Lightning like Steve McQueen I make a fast lane when the light turns green and I built tough. I ain't nothing but grit cause I made rugged blood, sweat and spit. Yeah, like a horse I fly for a bumpy ride. I like to play hard but I work harder and I weather the storm cause I'm built stronger.
What is up, ladies and gentlemen, we are back. We are live. It is a freight coach morning show. The top morning show 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 sada 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 you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve.
So you can take that information, apply it, utilize it and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Cory Buchan. Happy thirsty Thursday over on YouTube. Sonny Sharma. Good Thursday morning. Orange shirt gang. He's coming in over on LinkedIn. And yeah, you guys, we got a guest, very special guest for you guys here today. We're going to talk about a very great event they got coming up here in the next couple of weeks. But we're also going to be talking about automating some freight quotes and being more efficient and everything on that. So with that being said, I got my man Dave McCoy here with bit freighter on the show. So, Dave, thank you so much for joining me.
What's up, Mister Jolly, how are you?
Oh, man, I am ready to rock. It is, you know, prime time right now. And like, we got like, legitimately, we have more freight moving right now than we have ever since our inception. And it's a really exciting to see that growth and, you know, so many things. Like, you know, when you start anything, you. You just want that instant results, instant success and everything. But like, it just does not work out that way. It always takes so much longer than you want. But I truly think it happens like that for a reason, man. Because like, anybody thinks that they could move a thousand shipments until there's a thousand shipments dropped on their lap and they're like, pick them up in the next 48 hours, then you don't want a thousand shipments anymore. So.
I mean, yeah, you gotta know what you can commit to.
For sure now, man, that's it. So, dude, what's. Tell us a little bit about yourself here, Dave. I mean, I've known you here for a little bit, but, like, what brought you into freight and everything, man?
We all stumble into it some way, don't we?
Yes.
Yeah, I I. When I got out of school, I became an insurance agent, and the money was not what I expected. And so I started looking around, actually, the parking lot across the street from my insurance office. I didn't know what they did. They just had nice cars in the office, and I was like, what? I want to do what they're doing. So I went over there and just, like, met with the CEO and started working in software. Left that insurance gig and got into software. And one of the companies that this software company integrated with was DAT. So I got to know DAT and spent a couple of years at the software company I was at and that I wasn't making what I really wanted to there and started talking to the folks at Datzenhe and stumbled into freight from there.
Then that was back in, like, 2008, 2009. It's been a lot of years at DAT. I managed all of the TMS accounts, every single one of them. So there was 400, 500 TMS customers for DAT, and I managed every single one of them. I came damn near close to visiting every single one of them. And there was one thing that always, I could never help with, and that was integrations that everybody would say, you know, there's, how can you help? How can we integrate something better? How can you, like, EDI was the one that was always just, like, at the top of everybody's list. It's so expensive, it's so difficult. The support always sucks. We have a change that needs to be made, or, like, tenders. My tenders aren't coming through, and I I have to wait two weeks to get a response, and.
And I'm paying $5,000 a month just to connect to this shipper. That's forcing Edi down my throat. And that always, like, resonated with me through the years just more and more. I was always thinking, like, man, this is crazy. There's, like, a technology out there, even back, you know, 30 years ago, that was complete automation of tenders, tender acceptances, status updates, being linked with the shipper platform. But it was always like, the brokers were always like, we don't want to adopt that into our office unless we absolutely have to, because it's just not worth it.
Yeah.
So the only way that they'd get into it is if one of their biggest customers shoved it down their throat. That's just crazy, man. Like, here. Here's a way to be connected with your shipper, and everybody's pushing it back. So, yeah, one of the customers that I managed, one of the brokers, there was a guy there named Brad Perling who asked the same question to me. I was like, there's nothing else out there. It is what it is. And so that got his mind rolling a little bit. And it was, like, right around there that Covid hit. And we all took, everybody took a step back and went home for a couple of weeks.
And so during that couple of weeks, he, like, started really thinking about, you know, maybe we could offer something that is modern, keeps the price down for brokers to be able to connect to shippers and. And be able to, like, let brokers add EDi.
Yeah.
Not have it be forced down their throat, have it be something that lets them scale their operation and be more efficient. And so that's really how bitfrater was born. And of course, I was like, well, I want a part of this. Yeah, yeah. I jumped on, and we started as just an EDi van company that we wrote a proprietary platform, modern platform, with the goal of keeping the cost down, like data costs and all that. So we could pass those savings onto our customers and let brokers scale their EDI operation and let them reach out to their customers and say, hey, we want to get you on EDI. That was cool. So, yeah, were really successful from the onset of changing the way people think about EDi. And from there, we got into, like you said at the start, getting into automated quoting.
We thought that was a nice addition to our platform to really round it all out. So now we have kind of the full platform that really automates the entire lifecycle of the load now. So we have a quoting platform. So if you have. If you have a customer that wants to set up a broker or carrier as, like, a preferred partner, and they're saying, hey, we want to get instant pricing from you at any time, they can connect to us and you can give them that instant pricing. Or if. If you have spot boards that you're bidding on. Yeah, we have integrations already that connect to those, and you can plug it in and just start bidding some of them, like, same day. We're very quick setups. We have existing integrations, so you can bid out to those spot boards through our platform.
If you have customers that do, they want to get rate requests via EDI. They want to send an EDI transmission, want you to return a quote back to them. We're an EDI company, so we do that too. So there's all these different ways that we integrate. So you can send out a quote, you get awarded a tender, flows back through our system. Then we have 30 plus integrations to carrier tmss so we can just push those right in. We're already integrated with those to accept the tender. And you get notified you just want a tender. And so your contracted freight is covered with EDI. Your spot quotes are being pushed in Vidi or API. So yeah, that's kind of the overall there.
No, I think that, you know, from my, I remember the first time I met Brad and he was talking about what you guys are we're doing over at bit freighter. And you know, when it comes, when it came down to Edi and how expensive it is and compared to what he was looking to get out there and you know, I'm seeing a trend like that out there in the whole freight tech space where it was kind of, you know, fat and happy for a very long time and people could kind of charge whatever because they didn't, there wasn't a lot of competition, to put it bluntly. There was not a lot of competition that was out there so people could kind of name their price on it. And Edi was kind of the catalyst of that.
Because you're like, why am I spending 810 thousand dollars a month on this service? You know, I'm doing it because my customer needs it, but it can't be that expensive. And that's like what I like, look forward to the most through innovation here. Inside of the freight tech space is a lot of the bloated price tags are going to start getting slashed as more and more efficient technology comes to market. That's out there, that's where the competition starts to drive. Because I mean, some stuff that's out there right now, man, it costs more than two people salaries in a year to run that stuff.
And then you talk to some of these competitors that are out there because like the beauty of like going to like tech novations, Tia, and then the Capital ideas conferences is you start talking to some of these newer vendors that are out there and they start explaining like, hey, actually we're able to come in like 80% less than some people because we don't have x, Y and Z. Or frankly, we know what it actually cost to process some of this data and we don't have any exuberant marketing budgets or anything like that to kind of COVID why those price tags are there. And I think like, again, you know, your guys approach is, you know, you mentioned it here, Brad's mentioned it numerous times.
We want to bring an effective product at a great cost to our customers, which are the brokers, because most brokers, especially right now, man, and where the market is, technology is going to be the first thing that they're looking at. You know, they're going to be like, all right, why are we spending x on this? Where's the ROI that's associated with it and where I like things going because like with pricing, for example, you know, we brought, you know, you guys are really out there with live quoting and you guys have a great partnership with my friends over at green screens. I use green screens inside of my brokerage. Like they're there, their prices sometimes like more times than not. But I use this example because this happened last week. It was $13.
There was a $13 difference between what green screen said I would pay and what I actually paid on the load. So like I don't know how much of a, beyond a shadow of a doubt you need than that to get out there because you know, things are shifting. You do need to get prices out faster. And then essentially as a broker, whatever your customer says you need to do from pricing EDI, all of that, you have to do it, otherwise you're not going to get their freight.
Yeah, and like you mentioned about like the freight, spend the tech, spend. Like one thing that I noticed is there were so many people that were like their EDi bill was as much or more than what they're paying for their TMSD, that if anyone out there is in that world, please call us. That's ridiculous. It should not be that at all. And then, yeah, with green screens it's great because we can bring in a green screens right into our platform so you can have that starting point. And then we have our own proprietary rules engine. So you set up a shipper profile in our system.
You bring in a green screens rate and then you use that, the rules engine to really take everything that you know in your head of how you quote that customer, everything, all the details as simple as it is or as complex as it is, and offload all that knowledge into our system. So that when you get something on the spot board that you're wanting to bid on for your customer or if they're like requesting an instant quote from you know that you have taken everything in your brain of how you want to quote that customer and you have loaded it into our platform. So it's quoting exactly how you would quote. So I think taking, you know, do not quote situations.
We don't want to, we don't want to haul anything coming out of some west coast state or whatever or you don't, you don't want to quote if it's, you know, if it's picking up in less than 4 hours or, and then beyond that, like you say, you know, if it's picking up and if it's coming out of this location and it's going a certain amount of miles and the lead time is less than 12 hours, let's take green screens and add $200 to it. Yeah, you can get accessorials. You can get, I mean, as detailed as you want and create scenarios. It's a really cool platform. We're all super proud of it. I welcome anyone to reach out and take a look at it. The rules engine is really next generation automated quoting.
Yeah, I think that because quoting, I would say the number two question that I get out there, number one is, hey, how can I find shippers? How can I find customers that's like unrivaled as the number one question that I receive. Number two is how do I even price my freight? You know, I think that it's not as cut and dry as a lot of people think, you know. Cause there are so many situations that are out there that you're going to come up with. Like there is a massive difference in a quote of I need a truck in the next 30 minutes, or, hey, I just need a price that could move here in the next couple of weeks. Like, there's different rules that are associated with that.
And then same thing with, you know, I always look at reefer freight, for example, you know, my man Sonny Sharma does reefer freight all the time. And you know, these guys are, you know, there's three different prices for reefer. There's your frozen rate, there's your fresh rate, and there's your temp controlled rate and stuff like that. So it's like you need to know what you're actually bidding on. And I just like, they're like, obviously I'm a massive fan of pricing tools and stuff that are out there, but I don't want people to ever walk in to a situation and then they're like calling you up, Dave, like, Dave, what the hell, man? You're right. You told me I was going to pay this.
And then you ask them a couple of below surface level questions, you're like, well, no, man, this is all, if this is a perfect world scenario, but if there's some rush order behind it, if it needs to be expedited, you know, you need to ask questions on the front end to your customers and prospects. I always like to throw those caveats out there.
Yeah, there's always caveats and with automated quoting it is, you know, there's always question marks of like, can I accurately quote ydeh when there's, you know, all those caveats and we get a lot of information whenever something is posted out there, the details of the load. And then when that comes over, if we have, if our customers have created any kind of markup rule or do not quote rule or anything like that, you can set those parameters up in our system to where it knows what to do. There's test routes. So you can like say, I've set all my rules up, but do I really want to click this on and just let it hum and see what happens? You probably don't want to do that.
So you can test things out and test scenarios and see what our quoting platform is going to quote based off what you put in there before you turn it on. You can just have some more peace of mind. Is it going to be perfect? Probably not. You're going to, there's going to be some learning curves and things you forgot about and you're going to have to go in there and you might lose a little. You're going to be bidding on more. You need to set your capacity limits in there so you're not over committing. But yeah, you're right.
Yeah, you can definitely have a learning experience and go in there and lose some money on some and win some on more and tweak things until it takes a month or two of getting it just right and you just kind of let that thing hum.
Yeah, I think that a lot of brokers need to understand that, like you kind of make your money in volume, right? Like you can't look at it as like, oh, I don't want to lose $100 on this load, you know, but because it's like, it's that transactional mindset that a lot of people are in, especially when they're new customer and everything else, they don't have a lot of revenue. So they're like, I can't afford to lose money because I don't even have any money on it. But you're also, you know, and this is always easier to say when you have revenue coming in where you need to look long term with this stuff. Because I wish I would win on every single transaction that I ever did in the entirety of my business, but that's just not the case.
Have to look at the long term of these things. And yeah, you might lose on a couple, you might be off on a little, but you're learning the act the way that freight markets actually operate. You're learning how lanes actually perform certain days of the week. It, you know, every lane performs at a different price point throughout the week sometimes, right. You do. You talk to anybody out there, LA on a Friday, you tell me that you're going to pay the exact same rate out of LA on a Friday that you did throughout the rest of the week.
And if they tell you that they did, they either have contracted carrier that does it or they're bold face lying to you because I've seen certain freight markets spike like five, six, seven, $800 within a two hour period on where some of these things are going. So it's like, you know, quoting on freight, bidding on freight. It's an art, you guys. And this is why I always say you got to learn these things on a lane by lane basis. You know, that's why I hate national averages so much, Dave. Like, I understand that there has to be a national average, but like, that's just not the case, man. Like, you can't look at, oh, $2.10. I'm going to quote that on everything because that's the national average. So every lane has to be.
That would be a nightmare.
Yeah, man. So you guys, I want to make sure that we talk about this here. You guys got a big event coming up here in a couple of ways on the 12th, right? August 12.
Yep. Week after next. It's, what we've done with this event is it's only our second year of doing it. But when were talking about doing, we really, at first we just wanted a golf scramble. And I always thought golf scrambles are, they're fun, but you might leave there, like, not getting anything out of it. Like, yeah, I was paired with someone that I might get some business out of it or something like that. You know, it's, I might get some good conversation, but there's so many more people that I never got to talk to.
And then you go to a conference and you get a lot out of that and maybe you golf as well, but it's spanned over many days, so we wanted to take a conference kind of atmosphere and mix it with our golf scramble tournament, which ended up being a g impact, probably like three days worth of stuff g impact into one day of what we call an integrated tech summit. And it's essentially, it's a golf tournament mixed with a very condensed conference. So you get there and there's. We have a flight for our sponsors and the vendors to set up, and you can go meet with all the vendors that are sponsoring. There's a bunch. We have speakers, so we've got some shippers that are there to talk about how they are incorporating automated quote requests into their platform and what they're expecting of it.
So that's going to be very interesting. So we have speakers and then we. We golf, and then we go have a big party afterwards. Nashville, downtown, that.
That city is always. It's one of my favorite spots to go into. But, but no, I. I like the structure of what that event is bringing to the table. Right. Because I feel like sometimes, you know, conferences can and get long, you know, and. And not everybody has the time, you know, because this is where I'm at in my business, man. I don't have the time to go to a bunch of conferences at all because, like, I'm trying to build a business, you know, I can't fly out and spend three days somewhere because that's three days of lost revenue, you know, or I'm going to these conferences and I'm working out of my hotel room and I'm not at the conference that I paid to be at and stuff like that.
So what you guys are doing by condensing it down there like that, I think that's the only way to roll. Then you throw golf on top of that. Who doesn't like to golf, you know, at the end of the day, who doesn't like to golf? Who doesn't like to hang out and do that? So, no, I think that's a great thing. And, dude, I found out here recently that Nashville has, like, some of the best golf courses that are out there. It's actually a kind of like a. And I. It might be a hidden golf course kind of mecca out there. From what I've heard from some of my buddies who are big into golf.
I I just moved here. I have golfed. Like, there's two courses I've golfed that I don't really know anything about any of the others, but I hope you're right. I'll talk to you in a few months and let you.
There we go.
Yeah. The biggest thing about this event is what's behind it. We're raising money for ALS awareness. ALS is just a devastating nerve disease that just like, I mean, essentially it breaks down your muscles. Like you can't, you lose function of your, of muscles, which means like things you don't think about, like being able to talk, obviously, but being able to not swallow anymore and there's no cure for this horrible disease. And so we're raising money, we're partnering with ALS to give them as big of a check as we can to help them in their research. Can I, can I share a couple links in here for anybody that's, yeah.
No, absolutely, definitely share them out there right now because I know that there's going to be a link that you guys want people, if you're able to go out and donate to go over to this link.
Yeah, we've got a couple of places you can go. We do. Here's the link for our golf event. You can, it is sold out. If anybody wants to join the event, we can get on a waiting list. I know it's just the week after next and you're like, oh, man. But yeah, if you want to get on a waiting list, if you really want to come to the event.
Reach.
Out to me on LinkedIn, email me, call us, we'll put you on there. And if anybody drops out, we'll get you on. But you can also donate to ALS, right, from bitfredergolf.com or, I mean, if you just want to donate, right, to ALS. I, I mean, any help at all is obviously extremely appreciated.
No, definitely guys, just go to bit freightergolf.com to drop in your, if you guys want to go out there and donate to that. And then there's also, here's another link I'll pop put up on the screen here and I will make sure that we put these in the show notes as well. And you guys, you know, ultimately when it comes down to it, I, I like using this platform for more than just talking about freight, you know, like this audience, the audience here, I mean, my nephew was a recipient of in the Make a Wish foundation and we, I mean, we raised like twelve grand for the Make a wish foundation just off of this little old podcast that we got going on here, man.
The audience steps up big in these situations and you know, everything's, it's, everything's, everything that we worry about in life is so irrelevant when you are in scenarios like with ALS and other, you know, diseases like that's when you really actually understand what's truly important in life. And, you know, a lot of these problems that we think we have are not problems at all. Yeah, they might be annoying in the moment, but, like, they're not problems when, you know, you're. You're diagnosed with an incurable disease and you lose your motor skills and your ability to function and, you know, there's so many people that are affected by. By ALs and, you know, one of the more notable ones out there, Steve Gleason, he was a former NFL player, and, you know, he was on the sp's here recently. And, you know, it's just.
It's so sad to see that and to see anybody go through it and, you know, these are. This is where it's like, you got to, you know, stand up and stand together as a. As an industry or an organization and put your best foot forward. I mean, and every little thing helps, though, you know? Like, I want to be clear about that because I think some people are embarrassed if they can only donate a dollar or $5 like that. That's not. It's not the dollar amount that is, you know, it's the intent behind it. And the fact that if that's all you can do, that's more meaningful than somebody who just donates because, like, they're doing it for a tax write off, you know, and it is every little bit helps out there.
And, you know, because I, you know, just like with everything with my nephews make a wish thing that were doing, I mean, some people, it was, you know, $5 here and $7 there. It's like, dude, that, like, just the fact that you're. You're. You're giving your hard earned money up is, you know, and donating it to a great cause. That's what's. That's what the best part about it, man. So that's what I want to see, you know, anything that anybody can do out there, don't, you know, if it is a dollar or $10 or $100, whatever that amount is, every little bit helps you guys.
I appreciate that very much. Chris.
No, 100%, man. I. This is all for me. Ultimately, when it boils down to the only thing I want to do is help people with this. With this podcast, with whatever comes in life. I just want to help people. I want to make this world a better place. And I just feel like at the end of the day, that's where. That's where we always got to focus no matter what, because there are people out there who have it way worse than any one of us who are watching this show or listening to this show on replay could. Could even comprehend, you know, and every little bit helps. And, you know, because again, like, nobody's coming, man. You know, when it boils down to it, nobody's coming to save it, to save us. It's us. It's us as a community.
It's us as citizens to come together and band together and help your neighbors and help people out in these times.
Yeah, well, put a little misty eyed. You're making me misty.
I. Yeah, dude, I did. But it's the truth, man. You know, it's. It's the honest to God truth. And I feel like this is. These are those times and these are these platforms and everything out there. And this event that you guys are putting on is such a great cause behind it. And those are the important things in life. Everything else is replaceable, so. Well, Dave, I appreciate you joining me here today, man. I want to thank you on that. And then just make sure you guys go out to bitfreightergolf.com to register for that and then they can donate on bitfredergolf.com if they want. Right?
Yep. Donate to right on bitfradergolf.com, get on a waiting list. Yeah. Or go to als.org to learn about it. To donate or get involved if you want, from that website. Either one would work just fine.
Perfect. Sounds great. Dave. Thank you so much for joining me here today, you guys. And as always, you guys, if you guys got value in what you heard, a first and foremost, you know what? I'm not even going to say that. Go donate. All right. Go donate, you guys. We'll be back tomorrow. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Thanks for having me on, man. Anytime.