'regonna we've already seen it.
We're already seeing the effectof that a little bit. They pause
the tariffs. But it's still,you're still 30 days out, or 60
days out that they pauseshipments or whatever. So I
think that's been the difficultthing. I think people now like
(36:29):
they're just jaded at thispoint, almost three years in, or
whatever we are now, they'rekind of just getting jaded by
the fact. So it's tough. It'stough on everybody, because it's
still like, you know, depressedrates and tough to, you know,
loose market and whatever. But
Blythe Brumleve (36:45):
everybody's pointing the finger at each
other. You hear anybodyimmutable, yeah. But I think
we've
Unknown (36:48):
gotten to a point of at least stability, where we're
not, like, seeing the rates justgo down, you know, or, like,
fluctuate up for two days andthen go straight back to the
bottom. I think we've kind ofcome up a little bit. I think
the rates have come up, sothat's helped at least create
stability. Create stability sopeople feel better at least,
which is part of the battle.
But, yeah, I mean, it's stillbeen pretty tough, right? I
(37:09):
think, I think we've still seena lot of companies struggling,
either getting acquired or goingout of business. Hopefully, by
the back of the year, we seesome of that stuff change, if
this turmoil stuff and thetariff stuff kind of works at
some works itself out, which itseems like it will, again, with
some of the stuff that'shappened the last 30 to 45 days.
But yeah, I mean, on the brokersand three PLS, and the carriers,
(37:31):
it really puts that intensepressure on them. If your rate's
already low and then volumesdecrease, it's like, Okay, now
we're not moving any freight.
And there's some carriers
Blythe Brumleve (37:40):
that are saying, I'm just going to park
my truck during this truckduring this time and not move
anything and just wait foreverything to kind of settle
out. And it's like, you you gotto have a good cushion in order
to do that financially better.
Unknown (37:51):
Hope you do. You better. Hope you do in those
situations. But, but again,though, it's like, if they don't
have a good cushion, Far be itfor me to talk about anybody's
job. Well, it might not be. It'seconomics,
Blythe Brumleve (38:01):
right? And it's applicable to every business.
You have to have that safetycushion. You have to pay it. You
can't keep your head in the sandabout these things anymore. No,
I think a lot of folks triedthat and yeah, you know, tariffs
hit you over the head, andyou're out of business. And so
you have to pay attention tothese things. Is take
Unknown (38:19):
it full circle, though, the tech stuff, I mean, that's
where it makes it's going toimprove our industry with
efficiencies, yes, so that theseeffects, the acute effects of
having these rate fluctuations,or having these problems with
volumes or whatever, aren't asbad if you're in a 20 to 25%
margin instead of 10 to 15%margin, because you've improved
your efficiencies, And you'veraised your your lower to your
(38:42):
OTR, right? And you're actuallygetting more gross or net
margin, makes it easier toweather the storm than when
you're running razor thinmargins. And then this stuff
happens. So I think that's whereit's interesting, because the
investment in Tech has, like,kind of waxed and waned these
last couple years as this stuffhas kind of worked itself out,
but it's like, with that wouldbe my lesson to people, is like,
(39:06):
but, yeah, go invest in stuffthat creates efficiency, because
that's going to be your instantROI. If you can raise a few
margin points, then who market?
Be damned
Blythe Brumleve (39:16):
if it's a bottleneck. Now it's going to be
a bottleneck when business picks
Unknown (39:20):
up, doesn't matter, right? So create the
efficiencies. Raise your bottomline,
Blythe Brumleve (39:24):
especially with all you should maybe have some
extra time on your hands ifyou're not moving as much. And
so work on the processes,
Unknown (39:31):
transportation, marketing and sales. There you
go, go market, go sell and getmore business.
Blythe Brumleve (39:36):
Well, okay, couple last questions here,
because we are at, you know,TMSA elevate. What are you
hoping to learn from like, amarketing and sales perspective?
How are you kind of honing in onyour own, like person, because
you have a really great personalbrand, obviously, you're a
subject matter expert. How doyou kind of define what you're
going to invest in personally atthe, you know, personal branding
level, I'm
Unknown (39:56):
curious to see. So this is my first time in CMSA. Okay,
right? So. Um, thank you. AndI'm doing to a panel, and a
speaking opportunity got ropedin. It's funny how the speaking
thing happened. Jen, they'dasked me to do a panel, and
then, and I was like, No, I'mexcited, like new, new speaking
opportunity and like, new crowdand whatever, because I've been
(40:17):
and and then Jen and I were atBCS, and Jen was like, somebody
dropped Do you want to do thisspeaking? She goes, I told the
Education Committee, you'd begreat. Sure. So, and I don't
mind doing that stuff. It'll befun. But, you know, it's for me,
though, first time here andtalking to a lot of people that
I don't normally talk to, right?
Coming from tech, like I don'ttalk to a lot of the sales
(40:38):
people. It depends on thedifferent brokerage, or three PL
depending on how theirorganization is set up, and
whatever, and where the, youknow, the technology applies.
But I'm curious to see to talkto some of those people. Talk to
Mike, right, Mike's actually myTMSA buddy from SPI. But like,
talk to those people about,like, how, like, how are you
(40:59):
approaching this market? Right?
Because it's like, with chainnow I'm very much focused on the
operational efficiencies andthat sort of stuff. But how are
they approaching the market froma sales and marketing
perspective, how are theydifferentiating themselves?
Like, what are the opportunitiesthere for myself, from a tech
(41:19):
side to make that better forthem and improve that because
honestly, I don't think we getinto that much on the tech side,
right, like, they might use aCRM or something. But worse,
we're so inefficient. This isgonna sound so bad. We're so
inefficient in this industry. Onthe operational side, yes, we're
so great opportunity, whatever,right? Like, like, we're so
(41:41):
inefficient on that side that,like, we're so heavily focused
from a from a tech perspectiveon that part of the business,
that, like, we aren't reallyfocused on the sales and
marketing side as much from froma tech Avenue. And so I'm really
interested to talk to some ofthe different people about that.
And like, what their what theirmain focus is, how they're
differentiating their services,doing that sort of stuff.
(42:02):
Because even then, I mean, like,that's what I'm selling with
chain, to the people that I'mselling to on the operational
side, as well as, like, for yourpeople, get more people selling,
get more people driving morerevenue, right? Get more people
out there, differentiating yourbrand. But again, like, how are
they doing that is, is helpfulfor me to understand from our
perspective as a tech provider,but yeah, so I'm really
(42:24):
interested to have some of thoseconversations with people. Heck,
Blythe Brumleve (42:27):
yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of people
they hear that are eitherattending or speaking that are
going to be able to speak towhether it's the marketing one
person, marketing team in house,or the one that's building their
personal brand, it just is allover logistics and, like, a good
and a bad way, you kind of cancut your teeth on a lot of
things if you're a one personmarketing or a sales team. Well,
(42:48):
in the personal
Unknown (42:49):
brand thing is interesting too. Like, that's
what I've told a lot of, like,all the reps that I hired at
green screens, and, like,different people I worked with
at ravinova and whatever I'mlike, you really want to get you
really want to elevate yourselfin this industry, get network,
get to know people. And it's notabout like going out there and,
you know, being a influencer,but like you said, it's being a
subject matter expert and likehelping other people making
(43:14):
those connections, right? Orwhere to go to for certain
answers and that sort of stuff.
I think that personal brandingaspect has been really good for
our industry, right? We havepeople like yourself and others
that are like, come from thebackground of freight that are
now doing this stuff to helppeople market their personal
brand or like, do these things.
And in our industry, with itbeing a such a incestuous
(43:35):
network based industry, right?
Everybody's worked for everybodylike, that's
Blythe Brumleve (43:39):
trying to even get podcast guests who you know
haven't done the round. Yeah,
Unknown (43:44):
right, exactly. Oh, just I said to you, I'm like,
we've never done yourpodcast. Every couple years
Blythe Brumleve (43:50):
I'm excited about because you've made your
rounds. And when I know, I knowwhen the PR releases are going
out exactly, you can kind of seethe same, not necessarily you,
but you can kind of see the samepeople going,
Unknown (44:00):
Yeah, for sure, for sure, it's good. Like, no, it
is. It's good to like, have thatexperience, or, like, share that
background, and as again, theyounger people that are doing
this stuff, or in sales ormarketing in our industry, like,
that's funny, impart thatknowledge to like, build that
brand and do these things,because that will help you just
branch it. You'll get to writeyour own ticket and
Blythe Brumleve (44:19):
trust as well.
Like, you're developing thatlike and trust factor, and that
will be valuable no matter ifit's within your company or a
company you might, you know,join in the future. It's a way
to level up. Yeah, for sure. Allright, well, Kevin, any,
anything, anything that you feelis important to mention that we
haven't
Unknown (44:35):
already talked about, no, but, I mean, we're at TMSA,
so I feel like it's like, youknow, about to learn. We're
ready for the brand. We're readyto learn. I'm excited for the
panels. Awesome. You know, theopportunity to speak to
everybody, Heck, yeah, it'sthat's actually really fun.
Like, I have never done that.
I've always done, like, I'vedone like aI panels, or like,
stuff on rates, or things ontech or whatever. Now I'm
actually speaking to my actualcraft Conference, which is
(44:56):
different, weirdly. Been alittle nervous. Like, no, don't
be nervous. Don't be fine. I'venever done
that though. Oh, yeah, this ishow I do my actual job. Well, it
helps
Blythe Brumleve (45:10):
people understand your role and how it
could fit within theirorganization. And I think with
the beautiful thing about TMSAis that it's not going to have
the 1000s of people that youknow, maybe, like a larger
conference would have, yeah, sothis one just it feels less
like, it's like I have a certainlength people battery, and at
(45:30):
the end of some conferences,it's very, very low. This one, I
always come away feeling reenergized, because it's the
intimacy level of you know, lessyou know. It's around 200 people
that come to this conference,and you you build those more
personal, it's more personal,and you develop those lasting
relations. Yeah, some of these
Unknown (45:46):
conferences, you're right. It's just like, bounce
one to group to group to groupto group to group. And
Blythe Brumleve (45:50):
it's a lot, but it's a different it's a
different intensity level thatyou kind of have to, like, gear
up for. So I enjoy the, I don'twant to say slow pace, because
it still feels like we're doinga lot, yeah, but it's a lot with
people that you have built acore audience with. You know
Unknown (46:06):
for sure, I'm excited.
Awesome. Well, thank you somuch. Kevin, where can folks
follow you? Follow more of yourwork. Get
introduced to chain. They canfind me on LinkedIn. I'm always
on LinkedIn, building mypersonal Yes, but yeah, our
website is try chain.com Soexactly how it sounds, exactly
how it's spelled, try chain.com,reach out to us, get a demo.
(46:28):
People can always reach out tome directly. I'm pretty open.
People reach out to me onLinkedIn. I like helping newer
people in the industry, ormentoring. Like, how do I do
this? How do I get into this? Orwho can I introduce people to?
Again, it's trust factor, right?
It's how
Blythe Brumleve (46:43):
you build the network. Thank you so much.
Thanks for tuning in to anotherepisode of everything is
logistics, where we talk allthings supply chain for the
thinkers in freight, if you likethis episode, there's plenty
more where that came from. Besure to follow or subscribe on
your favorite podcast app so younever miss a conversation. The
show is also available in videoformat over on YouTube, just by
(47:07):
searching everything islogistics, and if you're working
in freight logistics or supplychain marketing, check out my
company, digital dispatch, wehelp you build smarter websites
and marketing systems thatactually drive results, not just
vanity metrics. Additionally, ifyou're trying to find the right
freight tech tools or partnerswithout getting buried in
buzzwords, head on over tocargorex.io where we're building
(47:29):
the largest database oflogistics services and
solutions. All the links youneed are in the show notes. I'll
catch you in the Next episodeand Go jags. You.
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