Tech in Freight Brokerage | Episode 298

Benjamin and Stephen dive into how technology is changing freight brokerage in this episode of Freight 360:

• Using TMS and automation to boost efficiency
• Helping small brokerages adopt and improve tech
• Avoiding the hype and making sure systems actually work

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to this week's episode of Freight 360.
Nate is out on military leavethis week, so Stephen will be
joining me as we discuss mostlytechnology tools, things we're
doing on the automation side,some stuff with AI, things we're

(00:21):
demoing, things we're using tomake things more efficient, more
effective, and just chatting alittle bit about what we're
demoing, things we're using tomake things more efficient, more
effective, and just chatting alittle bit about what we're
seeing in the industry.
So stick with us as we discusspretty much everything we're
working on and stuff that we'reseeing available, stuff that's
just coming out, where we thinkthings are going.
Before we jump into it, alittle bit of sports.

(00:41):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I know you're probably not a big tennis fan
but did you watch any of the USOpen or see any?

Speaker 1 (00:51):
of the news related to it.
No, I didn't.
I've been pretty uh, head downon the computer.
It was wild.
So like I really just startedwatching tennis this year.
I played in like high schoolbut other than that I didn't
really follow much tennis.
But my daughter started takinglessons and I started playing,
mostly just for cardio.
But this is the first time likeI actually like watch the
tournament to the French Openand I didn't know this either.
Like it's two weeks long, soit's on just like every day,

(01:12):
which is also one fun and justpretty interesting.
It is a very long tournamentbut it came to the finale, or
the final, and the finals werenumber one and number two.
So it's a guy named Skinner, umYannick Skinner from Italy
versus Carlos Alcarez.
Um Skinner's number one.

(01:33):
Alcarez is number two and thelast five um grand slams were
won by one of the two of them.
Right, and this is, I think,the only or the first time
they've played in the finals isone versus two.
They played in like thesemi-finals just the way the
brackets broke down before, butlike this was the first time it

(01:53):
might have been in a very longtime where one played number two
but um one.
It was one of the best tennismatches I've ever watched.
Now again, I haven't watched aton, but for anyone out there,
like, like for men's, it's bestof five.
So you basically play gamesright.
So it's 15, 30 to 40 to 45.
You win one game, then you wina set, and then you've got to

(02:16):
win six sets.
Without going super deep intoit, you got to win by two.
So if you get, if it's six andsix, there's a tiebreaker.
But you basically need to winbest of five sets and each game
is one point into the set Right,and Alcarez was down two sets.
So at any point in time ifSkinner won one more right, it

(02:38):
was over, and I don't thinkAlcarez ever came back and then
he not only won the next two, soit goes to the fifth one, but
then it went to a tiebreaker inthe fifth one.
So it would be like theequivalent of football, like
double, double overtime in likethe super bowl of like the two
best teams all year and both ofthem had like crazy, crazy

(03:00):
instances where, like youabsolutely thought it was over
and you thought like there's noway the other guy can come back
and wins like four points andthen he's winning and then you
think there's no way the otherguy's going to come back and
then does, and then it ends upin a tiebreaker like it was one
of the best sporting events I'veseen in a long time.
And then this week got the usopen at oakmont.
So super excited to watch thatfor father's day and for anyone

(03:23):
that doesn't follow golf thatmuch.
Right, like Oakmont isconsidered, if not the one of
like the hardest courses in theworld with the fastest greens
and normally you'll see a proshoot.
You know anywhere from like ahandful under to like a really
good score of like you know sixor seven under on 18.

(03:43):
Right, rory I think played onMonday and he shot like an 81,
which for anyone out there ispretty much like what Nate or I
would maybe shoot on like a goodday Right.
So this course is playing crazydifficult.
Could see like the highestscores we've ever seen.
If it doesn't rain it's goingto a wild us open watch.

(04:05):
And it's in pittsburgh.
I was there in like the early2000s, so like super excited to
just watch it.
Plus I got to play that course.
So like it's super coolwatching the us open at a course
like I've actually walked andplayed and yeah, it's wild.
There was a.
In fact, I saw a video I wastelling my buddy this morning.
Guys, 122 yards out, which isnormally like a wedge, maybe a

(04:29):
nine iron for some people thatdon't hit that far.
This guy hit a putt A puttNormally you would hit the ball
for anyone that's not a fan ofgolf like 20 foot, which is
about the stroke this guy tookto roll the ball.
This ball rolled 122 yards nextto the pin.
That's how fast the fairwaysand greens are like.
It is going to be nuts, sosuper excited for that.

(04:53):
Um, anything else in sports oh,aaron rogers signed with the
steelers this week too, so allkinds of shit going on in
pittsburgh.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Aaron rogers and uh, nick chubb was released from the
Browns, which I mean.
It's fun for me as a Bengalsfan and every so every year one
of my customers is up inCleveland and they're Browns
fans, so we take them to theBrowns Bengals game, and it was.
I had some fun getting somedigs in with Nick Chubb leaving,

(05:20):
yeah.
Speaking of golf have youlooked at the golf simulators
for your?

Speaker 1 (05:26):
house.
Yeah, I was going to put one inmy house.
I used to practice on them allthe time down here.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
I started getting a bunch of ads for the golf
simulators and I looked them uplike two years ago.
They're like $20,000, $30,000.
You can get a good one now forlike $5,000 in your house.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, there's a really big difference.
My cousin has one.
Oh yeah, my cousin DarrenKowalski.
He won the tri-state open as anamateur last week, which is a
professional event.
He won as an amateur by likefour strokes so he was in the
news in Pittsburgh, but he hasone in his garage.
So there's basically two orthree different ways.
There's Doppler, which is kindof like how your car actually
uses, think like cruise control,where it knows how far away the

(06:07):
car is in front of you.
So there's Doppler ones.
Those are the.
I think oh, my mind's goingblank, it's not SkyTrack.
Skytrack is one that uses, Ithink, light or infrared, the
Doppler one TrackMan, the ones Iuse on tour, like those ones
like are the most accurate rightwith ball spin speed, where the

(06:29):
ball is going to go.
I still think those just themonitor that reads the ball.
I still think those are likearound 10.
But to your point, like you canget like a decent setup in your
house for like 2500 bucks,maybe even less.
You could probably get one for1500, I've seen.
I mean basically need a mat.
That's the piece you reallywant, because like you can get
now a projector, throw a screenup in your garage and a net Like

(06:53):
it's not a huge expense anymore.
The problem I had is like Idon't have space to swing a
driver on my patio because Iwanted to put one right outside
my office when we moved in and Ican swing an iron back there,
but I don't have enough room toswing a driver.
Otherwise it would have beenthe first thing I did in this
house.
Yeah, yeah those things areawesome.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
So much fun too.
Yeah, yeah, cause you can playreal courses on it too, which is
fantastic.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah, play real courses and they're really good.
I mean the ones that I, when Ilearned to golf again when I
first moved down here, cause Ireally wanted to work on it I
took lessons at golf tech andyou do them inside and the
coolest part about it, which Ithink helped me learn the
fastest, is there's cameras onyou at golf tech, so like if I

(07:45):
put one in my house, I wouldprobably put a camera on me and
then when you hit the ball yousee it, just like you do like on
TV or video game, like youwatch where the ball goes, but
then you press a button withyour foot and it shows you
swinging the golf club.
Cause it's really hard whenyou're learning to swing with a
coach and he's like no, you'reall your elbows coming out,

(08:06):
you're leaning over and like youhear the words, but you can't
really see what you're doing andbeing able to see a recording
of yourself.
Right after you hit the ball,you see yourself slice it and
then you see a video and he goeslook your arm's doing this.
It just helps you learn so muchfaster.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah yeah, there was one I was looking at.
It's's got three cameras pluslike a sensor or whatever and it
was.
I think it was like in the fivegrand ballpark for like the
whole setup screen, thateverything.
But it also stores like abillion swings and like a
database and the AI it'll tellyou where you need to fix things

(08:41):
.
But you can take it to the golfcourse with you and it'll
record your swings as you're onthe golf course yeah, they put.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
I think that you put them in the back of your golf
clubs.
They there's like a little plugat least something a little.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, yeah, this one was just all cameras and sensors
in the little box and you justcarry it with you.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, oh that is pretty wild.
Yeah, yeah, they're reallypretty cool.
And the news Trump and Elonapparently going at it.
What I'm really curious about,like I mean clearly there's a
back and forth I mean both ofthem talking smack to each other
.
But like the thing that I thinkis interesting is that, like I

(09:23):
think Elon is right.
First of all, I think he wentinto government believing that
Trump was going to cut spending.
I do think that is the biggestrisk for our society long term.
Like you keep spending morethan you bring in.
That is how every society inthe history of the globe for
everyone that has ever lived hascollapsed.

(09:44):
So like it's not a little thing.
And I think he really believedTrump was going to do that.
And then all of a sudden we arespending more money than we
spent last year, increasing thedeficit when he was elected to
cut spending.
And the funniest quote I saw onthere was Elon said big,
beautiful bill.
I don't think in the history ofall legislation that has ever

(10:08):
been true.
It can be big or it can bebeautiful, but it can't be both
Right.
Like it's counterintuitive.
You can't have a large billthat is beautiful.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
I was listening to uh , so JD Vance was on uh, uh,
theo Vaughn's podcast and theywere kind of discussing like the
bill.
And it was interesting to likehear because Theo had asked him
like why are these bills alwayslike have so many things in them
, why can't we just do one at atime?
And JD Vance made a pretty goodpoint, because the government,

(10:39):
you know, is that you have toput those things, you have to
put it all on the one bill,otherwise it would take you 10,
15 years to get every singleissue through on separate bills.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Well, do you hear how past though?
This is the horse shit, right?
They're supposed to have, Ithink, by law, 72 hours to
review the bill before they voteon it.
They basically had an hour ortwo.
Then they waive some clausethat when they change the bill
before they vote on it theybasically had like an hour or
two.
Then they waive some likeclause that when they changed
the bill, they were supposed tobe able to read it again and
they gave it to them likeminutes before they had to vote
on it.

(11:14):
So nobody actually read it.
Nobody had time to read it.
They stuffed a bunch in therejust to push this thing through
and, like everybody's beendisingenuous about it, saying
like, oh no, everyone knew whatwas in it.
Literally, nobody knew what wasin it because they didn't have
time to read it.
And then I think the goodthat's coming out of this is
like Elon blowing the situationup.
You're seeing lots ofRepublicans that voted for it

(11:37):
now going.
Yeah, I didn't even get achance to read it, Even like
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who'slike, in my opinion, kind of out
there on the right like waslike yeah if I knew that was in
there I wouldn't have voted forit.
There is something in there.
I heard somebody say there isin that bill a restriction on
states ability to regulate AIfor a decade is actually in

(12:01):
there.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Like that's kind of nuts.
So JD vance talked about thatand uh, and he said, you know,
when it was presented to themwhat that the the premise was
like they didn't want thestate's ability like you know,
california or whatever toregulate the use of ai where

(12:21):
it'd be very restrictive andthen impact the rest of the
country.
So like that was their originalthought pattern.
And then, as they dug into thequestion a little further, he's
like you know, I can see bothsides and I can see where this
would get at it.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Like it's not good.
Yeah, it's a bunch of.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
It's a bunch of BS, cause I can.
I can see like, um, so, likeone of the things when we're in
the military, right, like youcan't relax the laws but you can
make them stricter within yourunit, right, and so you bounce
around from unit to unit andthey would restrict things down.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
And I can see where you would want to put something
like that, whether it's ai oranything else.
We're like.
This is a party that isliterally the banner of this
party is states rights, wherethey have pushed abortion back
to states rights after 50 years.
They have done every singlething on this platform to push
things from the federalgovernment to states and then
they pull this horse shit likehow are you going to make that
argument with a straight face?

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, I don't know.
That's why I'm not in politics,hey.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Well, hey, it's just frustrating.
Well, apparently they have adeal between Trump and China, so
that's a thing, but that'llprobably change by the time this
is released, so I wouldn't holdyour breath.
But as of this morning, I guess, in Free Caviar they posted
that apparently it's supposed togo to 55% and 10% out of China.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Who knows.
Yeah, there was actually.
There's a YouTube channelcalled Smarter Every Day and he
talked about trying tomanufacture this thing that he
was making in the United States,this thing that he was making
in the United States.
It's like 45 minutes long, butit was actually really cool to

(14:11):
listen to like his process withtrying to source everything from
the United States and like notuse China Cause like one of the
things that he had talked aboutwhich I didn't even realize is
like the, the manufacturingprocess in the United States.
One of the things that we havelost as a country is the ability
to like tool and die, to maketools and repeatable processes
in manufacturing, and that'ssomething that China does really

(14:34):
well.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
So, like a lot of issues in the United States,
like we literally can't makethem, we have stopped
manufacturing things a very longtime ago and no longer have the
ability to Right.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Exactly, and so it was interesting to hear like
that part of it where it's likeit's not so much a quality issue
getting stuff from China, it'smore of this.
We don't have the process hereanymore to do those kinds of
things.
But then he talked about likethe Amazon side of, because one
of the one of the people he wastalking to was an amazon

(15:04):
retailer and he had sent his caddrawings for this product to
china and then uh, and he had apatent for it and everything.
It was some kind of like grillthing, uh, and what the people
at the warehouse china would doafter they'd make his product,
they'd sell the plans to othercompeting companies and then
they would make dirt cheapversions of it to then sell

(15:25):
against him on amazon later.
So, like he was, he had just astack of uh uh legal documents
from lawyers where he'd sentlike cease and desist to all
these amazon retailers.
But yeah, it was interesting tolearn a little bit about that
agreed, um, but yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
I I don't know.
We could have an entire day'sconversation about how, what I
think about this scenario, solet's jump into some freight
tech.
So catch me up, man.
What are you working on?

Speaker 2 (15:59):
so, um, so I just took over the brokerage a few
months ago.
Uh, and a lot of the thingsthat that definitely in the
beginning that I worked on wasjust like process improvement
how can I make the process ofgetting a load covering a load,
closing a load billing easierand a lot of that process really

(16:21):
dealt with understanding ourknow, understanding our TMS,
understanding what features wehave and don't have, and then
making sure we're using themproperly.
Because one of the biggestissues I've noticed, not just
here but industry-wide you getpeople who want to start a
brokerage or a trucking companyand they're usually not tech
savvy.
They're not going to hiresomeone who's tech savvy to do

(16:44):
like tech stuff because it'sit's a thin margin business, so
there's not a lot of room in theprofits to pay a tech person a
hundred thousand dollars salary,um, and so a lot of these
people really don't understand,like, what the TMS is used for
and the TMS is and our defenseTMS is used for and the TMS is

(17:04):
and our defense.
They're not designed and builtby people who are freight
experts.
So the fields and things thatwe use don't like, while they
might mean something to us, theydon't mean the same thing to
the engineer that designed thesoftware.
So if you're not using it theway it was designed, then your
reporting is off and yourcertain things aren't working

(17:28):
correctly.
So like digging into that,those aspects and cleaning up
the process.
So, for example, from start tofinish the cover load I'd
unlocked a couple things that wehad had but didn't know, and
per load I reduced across thewhole process 30 minutes per
load through entry, throughbilling, removed manual

(17:50):
processes that could beautomated.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
I don't know.
You have to.
You said 30 minutes, on average30 minutes.
Why would it take 30 minutes tobuild a load dispatch?

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Not just build.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
I just want to understand the scenario you're
working on.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
I'm a little confused .
So what I did was I looked athow we enter a load, how we
cover that load, whatinformation needs to be put in,
what do we have to do with thecarrier onboarding that carrier
and then tracking that load,putting in notes, closing it,

(18:27):
putting in times and then thesettlement, pushing it out to
accounting, putting in thepaperwork.
Yeah, so here's what I want todo.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
I'm going to break down for everybody what that
looks like too.
I'm just going to reiteratewhat you just said for anyone
that's kind of new to theindustry, right?
So this is the life cycle of aload, right?
So Steven's my customer.
Steven sends me over theinformation for a truckload
order he wants me to pick up andthat order is going to have

(18:55):
where it's going to pick up,when it's going to pick up what
I'm going to pick up, how muchit's going to weigh, what, when
and where it's going right.
It's going to usually have anumber associated with his
company, like a purchase ordernumber a PO number is going to
be on there and the number ordollar amount that he's going to

(19:16):
pay me for it.
So it's going to pick up thisload of widgets today, deliver
it Friday here.
It's going to have the timeeither first come, first serve
or by appointment, and it'sgoing to say I will pay you
$2,000 for this load.
He sends me that over, usuallyin a document or an email.
I take that information.

(19:37):
Then I have to enter all ofthat into my transportation
management system.
So I'm literally going to lookat that document on one screen
and then retype that informationin my TMS.
There's two reasons for that.
One is I need a record of that,so I know I'm working on that
shipment for Steven.
And two, that system is goingto do a few other things that

(19:58):
we'll get into.
So now that information is in mysystem, the next step is for
newer brokers.
You're going to take thatinformation, everything but the
rate.
You're going to put that intolike DAT.
You're going to post that loadup for a trucking company.
That trucking company calls youand says, hey, I will take that
load for $1,900.
I go, okay.

(20:18):
So then my TMS I'm going topress rate confirmation and all
the rate rate confirmation is isit's the same document
basically Steve and my customersent to me, except I'm sending
it to the trucking company withwhat I'm going to pay them to do
that work, with all of thatinformation, except the rate
that Stephen's going to pay meand maybe some customer
information that I don't need mycustomers to see for whatever

(20:42):
reason, right?
So then the trucking companygets that document, they sign it
, that trucking company sends itback to me, I upload it into my
TMS.
Then the next thing that Stevensaid is the trucking company I'm
going to get that driverinformation what's the
dispatcher name, what's thedispatcher email, what's the
truck number, the trailer number, the driver phone number.

(21:04):
That goes into my TMS.
Then most TMSs I am going tosend the tracking link from my
TMS to the driver's phone sothat it can see where he is when
he picks up and when hedelivers.
Once he delivers that load, thedriver is then going to usually
send me the proof of delivery,which I'm going to upload,

(21:26):
usually a picture of the BOLthat was given him at the
shipper at Stephen's location,signed at the receiver, that
says I got this product, there'snothing wrong with it.
Driver sends that to me.
I upload that in the TMS.
Then the trucking company isgoing to send me an invoice with
the POD and confirming theamount they're charging me, that
there was no difference in whatwe agreed to, no detention, no

(21:49):
other charges.
That gets uploaded in the TMS.
And then the final step is mostTMSs are integrated with a
factoring company, meaning Iwill push a button and send all
that information to my factoringcompany.
My factoring company is thengoing to invoice Stephen and pay
the trucking company.
If there is no factoringcompany, my TMS will send or

(22:09):
create an invoice that I'llemail to Stephen and then I will
mark pay carrier and then Iwill manually either send a
check to the trucking company orpush an ACH or pay them some
way.
Like that is the whole lifecycle of a load.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
So let's talk through which steps in that whole
process you're automating, whyand kind of what's going on for
you, and so one of the firstthings, um which I already knew
about, it was more justeducating some of the other uh
brokers was you know, we cancreate these things called
reoccurring orders in our system.
So we had some brokers that theyran the same lane two or three

(22:46):
times.
But it's not an EDI processwith the customer, where the
customer hits a button and thenit sends information to our TMS
and all of a sudden it loadsthere.
They were getting these byemail, so what they could do is
they just build a load once.
What they could do is they justbuild a load once and then,
when that customer sent over theload, they could just hit a

(23:08):
button and that load wouldpopulate, kind of like an EDI,
but still like there's thatmanual trigger, but you know,
cutting out that order entrypiece where it's a repeatable
thing, and then they just go inand change dates, times, po
information, and so that was thefirst piece that we cut out.
How are you?

Speaker 1 (23:22):
doing that?
Which service are you usingLevity to do that, or how are
you automating that?

Speaker 2 (23:27):
So the broker is still getting the email.
It's still the manual process.
The automated process is thatthose loads are a repeated load
every week, so they're justhitting a button in our TMS.
Oh, you created a template forthe load.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Right Most TMSes will have that ability, right.
If I run this load for Steventhree days a week, usually once
I build the load the first time,I can click save, create
template.
So tomorrow, when he sends methe same load, I don't have to
enter all that information in.
Most of it will auto-populatethe location.
The only things that don'tauto-populate are the PO number,
usually, and the days and thetimes, because clearly those are

(24:05):
going to change.
But all the rest of theinformation stays in there.
So it saves me because buildinga load is time consuming, right
, and even if you're runninglike 20 loads a day or even five
loads a day, like it takes timebecause you have to make sure
everything is correct.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
So it's a huge time saver, Yep.
And then one of the otherpieces that we learned was that
in the individual customer file.
So each customer is going tohave different requirements for
the loads.
So maybe this customer is allreefer freight and they require
that the driver sends a pictureof the set temp or something

(24:42):
like that, or it's a flatbedload and they always need to be
tarped right.
This, these loads, always needto be tarped In those customer
files.
There's places where you canjust set those comments so that
anytime that customer's attachedto a load, like those things
will just auto populate on therate confirmation.
So more pieces of that orderentry just being taken out

(25:05):
through an automated process.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
So and that's really important.
So for anybody, that is mostTMSs you can do this with.
In fact very few can't.
And there's two things thathe's saying.
So one is you can save atemplate for a load meaning like
your pickup and delivery.
That's one template.
You can also usually most andmost TMSs save locations.
So when I pick up at Stevens,even if it's going somewhere

(25:30):
else, when I go to put in thelocation, it'll auto-populate
his address, the contactinformation for Stevens
Warehouse, the person that worksat the warehouse for the driver
to contact if he has issues.
All that will auto-populate sowe don't have to retype it.
And the second added benefitisn't just the saving time, it's
less opportunity for an error.
Somebody fat fingers a phonenumber and it's wrong, right.

(25:52):
So like that's another reasonyou do that right.
And then the third thing I wasthinking of is customer notes.
Most TMSs have the ability tosave notes specific to a whole
customer and to a location.
So let's say, stephen's mycustomer and one of his
warehouses in Cleveland.
Every truck there needs to havee-tracks or every flatbed needs

(26:18):
to have pipe stakes and aheadache rack.
To have pipe stakes and aheadache rack.
Well, you don't want to forgetthat and accidentally book a
truck that doesn't get thatinformation.
So you can usually save that toa location, meaning that that
location right every time Ibuild a load it will include
that equipment type right.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
And and then, one of the biggest things, because this
was an issue the the previous,uh, because this was an issue
that the previous person had setup some things and it was
causing issues, because notevery location is going to have
one customer right.
So if you're going to a coldstorage, that cold storage, you
may have two or three customersthat go there.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
So if you say AmeriCold is a good example of
that.
They don't tender their ownfreight.
They have probably hundreds ofdifferent customers that you
pick up for out of one facility.
So the customer changes, butthe physical location is the
same.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Right, and so one of the issues was they were saving
customer requirements to alocation and when you assign
that location those commentswould come up, but it only
applied to a single customer.
So being able to again, that'sone of those things where,
unless you understand how theengineer designed the software,
you're going to make sillymistakes like that Because, I

(27:30):
mean, it made sense on paper,because that's what it looks
like, but when you dig into thedocuments and how the system was
designed, then you realize, oh,this needs to be in this
section, and so when thiscustomer picks up at this
location, then that stuff getsattached.
Yeah, so a lot of just more adeep understanding of what

(27:51):
software you're actually using.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
And it brings up a really good point.
Right, you said at thebeginning of this conversation,
like most companies in ourindustry like don't have an
on-staff IT person.
Right, like the largercompanies have it departments
and they build their ownsoftware in a lot of cases.
Right, but like most brokerageseven up to like like 50 or 75

(28:13):
million.
Like you don't see full-time itpeople.
Like I've seen a hundredmillion dollar companies that
don't have full-time it people.
Like they outsource that andthey use those people when they
need to.
Like our company has that, butlike I'm the full-time IT person
.
And like I don't code.
But, to your point, like I havea really good understanding of
how these systems function, howthey're built on the backend, so

(28:35):
like I know what it can andcan't do, where things are going
and where they aren't going togo Right now, just because
because you don't or can'tafford someone that does this
Right.
Here's the thing that I think isa hack, if you will, or a thing
that I just think mostcompanies should do is, yes, it
sucks because there's neverenough time to do everything you

(28:57):
want to.
Right, and like it takes timeto invest in learning these
things, like hours and days toreally understand how these
tools work, right, but I willtell you that, like that,
investment in time pays hugedividends forever, right, if you
learn how your system works.

(29:17):
Even let's say, you have a fiveperson company and you own it
and you own it, right, youspending I don't know 15% of a
week right For the next month toreally learn your technology
systems.
One, you get so much more outof it because most people only
use five 10% of what this toolcan do.
So in just that example, right,what I see companies doing is

(29:40):
like they'll just keep hiringmore people, right, like, oh, we
got to build 30 loads a day,hire one or two more people, and
they don't even realize thatthe program they're already
paying for has simple thingslike templates that allow you to
build them faster.
Like I did this with ourcompany like a year ago, where I
went through it and I'm like Isat with the person building a

(30:01):
load.
We have like literally loadplanners two of them and I was
like let me just watch you allmorning and I was like, oh, you
guys are building that loadagain for that same customer.
And I'm like I know we run like30 loads a day sometimes with
this customer and I watched themmanually enter it every time
and I the same thing you justsaid is I was like you guys know
, there's a template feature inhere.
Like click that little buttonover here, click save template,

(30:21):
save it to this.
Now go to build the next load,and it cut their time down right
From like four or five minutesto 30 seconds to build those
loads, right.
Well, that doesn't seem like alot, but when that is all you're
doing all day to take a taskand reduce it by like 90% of the
time it takes, you freeze thatperson up to do other things and

(30:42):
it eventually saves you moneybecause you're just not throwing
people every time your businessgrows.
Most tools have that in thereand most companies don't do this
, and I'd say like it's superprevalent in the brokerage space
and very prevalent on thetrucking side.
Like I've gone into truckingclients that have 250 trucks and
have $150,000 McLeod packageand the dispatchers don't use it

(31:07):
.
They're literally using Google.
They're building loads andthey're putting them in Google
sheets, right.
And then I'm talking to theowners or the executives and
they want to be able to talkabout like how do you make
better decisions about how yourcompany's running.
Well, you can't make betterdecisions if you don't know how
your company is running thesesystems.

(31:28):
You've got to put theinformation in it to get it back
out.
To see where your money isgoing is an expense and where
your money is coming in Right so, when you're not using them
even at a minimum to the waythey're supposed to be used,
your reporting is absolutelygarbage.
Like, it's just not correct,right so, like, in order to be

(31:49):
able to really oversee andmanage a business, even if
you're working in it, right Like?
Being able to see reportsrequires you to use the tool
correctly.
And most companies like they'relike, oh, we just got too much
to do.
They never put on theircalendar.
Like, I need to block out twohours at least a week to start
learning what this can do andwhat it can't do.
And then, even if they learn it, they rarely ever book time

(32:12):
with their employees and go hey,I need to sit with them because
they're like well, if it's notbroken, they're moving loads.
Like, hey, why should I spendtime and take them away from
things that make money?
But these are the things thathelp you keep more of the money
you're actually working so hardto make, because the tools have
lots of things to make your jobeasier, faster and allow you to

(32:33):
hire less people as you getbigger.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, exactly, and it's.
I mean, just speaking to theMcLeod piece, we use McLeod
right.
Speaking to the mcleod piece,we use mcleod right.
Um, and it's I.
I, up until I came into thisposition, they gave me full
access to the system.
Like I did not like mcleod.
It was frustrating, it was justa glorified excel sheet, um.

(32:57):
But when I got access to thewhole thing and I could see,
like all these things that we'renot using, I, literally I made
the comment to somebody thatI've been just freight brokering
on expert mode the whole timebecause we had all these
capabilities and we just weren'tusing them.
So, like to go to the loadcreation thing, like the
templates and all that stuff,like that's cool.
But this whole time we've beenconnected to DAT and I've had

(33:23):
people manually entering loadson DAT when all they had to do
is hit a button and it would beposted.
So there's another two minutesjust cut out because nobody knew
how.
Nobody knew that was a featureor how to use it.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
And here's where that costs you money, right?
Just that example.
Right?
Somebody listening to this isgoing oh well, two minutes, what
does that really matter, right?
Ok?
Well, here's what it actuallylooks like when you're doing
your job.
You got 10 quotes that came inin the past five minutes.
You got six loads to post, yourphone's ringing from the other
post that you're talking tothese carriers, that customer's
waiting on a quote as you'retyping this into DAT to get your

(33:57):
next load posted, which takesyou two to three minutes.
You just missed three quotes.
Could have emailed yourcustomer back, got two more
loads and made some more money.
There is money being made orlost in inefficiency all day
long.
Every one of these littlethings adds up, right, like
there's a saying, like inbusiness.
But it's like making money onthe margins, right, all margin

(34:18):
is right.
That little line around a pieceof paper right, it's the edge
cases.
It's the very small things thatdon't seem like a lot, but when
you do all of them, they add upto a ton, right?
Like?
All these little things thatsave you time, allow you to get
so much more done with lessmistakes, and allow you to do
the things that you need to doto grow your business, like

(34:40):
talking to customers more right.
Picking up the phone andspending time talking to your
customers, talking to yourcarriers, building relationships
.
When you're spending all daylong doing redundant data entry,
you're not doing the thingsthat really create value for
your business, right?
Getting information from onescreen and one program to the
next does not really add value.
It's required, it's a necessity, but it's not earning you or

(35:04):
creating value for your company,right.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Right, I don't know if you listened to, um, oh,
what's his name?
Greg Eisenberg, the startuppodcast.
Uh, heard of him, but so he'sbeen.
He's been doing a lot of likeAI automation stuff and like one
of the things that he mentionedI think it was in the next post
, next post um, that is likesomething I've been laser

(35:27):
focused on the last couple weeksis, if there is something that
you're doing that is copy paste,like that can be automated, you
just got to figure out how toautomate it.
So find the systems fine and, toyour point, like there's a very
high likelihood that at afreight brokerage or a carrier
you don't have somebody who's ITsavvy, but with all the AI

(35:49):
models out there and thepodcasts and stuff, you can find
the information and learn ityourself and figure out how to
improve these processes for acouple hours a day, and that's
what's critical.
And then the other thing is,like you know, you don't start a
freight brokerage just to makemoney on the side, like you want
to grow it and scale it, andthat's what's what's critical.
And then the other thing is,like you know, you don't start a
freight broker, it's just tomake money on the side, like you
want to grow it and scale itand that kind of stuff.
But you have to look at whatare you doing all day, what

(36:12):
takes the most time, what isjust data entry, copy paste,
that kind of stuff, becausethose are going to be
limitations and how you scale.
And so you have to look at theprocess like, is this scalable?
Can I scale this?
To say you're doing 20 loads.
Now here's my pain points.
Well, what if it's 200 loads?

(36:32):
What if it's a thousand loads?
Are those pain points going togo away?
Or are you going to multiplyyour work every time you're
getting more freight and thendampen your ability to continue
to grow and continue to servethe customers?
Because anytime you're stuck ina manual process that is not

(36:53):
generating revenue, you'retaking away from that revenue
activity, whether it'sprospecting or tracking or
whatever.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
It's really simple, right.
What are the things that createvalue in a freight brokerage?
Adding new customers orincreasing the business you do
with existing customers?
Those are really the only twothings that add and increase the
value of a business.
Anytime you're not doing one ofthose two things, it's
basically administrative.
Now I would argue in ourindustry, like as intermediaries
, the same two things are truefor carriers.

(37:23):
So, adding carriers andbuilding relationships with
carriers and getting morededicated and consistent lanes
with repetitive, or they callcarrier utilization that's how
you create value in yourbusiness long term.
Right.
If you aren't doing one of thosefour things, most of which are
automatable Right.
Like I don't think we'regetting rid of people, not

(37:44):
anytime soon, but like the way Isee it is like our company's
got 25 people.
We run like two 300 loads aweek.
Right, I think by the end ofthis year we could probably have
a few more people and doublethe volume.
Right.
If it takes us 20 people to runjust for round numbers, 200
loads.
Right, 10 loads per person.

(38:05):
I think I can get that numberto like 30 loads per person by
automation and being able tostreamline processes.
Like.
I work with TLO almost everyday automating things and like
just to throw out a few likehere's another very cumbersome
task that really delays gettingmoney and making money

(38:26):
cumbersome task that reallydelays getting money and making
money Getting proof of deliveryfrom carriers after a load's
delivered.
Right, talk to a carrier.
Carrier's already in a hurry,they're trying to make money.
They got to get to their nextpickup.
So a lot of times they'llforget to send the POD.
Then they send it to thedispatcher, who sometimes
forgets to send it, or maybethey send it to the accounting
person and they forget.
Now a week goes by, now it'stwo weeks.
Well, if you're factoring, youusually can't invoice your

(38:48):
customer until that carriersends that invoice.
So even though you earned thatmoney on Monday, you aren't even
able to invoice your customerfor a week or two weeks because
the carrier hasn't sent it.
So what do most brokerages do?
Pay people literally to justcall trucking companies and send
them emails all day requestingproof of delivery.
Right, that is an automatabletask.

(39:09):
Right, levity's got voice inemail.
So guess what we do?
We plug it into our TMS.
So the day a load is going todeliver, it sends an email to
the dispatcher and says hey,just a heads up please send the
POD today.
And we have in our agreementsthat, like, we can do a rate
deduction for a late POD If theydon't get us to us in three
days.
We can deduct some money.
We don't want to and we don'treally ever enforce it, but

(39:32):
having that in there allows usto send that email the day it
loads.
I'm just going, hey, reminder,like there is a processing fee
if you don't get the paperworkin the next couple of days.
We want to make sure you getpaid for everything you did for
us.
Just please send it to us assoon as you get it from the
driver.
That way we don't delay payingyou and you guys don't have to

(39:53):
worry about deductions.
That's a service.
Now, right, like seems like apenalty, but now it's a service
because we're reminding themthat we don't want to see them
have a deduction that increasesit.
Then a second email goes outautomatically after the load's
delivered and a text messagegoes to the driver hey, load,
looks like it's delivered.
Do me a favor, please just takea picture of the POD.
And here's the second value wewant to make sure the load's

(40:15):
delivered clean, with no claimor detention.
If there's a claim, we need tonotify the customer right away.
If there's detention, we needto request the detention

(40:37):
approval from the customer rightaway, because the sooner we
request it, the sooner we canapprove it and pay's automated,
it's AI and it's just a phonecall to the dispatcher saying,
hey, looks like that loaddelivered.
Yesterday Shot you a coupleemails.
Can you just take a minute andjust email us over that POD and
invoice so we can make sure youdon't have any deductions?
Right, that just took.

(40:58):
When you're running 250 loads aweek, right, you got loads from
last week that we didn't getPODs, plus the ones that are
getting run every day.
Like that is a one or twoperson job all day.
Right, now we can just automatethat.
And not only do we.
Who wants to do that job?
Nobody wants to get paid allday to send emails and call
carriers and request paperwork,like nobody enjoys that.

(41:19):
We're not taking a job awayfrom somebody.
But not only is it a job peopledon't want to do, they would
rather do things that createvalue.
But it happens now at a hundredpercent of the time, so none of
them are missed.
Right, there's not.
Oh, I had a load come up at theend of the day, I forgot to

(41:39):
request our PODs.
Now it's the next day.
Loads come in and they miss awhole day.
Then three days go past and nowyou find out from accounting
you got a whole day's worth offreight that you didn't get the
PODs for because the team gottoo busy to keep up with it.
Those are some very low hangingfruit, I think, for automation
that creates a ton of value fora freight brokerage.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Right, and not only that, but I mean, if you think
about it, you've got to hire aperson to do that job.
It's an entry levellevel job.
You got to train them and theytake vacation, they get sick,
they have families, uh, andthese automation tools I mean
some of them are because the wayai is being subsidized, like,

(42:16):
some of them are free.
If you can, it'll take a lot oflegwork and you got to do some
learning.
Yep, some, some of them arefree, some 50, a hundred dollars
a month.
Or you can pay someone whatminimum wage eight, 10, $11 an
hour, yeah, while they're in theoffice, like it's just, it
makes sense, but it's a liftright, you have to.

(42:37):
it's something you have to learnand people are very resistant
to change.
I have come to learn the lastfew months.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
It's the behavioral human change.
Human behavioral change is muchslower than the adoption of
tech Well, not adoption, butlike the speed of technology,
right, like, and they provedthat.
I think there was aninteresting thing I read.
They were talking about, likewhen ai really started becoming
useful, quite like a year ago.
Right, large companies werespending massive amounts of

(43:07):
money to plug in like ai intojust work tools, right, and they
were finding it like a very fewsmall, very small percentage of
employees at large companieswere using these tools to make
their jobs easier.
But the small companies wereusing it very quickly and they
were growing much faster.
Like, now you're seeingstartups being able to generate

(43:29):
millions of dollars with ahandful of people, right, where
before you just couldn't do that.
The big companies weren'tgetting the value.
And it was exactly what yousaid Like they boil down to.
The reason is just like it's thepsychology of the person.
I've been doing this job for 20years this way.
I don't want to do itdifferently and I don't want to
use a tool.
Why?
Because that takes mentaleffort and energy and once

(43:52):
you've learned something and wetalk about this in the show all
the time you've got to have it,you can do it really quickly
without much thought and youdon't really have to think, so
you can kind of go on autopilot.
Well, to take yourself offautopilot, to learn a new way to
do something, is difficult,requires mental friction,
requires effort and, to behonest, most people are out of

(44:14):
job and I think a lot of casesto get a paycheck and they're
like you know what?
Like, why am I going to do that?
Like, at the end of the day, megetting faster at my job
doesn't make me any more money.
Why do I care if my companymakes more money?
Right, but in our world, doingthings more efficiently and
effectively usually means abigger paycheck.
Like, you actually get therewards for these things,
whether you're an employee mostof them are on commission or you

(44:37):
own the company.
That's more money in yourpocket and less that's going to
expenses that you don't need tospend.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
And it's I kind of attributed to like it's very
similar to like when an employeegets promoted from like their
job to then managing people.
Like some people have an issuewith delegating tasks,
especially in the beginning,Like oh, I just know how to do
it Because it takes that sameinvestment to delegate something
for me to you.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
If you're new, I could do it very quickly, but
for me to teach you, I got to doit four times as slow for a
whole week for you to learn it.
That is hard for me because I'mlike I got other stuff to do.
I got this mental need ofwanting to get the next thing
done.
It's frustrating.
You feel like antsy.
You're like, oh my God, I justwant to get this done.

(45:24):
Like you know what, steven, letme just do it myself and then
I'll get back to you.
And then I never do so.
I never actually delegate it andlike that is one of the biggest
issues with leadership isgetting people to delegate
things.
Most people don't want tobecause emotionally it's really
hard to slow yourself downenough because you've got to
then reprioritize and rescheduleall the other stuff you would

(45:46):
have done today until next weekin order to do that.
But it's an investment, right,and we used to model this out
when I was just in coaching andconsulting.
Like we would put this on likea financial model and show you
that if you invested three hoursa day for two weeks to delegate
a task, what is your return onyour time, right, yeah, three
hours a day, 15 hours a week, 30hours over two weeks right.

(46:07):
But that investment would giveyou back like 150% return on
your time forever, because onceyou're good at it, I never have
to do it again.
Right, and that's really whatshould be happening.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah and um and kind of.
One of the other things Iwanted to get to is, uh, just
the data itself.
Right, a lot of people likethis industry, we're very like
protective of our data.
You know the lanes, the rates.
It's especially for, like afreight broker that that's
proprietary stuff.
Right, and your TMS is good atreporting on certain things.

(46:41):
But one of the downfall and oneof the issues that I've had
with like CRMs, because they'renot necessarily tied to our TMS,
is we're not, we're not seeingour data compared to, like
prospecting or lead generation.
So then, like you get onto aconversation with a shipper and

(47:02):
they say, well, how often areyou in this area?
And I mean, you might have itoff the top of your head, but
wouldn't it be nice to just hita button and see or be able to
compare?

Speaker 1 (47:12):
normally you got to go into your tms to go look at
that right, and you got to do abunch of look at it.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, a bunch of reports and you got to make sure
and TMS to go look at thatRight, and you've got to do a
bunch of reports and even onthen, if you're not using your
TMS correctly, do you know thatyour reports are good?
Are you cleaning the data?
Are you making sure that's good?
So that's one of the otherthings Now that I've done the
process improvement side I'vebeen looking at.
Okay, where can I take thisdata?
How can I clean it, put it intolike a database, a table, and

(47:39):
then make it usable for you know, targeting specifically good
leads or qualifying leads, ormaking sure that it matches with
what we're trying to do?

Speaker 1 (47:52):
That's really pretty cool.
I'll tell you something I'mworking on now, actually with
Garrett is it's possible?
We're trying to map out howlong it would take, but I want
to be able to feed all of my TMSdata into a large language
model to talk to it.
Because, to your point, I don'twant to go and have to click
reports, I don't want to have tomodel Excel to see these things

(48:13):
.
I want to just ask it in aprompt and say how often are we
shipping out of Memphis?
How many days of the week?
What are days of the week thatwe're shipping out of there the
most often?
What are the most common placesthat we deliver to out of
Memphis?
When was the last time weshipped there?
Right, I want to be able totalk to my TMS the way I would
talk to a person looking at it.
Right Now.

(48:33):
The problem is when I've triedto do this out of the box the it
right now.
The problem is, when I've triedto do this out of the box, the
math isn't good enough in thelarge language models, so you
need to kind of run it throughan sql table or in some ways.
Being able to basically have thetool lean on a tool that's
better with math and then bringthe information back out.
But I just met with himyesterday.
I'm meeting with him thisafternoon to try to model out
how we can do this, because Iwant to be able to talk to the

(48:57):
data and have it give me thethings I want it to, not me try
to just use what it gives me,and I know it's possible.
It's just getting that built sothat I can do similar use cases
and from like an owner's pointof view, like hey, which of our
account managers are doing thebest this week?
Which customers are increasing?
Which ones have gone down?
Who's got the best averagemargin increase over the past

(49:20):
two weeks?
Whose has gone down?
Right, we have any customersthat we used to ship a lot with
that we're shipping not much atall or haven't talked to in a
while.
Right, I want to feed all ofour data into an LLM so like I
can use it to just give me theinformation I need to make
better decisions, to managethings day to day.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
It's funny you mention that because I literally
I just had the sameconversation with Garrett
yesterday.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
We probably talked to him after I talked to him.
I talked to him like aroundlunchtime, yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yeah, we were probably 20, 30 minutes apart,
because that's what I spent allnight last night working on.
I'm using this.
I've been bouncing back andforth between a company called
Airtable and Supabase, which areAirtables like an Excel sheet,
but there's a bunch of formulasand stuff in there.
You can build a database.
Supabase is a SQL database, sothere's a little bit more of a

(50:16):
learning curve on like the techside because you have to format
it.
Yep, um, but yeah, that'sexactly what I'm doing is
because then you can attach themto.
Like adio has some ai featuresin it.
Uh, lindy ai is another.
It's zappier but more of like a, an ai thing where you can set
triggers and it'll look at it.
So, like in Adio, it's a nativefeature where you can set up a

(50:40):
field and then it will classifyor research that prospect.
Well, with the database andusing load information and stuff
like that, I can then create atrigger with Lindy where I would
go hey, here's, here's what youdid for the month.
Here's the locations for thisprospect, here's what they're
moving the month.
Here's the locations for thisprospect, here's what they're

(51:00):
moving.
This is what matches up andthen we're going to create like
it's still a work in progress.
It's like a best fit, so scoreeach lead out of a hundred,
based on locations, commodity,equipment type.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
So if you want a tool to start digging around and I'm
setting this up today I'vespent the past like two weeks on
this.
Have you ever heard of claycom?
I haven't.
It is wild.
It allows you to sort massiveamounts of data, to score them
and do AI tasks along that.
So think like Excel.

(51:36):
Imagine, in your first columnyou have every shipper.
You pull off a list, call itlike 500 of them, right?
What I can do in the secondcolumn is queue an AI prompt and
say research, every one ofthese companies.
Go to their websites and everyarticle and find any time
they've referenced one of theircustomers.
Then I can go to the next oneand go okay, search all of these

(51:58):
against LinkedIn and pull meevery human being that has a
logistics title, transportationor any of those titles.
Then it'll find the people.
Then I can go run this againstZoom Info, rocket Reacher,
apollo AI and pull all of thework emails.
Then I can go next step runthese against Zero Bounce to
make sure all these people stillwork there.
Then I can go to the lastcolumn and go OK, run these
against zero bounce to make sureall these people still work

(52:18):
there.
Then I can go to the last columnand go, okay, run this against
gen logs, look for their mostcommon and least frequent lanes.
Then I can run that against myTMS and say, look at all of
those lanes and see which onesmatch up with the places we pick
up from the most.
Then I can have it go okay,write an email for every one of
those.
And then I plug it into a toollike SuperSend that has like 25

(52:39):
different email addresses andthen in the background it just
starts emailing all of thosepeople about their lane,
referencing their customer fromtheir website, any news articles
that have ever referenced them.
It literally can go step bystep and do what I used to do in
sales.
Step and do what I used to doin sales reading someone's
LinkedIn profile, reading thecompany's website, looking up

(53:00):
news articles, writing veryunique, specific emails to them
about their company, their joband then I can do that at scale
with like 30 email addressesjust myself.
Like it's, the capabilities andthe things that it's going to
be, it's able to do now are justabsolutely wild yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
So lindy, uh, lindyai , it sounds like it's probably a
competitor.
Um, it does something verysimilar.
So, like, they just came outwith this thing called ai swarms
.
So, like in a normal crm likehubspot or adio, you'll have
like an email sequence, right,or mailchimp a lot of people use
mailchimp where, like, you'llcreate a list in your crm and

(53:40):
you group them together bylikeness, whether it's region or
commodity or you know whatever,um, and then you haven't
contacted them for before.
So this list is maybe you knowthese shippers in, uh, the
midwest.
They're temp controlled andthey've never been contacted.
So you've whittled that listdown to like 200 and then that

(54:02):
sequence would go through and itwould pull little details and
it would send like a first touchemail and then go out.
Well, what Lindy and probablythis Clay does, what they call
AI swarms is, instead of itrunning down the list where
things can break, because it'sit's a code that's hitting each
one, the swarm is.
The way he attributed was likein the matrix, where the one guy

(54:25):
multiplies himself and it's thesame thing.
So, instead of one ai goingthrough each thing, it just
duplicates itself and it's oneai per line and it customizes it
and sends it all at once sothat the thing doesn't break.
And the one thing that I like,especially when it comes to
emails and stuff like I.
I'm very much the personalperson.

(54:47):
I don't want ai just to sendthat first touch.
I want it to come to me, so itcomes to me in a draft and then
I get.
I get to hit send so I can lookat it first and then hit send.
But that's just a me thing.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
Yeah, it's for sure wild.
I mean, like the ability to domore in less time for sure, is
getting better and better everyday and every week, and I think
what's helpful for anyone outthere is, like you don't need to
use the things that we're using, but I do think it's worth
starting to familiarize yourselfwith what's out there, what you
can do, because the reality isis your competitors are like, I

(55:23):
mean, in any business, if youcan get more done with less
expenses, you have an advantage.
Like if one company has got tohire 10 people and I got to hire
two to do the same amount ofwork, I don't need to charge my
customers the same amount, right, like now I have an advantage
and I can take your customersbecause I operate more
efficiently, and like that's inany business anywhere.

(55:44):
Right, if you need 15 people tobuild a house and I can build
one for five, I don't got tocharge the homeowner the same
amount of money you do.
Right, I can be morecompetitive, right, and I think
that is the thing that is coming, whether we want it to or not.

(56:05):
I think it honestly kind ofterrifies me in a lot of
contexts and how these thingsare able to do these things and
where they will be, but I meanit's just getting better and
better every day.
So I mean, if you're interested, I suggest anyone reach out to
Levity.
Take a look at their website,reach out to them on LinkedIn,
shoot them an email, becausethey are really good at working
with you step-by-step to buildthis stuff out.
I think Garrett over atLoadPartner is great.
I'm looking at their TMS now tobe able to do some really

(56:27):
specific use cases that no one'sable to do yet, and there's
just a lot of companies that areout there now probably more.
I mean, it's probably a crowdedspace and it's like, well, who
do you pick out there?
Now, probably more.
I mean it's probably a crowdedspace and it's like, well, who
do you pick?
Like my opinion, like those arewho I would reach out to
because I've worked with them, Iknow their quality of work, I
know they're going to be honestwhen you reach out to them, but
where?
Because the other thing thatI'd say and this is where I want

(56:49):
to kind of wrap this up isthere's way more hype, though,
than there is some substance.
We talked about all these thingsthat are possible now, and
these tools are absolutely mindblowing and a lot of use cases.
But I will tell you, in mostscenarios where I talk to a
salesperson in any of thesecompanies but then I talk to the
tech team about what it can do,there's a giant gap between

(57:10):
where their marketing materialwhat they say they can do, and
what they actually still can dotoday.
And that doesn't mean theywon't get there two months from
now, a month from now or nextweek, but like there is a
difference between what you'reactually able to use today and
what marketing material andcompanies are saying Like our
TMS was supposed to haveautomated load building when we

(57:31):
bought it a year ago.
It still doesn't function likeand it's nowhere close to being
usable.
So you really want to be carefulthat when you're going to
choose any of these new toolsand things, you really ask a lot
of questions to understand notjust how it's supposed to work,
but think of scenarios where youas a person need to think and
do something differently and askthem how that software would

(57:54):
handle those scenarios, becausethose are the things that are
going to give you the headaches.
Like it can do things nine outof 10, right All day long, but
in shipping.
If I miss one out of 10 loadsmy customer sends me, I'm not
going to have a customer verylong Like you need to get them
all right all the time.
So really knowing how thesethings work is going to be
really important before youpress go and automate anything.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yeah, important, before you press, go and
automate anything, yeah, and notonly that, but like, uh, when
you do, like, institute newthings, whether it's, you know,
it's an ai process or anautomation or whatever um, the
the best advice I can give is,you know, make sure there's some
kind of like error reporting orwhatever within that system,
and that that you actually, onceyou implement it and get it in,

(58:38):
like you schedule time on yourcalendar 10, 15 minutes a week
just to go back through thatprocess, go through the error
logs and make sure, like, hey,this thing is still working the
way it's intended.
Or, you know, create a form foryour the people who are using it
every day to send you back,back feedback on like, hey, I

(58:59):
like this, I don't like this.
You know ways that you cantweak it and make it better,
because the worst thing you cando is set up a new process and
then never revisit it and it'sbreaking and you don't know why
Exactly, because then you gettwo months down the road and now
you're sitting on a pile ofwork that's going to take six
hours, when you could havehandled it.
10 minutes every week agreedany final thoughts no, not yet.

(59:24):
Um, I'm sure I'll have more onthe automation piece and like be
deep in that right now, but uh,no that's all I got whether you
believe you can or believe youcan't, you're probably right.