Lightning like Steve McQueen I'm in a 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 Because I'm built stronger.
What is up, ladies and gentlemen, we are back. We are live. It is the Freight Coach podcast. The top podcasting transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys 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 this information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. It is Friday, ladies and gentlemen. I am glad to be back home for all of 48 hours before I head back out on the road. I'm going to be at the NMWTA Cybersecurity Conference on Monday and Tuesday in Cleveland. I'm going to be doing my live show from there. I'm going to be doing some interviews and everything there. So if you're out there, you will see me. I'll be in the signature orange. As always.
Just stop in, say hi. I always love talking to individuals who are fans of the show when I'm out there on the road and everything. Micah Campo. Good morning. Corey Bukin. Good morning. Robert Cowton. Good morning you. Oh my Rev. I use my Robert. I literally just use an Excel spreadsheet for my pipeline. Man, that it's as simple as that. But we got a very special guest for you guys here today. So I've known Tom here for a while and you know, he's been out on his own here with his company and I think it's like the most ingenious slash phenomenal piece of technology that's out there that has literally given me more gray hairs on my head than my 13 year old son. So with that being said, I have Mr. Tom Curie with cued on the show today.
Tom, thank you so much for joining.
Hey man, good to be here. Good to be here with the group. It's gonna should be a Good conversation.
No, man, I'm looking forward to it. I'm surprised you have Wi Fi in your log cabin back in the 1800s, man. You got the.
We got. We got a water mill out here that's spinning to be able to keep that WI fi going, baby.
Are you guys churning butter as well while we're at it?
Yeah, you know, we're churning butter, man.
Oh, man, that's awesome. So. So, Tom, I know who you are, but maybe not everybody does, man. So how'd you get your start in freight? Like, what brought you into this industry?
Yeah, so it's kind of a fun story. So I. I've been in the transportation industry for about 18 years. The way I actually got into it, my wife, we. She had started a job as a customer service rep for a large brokerage. Actually, she. Back then, a customer service rep was someone's just routing phone calls. That's all she was doing. And she started working at this company and she had been there like, I don't know, a few weeks. And she came home, she said, tom, I don't know really what we do as a company, but I think you would love this business. And So I was 19 years old and I got into the freight brokerage space and kind of cut my teeth there. Learned a ton about the industry.
And then I've been fortunate enough to be able to do everything on, from the logistics side over into the carrier side as well, and got a pretty good experience in the space. And that's what kind of sucked me in. And I can't get out. I'm stuck here, man. Like, this is. There's. There's no. There's no way out once you get into transportation, I don't believe, dude, if.
You make it past six months, you're in it for life. There's no way to put it. And that's in any role, right? So, you know, 19, 18. 19 years in the industry, you've obviously seen going from the stone age in technology to kind of where we are today. What are. What are some of those things, man, that you still see that areas that you'd like the industry to improve upon from a technology perspective.
So I think where. And we are seeing signs of this, I think the ability to have what I would call true connectivity across all these different solutions and different players and different TMs. And there's so many things that we're all having to actively work. I mean, how many tabs you got open, right? Like, I mean, everyone's into something and So I think as we continue to evolve in the use of technology, we're going to find the ability to actually connect these different applications in a way that becomes really natural for the user. I think that we have aspects of great user adoption in some aspects, but then in other ways they're all still disconnected, even if there is a quick unquote integration that exists there.
And so I think we're just going to see things kind of blend together a little bit nicer than maybe they have historically. Not so much standalone, but more so. You know, how does this come together as a whole?
Do you ever see a time when, you know, obviously as a broker, everybody wants access to, you know, locations and everything on trucks and we won't go into the get their tracking and then, you know, blow them up on the phone or anything. But do you ever see a point in time when we're going to have like true end to end visibility? And I'm going to go out as far as saying like as soon as that container is loaded in China, to on the water, to at the port, to Transloaded on a 53 footer out there. Do you ever think that there's going to be a point in time when that's going to happen?
Or is that with the free enterprise that we operate in here in this country, which I love, there's going to be too many competing companies out there where that's almost like a pipe dream that probably won't happen?
No, I think it's very realistic. I think that even we're finding transportation companies that may one side be competitors. They're actually being able to start transmitting data between each other because they understand that it's a better experience all the way down the supply chain. So if those companies that are truly committed to cutting waste through the supply chain, being able to provide visibility, look, if you go to most websites today, they're going to say they're champions of visibility. Everyone's going to throw that out in some way. There is a point where there's going to be an expectation that you actually deliver on that. And I believe that those companies who really want to be able to live, that they will provide that level of visibility.
And I think we already see players in the space that have done some of that work and the technology keeps getting better. I mean, I remember when I was at an asset based carrier and were talking about trying to change the 3G units that were powering the locations of our trailers and like, oh, that's a big investment. We got to switch from 3G to one of these new. What is 4G? What is 4G? What does it even mean? You know, and so I think that continues to rapidly change in our space. And because of that, we're going to just keep seeing this data get better and more connected.
And that's what I think, you know, because even, you know, being at datcon here these last couple of days and you know, and speaking to some shippers and, you know, other attendees there and, you know, data I think is, you know, like data and really cleaning your data. How does it actually make sense for your business? I think is something that, with the advancements in technology, I think is then almost the next roadblock that a lot of companies are going to be faced with is it's like, hey, I have all this data, but how do I make sense with this to tell the C suite about, like here, this is what's actually happening in our supply chains to kind of find those choke points and those weak points. And I think like, that's kind of the next iteration that comes up in here, right?
Where it's like, you know, I know visibility was a massive buzzword forever, but now I think it's going to be like, there's a lot of data that's coming through, but how do we make sense of it? But most importantly, how do we make the right decision to, you know, increase profitability inside of our business or increase efficiencies?
Yeah, I think so. I've been fortunate enough to be able to deploy hundreds of automation projects and businesses. And it does come down to data, right? How good is your data? How clean is your data? Even on our side, with queued, when we started scheduling appointments, one of the biggest problems that we knew existed was good PO management. I mean, PO management is a difficult thing to tackle because, you know, you're signing up a customer, right? I've sat in that seat where, you know what, I get a new shipper signed up, we're pumped, we're going to start hauling freight form. We got to do an EDI setup. We, we get set up with edi. But guess what? When the data comes in via edi, it's messy. POS don't look right. POS have dates, they have slashes, they have lines, they have all this stuff.
But when you start getting an automation, all that breaks automation. So like we right up front, we're like, okay, we know that, like that's the thing. Our team you know, we've got decades of experience in transportation, so we already knew that was going to be a problem. So we built our application to be able to handle the influx of data that's going to come in. Because you know what you're not going to do? You're not going to go to that big shipper that you just landed and say, hey, your EDI sucks. Like, it's really bad. Like, no, you're going to be like, please, sir, thank you. May I have another like that? That's the way it works. And so our approach has always been with our customers. Like, let us fix the data for you.
Like, I don't want your users going in there manually changing it, because that sucks. That's a waste of time. But then I also don't want you having to go back to the customer. So just let me have it the way that you have it, and then I can clean it, I can build a scrubbing process to be able to handle that. And I think that approach is what we're going to continue to see happen in this industry so that we do experience the level of connectivity that we're talking about here.
No, I agree with that, man. So speaking of Cued, What. What was it, man? What? Just as an. As an entrepreneur, I'm curious. What was that moment that you had where you're like, I gotta get out there and do this on my own. I gotta go. I gotta. I gotta run with this. I know that this idea is gonna stick. What was it for you?
Yeah. So I give. I give a lot of credit to my good friend Prasad Gallopoli, who serves as CEO and chairman for Cued. You know, as he went through his journey with trucker tools, you know, I was able to learn a lot from him over seven years. And in that journey of our relationship, you know, he kind of built into that hunger. You know, since I was a kid, I always. I always wanted to go build and do my own thing. I was the wild kid that was like, figuring out different ways to be able to earn money to go do xyz, whatever it was. And so there was a moment where I continued to hear this problem with appointment scheduling in the industry.
And it was wild to me because, you know how many solutions are being thrown into our industry all the time? It's like, no one's attacking this thing, like. And I realized it's because the level of complexity. Well, I'm a sucker for complexity. I buy old crappy things to try to fix them, because that's just the way I'm wired, that's why I have all these old people around me. Right. Like, I'm just. I'm that type of a person. And so when we really leaned in and said, okay, look, there is an opportunity here, we could actually really make an impact. And the bigger impact of what we're going to do here, around location management and how we can actually feed this data back into the industry, it really just got me pumped about saying, okay, let's lean in. Yeah, there's a ton of sacrifice.
Yeah, there's a lot of things that you have to give up. Yeah, there's a lot of things that you have to be able to reprioritize. But at the same time, you get out there, it's like. We've been at several conferences the last several weeks, and we're now to the point where we've got a phenomenal team. And this team is just serving these customers really well, where I'm able to see customers come up to me for the first time and say, hey, you know, we had those calls. You told me it was real. We worked with your team. They put it in place. This is real. Like, this is huge. And this is what it's done. When you start getting those, all that does is fuel the fire. Right? And you. So, yeah, okay, yeah. We've got 52 companies that already love what we're doing.
Who's the next 52? How do we bring them on? How do we show them that we can actually service them in this way? And that just continues to fuel that even beyond that day one energy that you kind of get out here to build something for fresh.
What was that moment when, you know, after you started everything and, you know, you got the everything running there, what was that moment where you're like, I think we're really on to something. I'm starting to see that adoption. Was it the first customer who came back and said, dude, you guys saved us X amount of time, or was there. Was it a string of things?
So there's a couple of moments that I would speak to. One is we did have that moment where the first two customers went live. You know, we had sold them on an idea and they believed in that idea. And by the way, every single one of our customers are signed customers. They were, you know, we don't have any free rides here that they were experiencing. They committed to this with us. And in that journey, we. Those first couple customers where it just literally, the light bulb went off and they just went nuts with it. And I remember I was at a conference, I was at the CSCMP conference. The product had only been live for, I mean, maybe a month. And I got a call from one of the reps who was actually scheduling appointments through the platform.
And she called me, she said, tom, I woke up today, came into the office, I had 116, I think it was 169 appointments that I had to schedule on a Monday morning. She said, I sent every single one of those just right through Q. I just said, you know what, let's just see what they do. And she said, all but eight of them were automatically confirmed without me ever having to lift a finger. And that was the moment that were like, okay, this is the real deal now. Like, this is making an impact. When you, when you have users who have spent their careers scheduling these appointments and they're like, man, you just. The amount of weight that you just took off of me in a moment, that became like, okay, now we've got something special here.
So I mean 100, I mean 160 some appointments, let's be honest, minimum, we're talking two to three minutes in appointment, right? Like that's like just. And that's if everything's working properly. That's perfect world scenario. So like, do you guys have a time save out there? Tom of like it, you know, it takes on average of five to seven minutes to schedule one appointment. And this is like the actual human capital hours that you are saving on a day to day basis with this.
So you would think that I had sent you some data on this just because you literally recited. It's five to seven minutes on average. Five to seven minutes is then I know, I'm like, everyone's watching, being like, dude, he's got Jolly in his pocket. Like, no, but Tom, it's because.
I've actually done the job before, man. Like I've actually done appointments.
Well, that's what I tell people. Like 18 years ago when I started this business, I was scheduling appointments. Like, I know the pain. I've scheduled so many in these different platforms. But yeah, typically you're talking five to seven minutes. And the thing you got to keep in mind is it's more than just the initial schedule. You have the schedule, you have the reschedule, which, I mean it's going to happen. And then you also have PO changes where you have to go back and forth to update pos. And so by being able to just bring all that directly into the user's tms, right? We're not. We're not trying to give them another widget, another portal, another login. Like, that's not it. It's literally right in their tms where they're working every day. And that's why we have the user adoption we have.
It's just, they get it right, you know, and so it's no different than, you know, when you're serving and you're a 3 PL, or you're a carrier in the space. Your customers are going to have a level of expectation. It needs to be easy to work with you. It needs to. You need to be able to do the job right. If I'm going to give you a shipment, I need to be able to trust you can do it. You need to be able to give me the visibility I expect. And you need to make it just simple. What is that simple way of connectivity. And that's just. It's the same approach that we try to take with every customer we work with.
No, I know what you mean there, man, because to me, it's like that. That's where the, you know, especially an organization of any size can benefit from something like this. But, you know, I just always, every time I interview and speak with somebody on my show, I always think about my business and my operation and when we're out there, you know, because it's like there's two of us. It's me and my co founder. We're out there moving shipments. We're out there cold calling, prospecting, updating customers, shippers receive. We're doing all of that stuff, right? So it's like, where can we find that little edge to keep us competitive to where we can grow smart? And, you know, because like, I've bootstrapped everything, man.
So it's like I've tried other angles and I know, like, I know my limits and I want to get to my limits before I think about hiring somebody. And I'm like, all right, but how do we build up a stack or, you know, help streamline the majority of our operations to not only improve our people's outputs, but minimize their mistakes? Because this is where I'm a fan of technology, right? And like, I'm a fan of technology in a bunch of areas, but when it comes down to like, minimizing the human error, when we're talking about PO numbers being offer scheduling the wrong appointment at the wrong platform or whatever that looks like, right? So it's like, it's helping you become more efficient because ultimately that leads to higher customer retention.
Because when we're thinking about the facilities that require appointments, that have TMSs, these aren't your small to mid sized market. In, in most instances, these are very large enterprise shippers. You are graded on how many times you sneeze in a day on their monthly carrier scorecard, essentially. So it's like this is where those efficiencies come from. Because ultimately that's what they look like, that's what they look at on a carrier scorecard review or a performance review. They are looking at all of that data because those large enterprise retail partners of theirs that have systems like this, they grade those CPG companies on literally everything. So this is what helps elevate those operations as well.
Yeah, they do. And we've actually seen now that some of these systems are actually requiring you to have an appointment put back in within two hours of accepting a tender. So in those cases, that's where we use a lot of our automated scheduling for our customers where as soon as the stop comes into the TMS were automatically triggering off to be able to schedule that. But the bigger thing is like, you know, I think about, there were many times that I was going in front of a customer and the customer and I'd be saying, hey look, we want to move freight, more freight for you. We want to figure out how do we get more into your network.
And then, you know what they would do is they pull up the piece of paper and they'd be like, well then how come you didn't bid on these 5,000 loads that we did last month? You didn't, you didn't go after any of these. And the reality is a lot of times you would know that based off of the time that you were going to receive that tender, those prime appointments would be gone. And so it's not one day transit, it's two day transit now. And because you're going to pay for that extra day of transit, it's got to be able to be built into the rate, otherwise the carrier is going to have an unprofitable load.
And so what we're doing as we continue to aggregate this, we're arming our customers so that when they go to that QBR with that customer, they're actually able to say, hey look, we like this lane a lot, but the problem is you send it to us with only 12 hours to be able to schedule appointments. We know based off of our other customers, if we can get it within 30 hours, we can get the appointments that we need to make it a better load for everyone. And so those are the conversations that we want because at the end of the day we want you to get more freight too. Right. And so, you know, it's directly related as you go deeper down into the tunnel of what happens with these appointments and what is the cost of a bad appointment really.
Yeah, no, I'm right there with you. And you know, I think you brought up a really good point there, Tom, about when you're going in there and looking to grow with a lot of your customers and you know, you don't have that data that comes along with it because that's ultimately what tells the best story out there. You know, like anytime I go into, you know, in my past and past roles and then, you know, presently as well, if I'm going to go in there and want to talk to somebody about how do I grow with them, you need to have your own internal information dissected down to the last possible thing so you can go in there and make sure that, you know, you are in a position to even ask for more business at that time.
And you know, and then it's also, you know, one thing that I've really started to hear more and more of in it, you know, @ this point in my career is there's a lot of customers, shippers, whatever you want to call them out there that are like, hey man, we're like, we're a manufacturer, we're not a transportation company. They don't know that 300 miles should be a one day run and it might be coming over as a two day run. They don't know these things. Right. So it's like we need to go in there and really help them out in that, you know, from that perspective because that's where the real cost savings are. Right.
Like I don't necessarily sit here, the whole rate per mile, yada, yada, that's you know, like it's the real fundamental cost savings of like, hey, you know, this product not being on your customer shelves is actually costing you this. If we start shipping it like this, it's less time in your inventory, it's more time on the shelf increasing the likelihood of somebody purchasing that product.
Yeah, I mean, it makes a bigger difference. I mean, because again, when you get in front of those conversations, they have data in front of them. How are you responding to that? Right. And you need to be able to know their business better than they do when you get into that conversation. Right. You've got to be able to understand it because, and I'll tell you this, on the shipper side, they want to have that level of conversation with you, right? Yeah, they want you to challenge them in a way that they think, oh, wow, we never thought about how those loads are dropping and the impact of, because of the way those loads have been routed. We've never even heard it. Right. You know what, that's just going to put you on a different level. Right.
When you talk to that customer, it absolutely puts you on a different level. And that's, that was always my thing when I was selling in the managed services space, specifically with three PLs, is that you want to be able to show that, hey, look, not only do we understand your business, but we also understand why you're challenged in the way that you are with some of these lanes. And here's a couple options that we think could probably make that better for you.
How, how has that paid off for you in the building stages of your company? Like being able to bring that down knowing that you've sat in the room with, you know, your guys's customers queued like those customers, all the shippers that they're working with are trying to work with that you've sat in those rooms and you know what that's like. How is that paying off for you guys when you're out there fundamentally talking.
About your guys's it, the difference is significant. I mean we, look, there's a lot of VC money that's been thrown around ideas in the technology space for quite a while. I think we've seen a lot of these and I think one of the things that I've said often is I think a lot of companies have built solutions that they're trying to find a problem for and that's not the case for us. Right. Like we started at the problem, we knew what the problem was, then we just had to figure out how to bring a solution to that. And in that story, it resonates really well when we talk to customers because we know the conversations they're having. We've been in that seat, we've been in front of those customers.
And so because of that, you know, we can absolutely, we understand 100% why you're doing this. And one of, the, one of the number one comments that I get told when we first get into a demo with say a trucking company or A3PL that maybe doesn't know me or hasn't been affiliated. When we first got a call, they're like, well, you don't look like a techie. Like, I'm a little confused here. You kind of look like us. I'm like, I've sat in your. I've lived in the semi truck with a guy for six days. Like, I've been out there. I know what it's like. And so it immediately builds so much rapport because we understand the problem. We're not trying to learn the problem. We understand now there's more we can learn.
We're always looking to understand a little bit deeper about how it's impacting them. But at the end of the day, understanding how this problem really works is definitely one of the biggest differentiators that we bring into the space.
I love it. No, I'm right there with you. Right? And I've said this a lot in. And I. And in no way am I saying that you need to have freight experience to build a successful tech company inside of freight. But that relatability that you're able to deliver, Tom, is what I truly think stands out to a lot of decision makers out there, right? Like, knowing, like, hey, man, these guys sat in the seat. And because. Because to me, like, I've demoed a lot of stuff over the years, man. I. I really have. You can tell the ones who have designed it because they've actually talked to freight brokers or trucking companies based.
To me, it's the workflow that I'm looking at because a lot of the interfaces and stuff out there, like, my personal preference, I don't care, as long as it makes my job more efficient. Right? Like, I don't care if this color is in this, you know, spot on the page or whatever. Like, I want to make sure that it makes my life easier.
Yeah, well, and we. So funny story here. So we had a trucking company that we'd reached out to start working with, and when we first called them, they were like, look, we've talked to so many different technology companies. We're really difficult. We don't follow the rules. We don't do things right. Like, and we've never been able to actually make something happen. I'm like, well, let me take a look. Like, let me understand your process. And I came from a background where we did a lot of manifested shipments, so we would consolidate freight, you know, especially consolidate a lot of reefer freight. Run them as full truckloads. And that's part of what this carrier did. And for the first. For the first, I don't know, week or two, all this carrier called me was sales guy. Hey, sales guy. Let's see. All right, sales guy.
You think you can do it? All right, sales guy. And. And then went live. And I'll never forget, they said, we want to just go live with one connection. We want you to schedule our appointment with this platform. I'm like, okay. And they're like, that's all we're going to do. I'm like, that's fine. It's perfectly fine. You know, went live. Three days later, I got an email from them and said, hey, did you say you could schedule these appointments, too? And so that level of understanding that, yeah, we can take a complex movement because we've moved those movements. We know how they work. It allowed us to move very quickly with a lot of these customers.
What's one thing. What's been the hardest lesson you've learned so far in being out on your own with Cued? What's one of those things where you're like, I'm glad I went through it, but that's kind of one of those moments that's helped kind of shape things.
I'll tell you, the hardest moment is those first couple of weeks. Because those first couple of weeks, you don't have customers, you don't have things keeping you busy. You don't have priorities, you don't have a team. You don't have, like, all those things that you think about. Once all of a sudden you're in this room by yourself, and you're like, okay, we gotta start. And it is that. That process of starting. And I know so many people that, you know, they want to do something different or they want to challenge themselves in a different way, or they want to try something new. And I think that is the hardest moment, that moment where you're like, okay, I've just got to start grinding. I've got to figure out, am I going to do it right? No, I'm going to miss a hundred times.
But eventually I'm going to hit it. And then when I hit it, then I'm going to lean into that and I'm going to continue to build. And I think that is. That is one of those hardest moments where you're sitting in a room by yourself. Now. It's great. We've got about a dozen people on the team. We've got a hundred. You know, we've got all these people that are helping us with a lot of different things that are honestly way better than me at a lot of the things that I was doing. Right. Let's just be honest. I mean, but that those first moments, those first weeks when you're like, okay, it's time to build and you've just got to go hustle and make it.
Happen, Dude, I will 100% agree with you on that, man. The hardest part of all of this for me was those first couple of months of looking at my schedule and when I was like literally in the bedroom of the apartment were renting at the time because we had just moved to Arizona and I had post the daily video at 7am and then create daily video for next day at like 2:30 in the afternoon. That was it on there. And that was for months, man. And you know what?
Here's the thing. This is why most cradle of grave brokers stop prospecting. Because it's really hard when you start. You've got to hustle, you got to grind. And guess what? Once you get that first customer, you know what you like to do? You like to sell to carriers, you like to do your check calls, you like to schedule your appointments. Because guess what? It's so much work to do the other thing. And you can't forsake that. Otherwise you become stagnant.
Yeah, there's so much less resistance out there because nobody likes getting hung up on, you know, And I was just talking about this on my call there, on my talk yesterday at datcon about building a sales team. Right where it's like it, nobody. The biggest part about cold calling that I still don't like to this day is you just don't know who's going to answer the phone. But ultimately that's why I have that system in place where my opening line is the exact same thing I leave on my voicemail. So there is no. In the event that somebody does answer. I'm not like, you know what I mean? So.
Yeah, absolutely.
But, well, hey, Tom, we are at 30 minutes, man. This flew by. Dude, I really appreciate you jumping on here and breaking down what you got going on there, Cued, man. But how does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more about what you guys got going on?
Yeah, they can reach us on our website, q.com or feel free to shoot us a message on LinkedIn or anything. You know, this day and age, Just say something, we'll be there. Yeah.
That works out. And if for some reason you guys can't find Tom or Cued, hit me up, I will gladly put you guys in direct contact with them. But that will be it for today, you guys. I will be live from the NMWTA Cyber Security Conference on Monday and Tuesday in Cleveland. 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, 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. Dude, there we go. That's what's up. And.