Freight 360
The BEST Freight Broker Tools of 2024 | Episode 252
It's 2024, and the freight broker world has evolved a TON in the recent years. With that change has come new products and tech tools to help us get the job done. Join us in this episode where we break down our favorite tools for freight brokers. From getting freight rates to preventing fraud, we've got you covered.
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It's 2024, and the freight broker world has evolved a TON in the recent years. With that change has come new products and tech tools to help us get the job done. Join us in this episode where we break down our favorite tools for freight brokers. From getting freight rates to preventing fraud, we've got you covered.
Support Our Sponsors:
QuikSkope - Get a Free Trial: Click Here
Levity: Click Here
Bluebook Services: Click Here
DAT Freight & Analytics - Get 10% off your first year!
DAT Power - Brokers & Carriers: Click Here
DAT Express - Brokers: Click Here
Truckers Edge - Carriers: Click Here
Recommended Products: Click Here
Freight Broker Basics Course: Click Here
Join Our Facebook Group: Click Here
Check out all of our content online: Click Here
Welcome back for another episode of the Freight360 podcast. We're at 252 this week, coming at you in beautiful July 2024. And if you're brand new here, make sure to check out all of the other episodes in our back catalog, on our website or on YouTube. You can also find the Freight Broker Basics course on our website. That's Freight360.net. Broker basics course on our website. That's freight360.net. That'll give you an educational full-length option to get a brokerage launched off the ground and all the sales tips and carrier network building advice that we've got, and everything's laid out in a straightforward playbook for you. So make sure to check that out. Leave us a comment. Share us with your friends. Sign up for our newsletter. Leave us a review All the good stuff. I did want to read. One of the comments. Slash reviews we got on YouTube last week Made me laugh because it's kind of a lie.
Speaker 1:This was on one of our shorts about hostage load, which has been kind of a viral short for us. But I'm assuming it's a carrier who said freight brokers are scum, period, no assets in the game and they take no risk being on the highway with 44,000 pound load. If I see you at a dinner party, it would probably not end. Well, I don't know, man, I got a kick out of that one, ben. What do you think? I feel like we've defended this, that stance, or defended against that stance a lot. What's your take on it when people think like, yeah, for sure I don't want to operate or something like that.
Speaker 2:I think it's mostly honestly like it's like it's a psychological thing. I think mostly people when they're frustrated and they're distressed. You know, trucking rates have been down for the better part of more than two years at this point, so people want to look for somebody to blame. It's just human nature. They want to point the finger somewhere else, make themselves feel better. Brokers are an easy target. They know that there's money coming out of the load to them and they feel like it's literally coming out of their pocket. But the truth is and we talk about this a lot if you just got rid of brokers and they all disappeared, who would suffer the most Are the smaller carriers, are the owner, ops. That's the market that brokers create by doing things that shippers aren't going to do. Shippers aren't going to work load boards. They're not going to post their loads up. They're not going to talk to lots of different carriers that happen to need a load because they get stuck in one place for delivery or they need to get another backhaul because a load got canceled.
Speaker 2:All of the fluidity of how the market functions comes from brokers spending hundreds of hours making phone calls, not getting paid anything in some cases or very little, and then in free caviar. They even said it today. There was like the big lawsuit I guess got settled with Molo, which was bought by ArcBest because of unpaid overtime Like that's super common. When I started at TQL, like I think I made 37 grand a year and I work like 70 hours a week for like nine months and if you figure that out, like I was probably getting paid half of what I would have made at like McDonald's If you took my hourly rate and divided it out by what I actually got Right and at the end of the day here's the thing that I always that makes me feel better about it.
Speaker 2:Personally, every carrier that I used back in back then, like 10 years ago now I still talk to have great relationships with literally send me Christmas baskets every year like whatever wine or meats or cheeses and stuff, because we genuinely work together. I've helped them make so much more money than they would have if we didn't have that relationship. I've helped them find backhauls. I've helped them find lanes that they weren't able to get didn't have that relationship. I've helped them find backhauls. I've helped them find lanes that they weren't able to get. They would send me customer targets that they wanted to work for because they knew I was more effective and had more time to be on the phone to build the relationship that they were busy dealing with mechanical issues, their trucks, drivers, all the stuff they had to do to keep cargo running.
Speaker 2:I was able to provide that to them and, just like anything, there's a cost to everything you do in life. If you get a service and a benefit, you got to pay somebody to do it Like it's not going to come for free and it doesn't matter what business you're in Like. The same thing is true in brokers. I was talking with somebody the other day. They were like, well, why can't I get 75% commission? And it's like, well cause, you have a salary. Well, and then, like we literally broke down where all the dollars of any margin goes to and like overhead, you got to pay somebody to do the insurance you got to pay.
Speaker 2:All the tools we're going to talk about today trucker tools, insurance, like tms is like all of those things that help us, help drivers a lot of the time. Like organization getting loads, being able to get loads quickly when they need loads. Like all of those things take time, effort, cost human beings. Like it's not free and the shippers aren't going to do it. So like we provide this valuable service but yet we catch most of the flack when things aren't going well all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I look at it like this. I agree with everything you said. I think there's a you know there's like the phrase perception is reality and I think there's a lot of perception from, there's a lot of perception of freight brokers that we are the scum right From a lot of these smaller trucking companies. But if you, instead of perception, if you go more to perspective, the perspective of these smaller trucking companies, but if you, instead of perception, if you go more to perspective, the perspective of the small trucking company is just there's likely a misunderstanding or lack of awareness of of really what goes on in the industry pretty much exactly what you just outlined there. Right, they, they, they don't see it through the lens of the. You know the big picture it's a very narrow focus lens.
Speaker 2:So you. It's interesting. So I'm reading a book right now that explains exactly what you just said why perception is more valuable than reality and why people's influence and people's opinions are more important than facts. The book's called you guys are both like this. It's called the Righteous Mind why good people are divided by Politics and Religion. Jonathan Haidt wrote it. He's also the one that wrote the new. It's like the new, really big bestseller on like social media and what it's actually doing the Anxious Generation. Long story short, this book really explains why, mentally, we do exactly what you said. We value perception, we value influence and what other people say, because human nature is like. That's how you survived. You didn't survive by learning how a tree worked. You survived by getting other people in your group to work with you. Those opinions mattered more than facts throughout human history, so they're weighted more and it makes a lot of sense when you kind of drill down to it.
Speaker 1:But either way, agreed. But hey, even if it's a negative comment, we appreciate all the comments because it helps fuel the algorithm on YouTube to get more people just like you and others in front of us. That being said, our Facebook group is we're getting close to like a hundred thousand. I think we're like right around 90 right now. We could use some more moderators. So if you, if you guys, want to be involved in the social media side of freight 360 and be a moderator on the Facebook group, that's you know, the whole goal is to keep, just keep spam out. We don't care what your opinion is, well, we care about your opinion. We don't discriminate what your opinion is. Well, we care about your opinion. We don't discriminate against your opinion. So, feel free and come in and talk about whatever you want and give whatever thoughts you have, but we want to make sure we're vetting the people that come in so we don't have a bunch of spam or bots or, you know, dope logo advertisements or crypto scam courses, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So let us know if you want to be a moderator.
Speaker 1:You can find the link for the Facebook group in the description box or show notes.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Jason Jordan. He has been one of our longtime moderators. He's over at a Carolina Sapphire logistics. He's been a great help in helping us manage the Facebook page and has been doing that for a number of years now. So much appreciated Sports. I don't have a whole lot for a number of years now.
Speaker 1:Much appreciated, really appreciate it For sure. Sports I don't have a whole lot Football season's around the corner. I saw a funny meme on Facebook that was like. I think it was like only eight more Sundays until college football or something like that. So I'm getting ready for football. I've been really like I've been loving watching like the Formula One races lately. So I saw Lewis Hamilton got his first win in a few years last weekend in Silverstone in England. I didn't know. Nascar has a Chicago street race that they did last weekend. I guess it was the second one they'd ever done. Didn't see it, but pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 1:Anything around the golf world I heard people talking about whatever at my golf league on Monday. The guys that we played with were like, did you see the match? And I'm like, no, I didn't see it over the weekend. They're like, yeah, well, wherever they played, it must have been a really relatively easy course for professionals, because these guys were getting like high 20s under par for this tournament. I don't know if you saw anything about that, but that goes to show you like you know the difference between a course um, you know, like some of these big pga championship events, or you know the majors versus some of these um different smaller events.
Speaker 2:So yeah, the john deere classic tpc deer run is where it was played. Yeah, winner was 28 under, second was 24 under. I mean there are a dozen people, it looks like that are 20 under or less. So wow, your point.
Speaker 2:The course I was talking with my cousin about that, um the course that you played, my mind just blanked yes and the turtle backed um all the greens and everything and it's just like it's really even for people to play a lot or even play a little bit, like golf's really hard, especially on a really hard course with a different slope which is the rating of a golf course. And like it's like every time you get a bad shot or you end up with a bogey and you think like, oh, I should have birdied it right. Like just remember that. Like it is a five degree difference between hitting it out of bounds and then five degree difference the other way, hitting it out of bounds the other way, like, and you're swinging that club as fast as you can. Yeah, right, hit that ball. It is a very small margin of error, but the course for sure plays a huge part in it, for sure, for sure. Anything else in sports I got nothing. I haven't even watched. I don't even have my TV connected.
Speaker 1:Really, Fair enough, the first world problems of a new someone moving into a new house. I love it News I didn't read. I know Stephen put a bunch in here beforehand.
Speaker 2:I did see there was one off the top of my mind a bunch in here beforehand.
Speaker 1:I did see there was one off the top of my mind. This came out in freight caviar this morning and we like we tend to share a lot of paul's freight caviar uh, like industry tips throughout our company at pierce worldwide, and um, there was like two mc numbers that were listed as like being involved in hostage loads and they were like in like a few day span there was like a handful of brokerages that all got you know the short end of the stick of these carriers trying to pull a hostage load scam to try and demand more money. And then we're going to gather the FBI is involved on it now. But I can't stress enough how important it is when you deal with fraudulent activity to get it reported. I dealt with one last week.
Speaker 2:Here's the MCs I don't want to cut you off Before you tell your story. The MCs that were cited in this the article634, and ZAP Transportation MC434847.
Speaker 1:Yeah, put a line, do not use list. I'm sure they'll get reported on highway and the others very quickly, but wild.
Speaker 2:Last week, the story you're going to tell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no-transcript. Yeah, yeah, I'll keep it real brief. I basically had an issue where a broker had basically tried to someone, tried to use our authority and doctored a bunch of carrier packet rate confirmation etc. Carrier packet rate confirmation etc. And identified a load, probably on a load board of high value. It was Adidas pants like 20,000 pairs of Adidas pants, probably valued at like 300 to 500K is what I would guess would be like the market value and it was supposed to go from basically Phoenix to a Costco distribution center in Maryland.
Speaker 1:So they take this load, likely stealing someone else's identity, because it listed a brokerage called Integrity Logistics on there Not Integrity Express, but Integrity Logistics was listed on the BOL as who was awarded the load. Then they stole our identity and posted the load and awarded it to and, like the comments and the posting were like two different postings and it was like owner operators. Only you know, they didn't basically didn't want to involve any larger companies, they wanted to only use a small owner operator who probably wouldn't think twice and didn't have time to do proper due diligence like a larger carrier would. But they find this innocent dude who's offered this load that is paying way over market rate, picking up July 3rd in Phoenix to deliver to a warehouse in LA Obviously a hotspot for theft, fraud etc. So this guy, guy picks it up, delivers it on the 4th of july. Um, first of all, what warehouse is open on the 4th of july? Like that should raise alarms for you. A lot of businesses shut down for our independence day, um, and that's it. So the guy sent, the carrier, sends his uh paperwork to rts financial as factoring company. They, they invoice us. We're like this is not our load. And then I look at it and I'm like, I do the math. I'm like, oh yeah, like he changed the rate confirmation to show delivery in LA instead of in Maryland. It was a one day transit time.
Speaker 1:The carrier definitely didn't read the BOL to see where the delivery was supposed to be, the BOL to see where the delivery was supposed to be. So I got it reported to DAT Truck Stop, fmcsa, the DOT's investigative office, the district attorney's office of LA County. I even sent it to Erica Voss from DAT Cybersecurity who was on the show a few weeks ago. We got a hold of the shipper and the receiver who, ironically, they were the least concerned concerned about it because they have so many shipments.
Speaker 1:They're like uh, we're not really sure what load you're referring to, we'll let you know, but send us whatever you have and you know, basically, like I'm sure they're gonna care once their high value load does not show up. Um, but we've done our due diligence to report to everybody. Worst case scenario here um, the driver is not going to get paid his 700 bucks or whatever it was, and more so the whoever's, whoever owns those goods. Costco, I'm assuming, like they're going to be like, this is a ton of money, a ton of value worth of our goods, right so, but you know, we got the guy reported and yeah, I want to point something out.
Speaker 2:Right, this is one of the things that I learned to do when I started in the industry. In fact, the brokerage I'm working with right now, we were I'm creating the sops and I was. This is what we were talking about. Is that, like, once your load is loaded, like even if you have tracking because there's a lot more sophisticated tracking we're going to talk about today and tools and things, so like you can literally see the driver when he arrived. And we got an email from the shipper. It says and the carrier and the dispatcher both confirmed the temp, confirmed that it said it on the BOLs and verified he was loaded and rolling Right.
Speaker 2:However, I still make sure that we make a phone call to every driver once they're loaded and rolling, and I ask that question always. Now and it's again, it's easy to remember for a reefer load to just hey, and it's important you ask it this way. You don't say hey, is your reefer set at 34? Because most people just say yes, you go, hey, what is your reefer set at? To make sure it matches what you said.
Speaker 2:Right is the first thing I always check on a reefer load. But secondly, now, because of so much of that fraud that you've pointed out. We use all of the tools we'll talk about today, but I still like the old fashioned phone call to verify and just ask the driver hey, if you got a second, can you do me a favor and just look at the BOL, make sure the pickup and the delivery match the rate con. And I always ask the driver like, hey, what's the MC on the side of your truck? Because that helps you avoid a lot of these things. Right, and again, your instance was different, but it just reminded me of because-.
Speaker 1:It's dialing your I's and crossing your T's, though it's what it comes down to, yeah.
Speaker 2:And a lot of the fraud is perpetuated because you talk to a dispatcher and that dispatcher is someone else and they've phished someone's email or something and you think you're working with a company and they send a different truck where they intend to load that to a different facility and steal it. Now most of those loads are, like you said, high value, high theft items. Like you know, know, I see it a lot like we've had clients, people that you and I know, like high value loads of copper, high value loads of things that are like easily stolen and sold. Like there's like a list of all these commodities we talked about with varirisk, but it's like razor blades, like actually laundry detergent is really high theft because it's like they got a very high street value, like they can basically sell it very quickly and get cash. Yeah, um, but any raw materials like metal and things that they can scrap and sell because they can get cash very quickly.
Speaker 2:You don't see it as often on like perishable loads because they literally expire, but like when we used to move, I used to move a lot of almonds out of california for a candy bar company and they're four or five hundred,000 a truckload.
Speaker 2:They were one of the highest targeted types of cargo to be stolen in California, because if they could get that truck, they would run it right into Mexico and they could sell that thing even at half price and get a quarter of a million dollars. So be aware of what you're moving and take some steps, even if it's just a phone call to ask these questions, to make sure the company you hired in the trucking company is the one that picked up your load and, furthermore, that the BOL that was handed to them matched the rate con and that they didn't somehow get someone else's rate con from another brokerage. Like you said, it looks like your name, but isn't it's close enough? Or in this case, it was different than yours, but it's still a recognizable name in the industry and if you look at it quickly, I would have overlooked that. But being able to slow somebody down and to ask those questions is going to prevent a lot of headaches for anyone out there. Yep.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent diligence man. That's what it comes down to, and we'll talk about some tools you can use. In today's episode, we're going to highlight some of the must-have products for freight brokers. It's 2024. There's been a lot of stuff that's come out in the last few years, like if you look at some of our content from 2020, a lot of this stuff didn't exist yet, right? So it's really important to make sure you're up to date on the latest tools that are available to you.
Speaker 1:What I wanted to start off with is having a good data tool, and so I'm going to start with rating tools right off the bat, and this is depending on where you're at in your journey as a broker is going to depend on the level of the amount of money that you're going to spend as an investment in a tool like a rating tool, because there's a wide range of what you could pay monthly, from $200 a month to over $10,000 a month for some of the more advanced analytical tools that are out there, and I wouldn't be surprised if, down the road, you see some of the big box brokerages that have available to them even more sophisticated data. That'll cost even more, but it'll be worth it. So one of the ones that I use very, very often is rate view with, like, the multi-lane and rate cast feature, and I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:For the past like 48 hours I have lived in that tool. I was in it at six o'clock this morning and I was in until eight o'clock last night working through bids and you showed me how to use the new rate cast tool, like a month or two ago. And I love the way it works because it doesn't just give you a quick way to pull all the current rates. You can pull current, you can pull contract, so spot and contract and then, if you choose rate cast, it gives you, I think, six months or the rest of the year, 13 months. It's 13 months out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you go 12 months plus the additional current month. Here's how it works. And we had a rep from DAT on I think it was Tamir, right? Tamir Dove was on with us last year to talk about rate view and where their data comes from. But RateCast. What's really cool about it is it predicts out the future rates with 95% accuracy up to that year out. It'll give you where they think the median is going to fall and 95% of the time that median they project falls within their high and low limits on rate view. So really really cool. And here's the deal, though. It's not cheap, right, it's expensive. So we're talking a couple thousand dollars or more per month for a single license. So if you're not actively working in a lot of bids or RFPs or doing a lot of business, you're probably not ready to invest in a tool like that because the payoff on it isn't going to come quickly for you. It's really probably designed more for the medium to more senior tenured freight broker.
Speaker 2:I didn't know it was that expensive.
Speaker 1:What's that Wow?
Speaker 1:I didn't know it was that expensive $2,250 a month is their current license cost. So great tool and that's an add-on to your normal DAT1 suite of products, but really really cool. So like what and that's again it depends on the number of for every lane that you run because you can do a bulk upload of a you know, origin destination zip, origin or desk or origin city state, zip, destination city state or origin city state, zip, destination city state, zip, equipment type, etc. Right, you can bulk upload it. It spits it out really really quickly with all these analytics in there. Really really cool tool.
Speaker 1:So it's not like you know, if you're doing a bid without a tool like that, you might have ratecasts available in your current DAT on a single load basis, but not for 800 lanes if you were doing a bid. If you don't have ratecasts at all and you just have rate view, you can only see current and historical. If you don't have rate view and you just have the standard DAT1 load board, you're going to see the current snapshot of the market rate but you can't see the past or the future. So you're trying to guess on what pricing is going to look like into the future. So definitely a big advantage if you're doing a bid and you got to think like, hey, the other people I'm competing against in this bid likely don't all have this exact same tool, so I've got an extra weapon in my arsenal here that I can use. But you get a certain number of credits. I think the one that I have is 20,000 credits per month, which means I can run 20,000 lanes per month on that ratecast tool. So really really awesome. Definitely recommend it.
Speaker 1:But the other stuff too, like within the DAT suite and there's other platforms that offer variances of these similar tools. But just understanding what the market looks like, like market dashboard, from that you could see on a map red means tight, blue means loose. You could see outbound versus inbound for the type of equipment. So you know what kind of Based on the area of the country you're dealing with. You know what the market's dealing with right now and they're taking, they're aggregating all kinds of data right Load postings, truck postings, all of this stuff. To give you an idea of you know what this current state of the freight market is. And thank you, steven, for the show notes Dat IQ that is the official title of that suite of products with all the analytics and market insights that are in there.
Speaker 2:I want to add two things right. One is that, no matter how predictive a model is right, not going to go into like statistics but like all of the information has already happened, right, like so, like there's literally no information about what's going to happen tomorrow, and it sounds simple, but when you think about it, right, like so, like there's literally no information about what's going to happen tomorrow, and it sounds simple, but when you think about it, right Like so, for the past two years and a little bit more, rates have been very, very stable and have not fluctuated, because contract is still in a lot of lanes still above spot and I've been looking at this and lots of lanes recently. Right, that is projected to change. I know it's been projected to change because it usually changes about like every 14 to 18 months. This is the longest cycle where it has stayed that stable. Right, and I know we have a lot of listeners that are new in brokerage or have been in the business, you know, less than three years. So they basically spent most of their career in a very stable market and I was talking to a few people in the past weeks that were like, hey, look, you know, I just really need to get some of these lanes that I know very well because, like, I know where the rates are. And again, like that has been true, but that does not mean it will continue to be true. And the thing I always try to stress when I'm talking with somebody is, like that is still temporary, even though it's been more than two years. It will end, just like every economic cycle.
Speaker 2:It goes in a circle, right. So as more trucks leave the market, or more freight comes in the market or less freight, whatever changes are going to happen, they're inevitable and when that happens, rates are going to be harder to predict. We're starting to see this now. I've seen lanes where Monday and Tuesday and Thursday, that same rate is profitable for a 15% margin, but on Thursdays and Fridays it's a 15% loss because there's just a lot of trucks that are there that need to get somewhere and there aren't any certain days of the week because there just aren't loads coming out of that area. So it's something you really want to start looking at more as you're bidding lanes or even talking to customers, because everybody's gotten so used to what has happened very recently that the expectation is that it will continue. It will not continue. We don't know if it'll be tomorrow, next month or even the beginning of next year, but it is inevitable that it will continue. It will not continue. We don't know if it'll be tomorrow, next month or even the beginning of next year, but it is inevitable that it will change and I don't know if we're going to.
Speaker 2:We're not going to jump into the whole thing that Steven put in here, but Craig Fuller's tweet about the SBA loans and all of the cash that went into our industry.
Speaker 2:A lot of those had deferred payments and a lot of that money started to dry up.
Speaker 2:So you're starting to see more carriers not able to run or even stay in business because some of that money started to dry up. The faster that happens, the quicker that market's going to shift and if the Fed changes interest rates, you're going to see more shipments in the market. So if you see less carriers, at the same time the Fed cuts rates and companies buy more inventory or ship more freight, we're going to see something similar to maybe maybe not as drastic as COVID, for sure, but maybe like 2017, like where the ELDs, but like these market swings, are going to be part of our industry again, even though they haven't been for a while, and it just speaks to why, having a tool that gives you some of this information, again, it's never going to know what's going to happen next week. It's still making its best prediction. They're very good predictions, like you said, 95% accuracy but again there are going to be more swings. This is going to be like a necessary tool if you want to compete in the market.
Speaker 1:I think For sure, for sure. And obviously the last thing with, like a suite like DAT, the load board functionality, right, posting loads, searching trucks, searching your competitions, posted loads. That's more of a basic like beginner requirement, but worth mentioning, and you can always get 10% off your first year with the link in our show notes. So check that out, show notes. So check that out. Um, other carrier sourcing though. So, um, we've talked, we've talked about highway in the past and you know we've had michael canion from highway talk about fraud.
Speaker 1:There's a really cool sourcing tool in highway that I want to point out and um, originally, you know, kevin hill created carrier listscom and it was a strictly a carrier sourcing tool, which then, you know, years down the road, is now highway. It was and it still has the same sourcing capacity to it, but in addition there's the fraud prevention and onboarding pieces. So here's what's really cool about a sourcing tool like highway you can just put in an origin and a destination. At a minimum. You can further drill down by equipment type, by fleet size, by authority length, certifications, like do they have a CARB cert for California, do they have HAZMAT cert, etc. And what it will do is it will look at three data points and give you, in a ranked order, the most recommended carriers that would likely be a fit for that lane, and what it's looking at is their actual where they've been observed.
Speaker 1:They call it. Observed is where their inspections have been right.
Speaker 1:So it looks at the previous two years. You can see a map with dots on it of every DOT inspection point for that carrier, right, you can see a map with dots on it of every DOT inspection point for that carrier and it's going to weight the previous six months heavier than the 18 months prior to that. So you've got the observed. Then they have the preferred, which is whether the carrier received a survey phone call from Highway or they filled out a profile preferences sheet when they onboarded through a brokerage. They've identified certain states that they prefer to operate in. And then, lastly, they look at their headquarters, where they're domiciled out of, and that's going to give you the head hall or back hall suggestions for you. So, taking all three of those, it's going to say they rank high in all of these categories because they are based in the origin or destination They've identified. They want to work in the state and they've been inspected through that lane Like boom, great.
Speaker 1:You're not even dealing with calling a truck that's posted on a load board or having to post a load and receive a call from a carrier you've never spoken to from a load board. This is great stuff and I don't have the exact data on it, but a couple couple years back we talked about it on one of our episodes on the amount of capacity that's out there. That is not listed on load boards, and I think it's the majority. Yeah, is not listed on load boards if I remember.
Speaker 1:I think it's like 25 or 35 somewhere in that range is what is on the load boards for, like the estimates, if I remember you've got to find an alternative way to get in touch with these carriers, and that's a great way to do, and there's other ones out there too. I know there's a whole, you know there's a whole bunch of uh products out there where you can try to find um carriers that are a good fit one of the things, too, with uh dat um, they've got a tool called uh lane Makers where you can and I'm curious if you remember when we first demoed it before it came out with the team at DAT a couple years ago but you can search a lane and it'll tell you not carriers that have a truck posted, but carriers that have historically searched for loads in that lane or historically posted trucks in that lane, to give you an idea of like yeah, they clearly want to run this lane right. Like finding ways to understand what's going on in the carrier's mind without posting and praying on a load board.
Speaker 2:And it's a really good point, right, because, well, we work with trucking companies as well, right as coaching clients, and we get to help them find business and match different lanes. And the thing that I was really surprised at in the past year or two is lots of the carriers I'd say like medium-sized, small to medium-sized carriers, like what you consider like 30, 40 trucks, 20 to 40 trucks A lot of them don't post their truck on that because they don't want to field calls for loads, they don't want to run.
Speaker 1:So they've gotten in the habit of like, or they're just definitely not posting all of their trucks. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 2:And then they have dispatchers that are still calling on loads to find freight out of there to your point, but they're not putting their truck up. So like if you're a broker and you really need a truck in an area like there's a very high likelihood there's a truck that needs that load or carry that would run it, that just isn't posted. And finding alternative ways to get better carrier relationships is like one of the most important things you could do as a freight broker. Right, like an analogy I give to people when they're like asking about the industry I'm like we sell a product but it's not really a product, it's a service, right, and I'm like the service can only be provided when you find the right fit for each individual scenario. Right, whatever that is the work that you're going to perform, the load right, like so if you don't have the right carrier fit, you also don't have the right pricing because that carrier needs to charge you more because a deadhead, because it's not a great load, because they're sending them somewhere to a market they don't know they'll get good freight out of a lot of those things. So one of the things that I think people it's a hurdle to get over, like a learning curve when you start in this industry.
Speaker 2:Is the assumption that just any truck will do and anybody that calls you or that you call is the same. They are not, and these are the things that you can't see, even on a load board anyway. Like you have to ask questions and get to know the carrier and what lanes they want to run, where they prefer to be, before you should even really be talking about price Because, like, if it's not a good fit, you're just wasting your time haggling over a rate that's never going to work. It's not because the trucker or the driver, the dispatcher, is being difficult, it's because they have additional costs to do that work for you. They got to drive empty, they got to do this. There's like a half a dozen things we could list, list. So when you aren't having these conversations, you miss out on almost all of the marginal gains, all of the best pricing, all of the best carrier relationships, and then you're going to struggle and go like, well, why can't I ever get loads that are profitable? Because it's both things. You can't just get your money out of your shipper and expect them to pay you because you didn't want to do that work. You have to put the time and effort in to make phone calls.
Speaker 2:Back to the earlier point in the beginning of this episode of carriers saying, like brokers are the problem. Well, effective brokers have these conversations in order to help the carriers find the loads that are a fit for them. Like I said this earlier, like, literally, we'll prospect areas and find shippers that my carriers have identified they want to work with and I'll call them on behalf of them like hey, I got guys that really want to work with you, can we find a fit? And I will do that for weeks and months until I can get onboarded to be able to help them. Right, those are the things that happen behind the scenes, but you can't do them without the tools you're talking about. You need to be able to find carriers, be able to identify them by some way before you call them. You can't just work through hundreds of thousands of carriers and randomly call them. You got to pair that list down to something manageable and then you still got to put the effort behind it to make it usable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agreed, you want to give a little teaser to Genlogs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to be a really, really cool product. That I think is absolutely going to change how kind of the industry functions. But I mean, long and short of it is the. The one that's being released soon is going to be the asset locator tool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but, like the first piece is really even just the asset locator tool.
Speaker 2:Right, Lots of and this is more I would say for, like, larger carriers.
Speaker 2:But there are lots of trailers that go missing all the time, that never get located, that get pulled from a pool or another carrier you know grabs that because the carrier needed to leave it there. Lots of different reasons. Trailers don't end up where they're supposed to be and they're very hard to find later. And this tool is able to find the majority of them, even now in like a matter of seconds, being able to show you where that was, where it was cited, which tractors pulling it, so that these companies can go and find that. And that tool is going to have some really really cool features for freight brokers some really really cool features for freight brokers. And the best way I can explain it is we developed it in a way that it basically does everything I've learned how to do manually over days, weeks and months, and it's absolutely going to be mind-blowing. So really going to be excited to be able to have them on the show to talk more about that product. But yeah, it's absolutely going to be coming.
Speaker 1:Stay tuned. Yeah, that one's called Gen Logs. So here's one of the thoughts I have here, because some people are always like, like man, like you guys just can't do your job. The old school, you know, the old fashioned way. You're relying on technology instead and there's going to be issues. And the way that I think about it is like this right, these are tools to just make you stronger at what you are already you know are naturally doing.
Speaker 1:Think about, like what humans used to do back in the day. And then the hammer was the point. Right. It's like, yeah, you're still building, but you're building more efficiently. And then construction equipment was created You're still building, but you're building more efficiently. And then construction equipment was created You're still building, but you're building way more efficiently, right. And then software and artificial intelligence comes into the mix. And again, we're still building, but we're doing it way more efficiently, with a ton more data synthesized and it's done, like you said, in the snap of a finger, super fast, to make us be able to do what we're good at way more at a broader reach, faster, simple as that Correct and it just allows us to provide better service.
Speaker 2:The analogies that always come to my mind when I think about it are like farming and the industrial revolution in the car right. Like I heard somebody talking about the other day. That like it was like a hundred years ago. Like people would literally yell at people driving cars and yell at them like, oh, go get a horse, because people didn't think it was necessary to have cars when you had horses. But also at that same time, literally there was just horse shit and all of the streets and all the major cities that they literally couldn't get out Right. And like things hopefully are improving, but there should be making your lives easier and the farming one right. Like yeah, you could still plow a field with probably a bull or a horse I don't really know what they plowed fields with, but once they made the engine and you had a tractor right. Like the farm next to you is now producing twice as much as you and half the time.
Speaker 2:If you need to be able to sell your crops competitively with the guy next to you, if you don't use that tool, you will not have a farm eventually because the guy can just do more, faster and more efficiently, and I always think it was like, even when AI came out, it honestly it kind of scares me because it's such a change and I think it can be very powerful. But also, if we don't embrace it and everyone else does, you just get left behind and can't compete. And I think it's really important to keep your thumb on the pulse of what tools are available, because if you choose them right and this is the thing I think we should talk about in a minute is like these tools should be driving more profit to your bottom line. We shouldn't just be buying them because it seems easier to do. You need to make sure you're doing more with the time you get back in order to get the money you paid for the tool right, it's got to increase your profit or reduce your losses.
Speaker 2:Right, you need to be more effective, more efficient, or both right and again. Like we were talking about, these tools are great, but you still got to make the phone call. You still got to put the human effort behind it for that information to be valuable. It's just a better hammer, right. It's not replacing the hammer, it's not replacing the person. You need them to be able to get more done in less time, and that's the biggest challenge free brokers have. How do you do more with less Right? How do you invoice faster? How do you do this? Like segue into the next tool you want to talk about.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I want to hit on the fraud prevention piece, Cause we talk about it's. You know the. You've got it's got a. The cost of the product should be justified by increased profits. The other side of it too is it should the cost of the product should be able to read them more than reduce the uh, or should be less than the the reduced losses that you might be incurring. So things like um tracking, carrier vetting, um ver you know verification tools, so I'll give you like three examples of uh tools that I really like. So pre pre-screening for a carrier tool tool like Highway We've mentioned Highway earlier you can get insights on inspection history, on reports against them, insights about a freight broker just located at the same address, or they've only accessed the Highway system from outside North America, or they've tried to log in as the wrong motor carrier in another instance.
Speaker 1:Things like that are really good at preventing a carrier before the transaction happens. Now let's talk about during the transaction, gps tracking. A ton of tools out there. I'm not going to say one of them is my favorite. I've used Trucker Tools, macropoint there's a whole bunch of products out there and then one of our favorites on the actual transaction level is Quickscope right. They're obviously a partner of Freight360. We've had them on the show but we use this at my company.
Speaker 1:It's an amazing product.
Speaker 1:This is a great tool that, on a load by load basis, just like for tracking, if you want that extra layer of security, you can verify at the actual pickup before you release pickup information like a pickup number or PO number, at the actual pickup, before you release pickup information like a pickup number or PO number, that it is the actual truck in the right location with the right DOT and MC on the side of it.
Speaker 1:And if Quickscope doesn't approve that, based on character recognition and geofencing and all that stuff, then they don't get the information that they want and a lot of these transactional level items here. They're deterrents, right. If you tell a fraudster on the phone, we're going to require you to do X, y and Z, right, like the old school take a picture of the side of your truck at the pickup, walk around the facility, take a video, show a picture of your cab, car registration, driver's license, etc. Quickscope does it all into one, makes it really easy with a quick snap of a button on your phone. But these are great deterrents, right. If you tell a carrier you need to do this, they're going to just go find an easier target right and that's going to prevent having to pay five grand on a double payment for a double brokerage instance that might pop up once a week or a few times a month, like a lot of us were dealing with in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:Here's some of the other ones.
Speaker 1:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I was going to add a few of the other ones that are really prevalent in the industry that people use right, rmis is one. So that's a tool for carrier vetting and also is used for carrier onboarding, so all of the carrier's insurances can sit in there. It also is used for carrier onboarding, so all of the carrier's insurances can sit in there. It makes the process more streamlined. To onboard a carrier much faster. You should be able to see their insurance in there and like it's integrated with our TMS.
Speaker 2:So when we pulled a carrier in, pulls all that stuff in, does that as soon as they accept the invite and verify what they need to on their end. Right, and I'll give you an instance of one I picked up this morning. Right, we could see they had verified auto insurance, which is required to drive the truck. We could see it had cargo insurance, but there was no general liability listed and it expired. Right, so we were able to at least identify that and then reach out to the carrier to determine if it was an error or they literally don't have that insurance anymore, which is a requirement of our shipper to move the load right. So these tools have very real use cases and mitigate risk when you're actually using them correctly.
Speaker 2:My carrier packets is another very common one used in the industry to do the same thing, similar to RMIS. I've used it for years too. I think they're both pretty good. They're at a better price point, I think, for newer brokers than the highway full integration. The highway full integration, I think, is at the very least like five, six grand, I think, somewhere around that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it depends on your carrier network size.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like the size of your business and things and there's different pricing. But most newer brokers tend to use RMIS or my carrier brackets just for the price. I also advise that, like you, use more than one tool to vet your carriers to just second check it right, whether it's carrier 411 is another good one to at least see what's been reported on it.
Speaker 1:One of the.
Speaker 2:OGs man Been around forever, right? So I'm always looking at RMIS. I will also check 411 and I check Highway. I check all three and see what matches up. The TIA Watchdog Stephen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's part of Highway. Now Highway manages the Watchdog program, yep.
Speaker 2:So I mean, those are some really good tools for carrier vetting and carrier management, right, because all of your carriers can sit inside that tool and also, like, even RMIS has a tool I wouldn't say it's as effective as Highway or even Lane Makers for DAT, but you can also find carriers in RMIS and there are lots of things that you can do to find better fits. Even if you've got carriers running your lane, you might be able to find one that's a better fit for that and it works better for everyone. Like, those tools really need to be utilized for their value and, I think, not just looked at as, oh, something I have to do every time I, you know, want to work with a carrier and it makes it harder because they're protecting you and the business and preventing huge losses and theft and lots of these other things.
Speaker 1:For sure. So we've hit on your data and analytics, your screening, your sourcing. What's that?
Speaker 2:I was going to say the one thing I want to add to the rating tool and then I think maybe we can cover track and trace and some of those tools. But the other one like I've heard, I haven't used green screens but a few clients have used it and really like it so far and the one thing that I think differentiates it again from what I've been told I haven't demoed it or used it yet, but we plan to is that you upload your rates into it. So what it does is it doesn't just give you the same rate it wouldn't give my brokerage the same rates, it would give your brokerage, nate. It literally will incorporate your TMS load history and then factor in what it thinks you can pay. And I think that's a really important one, because brokerages are not created equal when it comes to costs and it's everything we talked about.
Speaker 2:Brokers that make more phone calls, have better conversations with carriers, have better carrier fits for their lanes. They tend to run those lanes more and they tend to be lower rates because it's a better fit, right. So when you use a tool like green screens, it should be incorporating that in a way that gives you a better idea of what it thinks you'll actually pay on the lane, not what everybody else has been paying.
Speaker 1:And again, what you're getting paid by, maybe a contracted customer. All right For us. Specifically, you might have more money than the average broker does, or less, right, yeah, but the other one?
Speaker 2:I wanted to segue because you hit on this. I think it's an important point. Right, track and trace is one of the easiest tools, I think, to look at whether or not you're getting a return on your investment. Right, it's historically was done by human beings. Right In the US Check calls, yep Check calls and emails right. And then you know, during COVID, a lot of companies outsourced it to like companies like Lean and Nearshoring, and even in the Philippines, and they have somebody to lower dollar per hour. Make these phone calls and emails dollar per hour, make these phone calls and emails right. But some of the tools now can literally help you reduce your staffing by relying on something that is automated and have, instead of three people calling everybody. For instance, maybe you only need one to find and check and verify the automated tracking to make sure it's doing what it should be doing right. So what are your go-to track and trace tools and things that you're a fan of?
Speaker 1:So I mean I kind of hit him on it earlier. Trucker tools is the one that I use currently. We have an integration into our TMS so it's really easy Basically, when we're building out the load and we put in the driver's you know name, phone number, tractor, trailer number, etc. It automatically will pull that cell phone number and send it out. You can send the text route to the driver and it pulls the tracking. It pings it like every 15 minutes and it pulls it right back into the TMS on a map. It timestamps just about every single thing inside the TMS, just like a manual check call would be. So I really love Trucker Tools for its integration. There's an app too, and a lot of carriers can plug their ELD right into it, so it's not tracking their phone, it's just going to track the actual tractor that the ELD is in.
Speaker 1:Macro Point I've used in the past. I haven't used it in a couple of years since I switched to trucker tools but had fairly good success with that too. It's a very common one. That's a their product owned by Descartes. Those are the main two that I've used.
Speaker 1:I do believe that some of the load board companies have tried to release their own trucking or their own tracking tools as well. I haven't used them a whole lot, but I have seen instances where they have their own, whether it was beta version or maybe it's still live now. I just haven't looked their own internal stuff. I will say this though, man If you ever get that little weird feeling in your gut, nothing will make you feel better than the old school check call right, talk to somebody. You kind of gauge their tone of voice. You could ask questions and get you know subjective feedback instead of a dot on a map. But really, macropoint Trucker Tools, those are the main two that I've used. I know we've talked with the guys over at TextLocate as well for individual one-time use ping updates. But what do you got for other options?
Speaker 2:Anything. I use Trucker Tools mostly because you were a big fan of it and when I was setting it up again this year. We've been using it. I really like it. I've been using it. I literally would send it to myself. I downloaded the app to see the driver side of it. It's really slick and I think it's very effective. I've been a big fan of it since I've been using it. In fact, we have a call. I was literally responding to it during this podcast. I didn't know they had this, but they also have reefer tracking within Trucker Tools. So I got a call today actually to learn about how that functions. Cost because we do perishables, kind of what we focus on. So lots of produce and to be able to have constant reefer monitoring is going to be a huge time saver.
Speaker 2:We're literally check calling on top of it's literally what you just said, right Like? I just looked at the email to make sure. My team called the guys that got loaded yesterday to verify the reefer tent today. We can see they're tracking.
Speaker 1:We know they're fine, but we want to make sure just as a risk mitigator my guess is it's got to be the same way that you can integrate to the eld for live updates. You can. You can integrate right into that um reefer unit, because that mean that that's those if you've never done a refrigerated load um, that you can do what's called a reefer download after the fact, where you can literally get a graph that shows throughout the time of that load, like where was the, what were the settings, what was the actual recorded temperature, etc. As stuff's all recorded. You can get live feeds of that um, depending on the reefer unit that you've gotten, how new it is. But yeah, I mean that is. That is an example, a perfect example, of where technology is going. That's extremely beneficial. Think about the mitigation of claims and disputes and all this stuff, all the horror stories we talk about, especially when we have the folks from produce blue book on. You know, if you can prevent a lot of that, we can get back to doing our jobs and not having to do all the messy cleanup work. So that's, that's pretty neat. You want to talk about some efficiency? We're probably probably got time for a couple more things about some efficiency-based tools.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of stuff when it comes to email integrations. So if you have a lot of email traffic, having an easy way to organize that auto responses, etc. Levity we've had Tilo on the show in the past, definitely a strong partner of Freight360. But if you've got a lot of email traffic customers sending quote requests, sending tenders and things over the old school way of thinking was like, all right, we'll just do EDI, where everything just gets auto tendered and built in the system. And then people are like, well, we can do API integrations for this, that and the other thing. But Levity, I think, is a really strong, very focused solution that helps brokers out with things like, hey, quote request, or hey, I want to. You know I've got this. Whatever the email request is right, you create this whole sequence with AI to very quickly give a response back or take action to your customer.
Speaker 1:So you don't have to have someone that's just there monitoring email just to get a quick response back, and I think that's a game changer, because we've seen email plugins for different tools over time, but nothing as hyper focused as levity.
Speaker 2:Exactly and very focused to our industry. It's not a tool for everyone that people use in our industry. It's built for our industry for this purpose and it works, like I mean, full stop. So in a lot of cases this is a fit for you and you've got a lot of loads, you're moving and lots of emails and you find yourself getting the emails an hour or two later all day because you can't get to the responses and their loads. You would want to be moving and you're just missing them.
Speaker 2:One, this is going to help you keep the money from blowing out the window, because that's just lost revenue, right. And two, it's a trade-off because if you have a tool like this, you don't have to hire, like to your point, one or two people to just watch and read and respond to emails all day, like. That's a pretty low task to pay somebody for. It's still going to cost you three, four grand a month to pay a person to do it, if not a little bit more, right. So I mean having a tool like this could literally save you a lot of time and help you scale your business without just having to interview and hire tons of people to do all of these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, like the three big ones, and I'll just, these are right from levity. So there's quoting order entry and track and trace. So quoting estimated time um for a human 15 minutes. Estimated time for levity one minute. Um order entry estimated human time seven minutes. Estimated for levity one minute. Customer track and trace estimated human time five minutes. Estimated levity time one minute. So there you go, that stuff Again.
Speaker 1:The whole point here is the people that are in your company that you might be paying to do track and trace or data entry and they're getting that itch to do something stronger. This is a great time when you're growing at that pace. Move them up into a role where they're way more effective and can generate revenue for you and you can replace a lot of the tasks that, yeah, they might be really good at but it just doesn't. You know it doesn't do it for them. It's kind of mundane and maybe you know well, very likely boring. There's tools to do this for you, right? And think back to our analogy about, you know, building. It's really cool to build something, but it's also really easy to build it with a hammer, right and like power tools. And then you can go do other stuff, like design stuff and you know, go find more buildings to build.
Speaker 2:So yeah, this reminded me of right Like tools. It's like a little bit of a tangent, but like I was doing a lot of stuff in the new house and I was installing a bunch of things into a concrete wall and I have a new cordless drill right and it took me roughly probably five to 10 minutes to put a hole in that concrete wall as deep as I needed to Went and bought the correct tool, which is a hammer drill for $8.
Speaker 2:I made that mistake years ago 35 seconds to put a hole in there. That task went from taking me probably all day to put 12 of these holes in this wall to I literally had it done in 25 minutes. Right, the right tool for the right job saves you a hell of a lot of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember we were talking about this off air before, but mounting a TV outside of my old house there's a brick wall, and I tried myself. I didn't know right, but I was like, oh yeah, I'll just use a power drill with, uh, you know, a drill bit that's meant for concrete like 10 minutes, and that thing, that drill bit was so hot. And then someone's like, get a hammer drill. I got one for like 60 bucks, yeah, and just 20 seconds too easy. So but yeah, these are tools that are out there. There's lots of them, right, and I'm telling you, the big, the growing and succeeding brokers that are out there, they're leveraging the tools that we've talked about in this episode. So if you want to be in the same crowd as the folks that are getting to the next level, you've got to at least be aware of what's out there and then, when the timing is right, start to implement a lot of these tools.
Speaker 2:And I want to do one little brief thing at the end. Right, we're not going to do TMSs, because that's like a whole episode into what they can do and what you should be looking at. But as your brokerage is growing right, that's the thing I think you should also be reviewing. We've got a lot of colleagues and friends in the industry that have been using some of the free TMSs that they now pay for. Right, but they've just ratcheted up and they pay a little bit more and it does work right, but what they found is they are staffing way higher than some of the other people we know because they're not utilizing some of these tools or even in the TMS. Right, and one of the things that I really like, we're using TIE this year, but the few things in there that save a ton of time, like it brings everything from DAT and truck stop into the TMS, so you don't got to go somewhere else, right, it's got trucker tools directly through it, so from the dashboard, you can just click it and send it without having to go somewhere else. It has another screen where, if trucker tools doesn't work, I can send a text, locate and at least get a quick ping, like some of these things that aren't going to be in every TMS and you probably don't need when you first start out.
Speaker 2:But if you're at a point where you're moving 100 or 200 loads a week, right, like you should review your software packages, whether it's your TMS, your tracking, all of them.
Speaker 2:You should at least be doing this once a year and seeing if you've maybe outgrown the tools you've had the previous year. Because if you're moving forward, sometimes people just get so used to it, and it makes sense because you don't want to train everybody on all new tools every time something comes out. However, if you wait too long, you just end up spending thousands of dollars a month for people doing, like you said, very tedious tasks that nobody wants to do anyway. Like nobody enjoys just making a phone call to get updates from a truck all day. Like, if you can automate most of that and make the phone calls when you need to, that person doesn't want that job anyway. They would probably rather do something that has a bigger impact on the business anyway. Move them to something that creates value for your business. Isn't an administrative task that you can pay for a piece of software to automate for you?
Speaker 1:So I'll give you a testimony right, and it's not on a specific product, but this is in general by embracing new technology. Okay, I'm a huge proponent of like a lot of people. They get, you know. They get a salesperson or account rep reaches out, business development tries to sell them a product and they're like ah, delete. Whenever I see an email or I get a call like that, I get curious. I'm like I want to at least know and I'll be straightforward with the salesperson. I'll be like here's what I do at this company. I want to be aware of all the tools that are out there. We're not currently looking for anything in this realm, but I want to be aware of when the time comes up. I want to know what your product does and I approach it from that angle. So the conversation goes very smooth.
Speaker 1:But over the last four years or so at Pierce, we've added a ton of new tools Carrier vetting, carrier sourcing, carrier onboarding, track and trace, fraud prevention tools, tms, like you mentioned, different ways to vet for credit. I mean just all kinds of business process tools that are out there and we are able to run such a lean operation in our back office. Like you said, you can replace the human work to run more efficient and have a more profitable company. We do about 25,000 loads a year. There's about 100 people brokering freight in the company and we're able to accomplish that with just under well, there's about 10 people that really run the back office.
Speaker 1:But I mean you're talking every load getting invoiced, every claim getting handled, every carrier override that has to get screened, sometimes doubleoiced. Every claim getting handled, every carrier override that has to get screened, sometimes double screened. Every contract getting read, reviewed, redlined, handled. Every new hire, every issue with an agent, every RFP that goes through and needs special attention. All this stuff I have never seen. I worked at a company previously that when there was probably about the same amount of people brokering the back office was like 25 people. It was like one for every four. We're doing like one for every 10.
Speaker 1:So you think about that like that allows you to pay your people more money to have quality people to take care of them with incentive holiday bonuses, paid vacation parties, right, stuff like that, and you can take care of all of your brokers and pay them a better amount, and you have the money to be able to afford the latest tech and tools that's out there to get the job done the most efficient way possible.
Speaker 2:So that's my there to get the job done.
Speaker 1:The most efficient way possible. So that's my personal testimony on it. I'm always about what's coming up and what's the newest greatest thing For sure.
Speaker 2:Steven put in a point.
Speaker 2:I'm going to wrap with this right.
Speaker 2:The one thing I would absolutely make sure everybody does the way I do it is I basically have a list in my notebook and Microsoft OneNote of all of the tech packages that we use and all the software right, and then I have my notes for everything underneath it.
Speaker 2:The thing that I would make sure everybody knows or remembers is that when you are looking at new options, or if you're looking at options for the first of any of the tools we discussed, the first question I ask every company when I'm doing a demo is who are you integrated with and who aren't you? They will all give you a list and you want to make sure, if you're putting an entire suite of packages together, like tracking, tms factoring, for instance, and carrier vetting, that all of them have integrations with each other. With each other, yep, because you don't want to sign up for one and then find out the other three tools you're definitely going to use aren't integrated with the one you did sign on for and now you've got to use something you either don't like or is too expensive, or you can't integrate it at all because you solved one problem and created three other ones Exactly.
Speaker 1:No, it's perfect, man.
Speaker 2:Phone systems and CRMs is another one. Right, we're not going to get into it in this episode, but if you are putting together a CRM and you intend to connect it to your phones or your emails, make sure it's integratable with the other things you're doing Emails often overlooked. Making sure that integrates with these things will save you tons of headaches down the road, for sure.
Speaker 1:Great episode. That was good man, kind of a you know a little snapshot of where we're at mid 2024, as far as tech products go. I'm curious you know, a year from now, what it's going to look like? The new stuff that comes out? You know the the new, the new problems that arise and because of those problems, solutions become. The solution becomes another, another product that can eliminate that problem or, you know, handle that problem. So good discussion, any. You got like a proverb over the day. I feel like it's normally in your up your alley. Yeah, motivational pitch, anything.
Speaker 2:You know what I did. It's not a proverb, but I will say that this one that I read this morning I thought was really accurate. It's. It's a quote from Sam Walton from Open AI.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:Who am I thinking of? You were thinking of Sam. My mind just blanked when you said that I got to look it up.
Speaker 1:Open AI CEO.
Speaker 2:Sam Altman yeah, altman, outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish. If you want a successful business, your people need to feel that you are working for them, not them working for you, and I think to me that's a really brief way of saying that's how every business should be run, like the management, the owners, the leaders, whatever you want to define yourself as the job isn't to manage people. You don't manage people. You manage tasks. You lead people and you support them and the places they want to go, and everybody can work together and everybody moves forward.
Speaker 2:And to me, it's a really good reminder that when you get busy and your tasks come up and you get stressed and things go wrong, this is the first thing that goes out the window. People just start yelling at each other I need this done. You should have done this, and to remind yourself this often is just a really good refresher, because nobody likes to work in that environment and it's only temporary. If you keep acting that way, people will leave.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree 100%. Well, good episode. Final thoughts.
Speaker 2:Whether you believe you can or believe you can't you're right, and until next time, go Bills.