Ep. #67: Clay Curran, CEO & Cofounder, FreshX

Andrew welcomes Clay Curran, CEO and cofounder of FreshX, a young company tackling the tricky reefer LTL space. Clay shares his entrepreneurial journey, marked by a willingness to pivot that has shaped both his personal career trajectory and the FreshX business model. Today, FreshX is a marketplace that connects brokers with more than 80 reefer LTL carriers.

In this episode, Clay also covers:

• His path to entrepreneurship and early lessons learned from his entrepreneurial parents.
• The evolution of FreshX, including two major pivots from a last-mile delivery carrier to a reefer LTL brokerage, and finally to its current iteration as a tech-driven marketplace.
• The challenges and nuances of the reefer LTL market, including carrier specialization, capacity visibility, and the difficulties brokers face in sourcing reliable options.
• How FreshX is working to unlock hidden capacity and digitize pricing by building relationships with more than 80 reefer LTL carriers and providing a "Google Flights-like" platform for brokers.
• His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in the freight industry, emphasizing the importance of good advisors, rapid iteration, and deeply understanding the real problems you're trying to solve.

Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.

*** This episode is brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services. Visit gorapido.com to learn more.

A special thanks to our additional sponsors:

• Cargado – Cargado is the first platform that connects logistics companies and trucking companies that move freight into and out of Mexico. Visit cargado.com to learn more.
• Greenscreens.ai – Greenscreens.ai is the AI-powered pricing and market intelligence tool transforming how freight brokers price freight. Visit greenscreens.ai/freightpod today!
• Metafora – Metafora is a technology consulting firm that has delivered value for over a decade to brokers, shippers, carriers, private equity firms, and freight tech companies. Check them out at metafora.net. ***

Episode Transcript

Andrew Silver (00:00):
Hey FreightPod listeners.
Before we get started today,let's do a quick shout out to
our sponsor, rapido SolutionsGroup.
Rapido connects logistics andsupply chain organizations in
North America with the best nearshore talent to scale
efficiently and deliver superiorcustomer service.
Rapido works with businessesfrom all sides of the logistics
industry.
This includes brokers, carriersand logistics software

(00:22):
companies.
This includes brokers, carriersand logistics software
companies.
Rapido builds out teams withroles across customer and
carrier sales and support, backoffice administration and
technology services.
The team at Rapido knowslogistics and people.
It's what sets them apart.
Rapido is driven by an insideknowledge of how to recruit,
hire and train within theindustry and a passion to build

(00:43):
better solutions for success.
The team is led by CEO DannyFrisco and COO Roberto Lacazza,
two guys I've worked with frommy earliest days in the industry
at Coyote.
I have a long history with themand I trust them.
I've even been a customer oftheirs at Molo and let me tell
you they made our businessbetter.
In the current market, whereeveryone's trying to do more

(01:03):
with less and save money,solutions like Rapido are a
great place to start To learnmore.
Check them out at gorapidocom.
That's gorapidocom, all right.

(01:31):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcomeback to another episode of the
Freight Pod.
I'm your host, andrew Silver,joined today by another special
guest.
They're all special guests onthe Freight Pod.
Today's guest is Mr Clay.
I'm going to say your last name.
Hopefully it's not wrongCorinne Clay, corinne, mr Clay,
I'm going to say your last name.
Hopefully it's not wrong.
Corinne Clay, corinne, perfect,yep, perfect.
Clay is the CEO and founder ofFreshX, a company that is

(01:54):
attacking the reefer LTL space.
Which man this business hasbeen needed?
It's interesting.
I think in either the first orsecond FreightPod episode ever I
can't remember which one,whether it was Kevin Nolan or
with Ted Alling we spent quite abit of time talking about a
reefer LTL business, and I justthink it's something that's been

(02:15):
needed in our space for a longtime someone to try to solve
that problem.
So I'm really eager and excitedto learn more about what you
and your team are building.
But before we get into thebusiness, let's talk about Clay
the person, clay the man.
Why don't you just tell me alittle bit about yourself, your
interests, what you'd like to dogrowing up, and eventually

(02:39):
we'll get into the freight stuff?
But just talk about yourselffor a minute.

Clay Curran (02:43):
Sure, yeah, and thanks for having me on.
I'm excited to be here.
So I guess, yeah, my backgroundI grew up in New York, in
Westchester, new York, outsidethe city in the suburbs, and I
was always pretty, I think,distracted growing up and didn't

(03:08):
have the best focus in schooland everything.
I got OK grades but always waskind of getting distracted and
exploring new things.
To college in Ithaca, new York,upstate, new York, at Ithaca

(03:30):
College and didn't really knowwhat I wanted to do at the time.
But they had a great musicprogram and I always liked to
play the drums and play guitarand so just went to take music
classes and then figure it outalong the way.
So I pivoted majors a few times.
In undergrad I went fromphysics to creative writing, to

(03:52):
business and ultimately settledon finance, and so that was
undergrad.
After I graduated I moved toManhattan and worked at a fund
called Prospect Capital.
It was a private equity andprivate debt fund and I was

(04:17):
doing a mix of different thingsthroughout my four years there.
I was trading bonds, structuredproducts, I was working on the
balance sheet of the portfolioand then handling fundraising
support.
So got to see all kind of thedifferent sides of that business

(04:39):
.

Andrew Silver (04:41):
Was there anything in that business that
brought you to freight?

Clay Curran (04:55):
or was there anything freight related in that
or not at all?
My first kind of time to learnabout LTL and one of our.
We had a loan to Global Transand so I got to learn a little
bit about that company from thedeal manager on that.
So it was a little bit a lot ofprivate equity companies

(05:16):
touched logistics and so I gotto kind of see things from a
pretty removed standpoint.
But yeah, ultimately I didn'treally love finance.
It felt like I was kind of veryabstracted and removed from the
real world problems and that'swhy I decided to leave that

(05:40):
position and go to businessschool and find something new.

Andrew Silver (05:44):
And did you always have an itch to be an
entrepreneur, start your ownbusiness, or was that something
that came along further once youhad an idea?

Clay Curran (05:57):
I think I always did.
I don't really like followingrules and being told what to do,
and so I think that it wasalways the only thing that was
really going to make me happyand satisfied.
My parents are bothentrepreneurs so small
businesses but I got to see thatgrowing up and got to see the

(06:20):
kind of freedom they had and theautonomy and they really
enjoyed running their ownbusiness, and so it was nice to
see that that can the freedomthey had and the the autonomy,
and they really enjoyed runningtheir own business, and so it
was um nice to see that that canbe a rewarding path what's?

Andrew Silver (06:31):
what's something you learned from your parental
entrepreneurs, that, um, thatyou've kind of taken as a lesson
to bring into your own journey.

Clay Curran (06:43):
That's a good question, I think so.
One thing is my mom wasoriginally an art teacher and
then she decided to open up herown interior design firm and I
think that she didn't reallyfeel like she was ready and she
was always on the um, on theedge about it, on the fence,

(07:07):
about whether she should uh,make the make the jump and start
a company um.
And she ended up doing it andit ended up working out and it.
It was slow to start, but itover time she was able to build
a brand and um and build acustomer base, and so so I think
the thing I learned is just totake the leap and you can figure

(07:28):
it out as you go.
It's not going to be crystalclear from the start.
You have to work at it andbuild it over time.

Andrew Silver (07:36):
Yeah, I think that's a very valuable lesson,
especially for startups,first-time founders.
It's like I think a big mistakesome people make is trying to
get all the answers before theydo anything because out of fear
of I don't know failing orlooking like an idiot or missing
a step.
It's like you can figure out alot of things along the way and

(07:58):
you know Bogart, my partner fromMola, used to constantly make
reference to this.
I don't know if it's an analogyor what, but you basically said
you know this business is likebuilding a plane while you're in
the air and you're flying itand there's still pieces that
need to be screwed in and thingsneed to be added.

(08:19):
And you just got to figure itout.
Keep the the plane afloat andkeep attacking and solving
problems and things will workthemselves out.
And I think that's a very wiseway to think about it, because
you'll have analysis paralysisif you just sit around trying to
get the answer to everyquestion before you kind of say,
go and start moving.

Clay Curran (08:42):
Yeah, and we definitely had that experience
too, and I think we not only,like, built the plane, while we
were flying it, we changed thewhole plane.
We ended up totally pivoting,switching business models,
switching customer bases.
So we actually, over the spanof two years since we launched
the company, we got to revenuetwice and then shut down the

(09:04):
business and started somethingcompletely new.
And so it was all aboutlearning and, I think, iterating
really really fast and kind ofjust learning as quickly as
possible and making thosechanges.

Andrew Silver (09:16):
Talk a little bit about, like when you say kind
of two massive changes, likewhat was the original business
idea for FreshX?

Clay Curran (09:24):
two massive changes Like what was the original
business idea for FreshX?
So the original business ideawas a last mile delivery
business and so we were going tomarket as a carrier.
We were going to build a modelsimilar to Veho, where we used
outsource gig worker drivers andbuilt a last mile business

(09:47):
around the food and beveragespace.
So that was the one thing thatkind of stuck the whole time was
food and beverage.
But we initially were trying towork with those companies to
make their last mile moreefficient, basically try to take
a lot of the packaging out ofthe equation and basically pack
the boxes closer to the enddestination.

(10:09):
So that was it.
We ended up running a pilot, wedelivered packages for a summer
and got a paying customer forthat.
So that was phase one.
We actually had a differentname.
We were called Orca.

Andrew Silver (10:26):
Uh, and why?
Why did Orca?
Why does?
Why did Orca not make it?
Why did you pivot from the Orcaplan?

Clay Curran (10:35):
So we, we um, it actually was uh kind of working.
So we had some, our our pilotcustomer agreed to roll out
across Chicago, and so we werehitting the right milestones.
We ended up getting fundingright after that.
But we kept hearing from theshippers, the food and beverage

(10:57):
companies, that there's thisbigger problem upstream and that
was reefer LTL.
And so they just kept tellingus reefer LTL you know, what
you're doing is kind of kind ofa pain point but there's this
other thing that's reallybugging us and it's probably
going to prevent what you'retrying to do from really working
.
Where I think what happened, uh,and one of the light bulb

(11:19):
moments was we.
We had a customer that wasmanufacturing um salad kits out
of I think it was Virginia, andwe wanted to run a last mile
program for them in Chicago.
And we said, all right, shipthem to us on a refrigerated
truck and then we'll set up thelast mile distribution.
And they said, well, we have noway of getting them to you on a

(11:42):
refrigerated truck, we have topack them in boxes and put them
on a FedEx truck, because that'sthe only way we can get
reliable LTL to Chicago.
And so we realized that there'sthis deeper problem that was
going to prevent a lot ofefficiencies from happening, I
think.
For like a couple of weeks wethought we could try to do it

(12:03):
all and work with thesecompanies to manage their entire
fulfillment process, end to end, and then we at the end of the
day realized you can only reallyfocus on one thing as a startup
.
You have to be really, reallyfocused, and Reefer LTL was the
bigger problem, and so wetotally threw aside the last
mile business and got ourbrokerage authority and started

(12:24):
brokering reefer ltl okay, soyou pivoted to become a reefer
ltl broker.

Andrew Silver (12:31):
Yep, and that was fresh x logistics.
That was fresh x logistics yep,and so we that was the time and
when did you make that pivot?

Clay Curran (12:44):
That was October or maybe November of 2023 is when
we started brokering freight andit was a small operation.
We had a handful of customers.
It was just me and myco-founder, lance.
We've been co-foundersthroughout this whole thing as

(13:05):
we've shifted models and gonethrough all these changes, but
we started brokering freightthen we really didn't have any
idea what we were doing.
We didn't have a formal freightbackground.
We had an advisor, lars, who weended up booking our first load
, and then we called Lars and wewere like Lars, what do we do?

(13:26):
Do we need to sign something?
And he walked us through it andwe ended up building processes
and building a book of customersthat kept coming back to us.

Andrew Silver (13:41):
What was it like trying to run a brokerage with
zero experience?

Clay Curran (13:48):
um, it was really tough, especially because we we
really focused on reefer ltl,which is just such a difficult
thing to handle for for freebrokers.
Um, so we I mean we were wewere flying blind.
We we got lars was a goodadvisor at the time and he
walked us through a lot of itbut we were really figuring it

(14:10):
out as we went along and it wasinteresting that we were still
able to capture customers.
I think that the reefer LTLfocus was a part of that.
Just that niche focus allowedus to get in touch with those
customers and give themsomething that they wanted.
So difficult but not as hard aswe thought it might be.

Andrew Silver (14:35):
Yeah, I will say if I was a sales rep and I just
wanted customers to at leastrespond to my email or give me a
chance, I would solicit, Iwould offer reefer LTL capacity
Because you probably, of all thethings you could reach out to a
shipper and offer support on,reefer LTL, probably is the

(14:57):
highest percentage chance ofgarnering a response.
Now, what you do once they giveyou the freight or the
opportunity, that's a wholedifferent ballgame and has
historically been a verychallenging thing to navigate.
But that's partially why we'rehere, so we won't jump into that
yet.
I just want to sit on thebrokerage for a minute, though.

(15:18):
I'm curious, like what weresome of the lessons you learned
pretty quickly about dealingwith reefer LTL freight that,
especially coming without anindustry experience, were
eye-opening or insightful foryou?

Clay Curran (15:32):
Yeah, I think that one of the things that surprised
us, and that still continues tosurprise us, is that there are
a lot of these carriers outthere that do refer LTL and a
lot of folks think that there'sonly like one to five
refrigerated LTL carriers, butthere's actually well over a

(15:54):
hundred.
A lot of them are reallyspecialized and so they run
specific lanes Maybe they dochilled LTL from Miami up the
East Coast and each one isspecialized in temperature and
they're specialized incommodities they run.
They don't run certaincommodities, but that

(16:14):
specialization allows them tocreate enough consolidation for
the operation to be profitable.
So there was that.
There was just learning aboutthe carriers.
One thing I found interestingwe went and met with a lot of
these carriers in person,starting out just to build those
relationships, and the overflowof emails was something that

(16:39):
was pretty interesting.
So they get inundated withquote requests and orders all
day long, and I'm sure it's thecase for a lot of carriers, but
for Reefer LTL in particular, Ithink it's just pure chaos
dealing with all these inbounds.

Andrew Silver (16:55):
So yeah, Are a lot of those inbounds coming
from brokers or from shippersdirectly trying to utilize the
services?

Clay Curran (17:04):
Yeah, it's a mix and it depends on the carrier.
So some carriers are more knownfor spot and so those carriers
will be more broker heavy.
Some of them will have morecontract shipper customers and
it's interesting to see howthose companies have evolved
over time to have thosedifferent specializations and

(17:25):
reputations.

Andrew Silver (17:27):
Yeah, that is interesting and I actually had a
similar kind of purview orperspective as the kind of
misnomer you described.
Where you know we knew aboutFFE Frozen Food Express as like
the big national reefer LTL guy.
But most shippers that I knewof didn't have necessarily

(17:48):
favorable opinion of thembecause it kind of felt like
they had a monopoly on themarket.
And then there were what I knewof were some regional players,
but it never felt like enough toreally make reefer LTL a
foothold in my business, whetherI was a sales rep or you know

(18:08):
at molo as a company, because itjust felt like there just
wouldn't be enough capacity toreally service your customers in
a way that you felt comfortablecommitting um.
So I'm curious okay, you, youknow you're running fresh x
logistics, you and your coco-founder.
You're kind of running out andtrying to get some loads and
meeting with these carriers todevelop relationships there.

(18:31):
How long did you do that beforeyou thought like maybe this
isn't the right way to run ourbusiness?

Clay Curran (18:42):
It wasn't that long .
I think the first shipment wehad to deal with went sideways
and got lost in a warehousesomewhere in California and we
realized really quickly that weweren't going to be able to
build a tech company and abrokerage at the same time and
we had to pick a path.

(19:03):
Um, we were just so distractedby the um, by the brokerage and
all the manual operations andeverything um, and we also
realized that we weren't goingto be able to scale the
brokerage the amount that wewanted to, because with ltl you,
to make the economics work, youneed consolidation, you need

(19:26):
enough volume to make theeconomics really work and as a
startup brokerage, that's justimpossible to get off the bat.
So we realized that we had tobuild a tech platform that could
tap into a wide variety offreight brokerages and aggregate
that volume in order to makethe economics work.

Andrew Silver (19:50):
Are you looking to grow your brokerage?
Are you struggling to land newcustomers in these challenging
market conditions?
Look within.
So many companies that tenderyou freight throughout the
domestic United States also havebusiness coming out of Mexico.
A year ago I understand why youmight not have seen that

(20:12):
freight as an opportunity, buttoday Cargado exists and that
means any load coming into orout of Mexico is now an
opportunity for you to support.
In just over a year I've beenable to see Cargado go from
ideation to launch to rapidgrowth.
It's amazing to see how manylogistics companies have been
able to use Cargado go fromideation to launch to rapid
growth.
It's amazing to see how manylogistics companies have been
able to use Cargado to expandinto Mexico to grow their
business.
Cargado is the first platformthat connects logistics

(20:34):
companies and trucking companieswho are moving freight into and
out of Mexico.
If you move Mexico freight orare planning to reach out to
Cargado today at cargadocom,that's C-A-R-G-A-D-Ocom.
And so what did the pivot looklike?
I mean, you had raised talk tome about the fundraising journey
for, I guess, each of yourbusinesses, or was it one

(20:58):
fundraise, and then you've stuckwith those partners and they've
navigated the pivots with you.
What is that experience?
Is that experience Like howtalk to me first what you did
and then I'll kind of follow up?

Clay Curran (21:10):
Yeah, so it it actually is all one business and
that's because it it wasn'treally um.
The business evolved over timewhere we were doing one thing
and then we were slowly tryingsomething else and we relied on
the funding to get us throughthose pivots.
So initially we had raised umonly 25 000 from um university

(21:33):
of chicago and we I wentfull-time on uh on that funding
and uh, I was like this is tolast us six months max, but
we'll give it a shot.

Andrew Silver (21:46):
Six months on, 25 grand would be impressive.

Clay Curran (21:49):
Well, I was burning my own cash, yeah yeah.
So we got a developer thatworked for free.
He was a student at theuniversity, so we got by, but
not very much, though we endedup getting into an accelerator
and raising a bit more money.

(22:10):
We had raised about 200K by thetime we had totally pivoted
into a freight brokerage.
We tried raising as a freightbrokerage and we were going to
build a tech platform around thebrokerage and be kind of like
flock freight for refrigeratedwas the idea, and I think

(22:32):
investors had lost a lot ofappetite for the tech-enabled
freight brokerages, and so weended up not raising any money
under the brokerage model.
But once we pivoted, it becamepretty apparent that we had
something that investors weremore excited about.

Andrew Silver (22:53):
And what was the process of trying to raise money
as a non-freight experiencedindividual?
How challenging was it togenerate interest with or lack
of experience?

Clay Curran (23:12):
And yeah, it wasn't .
There was definitely that kindof question and we got some good
advisors.
We had Lars, we had yourbrother Matt advising us through
the whole process, so it helpedto be in touch with them and
have them in our fundraisingmaterial and helping us out
along the way we had.
I always told investors we had,like we learned 70% of what we

(23:34):
needed to know by brokeringfreight ourselves and then the
other 30% we got from ouradvisors.
Our lead investor that ended upleading the round ended up
investing because he knew theproblem that we were solving
really well, so he knew it wasreal.
He had portfolio companies thatare shippers that had dealt

(23:55):
with that problem.
They had a food focused VC fundout of Chicago and so they they
ended up just saying you know,this is a real problem that we
see you're solving.
We believe in you guys toexecute on it.

Andrew Silver (24:10):
Okay, and so when exactly did BrashX become,
become a thing?

Clay Curran (24:29):
So we closed the free brokerage down totally in,
I think, April of last year,2024.
We ended up raising money byJuly, so we went through a
business plan competition andwon a million bucks out of that
and then shortly after closedthe round within a couple of
weeks so added another 1.5.

Andrew Silver (24:50):
That was Chicago Booth's new venture challenge
deal.
Yeah, yeah, it was.
What was that experience like?

Clay Curran (24:58):
that was, uh, it was a really competitive
competition.
So the, the university ofchicago's school of business,
holds this competition everyyear.
Um, there's, I think, 80 teamsor so that apply to it and then
there's different stages whereteams get eliminated, and in our
cohort there was about 2million in prize money and 1

(25:23):
million of it went to the firstplace, so we ended up getting a
million dollars out of it.
But it was a tough competition.
There were a lot of othercompanies in there with revenue
that seemed a little bit furtheralong than us, but we had, I
think, built up a lot of fasttraction with freight brokerages
and with carriers, and we madethat pretty clear in our pitch.

Andrew Silver (25:46):
So now, what exactly?
I think we're at the point nowwhere I want you to tell me
exactly what FreightX does thecurrent business after two
pivots.

Clay Curran (25:55):
Yeah, so Fresh X is sort of a marketplace for
refrigerated LTL.
So what we ended up doing is webuilt relationships with most
of the refrigerated LTL carriersacross the US and some in
Canada.
We have a little over 80carrier partners currently.

(26:18):
Those carriers have worked withus to map out all of their
pricing, their rate sheets,schedules, and we've built a
pricing engine around it, and sothen we sell a product to
freight brokerages that lookslike Google flights for

(26:38):
refrigerated LTL, so freightbrokerages can go in.
They can run a search with zipcodes, pallets, weight,
temperature, commodity and getback instant price quotes from
refrigerated LTL carriers.
It's the tool that we wish wehad as a freight brokerage.
Back when we were brokeringfreight, we found that even if

(27:01):
you knew the 10 carriers thatdid LTL reefer out of Chicago,
you still had to email them allfor a price quote to find out
who's going to be best on anygiven lane, and that process was
time consuming.
You'd end up waiting hours toget a response.
Half of them don't respond toyou at all, and so this is

(27:21):
something that we had tried toback into their pricing and do
this all different ways, but theneed for instant rates was
really clear to us.

Andrew Silver (27:32):
And so do the carriers provide you the rates
in advance, or you help them todevelop the rates.

Clay Curran (27:40):
They provide us with the rates in advance.
So they send us over ratesheets in different formats.
Sometimes it's PDFs,spreadsheets.
Whatever they have on hand,it's either 100-weight-based
rate sheets or it's pallet-based.
They apply fuel surcharge.
But we work with them prettyclosely, almost in a consulting

(28:05):
partnership, where we arebuilding maps and showing it to
them and saying, does this lookright?
Do you want us to shave offSacramento?
And we map it out prettyclosely with them, get all the
rates dialed in and then havethem test and then, once they
approve the rates, they go liveto all of our customers.

Andrew Silver (28:27):
What's been the most challenging part of the
early stage of building this.

Clay Curran (28:34):
Yeah, I think it was definitely getting all the
carriers on board.
Um we, when we first started um, we had like one carrier
partner for the first two monthsand we were trying to get more
carriers online.
We ended up building the entirerating engine around this one

(28:55):
carrier's pricing and then foundout that it was totally
different than what the rest ofthe market did and we had to
throw the whole thing away.
So, building thoserelationships early on and
getting carriers to trust us andactually see that we're trying
to do something good here andgrow the pie we're not trying to
we're not a brokerage, we'renot trying to steal their

(29:16):
business it was hard for us toeven get those conversations,
let alone get them to providepricing and coverage to us and
invest their time into workingwith us.
The way we ended upaccomplishing that was traveling
a lot in the beginning and wewould go out to Florida or

(29:40):
Wisconsin or wherever and meetwith the carriers, meet with the
owner of the company usuallyand talk to them for a couple of
hours and show them mock-ups.
Kind of funny how thesecarriers are really standoffish
on the phone where it's likehard to get them to talk to you
and listen to what you're saying.
And then once you show up attheir dock and you meet with

(30:01):
them in person, they're superfriendly and they're down to
talk to you for hours.
So that was kind of the unlockfor us in the beginning was
traveling around and justbuilding those real
relationships with those folksand showing that we were, you
know, we were willing to investthat time ourselves.

Andrew Silver (30:20):
Yeah, I was going to ask, why do you think that
is?
Because I've I've noticed thattoo and I think you could say
that's true on the carrier side.
It's also probably true on thecustomer side, where people can
seem so standoffish when youcall cold call them or email
them, but then once you're faceto face, sitting in their office
, it's like a whole differentperson I think I mean, I think

(30:40):
that's probably, it's probablytrue for me a little bit.

Clay Curran (30:42):
I think they just get a lot of spam calls, um
they're.
They get a lot of, I think, uh,a lot of freight brokers and
shippers probably calling themasking for price quotes, and
then it doesn't end up end upturning into a real business
opportunity.
So it's a lot of time, I thinktheir time is wasted yeah, yeah,

(31:03):
um, so I I think that that'sprobably a pretty big part of it
.
Um are, some of our carriershave had bad experiences with
brokers in the past using theirown pricing against them or back
soliciting them, and so there'sdefinitely among the carrier

(31:26):
base a little bit of aversion tofreight brokerages, which we're
trying to solve with theplatform and provide more
transparency, vetting around thebrokerage customer base and
then also streamline the processof quoting so that the normal
process of carrier quotes 10shipments just to win one On our

(31:49):
platform.
It's a little bit moreattractive for a carrier because
they get a load sent to thempre-quoted at their rate.

Andrew Silver (31:57):
Got it, so it already has to meet the
requirements that they'relooking for for it to even show
up as an opportunity for them.
Yeah, that's right.
I like that.
And in terms of the on theother side from the carriers,
are your customers exclusivelybrokers, or can shippers sign up

(32:18):
as paying customers as well?

Clay Curran (32:21):
They are, I think, almost completely exclusively
brokers.
We have one shipper who signedup, but most of the time it
doesn't make sense for shippersto sign up for something like
this.
Shippers to sign up forsomething like this, it's for
brokers.
The value proposition is thatthis is a way for you to acquire
customers or a way for you togrow your business with an

(32:42):
existing customer.
For a shipper, it's for abroker, it's a way to open up
that capacity for a shipper.
If the shipper wants to workwith carriers directly, they're
going to work with carriersdirectly and they would have no
need for our platform becauseonce they establish that
relationship with the carrier,they're going to set up a

(33:03):
recurring contract lane.
So for probably 99% of shippers, our platform doesn't really
make sense, whereas brokers havea much greater need for
capacity everywhere that theycan constantly plug in new
requirements and find the bestavailable capacity for those
lanes.

Andrew Silver (33:24):
So we have, I think, 70 or so freight
brokerages signed up today andone ship we're using it can we
zoom out for a minute and talkabout reefer ltl in general and
just kind of walk me through howit works and what are the big
challenges and and the reasonsthat, um, it's such a tricky

(33:47):
business to to participate in?

Clay Curran (33:52):
yeah, so um so refrigerated LTL carriers are
really consolidators.
So what these businesses looklike is they're usually third
generation family businesses orso that have been around forever
.
They have a reputation.
They have a cold storage atleast one cold storage cross

(34:12):
dock.
Sometimes they have up to 10.
And they have a fleet of, callit, 25 to 500 assets and so
these carriers are picking uparound their facility, usually
throughout the week and they'repicking up and call it a hundred
mile radius around the facility.
They consolidate at the crossdock and they specialize in

(34:38):
specific temperatures dependingon the storage space they have
and specific commodities.
But they consolidate and thenthey ship out, usually on
Thursday or Friday, to whereverthey go.
They usually hit all theirdeliveries Monday and Tuesday of
the fall in week and that's sothe retailers can restock their

(35:00):
shelves by the end of the nextweek.
So it all ends up kind offitting around the retailer
schedule.
But these I would say 80% ofthe referral TL carriers out
there operate that way.
So they usually have aconstrained pickup area where
there will be a number ofreferral to yell carriers out of
Chicago.
That's totally different thanthe network out of Los Angeles,

(35:23):
but across those carriersthey'll go nationwide depending
on what they specialize in.
But there's I mean there'sthere's a carrier called Badger
State Western.
That's one of was one of ourearliest partners.
They're based out of Abbotsford, wisconsin.
They pick up, I think, about150 miles around Abbotsford and
then they ship out to the Westcoast and then they ship out

(35:47):
late in the week and then theyship out.
They ship back from the Westcoast, the LTL backhauls back to
the Midwest the following week,and so it's these folks that
are like for Badger StateWestern.
You would never know that thiscarrier existed because it
furgals West Coast backhauls,because their facility is in

(36:07):
Abbotsford and so these carriershave this kind of hidden
capacity.
A lot of times that's reallyhard to map out from an
abstracted view that a brokeragehas and in terms of the
individual companies, once theyconsolidate they'll have, call

(36:30):
it, six dispatchers that splitup the country by geography, and
then they're going to besetting multi-stop delivery
routes as those orders come inthroughout the week, and so
they're sort of optimizing andrecreating multi-stop routes of
10 to 15 stops every week byusually Wednesday night.

Andrew Silver (36:55):
And so I guess, when you think about the problem
in general, it could maybe bestbe described as there aren't
enough of these Badger StateWesterns in the carrier
community to account for theamount of one pallet, three
pallet, six pallet orders ofrefrigerated food and other

(37:20):
freight that shippers need moved, and there's not a great system
out there to aggregate all theproduct in a way that is
efficient and safe in terms ofkeeping temp and um reducing
risk of, you know, issues Ithink yeah, and I think the the

(37:46):
real problem that we solve isunlocking the hidden capacity.

Clay Curran (37:52):
Um, in that badger state example, I had a broker
that was looking for a carrierto ship from the Pacific
Northwest to Chicago and theycouldn't find anybody.
I pulled up Badger StateWestern and it was an attractive
rate, but they never thought tolook in Wisconsin for a carrier
that could do LTL out of thePacific Northwest.
So there's just a lot of thathidden capacity that you kind of

(38:17):
just need to do that work upfront of mapping everything out
and where all these carriers goin order to make that available
easily for free brokerages.

Andrew Silver (38:27):
And how does commodity matter?
Or does it with respect to yourbusiness and the matching of
carrier to opportunity?

Clay Curran (38:40):
Yeah.
So I guess there's one thing tobe conscious of is that the
transit times in reefer LTL withconsolidation are usually like
five to 10 days, depending onwhen you're booking that Um.
So there's some commoditiesthat just won't work most of the

(39:01):
time, that really highlyperishable stuff Um the
commodities that we actually seeon the platform.
If I could like roughly breakit down, we see a lot of uh meat
.
Poultry fish Um, that's likethe number one commodity.
Poultry fish um, that's likethe number one commodity.
We see um juice concentrate, umdairy products.
We see like uh coffee andpowders, alcohol and

(39:26):
non-alcoholic beverages um,across those.
I think those are the uh likethe top five or six.
Typically, one thing that we'vefound kind of interesting is
that some of these commoditieshave really tight temp
requirements.
So you might have a specificproduce commodity and we can't

(40:03):
guarantee 36 degrees continuousgets requested with the carrier.
We connect the carrier and thebroker in an email and they
communicate directly to work outall the specifics and whether
this commodity is actually goingto be a fit, whether there's

(40:24):
risk of cross-contamination.
Because of the nuances of thismode you have to kind of just
open up the communicationchannels and let folks
coordinate directly around thosetypes of things communication
channels and let folkscoordinate directly around those
types of things.

Andrew Silver (40:46):
Yeah, I'm curious like do you bear any
responsibility when a claimarises due to you know temp
issues or you knowcross-contamination things of
that nature?
Have you had anybody come backand point the finger at you, or
do you completely absolveyourself in the transactions?

Clay Curran (40:59):
I mean, yeah, so we're not co-brokering.
So our pricing model is thatit's a subscription for brokers
to access the platform, but wedon't even take transaction fees
.
So we're not dealing withclaims or anything like that.
We make it clear.
You know, this is part of thereason why we had to do this.

(41:20):
Pivot is it's just sodistracting dealing with all
those types of things.
So we're positioned more like aload board where it's a
subscription access set, but theservice we provide is
visibility.
It's not co-brokering oranything like that.

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Have you had issues arise on theplatform with, with?
You know claims and such andand like?

(42:45):
Is there anything you can do?
Like?
It's clearly a problem.
There's a reason that you movedaway from it in your own
business initially, realizingthat the claims are a big
problem, and it's why I think alot of companies stay away from
it.
I'm curious.
I definitely see.
If I was you, I also would kindof hands off, avoid bearing any

(43:06):
responsibility there.
But I'm just curious if there'sanything you can do as an
organization to help mitigatesome of those issues arising.

Clay Curran (43:17):
Yeah, so the claims rates that we've seen are
really low, much, much lowerthan we expected.
We thought that we'd be seeingclaims a lot more often, and I
think I've only seen oneinstance where there was a claim
.
Now maybe it's happeningoutside of our purview and it's
just going directly betweenbrokers and carriers.

(43:39):
There's only one that we'vebeen aware of and we've seen
1,500 loads booked on ourplatform to date, and that's on
the platform.
There's more business happeningoff the platform when a broker
and a carrier develop arelationship and they set up a
weekly run.
So it's at least in terms ofwhat we've seen.

(44:02):
It's actually much lower thanwe expected.
In terms of like what we do, weI mean we leave a lot of the
vetting process up to brokers.
We want to be a sort of likeSwitzerland third party where
we're not picking and choosingwhich carriers are on the

(44:23):
platform versus off, so brokersdo their own vetting process.
We are going to startdisplaying in the next, I think,
week or two more stats aroundliability coverage for each of
these carriers.
So typically these carriershave the standard 100K cargo
liability and then theysometimes have a per pound

(44:47):
insurance liability limitation,and so that's going to be
visible on the platform within,I think, within the next two
weeks, on the quoting page so inessence, your business is kind
of working to digitize as manyof the processes in refrigerated

(45:09):
freight as possible versus likefundamentally rethinking how to
move refrigerated freight right.

Andrew Silver (45:17):
It's not the latter, no, yeah, it's like a
massive yeah, you're right yeah,yeah, it's um, I mean really,
we think about it as it's.

Clay Curran (45:26):
It's visibility into capacity.
So we are making capacity andpricing more clear to freight
brokers.
They can more quickly andeasily make decisions around
which carriers to reach out tofor a given customer, around
which carriers to reach out tofor a given customer.
That's how we're thinking aboutour roadmap as well.

(45:48):
So, outside of Reef for LTL, acouple of things that we're
looking at right now are one ison the transportation side,
backhauls.
So we're working with one ofthe leading refrigerated private
fleets in the US to post theirbackhaul capacity pre-priced as

(46:10):
temporary capacity.
A lot of our carriers needbackhauls because they finish
their multi-stop route acrossthe country somewhere and then
the driver needs to get back,and so they need truckload
backhauls.
So we think that there's anopportunity to make that
backhaul capacity more availableon the same platform.

(46:30):
And then the other thing thatwe're pursuing right now is
cross-docking for OS&D.
So when a pallet gets rejectedneeds to be reworked, or
whatever, pallet gets rejectedneeds to be reworked or whatever
, it's going to be a simple,map-based interface that brokers
, carriers or shippers can gointo and easily find cross-docs

(46:55):
with the services that they need.

Andrew Silver (46:58):
That's another big problem in this space that
is lacking.
How do you approach that one interms of creating?

Clay Curran (47:07):
a solution for it.
So the way we're thinking aboutit currently is like Airbnb for
crosstalking is how we'resummarizing it but it needs more
work, more customer discoveryaround what exactly the solution
is going to look like.
I know that the real challengeis going to be aggregating the

(47:30):
supply side, the capacity, andgetting accurate data.
It's nice that our carrier baseis like a perfect partner base
to start with on this, becauseacross these carriers, we have
like 150 cold storage crossstocks across the U?
S and these carriers, for themost part, all offer re-delivery

(47:51):
services, reworking services,so they're they're really well
positioned to be that that likebeachhead market for this
product.
We've heard about food pantriesas a creative kind of
alternative that a lot ofbrokers typically look for when
they're trying to find a quicksolution, so we're going to be

(48:15):
approaching food pantries andjust building a really
comprehensive map of anybody outthere that offers these
services.

Andrew Silver (48:24):
How do you go about doing that?
Is that like ground and pound,just like pick up the phone and
start calling food pantries, oris there a more methodical or, I
guess, strategic way of doingit?

Clay Curran (48:37):
Yeah, I guess it could be ground and pound.
I'm sure to some extent it'llbe ground and pound Got to be.
But yeah, but we're also goingto.
You know, we're talking to afew potential partners on this
who may already have a goodamount of this data.
It might not be as structuredas we need it to be, but we're

(48:59):
talking to a few folks where wecould do some kind of data deal
and just purchase that and usethat as the at least the
foundation to build everythingelse on top of and crowdsource
the additional info as we go.

Andrew Silver (49:13):
So you mentioned, 1500 or so loads have been
booked through the platform sofar.
Are you happy with that beingwhere you are today?
Where do you want to get to?
How do you think about thegrowth of the business and how
do you think about injecting orputting rocket fuel into that
growth?

(49:33):
What can you do aside fromcoming onto this show, where all
the brokers will be listeningand hopefully call you to get
their refrigerated LTL capacity?

Clay Curran (49:44):
Yeah, yeah, no, we're I mean we're.
We're in growth mode right now,so we've been roughly doubling
or, yeah, roughly doublingvolume each month since since we
launched.
We just hired two salespeople,so one started April 1st and one
started last week, and so we'redefinitely starting to try to

(50:09):
roll this out a lot more quicklyto the broader brokerage
community.
I think it's something we saythat every brokerage that has
food and beverage customersshould have something like this,
because it's a tool in the toolbelt that you need if you want
to be a full service brokerage.
So goal for us internally is wewant to get to a million

(50:33):
dollars in revenue this year.
That's our kind of nice evengoal.

Andrew Silver (50:39):
And how do you make that happen?

Clay Curran (50:43):
Just hitting the road.
We've been going to conferences.
So we went to Berkley CarrierSummit, food Shippers, manifest,
tia, and we're going to be at,I think, smc3 and F3 and a few
others for the rest of the year.
So conferences are really goodfor the rest of the year.

(51:04):
So conferences are really good,but it's all about just
spreading the word, andleveraging social media has been
a great source for us.
A lot of our leads are inbound,so we just get.
We're commenting a lot and I'dsay like 80% of our inbounds say
that they saw us commenting onsomething on LinkedIn or
somebody tagged us.

(51:24):
So we're really leaning intoLinkedIn and trying to be as
active there as we can.

Andrew Silver (51:32):
I'm curious, like what kind of pushback would you
get from, like, let's say, youcall up XYZ broker and they take
your call and you tell themwhat you've got.
What reason do they have to sayno, or what pushback have you
gotten?

Clay Curran (51:47):
That's a good question.
I think the number one thing iswe don't do referral TL today,
so we don't really need aproduct to handle referral TL if
we don't have any of it.
And we have to kind of tellthem and show them that this is
a tool to acquire customers.

(52:08):
You know it's not.
You're not going to make a tonof money doing referral TL, even
if you do manage referral TLtoday, maybe you'll get a
slightly better rate on ourplatform.
But what it's really valuablefor is going out to shippers and
saying can I quote yourreferral TL?
I'll find you a reliable localcarrier that can cover it.

(52:29):
And we have to position it thatway and make sure they
understand that this is a way.
You have to be willing to likeinvest time into building out
this strategy as a way to startconversations and open doors.
But it's definitely somethingthat to start conversations and
open doors.
But it's definitely somethingthat, yeah, some folks are more

(52:50):
comfortable with that thanothers.

Andrew Silver (52:51):
Yeah, I mean, if you participate in food and
beverage, this is something youshould be doing.
I just I don't understand whyyou wouldn't.
I mean, I get on one side.
Someone could say I wipe myhands of it, I'm not touching
meat for LTL, I'm worried aboutthe risk, but that's why I
disagree with and I don't knowif maybe I heard it right, but
that you're not going to maketoo much money.

(53:12):
If anything, I think you canmake more money on Reefer LTL
than you can on a lot oftruckload, and it's just the
simple concept.
Yeah, higher margins.
I just think it's the simpleconcept of if there are fewer
people pursuing it, there's lesscompetition, there's more
opportunity to make more moneydoing it right.
I mean there's riches andniches and everybody, everybody,

(53:36):
everybody and their mother, iscalling Coca-Cola today wanting
to haul their dry beverages thatare 45,000 pounds and you know,
one pick, one drop, easy, comeeasy, go no touch.
And when everybody's callingthem and there's so much
competition, there's not a tonof margin on a load-by-load

(53:57):
basis.
Not everybody is calling andasking to take your four-pallet
reefer LTL load from LA to Fonddu Lac, wisconsin, and so
there's less competition, moreopportunity to quote a little
bit higher and expect a littlehigher margin.

(54:18):
So I don't know.
I don't know why.
I don't know why, like I wish Ihad this tool as a broker, just
because it's it was frustrating.
I always wanted to solve, tofigure out how to do Reefer LTL
and I think that this is onestep.
I do think there's like afundamental solution that could

(54:43):
be created, solution that couldbe created, but that's like what
I mean is I don't think there'senough available capacity for
the amount of reefer LTL that isneeded in the market today and
that's a structural issue in theindustry, more so than it is a

(55:04):
technological one.
I think that you're figuringout how to make lemonade with
lemons, and that is to take theexisting infrastructure and
capacity and apply technology ina way that creates the
visibility that you're talkingabout, which, again, that's a
solution and it's better thanwhat was available yesterday.

Clay Curran (55:27):
And I think the I mean our hope is that the
capacity can grow and, like,basically, these businesses can
grow over time and as morefreight flows to LTL
consolidation versus truckload,those companies will lease more
assets and grow their coveragebase.
So we had a carrier reached outto us because they were getting

(55:51):
a good amount of businessthrough the platform and they
said, hey, we want to open up anew lane out of Dallas and they
previously had nothing out ofDallas.
And they said we want to openup Frozen out of Dallas.
Can you help us build thevolume?
And we said, yeah, sure.
So we launched it and they'realready getting volume through
the platform.
So I hope it can be like youknow, lifts all seas kind of

(56:12):
thing, and help the LTLconsolidation industry grow and
become more attractive in theprocess.

Andrew Silver (56:19):
Yeah, see that.
So that was where I was goingto go.
Next is I wonder if there's away where you can leverage

(56:40):
enough data to create thecapacity, what's available in
terms of where is the freightthat needs to be moved?
Then it's as simple as going tosome of the existing carriers
on the platform and say, hey,right now you're running from
Portland to Wisconsin.
I see that among the 50 brokershere who've been hosting

(57:01):
opportunities in the last fewmonths, there's, there's,
there's enough break going fromI don't know twin falls, idaho
to Wisconsin.
If you just set up a, an optionthere for to pick up freight
and whatever, and you can makeit a consistent sailing schedule
for you to run.
So, like I almost feel like youknow chicken and egg, you can

(57:24):
be, you can be the one feedingthe opportunities back to the
carriers to say like there's,there's enough right here to
make this a meaningful part ofyour business yep, yep and we're
gonna.

Clay Curran (57:36):
We're definitely planning on doing that and
helping them see where theopportunities are to grow and
fill that demand.
Um, we're currently workingworking on a carrier user
interface where they can get adashboard and see where those
opportunities are.
I mentioned the loads number,but the search volume is much

(57:58):
higher.
We've had over 50,000 searchessince we launched six months ago
, and so all that search volumeis pretty valuable to the
carrier base in terms of justseeing where that volume is and
what is uncovered by theexisting carrier base, which we
have most of it on the platformcurrently, and there's

(58:19):
definitely pockets.
I mean there's a few lanes thatcome to mind right now that I'm
like there's a lot of searchesfrom, like, arizona to the East
Coast, for example, that therearen't a lot of carriers that
cover that, and so there areprobably a handful of these
opportunities that I think areripe for picking.

Andrew Silver (58:40):
At Molo we built a great company and I'm proud of
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(59:03):
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(59:25):
Go check them out atmetaforanet.
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What advice would you give tobrokers that are interested in
participating in Read for LTLbut know nothing about it?
What do they need to learnother than call you and use your
tool?
What do they actually need tolearn to than you know?

(59:46):
Call you and use your tool?
What do they actually need tolearn to do this well?
What are some of the pitfallsand mistakes that can be made if
they're not well prepared?

Clay Curran (59:54):
Yeah, and we usually do like a training
session and we try to get asmany people on as we can because
we want to.
We know that for a lot of thesebrokerages they're stepping
into this for the first time andare not as familiar with how
this works.

Andrew Silver (01:00:07):
So we go over a lot of this in those calls.

Clay Curran (01:00:11):
But the main things to be aware of are schedules
just what the schedules looklike and what you need to be
aware of in terms of transittime.
If you book earlier in the week, most carriers are shipping out
at the end of the week most LTLreefer carriers and so you want
to try to book before Wednesdaynight or else you're going to

(01:00:32):
miss the call off and theyalready set all the routes and
they assign drivers, so earlierin the week the better.
Another it's.
It's hard to guarantee service.
You shouldn't necessarily umassume that a carrier can do
something.
You need to get them to confirmit because it's it's constantly

(01:00:53):
in flux and it's it's so.
Um, there are so many nuancesto refer LTL in terms of uh
commodities that can and can'tbe matched up specific type
temperature requirements, um,and so it's.
It's.
It's currently.
It's still in the state wherethere needs to be a conversation
with the carrier and you needto make sure that you're on the

(01:01:13):
same page about what needs toget done.
It's not as transactional as atruckload can be.

Andrew Silver (01:01:21):
Yeah, I mean yeah because those little nuances.
You know a dry truckload thatmisses its appointment and can
probably get dealt with the nextday without issue.
You have a little bit more riskon a perishable reefer LTL load
that misses a delivery by day.
There's more risk there.

Clay Curran (01:01:42):
And the other thing I would say is that it's pretty
bad if you burn these bridges,because there's not that many of
them.
So if you burn the bridge forthe one referral TL carrier that
does chilled fresh seafood outof Florida, there's no fallback

(01:02:03):
options and we have seen somebrokers treating this more like
a load board and treatingcarriers more transactionally
and that's a bad experience forthem because then they, once
they lose that relationship,they lose that coverage and that
kind of capacity, and so thefolks that have the most success

(01:02:24):
are the ones that are buildingrelationships with the carriers
and thinking of them as partnersversus just capacity,
commoditized capacity.

Andrew Silver (01:02:37):
Do you bear any responsibility, or at least in
your mind, to to kind of managethe quality on both sides, like,
is there any kind of reviewsystem or process by which
someone gets removed, you knowif someone's super disrespectful
, or they treat a carrier likeshit or they don't pay the

(01:02:58):
carrier or vice versa, thecarrier does a bunch of shady
stuff to the broker?
Are you getting those phonecalls and if so, where do you
feel you have responsibility tostep in or do something about
anything there?

Clay Curran (01:03:12):
Yeah, that's another good question.
Yes, we do jump in if there areissues like that.
We have removed customers andwe have removed carriers for
that reason.
So the platform is amarketplace and in a marketplace
everyone has to have a goodexperience, or else it just

(01:03:34):
doesn't work.
And so we're paying closeattention.
We have an assistant who'smonitoring literally every load
that gets booked and theconversations that are happening
and making sure things aregoing smoothly and then flagging
anything for us that needsattention.
And there's hundreds of loadsgetting booked a week right now,

(01:03:55):
so we're we're really stayingon top of everything, making
sure that this takes off in theright way.
Um, and the things that we'vewe, we the main things that
we've kicked off carriers for isjust being unresponsive and
just not.
A broker sends a request andthe carrier never replies to the

(01:04:15):
shipment, even after we coachedthem through it a bunch of
times, and that's just a badexperience for brokers.
We had a broker being prettyrude to a carrier and multiple
carriers, and then we had totalk to them and tell them that
we need to pause their account.
So it happens and we're doingall we can to stand top of it
right now.
Okay.

Andrew Silver (01:04:43):
What's next in terms of the roadmap and what
you're building, and you talkedabout a few things you're
thinking about, but like what'sin the immediate future next
three to six months in terms ofthe fresh x journey yeah, so we
are um, we we launched our apirecently, so now we're doing TMS

(01:05:04):
integrations and we're talkingto a few TMSs, working on how
that's going to look in thoseportals and then unlocking that
new capacity.

Clay Curran (01:05:22):
So the backhauls and cross-dock network are two
things that are in ourshort-term roadmap, but those
are the things we're focused onright now.
And then on the carrier sidewe're working on more visibility
into where those opportunitiesare, just like you were saying
earlier, helping those carriersto see where opportunities are
to open up new lines of businessand whatnot.

Andrew Silver (01:05:45):
So that's kind of what's in the pipeline right
now and any advice you wouldgive to the aspiring
entrepreneurs of the freightindustry who are, like yourself,
itching to make a name forthemselves, to make an impact?

(01:06:06):
Um, just from your, your, yourown experience in the first few
years of your entrepreneurialjourney.

Clay Curran (01:06:14):
Yeah, um, I guess, uh, I mean one one thing is um,
advisors are, I think he um, soyou got to get good advisors
that can help show you the way.
That's been really helpful forus to make better decisions
faster.
And you know, there's all thejust conventional wisdom of

(01:06:35):
iterate really quickly and buildprototype products versus
production products in thebeginning, because everything
gets ripped out.
We've ripped out our productalready, rebuilt the whole thing
and we're constantly justshipping stuff and then removing
it and building fresh.
So it's I think that the mostimportant thing is speed how

(01:07:02):
quickly you can just buildthings and test them and then
replace them if they don't work.
Those are the two things thatcome to mind.
And the other thing is that we,like I think we were able to
find this problem pretty quicklyby just like doing a lot of
customer discovery.
We, back when we were doing thelast mile business, we talked

(01:07:25):
to about a hundred shippers andjust like we're just trying to
learn everything about theirsupply chain where the problems
were, um, and just like askingthem just tell us everything
that happens in your supplychain, where the where the
hiccups happen, and so I thinkthat um, finding a real problem

(01:07:45):
helped us starting out to get asolution that has been able to
get a lot of traction quickly.

Andrew Silver (01:07:53):
I think that's all great, great feedback, great
advice for the futureentrepreneurs of our industry.
Well, I think we got a prettycomprehensive understanding of
your business and your story.
Anything we left out, anythingwe should tackle or anything you
want to talk about before wewrap reach out, sign up for

(01:08:15):
fresh ice.

Clay Curran (01:08:18):
Yeah, it's great, great joining.
Thanks for having me and andyeah, anyone's welcome to reach
out, happy to show folks theplatform or collaborate.
If people think of other ideas,we can partner together.

Andrew Silver (01:08:35):
Yeah, I think you know I've had a lot of founders
on here and this might be theyoungest company I've had on at
least one of them but I justlove the problem you're trying
to tackle.
Anybody could go start anotherfreight brokerage, like me.
That's what I did.
That's not as hard as actuallyaddressing a real, tangible

(01:08:56):
issue in the space like ReeferLTL.
So kudos to you and the team.
I hope you guys continue tobuild on the traction you're
talking about and that you finda way to make a real impact here
, because our industry needs thehelp.
The reefer LTL problem has beenone for a long time and you
know I'm cheering for you guys,so cool.

Clay Curran (01:09:18):
Thank you.

Andrew Silver (01:09:19):
With that, see you all next week.
Have a good one, alright.