Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in the fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough find 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 cuz I'm built stronger. What is up ladies and gentlemen, we are back. We are live. It is the freight coach morning. Oh, the Freight Coach podcast. See I'm even, I'm a human being you guys. This is the Freight Coach podcast. We are the top podcast in transportation. Coming to you guys every single weekday, 830 in Pacific, 1030 central to break down some industry headlines, but most importantly 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, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show. And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day I want to talk to the right 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. I'm going to save the rest of it here you guys, because I want to bring my guests on the show. You guys, we got a couple of individuals on here. We're going to talk about shipper technology today. We're going to bring a different spin on this and we're going to talk about automation and for procurement bids, all of that stuff.
So I got my friends Ben and Matt with Freightro on the show. So Ben, Matt, thank you guys so much for joining.
Appreciate you having us.
Hey, good morning.
So let's just jump right in. How'd you guys get your start in freight? Like what brought you guys into the industry here?
How much time we got?
We got 28 minutes.
So I guess I'll start. So I was an early member with a startup out of, out of California. And the goal for that business was to create an e commerce marketplace with a focus on industrial b two b, right? So think about Amazon. But for b two b, right. And back in 2017, 2018, I spoke up and said, hey, if we're going to have this e commerce marketplace, this b two b marketplace, if you think about Amazon, when you buy something on Amazon, there's a checkout page that calculates, how do you know, if I'm going to have this product shipped to my house on Monday, it's going to cost you this. It's going to cost, you know, to get it there on Tuesday, it's going to cost me this.
And if we're going to create this b two b marketplace, we have to have something similar. But for, I'm not talking about small package, UPS, FedEx, USP's type stuff. I'm talking about containers, you know, multiple pallets at a time, rail, et cetera. Something that simplifies how the checkout process looks in the b two B space. Right. So long story short, that became a little bit of a standalone product that we sold at that company. And for me, I was very raw, very new to the industry, and I just threw myself in the weeds and learned everything I could along the way and built a business and a network out of that.
Ben.
Yeah. Matt and I have been close for over a decade now. I've been in the technology space for 15 plus years. I've been building teams, organizations within different companies, all the way from Fortune 80 companies through startups. So I've really been able to take a look at the industry from a corporate perspective. Right. Not necessarily just logistics.
Yeah.
Over the years, most of my career has kind of been in the management space, and I just feel like corporate America has lost its way over the years. Right. Employees and customers, the two, you know, in our minds, the two most important people in the puzzle have kind of fallen by the wayside. And it's all about, and don't get me wrong, we love money, but it's all about chasing that IPO or chasing that round. And it just, we looked at each other and I was at the same company. He was just looked at each other and were like, we've learned a lot and we've got something here, but there are just some elements we can tweak and put our spin on it. And if we do that, we really got something. And now, you know, a year later, we're up and running.
And it is, it's exciting, I think.
That you guys are right, and I kind of share that same sentiment where it's, you know, I can tell out there that it has been more about the bottom line than it is about what? Like, what problem are you actually trying to solve in the industry? And you kind of see it a lot in transportation where, you know, when the market's up, everybody's mass hiring, everything's great. But then as soon as the market dips, everybody mass lays off, you know, and it's like, and I'm sitting back. And again, like, as somebody who's bootstrapped for the last four years, I understand how challenging it is, but I'm also looking at, like, did you guys not train, develop, do anything different? Did you guys not put any emphasis on the customer or your people?
Or was it just on the next round of funding, or was it just on you padding your pockets there? Because I I look at it as, you know, again, I'm not a multibillion dollar organization yet, but I look at what the top 50 in, you know, on the asset side and the top 50 on brokerage did over these last four years. And I pulled the numbers from 2019 back to 2024. Everybody spiked when everybody else did, but then they all dropped back down to where they were prior. So that, to me, that tells me nobody did anything different over that timeframe. People capitalized on the market. They capitalized on where it is. And again, I'm a capitalist, so, like, I don't fault anybody for it, but I also look at it as if nobody's doing anything different. There's an opportunity for me.
There's an opportunity for me to come in and build something and actually do it differently.
Precisely. And, you know, that's where we landed the experience, the network. We had all the tools in place, so it just made perfect sense. And quite frankly, we've been validated over the past six to eight months as we got this thing live and our hypotheses and our theories kind of came true. So it's been great to see.
So what does this look like? Are you guys going out there and talking to, you know, supply chain companies, you know, three PL stuff like that about automating their entire process? Like, how does those conversations even start?
So if you think about, you know, whenever I'm speaking to somebody that's not a supply chain person, I got to kind of dumb it down and explain, you know, how we're building this thing. Right. Think about Uber. Right. It wouldn't make sense with if Uber was just going to market today and they were trying to build out the both sides of their network. Both sides of their network being, you know, you've got riders and you've got drivers. Right. It would make sense to have thousands of drivers and only a couple riders, or vice versa, having a couple, you know, thousands of riders and only a couple of drivers. So we're doing the same thing with our product is, you know, scaling both sides of that network. Network.
You know, so we've got, we've got several, you know, logistics providers one side of the network, and then we've got, you know, several, you know, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers on the other side of the network. And I don't want to just call this a, you know, a marketplace because that's not interesting. There's been a handful of other companies that have gone out and done that. We've, we've put our own spin on this to make what we feel is this product is pretty special, but, and.
So essentially, in our view, we're bringing freight to the marketplace. So our target primarily is manufacturers and distributors who are shipping. Whether it's FTL, LTL, rail, the equipment type or mode doesn't really matter. We are looking to provide shippers with a very easy way to, quote, book and manage their freight. Automated procurement within. Of course, there are elements of integrations if you want that. Right. If we want to integrate to ERP systems, various tmss that are already in there, we have done that. We do have that capability. But out of the box, we're providing a shipper. Within three minutes, they can come in, be signed up and book a load.
And Chris, when we first brought this to market, our original goal was really to target spot freight shippers in the SMB market. Right as we started having conversations with folks like we just had Tony Darnell just, you know, say hello here a second ago. He's become a close buddy of mine over the last year. Yeah, we figured out that, you know, picking the brains of folks like that, these are issues that we're solving for folks in the enterprise as well.
So again, our original goal was to solve this problem for the companies that were under that 500 million in annual revenue threshold, the folks that aren't spending millions of dollars on heavy duty TMS systems technologies in the back office and create an easy to access, cloud based platform that they can just jump in and instantly simplify how they run their business and clean up their logistics operations. It's been really cool to see that. Shoot, we had a conversation yesterday with a $3 billion company moving thousands of loads a week, and we're solving problems for them, too. So again, there are several functionalities that our software offers, but for folks that are simply just booking several spot loads a week instead of having to sift through multiple emails and systems like Uber, freight and Freightquote.com, comma, I'm sure you guys are very familiar with those.
We bring it all into one place and even in our most rudimentary, you know, the most rudimentary version of our product instantly provides operational efficiency.
So what's the biggest thing from the manufacturer and distributor side of like what's their biggest problem right now with their freight being effectively moved, right. Because like again anybody can take a load, post it up and you know, try and find somebody. But like what from your guys perspective and from the conversations that you guys are having, what's their biggest threat to their business?
I mean I hate to go to this first, but obviously cost, right? They, you know, let's say I'm a hundred million dollar manufacturer. I work with five brokers typically wouldn't it be nice to have a network of ten or 15 or 30 broke, you know, brokerages that, you know, that way where you're seeing a bigger picture, you're getting quotes back in a much cleaner fashion, putting them all one page and seeing, you know, seeing them stacked up next to each other. So you know you could, I hate to say this but kind of keeps those guys honest, right. When the market gets volatile you don't know when you're getting taken advantage of or not, right.
If I'm the CEO or CFO of this $100 million business it's not, I don't have the brain capacity to keep up with the freight market when, you know when things go up and down and to understand when I'm getting nickel and dimed. Our product solves for that right out of the box.
Go ahead Dan.
Well there's an operational aspect to it too. When you're booking that much loads. You know, we're dealing with teams of ten or twelve people just to book freight. One of our customers after the last quarter of data just came back to us and said you know, essentially we're able to reduce our team. You saved us 17%. Now all the sales guys are getting larger commissions this winter. So you know in a nutshell that kind of summarizes what we're trying to solve for.
And this is a business, you know when you compare it to the enterprise, nothing, not a, you know, not a huge number. But this is a business with us. Freight spend between eight and $10 million annually. You talk about 17%, that's a big number.
Yeah I think that you know there's opening it up you know because like I understand the whole legacy providers and stuff like that. You want to address what you were saying back there about how like, you know, they've only been working with five brokers or five transportation providers and everything else. But you brought up a good point. How many of them are actually overspending on their freight? They're not aware because they don't open it up or there isn't an easy way to onboard a new provider on there. Because again, I think most brokers, and again, I've only been a broker, so this is just my perspective on it, most brokers can't comprehend the risk that is associated with a manufacturer, distributor bringing you on when we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars worth of freight every single load. Right?
Like how I would, I almost wonder sometimes if brokers actually stop and think if they're going after, because like I do a lot of open deck, right? So I do a lot of open deck, heavy haul, specialized, over dimensional and stuff like that. And I see people out there like, oh, we want to get into it. I'm like, but do you realize that machine is half a million dollars? Do you realize that the sale of that machine pays for this company's p and l for the next three months?
Do you understand that when you're going in there because you know, so it's just situations like that it's like, you know, and then how many of the times that you're out there and you're quoting, I want to shift into like the manufacturing or distributor side of things where you're sending that out there and if you have been working for, with the same people, and again, I want those relationships. That's what I'm out there to actively pursue. But how do you know that you are getting the actual best fair market price as opposed to, hey, I've been quoting you $9 a mile for the last ten years and you've just been paying the invoice.
Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head here. And how we solve for that is we don't provide algorithmic based rates. This is a live bidding platform. So when the shipper comes in and submits a quote, it is on the broker or carrier, whoever the provider is in the system, and we can facilitate both to come in there, do some due diligence and actually provide a rate. And then on the back end, when the shipper gets those rates back, they have the ability to negotiate. So it's not set in stone. It really does give some power back to the shipper.
Is this more of like, I mean, when you guys are going out there and working of shippers of all sizes and bringing down, like just some basic technology over to the shipper side of the industry. How many of them have worked with a TMS provider in the past? How many of them, this is the first piece that they've ever seen kind of come across their desk. Because I think that if there's any, and I'm not trying to, like, open up for people to come in and compete with you guys or anything like that, but I, you and like two other companies are the only ones that come to my mind that have a shipper TMS product. But you guys are the only ones that I'm aware of that don't have a brokerage associated with it.
We're not dog fooding. Yep. No dog fooding. We are Switzerland. We want to stay completely neutral. And that goes back to the point of us doing right by the customer. If we're going to sit here and say we're providing transparency to the shipper and then we go have our own brokerage.
I always wondered this, man, because it's like I sit here and I look at a lot of these scenarios where I'm going in and I'm uploading all of my rates onto this platform that has a freight brokerage. I mean, everybody can sit here and say that, oh, we would never automatically underbid. I'm not accusing anybody of that, but that's the thought that's in the back of my mind. Every single time that I submit a bid on certain platforms that I see, I'm like, how do I know that they're not just going in there and under bidding me with their own internal brokerage? And again, I'm sure there's some parameters that are set in, but like, that's the thought that goes into my mind.
And then also from a competitive advantage standpoint, how do I know that they're not just bulk collecting all of our prices at that point?
Yep.
Yep. And, you know, that was, did the conversation come up about us having a brokerage? Sure, but everything you just mentioned is why we didn't do it.
Yeah, because I feel like at what point is the end your guys's customer, how do, how can you ensure that they are getting the best price at that, you know? Yep. If you, if, because if you have a dog in the race, how do you like, I don't know, man. I'm just, I'm a skeptic at heart, but I'm also a capitalist and I know how people work, you know? So it's like, why wouldn't you go out there and do that, you know, so, like, I was, when I first heard that you guys don't have what I was actually kind of shocked with that because I'm like, everybody does. Some don't advertise it, but everybody does. And you were the first one that, because I did my due diligence. Right. I wanted to make sure.
And then when I found out that you guys don't, at least from what I could find, I was like, that's actually, I think, the most ethical approach that I've seen. If you're going to be a true, I know you don't want to use the term marketplace or anything like that, but if you're going to be a true shipper technology company and help them on that end, and you guys don't have a dog in the race, it's just a different approach that I haven't seen, Chris.
It goes back, and I'm not going to sit here and say we're the moral bastion here. We're humans, but we truly do. We know we can solve a problem in the market and we know we can do it ethically. The money will, you know, the money comes when you do things. Right? So that's our approach. There's, it's a $9 trillion international industry. Right? Like, we don't have to make all our bucks right now by doing wrong by the customer. So again, not saying we're perfect humans by any means. We want to do this. Right.
No, I know, and I know what you mean. Right. I just feel like if you're going to be a anything and you have a brokerage, just, I don't have a problem with it as long as it's like, that's the message, right? Like, hey, we have this, but we also have a freight brokerage or we also have trucks or whatever that looks like. I just feel like if you're going to, you know, because, like, that's just been a big thing here, you know, in the industry here, last couple of transparency and all of this stuff, but you're only telling 80% of the story, you know what I mean? So it's like, if you're gonna have it and own it, don't try and hide behind it. Right.
And I think that because it's like, you know, ultimately, if you're out there to try and deliver the best product or service to your customers and the market, right. As a whole, you got to just be brutally honest with it. Like, I just, that's just. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I would. I would rather have people hate me for who I am than like me for what I'm not. You know what I mean? It could because I'm out there trying to message that I'm something that I'm not. Like, hate me for who I am. That's fine. I. I just wish there was more of that out there in the market because I feel like ultimately, that's just the best practice. That's what people need.
Because it's like if you listen to the drivers out there in the industry at all, which I know some people don't think drivers should have a voice, but I do. I hear it all the time. And they hate, they're the bottom of the totem pole of this entire equation. They're the ones who are not given the information. They're the ones who are left holding the bag in most instances that are out there. And I think, like, bringing a more clearer picture to the transaction is ultimately what a lot of them are asking. I don't think that a lot of these guys are concerned that people are making money. They just want to make sure that they're making money as well.
Yeah, it's, in our very early days, we thought we might have to have our own brokerage. At first. We absolutely do not. We don't plan to. But to get this product to market, weren't sure if the provider side of the network was going to buy into this. Right, and support us in this idea. And were worried that when our shippers get in there and go in to request quotes, et cetera, were they going to get responses. And we just wanted to make sure we had that safety net. For example, if there was a load being moved from the middle of nowhere, Idaho, to the middle of nowhere, North Dakota, and no one wanted to cover it, we wanted to be able to make sure that there was something there as a safety net to cover that load. And now it's not even a.
Not even close to a thought in our mind. And I'm glad we've gone that way, you know, because it's already helped us build a ton of trust in the provider side of our network. We've already had just twice in the last week, we've had two of our providers come to us and say, hey, I don't know if you know this, but one of your customers, I'm not going to say any names. One of your customers has 23 other distribution centers. Were you aware of that? They came to me and said hey, let's go get those guys and get them on freight row. They're already, you know, instead of backdooring us and saying, hey, I'm going to go steal those other 23 distribution centers and take them for myself.
They're coming to me and say, hey, let's tag team this and go get those other 23 distribution centers onto the freightro platform. Just another instance, just a week ago we had another one of our providers that said, hey, one of the receivers saw, because one of the functionalities in our system is it automatically creates a bol for our customers. They don't have to manually create a bol. It just pops out of our system. On our bol it says powered by freight show. On the bottom, the receiver of that load said, who's freightro, what's Frey trail? And the provider who moved that load for us said hey, these guys have a really cool system that can make your business more efficient, etc. You should give them a shot. He gave me their phone number.
He didn't back again, didn't go behind my back and steal that business from me. He could have, but you know, he brought it to me and said hey, go get these guys on the freight trail platform. We got them signed up yesterday.
Yeah, no, I like that. So how are you guys protecting your customers freight out there? Right? Because I think like obviously with, you know, fraud and all of the stuff that's going on, how are, is that conversation coming up with any of your guys as customers? Like, hey, fraud, double brokering, all of that stuff is a very big issue right now. How are you ensuring that the people who are hauling our freight are vetted, compliant and all that stuff?
Yeah. So we do go through a very thick vetting process before we bring a provider in, we go through all their documentation, make sure they're up to speed with, you know, from an insurance standpoint, everything. Right. And here's the other thing is we don't act as a barrier between the manufacturer, the distributor, et cetera, and the provider. They connect with each other on our, from within our platform. They can communicate with each other from within our platform, whether that's for negotiation purposes or tracking a load, whatever it might be. They don't have to move a load with said provider. Right. If a provider pops up, that's, you know, hey, I can book a load with these guys. I've never, I've never heard of them. I've never moved a load with them. Before, but they're $100 cheaper on this lane.
They can actually see who these guys are and do a little more due diligence from right within our system to make sure that this is somebody that they can trust and move that load with.
So, yeah, Ben, go ahead.
Yeah, no, the message is we do the vetting and then there are integrations happening to various third parties that are going to validate every day. You know, this company is actually launching broker verification too. So we're looking to add them in and we'll be the ones verifying daily or weekly that all the providers in the system are up to date.
So are owner operators and small fleets able to sign up on your guys's platform to get access to these direct shippers or no?
Yeah, so we have our spot open marketplace right now. And on the provider side, we're protecting it a little bit just because we want everybody to be able to eat. And, you know, if we tell brokers or carriers there's freight, we'll get 1000 of them tomorrow.
We do.
Yeah, we have some small asset based providers. We have some true brokers. We have, we have all different types in the mix.
No, I think that, you know, for. I think, you know, again, this is just me thinking off the top of my head if, you know, depending on the, some of the shippers that you guys are working with and bringing that because like, you know, drivers out there all the time, I try and be as middle of the road as I possibly can with all of my stuff. You know, I talk to as many trucking companies, I try and talk to trucking companies as much as possible. Owner operators, the fleet side of things. I try and bring as many guests on there as well. The overwhelming majority of them, they want direct shipper freight. They want that opportunity to go in there.
But a lot of these large shippers, I don't want to set somebody up who can only haul one load for them a week or whatever that looks like. And again, because it's like the overwhelming majority of this industry is small business, right? Like 90 some percent of the trucks that are on the road are ten truck or less operations. They don't have a sales force. They don't have a sales staff that's out there, but, you know, they're out there combing the load boards every single day. They might not even be aware that you guys have somebody who's just down the street from them that ships. And, you know, like I said, that one person said, hey, they got 27 facilities nationwide. Why aren't we in there? You know, stuff like that.
Like they could get a drop like a round trip in network with the same shipper going back and forth transferring loads between their facilities. So I think that's something, I don't know if that's out there or what. That's something I would love to see brought out to the market from this style of what you guys are talking about is to bring that into the small trucking company, the owner operators out there to get them that direct access to that freight.
Yeah and so there is that and that will be the motion is hey if you want access to our marketplace come in here. But there is also a private side of things as well. So if, whether it's, and this is the beautiful thing, whether it's a shipper or a provider, let's say I'll give an example of both. So we have a potential co op, right? They have a network, they have a provider network of 700, 350 carriers, 350 brokers. They're like hey we don't really need your broke your provider network. So what we do is we build out, it's called our private fusion functionality and that's essentially creating a private targeted network for the shipper. Hey come in and use us as a quoting, booking and managing every freight tool and just bring in your providers.
And then on the other end if it's a broker, hey broker, we understand if you don't want to bring your shippers onto the general marketplace it wouldn't make much sense. However if you're looking for a booking, quoting and managing tool to connect to your TMS, go ahead and we'll build you out a private targeted network. Yeah that's the other. We do have the spot marketplace but there is the private section as well to build.
So there could be an enterprise shipper or shipper of any size. That's like hey we already have our own network. No we do not want our stuff going out there. This is all embedded to our five providers only. But then there's a separate sector of your guys's that is open network.
Freight where it's targeted, private targeted network. So our, we feel like communication has been lost along the way. You know people try to over automate right. In the supply chain world it is chaotic and there will always be a need for one to one communication directly with another human being or multiple human beings who are stakeholders within a shipment. We facilitate that so we automate where needed and where it makes sense. But we provide communication elements all throughout.
Yeah, no, that's awesome. I love that. So we only got a couple minutes left here. So how, like, what's next for this? You know, like, what is your guys's big thing? Is it more? Get out there and get in front of as many shippers is possible. Like, what's the plan for this?
Yeah, so, I mean, again, going back to the Uber reference, right, the hard side of the network for us to build is the manufacturer, the distributor, the retailer side of the network. Right? The shipping providers, if we got freight, they're coming, right? So, yeah, I mean, it's really just pouring gasoline on the fire now. I mean, we've got a legitimate network already built. There's transactions taking place as we speak. If I refreshed my page right now and look at how many transactions have happened since we started this call, there'd be several. So it's, you know, we're really just trying to, you know, add as much to that as we can.
But ultimately, you know, the longer term vision is connecting the supply chain. Right? It all goes back to that networking and communication piece. We have a mix of forward technology. So think AI, think smart contracts, think staying ahead of the curve in terms of technology perspective. But also that communication piece will always be tied in. And, you know, we start with domestic logistics and then we go from there. Ultimately, we want to change the freight and supply chain ecosystem within freightro. You know, freightro will be your freight ecosystem in ten years that will handle every aspect of your freight. Right now. It's domestic.
Yep. No, I got you. And I mean, trust me. Tony Darnell, I know you brought him up earlier. Tony's a really good friend of mine. If he's with you know, and talking with you like you're saying, man, you're in good hands with Tony. Tony's one of the best guys in the industry that I've ever met. But that will be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. How does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more, though?
Matt@freightro.com. Bennett. Freightro.com. Check out our website. We've got a little, you know, a little web form there where you can, you know, you can request a demo. Yeah, we'd love to chat with folks and show them what this is all about.
Any shippers out there, you can try us out for free. You guys on the provider side, it's again that general marketplace. We will be opening it up here soon. But if you're looking for some technology that provides your shippers with a very easy way to quote, book and manage their freight and connect to your internal tms. Yeah, shoot us a note.
Perfect. I love it. Ben, Matt, thank you guys so much for joining me. As always, you guys. If you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there to your network. We'll be back next week with more guests coming on. You guys, we're going to continue to deliver more and more information out there. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Chris, thank you for having us. Chris, take care.