Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in the fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough I ain't nothing but grit cause I made rugged blood, sweat and spit yeah like a horse I fly for a bumpy ride I like to play hard but I work harder and I weather the storm cause I'm built stronger.
What is up, ladies and gentlemen, we are back. We are live. It is the Freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 08:30 a.m. Pacific, 1030 Central to break down some industry headlines, you guys. But most importantly, we're just here to provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of freight. I only speak to transportation professionals on this show, you guys, because that's what I am. I'm a transportation professional and I want to bring the individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve. So you can take that information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life.
Cory Buchan, happy Monday over on YouTube. John paradise, good to be back. Happy Monday as well. He's over on YouTube. Sonny Sharma, good morning orange shirt gang over on LinkedIn. I go live on LinkedIn and YouTube, you guys, and check them out. Check me out on any platform that you're on. Let me see here. I got a very special guest for you guys here who I'm going to bring up here shortly. But just another quick announcement here. We got a newsletter that drops every single Wednesday, you guys. So if you guys want to register for that, just go over to the freight coach.com and it will auto prompt you to do it. I'm not going to auto sign anybody up just because I have your email address.
I'm not going to sell it out there to anybody because it annoys the shit out of me when people do that to me. And I'm not going to do that to you guys. So if you guys want that, it's a weekly newsletter, drops every single Wednesday. Just go over to the freightcoach.com and register for that. But I got a very special guest for you guys here. I'm going to bring them up right now. Weather personally affected my book of business last week by like a pretty substantial amount. And we're going to talk about that, you guys, and predicting it and the effects that it has on the overall supply chain. So I got my man Scott with weather optics back on the show. Scott, thank you so much for taking the time.
Yeah. Hey, Chris, thanks for having me.
No, man, it was funny as were kind of talking, when we, began where it was just like, I got the hurricane that went through there last week, I was like, God, this sucks. And then I'm like, I gotta get Scott back on the show. Like, my first thought was weather optics and getting you guys back on the show and how we can kind of break this down. So what's good, man?
I'm, first of all, I'm glad that you thought that's exactly what I want. Right. When there's bad weather that happens, I want you to think of me and of weather optics. So I'm glad to hear that was your first thought. And, yeah, it's been a crazy kind of start to hurricane season. We're at the very start of it. We've had barrel, we've had Debbie. Those are the only two that have really made an impact on the US. So long. Way to go. Peak of hurricane season, September 10. So, yeah, there's a good amount on the horizon for sure.
No, it's pretty insane when you think about it, right? Because, like, we have, like, we're in the middle of, like a 50 load project out of the port of Savannah, and it stopped, like, 30 containers. It delayed 30 containers from getting offloaded. The port was shut down essentially two days last week. On Tuesday, it was shut down completely. Wednesday it reopened, but it didn't start offloading ships until Wednesday after late afternoon, early evening. So then there was that residual effect that came through with that. And then, you know, if you're out there doing any port work, you know, like it. We had 28 of our 30 containers offloaded on Friday and today. So it's like they were supposed to be spaced out a little bit more. So now it kind of jammed it up.
And then we have delivery appointments that we have to schedule for all of these. So there's like, there's a big trickle down effect on this. And this is why I wanted you to come on so we can talk about this and predict this a little bit more to really help out all parties involved here because, you know, ultimately, it affects the carriers, you know, because, like, they, prior to, you know, weather events, they could get possibly two or three or four turns in, depending on the schedule. And now they might cut that in half. So they're losing out on revenue. Receivers are getting backed up because they only have so many appointments. Lots that they can take. So again, like, there's big after effects that can kind of happen with all of this.
Totally. And, you know, Savannah was impacted. Charleston was impacted. There was a couple of other key ports that were impacted. But, you know, when you have a really big weather system and there's multiple locations, that ripple effect multiplies by 510. 15 because all of a sudden, you have a lot of key locations that are backed up. And like you were saying, appointment times pushed back, carriers are delayed. There's a whole host of issues that happen. So when it came to Debbie, as much as a headache, it seemed like that it caused for you overall. You know, there were a lot of, I would say, companies that were lucky as well that there weren't worse effects. The original forecast for that storm are supposed to be much more significant in Savannah, Charleston, Florida, up the east coast.
So it's always a good reminder, right, that, like, you know, these storms happen and sometimes they're even worse than what we just experienced.
Yeah, it's, you know, I think that it could have been definitely a lot worse. Right. I mean, ultimately, it was only one day that it really got shut down. But, I mean, I saw a lot. Cause, like, out of this, you know. Cause we use the same handful of carriers to do all this stuff, right? So we have four carriers that are doing all 50 of these containers for us. And, you know, a couple of them were like, hey, we're actually shutting our fleet down all week because we just don't want to risk it. And, you know, again, I'm never gonna ask anybody to drive like that. Like, I, you know, I'm a human being as well. Like, I personally feel that no truckload is worth a human life. Bye. Any stretch of the imagination.
And, you know, so, again, it is just planning all of this stuff out there. So, you know, you brought up hurricane season is just starting here. What is hurricane season? How long does it typically last, and is it just the gulf region that it affects? Kind of walk us through that.
So hurricane season technically goes from June 1 all the way to November. So it's a really long stretch of time. But typically when we get the most hurricanes are August and September, and the peak of the season is September 10. In recent years, we've been seeing earlier and earlier hurricane. This is another good example of that. Like, we're way ahead of schedule of where we typically should be for hurricane season. But the season itself expands over a really long time period where basically any tropical system could develop anywhere in the Atlantic. Could be the Gulf of Mexico, could be the Pacific. Most often, we see the biggest issues, right? Like, along the Gulf shore up to parts of the east coast. It's been, you know, knock on wood, a number of years since we've had stuff probably north of, like, North Carolina.
But what we saw with Debbie was we had a landfall in Florida, then we had a landfall in South Carolina, and then it kind of crawled up the coast. So we ended up seeing like a week and a half of really bad weather. And so that's something that's always a risk as well. Even if it landfalls somewhere totally different, the ripple effects of the storm itself could be much farther reaching.
So how are you guys working with people about, you know, the predictive side of this stuff? Right. So it's like, we all know that it's hurricane season right now. We all know that there's snow that's eventually going to fly here in the next couple of months in certain parts of the country. So how are you guys working with people from a predictive standpoint?
For us, it's really about planning and execution. Right. So, like, giving companies the notice that certain lanes in the country are going to be shut down because of weather. So at the end of the day, we're a weather company, but we combine it with transportation data, and then that allows us to give very specific insights on, you know, this corridor or this shipment that you have planned or these shipments that are coming in. They're going to be impacted by weather. And then we take that a step further. We say this is going to be the delay time. Here's a route alternative you can take. Here's a better time that you could also leave at that would avoid the weather. So it's kind of like weather on steroids, where we're not just telling you it's going to rain or wind or there's a hurricane.
We're telling you, here's what's actually going to happen in your transportation operations, and here's some things that you can do to prevent some of those bad effects from happening.
So you mentioned you're a weather company there, and I just realized it's probably been a while since you were on the show. For those of you out there, for those out there that don't know what weather optics is, what service do you guys provide out there?
Yeah, so we call ourselves a weather intelligence platform, which really means we take weather data, and then we take a bunch of business impact data, and we translate that into, like, tidbits and insights. So mostly all of the data that we provide are these zero to ten risk scores. We tell you, either it's a zero and there's going to be no impacts of weather on your business operations, or it's a ten. And, you know, things are going to be shut down. There's going to be days of impacts or somewhere in between. Right. Everything we do is just translating weather data into insights that make sense for truckers, for three pls, for insurance. It's all about, like, speaking the language of the industry, because at the end of the day, what does seven inches of snow mean in Nashville versus Chicago versus buffalo, New York?
A lot of that is confusing. It's time consuming. Companies tend to have, like, a weather person at their company that's doing a lot of that tracking. We're trying to remove a lot of the guesswork for you and just give you information that matters. And that's important.
Yeah. I mean, Dylan Turner says right here that Debbie messed up, southern New York and upper Pa all weekend. My town's via, volunteer fire department were out doing cleanups and pump outs for homes and communities and everything else, you know, because I think, like, you know, a lot of people are. You know, I'm out here in Arizona, right? Like, the only bad weather we get is excessive heat over the summer. And it's not even that excessive if you live here. Yeah, it's so sucks during the moment, but, like, you're kind of used to it. Anybody who says it's a heat wave in Arizona is clearly not living here. Like, it's always hot. You know, I.
You know, I look at that, and, you know, you look at Debbie alone, what that caused and the delays and the after effects and then how it's not just the coastal region that it affects, you know, because think about it like this. If you're, you know, if you're in the industry at all, say, you know, that all the ships come through the ports and then they go into inland distribution and then inland distribution out throughout the rest of the country. So it's like, think about the after effects of those little store, because it seems like it's like, oh, it doesn't affect me if I'm living in Kansas, but it's like, if your local, you know, Walmart or your local store imports everything through a port that's affected by that, you will see that. So it's like, you.
You need to be prepared for those events, and you need to pay attention to that stuff, too, because it's like you just never know, right? Your one component of your entire manufacturing line might come through the port of Savannah and everything else comes through the port of LA or whatever that looks like, right? So there are definite things that you need to pay attention to. And then again, I think of it like a staging effect. I know, like FEMA, any, you know, that you can call, say what you want about FEMA and some of the, you know, the Red Cross that, but they bulk prepare for a lot of these things where they'll see a storm coming and then they'll shift all their resources to go into that area.
So it's like from a transportation perspective, those are opportunities as well for people to go in there.
For sure. For sure. Those type of like black swan events where there's a hurricane or there's some kind of, you know, major weather event, and FEMA is requiring loads of, you know, supplies to come through certain area. That is an opportunity. It has a ripple effect on, you know, pricing as well. Right? Like how the spot market works. There's a whole host of things that happens to even when a storm isolated to a small area. And as you were saying, if it is a small area that is a large enough port or distribution hub, I mean, it could even be in the center of the country, right? A tornado goes through or some kind of ice event we saw this past winter, it could have ripple effects everywhere, especially for those large retailers, big shippers that are traveling all over the country.
We've been seeing a lot of that more and more often.
Yeah. And I think that I just look at it from a predictive standpoint. That's the thing I look for the most in all the data that's out there, whether it's rating data or, you know, weather data, it's more of kind of getting in front of it as a broker. Right. Because a lot of brokers out there might be thinking, well, what does this have to do with me? I think this has everything to do with you. You know, like, again, how are you setting your drivers up for success? You know, I'll always come back to, you know, a story that I, you know, because we used to move a lot of freight out of Texas going up into like, Wyoming and stuff like that, Wyoming and Montana. And, you know, just like I said, I live in Arizona.
We're in shorts twelve months out of the year, essentially, you know, but sometimes you get loaded up in a specific area going to a certain region, and freak snowstorms happen in Wyoming. And Montana. And that it's exactly what happened in this specific scenario where we told our driver like, hey, FYI, it's Wyoming in September. Like, you just never know. Pack warm clothes just to be safe. And the dude didn't listen. Cause he's like, man, I'm in Texas. It's 100 degrees down here. Legitimately freak snowstorm happened night that he was up there and all he had was shorts. So, you know, he kind of had to deal with that in that moment. But again, like, those are the situations that I think about in. And like, it's more of just getting people prepared and pay attention to these weather patterns that are out there. Right.
Because just because we don't think it's going to affect us doesn't mean that it's not. And again, I just want. And then because, like, we used to move a lot of freight over Donner pass in Lake Tahoe area, and that is another area, man, that just turns out there. Yeah, yeah, dude, it's an absolute nightmare when some of those storms hit, and sometimes a lot, it's like there's drivers that will have to route to go down through Las Vegas and come up through the Central Valley of California depending on how critical their shipments are. So again, paying attention to these things and just giving people just a common courtesy heads up, I think is worth its weight in cold here 100%.
For brokers especially, I mean, some of the three pls that we work with, a lot of it is about customer service, like being able to provide something to tell your customers that there's going to be significant delays due to weather, and then also providing that information to your drivers, to your carrier partners to let them know that there's going to be issues and also automating that process. That's a lot of what we do at weather optics, which is rather than having to stare at a map and look at the weather every hour, we connect with your TMS, we connect with your routing provider, we connect with your eld, and then you're able to set up thresholds within weather optics.
So you can say, you know, hey, weather optics, alert me every time the snow is going to be over three inches or there's going to be a winter storm morning. And then that can kick off a whole host of actions that is sent throughout your organization that lets them know that there's expected to be issues. And, you know, here's who we need to tell about those problems. So not only are we trying to give you the best weather information, but we're trying to automate that process so you have to do less and less work.
So I'm, you know, I'm trying to, when you say a TMS, are you guys doing like carrier TMS's as well? Like telematics devices? Are you guys integrating in with that? Because, you know, again, I think that would be something that's cool. And if you have this, please cut me off. But, like, I think if you just integrated inside with an eld and then, you know, it show and then you pump in the lane that you're about to drive on and if it gives you warnings like, hey, FYI, 24 hours from now, there's severe weather, yada, yada. Is that something you guys do?
Exactly. We integrate with all the top elds and we're trying to build new integrations all the time, but we have like platform science, geotab motive, Samcera, Trimble. We're integrated with all of those companies. And so we're able to track where trucks are going, where trucks currently are, and then we're able to shoot off alerts both to the driver, then to the back end folks as well, to let them know that there could be potential issues.
Yeah, I think that, you know, I mean, especially with the amount of places that you go into that are by appointment and everything else, and if you miss it, you're there for four days or whatever that looks like. Again, I think a lot of this just getting ahead, a lot of every issue that we possibly can and whether it's something that's constantly going to affect us in our, our industry. In every industry. Are you guys working with other industries at all, Scott? Or are you guys mainly within the transportation space?
We started with supply chain, but as you know, supply chain covers a lot. Right? Like every industry has some sort of supply chain. So naturally, we've worked our way into insurance, a bit into emergency response, emergency preparedness, government a little bit. So we certainly are doing things outside of strictly what you would consider transportation and supply chain. But I don't know if, you know, retail. I mean, I also consider that to be supply chain, but I, yeah, there's a couple of other areas where our risk scores and our transportation data, even for industries outside of transportation, ends up being really important as well.
Yeah. Now what are some patterns that you guys have noticed? Because, I mean, if you guys are out there compiling all of this data, is there any weather trends that you guys pick up on that are kind of outside of the normal? And this isn't me trying to say debunk global warming or anything like that. I look at it as like, you know, there's so much seasonality in everything, and it's, to me, it's identifying where the seasonality is so you can kind of apply it inside of your business. Have you guys noticed any patterns that happen almost, like, regularly there? It's like, hey, it's July in Georgia. 17 days are going to be torrential downpours. Hypothetical example?
Yeah, I think the most obvious, and you already mentioned it, but is when I 80 up in Tahoe closes down. It's remarkable how often and consistently that happens. And I think I read somewhere that for every day I 80s closed down up there's about $100 million in losses because there's so many goods that are moving in and out of that region that a shutdown a day or two shutdown is incredibly expensive for a lot of these companies. So that's a really obvious one. The other one that's less obvious and more interesting is that more incidents and shutdowns happen in spring and summer than they do in winter. So a big misunderstanding is that, like, the warmer months are safer for drivers and a bit better.
But hydroplaning and sudden thunderstorms and rainstorms, those are actually some of the biggest threats to drivers and folks in the transportation space. And when it comes to winter, people are actually a lot more prepared. So you think that big snowstorms across the country. Yes, they shut down a lot of things, but it is actually those sudden rain events that are a lot more impactful sometimes.
So how are you able to really kind of get it? I mean, I know sudden and unexpected. I know what the definition of that means. So I don't like, I don't want my next question to. But I mean, I went to public school, Scott, sometimes I speak, you know, because I look at it as, like here in Arizona, it's monsoon season right now, right? And we're like, where I live in the Phoenix Valley. They call it the valley where I live. Like, all the storms build right by my house. So it's like, there's some days, man, where it looks like it's going to be absolutely insane, and then it just blows right over and everything else. But then there's other days where it's like, oh, hey, this isn't too bad out. And then boom, it's a black skye, torrential downpours.
This shit comes out of nowhere. So with those being said, like, do you guys have any kind of, like, the national weather system right where it's like, hey, dust storm in your area or whatever that looks like. Are you guys building those type of alerts inside of weather optics to where it's like, hey, this storm is intensifying, you know, shut your truck down, get off the road as soon as possible, stuff like that?
Yeah, that's one of the biggest issues that we're trying to tackle at weather optics. We have this model that we recently introduced about four or five months ago called hyper. And I'm going to get a little weather nerdy on you, but it's really cool in the fact that it takes observations from all around the country. So we're looking at actual real time weather observations everywhere. We're looking at radar data everywhere. So where it's raining, where wind gusts are high, all of that. And then we're looking at these predictive models that the government produces. So some of the ones that you're talking about, like from NOAA in the National Weather Service, and then we basically do a comparison of the two. So we're looking at, what is this model predicting? And is this actually happening on the ground?
And then we bias correct that model every 15 minutes. So, for example, if that model is saying over your house, there's not going to be a thunderstorm, it's going to move past you to your north, and all of a sudden there's a radar station not so far from you that picks up that there is rain actually happening by you. Our model will correct and then produce a different forecast that says, hold on a second, there actually is going to be a storm here. And then we can alert drivers much faster. So we basically take a lot of what NOAA does, and NOAA's incredible. The National oceanic and Atmospheric administration, they're really good. And then we apply our own kind of machine learning and data that we collect onto that model to create our own weather modeling that we call hyper.
So I'm trying to think here, man. Like, I feel like a lot of opportunity for you guys might go into, like, the critical space, right? Like the expedited style runs, you know, the, you know, you think medicines and everything else. And, you know, like, having that data, to me, would almost be, you know, crucial, right, where it's like, hey, we actually got to stick a team on this because we got to go out of route 800 miles to avoid kind of like in airplanes, right, where they have the radar that's going on out there, and then they're like, oh, hey, your flight actually is going to be 45 minutes longer because we have this massive storm system we got to fly around now and everything else.
I follow a bunch of pilots on YouTube because I'm like, I'm convinced, Scott, if I was, if I could go back, I'd be a pilot all over again because that, but, like, you know, they talk about this stuff all the time, like, weather patterns and how this stuff just pops up mid transit, and then they got to reroute around or they got to divert to a different airport because, you know, all of a sudden, there's a massive storm over a certain area, and they're running out of fuel and stuff like that.
So I think a lot of it to me, is like, it's that contingency plan aspect of things that might be coming in where it's like, hey, if you reach Cleveland and the storm hasn't hit yet, you're good to go, but if you hit there, you got to drop down to Columbus and then come up so you don't hit weather and stuff like that.
Yep. Yep. I think that's completely true. And our whole goal is to try to simulate that plus any of that real time and predictive weather that's happening. So trying to intersect the two, you know, here's your flight path or here's your truck path, and here's what our model is telling us. The rain or the storm will intersect, and here's the actions that you should take to try to avoid that. So we're trying to get better and better at that process. And over the last couple years, we've made, you know, major strides in both the accuracy of the weather and then also the capabilities of our systems to integrate with a lot of, like, the existing transportation infrastructure that's out there.
You know, Cody brought up baptism by fire here in his comment about certain areas. And, you know, and I think that a lot of it as well is that's a great way for you to, I think, expedite you being a true transportation professional with a lot of your customers is, you know, say if they're primarily a spot market style customer where it's all same day rate, truck in hand style pricing, you know, be able to explain to them about how, you know, because a lot of people, all they see is, why is my rate $300 higher week, you know, or why did it, whatever that looks like. And I think you being able to explain to them that where it's like, hey, middle of this area, you know, just gets blasted by a hurricane. So the driver's gonna have to shut down.
It's gonna add two days of transit onto that. Or if you want any driver to drive into that storm, there's gonna be an upcharge associated with that. Because again, most people, this might come as a shock to others. Like, they only look at how their area of the country is. They don't pay attention to anything else. Right. Having all data out there to be able to justify any form of changes in pricing or, hey, transit time could take up to seven days on this one due to the fact that this storm is possibly hitting there. So they might get shut down or whatever that looks like, I think any data, any further information besides, we just need more money. That's how you really separate yourself out there.
That's what really shows all of your customers why you are truly a step above everyone else out there.
Exactly. It's a competitive advantage. And so for three pls and brokers to be able to point to whether, yeah, as a reason that prices might increase or just giving their customers a heads up, I mean, I think that's something that isn't currently being done today. And so there's a huge opportunity for those companies to take advantage of data, like the type of insights that we have and really run with that.
So what's exciting coming up here for the rest of this year, man? I mean, we're already in August. If you're in the middle of something that you can't talk about, that's fine. How are you guys looking to kind of finish the year with the data and the information that you guys put out there?
We have some really cool products coming out that we're getting ready to announce, and I'm happy to talk about a couple of them on here. The first is we have what we call a road status product that's coming out. So essentially what we do is we give all these risk scores for roads, right? So we're telling you the risk on this road is a seven out of ten or an eight out of ten, and it's this dangerous. We're now taking data from all of the state websites, all of the 511 websites, and we're telling you in real time the conditions of the roadways and if roads are going to be shut down or are currently shut down. So we deal with a lot of companies that I hear spend all day going on 511 websites, checking state by state, what's closed down, what's opened.
Where is it icy? Where is it snowy? That is a headache. We are collecting all of that data for you and then just going to present that in a very easy to understand way and let you know ahead of time if there's going to be bad conditions. So that's our next big product. It'll come out probably in the next couple months and certainly be ready for winter. So very excited about that one.
So are you guys already integrated with a bunch of platforms or do you have a bunch on your roadmap? I guess because this, you know, I'm asking along the lines of like what people could do to get this signed up. And, you know, if you're already integrated with their TMS provider or their telematics devices or something like that, yeah, our.
Biggest partners in that space would be Trimble. That's why the biggest integration that we have. So a lot of trimble products are using our data platform, science motive, Samcera, Geotab. Anyone who uses any of those services can integrate directly with our data, which is super exciting, makes it a lot easier for the integration process. And it's like switching on a button and you can get some of our data, which is really nice. And we're building new integrations all the time, so we take by request as well. If we don't have your eld or your TMS or for shipper, it's even your visibility platform, like a P 44 or four cats. Those are big integrations for us as well. So we try to make it as easy as possible for people to get weather optics data.
Perfect, man. Scott, I love it. I appreciate you taking the time to jump on. And you know, again, weather optics is synonymous with any time any of my freight is affected by any of this weather out there. But how does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more about what you guys got going on?
Yeah, definitely. You can visit our website at Weatheroptics co. You can follow me on LinkedIn. I'm always posting about the weather and freights of. So yeah, Chris, appreciate you, having us on now.
Anytime, man. Scott, I really appreciate you taking the time to come out here today. You guys, we will be back tomorrow. We got a guest tomorrow and I think we got a couple more later this week. I'm in the middle of, you know, moving freight, you guys, so I don't have my guests lined up right in front of me here. But again, we're going to be doing this, you guys. The audio only replay of this will be available at 01:00 p.m. Pacific time across all major platforms. So yeah, you guys, as always, if you guys got value in what you heard. Subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there. Dear network, because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. And we'll be talking to you soon, and.