The Future of Freight Payments: Outgo and DAT | Episode 296

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome back for another episode of the Freight360 podcast. We have a special one today. We've got some of our friends from DAT and Outgo, which we'll talk about here in just a little bit Big news there. But if you are brand new, you've got a whole library of content episodes, youtube videos, blogs all on our website at Freight360.net, or just go right to YouTube and look us up there. You'll also find a bunch of downloadable products some little helper guides, dispatch checklists, produce calendar, some model contracts. You've got the Freight Broker Basics course if you're looking for training material for you or your team, so make sure to check that out. Share this with your friends. Do the whole like, subscribe. Comment on YouTube. We've gotten some interesting comments on the YouTubes lately, so send them our way. Whether they're love or hate, it helps the algorithm, so we appreciate it. Ben, what's happening in Florida today? Man? Anything good.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Nothing too terribly interesting. Nice long weekend for Memorial Day Watched a little bit of the Indy 500. Didn't watch the end of it. Watched actually quite a bit of the French Open and I've never actually watched that much tennis, but my daughter and I starting to play this year I watched quite a bit of it. It was actually pretty enjoyable.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Nice. Well, hey, we've got Marcus from Outgo joining us and Ken from DAT, who's been on numerous times. So, ken, you've introduced yourself enough times and you've got quite the X following. So people know you. But, marcus, we haven't had you on the show before. So if you don't mind, just real quick tell us. You know the audience, who you are, what you do, and we'll get into the whole story about this big news in today's episode. But just a real quick background.

Speaker 3: 2:08

Awesome, well, great to be here. Thank you, nate, thanks Ben, awesome to be here. So I'm I'm a CEO and co-founder of Outgo. Outgo is a fintech and factoring company in the freight space, and so we were just acquired by DAT just about seven days ago maybe, I guess, a week and a half. So we started Outgo five years ago to transform how carriers get paid. You know they care about finding work and getting paid, and we saw an opportunity to really transform the back office suite and financial services to help them run their business more profitably and efficiently.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Awesome, we'll appreciate it. Well, we're going to get into that exciting news and the whole story behind that in a little bit here. Ken, what's the latest with you, man? What? First of all, congrats to the Ohio State University big dub earlier this year.

Speaker 4: 3:03

Yeah yeah. It was pretty, pretty awesome. We got to go to the tennessee game. I took my boy to the tennessee night game and froze our butts off, but probably the best sporting event um I've ever been. Previously that would have been when we beat the patriots as a stealer fan and the afc championship game. There you go, but this, this was a different level, being in a college stadium at night in the week before christmas nice.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Um. Well, on the. On the topic of uh sports, we'll just hit on it real quick. Um, I know we're not in uh nfl season yet, but as a buffalo bills fan, it's really, it's. It's funny. So they're they're doing a Hallmark movie about the Bills. It's coming out this Christmas.

Speaker 1: 3:46

So I think they did it with the Chiefs last year, but they filmed it this past weekend, so like I think it was like the Saturday before Memorial Day or Friday and Saturday. So they took like 2000 fans as extras, packed them in a couple of the sections at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park and it's they had to make it look like it's a late december game in the snow, so like everyone's dressed up in uh like winter gear and everything, but ironically it happened to be like 40 degrees and cloudy in buffalo um in late may. So, uh, I guess it worked out in their favor. But, yeah, you, you can see uh, you can see the bill. I think there's like five players from the bills that'll. They'll be featured in the movie, um, but it's some hallmark love story.

Speaker 1: 4:29

So, in other news, in buffalo sports, the uh, if you're a lacrosse fan, uh, my buffalo bandits just won their I think third straight national championship this past weekend. So um way to go bandits. Indoor lacrosse is like wildly, uh, entertaining to go to. If you're like if yourosse is like wildly entertaining to go to. If you're like if you don't follow the sport, you just go and there's pumping music the whole time and playing lacrosse, so yeah.

Speaker 4: 4:52

EA released the cover athletes for the NCAA game today. Oh who we got Jeremiah Smith for the Ohio State University and Ryan Williams from Alabama Nice.

Speaker 1: 5:06

I did not catch that one.

Speaker 4: 5:08

When's the?

Speaker 1: 5:09

game coming up.

Speaker 4: 5:11

I don't know. I might pick up a copy just to put on the wall, because I think the extended version has Ryan Day and Caleb Williams on too, but I'm assuming it releases in the next month or two.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Yeah, let's see. Oh yeah, here it is EA College Sports Football 26. Ben, what do we got? Anything like golf or any other good sport. You said the Indy 500, right?

Speaker 2: 5:36

Indy 500, I didn't see the end and I don't actually know who finished, and I was watching some of the French Open, but that's not over, I don't think until like next weekend. It's like what is that Tennis?

Speaker 1: 5:46

Yeah, tennis on clay.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Tennis on clay, so it's like Roland Garros is the one, the French Open, then they have the Australian Open, wimbledon and then US Open, like the four big tournaments Gotcha. It was pretty cool, though, because Nadal, I guess, retired this is his first year not playing and he won 14 of them there, which is like insane. I mean like I think the next person had won like two or three, and he's won there 14 times over his career, so like Monster on clay.

Speaker 2: 6:14

Wow, Insane. I was curious, Ken. What do you think? I think Aaron Rodgers is going to end up at the Steelers.

Speaker 4: 6:20

I mean, I hope not. I think they should give Will Howard a chance.

Speaker 2: 6:23

Yeah everybody in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3: 6:25

I hope so.

Speaker 4: 6:27

And get Will Howard a chance and then, if he doesn't pan out, you draft Arch Manning or Nussmeier out of LSU. The problem with Steelers fans I belong to two of the most entitled fan bases in the world Because Steelers fans like they need to just go like 2-15 one year and get a quarterback.

Speaker 1: 6:44

You guys are stuck in purgatory right now.

Speaker 4: 6:47

You're like making playoffs but not getting draft picks Tomlin, going 9-8 and then getting just obliterated by the Chiefs in the first round of the playoffs is like not, I think, like the standard.

Speaker 3: 6:57

But you have DK Metcalf now. You have DK Metcalf now.

Speaker 2: 7:01

Yeah he's the only receiver.

Speaker 4: 7:03

We have on the roster.

Speaker 2: 7:04

Got rid of Pickens.

Speaker 4: 7:06

They're trying to get Chris Olave, which then you'd have Olave, jack Sawyer and Will Howard. I don't know, I mean they'll probably still be second in the division, but I think the prospects are better for the Buckeyes this year than the Steelers. That's my bold prediction on today's show.

Speaker 3: 7:23

It's like every year, the Steelers. That's my bold prediction on today's show.

Speaker 4: 7:25

It's like every year. Well, yeah, there's a few years where the Steelers Remember. The Steelers were great in my lifetime. The Steelers were great during the middle of the Trestle era where the Buckeyes were kind of middling about a little bit.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Yeah, interesting. Well, we'll see. I was talking about it with my wife earlier, like we're already planning like when to take our kids to like kids day for preseason and I'm like man, it's like only a little over two months away from being back in the stadium, so it'll be here before we know it. They will. I like to try and enjoy the the few summer months that we get.

Speaker 4: 8:08

I'm sure, ken, you're in the same boat. You know you're in Ohio, right? Are you in Akron? Yeah, I am. This is the worst. It's been bad weather since the day after Thanksgiving, I'm not kidding Like it's been the worst stretch of weather in my adult life.

Speaker 1: 8:15

I feel very I could probably say we're on the same page. In Buffalo, because it has been we had like a couple of like teaser warm summer feeling days and then it's been like consistently like a lot of rain, like a ton of rain and like just not warm, like not warm at all. Um, Northwest that's the.

Speaker 3: 8:36

That's the standard out here.

Speaker 4: 8:39

It's like you could tell I got a little sun. Yes, there was the first nice day we feel like we've had. We walked into Memorial Day Parade and now it's supposed to rain for the next six days.

Speaker 3: 8:47

So yay us Yucks it's supposed to be 86 here tomorrow. We're swapping weather patterns.

Speaker 1: 8:57

All right, so, ken, give us the latest on the market. You and Ben were having a good little dialogue off air beforehand, but before we talk outgo, I want to get your take on. You know, where have you seen things? We we've, like historically done like an annual um show with you where we talk about, like either how the year went or the upcoming year will be or it would expect to be. We didn't do one, I think, in like 18 months. So I'm curious, like what's's the what's the state of the market overall? I know we get a lot of, you know, weekly stuff from Dean and from you guys. Big picture, though, like we're just about mid 2025. I don't think anybody thought we'd be where we are right now. Still, but what? What can you say? You know where have things gone? Where do you see them going, like on the biggest level possible?

Speaker 4: 10:39

Yeah, I mean it's just incredibly stuck right. I mean it's as indicative of equilibrium as you could possibly get. I don't think the market's trending down, it's certainly not trending up, it's just stuck. So we had our executive symposium in Phoenix last week. 80 or so top execs from probably what's called the top 50, top 60 brokerages very similar sentiment. So you know, maybe we're getting two to 3% on RFPs if they're lucky, like very lucky but the spot market is just absolutely holding steady at where it's been largely for two years now.

Speaker 4: 11:15

Road check week I think everyone, especially the loudest voices out there on social media thought 200,000 drivers were going to come off the road that don't speak English. That wasn't the case. It was just like every other road check week. I made a joke this morning, right, that all of a sudden, these 200,000 mysterious drivers they spent road check week and Memorial Day learning English and now they're proficient again because the markets come right back to where it was and it's just. That's what happens when a market's at equilibrium. Just think of like it's buoyancy, right. When the market's over capacity, it's like a dead weight in the water and when it's you know, when it's way under capacity, it's floating above the water. Right now we're just kind of riding the waves and if we get tropical weather or a polar vortex or road check week, the market responds and then immediately snaps back to where it was.

Speaker 2: 12:03

So I have one question about that. So, from the macro perspective, right, it seemed like the past two years, right, we're in like the end of what a four-year, basically, period where the market hasn't really changed, right? Post-covid.

Speaker 1: 12:16

But like yeah, let's call it three. Three, I would say like spring of 22, right?

Speaker 4: 12:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:23

So the thing that I've seen, again anecdotally, is that, like any of those things like road checks, storms or anything that were even regionally affecting capacity like that normally did pre-COVID seem to start happening more now than they had. And again, is that indicative of enough carriers leaving the market that you're starting to see these things affect the market more when they do happen? Because, like the Savannah market got super tight last week to where, like I know they said, like the tender rejections went up like 28%, but like, again anecdotally, people were paying like literally two, three times the rate to get something moved out of there. I just don't remember that happening the last two years, right Of this period, where any of these things affected the market enough to see the lane rates ever move that much again, is that showing that we're getting closer to at least the excess capacity shutting the market, do you think? Or do you think it's just a bunch of things converging at the same time?

Speaker 4: 13:22

I think, like I posted about Savannah last week, I mean it just happened to be that they were caught flat-footed without enough trucks and the marginal units right, the last couple of loads within the last couple of trucks, or what everyone talks about, right? I mean, it's hardly ever. I don't think the first load out of Savannah last week raised an eyebrow. I don't think the middle 50% of loads raised an eyebrow. I just think, like on the margin, a lot of trucks have come out of the market. They're not continuing to come out though, right? That's what I think is really interesting. Like the last two months, we net added capacity. Now April always adds capacity, right. So I really think, for as much as being made about what's happening right now, it really isn't that much different than 2019 rounding into 2020. Had COVID not happened in 2020 and we didn't see a market recovery, we would have had the exact same conversations of how could we possibly repeat a year like 2019 again.

Speaker 4: 14:18

I was still in the industry in 19, and it was absolutely awful. I came to DAT in middle of December and it was like a Christmas present to get out of having to worry about profit margins and sending hourly folks home for 36-hour work weeks instead of 40. That was as bad as I could ever remember it being. 36-hour work weeks instead of 40. That was as bad as I could ever remember it being. And I don't know. Do people really like to sit around and compare the worst times they've ever experienced? How much does it actually matter if 2024, in the rear view, was worse than 2019? Not at all, and so I do think it's just too much volatility with the trade policies. That's what this all comes down to.

Speaker 4: 15:04

I think. Had we not had an absolute coronary in the trade policy department, we probably would be up seven to 10% year over year right now, just kind of plotting along anticipating some Trump tax cuts with a GOP House, senate and presidency, as opposed to like literally just continuing to hit our foot with a hammer over and over and over and over and over again. And that's not a political statement Like I don't care who you vote for, who you support. It's just like this is crazy. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, an alien or you've never even you know you've never spent a day in global trade. This is just crazy what's happening.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Yeah, it is weird, it's so my, my assistant, started working for me in May of 2022. And like I remember telling him, I'm like, yeah, I'm like you know, as we got towards the end of 2022, I was like, yeah, you'll probably see like the market shift into next year. And then we have a conversation like a year in, two years in, and now like three years, and he's like man, he's like where's this like this turn that everyone's been talking about? And then I looked back at the other day. I look back at like just national spot rates across like the three you know, your drive, your van, reefer and flat, and I'm like they've just been like flat for years now.

Speaker 4: 16:18

So I've never seen anything like it. I mean, honestly, prior to the last six months, I would have said this was not abnormal, right, because, like, the front end of the cycle was not normal. You know what I mean. Like it's like I hate to use a roller coaster analogy, but it's like going up or going up the hill and then being shocked when coming down was fast and going up a bigger hill meant you shot it, like, but the fact that it's stuck there is, I think, what's concerning even the most mild mannered Cause. I don't like freight sensationalism. I think you know that about me. Um, it's just that's. What's most vexing about the current situation is how stuck things are.

Speaker 2: 16:54

And that was the thing that, like, we've talked with Dean about. I think he was on like December, we were, you know, end of last year, somewhere give or take. And we were talking about, like you know, there's two. That's the tale of two carriers coming out of this right, you have the carriers that paid a lot for their trucks, that have to get break even at.15 a mile right, but also got a lot of COVID money right or banked a lot of money and saved a bunch and had enough saved for the rainy day. Then you have the other side of the market where carriers bought really cheap trucks and were able to bank money right and also borrow some money. Coming out of this, where he's like you know the operational cost. There's like two very different numbers where, like, some carriers are able to break even at like even a buck 90, a buck 95. Then you have this whole other section that is over two bucks a mile.

Speaker 2: 17:38

And he said the interesting thing is like none of them from what he was saying like, do you feel like has enough money in these coffers still after three years for a rebuild on any of these trucks? And he's like now we're reaching the mileage point and time point at which all of these trucks are going to need rebuild. So even if you got a cheaper truck, you're going to have to put in. And he knew the number off the top of his head. I can't remember what the rebuild number was, but it was significant. And he's like so if you don't have that in savings and you need a rebuild, you can't just keep driving, they're going to have to leave.

Speaker 2: 18:09

And there was his sentiment. It was, you know, somewhere around the midpoint of this year those carriers are going to have to exit the market pretty quickly because, like, they just don't have the money, can't borrow more money, because the market isn't good enough, their balance sheets don't look good enough, the income statement doesn't. How are you going to get a rebuild? You're just going to leave. And he was expecting a big mass exodus in the carrier market and like you just kind of haven't seen it. And then it's like on DOT week Leffler was talking about like it was something like 4% of carriers like didn't have any CDL whatsoever. And it's like are people just driving just with no CDL and just completely defunct equipment that aren't anywhere close to the service standards? That is keeping the rates up Because, like, economically speaking, as big of a hill as it was, they still should be exiting the market at some point, right To bring that capacity back up, or I mean, you know, the equilibrium back up.

Speaker 4: 18:59

I mean, the FMCSA is like the Cleveland Browns of government associations, right, like they are the absolute worst, right. You've got a guy who's, like, only claimed to fame as being on road rules, making a big deal about the English language proficiency thing, and again 20 some percent of commercial motor vehicles are unsafe at any speed. And then you've got again large percentages of folks who are getting out of service violations. I don't even know I was reading this tweet from Fuller which actually blew me away which is like they can't even be taken out of service because they're technically not commercial motor carrier drivers, like they're not even licensed to operate.

Speaker 1: 19:34

So there's actually no Because they never were authorized to yeah.

Speaker 4: 19:37

What do you think they're going to do? They're just going to go right down the road and hop into another truck, and that's what I do. I think it's changing a little bit, like it's a little bit of a moving target. But at the end of the day, over the short term which short term has changed in its definition a little bit Market rates are bound by the variable cost to operate, so literally the rolling costs go down the road. Over the longer term it will bake in the rebuilds and changing insurance costs and reinvestment and all that the problem becomes. We're all going to be very disappointed if this true recovery is a supply-driven recovery, because those are always very tepid and unexciting. And that's when you start to see a lot of turnover at the top, like large brokers consolidating or going out of business. Think like Celadon a few years ago. What you want to see is-.

Speaker 1: 20:22

You want demand-driven right.

Speaker 4: 20:23

Yeah, you want to see like this would be. Maybe I'm going to speak it into existence, but this is where you're primed for a demand event to shock the market like ELDs. You were coming off a really, really sluggish 16. Capacity had completely came out of the market and then you had Harvey and Irma, the Trump tax cuts and then boom ELDs, and it was like a demand. Covid was a demand-driven, again on the heels of a very weak capacity market.

Speaker 2: 20:52

If we're going to rely on the upward pressure on rates being purely supply-driven, we're going to be in for a pretty that caps out probably at 10% to 12%, if we're lucky, unfortunately, maybe we're lucky and it'll be both, but these carriers won't have to go out of business because they have a market-leading factoring solution.

Speaker 4: 21:13

now that they can acquire through DAT to manage their back office at well below their competitors from a rate perspective, what?

Speaker 1: 21:21

a fantastic segue. Yeah, so obviously big news, marcus. We've got you with us today, I guess. Paint us a picture. What's the big news? What happened? I'm sure Ben and I will have lots of questions and whatnot, but give us the rundown.

Speaker 3: 21:40

Yeah, so, fresh off the announcement on the 15th DAT acquired Outgo. Outgo is a fintech and factoring company that serves carriers and, like I said, we started five years ago. Carriers care about finding work and getting paid, and not a lot of innovation has happened around helping them manage their backoffs and getting paid, and so Alco built a software platform connected to a bank account that it's like hiring our software to run your AR department, and so it's reducing the costs, increasing the flexibility and speed that carriers need to run 24-7, 365. And so I think it's about putting them back in control of what it means to run a profitable business as much as we possibly can with, obviously, the services we offer, and putting that under the DAT suite.

Speaker 1: 22:39

I got a question on that because I wasn't very familiar with Outgo previous to this. I've been trying to learn about it. I'm sure this is probably good for anyone listening too. Before DAT's acquisition of Outgo, how was one of your customers using the service? So if I'm a small trucking company, for example, we'll say I'm the average size trucking company, which is arguably small how, how are they using Outgo? Yeah, so what does that actually look like on a like, a actual like load level or whatnot? How do they? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 23:15

Yeah, yeah absolutely.

Speaker 3: 23:17

OK. So when you're a carrier, you like, you have back office services that you hired around your business so you might have a factoring company. You get a bank and then you may have a separate way to make payments. And so we took, we looked at that back office life cycle from you know, you get your, your, your rate con, you deliver the load, you get a BOL, you got to send that in to invoice the broker and you know, then it starts a payment clock Typically it's around 30 days and and then that money lands in your bank account and then you make payments, you know, etc.

Speaker 3: 23:54

But obviously we know that, like running a trucking company, there's high operating expenses. You got fuel, you got payroll, you got insurance, you got your equipment costs paying for your lease or your truck payment. So a lot, of, a lot of carriers turn to factoring companies and those factoring companies are very traditional finance companies. They use off-the-shelf software and they hire a lot of people to run the invoicing process in the back office. And we as technologists I've been in technology for 25 years we look at technology as leverage and automation and really kind of use technology to transform how business is done. And so we took that sort of back office process. Think of it as like your AR department.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:40

And we built software around that process to automate the load lifecycle, and then we connected it directly with a bank account. Think of it as, like, I guess, most corner banks, they only offer treasury services for most small businesses, particularly trucking companies, because they don't know how to underwrite them, they don't offer them the credit. So you have your bank and then your factoring company, and your factoring company sends money to your bank and then you make payments. Well, we combine that all into one, so it's an all-in-one business suite that manages your back office. And so we turn your future payments, your receivables, into almost like an overdraft line that sits right behind your bank account that, as you OPEX your business, as you spend to cover fuel maintenance payroll, we factor on demand out of the receivables due to you by brokers you work with. And so we built the first in the industry fractional factoring product that actually spends as you spend out of your bank account. It takes money out of your invoices and you only factor what you need to fund your business.

Speaker 1: 25:57

Gotcha. So I'm going to break it down Barney style and tell me if I'm regurgitating this properly. So, traditionally right, like a trucking company, let's say they're not factoring, they're doing everything themselves, right, they are paying. Either they're wearing the hat themselves to do this, which takes up valuable time to produce revenue, or they're going to be paying somebody to handle their AR department, like you mentioned. So that's like you said getting the signed bill lading or POD, merging it with a rate confirmation from a broker, creating an invoice, sending it, hoping they send it to the right person, and then, yeah, then they wait 30 days. They get a check in the mail. They have to walk to the bank, deposit it to have access to those funds.

Speaker 1: 26:41

That's the traditional way. Factoring says hey well, just send us your paperwork and we can basically pay you a percentage of that at a fee and then pay the rest of it once we collect on it. And there's a whole. You know we've had lots and automation to shorten the uh, the distance between all those connecting dots and reduce the manual lift to actually do those tasks. Is that like, in a nutshell you got?

Speaker 3: 27:24

it we. It's like your AR department meets your bank account and, uh, and that's right. So, like a traditional factoring company, they do, they do your AR behind the scenes, but they give you cash immediately at a discount and then they collect on the receivable because they own it yep, and they send all that money to your corner bank account. That you spend as you go out goes different in that it all you run all your a, all your documents, so we can instantly process your documents and send out. About 95% of our invoices are sent within four hours of document submission, so that starts your payment clock right away and then you can access capital money from that load anywhere in the payment cycle based on your factoring fee. So it's a fully integrated AR product meets a capital product and it's like super flexible because you can only you only have, you can only you only get to use what you need and you don't have to use what you don't need, you don't have to access, and so you can save money.

Speaker 1: 28:31

I was going to say cause some factoring companies will say like hey, 100% of your stuff needs to, like you know, exclusively come through us. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3: 28:38

That's right.

Speaker 2: 28:38

So the two things and I have two things that I kind of wanted to talk about is one is what Nate just said, right Is? I used to see this when we first got in the industry. I remember going to TQL because I had some carriers and I'm like we're doing all of their business but yet we can't quick pay them because they're factoring company right. They're basically getting a quick pay from the factoring company and I remember running the numbers on just one carrier and I'm like they're exclusive, meaning like they've got to put every invoice they ever do with their factoring company and it basically becomes like it's like a revolving prison because like they can't get out because they're always spending right what is coming in and they're always owed the factoring companies always owed money behind them.

Speaker 2: 29:19

And I looked at I'm like they're getting, they're paying their factoring company with some like a hundred grand a month on just the loads we ran them and I'm like we could make even 80 of that grand. They would save 40, but we would have had to cut a check to the factoring company for like a quarter of a million dollars or half a million to buy them out of the factoring relationship to be able to do business with them directly and it's just like. It's like you end up with a credit card as a kid and you keep making minimum payments. You never get out of that debt. It's the same thing with a carrier.

Speaker 3: 29:49

Totally, you got. You got exactly right and I think we saw that. So my background is I've been in tech for 20 years, have built software. I started at Microsoft and then started companies about eight years later and you know, we worked at a company called Axon. My co-founder and I sold our first company. We want to build software that's mission specific that is used by people to change their lives. We serve law enforcement for five years by building them a suite of services around body camera and digital evidence collection, and so my co-founders then went to Convoy.

Speaker 3: 31:42

I was at Uber for three years and we got back together and we said, hey, we have this mission of focusing and we think carriers are really underserved when it comes to managing their payments in their back office. And we just saw this hamster wheel that factoring was that once you get off on that thing, you can never get off of it. And listen, some people need it, some carriers need the cash flow. You're an early one truck carrier. You're going to have higher operating expense needs, that you're going to use up maybe all of the receivables that you run on a weekly basis, but you can never get off of it, and I think that's why we wanted to kind of flip it on its ear and build software and a banking platform that said hey, listen, run your receivables through this platform, run all your loads, and that you can adaptively access the cash flow you need. And if you don't need it, that's cool, we'll charge you a floor rate and it'll operate more flexibly and it's not a one-way door.

Speaker 2: 32:44

And I wanted you to just stop there because, for the audience, what I want everyone to understand what that means is if I don't need the money, money, I'm not paying interest just to have it sit in my bank account. That's the way a traditional factoring company is like if you need it, you got to take all of it and you're already paying interest and fees on that. And what Marcus is saying is if I only take what I need out of my invoices, I'm not paying additional money to have cash sit in my bank account I don't need for my expenses and I'm flexible as in when and how I actually need to take it, meaning that money is cheaper, actually like you earned it, and you get to keep more of it.

Speaker 3: 33:17

Right, that's right, that's right. And I think, like we have a, we can get into the details, but like we have your top line rate and then your floor rate and like you can adaptively access the cash you need, which will lower your effective rate as you run your business. And again, like, if you need it, if you're running one truck and you need all your cash from all your loads, you could take it. But then let's say you don't need. You grow and you're building up your business, you can adapt how much you take in the future. Because again, it sits, the service we built. It sits right behind your bank account like an overdraft line that adaptively, like, as you spend out of your bank account, we cash flow your needs, whether it's payroll or fuel or maintenance so how does the money?

Speaker 2: 34:04

the second question is like the money that goes out to expenses, right, like in my head I'm picturing similar to like paypal in a sense that like they kind of sit together but they don't sit together in a sense that like so if I'm paying a bill as a carrier, is that coming out of Outgo or is that coming out of my bank account? Or am I moving all of my money expenses into the Outgo system to pay them directly out of your system?

Speaker 3: 34:28

Yeah, so so we're, we're, we're very flexible, so it's a with Outgo you get a full FDIC insured checking account.

Speaker 1: 34:36

Okay, I was going to say there's actually a bank component to this right. That's right.

Speaker 3: 34:40

Yep, we have a partner bank and you register your business entity with our banking partner and it's the tax ID number of the business.

Speaker 3: 34:50

So it's your bank account, it's all yours. It's got a routing number, an account number, and you can spend money out of that account just like you could a traditional corner bank, or you could move money from that account, your Outgo account, to whatever corner bank you're using. But I think the idea is that we have a debit card that is attached to that account and this using. But I think the idea is that we have a debit card that is attached to that account, and this is where it's really the differentiator is that you can submit a load and we have a four-hour funding guarantee for approved brokerages, where that money can become cash in four hours and spendable out of your bank account on your debit card. Or we have other, like Visa, direct payment rails. You can move money around and so you can pay whatever you need. Whether it's you pay off your fuel card, your insurance, you can pay it directly out of that account.

Speaker 1: 35:44

So like if I'm let's say I'm running a small truck, or any truck company for that matter. Instead of having to go to a broker and say, hey, can you send me a fuel advance, Right, my driver can just go to the ATM pull money out.

Speaker 3: 36:00

Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:01

Yeah, we have on their balance sheet, essentially their balance sheet, right.

Speaker 3: 36:04

Assuming they have either money in their bank account or they have receivables they haven't factored, they can. They can pull money directly out of the ATM if they need cash.

Speaker 3: 36:15

So they could frankly, they could use their Alco Visa debit card at a point of sale to factor on demand at a point of sale to factor on demand. Okay, so think of it as, like Outgo has a bank account and there's a debit card attached to it. It's a Visa sponsored debit card. You swipe wherever you swipe, we're in the authorization flow of that swipe and we can factor on demand for you Interesting.

Speaker 2: 36:42

So I want to point out too for anyone out there that's like thinking about this or trying to understand how and what this affects right, like my meeting after this okay is literally with the factoring company to go through our integration with our TMS, meaning like all of the invoices and BOLs that go over through. It is not and everything is fully integrated and it is not, I would say, straightforward to be able to see the difference between what you send into the factoring company and the cash that actually comes out of the factoring company. And I've been I mean, I've been doing this for 15 years and like we're going to go through this line by line, to go and look and see exactly how this happens. And I think for a carrier out there, like the ability to have this all sit in one place is not a small thing, like knowing that you're putting your invoices in and your BOLs and being able to see it all there and see what's hitting your bank account in one place is a very big difference from the way all of these operate. Now.

Speaker 3: 37:42

So, ben, this is exactly why we built the software the way we did is because we felt that there wasn't transparency within the space to see exactly where your fees were going, and we custom build a platform around your bank account that shows you down to the penny on every transaction, where the money's come from and exactly how much you're paying.

Speaker 3: 38:04

So you can go. Let's say you have a, you know you want to make a $500 payment out of your account and it just so happens we need to take $250 from one invoice and $250 from another invoice. We're going to show you exactly what invoice does those come from and we're going to show you the fees that you pay to access that cash. And it's like you can literally click down into the details to see what you paid and how much exactly when you paid it. Because we felt like there needed to be greater transparency, both on the cost of factoring but also on the fees around the movement of money that often get charged in this space, and so we wanted to build a custom software platform that showed you all the details you wanted.

Speaker 2: 38:48

And I wanted, like I was literally working on this Friday and this morning, like I have a background in accounting I don't I'm not practicing that field anymore, but like at least enough of an understanding that I should be able to follow a transaction right From my TMS to the bank account literally couldn't follow it.

Speaker 2: 39:03

I'm like could not go through line by line to see exactly the statuses of what was purchased, what was funded, what was held, which portions were and which was going to hit the bank account and when.

Speaker 2: 39:15

Because even when the disbursements come from the factoring company and we use one of the three largest factoring companies, like it's a bank, you still can't see it because it'll do disbursements but it does them in lump sums without remittances. So it's like hey, we dropped 15 grand in, but you can't trace to your point which invoices made up that 15 grand, which portions were held, which were fees and what does that actually look like on a per load basis? Like literally exporting them into Excel to try to find that and we still can't find it. Like it's literally what my meeting is after this. So it's like when you're a company that depends on, I mean, it's why you go to work is to generate cash to pay. The fact that most TMSs aren't integrated both ways and will feed information to a factoring company one way but not back the other way, so you can't even see this in your TMS in most cases.

Speaker 3: 40:13

Yeah, so you can export your bank statements directly out of Outgo. But that's why we started this. We did hundreds of interviews with carriers truckers that were like and we looked at the back office ecosystem getting paid and they're like factoring is just a one-way door that they felt like they didn't have control over. It was a necessary evil to run their business and we wanted to put more power in their hands and flexibility and control over their finances and I think that was the premise behind why we, why we?

Speaker 1: 40:45

started what we did, ben. We always say, like, when people ask about factoring, we're like I've used the phrase necessary, evil, um, the same way that you just did, marcus, and I always would say, like factoring is something that you should do until you don't need to do it anymore, right, and I think what the trap a lot of the companies get you in is that, like, hey, we're you're going to have, you're going to be required to factor a hundred percent of your invoices through us. So there really is no easy way out of it, whereas you have it sounds like. Well, I mean, it was not what you just said. You have the ability to to choose. You know, if you want to scale it down on how you're going to, how you're going to use the services, it's going to reduce your effective rate that you're paying. So that's right.

Speaker 3: 41:31

I think the bigger problem is that you know, I think banks just don't serve small, small trucking businesses.

Speaker 3: 41:38

They don't know how to underwrite them and I think that's created this need for factoring companies, because ultimately what factoring is is invoice underwriting. You can look at the history of a business and determine the creditworthiness of them, and I think that's easier to do the more trucks you have. But the same problem exists, whether you're running one truck or 40, is that oftentimes a bank won't even collateralize a business against equipment, especially over the market over the last few years, as power units are, you know, declining in value because we hit peak supply back in 23. So you know, the ability for you to grow your business working with credit from a banking institution is really difficult and I think you know what we see is that this your invoicing history. Whether you're a one truck or 50 truck carrier, you're working on a platform that really understands your business and that's the. That's our goal of providing a financial back office suite to just run a more profitable, efficient company just run a more profitable, efficient company.

Speaker 2: 42:50

And the irony is that, like small business banking is you have to put your bank accounts with me if you want to borrow money, because I need to see your money coming in and going out. Right, but to your point, the problem with the way it's been structured is that, like they're not built to lend money like to small businesses because they're incredibly hard to underwrite. Like, if you're going to underwrite a small business as a bank, the first question they're asking is what's your collateral other than this business? Not the truck you're driving, not your office, not your computers. Do you have a house? Do you own another building? And secondly, are you married and do they have a job? Because I'm underwriting their income and the other collateral to give you the money for this Cause.

Speaker 2: 43:23

I don't know what the business is doing and your point. And then, like, what I think is cool about Alco is like, by tying the bank account to it, you're giving them the benefit of ease of use and transparency. But also back to you guys behind the scenes. You have visibility into what the business is doing, the lifeblood how much is going in, how much is going out to be able to better service those people too.

Speaker 1: 43:46

Let me assist you on the receivable side. Is a carrier able to see like, hey, this broker is probably one you don't want to work with because of how they've been paying their bills. Is there like a credit checking? Or even with direct shippers too? Most factoring companies, including us, provide a. Is there like a credit checking? Or even with direct shippers too? Is there? Is there a-?

Speaker 3: 44:04

Most factoring companies, including us, provide a way to look up a broker to determine sort of their credit worthiness, their days to pay what they're like to work with. And you know we work directly with thousands of brokers, just like all these factoring companies. So we know who pays us on time and who doesn't, and we integrate that data into our platform because brokers and carriers can make an instant decision about whether they can factor an invoice with that broker. You know on Alco, and so the bottom line is like you know we provide that information both in detail via a search interface but then also directly on a load board for them to decide who they want to take a load from.

Speaker 1: 45:00

Is there a? I'm trying to think of an issue I've been dealing with. Hopefully it's an isolated incident, but we had a slew of double, triple, quadruple brokered loads that we identified and it's nasty and like we're trying to figure out who what belongs to who type deal. Is there like a fraud prevention piece to any of this where it'll help? So for Outgo.

Speaker 3: 45:31

I can. I can talk about what we've built at Outgo, but ultimately you know we've we built an integrated platform that is customer focused but under the covers. I talked a lot about how it's directly connected to the banking network because we're a fintech. But we've built three risk engines. We have a carrier engine, we have a broker engine and we have an invoice engine and those are underwriting brokers and carriers upfront when they join the Alco platform. And then when a carrier submits a load document, we analyze that load document with our invoicing engine, risk engine, to determine the carrier on the load, the broker on the load, and ensure that it's all legit and healthy in real time. And we have processes to go through and adjudicate and identify common forms of fraud.

Speaker 1: 46:27

But NetEase is like we built that into our platform as part of running sort of a FinTech and payments platform owner-operator, for example that he's trying to figure out like hey, you know, this says you're supposed to pay me and we're like, well, I have no idea what load that is. And you find out somebody doctored a rate confirmation and then like on top of it, like the bill of lading, they're not even the carrier that's listed on there and it's like you know. We'll try to help you get to the bottom of this, but unfortunately it should be a duty of yours to verify that, when you're accepting a load, that your company's name is listed as the motor carrier on that bill of lading, which is a legal document, right?

Speaker 1: 47:15

That's right, you probably have imaging that's reading that and catching doctor documents and things like that you know, doctor documents and things like that.

Speaker 3: 47:24

Yeah, Double brokering happens and we have customers that run into challenges where they didn't properly assess the paperwork and see that the you know the domain has changed and the contact has changed.

Speaker 3: 47:32

And we work with them in cases to try to work with the broker to figure out, like either hold payment and like also teach, to say like hey, look at that rate, does that rate rate? It looks like it's way above the market rate here. If it looks too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. You need to ask more questions about that rate. Systems that detect doctored paperwork, and so that's part of the process. But also it starts up front with the carrier looking and, like you know, challenging is that the right rate for this lane right now? And you know, I think again, this is why also, like you know, the connection with DAT makes so much sense is that if we're linking all these together, you can see there's going to be more opportunity to come of helping carriers make really good decisions about what loads are the best for them and, you know, integrating that into the load lifecycle from an AR and payment standpoint.

Speaker 1: 48:39

Yeah, like if rate view is telling you hey, here's your 50th percentile on this lane and you're being offered a triple rate. Triple that, that amount. Um warning, yeah, that's good exactly, exactly.

Speaker 3: 48:51

Like you know, spidey sense should go up and but there's all. There's so many subtleties, like in modification of documents, that you know it's hard to detect. Detect a slight character change on a domain. Obviously, we've seen FMCSA contact modification to make it even harder. But Net is like listen, it's a never-ending battle to deal with fraud in the industry. But the net is that we've had to do that on the payment side and continue to make investments there.

Speaker 1: 49:31

You mentioned the blue checkmark on DAT. I'm curious what's next, or what does this mean for everybody, with now DAT acquiring Alco? What are the changements? You know what are the changes, or I guess what changements enhancements et cetera. So you mentioned Blue Checkmark. Carriers are going to know right away this is a factorable carrier.

Speaker 3: 49:51

Yeah, it'll be a factorable load with via Outgo for that broker and you know, obviously we're we're just you know about seven days in, but I think the bottom line is like we want we want to bring the financial back office suite for carriers to run their business and connect it with the tools, the load board and the marketplace for carriers to make. They're going to make good decisions about what work they do and they're going to have a software platform that helps them get paid efficiently and those things are going to work even better together. You know, over the future. I think you know day seven it's about ensuring that there's, you know, tight integration across the two and I don't know that we have any immediate announcements to share like specific, like new features, but you should be able to find work and get paid really efficiently in the marketplace.

Speaker 1: 50:46

So if somebody, um, if they want to use Outgo and they're an existing DAT user, is it like they're automatically? Do they already have an account or is something they have to see?

Speaker 3: 50:57

Yeah, so they there's a, there's a website. They just go onto the website and they link and click through to factoring. They can also go directly to Alcocom and sign up to join the.

Speaker 2: 51:17

Alco service. How does that work for a carrier that already has a factoring company? They have additional steps.

Speaker 3: 51:29

It's typically.

Speaker 3: 51:30

What's required is that you need a buyout and this is because you're about normally 30 days ahead.

Speaker 3: 51:32

You have like a balance of the last 30 days of loads that you've done and because of the, the way factoring companies are secured, you know one, the the new factoring company would work with your old factoring company to buy you out of your uh, your loads or your contract and then migrate you over to the new platform. You know every company has a different um you know set of terms of what they allow and when they allow it. So you have to look at the terms of your factoring agreement to understand when you might be in the buyout window. Again, many factoring companies have long-term contracts that they retain you on. Alco is a little bit different in that we have no long-term contracts and you can leave whenever you want. I think we have a 15-day or day notice of of of transition, but when you decide you want to join Alco from another factoring company, you share with us your factoring agreement and then we would go through a buyout process with your previous factoring company.

Speaker 1: 52:39

Interesting Ben. You got any other questions?

Speaker 2: 52:44

I don't. I think this is really pretty cool and the fact that you guys have that that's, you know, kind of seamless in the background that allows carriers to work away from their existing factoring company into a new one, that all the money out all at once, all at the same time and just at the end of the day, like these numbers add up, like even like when you see, like from the brokerage side, it's like, oh, I'm only paying 1.2%, but that's not annualized. Like annualized, those numbers end up being like 12 to 16%.

Speaker 3: 53:18

You got it Totally. This is the challenge is that I think when you look at the discount fees that are taken out of an invoice, if you annualize that in the terms of APR, it's pretty high APR it's, like you know, north of often 36 to 60 percent, depending upon you know what the what the percentage is, and so it can get quite expensive.

Speaker 2: 53:41

And think about that like, for every thousand dollars you make, right after you pay all your expenses, you're hoping to keep 200 of it. Right Like no, you're giving another half of that to a factoring company. In some of these instances, to your point. And it's like if you can reduce that number, right, that's just more money you get to keep that you've already earned, instead of sitting in some static setup that was set by a factoring company that everyone just has to do on every invoice all the time. Right Like? You're just not keeping enough of your own money.

Speaker 3: 54:10

In those scenarios, I feel like and here's the other thing about that. I think technology unlocks more value in that we you know carriers need speed and flexibility and transparency. You need money 24-7, 365. And you want the flexibility to only take what you need, because you don't want to overpay for funds. It's like you don't want to take out a loan you don't need.

Speaker 2: 54:38

You're borrowing your own money.

Speaker 3: 54:40

Yeah, yeah, you want to run a vision business and I think the technology platform we've built really puts the carrier back in control of their finances and you know whether it's you just want to factor and run your entire business and take cash flow or you want to use our software as an AR department, like we felt like there was total automation capable there in the market and we want to put more power in the hands of carriers to just run their back office more efficiently.

Speaker 1: 55:12

Yeah, it's like you don't. If you want to go buy a car for, let's say, 25 grand and you're taking an auto loan out, you don't take a $50,000 loan out, you know, and pay interest on that to buy a $25,000 car. It's like, whereas if you're factoring, even if you don't need all the money right away, and you're forced to put a hundred percent of it through at your three to 5% rate, like, yeah, you're, you're, you're paying fees that you otherwise shouldn't have to pay, and it sounds like Alco is a great solution to that with being able to hey, when there's that month when you've got a big expense and you do want to maximize the amount that you can get access to, you have the ability to do that. But the other one, you don't need it, you can, you can find that happy medium. So it's kind of like you know, your solution helps companies grow at whatever speed they are growing at, and every company operates individually. Right, it's their own story with their own you know growth trajectory and all that.

Speaker 1: 56:08

So that's good, that's. That's a. It's an interesting concept. I, I are, you, are you guys like the first? Did you like trailblaze this? It's like.

Speaker 3: 56:19

Yeah, I'm really proud of the team and what we built. We were the first ones to bring FinTech. It's called FinTech, it's basically connecting a bank account to software and the opportunity to really bring what I would say is fintech and AI for automation all together in a suite that really gave carriers leverage to run their business more efficiently.

Speaker 1: 56:56

Nice, well, that's cool. Ben, you got anything else on this? I'm excited to see how this all, like where it can go, because I feel like you know, this is the beginning of what could be. You know, I have like a million ideas in my head of like how you can use similar technology in other applications in our industry.

Speaker 3: 57:17

So, be cool, we're excited. Actually, when I first started talking to Ken was a couple months ago now. We just talked about the vision of what could be to bring Alco under the DAT umbrella. No-transcript.

Speaker 1: 57:54

Ken, are you, do you have any direct involvement in any of this or any any anything to add in that we didn't hit on?

Speaker 2: 58:02

I always, I always think of you.

Speaker 1: 58:03

I'm like he's the numbers guy. He's like the, the analytics guru yeah, it's, it's been so.

Speaker 4: 58:09

About a year and a half ago I took over corporate development at dat right. Roper, our parent company, has been pretty vocal about their interest in getting into kind of a diversified investment approach instead of just buying big platforms every year, taking on, uh you, 30% to 40% of their capital deployment on bolt-ons, which is what you would call Outgo or Trucker Tools, earlier this year. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know, I think it's probably more luck than anything, but less than a year and a half in to have two deals hit has been awesome. Everything out there is for sale right now. I think there's no mystery to any of your listeners that, um, I guarantee that every one of your brokerage listeners have at least one vendor that's in an active process to sell or raise money right now. That's not like a hot take or anything crazy. So it's going to be a very interesting year. I think it'd be really fun to do a corporate development redux at the end of the year on everything that and where everything landed.

Speaker 1: 59:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 59:10

Yeah, there's a ton of potential in this when my brain went the first time and I'm going to be anxious to follow up later this year on how things kind of come to fruition. But it's like you've got visibility now between the load board and the marketplace, directly to a bank account. Why that matters is they're federally regulated, meaning you're going to know your customer knowing where those funds actually went, right. So I think there's a ton of potential to increase trust in the market, increase trust in the marketplace to be able to verify these things. At the end of the day, everybody wants to just make sure that the people that perform the work get paid Right, and in the middle there's us Right. There's that as the marketplace, we're connecting the people that are needing the work done shippers, with drivers doing that work, and the more you can verify that the person or individuals that perform the work are the ones that got paid, the more work gets done, the faster things go, the more transactions happen, and I think that's good for the industry.

Speaker 4: 1:00:08

You got it large, yeah yeah, you've said the entire thing. It's like ben gpt I'll say right, like this is, it's not just going to be who's buying and selling. I think, like the consolidation play um, all of the swirl that happened during covet, all of the advancement remember pre-covid paper bill of ladings and pod's, and everything was still by far the more common approach to checks like yeah, I remember, um, yeah, you go drop your com checks.

Speaker 4: 1:00:35

We used to mail them to ourselves at fedex. We'd go out back drop them in a, um, a t-check box, whatever.

Speaker 4: 1:00:42

Those things were called the yellow envelopes, whatever they were and then mail them back for consolidated billing and, and so I think, like what's going to happen is you're going to see these players and for us, it's about end-to-end visibility, the data exhaust that comes off these businesses, but also just making things really easy for our customers, right, like we're only ever going to invest in things where we feel we have a very high, established relationship. You know, internally we call that like a right to win and so like with visibility, it just made a ton of sense with Truckers Rules, right. Our customers are on our platform every day, millions of loads getting posted, looking up rates. Sure, you want to see where your truck is and you get an industry leading solution to do that. Well, we have 100,000 carriers, almost a million and a half trucks, in our network. Of course, they want to help their working capital. It only makes total sense. So I'm very bullish on where we're positioned.

Speaker 4: 1:01:29

I think you're seeing a lot of other players out there. Try to make some sense of it, right. I think earlier this year you saw like a publicly traded bank by a freight analytics startup, which is, I think, a little bit of a different approach. So I think you're going to start to see these moves start to coalesce. The cart just bought three GTMS and they bought my carrier portal a little less than a year ago, so I think you're going to start to see a lot of these moves come together over the next 12 to 18 months.

Speaker 2: 1:01:55

Yeah, and even just the two you mentioned. I was just going to say like, okay, I booked a load through the marketplace. Can I see that the truck I booked picked up my load and can I make sure the truck that I saw that picked up my load is the one that I paid Right? Like, just very simply speaking, like the those three things together create so much value just being under one roof.

Speaker 3: 1:02:17

Yeah, I think you know we when we we talked about a bank account. You open a bank account and you go through a what's called a KYB process, know your business, where we thoroughly vet you know all the all the carriers we work with to ensure we're we ensure we've identified the entity and the key operators associated with that entity, and so that's a key piece of Alco in our onboarding process. But when you talk about settlement from a marketplace standpoint, it's like transacting on eBay or transacting on Amazon. You know that both sides of that marketplace, you know, are, you know, good for the good payment can happen and be transacted efficiently.

Speaker 1: 1:03:04

Is there anything like because Ben and I sit in the broker's seat like, is there anything that we will see an impact on from like day one? Like do we know? Like hey, this carrier, that I'm this truck I just saw on a truck search. Like they're, you know, verified through your service, or is that not? Is that, is that anything? Is there any, I guess, immediate impact of brokers or change for brokers, or experience wise, or no, no news today.

Speaker 3: 1:03:30

I mean I think we're bringing you know Outgo under the DAT portfolio and you know no specific. You know new features or announcements.

Speaker 3: 1:03:41

I think that's what I'm interested in the biggest one is like already you know, go, you know. Any load with that blue check mark means it's factorable on Outgo. Any carrier customer can go, apply for Outgo under the DAT factoring brand or direct at Outgocom, and that will continue to bring the marketplace side together with the payments and factoring side of the business. And I think that we're excited about what this means for brokers long-term too, and certainly we'd love to come back and talk more about that once we're ready.

Speaker 2: 1:04:22

That one you just said was huge, by the way, Like the blue checkmark from the carrier point of view right, Like if I can see that load that I want to run is factorable, like there's already trust there that I didn't have before.

Speaker 1: 1:04:33

Yeah it's like, hey, these guys have a blue checkmark that one doesn't. So yeah, if I'm a carrier, it's the same way as when you would see credit score days to pay. It's one more thing that's going to give a carrier I, you know, or I guess reassurance. Yeah, like gives them data to make a decision based on.

Speaker 3: 1:04:57

Yeah, and here's the other thing is that you know getting the best loads means acting fast, right and getting in touch with the broker, and when you see that you can know with confidence that you're going to be able to get paid, if you negotiate that load and land it and like it removes a step and simplifies the process of just finding work, getting paid, and I think that's what a carrier cares about. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:05:21

Yeah, I think just to kind of land this all, I think it might seem like we've got like a lot of not yet. So I'll just give you two interesting bits of context, because markets is a pretty modest guy. We broke Outgoes, we, the collective new company, broke Outgo's single day application record 30 minutes into announcing the acquisition and we announced it at 430 on like a Thursday. We broke the monthly record Marcus by the end of that calendar day, correct?

Speaker 3: 1:05:47

That's right, that's right.

Speaker 4: 1:05:49

So these guys are like training. I'm going to probably be processing lead forms by the end of the month.

Speaker 4: 1:05:53

The whole executive team is going to be sitting there processing. So like, that's part one of it. Part two this has been a really great experience. So my job is out there. You've got to find these deals right before you can even start working on whether they make sense. And so Marcus and I started talking probably nine months ago, and it's like, wow, this is really really cool. But amongst everything else, it's like then we touched back in again. It's like, oh, this is really really cool. And then Marcus met with my team at Manifest and it all came together. I won't I don't think I'll ever forget when it came together, because it was the weekend of my son's 10th birthday, because I remember being at his birthday party singing happy birthday to get the deal moving.

Speaker 3: 1:06:37

So what, marcus, was it like? Seven, not even seven weeks from when we decided to do the deal to closing it? It was incredibly fast. Yeah, I met with you and then Jeff, and it was like lightning fast.

Speaker 4: 1:06:43

Yeah, that's our advantage, right, roper is our superpower, our parent company. They do deals all day, every day. They do things fast. But the reason like we've got tons of ideas around data exhaust, like like verifying a carrier that's factored more than five or ten times that carrier's not fraudulent, at least not like systemically fraudulent. So it's just, I can't wait to get access to their database so I can start playing with the data. But they slapped my hand three times already in the last week, so we'll get there. It's just like let's get everyone laptops and employee credentials and make sure they have insurance before we yeah, before we go too crazy.

Speaker 4: 1:07:13

First, things first, yeah First thing is first, and then the next one Go to the next deal for you on making the deal happen.

Speaker 1: 1:07:20

That's, that's huge. Thank you, awesome. Well, we'll definitely leave a link for Alco in the description or the podcast show notes. So if you guys, alongside our normal DAT link, that's there. So if you, if you need access to the greatest marketplace in brokerage and trucking, the DAT link is there. And now Outgo will have a link in this episode as well. So make sure you guys check it out, sign up and can't wait to to be talking later this year with you can and see. You know what the year in review has looked like and, however, things all uh panned out. So appreciate you both uh joining us today. Marcus, did you have anything you wanted to wrap up with, or?

Speaker 3: 1:08:04

no, just come check us out. We're at, uh you know, datcom slash factoring or alcocom. Feedback Always welcome. Love to engage through carry. I want to reach out Love to love, to have a conversation, so awesome Ken, you got anything.

Speaker 4: 1:08:22

No, still reveling in that national championship. I think 10 and two is probably the prediction for this year, with a win in Ann Arbor.

Speaker 2: 1:08:30

But always trying to get out there and play some golf in my parka.

Speaker 4: 1:08:33

In May I got out and played a little golf. I got more windburn than sunburn, so maybe we'll get a couple months of summer, as you suggested this year.

Speaker 1: 1:08:41

Awesome, Well, always good having you on Ben any final thoughts.

Speaker 2: 1:08:45

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

Speaker 1: 1:08:49

And until next time go Bills.