Ep. #26: Carrier Sales Strategy Panel: Drew Herpich, Jay Gustafson, and Blair Blake

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We look forward to working with you To our listeners . That's it . Let's get the show on the road . Hello , freight friends , we are back with another episode of the Freight Pod . I'm your host , andrew Silver , and for the first time well , not the first time , the second time , I guess we did this with Convoy , but we've got multiple guests .

We're doing a panel , so I got the feedback from people to try to change things up a little bit and , frankly , I came back from a conference where I moderated a panel with a few CEOs and I just liked having multiple people sharing perspective . I'm hoping for some intense arguments here , like metaphorical fisticuffs , and I want to see these guys going at it .

So I am joined today by three of the industry's finest , especially as pertains to their history on the carrier side of the business and the experience that they've had . So I'm going to let them introduce themselves . Why don't we start with Mr Blair Blake ?

Give us kind of your background , your career journey and especially touch on some of the carrier history there and kind of what you're doing today .

Once the news came out about the M&A between Command and Echo I think that was in 2015 , I decided it would be a perfect time in my career to take a chance and started a brokerage with a few other colleagues that was called Forefront Logistics .

After about I'd say , 15 months into that journey , we found ourselves in a profitable position and naturally started thinking about growth opportunities . Being really naive , we sent a LinkedIn message to a company whose business objective was to really create self-driving stacks and ultimately , self-driving trucks for the long haul portion of shipments .

Not really expecting much . For the long haul portion of shipments Not really expecting much , you know . We did get an outreach back that evening and really wanted to talk and discuss about brokerage overall . Long story short , you know that transitioned into an M&A and , you know , went to start a company called Uber Freight .

After going through that experience for about you know , four , four and a half years , I decided that it was important to try to get some additional exposure .

After about a year and a half at the produce shipper , I made a decision to explore some other brokerages . I really wanted to find someone who had a couple years under their belt but were maybe looking to transition into that , you know true growth and economies of scale phase .

So ultimately , that's what led me to arrive and over the last , you know , four and a half years , I spent my time really focusing on ways to improve business efficiency on the carrier side . That comes down to people , process and technology .

In summary , what people don't know is the very same produce shipper that you first partnered with to start your brokerage was the one that I did , and I guess it didn't quite work out for either of us with them , but I was glad to get to meet you through that and I'm happy to have you here today . So let's move to Jay Gustafson .

Why don't you go ahead and give us your background ?

Actually , yesterday was my 20-year anniversary in the logistics space . I started as an intern at AFN in my junior year of college . Loved the industry , loved the fast-paced nature of it , spent my first four years at AFN a couple years in carrier sales , a couple of years in carrier management .

Then got the opportunity to join Echo in 2008 to be the first truckload carrier sales manager . At the time they were very focused on LTL we're trying to get their beak wet in the truckload space and got a cool opportunity to join the organization . I've now been with Echo for about 16 years .

Most of my time in the space has been spent on the carrier side of the organization . Initially led as VP of carrier sales , the Echo carrier sales team . After the command acquisition in 2015 , led the combined carrier organizations .

Those were the first groups after that acquisition took place that we merged together , kind of walking the tightrope between the carrier sales operations side of the business and also our general digital transformation strategy kind of where the tech , the people and the process all kind of come together .

So thanks again for having me on today and looking forward to this chat .

But yeah , started back in the day with Andrew at Coyote and so when I came into the organization , probably one of the first 20 , 25 sales reps in that organization I'll never forget the days Andrew of at that time you probably weren't even legal to be actually booking freight , but we'll keep that story for some time later .

But yeah , no , worked my way up as a carrier sales rep , worked my way up to management .

As Coyote grew I was able to grow with it and worked my way up to leading , obviously , their carrier sales division and then , after about 14 years there , made the move over to NTG you know , with what I saw with their growth and where they were going , and then over at NTG the last four and a half years now .

So we've got some quick introductions and between these three companies , arrive Logistics , echo , ntg I don't know what the number is , it's maybe $8 billion of transportation managed annually , three of the largest , most reputable brokers in the industry , and our goal today is to kind of get into the world of carrier sales , carrier procurement , and how brokers of your

size think about that and how things are changing and where the industry is going . So let's start with a softball , though . What makes a good carrier rep ?

You know , within the space and the most successful carrier reps I've worked with in the past have been those that don't get lost in the chaos of a billion dollar plus marketplace that you might be managing internally , but really kind of find a niche and go after that aggressively .

The other area that I would say I think is like really key to the success , certainly in this day of age , is somebody who understands the customer's point of view and how important service is in the .

You know the value proposition that not just a carrier rep but that a 3PL offers to the shippers that they work with , and so it's a combination of hunger and then a deep appreciation for customer service .

I think that's critical and really kind of the tandem character attributes I see of those within my world that have had some success what are we adding to that boys ?

I think it's . I think it's fair to compare a quality carrier rep to maybe a defensive back in nfl . Right , like they say , a defensive back needs to , needs to possess that like short-term memory , memory as they get beat for that touchdown or the big play from time to time . I think it's effectively the same for a carrier rep Rejection that's frequent .

It's often in a carrier sales role . Really , from my experience , the great carrier sales reps , they don't allow rejection to impact their performance . They don't allow rejection to impact their performance Moving on to the next call , showing poise , confidence in that next call usually leads to success overall .

But you know , when I think about , you know , echo , I think about Arrive , I think about NTG . Our starting salary for a carrier rep is probably similar coming in right .

And I remember well guys , when I started in this industry I started at $34,000 is not going to pay my bills , right , and so the one thing that I think about in this industry is having the go to get it . You know , I think all three of us probably sell the same thing . You're not coming in to make the $40,000 , $45,000 , $50,000 salary .

You're coming in to be able to make six figures .

And the one thing that I love about carrier sales more than anything because one of the few jobs , not only just in logistics but overall that first year you can make 100 grand , and everybody always looks at me like you're crazy Every training class , though , there's one rep that will come out , or a couple reps that will come out that will make 100 grand a

year , and so for me it's changing their lives , right ? You know , when I came through , right , it was different . But then I think about some of the people we've hired over the years . You know people that were , you know , uber drivers or bartenders or people that didn't have the opportunity . Just the motivation that goes into that and the opportunity .

I think that honesty plays in this and that could be more of a business practice than maybe an individual rep , but I think it does , at the rep level , matter in terms of if you're trying to build like long term relationships with a carrier .

In terms of if you're trying to build like long term relationships with a carrier , if you're not honest with them and you're trying to cut corners to get them to take a load that's a work in instead of an appointment you're not honest about it Like that makes for a bad carrier rep . I think so from your perspective .

I remember when I used to come home from those days being either a carrier or carrier manager , and I would just look at my friends and be like I don't want to make any more decisions today , right . And I would just look at my friends and be like I don't want to make any more decisions today , right .

And because you're making thousands of decisions in that moment , whether it be how much you're paying the carrier detention , where we're going to take that pallet . Hey , there's ants crawling all over the place . What do I do right now ? Right , you're making decisions on the fly in the moment .

And then you're making decisions on 20 , 30 , 40 , 50 loads Right , you've got loads that are moving today . You've got loads that are moving two days out . You've got loads that are moving three days ago .

And so for me , you know , when you think about training that rep , how to make decisions quickly , how to understand where to go to make those decisions , so you can keep your day moving and obviously get to the other freight that you need to be moving .

From our perspective , from training and I know Matt Pied , our CEO , incredibly bullish on mentorship overall Mentorship is really how you set that foundation for carrier sales reps .

I mean , there's so much freight , there's so many different types of niches you can pursue and what we really try to encourage reps at Echo to focus on build a niche , build a market , build an equipment type , build a service that you can not make your own by any means but really become an expert in . And then , you know , build on that over time .

Don't try to accomplish the entire country , you know , on day one . Focus on an area where you can differentiate yourself . The other thing I would say to kind of build on that is , you know , the carrier sales role now is certainly one that has that kind of quick ramp for top performers , like Drew mentioned .

But I think what's really different from the world of a carrier rep now versus when I got into the business , is you can make this a long term career . The freight brokerages that we're all representing move enough freight that you don't got to hustle off the open board every day to find that next spot load .

You can build a repeatable book of business , that next spot load , you can build a repeatable book of business . And you do that by carving out a niche and becoming an expert in a specific area .

And so I'd say is our new folks come into the organization , we do our best to help give them a focus or pair them with mentors , like Blair mentioned , who have done that themselves , so they can learn through osmosis and figure out how do I not just achieve quick earnings but build sustainable earnings in a long-term career ?

We learned the industry through that and I think it's hard to understand what that truck driver goes through on a day-to-day basis to be able to do operations , customer sales , finance , whatever it might be in this industry overall .

I don't think that I could manage a brokerage as well if I didn't have five-ish years of time spent getting to know these owner-operators , their families , their business needs , the challenges that they were enduring day in and day out working with us .

It just makes you a better leader to really have empathy for the quote-unquote customer that you're trying to serve .

And there's me and Andrew , a bunch of young 20 year old punks trying to tell them how to broker and move their freight right . And little did we know how to operate a fleet , little did we know how it went into . You know costs and gas and insurance and everything like that . But learning that perspective , andrew , I couldn't agree more with you .

But I think the thing that these folks all appreciated from us , they did trust us . I mean , like they , their entire livelihood was built on the loads that you and I were sending them . And I mean we were again , I was 17 or 18 , you were 20 , and we were sitting at desks moving loads around .

And like I think people sometimes don't realize the impact that we have as brokers on someone's actual life . And if you have a load , that's you know , you tell a driver he's got an 8 am delivery and someone made a mistake and it was actually meant to be 8 pm and that person is going to spend 12 hours sitting at that facility . That's a .

You just screwed someone's day pretty badly and probably cost them at least several hundred dollars , maybe in the thousands , and it's a click of a button . I mean let's talk about that a little bit .

Like I think , part of the importance of being a successful carrier up is having empathy , but how do you go about making sure that your carrier reps are doing the right thing and and that they're actually taking care of their carriers and their drivers ?

Because I know all three of your companies want to have wrong relationships with carriers and carriers that count on you and , at the end of the day , it's hard when you have hundreds of carrier reps to know exactly what each one of them is doing all the time . How do you make sure that people are , being honest , doing the right thing ?

You know all that we preach . How do we make sure people do it ?

say like . I think one of the benefits from my perspective in this like more modern age of managing a carrier sales organization is the level level of data we have access to in terms of how people are doing their job .

It makes that management of them much more objective than some of the subjective ways we used to have to listen in on phone calls and read the tea leaves on if someone was doing the job effectively .

And so at Echo I think there's like this culture of embracing the data to help understand who's doing things by the book , who's maybe cutting corners and not managing their freight the right way . You can see it in the internal tracking data . You can see it in , you know , assessorial discrepancies .

If someone isn't , you know , dotting their I's and crossing their T's from a process standpoint . The other thing that we've started to do a bit more recently is like much more proactive surveying of our carriers to get an unbiased perspective back .

You know , after their first shipments delivered , after their second shipments delivered , get a sense of how their experience with us was .

And we use that as a way to not just give , like the rep , feedback but figure out are there business process changes we got to make to make a carrier who does their first load with echo want to do their second load and their third load . We hate , I hate . I don't want to say we .

I hate seeing one and done carriers in our data and so anything we can do to to keep those carriers in house , it's important to us . So I'd say we look at a lot of the internal metrics . We also try to get as much feedback from our carriers as possible to understand what their experience was like .

I think it's important to really take a step back and ensure that everyone is following the playbook , if you will , and just making sure that if someone needs a little bit of training , that that happens in a structured manner . Overall , I really like the call out about the carrier surveys . I think that that is really tangible feedback .

You can obviously aggregate that data and then go direct to some of those individuals who may be interacting with those carriers and drivers overall and really double click into that and figure out what the root cause of some of that feedback whether that be positive or negative is . So I think those are incredibly beneficial .

You know , Andrew , of what you were kind of talking about a little bit . We didn't treat carriers always with respect and I think what that boiled down to was , when you do that cradle to grave approach , the customer is always the most important and the carrier is always second .

And don't get me wrong , guys , Cradle to grave can work in a lot of different situations . The carrier is always second and , don't get me wrong , guys , Cradle to the Grave can work in a lot of different situations .

I actually had a friend on LinkedIn post a great thing the other day produce customer basically saying , hey , it works better for my organization , Right ? I think there's plenty of organizations out there that work . Cradle to the Grave can work .

But I think where you're going with this is how do you treat carriers , how do you make sure you get that respect from them ? You know it comes back to me . You know , Jay's right , data analytics , everything behind it but it comes back to that relationship .

It comes back to being that person understanding , at the end of the day , what that carrier is going through , what they're looking for , how they're looking to grow their business , what they're looking to do , and having that feeling for them that you're actually going to go fight for them to get detention .

You're actually going to fight for them to get that pallet off their truck . You're going to actually go fight for them to get that you know trailer out of the tow yard , whatever it might be . Those are the things that I think will stick with people for a while . There's always going to be carriers that are going to be DFM .

There's going to be carriers that are going to be one , and done .

And it's funny because I think back to maybe Molo's second year or third year as I was contemplating ways to get carriers to want to work with us more and we were talking about a carrier loyalty , a driver loyalty program , and essentially , you know , the concept was the more they hauled with us , the more rewards we could give them and we were trying to figure

out what kind of rewards we could get . But somebody who I ran this by Paul Loeb , of all people , blair , who you've worked for and he was like it's stupid . And I was like what do you mean ? He's like it'll never work . And I was like why ?

He's like cause , carrier , there's no carrier , such thing as carrier loyalty , like they , the carriers go where the money goes . And I argued that I didn't really agree and I think you know I've seen examples with owner ops where they were willing to be loyal .

I mean , if I was going to pay them $500 less than the next guy , then yeah , you know they were going to go take that load . So I'm not talking about like exclusive loyalty . But what do you guys think about the idea of carrier loyalty ? Is that still a thing , or is it only happening in pockets ? And if it is , how do we establish it ?

Let's talk about that for a second .

I think there's a blend in my opinion . I've experienced both , whether that be at a previous company or going through some discovery here at Arrive . But I personally think , broadly speaking , that there are great partners in our marketplace that are willing to operate with loyalty as long as it's reciprocated .

You don't necessarily need gamification to be able to see carrier stickiness or drivers come back . I know , jay , you mentioned the one and done carriers overall . At the end of the day , everyone has financial obligations .

So I think it's understandable that some capacity might shift their strategy in evolving markets and they might go from the spot market the contract market , whatever that might be . But in my opinion , loyalty can exist if both parties adhere to their overall agreements best as possible . I'll give you examples , like on the dedicated side .

You know , when a carrier is awarded a lane for an agreed upon , you know , period of time , there's that fundamental expectation that you know both parties are going to stay committed to those terms .

You know from our position , from my position , if a carrier you know wants committed or dedicated business , you know , as long as you know they're willing to overall adhere to those , there might be net new lucrative contract opportunities for them and we're going to go to them first to be able to have those discussions .

I think , conversely , you'll see some carriers repeatedly fall off some of those commitments and that might mean that we pause some of those new RFP or award opportunities for those particular partners .

You know that foundational aspect of you know as long as you guys are working together within your carrier partners , I think that everyone can be successful and you can see that loyalty really exist .

I'm a bigger believer in carrier relationships where it goes Because I think at the end of the day , everybody gets so excited on customer growth and , don't get me wrong , that's 50% of it , but the other 50% of these carriers that are hauling for you .

So how I look at things is as a spot market gets more tight , with people getting into it and more brokers out there . I was with a customer the other day and he showed me this board real quickly and it had 60 brokers on there that were bidding on the freight right . You know , blake , you're on there , jay , you're on there , we're all on there .

And of those 60 brokers , $75 from the top to the bottom made a difference on that . So we're getting so sophisticated now on our pricing to customers , what we think that's out there , and so on that relationship piece , if I got that carry in my back pocket that gives me 25 , 50 bucks more . That is a huge advantage , I think , into this market .

Now I think Paul's right . There's plenty of carriers out there that are going to only chase the revenue . They're chasing the dollar . They're going to move off your contract freight tomorrow . They're going to not commit and for those type of carriers you put them into a bucket .

But man , there's a lot of carriers over here that I can actually use their trucks go bid on behalf . When I look at our 5 , 10 , 15 , 20 truck operations , they're looking at NTG as a source of revenue .

They're looking to me as a customer and so for that I need to make sure that I'm taking care of my customer freight as well , too , with those relations .

You know , relationships are critical when we think about , like , our core carrier network and how we kind of pursue , you know , that carrier stickiness . That's obviously pivotal in our business model .

But you know , I think you know , just just simply , you know , giving short term kind of gamification pieces back may not be a sustainable strategy for us , but I think that there are bits and pieces where you can take that and run with that long term overall .

Blair for saying what you did , because I do think his point was more around like the game is not what's going to get a carrier to want to stick with you forever , because at the end of the day they're going to go where the money goes . But he was not condemning carrier relationships by any means . So I'm on the record the godfather of freight brokerage .

I'm not throwing any shade at you .

But it's kind of true when you think about the relationship between brokers and shippers and how shippers view brokers , and it's certainly true of how carriers view brokers and how shippers view brokers and it's certainly true of how carriers view brokers .

In fact , when I was at the conference a few weeks ago for Reliance Partners , the Trucking Matters Conference , and I was on a panel with all brokerage CEOs talking to a large audience of mostly carriers . When we got to the Q&A session , the only questions they wanted to ask were what's your margin per load , how much money are you making off of me ?

And there's just this kind of mistrust and I'm curious what you all think about that . Has any of that changed in the last five , 10 years ? Has it improved at all ? And , additionally , what can we do as brokers to change it ? Like , how do we , how do we get that relationship in general to a better place ?

For the brokerage side of things , right , you know , brokerage for the customers for the longest time , guys , is a four letter word , right , and now when you actually look at their routing guides and you size them up , yeah , they're going to have the big boy assets in there , but they're going to have some sizable brokerages in there and they're talking to their

routing guy as well too , and so from that now , I think even the carriers kind of realize too hey , the brokerages aren't just giving us spot freight . The brokerages aren't just giving us the one-off opportunities the word that is dead , in my opinion giving me a backhaul .

I don't think carriers are looking at brokerages the same way now , and I think they're looking at that for more of a revenue stream . Now , I say this to our customers , I'll say this to our carriers , I'll say this to anybody in business . Everybody in business should be in there to make money right . At the same time , though , too , what is outrageous ?

What is practical ? How do you get to a point where you're sharing costs to a certain degree ? Hey , I've been running a contract lane making $800 off you for two years . Yeah , those are some things that will leave a bad taste in a carrier's mouth and ask those kind of questions that you probably got on that panel .

But for me now , going forward , I think to your point this is a much different ballgame five years ago to where we are today with carriers and how we're looking at things .

One of the questions we ask our carriers every year is how do you perceive Echo as a 3PL versus a direct shipper ? And I would say , based off of the value that we can add these carriers , they look at us now as equal or better than getting freight from a direct shipper .

You know we're not talking about the publicly traded carriers out there , we're talking about the five truck 250 truck fleets . They look at Echo as a customer . They don't really think about us as just a broker that's going to help them move .

You know one off , you know freight , and I think if we ask carriers that question 15 years ago , the answers we would be getting are totally different than we get now . And so , to treat carriers with respect , I think they're going to look at you as more than just that .

I think of brokerage as a sales arm for a carrier and that can be in reality . It can be incredibly powerful for that carrier who may not have what , the resources , time , technology to invest in accessing that freight . I know everyone's always worried about , hey , what do they leave on the table ?

But I know it was mentioned about , everyone's got to make a margin here and as long as that transparency exists , I think for both parties set goals , that partnership can really lead to financial success and growth for both the broker and the carrier overall .

I mean , we saw a very large broker that we talked about earlier on this conversation that went out and didn't pay some bills , right , you know that's the last thing a carrier is going to want to deal with at the end of the day .

Part of this for me is thinking about the concept of convoy for brokers and or Flexport , wherever it is , and the load boards that are now not just a DAT board but a place where a carrier can log into one of your platforms or another company's platform and just take a load book it now , whatever you want to call it .

How do you feel like that's kind of changing the game in terms of the carrier broker relationship and just in terms of how the carriers operate ?

not creating a uniform process that all carriers you know have to fall into .

The way we kind of describe it here is like we've got everything , ranging from a person which is , you know , call it the least tech-driven solution through direct API connectivity that we've got with the large carriers you know that we work with , and so in between those two ends of the spectrum are , you know , mobile apps , our own Echo Drive , you know , dfm .

We work with a couple third parties that some portion of our freight can be exposed to , and so we try to meet the carrier where they want to be met individually . If a carrier wants to work through a rep , they can still work through a rep .

But for those that are becoming a little bit more tech savvy , a little bit more tech focused , trying to run an efficient operation within their four walls , we want to offer a number of different technology solutions to kind of help them out . We want to meet them where they want to be met , in their own technology .

You know , journey , and I guess what I've seen as that technology has come into play and kind of hits on some of the earlier conversations is I think the tech has been a catalyst in some ways for Echo in building stickier relationships with some of the partners within our network .

As a carrier rep , you can only make so many phone calls a day , can only send so many emails , have so many WhatsApp conversations . You build a relationship and as part of that you start to offer them access to freight through a technology medium .

It lets you go from booking 50 loads a month with a carrier to 150 loads with a carrier pretty quickly , and so I think the tech has in many ways made the relationships even stickier because they act as an extension of that representative that they've historically worked with act as an extension of that representative .

I think like that was maybe the point where it was okay . Now there's some forced let's call it forced technology that's implemented here . Now who's the resistance , if you will , and how can we really like pull some capacity along internally ? How can we , you know , have some acceptance to utilize technology ?

And I think it arrived in , you know , similar statements that you made , jay . Is we really reference like our co-pilot model ? We're not sitting here and trying to force our capacity to use one specific technology tool . We'd like to hear how they want to operate and then we can really accommodate them and help them be efficient and effective along the way .

And we've received a ton of positive sentiment to that , you know , perhaps even in a carrier survey that you love so much , jay . So you know we've really seen some positive reactions to that co-pilot strategy overall .

Today , you know , nobody wants to talk , nobody wants to communicate . Everybody wants to go through this technology . Those communicate , everybody wants to go through technology , those social connections are harder and harder to get to . And so I think Jay made a great point how does a carrier want to work with us ? I always go back to this carrier thing .

I've been hearing this for the 18 years I've been in the industry . Drivers are getting older . The driver's age has been 55 years old for the last 18 years the average age it's . It's not moving one way or the other , right ? I do believe the younger drivers that are coming into our workforce are much more tech savvy and will continue to go that way .

I think the older school drivers you know worked with three , four , five brokers . Where these new drivers you know some of these new carriers I've talked to they're working with 30 , 40 , 50 brokers , right , and the reason they're able to do that is from a technology perspective . They weren't able to do that before .

Now they can get off their drive , they're looking at four or five apps really quickly different screens , different portals , being able to compare what prices , and points like that and so I think technology is going to help them get freight quicker . I think technology is going to help them be more profitable . They use it the right way .

At the same time , though , too , you know , I still believe at the end of the day , to get to that dedicated purpose , or to be able to haul more significant type of volume , you've got to build a relationship with that carrier as well , too .

It's one thing just to get them to to be tracked , but to get that consistency to the numbers that our shippers are requiring of us was always a challenge , and I believe it maybe still is . Like what's driving that ?

Right , I think the acceptance to track those loads is at a very very high level right , you know , right , I think the acceptance to track those loads is at a very , very high level . Right , you know 70 80 90 for most brokerages .

I think it goes back to what you just said there , andrew the consistency right , the the in and outs of wi-fi , the in and outs of you keeping the app open , uh , whatever it might be , that's where I think we struggle through some of this and I think people struggle with does the technology work or not ?

Um , that's where I think we're at in the industry now . I do think that carriers have got you know , past the whole big brother thing , I think they understand why most people are wanting to look at this from more of a transparency standpoint , um , but that's where I think we are today , and blair jenner don't feel differently I .

In many ways , the shipper being the customer used to talk about service purely through the lens of on-time pick and delivery . Now they're judging 3PLs on on-time pick and delivery .

Now they're judging 3PLs on on-time pick and delivery , tender acceptance , electronic tracking , performance and a lot of that , I think , has trickled down to the carriers because they understand the metrics we're being held accountable to . But I'd say the resistance that was very prevalent from call it 16 to 2021 is started to die down a bit .

I'd also say one of the big gifts for us was um and the ELD . You know , I think the ELD mandate helped with this . Like , ELD devices are our preferred method of electronic tracking where we started pushing carriers more for that .

Connection type versus the mobile takes a lot of the unknowns off the table when you're relying purely on that mobile tracking experience . So I think there's been some market tailwinds that have helped out and then also just some process .

it takes focus , can be distracting to get that work done when you're trying to book freight or deal with exceptions .

And so I think , as we recognize that opportunity and the success our own people were experiencing , we work to organize a support structure around that to help the reps out but also meet the needs of our customers that were starting to make decisions on who they were going to award freight to , based off of a Forkite compliance score , a Project 44 compliance score .

There was a number of factors , but honestly I think the carrier reps raising their hands and saying I can be at 90% success if I just get the tractor numbers from our carriers , versus getting the driver's cell phone , asking them to download the app , asking them not to block their location .

It just took a lot of the friction off of the table , and so our carrier reps in some ways led us to that discovery .

Overall , I think for us it's it's really about , you know , table stakes and integration capabilities and acceptance towards real-time tracking visibility . What does that mean for our capacity ? That's , access to freight , potentially lucrative , enterprise-level freight that otherwise they just quite frankly wouldn't have access to .

So I don't see as much detractors , if you will . I don't see as much detractors , if you will .

And again , I know we've touched on this a couple of times , but I think the ELD mandate was that kind of critical point for us to remove some of that capacity that wasn't willing to participate with some of that big brother type concept that we talked about earlier .

But overall , I think there's a willingness to participate and and it does come down to it's not necessarily complex but it is tedious to be able to , you know , ensure that there is that consistent visibility to , to auto tracking and and ensuring that we're meeting the , you know , the requirements of our , of our customers and shippers overall .

Because it's just you know , if you want to load , if you want a truck , you got to take the truck that's available . Do we think we get back to that ?

So to your question there , andrew no , I don't see us going backwards on this . I think this is , you know , like Blair said , this table stakes going forward . This is something that brokerages and customers are going to expect from carriers . I don't see us going backwards on this technology .

I don't need to see where your truck is every five minutes and I'm pretty sure the shipper doesn't even look themselves .

But this is the requirement and if I don't do this then I'm not getting the load , and if I don't get the load , you don't get the load , at least from me , and you know you're gonna have to go find it somewhere else yeah , I think that's the cell internally , that is the resonates with the carriers .

Those updates are needed now and , like however the 3PL gets them . I don't know if the shippers are ultimately going to care in a tight market , but the carriers are going to care because they're not going to want a driver getting bombarded or a dispatcher getting bombarded asking for updates .

And so I think we've reached that like tipping point with electronic tracking , where it's just part of the way 3pls and carriers now operate let's remember one thing too .

Those two remain the same for the most part , right . When I look back the last 18 years in this industry , those have remained the same . Those standards have remained the same . The expectations from customers generally have remained the same , and so you put a lot of work into this . You put a lot of you know time , resources , things behind that .

You know , when I look at the numbers , we're talking 0.5 , maybe 1% of what you're seeing in the difference in pickup and delivery . Now to your point . It gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling , right , it's the same thing that we feel like when we order a package that you see is tracking on this truck down the road . You don't know where it is right .

And you know the one thing that I've always argued with old school guys right , you know , andrew Silver , I go back to the days of , like Sean Storr , right , you know , the big difference is , you know , everybody always wanted to talk to the driver . Talk to the driver . Would you ever think the driver was lying to you about where he's at ?

And so , with technology , though , you get that warm and fuzzy feeling , you get that breadcrumb , you understand where that red dot is on the map . And those are things , today , in age , that I think , we jones for . We jones for the knowing we jones for the where things are , how things are right away . You know information at the fingertips .

That's where I think we are today with really digital tracking too .

What that unlocked , from my point of view , though , is the ability for 3PLs to collect data throughout the life cycle of a shipment , and we're now all in a position to do something with that data to be more proactive in addressing certain exceptions that are popping up , and so I'd say like we've actually , on our side , been able to , in some ways , like allow

carrier reps to be a little bit less hands on with their freight , if that electronic tracking gets set up appropriately because we've built out like notifications and different alerts to let someone know that there's a problem .

Let someone know that there's a problem , as opposed to having to babysit every one of your loads , you know , go into the load and kind of just mentally check is the driver in the right location versus the deliverer If you do something with that data , I think you can actually really create some efficiencies in your operations and also be more proactive in trying

to improve that on-time percentage If you're removing a truck because they're not making their way to the pickup on time , or getting in front of a missed delivery 24 hours in advance because you can see the drivers trending in the wrong direction .

And so I agree in general that service performance hasn't materially changed as an industry , but I do think there's opportunity for organizations like ours to do something with that data and deliver our customers . A better surprise-free kind of experience is , I guess , how I would call it . I couldn't agree more with you too .

Let's talk about where things stand today with respect to AI and let's start in the carrier rep function or in the carrier procurement process . What are you guys seeing ? What are you dabbling with in your own businesses ? I've got some thoughts , but I want to hear from you what you're seeing .

You know everybody wants to use AI , but you have to ask the question of why ? Because if you are using it , you better get the use out of it . If not , you're just spending a lot more money and cost going into something that could probably produce the same thing for .

But you know we're looking at different models , learning methods , some of the things that we think about , you know , doing spot quoting and getting freight to the customers and being able to do that systematically from an AI approach . That's something that I think that will continue to go .

And then to your point there , andrew instead of having to hunt for freighter and get freighter and things like that , the carry rep role turns into a little bit more of a consultative role .

Right , how they should be looking at their triangles , their quadrilaterals , how they're looking at to get their revenue , what areas of the country they should be looking at their triangles , their quadrilaterals , how they're looking to get their revenue , what areas of the country they should be coming in and out of , and what time of the year .

Getting more into those specifics than just finding you a load for the most amount of money possible . That , I think , will be generated by a lot of the AI , the data and the things that we're probably all pushing forward on our end .

You know , for us at Arrive we've got a product called Now Carrier that really affords a dispatcher or planner the opportunity to interact with Arrive shipments on their time . You know they can initiate those bids .

You have the book , it now concept or browse through kind of those consistent or dedicated opportunities that they might want to have further conversations about , ultimately dedicating that , or what we call a committed capacity overall .

So I think for us , in reality , carriers within their RIBE network , they're not necessarily restricted to operating during those traditional business hours . I think that that's important as we've kind of evolved through time here . Instead of you know a shipment from you know , think of a time where you know a shipper suddenly cancels an 8pm shipment on a Friday .

You know we've obviously got staffing 24-7 , but a user can also log on , select a shipment , generate revenue and save a driver's hours of service , all through a click of a button , I think . One other you know procurement method that I know we all have familiarity with but is the dedicated kind of routing guide model , I think .

Like that's where you know , mostly for Arrive , within our preferred cohort we heavily participate in and it's almost like a shipper-like perspective we're awarding , you know , these fleets enterprise and mid-market lanes really based upon cost basis . That again we're leveraging data science algorithms on .

We're looking at historical service acceptance , adherence and other metrics and we've seen this create . Going back to that conversation before about Cura , loyalty , really stickiness and further engagement with our fleets . It also supports efficiencies when we talk about cost to serve right .

I'm sure you guys have similar experiences within the technology realm , but I think it's an interesting conversation overall .

A lot of times the word AI is used when we're just talking about , like you know , rule driven processes within a you know TMS that kind of suggests certain actions get taken . That's not necessarily you know AI , and so what I'd say , just being you know transparent , is we're still figuring it out at Echo .

I think what we know is that there's a tremendous amount of communication with carriers , with customers . That happens in email . Email is the universal technology in our industry .

The mobile app is never going to displace the thousands of emails that all of our people get on a weekly basis , and I don't think there's an application for AI to replace all of those emails by any means .

But I think there's certain workflows , certain processes our people are managing on a daily basis that feel ripe for disruption or in the AI world , and so I don't know if that's going to be replying to emails that a customer sends in asking for a tracking update on a load , you could use NLP to understand what that customer is asking for .

You could have that AI go , retrieve the most recent update from your system , automate the response back to that customer .

The same thing could happen with dozens of carrier use cases , and so I'd say we're right now trying to really figure out where true AI could be deployed within our business to build on top of the data science driven initiatives and kind of machine learning initiatives that are already in place .

I think we're still figuring out where AI makes the most sense , because what I believe strongly for years to come is that , like the relationship between our carriers and our brokers , between our shippers and the account teams that manage them , that's going to be , continue to be paramount in a lot of the decisions that are made .

And so I think we're trying to figure out where does AI take work off people's plates to spend their time on stickier , more customer service-centric activities , or what can we chip off around the edges to help our carriers or customers out in more of a real-time manner so transparently .

We're still figuring it out at Echo , but we see some really exciting use cases , both in terms of how we bring some of that decision-making power into our TMS . But I think , specifically around the inbox there's a lot to be done in that general communication .

on it for a second . You mentioned email is kind of the preferred methodology . Even as we've advanced with product technology , AI , overall , why do you and we see similar things that arrive where our customer , our capacity overall tends to revert back to email as kind of the norm ? Why do you think that is ?

We've got a centralized carrier group that's in nine different offices . You know we can't have those face-to-face discussions .

So I think the fact that so much internal communication happens in email , not just for us but even for the carriers that we support , they're emailing their other co-workers throughout the day , and so it's just a captive medium where , when you think about any employee in logistics having three monitors up , I can almost guarantee email takes up the real estate on at

least one of those monitors . And so it's just , it's so ingrained in a lot of what we do . So I think that's one part . Those monitors , and so it's just , it's so ingrained in a lot of what we we do . So I think that's one part of it .

I think that there's still , like we talked about earlier , this long tail of um , this , I should say , this diverse carrier you know universe that many of them still like want to interact over email as their preferred communication method .

Despite like the explosive dfm adoption we've probably all seen like email still is a big part of how we all do our jobs and I think there's a number of different factors , but it's where you do outside of your tms . It's probably where the most work any of our people do actually takes place .

Right here you're clicking a button . Yeah , you know , like when I , when I walk by some of these desks , like you know , when I , when I first , skype was the big thing . Now they've got four different channels up they . They've got their WhatsApp on their portal . They're talking to their carriers on Facebook .

I mean , there's just so many different ways that we're connecting with these carriers . I think we can see some of the impact from AI collecting more of this data , information , things like that where we can have a bigger impact long-term too .

I don't know if that's still around , though Maybe it's your next idea .

You think about a broker sharing available loads with the companies that maybe haven't adopted their digital technology . It lets you expand your reach tremendously versus the phone calls that we were , all you know , used to coming up in the space , and so I don't think you can be successful .

If that's all you rely on but I think it's it is the universal technology across all stakeholder groups in our space .

Well , you got to enter that capacity and then you got to figure out how to match that capacity and then you know , maybe you're emailing back and you're sharing , you know options overall .

So I think you know , again , without you know giving up too much here , I think you know we , we all , are exploring opportunities to be able to ingest that , that capacity , and respond to that efficiently .

And again , let's point out , that's going to help all parties , that's going to help with efficiency , that's going to help with speed and that's going to help with revenue opportunities for everyone overall .

Maybe it was my fault for not directing the question the right way , but I was thinking about these AI agents that I've seen speaking to carriers , and I don't know if any of you have tested or seen the recordings of this , but essentially to phrase it for the audience , essentially it's an AI agent , as they're called , who answers an inbound call from a carrier

and the carrier's interested in a load and they ask for the details on the load . The AI bot agent thing gives the details and goes as far as to negotiate the load but doesn't execute the sale . And when it's time to execute the sale , they say I'm going to pass it now to basically a human to confirm the full movement .

Now this is the first kind of iteration of this AI agent and I'm curious is this something you think can have a meaningful role in carrier procurement and sales ?

You know , like I said , there's one too many pallets on the truck . That's a tough part . The actual selling of the load . You think about the digital boards . We have the easiness of selling a freight quickly . That , to me , is something where , if you're going to pay for an AI , you're still going to have to have those carry reps somewhere .

Whether you call them carry reps , whether you call them operations reps , whether you call them back office support , whatever you want to call it , somebody's going to still have to step into a lot of those steps , and so I think that solves one of it .

But the one thing that I'm seeing the gaps right now , Andrew , is just what you said there hey , let me go through this whole process with you and then get a rep on with you , and then that rep's like hey , what would you sell that load for ? Was it $1,600 to that AI rep ?

You know there's a lot of things I think I need to be sure of before we go into that direction .

Maybe it's a qualification , it's qualifying the carrier overall , and then that could have a use case for it when we get back to so what is the problem that we're trying to solve ? Is it pure efficiency play ? Is it pure efficiency play ? Is it pure automation play ? Or what really are you trying to take with this AI and solve ? For ?

We've all sat here and preached , you know , throughout the session relationships and I still don't think that you can remove that and replace that with an AI agent overall .

But some of the things that are intriguing are qualifying the carrier and then also perhaps logging the bids that potentially would come through there , Because we all know sometimes reps are really busy with their day-to-day , whether or not they're going to necessarily take the time to log that offer . They could get distracted with other events that transpire .

So that could be an interesting use case for some of this AI that's coming into play . I think it's got some room for growth overall , though .

These LLMs and large language models , these are advancing so rapidly that I think that it's very likely there will be some use cases in the brokerage space to handle , I think , more customer service focused inbound inquiries , maybe the small percentage of call-ins we get from non-relationship carriers , you know , maybe those can be vetted through an AI agent .

But from what I've seen I today , I don't think the technology is really ready for the main stage . That can change very quickly . I'm just commenting on what I've seen so far . I think there's some nuances to that carrier broker connection that aren't being captured today and I've shared my feedback with some of the companies in this space .

I think they're too focused on just the price and the one load and so much of like the broker carrier relationship is built through those negotiation opportunities where you start to also track freight or offer them long-term opportunities outside of just that one load focus conversation .

And I think that there's risks in trying to make each phone call about one specific activity , not just from a relationship standpoint , but maximizing the use of the carrier's time . If you're not trying to get into some of the other conversations , I think you're going to end up making an outbound phone call back to them in 30 minutes .

And so I think this technology has a long way to go before it really could be taken seriously within our space .

But if I'm taking into account the growth factor , I have to assume it gets wildly better . But the point you just made was really interesting to me because I used to and it's been so long since I was selling loads to carriers .

But I used to tell other reps like the way I thought about it was the more time I was on the phone with a carrier , the less time they could be talking to a competitor . And that first phone call I had with a carrier , I wanted to talk to them for an hour .

I wanted to learn every single thing there was to learn about their business , their family , their personal life , their needs , whatever it was . Whatever they cared about I was going to care about . And you know , at the same time , Blair , you talked earlier about setting expectations For me that's what that first phone call was about .

It was about learning as much as I can about them and , in conjunction with that , setting the expectations of what the relationship will look like . From my side , I was making commitments on how I would treat them .

I would be honest , that I would give them my cell phone number and answer whenever they needed to and do my best to solve their problems , and in return , I expected they'd be honest with me , they would try to be on time as often as possible and they'd be reasonable when shit hits the fan , when there are issues , Because to me those are the things that are

kind of most important . And when I think about the bot or AI agent I heard take an inbound call , it certainly wasn't thinking about a long-term strategic relationship and maybe that's just not what its job is and it never will be . Or maybe it listens to enough of those phone calls I just described and it learns how to do it itself .

And so I just I'm so curious about this because in some , you know , there's , there's part of me that's the naysayer that kind of thinks about this like , uh , the next blockchain fad , and I know it's way bigger than , and will be more useful than , blockchain ever was in our industry .

But you just you see these hype trains that come for whatever is the newest , cutest thing , and so part of me , the naysayer , thinks that , and the other parts like listen , it's happening . I mean , this is where all of the attention in the world is focused right now . Why would we be any exception ? Um , so I don't know .

I just I'm so curious because if it does advance at the rate that you know people describe it being able to , there's a world where it changes kind of carrier procurement in a lot of ways , and that's where I start to get really curious about how organizations change .

I mean , you're certainly going to be doing more with less is the simplest way to think about it . And it's not to say you need to go fire 50% of the carrier reps , but you certainly don't need to hire more as you continue to grow . And then it's like can carrier reps still make as much money ?

You know the concept will be you'll do more with less , so you know the percentage may go down , but you're going to be booking 100 loads instead of 50 , so you can make more in aggregate .

The one thing that I don't think we think about enough right is when you think about the carrier itself .

You're driving a truck 400 , 500 , 600 miles a day and guess who you're doing that truck with Yourself . Sometimes you want to talk to somebody . I can't tell you how many times .

You know the phone calls that would come in that we analyze were just people wanting to talk to somebody , wanting to tell them about their day , wanting to tell them about the struggles that the shipper , the constinee , whatever it might be .

I do believe in the truck driving world there is something from a carrier that a lot of these owner operators and stuff like that want to have that human connection . At some point in the day you put yourself in their shoes . You got up at 7 am , drove that 500 miles . You get to this constinee .

Somebody treats you like shit there , doesn't give you a bathroom , tells you to go away , go wait in line . You sit by yourself in the cab for two hours . You just want to talk to somebody . You want to talk to somebody about your day . I do believe from the carrier world that there is something there behind that as well too .

Think about like hey , I'm calling in for a pickup number , right . Do you guys utilize any of that today ? I'm calling in for a pickup number , right .

It's in that customer service realm where somebody just needs a quick piece of information that doesn't necessarily require any real strategic thinking or solution design what's the pickup number , what are the hours of operation ?

You know that type of stuff that we get at Echo thousands of phone calls a day from drivers like looking for those bits of information or to give a routine update . I think that's the more reasonable place to try to start to play with this technology Today .

Again to Andrew's point , I think it would be naive to think that this technology doesn't advance rapidly and put us all in a position where we have to think long-term about what that means for our people . But customer service is where I would , you know , encourage that focus to be out the gates .

Then I think about the back end of like you know how do you get actually paid ? You think about the invoicing process of that . You know going through . You know , does my load have a BOL , does it have the POD , does it have the ? You know those are things I think Jay's correct .

There needs to be a lot more that goes into this for us to be ready on that .

Is there any hope in the near term ? Let's talk about that a little bit what you all are seeing and what you're hearing out there I'll start and the answer is yes .

I think all of us saw our cost per mile from that standpoint start to take up . You know , I think tender rejections have been at a historical low for years and you're starting to see that tick up a little bit .

I think where we're going to start to see the real tick up here is that everybody from the 19,000 brokers out there we call it paper rates and I think a lot of people put paper rates into their routing guys , into their contracts .

I think a lot of shippers were told from the top we need to save money , right , you think about a large company the quickest way to save money or the quickest way you're going to go is into that transportation field . And so they told all those guys save even more , right .

And so I think you know what I've seen over time is a big shift in the shipper world where procurement is getting a little bit more strength than operations used to , and what I see by that is rates are more important . Just on the paper Operations , figure it out on the back end of what you need to do .

I think we're going to see a big catapult on that going forward . But it comes down to guys supply and demand . Obviously the supply has been coming out of the market at an alarming rate over the last six months . I think demand has kind of , you know , fluttered a little bit . We haven't seen what we want .

I think we do have some powerful things going forward , you know , from imports to some of the macroeconomic indicators . I think having an election year always gives you a little bit of a , you know , kind of a slow run into that until you really know who's going to win one way or the other .

And then I think we have some big things on the horizon that can really change things . You know we mentioned , on this call a couple of times , elds . You know this speed limit enforcement happens . That's going to be a huge shakeup in our industry .

I think , like ELDs again , and I don't think enough people are talking about that , and so for me , I do see the run up starting now , but , uh , for me , um , I do see the run up starting now , but you know this isn't quick ever , uh , and I think everybody wants you know in our , in our world , to say hey , it's back .

It's never like that in the freight world , guys . Right , and what ? What ? What I think you'll see is , in six months from now , we'll wake up a lot happier . In 12 months from now , on the brokerage side of things , we'll be thrilled with where that's going to be set .

Or , when we think back to again , like we're bringing up ELD again , do you go and have to retrofit for within your outdated or old equipment to be able to have that enforcement going on ? That should be an interesting play as we move forward here . I think like I'll give a shameless plug . Arrive sends out a carrier market outlook update .

Shout out David Spencer market outlook update . Shout out to David Spencer . Shout out to David Spencer the best and I think , for us , his position , our position overall . The remainder of 2024 , increased volatility compared to the majority of Q1 . You mentioned it like capacity is continuing to exit the marketplace .

It's causing some slight strain within the supply chain . I think it's generating some upward rate movement overall . I think the next couple of months are really going to be key indicators for us on what happens here moving forward . You mentioned revocations of authority and new carriers entering the market .

Those are quality indicators in really determining the attractiveness of the marketplace . What is it like ? The last 17 of the last 19 months ? I think we've seen that reduction or revocations in authority overall . So clearly . Something is transpiring , and perhaps that means a turn is coming .

But you look at the total number of tractors operating in the same breath and it's still well above pre-pandemic condition .

market , but you haven't seen that same decline really begin yet that you saw go up from 2020 to 2022 . I do think it might be the calm before the storm , you know . Just being honest , I think that the rates have been suppressed for so long and even the short-term market tightening that Drew mentioned earlier .

I think a lot of companies are in a bad financial situation and you may start to see that snowball effect take place of more and more companies leaving the industry and I really believe , outside of like a major catalyst to drive demand that the exiting of supply will ultimately be what you know gets the market back to , not to what we saw during COVID , but to

more of the historic , you know , peaks and valleys that we've experienced . The COVID days are behind us from my point of view , but it doesn't take too much supply leaving the market and a little bit of uptick in demand to really create some market constraints , and I think we saw it this year for the first time in two years with produce season .

This was the first produce season the industry has really experienced in the last two years , both from a honey standpoint but also how it's impacted capacity and pricing to some extent , and so I think it's a glimpse of what could happen if enough supply leaves and demand upticks a little bit .

So I still think we're a little bit away from that shift really taking place . But to Andrew's point , this time next year I would expect to be a bit more carrier and broker friendly than the last 26 months have been .

And you know the one thing I keep thinking about and , Jay , I hope this comes off the right way I hear everybody always say pre-pandemic , those four freaking years . I guess Things have changed in four years , guys , people have grown in four years and I hear from everybody , hey , is it going to get back to pre-pandemic number ? It's four years ago .

This isn't a year or two like it was in 21 or 22, . Right , we're in 2024 now . Now do I think we get back to some more normal cycles from a spot perspective ? I do , right , you look at , you know , some of the things that all of us look at from these curves that we have and obviously , our beyond curve that we put out there .

I'll do my plug here as well here , blair . But you know , I think when you look at the year over year , quarter over quarter perspective in COVID , the spot got up to 60% .

When you look at historically , that's usually somewhere around that 40% , 35% , somewhere in there , and I think we get back to those kind of normal cycles that we saw before on things like that .

So it's curious whether or not that capacity shift has gone more in the private fleet realm . And then you have the other side of it when we're talking about owner operators and driver dispatchers overall , but really we're able to accelerate their earnings during the pandemic time . Is that nest egg perhaps running out with some of the ?

You know the market that we've been in for what feels like some time now ? So really those are , those are interesting discussion points to bring up and really understand how that's impacting

. The mention of revocations of authority and how that's kind of transitioned , you know , from that owner operator over to private fleet , so on and so forth there .

I feel like that decision process is way slower than than if if a normal trucking company were to want to buy trucks because it's like just not their bread and butter and it just takes a lot longer for them to get to a place where , like yeah , we're gonna operate our own .

I think it's one thing if you're going from 200 trucks to 300 , but to be someone like I remember hearing home depot maybe was gonna buy their own boat a few years ago . I don't know if that ended up happening . That was when the yeah , but in any case , I just I think it's an interesting point .

I just I'm not sure if the impact would be substantial enough in the time period , but it's something to think about for sure .

I mean the whole ballgame changes for you overnight , right , because you know , jay , I'm sure your guys ask you all the time hey , when are we going to get a couple of trucks ? Or when are we going to look at it this way , we can go out there and sell as an asset and a broker together .

So you bring up a great point in just thinking through again how capacity is either being added or exiting across the marketplace overall .

What do we think it looks like when the market turns ? Are brokers going to hold their rates or is this going to be you know a likely quick ? Hey , listen , you know I got my ass kicked the last two years . I'm not . You know a likely quick ? Hey , listen , you know I got my ass kicked the last two years . I'm not .

You know the market has shifted in the last three weeks . I'm not losing 20 cents a mile on this . You got to pay me more . Is that likely where we get back to ?

Many are running these quarterly , biannual bids and I think that that trend will likely stick for a while . I think it's in many ways in all parties' best interest to be in that position to re-bid on a more regular basis .

I think that just reading the tea leaves that the large asset based trucking companies will be the first ones to go back to shippers and say we can't operate at these rates . I think we're already starting to hear some of that commentary in some of the quarterly earnings that have happened the last two quarters .

They control a lot of the capacity on the road , especially for the Fortune 1000 shipper base . I suspect they'll be the first to act . It's just my guess .

Give you an example three years ago , one of our largest shippers took about a month and a half to get through that rfp process , from the day they sent it out to going through the bids , getting them all uploaded .

Going through that , that same shipper now turned around their annual bid in three days , right Because of the technology , the way that they're looking at things , the systems that they're using today , and so I think the shipper side is really catching up on this as well too , because they saw that little amount of technology they were able to put into it was able

to capture so much cost savings on the back end of things .

Um , I think our shippers would have understood rate adjustments , but it really we .

That's how we wanted to stand out , and a lot of our shippers reciprocated that in the following year and we saw big growth and , you know , no adjustments on our rates , but it wasn't true of everyone , and there were a lot of companies that , when push come to shove , they may have really respected us and appreciated the hell out of us , but they had a job

and they had a boss and their boss told them to get the savings and so they couldn't just let us stay 20% above market on a five or $10 million award .

Um , it just it wasn't feasible for their job and so , like you know , I think it became a a a by customer situation where , you know , initially it was a en masse we are committed to this concept and then , once we were burned by enough , it was like okay , let's let you make the rules shipper , like , if it's your game , you're in charge .

You tell me how we're going to play . If every three months or every six months , we're going to change the rates because the market's changing , I'm in , I'll play that . If you want me to stand by my rates for the year , my expectation is the next year you're going to stand by yours , and if not , that's the challenging thing is like .

If you want to build trust in brokerage , you have to kind of take that first step and you can be burned by the carrier or the customer or both , and all you can really do is say you know what ? I learned my lesson I'm not going to work with that carrier anymore . I'm not going to work with that customer the way I was working with them .

I'll reduce my acceptance percentage to what the market is at or my on top , whatever it is . So you know we didn't solve something like across the board . I think we built some really strong relationships that that should last hopefully decades there , even without me and other people there .

But you know it was a lesson for sure and there were adjustments that needed to be made after the fact . With that , yeah , he puts you on the hot seat . I love being on the hot seat , I mean . What I've noticed about this episode is I've kind of been able to just chill , cause you three are doing most of the talking .

I can just ask the questions a lot of time . If it's just me and one other person , I feel like I should be inputting a lot of my own opinions . But you guys got enough of your own great opinions . I was feeling like it , but no , I'm just kidding . In any case , we're going to wrap with this Last question .

I want a bold prediction from each of you , something it could be anything related to the industry over the next five , 10 years . Give me something juicy , something interesting , something I can market .

No , it doesn't need to be marketable , but just give me , give me a juicy prediction , something that you think is going to happen that could change things for us .

I think two things . I think one spot freight isn't anything . What it looks like today . Right , it's a whole different ball game about how you look at that . And I think the second thing you think about , can you elaborate ?

I think you're just gonna see a more of a digital approach to keep on going on that aspect of it , I think . The second bigger thing and more probably to your point on , like the five 10 year thing . So bold statement 19,000 , 20,000 brokers , whatever you look at out there you're going to see a huge consolidation , I think in the next five , 10 years .

You know I don't want to go this far but you know , when you think about some of the you know stockbrokers and how those exchanges were back in the day , to getting to Robinhood and eating , trade and things like that and having big platforms , I could see that being the big consolidation in the next five , 10 years .

I think if you fast forward five or ten years , the universal belief is going to be the large legacy brokers that have an appreciation for technology that are going to drive the consolidation of the industry and also take more market share as we look into the future .

That , to me , is the winning formula and I think we're seeing it , you know , play out with some of the exits that have occurred over the last 18 months .

So not saying technology isn't a big part of our business , but I think the digital broker as a standalone business concept is not going to be something that's talked about the way it's been talked about the last 10 years .

I don't think we're in a situation where that's going to be fully automated or self-driving overall . I think there's going to have to be a middle ground that's figured out there .

I think also , when you think about electrification overall and what that means within that space , I think that's potentially something that's going to , or we're going to see itself see something be played out there in the next handful of years .

I think that whole function of carrier procurement is that we grew up in is a thing of the past . I don't know . I kind of think the AI thing is going to be big in how that plays on the carrier side .

I think there's still going to be a need for strong relationships with the carriers and I just think it's going to look really , really different on that side . I think the customer side is not going to be that different . I think the ops , customer operations , scheduling in five years there will not be a human scheduling , appointments .

So I think those are things that are going to change a lot and I don't looks like for you know , I think that doesn't mean brokerages are going anywhere . I think brokerages , like you said , I think consolidation is probably coming . I'm hopeful there's a way for the little guy to still exist . You know , when I started Molo .

My dad said he's like you shouldn't do it in five years there's only going to be like five big brokers and that's it . So I mean he was off and that was 2017 . That would have been two years ago . We could be wrong about it again . I mean I don't know , but I could see why the industry would start to consolidate .

It just feels like the tech is finally starting to make some hay there . So that's my bold prediction . Part of me hopes I'm wrong . I don't , you know , I don't , I don't know . I don't have a dog in the fight . I love carrier reps and I love the role and I I just think you're going to be able to do more with less . So with that we're going to call

it . This was a great episode . I appreciate all three of you coming on . I'm hopeful that this worked . I don't know , uh , for our audience , hopefully we'll be completely unaware of the technological issues that we had today . This was the most I've ever had .

It's also the first time I've tried to do this kind of thing with three people , other than the convoy episode the one time . But , uh , you guys have been great sports and I appreciate you putting up with me and coming on and sharing your thoughts and um to our audience . I hope you enjoyed it .

We'll we'll do more of this and , uh , we'll , we'll see on the next episode . You .