Solving Logistics Problems with the Right Technology

Episode Transcript
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Blythe Brumleve (00:05):
Welcome into another episode of everything is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight.
We are proudly presented by SPIlogistics and I am your host.
Blythe Brumleve, I am happy towelcome back in for the second
time in 2023.
Brian Glick he is the CEO overat Chain.
io and I was just telling youthis.
I was sort of fan-girling for alittle bit here, but anytime I

(00:28):
see your name as far as like aninterview guest on a podcast or,
you know, a YouTube video, it'san immediate save to my library
because I'm going to learnsomething new every time.
So thank you for coming back onthe show and excited to dive
into this conversation.

Brian Glick (00:42):
I'm flattered and also now a little nervous to
have to live up to thatintroduction, but I'm sure we'll
make it happen.

Yes, definitely Now.
Now, for folks who may not befamiliar with your career
history, you sort of give usthat eagle eye view of you.
Know your history withinlogistics space.
I believe you're a formerfreight forwarder.
You know also, you know,involved in technology across
the space, I think for about 25years now.
So vast amount of experience.

(01:11):
I don't think I covered it all,but did I come close?

Pretty close.
So again, I'm a college dropoutwho got a job running wires
under desks at a customs brokerin 1999, and they had to explain
to me what customs was and whatbroker was and really genuinely
said I'm going to do this forthree months and then find
something more interesting and24 years later haven't found

(01:37):
anything more interesting yet.
Then this whole globallogistics space.
I had a software company at onepoint before this one that did
customs related tariffmanagement for big global brands
and worked inside of forwarders.
Lucky to be one of the fewpeople, I think, who has run IT
and sales activity and reallykind of has always been able to

(02:00):
kind of bring that all together.

Since you brought it up.
I was going to save my fifthgrader questions for later on in
the show, but you brought upthat you know that you were
explained to like what a freightforwarder is and I think for a
lot of my audience they're moreon the US-based freight
brokerage side of things.
Can you explain as a fifthgrader the differences or
there's a lot of similaritiesbetween freight forwarders and

(02:24):
freight brokers, but what aremaybe some key differences
between those two fractions?

So probably, the biggest difference between a
freight forwarder and a freightbroker from a domestic versus
international side is that whenyou're a freight broker, you
live very much in this kind oftransactional world of I've got
to buy and sell and I'm load toload and it's you know, whereas

(02:51):
a freight forwarder on theinternational side, you're
managing a process that has alot more parties involved.
So there's customs, there's youknow, you're working with a
customer across both air andocean, and you're become more of
a travel agent, which is ananalogy that people like to use,
and then it breaks down reallyfast.
But so you're dealing with amore complex process that starts

(03:14):
in another country and has alot more parties that you're
trying to coordinate thandomestic brokerage, which tends
to be.
You know, it's you, it's thetrucker, it's the customer and
the facility, it's being pickedup and delivered, but you don't
have 150 different companiesinvolved.

And so it's a lot more moving parts.

you know, for the sake of the industry, but it's
also a little more stable in thesense of you tend to be doing
repeat business and you're notlike bidding on every load and,
like I've worked with freightbrokers as well, that you would

(03:54):
what freight brokers do is amuch more intense process.
What freight forwarders do is amore complex process, so you're
more consultative with yourcustomers.

Oh, interesting Because I would imagine, with
you know everything that's goneon in the market over the last
few years that it's just been asituation of where forwarders
and brokers are like areexplaining what's going on in
the world to shippers and tryingto help them understand rate
fluctuations.

Oh yeah, absolutely , I think.
I think really the different.
I've always felt that, likefreight brokers still live in a
world that feels like a boilerroom all day, every day, right,
where's fuel going?
Where's what can I get?
How can I fight for this load?
It's like it's a very intenseprocess and certainly all of my
forwarder friends are going tobe mad at me for saying that

(04:41):
what we do is less intensebecause we have entire vessels
stuck in ports and airlines thataren't moving things and you
can't get it in and out of thisairport and this and that and
the other.
It's still chaotic, but it'smore.
The relationships tend to be alittle bit more longer and
stable with you know you'resaying, okay, well, I'm going to
help you with this trade laneover a period of time in a way,

(05:04):
that is, you know, you're ableto kind of step back from it a
little bit than that kind of rawintensity of you know that you
see, sometimes on the brokerageside, yeah, because I would
imagine, with brokers, that youmight be even lucky to have a
conversation with your shipper.

It's more or less like you're playing defense
instead of being on the offense.
Is maybe that a safe comparison?

Yeah, and then when you and then when you look at
like a customs broker, you arein a very long term decade or
multi decade relationshipbecause you're dealing with
compliance and you tend to bedoing quarterly business reviews
with your customers and youoften have 100% of their
business or you know you're oneof two or three people.
So you're even another step backfrom that transactional world

(05:49):
and into a deep so there's likeall sorts of different levels of
relationships in this industry,depending on kind of how
commoditized the thing you do isto the customer you're doing it
with.

See, this is why I love having you on the
show, because you could breakdown these complex things that
feel complex from the outside,because you know and this is
part of you know your goal as acompany, chainio.
You know connecting theindustry silos, because there
are so many silos within thisspace.
I spent the better part of thelast, you know, decade working
in an asset based freightbrokerage and I had no idea

(06:24):
about maritime, I had no ideaabout customs brokerage and
freight forwarders, and so youjust shed a light on, you know,
a whole other set ofperspectives that I wouldn't
have even thought of.
So great start to today's show.

And here's where the humility comes in, because I
do want to be very honest aboutwhat I know and I don't know.
I've worked in companies thathave had freight brokerage arms,
but I've never had to live thelife and the one thing I've
learned in this industryeverything that seems simple,
someone else, there's like athousand foot hole of complexity
under it that you have no ideaabout, and then every one of

(06:58):
those has another thousand holesunderneath it.
Right, like I say, oh, customs,there's like a million
subtopics under customs, and I'msure that everything,
everything that the person atthe desk across the hall from
you in a big company that youthink looks so simple, like
accounts, payable or receivableor whatever they're all
infinitely complicated, and sowe all have to bring a lot of

(07:20):
humility to like the fact that,oh yeah, that other thing is
always easy and what I do isalways very complex.

And I was just.
I was going to save some ofthese questions for later, but
since we're already on the topic, you know I saw that you had
posted on LinkedIn a littlewhile ago talking about some
tips for forwarders to, you know, have these conversations with
their shippers and what kind oftopics that they should be
talking about.
I'm curious as to you know howare, what are some of those
strategies, and I wonder ifthere's any similarities between

(07:49):
brokers and and forwarders thatthey can kind of borrow from
each other to continue to havethese educational conversations
with their customers.

Well, the good news is, as you and I are recording
this, we just did a webinarabout an hour ago on that topic,
so it's very fresh in my mindand we'll we'll get you the link
for the for the notes.
But the the big topic that wesee for any logistics provider
who's going out and talking to ashipper now about next year, is
remembering that, like 2018,2019, we were talking a lot

(08:24):
about innovation and then theworld fell apart.
And then the world fell apartand all we were talking about
was we can get stuff done foryou.
We can get loads moved, whetherthat load doesn't matter, what
mode that load is on, we can getsomething somewhere, was a good
enough answer.
And then we all hit a downturnand then it was okay, we can,
we'll, we'll figure out how tobe cheap and get the loads moved

(08:47):
.
And now there is someindications that we're heading
towards, potentially, some sortof recovery sometime in the year
, or at least a new norm like astabilization, and that it's now
time to go back to thosecustomers and start thinking a
little bit more, like we weretalking in 18 and 19 about.
Here's how we're going to helpyou be better as a company you

(09:11):
know, be more on time and full,be more reliable to your
customers.
And we're going to bring techto the table.
But we're not going to BS youand say that, okay, tech and AI
or whatever is going to fixeverything but it that I think
the customers are now going tobe in a position where they're
more open to real business valuefrom their providers.

(09:33):
That, as long as you bring itto your customer with a business
term first, not with a techterm first, we're going to help
you be more on time and full.
We're going to help you be morecost effective, more reliable,
and here's the tech we're goingto bring to the table to do that
.

What kind of I guess the technology solutions
that there's because we're goingto talk about AI, of course you
know later on in this episode.
But I'm curious as to what youthink.
You know the perceptions haveevolved around technology over
the last 25 years.
You know, over the last fewyears it feels like it's just

(10:12):
been a wave of hope and decline.
Hope and decline.
But I'm curious is that thenormal, is that the sort of the
normal attitude towardstechnology?
Or is it very slow to change,slow to that resistance?

So in 2001, I had supply vendors telling us XML
files are going to fixeverything.
All the things will be betterbecause of XML files.
You know, in 2007, I hadsoftware vendors telling us and
people don't even use this wordanymore but service oriented,

(10:48):
architecture, orientedarchitectures are going to fix
everything.
Give Oracle or IBM a milliondollars.
They will implement a serviceoriented architecture, will
reenvision your company and itwill fix everything.
So these cycles are forever.
There's no time where we won'tbe in a hype cycle on something,

(11:08):
and but at the same time, everyone of those things makes us
incrementally a little bitbetter.
So, as long as you don't gettoo excited or too disappointed
when the cycle doesn't turn outto reach its full potential, you
can see this steady progressover decades.

(11:28):
And I mean, I think, thebiggest difference, though.
The people in the industry thatI grew up with who said I don't
want to change are not in theindustry anymore, like even the
people the you know quoteunquote old people in the
industry now grew up in ageneration where they already

(11:49):
had a home computer or theyalready, you know, knew about
innovation.
There was a time where we hadpeople who would come in every
day and say I don't want tochange.
I just want to drive around thecountry and visit my customers
and get them drunk and get usanother load Right and that was
how business was done.

(12:09):
That just so like we don't haveto fight that fight anymore.
Everybody understands that techis helpful, which just now.
The question is which tech ishelpful?

And that's that's.
That's a perfect segue into mynext question because, you know,
I really, as we sort of end out, we're in Q4 of 2023,
everybody's budget budgeting andlooking forward to, you know,
2024.
What does you know sort of thecurrent tech landscape look like
relative to the biggestlogistical problems that we're

(12:38):
facing?

I think what's really interesting and exciting,
but not sexy, is that the techlandscape is more mature than
it's ever been.
So pre pandemic, 2018, 2019,everybody was talking about new
things.
I was at a conference earlierthis year I can't remember which

(13:01):
one and somebody was reallydisappointed.
They're like there's nothingnew here.
These are all the same vendorsthat were here last year.
They're all just telling us thesame stuff.
And I'm like that's a goodthing, because now you can start
asking about our OIs right, andyou can start like having
mature conversations with thevendors that are still here,
because a whole bunch of themaren't because they've gone out
of business or because they'vebeen gobbled up into other

(13:24):
things, or because their ideawasn't that great or it was too
cutting edge.
And now we're in a world whereyou can talk about a business
problem and there's probably avendor somewhere Once you've
identified the thing you want toimprove.
I want to be cheaper, right?
Well, here's all theseautomated rate management or
rate calculation engines thatare going to help you always

(13:46):
have the lowest bid that stillgets you margin right.
Or I want to be the strategicsolutions provider?
Well, here's all these softwarethat can help you help your
customer with network planningright and get up to that next
level in the C levelconversations about where they
should be putting theirinventory so that you can move
it more efficiently.

(14:06):
You don't have to like it's notall about what's the new tech,
it's about picking the tech thataligns to your business,
because there are maturesoftware companies now, whereas
I think we went through, maybe Iwould say there was a bunch of
software companies in the early2000s who did amazing things in
TMSs and order management andall of that, and then there was
sort of this gap where, likethere was nothing new and then

(14:31):
there was all this new stuffaround machine learning and AI
and APIs and all of this.
Well, now those companies aremore mature and now's the time
to be able to like startdelivering on projects that
actually show value.

Are you in freight sales with a book of
business looking for a new home,or perhaps you're a freight
agent in need of a betterpartnership?
These are the kinds ofconversations we're exploring in
our podcast interview seriescalled the Freight Agent
Trenches, sponsored by SPILogistics.
Now I can tell you all day thatSPI is one of the most
successful logistics firms inNorth America, who helps their

(15:08):
agents with back officeoperations, such as admin,
finance, it and sales.
But I would much rather youhear it directly from SPI's
freight agents themselves, andwhat better way to do that than
by listening to the experiencedfreight agents tell their
stories behind the how and thewhy they joined SPI?
Hit the freight agent link inour show notes to listen to

(15:29):
these conversations or, ifyou're ready to make the jump,
visit spi3plcom and so you know.
As you were talking, you knowyou had mentioned a couple
different phrases because Ilooked at your LinkedIn.
I pretty much stocked itearlier today in order to come
up with some good questions, andI loved this article that you
posted about a blog back in 2018talking about logistics tech

(15:51):
buzzwords for 2019.
And you mentioned words likeblockchain, ai, apis, internet
of Things, etc.
And for AI, you called it backin 2018, you said it's real,
it's here and it's going to beeverywhere.

I did and I also said, if I recall correctly I
don't know the article in frontof me that I caveated that with
you, know, but you have to findthe right solutions for it,
right that nothing fit like it.
Like I said before, nothingfixes everything, right?
So, you know, my prediction onblockchain back then was that it

(16:26):
had some very specific usecases, but they weren't
universal use cases, right, andthere was going to be some
things around compliance, somethings around digital twins
where it might be interesting,and with AI, I think it is going
to be pervasive.
In the same way that we don'ttalk about software now that has

(16:47):
databases, right, Everysoftware has a database, it has
a data store.
Well, there was a time whenthat was a new concept and now
it's literally in everything,right, like everything you have
can store data and retrieve it.
Like you don't.
Like.
There was a time when thatsounded weird or innovative.
Ai is going to end up like that,like it's going to be in things

(17:10):
, but it is not, in and ofitself, a thing that you don't
buy AI.
You buy a solution, and this isthe one thing I'm going to bang
on for the next 25 years.
You buy a solution to abusiness problem, and if your
software vendor uses AI to solvethat problem, great.
If they don't use AI to solvethat problem and they still
solve that problem, also great,Right.

(17:31):
So ask them why they're usingAI and what value, what extra
value, it's bringing to you.

Yeah, because I think that for a lot of
business, especially over thelast year you know, chatgpt was
launched about a year ago.
It was the fastest app to 100million users.
So it's becoming that just sortof like a common phrase of oh
AI is going to take all of ourjobs that just sort of doomerism
around just the concept oftechnology.

(18:00):
But if you were calling theseshots back in 2018 and some of
the freight executives that I'vespoken to, they're already
using AI, but not in the sameway that chatGPT, large language
models, that sort ofinfrastructure.
So if you could maybe highlightsome of the use cases that AI
is playing a role in logisticstech right now, is it mainly

(18:24):
just parsing through all of thedifferent data sets?

So AI is a marketing term, right.
So people put a lot of thingsunderneath it right.
So the thing we were using in2018 was generally machine
learning, and it was abouttaking past information and
trying to predict the future.
Okay, so this has been all theloads we've ever moved, and so
therefore, we think, based oncombining that with weather data

(18:47):
and demand data and economicdata, we think that the next
load is going to be this price.
That was the machine learningrevolution, and large companies
that have enough data orsoftware vendors who aggregate
data, have kind of like that'salready an accepted thing.
What we saw with chatGPT inthese large language models, is

(19:08):
this idea of getting closer tosolving creative problems or
filling in kind of finishingthoughts, right.
So before we connected, I waswriting a blog post, and every
blog post I write now I use AIto help me think through the
problem.
So you know, I'm writing a blogpost about our position as a

(19:28):
neutral software company andwhat that means for our
customers.
So I gave AI, I gave chatGPTlike six bullets of kind of what
I wanted to get out, and thenlet it write a longer blog post
for me based on my originalthoughts, and it kind of fleshed
out some things.
I was like, hey, maybe thatpoint isn't as clear as I

(19:49):
thought or what, and then I usedthat to rewrite.
Well, that's a different kind oftechnology and where is that
going to be useful in theday-to-day life outside of the
marketing department?
Or we use it internally.
Now it's very good for helpingcoders finish their code.

(20:10):
It's very good.
We use it from a strategicplanning process to like.
I encourage my team.
I'm like if you have a thoughtfor a new initiative, put it
into AI and have it give you theideas of how it would write a
PowerPoint around it, andsometimes it brings up other
ideas.
But it's a jumping off point.
It's not a finishing point Inthe day-to-day logistician's

(20:32):
lifecycle.
You're going to talk tochatbots now more than you ever
did, and you may or may not knowit, and they're going to seem
more human.
But it's not going to replacejobs.
It's going to just change jobs.
And every technology revolutionsomebody says this is going to
replace all the people.
Sewing machines are going toreplace all the people and

(20:54):
whatever else, everything sincethen.
There are always people whosejobs disappear because that
skill is not needed anymore andother jobs that get created and
unfortunately they're not alwaysevenly distributed.
We're the same person can moveto the other job, which sucks,

(21:15):
but I don't think this replacesall the jobs and logistics I
think we're going to.
Every time we solve something,we invent a new problem to have.

It's like a whack-a-mole, like every time
you knock one down, there isanother, or we just go?

how can we go further?
I mean, like the idea ofe-commerce.
I mean like e-commerce justchanged so many things in the
way that we move boxes around,but it created a whole new set
of jobs of people who, like thefirst machine learning
application I ever really saw inpractice, was one of the parcel

(21:47):
carriers using machine learningto figure out what carton sizes
they should carry in facilitiesthat were now being disrupted
because they used to move hugeshipments to retailers and were
now having to move parcel e-com,and so they were using it to
figure out, well, how manycartons do I need to have and
what sizes, when I have peoplebuying these very mixed orders.

(22:08):
Like that job of the machinelearning guy who had to figure
that all out and it was a guy,he's, his job didn't exist
before all of this.

Yeah, I mean like social media coordinators,
podcasters.
Those roles didn't exist 10, 15years ago, unless you were very
early adopter in a lot of thosedifferent platforms.
Do you foresee how we talk tochat, GPT for ideation and
things like that?
Do you foresee that happeningfrom a logistical standpoint for

(22:42):
maybe like a customs broker,where they have a specific issue
and they can talk to their owndata set of their own large
language model that's personalto them?
Do you foresee a situationwhere that might happen and that
might be beneficial?

Absolutely yes.
What I think we are muchfurther away from and I'm going
to use the self-driving carthing here every year.
It seems like next year they'regoing to be here the idea of
that system making the finaldecision.
I think we're pretty far awayfrom, much, much further than it

(23:19):
feels.
But the idea that, look, theother day I was trying to do a
contract with someone and I knowyou do not use chat GPT to be
your lawyer that is a reallystupid thing to do.
But there was, like I wastrying to remember this one
concept around exactly how tophrase this one thing in a
contract that I did 100 times.

(23:39):
And I just went into chat GPTand I described the problem and
it was like, oh, you're talkingabout this.
And then I was like, ok, itbrought me back into it.
So if I'm a customs broker andI'm like, hey, my customer, I
don't remember exactly thisthing, but my customer is trying

(23:59):
to figure out how to save moneyon bringing stuff in from South
America, maybe that prompts youto remember that there's the
Dominican Republic CentralAmerican Free Trade Agreement
and then you're back on track.
That's where it's valuable, notin finishing the whole Free
Trade Agreement program for thatcustomer.

So it kind of sounds like chat.
Gpt in particular is very mucha core part of your day, which
maybe wasn't the case a year ago.

Oh, absolutely, and again, it's a core part of my
day and I'm glad that I've beenthrough a few technology cycles
so I know when it should not bea part of my day and I know that
it is not the only part of myday, but I find it to be the

(24:48):
same way that there was a timewhen Google was not a part of my
day and I now use Google a lotto do searches, to figure things
out that I used to have tophysically, am old enough to
have had encyclopedias in myhouse.
We did too.

(25:08):
So that's better, but it doesn'tmean that I have outsourced my
entire brain to Google, justparts of it, where Google's good
at it.
And ChatGPT is going to be thesame thing right, it's going to
help us with things, but we'restill in the driver's seat, for
that self-driving car is notgoing to be self-driving for a

(25:30):
very, very, very long time.

Are there any other use cases for AI in
logistics outside of maybe likeChatGPT, of course, but outside
of maybe their own machinelearning, or is that machine
learning essentially the onlyuse case in logistics?

No, I think that there's so many things around
like image processing and all ofthe things we can do nowadays.
I mean, I see these demos of Ican't remember who it was
Somebody just bought a bunch ofBoston robotics robots that can
unload a trailer autonomouslyright, and it's like a suction

(26:12):
cup and an arm, but they showyou in the demo what it sees and
how it's able to process thereal world and use all of these
algorithms to figure out theboxes.
And OK, if I pick this box upfrom the top, it's going to fall
off the bottom and all of thesethings.
But it's so pervasive that Ithink that's what you're going

(26:33):
to see.
It's just, everything is goingto have a little of it, but the
thing you're buying is unloadingthe trailer faster, not AI for
AI sake.

Yeah, I think that that's super important to
keep in mind.
And now, reflecting on thebuzzwords that you predicted in
2018, what are some of thosebuzzwords that you're predicting
for 2024?
Not to put you on the spot oranything, but what are some of
the, I guess, the buzzwords thatyou're thinking about that

(27:04):
maybe is going to be around fora while, versus something that
probably won't be?

I mean I feel like AI has sucked all of the air out
of the room, and kind ofrightfully so, because the
potential genuinely is there.
You know what?
I still don't think we've fullyexploited IoT, and I know it's

(27:29):
not as buzzwordy now, but youknow, you've got your ELDs.
But on the ocean freight side,we're just starting to see the
carriers invest in putting IoTon the containers and what
happens when you can start usingthat data to do things that we
haven't even thought of aspossible before.

(27:53):
A lot of the carriers are justputting Starlink internet onto
the vessels and so now I've gotto connect the container on a
vessel with internet access andI've got a perishable product or
a temperature control productin that thing.
And I can understand thatcertainly I can't take a
helicopter out to that ship ifsomething goes wrong, but I

(28:14):
might know that I have anat-risk product 20 days earlier
now in my process because thatcontainer was compromised in
some way, and this is all new tous.
And I think that we've got thisfund foundational
infrastructure going in for IoT,but we haven't started
exploiting it yet.

(28:35):
The innovation that's going tocome on connected world and this
bridging of the physical andthe virtual world.
The biggest companies in theworld are just scratching the
surface, and the rest of us arejust kind of waiting for it to
be more accessible.

And when you talk about the internet of
things, is that more or lessjust digital twins replicating
the real world environment, adigital environment, or is the
internet of things moreencompassing of a lot of
different sectors?

I think it's more than digital twins.
So digital twins is a reallyinteresting thing if you've got
a lot of data and a lot ofmodeling and you're trying to do
all of these things.
But if I import a friend whoexports from Columbia like,
let's say, 20 containers a monthof sugar, he's not building a

(29:24):
digital twin model of his 20containers a month.
But if he can get more dataaround where those containers
are and whether they're actuallymoving and whether that's being
stored properly, like that'smeaningful information to him
and he can take that informationand do things that are less of
a marketing glossy and more ofjust my freight provider can now

(29:47):
tell me the position of thatcontainer on a ship when
containers fall overboard onthat ship.
I have another friend who shehad lost containers off of a
vessel out of Vancouver, sort ofon the tail end of the pandemic
.
There were storms and they fellover a sport.
It took her weeks to find outwhether her containers were the

(30:10):
ones that fell overboard.
I mean, 20,000 containers on aship she had, let's say, 10 of
them.
The odds are low, but you don'tknow when everything's
connected.
You know that container is nowon the bottom of the ocean.
It's no longer online like thatkind of stuff, or on the

(30:31):
roadside.
I mean, just as these thingsconverge, the ability to really
know.
Ok, I know they said that thisdock is going to be open, but
can I see that that dock isactually available, as I'm
pulling into the yard and all ofthese things?
When there's sensors everywhere, really practical little things
get easier.

(30:52):
The same way is like paying withyour phone versus having to go
get cash.
It's not sexy once you're doingit, but oh my god, was that
amazing the first time?

And so that's such a great comparison because
you think about those frictionpoints of the half a second that
it takes to take out yourwallet and pay for something
versus just tapping your phoneis something that we never knew
that we needed until we juststarted getting used to doing it
.
And so when we think about someof these larger logistical

(31:25):
problems that we're trying tosolve, essentially customers
just want their freight there ontime and reliably and hopefully
at a cheaper rate than whatthey were paying maybe the
previous year before.
As a business owner that isproviding these logistic
solutions, how do you know ormaybe what questions should you

(31:46):
be asking to figure out wherethat technology fits into your
business so that you can explainthose little moments of
frustration that you've easedfor the customer?

So I think my personal superpower, when I'm
out talking to our customers, isbeing willing to ask one
question what is your boss beingjudged on?
Ok, so I'm talking to somebodyin logistics.
They say, ok, well, who do youreport to?

(32:18):
Well, I report into the head ofsupply chain.
Well, what's he being judged on?
Or what's she being judged on?
And so if they say, oh well, wejust have this thing where now
everyone of our executives has aCO2 emissions part of their
bonus this year, that's new.
So well, now I know what totalk to you about.
Now I know how to separatemyself from all the other

(32:41):
freight brokers in here, becausewhat I'm going to talk to you
about is how we're going toreduce your idle time, which is
going to reduce your emissionsfootprint and make your boss
happy.
And so when we all liveeveryone in freight lives in a
somewhat commoditizedenvironment, at the end of the
day, there's boxes and they moveplaces, being able to listen

(33:04):
and hear what your particularcustomers care about.
Then talk about technology.
If you open the conversation byblabbing on about that new tech
you've installed, you don'tknow how to make the customer
care about it.
If you listen to them, then youcan figure out how to take the
tech you've invested in and tella story that matters to that

(33:25):
customer.

I love that, especially from a marketing
standpoint.
So many marketers would be bestserved to listen to those types
of statements and then craftermessaging around those problem
areas and as we dive into theproblems that are existing for a
lot of these different businessleaders and how maybe
technology can fill the gaps andsolve some of those problems.

(33:49):
There was another post that youhad mentioned about the.
I guess not the value, but thepotential value that you could
gain from not having what didyou call a disconnection debt in
organizations.
Can you explain what?

that is and why it's such a problem.
That was a Harvard BusinessReview term that they came up
with.
I don't think it rolls off thetongue very well as you just
proved.
I don't actually like the words,but the there's a world of
haves and have nots when itcomes to technology and supply
chain.
You go to Walmart, you go toGeorgia Pacific, you go to these

(34:23):
big Siemens and they've got allthis connectivity and all of
this stuff and these dashboardsand what have you, and then
there's this huge chasm.
And then there's all of thesepeople who have email and
texting and that's their TMS andthere's some Excel sprinkled in
there somewhere.
The disconnection debt is thateven in those big companies,

(34:46):
when those big companies areinteracting with the small ones,
or even inside the big ones andthey don't like to talk about
this there's somebody who'slogging into a carrier website,
looking at the status of a loador an ocean container or an air
freight move and then retypingit into that other system so
that it's magically automated tothe customer.

(35:07):
Those people are all over thisindustry and every one of them
is introducing latency andinaccuracy and fixing that.
Making sure that the basicwiring of this giant machine
that we're all part of is notpeople is often ignored because
it's not sexy, but I had aconversation a couple of years

(35:30):
ago with a freight forwarder inAsia who was saying they
couldn't buy integration andsoftware to solve this problem
because their labor was so cheapthere that they couldn't adjust
the fire, replacing it withsoftware.
Because we're paying somebody$1, $2 an hour, you got to get a

(35:50):
lot of efficiency from a$100,000 piece of software.
Then they came back and theysaid okay, now I have to do this
because my customer is showingreal-time statuses to their
customer and, no matter howcheap my labor is, they can't
type fast enough and they can'ttype accurately enough.
The value of solving thatdigital disconnect or whatever

(36:13):
that.
I think I got that right.

Disconnection debt.

Disconnection debt.
We're never saying that again.
Solving that problem of these Ialways called swivel neck.
I've got this monitor and thatmonitor and I got to type it
from this monitor over to thatmonitor is now about so much
more than just labor savings.
It's about real-time visibilityand accuracy.
You have to solve it, even ifit's expensive.

How do you know when enough is enough when it
comes to technology?

When you can't explain it to your CFO and if
you're a small company, youdon't have a CFO go ask your
spouse whether the money thatcould be coming into the bank
account is better invested inthis.
And if you can't explain why,then you've hit enough.
Real simple.
If you can sit there and youcan't look.

(37:08):
If you're running a businesswhether you're a one-person shop
or whether you're UPS you'vegot two numbers.
You've got the number at thetop, which is how much money you
bring in even the money at thebottom, which is how much
money's left.
You can put all sorts of magicinside of there.
If you can't tell yourselfwhich of those numbers you're

(37:28):
impacting, you're not doing theright project.
I love CFOs because they arewonderful at having very excited
young people come into theiroffices and making them walk out
with their heads down.
I know, but it was so cool.

I suffered this earlier this year because I
just felt myself just reallydiving into the world of chatGPT
and even Claude and Google'sbar to some extent Between all
of those platforms and thenlearning maybe like a new CRM or
a new video editing tool.
It just felt reallyoverwhelming and it caused a big

(38:11):
delay in my overall productionvalue and my overall
concentration value.
I'm thinking about other smallbusiness owners that are working
in freight that may beexperiencing some of this, just
almost like overload oftechnology solutions and
analysis by paralysis, orparalysis by analysis, where
you're not exactly sure whichtool to dive into.

(38:34):
As a small business owner, howdo you make those decisions on
what to invest in and what notto invest in?

The first thing to remember and I will say this to
everybody who's out therelistening, and everyone is going
to nod their head and agreewith me your TMS sucks.
Your TMS sucks because the jobthat a TMS does sucks and the
data that's coming into it isgarbage and the thing it does is

(39:03):
hard and it's never exactly howyou want it, it's never
optimized, but the TMS you'regoing to change to also sucks.
It sucks for a different reasonin a different spot.
Yours is amazing at real timetracking, and that one sucks at
real time tracking, but it'sbetter at building the customers
.
The bar for introducingsomething new into your business

(39:26):
should be higher than it's new,and it should also be higher
than what.
I don't love, what I have today,because you're also going to
have problems with the nextthing.
I think the bar for introducingnew technology in most
companies is actually too low,which is a scary thing to say as

(39:46):
someone who sells software fora living, but it is.
I think that, and the size ofcompany matters a lot in that.
If you've got a billion dollarbottom line, go invest some of
that in some things that aregoing to fail.
If losing 20% of your revenuebecause you got distracted is

(40:06):
going to put you out of business.
Stick with what you got because, or buy something that 40 of
your friends are already usingsuccessfully.
Get some real world referrals.
Don't be on the bleeding edgeif it matters.

I think that's probably a good place to jump to
with you and your company andthe services that you guys
provide For folks who may not befamiliar.
Can you give us an overview ofsome of the solutions that you
guys are offering over atchainio?

What we do is.
Our slogan is we move the datathat moves your freight.
What we do is we connect all ofthe systems, whether it's your
applications, the shippersapplications, the different
software companies, the freightaudit and pay tools.
All of these different thingshave to communicate
electronically.
We have plugins so that,instead of having to do an IT

(41:03):
project every time you want twothings to talk to each other,
you take plugin from system Aand plugin from system B.
In many cases they worktogether very smoothly.
In a lot of cases there's alittle bit of tweaking.
That still happens.
We don't like to oversell whatwe do.
We're this network that letsall of these things connect
together so that when you dolive in a world with lots of

(41:24):
software, that software iscommunicating with each other
instead of the swivel neck of.
I've got four monitors.
Now I've got to take stuff fromthis carrier website and put it
into my TMS.
I also have to go into fourkites for my customer and
manually key it over here andinto project 44 for this other
customer and key it over hereand into this and that.
Let's get all of that smoothedout.

(41:45):
And then I have to retype myinvoice three times because I
need to put it into mycustomer's freight audit
platform and my accountingsoftware and my TMS.
That noise is the foundationalunderlying crap that drags
profitability down and it's ourjob to get that stuff to go away
.

I would imagine that process mapping is
something that regularly has tobe done at some of these
companies that are looking toimplement some of these
solutions.
Is that a safe assumption?

Yes, when we demo our software, the first thing
that we show is that, when yougo to create a new integration
with us, the words that come upon the screen are not XML and
JSON and API and blockchain.
They are advanced shipmentnotice, freight billing rate and
quote automation, customsclearance, business terms,

(42:38):
because the hardest thing inintegration in supply chain is
the fact that we all usedifferent words to describe the
same thing.
A pro number and a bill oflading, a load tender and a
booking they're all the samestuff and getting people to
agree on okay.
Once the computer is automatingsomething, it has to be
repeatable and we all have toagree what we're actually doing
here.

(42:59):
You go to a global company andyou say how do you quote the
customer?
They say, well, okay, inMalaysia, they send us this
electronic message and we sendit back.
In Spain, they call the officeand then they kind of make up a
number and then we sort of sortit out from there.
In the US, we go and we load upan index tool and then we add

(43:21):
5% to the index and then thatgoes back to them over an email.
It's okay.
Well, now we all have to agreeon how to do that if we're going
to automate it by bringing inintegration software.
It forces those conversations.
Some of our customers have saidto me that most of the value
they get from our software is inthe first month of the
implementation, and then theyare willing to use it to do all

(43:46):
of this.
But the value is that it goteveryone on the same page.

Which I imagine is such a nightmare for these
companies to go through.

Our client success team does a lot of therapy as
part of our services, alsoorganizational therapy.

So, in addition to organizational therapy, you
mentioned earlier about how AIhas really sort of sucked a lot
of the oxygen out of the roomwhen it comes to technology
advancements, is there anythingaround logistics tech that we
should be paying more attentionto?

Carbon, co2 emissions, especially here in
North America, we're woefullybehind, and California is going
to get us all caught up realquick with not just the I know
everyone on the trucking side iswell aware of the actual
physical emission standards andthe like but also carbon
reporting.
And so globally, within thenext couple of years and dates

(44:49):
are different in different spotsbasically everyone who's
publicly traded is going to haveto report on what's called
scope three emissions, which isnot the emissions your company
does, but the emissions thateveryone you buy goods and
services does, which means, evenif you're a small provider, you
are going to be in someoneelse's scope three.

(45:09):
So you go.
Ok, it only applies to billiondollar companies in California.
I'm not a billion dollar company, but I move loads for Target.
Target's a billion dollarcompany who operates in
California.
Therefore, target is going tocome back to me and ask about my
carbon emissions and soapplying the tech to take your

(45:31):
ELDs and get that emissions, butalso things like your corporate
travel and the emissions onthose, and so being educated on
the tech that is being built.
And it's very frustrating rightnow because it's all early days
and all the regulations aredifferent and everything's chaos
and it's not pleasant right nowin the emission space.

(45:53):
But if you're not at leastlearning the words, if you don't
know what scope three emissionsmeans, you're behind.
If you are already invested intechnology, you are already able
to give granular reporting toyour customers you're ahead.
If you're in between those twothings, you're probably on the
right track.

And so I would say that probably sounds like a
safe assumption to at least haveon your radar to implement for
2024.

Yeah, I mean if you're not actively
understanding it.
And it's a little embarrassingthat I have paper on my desk.
But I have the GreenhouseCouncil white paper on emissions
on my desk at all times nowbecause it is a complicated
topic.
But the literature that's outthere is actually not that hard.

(46:42):
It's got graphs and picturesand shows you.
Ok, if you're here in thesupply chain, this means this to
you If you are becoming fluentin the language.
I'm trying to think of a goodanalogy here.
But there are things like PODs.
So there was a time when youwere pretty cutting edge if you

(47:05):
were even talking to yourcustomers about electronic PODs.
Now it's given right, but weall had to learn that language
together.
We're in that language learningphase right now and so if
you're not learning the languageof emissions, you are going to
be playing a lot of catch uptowards the end of next year.

How, as a technology company, how are you
and your team staying educatedto help your customers stay
educated?

So we see our job is to be out there and we have a
partnership team who goes outand talks to every other
software company in the industrythat's willing to give us the
time of day and we learn and welisten.
And then we also talk to ourlargest customers, these big
multinational forwarders, andthen we have regular meetings
and every one of our customersagain like another sort of
hidden value.

(47:54):
They meet with their clientsuccess managers regularly and
we try to feed back what we'rehearing and we never recommend a
particular piece of softwarebecause we're neutral.
But we will say, hey, if you'renot doing something in CO2,
you're going to be behind.
Here's the six providers in thespace so you don't have to go do

(48:16):
all that research and getstarted and then we'll make
those introductions and we'llfacilitate saying OK, well, the
big guys in general are reallylooking at rate and quote
automation right now.
Here's some providers in thatspace that you can go talk to.
So we help the executives atour customers, especially the
mid-sized ones, distill thenoise, what category should they

(48:38):
be investing in?
And then we introduce them tothe software companies that can
help them in that space.
But we don't like provide apreference of this one's better
than that one, so they can trustus.

I'm curious, taking a little bit of a
different direction for theselast few questions.
I'm curious as to what motive.
Do you have any sort of mentorsor people who have been super
influential to you in yourcareer and your outlook?
Because it's always get thepresence that you are very
positive and very much eager tohelp other companies solve these

(49:17):
complex problems.
So I'm curious as to who isinfluential to you.

So I can give you three, only one of whom I
directly worked for.
So there's a woman namedKatherine Cooper, who was my
boss for a number of years, whohas been very influential in my
career in teaching me, as a nerd, how to interact with other
people and how to understandthat relationships are as

(49:44):
important as facts, and so shewas very influential.
There's a company called 37Signals, which is a software
company.
They have a couple of productscalled Basecamp and, hey, I
don't use their products.
I used to use their productsmany years ago but they were
very influential in one of thefirst fully remote companies and

(50:07):
building a culture ofempowering people in a business
to go make decisions and getthings done.
And they wrote some books aboutthis and I went to one of their
first in-person seminars like20 years ago.
So that team and then from afarand we know each other now but I
always very much admired JohnUrban, who's now running Slink,

(50:29):
but it was really the GT Nexuswas what made him famous and his
ability to see that you had allof these parties in global PO
management and order management,arg and supply chain and that
you had to make software thatbrought value to all of them or
it wasn't going to work.
And that ability to see thatglobal network and then build

(50:54):
software.
That was going to be the risingtide.
Instead of moving value betweendifferent companies, which
really became what I needed todo with chain, which is we draw
this triangle.
I've had it since before Istarted the company Shippers,
logistics providers and softwarecompanies and anything we do
should be adding value to thattriangle not moving value around

(51:18):
that triangle.

I love that.
No, I mean, I feel like thatwould be a perfect place to end
this interview, but I do havesome questions.

However, there's a quiz round.

But we do have one of the audience seems to
really enjoy this segment.
I call it the relatable eight,eight questions that I'm asking
each interview guest over that.
We've been doing this for acouple months now.
I always get some fun sort of Iwould call them like break the
ice type questions, but this isat the end of the interview, so
it's not really breaking the iceanymore.

(51:49):
All that to say, let's get tothe first one, because you're
very good at podcast interviews,very clearly, as an evident of
this show.
But how do you think aboutmarketing when it comes to you?

and your company.
Create value and don'toverthink how you're delivering
it.
We do our podcasts, we do ourLinkedIn presence and we don't
get to.
Our job is not to becomeCoca-Cola.
So we try to add value.
We try to make out good contentthat people like and then,
because of that, they like ourcompany.

What is your favorite social media platform
and why?

For business, it's still LinkedIn.
The only other platform I'm onat all anymore is Reddit, and
that's anonymous, because Ithink it's a really good place
to see what people are reallythinking.

Yes, I would cosign that for sure Reddit is.
I have a secret anonymousaccount and then I have my
public facing.
I have like five of them.
You've got to be a littlecautious on that crazy platform.
Ok, what is your favorite SaaStool that you use every day and
can't live without?
It cannot be your own.

Don't worry, I don't know that won't be a
problem.
My favorite SaaS tool that Iuse every day and can't live
without is still Slack.
I mean, it's just so effective.

What about your favorite freight business that
isn't your own?

I am not allowed to answer that question.

I guess you did cut it.

What I will say is that I think that the entire
space of pricing and ratecalculations and all of those
things is so unbelievably hardand fascinating to me that
everybody operating in thatspace globally just has my
admiration for tackling a hardproblem.

Yes, very well said.
You did say that earlier, thatyou didn't want to be a neutral
party.
All right, next one what's onetask in your current job that
you can't stand doing?

Legal compliance, like government filings and all
of the like.
I have to sign this documentfor this state and all.
It's just so much noise for novalue for the customers.

I echo that statement because I just went
through a whole issue with theFlorida Department of Revenue.
They kept sending me noticesabout how I owed $20 to them.
I just said I don't feel likecalling the government to deal
with this, I'm just going to paythe $20.
I don't know where this billcame from.
I spent months going throughthis issue.
Then, of course, after I paidthe bill a month later, I get a
check in the mail from a rebatefrom the Florida.

Department of Revenue, try it on registering a
legal entity in New Hampshire.

I'm just going to put that out there Sounds
like a nightmare that costs alot more than $20.
Yes, but it just goes to showthe lack of progress or process
optimization.
I should say, all right, if youdidn't have to worry about
money, what would you want to dofor the rest of your life?

Work on food security.
It is ridiculous to me that inmodern society there are people
who don't have enough food toeat and then we can't get the
food that they need to them itis.
Whatever measure you make ofour society, the fact that
people go to bed hungry isabsurd.

That's why I love the feeding Northeast
Florida.
Feeding Northeast Florida isone that I really admire.
What they're doing is becausethey take these donations from
local stores and farmers andthey help with the logistics of
getting that food to folks inneed.
And they also go the extra stepof to almost hide certain food

(55:33):
donations, especially for kidsin classrooms and things like
that, where they will partnerwith schools and they'll take
the food and they'll discreetlyput it in the child's backpack
and so that they can take ithome and so they're not
necessarily made fun of atschool.
Anyways, great chance.

And just a reminder for everyone the thing that the
charity you care about valuesmost is your money, not your
in-kind services.
So always donate money whereyou can, absolutely.

They're better equipped to make those decisions
than we are.
Okay, last couple of ones.
What's something you believe inthat most people don't?

That there's no such thing as rules.
There are only consequences.
So everyone says this is therules, this is how this has to
be done.
Well, long as you're willing toaccept the consequences of your
behavior, you can literally doanything.

Spoken like a true tech executive.
All right.
And last one, a little bit of afun one what's your favorite
supply chain or logistics fact?

Oh man, my favorite supply chain or logistics.
Fact is and the numbers varydepending on who you ask, but
I'll just say that there are anexcess of 100 companies involved
in every international shipment.
Oh, wow.
Right that when you startcounting the customs brokers and
the origin trucking agent andthe freight audit and pay
company and the customs bureauand the company, the three PL

(56:52):
that's managing the originwarehouse and the destination
warehouse, and the transloaderand the trucker, and you end up
with over 100 companies and weall have to.
We all still get things to getplaces every day, which is a
miracle that it ever works.

We do it millions of times a day which is
why I love quotes like that,because you bring the tech
positivity to the ecosystemwhich I think we need more of
now.
For I guess, for lack of abetter phrase, are there any
questions that you feel like Ishould have asked and didn't, or
any statements that you wouldlike to make that you feel is

(57:30):
important as to sort of closeout this conversation.

Well, I think you just hit on the one thing right.
If there's one thing that Ijust want everyone in this
business to hear, it's that wemake minor miracles happen.
That would be considered magic200 years ago.
I have a t-shirt in Shanghaiand 48 hours later it's on a kid

(57:53):
in Little Rock.
Is magic, and we all crap onourselves all day, every day.
We all have very lowself-esteem about the technology
and all the things, and weshould all remember that we're
doing magic every day andappreciate that, even when it's
hard.

Wonderful way to close out the show.
Brian, where can folks followyou?
Follow more of your work.

LinkedIn used to be that other platform that they
renamed each other and I losttrack.
So just check me out onLinkedIn.

I will be sure to link to all the things in the
show notes just to make it easyfor folks and also to check out
chainio, in case you arelooking which you probably are
looking at your differentintegration capabilities for the
coming year.
So, brian, as always, greatconversation, great insight,
great perspective.
Thank you again for coming onthe show.
Thanks for having me.

(58:43):
I hope you enjoyed this episodeof Everything Is Logistics, a
podcast for the thinkers infreight, telling the stories
behind how your favorite stuffand people get from point A to B
.
Subscribe to the show, sign upfor our newsletter and follow
our socials over ateverythingislogisticscom.
And, in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let y'all

(59:05):
know about another company Ioperate and that's Digital
Dispatch, where we help youbuild a better website.
Now, a lot of the times, we handthis task of building a new
website or refreshing a currentone off to a co-worker's child,
a neighbor down the street or astranger around the world, where
you probably spend more timeexplaining the freight industry
than it takes to actually buildthe dang website.

(59:28):
Well, that doesn't happen atDigital Dispatch.
We've been building onlinesince 2009, but we're also early
adopters of AI, automation andother website tactics that help
your company to be a centralplace to pull in all of your
social media posts, recruit newemployees and give potential
customers a glimpse into how youoperate your business.
Our new website build startedas low as $1,500, along with

(59:52):
ongoing website management,maintenance and updates starting
at $90 a month, plus some bonusfreight, marketing and sales
content similar to what you hearon the podcast.
You can watch a quick explainervideo over on DigitalDispatchio
.
Just check out the pricing pageonce you arrive and you can see
how we can build your digitalecosystem on a strong foundation

(01:00:14):
.
Until then, I hope you enjoyedthis episode.
I'll see you all real soon andgo Jags.

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