June 3, 2025 • 45 mins
What happens when you apply CIA intelligence-gathering methods to America's trucking industry?
Ryan Joyce, former intelligence operative turned freight tech entrepreneur, has created something extraordinary with GenLogs—a nationwide network of roadside cameras that's revolutionizing how companies track, validate, and secure freight transportation.
The system is disarmingly simple yet profoundly impactful. Cameras placed along major highways from Pennsylvania to California capture images of every commercial vehicle that passes by.
Advanced AI extracts identifying information in real-time, enabling passive tracking of truck movements across the country without requiring driver participation or specialized equipment.
The results are transformative: missing trailers found in seconds, fraud schemes exposed, and unsafe carriers identified before they can cause accidents.
The statistics are sobering. One insurance provider reported that 43% of their claims now involve fraud or theft, costs that ripple throughout the entire supply chain. GenLogs offers a powerful countermeasure by providing objective validation of carrier identities and movements.
In one compelling example shared during the interview, Joyce described how his team uncovered a carrier that continued operating a truck four hours after being placed out of service for dangerous brake issues—the same violation that had tragically killed Joyce's own grandfather years earlier.
Beyond security, GenLogs provides unprecedented lane intelligence, helping shippers identify qualified carriers they never knew operated on their lanes. This expanded competition drives better rates and service levels. T
he platform even allows users to examine carriers' equipment quality and strap work for flatbeds, offering insights that were previously impossible to obtain without physical inspections.
"GenLogs 2.0" will enhance capabilities from fleet-level to VIN-level data, unlocking even more granular insights about carrier compliance and safety. For shippers concerned about potential liability from carrier violations, this intelligence could prevent the next $100 million lawsuit from a preventable accident.
Ready to transform your transportation visibility? Visit GenLogs.io today to find lost assets (free for up to three recovery attempts) or book a demo to experience this groundbreaking technology firsthand.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Doing Business in Bentonville podcast
with the Whiskered WarehouseWarriors Josh Safran and Harvey
Williams from Plug and Play.
Harvey, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Doing lovely.
I'm fired up because my hometeam, the Dallas Stars, round
two of the playoffs.
First of all, they had aglorious game seven.
Oh my God, it was fantastic.
What a time.
What a time to be a fan of theDallas Stars.
So I'm feeling good.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Game one's tomorrow, but, more importantly, forget
hockey.
Look how good your beard'slooking for the Whisker
Warehouse Warriors today.
And Ryan's about to join us andwe didn't even give him the
heads up.
It doesn't look like he shavedtoday, so he was kind of in
theme with the Whisker WarehouseWarriors version of the podcast
.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I have to be man.
You got to let it grow for afew days before you get on here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, you're looking good, my friend, you're looking
good.
My friend, harvey, can you dothe warmest of introductions to
Mr Ryan, because you will do itso much better than I would,
since you and he are such dearfriends for such a long period
of time.
So I'm going to oh, dearfriends for such a long period
of time.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So I'm going to wax poetically.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, to our thousands, tens of
thousands of fans out there.
I am delighted to introduceyou're right, I'm sorry, I try
to undershoot a little bitDelighted to introduce Ryan
Joyce, founder and CEO ofGenlogs, probably the fastest
growing, definitely the sexiestfreight tech startup in the
(01:28):
market today.
Very delighted to have you on,ryan.
Thank you for joining us andwelcome to Doing Business in
Daytonville.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, thanks for having me today, guys.
I wasn't cool enough to flashthe W, but uh, maybe someday
you'll have me on and I could beone, you can try.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, boom, so you're , you're cool, you got to figure
it out for all our warriorsfans out there.
You know, go dabs too, yeahthere we go well.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, it's great to be with you guys.
Uh, ryan joy, ceo at gem logs,and uh, man, it's been a wild
ride the last few years.
Uh, known plug and play and theteam over there since the
beginning, literally.
I think you guys were one ofthe first calls we had when we
started what we're doing atGemlogs.
I'm happy to get into a littlebit more of the background what
we're doing, if that's helpful,but I'll let you guys kind of
(02:16):
guide it.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, I'd love to know what you're doing, because
when Harvey opens up a podcastand says sexy and fast growing
like, the audience is sittingthere like tell us more, tell us
more.
So what is so sexy and fastgrowing about you and your
amazing company.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah Well, let me tell you what we're not.
We're not just another TMS,we're not another AI agentic, ai
kind of just handling a lot ofthe automations we talk about.
A lot of what's going on inthis space is all bits and bytes
, it's just data or, I guess,software.
Genlogs took a little bit of adifferent approach to trying to
tackle a few key issues that arehappening in the space, one
(02:52):
being visibility, and that'sreally visibility, so that we
can tackle some of the fraud andtheft going on in the industry.
But then also drive efficiency,drive the ability to push
margin, all the above.
And so what Genlogs does iswe've built a nationwide network
of roadside cameras along allmajor interstates, freight lanes
, highways I'm talking coast tocoast.
(03:13):
We're up in Pennsylvania andNew York, all the way down to
your California Inland Empire.
We're at the Laredo border, wejust got installed at the Port
of Miami and pretty mucheverywhere in between.
We have a team literally that'sinstalling up in the Dakotas
this week, and these sensors siton the sides of roads.
(03:33):
Each one of them has threecameras that allows us to
collect on the front side andrear of every piece of truck and
equipment pairing that goes by.
So, whether it's an 18-wheeler,it could be a box truck, it
could be anything that'scommercial in nature, we are
collecting images and then fromthose images, using AI in real
(03:53):
time, to extract out data oridentifiers about that truck and
equipment pairing, such as themake model.
We could get the US Departmentof Transportation motor carrier
numbers, we'll get the equipmenttype and that's really
important as well as any logosand numbers on that equipment,
and then we passively monitorhow they're moving across our
sensors and then we correlatethose movements with other
(04:16):
third-party data sets.
So we will go out and suck upanonymized telematics, connected
vehicle data, electroniclogging device data and we'll be
able to actually build thistapestry of when this truck is
seen moving across our owncameras.
We observe these otheridentifiers and these data sets
moving across those same areas.
We can correlate the two as thesame truck and then track
(04:39):
origin to destination withoutthat truck driver or company
needing to do anything.
So we get the hey where didthey come from, where are they
going, what was the equipmenttype and what, therefore, is
that lane?
And we're able to even tie thatback to the shipper itself to
get a really rich understandingof who are the suppliers of
certain companies and what arethe transportation needs of
(05:02):
those companies.
But then also, looking at theinverse, well, who's also
shipping in the other directionthat needs the exact same
equipment.
And hey, could we actually pairthis shipper on the, let's say,
in Dallas with this shipper inChicago that have the inverse
lanes, to make those backhaulsmore efficient and to drive the
(05:23):
transportation costs down,because you're kind of using
those closed networks, could beusing four higher carriers, but
doing in such a way that couldreduce transportation costs
overall.
So I know that was a mouthful.
That's what Genlogs is doing atits core.
We've spent millions of dollars, a lot of blood, sweat and
tears, to put these camerascoast to coast and then we can
(05:44):
get in all the fun use casesfrom there.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, I have a million questions for you, but
the first one is your backgroundis also super interesting and
fascinating, right Anytime weget you in a room and we tell
people where you are and whereyou started all this tech from.
Can you share that?
Is that publicly shareable?
Speaker 3 (06:01):
information.
I have received permission toshare some details.
I spent some time in the USintelligence community.
It specifically did time in theCentral Intelligence Agency.
I was an operations officerthere.
I was deployed overseas, spenta lot of time in the Middle East
and North Africa.
I'm an Arabic speaker by trade.
My job, day in, day out, was tobe out there speaking a foreign
(06:25):
language and recruiting thesources in these countries
oftentimes penetrations ofAl-Qaeda or ISIS to give us
information to stop the next9-11 from happening.
Now, in doing that, I got reallygood at not only getting the
information, but then we had tovalidate that what that source
(06:46):
was telling us was true, so thatwe weren't dealing with a
double agent.
And that is where we took datacoming from sensors, satellites
or even what we were hearingfrom other sources, brought that
all together.
It's called an all-sourceanalysis.
We would use that to validateour own sources, and it was just
fast forward a decade later.
(07:07):
And here I found myself in thetransportation space where we
have this big issue going on nowcalled double brokering or
fraud, and it's leading to a lotof theft and it really comes
down to someone claiming thatthey are a truck carrier that
has assets or operating oncertain lanes, but not real and
to date there's been no real wayto validate that.
You're just kind of takingsomeone at their word or you're
(07:30):
looking at their digitalfootprint and kind of shrugging
and saying, all right, I'm goingto pray that they're not going
to steal what we have on theroads now, and I saw the
parallels from what I was doingat CIA and the validation of
sources, with now the ability tovalidate carriers, and it came
down from using data coming fromsatellite sensors or what we're
hearing from other sources,that all source intelligence
(07:51):
approach.
That's what we are leveragingnow to apply to the
transportation industrydomestically to look at hey,
what is being claimed digitally?
Is it matching what is beingobserved physically on the roads
?
And ensuring that those twomatch in order to tender loads
and do so with a high degree ofconfidence that you're not going
to have issues with that fraudor theft.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So I'm going to ask one more layup of a question and
then I give Harvey all theharder questions because to me
I'm more layman than Harvey,harvey's more technical than me,
and so when I was trying tounderstand you guys early on,
one of the first stories I heardwas you were in a meeting with
a carrier and again, tell me thetruth, or what level of truth
the story is, and they're like Ican't find this truck.
We've been looking for it forforever.
And you said give me thelicense number, give me the
(08:34):
truck number.
And you pulled it up and youfound it within 30 seconds.
You were able to tell themwhere they were and they were
like what?
They couldn't find this assetfor forever and within minutes
you knew exactly where it was,where it had been.
You must have blown people'sminds in that meeting 100%.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
In fact, this happened so early in Genlog's
genesis that we only had threeof our cameras out there in the
roads.
Now we were lucky that one ofthem was on I-81 in Pennsylvania
, one of the highest corridortraffic for trucks in the nation
, and so, when it was actually ashipper that has their own
private fleet, came to us andsaid, hey, we have this trailer.
In fact, here's a list oftrailers.
We have no idea where they'vebeen.
You're telling us that youmight be able to track it, prove
(09:16):
it.
And of course, I'm sittingthere thinking, well, we only
have three out there in the road.
There's no way.
And I took the very firsttrailer that was on that list,
plugged it in, hit, enter andboom, we got an immediate hit
and I was able to turn aroundwithin 30 seconds later and say,
hey, here's the first trailer.
I haven't even searched theothers, but we already got a hit
.
This is the truck that it wasattached to the daytime.
(09:38):
We had seen the actual imagesand they were hooked right away.
They've been a great customerever since.
We've since expanded to 80other customers that have had
similar issues that are lookingfor help.
Either they're wanting to findtheir own assets out there in
the road that are missing, orensure that they're working with
(09:58):
responsible asset carriers onthe roads that can actually run
those lanes without causing themproblems.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
So super easy for them to catch the ROI
immediately with you guys.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Absolutely A $40,000 trailer that was missing and
this was actually a leasetrailer for them that was
accruing month over monthexpenses and they were trying to
scrambling to find it.
That was going to continue foryears to come or they're going
to have to pay that full $40,000off.
We found it for right away.
They recovered it in less thana day.
We've had some crazy storieslike that happen throughout the
(10:25):
last year for us where thesetrailers that have been missing
one was missing for six yearsand we actually had an alert for
a few months, because that'sthe great thing about our system
you can actually set alerts forequipment out there.
And I had set this alert monthsago and it must've been just
sitting in a lot somewhere untilsomeone hooked to it went out
(10:46):
on the roads and I got thatinstantaneous alert.
Hey, that thing you werelooking for three months ago, we
just saw it today and I shot itimmediately to the asset owner,
who then called the carrierthat was seen with it and it
turns out that it was a totalmix up.
But look, they found theirasset that they never would have
otherwise and it was all due tothis network that we have since
(11:07):
built from three to now.
Hundreds boarding on thousandsof these sensors everywhere,
watching 24-7 to find what'sgoing on in the roads.
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I love the early pitch, the early tagline At
least I can remember it, I thinkit was.
We used to track terrorists andnow we track trucks.
And it's so hard to selltechnology as a startup into
this industry.
It is Buyer behavior is achallenge, and I think that
tagline is, and it raised somepeople's eyebrows and they're
(11:37):
like, okay, let's see what Ryancan do here.
And it opened up the door tohave really, really interesting
conversations.
And then the value propositionis so compelling, it's so
immediate, and people's eyebrowsstart to climb their forehead
and they start to think aboutthe possibilities of what can I
do with this data.
And then they start to have funconversations internally about
what can I do with mycompetitor's data.
We'll get to that in a second.
(12:00):
So if I can summarize one, it'sfraud, it's combating theft.
Tell us a little bit about whatyou're doing for law
enforcement agencies as well,because I know that that's a
free service that you guys arecontinuing to provide to law
enforcement here in the US.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Yeah, we actually have a team of SAMR, either US
Army Intelligence, specialForces or US Intelligence
Community.
There's three of them that arenow working together, that are
using our data to now be theaction arm of law enforcement.
In fact, just the other day wesaw out there was posted on
(12:34):
social media posts by a lawenforcement agency in kind of
the Pacific Northwest or Midwestterritory.
There was a hit and run.
Unfortunately that resulted inthe death, so you had a homicide
here, where a truck had hitthis fellow truck driver and
then just kept driving and allthey had was a really grainy
image of the side of this truckand we saw it out there, took
(12:57):
that in and looked at what wecould tell from the name of this
truck we were able to put in.
There was a lot of variants ofwhat this truck could have been
based on this grainy image, butwe got a hit.
We were able to then look upand find that this specific
truck had been in the area ofthat hit and run that day and
they'd go back in time and piecetogether where that truck
driver had been prior.
(13:17):
We turned it over to the lawenforcement agency and they said
look, we got to be honest, whenwe posted that grainy picture,
we thought there was no way wewere ever going to solve this.
And for you guys out of theblue to just come in and say,
hey, we found it and now we canactually get to the bottom so
that a grieving family canfigure out and at least have
some justice in this.
It was just a really neat waythat all elements of what
(13:42):
Genlogs does come together fromour field deployment teams that
are out there actually puttingthese sensors in the road, the
sensor deployment teams that arefinding where they should go,
the engineering team that aremaking sure that data gets back,
and then now the product teamthat's able to work with our
public sector team to providethat support.
At the end of the day, one thingI've realized is it's not like
(14:04):
law enforcement doesn't want toget to the bottom of this fraud
and theft out there.
It's just often reported tothem and they have no evidence
to actually do anything about it.
And that's now changing withGenlogs is, every week we work
with law enforcement to plug ina suspicious motor carrier
number or specific truck thathas been reported to have been
(14:25):
involved in theft and actuallytrack those trucks passively, so
that they can use theirinterdiction methods to actually
stop these bad actors on theroads and remove them from the
roads that the good actors canflourish.
And at the end of the day,that's what it's all about.
And I even had some trepidationearly on, thinking, hey, what
are the truck carriers going tothink about this?
(14:46):
We're now looking at them allover.
Is it going to be Big Brother?
And a lot of pushback.
And we've gone about this inevery which way that we can
enable privacy up front.
So, first of all, we do notcollect on any private vehicles
out in the road.
It has to be a commercial motorvehicle, a truck, box truck,
(15:08):
something like that.
So that's what we're onlycollecting.
That's the only data weactually collect at the edge and
bring back.
Beyond that, we treat everytruck as if it's autonomous,
which means we don't know ifthere's a driver and we don't
care if there's a driver.
It's not about the who.
It was, about this inanimateobject we know as a truck being
there to place in time.
But when you do that enough,you're able to actually derive.
(15:29):
Hey, what are some of the issuesthat are out there on the roads
?
And I was shocked to find thatsome of the biggest truck
carriers out there are now notonly our customers but our
biggest advocates, because theyare seeing that their insurance
premiums are going up.
Whenever these bad actors areeither involved in fraud, theft
or hit and runs or whatever itmight be that's influencing the
(15:51):
whole industry.
Or you have these visaviolations, with sometimes
drivers coming in from Canada orMexico or whatnot that are
supposed to be doing a specificdrop, coming in and leaving, and
then we've now found evidencethat some of these drivers are
taking intra-US loads andthey're doing so at dirt bottom
(16:11):
rates and guess what?
That's harming American truckdrivers out there, and so we're
piecing that all together andworking with law enforcement to
make sure that that doesn'thappen.
In the end, that benefits thosethat are actually playing it by
the book and doing what theyshould be.
They're keeping their truckssafe and keeping them in service
instead of out of service.
(16:32):
We're going about legitimatetrucking, which is like 99% of
truck drivers out there on theroad.
It's the 1% involved in thefraud and theft or visa
violations or out of serviceviolations, hours of service
violations, all of that.
That's what we'll get to thebottom of, so that the good guys
can flourish.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, I love it.
I think that's such a cool partof the mission.
As you guys are building thecompany and building momentum in
the commercial sector, you'remaking sure that that's a big
part of the company cultureinternally and that shows, I
think, okay.
The next topic I want to get toreally quick is the idea that
you are helping some of yourcustomers a lot of your
(17:14):
customers sourcing capacity,because now they understand, hey
, I can identify the carriersthat operate certain lanes that
I didn't know before and you canalso connect them with the
backhaul.
You can connect them with otherthird-party providers.
How are you guys playing thatrole and how have you seen that
take off since you started toreally put that in motion?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, I think one of the things that shocked me early
on was that this wasn't asolved problem and I guess, not
being in the transportationindustry, I just thought that
there would be a white pages forany lane out there.
Hey, you need to find a carriergoing from Dallas to Chicago.
Here's every single one.
And what I ended up finding outis everyone listening to this
podcast already knows is that isin all these fragmented places,
(17:57):
it might be posted on a loadboard on one load board here and
another carrier is posting onanother load board over there,
or it is stuck within oneshipper's TMS on this side, but
this other shipper that has theinverse lanes has no idea that
those carriers are out there.
And the biggest issue isprobably that the long tail of
the market is turning over somuch that it's an evergreen
(18:18):
problem.
In fact, I spoke to a factoringcompany out the other day that
deals with smaller carriers.
They said that since COVID,their entire book of business
has turned over three times.
So you have these carrierscoming in, they're spending 12
to 18 months in the industry andthen rates are tough out there
on the roads, as everyone knows,and then they're going out of
(18:38):
business and someone else iscoming in, and it's this
constant cycle.
And so to understand, hey,where is this long tail of the
market?
Where do they operate?
That has been why these largeintermediaries, freight brokers,
3pls, have popped up is becausethey will hire armies of people
to carry sales reps, to pick upthe phone every day and ask
(18:59):
carriers these four basicquestions hey, what kind of
trucks do you have?
Where are your trucks now, whatkind of lanes and what's
available?
And so what we just decided ishey, if we can blanket the
entire US with our cameras andcapture those patterns over time
, then you can actually query,hey, who runs reefers from
Dallas to Chicago?
(19:19):
And we'd be able to tell youevery single truck carrier out
in the road that does that, andthen sort by frequency and then
look at the volume that they'reactually out there on the roads
so that you can really dial into say, hey, let's maybe go
beyond the same 10 carriers thatwe've invited to our RFP
process for the last five years.
Who else is out there thatmight be able to do this for us
(19:41):
with having better service andbetter rates?
And then you can go to Genlogs.
You can query that lane we'regoing to give you all the
carriers.
You can sort by theirout-of-service scores.
You could sort by their fleetsizes.
You could sort by theirauthority age.
You can really dial it in toget exactly what you want.
And it's always current and weliterally, in our platform, will
show you dots where they'vebeen seeing the last 24 hours.
(20:03):
So you know this wasn't acarrier that was running this
lane six months ago but then,frankly, maybe went out of
business and someone else boughttheir motor carrier number is
now about to defraud you.
You know that they are not onlyrunning that lane as of
yesterday, but with one buttonyou can click and actually see
all of their trucks that wererunning that lane yesterday.
You can examine the equipment.
(20:24):
If you're a flatbed carrier,you can literally look at their
strap work and say how are theytarping?
What's their strap work?
Are they the type of carrier wewant to invite to this RFP
process?
If it is boom, you reach out,you bring them in and with more
competition you are inevitablygoing to get better rates and
better certs.
That's capitalism 101.
Before you were just hamstrungby not having the data to know
(20:46):
who to invite to that RFPprocess.
Now you can't.
And so if you are a CPG companydelivering to a Walmart there
and you're worried about youron-time in full and hey, you
want to know that these carriersare going to be great for OTIF
and all the above, well, we'regoing to have a lot of data
about them.
It's like the regularity thatthey're running the lanes.
(21:08):
How fast are they going betweenpoint A to point B?
Are they reckless or are theyjust going to consistently get
your goods there on time?
That's the type of that datathat we're collecting.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Ryan, I want to ask you a two-part question and it's
going to be long-winded, sobear with me.
I've had a chance to see yourteam at Action.
Alex Craley, you have a greatteam.
You're not just a one-man showand you guys are solving so many
things.
When you're talking to companyA, who is the right person?
Because there's the assetconversation, there's the
trucking and transportation andlanes conversation, so who is
(21:43):
the right person to talk to?
And then, when I'm in meetingswith your team, we're
discovering so many new usecases.
How are you prioritizing andstreamlining the workflow that
you guys are working on?
Josh?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
it's been one of the I would say problems up front
that I thought was going to be aproblem.
It's actually been a blessingin disguise, because the
platform is extremely variable.
So trying to figure out is whois the one person that we're
going to talk to.
That's kind of been an issue,because someone will hear about
us on the asset, the trailermanagement side, and they'll
come to us and say we heard youguys are tracking down trailers.
(22:14):
We have a list of them.
Can we work with you?
Absolutely, and we'll oftenstart with whoever comes inbound
to us first.
And I'll be honest, we have yetto build our outbound sales
motion because it's almost allbeen word of mouth right now and
it's been awesome and we'regoing to change that over time.
We just brought in Chris Kobus,came most recently from Project
44, really knows the shipperspace and really knows the
(22:38):
visibility space.
He's going to work wonders fordeveloping that outbound motion.
But for those coming in, we weregetting hit from various folks
and we really focused on freightbrokerages for a long time and
so it was often the carriersales, vp of carrier sales or
sometimes it was to be the VP ofcustomer sales, because we also
(22:59):
have the lane data for about aquarter of a million shippers
around the US.
So we would field, kind ofwherever the inbound came from
us.
We would tailor a demo to thatindividual.
Then we say, look, this is aplatform that can do so much
more, so can we invite let's sayit was the trailer management
or the asset management teamsand they came to us first we'd
(23:20):
say, hey, but next time we dealwith you, let's bring in the VP
of carrier sales as well.
And then we kind of build thisconsensus based on whoever came
to us first.
And that's been really exciting.
Now, in terms of all the usecases that we can attack, one of
the things that we realized forthe last year we've been what I
will call USDOT or fleet leveldata.
(23:41):
So we're looking at, hey, thisWalmart truck just flew by and
we're capturing that as aWalmart truck.
And then we kind of look at thefootprints of Walmart on the
roads, or maybe Werner on theroads or whatever it might be.
What we are building towards,and we're releasing this in
mid-July, is what we are callingGenLogs 2.0.
(24:01):
And that is when we drill downfrom the fleet level to truly
the VIN or the truck level dataand man that unlocks so much
more.
And I'll give you a greatexample.
The other day there was alawsuit that was brought against
a major US shipper.
It was a lawsuit that wasdropped because there was a car
accident or a truck accidentthat occurred that killed a
(24:24):
handful of people verytragically.
But this lawsuit hinges uponthe hours of service that the
driver was driving at the timeand that the potential
violations that occurred there.
So I went into our data, lookedup this shipper and said, well,
who else is hauling for themout in the roads?
And we found one of thecarriers that hauls for them.
(24:44):
Because we could search thisshipper's logo of their trailers
and see every carrier thatactually hauls for them in the
roads, we just choose one atrandom and started to dig into
this specific carrier.
They had seven trucks on theroads.
They've had a few violations,but from the fleet level you'd
say, hey, they're out there, itdoesn't seem to be an issue.
(25:05):
Let's move on to the next case.
They're good to go and in factin every vetting and compliance
tool out there they literallyhave green checks as they're
validated.
They're good to go, there'snothing to miss there.
But when you actually go fromthe fleet level down to the
truck or bin level.
That's where some of thoseskeletons in the closet start to
reveal themselves.
So I looked back and saw thatone of the trucks had been
(25:28):
placed out of service last yearand it was placed out of service
for an airbrake issue and alsofor a fuel leak issue.
Now I haven't talked about itpublicly much, but my
grandfather was actually killedby a truck driver who was
driving on an out-of-serviceviolation for air brakes.
This hit really close to homethat I was seeing that they had
(25:50):
been placed out of service in aninspection.
Well, immediately that carriershould be taking that truck to
go get service to make sure it'ssafe before they continue to
operate.
But when we looked in our datafour hours later after this out
of service violation, we sawthem four hours up the road.
Wow, they just kept drivingafter the inspection.
And then we dug in and lookedat what mileage are they
(26:13):
actually claiming out there?
Because they've had some hoursof service violations.
In fact they had a violationfor concealing their hours and
attempting to hide their hoursof service.
So we took a look at this onetruck and we watched it in a
five-day period go fromPennsylvania to Indiana, to
Arizona, to California, turnaround and go California to
Texas, back to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
That's crazy, come on .
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, it drove 4,500 miles, 70 hours within five days
.
There's just no way to do thatwithout having some violations.
Now, at the USDOT level,everything would seem fine, but
at the truck level, that shippernow has another ticking time
bomb at its hands and another$100 million lawsuit that can be
(26:58):
coming down the pike.
So what we're revealing in Julyis really going to now unlock a
whole lot of more use cases forshippers.
Oh yeah, the good news is it'sall on the same platform and
there's not like, hey, we'retrying to sell you this
completely different platform,that it's the same platform
we've had.
We're just diving down deeperinto the data and now unveiling
(27:20):
all of this new insights thatcan help you get ahead of the
compliance issues up front.
Or, if there's a fraud or theftissue in the back end, we can
now help recover that.
And in the middle, we can nowget a whole lot more targeted
about what carriers you'reactually inviting your RFP
process to ensure that you areprotecting yourselves and your
freight.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So you mentioned insurance kind of at the
beginning.
How are you helping yourcustomers with those
conversations?
Because for the insurancecompanies I can imagine a lot of
this is going to be a littlebit newer for them.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And trying to get up to speed as well, we took a
random sampling of our data theother day and we have this API
that essentially merges whatGenlogs is seeing out in the
roads with what the FederalMotor Carrier Safety
Administration is seeing.
It's all kind of together, butin terms of how much of that
(28:15):
data is actually Genlogs data?
It's over 97% of that data, sowe are seeing over 30 times the
amount of data that FMCSA isseeing on the roads on trucks.
We are seeing them in all thesedifferent states, which then
just gives you a more robustpicture.
Well, when it comes toinsurance, literally for the
last 70 years, the only datathat insurers have really had to
(28:38):
do their underwriting has beenthe inspection data from the
Federal Motor SafetyAdministration.
And then, when it comes to theactual claims, they've kind of
been out of luck.
There just hasn't been a reallyround truth that they can rely
on to say, hey, was this damagehere a week ago Before you claim
that it happened?
(28:59):
And hey, when the carrierclaims that you sideswipe or
that you had damage that you arenow faulting a shipper for, was
that damage actually thereprior or are you just trying to
pin it on someone else?
And the bad apples absolutelyhave tried to pin it on someone
else.
What's crazy when it comes tothe insurance space?
I was speaking with an insurerthe other day.
(29:20):
They told me that 43% of theclaims that they process now
have to do with fraud or theft.
So, as that continues to grow,the claims that they're having
to deal with is now fraud andtheft, and all of that cost is
being passed along to the marketwrit large, and so what we're
really excited about is nowbeing able to put a tool into an
(29:43):
insurer's hands that's going toallow them to do better
underwriting upfront so thatthey can really dial in.
Let's not apply these premiumsto everyone in the market.
Let's apply it to those thatare more problematic and those
that are doing right.
Then they can pay lowerpremiums on the whole.
So that's really how this isgoing to help on the process
(30:07):
overall.
The other thing we're workingwith insurers is to say, hey, if
you have a shipper that iseither using Genlogs or
requiring their brokers to useGenlogs, then looking at ways to
reduce their insurance overall,because it is absolutely
unequivocally like we have thedata to prove this that when you
(30:28):
are using gem logs and using itwell, that your risk of fraud
and theft drops to near zero andfor the little bit that
actually could happen, that younow have a tool to actually
initiate that recovery process.
So in terms of the risk thatthe insurers are taking on when
they are insuring a Gemlogscustomer or a shipper that's
(30:48):
requiring their brokers to useGemlogs, then their risk just
plummeted and we can actuallytherefore lower those premiums
as well.
So that's where we get reallyexcited in the insurance side is
to both give the insuranceindustry better data but also
allow them to give rebates ordiscounts to customers using
GenLogs.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Ryan.
So I want to go back to thesupplier CPG side, because that
will be a broad portion of theaudience here.
So I am supplier CPG, supplychain person A, and I'm hooked.
This sounds super cool.
What does a contract look like?
Do I get access to the platformand I get everything in the
platform?
Or are are different layers ofdata that I get at different
price tiers?
(31:26):
And will that change withGenLogs 2.0?
Walk me through a little bitaround how, as a customer, I'd
be able to interact with you, atwhat type of pricing levels.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, what I can say is what we've been doing
historically.
We're kind of reviewing thisprocess now to say, hey, do we
break this out to make itfrankly more attractive for
people to get on a lower pricingtier early on and then, as they
want to add in new capabilities, they can come up.
Historically, what we've justdone is one enterprise price.
That's for unlimited seats,unlimited use cases.
(31:56):
You get it all, so you cansource carriers on lanes, you
can investigate and set alertson certain assets.
You could do that all for onemonthly price, and that was it.
You could bring as many peopleon as possible.
What we found is that we're notthe cheapest solution in the
market.
We're also the best.
(32:17):
I'm confident of that when youactually see what we're able to
do.
But there were some folks thatsaid, look, we don't need all of
the bells and whistles rightnow.
Can we start out?
This is the one use case we'retrying to address now, and so
we're looking.
Okay, can we unbundle thisenterprise pricing so that we
can tackle hey, you just need totrack down missing assets.
Great, we can work with you onthat until your transportation
(32:38):
team wants to now look at whatare the carriers operating in
certain lanes during RFP seasonto look to and to invite.
Then we can expand the aperturethere.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So you can mask the other data above and beyond that
.
So you could say you're goingto pay for the assets and asset
tracking only and I'm going tomask everything else and this is
the price you're going to pay.
But when you're sold on that, Ican open up more data at a
higher price point.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
That's what we're looking to do is to provide
flexibility there.
A higher price point that's whatwe're looking to do is to
provide flexibility there, whichincludes there are some
enterprise customers that theylove the UI that we've developed
and it's extremely intuitiveand it gets you exactly what you
need.
For some, they've said that'sall we need.
Others have said, hey, we wantto have direct access to your
data as much as possible via APIto integrate into everything we
(33:25):
do, so we can find literallywhat is the truck to load ratio
in Dallas right now.
Well, if you look in Dallas, wehave every major ingress and
egress highway in and out ofDallas completely ringed with
our camera systems, which meansyou will know exactly how many
flatbed trucks are in Dallasright now, or exactly how many
refurts and what that can dowith driving pricing or dialing
(33:47):
in pricing.
There's some customers that saywe want that and we'll work
with customers to make sure wecan get them exactly what they
need.
But we are kind of readdressingthe, not forcing you to eat the
whole elephant, so to say wecan have you eat certain bites
of the elephant over time.
We love that.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
The competitive dynamic.
I do want to touch on for JoshCrack's joke that he's been
sitting on probably for 10minutes.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (34:13):
guys handling that right now?
You have a customer, or maybeyou have two customers, and they
are in direct competition withone another, and maybe you let
them reach the conclusion thatif they ask nicely, they could
get some data on theircompetitor.
And maybe you let them reachthe conclusion that if they
asked nicely, they could getsome data on their competitor.
How are you guys handling thatas a company?
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, this is a I'll be very candid that we haven't
fully solved what we're going todo about this in the long.
So, hey, if you're listeningand you got some ideas about it,
please reach out.
I'd love to have a chat,because we really started this.
We're calling this the truckintelligence platform and we're
trying to really differentiatethat from competitive
intelligence platform.
(34:50):
Now, the way that we've handledthis to date is, essentially,
we will show you the lanes thata carrier runs, but we'll show
it obfuscated to kind of a 20mile hexagon out there saying,
hey, they're delivering to someshipper in here and they're
picking up from some shipper inhere.
So shipper-receiver pairing, soto say.
That has been incredible.
(35:13):
It's worked for us thus far.
About a few months ago, weflipped on what's known as our
intermodal insights.
This now actually goes a layerbeyond that, which allows you to
look at every intermodal railramp in America, click on it and
seeing every shipper orreceiver that has freight to and
from that ramp.
So we look at the drayagetrucks and look at their origins
(35:34):
destinations.
That's how we're able to dothat.
Now that we've actuallydeployed our own sensors at a
major US port and have a fewothers coming on.
We're going to be doing thatsame insights for the port
operators themselves and some oftheir stakeholders to say what
are the beneficial cargo ownersthat actually specifically
received the freight coming inand out of this port.
(35:57):
There's been demand, therefore,because we have gone, we've kind
of almost pierced the veil ofthis hexagon kind of masked
approach to say, well, can youjust show me that if Acme widget
company, where exactly we knowtheir lanes, but who exactly are
they delivering to and what isthe volume?
How many truckloads a week arethey doing there?
That would be really helpful.
We're kind of in this processof like, if I have Coca-Cola as
(36:23):
a customer, well, how's Pepsigoing to feel if they're also a
customer?
And that could put us kind ofin a bind.
So, candidly, we're debatinginternally, we're talking with
stakeholders, we're talking withour customers to say what is
the line that you would feelcomfortable people knowing about
your operations, that,therefore, you would feel
comfortable knowing aboutsomeone else's operations A
(36:44):
little bit of this do untoothers as they would have them
do to you.
I think, ultimately, themarket's just going to sort that
out if we really feel thatsucking sound, and a lot of this
can be derived throughpiecemeal, through a lot of
other observations of data.
Potentially, genlogs is justthe platform that brings it all
together and just makes itvisible.
It's not fully decided, but ifyou're listening and you're like
(37:05):
, well, I kind of want to knowwhat's happening, then we'd love
to engage because we do want tohear how, how you would feel
and how others would feel agreedbecause then gen logs can
become the standard thateverybody knows.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
We're going to abide by these rules, these best
practices, like the Zelle whenall the major banks got on the
same page in the technology.
So I think that is cool.
That is a cool conversation.
If you have thoughts, pleaseping us, ping Ryan, let him know
.
I think the hexagon approach isa nice stopgap.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
The one thing we're looking at Arby is allowing each
customer to see their suppliersand where their suppliers
receive their supplies from, soessentially looking at their
supply chain.
Going back in time and early onwe did this where we isolated
this shipper in Hattiesburg,Mississippi.
(38:01):
I gave my team no other dataabout this other than it was
Western Container Corporationand I just said pull me the
outbound lanes for this shipper.
And so they did, and there wasa big line that went down in New
Orleans, a big line that wentup to Indianapolis area, and
when we actually looked at whereall of those trucks were going
(38:21):
down in New Orleans, they weregoing to Coca-Cola bottle.
And then we went up tosomeplace in Missouri and then
they were going to Coca-Colabottling there.
And then we looked over at even, like in Orlando, they were
going to Coca-Cola bottle.
So we saw that, oh, this is asupplier for Coca-Cola bottle.
My team had no knowledge of that, but the data led us to that
conclusion.
Well, what was really cool thenis to take Western Container
(38:44):
Corporation and say, okay, whatare their inbound links?
Essentially, who is supplyingthem?
Well, if you're Coca-Cola andWestern Container Corporation is
making the bottles for you, youwant to know if there's risk,
from where Western ContainerCorporation is actually getting
their supplies, because maybethey were getting their supplies
from China.
(39:05):
There we go and all of a sudden,now we got tariffs coming up,
that's going to be passed alongto you.
We can actually go source thatall the way back and provide you
this kind of hey.
You have a risk here where thecontainers have stopped coming
out of this port in China andthey're not going to get to them
and they're not going totherefore become this whether
it's a cocoa bottle or someother widget that your business
(39:26):
depends on and be able to tracethat back and have full supply
chain visibility.
That is something that it's nota competitive intelligence,
it's your own supply chainintelligence, and that's
something we will be doing andthat's something that's
currently available in ourplatform.
Right now, we could just say,hey, I need to see this supplier
, not down to the hexagon level,but down to the actual where
(39:48):
are they getting their suppliesfrom, so that we know if we're
at risk.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, I've been in a couple of meetings with you guys
.
It's interesting.
The light bulb clicks forpeople like wait, wait, I could
see other people's stuff.
Hold on, that means they couldsee my stuff as well.
It's like uh-huh, have youfigured out a software Like
uh-uh, because we don't write,and I think you're playing it
the right way, like this is nota transactional.
I want somebody to write me acheck and share this with.
I mean, you guys are reallythinking and taking a mindful
(40:13):
approach as to how you want todo this.
Do this the right way, theethical way, make sure that it's
a level playing field.
And I commend you guys forthinking through this, because
you guys could just be goingright and I think the way you're
doing it is the smart way.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
You know I learned this, josh, from my time in the
US intelligence community.
We have great intelligencerelationships with a lot of
other intelligence agencies froma lot of other countries.
What we don't do is give all oftheir intelligence to every
other country and we try todevelop those truly decades-long
partnerships hopefullycenturies-long partnerships in
terms of the intelligenceliaison relationships that we
(40:51):
have.
It's very similar where Genlogsis right now.
We're trying to find what is thebalance to make sure that
customers don't feel exposed.
It doesn't feel dirty, likethey're getting what they need
and they're able to say, hey, Igot better transportation on
this lane than potentially mycompetitor because I'm using gen
logs.
But at the end of the day, theydon't feel exposed themselves,
(41:13):
with everyone else being able tolook at what's going on in
their operations.
So it's going to be a delicatebalance.
We're trying to find it.
That's why we're listening here.
We want to hear from folks tosay I don't really feel
comfortable about that beingexposed, but I don't mind that.
The carriers that are out thererunning our trailers that's
just kind of like.
(41:33):
If you can see it with thenaked eye on the road, it's
tough to say you got to suppressit in our data.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, Ryan, I have the tough job of being
timekeeper here.
I know you, Harvey and I, overa beer, could go for four or
five hours because I think whatyou're doing is so cool and we
have such a long standingrelationship with you.
What's the best way for folksto connect with you?
Email address, website, if youwant to give me your Instagram
or anything else fun.
Obviously LinkedIn access.
(41:59):
But how do people get in touchwith you if you're looking for
more information other thangoing through Harvey and myself?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
of course, yeah, let me just start by saying please
go check out the websites.
It's genlogsio G-E-N-L-O-G-Sio.
Upper right-hand corner.
We have two buttons and this isreally important One.
We have a find lost assetsbutton.
We will help anyone out therein the industry up to three
times find their lost or stolenequipment for free.
(42:26):
We're not going to send you Ifyou never need more than three
times the help, boom, it's freefor all your life.
But that button's up thereRight beside it is the book, a
demo button.
Hit that That'll connect withour team who would love to reach
out and show you.
I'm on LinkedIn.
You can search me, ryan Joyce.
That's a great way to connectwith me there.
That's the primary platform.
I wish I was cool enough tohave an Instagram or even an
(42:48):
active Twitter account.
But yeah, ryan Joyce, onLinkedIn or genlogs
G-E-N-L-O-G-Sio Harvey partingshots.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Final words from you.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Well, before we wrap, I wanted to kind of come back
to the founder journey, right,and the mission, the team and
all that stuff which we spent somuch time talking about.
The product, because theproduct can speak for itself.
But, Ryan, I do want to wrap upwith just hearing from you what
has it been like building thiscompany, building this team,
keeping them on mission, stayingfocused and growing this fast?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yeah, yeah, it's not been easy.
And growing this fast yeah,yeah, it's not been easy.
One thing that I it's kind ofmy cheat code that I would give
to any other founder that wascoming in there is communication
, and transparency is so key tomake sure that everyone's
growing in the same direction.
We made a decision early on sothat we could hire the best
talent anywhere.
We were not going to berequiring everyone to come into
(43:42):
the office, so it was a veryremote work first environment.
As a result, we needed to makesure that we were always giving
the where are we going and thewhy, and so I spend eight to 10
hours every weekend puttingtogether a message that goes out
to my team at 7am every Mondaymorning Schedules to send.
Boom.
It heads out.
It gives them a where what didwe do the last week, where are
(44:05):
we going this week and how doesit fit in the overall strategy?
And we just do it over and overagain, and that is the drumbeat
that causes us to all row inthe same direction.
That has been my cheat code.
Also, hiring the best people.
Obviously, that speaks foritself, but, like Josh said,
he's met some folks on our teamAlex, chris.
There's a host of others that Iwould love to promote more as
(44:28):
time goes on, because they'redoing fantastic work and they're
going to go be the futurefounders that Plug and Play
should definitely invest in andhave them at conferences in the
future as well.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Thank you.
Your company is amazing To yourpoint.
Alex, chris, the team I'veworked with is fantastic.
Everybody always wants to talkto you and I'm like, well, if
Ryan's unavailable.
The other guys are pretty darngood as well and I've seen them
in front of customers andclients and leads and they do a
great job.
I'm excited that you've trustedPlug Play to help lead the
journey with you guys and foryou guys and some of the stuff
(44:59):
that we've worked on togetherand it's only the beginning.
I mean, you guys are a rocketship that's about to just take
off and we're just excited to beassociated with you and team.
So thank you for the time today.
Much appreciated Any last words.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Well, what I'll say is you guys have been phenomenal
.
So, Josh, harvey can't thankyou enough, and Harvey, I hate
to say it, but man go Caps.
Welcome to the Doing Business in Bentonville podcast
with the Whiskered WarehouseWarriors Josh Safran and Harvey
Williams from Plug and Play.
Harvey, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Doing lovely.
I'm fired up because my hometeam, the Dallas Stars, round
two of the playoffs.
First of all, they had aglorious game seven.
Oh my God, it was fantastic.
What a time.
What a time to be a fan of theDallas Stars.
So I'm feeling good.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Game one's tomorrow, but, more importantly, forget
hockey.
Look how good your beard'slooking for the Whisker
Warehouse Warriors today.
And Ryan's about to join us andwe didn't even give him the
heads up.
It doesn't look like he shavedtoday, so he was kind of in
theme with the Whisker WarehouseWarriors version of the podcast
.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I have to be man.
You got to let it grow for afew days before you get on here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, you're looking good, my friend, you're looking
good.
My friend, harvey, can you dothe warmest of introductions to
Mr Ryan, because you will do itso much better than I would,
since you and he are such dearfriends for such a long period
of time.
So I'm going to oh, dearfriends for such a long period
of time.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So I'm going to wax poetically.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, to our thousands, tens of
thousands of fans out there.
I am delighted to introduceyou're right, I'm sorry, I try
to undershoot a little bitDelighted to introduce Ryan
Joyce, founder and CEO ofGenlogs, probably the fastest
growing, definitely the sexiestfreight tech startup in the
(01:28):
market today.
Very delighted to have you on,ryan.
Thank you for joining us andwelcome to Doing Business in
Daytonville.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, thanks for having me today, guys.
I wasn't cool enough to flashthe W, but uh, maybe someday
you'll have me on and I could beone, you can try.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, boom, so you're , you're cool, you got to figure
it out for all our warriorsfans out there.
You know, go dabs too, yeahthere we go well.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, it's great to be with you guys.
Uh, ryan joy, ceo at gem logs,and uh, man, it's been a wild
ride the last few years.
Uh, known plug and play and theteam over there since the
beginning, literally.
I think you guys were one ofthe first calls we had when we
started what we're doing atGemlogs.
I'm happy to get into a littlebit more of the background what
we're doing, if that's helpful,but I'll let you guys kind of
(02:16):
guide it.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, I'd love to know what you're doing, because
when Harvey opens up a podcastand says sexy and fast growing
like, the audience is sittingthere like tell us more, tell us
more.
So what is so sexy and fastgrowing about you and your
amazing company.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah Well, let me tell you what we're not.
We're not just another TMS,we're not another AI agentic, ai
kind of just handling a lot ofthe automations we talk about.
A lot of what's going on inthis space is all bits and bytes
, it's just data or, I guess,software.
Genlogs took a little bit of adifferent approach to trying to
tackle a few key issues that arehappening in the space, one
(02:52):
being visibility, and that'sreally visibility, so that we
can tackle some of the fraud andtheft going on in the industry.
But then also drive efficiency,drive the ability to push
margin, all the above.
And so what Genlogs does iswe've built a nationwide network
of roadside cameras along allmajor interstates, freight lanes
, highways I'm talking coast tocoast.
(03:13):
We're up in Pennsylvania andNew York, all the way down to
your California Inland Empire.
We're at the Laredo border, wejust got installed at the Port
of Miami and pretty mucheverywhere in between.
We have a team literally that'sinstalling up in the Dakotas
this week, and these sensors siton the sides of roads.
(03:33):
Each one of them has threecameras that allows us to
collect on the front side andrear of every piece of truck and
equipment pairing that goes by.
So, whether it's an 18-wheeler,it could be a box truck, it
could be anything that'scommercial in nature, we are
collecting images and then fromthose images, using AI in real
(03:53):
time, to extract out data oridentifiers about that truck and
equipment pairing, such as themake model.
We could get the US Departmentof Transportation motor carrier
numbers, we'll get the equipmenttype and that's really
important as well as any logosand numbers on that equipment,
and then we passively monitorhow they're moving across our
sensors and then we correlatethose movements with other
(04:16):
third-party data sets.
So we will go out and suck upanonymized telematics, connected
vehicle data, electroniclogging device data and we'll be
able to actually build thistapestry of when this truck is
seen moving across our owncameras.
We observe these otheridentifiers and these data sets
moving across those same areas.
We can correlate the two as thesame truck and then track
(04:39):
origin to destination withoutthat truck driver or company
needing to do anything.
So we get the hey where didthey come from, where are they
going, what was the equipmenttype and what, therefore, is
that lane?
And we're able to even tie thatback to the shipper itself to
get a really rich understandingof who are the suppliers of
certain companies and what arethe transportation needs of
(05:02):
those companies.
But then also, looking at theinverse, well, who's also
shipping in the other directionthat needs the exact same
equipment.
And hey, could we actually pairthis shipper on the, let's say,
in Dallas with this shipper inChicago that have the inverse
lanes, to make those backhaulsmore efficient and to drive the
(05:23):
transportation costs down,because you're kind of using
those closed networks, could beusing four higher carriers, but
doing in such a way that couldreduce transportation costs
overall.
So I know that was a mouthful.
That's what Genlogs is doing atits core.
We've spent millions of dollars, a lot of blood, sweat and
tears, to put these camerascoast to coast and then we can
(05:44):
get in all the fun use casesfrom there.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, I have a million questions for you, but
the first one is your backgroundis also super interesting and
fascinating, right Anytime weget you in a room and we tell
people where you are and whereyou started all this tech from.
Can you share that?
Is that publicly shareable?
Speaker 3 (06:01):
information.
I have received permission toshare some details.
I spent some time in the USintelligence community.
It specifically did time in theCentral Intelligence Agency.
I was an operations officerthere.
I was deployed overseas, spenta lot of time in the Middle East
and North Africa.
I'm an Arabic speaker by trade.
My job, day in, day out, was tobe out there speaking a foreign
(06:25):
language and recruiting thesources in these countries
oftentimes penetrations ofAl-Qaeda or ISIS to give us
information to stop the next9-11 from happening.
Now, in doing that, I got reallygood at not only getting the
information, but then we had tovalidate that what that source
(06:46):
was telling us was true, so thatwe weren't dealing with a
double agent.
And that is where we took datacoming from sensors, satellites
or even what we were hearingfrom other sources, brought that
all together.
It's called an all-sourceanalysis.
We would use that to validateour own sources, and it was just
fast forward a decade later.
(07:07):
And here I found myself in thetransportation space where we
have this big issue going on nowcalled double brokering or
fraud, and it's leading to a lotof theft and it really comes
down to someone claiming thatthey are a truck carrier that
has assets or operating oncertain lanes, but not real and
to date there's been no real wayto validate that.
You're just kind of takingsomeone at their word or you're
(07:30):
looking at their digitalfootprint and kind of shrugging
and saying, all right, I'm goingto pray that they're not going
to steal what we have on theroads now, and I saw the
parallels from what I was doingat CIA and the validation of
sources, with now the ability tovalidate carriers, and it came
down from using data coming fromsatellite sensors or what we're
hearing from other sources,that all source intelligence
(07:51):
approach.
That's what we are leveragingnow to apply to the
transportation industrydomestically to look at hey,
what is being claimed digitally?
Is it matching what is beingobserved physically on the roads
?
And ensuring that those twomatch in order to tender loads
and do so with a high degree ofconfidence that you're not going
to have issues with that fraudor theft.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So I'm going to ask one more layup of a question and
then I give Harvey all theharder questions because to me
I'm more layman than Harvey,harvey's more technical than me,
and so when I was trying tounderstand you guys early on,
one of the first stories I heardwas you were in a meeting with
a carrier and again, tell me thetruth, or what level of truth
the story is, and they're like Ican't find this truck.
We've been looking for it forforever.
And you said give me thelicense number, give me the
(08:34):
truck number.
And you pulled it up and youfound it within 30 seconds.
You were able to tell themwhere they were and they were
like what?
They couldn't find this assetfor forever and within minutes
you knew exactly where it was,where it had been.
You must have blown people'sminds in that meeting 100%.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
In fact, this happened so early in Genlog's
genesis that we only had threeof our cameras out there in the
roads.
Now we were lucky that one ofthem was on I-81 in Pennsylvania
, one of the highest corridortraffic for trucks in the nation
, and so, when it was actually ashipper that has their own
private fleet, came to us andsaid, hey, we have this trailer.
In fact, here's a list oftrailers.
We have no idea where they'vebeen.
You're telling us that youmight be able to track it, prove
(09:16):
it.
And of course, I'm sittingthere thinking, well, we only
have three out there in the road.
There's no way.
And I took the very firsttrailer that was on that list,
plugged it in, hit, enter andboom, we got an immediate hit
and I was able to turn aroundwithin 30 seconds later and say,
hey, here's the first trailer.
I haven't even searched theothers, but we already got a hit
.
This is the truck that it wasattached to the daytime.
(09:38):
We had seen the actual imagesand they were hooked right away.
They've been a great customerever since.
We've since expanded to 80other customers that have had
similar issues that are lookingfor help.
Either they're wanting to findtheir own assets out there in
the road that are missing, orensure that they're working with
(09:58):
responsible asset carriers onthe roads that can actually run
those lanes without causing themproblems.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
So super easy for them to catch the ROI
immediately with you guys.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Absolutely A $40,000 trailer that was missing and
this was actually a leasetrailer for them that was
accruing month over monthexpenses and they were trying to
scrambling to find it.
That was going to continue foryears to come or they're going
to have to pay that full $40,000off.
We found it for right away.
They recovered it in less thana day.
We've had some crazy storieslike that happen throughout the
(10:25):
last year for us where thesetrailers that have been missing
one was missing for six yearsand we actually had an alert for
a few months, because that'sthe great thing about our system
you can actually set alerts forequipment out there.
And I had set this alert monthsago and it must've been just
sitting in a lot somewhere untilsomeone hooked to it went out
(10:46):
on the roads and I got thatinstantaneous alert.
Hey, that thing you werelooking for three months ago, we
just saw it today and I shot itimmediately to the asset owner,
who then called the carrierthat was seen with it and it
turns out that it was a totalmix up.
But look, they found theirasset that they never would have
otherwise and it was all due tothis network that we have since
(11:07):
built from three to now.
Hundreds boarding on thousandsof these sensors everywhere,
watching 24-7 to find what'sgoing on in the roads.
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I love the early pitch, the early tagline At
least I can remember it, I thinkit was.
We used to track terrorists andnow we track trucks.
And it's so hard to selltechnology as a startup into
this industry.
It is Buyer behavior is achallenge, and I think that
tagline is, and it raised somepeople's eyebrows and they're
(11:37):
like, okay, let's see what Ryancan do here.
And it opened up the door tohave really, really interesting
conversations.
And then the value propositionis so compelling, it's so
immediate, and people's eyebrowsstart to climb their forehead
and they start to think aboutthe possibilities of what can I
do with this data.
And then they start to have funconversations internally about
what can I do with mycompetitor's data.
We'll get to that in a second.
(12:00):
So if I can summarize one, it'sfraud, it's combating theft.
Tell us a little bit about whatyou're doing for law
enforcement agencies as well,because I know that that's a
free service that you guys arecontinuing to provide to law
enforcement here in the US.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Yeah, we actually have a team of SAMR, either US
Army Intelligence, specialForces or US Intelligence
Community.
There's three of them that arenow working together, that are
using our data to now be theaction arm of law enforcement.
In fact, just the other day wesaw out there was posted on
(12:34):
social media posts by a lawenforcement agency in kind of
the Pacific Northwest or Midwestterritory.
There was a hit and run.
Unfortunately that resulted inthe death, so you had a homicide
here, where a truck had hitthis fellow truck driver and
then just kept driving and allthey had was a really grainy
image of the side of this truckand we saw it out there, took
(12:57):
that in and looked at what wecould tell from the name of this
truck we were able to put in.
There was a lot of variants ofwhat this truck could have been
based on this grainy image, butwe got a hit.
We were able to then look upand find that this specific
truck had been in the area ofthat hit and run that day and
they'd go back in time and piecetogether where that truck
driver had been prior.
(13:17):
We turned it over to the lawenforcement agency and they said
look, we got to be honest, whenwe posted that grainy picture,
we thought there was no way wewere ever going to solve this.
And for you guys out of theblue to just come in and say,
hey, we found it and now we canactually get to the bottom so
that a grieving family canfigure out and at least have
some justice in this.
It was just a really neat waythat all elements of what
(13:42):
Genlogs does come together fromour field deployment teams that
are out there actually puttingthese sensors in the road, the
sensor deployment teams that arefinding where they should go,
the engineering team that aremaking sure that data gets back,
and then now the product teamthat's able to work with our
public sector team to providethat support.
At the end of the day, one thingI've realized is it's not like
(14:04):
law enforcement doesn't want toget to the bottom of this fraud
and theft out there.
It's just often reported tothem and they have no evidence
to actually do anything about it.
And that's now changing withGenlogs is, every week we work
with law enforcement to plug ina suspicious motor carrier
number or specific truck thathas been reported to have been
(14:25):
involved in theft and actuallytrack those trucks passively, so
that they can use theirinterdiction methods to actually
stop these bad actors on theroads and remove them from the
roads that the good actors canflourish.
And at the end of the day,that's what it's all about.
And I even had some trepidationearly on, thinking, hey, what
are the truck carriers going tothink about this?
(14:46):
We're now looking at them allover.
Is it going to be Big Brother?
And a lot of pushback.
And we've gone about this inevery which way that we can
enable privacy up front.
So, first of all, we do notcollect on any private vehicles
out in the road.
It has to be a commercial motorvehicle, a truck, box truck,
(15:08):
something like that.
So that's what we're onlycollecting.
That's the only data weactually collect at the edge and
bring back.
Beyond that, we treat everytruck as if it's autonomous,
which means we don't know ifthere's a driver and we don't
care if there's a driver.
It's not about the who.
It was, about this inanimateobject we know as a truck being
there to place in time.
But when you do that enough,you're able to actually derive.
(15:29):
Hey, what are some of the issuesthat are out there on the roads
?
And I was shocked to find thatsome of the biggest truck
carriers out there are now notonly our customers but our
biggest advocates, because theyare seeing that their insurance
premiums are going up.
Whenever these bad actors areeither involved in fraud, theft
or hit and runs or whatever itmight be that's influencing the
(15:51):
whole industry.
Or you have these visaviolations, with sometimes
drivers coming in from Canada orMexico or whatnot that are
supposed to be doing a specificdrop, coming in and leaving, and
then we've now found evidencethat some of these drivers are
taking intra-US loads andthey're doing so at dirt bottom
(16:11):
rates and guess what?
That's harming American truckdrivers out there, and so we're
piecing that all together andworking with law enforcement to
make sure that that doesn'thappen.
In the end, that benefits thosethat are actually playing it by
the book and doing what theyshould be.
They're keeping their truckssafe and keeping them in service
instead of out of service.
(16:32):
We're going about legitimatetrucking, which is like 99% of
truck drivers out there on theroad.
It's the 1% involved in thefraud and theft or visa
violations or out of serviceviolations, hours of service
violations, all of that.
That's what we'll get to thebottom of, so that the good guys
can flourish.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, I love it.
I think that's such a cool partof the mission.
As you guys are building thecompany and building momentum in
the commercial sector, you'remaking sure that that's a big
part of the company cultureinternally and that shows, I
think, okay.
The next topic I want to get toreally quick is the idea that
you are helping some of yourcustomers a lot of your
(17:14):
customers sourcing capacity,because now they understand, hey
, I can identify the carriersthat operate certain lanes that
I didn't know before and you canalso connect them with the
backhaul.
You can connect them with otherthird-party providers.
How are you guys playing thatrole and how have you seen that
take off since you started toreally put that in motion?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, I think one of the things that shocked me early
on was that this wasn't asolved problem and I guess, not
being in the transportationindustry, I just thought that
there would be a white pages forany lane out there.
Hey, you need to find a carriergoing from Dallas to Chicago.
Here's every single one.
And what I ended up finding outis everyone listening to this
podcast already knows is that isin all these fragmented places,
(17:57):
it might be posted on a loadboard on one load board here and
another carrier is posting onanother load board over there,
or it is stuck within oneshipper's TMS on this side, but
this other shipper that has theinverse lanes has no idea that
those carriers are out there.
And the biggest issue isprobably that the long tail of
the market is turning over somuch that it's an evergreen
(18:18):
problem.
In fact, I spoke to a factoringcompany out the other day that
deals with smaller carriers.
They said that since COVID,their entire book of business
has turned over three times.
So you have these carrierscoming in, they're spending 12
to 18 months in the industry andthen rates are tough out there
on the roads, as everyone knows,and then they're going out of
(18:38):
business and someone else iscoming in, and it's this
constant cycle.
And so to understand, hey,where is this long tail of the
market?
Where do they operate?
That has been why these largeintermediaries, freight brokers,
3pls, have popped up is becausethey will hire armies of people
to carry sales reps, to pick upthe phone every day and ask
(18:59):
carriers these four basicquestions hey, what kind of
trucks do you have?
Where are your trucks now, whatkind of lanes and what's
available?
And so what we just decided ishey, if we can blanket the
entire US with our cameras andcapture those patterns over time
, then you can actually query,hey, who runs reefers from
Dallas to Chicago?
(19:19):
And we'd be able to tell youevery single truck carrier out
in the road that does that, andthen sort by frequency and then
look at the volume that they'reactually out there on the roads
so that you can really dial into say, hey, let's maybe go
beyond the same 10 carriers thatwe've invited to our RFP
process for the last five years.
Who else is out there thatmight be able to do this for us
(19:41):
with having better service andbetter rates?
And then you can go to Genlogs.
You can query that lane we'regoing to give you all the
carriers.
You can sort by theirout-of-service scores.
You could sort by their fleetsizes.
You could sort by theirauthority age.
You can really dial it in toget exactly what you want.
And it's always current and weliterally, in our platform, will
show you dots where they'vebeen seeing the last 24 hours.
(20:03):
So you know this wasn't acarrier that was running this
lane six months ago but then,frankly, maybe went out of
business and someone else boughttheir motor carrier number is
now about to defraud you.
You know that they are not onlyrunning that lane as of
yesterday, but with one buttonyou can click and actually see
all of their trucks that wererunning that lane yesterday.
You can examine the equipment.
(20:24):
If you're a flatbed carrier,you can literally look at their
strap work and say how are theytarping?
What's their strap work?
Are they the type of carrier wewant to invite to this RFP
process?
If it is boom, you reach out,you bring them in and with more
competition you are inevitablygoing to get better rates and
better certs.
That's capitalism 101.
Before you were just hamstrungby not having the data to know
(20:46):
who to invite to that RFPprocess.
Now you can't.
And so if you are a CPG companydelivering to a Walmart there
and you're worried about youron-time in full and hey, you
want to know that these carriersare going to be great for OTIF
and all the above, well, we'regoing to have a lot of data
about them.
It's like the regularity thatthey're running the lanes.
(21:08):
How fast are they going betweenpoint A to point B?
Are they reckless or are theyjust going to consistently get
your goods there on time?
That's the type of that datathat we're collecting.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Ryan, I want to ask you a two-part question and it's
going to be long-winded, sobear with me.
I've had a chance to see yourteam at Action.
Alex Craley, you have a greatteam.
You're not just a one-man showand you guys are solving so many
things.
When you're talking to companyA, who is the right person?
Because there's the assetconversation, there's the
trucking and transportation andlanes conversation, so who is
(21:43):
the right person to talk to?
And then, when I'm in meetingswith your team, we're
discovering so many new usecases.
How are you prioritizing andstreamlining the workflow that
you guys are working on?
Josh?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
it's been one of the I would say problems up front
that I thought was going to be aproblem.
It's actually been a blessingin disguise, because the
platform is extremely variable.
So trying to figure out is whois the one person that we're
going to talk to.
That's kind of been an issue,because someone will hear about
us on the asset, the trailermanagement side, and they'll
come to us and say we heard youguys are tracking down trailers.
(22:14):
We have a list of them.
Can we work with you?
Absolutely, and we'll oftenstart with whoever comes inbound
to us first.
And I'll be honest, we have yetto build our outbound sales
motion because it's almost allbeen word of mouth right now and
it's been awesome and we'regoing to change that over time.
We just brought in Chris Kobus,came most recently from Project
44, really knows the shipperspace and really knows the
(22:38):
visibility space.
He's going to work wonders fordeveloping that outbound motion.
But for those coming in, we weregetting hit from various folks
and we really focused on freightbrokerages for a long time and
so it was often the carriersales, vp of carrier sales or
sometimes it was to be the VP ofcustomer sales, because we also
(22:59):
have the lane data for about aquarter of a million shippers
around the US.
So we would field, kind ofwherever the inbound came from
us.
We would tailor a demo to thatindividual.
Then we say, look, this is aplatform that can do so much
more, so can we invite let's sayit was the trailer management
or the asset management teamsand they came to us first we'd
(23:20):
say, hey, but next time we dealwith you, let's bring in the VP
of carrier sales as well.
And then we kind of build thisconsensus based on whoever came
to us first.
And that's been really exciting.
Now, in terms of all the usecases that we can attack, one of
the things that we realized forthe last year we've been what I
will call USDOT or fleet leveldata.
(23:41):
So we're looking at, hey, thisWalmart truck just flew by and
we're capturing that as aWalmart truck.
And then we kind of look at thefootprints of Walmart on the
roads, or maybe Werner on theroads or whatever it might be.
What we are building towards,and we're releasing this in
mid-July, is what we are callingGenLogs 2.0.
(24:01):
And that is when we drill downfrom the fleet level to truly
the VIN or the truck level dataand man that unlocks so much
more.
And I'll give you a greatexample.
The other day there was alawsuit that was brought against
a major US shipper.
It was a lawsuit that wasdropped because there was a car
accident or a truck accidentthat occurred that killed a
(24:24):
handful of people verytragically.
But this lawsuit hinges uponthe hours of service that the
driver was driving at the timeand that the potential
violations that occurred there.
So I went into our data, lookedup this shipper and said, well,
who else is hauling for themout in the roads?
And we found one of thecarriers that hauls for them.
(24:44):
Because we could search thisshipper's logo of their trailers
and see every carrier thatactually hauls for them in the
roads, we just choose one atrandom and started to dig into
this specific carrier.
They had seven trucks on theroads.
They've had a few violations,but from the fleet level you'd
say, hey, they're out there, itdoesn't seem to be an issue.
(25:05):
Let's move on to the next case.
They're good to go and in factin every vetting and compliance
tool out there they literallyhave green checks as they're
validated.
They're good to go, there'snothing to miss there.
But when you actually go fromthe fleet level down to the
truck or bin level.
That's where some of thoseskeletons in the closet start to
reveal themselves.
So I looked back and saw thatone of the trucks had been
(25:28):
placed out of service last yearand it was placed out of service
for an airbrake issue and alsofor a fuel leak issue.
Now I haven't talked about itpublicly much, but my
grandfather was actually killedby a truck driver who was
driving on an out-of-serviceviolation for air brakes.
This hit really close to homethat I was seeing that they had
(25:50):
been placed out of service in aninspection.
Well, immediately that carriershould be taking that truck to
go get service to make sure it'ssafe before they continue to
operate.
But when we looked in our datafour hours later after this out
of service violation, we sawthem four hours up the road.
Wow, they just kept drivingafter the inspection.
And then we dug in and lookedat what mileage are they
(26:13):
actually claiming out there?
Because they've had some hoursof service violations.
In fact they had a violationfor concealing their hours and
attempting to hide their hoursof service.
So we took a look at this onetruck and we watched it in a
five-day period go fromPennsylvania to Indiana, to
Arizona, to California, turnaround and go California to
Texas, back to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
That's crazy, come on .
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, it drove 4,500 miles, 70 hours within five days
.
There's just no way to do thatwithout having some violations.
Now, at the USDOT level,everything would seem fine, but
at the truck level, that shippernow has another ticking time
bomb at its hands and another$100 million lawsuit that can be
(26:58):
coming down the pike.
So what we're revealing in Julyis really going to now unlock a
whole lot of more use cases forshippers.
Oh yeah, the good news is it'sall on the same platform and
there's not like, hey, we'retrying to sell you this
completely different platform,that it's the same platform
we've had.
We're just diving down deeperinto the data and now unveiling
(27:20):
all of this new insights thatcan help you get ahead of the
compliance issues up front.
Or, if there's a fraud or theftissue in the back end, we can
now help recover that.
And in the middle, we can nowget a whole lot more targeted
about what carriers you'reactually inviting your RFP
process to ensure that you areprotecting yourselves and your
freight.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So you mentioned insurance kind of at the
beginning.
How are you helping yourcustomers with those
conversations?
Because for the insurancecompanies I can imagine a lot of
this is going to be a littlebit newer for them.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And trying to get up to speed as well, we took a
random sampling of our data theother day and we have this API
that essentially merges whatGenlogs is seeing out in the
roads with what the FederalMotor Carrier Safety
Administration is seeing.
It's all kind of together, butin terms of how much of that
(28:15):
data is actually Genlogs data?
It's over 97% of that data, sowe are seeing over 30 times the
amount of data that FMCSA isseeing on the roads on trucks.
We are seeing them in all thesedifferent states, which then
just gives you a more robustpicture.
Well, when it comes toinsurance, literally for the
last 70 years, the only datathat insurers have really had to
(28:38):
do their underwriting has beenthe inspection data from the
Federal Motor SafetyAdministration.
And then, when it comes to theactual claims, they've kind of
been out of luck.
There just hasn't been a reallyround truth that they can rely
on to say, hey, was this damagehere a week ago Before you claim
that it happened?
(28:59):
And hey, when the carrierclaims that you sideswipe or
that you had damage that you arenow faulting a shipper for, was
that damage actually thereprior or are you just trying to
pin it on someone else?
And the bad apples absolutelyhave tried to pin it on someone
else.
What's crazy when it comes tothe insurance space?
I was speaking with an insurerthe other day.
(29:20):
They told me that 43% of theclaims that they process now
have to do with fraud or theft.
So, as that continues to grow,the claims that they're having
to deal with is now fraud andtheft, and all of that cost is
being passed along to the marketwrit large, and so what we're
really excited about is nowbeing able to put a tool into an
(29:43):
insurer's hands that's going toallow them to do better
underwriting upfront so thatthey can really dial in.
Let's not apply these premiumsto everyone in the market.
Let's apply it to those thatare more problematic and those
that are doing right.
Then they can pay lowerpremiums on the whole.
So that's really how this isgoing to help on the process
(30:07):
overall.
The other thing we're workingwith insurers is to say, hey, if
you have a shipper that iseither using Genlogs or
requiring their brokers to useGenlogs, then looking at ways to
reduce their insurance overall,because it is absolutely
unequivocally like we have thedata to prove this that when you
(30:28):
are using gem logs and using itwell, that your risk of fraud
and theft drops to near zero andfor the little bit that
actually could happen, that younow have a tool to actually
initiate that recovery process.
So in terms of the risk thatthe insurers are taking on when
they are insuring a Gemlogscustomer or a shipper that's
(30:48):
requiring their brokers to useGemlogs, then their risk just
plummeted and we can actuallytherefore lower those premiums
as well.
So that's where we get reallyexcited in the insurance side is
to both give the insuranceindustry better data but also
allow them to give rebates ordiscounts to customers using
GenLogs.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Ryan.
So I want to go back to thesupplier CPG side, because that
will be a broad portion of theaudience here.
So I am supplier CPG, supplychain person A, and I'm hooked.
This sounds super cool.
What does a contract look like?
Do I get access to the platformand I get everything in the
platform?
Or are are different layers ofdata that I get at different
price tiers?
(31:26):
And will that change withGenLogs 2.0?
Walk me through a little bitaround how, as a customer, I'd
be able to interact with you, atwhat type of pricing levels.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, what I can say is what we've been doing
historically.
We're kind of reviewing thisprocess now to say, hey, do we
break this out to make itfrankly more attractive for
people to get on a lower pricingtier early on and then, as they
want to add in new capabilities, they can come up.
Historically, what we've justdone is one enterprise price.
That's for unlimited seats,unlimited use cases.
(31:56):
You get it all, so you cansource carriers on lanes, you
can investigate and set alertson certain assets.
You could do that all for onemonthly price, and that was it.
You could bring as many peopleon as possible.
What we found is that we're notthe cheapest solution in the
market.
We're also the best.
(32:17):
I'm confident of that when youactually see what we're able to
do.
But there were some folks thatsaid, look, we don't need all of
the bells and whistles rightnow.
Can we start out?
This is the one use case we'retrying to address now, and so
we're looking.
Okay, can we unbundle thisenterprise pricing so that we
can tackle hey, you just need totrack down missing assets.
Great, we can work with you onthat until your transportation
(32:38):
team wants to now look at whatare the carriers operating in
certain lanes during RFP seasonto look to and to invite.
Then we can expand the aperturethere.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So you can mask the other data above and beyond that
.
So you could say you're goingto pay for the assets and asset
tracking only and I'm going tomask everything else and this is
the price you're going to pay.
But when you're sold on that, Ican open up more data at a
higher price point.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
That's what we're looking to do is to provide
flexibility there.
A higher price point that's whatwe're looking to do is to
provide flexibility there, whichincludes there are some
enterprise customers that theylove the UI that we've developed
and it's extremely intuitiveand it gets you exactly what you
need.
For some, they've said that'sall we need.
Others have said, hey, we wantto have direct access to your
data as much as possible via APIto integrate into everything we
(33:25):
do, so we can find literallywhat is the truck to load ratio
in Dallas right now.
Well, if you look in Dallas, wehave every major ingress and
egress highway in and out ofDallas completely ringed with
our camera systems, which meansyou will know exactly how many
flatbed trucks are in Dallasright now, or exactly how many
refurts and what that can dowith driving pricing or dialing
(33:47):
in pricing.
There's some customers that saywe want that and we'll work
with customers to make sure wecan get them exactly what they
need.
But we are kind of readdressingthe, not forcing you to eat the
whole elephant, so to say wecan have you eat certain bites
of the elephant over time.
We love that.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
The competitive dynamic.
I do want to touch on for JoshCrack's joke that he's been
sitting on probably for 10minutes.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (34:13):
guys handling that right now?
You have a customer, or maybeyou have two customers, and they
are in direct competition withone another, and maybe you let
them reach the conclusion thatif they ask nicely, they could
get some data on theircompetitor.
And maybe you let them reachthe conclusion that if they
asked nicely, they could getsome data on their competitor.
How are you guys handling thatas a company?
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, this is a I'll be very candid that we haven't
fully solved what we're going todo about this in the long.
So, hey, if you're listeningand you got some ideas about it,
please reach out.
I'd love to have a chat,because we really started this.
We're calling this the truckintelligence platform and we're
trying to really differentiatethat from competitive
intelligence platform.
(34:50):
Now, the way that we've handledthis to date is, essentially,
we will show you the lanes thata carrier runs, but we'll show
it obfuscated to kind of a 20mile hexagon out there saying,
hey, they're delivering to someshipper in here and they're
picking up from some shipper inhere.
So shipper-receiver pairing, soto say.
That has been incredible.
(35:13):
It's worked for us thus far.
About a few months ago, weflipped on what's known as our
intermodal insights.
This now actually goes a layerbeyond that, which allows you to
look at every intermodal railramp in America, click on it and
seeing every shipper orreceiver that has freight to and
from that ramp.
So we look at the drayagetrucks and look at their origins
(35:34):
destinations.
That's how we're able to dothat.
Now that we've actuallydeployed our own sensors at a
major US port and have a fewothers coming on.
We're going to be doing thatsame insights for the port
operators themselves and some oftheir stakeholders to say what
are the beneficial cargo ownersthat actually specifically
received the freight coming inand out of this port.
(35:57):
There's been demand, therefore,because we have gone, we've kind
of almost pierced the veil ofthis hexagon kind of masked
approach to say, well, can youjust show me that if Acme widget
company, where exactly we knowtheir lanes, but who exactly are
they delivering to and what isthe volume?
How many truckloads a week arethey doing there?
That would be really helpful.
We're kind of in this processof like, if I have Coca-Cola as
(36:23):
a customer, well, how's Pepsigoing to feel if they're also a
customer?
And that could put us kind ofin a bind.
So, candidly, we're debatinginternally, we're talking with
stakeholders, we're talking withour customers to say what is
the line that you would feelcomfortable people knowing about
your operations, that,therefore, you would feel
comfortable knowing aboutsomeone else's operations A
(36:44):
little bit of this do untoothers as they would have them
do to you.
I think, ultimately, themarket's just going to sort that
out if we really feel thatsucking sound, and a lot of this
can be derived throughpiecemeal, through a lot of
other observations of data.
Potentially, genlogs is justthe platform that brings it all
together and just makes itvisible.
It's not fully decided, but ifyou're listening and you're like
(37:05):
, well, I kind of want to knowwhat's happening, then we'd love
to engage because we do want tohear how, how you would feel
and how others would feel agreedbecause then gen logs can
become the standard thateverybody knows.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
We're going to abide by these rules, these best
practices, like the Zelle whenall the major banks got on the
same page in the technology.
So I think that is cool.
That is a cool conversation.
If you have thoughts, pleaseping us, ping Ryan, let him know
.
I think the hexagon approach isa nice stopgap.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
The one thing we're looking at Arby is allowing each
customer to see their suppliersand where their suppliers
receive their supplies from, soessentially looking at their
supply chain.
Going back in time and early onwe did this where we isolated
this shipper in Hattiesburg,Mississippi.
(38:01):
I gave my team no other dataabout this other than it was
Western Container Corporationand I just said pull me the
outbound lanes for this shipper.
And so they did, and there wasa big line that went down in New
Orleans, a big line that wentup to Indianapolis area, and
when we actually looked at whereall of those trucks were going
(38:21):
down in New Orleans, they weregoing to Coca-Cola bottle.
And then we went up tosomeplace in Missouri and then
they were going to Coca-Colabottling there.
And then we looked over at even, like in Orlando, they were
going to Coca-Cola bottle.
So we saw that, oh, this is asupplier for Coca-Cola bottle.
My team had no knowledge of that, but the data led us to that
conclusion.
Well, what was really cool thenis to take Western Container
(38:44):
Corporation and say, okay, whatare their inbound links?
Essentially, who is supplyingthem?
Well, if you're Coca-Cola andWestern Container Corporation is
making the bottles for you, youwant to know if there's risk,
from where Western ContainerCorporation is actually getting
their supplies, because maybethey were getting their supplies
from China.
(39:05):
There we go and all of a sudden,now we got tariffs coming up,
that's going to be passed alongto you.
We can actually go source thatall the way back and provide you
this kind of hey.
You have a risk here where thecontainers have stopped coming
out of this port in China andthey're not going to get to them
and they're not going totherefore become this whether
it's a cocoa bottle or someother widget that your business
(39:26):
depends on and be able to tracethat back and have full supply
chain visibility.
That is something that it's nota competitive intelligence,
it's your own supply chainintelligence, and that's
something we will be doing andthat's something that's
currently available in ourplatform.
Right now, we could just say,hey, I need to see this supplier
, not down to the hexagon level,but down to the actual where
(39:48):
are they getting their suppliesfrom, so that we know if we're
at risk.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, I've been in a couple of meetings with you guys
.
It's interesting.
The light bulb clicks forpeople like wait, wait, I could
see other people's stuff.
Hold on, that means they couldsee my stuff as well.
It's like uh-huh, have youfigured out a software Like
uh-uh, because we don't write,and I think you're playing it
the right way, like this is nota transactional.
I want somebody to write me acheck and share this with.
I mean, you guys are reallythinking and taking a mindful
(40:13):
approach as to how you want todo this.
Do this the right way, theethical way, make sure that it's
a level playing field.
And I commend you guys forthinking through this, because
you guys could just be goingright and I think the way you're
doing it is the smart way.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
You know I learned this, josh, from my time in the
US intelligence community.
We have great intelligencerelationships with a lot of
other intelligence agencies froma lot of other countries.
What we don't do is give all oftheir intelligence to every
other country and we try todevelop those truly decades-long
partnerships hopefullycenturies-long partnerships in
terms of the intelligenceliaison relationships that we
(40:51):
have.
It's very similar where Genlogsis right now.
We're trying to find what is thebalance to make sure that
customers don't feel exposed.
It doesn't feel dirty, likethey're getting what they need
and they're able to say, hey, Igot better transportation on
this lane than potentially mycompetitor because I'm using gen
logs.
But at the end of the day, theydon't feel exposed themselves,
(41:13):
with everyone else being able tolook at what's going on in
their operations.
So it's going to be a delicatebalance.
We're trying to find it.
That's why we're listening here.
We want to hear from folks tosay I don't really feel
comfortable about that beingexposed, but I don't mind that.
The carriers that are out thererunning our trailers that's
just kind of like.
(41:33):
If you can see it with thenaked eye on the road, it's
tough to say you got to suppressit in our data.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, Ryan, I have the tough job of being
timekeeper here.
I know you, Harvey and I, overa beer, could go for four or
five hours because I think whatyou're doing is so cool and we
have such a long standingrelationship with you.
What's the best way for folksto connect with you?
Email address, website, if youwant to give me your Instagram
or anything else fun.
Obviously LinkedIn access.
(41:59):
But how do people get in touchwith you if you're looking for
more information other thangoing through Harvey and myself?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
of course, yeah, let me just start by saying please
go check out the websites.
It's genlogsio G-E-N-L-O-G-Sio.
Upper right-hand corner.
We have two buttons and this isreally important One.
We have a find lost assetsbutton.
We will help anyone out therein the industry up to three
times find their lost or stolenequipment for free.
(42:26):
We're not going to send you Ifyou never need more than three
times the help, boom, it's freefor all your life.
But that button's up thereRight beside it is the book, a
demo button.
Hit that That'll connect withour team who would love to reach
out and show you.
I'm on LinkedIn.
You can search me, ryan Joyce.
That's a great way to connectwith me there.
That's the primary platform.
I wish I was cool enough tohave an Instagram or even an
(42:48):
active Twitter account.
But yeah, ryan Joyce, onLinkedIn or genlogs
G-E-N-L-O-G-Sio Harvey partingshots.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Final words from you.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Well, before we wrap, I wanted to kind of come back
to the founder journey, right,and the mission, the team and
all that stuff which we spent somuch time talking about.
The product, because theproduct can speak for itself.
But, Ryan, I do want to wrap upwith just hearing from you what
has it been like building thiscompany, building this team,
keeping them on mission, stayingfocused and growing this fast?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yeah, yeah, it's not been easy.
And growing this fast yeah,yeah, it's not been easy.
One thing that I it's kind ofmy cheat code that I would give
to any other founder that wascoming in there is communication
, and transparency is so key tomake sure that everyone's
growing in the same direction.
We made a decision early on sothat we could hire the best
talent anywhere.
We were not going to berequiring everyone to come into
(43:42):
the office, so it was a veryremote work first environment.
As a result, we needed to makesure that we were always giving
the where are we going and thewhy, and so I spend eight to 10
hours every weekend puttingtogether a message that goes out
to my team at 7am every Mondaymorning Schedules to send.
Boom.
It heads out.
It gives them a where what didwe do the last week, where are
(44:05):
we going this week and how doesit fit in the overall strategy?
And we just do it over and overagain, and that is the drumbeat
that causes us to all row inthe same direction.
That has been my cheat code.
Also, hiring the best people.
Obviously, that speaks foritself, but, like Josh said,
he's met some folks on our teamAlex, chris.
There's a host of others that Iwould love to promote more as
(44:28):
time goes on, because they'redoing fantastic work and they're
going to go be the futurefounders that Plug and Play
should definitely invest in andhave them at conferences in the
future as well.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Thank you.
Your company is amazing To yourpoint.
Alex, chris, the team I'veworked with is fantastic.
Everybody always wants to talkto you and I'm like, well, if
Ryan's unavailable.
The other guys are pretty darngood as well and I've seen them
in front of customers andclients and leads and they do a
great job.
I'm excited that you've trustedPlug Play to help lead the
journey with you guys and foryou guys and some of the stuff
(44:59):
that we've worked on togetherand it's only the beginning.
I mean, you guys are a rocketship that's about to just take
off and we're just excited to beassociated with you and team.
So thank you for the time today.
Much appreciated Any last words.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Well, what I'll say is you guys have been phenomenal
.
So, Josh, harvey can't thankyou enough, and Harvey, I hate
to say it, but man go Caps.
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