Came back with a bank window down.
Yelling now money at a day hey.
Oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm getting to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal.
When the lane moving fast hey.
Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a.
Bigger balls hey what is up ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It is a Freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in 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, you guys, 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. Happy Wednesday, everybody. I got a very special guest for you guys here. I'm going to pull him up in just a second. But just a quick reminder, you guys, the Freight Coach newsletter dropped today. If you want to get it, go to thefraycoach.com to register for it. I don't sell out my contact list. I don't auto sign you up if I have your email address. I don't believe in any of that stuff because I personally hate it when I get spammed with a bunch of garbage as well. So if you want to get a part of that, we talk about the industry, we talk about rates, fuel prices, all of that stuff. So go to the Freight Coach.com to check that out.
All right, now I have the pleasure of bringing this guy on here. I met him and his business partner and this is a, like back in, like, I don't want to say it was like 20, 21, we met up for breakfast. They were in town in Phoenix and you know, they were just really getting their dream started and really running it and getting it built up off the ground back then. And I love talking to founders, I love talking to people who are out there getting it. And there is Nobody better than Mr. Patrick Vasanter with Repower on the show today. So, Patrick, thank you so much for joining me.
Absolutely, Chris, great to be here. And it's been a While like you said, I think 20, 22, maybe it was, were eating, I think it was like Sunnyside Grill. I don't know what it was called, but in Phoenix, Arizona. So great to be back and thanks for having me.
No, absolutely, man. And it was, I mean, I remember it. You guys were like, had a bunch of meetings booked up and you were like, dude, I gotta get on a flyer flying back to Birmingham tonight. I think you guys were living in Alabama still at the time and you guys have since moved up to. You guys are in Chattanooga now, right?
Yep, in Chattanooga. The team's there and it's been a great ecosystem and area for repower to get going. And it's, it's been awesome.
Dude, that's great, man. And so like how before we go any further on what you guys are, you know, kind of building right now, how'd you get your start in freight? What brought you into transportation?
Oh, man. So I didn't always know really what the career path I wanted to take was. I've always been extremely curious. I love problem solving. You know, when I started college, a close friend of mine introduced me to supply chain management. Didn't know what that was, what it meant at the time, you know, in those early days, but I got into some classes and I quickly realized that it piqued my curiosity and it was something that I saw was extremely important to the economy. And I just saw all the opportunities that existed from it and taking that curiosity and problem solving and I was able to start identifying inefficiencies and figure out ways to improve them. And that's overall just a big part of how I think.
And I started my career, you know, right out of the gate at a trucking company, a flatbed trucking company in Birmingham where I was a customer service rep. I had shippers as my customers and I was matching drivers to freight. And you know, at that time it was a lot of things were going on between the ELD mandate and you know, clocking the driver's hours of service. I saw the continuous need and growth of trailer pools and you know what that meant for us as an asset based carrier with a brokerage side. To get those opportunities, we had to go out and acquire more assets, acquire those trailers to get those opportunities. Or we would have to go to a leasing company and sign a five year long contract. And there's just really not that flexibility that was needed.
And I noticed that, you know, looking at the industry and doing some research, I saw 97% of those the trailers that are in the market are owned by just 3% of the companies. And so there's a lot of inefficiencies that creates the fragmentation, the under utilization and just on top of that, those trailers are inaccessible. But I learned a lot. I got to work with some really great people over there and that's kind of where I got started.
Mm, dude. I think, you know, it's one of those things that I don't know if enough people even really like, think about. Right. Like, I mean, if you've ever driven around any warehousing districts of any cities, you see piles of trailers from multiple different companies just kind of sitting there. Right. And you know, to most people they're just, they're like, oh, that must be a drop trailer pool if you work in the industry, right. Like you see that, like, oh, they must have a drop trailer pool here. But that's not always the case, man. And, and then especially if there's any changes in customer requests and you know, they need to reposition 50 trailers from Phoenix over to, you know, LA, for example, whatever that looks like.
And you know, that is, that's just another problem or another thing that trucking companies have to get a hold of and move it. And, and if they don't have any assets in the area, they gotta, I mean, they're paying somebody to move it. Right. And then now have you guys kind of seen a, an uptick in, you know, in the power only movement? I mean, I mean I've kind of seen a growth in that out there, especially like with the Amazon effect and stuff like that. Now are you seeing your, you know, your company, your users allowing people to go in there, load that trailer out as long as it gets from point A to point B?
Absolutely. I mean, like you said, power only freight is growing rapidly and it's, there's, it creates a lot of major imbalances. The people who can, you know, be engaged with the opportunities they've got to get the access to the trailers and with the fragmentation that makes it very hard. So, you know, the power only freight movement has definitely helped provide a lot of opportunities for repower. And you know, we essentially help brokers and you know, those smaller carriers and shippers source and find those trailers to get those seasonal opportunities of drop trailer needs and just kind of being that connecting piece of, and collaboration piece and using our technology to bring that community and trailer network together is where we kind of fit.
And I mean, obviously I know you guys aren't a freight broker or anything like that. But I'm just trying to, you know, have you ever seen any situation where you know, maybe one of the larger fleets out there, they need say 30 trailers repositioned, they actually have freight that you can load it out in and then you just, you know, the power only unit is able to go on there and kind of, I don't want to call it double dip but like they don't have to go out there, grab the trailer and then find freight on top of that to go into that direction.
Now you're, we don't do that and we don't necessarily go that route. When we're talking about this, we're just concentrated on the trailer. I think it's a big part of saying agnostic in the industry and being able to work with everybody. But that's internal. Now when somebody is giving access to a trailer and sharing a trailer via repower, they see who they're working with, they see who they're able to communicate with them. And you know, if they want to give them freight, they're more than welcome to if they have freight opportunities.
But the most of the time those trailers, you know they're being used because there are no freight opportunities and they're being moved xyz but a broker will come on, see that we have a trailer, see there's a load and they'll match that driver and the carrier with our load and or with our trailer with their load. So you know, once that connection happens you're able to kind of take it from there.
I gotcha. So what's it like kind of been building out like the tech platform and like the back end user interface and all of that stuff. How are you guys building that out to where it's like, it's just simple, right? Because like I feel like in you know, user ability has to be probably one of your guys top priorities. And you don't want anybody who's overly confused to go on there and try and you know, use your guys platform.
Exactly right. I mean the biggest thing is there's a ton of technology out there. Everybody's on load boards, their own TMS system, they have their own telematics provider that's tracking their equipment. ELD provider. And you know, we want to be something that is so simple that you're thinking about in your everyday freight movement and being able to fit that. But one thing starting out in those early days is Spencer and I created the platform. We don't have technology backgrounds. We created a no code platform and in the back end, were working on spreadsheets just like probably the majority of the industry.
But it gave us a chance to really learn and understand what needed to be built and how people were working with us in those early days and what they were, you know, how they find a trailer, the number of clicks to book a trailer, the time it takes. And that's all things that we track now. And there's still a lot of simplicity that we can build into the product. But I mean today you type in a location and that first trailer pops up and it's a couple clicks away. And I think it's 80% of our trailers that are booked are same day pickups. So it's very quick process and the more you interact with it, the more seamless it becomes. But from the technology side, where we have always really spent, a lot of our focus is on the supply side.
And the reason being is because, you know, we said from the very beginning that supply drives demand. And we want to understand how these people are looking at their trailers, how they're managing these trailers, how they're finding the opportunities of, you know, when these trailers need to be moved. And we're understanding and collecting that data to help them be more efficient with their trailers. And if we do that, we should see more demand. But on the front end side of things, it's gotta be simple for the user to find and book the trailer.
So how are you guys like, you know, obviously I think, you know, damage to the trailer. Right. Like that would be probably my biggest concern is like, hey man, our trailer was in this condition when it got picked up. You know, how are you going to protect that asset in there? Walk me through that. Is it like a photo thing? Like where you guys have updated photos and then inverse. Any, any power only provider out there doesn't want to show up and see a trailer that looks like Swiss cheese that they're supposed to pick up with no working brakes or anything like that.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say that never happens. It happens. But the truth is, you know, as we've grown, we've built out this large network and we have, you know, in our system we have probably 200, 250,000 trailers. And I'm not saying all those are available on the website every second of the day, but they're made available and the locations and everything are changing. And you know, once somebody shows up, there are typically multiple trailer options. We give them a trailer number or two that they can choose from and Then these trailers, a lot of times they are being moved to a location where they're in need to move freight. And so we get access to the maintenance and roadside and things like that to come out and do those, you know, tire fixes, quick fixes.
But every time a driver shows up, they have to do a quick digital inspection form and they have access to roadside before they even leave with that trailer. So it happens. But you know, luckily we built out a network where there are a lot of additional options. But I'm not going to say it doesn't happen.
No, absolutely, man. When you say access to roadside, is it like in the event that there's a repair that needs to be made to the trailer prior to pickup or do you guys have something worked out with any roadside repair like hey man, if anything happens in transit to this trailer, this is who you're supposed to call. This is the owner of the trailer's maintenance team or whatever it is. So then they can go out there and service in the event that there's a blowout or something.
Yeah, I would say about 90% of the trailers have that access to the owner's roadside maintenance. And it comes with that again because they need it in working condition when they get it on the back end. But there are, you know, some regional type fleets, mid sized fleets that don't have that maintenance program in place and they might be using us to generate revenue on their equipment that they're just not using. And so we kind of move it around our network and we're working with, and we have worked with multiple maintenance and roadside type partners and still kind of investigating a lot of those things. And today it's essentially on the carrier. Once they leave that facility with the trailer, it's on them for those instances. But we're working through some partnerships around the maintenance and roadside today actually.
So what's the benefit in going through somebody like you guys? I'm thinking like as a power only carrier right now and going on to your guys's platform as opposed to like me just going to like a trailer renter rental facility and just using that, you know, for 30, 60, 90 day lease or something?
Yeah, I think that it, you know, what we can offer carriers is we give them the ability to use a trailer as you need it. If you're taking a power only load, say with, you know, a JB Hunt Uber Freight, whoever it may be, from Atlanta, Georgia to Los Angeles, California, you drop off the loaded trailer. That part, that customer, that broker that you're working with, they don't have another load for you. Now you're stuck there, just a truck, no trailer. And you're limited to a couple opportunities, power only opportunities. Now with Repower, you can grab a trailer 10 miles down the road, you instantly have more freight opportunities to get back into your network.
And so we just kind of open up more freight opportunities and kind of give them that ultimate flexibility instead of locking them into that year long, five year long rental lease with a typical rental company leasing company, they're able to kind of, you know, stick with the volatility of the market and go with what's paying the best. What freight opportunities are actually out there. Where do I want to spend my time and use a trailer as you need it?
Yeah, no, I'm right there with you. I look at it as, you know, in the event that somebody, you know, even if they're not, maybe they do own their own trailer, but that trailer goes into the shop for an extended period of time or something like that. And you know, you don't want to have to shut your business down. Right. I, I look at it as, you know, as, I mean, the majority of the trucks on the road are small fleets, right. One owner, operators, 10 truck or less, whatever you want to, you know, interject there for that statement. And you know, they might not have access trailers in their fleet in the event one of their trailers is in a shop and then a driver shut down for a week or something like that. Right.
I just, I always think the worst case scenario with a lot of this stuff and you know, and especially because so many small businesses are so financially fragile, right? Like you get it, you've, you're building your company. It's not just like, oh damn, we just got access to all of this money at any given time. We're good, we don't have to produce revenue. And that's where it's like, that's where my mind goes with a lot of this, right? Is it's like that short term fix where, you know what, you don't have to go out there to a leasing company and be like, no man, it's only a 30 day lease. That's all we do at this facility.
And then you're locked in and you know, you might not have an additional thousand dollars in your budget at that time to go and lock something like that in.
Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of cases where getting that lease and that going out and buying a trailer makes the most sense. And then like you mentioned earlier, if that trailer goes into the shop, that's where we can fill that gap for that customer. But if a large shipper calls you and they have a quick seasonal project that they need, you know, 10 drop trailers for three months and that's it, do you want to go out and sign that contract? Because once that ends, what are you going? You got to find a home for those trailers to keep them busy and keep them moving. So we want to be able to support the people who do want to own those trailers and do want to have that lease because it makes most sense.
But when they go into a shop or they bring on a new driver, instead of deadheading them all the way to their location to get into a trailer, we can fill that need and they can be revenue generating the first time that driver comes on board or that trailer goes in the shop still keep the movement of freight and keep them their business moving.
Are you like, I mean, I heard you bring up a couple of brokers earlier like that. Are you seeing brokers go on there? And you know, because like I get, you know, I've talked to a couple of prospects here, you know, and they need drop trailer capacity, right? They need 48 hours, 72 hour drop. And you know, as a broker most of the time we're contracting with smaller carriers out there and they don't have additional capacity to go and drop, you know, stage three trailers a week at a certain facility or something like that. Is that an option where a broker could go on there, say they need it out of Dallas, you know, for example, where they can go and as long as the reposition lines up with the customer, that's an ability that we could go out there and leverage 100%.
I mean there's a lot of trailers that we have like lanes that we know we're always going to have and move. And so they'll come to us with a potential opportunity, a bid and they'll kind of get some trailer pricing and they'll look at the lanes of, and the trailers they can use us for one ways or if it's going to be a round trip and they just want to reserve 20 trailers for this drop trailer project. That's definitely where we've seen a lot of growth and opportunities and you know, we're gaining a lot of feedback from those early brokers that are spending time with us and understanding what they need to make this work. And it's been kind of a, you know, learning experience for sure.
But it's definitely Something that is, has helped us scale and grow over the past, you know, I would say 12 months.
Yeah, it's. I mean. Cause that's one of those situations that as you kind of progress down and start working with larger shippers or depending on the commodity that you're going after as a broker, drop trailer. The ability to provide a drop trailer pool exponentially opens up way more doors for you. And just building up that familiarity on kind of how that process works now, like, just are you, you know, you brought up one ways out there. So is there like, you know, is there like a, a set amount of trailers that are on your guys's platform? Patrick, that's like, hey, these are just designated one ways. And then you guys have. Is there like a short term rental option where they're like, dude, you can use this for the next three weeks.
We don't care, as long as it's, you know, back in that area at that, the end of that time.
Yeah, I would say the average trailer usage on repower month to month is probably, you know, 29, 30 days. So that carrier can use that trailer as much as they need, move anywhere around the country. But we try to keep the marketplace balanced, you know, between the demand that we're expecting in the supply that helps with our pricing and our algorithms and different things like that we have behind the scenes. But we can always deploy more capacity at any given moment and we set those tools up for our suppliers to be able to say when that capacity can be deployed. But we can tap into it whenever needed. But we try to keep it balanced as much as possible.
Is there, is it pretty much just primarily vans on there or is it everything vans, reefers, chassis, flatbeds, stuff like that?
I would say like 85 to, you know, depends on the type of year that we're in. So 85% probably dry vans, 10% being reefers, and then 5, you know, varying on the year, 5 to 10% around flatbeds. So dry vans, flatbeds and reefers. And we've done a few chassis here and there, but you know, dry van demand is always there.
No, definitely. And it is now, obviously. It's like 70 of the market is dry van freight at the end of the day. Right. So that would naturally kind of marry up with that dude. So how has it been building your company, man, over these last couple of years? There's been, you know, obviously anybody who. It's always challenging to build a business. Right. But you know, when there's a lot of economic uncertainty that is out there. Kind of like as a founder, how have you really approached that to kind of keep your eye on the long term?
Yeah, I think that with like some of the uncertainty and things in terms of like owning trailers, it's kind of turning from trailer ownership to trailer access as being more important. And you know, luckily we've gotten to, we started repower in an extreme robust, busy, high rate, you know, freight market back in 2020, 21, coming out of COVID and were the only ones who had trailers. So we built up the demand like that and we started to prove and you know, the concept of what were trying to do in the market and saw a lot of value that were able to provide both sides of the marketplace. And then last year it was kind of slowed down. And so we've seen like what we look like and how we transition during slow periods of freight and different seasonality changes and things like that.
And the best part about it is we've been able to benefit both sides still throughout those times, the good times and the bad times. And you know, there's always going to be a need for trailers. And you know, 80% of the loads that are hauled in this trillion dollar industry are hauled in a trailer and so they're always going to be needed. And we've continued to grow through those challenges that the freight market's seen and learning a lot through them for sure.
How are you guys, like how does this expand out? Is it getting as many fleets as possible on there with as many assets as possible that are on there for kind of deployment across the country?
Yeah, I think that, you know, overall we want to, we see the usage of our trailer, I mentioned it was 29 to 30 days on average. But we see that as we scale, continuing to go farther down and being used like load by load type deal and they're becoming almost like relay trailers and they're just being moved all over and more regional and things like that. But it's a more fluid network of trailers being interchanged and shared day by day. So the volume increase. And so overall it's about, you know, continuing to develop our partnerships, develop our technology to make those even more easily seamlessly shared.
The integrations and APIs with TMS systems, telematics, the notifications of when a trailer can become available, when it's in, you know, it could propagate, it could be towed or it's in jeopardy if there's a problem and bringing better Visibility. And so getting more supply is always a number one for us. But continuing, just get deeper and understanding what our customers are wanting to do. Spending the most time with our customers and building the product around our customers is the ultimate. You know, that's the route we gotta go. And just, you know, seeing every trailer interchanged through the market, has that been.
One of the, like, I'm just thinking, like, as a user of your guys's platform, has that been one of the, like, the unforeseen benefits of it is, like, actually knowing where all of their trailers are at any given moment. Because, you know, again, man, like, I operate in reality. I don't do pie in the sky. Like, oh, of course we know everything at every given moment out there. Have you seen that as a. As an unforeseen added benefit out there? It's like, no, actually, we know exactly where all of our trailers are at any given moment. Out where. You know, in the past, maybe they didn't know that. Hey, actually, I got 40 trailers in little Rock this week. I thought I only had 15 or something like that.
Yeah, I think we're. We're learning a lot from the supplier side, is we're getting to understand their network and trailer moves and getting to help. Helping their trailer network teams be more proactive in finding the opportunities and keeping their trailer pools balanced. And the longer they've been with us, the more data that we're able to collect and help educate them and really, you know, be by their side and being proactive and reducing those empty miles and things like that. But I guess, you know, really, to answer your question, we're taking in a lot. We're learning a lot, and there's a lot of data behind the scenes and, you know, just continuing to, I guess, learn, you know, at the end of the day.
But I was gonna say. I know what you mean, man. It's. You know, it's. It's. There's so much coming at you at any given moment, especially when you're building something out that, you know. You know, but the data is everything at the end of the day, right? It's what, compiling that, seeing what's working, what's not working, and then making the necessary changes to kind of evolve and grow your business. Right? Because I'm sure Repower today probably looks nothing like you guys thought it was going to when you first started. And it's just like, you know, reality eventually sets in, Patrick, and you're like, wow, we 100% misjudged this one.
Yeah, I mean, the more we've grown, the more problems arise. But they're good problems and they're problems that need to be solved. And it's been challenging, it's been fun, it's been every adjective I can think of. But, you know, just keeping the flywheel going.
Yeah. No, dude, it's. I mean, I just look back, you know, because I'm coming up on, you know, five years of being self employed here and, you know, where I thought I would be by now and what I thought things would look like by now is not what, you know, the reality is. Right? Like it's, you know, but that, like, that's the, I think the best part about starting something from nothing ultimately is kind of seeing where things progress into how things change, how things evolve. And, you know, and that to me is like, what's exciting, right? Like, I just, I love everything about transportation at the end of the day, right. Like, I love, you know, building out my brokerage, I love cold calling prospective customers, like, the rejection that comes along with it. I've just embraced the whole process.
And that's just, it's just part of it, right. And I think that anybody who's out there, who's starting in anything, whether it's a new sales role or a new business, you just gotta understand it is way harder than you think it's gonna be. Right. And the world is so much easier when you have a direct deposit coming in every two weeks. And then as soon as that stops and you're like, oh, damn, I only get what I kill this week. And you know, it just changes things. But then I think like, that's where it just shows, like, what are you made of? You know, do you really want it? And I just, I, I actually just, I love the unknown of it. Right?
Like, I love the unknown and really approaching it and being like, dude, look at where were and look at where we are now.
Yeah. And you know, one thing that I think is important, especially in the industry that we operate in is, you know, there's a lot of technology, but at the end of the day, it's still very relationship based. And we've got to lead with that relationship. It's a large industry, but it's also very small. It's well connected and there's people that have been in it for years. And so we want to lead with the relationship and just continue to get deep, understand the problems they're trying to solve. And how does repower fit into that. And if we can fit into that and build off of that and growing with our customers, that's where we want to fit and where we want to be.
I love it. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me here today, man. How does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more about what you guys got going on?
Yeah, check out repower.com on our website. You can visit us on LinkedIn. Repower R E P o W r Leave off the second R a little confusing, but R e P o W r and then you can find me on LinkedIn. Patrick Byzanter. Probably the best routes.
Perfect. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me. That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. As always, if you got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. If you're feeling really ambitious after this one, rank the show as well on itunes and Spotify. Because if you saw value, that's how 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. We don't have any cool outro stuff, man. Just the right.