Credit Policies for Freight Brokers | Episode 294

Speaker 1: 0:19

All right, welcome back Another episode of the Freight 360 podcast. Ben, how are we doing down in Florida this week?

Speaker 2: 0:28

Man, weather's not too hot yet Like rain for the first time in like months. I feel like Dude Monday. Did you see on the news Like we got like two months worth of rain in a day? There were areas down here that got like seven inches of rain in 24 hours. Yeah, I did not see that.

Speaker 1: 0:47

Um, there, there's definitely been some wild weather going around the country, though we had there was a stat. It was uh, I think we actually finally broke it this past weekend, but previous to this weekend, this past weekend, buffalo had precipitation every weekend for 24 weeks straight. So, like you think, like everyone's looking forward to like a nice weekend, whether it was wintertime or springtime, we either had a snowstorm or like a thunderstorm every weekend for six months.

Speaker 2: 1:20

So you know what's funny about this? I kind of laugh like I talk about this a lot, is it? Like? I grew up in Pittsburgh and like if you Google this, I'm pretty sure Pittsburgh has like very comparable number of like overcast and rainy days. Is like Portland, like it's really close and it's like same as Buffalo lake effect and the mountains are right next to Pittsburgh. So a lot of that rain goes, hits the mountains and it's overcast and rainy.

Speaker 2: 1:43

And I live obviously in South Florida now, which is like the sunshine state and it's. It's so funny. Like, growing up there and living here now for like 10 years, I get like super nostalgic, for when it rains Like it makes me actually like kind of happy in this funny way, because it's like when it's sunny out every day, dude, I feel guilty when I'm in my house for like not being outside doing more, and when it rains I'm like, oh, I can sit on the couch and not feel like I don't know. Like it's just this funny, weird relationship I always notice because like my wife and I were talking about that and she was like on mother's day we like we went out, uh, had a nice like brunch and went out, did some stuff and she oh, it would be so nice if it just rained all afternoon so we could just sit on the couch and then it poured like the whole next day, but it's just like I don't know being able to relax.

Speaker 2: 2:32

You said two months worth of rain, and it was some crazy stat I saw like on the news that was like we got like either six weeks or like as much rain as you normally get over, like either six weeks or two months, and it hasn't rained really forever Normally. Like I remember this because, like the golf changes, I think May 1st is when like season starts. Basically, that's kind of when most of the snowbirds start heading up north.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Yeah, it also gets way hotter, obviously, so, like the greens, fees are like 30% of what they are in the winter here uh, yeah, I remember when we golfed with trey a couple years ago and it was like still off season, right, because it was like the beginning of may, yeah, or something like that and it's.

Speaker 2: 3:14

It's funny because it's normally like may 1st, right, like you'll pay 150 bucks to play a course and then, like the first weekend in may, it drops to like 45 bucks yeah, that's, yeah, yeah and it normally starts raining up here. Yeah, it gets and it normally, yeah, and it starts raining almost immediately because, like now, it's so warm that, like you know the oceans and the precipitation, like it'll usually rain, like every afternoon, between like two and four like 20 minutes or whatever yeah, or like a few times it'll just keep raining and then stop, but like it hasn't rained at all.

Speaker 2: 3:46

It hasn't seemed to rain for like a month or two and then, like apparently they said like all the rain we hadn't gotten two months basically fell like two days ago got to rain like 24 hours um, well, anyway, uh, if you're new, make sure to check out all the other content.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Freight360.net go to our YouTube channel. You got the Freight Broker Basics course. If you're looking for education, we were just talking offline about training options that are out there, and there's a lot of stuff, a lot of content that'll come across your YouTube or your internet search. It's not all as good as you might think. So ours is. You know, we built our course before AI was around, so we literally put our own knowledge and experience into it, not just chat. Gpt so yeah, but cool Sports real quick. The NFL schedule will be dropped. Well, by the time this releases, it'll have dropped. We're recording on Wednesday. It's going to drop tonight. So the rumor as of right now is that the Bills are going to host the Bengals Sunday night football week one. So, stephen, thoughts on your Bengals and my Bills week one.

Speaker 3: 5:07

So steven thoughts on your bangles and my bills. Well, the first four weeks of any cincinnati season is usually loss after loss. You remember last year we lost to the patriots in week one, which was just abysmal. We should have won by like 30 points and I think we lost by two or three touchdowns. So while it's exciting to come and play the Bills, I might have to look at seeing to get tickets to come to the game if that's the case, but I do not have my hopes up for a dub.

Speaker 1: 5:33

So I was saying this to you before too, like I just think the NFL, if, if, that is actually, if that rumor is true and you know, we'll know by the time this drops but what a genius move by the NFL. Two gunslinging quarterbacks, josh Allen and Joe Burrow, throw them on a primetime game Sunday Night Football, week 1. The over on that game has to be well. I mean, who knows what the Bills knew, defensive pickups with the draft and whatnot, but you're looking at like a 60 point over under.

Speaker 1: 6:07

I mean I don't think it actually set the line there, but like a high scoring game, a lot of offense, like a lot of yards.

Speaker 3: 6:13

So yeah, if I was, if I was to take a bet today, I would. I would bet really high on the total points for the game, for sure, exactly.

Speaker 2: 6:23

But we'll see did you see I they um remove the lifetime ban from uh pete rose and shoeless joe jackson oh, yesterday, yeah, now that he's dead, yeah, now they're. I mean joe jackson's probably been dead for eight years.

Speaker 1: 6:39

But pete rose. Didn't he die like in the last six months? I can't remember. I think it was pretty recent. Right Is that they were both for sports.

Speaker 2: 6:48

Yeah, she was. Joe was the guy who was involved with um, the mob and the black socks in 1919. Uh, okay, setting up the world series and I can't remember I think it was Lucky Luciano. I can't remember which guy was in it Like I've seen a bunch of movies and documentaries on it and I can't remember which one it was, but like that was the thing that actually almost put one of them in jail around that time. Like Congress actually intervened because the world series was like national pastime and when they found out like they rigged it, there was like huge pushback and he like left the country for a long time to avoid prosecution. For that I remember Wow.

Speaker 1: 7:35

It's a. If you're a sports fan, this is a fun time of the year. You've got. I mean like NFL is not playing right now, obviously, but like everyone, whether your team is good or bad, like everyone is, oh no, right now it's like you don't have a losing team. You're excited for the season, but like baseball's in full swing, you got NHL playoffs right now. You've got.

Speaker 2: 7:55

NBA playoffs right now.

Speaker 1: 7:57

I was watching a game the other night and I'm not like an NBA fan, but I just like sports. So like was watching one of the games and who was Cleveland? It was like a 43 or no 41 point lead at halftime for the one team and it would like set the record for like the biggest point differential in like or tie the the record like the biggest point differential in like playoff nba history. Um, and then they gave up like 20 something points in the second half and still won by 20 but, um, just wild it's great.

Speaker 3: 8:35

Do you know how the nba does their draft?

Speaker 1: 8:38

I have no idea. I don't.

Speaker 3: 8:39

I'm not a big basketball guy so, like the n, it's based on your record right Losing team gets. The NBA is a lottery system.

Speaker 1: 8:48

The entire thing. I think some of the NHL is too NHL. The bottom, like four or whatever, is a lottery system, I think.

Speaker 3: 8:57

I'm pretty sure all teams are in a lottery and it's just whoever gets pulled up gets the pick.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I can't say I've ever watched the NBA draft.

Speaker 3: 9:07

So it was trending the other day because LeBron was talking about how the lottery system is just trash. But I had no idea.

Speaker 1: 9:15

I was shocked to find that out, yeah that's weird, doesn't seem very commensurate with how it should be. You would think maybe it's just biased from how the NFL works and that's what I follow typically. But you would think whoever sucks the most gets the best draft pick. But who knows? And then you got baseball, which is just totally strange because they work through the farm system like these guys get. Like you know, they get drafted into the system when they're 18 years old and, like they hope in five years they're like on a roster in the major leagues. So wild anyway. Um, what else in sports?

Speaker 2: 10:03

I didn't have any pgas this weekend yeah, it is.

Speaker 1: 10:07

Where are they playing this year? I?

Speaker 1: 10:09

think quail hollow okay, yeah, I saw that on uh espn this morning pga championship, um news, the china tariffs we got a pause on that. Dude. It's crazy the you were texting me about it and like I saw multiple articles referencing like basically covid 2.0 when it comes to freight, like that, because we saw, you know, trump gets elected and people are like very uncertain with what to do. They're pushing a lot of stuff in. Then tariffs get talked about, then tariffs and everyone's like pumping the brakes. You get this big backlog of imports and now they're like all right for the next three months. We're basically pressing pause and going to these very minimal tariffs and in comparison to the you know, discussed ones, so you would expect like a huge summer push right Of imports. I don't know. I'm very curious. Here was my.

Speaker 2: 11:06

I was having some conversations with folks yesterday. So two things. One is they reduced it back down to 30% the original 10% plus the 20% considered like the fentanyl tariff, right? So what you also had was, at the same time, these orders fell off a cliff when they went into effect, I think, like around a month ago. So the stuff that comes in everyone's got to remember like lags a month to a month and a half to two months, right, just ballpark right. So those orders supposed to come in. There's a giant glut because those orders fell like 50 or 60% immediately around that time.

Speaker 2: 11:52

But also what happened? Yeah, there was a huge push through. They call it like a pull through before the tariffs went in, where every company to get as much in as they could, shipped as much in. So there was a massive increase, then a giant fall. But the next thing that happened was most of the stuff that arrived after the deadline when the tariff went into effect like went into bonded warehouses.

Speaker 2: 12:16

And for anyone that wants just a general understanding, what that means is hey, I ship this in, say it didn't make the tariff deadline and it came in a week later, whatever, right, okay, so instead of me paying 145% of what the value of that container is. Say it's a hundred grand. I got to pay a tariff of $145,000 to get a hundred grand worth of goods out, but what a bonded warehouse allows you to do is it can sit there. You don't pay the tariff until you take it out of the bonded warehouse. So, basically, everyone that got cargo when the tariff went in place left it in a warehouse, and now that the tariffs are paused, they can take it out of the warehouse and they only pay 30%. So my guess is we're going to see a giant influx of cargo being released from bonded warehouses in Cali, in the West, because they basically maxed that out. Like all the warehousing was basically full the whole way up the West Coast, with all this cargo sitting there. Now that you only pay 30 percent, and if they, if the most of the economy kind of feels like that's where it'll end up around there and they don't feel like it'll fall lower, they're going to release that now. So you're going to see a bunch of loads, I think, coming out of the West Coast immediately. The other thing, though, is people that did pay the $145,000, they don't know if they'll get some rebate or they just got stuck in that weird window where they paid a whole lot more than they wanted to.

Speaker 2: 13:44

But there's a whole other piece to this and I tried to find numbers on this and I couldn't really get great numbers because I don't think they actually exist. I've been following Ryan Peterson from Flexport, who's been on a bunch of podcasts talking about how and what this is affecting anybody right? So a large portion of what we bring in and then just look at it this way, a large portion of what we buy is just a country is actually overwhelmingly from small businesses. Everyone thinks it's the walmart's and the targets of the world, but like the reality is, most of the stuff we buy is from small businesses and most of those products are like sub 800 now. What used to exist was called de minimis, meaning there was an exemption for any tariff coming in.

Speaker 1: 14:26

Was the dollar amount on that 800 bucks from China.

Speaker 2: 14:30

That has been removed. So, yes, the tariffs went from 145 to 30, but the fact that you're now going to pay 30% on everything moved in when you used to pay zero is drastically affecting small businesses, where a lot of GDP and a lot of the stuff we buy comes from Now. 30% isn't enough to make it, I think, to sink small businesses. 145 for sure was. It could have been catastrophic if that stayed in place. But at 30, they're still going to be doing businesses, but they've got to raise prices. And just for round numbers for anyone to think about this, they go okay. If I buy something for a hundred bucks, does that mean it's 130? No, Because if you buy something from China, let's just say it's a cold plunge. Right, there's one set out there I'm looking at.

Speaker 1: 15:20

Say I buy that Big cold plunge guy yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:23

Yeah, say, I buy that for $25 and I sell it for $100, okay, I'm paying 30% on the $25. So that's roughly $8 tariff. So my cost to buy that from China went from $25 plus $8 to like $32, $33. Now, right, that doesn't mean I'm going to charge 130. It means I'll probably charge now 108 or 110, which is still like 30% tax on something that you mark up. Right, four times you're going to roughly see the price go up about 8%. Okay, just for round numbers. So when most of the stuff we do buy is from small businesses, they've got to raise their prices some. Maybe not the whole 8%, but three or four or five, and that's a real number.

Speaker 2: 16:13

I think that the Fed's looking at because they decided not to reduce interest rates, mostly because they're scared of stagflation, and anyone that was around knows what happened in the 70s and 80s. If you don't, you probably heard of it. That was when you have slow growth and high interest rates and when that happens the Fed really can't do anything because inflation is very high and the economy isn't growing If they reduce interest rates. That drives inflation. So they can't and that means the Fed's hands are tied to fix the economy, which is like the worst scenario for us to be in. So they're scared to reduce interest rates because inflation should go up right, because all these small businesses are paying more with this de minimis that is removed.

Speaker 2: 16:58

However, the inflation reports came in like yesterday. I read this morning like they're actually down, but they're mostly down because gas prices are down. The rest of everything else has still kind of gone up a little bit in price. Now everyone's expecting next month's numbers to really show this, because all that cargo right that was in warehouses bonded that you're now paying taxes on, that you just let sit there, and the cargo that people did pay $145 on. Those numbers will be happening in May and remember, inflation gets a lag month right. So the inflation numbers now are from last month.

Speaker 2: 17:34

What everyone's expecting is that inflation may go up in May, which we'll see in June, and if that happens, that's really going to be the indicator of like how much of an impact these tariffs have on the cost of the things we buy. So it's going to be really anxious because, like I was debating with somebody, they were like oh look, everything's fixed, the stock market's back this tariff and everybody's screaming that Trump was being erratic, had no causes. There's no problems. Orders are going up.

Speaker 2: 18:01

The other thing that happened was when we stopped shipping all this volume from china, the major steamship lines diverted those ships to other countries because there wasn't enough coming in. You're not going to send a ship over there to bring it back empty. So they did blank sailings and they reconfigured where these cargo ships are going. So as soon as this happened like two days ago or three days ago, right the price to ship a container from across the Pacific to the US from China went up 41% that day. So, yeah, your tariff went from $145 to $30, but your cost to move a container from China to the US just went up 41%. And guess what, somebody's paying that right.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, the consumer is the one that is going. This is the same thing that happened during COVID too.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Exactly, and that could have a drastic impact on our industry, because if we see major congestion and the similar things that we saw related to COVID, because of this, you could see 2021 again in our industry with massive rates going up. A ton of cargo needing moved last minute, not enough trucks. Because the other thing that's interesting is we have been in such a depressed rate for trucking companies for so long. They're starting to go out of business now faster, and if we see capacity shrink, with small trucking companies leaving the industry and a whiplash like COVID, you're going to see 2019 and what happened in the beginning of COVID happen all over again, where rates are going to go through the roof because there's not enough trucks and there's too much cargo to move, which could be great for freight brokerages this year and could be a saving grace for the trucking companies that survive. It's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out.

Speaker 1: 20:32

I was explaining this to someone like a week ago or earlier this week. It's like it's kind of it's a weird concept that, like when, when transportation costs go up, the consumer pays more for products, but truckers and brokers make more because we're you know, like brokers were a margin based industry and truckers Like it's just literally just extra profit for them.

Speaker 1: 21:00

So it's also DOT week, DOT blitz. So you have, you know, three days of roadside inspection. I saw the one someone posted. It was like they had like three. They got hit three times in the same day, or something like that yesterday.

Speaker 2: 21:21

Well, to that point. We talked about this with Leffler last week. One he there was something in Frey Caviar that was really pretty good and there were two very significant fatalities related to driver issues recently One like eight car accident with like two people I think that died, and another one where one person died very recently. So it's definitely becoming more, I would say, in the public sphere, of paying attention to this. At the same time you're seeing them crack down on immigrant drivers or non-speaking English. Same time you're seeing them crack down on immigrant drivers or non-speaking English. And also, what's interesting is that, like when the public is starting to be concerned, you start to see the government act more, and we talked last week that the FMCSA is drastically underfunded and understaffed to keep up with maintenance and safety. Like what did he say? Like one, 25, 20% of trucks on the road right Are considered unsafe, like one in five like that is absolutely insane, right?

Speaker 2: 22:27

So my hope is that you see more of this, because the other part of this it's really interesting is I've read some articles on trucking company owners that have been in business 30, 40 years, that are going out of business and they're like listen, we can't compete with trucking companies bringing in and they stated illegal immigrants that they're underpaying because they're able to run at lower rates. Carriers have been yelling at brokers all year with broker transparency and saying we're the problem. The reality, reality is, is it's actually their peers in the trucking industry that are either bringing in illegal labor and then underpaying them. That's who's running this freight for 90 cents a mile. It's not the brokers pushing your rate down there. It's that if three carriers call you, one goes I'll take it for a buck a mile and the other two need a dollar 90 a mile. You're gonna pay the guy for a dollar a mile if he's got decent service records, the right insurance and can make the times.

Speaker 1: 23:21

Even so, that it makes me think of this. Like the uh, we'll talk about some agent drama today, but, um, I have seen and talked to, I've talked with a lot of these guys that like work in um Pakistan, armenia, like you know, lower Colombia, mexico, like lower um I don't know what the phrase you would use like the the US dollar is strong to them, right, so like they will like try to be an agent or a broker for a company in the states and they're like they'll take 50 bucks a load as a profit and like call that a good day Because to them, like that's like 500 bucks what it would be to someone in the States and it's like dude, like that's, and then they win business on this.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Like you know, you're building materials and some of your low margin freight, your low cost freight, and it's like you're literally like you're undercutting American workers because our dollar goes that much further in your home country. So it's an interesting thought experiment of how that impacts everybody. But yeah, I mean and like you just mentioned the trucking side as well, how it'll and this is anecdotal right, this is like one story.

Speaker 2: 24:40

But I had talked to somebody and, like I used to do a lot of business in Chicago so I had lots of carrier owners that were friends and decent network and I remember them telling me about this one trucking company and he said the guy who I've worked with for like a decade knew this guy very well and he said here's what he does. He bought an apartment building in Chicago. He brought over I don't know if they were necessarily illegal, but he was able to bring in immigrants and basically what he would do is go, I'll give you a house and a job. He would put them in his apartment building. He would deduct the money for rent out of their carrier pay. So basically it's I don't want to say it's like indentured servitude, but kind of like you literally have to go to work because he's going to take the money out for your rent, Can't negotiate it, you can't go anywhere else, you don't know where else you can go. You didn't speak English, so like they didn't have a choice.

Speaker 2: 25:38

And then this is the egregious part he would book loads, right His dispatchers, and then they would Photoshop the rate cons to give to the carriers and knock off like 500 bucks give or take on every load. So then he would pay the carrier out of the rate on the fake rate con. So he depressed what he was actually paying the drivers on top of that and skimmed money off the top of every load, then forced them to pay higher rents and he's like he's got like 50 drivers and he's like, if you want to know what's affecting rates, he's like it's situations like this because, like, they're paying this driver literally pennies, they're basically providing food and shelter they have no choice, yeah they're just giving them a way to survive and taking every bit of profit off the top and then undercutting all their competition because they're paying drivers 20 of what they're paying and they're making money on all of it.

Speaker 2: 26:34

They're making money on their housing like that's's literally what Carnegie did during the steel mills in the 1910s and teens. He built a town. You go to work in my steel mill. You have to work seven days a week. You can only shop in my company store and I own the house. So I'll give you the money. Then you give it right back to me so I can take your rent and make money off your groceries.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Yeah, wild, well, yeah, anyway, crazy stuff. So let's get into. Let's get into this discussion today. So here's a situation that I'm dealing with or that I dealt with this week and I'm curious your thoughts on it, your criticism, feedback, any of any of which is welcome.

Speaker 1: 27:20

So had a uh, had a guy that joined our company and we brought on um about three weeks ago and get some customers set up. Um has one specific customer that we denied credit on and we said, hey, the address you gave us, we can't find anything on them. Figure out what you need to do so we can try to get this guy approved, but for right now they're not an active customer. Guy starts moving some freight for his customers. This guy worked at TQL years ago and then went to a couple other brokerages and came to us and so then we get a. We get an email from this like third party company and it's like, hey, it almost looked like a scam and it was like you know we've got. You wanted to verify your account and routing number for payment for some invoices. Is this accurate? And like, right away, like the account number, like it doesn't match us.

Speaker 2: 29:43

Was it like? What is it like Stevens text yesterday? So this is actually a legitimate email. Literally said scam.

Speaker 1: 29:52

But like so we're like well, like well, like no, that's not us. And like who's this for? Let me get the the guy's email address and it's this new guy. So I go to him and I'm like yeah, like do you know? Do you know who this company is? He's like no, I have no idea. And I'm like, okay, so we go back and we tell the guy like no, we're, we don't know anything about this. This is not accurate. Can I ask you something?

Speaker 2: 30:17

Do you make them upload the load tenders for invoicing as like a procedure for your agents? Are they like in your TMS so you can look at?

Speaker 1: 30:25

those. We don't require them to upload their tenders. We contractually require them to get the rate from the customer in writing. We don't spot check every single one of those as a matter of procedure. So anyway, we ask like oh, if you have payment due to us, which customer is this on behalf of? They gave us the name of the customer and it's the customer that we denied credit on.

Speaker 1: 31:01

So I go to this guy again. I'm like hey man, this guy is saying like it's for this, this shipper of yours that we denied credit on, and he's like no, no, no, no, it's not, it's, it's uh. He's like you know, I don't know. I'm like okay, I'm like do you know? Like does this specific customer that we denied, did they use this third party? He's's like I've never heard of them. I'm like okay.

Speaker 1: 31:15

So then my assistant like does a little research, and he like he's, he's getting the load details that these guys are trying to pay on. And then these loads are like uh, built in our TMS under another customer. So I'm like this guy is circumventing credit, like he. He got one customer approved, he's got plenty of credit for them. We denied this other one. So he starts moving loads for this denied customer, putting them under the other one.

Speaker 1: 31:39

So then I go to him like dude, I'm like like they're saying these loads are for this, they're built in the system under this customer, and he's like, he's like no, no, no, he's like that, that third party company, like they're confused, it's, those aren't for that customer, they're for this customer. I'm like, expect to happen. Well, that's why. So I told him. I was like hey man, I was like 100 of the time that a uh, one of our brokers or agents tries to circumvent our credit policies and change a customer, we will catch it 100 of the time, whether it's from the company won't pay the bill, they're gonna get an invoice for a load they didn't tender well.

Speaker 1: 32:16

So there's that. There's that, yes, there's that situation. When we invoice their own customer, they're like that's not our load, but also we have a, we have a steven would understand this. Rapid alert is mcleod uh terminology where, like, if something happens in our tms it triggers a message to be sent out to a certain individual, for example. So we have a rule set up in McLeod that, like, if a customer is changed on a load in the system, it will instantly email out the owner of the company, the credit team, you know whoever is on that distribution list. So we'll know hey, john Doe, broker just changed the customer on this order from ABC Steel to XYZ Steel. Right, and we'll. So everyone knows about it. It's very clear and obvious and you know we can catch that. So we will identify if that kind of stuff happens.

Speaker 2: 33:09

Wait. So I understand that he built a load. Steven is the legit customer and Jimmy is the guy at the company that didn't get credit. He built a load under Steven and then, once the load was built, he tried to change the company name to Jimmy.

Speaker 1: 33:26

So he this is like he didn't even get that far, like I guess the good thing is like someone's trying to pay us and you know, but that's how. So it could have been worse. It could have been the customer that we denied gets an invoice and just doesn't pay, or the customer that got denied.

Speaker 2: 33:45

You find out 40 days later.

Speaker 1: 33:47

Never gets an invoice and just doesn't pay us and we have an outstanding balance. But in this case, like someone's trying to send us money and we you know. But in this case, like someone's trying to send us money and we you know. But anyway, we end up like he tries telling me like oh, you know, I don't know who that company is. And then his story changes and it's like he's like oh no, they're actually partnered companies, the one I built the load under and the company it's for. But it should be listed under the company that got approved. I'm like all right, send me your load tenders. So we get his load tenders and they're literally tendered from the company we denied. Further, the tender has us listed as a carrier and has verbiage, treating us like a carrier. And we're like dude, like we're listed as a carrier here. And he's like yeah, he's like we did it as a co-brokerage. And I'm like do you have a co-brokerage contract? Sends over a co-brokerage contract that he signed on our company's behalf. And I'm like dude. So like, needless to say, like the guy's not working at our company anymore, like we took care of that, but like we got a mess to clean up and the whole.

Speaker 1: 34:48

This is a day like we we talked uh, we did an episode, I don't know, last year um with matt perkins talking about, like the risk of agents. Right, and this is one of the things is like, this guy comes in, we vet him, we train him, we get him um acclimated to our, our processes. Next thing, you know, like he's running loads for customers that we've denied. Luckily we're getting paid on them, but then he's signing contracts that we have not seen or approved. He's taking, he's like using, he's treating us as a carrier.

Speaker 1: 35:25

And then and this just like adds fuel to fire we get like a notice from like this collections company that like there's a load that was like triple brokered and this dude apparently claimed he was going to pay the invoice on it under our company and he had. He hadn't even worked with us yet whenever this load was moved. So it kind of seems like the dude got himself in a mess at a previous company and was like, let me go find a new home, I'll have this great story and I'll just bring all my mess over to them, get it cleaned up and whatever. Luckily, like we have layers and layers of like processes to, like you know, find this stuff early and deal with it instead of like finding out six months later.

Speaker 1: 36:12

So yeah that was like the biggest, the biggest headache. But I'm curious so like this brought up the discussion that this week we're like how do we verify with a customer that it's legitimate? Because I've seen situations in the past where, like, there's, you know, the customer's denied and they just run under somebody else and try to change it. I've seen that one. But I've also seen and this was years ago at a different company someone came in as an agent and set up a customer that was legit but had the invoices sent to an email that wasn't correct and either them or a friend of theirs was behind that email address. So they, the running fake loads that don't actually exist, they're getting commission on them. The customer's corresponding like oh yeah, you know, great delivery, blah, blah, blah, and then the invoices don't get paid and we call the customer and the customer is like, who are you guys like we didn't ship any of those like. And we're like well, here's the email. We are like that's not our email domain. Like, and we're like well, here's the email. We were like, that's not our email domain.

Speaker 1: 37:15

So we had this discussion about like, how do we verify when a customer gets set up that, like they're a legit customer, the loads are legit. We're not getting scammed in some like scheme here. And I'm like, I'm curious like your processes on like have you ever run into the like that's a pretty layered scam? Right, if you were to go that far with it. But I'm curious, like what your process is on verifying like, not just the credit checking but like verifying that like, loads are legit, customers are legit. All that because we talk a lot about our carriers legit but like we even had one and not to change the, you know take a left turn here. But you know we had that, that inbound lead that you never get Right and they're like we got to move this blah, blah, blah. And it was. It was a fake customer basically trying to steal cargo. But I'm curious, like, and we caught it and it didn't happen. But I'm curious like what your process is or what your thoughts are. I process is or what your thoughts are.

Speaker 2: 38:15

I'm just verifying the validity of a transaction and a customer is legitimate. So going all the way to the beginning and this is also something that I've had to do in multiple W-2 brokerages, where TMSs typically will allow you to limit access to employees pretty standard and making sure that nobody can build a customer but a certain amount of people is the first thing I would suggest anyone does. If they haven't done that, Don't allow any of your brokers to just build customers. And there's two reasons for this. It's not necessarily a lack of trust. It's sometimes brokers are ambitious. They're trying to move freight and get new customers.

Speaker 2: 38:57

So what I've seen pretty frequently are hey, customer just prospect just reached out, they got a load to move, I got to move it right now they either build it under another customer and try to change it, Yep. Or two, they just build the customer and then request credit. And in that scenario I've seen a lot of issues where one, that customer gets denied credit and they've run three loads that week or four loads that week for like 10 or 15 grand and now you have no credit. Now you just got to hope that customer pays, which is a risk. So that's the one thing you want to avoid.

Speaker 1: 39:31

I've had that one happen too, where they just don't even sign them up, they just run the load. It's already picked up. I need credit and we're like what? Why would you do that? You know.

Speaker 2: 39:39

And also like it creates a lot of back end work for your accounting department because they go to factor that and go like what do you want me to do with this invoice? So now they got to stop doing what happened and then take the steps to correct it, which sometimes works. Sometimes you just end up hoping they pay you. So in our CRM I added this field to where, like, I use a TO. Now it's really effective because what a.

Speaker 1: 40:04

TO does.

Speaker 2: 40:06

ATTIO. Actually, ryan over at Genlog started using this when they switched from HubSpot to this CRM. I switched recently and the thing that is one, it's way easier to set up and two, you can put custom fields in there very easily. That work and also everything integrates. So, like it creates a company and a person record for everybody you email. So in HubSpot you've got to add that company in person. This just creates them. You got to add that company in person. This just creates them. And then I can create fields like my fields and my CRM now say like is this a shipper or carrier? Cause it records everything, so you know which one it is to. It says credit approved. It's just you can click a box hey, did I get credit approved? And then is is this set up in our TMS? Then it's how many truckloads a week do they ship? Full truckload? Ltl reefer all the equipment has drop downs. I was able to add. I added all those fields in like 10 minutes. And RFP when is there RFP? So it was way easier for me to do than what I've tried to do this in HubSpot.

Speaker 2: 41:05

But long story short, that credit box is important because, like, we need to know, was that done so like we factor through triumph. Did we get it back and what is the limit gets put in there? Because the next issue that I've run into is not all factoring companies are two-way integrations with TMSs, like most of them are one-way, meaning it'll send the invoicing data to your factoring company, but their outstanding credit balance doesn't get sent back to the TMS. And what you then need to make sure is that your credit department, even at least weekly, goes in and adjust that credit line. Because another problem I've run into related to this similar topic is hey, this customer has $25,000 in credit. How did we run $75,000 worth of freight with them? Oh, because the TMS is what limits your load building based on the credit line, but your factoring company doesn't send that information back to your TMS, so you have to manually go in there and again, ideally you want that live, so you don't basically let your customer borrow a bunch of money from you that you don't have approval for, because now that creates other issues, because the factoring company won't always invoice if they're over their credit line, which means you ran a load today. Your factoring company doesn't want to send an invoice until they pay that down. That might be 30 days from now. Now your customer doesn't get their invoice until 30 days from when the load was ran and now 30 days do you get pay. So it screws up a ton of your accounts receivable not managing your credit lines in your TMS to make them match your factoring company.

Speaker 2: 42:42

It's the second thing. Yeah, third thing is how do you and what you do as procedures? One of the procedures I learned and I liked at TQL because this helps accounting a ton is I make sure every load tender if it comes in an email. I don't care if it's a text message that they get for loads, because customers will send it in WhatsApp sometimes like hey, pick up this load. The procedure is brokers got to just send an email to that customer and say please confirm below load details, rate what the load is and what are the requirements. That email gets saved and uploaded into the TMS. Why? So that when we create the invoice for the customer or get the carrier bill, we go and can see without having to go into someone's email and reach out to the broker for the tender. It's just right there. Okay, what was the rate? Did that match the bill rate? If they don't match now there's an exception in the accounting person can go to the broker Like, hey, why don't these match? I?

Speaker 1: 43:40

can see the email. That's interesting. So you, every broker, had to get and upload the tender for every load. Yes, okay, yeah, like we require them to get it but not upload it.

Speaker 2: 43:59

It makes the accounting work a little smoother, because now they don't have to communicate with a broker, they can just look very quickly what did the customer send this for and what am I billing them for? And if the numbers are different and that happens a lot, detention, accessorial, whatever right. You look at the notes in the TMS and go, oh, detention. Well, now the second email comes in. If you have put detention in, there needs to be two things there One, the POD that has the check-in and check-out times signed, because almost every customer requires that. So like that's just the first thing. The second is there needs to be an email that confirms the communication and the proof right.

Speaker 2: 44:38

Yes, both. There. The proof is the POD and then there's got to be an email in there from the broker that says requesting detention. Here's the POD, the check-in and check-out times and then the customer's response. It says approved, paid and the amount that gets saved in there. So it's the tender and any approved charges, because that's what we're going to attach to the invoice when we send to the customers.

Speaker 2: 45:02

Because I would say the overwhelming majority of issues we have with customer payments, the loads that are aging. When I go through our weekly aging with our accounting, more than half of them are additional charges that weren't approved. Hey, we had a layover. Oh, I saw three yesterday. It was like hey, we charged the carrier wanted $500 for two days, layover. Customer approved one day, 250.

Speaker 2: 45:24

Broker accidentally billed the customer for two days even though the approval was for one day. Well, that invoice just didn't get paid because customer goes nope, these numbers aren't right, we don't pay it. I see it at 32 days and I'm like I look at the load and I'm like, okay, two layovers. I immediately go in the TMS and go did we get it approved from the customer? We did get it approved. But then I looked at the number in the email and I'm like, yeah, but they approved it for one day and you billed them for two days.

Speaker 2: 45:50

This is why this invoice didn't get paid when all the other ones did, and that makes it so much faster for us to resolve and get money into the brokers. It should be because I now don't have to go to that broker, stop him in the middle of his day, ask him to go find that tender. He's got to remember what happened, find that email from 35 days ago. Now. He's got to find the second email where he either did or didn't get that approved then. He's got to read through them now.

Speaker 1: 46:16

Three people just wasted 35 minutes to see what I could see in 30 seconds I remember, um, this is probably like 10 years ago, I had a guy that did bag weight on certain produce and potatoes, onions like whether or not it was intentional, like here's an issue that came up and it comes down to a very similar situation of like the numbers, so like, let's say it was uh, bags of potatoes, for example, like 50 pound bag of potatoes, for example, like 50 pound bag of potatoes, and customer is going to pay based on how many bags of potatoes were loaded.

Speaker 1: 47:00

So maybe it's like yeah, they loaded, you know 50 pound bags, they loaded. You know. Let's say they're going to say, hey, we'll pay you X amount if you load to 42,000 pounds. Ok, they end up only loading 41 000 pounds, right? So then the carrier gets a rate confirmation for um, you know, they're gonna get paid in bag rate too. So then when it ended up happening is like we invoice the customer for the full rate, they adjusted the carrier's rate down to the actual rate, so we have an inflated margin now.

Speaker 3: 47:32

Yep.

Speaker 1: 47:33

Broker gets paid their commission 30 days later, or 35 or 40, whenever the customer ends up paying, they short pay. And now we're short paid like I don't know a thousand bucks or 500, whatever, whatever the amount is. And we had a when this all like, when it all shook out, we realized like this guy was overpaid like eighty thousand dollars over the course of like six months or something like that. And we're like, dude, like this is an accounting nightmare. We've overpaid you, your customers short paying, overpaid you, your customers short paying. And you know the excuse came back of like oh, we must have forgotten to like adjust the customer rate down. Sorry about that. And it's like well, you didn't forget to adjust the carrier's rate to the actual, you know loaded amount because they got paid correctly. I'm sure that carrier would have loved to been overpaid, but they weren't.

Speaker 1: 48:26

So, like you know, this is the stuff that, like, whether someone's a w-2 and they're in your office or they're a remote worker or an agent or whatever, like these are the risks that you run with um, you know bad actors and like I have heard horror stories of like chicago area and like chattanooga, like think about areas where there's a high concentration of freight brokerage companies and these guys, like they get fired from one and they go work next door and you don't, like you don't actually vet them before you hire them or like, if you're, if it's an agent, like before you actually like contract them.

Speaker 1: 49:02

Um, because there are legitimately people that are out there that they make their living on scamming companies, right, and sometimes it's like a full-blown, like intentional scam and sometimes it's like really small little things where they're gonna nickel and dime you here and it's so small that you don't notice at first until you know six months later, like, oh my god, like uh, I remember steven telling us about like an accounting nightmare where, like uh, dudes were getting overpaid. Stephen, if you want to unmute and run through that briefly, but this is the stuff you've got to watch out for.

Speaker 3: 49:35

Yeah, and ours came down to just a system issue that I pointed out probably three years ago at this point. And so we use McLeod, just like Nate does, and, for example, wire codes and lumper fees. One of the issues that the system had is when we would issue a wire code for the carrier to pay for a lumper.

Speaker 1: 49:59

It wouldn't create an expense from us, it would just it would bill the customer so again and then profit is how it looks right, like if you pay 200 of a lumper and it doesn't get taken out. It looks like they made an extra 200 bucks on that load right, exactly.

Speaker 3: 50:13

And and then, because it's a wire code, the system default for mcleod is to create a deduction. So now you're even more inflated because you're short paying the carrier, whether or not they're supposed to be short paid, and then you're not accounting for that expense. On the on our side. Yeah, so the um, the previous manager, wanted to like offset it by. You know, everyone tries to duct tape or, like you know, fix their own tms system instead of consulting with the people that built it.

Speaker 3: 50:46

Yeah and that's that's like one of my biggest pet peeves. And so his thing was oh, we'll just create a negative invoice to us as the company. Now your margin is correct. Well, the cloud, and probably every TMS system, is not built to handle a negative invoice. So now we've got a stack of loads with negative invoices that we can't reconcile because the system's not designed to handle that um, yeah, it's a nightmare luckily we got it fixed, but that wasn't after.

Speaker 3: 51:20

you know I was involved, so there was, you know, yeah, thousands of dollars in lumper fees that got yanked back out of paycheck the way we always do.

Speaker 1: 51:29

It is like a lumper, for example. I'll give you both scenarios, like an advance versus there's not an advance, given the driver just pays for it. So if the driver pays for it up front and doesn't take an advance from us and let's say the lumper is $100, the way we do it in our system, this is like, if done correctly, this is how it would work. Like you would say all right, I'm going to add a $100 pay item titled lumper to motor carrier and I'm going to add a $100 charge item to customer called lumper. And it evens out exactly the other way, when this is the more common if they take an advance out.

Speaker 1: 52:09

Exactly the other way, and this is the more common if they take an advance because they don't want to pay out of pocket, we issue let's say we issue an advance for $100 to the carrier for a lumper right. The money is sent, it automatically deducts or, I'm sorry, it automatically adds the or deducts $100 off of the driver's total final pay. And again, we've added the $100 extra pay in there it automatically deducts $100 from their final pay, resulting in the net final pay of their line haul. And the same thing for the customer it would add the charge onto their side as well. So that's how it should be done. But again, if you don't set up your processes accurately or properly within your system, this is the stuff like, stephen, like you just said. Like three years later, you're like trying to, you're trying to and to Ben to your point, like you're trying to fix something and you're wasting everyone's time doing it right.

Speaker 2: 53:06

Here's another one that I found with agents was there is an agent a year ago or two years ago, I remember um, technically, the brokerage had a policy that they didn't really utilize, which was like, if you don't get a POD and within I think it was five days or three days, like they could charge them $250.

Speaker 2: 53:28

And the point was more to incentivize the Charge the carrier like deduction Charge the carrier a deduction and the point wasn't to make money on it, it was just to incentivize the carriers to get them in faster so they could invoice quicker, right. But this agent was just putting them on all these loads, just 250 deduction, like the next day, 250 deduction on the carrier, no paperwork, right? So at that agent model they got paid on loads delivered for that week. So they're getting commissions on these fat margins of an extra 250 on every load. But then every time the carrier, right would get short paid. They were reaching out to the brokerage and going where's my money? I'm going to file on your bond. And the brokerage is like they would look at the load and go, yeah, the carrier, send the POD. Three days later We'll pay you. So the the the agent is getting paid on all these fat commissions and then a week later those commissions were basically given back to the carrier because they never should have been deducted in the first place.

Speaker 1: 54:36

And you already paid the agent.

Speaker 2: 54:38

And you already paid the agent, the commission, on all these inflated margins and then every week they're just reducing it. So it's one creating a whole bunch of work and problems for the accounting department, resolving these, talking to the carriers, researching, giving them the money they should have gotten, and then the agent is just taking fat commission checks every week as if he's looking at his numbers like dude. I made like 15 grand this week but then when I started comparing what he was doing to like a month ago, I'm like wait a minute. I kept thinking this guy was making like 15 a week in GP. But when I look at his, when I look at last month, the average is like 7k a week and I'm like, if I look back three months ago at 7k, I'm like how is this guy looking like every week that it's happening he's making 12 to 15. But when I look in the back, I'm like it's like three quarters of that.

Speaker 2: 55:32

And I started looking at the loads and I'm like, oh my God, we're reconciling and paying him on these fat margins and then giving this money to the carriers that should have got in the first place and, to your point, it sometimes takes a few weeks or a few months until you kind of notice those little things. But it's a lot of money, Like it added up to probably 20, $30,000. And now, if that guy just leaves, you have no recourse. What are you going to do? Sue them so, like you, this is the risk you have when you've got agents that are operating their own business underneath your business's name and reputation.

Speaker 1: 56:08

I'll give you one, one more quick one before we wrap up here. So I was telling you about this a little bit off air had a project. We set up drop trailer. We were renting running trail I'm not going to give the name of, like any involved parties here, just for, like you know, out of courtesy. But we're renting trailers from a certain organization, staging them at a customer's facility and, um, the agent is, you know, basically getting power. Only carriers to you know stage these trailers and then, once they're loaded, they're hauling them.

Speaker 1: 56:49

It's a great business. It's a very, very good, profitable project. If you do it correctly, a bunch of disorganization happens, stuff is missed. This person doesn't understand pricing very good and is overpaying carriers. We end up at a loss and we, you know we press pause, take a knee, have a conversation months ago. We're like, hey, we got to like fix this and get it in the right direction, Get it fixed. We're starting to be profitable, we're digging out of it. This person just decides the other day because now, with the losses, the broker has to like we have to recoup those, so we're holding a portion of commissions every week, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 57:34

And the broker is like financially strained from having to like make that. Now they're like I've got to dig out of this hole. Every time I make a dollar, I'm only making 50 cents because I'm giving half of it back to my, my debt. Um, and I kind of like see the writing on the wall like what if they just quit and walk away from it? And that's what happened.

Speaker 2: 57:53

What was the total number?

Speaker 1: 57:54

It was like $40,000 or something like that.

Speaker 2: 57:58

How much got paid before they left? Did you get back the?

Speaker 1: 58:00

total was like $55,000 and it got like a big chunk of it got recouped, but still like we've got this hole and so this person quits. Keep in mind we have trailers that we're paying for that are just out there throughout the country. Further, we have a contract with the provider of these trailers that we have to provide I think it's like 90 days notice before we want to cancel that agreement. Further, we have a 60-day notice with this customer before we cancel their service contract. Otherwise, we can be held financially responsible. So now I'm going to try to make, as you would say, turn, a bad situation into a positive one. My goal is like all right, well, I've got other competent folks that can take this and actually run it the right way and help us out.

Speaker 1: 58:58

But the whole big point here is like, when you allow someone to just start running a project, you have to remember there's a risk of like what if they just walk away from it? And they this happened to us this week. But we've got, you know, some folks that are really strong in this area and we can help them out and transition it. But like, hopefully you know that'll be the the positive silver lining in all of this but like we've got a mess on our hands to try and clean up.

Speaker 2: 59:49

Right Two things. Right Two things, three things I think of. Right is the time of your risk, right. You always have a risk that any agent you have and also unfortunate events in their family, and they're out for like weeks at a time and there's not always enough staff to be able to pick that up in a lot of companies, people like you know.

Speaker 1: 59:59

I don't want to be morbid, but people have died Like they pass away. They have a stroke, heart attack, car accident, like that stuff can happen.

Speaker 2: 1:00:05

And I think a learning lesson I have from that is that anybody running any project, someone else in that organization, needs to understand it, because if, for whatever reason, they are out of the office for an extended period of time, the information can't just be in their head, so it either needs to be written down in a document that a manager can access. A manager should at least understand what they would need to do if they had to take it over, because if it's just them, I've seen this happen at big companies too. Like in TQL would happen like somebody who's just gone, and like they didn't train anybody else on this because that was their job security, and then that person's gone. Nobody even had access to the TMSs, couldn't log in, couldn't get into these systems, didn't know where trailers were, there was no reporting or it was saved on a different computer. Like I've seen disasters related to only one person, knowing that the second is the time right. Like as an owner of a brokerage, like I'm signing three month contracts, but, to your point, this guy can leave at any point in time and I got a 60 day contract with the shipper. So like I am committed to a timeframe that is different than the contract with my employee. So I need to make sure I at least have some plan worst case scenario right To be able to transition if I had to.

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

Right and then like the third thing is like what you said is that like, though, in most of those situations, like there's a way to turn it into a positive right, like if you can calm yourself down, walk away from this work on something else and come back to it with a clear head, where your emotions are at least a little out of it, there's usually a way to turn it into something better than it was Right and some long-term win.

Speaker 2: 1:01:45

Because I feel like that is the one thing that I see over and over again, just as an entrepreneur in business. Is it like anytime something shitty happens? The first thought now cause I've kind of developed that habit for myself is I'm like there's some way to turn this into something better. I don't see it yet, but I know it's there. Clear my head, do something else, come back and I'm like there is some way if you re-approach it usually that you can turn that into at the very least, a break, even if not a better win than you had, because now you've got the right people doing it instead of the wrong. You have people that have less risk to leave, and you might make more out of this. When it's all said and done, get that money back, and then some by doing this correctly.

Speaker 1: 1:02:28

So, Well, we unpacked a lot there. What do you got, Steven?

Speaker 3: 1:02:31

There's one thing I want to touch on. It's a conversation that happens more frequently than I thought would have to happen as an adult with common sense. But the concept of risk and the value of a dollar just goes over people's heads constantly.

Speaker 1: 1:02:50

Well, it's not their dollar. You know what I?

Speaker 3: 1:02:53

mean. So like kind of going back to this issue, right, we have a similar issue where there's a an agent that their customer is over 120 days and they got paid a bunch of commission and we're we're pulling part of that commission back.

Speaker 1: 1:03:09

Yeah, we can't pay commission on money we never received Like it's. That's a very simple concept.

Speaker 3: 1:03:14

Right, and to the agent's point. You know well, yeah, it's, they didn't pay, it's not my, I still ran, I still made the money. It's like, well, so there's no money to pay you with, so we have to take this back. But then on the opposite side, it's the conversation with the ownership and the people that you know pay the bills. It's like, well, we're going to take it back a hundred percent of what the company owes. It's like, well, there's a level of risk that you guys took that you're paying for. So, like, if you know at that level you got to return 50, then you have to eat some of that cost. You can't just take it completely out of them.

Speaker 1: 1:03:51

And I understand that it's very common and if you're going to go the agent route right, like let's say, let's say an agent is 50, 50. I'll just make it round numbers. A lot of times you see 60, 40, 65, 35, 73, but I'll just say 50, 50, right, that's a partnership gains, gains or losses. If the company loses money, you're losing your portion of it. Some companies have ways to mitigate that. We actually just signed up for credit insurance for certain named customers Because we want to be able to open the doors and the floodgates on credit lines, but we want to be able to protect all the parties involved.

Speaker 2: 1:04:39

So that's a partnership.

Speaker 1: 1:04:40

That is how being an agent works.

Speaker 2: 1:04:43

And I think it's important, right, whether you're an agent or a W-2, it should be shared along with what you're willing to give. And again, if I've got a broker that works for me and just say they're cradle to grave and they get 25% guess what? They're on the hook for 25% of the losses. I'm on the hook for 75. Why? Because that's exactly the risk return that we agreed to. If I've got an agent or they're getting 70% profit of their GP paid out, if there's a loss, they're paying 70% of that. I'm paying 30 because that's exactly what we agreed to. When things go well, I get 30 and you get 70. When things don't go well, I'm going to pay 30, you're going to pay 70. Because in a W-2 world, I I don't.

Speaker 2: 1:05:27

I think also, like the decision to make that risk is important and who pays it? Right? Like if I'm working at a company like TQL, I didn't grant them a credit line. The credit department did. I had no say so in that I didn't decide to give them a hundred or 150. I didn't look at their income statement and balance sheet. I didn't look at their credit report. A whole other department decided to lend this company 250 grand If that company doesn't pay me. That was your poor decision over there credit department people, not mine. You didn't involve me in it. You made that bet, not me. I should pay none of that in some of those scenarios, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:06:04

It. Just, it all depends on how like we've had and I don't want to go too deep down the rabbit hole, but we've like the ones. We look at them all like as a case by case. But we've had like situations where, yeah, like credit department approved that we're not going to hold you accountable, but we can't pay a commission on it because we didn't get the money. But then you have the ones where it's like credit said no, you pushed back 10 times, we decided to bend for you and said fine, and then it didn't go as expected, which is exactly what we expected, but you didn't expect. So, yeah, now you're gonna have ownership in that, so like. But you have to have those conversations like I've had, um, in the past like we'll tell an agent, um, we can approve this, but you're taking full risk on it. So if it doesn't go as expected, you have to own 100% of it or, more commonly, you're going to own your percentage of it. So yeah, anyway, this is the. We've kind of got a mixed bag of things.

Speaker 2: 1:07:04

It's a good conversation. It's a good episode.

Speaker 1: 1:07:06

But this is, like you know, hopefully learn from the three of us our situations and our experiences here. Learn from what we've done wrong and our ideas on how to do things better and what to do properly, and don't make you know those mistakes yourself, Cause they can be very, very costly. So, cool man, Good discussion guys. Uh, Cool man, Good discussion guys, Ben.

Speaker 2: 1:07:27

Final thoughts Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.

Speaker 1: 1:07:35

And until next time go Bills.