Freight Friends: Warehouse Drones, Market Shifts, and Logistics Biz Favorites

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Grace Sharkey (00:05):
I think we're going to see more spending. We
just do every year aroundChristmas, right? We see the end
of the year, Christmas gifts,etc. I mean, even Halloween
candy last year saw a slightincrease. I I trust the American
consumer to spend more moneythis year than they did last
year. That's if there'ssomething that we can do in

(00:27):
distress, it's we will find away to spend more money.

Blythe Brumleve (00:30):
Welcome into another episode of everything is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight. I am your
host, Blythe Milligan, and weare proudly presented by SPI
logistics. And we've got GraceSharkey back with another
episode of Freight Friends. Sheis from Orderful. This is her

(00:52):
second show, new gig with thecompany. As you can see, she's
got the flashy shirt on today,and your title, you just told
me, and I've already forgottenit, so please, please tell us,

yeah. So I'm a PR girly now, Senior Manager of PR
and communications for thecompanies, also all the fun
stuff out of journalism into

tech. How are you liking the adjustment so
far?

It's good. You know, I was just talking on what
the truck earlier today withKaylee, about how it's
fascinating to see kind of thework that happens behind the
scenes at a lot of these techcompanies. You know, it's, it's
definitely not when you youacquire new customer, or you're
working with a potential newcustomer, it's technology in the

(01:39):
space. There's nothing that'seven close to, let's just, you
know, switch, the flip theswitch, and the light will turn
on right, especially with EDI,because there's so many
different guidelines and peoplebuild their their systems
differently, building atechnology that can connect
systems EDI integrate withinnine days, is a lot of work and

(02:04):
a lot of nuance and a lot ofexpertise. So it's like, it's
really fascinating to talk tocustomers and just hear not only
about the product working, butmore so the conversations and
the listening skills that ourteam has in order to to develop
and deliver these, you know,SOPs at the end of the day. And

(02:24):
so I just find that fascinating.
You know, we always talk aboutpartnerships in this space, and
I think I've even written aboutand talked about in the past the
importance of, like, not justfinding a tech provider, but
finding one that's a goodpartner. And it's just cool to,
like, see that come into effectand truly understand the weight
of that relationship as well.

I'm sure it helps too obviously, with your
writing and covering experienceto know what media outlets are
looking for, and then you cankind of help position both
orderful and your customers inorder to tell a better story,
which I think is pretty cool.

Yeah, we're working on, actually, for an
event that we're doing in acouple of months. Part of that
is we get to upload, like a 20minute webinar customer story,
et cetera, for everyone to seefor a couple of months, kind of
like a catalog. And I wastalking with a customer that
we're going to do that withyesterday. And it was, it was, I

(03:25):
really enjoyed the the time,because it did put me back into
kind of that writing place whereI get to kind of pull that story
out of an individual. And it waskind of funny because, you know,
at first they're like, you know,I don't know what we can talk
about. And as I'm, you know,kind of pulling on, you know,
what problems we're solving. Howdid that happen? What is your

(03:45):
life now in this role? It'sespecially from her standpoint,
like she was even saying, I'mnot a technologist, and, like,
this system is just so easy touse. And having her, like,
articulate why, it brought backkind of just that, like,
journalistic, like, fun momentthat I have, but it also like
resonated to me, like, Okay,this is, like, how I can really

(04:06):
contribute to this, to thisbusiness is, is being able to
pull that out and to tell thatstory and and share that
outcome, right? I think that'swhat's interesting. We've talked
about this a lot. It's like, youknow, the EDI work, the
technical work, might not be thesexiest thing to talk about and

(04:26):
in a panel or space, but what'sreally fascinating is, like the
aftermath of having these toolsand the work that this big,
growing brand, actually, I cansay this Verity is, you know, a
scaling quick growing clothingline and to like, hear someone

(04:47):
who's working their their ERPsystems and their different
management systems say, like,you know, we can continue to
scale this business with justtwo of us in this tech
department. Percent of thiscompany, and like her, like,
just like seeing the joy on herface was like, it's like, okay,
this is what the outcome of thistechnology is. It's, it's

(05:10):
someone doing their job. Well,who knows how this industry
works, but I might not be atechnologist, right? And so it's
just really cool to, like, bekind of back in that space and
be reminded of this is theskills that you're bringing
here.

Hell yeah, it's like evolving your skills too,
like you, you typically willyou, you know, you always,
especially in media. And whatI've seen and what I've
experienced is that you startoff writing, and then you get a
little bit into radio, and thenfrom radio to TV, and then the
real money is from taking itfrom everything you've learned
through all of those, you know,steps, and then being able to

(05:45):
help businesses tell their storyas well. And so it sounds, it
sounds like you've got, youknow, really good place there.
And I, you know, you mentionedsomething about, you know,
different case studies andcustomer stories. Learned
something at the recent TMSAconference. I'm going to get
into it a little bit later intoday's episode, because for
folks who may be new here forfreight friends, we usually

(06:05):
cover, you know, a coupledifferent news topics, and then
what we'll get into is ourfavorite freight business at the
time, favorite freight marketingat this time, and then also a
source to porch story that eachone of us picks. So it kind of
gives us the ability to keep aneye out. We're already online,
you know, like 24/7 it feelslike so we're paying attention

(06:26):
to a lot of different things.
And so hopefully this is kindof, you know, an interesting
roundup for the audience totake. And for this, for the sake
of today's show, what we'regoing to be talking about, we're
going to get into a little bit,not a little bit a lot, around
drone logistics. There's a lotof moving parts that are
happening in that space. Is itall hype? Is it, you know, kind
of going to be a multi billiondollar industry, which some are

(06:46):
betting on, probably, then we'regoing to get into some second
half logistics marketpredictions that we are in July,
halfway to Christmas. And thatfeels weird to say, but here we
are, so we're going to talkabout that. What you can kind of
hope maybe, can we setexpectations for the rest of
this year we will see? So we'llset that groundwork, and then

(07:10):
we'll get into some of thefreight marketing, the
businesses, and round out theshow with source to porch. So
first and foremost, let's getinto drone logistics. And so I
got a little intro. I did. Ikicked it up a notch. So let me,
let me read through my littleintro for drone logistics, the
reality versus the hype. And itsays, From buzzing through last

(07:32):
mile deliveries to scanningwarehouses, this tech isn't sci
fi anymore. It's real. It'sscaling, and it's getting funded
like crazy. So where drones aremaking the most impact right now
is around last mile, delivery,warehouse, inventory,
infrastructure, monitoring, andthen some niche use cases in
agriculture, we have talked, Idon't know if you remember a few

(07:53):
episodes back where there weredrones that were helping
tugboats tie different lines tothe ships that are coming in. So
that was something that Ithought was interesting. So
that's happening in the nicheuse case in the maritime sector.
So for last mile delivery, acouple little highlights zipline
you probably have seen. Have youseen them at all on your Twitter

(08:16):
slash x feed?

Well, I've been following them for years because
I know that they started off in,I believe, Africa, because of
the regulations,

right? Well, they started off in Ghana, and
they were doing blooddeliveries, and so that was,
it's interesting to see, like,kind of how some of these
companies get started. Theystart off with, like, disaster
logistics, or, like, medicaldeliveries. These really, like
time sensitive shipments, butalso high value shipments. And I
think that's probably thebusiness model for some of these

(08:49):
companies, is that they startoff in the high impact areas,
you know, kind of tweak somethings, and then from there, it
becomes more investable to theseother VCs. So zipline is one of
them? What have you seen fromthem?

So, yeah, like you said, they did start more of
the medicine, pharmaceutical,maybe side. I think a lot of
drone companies jumped in rightaround the pandemic with FAA
like, I guess regulationroundabouts in order to get
enough flying in so they couldget regulation as well. The one

(09:25):
thing I believe the last time Ihad really looked at the
zipline, they they are doing alot of work, if I remember
correctly, in Texas withWalmart. I believe Jack Dalio,
one of my favorite guys over atflying magazine, who also
writes, of course, forfreightwaves as well. He always
gets to go on those fun toursand see them in action. And I

(09:48):
always get really jealous of himas well. But I do know I think
Walmart is as invested, or atleast has started using zipline
as well, and they have theirdrone is like, definitely
changed. Change too, if Iremember correctly, since when
it first came out, like it wasmore of like this, almost like a
mini plane looking structure,where now I feel like it's more

(10:09):
of like a bus looking situation,and it has, like it's a little
bit more square, boxy. So that'sbeen kind of cool,

like a copter, where they can mask off
vertically, yeah. And then I'venoticed too, with with zip
lines, they they use the samekind of methodology that, like
aircraft carriers will usewhenever a plane is coming to
land on an aircraft carrier, youhave this, it's called the
adjusting cable, I believe. Andso it's literally a cable that

(10:37):
is in obviously very strong, andthat it catches the plane as
it's landing on the carrier. Andso they have something similar
set up in Texas, or maybe it'sArkansas, I believe, with zip
line that they have, but it's inthe air. So they have these two
kind of sticks that are pointedin the air with a line with a

(10:58):
string that's connecting the twosticks, and it catches the drone
as it's landing. So ziplinedefinitely is, is one of them.
They have 600 plus daily medicalflights in Ghana, serving 12
million people. I believethey're also doing deliveries in
Rwanda. So that's to your point.
That's really where they kickthings off, Alphabet slash
Google, which or is the parentcompany to Google their

(11:19):
alphabets wing, it's 300,000global deliveries they've done
so far. They're doing 1000deliveries a day in Australia.
Walmart, you said that theyinvested in zipline, but I
believe they also have their owndrones as well. It's been kind
of, I think for Walmart, it'skind of been a trial period,

(11:41):
because I know that they weretrying to do deliveries via
drone in Florida, but then theyjust stopped doing it. And
there's lots of factors at playthere. So there's maybe we
should get into a little bit ofthe, I guess, the challenges
around it. But first, Shenzhenis another one that is the food
delivery in Shenzhen is inChina, is already normalized

(12:03):
there. I don't know if you'veseen any of those videos. It's
kind of incredible. So while I'mtalking about it, they have
almost these, like kiosks, likevending machines, all over
Shenzhen. Shenzhen is like theSilicon Valley of China. And so
they have all of the driverlesstaxis in there, by BYD, the
driverless cars, drone deliveryfor food in particular. Like, if

(12:27):
you are watching some of thesetourists that go over there,
it's like a vending machine thathas a landing pad on the top of
it. So you can order food froman app, like the the demo I saw,
they were ordering from, like aKFC, so they placed their order
in the next, like closest,little vending machine kiosk
thing you can either order atthe kiosk or use your phone in

(12:49):
order to order and pay. Thedrone gets your food, gets
delivered and, like less than 30minutes, they drop it off in
it's almost like their owncontainer system that they
developed. So, you know, thecontainer system that got
developed for the cargo shipsreally streamed line a lot of
deliveries. And that's what thisreminded me of, is this drone

(13:09):
that was dropping off a box thatwas meant for food, and it's
specially created has littlehandles on the top of it that
the drone latches onto. Thedrone lands onto the vending
machine in a specific spot, thefood drops down into the vending
machine. You put in a keypadcode, and you take your you take

(13:29):
the box out, and then you takeyour food out of the box. It's
all sealed and properly. So evenif it's a drink, you don't have
to worry about it spilling,because there's like a special
seal on it. You take the boxthat it arrived in, you pull
like one side of the box, and itfolds up instantly, and you just
drop that box right back intothe vending machine. Nearby,
they have a landing and atakeoff area. So there's a

(13:52):
couple like humans in the mix,where the landing and the drones
are kind of taking off from, andthey have batteries that are
there as well. So they can kindof switch out the batteries.
Because the biggest hurdle, orthe biggest challenges, which we
could probably talk about rightnow, is weather related and then
battery related. So these, thesetwo gentlemen, were like
monitoring all of the drones,monitoring their power level,

(14:15):
and then also switching out thebatteries for the drones that
were looking a little weak inthe charging department. And so
it's just this whole like systemthat they have set up and the
drone deliveries. I mean, youcan order from all different
kinds of restaurants all withinthe app, and it all gets
delivered, like, right next toyou, versus, like a zip line,
where it's more custom, likeit's coming right to your house.

(14:37):
And so those were the, I think,some of the more interesting
things that I've seen like outin the wild when it comes to
deliveries. Have you seenanything sort of interesting
like that?

That is really cool. I haven't have, I to say,
Have I seen any of thesephysically? No, we, I'd say,
here in Michigan. And weactually do just in Ann Arbor
yesterday, and they, they have alot more of the on the road
robots, because the townphysically has, like, set up its

(15:12):
infrastructure. It's, it's kindof annoying as, like, as a
driver, because you'll see like,what looks like a bike lane, and
then parking for on the street,and then a regularly to drive
in. And it's so they've, like,created really great lanes for,
like, robot those type ofdeliveries. But I do think it's

(15:33):
fascinating. I know that Ohio, Ithink Kroger is working with a
company, DEXA drone Express,which is a female founded drone
company. So go check them out aswell. I think they're a venture
53 portfolio

company. What are they? Called? DEXA,

yep, D, E, X, A.
Are their their big customers?
Kroger, if I remember correctly.
So the same thing you can, like,because I remember they had sent
me, like, a, if you've ever beento Kroger, I really any grocery
store, right? Sometimes you getthose, like, coupons after your
receipt, right? And there's areceipt from Kroger that you get

(16:13):
now that's like, a free DEXAdelivery. So, like, you can, you
know, just get a free dronedelivery if you want. Yeah,
there you go. Perfect. So I'veseen theirs, and theirs is,
like, more of, I believe whatthey're calling like as a
service. So like, their thingis, they'll create the drones.
It's almost like, could almostlike, kind of be like a Waymo

(16:38):
experience. So like, they

build, like, software, or they build
hardware.

I believe they have the hardware too. And then
let's say, I say, oh, for aliving, I want to maybe more of
it's an Amazon experience,right? For a living, maybe I
want to own a fleet of thesedrones, and I'll make
deliveries. Then you can, like,purchase the fleet through them,
just like you would Amazon,right? Like, you can purchase

(17:05):
like, a fleet of trucks, andthen your business is
dispatching those trucks andmaking sure they operate. So
they kind of set up the samething there. But yeah, they're
doing the same thing withKroger. And I just think it's
fascinating. I What is alsointeresting, though, is like,
for, like, the zipline thing,like, how they set up those
experiences, like you said inChina, right? They have kind of

(17:28):
that, that booth situationthere. What I've noticed, like,
from the Walmarts in particular,is, like, they, they almost set
up, like, a whole, like, landingpad next to the store that's,
like, gated off and like,instead, the person will bring
the groceries or those itemsinto this like gated off, like
zone, and then they take off. Soit's also fascinating to kind of

(17:51):
think, like, for instance, Ithink Walmart came out that
they're starting to do darkstores, right? These locations
that no one physically goes intoyou just go there to pick up
your groceries. So it's like awarehouse. It's like a
warehouse. And I just, I wonderif, like, that's what they're
going to do with these, like,dark stores too, is like, maybe

(18:11):
use the roof, or, like,somewhere on that property, like
to do also the drone deliveries.
Because I think, right, when youkind of talk about, like,
regulation, I'm alwaysinterested in, like, how do you
set these up around, you know,busy areas, areas like, with a
lot of trees, a lot of cablelike, what is that experience
like? And so when I did see thatthey're starting to go into dark

(18:33):
stores, I'm like, is that partof this drone experience too? So
I think it's cool, though, it'sstarting to work. People are
using it. I just, I haven't beenin an area yet where you can
accept one,

Yeah, same.
I've been trying, even when I'vegone to Austin twice this year,
and I tried so hard to get aWaymo to pick me up, but I think
they're just limiting it topeople who have, like, Austin
addresses or Austin homeaddresses. So I was very, I was
very mad that I wasn't able toget into a way, because I really
want to experience this kind oftechnology, and it's just not

(19:08):
available in in my area yet. Andand back to Walmart's like,
drone kind of experiments, like,there's a lot of experimenting
going on because the it, there'sthe challenges that exist are
the battery power and then alsofrom a weather perspective, if
it's raining, if it's dark, ifit's foggy, that can all mess

(19:28):
with, like the drone sensors anddelivery mechanisms. There's
also different ways that youknow deliveries can be made,
like zipline actually uses, likea tether system to drop your
package. Walmart and Amazon,when they were first starting to
test these, they were literallyjust dropping the package in
someone's backyard. So, I mean,you know, God forbid, you know,

(19:50):
have something fragile in there.
It's not gonna, not going towork in that system, but there's
a lot of. Opportunity here,because Amazon, they, I think,
in their own study, when theywere piloting this program, said
that 85% of their deliveries arefive pounds or less. So that is

(20:11):
a major drone unlock, becausefor one of the challenges that
exists right now for a lot ofdrone deliveries is that they
can't carry a lot of weight.
That is getting improved. So Ithink there's some drones now
that can hold up to 50 pounds.
So groceries might not be, youknow that likely, especially
depending on what you'reordering, it's probably going to

(20:33):
be a certain weight limit. Ifthat you know that, I guess that
software allows you to, kind of,like, when you're in Amazon, and
you can kind of pick, oh, can Iget the same day delivery, or
can I match it to, you know, mydelivery of the week day? So I
would imagine that that kind ofcapability would be coming
sooner or later. But as I'mtalking right now, it's pouring

(20:53):
raining in Florida so

well, and it's funny too to like, kind of think
through that problem, becausegoing back into like, the
technology side of it, right,like, in order to solve that,
you theoretically have to go inand every SKU that you are
moving decide whether or notthat item right, could be

(21:19):
technically shipped right,whether it's based off weight,
how fragile it is, etc, and thenbuilding your system so that,
I'm sure you've seen this,right, if you like, I this
happened to me at Dick's theother day, right? I was trying
to purchase a number of thingsin store, and at the end of it,
it was like, we can't do this instore, because this one item is,

(21:42):
has to be just shipped directly,right? And like, so creating the
rules in your system to, like,be able to know, so it is, it is
interesting to think, like,Okay, you could even, you could
have the drone ready. You could,you could pass all the weather
situations you get. But there'sstill, I think, just
connectivity issues of whatexactly can go on there. And I

(22:05):
think that's why they've focusedso much on kind of we're just
going to stick to medicines,right, like dropping Tylenol off
on your on your porch, right?
Something that we all know canhappen, can fall from the sky
and probably be fine, comparedto sending like, of course, like
I've seen, I think Starbucks,though, was like, delivering in
drones. Weren't they, like, orsomething there was like, a

(22:26):
coffee company. And I was like,see, that's something I don't
want delivered by a drone. Andthen

it's interesting, you say that,
because in the Chinese way, Imean, obviously they're far
ahead, because DJI is their bigdrone manufacturer. They
manufacture, I want to say overit's not close to 80% but I know
it's over 70% of all the world'sdrones. So they are like the
king as far as, likemanufacturing them. But even

(22:56):
with, you know, a lot of theirdeliveries that they're doing
with those sort of, like kioskvending machine type places, the
the drinks that they weregetting were sealed, so they
had, like, almost like, like ayogurt in, like, that kind of
seal on top of the yogurt on topof your drink, so it wouldn't
spill it all. And so I imaginethat there's going to have to be

(23:17):
some coordination for like, aStarbucks or for some of these
other companies, maybe not hotdrinks, but cold drinks, for
sure, because I think thepackaging was also insulated
from like the sun or heatexposure or anything like that,
kind of messing up your food.
But when you think about howmany like DoorDash deliveries,
Amazon's 85% of their deliveriesare five pounds or less. Like

(23:42):
how much are we wasting withjust general traffic on the road
emissions from these last miletrucks like that? There's a lot
of waste going on that thismarket could absolutely
capitalize on, and I think it'sgoing to be, let's see. I think
I had it in my notes, 61billion. A drone logistics

(24:04):
market could hit 61 billion by2029 and it says drone delivery
cuts CO two emissions by over90% versus vans like delivery
vans. So there's definitely someopportunity. But to your earlier
point about like regulatoryissues. In order to even pilot a
drone, you have to have what'scalled, like the FAA 107 rules,

(24:27):
which is the US commercial droneuses, regulated by weight,
altitude and line of sightlimits, so the drone can't leave
your eyesight under that rule.
Now they're currently trying torework that rule. It's, think
it's loosely being called likerule 108, so then, because

(24:47):
that's where the fleetmanagement software is going to
come into play, which I think issuper interesting if you have an
entire fleet of drones, becausemuch like trucks, like you have
to know where they're at, youhave to know their maintenance
schedule. You have to know theirpower life in you know, where
are they making deliveries, whoare they making deliveries to,
and so you have to have all ofthat information as well for

(25:08):
your drones, just like you dofor your trucks.

Yeah, that's why I when I think, when I met the
the DEXA company, like that, wasmore of their focus was what
you're talking about, like,almost setting up people.
Because I agree with you. Ithink that market for Drone
Experience is big, just like,again we saw with Amazon and
kind of these, like, smalldelivery vans, etc. But how do,

(25:36):
like, we deploy that at scale?
How do we, you know, find thesepeople who can test and qualify
and then run these drone I guessdrone have to

get a license.
They also have, well, I waslistening to a podcast earlier
today that they have these,like, it's like a digital
license plate for any drone thatis flying in the country, so you
could avoid collisions. You haveto fly at certain like, there's
going to very soon be like,flight paths and flight lanes
for drones. And there's also thefactor around, like, trying to

(26:14):
be less of a nuisance, becausethe public, especially when
you're talking about in, like,the public atmosphere. They
don't want to hear drones flyingaround. They're still incredibly
noisy. They are, you know, themanufacturers are working on,
you know, reducing that noiselevel. But then there's also,
like, the privacy level too. Of,you know, people see a drone and
they automatically think liketheir privacy is being invaded,

(26:35):
and so you have to sort ofmonitor that perception as well.
But there is one place where youdon't have to worry about any of
this, and that's inside awarehouse, and that's probably
like the best use case fordrones right now, because there
are self flying drones arereducing manual labor by
scanning shelves and barcodesinside these Massive warehouses.
IKEA uses 250 autonomous dronesacross 73 warehouses and in nine

(27:01):
countries, even in the dark. Sothey're doing like inventory
counts in the dark. I had gatherAI on the show about a year ago,
and they talked about how theyhave like charging pads inside
of their office, and then thedrones will take off from the
charging pad, go do theirinventory counts, and then

(27:21):
return back to the charging pad.
And it's all internal. Theydon't have to worry about
different licenses. They don'thave to worry about, you know,
weather patterns and things likethat. It's all kind of, you
know, just built in. So there's

like, how you can maximize space in a warehouse,
knowing that you can, I mean,clearly, there's probably some
fire hazards in this, but youcan build shelves as high as you
physically can, right? Becauseyou don't have to worry too
much. Well, my drones are goingto be counting up there. It's
not humans I'm sending to thetop of these things, right? And,

(28:01):
and again, you can count at anytime of the day, you have to
worry about having a third shiftto do any of that. I think
that's what's really cool aboutthe drones inside, is it just
like, makes so much sense. It'ssuch a state. It's almost it
feels a little bit like theopposite of a problem with a
drone outside, where it's like,oh, this is actually helping
with a lot of safety initiativesinside, human safety

(28:23):
initiatives, right? And at thesame time, like just being able
to pack and pick and find itemsquickly, I think is, is huge. I
mean, I can't think of, you knowhow often things just get lost
in a warehouse, and to be ableto say, Listen, send the drone
out, who'll sweep this place inminutes, and we'll know exactly
where it is, compared to liketrying to manually find

(28:46):
something like that. I'm surethere's, I'm sure there's
warehouses all over the countrywho are losing product or have
some type of significant lossjust because things get lost in
their warehouse. So just to havethis, like being that can easily
maneuver through I think it'sreally cool that, yeah, that
team's awesome. I think the lasttime you talked to him, I just

(29:07):
got that warehouse.

I was wondering too, because I used to work at
Costco, and we used to haveinventory counts twice a year,
where all hands on deck. It wasnot a you, if you worked at that
company. You had to be there oninventory night. You were
assigned a certain area, and youhad to count everything by hand,
and so it was just all hands ondeck kind of thing, and you have

(29:30):
to do it twice a year. So I'msure that's the case for or was
the case for a lot of othercompanies that aren't utilizing,
you know, technology like this.
So I'm I'm curious if the Costcoworkers out there, if anybody's
listening, chime in and let usknow how they're doing inventory
counts. Because I would love toknow if, because, I mean, Costco
is a, pretty much a warehouse,and so when you're inside there,
I wonder if you know, maybethere's something that they

(29:54):
could do with, like their ownlike inventory counts via drone,
that are happening. Happening atnight. So it doesn't have to be
like the all hands meeting atthe end of the day. So I did
want to highlight, you know,some of these, like GPS tracking
autonomous systems. So there area couple of them, like DJI. We
talked about them. They have aflight hub as far as like, a

(30:15):
fleet management softwareoffering. There's another
company called Air Data. There'sanother company called aloft.
There's other like battery andlike health monitoring. So think
like maintenance for your drone.
It's called Flight base dronedeploy, or air data, UAV. So

(30:35):
there's a few companies therethat are almost like your fleet
management software, which Ithink is just super cool that
we're watching, like some ofthis stuff, like unfold, and
what are they learning from, youknow, experiment logistics,
experiments across the world,and then how it's kind of
different, or the, I guess theapplication is different for all
different sectors of the world.
But kind of, when I was watchingthe video of, like, the the

(30:57):
Chinese drone delivery, becausethey're so far ahead when it
comes to drone manufacturing andjust drone deployment, it was
interesting to see, like, whatis working in their society? And
I kind of think that with thosekiosks, I don't think we're too
far off from, you know,apartment buildings or even your
own home, like having a littlehelipad for drone deliveries,

(31:18):
and that is just a marked spacefor the drones to make the
delivery and they drop thosepackages off. And you know that
that's your little landing pad,not just for buildings and not
just for kiosks, but for yourhouse as well.

Yeah, poor gig workers, right? Just so they
thought, No, I think it would becool. I just, and it's, I think
my well, and this is more of asocietal issue. My one fear with
it is that, and this, again, ismore societal is I think
something like this could bereally helpful for areas who

(31:56):
have food deserts, right? But Ialso think at the same time,
those areas also probably haveissues with drone flying
regulation, because they're socompact. Usually inner cities,
right? Are a little bit moredifficult, I think, to withstand
that. So that's, that's my onlyfear is, like, is this going to
be something that you more of,like a suburb thing where you

(32:20):
have that space to kind of takeoff and maneuver around,
compared to, like an inner city,who could probably really use
that technology to actually,

like fresh produce or something like that,
like being able to get thatdelivered? Yeah, I don't know if
we're too far off hopefully. Imean, it just, it depends on the

budget. It could be a situation too, where it's
like you're saying you almostmaybe, like a block or to share
one, and that can help, but itwill be fascinating to see how
it starts to explode more and Ithink once we have more states,
I think accept, accepting of alot of this technology, we'll
see, see more of it too. I thinkthis also the sad side of this,

(33:02):
though, is my poor state, wholoves to see snow and rain
throughout the year, is probablygoing to have a little bit more
difficulty deploying thatbecause of weather purposes,
compared to states likeyourself, and stay a little bit
more dry.

Well, it's literally funding outside right
now. We're at the time of theyear in Florida, where it rains
every day. So what are theygonna do about a state like
this, where it's raining fromlike one to 4pm or has a high
chance of rain between thosetime frames? Yes, maybe more
late night deliveries, or moreearly warning deliveries. That's
probably a better, I guess,method to take, but it is. It is

(33:40):
interesting also to see howthey're approaching the style of
drone that they'remanufacturing, because I just
saw, and I'm blanking on thename right now, but I just saw
this drone maker the other daythat is starting to mimic birds.
And so instead of having like avertical takeoff, they kind of
with birds, they kind of jump totake off. Yeah, so adding

(34:01):
almost, like little bird typelegs to the drone so it'll jump,
and then it starts taking off,like, give it a little extra
oomph so it doesn't need as muchbattery in order to take off,
because once it takes off, it'sit's much I how do I say this?
It's not as impactful on thebattery load of the machinery if

(34:23):
it's already in the air. Butit's the initial takeoff that
is, is challenging of asituation. And it even, like,
this little drone had wings aswell. And so it was like
flapping, like, if it wanted to,like, hop over or something,
then it was like a little,little bird leg jump and then,
but the wings would flap too asit was jumping. So I don't know

(34:45):
how practical that is for likedelivery and especially
carrying, you know, payloadslike that, but it is something,
it's something interesting towatch

totally and for all the people out there think
birds aren't real. I just helpedyou support that theory. So

are there really people who think, no, I
don't. Oh god, you know, I'mabout tired of conspiracy
theories and news and everyconspiracy theory I feel like I
talk about, it comes trueanyway. So is it even a
conspiracy theory? And you know,I will say

though the whole drones around New Jersey thing.
It is funny that you talk aboutthe type of takeoff, because the
whole, like, weirdness aboutsome of those, like, lights and
stuff, was going back to writethe science of kind of
propulsion. And if we have acapability of being able to kind

(35:43):
of take off in a different typeof propulsion form, and that's
kind of like, what you'retalking about, right, is like,
but that kind of technology,right, can be it's, it's
interesting to like, theorize,if, if we do have it as a
Country, right, through the lensof that conspiracy theory,
because that would be veryhelpful for this exact problem

(36:06):
solving scenario. So hope maybethe conspiracy people are right,
and we can get that type ofpropulsion off of these drones
and make them a little biteasier to get off the ground and
going.

I would love to see some of these experiments
take place, and like, thepouring down rain of what we're
experiencing now, like realmagic, or just dive into the
ocean or something like, give ussome goods. You

do actually make a good point, though, because in
a day, like, when it's rainingout, I don't want to go the
store, that's the day I mostlikely want to use a drone.
Like, when it's beautiful out, Iwant to leave my house and like,
so really, do have to figure outthis weather situation. Can you
hear the thunder? Honestly? Ithought that was your stomach. I

(36:55):
was like, I did start listeningto and I was like, and I know
the listeners can hear it,because I can hear it.

Yeah, it is.
I'm not hungry. I ate rightbefore we started recording. So
we're good there. Eat ourselves,alright? Well, that is our sort
of, I don't even know what tocall this, but like our drone
logistics Outlook. So hopefullyy'all enjoyed that discussion.
Let's move into the nextdiscussion. Again, we have grace
Sharkey with orderful here, andwe're going to talk about the

(37:26):
second half of 2025 thelogistics market predictions.
And I'm going to have grace leadthis one, because it there's a
lot going on. So we're going totalk a little bit about what
retailers are doing for peakseason, maybe where supply
chains are shifting, what trendsare shaping up, you know, for
those 2026, budgets, let'sgrace, let let's kick it off.

Yeah, so I think the biggest place I want to
start right now is, of course,at the end of the day, if
consumers aren't buying things,and we aren't moving things, and
logistics slows down. So ofcourse, you kind of want to look
at the consumer and see whattheir their focus is, right? And
I clearly, I think inflationright now is still a question
out there for a lot of people.
Now, depending on where you'regoing for your inflation news,

(38:12):
there's back and forth ofwhether or not what's causing
the inflation. At the end of theday, we have it still. It's
still affecting consumerspending, regardless of what
number you want to throw outthere. Perception is there, the
perception exactly theperception is there. And that
perception, and that concerntoo, is also a reason why the
feds have held off on figuringout what to do with interest

(38:36):
rates as well. I mean, if yousaw the last time that they
talked the whole this wholeunknown scenario of tariffs and
and not so much. I don't thinkit's 100% so much of of what
will the tariffs be, but justhow companies and how consumers
are going to react to thetariffs as well as we start to

(38:57):
see those final tariff numberscome out here soon. I think that
is like their biggest concern isthat we just don't know how the
economy is going to reactwhatever numbers you land on. So
we're just kind of in this stateof we don't know what to do as
well. Now they have said it'squite unlikely that they'll do

(39:18):
it anytime soon, when I say soonin the next 30 days or so,
because again, what you couldcall the inflation psychology of
it all isn't showing positivesigns for them right now. Of
course, we've got that one big,beautiful bill, which I actually
don't have I don't hate themarketing behind I love giving

(39:42):
bills a fun

he loves to phrase that he is. He a
marketer.

He is, he is low key a marketer. I said that
someone like for as someonewho's like, maybe doing this job
more on a day to day basis. Idon't hate him for under.
Understanding the storyline andsticking to it, you know, like

I had what the sleepy Joe Biden and named
something, yeah,

the way that how good he is at reminding us it
was Biden's fault is almost atthis point from a marketing
perspective. Like, boy, do wewant a CEO who understands the
talking points, you know,

you got to repeat it seven times, right?
Somebody could buy

so there's like, a level where I now that I'm,
like a PR marketing girl, like,I love it. So, um, but I will
say the outcome of that billshould be positive for economic
reasons. But again, it's nottrickle down economics, but it

(40:46):
is going to be a trickle effect.
So I don't think that we'regoing to see, I think we're
going to see, uh, more spending.
We just do every year aroundChristmas, right? We see the end
of the year, Christmas gifts,etc. I mean, even Halloween
candy last year saw a slightincrease. I I trust the American

(41:07):
consumer to spend more moneythis year than they did last
year. That's if there'ssomething that we can do in
distress, it's we will find away to spend more money. We're
really good at that. Now. Willthat be through buy now, pay
laters. Will that be throughloans? Will that be hoping that
we can file our taxes as soon aspossible and get that check at

(41:28):
the end of January and just getthrough that time period?
Probably that's the American aswell. We're always trying to
find a way around, and so Idon't think we're going to see
anything crazy that we didn'texpect. I think, I honestly
think we'll see probably trends,much like we saw last holiday
season, much like we saw theschool season. I do know that a

(41:51):
lot of especially for more ofthe school season, products,
early fall products, etc, goingback to school, clothes, all
that stuff. I think we start,starting to see shippers bring
that stuff in early trying tosome of the potential tariff
rules that they'll have to dealwith throughout the fall. So I
think, in terms of inventory, Idon't think we'll have a

(42:12):
problem. But if we all remembercorrectly few years back, right?
People kind of responded thisway. We had a lot of inventory
in which meant that, you know,there's a lot of inventory we
had to get through over thesecond half of the year. So I
again, I just don't think that,if there's carriers out there
watching or, like, I can't waitfor rates, I don't think you're

(42:33):
going to see rates start tospike up. I also don't think
much as we're doing inregulation for the trucking
side, I agree. I don't thinkwe're going to see just like a
complete wash of the market dueto any ELP mandates, etc. I
think maybe we'll see kind of

driver is the English language proficiency,
right? Yeah,

yeah. I I really don't think we're going to see a
huge impact on that market. Ithink that shippers are already
have been planning on it. Havestarted to put those rules in.
If there's anything we knowabout logistics providers and
brokers, they're going to beclever and how they use their
carriers and use themappropriately, right? Yes. Will
there be shippers who say, don'tbring this person who can't

(43:16):
speak English well into ourfacility? Sure, but there sure
is hell going to be a lot ofshippers who don't overly
mandate that, and that freightwill get moved as well. So I
just, I don't see any of thatimpacting the market. So I
honestly, I think we'll see kindof just the stagnant year, I
don't like see when it comes tomaybe a recession. I think we

(43:42):
would have saw signs of that bynow. To be honest with you, I
think maybe that delay in thetariffs kind of helped with
that. I think I want to givemaybe the consumer credit to
kind of avoid that situation.
But we'll start to see what iscoming in through a lot of these
ports, and see what consumerspending is like and, and what
you know Amazon Prime Day andall that will look like as well,

(44:04):
because I think Amazon Prime Dayis, is either happening right
now or

it's right now.
I actually, I was going to bringthat up because one of the, and
this is very anecdotal, becauseit's only one Amazon seller that
I saw say this on my x feed, andhe was saying that sales were
way down, but he expected it.
What he had done is raise priceson I mean, this is kind of
typical for a lot of Amazonsellers. Is ahead of Prime Day,

(44:30):
they'll raise their prices sothen that way the discount looks
much deeper ahead of time. Buthe said, even within he knew
that sales were going to bedown. And I think what's
interesting about this sort ofeconomic situation that we're in
is, you know, over the last fiveyears, it was like this dramatic
increase in things that we buy,and then it was this dramatic

(44:52):
increase in experiences, andthen now it kind of feels like,
are we like, kind of eveningout? Yeah, but then also, with
all of the uncertainty aroundtariffs and just that, becoming
like a kitchen tableconversation is making people
kind of reel in their spendinghabits, which I could argue

(45:13):
probably needed to happen. Youmade the point earlier about,
you know, people putting likeDoorDash in Klarna recently
announced a partnership where ifyou are paying payments on a
Door Dash food delivery, youhave no business ordering Door
Dash, and we have a recordconsumer debt. So we have all of
these things that, like thechickens, are going to come home

(45:34):
to roost eventually, and maybeall of this sort of uncertainty
around the economy, maybe thatit has forced people to take a
step back from their probablyirresponsible spending. I know
it's had that effect on me,especially from, you know, like
my ordering habits from liketemu, and she in like, I It's
fallen off a cliff for me, um,and I've heard that actually

(45:56):
temu is is in a lot of troublebusiness wise. Like, they've had
to raise prices all across theboard, there's a real danger of
them just running out of moneyin general, following kind of
the pattern of what happened towish. So you know, they're not
getting that de minimisexemption anymore, which, you
know, anything under $800shipped into the United States

(46:18):
was arriving tax free. There'srumors that at first the de
minimis was going to go awaycompletely in 2026 but now
that's it's look or 2027 Ibelieve. But now it's going to
be kind of done for with everywith the big, beautiful bill
passing that there was somelanguage in there that said that

(46:38):
it was going to be gonecompletely. So that's, you know,
for a lot of global shippers,then that's something obviously
to keep an eye on, too. So Ithink it's just a lot of
uncertainty. And maybe I wasgoing to argue, well, maybe
people are spending over thesummertime more on experiences.
But also, anecdotally, I've seena lot of like, the wait times at

(46:58):
like Disney World, which I amright down the road from, I
don't know if you guys can hearthat thunder in the background,
the loud lightning crack as soonas I say Disney World. Maybe
that means they need to go back.
Yeah, yeah. So, but the DisneyWorld crowds like there, maybe
this has to do with epicuniverse recently opening, which

(47:18):
is Universal's new theme park,but Disney World crowds are,
like, way down. Like, you canopen up the app right now and
like, check the wait times insome of their different
attractions, and it's not whatyou would expect for, you know,
a summertime, you know, familiesvacationing to Disney. I think a
lot of their money is actuallygoing to cruises versus the
theme parks, which admittedly,admittedly need a lot of work, a

(47:42):
lot of maintenance, a lot ofrevamps. Rip Two Rivers of
America and Tom Sawyer Island. Idon't want to get started on
that, but I know pour one outfor Rivers of America, yay.
Can't wait for Cars Land.
Dumbest decision in MagicKingdom history. But

just pour one out

for the water that will no longer exist inside
of

listeners right now are like, did this? Did this
just turn into a Disney it canNo, it did? You know, I agree
with you. I think, you know,we're starting to see signs, and
we brought this up numeroustimes on this show signs of that
kind of lipstick index. But Imean, like the little boo boos,
I think you're a perfectexample, right? What is it? Is

(48:29):
it just a little stuffed animal?
Yeah, it's like a little stuffedanimal. And I don't have one,
but you know me, they look

demonic. You know, have you heard that theory
that they're like, actuallydemonic, like devils? Yeah, the
way for the devil to creep intoyour life in more ways than one.
Well, you

know, there maybe for consumer spending. They are
because, you know, they've saidthat. That's kind of the perfect
example of it. Like, I can'ttake my kid. I can't afford to
take my kid to Disney, but Isure can afford to drive my kid
to the local big mall and popMart and try to grab one of
these things, right? And I thinkthat kind of showcases that we

(49:05):
might be in that situationagain, where people are kind of
holding off and saying, I thinkwe've noticed even Michigan does
this quite frequently. But a lotof like, more in state travel,
where we're not going out ofstate or out of the country, but
we're willing to drive, youknow, a few hours in state, to
have some type of vacation. Andso I think I agree with you. I I

(49:28):
think that again, we're probablygoing to see a light uptake we
just do every single year, so tocome back and but if I will say
on that note, if we come backand back to school shopping or
Halloween shop. If Halloweenshopping comes back down for the
first time, and I mean, I'vecovered that for like, years
now, then that's gonna be reallytell, tell sign of what's to

(49:51):
come around the corner. So well,

didn't a lot of these retailers like they, they
purchased in advance for a lotof the to try to beat the
tariffs. I heard it was like.
Back in March, they werepurchasing back to school items
in order to beat the that Aprildeadline when the new tariffs
would kick in. So they weretrying to a lot of like
Walmarts, Amazons were securingthose, those that product well
ahead of time, and now it lookslike we're going to have, at the

(50:14):
time of recording, we have newtariffs taking place starting
August 1. But that's, you know,to be determined, because who
knows what's going to happenwith a lot of those tariff
announcements between now andthat time period? Because we're
recording this on July 9 forfull transparency there. So
we'll see what deals I guess,are going to get made. But what

(50:35):
I do, think is encouraging is tosee all the tariff revenue that
we're starting to get, I thinkthey estimated by 300 billion by
the end of the year. And that isenormous. Hopefully it helps cut
down on some of our $26 trillionin debt, which the big,
beautiful bill adds a coupletrillion more to that. So

(50:56):
everybody, everybody else in thecountry is supposed to be
financially and fiscallyresponsible, except for the US
government. So that's neitherhere nor there. That's my little
mini ranch for today. Butanything else, I guess, that
people should be looking outfor. I have a couple notes here.
Warehouse space is tied again.

(51:19):
That makes sense. A lot ofretailers were bulking up on a
lot of their inventories wellahead of those tariff
disruptions, labor disruptionsstill loom. Looks like some
contracts were settled. Ofcourse, geopolitical tensions, I
think, are the big one betweenUS and China,

I will say, though, on the warehousing this
just came out. I think it was inWall Street Journal today that
they are seeing just a slightuptick of vacancies. And I think
that's because people, again,it's just the uncertainty. They
aren't, they aren't going andunleashing more space, because
they're just not sure of whatthat inventory situation will be

(51:59):
like after this, too. So we'llprobably continue to see that, I
would say, for the rest of thisyear, until we see what spending
is like in the fall.

Yeah, some of these stats, I just don't know
how reliable they are until weget some more data in. I mean,
even like consumer purchasingdata, like, you know, a lot of
these things, we just don't knowyet. Another big one that just
happened was ups, cutting 20,000jobs in order to further invest
in automation and reduce costs.
We talked earlier in the showabout drones, didn't mention

(52:31):
ups, but UPS is one of thosecompanies, also DHL, that is
piloting a lot of different forlack of a better phrase,
piloting a lot of differentdrone initiatives for some of
their deliveries. So when I sawthat they were making cuts, I
was like, hmm, I wonder if youknow that, that's a big reason
why. And, and I don't know ifthis is the case for you inside
your Amazon account, but UPS waswhenever you may go to make a

(52:53):
return, UPS was always like thenumber one option. Now I have to
click see more to pick ups. Soit's like Whole Foods, it's a
couple other retailers. It's anew one in there. I'm blanking
on the name, so it's WholeFoods, which is obviously Amazon
owned, a couple other retailers,and then you have to click see

(53:15):
more in order to choose ups. SoI found that that was
interesting. Maybe that, that,that relationship is, you know,
there's some cracks that arestarting to be shown. Probably,

yeah, no, you're probably 100% right on that and
on the DHL stuff. It's probablya lot of the warehouse suit
stuff, right? There's not surewhat that's gonna be like. So
investment on a lot of thatstuff will pause,

yeah, especially being so e commerce
heavy, the of what DHL is, like,UPS, seems maybe a little bit
more, yeah, COVID, yes, is likea DHL, which is almost all e
commerce

and global, which is really fun in a global trade
war.

Their trade software, which I know that
they've invested in heavily,gosh, I bet that's just, like,
just burning a hole in someone'spocket, just because it's just
so much data, so muchinformation you have to sort
through customs and fees andever changing

and one man's headache is another man's job
security. Yes,

that's, I mean that? Yeah, that's, that's very
well put any last remarks, andwith the, you know, the second
half market outlook, or do youwant to move on to the next

topic? Let's move on the next topic. Yeah, I think
we covered it all right. Well,let's move

into our next segment, and we're gonna, I, at
least on my end. I'm gonna blenda couple of these together with
our freight marketingspotlights, and then also our
favorite freight business. Onceagain, my name is Blythe
Milligan. We are presented bySPI logistics. This is the
everything is logistics podcast.
We are joined with Grace Sharkeyof order full fame. And I have
to get used to not sayingfreight waves, fame, fame. I

(54:54):
have to say orderful fame. Whichdoes I mean? It has a nice
little you know? Role of the appthere too. So nice little segue
into this next segment and wherewe like to feature some good
freight marketing, because Ithink it's kind of it's still
rare in this industry to seegood freight marketing, so we'd
like to highlight those, andthen also any businesses that
come across our timeline that wethink are just interesting. So

(55:17):
do you want to go first? Or youwant me to go first? Yeah, I'll
go

first because this was a fun one. Um, I don't
know if you've listeners outthere. Go check out this video.
So if you haven't heard of thecompany, load, pay. It is a
division of triumph bank. It's,it's basically their, oh,

what I did? I did see so I'm pulling up your
commercial. I'm sorry likestarted playing. And no, no,
you're

good. I was just, you were shocked, and I was, I
just love micro, yes, yeah. Sothey again, and we were talking
about this prior to the showstarting right? Like
understanding who your yourclient is, what they're
passionate about, what's goingto speak to them. And so low pay
is this new function of triumphbank. And we'll kind of get into
it a little bit more in asecond, because it is a part of

(56:05):
my cool business initiative aswell. But of course, it's a easy
credit finance structure forcarriers out there to, of
course, get invoices paidearlier the factoring services,
but more so you do have aphysical card that you can use
to pay for repairs, fuel, etc.
It gives you a centralized placeto just watch all of your

(56:27):
expenses. So yeah, that that'swhat their focus is. And of
course, they're talking truckdrivers. So you know, when you
think of a dirty job liketrucking, you think, well, who
is the dirtiest job guy, of themall. So they just recently put
out this awesome commercial.
It's a minute live. We probablycould play the whole you want me
to play it? Yeah, with micro ifyou want to put that out. The

(56:49):
dirtiest guy

immediately started coughing up dust when
you talk about micro, eventhough I love him so much, I
don't know a side sidebar, hewas just on Theo Vaughn's not, I
don't know if he was just on,but I thought I finally listened
to it, and it was really good.
So I listened to it on a planeride. It was awesome. I love his
initiative. Always kind ofthought of micro is like, almost
like a TV dad to me, totallylike him and Tim Allen were like

(57:16):
TV dads, like growing up. Sojust like they, I think they
just remind me of my own dad.
So,

okay, so I wish my dad was strong as my you

know, he's a bra he, he's someone Broadway,
yeah, so he's someone Broadway,and he was also a QVC host for
like 10 years.

He's got a great voice, fantastic.

Unknown (57:47):
Let's play the commercial. Hi. I'm Mike Rowe,
and today I'm standing in anenormous parking lot with an
enormous 18 wheeler behind meand four superheroes.
Technically, these men are truckdrivers, but make no mistake,
without them, nobody anywherewould have anything at all. I
know you love what you do, butI'd love to hear why you love

(58:09):
it. Weget the adventure of the old
cowboys.
It's never a dumb moment,really. I promise you, it feels
great knowing that I'm a youngtrucker helping out my
community, not just mycommunity, but
the world. It's not just thecommunity, it's the world. I
think a lot about the sacrificethat you guys make.
I watched my son grow up fromabout five or six to eight years

(58:31):
old on the screen.
Let me ask you the mostridiculous question I've ever
asked anybody before. Is gettingpaid? Important? Very important.
What am I looking at here? Thepayday accelerator load, pay.
What's that mean for you?
Load? Pay puts money in theowner's pocket within minutes.
Instead of having to waitanywhere from three days to

(58:52):
45 days, we accrue so manyexpenses just from driving to
point A to point B. It's allabout cash flow. I don't
want to ask too obvious aquestion, but just the basic
premise of getting paid as soonas you finish your work seems
like a pretty good thing. Oh,absolutely.

Freelance isn't getting paid when you finish
your work, just the best.

We love micro.
But

you know, I do want to point out a couple of
like, even like deep lore.
Positives about this commercial,too. So I would highly suggest
if you're listening to this, towatch the commercial. Because
yeah. One, you got a voice thatyou know your audience is going
to trust, right? So that's like,right off the bat, awesome. Two,
you'll notice that when theytalk about the actual load pay,

(59:38):
tool or application, they don'thave that coming out of the
mouth of someone at Triumph orsomeone at load, pay. They have
those details coming out of themouth of an actual user, a truck
driver themselves, right? WhichI think is powerful too, having
your actual client accept.

(01:00:00):
Explain the product like that. Ithink is awesome. Three, maybe
343, diversity within that groupof different drivers, right? And
I don't mean diversity, justlike, in terms of like race all
that, but also just ages, right?
Because like Trucking is goingto get into the different
generations, and I think it'simportant. I just feel like I

(01:00:21):
don't see enough of youngertruckers on trucker sponsored or
focused marketing campaigns, andyou're ignoring not only the
future of your business, but agreat pool of individuals who
are making their way into thisindustry. Last but not least,
you might have this is youryou're gonna have to watch it to

(01:00:42):
catch it. But they pickedinfluencers, each one, each
person they talked to. Theyshowcase their Twitter handle.
They pick someone they they knewwas probably important in their
little niche space within thetrucking industry. We understand
it's fragmented, and it's withthat means you have to, you
know, find these littleaudiences. I haven't got a
chance to go check out all theircontent, but I'm sure they kind

(01:01:06):
of focus on different groups anddifferent types of trucking and
it so it's just it. It wasexecuted and planned, I think,
very intelligently. And I'm kindof, I'm excited to to see how
low pay takes off. And to behonest with you, I actually put
that down as my favoritebusiness segment as well is is
what triumph is doing with lowpay in particular, and what it's

(01:01:29):
doing to expand its financialservices. So what really shout
out to Cody Griggs over at chRobinson, just because I know
this is something that she'sbeen a part of as well, and we
just love a woman in STEM who'skilling it. So shout out to her
over there. But they're startingto work with Triumph to deliver

(01:01:49):
these extra services throughpartnerships as well with a
trusted company like triumph.
They know most drivers are setup with them. Why build our own
finance solution when we couldjust partner with one who's
figured it out, who has theinfrastructure, who's built

(01:02:11):
this, who has won over thecarrier audience, and who, I
assume, before they went intothis, already had implemented,
you know, their whether it'slike triumph pay or some type of
factoring service with a largenumber of CH Robinson carriers
to begin with, if you watch aswell, the recently had come out

(01:02:32):
that not only are they doingload pay, but triumph is going
to be Basically white labelingtheir factoring services or
brokers, which is going to behuge and well, I mean, I think a
lot of factoring companies aregoing to have to really fight to
to keep up. That's why you seeda team out go. I think that's

(01:02:52):
why you're seeing some of theseother companies buying more of
these financial firms, becausethey're realizing, hey, for us
to build this and also tofinance, that is going to be a
lot. So why aren't we workingwith someone who already has
built this? And if you read anyof Aaron graphs, like letters to
their shareholders, he toucheson this, like we've built this

(01:03:13):
already for people, and I thinkthe way that they're running the
factoring division right now,from the way that he spoke about
it in letters, sounds like it'snot, you put a lot of work into
building that technology, andit's, I don't think it's, I
don't want to say it's notpaying off, but it's how they
monetized. It isn't, isn't aspositive as they had thought. So

(01:03:37):
this is kind of their pivot intofinding a way to make that
division more profitable. Whynot white label it? Let's see H
Robinson, and I'm sure we'regonna see other big players in
that space to start to toutilize that that service as
well. So that's kind of my it'smaybe favorite business from
just business in general thatI'm watching, because I think

(01:04:00):
it's causing a reallyinteresting ripple effect in the
industry as well.

Blythe Brumleve (01:04:04):
Yeah, that's a good point, because they also
triumph. Just purchased greenscreens, like one of, like, the
just, I don't want to say up andcoming, because they've been
established for like, a longtime, but they kind of, I think
they got started in what, 20192018 Yeah. And that's
evaluation,

Grace Sharkey (01:04:21):
yeah, and that's a part of what they graph calls
their intelligence unit thatthey're adding, right? It's
okay, we have all this paymentdata. And the cool thing about
even payment data, too, is likethere's a level of it that's
also showing you, right, likewhere the carriers are, for
instance, like, when we talkabout fraud, if I have three

(01:04:43):
invoices that deliver today, andI know that your trucking
company only has two trucks,like, there's a red flag. I know
it's a lot more technicallydetailed than that, but just to
kind of layman's terms, itright. You can use that data for
a lot of really interesting, uh.
Analysis of this industry, andthey're realizing that that's
what we have. And so I'm veryinterested to see how the data

(01:05:07):
plays of the next like decade goin this industry, because I
think people are starting torealize, oh, this is more
valuable than I thought, andtriumph, I think, is one of
them, and they're making movesto correct that and move forward
in a more positive direction.
So,

God, data is so hard, I'm telling you, right? I
just building like I'm gonna,I'm doing totally you get it
with the cargo Rex. I mean, it'sjust so, I mean, even my own
building cargo wrecks and thenbuilding like search engines on
top of it, which I we're on ourthird crack of it. Now. It third
time that we are revamping thesearch engine around the data

(01:05:46):
set, because it's not justrecording the data, but it's the
data integrity to begin with.
And then how do you make thatdata searchable plus valuable to
the intent of the person who ismaking the query? And it's just,
I have so much more respect forwhat Google has done. I mean, we
take it for granted how we couldjust pop Google open, or even
Amazon, or, you know, a lot ofthese different sites, and you

(01:06:09):
can just put a couple keywordsin and they feed you back, you
know, mostly what you want tosee. And it's so challenging. So
my hat is off to anybody thatworks in data and is trying to
filter through, you know, a lotof this different just large
amounts of information, andtried to disseminate it to where
it's something that is useful tosomeone. But that's actually a

(01:06:33):
perfect segue to go into myfavorite freight marketing and,
you know, a quick BusinessSpotlight that I wanted to put
on, and that is, have you heardof import

Yeti? No, I saw it on the notes. I was like, I
almost looked it up. I figuredI'd let you

so import Yeti allows you to find suppliers for
any company. So they were at therecent TMSA transportation
marketing and sales Association.
We had our annual elevateconference. One of their co
founders, Dave, was giving asession there. So import Yeti, I
they gave me this mug. I don'tknow if you can do it's a cute
little Yeti that's on the sideof the mug. But what's really

(01:07:12):
cool about it is because forimport Yeti, where it's useful
is say, like I'm a broker, and Iwant to find out where some
shippers are at, or maybe somenew shippers. Maybe I've, you
know, specialized in a certainkind of commodity, and I want to
find more customers like that,because I have a proven track
record. Well, you could find anyproduct, maybe it's yoga pants

(01:07:32):
or Yeti water bottles orwhatever. And you can go to
Import Yeti, and if you have youcan sign up for free. But they
also the paid plan is muchbetter. And you can search up
any supplier. You can searchshipment records and import
records and find them on so withthis mug, what they do is really
cool. So they will they havecertain target customers that

(01:07:54):
they reach out to with, likethese highly specified marketing
campaigns. And then when theyhave someone kind of in their in
their eyesight of like, this isgoing to be a really good get
for us. So they'll send them alittle mini container, shaped
box, like it, it's painted tolook like a mini container. They
put this mug in it, and then onthe bottom of the mug, oh no,

(01:08:17):
they tell you the supplier, thesuppliers, name of where the
person who is making the mug,and the the number. So the
number that you can put, I don'tknow if you can see it all that,
but you can then the product IDnumber that you can put into
import Yeti's website to findthe supplier of the mug that

(01:08:39):
they use to send out tocustomers. And I just thought
that was so smart. That is socool about your marketing like
that, like kind of full rounded,I guess, philosophy, or well
rounded philosophy that you'reputting the product number on
the bottom, plus the supplier ofwhere you're getting the mug
from. Hopefully there's somekind of like a trade deal that

(01:09:00):
they worked out there with thesupplier that, hey, you know,
your company is going to be atthe bottom of all of our mugs.
You know, give us an extracouple bucks off of the mug and
make it really cute. And so theyhave some really cute branding.
But a couple of the other thingsthat he was talking about during
his session is that they treatsales copy like a science
experiment. They said oneexample that they had a stat

(01:09:21):
about improving retention by 40%so they they're they're telling
their customers that they canhelp them improve their
retention by 40% but hisaudience, the people, weren't
believing a number that high. Sodropped the number to 19% and
once they dropped the number to19% like they're pretty much

(01:09:42):
cutting it in half of their ownsuccess rate, suddenly, folks
kept reading, and when he saysreading like his emails, his
case studies, they said thatlevel of honesty and testing was
enough of a significantimprovement to have them. Close
deals on new customers becausetheir percent, the customer's

(01:10:02):
perception was, or the leadsperspective perception was, is
that that number is not entirelya lie. You're bullshitting me.
And so they dropped their ownsuccess rate retention number to
19% and it led to more customersbecause of it, because it made
the stat a little bit morebelievable. They also make cold
outreach fun, so they send outthose mini shipping containers.

(01:10:26):
They also will send out flipphones to HR teams, just to
prove how broken internalsystems are. So it's kind of
like the opposite of spray andpray. It's specific, it's
relevant. It's memorable. Theyalso use data to pre remove
objections. Another thing thatthey do is, with all of their

(01:10:47):
marketing is inside of HubSpot,so even like their case studies
and things like that, if theysee readers drop off of a
certain page of their casestudy, they'll rework the entire
PDF. So then that way they canimprove retention or improve
readability. So then that waythe consumer is reading until
the very end of the case study.

(01:11:10):
So I thought that that wasreally interesting. Snail mail.
Also, we have talked beforeabout how direct mail, snail
mail, or like hidden marketinggems import. Yeti, is kind of
proving that, and they're takinga more of a creative approach to
that. So I thought that that wassuper interesting. And then they
use HubSpot, like a lab. Ialready kind of talked about

(01:11:31):
that one, but yeah, that thatwas especially, I guess, co
signing off of the the casestudy is, you kind of think,
like case studies, like nobodycares about case I personally
had this opinion walking intoTMSA this year, it's like nobody
cares about case studies. Stopmaking them like they're, I

(01:11:52):
don't want to say they're BS,but nobody reads them. Nobody
cares. Nobody downloads it'sactually the exact opposite. I
was so totally wrong in thatimport. Yeti is kind of proof to
that. We had a shippers panel aswell at the event, and all of
the shippers on the panel, Imean, it's technically
anecdotal, but three of themsaid, I love getting case

(01:12:12):
studies. I want to read casestudies. And I was like, Jesus,
okay, fine. Like,

and I think it depends on the case study that
you use too. Like, I'veactually, and again, I've only
been doing this job for like, amonth, so take it for granted,
but I've noticed that weactually do get bigger responses
and from the case studies thatwe put out compared to just
like, maybe a blog, but the casestudies I have focused on, and

(01:12:41):
have kind of put out there are,like, famous names, right? So,
like, the liquid deaths of themall. And we, oh, like, we did a,
I did a PBR one, perhaps BrewingCompany on the day before Fourth
of July, right? You're like,going into that and, and that's,

(01:13:02):
I mean, even today, is like,still doing really well. And so
I think it's, I think it's, howare you attacking the case
study? Who is that case studywith? Is it's with someone that
people are going to instantly belike, Oh, that's a growing
company, or that's like, alegacy in this industry. That's
someone we need to talk about,like, being just strategic about
it. But

now, are you making people download them for
all of them? But

that's something that we're starting to look
into, as well as doing more ofthat kind of stuff. So now, no,
not, not for a lot of them areblogs right now, look at us like
but that's something strategybecause strategy talk now,

well, someone had asked me the other day,
like, do you host webinars atall? And I was like, No, I
haven't hosted a webinar for anyof my own companies. God, since
like 2021 but I remember themperforming pretty well. And the
guy was like, well, we justreally like it was a potential
podcast sponsor. And the guy waslike, well, we just really like

(01:14:07):
webinars, because we get a copyof the email address and, oh
god, yeah, I guess I need tothink about that. I, you know, I
just always think of, you know,my marketing mindset has always
been just like, just put it outthere, put your message out
there is blast it out to as manyplatforms where people are
hanging out as much as possible,and get them into following you.

(01:14:27):
Get them into subscribing toyour email newsletter, and then
when they're ready to buy,you're the first one at at top
of mind. But you know, as I'mstarting to build out a lot of
these different marketingcampaigns for these podcast
advertisers like that's whatthey're looking for. They're
looking for ways to justifytheir marketing spend to their
bosses. Can I provide that tothem? So case studies came to

(01:14:52):
mind. I did hear of anotherrecently, this marketer that I
follow on LinkedIn. She's reallygood, and I'm sorry I'm blanking
on her name. Um, but she saidthat she doesn't even write case
studies anymore. She takes allof the sales notes, like the
sales recordings, and she takesthe transcripts of those, and
then she turns those into casestudies. And I thought, Oh, my

(01:15:13):
God, that's that is super smart.
And how she delivers them is sherequires, you know, emails, to
be downloaded. So that makes aton of sense, and I probably
will start to do I got somecontent plans in the works for
cargo Rex. It's a little bitmore of a higher, higher level
than, like, a or a higherproduction level, I guess then
probably will do you know, Idon't know yet. I'm working on

(01:15:37):
the plan, but thinking of somedifferent roundtable type
content that, you know, we'll,we'll start after the Labor Day
holiday, because I'm not doingit in July and August while
we're working on this damnsearch engine. But, yeah, it's
all it's a pain in my ass. I

think something that we should talk about,
though, and we'll think for nextmonth, is I'd love to get into
the discussion with you on howyou're adjusting your maybe SEO
strategy based on instead ofGoogle. If you really again,

(01:16:18):
just listening, I remindedBlythe of a headache. She

probably already it's just, it's so it is

fascinating to think that people now, instead
of like, I have an EDI, forexample, orderful, right? I, who
do I go to for or EDI? Peopleare going to Google, right? Less
with that question, more tochat. GPT, so how are you
popping up and not so kind ofinteresting. So

there, I don't want to get too much, because I

anybody, let's save it.

Okay? Anybody who tells you that they got it
figured out right now is lying?
They have something to sell you,yeah. So all of these SEO
agencies that are, God, I hadone of them reach out to one of
my clients, and they're like,you're not appearing on the top
page for this specific keyword,and we can get you there in four
months. I'm like, You're effinglying, because no one can
guarantee you certain placementunless you're paying Google for

(01:17:12):
that placement. Because Googledoesn't even have it figured out
right now, and so everybody'strying to figure out how ll
limbs are classifying data, andshould you just follow what
Google has been doing for years?
But then are Google itself iskind of like cannibalizing its
own like honey pot, becausethey're so search dominant, but

(01:17:34):
that search dominance hasdropped below 90% for the first
time forever, so they havestarted to make slight
adjustments to how they'redisplaying search keywords, but
I think too many companies arestill trying to rank for words
that are meant for the AIoverviews they're not meant for

(01:17:54):
the really long tail keywordsthat you should be targeting.
And so there's a whole like justsnake oil salesmen that are
relying off of what you know,Google was four years ago, and
then you have all of these othernew consultants that are trying
to figure out how llms areplaying a role. And there's a
lot of smart people trying tofigure this out, but the truth

(01:18:16):
is, is that no one really has itfigured out just yet. And where
a lot of these llms are going tobe going is that you're going to
have, you're going to have tostart changing how you measure
things, and you're going to haveto start measuring it based on
impressions, and not actuallyclick through rates of people
coming to your site and so orcoming to your brand, and how

(01:18:36):
they find out about your brand.
And it's a lot. It's a lot. ButI will say there is one
gentleman that everybody shouldfollow on LinkedIn, if you want
somebody who's trying, he's thesmartest SEO person that I
personally know of, and that'sgiantano Nino dinardi. He is
over on LinkedIn. I'll put himin the show notes, because he

(01:18:58):
had a post just this morning,talking about, you know, the
llms overview, he said theimpact on SEO will be reduced
trafficking, click through rate.
It's already down by 35%impressions or visibility,
replaces clicks, citationsreplace rankings. Brand mentions
will become backlinks, 2.0which, if you don't know what a

(01:19:19):
backlink is, don't hire an SEOagency. It's all there's so
much, G, A, E, T, A, N, O, andthen his last name is dinardi,
but he he's literally been onthe front lines of SEO for
forever, and he's documentingwhat he's seeing and who he's

(01:19:43):
talking to, but he's one of thereal ones. He's like, one of the
ones that like he will tell hehad a newsletter that went out
the other day of telling acustomer, no, like, you're not a
good fit for me because youdon't have at least, like,
100,000 visitors to your websiteyet. You don't have at least 250
organic backlinks to your site,which a backlink, for those who

(01:20:05):
don't know, is when anotherwebsite of high authority links
to your website, and then theyhave to have that link as a do
follow a lot of times. Lot ofmedia companies will do this,
that they will mention yourcompany, they will link to you,
but you have a no follow link,and so you're not getting that

(01:20:25):
credited backlink, because whenyou get the credited backlink,
then that shows tools likeSEMrush, Google, Ahrefs, all of
these other SEO type companiesthat this your brand is
trustworthy enough that thisother brand is going to link to
you, and then your domainrankings come into play. How old

(01:20:46):
is the domain? How manycompanies are linking to you?
How much of your content on yoursite is internal linking into
other kind of, like contentwebs. There's, you know, sort of
the the wheel and spoke model,where you have one phrase, and
then you have all of these likespin off phrases that you can
target that's shifting a lotfrom what's How do I change a

(01:21:08):
tire on this car to completelydifferent to what's the ideal
tire for this car this year,this model, but I'm going to
replace it in two years thatthat those long tail keywords
are where you want to put yourmoney, and then you also want to
make sure that there's intentbehind that. So we're trying to

(01:21:29):
solve a lot of those differentquestions, and what people are
answering and how they'reanswering and how they're
finding the answers, is thebiggest one trying to tackle
that on on cargo wreck. So we'reseeing some promising signs, but
it's just if Google doesn't haveit figured out, then the llms
haven't got it figured out,yeah, and then everybody's just

(01:21:51):
just throwing spaghetti upagainst a wall and seeing what's
going to stick. Because it'ssome of this stuff, like the the
shady ideally you want theshadiness to be gone. You want
all of the AI slop to not rank.
The problem is, is that over thelast 20 years or so of the
internet, we've had a certainlevel of bot activity, and now
it's just on steroids, and thatAI slop is they're trying to

(01:22:16):
gain control over how you evenmeasure it. And so it's, it's a
whole mess. It's, I don't knowif there's light at the end of
the tunnel, is it? That's a my,my soapbox moment. I think I
just You see what happens whenyou bring up SEO, yeah, maybe
next

time we dive into it. But

this is what I'm trying this is what all
marketers are trying to do rightnow. I just had a client send me
a whole SEO breakdown yesterdayof, like, the things that they
want to address on the site. AndI'm like, you don't We don't
even know what we're fixing andwhat we're fixing for. Like, we
know what we're fixing, but arewe fixing it in a way that's
measurable for the Internet ofTomorrow, yes, and how people

(01:23:04):
are going to be experiencingdifferent the answering of
certain questions. And I thinkfor a long time, the internet
has survived on answering quitethis. It's exactly why you see
like recipe blogs, where theygive you a whole spiel before
they get into the actual recipeis because that format is what
Google has rewarded for adecade, and that format is out

(01:23:26):
the window now, and so all ofthese different content creators
are getting slammed by it, butthat's because a lot of their
work has been so easilyreplaceable. And so you content
marketers, you're just going tohave to get better, and you're
just going to have to have, youknow, an authority on the topic.
You're going to have to haveyour executive team be

(01:23:46):
comfortable giving authority onthe topic. You're going to have
to have case studies andcustomers giving testimonials.
You're going to have to havethem linking to your site.
You're going to have to beeverywhere on all the different
social media channels, and

that you're gonna have to be in cargo. Rex, yeah,

you're gonna have to be. Because, let me tell
you, some of y'all SEO is notvery good. If my listing for
your company is

reminds me, I need to finish our profile.

I'll send it to you after the recording, but

started it last week or something. I just

for those folks, if you're looking for
gentanos, I think that's how yousay his name. Yeah, I'm on a
podcast a couple times, so Iwill link to that specific post
in the show notes in case youwant to follow him, because
we're all trying to figure thisout in real time. But at least
this guy is like showing somereal data. He works with a lot
of different heavy hitters, andhe's not afraid to tell a

(01:24:42):
company, no, like, you're not agood fit for me to work on your
SEO. So I really like him. Hecomes from, like, definitely,
like, the high impact sort ofSEO days, but now it's a new
Wild Wild West, and so we're alljust trying to figure it out
together. Yeah. I love it. Okay?
I think we are ready for ourfinal

segment. I say I haven't cut off in like 10
minutes. About 10 minutes, yeah,

Jesus. Okay, we gotta get to it. Okay, all
right, we already kind of talkedabout our favorite businesses
and favorite so we're not goingto rehash that. So favorite
freight marketing, which is allkind of tied together, let's
move into our last segment oftoday's show, and that is source
deport. Once again, I am Blythemillikens Is everything is
logistics. We are joined withgrace, Sharkey of order full

(01:25:30):
we're going to talk about sourceto Porsche, and that's our
favorite logistics of story. Sohow your favorite stuff gets
from point A to point B? SoGrace, I'll have you kick it
off.

Yeah. So actually, this one is a little
bit fueled by your last one.
When you're talking about theissue with the green crabs,
right? Yeah, they're green,right? They're green. Yeah,
cool. So, and this actually justgot lifted on it would be
Monday, yeah? Because it's thenight today, on Monday, the July

(01:26:00):
7. But recently, you might haveheard that we've had livestock
meat issues here in the UnitedStates, because we've actually
had a ban over the last, I wantto say, couple months, if not
most of this year, on livestockcoming in from Mexico. And a big
reason for that is actually aproblem that happened a long,

(01:26:25):
long time ago. And of course,it's a bug, so the good old
screw worm, if you haven't heardof it before, it's a it comes
from a screw fly. So screw flywill lay its larvae and decane
tissue. So is that what

that saw, screw screw fly. Don't bother me.
That. Is that what that comes isit screw fly, shoe, fly, shoe,
fly,

shoe fly, yes, yes, yes. And so. So this
actually was like a big issueback in the day, and I think if
you pull up that first Youtubeshort, it'll kind of showcase to
you the problem. But long storyshort, these flies are laying
eggs, and maggots clearly areforming inside the live flesh of

(01:27:13):
these cows, which of course,makes it impossible for us to
eat. And those bugs have beencoming in through the United
States, through cattle inMexico. If you want to play that
YouTube short, really quick,just so you can see what these
beautiful things

look like. No, they look ugly. So play anyways,

Unknown (01:27:33):
is capable of taking out a cow called the New World
screw worm, and it is probablythe scariest fly you have never
heard of the larva feeds onliving animals, eating them from
the inside out in just 10 days,the screw worm was one of the
deadliest blights on Americanlivestock for decades, from the
1930s to the 1980s infectingfarm animals, wildlife, even

(01:27:56):
humans, and it cost ranchershundreds of millions of dollars
a year. That's over a billiondollars today. After a decades
long effort by the USDA to pushthe screw room south into Panama
using a novel techniqueinvolving sterile flies, it was
finally eradicated in the US in1981 and since then, we haven't
thought about it much until now,the fight to stop a flesh eating

(01:28:16):
parasite from spreading to theUS is ramping

so yeah, we got we did get rid of them for a
long time period. And it was, itwas actually really cool. So
they would basically have wildfemales made with sterile males,
and that would lead to zerooffspring. That's how production
works. And they did get rid ofthem, mostly in the 1980s 1990s

(01:28:42):
for sure. And but they'vestarted to come back. And who's
to blame? And it's funny, I lovedoing this research Blythe,
because who is to blame? It'sthe dogs of Florida. That's who,
that's who we've so far. We candogs do, what did? What did the
dogs do? So it sounds like a lotof the strays around homestead
Florida, which I believe isn'tthat close to the keys.

Yeah, that's south. It's near Miami. Yes,

which makes sense, depending on how those
the cattle was coming in, but westarted to see them again, start
to come into United States,about 2016 they did a pretty
good job of keeping that thepest down, but it did start to
grow. And in October of lastyear, they started to see a huge
infestation among deer inFlorida. And it just started to

(01:29:31):
spread more and more. Theystarted realizing a lot of this
was coming from Mexico, and sohere we are again. So I just
want to stop on it again. It waslifted, I believe, yes, Monday,
but there are a number offarmers and farming groups that
are asking us to push it back,to just make sure this doesn't

(01:29:52):
continue happening. So more ofthe story is, if you are beef
lover and you've noticed thatyour story has been lacking and.
Eve in particular, this islikely the reasoning for it, and
hopefully we can keep iteradicated. Hopefully we can
keep it down again. They arekind of pushing that we put
another livestock ban on theborder, but for now, that's

(01:30:15):
open, so you probably won't seeas many of those issues, but it
I just think it is interesting,because this is kind of the
argument that's often brought upbehind different like man made
beasts, right? Or like beyondmeats, and all of that is that,
you know, are we going to see apoint where we can't eradicate
these animals and we need tofind a way, another source of

(01:30:38):
protein, etcetera, to to keep upwith lifestyles. And so it's
just interesting to see howthis, like little bug, right,
can really kind of destroy thisproduct. In

particular, one Shut up, because Florida within
the last two years, I believe,banned lab grown meat. So
instead of sort of like marketplay out where allow consumers
to have the freedom of choice.
Yeah, what is marketed as by thestate's governor, you should,
you should have these the beef,I guess you know the beef

(01:31:13):
agriculture lobbies. Theylobbied the state in order to
get this lab grown meat banned.
But I would argue that youshould have these options and
just let the market decide,like, don't take away people's
options and be in order to caterto different lobbying groups,
allow the market to make thosedecisions. Tried lab grown meat.
I'm not the biggest fan of it. Ijust I like supporting local

(01:31:36):
farmers. This is this asespecially if it's coming
through Florida, and you alreadybanned this other meat and these
lobbying groups want to also banmaybe other, you know, beef
producers that are maybe inBrazil or Mexico or wherever.
You know, these different beefproducers are coming from.

(01:31:57):
Things a little bit of aninteresting play on the the
lobbying part

there. So think about it like from their
perspective, though the littlenow, the demand for beef goes
up, there's little supply. Sowhat do they get to do? They get
to make more money. So,

so that's how the game is played. That's

how capitalism works. Great. Well, we work
soon, but

swell. That is a good one, and I just did it.
Why would you from like acustoms and border trade?
Because I watched these showsall the time and talk about it
all the time. You can't shipanything in with, like a moth
larva on it, or the wholeshipment is going to get
rejected. And so I wonder whythey would, if that was, if it
became that much of a problem,why would you ever stop looking

(01:32:51):
for it? So that kind of,

I guess maybe the point to that is, can you
imagine having to, like, scanevery cow for, like, a wound,
and then like, oh my god, thetime that would go into that you
just, like, slow down theborder, big time. So drones do
it, like, yeah, it's the reasonwhy they brought to menace back
right for a little bit, becausethey're like, Yeah,

(01:33:14):
theoretically, this makes sense.
But like, we don't have themanpower to, like, go through
all this stuff and categorize itso at least customs were patrol,
protection, whatever is going tobe hiring. That's one piece of
the government that's hiring.

They've been ice. They're doing. They got the
budget approvals for that. Allright, moving on to my source,
to porch. I picked one of theoldest spices known to man, and
that dates back 1000s of yearsof its official use. And can you
guess, just based off of that,those little couple things, one

(01:33:52):
of the most popular condimentsin the world, salt, mustard,

oh yeah, yeah, Pepper was my next one

is they first discovered it. There was so
there's a couple differentdiscoveries. So it dates as far
back as, like 9000 years ago, inlike different Sumerian texts,
where they talk about usingdifferent mustard seeds. It also
has a very like faith basedbackground, like it's mentioned

(01:34:24):
in all faiths, mentioned in theBible as well. So there, there's
one phrase that says the mustardseed is a powerful symbol of
faith growth and resilience,because it's often associated
with the potential for greatthings to emerge from very small
beginnings. So if you've neverseen mustard a mustard seed
before? I don't even it's likethe size of like the top of a

(01:34:46):
pin prick. That's how smallthese things are, and they have
the encasing the seed kind ofcomes into a pod. The pods are
grown on the different mustardplants. Some of the leaves from
the mustard plant are used. Usedin for different greens. So if
you ever hear like mustardgreens, it's actual greens from
the mustard plant, the shootsthat kind of flower, that's

(01:35:09):
where the pods and the seedscome from. You obviously need a
lot of those in order to makejust one, like, bottle of
mustard. I think I read that itwas 10 million seeds in order to
make one bottle of mustard isneeded. And so what typically,
they also found them in likeKing Tut's tomb. Like when they
discovered his tomb, they foundmustard seeds in there too. So

(01:35:30):
this has this spice, and thiswas the first spicy food that
humans ever consumed. Were ableto kind of season a lot of their
different foods with it becauseit doesn't have was with
peppers, it's capsaicin, right?
I believe Capsaicin is what ismaking peppers spicy. But for
mustard, it's different whereit's the mustard seed itself

(01:35:54):
that is the spiciest. So it'sbeen around for a really long
time. It's seen as a symbol offaith. They there's so many
that's used in like theafterlife. As far as like King
Tuts tomb is concerned, it'sused as medicine throughout
history. There are It's alsoused for chemical warfare, for

(01:36:15):
flavor. There's also differentkinds of must. Obviously,
there's Dijon mustard, there'syellow mustard, there's brown
mustard, all of those come fromdifferent seeds. Did you know
there was actually a town inFrance called Dijon France of
where Dijon mustard wasoriginally invented, or
originally came from? There wasalso a position developed by the

(01:36:36):
pope because it became sopopular, like back in, you know,
historical times, that it wascalled the the mustard maker
position. And that's kind ofslang for, like, somebody who
has a really important job butalso does nothing. So there's,
like, all of those different, Iguess, background of what

(01:36:56):
mustard is, but it's the numberone condiment in the world. It's
being used in a variety ofdifferent spices. Primarily it
the mustard seed is grown inCanada, and so they export it to
the rest of the world. Theycontrol, like 85% of the mustard
sort of realm, Russia, Ukraine,area control, you know, a lot of

(01:37:17):
the different growing seeds aswell, and so they'll export
these seeds in dry bulkcarriers. They'll put them on
cargo ships. They're naturallylike self shelf stable. So you
don't need to keep it cool. Youdon't need to keep it warm. But
if it does get a little toocold, then that's where you know
some of the consistency willstart to mess up if it's already

(01:37:39):
made into mustard typically,what they'll do is they'll take
these stone grounds. A lot ofthe stone grounds that are used
to make chocolate are the samestone grounds that are used to
make the mustard seed. So youhave to remove the outer shell
around it and then smash up themustard seed itself, and then
that's where some of the coloris from except for the American

(01:38:01):
version, which is French'syellow mustard. It was started
by a couple brothers with theFrench last name, French's
yellow mustard. And so theystarted it up, and it was almost
they use white mustard seeds,and where the yellow color comes
from, is actually from turmeric.

(01:38:22):
So they add turmeric to it, andusually, like a vinegar base to
keep the mustard shelf stable,so it can stay in your shelf. It
doesn't have to, you know, berefrigerated for very long.
Yeah, I think that's about it.
First one for a lot of themustard crops, we did have a
shortage back in at 2022 becauseCanada was hit hard by a
drought. And then also aroundthat time, I think it was 2022

(01:38:44):
that the Russia, Ukraine warstarted. So you're like number
one and number two exporters formustard or for growing the
mustard crop, we're severelyimpacted from that. And also,
just like the mustard crop ingeneral is seen as, like this
miracle crop that a lot offarmers will use it as a cover
crop. And so it acts as, like afertilizer. It brings

(01:39:06):
pollinators, it brings, like,the good bugs to different farm
crops. So they'll grow it as,like the the bottom cover crop.
And then when the mustardharvest harvesting season is
done, they'll just have a mowerrun over it, and then it
fertilizes the ground. It alsokeeps away a lot of the bad
pests, because the pests don'tlike the spiciness of the
mustard plant itself. So it wasdeveloped not by nature,

(01:39:27):
developed by nature as sort ofthe spiciness was a pest
deterrent, so it naturally keepspests away too. So it's kind of
like this super crop, but alsoI've kind of having like a
maybe, like a realization orfalling back in love with
mustard because I am German. Icome from like that area of
Europe, or my family does comefrom that area of Europe where

(01:39:49):
mustard is incredibly popular.
If you go, there's a place inFrance, I believe that has you
know when you go to, like theolive oil stores. Or, like, beer
stores where you can, you know,pour your own beer, or pour your
own olive oil. They have thosekinds of stores in France as
well. So there's a store that'sbeen around for like, 250 years,

(01:40:11):
and you can go there and pouryour own tubs of mustard. And so
it's just very versatilecondiment. I thought it was
really interesting to be able toshine a light, especially, you
know, with the French's yellowmustard, we just had July 4.
Yellow mustard didn't even getinvented until the early 1900s
and so this is kind of like asuper crop that's been around
for 1000s of years, but it'sstill finding its way into, you

(01:40:35):
know, American diets anddifferent sauces and recipes.
And I just thought it was cool,so, and it has like the faith
angle to where, like, I don'tknow if he ever owned, like, a
mustard seed necklace, but Ihave a couple of them that I got
like, growing up. So it was kindof like a, you know, like a
faith based thing. But thoughtthat that was interesting for

(01:40:55):
the number one crop in theworld, it made me want to start
growing my own mustard. But youneed a heck of a lot of them in
order to make, like, one bottle,so I think I'll just continue
buying it nice. All right. Well,I think that about does it for
our I mean, we covered a lot ofground today. We started off
with drones, then we moved intomarket predictions, and then we

(01:41:16):
moved into freight marketing,and then we talked about worms
and mustard. So another, goodshow for us

today. Yes, ma'am, I have to go. I

was gonna say, like any last words, I know you
gotta go. Good

episode, um, you know, hopefully by the time we
do the next episode, we'll havesome more clarity on Tara. So
that's cool, right? Is I thinkwe're gonna, we'll have, going
into August, more of an idea onthat. So excited for that. Then
we'll get some more LLM SEOdrama in there, but I'll

come with a better plan instead of just
having a panic attack on air.

No, I think it's interesting, though, but yeah,
for everyone out there, go checkus out@orderful.com as well. If
you're looking to changesystems, and even if you're just
having issues with your EDIintegrations down, it's stopping
you from doing things at yourbusiness. Give us a call. Let us
know, and we'll of course, wegot a wonderful agent on our
site who can help you, guide youthrough that too. So appreciate

(01:42:11):
it. Play

another great show. Thank you, Grace.
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

(01:42:35):
show is also available in videoformat over on YouTube, just by
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

(01:42:57):
buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the
largest database of logisticsservices and solutions. All the
links you need are in the shownotes. I'll catch you in the
Next episode and go jags. You.

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