Market Shifts and Innovation with Quikskope | Episode 302

Speaker 1: 0:19

Hey, welcome back to this week's episode of Freight 360. Nate is traveling down to Nashville, I believe, so Mike Fulham from Quickscope is going to be joining me. We're going to talk about the new release of the product, dig into a little bit about market conditions and fan of the show like subscribe, you know, do all that fun stuff we were just talking about right before we went into recording is Wimbledon semifinals. Just basically, I guess were set as of like an hour and a half ago and you were asking me well, it's Sinner and Djokovic, they're going to play Friday's time, still TBD, and then Fritz from the US, who's ranked fifth, is going to play Alcarez on Friday. So really pretty cool semifinals.

Speaker 1: 1:04

And you were just asking me about Djokovic and why he was ranked sixth and I mean I think part of it is just he's probably playing less tournaments. I don't follow like the whole year versus tennis and honestly, like I've only really been watching tennis for like the past four or five months since I started playing again, but I mean I think he's 38. But I mean, and Wimbledon, like he's been playing great. I mean like the only two people that they think if he's on top of his game that can beat him, are number one center and possibly Alcarez. So I think it's going to be a great you know semifinals him playing center on Friday.

Speaker 2: 1:40

I've seen Alcareaz play a few times.

Speaker 1: 1:42

That kid's really good, he's a monster After.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Federer and Nadal started retiring, I kind of lost track of everything.

Speaker 1: 1:48

I always like Jock but he is good.

Speaker 1: 1:50

I mean he's got the most of anybody you know grand slams. I think he has 24. I think Federer has 21 or 22. And I think Nadal he's gotten in the high teens, maybe low 20s. I'm going to look it up. But because I was asking my tennis coach this the other day, I'm like you know he's a huge Federer fan and Federer, like, might be considered the best ever, but he definitely has less grand slams than Djokovic and I think the reason, looking up Nadal grand slams, I know nadal was the best on clay. So nadal is 22 in total and he, I think it was 14 in a row. He won the french open rolling arrows on clay which is insane.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Yeah and um, federer, let me see how many federer federer 20. So Nadal and Djokovic have more. Djokovic has the most and I think he just broke the record for the most consecutive semifinals, like yesterday when he went into the match, or two days ago when he went into today's. But I guess it's because Federer dominated on grass at Wimbledon, nadal dominated on clay but Djokovic dominated on hard court, and there's just more grand slams on hard court because the Australian Open and the US are both played hard court, which is probably why he ended up with more is, I guess, my guess. But to your point, I haven't followed tennis long enough or extensively enough.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Nadal also was always hurt. He was so big, you know, he had a big frame that yeah, I just don't think it held up as well as Djokovic or Federer.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Yeah, and I think in like 09 or 10, as somebody was telling me like he had really bad shoulder injuries. He was basically out like an entire season and he definitely wore out faster, I think, than the other. But I mean Djokovic looks fantastic, I mean for his age.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Watching him today, like I mean mean I can't remember the kid he beat today, but like he's got to be like damn near twice his age and he looked fantastic still playing, yeah, yeah, and he actually he fell and there was an injury timeout on the last point of today where his left foot slipped in grass, he went down into like a full split, like I really thought yeah, I thought he might have had to lose the match on literally the final point because, like he slipped right before winning the final point to take it into the semis.

Speaker 2: 4:14

But yeah, if that happened to me, I wouldn't be walking for a month.

Speaker 1: 4:17

There was I forget there was one or two other ones the guy yesterday too, I can't remember his name, um, he was beating center, world number one, um, like pretty handily, and he had, uh, he pulled his peck on a serve and he ended up having to retire the match to center, which you know sucks.

Speaker 1: 4:37

I mean like yeah that close in Wimbledon to be playing that well against the number one guy in the world and I think he was up one or two sets to none Like he was really outplaying him, like it was significant.

Speaker 2: 4:53

And yeah, sucks to see that I always enjoyed watching tennis. I mean I didn't watch a lot of it. I watched, you know, the majors, the Grand Slams and usually the semifinals on. But ever since Federer and Nadal retired, I mean I've always liked Djokovic but I haven't kept up with who's next, but I did see that Alcaraz kid playing.

Speaker 1: 5:09

he's good yeah, I haven't seen him play yet he's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 5:13

I mean, he's really good and in fact it's even worth re-watching. The French Open, which was just a weeks ago, was number one and number two. So Alcaraz played center and it not only went all the way through best of five to the last, but then it went into. In fact I can't even remember what it's called, but it's basically like overtime right when, like they were tied and you got a win by two and it went into a tie break to decide the French Open. It was like the best way you could like basically script out number one versus number two, going all the way to the final and even like throughout it, like, if I remember, like I think Cinder was up like two, meaning like if he won one more it was over, and then Alcaraz won the next two and then they fought out the final one and then went into again. I can't remember what it's called. It's like, I think, in French, best of seven or best of 10. But it went like all the way to the wire. It was fantastic.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Yeah, that's awesome. Those types of matches are great for tennis. I forget who it was. It was years ago, but the tennis match was like what? Was it five or six hours long? I watched that whole thing. I can't remember which one it was.

Speaker 1: 6:24

I think they made a movie about that one, cause I saw a preview for it. I thought and I tried to find that movie. I could have swore it was called like the longest day in tennis or something and there was maybe a documentary and I couldn't. I couldn't find it but I remember it, but I don't remember like actually how it played out or like who was in it yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:48

Tennis is great. I don't play it, but I've always liked watching it. Yeah, a lot of fun really been enjoying it again. Mostly, I started playing because my daughter she's six, she started taking lessons and it's just fun to do with her. But like, really good exercise and definitely keeps your interest. I'm not a big fan of running on a treadmill or just doing cardio in any way whatsoever, so I'm like, oh, this is a good excuse to actually like run around.

Speaker 2: 7:06

Yeah, it's good exercise. It's functional too. I mean, the older you get, the more you got to think about moving your body in athletic ways.

Speaker 1: 7:12

You're gonna lose it you know it was funny, somebody I think it was my cousin was telling me this is like, statistically, if you think about it, like when was the last time you ran full speed or jumped like as high, like literally jumped, like almost as high or like too close to what you could do? And I'm like he's in his late thirties, I'm in my early forties and I'm like when I thought I'm like I literally can't remember the last time I ran as fast as I could until I started playing like some sport again. I'm like I don't know 15 years, maybe, not recently.

Speaker 2: 7:44

We took the kids for a walk the other day and we went to like a little playground near us and I was chasing after him on the playground and climbing up like the monkey bars and all that. And I was like oh my, like I did not have what I used to have and I need to be careful or I'm going to break something.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Well, that was a funny thing Nate and I talked about a lot Like that was my motivation, like a big one, to like wanting to get back into shape again. It's like I literally kind of just couldn't keep up with like a three-year-old and a four-year-old you know what I mean Like when she got around that age to just run around. I'm like I am exhausted and I'm like if I want to have fun playing with her for the next 10, 15 years while she's still a kid, like I need to like actively go and work out, and that's the other thing is like mostly just to avoid injuries and to be able to keep up with my kid is like enough motivation.

Speaker 2: 8:30

Yeah, exactly, yeah, I hear you getting old.

Speaker 1: 8:35

I mean there's nothing really news new in the news other than tariff deadline, two deals out of 90 that were promised. Who knows if they'll come through. But we can start talking a little about market conditions, cause I'm really curious what you're seeing. I mean you run a brokerage team. You are in the industry daily. I mean, what are you guys seeing in the market from like volume rate volatility, just from whatever perspective?

Speaker 2: 8:59

Yeah, I mean we don't do we really don't do much spot market work anymore. Most of the stuff we do is like strategic, long-term stuff, multi-drop, distribution based things, kind of asset light stuff. We don't really plug ourselves into a traditional brokerage market as much as we used to, partially because of the conditions. I mean, it's been like this for how long? Two years, almost four years, yeah, almost four now. It's crazy. So I think it's a combination of things. I think we're still oversupplied. I think in general, product flow has slowed down because of all these changes with tariffs and just post-pandemic potentially if you want to call it a recession or not. But I also think that prior to the pandemic, retail and manufacturing were always focused on staying in stock, which is very important to be in stock, and I think what the pandemic taught them is that you'd be chargeable and you don't really need to be in stock and you don't need to be a one-stop shop, and it's really about per unit margins rather than foot traffic and all this noise that they used to focus on.

Speaker 2: 10:07

So I think part of it is just the urgency. They used to drive rates up because they would do whatever it takes to get a truck underneath. It's also gone. So I think what we're dealing with is buyer behaviors have changed. Retail manufacturing behaviors have changed, probably in a recession. Retail and manufacturing behaviors have changed, probably in a recession. We are oversupplied and it's just creating this perfect storm that I don't think we're going to see a turn. I don't think we're going to see a snapback. I think it's going to be a gradual climb out of it and I don't know if we really should even expect traditional tight markets again. I think we're going to do a better job next time of controlling the highs and the lows. I think we'll see tight markets in short periods of time, but I don't think you'll see these you know, 18 month periods where it's just crazy. I just don't see it happen.

Speaker 1: 10:57

Yeah, and I think one I totally agree with, like the economic perspective, one I totally agree with. Like the economic perspective, like big picture, I tried to dig into this like a few months ago. If you like, look at post-COVID. What technically like I mean a recession for anyone out there is just two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. Basically, the gross domestic product of the country goes negative for two consecutive quarters is technically a recession, but that's really nuanced when you get into it, because consumer spending has a big piece of that and so does government spending. And when I dug into the amount of government spending post-COVID, if you theoretically could strip that out, we would have been in a recession. And most of government spending doesn't buy goods Like. It buys services, like health care and things it pays for salaries. So while there was a lot of money and the GDP was technically positive, it wasn't people buying things that was keeping it positive. It was the government pushing money into the economy, booing it the GDP positive, and I think a lot of that was an economic cycle. Nobody's going to get reelected when everybody sees that it's a technical recession.

Speaker 1: 12:11

But the reality was we have been in this economic position I think for the better part of four years and I don't think there's anything really on the horizon showing that any of the consumers are doing any better. In fact, everything I'm reading is the opposite. The consumers, going into the summer, are terrified of what prices will be as tariffs start to affect what they're actually paying in the stores. They're going to restaurants less, they're spending less money buying things. Automotive sales are down, like I mean I'm hard pressed to think in the past three or four years of any specific industry that has done well. I mean, even if you look at the s&p like there was somebody talking about the other days like if you back out like the top seven companies right and growth out of the s&p and you just look at the next 492 or 93, the s&p also hasn't been doing well and hasn't been doing well in the past few years.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Like the consumer, money is getting dumped into AI and tech, but like that's offsetting a lot of it and that's not creating a lot of necessary jobs. It's going into data centers. It's going into resources like possible investments into power plants and resources to power that. Resources like possible investments into power plants and resources to power that but like that money is not hitting people's bank accounts and then being spent at a restaurant or at Macy's, for example.

Speaker 2: 14:21

We have a lot in front of us as the consumer, because, I mean, just take the brokerage industry as an example we're not going to see margin expansion.

Speaker 2: 14:30

What we're going to see is it costs less to operate low-level business. We don't need as many people, so what's going to happen is the competitive build, too, is going to decrease, so you can maintain that market share, but you're also not going to need the margin profile to support the operation as you did, and I think the consequence of that is one. The brokerage space isn't going to see a lot of growth, but the consumers, who are likely going to have to either reposition or maybe find a new place for a job because of artificial intelligence and the emergence of AI and recovery and consumer spending or capacity constraints. I just see our efficiency, like as a country, our efficiency only increasing from here, you know. So I don't know, I just don't. I think brokerage is really going to evolve into security, old school, actual arranging of transportation and getting shippers in touch with the right carriers at the right time stabilizing rates, making the operation seamless and high service levels.

Speaker 2: 15:40

I mean, you even see it in the big retail space now how many of them are actually doing annual contracts. They might do six months, they might do three months, they might go to mini-bit Because route guide compliance during COVID was non-existent. Yeah, just, they all fell apart and they're really just why. Why lock in rates for a year? So there's really not a lot of opportunity for turmoil. And brokerage has historically lived in the spot market. Not that the majority of it is a contract business I'm not saying that. But what earns you new business and what earns you the best margins?

Speaker 1: 16:13

It's the fluctuations what earns you new business and what earns you the best margins. It's the fluctuations, it's the variability of the ups and downs that really opens the door that creates the service failures in the contracts, that opens the door for other brokers. The thing I would say is, like I was a whole lot of negative, I think, and both of us, I think, we're coming from a good place. I would say the thing that I think could create some of that volatility is like there's only so long that the whole carrier market can operate at the rate per mile average as they are, and a lot of the reason why they've been able to run a lot longer than typically is because there was a lot of that money that went out in COVID. A lot of carriers did really well, some banked a lot of it and had a big piggy bank that they've been able to live on, and I had.

Speaker 1: 16:59

We had Dean Croke on like a few months ago and he's like it's like really a tale of two carrier markets where half of them were able to buy trucks very cheaply Okay and had money from government subsidies, and the other half did really well but bought trucks that were more expensive at the peak. And he said we're now reaching that period where a lot of those assets are going to need full on rebuilds, like for the motors and things, and he's like there's not a lot of carriers that have enough savings to do that rebuild. And he's like, you know, there's only so long that a carrier, any of the carrier market, is going to be able to sustain a buck 70 a mile, a buck 80 a mile, when everything the trucking companies have to pay for has gotten more expensive from the tires to the engines, to the maintenance, to the drivers, is everything gets more expensive. In this country Things cost more. That cost operated truck is going up, while the rate per mile hasn't, and something has to give at some point and that could create some volatility.

Speaker 2: 18:01

There's also the fact that we're probably going to see a reduction in drivers with the new mandates and just this administration. I mean there's going to be a lot less drivers that come here to work for a period of time. I mean there's going to be a lot less drivers that come here to work for a period of time. And you know you look at the produce market or any market that has seasonal trends they'll bring in drivers from overseas or across the border and now they're going to have to meet requirements or at least be held accountable to existing requirements. That could strain the carrier base. But what I do think even if none of that wind promotes a healthier market for us I think that we're going through tremendous change in this space right now. You have the emergence of tech. You have shippers that some of the younger generations are moving into those decision-maker positions. They're a little bit less baby boomer negotiating I can't tell you what my rate is Got to get the cheapest rates. They're more partnership driven, visibility driven.

Speaker 2: 18:59

I think what could occur is that the traditional world where carrier and broker are at odds, broker and shipper, broker does whatever they want for shipper and then shipper doesn't care and passes it down the line.

Speaker 2: 19:12

I think what you're going to have is very transparent arrangements, more collaborative arrangements. I think there's an opportunity to create more accountability, which is really what Quickscope's aiming to do, and make these relationships a little bit less prehistoric. And, like you know, I'm going to get the carrier down a hundred bucks and I'm going to do this. I think we can actually be smart business people if we're, if we're smart about this and not going about it the old way, like I'm going to hold out till 6 PM on a Friday to catch the like what are we doing? What are we doing? There's much smarter ways to engage in this and the tools exist, and I think that's the biggest thing about this, because I think there's a space for all of us. I don't think we necessarily need hyper-tight markets to win. I think we need to go back to doing what the purpose was was to arrange transportation, provide service and security of that freight and bridge the gap between someone that needs work and someone that wants the work done.

Speaker 1: 20:30

I couldn't agree with that more. It's a good segue. So for anybody that hasn't been brought up to speed, hasn't been reading our newsletters or caught any of the other episodes, why don't we give everybody like a breakdown on what Quickscope is and what the new release is going to be like? Give everybody kind of like a background base level understanding on? I mean, you could start with why and how it came to be, but I think it'll be helpful for everybody's context to understand that too. It's a good refresher, yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Yeah, sure, so Quickscope. We started in 2023 and the goal of Quickscope was to address freight fraud in its simplest forms target theft and double brokerage or re-brokering, which I guess would be the politically correct way to say it. But ultimately, the whole team there's about seven of us we've been in this industry for a long time 15 to 25 years, depending on who you're talking to and I would say over the past six, double brokerage was becoming more of an issue. I think double brokerage always existed, but it really wasn't a big deal because it was giving the load to a friend that nobody really had to solve for anything. Now double brokerage has become a scheme where people are stealing money and screwing the carrier, and so much so that it's caught the attention of shippers. They're already dealing with massive amounts of cargo theft.

Speaker 2: 21:48

Yeah, so we said, can we solve this issue, at least for our own customers? So we went out and we built a product and the product works kind of like a trucker tools, where it's deployed at the load level and what it does is it tracks the driver to the shipper. When the driver gets within a certain radius of that shipper, quickscope deploys. Quickscope will ask them to take a picture of the side of the truck, it will timestamp it, it will geofence it, it will send the picture back. Quickscope cross-references that with what the broker or shipper has provided and if everything aligns DOT, mc number, things like that we will then release the pickup number, things like that. We will then release the pickup number and from there Quickscope kind of orchestrates the loading and delivery of the truck, providing pickup numbers at each shed when the truck gets close, giving them the quantities, whether it's case count, pallet counts, tracking them through transit, and you can even ask for verified updates in transit.

Speaker 2: 24:02

And it's been really effective. We've put probably 10, 000 different users through it at this point version one and we haven't had any issues. No, most often if we do run into a fraudulent actor, I think they're deterred before they take the load. You know, at tender, if you tell them that you know you're gonna have to get your pickup number through Quickscope, a lot of them will just punt. We have caught a lot at the picture phase, but ultimately we felt like we could do a lot more with Quickscope. So that's what version two is about and that we're really excited about. It expands our value proposition a lot.

Speaker 1: 24:41

So just to kind of reiterate for everybody right, like, basically, what's going to happen is you're going to log in, you go into the website or the user interface, you put in your load details, you put in the driver info. It's going to send a link to the driver. The driver is going to open that when they arrive within a physical location, meaning their GPS is close enough to that shipper. They are then going to take a picture of their truck at that location. That is going to determine whether or not the pickup number gets released to them, so that if somebody's impersonating that truck, if it's a different carrier, it's somebody trying to steal a load, they don't get the pickup number, they can't get the load. So it's really load level security to make sure the information is only going to somebody a driver and a carrier that was supposed to actually pick up that load. Right, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1: 25:34

So, when you, when you said could do a lot more. Tell me a little more about like what you mean. What were some of your thoughts around version one and how you guys saw you're going to be able to improve it.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Originally we were just going to provide it for brokers. Originally it was just to help them solve that problem. But the amount of shipper interest was pretty crazy. We got quite a few shippers reaching out to us trying to help them solve this problem. But there was other things that they need to solve, for they needed real-time location updates all the time pre-loading, during transit, after loading. They needed methods to not only collect and categorize documents in real time but they needed the ability to cross-reference them. An example might be a BOL Driver's supposed to pick up 1,500 cases. They submit the BOL through their phone. It immediately gets cross-referenced with the tender in our system and it says you know what? You're short 35 cases. So the truck hasn't even left yet. They haven't even signed the BOL yet. You know we can address those things Also the creation of BOLs and the collection of things like seals.

Speaker 2: 26:44

We had a couple of department stores ask. They had a lot of cargo theft and the seals were being violated. They wanted us to capture that in real time, categorize the document, save the document. So the documentation process and creation is a big part of it. Track and trace is a big part of it. But a couple of the shippers we work with have really demanding final type procedures where the drivers are going in dealing with volatile products you know could be perishable, could be expensive, et cetera. They're taking them into stores, they're merchandising them, they're then recovering reusable equipment and bringing it back to the facility. There's a lot to manage there. There's temperature monitoring. It's making sure that it's being stored. A lot of the deliveries happen before the store itself is open, so they use things like lock boxes to maintain a code in there. So what we're doing is just like we're mapping the pickup number. We're now containing the code to the lock box to get into the store. So only one individual has that in real time at all times.

Speaker 2: 27:47

And what it has evolved into is a platform that takes the lifecycle of a transportation order for a shipper or a broker and institutes a lot of basic TMS principles with inside the transaction benefits, like I said, the document collection facilitation, real-time tracking and a lot of custom things like the lockbox. The shippers have found a lot of value in it, partially because of its price point, ease of use. The big part about all of that is that we're not going to be collecting the data from a lot of like the competition does. I think a lot of the issues that we have with finding capacity today and qualifying that capacity is that we're trusting kind of these centralized sources, whether it be DAT or highway or carrier shore, whoever it is. Well, what they're doing is, as the brokers or carriers utilize them, or even shippers, they're collecting that information and then sharing it back.

Speaker 2: 28:50

When you and I started in brokerage, having capacity was a competitive advantage and these brokers are just like whatever you know, whatever We'll just like. I think it's kind of crazy. So we want to create very valuable driver level data, not carrier level, not bringer level, not shipper level driver level.

Speaker 1: 29:11

Should we go down to the VIN level?

Speaker 2: 29:12

Probably more to the CDL level. Like the CDL itself the person, not the truck. We can incorporate VINs and all that, elds and all those things, but we really want to get to better triangulation or efficiency at the driver level. We also want to give drivers the ability to get better business, not like, hey, you get freight matching. That's not where we're going. We have spent most of our time in the creation of version two, building out the value proposition for the driver. That is where we've spend most of our time, because we want to create a very collaborative chain between the broker, the driver and the shipper where people can be held accountable fairly. They can document things in real time and maybe not get taken advantage of for a claim here or a claim there or temperature. You just unloaded my truck and you're leaving it sit on the dock and it's refrigerated, or you're loading it and it's damaged. So we're using the video, we're using the phone to create accountability across this chain and listen.

Speaker 2: 30:15

For that reason I think there's a lot of shippers that won't want to use it, but the right shippers still. They want to do things the right way and drivers want good business, they want consistent business and as they do these things extra here, extra there. I need you to pull every day or I need you to go into the facility, unlock this lockbox, put the frozen stuff here, the refrigerated stuff there, the dry stuff there. They'll get compensated really more for that. So what we're allowing them to do is, as they effectively check boxes in QuickScope, we're going to give them a resume and that resume is going to be collected so that they can deploy it to get better business. Through QuickScope, we're also giving shippers and brokers the ability to tip the driver directly. So you bypass dispatch, bypass the carrier, you go right to the driver and tip them for extra instead of fines. There's a lot of stuff in there for the driver.

Speaker 1: 31:06

And I think that's a really good perspective on this. I've talked with Nate about this a lot and it's like I think if you provide visibility into the work that better drivers are doing, the industry would be willing to pay them more because it reduces risk. Right, like, if you think about it just from a very simple standpoint, right, like, you really have two risks every time you book a truck, is that? Well, I'll go three. Is that truck, the truck that you think you booked, right? Okay, carrier wise, that Quickscope addresses in version one, which is making sure this carrier is the one that picked up the load, before they can pick up the load.

Speaker 1: 31:46

But the other two risks that are as old as our industry is is this equipment maintained well enough to make it from pickup to delivery? What is the likelihood they break down? Right, the maintenance level of that asset is one, but the other big risk is what is the driver fitness? Right, and the information available is to that whole carrier, to the industry. Like, you can't see down to the driver level. So you might have five great drivers, four new drivers at a carrier and they have poor driver fitness, all because there's four poorly trained drivers that a company hired and didn't do what they should have done. The five very good drivers get penalized for a company's decision. They had nothing to do with Right, but yet you and I on the brokerage side, or even if you're a shipper, like if that vehicle is well-maintained, like you would be willing to pay more for a driver that is going to drive in a way that is safe for one and two, reduce claims. I mean the faster you're driving or the more haphazard you're driving, the more likely there is a claim that cargo is going to shift, that there's damage, Like I saw one like two days ago, and that one, to your point, was a shipper issue. They didn't load it correctly, wanted to blame it on the driver right.

Speaker 2: 32:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:57

And like there's two instances that come to mind that were recent, like one was if that driver could have taken a picture of a video of the truck when it was loaded. He could have taken a picture of a video of the truck when it was loaded. He could have had absolute verification, because that truck was then sealed, made it to the receiver, driver didn't have any issues, but yet it was damaged. But they didn't wrap the front pallet right. It was in the nose of the truck and it was just loaded poorly. And the receiver even said over the phone to one of our brokers like hey, like we've had this issue with this facility before, like we know this is pretty common with them.

Speaker 1: 33:27

You don't want to penalize the driver for something they didn't do. You don't want to penalize the trucking company by claiming their insurance for something the company that loaded it did Right. So you help protect the drivers. And then the other instance I was thinking of is when you said like um, helping product, like we had a claim. I don't know if it was us, it was somebody I worked with. I helped with the claim. It's probably like six months ago, it was a load of lettuce. And to your point about shippers that are unethical. Right, they loaded half the truck pre-cold lettuce the way they were supposed to right. The other half of the truck they brought a flatbed out of the field in the summer. Right.

Speaker 1: 34:02

Put it right in the truck and the driver. And here's what happened, right, like the driver um wasn't as great with english but was a really good driver like I spoke with him right and what he was saying was, like I pulped half the product, it was right, half of it was not. And he said clearly, like this shipper made me initial this, this, this was not the same temperature as what I already pulped. I knew they loaded half of this hot. Like this is not on me. Right and to your point, like the driver's doing what he's supposed to. That shipper basically strong-armed the driver into doing this right After he was probably sitting there five, six hours anyway waiting for the shipper to do what they were supposed to. Then there's a claim on the product and then it goes on the carrier and the reality was like that was never really the carrier's fault. That driver did everything he was supposed to.

Speaker 2: 34:52

The carrier did everything they were supposed to.

Speaker 1: 34:54

And like this is very I don't want to say very common, but it's pretty common. If you're shipping, like everybody that's been in the industry long enough knows, there are certain shippers that will intentionally load product they know isn't going to make it, that isn't pre-cooled.

Speaker 1: 35:07

Sometimes and again I want to be generous too yeah, I mean like I want to be understanding of shippers that are under constraint sometimes to get product where it needs to be. So they're oftentimes like under very tight timelines where they're trying to do their best and I don't want to say that like all of it is malicious, but but at the end of the day, like you don't want other people or other businesses paying the cost for a risk another one took Right, and I think when you've got a product like this that brings the visibility and can show this driver's doing what he's supposed to like, if I got a customer that has a load that is super important, or even just a lane, and a customer that they need better service on lower risk they can't deal with an issue at delivery or a claim most of the industry would be willing to pay them more and I think even all the way up the chain of the shippers. I can absolutely see getting on the phone with a customer of mine and being like, listen, this is important. I want to give this guy an extra 200 bucks. I'm going to literally pay this driver an extra 200, not the carrier, not me to make sure that this is done exactly to your specs, your standards Right, and it's like now that driver gets the benefit.

Speaker 1: 36:16

And then people in our industry like you and me, like you can see which drivers are taking more risks and which ones aren't. And it's not that you don't want to give freight to the guys taking more risks. It's like, okay, well, if you're shipping a load of pavers or you know asphalt shingles, that's not as important. If you're shipping $150,000 load of whatever frozen seafood or high claim risk, like you want to spend a little more but the industry can't actually give those more incentives or more money because like we can't tell the difference, like at the end of the day, all you can see is the whole trucking company. You don't know if that driver is better than the other one. I mean, the dispatcher is going to tell you that no matter what you ask anyway. So there's no real way to see into that opaque market side.

Speaker 2: 37:02

And why should a dispatcher or a driver be tied to a dispatcher? Like, if you're doing a really good job, you've amounted this proof of success? Like, wouldn't you want to make yourself available for the right job for you and your family at the right time? So we have put a ton of focus on that you had mentioned. He's forcing them to sign this BOL. We want the driver to be in the QuickScope app at that point in time and either record it or take a picture of it happening, because when he presses that button, everybody linked to Quickscope at the brokerage side, the shipper side, from you made aware they're going to be caught in the act.

Speaker 2: 37:34

And listen, there's going to be a lot of big shippers, especially the big retailers, that probably wouldn't want to deal with that. But that's not what we're aiming for. We're aiming for. We're aiming for the shippers, the drivers, the brokers that actually want to develop a collaborative transportation chain where they're not against each other, they're treated fairly, compensated for good work, there's no fraud and there's not a lot of extra energy dealing with the inertia of this document or this piece of communication or this question mark that nobody can see or feel in the moment because they're behind a computer desk and the appetite on the shipper side has been really good.

Speaker 2: 38:12

And it's not your big shippers, it's your intermediate size ones, the ones that have a really unique value proposition, that are growing the right way, that don't want a large degree of turnover, they're not going to RFP every 10 seconds and I think that's what Quickscope is going to assert. The drivers that want that, the brokers that want that, the shippers that want that, those that are going to play the wild wild west game. There's plenty of options. You know, it's just probably not. You know Quickscope.

Speaker 1: 38:40

And you know what else. That reminds me is Nate and I were working directly with a shipper on some consulting this year and one of the things they said and they're a very, very large company in the billions and they said the biggest issue they have is that like from a staffing perspective, it's very hard for them to get long term employees loading trucks. Like it's very hard for them to staff them with positions where people are there for more than a few years that really understand and can make sure they're being done. Cause we're talking a hundred percent right, like you're talking about checking a BOL versus what should have been loaded in the truck, versus what was. And he told us he's like it's just really difficult. Like we try to pay a little more, we try to hire the best people we can find, there's a lot of turnover in that position, and it's just he's like it's just been impossible in the 20 some years he's been doing this. He's like to eliminate mistakes loading a truck and he's like they're not intentional, they're just doing this all day.

Speaker 1: 39:38

Sometimes there's an order change, sometimes that information doesn't get all the way to the dock in time for that truck to get loaded right.

Speaker 1: 39:45

The broker has the updated BOL, the shipping department has it, right, the driver has it, but then the person loading it either didn't get that email or the email got buried, or they were busy and there's a mistake loading the truck.

Speaker 1: 39:58

Well, that's a cost to the driver, a cost to the shipper, and usually that isn't found to your point until it makes it to its delivery.

Speaker 1: 40:05

Now that shipper's got to book another truck, rework whatever the next load is, or pay to send a full truckload for a few pallets, right. The fact that that information can go all the way around and back to the dock with Quickscope to me eliminates so many issues. Right, because that order coming from the company to a broker, to the carrier, is going to be likely as close to 100% correct as you're going to get. That error is usually going to happen at the loading dock, where maybe their system was uploaded and updated, but, like they're literally loading a truck and they just didn't see that another pallet needs added to that load, right, but that information is not going to go all the way around back to the driver, where the driver is going to be able to scan what they put in his truck and quickscope is going to be able to say hey, there was supposed to be 26 pallets, there's 24 in here now, before the driver even leaves, he can walk right back over and be like, hey, just want to run this past your system.

Speaker 1: 40:58

check it one more time before I leave, because this is showing me that, like we didn't load everything Like to me that's a huge benefit.

Speaker 2: 41:05

Well, a lot of the causes of things being misloaded, whether it's too many pallets, not enough pallets, whatever is upstream issues right, it could be WMS issue, it could be whatever but there are issues caused exclusively by trucking and that's congestion. And the biggest cause for congestion is that I'm supposed to load five trucks in the next three hours, right, and they all have appointment times. One of them doesn't show and that product stage. So now you can take that product back.

Speaker 1: 41:36

The second truck or the third truck gets there when the first truck supposed to be there because of traffic.

Speaker 2: 41:40

So they're moving stuff around right, or a hundred different reasons. Everybody's panicked. There's a bunch of trucks showing up at the same time, so one of the things we're doing with quickscope and this is great for the driver's suit is we're going to be doing what we're calling remote check-in. So as the driver clears his verification, he's within x miles of the shipper. He's cleared his verification, he's good to go, he has an appointment time. We're going to notify the shipper or receiver that the truck is within striking distance and he's verified ready to go and that truck's going to be able or I'm not going to check in early, I'm going to stay here, grab a shower, eat something. They're going to tell the shipper or receiver that they're ready to go. So if somebody else no-showed them, they notice to bring that guy in early and the truck's off-site, not on-site doing this. That was actually a recommendation from one of our shippers, so we're trying to make things easier and account.

Speaker 1: 42:33

Yes, it's like that Literally at Disney we're like I don't have to wait in line to check into the ride. It gives me a time so I don't have to stand there for two and a half hours. I can go. I mean, from Disney's point of view, I'm going to spend money, I can go, walk around, I can do whatever. And then I show up then and to the trucking example. Instead of having whatever nine, 10, 25 trucks all jockeying around a small parking lot or by a loading dock, moving door to door, like they're letting the shipper know hey, I'm within 15 miles or I'm within this parameter. If you can take me early, let me know. And now they can manage who's coming in much more effectively and much more efficiently.

Speaker 2: 43:17

And it's going to be documented too. Detention is going to be documented without the driver having to call you and say I'm here, I'm waiting, and then the broker hangs up and all that crap. No, it cleared the geofence. He checked in, started. The goal again is that people that want to participate in a healthy partnership in the transportation chain shipper, broker, carrier, specifically, driver Quickscope is the place to be, and I think the best part about it is that we're targeting a price point and, yes, we can get very sophisticated with how it integrates the API, edi, to this system, that system. But we're also making it very simple to use. If you don't want to go through all those integrations, it still works. If you're not using EDI or API, it still works. We can use phones, we can use email, we can use text message. It's really just meant to solve the problem, make things easier for a good price, really easy.

Speaker 1: 44:15

Well, this is the thing that I want to make sure we touch on before we wrap right, because we have lots of newer brokers listening to the show. We talk to them all the time and most of the solutions to address fraud are one expensive, two require and three, take time to get in place for any of them. Like, and it's not a knock on any of them. That's how they're built. That's how they work right. The thing that I love about Quickscope is one you basically pay per load to use it. Any size brokerage right and correct me if I'm wrong can get an account, can just jump on, log in, put their information and decide, hey, I want to use it on this load. There's not like a yearly fee. There's not a fee that you've got to pay, that you're locked into for some long-term to see if this works.

Speaker 1: 45:02

And to me, like that was the thing when you guys first came out with this and Nate and I talked about it was, and even with you, I'm like this is the best thing about this is anybody can use this low or it's high ease of use, like literally any broker out there, and even if you've just gotten in the industry and you've been shipping things that are like low theft whatever, whether it's lumber or any of the commodities you kind of start within the industry.

Speaker 1: 45:26

You get one new customer that's shipping some like higher end material or high theft commodity. You don't need to fork out thousands of dollars to get any other solution Like you could literally just go and sign up for account for quick scope the first load that you're going to move with this customer. If you're worried about theft and you don't have all this other vetting software, you at least know that the trucking company you booked is the one that picked up the load right Like that alone, to me, is still one of the biggest advantages of quick scope is just ease of use. You don't need to be technically savvy, you don't need an integration team and you don't need to fork out thousands of dollars to protect a load. You're going to ship Shit. If you're listening to this in the next 15 minutes, you can get an account spun up and basically use this.

Speaker 2: 46:08

Yeah, we're super pumped about it, like I wish I could take you through the platform so you can understand, like all the little things, all the little nuances, because most of us are logistics operators. We know what it's like to use these platforms. They're just little things that if you were a logistics person, if you're a driver, if you're a shipper, you're going to love and ultimately, yeah, anybody can use it. We don't want to create a world where we're taking on a bunch of funding and getting as big as we possibly can and we hire a bajillion salespeople and we collect as much. That's not what we're going for. We're trying to build an awesome product that's easy to use for a good price and commit to the customers that want to commit to its mission.

Speaker 2: 46:47

If you're not in, then whatever, we don't have a lot of mouths to feed. We're not trying to be IBM here, but when I tell you the amount of artificial intelligence that's in this thing and all the nuances that it's enabled us to do quickly, it's going to have object detection, so you're going to know. You know if it's a fraudulent picture. You're going to know if, potentially, down the line, there's some things that we're going to be doing with video that will help with temperature monitoring and counting cases and pallets, like there's some really cool things that just you know half the memes that you see about freight brokerage or trucking will make them go away, because a lot of that noise will go away.

Speaker 1: 47:26

And I think that's like the best news for the industry. It's like who in this industry wants to see their shit stolen? No, full stop, it's everything.

Speaker 2: 47:33

Right, it's a cheap product. It's expensive Anything. Stop, it's everything. Right, it's cheap product. It's expensive anything.

Speaker 1: 47:37

If it's easy to turn over, they'll steal it yeah, I mean I remember and this is going back a long time but like one of the highest theft items that always surprised me and this was I think I heard about this like 15 years ago was like laundry detergent, like tide, and laundry detergent was like always a super high theft commodity.

Speaker 1: 47:55

And razor blades, for exactly the same reason you said, is like if you stole a truckload, you could literally sell it in a few hours or an afternoon basically anywhere in the country. Because if you're like, hey, this stuff's eight bucks a bottle, I'll sell it to you for four. I mean it's like stuff you see in the movies in like the 40s and 50s, where they're selling steaks off the back of a truck that they stole. Like. Like that stuff still happens today. It's not just the three or $400,000 truckload of TVs, it's literally things like a truckload of Gillette razor blades, down to a truckload of Tide you could be shipping If it can be resold cheaply and fast, like that's a target, that's quick cash for thieves, like they're going to go whatever they can resell.

Speaker 2: 48:33

Yeah, and that issue is something that we need to hold. Shippers accountable for, receivers accountable for, brokers accountable for the good drivers are not the problem. They've never been the problem. It's, you know, cyber criminals or people that are part of a criminal organization and you either stop that before the truck loads or a shipper or a receiver doesn't use their po number as the pickup number. Right, like basic things, just very basic. Most of the consults we get called into with these shippers it's like oh so tell me, you just asked for mom and the truck gets loaded. Yeah, it's been working for 20 years. Well, we need stuff like we've always done, mike.

Speaker 1: 49:15

We've always done it this way, right like the driver shows up goes, give me the load to you know, la, and we put it on his truck. You mean, we're supposed to use like a specific number before we give them. Yeah, eighty thousand dollars worth of our inventory. Yeah, maybe we should just at least check to make sure the company you're putting it on is the company that is supposed to be picking it up.

Speaker 2: 49:37

Right, yeah, like I've never like the truck, the truck drivers that do their job and have the intent to do their job the right way are not even remotely close to this problem. No, they're likely the ones that don't get paid by the broker.

Speaker 1: 49:52

And it's wild.

Speaker 2: 49:53

All we're doing is driving accountability more to the driver, more to the character. Well, maybe we just create an environment where good players play together and have, teach shippers how to not do things that make themselves at risk and receivers and hold them accountable by documenting and facilitating the process and giving them the tools to say that makes sense. I see what you're saying. We'll make a change. That's one of the things we're doing for a shipper right now. I'll stop after.

Speaker 2: 50:18

This is their fast food company have meals where they put toys in them like like a mcdonald's would do. It's not mcdonald's, but they uh, they're worth not a lot of money, I mean thousands, not hundreds of thousands and they were getting stolen like crazy, like crazy. And so what we did was we implemented a random number generator in Quixco and that random number generator associates itself with the PO provided, so the shipper never had to change their PO number. All we had to do was, at the time of loading, tell them this is the random generated number you should be presented with, and they would associate that to the PO number and they knew what to load. There's very simple fixes to this. Like you don't need NetSuite, like you don't need this crazy ERP system or hundreds of thousands hiring all these people. You just got to know what you're doing and deploy some tools and hold people accountable.

Speaker 1: 51:09

And that's the biggest piece, right? If you've got a relationship with your shipper right and you guys can all work together, from the driver through the shipper Like that's what keeps the criminals from being able to take the things right. Like the problems are when nobody's talking, everybody's fighting with each other, that the thieves are like damn, this is great. Like all three of you are fighting with each other. I'm just going to walk right in and take this and leave and no one's even going to notice that it was me and that's exactly what you're doing, right? Yeah, you don't need this crazy suite of products where, like you have all these things doing everything at the end of the day, like, if all three parties are just working together, then at least you know that company is the one that picked it up, instead of just giving the load to whoever asked for it, because they said give me that load heading to Chicago today.

Speaker 2: 51:51

Yeah, let me pay a bunch of money for an onboarding platform that just takes my throughput and gives it to my competitor Like it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense and back to our original, you know market thing. That's what we're hoping for is that there's enough people out there that want to do this simple, cost-effective, the right way, and that's where Quickscope's going to be deployed.

Speaker 1: 52:14

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree with you more. Um, where can everybody find you? Where can they get more information, or what's the easiest way for anybody to access? Sign up, start using your product.

Speaker 2: 52:24

Yeah, they could reach out to me on LinkedIn, mike Fulham at LinkedIn. They could reach out to me on email, m Fulham F U L L A M at quickscopecom. Quickscopecom is spelled Q-U-I-K-S-K-O-P-E, and if you just email info at quickscopecom and ask for a free trial, we'll throw you on version one. We're really hoping that version two is going to be out September. I think what we're going to be doing is releasing it for a few shippers first, but if you reach out to us prior, we're grandfathering people into our old rates. So if you reach out prior and you're willing to commit to Quickscope for, let's say, six months, we'll give you that version one price.

Speaker 1: 53:06

Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 53:07

We're just trying to create a list of people and we're not going to be doing a ton of marketing, not going to be doing a ton of sales. We're going to be dealing with the people that are in line and making sure the solution is customized enough.

Speaker 1: 53:17

Yeah, I mean you can click the link on our newsletter. If you guys are signed up, it's in every one of our newsletters. You can also email us if you have issues getting a hold of anybody at info at free360.net. We'll put you guys in touch with Mike and be able to jump in and start using this product and hopefully protect your customer and yourself and your insurance and everything along the line all the way down to the driver, by being able to use a simple solution for this. Yeah, exactly, Sweet man. Well, appreciate having you on Any final thoughts you want to wrap up with Thanks for having me Go Eagles.

Speaker 2: 53:47

You know it's nice to be a champion, I know you guys. So Nate's a Bills fan. Where were you?

Speaker 1: 53:52

I'm Steelers. I'm from Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2: 53:54

Steelers. Well, maybe you got to go this year. You know, you got DK, you got Rodgers. At least they'll sling it a little bit. It's a possibility.

Speaker 1: 54:01

I don't know that it's super likely, but it should be an interesting season to watch. We will see.

Speaker 2: 54:04

Yeah, it'll be more fun than last year.

Speaker 1: 54:06

Yes, that's not a super high bar to get over but We'll see hey making some changes. It'll be a fun season. We'll see how it goes.

Speaker 2: 54:15

But listen, there's room on the Eagles bandwagon. If you want to join, just let me know. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 54:20

I don't know that that's even possible. I'm pretty sure my family would dissent on me. But a whole other story, man, I mean thanks for having you on and whether you believe you can or believe you can't,