September 7, 2023 • 23 mins
Chris Oliver is Trucker Path’s Chief Marketing Officer. As a proven problem solver, strategist & brand creator in the world of transportation technology, Chris brings more than 25 years’ experience leading small to mid-sized businesses into and through tremendous growth phases by identifying avenues to feed company growth; developing & executing the strategies to capitalize on those growth opportunities; communicating the vision, roles and deliverables required from each department within the growth organization; and leading the execution that ensures overall success. In addition to Trucker Path, Chris led growth and development efforts for several well-known transportation brands including Cargomatic, Zonar & PrePass. Chris holds degrees in Marketing, International Management and Finance.
Phoenix-based Trucker Path is the provider of a wide range of truck driver-centric mobility products. A subsidiary of leading global SaaS provider, Moatable, Inc. (NYSE: MTBL), the Trucker Path app is currently in use by nearly 1 million professional truck drivers. Offering best-in-class navigation with truck-optimized routing, the Trucker Path app also provides access to vital up-to-date information about truck stops, real-time parking availability, fuel prices, weigh station statuses, and truck scales and wash locations. The company also offers TruckLoads, a digital freight exchange that connects drivers, carriers and brokers; and COMMAND™, the industry’s first and only Operations & Driver Relationship (ODR) platform that provides small to mid-size fleets with the necessary driver and TMS technologies to successfully run a fleet. For more information, visit www.truckerpath.com.
Phoenix-based Trucker Path is the provider of a wide range of truck driver-centric mobility products. A subsidiary of leading global SaaS provider, Moatable, Inc. (NYSE: MTBL), the Trucker Path app is currently in use by nearly 1 million professional truck drivers. Offering best-in-class navigation with truck-optimized routing, the Trucker Path app also provides access to vital up-to-date information about truck stops, real-time parking availability, fuel prices, weigh station statuses, and truck scales and wash locations. The company also offers TruckLoads, a digital freight exchange that connects drivers, carriers and brokers; and COMMAND™, the industry’s first and only Operations & Driver Relationship (ODR) platform that provides small to mid-size fleets with the necessary driver and TMS technologies to successfully run a fleet. For more information, visit www.truckerpath.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This week I'll be talking to ChrisOliver. He is the CMO for trucker
Path. Trucker Path is an appthat provides vital, up to date information
about truck stops, real time parkingavailability, fuel prices, and much much
more. My conversation with Chris iscoming up next on the Art of Improvement.
(00:24):
Thank you so much for listening tothe Art of improvement. My guest
today is Chris Oliver. He's CMOwith something called trucker Path. Hi Chris,
Hi, how are you? I'mgreat. It's so funny because I
have a friend. This is along story, but I have a friend
who is a train engineer, andhe says that every time he's in the
(00:44):
car with somebody, he always says, if they complain about the trains,
He's like, how do you thinkwe get everything? You're stopped behind a
train, but how do you thinkwe're get everything? The same goes with
trucks on the road. People think, oh my gosh, these big truck
they're everywhere, But without them,how would we get everything? And so
when I saw this app called truckerPath, I was like, this is
(01:08):
this is brilliant. Can you telleverybody what it is. Yeah, But
first I gotta say you nailed it. There's a thing in the trucking industry.
If you bought it, a truckbrought it, and that is true,
true, So I'm glad to seesomebody else recognization of the industry.
Absolutely. I can tell you alittle bit about trucker paths truck About.
It was created in twenty thirteen,so almost ten years old, now well
(01:32):
before I was involved, but youknow, quite a while ago, and
I think the easiest way to explainit, and most of our the drivers
who use it think of it asit's like if Yelp and Ways were jammed
together just for truckers. That's exactlywhat it is today and that's what truckers
enjoy using it for. Okay,so let's let's explain this to anyone that
hasn't used Ways or Yelp. Soobviously truckers that are out on the road,
(01:56):
they need information and they need theinformation to be up to date.
And so ways, if you don'tuse it, it's it's like, to
me a more up to date likeGoogle Maps or whatever maps is in your
phone. Yeah, think exactly.And so yelp is kind of like talking
about what's around you. Is thatnot correct? Can you explain it a
(02:19):
little? That's exactly what yelp is. You know, what we in this
the app world called a collection ofpois points of interest. So that's where
trucker Path was born. It wasreally created just to help drivers find truck
stops. So you can imagine justan app with a map on it.
It was a basic Google map,just like car drivers use, except it
had truck stops that were highlighted onit. And then the next step was
(02:42):
adding the actual prices out those truckstops. And you know, you can
imagine, you know, once you'redriving all over the country and you need
to fuel every day, being ableto find where to get fuel and where
to find the price and what theprices are is pretty darn valuable. It's
so funny. I never thought ofthat because obviously I have apps for myself
to see, okay, where amI going to get gas and where are
(03:02):
they going to try to gouge me? But I never thought of that for
truck drivers. Yeah, I said, you know, for all those of
us who drive cars around town allthe time, we tend to forget what
it's like when you drive across thecountry, different different markets, different locations,
different brands, so they needed atool to help them, you know,
find those and they and it workedobviously. And then but what happened
(03:23):
next was they said, Jesus isgreat, but what about restaurants or hotels
or rest areas. So then withthe next evolution, I guess the evolutionary
step was we offered up the abilityfor the drivers to suggest poise, and
that still happens today that the tunesof thousands of months. You know,
somebody has great tacos here in Phoenix, they can shoot a note to our
(03:46):
team and say, hey, Ijust had some great tacos at Karen's Taco
stand in Phoenix. I think theyshould be on trucker Path. No team
gets better congestion and make sure it'sreally a taco stand and not something we
wouldn't want on the app. Andif it does, boom, it's up
there and instantly any drivers start torate it and review it and provide feedback
in their thoughts. And it's alwaysfrom the driver's perspective. So when a
driver sees a review on trucker Path, they know that it's another trucker not
(04:10):
you know, somebody who's you know, specialists on tacos or anything, so
right, like a brotherhood of reviews. It's it's incredible because when you think
about it, and you are thinkingabout I don't know, is it thousands,
hundreds of thousands of drivers that aremoving twenty four seven and so one.
Yes, you have all of thisgreat information, but to have it
(04:31):
all together, it's it's almost unbelievable. Do you have any stats on how
many truckers use it and who's interactiveand how does how do you get the
new information? Yeah, yeah,we do. I'm pretty proud of it.
Generally speaking, you know, thisis arguable because it's a stat of
course, but generally speaking, mostagree there's about three and a half million
(04:53):
truckers, you know, doing longhaul loads at any given moment in the
country, and we have and pertrucker paths, we have a million active
users. So that's almost a thirdof the drivers that are moving our stuff
that we're going to be buying andeating on a regular basis are relying on
trucker paths to get where they needto go. So it's a pretty significant
tool for the industry as a whole. You know, I don't know why.
(05:16):
I just don't know that much abouttrucking. And so when you said
that it was one of the Iguess one of the features of trucker path
was just like ways and maps,I never think, Okay, you get
an assignment, you know exactly whereit is because you've been there one hundred
time. But that's not necessarily thecase. Yeah, that's rarely the case.
(05:39):
And then the other thing is isyou know ways or Google Maps or
any of the regular mapping tools thatwe use driving cars. They don't work
well for big trucks because big trucksare big, they're tall, they're heavy,
they're long. So you can't justdrive a big tractor trailer anywhere you
can drive up onto a chord.The way our navigation works is when someone's
(06:00):
going to use if they put in, they input the dimensions of the truck,
how tall is it, how longis it, how much does it
weigh, and then we have theknowledge of all that. We pull together
lots of databases and you can imagine, so we know that you know,
if your truck is fifteen feet tall, we don't route you down roads where
there's a fourteen foot high bridge.You know, that would be bad obviously,
So we do all that and that'sso that's kind of that's pretty vanilla.
(06:21):
You know, a lot of thereare other truck navigation platforms in the
industry. But what's need is ifby chance we make a mistake, you
know, which we do, we'rehuman, a driver could just push a
button and tell us what's wrong,and then that feeds back into our machine
learning and we don't route anybody thatway. Again, it kind of self
corrects. So we've got these milliondrivers out there using this all the time,
(06:43):
perfecting our knowledge base for us.So we believe we have, you
know, the best there is whenit comes to navigating for big trucks,
and that's you know, i'd sayprobably the second most popular item on our
AM the trucker Path app itself isyou know that reliable, trustworthy navigation.
Yeah. And the interaction, andI mean that in itself is the self
correcting part is unbelievable because sometimes evenif this is so not part of what
(07:10):
yours is for, but even ifsometimes you'll look on a website or an
app and it has the wrong informationand you go to a place it's closed
or whatever, it really makes adifference on how people like the app exactly.
Yeah, and we rely on that. And another thing that we have
is we're parking is a real problemfor big trucks, a real problem,
(07:31):
not just because it's difficult to drivethem. But to give you an idea,
an industry research group did a studyand found that the average truck driver
spends more than forty five minutes aday at the end of their shift just
trying to find a place to park. And they're only allowed to drive ten
or eleven hours a day, sothat's you know, arguably what eight ten
percent of their available capacity spent lookingfor a place to park. So as
(07:56):
everybody's telling us all these great placesover the years, those that are legal
and safe places at the park,we put it what's called a gel fence
around them. So whenever somebody hasthe app open and they get close to
it, we know and we askthem a question. We say, hey,
look around, are there a lotof spaces available in this parking area?
Are there some spaces available in thisparking area or is it full?
(08:16):
That's so helpful, It seems prettygeneral, but when you have a million
people telling that, reporting that ona regular basis, it starts to become
really reliable. So what we showthe drivers. If you're looking at you
know whatever, a pilot flying jayhere in Phoenix, you can see on
the app that two minutes ago.For example, another driver said there were
a lot of sponsives available here atPark Wow, so boom, you can
(08:39):
go there and save you that fortyminutes. I need that during Christmas at
the mall the time. That isincredible. Before I go one more minute,
can you tell people how did theyfind trucker Path the app and all
of the information. The best wayis just go to on your app store,
(09:00):
whether it's Google or Apple. We'reon both of course, and you
can type end trucker Path, trucknavigation, just about anything we talked about,
and we'll be the first ones thatpop up. The app's free,
it's easy to use and to reallyuse their friendly. We have our developers
that grew up prior to trucker Path, most of them doing social media.
So the look and feel the appis very very familiar. I guess you
(09:22):
would say to Darnier. Everybody whoopens it nice and I have to just
ask you this. You said you'vebeen with trucker Path for a while,
now, But how does one endup working for an app for truckers?
I mean, have you ever donethat? Well? How did you?
What was your path to being wordyou are today? Yeah? Well it
(09:43):
definitely is my first rodeo. I'vebeen working in technology and trucking for almost
thirty years now, wow, Andso this is one of many. But
everyone that I've ever done has beenfocused on drop or comfort, safety,
convenience, making life better for thedrivers because man, they know they've gotten
better since COVID, but they usedto get a bad rap for a long
(10:05):
time and now finally people recognize alittle bit better how important trucking is to
our economy and for all of usto get our stuff as a whole.
So it's been a passion of minemy whole life. And you know,
I've been fortunate been able to workwith several companies that did really, really
good things for the industry. Andthis is just the next stop on my
journey. That's incredible because during COVID, when we started to see the trucker
(10:28):
strikes or just stopping, I panicked. I panic because it was already apparent
that there were problems with getting itemsto the grocery store. Or anything really,
and it really brought to light whattruckers do and why is it that,
I don't know, nobody talks abouttrucking. It's still a vibrant career
(10:54):
too, isn't it. Yeah,yeah, I mean, believe me,
if you want to be a truckdriver and you have a safe driving history
and a cdo you can get ajob. There's there's been a shortage of
drivers in this industry as long asI've been in it. And I said,
you know, I admit it earlier. How old I am, So
it's been a long time. Soyeah, it's it's a great industry.
They're good, They're always good jobsavailable, And I agree with you,
(11:15):
no, I think maybe people arejust a little bit nervous around big vehicles
on the highway. But you know, I get the flat from people all
the time about trucking, and myresponse is always the same as I've met
dozens and dozens and dozens of driverswho had driven millions of miles and never
had a crash or speeding. Sure, how many of your friends can say
that? Not many in my familytruckers. Right in my family alone,
(11:41):
there's there's too many, you know, beside the fuel prices and real time
parking availability. There's one thing anotherthing about trucking that I've never understood and
maybe you could open my eyes toit, and that's these way stations and
the truck scales. Is that partof the app at all? Yeah,
(12:01):
it is. The way stations arewe have, I think all of them.
You know, they come and goa little bit, but we have
them all on our app and wegeofence those as well. So the information
we provide on our app for thedrivers is whether or not they're open and
how long people how long it's takingpeople to get through them, so that
they can be prepared to go throughthat queue and you know, go through
(12:22):
the process and that nobody likes tostop in the middle of a trip.
And I'll tell you what. Thoseway stations serve a really really important function
in our entire transportation system. Andat safety. They make sure the tires
embrace and lights are all okay,and the trucks aren't overweight, so that
you know, the four wheelers peopledriving cars are safe and the guy driving
the truck is safe and our stuffgets there on time. So no way
(12:43):
stations are essential. And that's anotherelement that drivers really rely upon us for
as you know, understanding what's comingahead and be ready for that five or
ten minutes. They got to slowdown and get checked out real quick.
That's totally cool. I never thoughtof it, is that, But yes,
it's taking care of the rest ofus too. Yeah, if you
just now started listening, this isChris Oliver. He is the CMO for
(13:05):
Trucker Path. It's an app usedby truckers to find a place to park,
find a place to stop, finda place to eat. One thing
that it's so I don't know,it's funny because when you think of truckers,
or at least when I think oftruckers, you don't think of you
know, high tech anything. Youthink, okay, you get behind the
wheel and you drive. But thisreally does bring in technology two truckers,
(13:33):
and when you stop and think aboutit, I mean, it's something that
they absolutely need because they are outmaybe in an unfamiliar area, and this
kind of brings them the information thatthey need absolutely And that's that's really I
mean, it sounds like you've beenlistening to our board meetings, because that's
exactly what our goal is. Basically, we sat ice back and think about
(13:58):
okay, Dan, the life ofa truck driver. Do you need no,
you need. You need to beable to find jobs, and we
have load board for that which hasload job postings where they can find those.
You need a truck, that's usuallytaken care of, right, We've
got that covered. Directions on howto get where you're going, we've talked
about that already, got navigation,and then most recent and most addition to
(14:18):
the product is a fuel programs fueldiscount program we just implemented a few months
ago. We're you know, thousandsof transactions a month. I actually spend
all the morning this morning out ofthe truck stop testing out an upgrade to
that network for us. But itgives drivers ability to save on fuel,
the fuel that they're finding by findingusing trucker Path. There's stilly being an
(14:39):
average of thirty bucks each time theyfill up. It's and it's free.
So it's it's just one more thingwe've added to the tool just to make
it a day in the life alittle bit easier for those guys that drive
long, long distances along hours everyday. To make sure that we have
our Sunkels bar in the morning.Right, it's so it's incredible that this
(15:01):
is such a it's such a change, constantly changing app and it's adding on
things as you find them. AndI was also reading online that you have
other things that you offer, somethingcalled truckloads or something called I'm trying to
think of the other thing, butthe command that's what was the need for
(15:26):
those and what are they? Yeah, it's just the ongoing evolutions. Like
I said, we want to serveeveryone. So truckloads is that loadboard I
was talking about. That's what driversused to find jobs. So if you're
in San Antonio and you're ready togo, you can just open the apps.
I'm in San Antonio and I wantto go X or just I'm here
and I want a great job.We push tens of thousands of those a
(15:48):
day. You can just look atthe ones, find the one that fits
you, touch a button you knowyou need some In some cases you can
touch that button and just secure thejob right there. In some classes you
touch the button they called the personhouse attle available for you to talk to
them. By the way, itgives a place for the drivers to find
the jobs they do and then commanda TMS and TMS stands for a Transportation
Management system is back office software forthe company to use or run their entire
(16:12):
operation. So it helps up findloads, helps a keep track of drivers,
it helps keep track of trucks andmaintenance and everything these take place that
pushes information out for the navigation tothe trucker Path app itself facilitates the fuel
deals that I talked about earlier,keeps tracking a job when it's drivers take
pictures of the paperwork with their phoneslike a scanning tool, nice them back
(16:34):
to the back office. And thenwhen all the information the job's done and
all the information is gathered to automaticallygenerate the invoices and some of the medicines
amounts of customers for you. Soit's the back office side of trucking that
we're attaching to the trucker Path appthat all the drivers use. Well,
it's funny because I never thought ofthat either, because my daughters go to
school like eight hours away from whereI live, and I always tell them
(16:59):
keep your location on, keep yourlocation on so that I can see where
you are or other people can findyou. But you never think about that
with truck drivers. But I again, it's amazing that not only other people
can find you your family, butyour boss, you're the company that you're
working for, can just keep tabson everything that's going on. That's pretty
(17:22):
unusual but very cool. I feellike they do that to me here at
work. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's also good for the companies because
it lets them keep their customers informed. Oh yes, I don't know about
you, but Amazon pretty much comesfrom my house every day, and I
think it's neat. They can tellme when they're ten stops away delivered.
That data supports the same type ofservice for trucking companies to the people who
(17:47):
are shipping the products. That isamazing. That is so great if you
just started listening. This is ChrisOliver. He's the CMO for trucker Path.
It's an app for truckers and Ialways when I think of her,
so I always think of Overnight.Don't ask me why you know, But
but what you were just saying aminute ago is that with a third of
(18:08):
all truckers using trucker Path, thisis a twenty four seven app that people
can use. Oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You when you look at
you know, when you're looking forparking or truck stops that are open or
closed. We show graphs. Youknow that's you know, by hour,
how busy is this place usually?And you know they're busy all the time
(18:30):
because the industry never stops because weknow we use consumers never stop consuming.
Right, So is there a wayfor you mentioned restaurants, But is there
a way for restaurants or points ofinterest to contact Trucker Bath to be a
part of the app or is itjust truckers that get to enter that information?
(18:53):
Yeah, anyone can. I meananybody who's a business can. We
of course vet them because there arecertain business types we don't want on the
app, but yeah, anyone can. And then we have we call it
our business portal. So if youhave a dot or cooi on the Trucker
Path app, you're given access toour business part let's to flog into where
you can make sure the information aboutyour restaurants, say, is always accurate.
(19:15):
You know your hours, et cetera, even your menu. And then
you can also post promotional so youcan say, hey, the Trucker Path
users, just tell us you sawus on Trucker Path and we'll give you
a free cup of coffee or burger. So the merchants the people who own
those pies have the ability to dothat self promotion themselves, and of course
we sell advertising packages where they cankick it up a notch and make it
(19:37):
fancy, but we do give themquite a bit of leeway and ability to
manage their own presence on the app. It's a long way from what is
it the ham radio to the phonebook delivered to my house here about a
week and a half ago. Myson was like, what is that?
That's a doorstop? Son? Unreal? I mean it is. It is
(20:03):
so fantastic for truckers to be ableto have this, but it's also something
that even though you said it wasstarted in twenty thirteen, I mean,
this is something that they have neededfor a long time. So it's incredible.
Thank you, thank you. We'rereally proud of it. You know.
That's there's a reason why I joinedthe company a couple of years ago.
I think it's not only is therea good thing for the industry,
(20:25):
but it's a great thing. It'sa grids great business and offers, you
know, both sides to be ableto improve upon. You know what I
call the circular tour system for oureconomy. So have you had any feedback
from individual truckers about their experiences withTrucker Path. Oh yeah, I got
funny just this morning house that truckstuff. I had my Trucker's Path t
shirt on, and it's it's amazing. You know. I know you're gonna
(20:47):
expect me to say this, butit's the truth. It's always positive.
Occasionally somebody say, oh, myapp doesn't work, and that's because their
phone's ten years old. That doesn'thelp. But yeah, this this morning,
guys walked up to me and said, Trucker Path, I love that.
And I say, well, Iworked there and there was you know,
I had half a dozen conversations overan hour and a half that I
was at the loves Hearing Phoenix thismorning. It's it's really really rewarded for
(21:10):
a guy on my job to beable to know that dang near everybody knows
who we are, you know thatthe branding is awesome, and then to
have it to be such a positiveexperience. I love going to truck stops
and trade shows and talking to driversand not only hearing the accolades, but
then also hearing their suggestions because theyhave great ideas and they just make it
better for everybody. So is thatreally? Honestly, the way that y'all
(21:30):
have grown Truck or Path as anapp is just by feedback and brainstorming hugely.
I mean, I don't know everything. You know. None of us
within this company know all the stuffthat drivers need, and they're not shy
about telling us about It was abouta year ago. I did an interview
on a radio show and it turnedout there was a bad storm that people
(21:51):
were in the Midwest and Chicago,and they said, oh man, it's
a storm. I'm glad I'm notdriving in. She would be cool if
you guys had weather on your appso the drivers could be preparitors to come
into cities. And wow. Icalled our developers as soon as I got
off the phone. I was goingoff the interview, and I said,
this would be really cool, andit tells us about a week they added
a layer to the map and weatheralerts. So I was, you know,
(22:15):
I just called back to the peopleon the radio show. I said,
I'm not trying to horn in anew interview or anything here. I
just want to let you know thatthat's done. Thank you very much.
If you've got more ibas, keepthem coming, and that happens all the
time. That is really me cool. That is so cool. Chris,
please tell everybody again how they canget trucker Path and what is on it
that would make people say, youknow what, I need this, I'm
(22:37):
happy to go. The easiest wayto just go to the app store,
whether it's Google Play or on theApple side and just search for trucking app,
truck or path, whatever you need, it's trucking. We're going to
be towards the top of that search. Of course. Our Our website is
trucker path dot com and you canget the links to the stores there.
And I would say the biggest reasonis why people would want to use trucker
(22:57):
Path. There's a few. One, it's convenience and comfort on the road
to it's reliable. Three can getgreat fuel discounts. And there's more coming
in the very very near future.We're going to have a revolutionary insurance program
for drivers so that I don't knowif you know this, but truck drivers
paid north of two thousand dollars amonth on their truck insurance premiums. We're
(23:19):
trying to make that a little bitbetter for them. We're also offering roadside
assistance, entire discounts, and alot of things are coming between now and
then first of the year to justcontinue to make your life a little bit
better and easier for those drivers onthe road. Well, I hope you
come back and give us some updatesbecause this is obviously something that so many
people need, and I really appreciateyour time today. I'd be more than
(23:42):
happy to come back, and Iappreciate the opportunity to chat with you.
This week I'll be talking to ChrisOliver. He is the CMO for trucker
Path. Trucker Path is an appthat provides vital, up to date information
about truck stops, real time parkingavailability, fuel prices, and much much
more. My conversation with Chris iscoming up next on the Art of Improvement.
(00:24):
Thank you so much for listening tothe Art of improvement. My guest
today is Chris Oliver. He's CMOwith something called trucker Path. Hi Chris,
Hi, how are you? I'mgreat. It's so funny because I
have a friend. This is along story, but I have a friend
who is a train engineer, andhe says that every time he's in the
(00:44):
car with somebody, he always says, if they complain about the trains,
He's like, how do you thinkwe get everything? You're stopped behind a
train, but how do you thinkwe're get everything? The same goes with
trucks on the road. People think, oh my gosh, these big truck
they're everywhere, But without them,how would we get everything? And so
when I saw this app called truckerPath, I was like, this is
(01:08):
this is brilliant. Can you telleverybody what it is. Yeah, But
first I gotta say you nailed it. There's a thing in the trucking industry.
If you bought it, a truckbrought it, and that is true,
true, So I'm glad to seesomebody else recognization of the industry.
Absolutely. I can tell you alittle bit about trucker paths truck About.
It was created in twenty thirteen,so almost ten years old, now well
(01:32):
before I was involved, but youknow, quite a while ago, and
I think the easiest way to explainit, and most of our the drivers
who use it think of it asit's like if Yelp and Ways were jammed
together just for truckers. That's exactlywhat it is today and that's what truckers
enjoy using it for. Okay,so let's let's explain this to anyone that
hasn't used Ways or Yelp. Soobviously truckers that are out on the road,
(01:56):
they need information and they need theinformation to be up to date.
And so ways, if you don'tuse it, it's it's like, to
me a more up to date likeGoogle Maps or whatever maps is in your
phone. Yeah, think exactly.And so yelp is kind of like talking
about what's around you. Is thatnot correct? Can you explain it a
(02:19):
little? That's exactly what yelp is. You know, what we in this
the app world called a collection ofpois points of interest. So that's where
trucker Path was born. It wasreally created just to help drivers find truck
stops. So you can imagine justan app with a map on it.
It was a basic Google map,just like car drivers use, except it
had truck stops that were highlighted onit. And then the next step was
(02:42):
adding the actual prices out those truckstops. And you know, you can
imagine, you know, once you'redriving all over the country and you need
to fuel every day, being ableto find where to get fuel and where
to find the price and what theprices are is pretty darn valuable. It's
so funny. I never thought ofthat because obviously I have apps for myself
to see, okay, where amI going to get gas and where are
(03:02):
they going to try to gouge me? But I never thought of that for
truck drivers. Yeah, I said, you know, for all those of
us who drive cars around town allthe time, we tend to forget what
it's like when you drive across thecountry, different different markets, different locations,
different brands, so they needed atool to help them, you know,
find those and they and it workedobviously. And then but what happened
(03:23):
next was they said, Jesus isgreat, but what about restaurants or hotels
or rest areas. So then withthe next evolution, I guess the evolutionary
step was we offered up the abilityfor the drivers to suggest poise, and
that still happens today that the tunesof thousands of months. You know,
somebody has great tacos here in Phoenix, they can shoot a note to our
(03:46):
team and say, hey, Ijust had some great tacos at Karen's Taco
stand in Phoenix. I think theyshould be on trucker Path. No team
gets better congestion and make sure it'sreally a taco stand and not something we
wouldn't want on the app. Andif it does, boom, it's up
there and instantly any drivers start torate it and review it and provide feedback
in their thoughts. And it's alwaysfrom the driver's perspective. So when a
driver sees a review on trucker Path, they know that it's another trucker not
(04:10):
you know, somebody who's you know, specialists on tacos or anything, so
right, like a brotherhood of reviews. It's it's incredible because when you think
about it, and you are thinkingabout I don't know, is it thousands,
hundreds of thousands of drivers that aremoving twenty four seven and so one.
Yes, you have all of thisgreat information, but to have it
(04:31):
all together, it's it's almost unbelievable. Do you have any stats on how
many truckers use it and who's interactiveand how does how do you get the
new information? Yeah, yeah,we do. I'm pretty proud of it.
Generally speaking, you know, thisis arguable because it's a stat of
course, but generally speaking, mostagree there's about three and a half million
(04:53):
truckers, you know, doing longhaul loads at any given moment in the
country, and we have and pertrucker paths, we have a million active
users. So that's almost a thirdof the drivers that are moving our stuff
that we're going to be buying andeating on a regular basis are relying on
trucker paths to get where they needto go. So it's a pretty significant
tool for the industry as a whole. You know, I don't know why.
(05:16):
I just don't know that much abouttrucking. And so when you said
that it was one of the Iguess one of the features of trucker path
was just like ways and maps,I never think, Okay, you get
an assignment, you know exactly whereit is because you've been there one hundred
time. But that's not necessarily thecase. Yeah, that's rarely the case.
(05:39):
And then the other thing is isyou know ways or Google Maps or
any of the regular mapping tools thatwe use driving cars. They don't work
well for big trucks because big trucksare big, they're tall, they're heavy,
they're long. So you can't justdrive a big tractor trailer anywhere you
can drive up onto a chord.The way our navigation works is when someone's
(06:00):
going to use if they put in, they input the dimensions of the truck,
how tall is it, how longis it, how much does it
weigh, and then we have theknowledge of all that. We pull together
lots of databases and you can imagine, so we know that you know,
if your truck is fifteen feet tall, we don't route you down roads where
there's a fourteen foot high bridge.You know, that would be bad obviously,
So we do all that and that'sso that's kind of that's pretty vanilla.
(06:21):
You know, a lot of thereare other truck navigation platforms in the
industry. But what's need is ifby chance we make a mistake, you
know, which we do, we'rehuman, a driver could just push a
button and tell us what's wrong,and then that feeds back into our machine
learning and we don't route anybody thatway. Again, it kind of self
corrects. So we've got these milliondrivers out there using this all the time,
(06:43):
perfecting our knowledge base for us.So we believe we have, you
know, the best there is whenit comes to navigating for big trucks,
and that's you know, i'd sayprobably the second most popular item on our
AM the trucker Path app itself isyou know that reliable, trustworthy navigation.
Yeah. And the interaction, andI mean that in itself is the self
correcting part is unbelievable because sometimes evenif this is so not part of what
(07:10):
yours is for, but even ifsometimes you'll look on a website or an
app and it has the wrong informationand you go to a place it's closed
or whatever, it really makes adifference on how people like the app exactly.
Yeah, and we rely on that. And another thing that we have
is we're parking is a real problemfor big trucks, a real problem,
(07:31):
not just because it's difficult to drivethem. But to give you an idea,
an industry research group did a studyand found that the average truck driver
spends more than forty five minutes aday at the end of their shift just
trying to find a place to park. And they're only allowed to drive ten
or eleven hours a day, sothat's you know, arguably what eight ten
percent of their available capacity spent lookingfor a place to park. So as
(07:56):
everybody's telling us all these great placesover the years, those that are legal
and safe places at the park,we put it what's called a gel fence
around them. So whenever somebody hasthe app open and they get close to
it, we know and we askthem a question. We say, hey,
look around, are there a lotof spaces available in this parking area?
Are there some spaces available in thisparking area or is it full?
(08:16):
That's so helpful, It seems prettygeneral, but when you have a million
people telling that, reporting that ona regular basis, it starts to become
really reliable. So what we showthe drivers. If you're looking at you
know whatever, a pilot flying jayhere in Phoenix, you can see on
the app that two minutes ago.For example, another driver said there were
a lot of sponsives available here atPark Wow, so boom, you can
(08:39):
go there and save you that fortyminutes. I need that during Christmas at
the mall the time. That isincredible. Before I go one more minute,
can you tell people how did theyfind trucker Path the app and all
of the information. The best wayis just go to on your app store,
(09:00):
whether it's Google or Apple. We'reon both of course, and you
can type end trucker Path, trucknavigation, just about anything we talked about,
and we'll be the first ones thatpop up. The app's free,
it's easy to use and to reallyuse their friendly. We have our developers
that grew up prior to trucker Path, most of them doing social media.
So the look and feel the appis very very familiar. I guess you
(09:22):
would say to Darnier. Everybody whoopens it nice and I have to just
ask you this. You said you'vebeen with trucker Path for a while,
now, But how does one endup working for an app for truckers?
I mean, have you ever donethat? Well? How did you?
What was your path to being wordyou are today? Yeah? Well it
(09:43):
definitely is my first rodeo. I'vebeen working in technology and trucking for almost
thirty years now, wow, Andso this is one of many. But
everyone that I've ever done has beenfocused on drop or comfort, safety,
convenience, making life better for thedrivers because man, they know they've gotten
better since COVID, but they usedto get a bad rap for a long
(10:05):
time and now finally people recognize alittle bit better how important trucking is to
our economy and for all of usto get our stuff as a whole.
So it's been a passion of minemy whole life. And you know,
I've been fortunate been able to workwith several companies that did really, really
good things for the industry. Andthis is just the next stop on my
journey. That's incredible because during COVID, when we started to see the trucker
(10:28):
strikes or just stopping, I panicked. I panic because it was already apparent
that there were problems with getting itemsto the grocery store. Or anything really,
and it really brought to light whattruckers do and why is it that,
I don't know, nobody talks abouttrucking. It's still a vibrant career
(10:54):
too, isn't it. Yeah,yeah, I mean, believe me,
if you want to be a truckdriver and you have a safe driving history
and a cdo you can get ajob. There's there's been a shortage of
drivers in this industry as long asI've been in it. And I said,
you know, I admit it earlier. How old I am, So
it's been a long time. Soyeah, it's it's a great industry.
They're good, They're always good jobsavailable, And I agree with you,
(11:15):
no, I think maybe people arejust a little bit nervous around big vehicles
on the highway. But you know, I get the flat from people all
the time about trucking, and myresponse is always the same as I've met
dozens and dozens and dozens of driverswho had driven millions of miles and never
had a crash or speeding. Sure, how many of your friends can say
that? Not many in my familytruckers. Right in my family alone,
(11:41):
there's there's too many, you know, beside the fuel prices and real time
parking availability. There's one thing anotherthing about trucking that I've never understood and
maybe you could open my eyes toit, and that's these way stations and
the truck scales. Is that partof the app at all? Yeah,
(12:01):
it is. The way stations arewe have, I think all of them.
You know, they come and goa little bit, but we have
them all on our app and wegeofence those as well. So the information
we provide on our app for thedrivers is whether or not they're open and
how long people how long it's takingpeople to get through them, so that
they can be prepared to go throughthat queue and you know, go through
(12:22):
the process and that nobody likes tostop in the middle of a trip.
And I'll tell you what. Thoseway stations serve a really really important function
in our entire transportation system. Andat safety. They make sure the tires
embrace and lights are all okay,and the trucks aren't overweight, so that
you know, the four wheelers peopledriving cars are safe and the guy driving
the truck is safe and our stuffgets there on time. So no way
(12:43):
stations are essential. And that's anotherelement that drivers really rely upon us for
as you know, understanding what's comingahead and be ready for that five or
ten minutes. They got to slowdown and get checked out real quick.
That's totally cool. I never thoughtof it, is that, But yes,
it's taking care of the rest ofus too. Yeah, if you
just now started listening, this isChris Oliver. He is the CMO for
(13:05):
Trucker Path. It's an app usedby truckers to find a place to park,
find a place to stop, finda place to eat. One thing
that it's so I don't know,it's funny because when you think of truckers,
or at least when I think oftruckers, you don't think of you
know, high tech anything. Youthink, okay, you get behind the
wheel and you drive. But thisreally does bring in technology two truckers,
(13:33):
and when you stop and think aboutit, I mean, it's something that
they absolutely need because they are outmaybe in an unfamiliar area, and this
kind of brings them the information thatthey need absolutely And that's that's really I
mean, it sounds like you've beenlistening to our board meetings, because that's
exactly what our goal is. Basically, we sat ice back and think about
(13:58):
okay, Dan, the life ofa truck driver. Do you need no,
you need. You need to beable to find jobs, and we
have load board for that which hasload job postings where they can find those.
You need a truck, that's usuallytaken care of, right, We've
got that covered. Directions on howto get where you're going, we've talked
about that already, got navigation,and then most recent and most addition to
(14:18):
the product is a fuel programs fueldiscount program we just implemented a few months
ago. We're you know, thousandsof transactions a month. I actually spend
all the morning this morning out ofthe truck stop testing out an upgrade to
that network for us. But itgives drivers ability to save on fuel,
the fuel that they're finding by findingusing trucker Path. There's stilly being an
(14:39):
average of thirty bucks each time theyfill up. It's and it's free.
So it's it's just one more thingwe've added to the tool just to make
it a day in the life alittle bit easier for those guys that drive
long, long distances along hours everyday. To make sure that we have
our Sunkels bar in the morning.Right, it's so it's incredible that this
(15:01):
is such a it's such a change, constantly changing app and it's adding on
things as you find them. AndI was also reading online that you have
other things that you offer, somethingcalled truckloads or something called I'm trying to
think of the other thing, butthe command that's what was the need for
(15:26):
those and what are they? Yeah, it's just the ongoing evolutions. Like
I said, we want to serveeveryone. So truckloads is that loadboard I
was talking about. That's what driversused to find jobs. So if you're
in San Antonio and you're ready togo, you can just open the apps.
I'm in San Antonio and I wantto go X or just I'm here
and I want a great job.We push tens of thousands of those a
(15:48):
day. You can just look atthe ones, find the one that fits
you, touch a button you knowyou need some In some cases you can
touch that button and just secure thejob right there. In some classes you
touch the button they called the personhouse attle available for you to talk to
them. By the way, itgives a place for the drivers to find
the jobs they do and then commanda TMS and TMS stands for a Transportation
Management system is back office software forthe company to use or run their entire
(16:12):
operation. So it helps up findloads, helps a keep track of drivers,
it helps keep track of trucks andmaintenance and everything these take place that
pushes information out for the navigation tothe trucker Path app itself facilitates the fuel
deals that I talked about earlier,keeps tracking a job when it's drivers take
pictures of the paperwork with their phoneslike a scanning tool, nice them back
(16:34):
to the back office. And thenwhen all the information the job's done and
all the information is gathered to automaticallygenerate the invoices and some of the medicines
amounts of customers for you. Soit's the back office side of trucking that
we're attaching to the trucker Path appthat all the drivers use. Well,
it's funny because I never thought ofthat either, because my daughters go to
school like eight hours away from whereI live, and I always tell them
(16:59):
keep your location on, keep yourlocation on so that I can see where
you are or other people can findyou. But you never think about that
with truck drivers. But I again, it's amazing that not only other people
can find you your family, butyour boss, you're the company that you're
working for, can just keep tabson everything that's going on. That's pretty
(17:22):
unusual but very cool. I feellike they do that to me here at
work. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's also good for the companies because
it lets them keep their customers informed. Oh yes, I don't know about
you, but Amazon pretty much comesfrom my house every day, and I
think it's neat. They can tellme when they're ten stops away delivered.
That data supports the same type ofservice for trucking companies to the people who
(17:47):
are shipping the products. That isamazing. That is so great if you
just started listening. This is ChrisOliver. He's the CMO for trucker Path.
It's an app for truckers and Ialways when I think of her,
so I always think of Overnight.Don't ask me why you know, But
but what you were just saying aminute ago is that with a third of
(18:08):
all truckers using trucker Path, thisis a twenty four seven app that people
can use. Oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You when you look at
you know, when you're looking forparking or truck stops that are open or
closed. We show graphs. Youknow that's you know, by hour,
how busy is this place usually?And you know they're busy all the time
(18:30):
because the industry never stops because weknow we use consumers never stop consuming.
Right, So is there a wayfor you mentioned restaurants, But is there
a way for restaurants or points ofinterest to contact Trucker Bath to be a
part of the app or is itjust truckers that get to enter that information?
(18:53):
Yeah, anyone can. I meananybody who's a business can. We
of course vet them because there arecertain business types we don't want on the
app, but yeah, anyone can. And then we have we call it
our business portal. So if youhave a dot or cooi on the Trucker
Path app, you're given access toour business part let's to flog into where
you can make sure the information aboutyour restaurants, say, is always accurate.
(19:15):
You know your hours, et cetera, even your menu. And then
you can also post promotional so youcan say, hey, the Trucker Path
users, just tell us you sawus on Trucker Path and we'll give you
a free cup of coffee or burger. So the merchants the people who own
those pies have the ability to dothat self promotion themselves, and of course
we sell advertising packages where they cankick it up a notch and make it
(19:37):
fancy, but we do give themquite a bit of leeway and ability to
manage their own presence on the app. It's a long way from what is
it the ham radio to the phonebook delivered to my house here about a
week and a half ago. Myson was like, what is that?
That's a doorstop? Son? Unreal? I mean it is. It is
(20:03):
so fantastic for truckers to be ableto have this, but it's also something
that even though you said it wasstarted in twenty thirteen, I mean,
this is something that they have neededfor a long time. So it's incredible.
Thank you, thank you. We'rereally proud of it. You know.
That's there's a reason why I joinedthe company a couple of years ago.
I think it's not only is therea good thing for the industry,
(20:25):
but it's a great thing. It'sa grids great business and offers, you
know, both sides to be ableto improve upon. You know what I
call the circular tour system for oureconomy. So have you had any feedback
from individual truckers about their experiences withTrucker Path. Oh yeah, I got
funny just this morning house that truckstuff. I had my Trucker's Path t
shirt on, and it's it's amazing. You know. I know you're gonna
(20:47):
expect me to say this, butit's the truth. It's always positive.
Occasionally somebody say, oh, myapp doesn't work, and that's because their
phone's ten years old. That doesn'thelp. But yeah, this this morning,
guys walked up to me and said, Trucker Path, I love that.
And I say, well, Iworked there and there was you know,
I had half a dozen conversations overan hour and a half that I
was at the loves Hearing Phoenix thismorning. It's it's really really rewarded for
(21:10):
a guy on my job to beable to know that dang near everybody knows
who we are, you know thatthe branding is awesome, and then to
have it to be such a positiveexperience. I love going to truck stops
and trade shows and talking to driversand not only hearing the accolades, but
then also hearing their suggestions because theyhave great ideas and they just make it
better for everybody. So is thatreally? Honestly, the way that y'all
(21:30):
have grown Truck or Path as anapp is just by feedback and brainstorming hugely.
I mean, I don't know everything. You know. None of us
within this company know all the stuffthat drivers need, and they're not shy
about telling us about It was abouta year ago. I did an interview
on a radio show and it turnedout there was a bad storm that people
(21:51):
were in the Midwest and Chicago,and they said, oh man, it's
a storm. I'm glad I'm notdriving in. She would be cool if
you guys had weather on your appso the drivers could be preparitors to come
into cities. And wow. Icalled our developers as soon as I got
off the phone. I was goingoff the interview, and I said,
this would be really cool, andit tells us about a week they added
a layer to the map and weatheralerts. So I was, you know,
(22:15):
I just called back to the peopleon the radio show. I said,
I'm not trying to horn in anew interview or anything here. I
just want to let you know thatthat's done. Thank you very much.
If you've got more ibas, keepthem coming, and that happens all the
time. That is really me cool. That is so cool. Chris,
please tell everybody again how they canget trucker Path and what is on it
that would make people say, youknow what, I need this, I'm
(22:37):
happy to go. The easiest wayto just go to the app store,
whether it's Google Play or on theApple side and just search for trucking app,
truck or path, whatever you need, it's trucking. We're going to
be towards the top of that search. Of course. Our Our website is
trucker path dot com and you canget the links to the stores there.
And I would say the biggest reasonis why people would want to use trucker
(22:57):
Path. There's a few. One, it's convenience and comfort on the road
to it's reliable. Three can getgreat fuel discounts. And there's more coming
in the very very near future.We're going to have a revolutionary insurance program
for drivers so that I don't knowif you know this, but truck drivers
paid north of two thousand dollars amonth on their truck insurance premiums. We're
(23:19):
trying to make that a little bitbetter for them. We're also offering roadside
assistance, entire discounts, and alot of things are coming between now and
then first of the year to justcontinue to make your life a little bit
better and easier for those drivers onthe road. Well, I hope you
come back and give us some updatesbecause this is obviously something that so many
people need, and I really appreciateyour time today. I'd be more than
(23:42):
happy to come back, and Iappreciate the opportunity to chat with you.
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