Freight Friends: Holiday Retail Trends, Nike Marketing Struggles, and Temu Imports

Grace Sharkey is back with her monthly appearance on EiL, and in this episode, she and Blythe tackle holiday retail trends and Nike's marketing missteps. They explore the addictive nature of Temu shopping and debate the value of creative versus data-driven strategies. They also discuss Inversion Space's ambitious plan to create orbital warehouses, raising questions about the future of global logistics and space regulations.

LINKS:

• Grace’s Linktree
• Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction
• Space Logistics Episodes
• Ray from Inversion Video on X
• Justin Fiaschetti - Inversion Space

WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE

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Chapters

• 0:05 Holiday Shopping Trends and Early Planning
• 6:23 E-Commerce and Retail Trends for the Holiday Season
• 8:42 Impact of Social Media and Influencers on Retail
• 24:42 Nike's Marketing Strategy and Performance
• 48:16 Truck Driver Appreciation Week and Industry Initiatives
• 1:07:50 Favorite Freight Businesses and Innovative Solutions

Transcript

Grace Sharkey: 0:05

What is interesting is, and again, just saying we've seen this in sonar data as well, is that shippers are becoming very smart and getting this stuff in early, because a lot of surveys are showing that consumers are looking at getting their holiday spending done within not only September, but through October. Yeah, they want to start early. I think that we're a little bit more planning, looking for those sales right ahead of time, not just waiting for the end of the year sales. Fun fact, this is actually going to be one of the shortest amount of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. So I think that also plays a part of it too, with the less days, less sales, less opportunities to hopefully save here and there. So yeah, about 31% of parents say that they're going to shop sooner than October. 40% plan, at least, to start in October. It sounds like not only that, but 44% are afraid that if they don't start early, they might not see the items that they want for a holiday season as well. Welcome

Blythe Brumleve: 1:14

into another episode of everything. It's logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in for each we are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I am your host, Blythe brumleve, and we've got Grace Sharkey back on the show. It's been a while since we've we've chatted since we've talked. We've actually been talking for like the past hour and a half offline. So we figured we might as well just go ahead and hit record. But grace, welcome back to the show. Hey,

Grace Sharkey: 1:37

happy to be back. Happy to see you. Football, college football, season's back. I love that. NFL. It's alright. It's alright. No, it's It's the fall, baby. We're here. We made it and happy for some nice fall weather too. Oh yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:56

it's only after our keys trip. So we were recording this on Friday the 13th. So I'm just going to knock on wood, just to for any kind of safeguarding against that. But we are headed to the keys next week, so after that, then we'll be enjoying some some fall weather, some sunshine first. But yeah, maybe we'll, we'll talk a little bit about the keys trip on the next episode, because we got a lot of fun stuff planned. I don't know that I can talk about a lot of it,

Grace Sharkey: 2:24

clip show, like, enter in here, and just like,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:29

I can just maybe edit the parts out, or maybe edit it, slice it in, of everything that we get to do, or, you know, things that are appropriate to share on logistics, just sort of a, I guess, set the road map for today's show. We're going to talk a little bit about e commerce and retail heading into the holiday season. What can we expect there? We're going to talk a little bit about Nike and their their attempt to try to rectify the last 10 years of their kind of a subpar performance, especially on the stock market, especially among consumers. Then we're going to get into our typical segments of favorite freight marketing, favorite freight business, and then we'll end it out with the source to porch, which is a really good one. And I don't just mean to say that because it's it like it, it's something that I found that only like the VC community has covered, or engineering communities have covered. No one has covered this in our space. And so I think that I am waiting with bated breath to see your reaction to it, so I can't wait to get to that part. But let's kick things off with the holiday season. You cover a lot of retail e commerce that sort of, you know, just that's part of your beat with freightwaves. And so I want to know, like, what are you paying attention to? What are you thinking about as we head into the holiday season? Is freezing going to be spent, or freezing going to be spent? Is spending going to be frozen, or is it going to increase? Or what are you kind of anticipating or seeing out there?

Grace Sharkey: 4:03

Your brain really does need that vacation. So don't worry. Don't worry. Blythe brumleve, yeah, no, it's we're going to we're going to see an increase in spending. And we do see this every year looks like reports. E marketer did a report 4.8% year over year, increase over Yeah, so right in line. It's, I want to say last year is right about the salmon. I will say, actually, from looking at even sonar data in particular, this is something that for all those looking for other podcasts too, we covered in the stock out a few weeks ago, we're starting to see the uptick in in shipments coming in right about the same and as what we saw last year. So in terms of overall freight volume for the rest of the year, I don't think we're going to see anything too crazy compared to what we saw again this time last year. So it's nothing, nothing that's going to really please the driver community watching this. But again, we're thinking that. Market's going to come back more in 25 but what is interesting is, and again, just say, we've seen this in sonar data as well, is that shippers are becoming very smart and getting this stuff in early, because a lot of surveys are showing that consumers are looking at getting their holiday spending done within not only September, but Oh, wow, October. Yeah, they want to start early. I think that we're a little bit more planning, looking for those sales right ahead of time, not just waiting for the end of the year sales. Fun fact, this is actually going to be one of the shortest amount of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. So I think that also plays a part of it too, with the less days, less sales, less opportunities to hopefully save here and there. So yeah, about 31% of parents say that they're going to shop sooner than October. 40% plan, at least, to start in October. And it sounds like not only that, but 44% are afraid that if they don't start early, they might not see the items that they want for the holiday season as well. So yup, 27 days total now between Thanksgiving and Christmas again, one of the shortest periods we've seen. And yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised by it again. I'm. I'm very nervous, because I think what's, of course, I'm concerned with, is, is where we're finding the funds to afford that 4.8% increase. I think a lot of it's going to go on credit cards. We'll probably see an increase in credit spending and limits over this, this q4 another thing, though, that's interesting to consider, and again, this could actually be good for the trucking community, is that it sounds like a lot of people, and as a honestly, as I'm going to say, young adult, but honestly, I'm probably creeping a mid level adult who's not married and loves To use a sales opportunity to buy something that probably would have been at a wedding registry. A lot of people are going to be doing that itself, looking at more of the essential items that they need as gifts, right? So, yeah. So like, for example, maybe instead of buying body wash throughout the year, right? You're going to go and hit up bath and not Bath and Body Works, but, yeah, no, Bath and Body Works. Just think about beyond, uh, Bath and Body Works, and use those holiday sales to buy a large amount that you're going to use throughout the year, right? Like, instead of getting people gifts that you might just think they like, and you're instead giving gift cards, or you're giving them things that you know that they they need today, which could be an electronic or it could be a like kitchen item, kitchen aids, things of that nature, right? So 40% adults said they're going to buy things just for themselves, like things that they personally need. And I'm sure that's going to for kids out there. You might see a little bit more clothing than Legos, you could say, or maybe even the clothing for size up, or shoes for the springtime, but I think you're going to see people being a little bit more strategic with their gift giving this year than maybe we've seen in the past. That's I

Blythe Brumleve: 8:25

was going to ask you if any of the commodities sort of stick out as far as, like, where shippers are spending their their I guess choosing to invest in for this holiday season. I'm curious, though, and I don't know how, and even if you might not have the answer to this, but, but noticing, especially on Tiktok, a lot more de influencing trends where, you know, users are going on and making videos about things not to buy, or they're making videos of, I'm not going to spend any money on extra items until I like. The one in particular that this woman was talking about was, like, all of her makeup and skincare items she's she's made a concerted effort to not buy something new until it until something, you know, is is used completely up. And she's even going to the which sounds like, no, duh, you should be doing this, but at the same time, like, I know that I have probably, like, six foundations in my, you know, makeup drawer right now that I could probably use each and every one of them. But she's going as far as like, I'm going to mix the rest of like, you know, my foundations or blushes or lotions, and I'm going to use every drop of it before I go and buy something new. And she said that she hasn't bought anything new in months, and she says that it, it's cleared. She's she's less anxiety, less anxious. She has less stress. She's not worried about looking at, you know, her credit card bill. So I'm curious if that is maybe, like a larger trend than because I'm always curious about how people can continue to keep spending money. But then we kind of have these little pockets of like the D influencing and how that impacts retail. Do you notice anything? Or is it any kind of news like that with the stories that you're seeing?

Grace Sharkey: 10:12

No, I don't have anything statistically in front of me in that regard. I think it going kind of back to the essentials thing. What I wouldn't be surprised is of for instance, if, and I've seen this, even with my own spending, like, if you know that your kid is a beauty guru, maybe you're, instead of buying them some crazy eyeshadows to have fun with, you're buying them a neutral palette, right, something that you know they're going to buy or use every single day. I also have seen, I think, the trend, especially in the younger generation, more of spending at thrift stores, right? Compared to to going out and buying that item at full price somewhere else. I just recently sold a number of of shoes on Facebook marketplace, right? And interesting surprise, how, how quickly that experience went too. And I think again, yeah, people are looking for these ways to continue to spend money, but not, you know, get themselves in a difficult position. I also think that there's still a number of different payment companies like affirm, Zin, afterpay, Klarna, right where, oh, this is a perfect opportunity to maybe set these, especially something like a firm right, lets you do a little bit longer than two weeks every two week payments. But if you know that, by the end of January, you're going to get your your tax refund, like being able to take advantage of maybe some of those buy now, pay later programs, I think will be a big one too. And I'm seeing those options more and more and more as I online shop too, right? Like those partnerships with those type of payment offerings as well. Have you ever done those? Oh, yeah for sure. Yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 11:59

yeah. What are the like? I guess the interest rate on things like that, because I see that, and I'm like, that's a scam.

Grace Sharkey: 12:05

Yeah, some of them I I've seen, like, I've looked into the affirm before, and affirm does throw like, a hefty percentage point on there. Um, I actually, you're a woman, you, you get this. I actually, you, I use afterpay, actually, for my hair. My hairstylist is on the afterpay app, so I just use afterpay instead of spending way too much money at one point, it just splits it up into four payments every four weeks. So that's one place where I've used it before, and I'm trying to think, Oh, well, and it's, it's already paid off now, but our ticket to Key West, I used it on there too. So I've used it twice or more for, like, larger, bigger purchases where maybe planning wise, it's easier for me to do that, but there's no interest rate on those either. So wow,

Blythe Brumleve: 13:00

yeah, these companies are making money. Good,

Grace Sharkey: 13:03

great question. I think they charge a certain percent to the company that's using it.

Blythe Brumleve: 13:08

But I think, oh, processing fees, probably,

Grace Sharkey: 13:10

yeah. And unlike myself, where I set it on auto deduct from like my bank account, I think they also get you when you don't auto deduct So yeah, if you don't pay on time, then those fees start to charge up.

Blythe Brumleve: 13:28

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Grace Sharkey: 15:52

you know, oh no, because I want to say the minimum for a lot of them is, like, at least for afterpays, like, 35 bucks, yeah, but I think again, for a lot of the the consumers out there, right, it's still an option. Just, just spread it out a little bit. And I think that's what makes me concerned a little bit about the economy, is, I think there's a lot of people doing that, right? It's, I mean, it's, it's like a business, right? It's kind of, I mean, there's businesses, I'm sure, during covid, we saw it from a lot of shippers. Hey, if you can just give us 15 more days and change our terms by 30 more days, and you can say solvent and continue to grow the same operations that you have. So yeah, I say I, I'm a big I've used afterpay. I'm big fan of it and but you're 100% right. If you, if you're going to you gotta watch yourself. I can see people definitely, especially

Blythe Brumleve: 16:52

with the credit card spending, because we, we've heard that you briefly mentioned this earlier, and this from CBS News. It says US consumers collectively owe a record 1.1 4 trillion in credit card debt figures that released in Tuesday. So this article was written in August, so just last month, that's 27 billion more than the 1.1 3 trillion in credit card debt that they carried during the second quarter of 2024 so I think people are putting it on credit cards, and maybe the holiday season, if they want to spend a little bit more, maybe that's, you know, I guess, an option. But just be very careful, because the article goes on to say prolonged debt also plays a factor in this historic amount. As more Americans fall behind on their credit card bills, about 7.18% that's such a 7% of card holders fell into delinquency in the second quarter, up from 5% in the previous quarter. So people are spending more, but they're, I think they're not. They're not paying it back very quickly. So we've seen some tightening over the summer, and maybe it loosens up a little bit for holiday season.

Grace Sharkey: 18:00

I think one other point too on that. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I want to say earlier in the year, we looked into it, the problem too is that not only the delinquency part, but most, if I remember the the study was split into under 100,000 or 50,000 to$0 in household income, 50 to 100 and 100 plus. And all three of those right, not just poor, but all three of those groups were falling into high percentages of their credit limit. So when people making over $100,000 are using 70% of their credit limit, that's concerning as well, right? It's not just about have you not paid the bill on time, but the fact that you are, you're maxing it out as much as you possibly can.

Blythe Brumleve: 18:56

You're you? What is it? Your utilization rate? Yes, and I think you're not supposed to go over what, like, 30% of your credit card so that that keeps you in like, the safe area. Because I'm, I've been monitoring, like, my credit score, because I had really bad credit in my 20s, and it took damn near like 10 years of building it up and building it back up to, you know, a good and I'm so close to going over 800 with my credit score, it's just not there yet because I don't have a, I guess, a variety of different loans. And I'm like, Well, I don't have a variety of loans.

Grace Sharkey: 19:33

Don't even get me started with the credit system. Your girl, at a young age, got tricked by Walmart into a nice little screwed me too. And hey, college students, I don't care if Michigan State Federal Credit Union is going to offer you$5,000 credit limit. Predatory, yes,

Blythe Brumleve: 19:52

target got me. Victoria's Secret got me. And I think express all those stores, I was like, why not? Like it. You know, free. Stuck. Oh, you get 20% off if you sign up for our credit card today, just like, Sign me up. Yeah, let's do it. And that's what got me into a lot of trouble. Ended up paying those off, but it stayed on my credit report for close to a decade, and it was so bad, but they got me too on college campus. I think it was like 18 years old when I'm signing up for all of these cards at the same time, thinking I'm living the high life. Swipe, swipe, swipe, got new outfits for the weekend. So this to me, like the, the Klarna, the, you know, some of these other like, buy now, pay later, that, it kind of screams to me that that's like, just the the credit card scams, 2.0 they don't really want to call them scams, because they're not scams, because you should be fully aware of what you're signing up into. But it just seems like it's a lot of maybe low value transactions that you could probably stand to not have. And so, yeah, maybe, maybe there's some. And there was also this other story of this other woman that she stopped all of her she got off social media, and the spending that she was accumulating completely dried up because she wasn't being forced, I guess, to see all of these ads all over social media and the impulse to buy. And so when she got off social media, not only did it help her, like from a mental standpoint, but it also tremendously helped her bank account because she spent less.

Grace Sharkey: 21:25

I want to touch on that, but that's also deeply in engraved in what I would like to discuss at the end of the episode.

Blythe Brumleve: 21:36

Okay, so the little teaser

Grace Sharkey: 21:39

that'll be a little bit teaser to to my source, to porch situation later on,

Blythe Brumleve: 21:47

another retailer or, I guess it before we do that, anything else that I guess we should know about the holiday season, e Commerce Trends, anything like that.

Grace Sharkey: 21:55

So the one thing that we are watching and for all the updates on this scenario, head to Freightways com, our whole editorial team is on it from every single angle you could possibly think of. And I think this is also why we see a lot of shippers pushing their inventory into the United States ahead of time. Is because the ILA, of course, is threatening striking at the end of this month. So potentially, if that were most of us over here pretty, pretty sure that this will get figured out, if not through government intervention or some type of regulatory intervention, but there is a chance that the ILA and the ports do strike at the end of the month. If that were to happen, that would greatly affect what is coming in. So there's that chance. So it sounds like, though, again, consumers are want to make sure what they want to buy is on the shelves. So I think that, mixed with shippers already anticipating problems with that and getting stuff in early, I don't think it'll have a huge impact, but it is something to watch. Yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 23:00

for sure, that definitely, with the threat of that strike, that makes a lot more sense why shippers would be starting to order a lot of their merchandise now. And I think it also kind of justifies, or maybe solidifies the reasoning behind some of these retailers putting, you know, Christmas decorations out in August and, you know, September way earlier than normal, because they want people in that, you know, sort of holiday spirit and shopping early. So I think they've conditioned us now to start shopping for the holidays and earlier months. And so I guess, you know, those tactics have been working as of late. Yeah, cost.

Grace Sharkey: 23:36

I'm so happy on the Costco membership because I've been seeing all the Disney Halloween stuff, and I just don't, I don't need it, you know, I want, I wanted the light that I don't. I don't need it. Or there's already put skeleton. And yes, oh my if I actually that could be like, kind of cool. I feel like my neighbors would be like that, that psycho girl down the street. We're not a big I don't live in a big decorate neighborhood, I'll say that. And so I don't know, maybe I should spook them all.

Blythe Brumleve: 24:08

Well, they're one of my there's a road that I drive down frequently, regularly to go to the beach. And they're, they have one of these skeletons, and they just keep it up all year long, and they just dress it in different offices depending on the holiday that's coming up. So I guess you could get a little bit more bang for your buck, or you could be like my other friend who purchased one got, you know, got it at retail price and then flipped it on Facebook marketplace, because these things just that the giant skeletons, like sell out, and then you can flip them on like eBay or Facebook marketplace, and sometimes double your money so there's, there's a little commodity out there that you could be, you know, flipping out there instead of some of these other items. Brokering success demands a battle ready strategy. Thai TMS equips freight brokers with the ultimate battle station for conquering a tough market. With Thai brokers gain access to a comprehensive. Platform where raid intelligence and quote history converge on a single screen. It's not just a page, it's a strategic command center designed to help brokers win. Thai equips your team with all of the data they need to negotiate with confidence and allows them to communicate directly with carriers and customers from a simple control base, revolutionize the way your brokers perform by giving them a competitive advantage with Thai TMS. For more info, go to Tai dash software.com, backslash battle stations. And we also have a link for you in the show notes to sign up for a demo. But speaking of items that get flipped a lot, let's talk about Nike, because there was a viral post that, haven't you like that segue, yeah, there was a viral post that popped off on LinkedIn. I mean, this is back in July, so like late July, there was this old marketing or former CMO, I think he was of Nike, and he released this report of how Nike has sort of fallen from grace, has fallen from, you know, sort of the dominant spot of like the go to uniform shoes for for athletes all across the globe. And he basically attributed this to Nike's not investing in the creative in the advertising, and placing less priority in those areas and more of a higher priority in digital advertising, because they I think it's kind of what a lot of retailers have have thought over the years, is, oh, wow, I can just pay for advertising and pay for all of these ads, you know, on social, on, you know, PPC, or, you know, some of these other, you know, distribution networks. And what they're finding is, is that, or what they hoped was, that they would be able to see sort of this straight line of consumer saw the ad, consumer made the purchase. But as you know, people who work in marketing for more than five minutes know that there is no straight path from when a person sees a piece of your content, whether it's organic or paid, to when they actually make a purchase, it's it's kind of like all over the place. It's zigzagged and stops and starts. And there's all different kind of variables that that play a role when it comes to attribution and marketing. And so this CEO, this former CMO, which I do have to let me see. So the tweet says, even if you're not in marketing, you should read this post from the former CMO of Nike. Well, he was actually the brand director, not the CMO. I do have to make that he corrected it in the follow up tweet, it details Nike's transition from a brand driven demand creation engine to a data driven performance direct to consumer model that relied primarily on sales, on nike.com the results after the release of Nike's quarter 220 24 financial results, they lost 25 billion and market cap in a day, and shares hit their lowest since 2018 declining 32% since the beginning of 2024 which is a major, major shift. 25 billion in market cap is crazy, but this guy goes on to say his favorite excerpt from the former brand director, senior brand director over at Nike, they said Nike invested a material amount of dollars, billions into something that was less effective but easier to be measured versus something that was more effective but less easy to be measured. In conclusion, an impressive waste of money. And it said, Will marketing see renewed interest and perhaps even a renaissance and brand advertising for Nike's sake? I hope so. And so they Nike has since hired a brand new cmo earlier this year, and then they also, they tried to go back to the creative and so the Olympics, the Paris Olympics, was their first foray into, you know, sort of the Getting back to the basics. You know, this really like motivational commercials that make you want to go out and, you know, purchase something from Nike. So I guess before I play this next video, because this has another component, which is like the management side of things, or, I guess, the consultant side of things. And he calls it death by 1000 consultants. And so before we get into to that, do you have any, I guess, comments on on Nike's horrible stock performance in the first half of this year?

Grace Sharkey: 29:22

I uh, I mean, he's going to touch on it. I think in the episode to you go, he talks about the Olympics presence. I think that is kind of the old school stuff that's hopefully we'll see kind of them focus on and turn it around. But, I mean, I 100% agree. I mean, you're talking to an Adidas girl right now. Like I have in a lot of it, though, is because of the influencers that are part of it. I mean, I Ivy Park releases and the Beyonce releases are a big reason why I have so many I have, again, I bought these a while ago, so don't get me wrong. But, like. Having Kanye a part of it and the Yeezy drops, right, or a big part, I think, of its growth. And I've never really, besides, clearly, Jordan, like, we haven't seen that, that, like, connection be used through Nike before, and I will say as well. And again, I think Beyonce helped this. Lisa on the Dina side. It's like, I just don't think you see the inclusivity as much with Nike is there's as a plus size woman, like, I've never seen a Nike ad and been like that person, like, looks like me, and is someone and I, and going into a Nike store, there's only certain sizes as well. So I think going back to like I and here's the thing, you talk about the numbers, I guarantee that they're looking at numbers. There's not people like me purchasing their stuff. But that doesn't mean I don't exist as a market. And I think that's what's interesting too. Is like when brands just focus on numbers? I mean when any company just only focuses on numbers and not what the future holds or what markets you're not. I don't want to say exploiting, but looking into like this is going to happen. And so I think what was it under armor? It wasn't until it was during covid, I remember them just starting to look into women's lines at Under Armor, right? So I think when you are so data driven, you lose that relationship building almost with a client, right? And

Blythe Brumleve: 31:33

there's also an interesting, I guess, movement going on with being branded and agnostic. I remember growing up and my parents couldn't afford Nikes, and so I remember having to, you know, be like, you know, 1415, years old, and do, like, babysitting jobs and, you know, that kind of thing, in order to save up enough money to get my own pair of Nikes. And I had those for probably three years. And I remember, like, kids used to, like, make they're like, Oh, you had those shoes last year. And I'm like, but that's all we could afford. Like, it was very much like a aspirational brand. And nowadays, very people are very much like brand agnostic. Like, they will go, they the the Nike people are now exploring other different, other different brands under armor, Adidas Pumas. You know, all of these other there's other, another, like running shoe that apparently, like, has just taken waves. And I'm blanking on the name right now,

Grace Sharkey: 32:31

and it's, it is actually, I think, a more cost effective shoe, too. And

Blythe Brumleve: 32:34

it's Roger Federer, like he was, like, pictured with the shoe. And he wasn't even like an ambassador yet, because they the the company couldn't afford to, like, pay him as an ambassador. But when they saw the photo, they like, approached him and asked him, well, we don't have money to pay you, but do you want, you know, you know, a certain a percentage of our business and to be our ambassador? And he signed up for it. I need to actually just go ahead and Google it. But yeah, so Roger Federer was one of those shoes. I'm just going to do a relief.

Grace Sharkey: 33:04

I know I'm trying. It's doing. That's what it's called, yeah.

Blythe Brumleve: 33:08

So those those shoes, so that, I think is more of those. There's better stuff being made for cheaper. And I think that there's also, like, the, there's a little bit of, like, psychology playing a role too, especially with like, younger demographics, where they don't really want something that everybody else has. And then also, Nike is is dealing with or maybe exploiting this secondary market for their shoes. And so they know that, you know, they they'll do limited drops and limited releases, and so there's not really that they're appeasing, or they're appealing to, sort of that top, like 1% of their shoe purchasers versus the rest of the market, that they're not doing a very good job at targeting. They've also had a lot of like, supplier issues as well. A lot of their uniforms are just not very good. The quality is not there, and it's not consistent. So it's leading to people choosing for other other avenues, or other competitors that are a little bit for a variety of reasons, not just they're just not staying loyal to Nike, but there's another aspect of Nike that I think is has also played a role in some of that market cap is listening to free and management consultants, and that, I think is maybe more detrimental, because you're talking to people who don't really know how to run their own business. They like to just tell other people how to run a business based on the data that they've seen, and so that can be an outsider trying to tell you how to run a business takes away sort of the instincts of the leadership team within that company. So let me play a quick clip from this creator. It's a Eug brand Strat that over on Instagram. I think he also has a. A Tiktok, which is where I originally saw this video. But I was like, Grace doesn't have Tiktok, so let me find them on Instagram, and we'll play this God forsaken reel, kind of like prehistoric technology. So here, let's hit play. Wait. Oh, no audio. Thanks. Reels, no audio.

Grace Sharkey: 35:21

So now you're looking at it at work, you know? There

Blythe Brumleve: 35:23

we go again. No audio. You can't refresh. But he starts out the video with these schmucks. Okay, here we go, management consulting,

Unknown: 35:29

thinking nearly single handedly destroyed the Nike brand. Let's talk about what went wrong so you don't make the same mistake. Brands are unique industry because your job is to create intangible value. But it's for that very reason that, outside the marketing department, everyone in your business hates you. They hate you because, despite all of this fancy methodology, creativity is the one thing in business that evades quantification. We're talking about cognition and emotion. This is, at best, an inexact science. And in business, people want certainty. I put in x, I get out y, and management consultancies are ground zero of this point of view. Bulletproof problem solving is an enthralling piece written by ex McKinsey consultants that really stepped you through how they view problem solving. And then chapter one, what do you have? The author showing how to decide where you should live by creating a list of variables and assigning them quantitative weightings. These people view the entirety of human experience as if it's something that can be reduced to a number. And where do you think the CEO of Nike, cutters, teeth, 20? 23 years as a management consultant? That explains why he treated Nike as if it was a tech company, why they shifted all of their spending from long term brand building to short term performance marketing, and why they obliterated their brand salience by cutting out all of their wholesale channels, because these people would rather do something wrong that they can control rather than something right that they can't and we've all seen the result now you can see Nike have finally realized the error of their ways. The Olympics campaign was a really strong return to form for Nike, but we all know that good brand building takes time. If you're an executive in a brand led business, be careful what you trust these people with. They are very intelligent, excellent operators and even better communicators, but they don't understand what they can't see, and I can't see a lot, but just because something's intangible doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. But hey, don't take my word for it. Check the data.

Blythe Brumleve: 37:10

That's a really powerful video. You did it in under a minute, which is, we love short and concise and just, you know, an epic sort of take down of the the management consulting world, and I'm curious first initial thoughts, when, when you see a video like that covering, you know, consultants that don't necessarily have a creative bone in their body, that they just want to attribute everything to a single number.

Grace Sharkey: 37:34

I mean, that's what you kind of paid them to do, right? I think is to and that's a lot of times. I think people wait to bring consultants in, and you should, at least, I, I hope, would wait to bring consultants in until you absolutely need to, right, like I need to turn my business around. I need to, you know, in order to stay afloat, get this thing moving and and again, that's tough. And I've never worked for a clothing garment or, like, some type of artistic, type of company, you know, where it's like, your product also takes the has to take into mind, like the generations, how people, how it looks, you know, the the creative I've never been a part of like, a creative work and find, well, okay, wait, I guess that Freightways could count. But we've also, from my knowledge, haven't had consultants issue, you know, I mean, and, but I will say, you know, that's actually to bring in kind of a freight ways, right? Like, part of the reason that people do love our brand is because of the people behind it and our thoughts and how we we each differently portray like the top, the way Thomas creates content is different than from I create content from how Mary creates content, but altogether, makes a really great experience. And I think if you were to bring consultants in, I think into that type of thing, they're going to care naturally less about the creativeness or the or the personalities, and say, well, this right, you get it, you're in this, this industry, like this contents, bringing x in and this contents not so we cut this and we and so it does, I think, limit what makes a lot of these brands better and bigger and and innovative. And you know, what's frustrating is, and it must be tough, like, I can't imagine what it'd be like leading a company at that size. It's like when you do have shareholders, you do, of course, need to continue to bring them something back in return, which means I personally think you need to take creative risk, and that's gambling, and that's something that McKinsey does not like to do. They're not going to gamble. They're going to spend$5 million on telling you what trash cans to use, right? Do they run the DD works? Right? Um, but, dude, we're going. Are depending on how much have you spent. I That's just naturally what they're going to do. And I think anyone that hires in consultants knows that in particular, I think what is interesting, I will say, across II noticed this more even more so across like consumer goods and things like that. You don't always see it as a consultants, but you see it as maybe board members or certain companies coming in, like ancora, is a big one, the term I'm missing the term in my head for what it's called, technically, but you'll see these groups bring in companies like ancora or different holding groups, and their point is to to change things up and make things a little bit more different, or change the style. And I think that's also sometimes can can change the way that brands are going to produce products for the end consumer. So, yeah, it's funny, because I didn't realize that the Nike leadership did have that much consulting experience. But once he said that, it was like, Okay, that is, it stems from somewhere, and that's exactly where it's coming from, and you almost can't blame them. If anything, I would blame the person who, the poor probably the board, right, who put them in that role? Yeah, and it could be one of those things where it's time to move on. I think that there's people who are the Starbucks CEO that they just hired, like that guy is really good at turning things around for

Blythe Brumleve: 41:40

when Chipotle, I think too, he spent time at Chipotle kind of rehauled their supply chains to make them, got

Grace Sharkey: 41:46

them better the E coli problems they kept running into and and got them, I think, to be more lean, but also efficient for what consumers come in there for, and then he left. So I think it's like hopefully, I would hope, what makes this this fun, this podcast and those listening is like, watch for that kind of stuff. Like, look who's going into these roles. And I always love to do that, like, because a lot of them are on LinkedIn, like, look back at what they did in their time period different brands, because it can tell you a lot about what that company is having problems with as well. Right, to bring it to our industry like ch Robinson, right? They brought in the guy from Ford, who is all about lean processes and making sure that departments are sticking to what they do, and that projects are getting done on time, and that things are more structured. And there's, you see a lot of people leaving ch Robinson because of it, and going to Uber freights and going to these, like new creative marketplaces, because that's what they're good at. I think there's people who are good at that kind of, like startup mentality, getting things to where they need to be. But then there's also people who are good at getting can, I swear on this. I also think that's there's individuals who are really good at saying, this is the numbers that we need to hit, this is how we get done. And yeah, there's a chance that's going to rub customers wrong. But again, each company does, unfortunately, have their ability. So yes, there's someone like Nike. I'm not surprised by this, realizing his background. We shouldn't be surprised by this. And I mean, what we should look for is that they hopefully hire or look at bringing in some talent that either has experience at Adidas, right, or maybe someone like who helped at on grow, or what was the other one I saw, too. Oh, the Hey dude, shoes that I saw coming out too, like maybe someone experienced in there that can help bring, bring that atmosphere. But, yeah, it's not surprised to hear that leadership that stems from the top.

Blythe Brumleve: 43:51

And I think Nike, too, they're just kind of a, maybe a victim of their own success over the years, is that they've just been the dominant player for so long now they have a lot more competition, and they kind of, you know, have been caught, you know, sleeping behind the wheel, and for a CEO position to have a management consulting background like that, I think that's just so ingrained in that person. And that's such a in my opinion. I mean, I'm over here advising, like, a billion dollar company, but the CEO position, to me, is just so visionary and that you have to balance not just the data but the creative and the people and the vision of where you're taking the company itself. I think that that you know that maybe have been a perfect hire for like the CFO or the COO but for the CEO, the vital skill set you need there is to balance that creativity and for a brand like Nike, that is just over the course of their history, has invested so much in athletes, in the creative side of things. You know, I haven't really noticed their fall off until this LinkedIn post. You. Just it kind of you start to forget about them, and I think that that speaks to their lack of marketing messages, and also the shift from traditional television broadcasts, where you would see those kinds of advertisements from Nike. Well, I guess I take that back, because for a lot of their advertisement, I would think that they would still be advertising on sports programming from a TV standpoint, because that's really the only profitable thing when it comes to TV, is, is sports and politics. But I haven't really seen Nike commercials in around sports, have you no

Grace Sharkey: 45:35

no, and they're the ones that I have seen. It's like, they're not like, like, I'm not enjoying myself watching this, or I don't relate to it, right? Like I feel like I feel like they Nike tends to be more like the commercials I have seen are, like, I am a hardcore athlete. Yeah, right. Well, the problem with leisure wear is, 99% of us aren't hardcore athletes. We just like to wear tennis shoes during the day, you know, like, and I think that's what they really ran on with Jordan. And so long is like, you know, most people buying our products are using these products on the court. And it's like, no, like, we we want something cool that to to go to the local Mullen, you know, like, it's nothing too crazy. So, yeah, it's, it's kind of disappointing to see and but I also wonder too, it's just like a change with the the environment of maybe leisure wear. It's kind of like, almost like, reminds me a little bit, you know, you and I like sports, like, kind of like the N i L structure now, like, there's some coaches that know how to work in n i L structure, you got coach primes, and then you have, I hate to say it, but like, my my God Father, almighty Coach Izzo, who's like, I hate this. I'm used to having guys dedicated to me for four years who want to grow and don't want to work the transfer portal system for for more cash.

Blythe Brumleve: 47:11

That's right, saving got out 100% Yeah. So

Grace Sharkey: 47:15

I think maybe it's just a change in how the industry's going to work for for leisure, wear and E commerce brands as a

Blythe Brumleve: 47:23

whole? Yeah, I think it's, it's a good lesson in the the value of creative and why it it shouldn't be somebody something that you're trying to attribute, you know, a specific dollar amount or a specific ROI to it, like you have to invest in it, even if you can't exactly measure it, but that's the only aspect of your business that you can't accurately measure, like that. Everything else you can kind of, you know, cost of goods sold, and things like that, you can accurately measure that and predict for that, but the brand is something that it's to that creator's point. It takes a long time, and they're finally starting to get back to their creative roots, so we'll see if it actually pays off in the long run for them. But let's move on to actually. We'll continue the discussion on marketing, because I want to talk about some of our favorite freight marketing that we have seen. Do you let me pull up your doc? Because I got a I got a couple quick ones. Um, let me see any favorite freight marketing from you. I don't see it in your in your dog. I'm scrolling that's

Grace Sharkey: 48:32

at the very end. Yes, no, something we actually talked about on radio. Oh, there we go, just because I knew when this was going to air. So this will be relevant for when this goes to air, for everyone but talking to future audience, it's truck driver appreciation week, our favorite marketing time of the year. We get to see people fail as hard as they possibly can, or people win as much as they can. And I figured, why not make this little segment about that in particular? And so, you know, we talked about this a little bit on the radio this past week as well. And there's a few people I wanted to shout out before we shout out the winners, though, I wanted to shout out a few things that I would hope to see people avoid. One, of course, is, don't you dare, unless you're like, a you're worldwide, so, like, I don't know, maybe like mayors or something like that, don't you dare post a European truck on your truck driver appreciation week. Post if you're a marketer watching this because you're like, you're new here, and you heard that Blythe is the one that's going to give you all the best advice. I'm stealing that from her mouth directly. Don't and if you're like, a European truck, I don't know what that is. Google it now

Blythe Brumleve: 49:52

it's the smashed face of the truck. You want a big American with the stacks, and you want the full I don't even know. It's called, but you want the engine area. You don't want the flat face trucks. Stop using those images. Yes, unless you're based in Europe,

Grace Sharkey: 50:09

I will say there are enzoos is here, though, for like, more medium duty situations. But that's not what this like, warehousing things like that. Yes, well, a few here and there. We can put that but, but American Truck drivers, the ones you're speaking to. Yeah, this isn't a worldwide holiday. This is American holiday. So focus on that. Um, also, don't just post something to post something like put some consideration into it. Now, if you're just realizing it's national truck driver appreciation week, I guess, just post something to post something's kind of like, no, go

Blythe Brumleve: 50:41

to the drive to the bank. No, take out some cash and then give that to your drivers. That's all they care about. Yeah, 100 money so they could spend it on whatever the hell they want. Yes.

Grace Sharkey: 50:53

And you know what? That brings me to one of my highlights for this episode, too, a really cool company, I think actually met at the Women in Trucking conference a company called fluid truck, which is, which I thought this was kind of hilarious, that, and this is a post from last year, but fluid truck is actually a little bit more of like a final mile delivery. So the fact that like a box truck slash like car moving a cargo van, truck company like came up with this list, it's like just ironic to me, but they're they hit the nail on the head. I found a post from fluid truck about five ways to think a truck driver, and they're all literally perfect. So shout out to the team over there at Fluid truck, you guys, you're showing to the big, big, long haul guys how to do your job. And so there's a few big ones, I think, and and honestly, if you aren't a trucking company, these are things as part of the industry you should be doing this week anyways. Uh, first things first is just being nice to drivers. Hey, let's not cut them off this week. You know, let's not ride their tails. Let's give them a good time on the road. Let's let them enjoy themselves. Give them a good little driver salute. Maybe get a little honky honk back. Who doesn't love that? If you're and I do this like all the time, just because I'm kind of crazy. But if you're at a rest stop, if you're just parking somewhere, and you see a truck nearby, like, skull up and say, Thank you like for what they're doing, be nice to them. Like that is that goes a really long way. And I trust, like I said, I I do it usually, if I ever stop at a rest stop, there's at least a handful of trucks. And I will literally walk up to a truck and be like, hey, just want to say thank you. And they're like, Okay, psycho. But I think it's because you're just not used to it. So let's change that around, uh, number two. And this goes back to kind of like, Blythe thing. If you're like, oh my god, it's your appreciation week. What do I do? Go to Costco. Get your Costco card out. Take the company card, whatever you need to do, go buy some healthy snacks and drink Yes, yes, and and take that to local again, rest stop or truck stop, and just start handing them out and again. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think you you forget at the end. Oh, another one too. And just because, just because covid is dying down, which, by the way, you can get your next covid vaccine. I did the other day, and I'm good to go for these conferences and everything coming up. But, you know, hand sanitizer wipes, like, think of the things that you have in your car that you use frequently, that you think they would want to because unlike us, in our cars, like we don't get tickets for having a messy cab, where these drivers can actually get tickets for having stuff like messy situations as well. So maybe think of things like that that can help them out too. Really

Blythe Brumleve: 53:57

good pair of gloves is what? Because I asked this question on Reddit a handful of years ago, cash was far and away like the number one response of what to gift a driver during this week, but a really good pair of gloves and a really nice flashlight that was one of the or that those were a couple of items that they multiple comments had mentioned that. So if you can spare, you know, 80 bucks for a pair of gloves, then that will go a long way for a lot of drivers. 100%

Grace Sharkey: 54:26

I like that one too. Uh, this one, I think is something we can all do better shippers talking to you out there, and also just people in the neighborhood who don't like seeing trucks sitting around, let them park where they want to make your home, make your neighborhoods, make your businesses accessible for truck drivers. It's kind of, you know, it's crazy to like, not I have my father is unfortunately handicapped, so I see this more often now. Like going to places where it's like, wow, this is like, not set up for a handicap person to to go in and out of. Uh, I can't imagine what drivers feel like the same way. I mean, think about even how they are going to see a doctor, or how they, you know, just park somewhere to take a quick nap, or the fact that it's difficult for them to, you know, go to a grocery store and get groceries because of not being able to park like just be more considerate to the driver lifestyle and and, and think about that when you're you know planning for urban planners out there, where you're planning neighborhoods, and for businesses, when you're planning your business, is this easily accessible for delivery trucks to come into and, and do I have a accessible bathroom to them? What's what? How? What's my demeanor when they're making these deliveries? So consider that too. And this one I'm actually seeing more of from, like diners, and especially ones that are attached to, like truck stops or in big truck parking areas, is pay for a driver's tab. Right if you go, I've got a Pilot Flying J down the street right next to is the loves as well. If I go in there, there's like, an IHOP that sometimes I frequent there, and I see a driver sitting like, pay for their their tab. Like, an easy way to say, thank you. It's paying it forward. I know we've most people, I've been in a few of them where you're kind of in that pay a Ford line. Hey, the person from Oh, yeah, yeah, Frank, I do one of those things, right? Or walk into a loves, get yourself a Coke, and whoever drivers in front of you say, hey, I'll get that for you as well. And I think, yeah, it's just acts of kindness. I think we want to see more. Um, another one too. Let's say you do have some cash and you're willing to to really give back to drivers. This one is a nice shout out to oida and T, A T, so we all know oida is the owner operators group, and then the T, A T is truckers against trafficking. They are coming together to for a raffle for drivers to win headsets and other in cab type of electronics that make their their life more enjoyable. It's not, it's not a better camera for them to spy on you, but instead, you know something that they are going to like and use often. And I think that's really cool too. Like, like you said, cash is one. But if I'm again, going to give someone a gift, maybe it's you get them some really comfortable, like, seat protectors. Or you get them if, if you know that they have a bed in their space, you get them your sheets, or, like, nice sheets that are really comfortable or, or I'm all I got, like, new pillows that I'm like, obsessed with, like, that kind of thing too. Like, consider if you are actually employing drivers, or you have a little bit more money behind you to at least thank a driver. Then think about that kind of stuff. What can make them more comfortable on the road every single day as well? So that's, that's another one there that I think is, is pretty big too, and then last, but not least, and I'll be doing this actually on the radio with brokers out there, like, shout out your favorite drivers and do it on your social media. Is there someone who you know, if your customer calls you with a last minute load, you can call and get that covered immediately. Someone's like, filling your pockets up with a really high commission load, and there's someone you can depend on, like, give them a shout out. I can't every driver I run into that's like, the stuff they love to brag about most is how many safe miles they have, what awards they won, who announced them as Driver of the Year. Like, it's the same thing with all of us, those participation trophies, and I think this kind of stuff, like, will showcase, hey, this is we're proud of what you've done and contributed, I think,

Blythe Brumleve: 58:50

in relative to, you know, because that's such a great idea about just honoring, you know, some of their achievements that they have as a driver, and typically, they they'll Do that with, you know, a certificate, or, you know, a party at the office, things like that. But there's a podcasting company called Buzzsprout, and they give you certain achievements for a certain amount of like downloads or episode published things like that. But if you go to their booth at conferences and you show them your stats, they will give you a really nice pin, not like a writing pin, but like the pins that we that we collect at conferences, have everything is logistics pin that I bring to every single conference and hand them out to anybody who says that they listen to the podcast. I keep them stored in my backpack specifically for those people. And I think you could take a similar approach to drivers, give them pins. They could put it on a lanyard and hang it in their truck, and, you know, have that serve as a reminder. I would love if we could have, you know, coming from, like the Disney fan, an adult Disney fan, yeah. I would love if we had some kind of, like a pin trading community inside of logistics, where different truck stops. Have their own pins, and different conferences have their own pins. And you know, you can start to collect some of these things, but the achievements, I think, is one that they could really hone in on. And it's very cost effective. We're talking about pins that maybe cost $2 each, but it's a sign of recognition that you could give to them, that they could keep for a long period of time. And so I would add that one in there, and I mentioned this one on on your show, on the series show the other night, but I'll repeat it here. Off. Think about those spouses and the wives of the drivers too. So they're a lot of times. They're holding down the floor, they're at home, they're taking care of the kids. They're they're taking them to, you know, soccer practice and school and, you know, all of that stuff while drivers are away. And so they're pulling a lot of they're they're lifting. They're doing the heavy lifting at home. And so if you can show some appreciation to them, to the spouses, I think that that would go a long way for the drivers too, and maybe even helping them, help their spouse. Like, here's something for you, but here's also something for you to give to your wife or your husband that's at home, and maybe it's a spa package or something like that that would go so much longer than a pizza party at the office. And, you know, driver's health is a huge concern. It's a growing initiative that I think that more folks are. Mark manera is a perfect example of this with his company that he's trying to help drivers get fit, make responsible, healthy choices on the road. It's very difficult to do that when you're stopping at truck stops and rest stops who you know, have all of this really highly processed food. And you know, it's one of those things that we don't typically think about because we have access to home food, but anything you can do to help, I think, from the health perspective, goes a long way. And then finally, don't think that you can only do this one week out of the year. There are 51 other weeks of the year that you should be having some of these programs and these initiatives ongoing basis. But if I could have one plea to the industry, it would definitely be embrace the pin trading selfishly,

Grace Sharkey: 1:02:07

1,000% i That would be so cool. If it was like Disney, where you could like, trade at certain like spots and stuff, just like, collect them. Yeah. That would be really cool.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:02:16

I mean, just imagine, like, if we go to like f3 or manifest, and they have like, pin training boards, like f3 you know, 2024 or, you know, maybe it's a sponsor pin, or, you know, something along those lines of, there's lots of different ways to play around with this. And so this free ideas, just, I guess, if you're going to take the pin route, don't get the cheap little plastic ones, or the whatever. Get the nice metal pins that people want to show off they want to wear that. That's my only sort of piece of advice, because the plastic ones are junk, and they fall off immediately. So don't waste your money, because you want people to actually keep these things, and they're not going to keep them if they're not really nice pin, and the really nice pen is still only, like, $2 a piece. Get them down cheaper if you get more of them. I'm freaking begging you to buy something that's nice or of quality,

Grace Sharkey: 1:03:15

just keeping the the pins market going. Just by yourself alone,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:03:20

I'm trying to think I've been given like, the shitty pins, and I'm like, Oh, thanks. And then you try to wear it, it just falls off and, you know, it gets damaged, and it doesn't last even, like, a few days of a conference, even if I put it on my damn lanyard. And so get the nice ones. They'll, they'll survive anything. Yeah,

Grace Sharkey: 1:03:41

look at Werner. Werner's killing it, right? Oh, nice one. Forgot I even have that. Yeah, there's the Disney one. There's, oh, there's

Blythe Brumleve: 1:03:50

a little flounder. Yes, we got it right before cscmp. We went to El pot and it just poured.

Grace Sharkey: 1:03:59

Here's a nice throwback to something you'll never see again. Oh

Blythe Brumleve: 1:04:02

rip convoy. I still have some of their merch right beside my desk and offer these

Grace Sharkey: 1:04:07

things. The slap Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. I actually where was one I saw something. Oh yeah. Here it is. Here we go.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:04:21

This is the ultimate Oh yes, you should bring that to the keys.

Grace Sharkey: 1:04:25

Oh no, is it broken? I No, I definitely, I It's funny. You say that I was thinking about it. Dang it.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:04:36

I still have mine. I want I don't have room in my suitcase. Let's just just put it that way, we're having a neon night on one of the nights, and I'm already like, I'm an over Packer for trips, and I now have to take your gift and another girl that's going on the trip that we have this big group of 18 girls, everybody's gotten their little sort of neon party gift bag. So I have to bring. Obviously mine, but I have to, you know, use space in my suitcase for for you and another girl too. So I don't have enough room in the suitcase for the convoy cowboy hat, but I am bringing you a hat. It is the hat. Is it in there? It's just,

Grace Sharkey: 1:05:14

you just reminded me, too to pack this. So yes, thank you. How you said So,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:05:20

speaking of which, I already put your transporter rock. So if anybody has missed previous episodes, there was a request over the summer, I asked grace to get me a Porsche pin from a freight waves. Was it Futura supply chain event in Atlanta? With a good click, that Porsche pin is so amazing. So if you ever visit the the Porsche complex in Atlanta, try to borrow, permanent borrow. They

Grace Sharkey: 1:05:50

are. They are hiding them. I'll tell you that I had to persuade a security guard to give me his basically,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:06:00

well, I got, oh, my NASA trip, if you're not tired of hearing about it, yet, I'm going to keep talking about it. But I got one of the rocks that's on the transporter path, because Grace loves the previous, you know, source to porch story she covered the the transporter. And so in the gravel road that the transporter that carries every single shuttle, or for every single you know mission that goes up into space, or every single rocket, I should say, that goes up into space, it goes on the transporter, and it goes one mile an hour on this gravel road. So I borrowed one of the rocks that was on there, so I have one. I gave my brother and my mom one, and I got you one too. So I'll make sure that I bring that to the keys as well. I do have a couple really quick ones that I did want to showcase for marketing. And it's very it's, it's, it's truck driver appreciation related too. So you might have listened one of our more popular episodes on everything is logistics. Is the Rust Belt kid on Twitter, slash x. And he is a manufacturer. He is the co founder of a company called Gator bar. They make rebar. They manufacture it inside of the US so they don't outsource it. But they had a really wonderful tweet recently that he calls it, I'm submitting the freight X load of the year, and it's a Hawaii, Iowa and Hawaii load hauled by hellbent Express, which is another, you know, famous driver that is over on x. He's very, very active. So I just wanted to showcase the power of social media and how this is. This tweet comes from Andrew teal, and he says the power of great people and companies coming together over social media. And so he has a picture of hell bent express his truck carrying a lot of the Gator bar rebar. And it's just, it's a cool moment of all of these people coming together because of social media, and now they're doing business together. So that's my sort of, you know, freight marketing spotlight that I wanted to give a quick shout out to. So shout out to

Grace Sharkey: 1:08:01

some Michigan companies right here too,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:08:04

which that the Michigan mafia is very strong because that that episode is still, it's one of my top performing of the entire year. And it talks about, you know, sort of the, you know, the growth, or the or the focus based on US manufacturing, but then also all of the materials and the shipping that happens in Michigan that you know we've covered with, you know, some of your your stories about the the ferries and that that travel around the Great Lakes, if I'm remembering correctly, But I

Grace Sharkey: 1:08:37

thought you meant like, like, we have to it's

Blythe Brumleve: 1:08:45

depending on maybe the time of year, and your your definition of fairies and things like that. But yeah, that is that that's just wanted to showcase that one because of the fact that they all found each other on social media and then started doing business together and talked about it on social. So that was definitely one that I wanted to highlight. But let's move on to our next topic. Let's talk about our favorite businesses in freight you want me to go first? So you want to

Unknown: 1:09:13

go first? Yeah, go first. Okay, mine is

Blythe Brumleve: 1:09:17

going to be a little unique and also tie into a lot of the things that we've been talking about on this

Grace Sharkey: 1:09:23

show. Life never tells me her topics, I share mine, and so it's just as fun for me as is

Blythe Brumleve: 1:09:30

i So side note to that the magnet conversation that we had a few months back, like I have regularly rewatched that clip, and when I talk about, when I first say what I'm talking about, and you just, you look down at your hands, and you just start laughing. It gets me every time, because you're like, What is this girl talking about?

Grace Sharkey: 1:09:54

Yeah, this is crazy.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:09:57

But then it switches from like this girl. Is crazy. Why do I even do this show? It switches from that to like, oh wow. And then your face, kind of like, lights up when you realize like, so that's sort of the goal I'm trying to aim for with each of these stories that that I talk about. So mine is my favorite freight business. You might have been getting this targeted ad over on Instagram, but it's called trashy, this company you can take your clothes because we've talked about, you know, some, you know, retail spending and things like that that we've also previously talked about, you know, fast fashion and what, you know, sort of the the clothing, or the mass, I guess, purchasing of clothing. I think we purchase on average, like six things a week from Amazon or Shein or temu and all of these products, they're not built to last. They're not built to for longevity. And so this company trashy. What they're trying to do is they are trying to make it so they send you a shipping bag. You load up all of the clothes that you don't want anymore, that you were just going to toss out or maybe donate instead, you donate it to trashy and then you get points back to shop on. You know, a lot of their different brand partnerships. So they have a brand partnerships with a lot of different retailers. And so they're trying to solve this problem of fixing clothing and textiles that go to the dump and never get recycled. They just, just end up in the dump itself. And they have really, really like creative marketing. So let me go ahead and pull up their website, because essentially their tagline is, get rewarded for recycling your clothes and more with the Take Back bag. And it's just a very like, brightly colored bag that they ship to you. So I'm pulling up the Instagram right now where you can kind of see a little bit of like, how they're branding. Let's pull up this post that talks about how trashy works, which I love the name too. Like the name is, you know, obviously a little, you know, kind of side eye, a little bit when you first hear it, but as you kind of go through some of their marketing so the they're explaining here in the images, buy a take back bag from trashy or one of our growing list of retail partners. So when you buy a bag, it's 20 bucks and you get five of them, the bag is fairly large. It's like the size of like a large pillow that you would put on your couch. So you buy the bag. They ship it to you. You fill your bag up with unwanted goods, including clothing, socks, underwear, underwear, linens, shoes and bags. I hope they're burning the underwear, by the way. Moving on to the next one step number three, you scan the QR code, you follow the instructions to generate your free shipping label, and then you get your trashy cash reward within the app itself. And then step number four, spend your trashy cash on exclusive deals and rewards from a growing list of brands. And so it's shoes, it's other clothing. So instead of the idea is that instead of sending this stuff to a landfill where it's just going to continue to pollute the environment, instead you get a little money back, you can help recycle. And what they do also is they take an added step of trying to figure out how to upcycle the clothes as well. And so what they have is real like onshore people within the United States that are going through all of these shipments that are coming in, and they're figuring out what, okay, what can we what can we keep? What's seasonal? And they they organize all of the clothes, and then that's when they go back through and create a what is it called? We have also created a best in class data system that monitors all collections, generates sorting and grading reports in real time, and tracks each grade to its second life. So they're matchmaking to maximize reuse. So they're selling these goods as well, but they have to be like in good condition, and they're also they have filters for like, seasonal items or holiday items, and so it's just a really cool concept, I think, that you know, just is trying to tackle this massive problem, because if 30% of all shipments coming into the West Coast of the United States belong to Sheehan and timuth, and that means that a significant amount of goods are being wasted, And they're just going to end up in a landfill. So we need solutions, like trashy to be able to take back with their take back bag in order to, you know, create that second life for these materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill and just cause more issues for the planet. So that's my that's my favorite freight business, business right now. Which I, when you think about it, what the the winter is coming up? That's typically when people kind of go through a lot of their clothes and get rid of some stuff. Yeah, make, make room for, for new stuff. That's the perfect excuse to go buy new stuff. So if you can get a little cash back doing it, why not? Well,

Grace Sharkey: 1:14:58

and it's cool too, because, like. Right now, I'm doing the same thing, and it's like, I have two bags. When I'm cleaning, I have one bag where it's like, okay, this is no, like, this is trash, you know, like, maybe there's a string is falling off of it or something. And I know that, like, Goodwill is not going to take it. So I have a goodwill bag and I have a trash bag. And if I can shoot. I mean, I'm considering everything in the trash bag of loss, so if I can, at least, you know, send it somewhere where I know it's going to be at least taken care of, and not put in a landfill. And then, I mean, even if I get$2 back, that's better than getting nothing back at the end of the day. So it is, it is, I'm gonna, like, look at this after we stop recording. Because, again, like, Why? Why not at the end of the day, I mean, this,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:15:47

you'll get five of those bags. You pay 20 bucks, you get five of those bags. You get the kind of good conscious buzz of, yeah, you know, your stuff isn't ending up in a landfill. Because, I mean, they have some incredible stats on their website, 85% of used clothing ends up in the trash. Our consumption has increased by 400% over the last 20 years, and trashy says that they can handle up to 1 million pounds of clothing and textiles waste per week. And trashy keeps 90% of our take back bags collections out, or keeps 90% of the items that you send them out of the landfill. They said, doubling the number of times a garment is worn reduces its associated greenhouse gas emissions by 44% don't know how you really come up with numbers like that, but think the long story short is that you can take this stuff that you know you're probably spending, you know, you sometimes you need, you know, an outfit in a couple days, and you order it from Amazon and it, you wear it a couple times, and the clothing is falling apart. Well, this company actually takes it a step further, where even on their Instagram, you can see them like taking a piece of clothing that might not, you know, be good in its original form, and then they'll upcycle it to something else, and they'll create something else out of it. So it's a multi pronged approach, which is something that I really like. So yeah, check out trashy. In case you're going through your closet and you want to, you know, get rid of some stuff. You might get a little bit of money and maybe buy some Christmas gifts with

Grace Sharkey: 1:17:17

it. I will say it's a trashy spelled, I, efpn not why? Because I did, I did search trashy while she's going to do that. And it's, it's, it is safe for work, but it's not the same thing. So you need a costume of a certain sorts. The other one is what you want to go to No. So I will say mine is less cool, like that. The colors were just so cool.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:17:49

Are they so bright and just

Grace Sharkey: 1:17:51

wow? Speaking of me, a night No. So I actually want to shout out a company that I've been following for a really long time, really big fan of their leadership. I know multiple people who have either worked there or do work there now and last week, unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to but Neil did get a chance. Sorry, not Neil Noy over, one of my fellow writers here at freightway, has got a chance to review a freight tech company called AI fleet, and I'll get into why I think this is cool. Is this something I've kind of touched on on past episodes with, with life as well, but they raised an extra$16 million in a series B that they closed on. I think they've raised over $50 million so far, and and what they do is they just their data guys. They use data to right now they have, like, their own fleet of trucks and drivers, and they take the feeling out of dispatching basically, and they use the opportunity to leverage machine learning to figure out what lanes to take for drivers. Drivers will come to them and say, Yes, I want to drive for you, but I need to be home on these days, or I need to get home every day or anything. And they basically create the algorithms around what needs to be done in order for that driver to have a positive experience in the workplace. And it's been working well for them, and they've been growing. According to the recent article with Noy, they are close to profitability, which we all know in this industry, is a fun thing that noone wants to fully admit. So the fact that mark, their their CEO, and everything, put that out there, I think, is is really strong as well. But the reason I did want to touch on this too is because, again, I've talked about this a couple of times. One of my favorite things to do is when I see these raises, is see who's a part of them, right? Who's investing in them. What is that family tree of of investors or portfolio companies look like for long term trends within the industry? And this one is fun, because a part of their recent. Was a company I'm sure all of you know, called Volvo, Volvo group, of course, related. It's the investment firm of the OEM out there. And there's a number of Renaults, a number of different truck companies meet all the way from heavy duty to medium duty trucks that they build, too. And I get really excited because I've actually, I had a cool talk with an investor this past week who was looking to learn more about, like, upcoming trends and things that investors are looking at. I think this is one that I'm really excited for, and it's the opportunity for OEMs like Volvo. We've seen other groups too out there do the same thing um, these OEMs, Wabash is another great one. They're having a little hard time, right with the recent that's something we could probably talk about the next episode, the recent court case. But what's the next step for these companies? Right? Because, listen, parts are getting made better. Parts are lasting longer. As we use data to watch parts too we're making we need to make sure that our parts, especially for Volvo, right, that they're accessible. Their parts are more widespread across the United States, so that a truck isn't down, right? If they're asset that they've created for you is down, it basically becomes worthless, but we are making trucks better and they're lasting longer. That's kind of a lot of times like, right? The pushback against even like alternate or alternative fuels is the fact that, well, engines produce less of emissions and are running a lot better. That is true, but there's still this wonderful opportunity in this growing market for what we call after market services. And the fact that Volvo, of course, is investing in this one, I think, is really interesting. Hold on one second. Brought to you by Panera red, sorry, I got I think I have a little cold coming. Um, long story short, that's so I think that's really cool. I mean, could you bring up that site again?

Blythe Brumleve: 1:22:07

Sure, so the Volvo site. You want me to bring this one up? Or should I bring up the AI? Okay, let me bring up Volvo. Cuz there's a lot of companies on here that I had. I, frankly, I didn't have any idea that Volvo actually like in that they invest in companies like this. But there's a lot of companies on here that, yeah, I follow that. I had no idea that Volvo was investing in forts, blocked rate, just to name a few.

Grace Sharkey: 1:22:36

You can see like what they're interested in past selling you a truck, right? Oh yeah, we sell you a truck. There's also a possibility that we can connect you with AI fleet software so that you can dispatch your truck and make

Blythe Brumleve: 1:22:55

there. Oh, auto tech ventures, yeah, we, we've had them on the show before that. That's Barack was what was, oh, yeah, he's really, really insightful, and he's one of those guys that like on his his LinkedIn, he boldly puts his meeting link on his LinkedIn so that anybody can book a meeting with him at any time, which is reckless, not something I would do. Absolutely not, no,

Grace Sharkey: 1:23:22

um, oh. And then plug and play, right? Play, you know them, but yeah, if you look at these, like, upstream is a great one flock freight, they they're starting to understand that just to focus on building, I don't want to say starting, because they've been doing this for a while, but they do understand that the future of their business is not just creating and building you the part, but it's making sure that the asset is running when it should be and it's not running when it shouldn't be a big part of AI fleet as well as like, do you have too many trucks on the road? Are you dispatching them to because clearly you want your trucks moving, but you don't want them at a loss. So are you using their assets correctly? Do you know four kites? Do you know where your assets are? I believe upstream and fire remember correctly is, is focused on the cyber security of your trucking business. So it's, it's, I mean, it's something we're going to see, I think in, even in our own cars, right, like the we'll get to a point where, like a Tesla, not only are you, you buy the car, but you pay a monthly subscription to,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:24:33

Oh, I hate that.

Grace Sharkey: 1:24:35

See, I know, I know, I know you hate this. But

Blythe Brumleve: 1:24:39

investors and I see why they get it the way that they're thinking like that. But what is it like for

Grace Sharkey: 1:24:46

a Tesla, though? Is that it lasts longer. So you might hate the subscription model, but you also aren't buying cars as many times through your lifetime, right? So it's kind of like that situation where it's like, okay. If we can produce these to last longer, well, how do I continue to bring shareholders value and my customer value? And I think this, this kind of showcases that aspect, right? It's like, we're going to flock freight. You'll be able to, you know, put together partials for your truck so that you're running full capacity. And I can't remember what truck hicksters is. Oh, so you're European company, which Volvo does European trucks as well. So, yeah, I think again, I think it's cool. Whenever I see a big OEM investing in something like this, I get really excited, because one, I think it's going to lead to a really great outcome for the company it's attached to, and in a worst case situation, likely it if it's not, if the exit strategy isn't selling it off your portfolio, it's probably consuming it within your own operations too, kind of like, Who Is that writer and the it's going to drive me nuts. Now, um, Andrew's company, Berwick, out of, what is that company? It's, it's going to drive me nuts. I gotta look it up.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:26:15

Well, I in in, I just when it talks about, you know, sort of subscription models inside of cars like that. Just it wasn't it was BMW last year that caught a lot of shit that you have to have a subscription to use features that are already installed on your car. It was heated seats. You had to pay BMW a monthly subscription fee in order to access heated seats, a feature that you should have paid for when you bought the car, or should have been included when you bought the car, but you can't have access to that feature if you don't pay them a subscription fee. So I am anti subscription fee in that regard, but I probably would pay for a cyber security fee, because that could mean literally, like, the the difference between life and death,

Grace Sharkey: 1:27:00

yeah, 100% so, oh, baton was the company I was trying to think,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:27:04

oh, okay, okay, yeah, that's a writer company too. We had them, yeah?

Grace Sharkey: 1:27:08

And Ryder was an investor, right at first, and then they ended up consuming the company, because the technology would work for writer as a full full

Blythe Brumleve: 1:27:16

time, yeah. And writer does a lot of that kind of investing, too, very similar to to, you know, Volvo that that I learned about today. So, yeah, writer has, like, a whole, like, innovation hub that they invest in, and then, if it does well, then there's an opportunity for you as a business owner to have an exit. So I think, I think

Grace Sharkey: 1:27:34

that's actually what I think Andrew and his, I can't remember, his co founder, Nate Robert, will be leading over there. Too Awesome.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:27:47

Cool. Well, that is, that's a really good one. So I think that kind of concludes our favorite freight business until we go on to the most exciting part of show, and that is source to porch. So I think you should kick us off, because we we've kind of been talking a lot about retail, and so let's, let's talk about yours, and then we'll get

Grace Sharkey: 1:28:10

into mine. Yes, so hold on. So if you're watching this and not listening to this, you might have noticed that throughout this episode, my wall has been changing colors back here. It's hard to tell, because it is really bright in here, in this daytime or, yeah, it was dark. Oh, I see it down, yeah. We might if I turn this off, yeah, you can kind of see it a little bit more. Um, your girl, your I've used Temo. I have officially used Teemo temu. And let me tell you, it was an interesting experience, and I learned a lot. As someone who has done online shopping, does podcast kind of on retail and stuff like that. I'm understanding the situation, so I this. I'll start from the very beginning. I got a notification from Timu. I'm sure, like a lot of us do that I had won 100% off gift card or or or object. And boy, is that tough to say NO to NO. I got on the app, and I said, awesome. We're going to get something for free today, and unfortunately, where team starts to get you is they said, but you can't use it unless you buy four items. And I said, okay, okay, team, we want to see you. I see you. That's fine. I'll do that. So I ended up getting, I want to say six items or so in total, because when I clicked on the fourth item, it said, spin the wheel again. You have another opportunity. It's

Blythe Brumleve: 1:29:48

a casino. It's, you know, it's a casino shopping experience.

Grace Sharkey: 1:29:52

Yes, no, okay, so yes, you're getting to my point. So yes, I ended up buying for about. $60 total, somewhere around, I want to say five, six or seven items. One was this adorable space man, who's really cute, who projects the it does also have the option this will just like, give me a headache to do the stars. Oh, see. Oh, that's cute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's cute. It does, like, the whole Milky Way thing on your wall. Yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:30:24

I do like those. They're great for parties. So if you have, like, mood lighting,

Grace Sharkey: 1:30:29

I put mine on at night in my bedroom, it's like, cool to fall asleep to the cat. I can't. I honestly, the reason I can't do the green, the green part, though, is because the cats will start jumping on the wall. So that's we don't need it. We don't need that drama this episode right now. So you would see cats all over this calendar right now. So yeah, but though, if you want to distract your cats, this is something you can get. So I will say I got this. I got a full length mirror. I got shelving units. I also got, I have a new cat who has more hair. It's like one of those, like combs that, like, you just go like this, and it sweeps up all it's fast. And here's the thing, and I know I've heard the whole temu, cheap items, poor shipping, things like that, not not fully my experience. So I was interested, particularly for the mirror, because I said, watch this thing come in broken you know that delivered within one day of me buying the item, and it delivered. It's, it's a beautiful mirror. It's like a feeling gold outside, like mirror. It's, ladies and gentlemen, we got her. It's absolutely gorgeous and but it's interesting, because talk about source supports, right? Is that this is something you actually brought up to me when I was texting me about the experience is that I started to understand why Sheehan, for example, is working with Flexport now, and and kind of where these platforms could evolve into and how disruptive they could truly be to someone like Amazon, because I started to realize where there are the items, right? Like, I think the shelves took the longest to get there. It was like, two weeks or something like that. And it came from China, where there are items on there that are made overseas and take a while to ship. And I will say, like, one of, oh, I got these, like, garden things that like light up. They're like, solar powered, right? So they light up in my backyard. That was probably, like, the cheapest thing that came in where I was like, Okay, this is, like, probably worth five bucks. But everything else was, like, very, very decent for the price that I ended up paying for and but when it came to again, the shipping aspects, like every shipping notification was on point. There was no one thing I've noticed recently with Amazon, and I noticed it really bad during Prime week, is the promise of two days shipping and but the problem a lot of times with that, is it doesn't actually leave the warehouse like it doesn't get a sticker from the shipper for like, five or six days, right? So, but they'll tell you when you say, Well, you said you get to me in two days. Well, it did ship in two days, but it it's not our fault if the person shipping it didn't like actually get it to the post office in time, like I, I don't, whose fault

Blythe Brumleve: 1:33:44

is it? Then Amazon, whose fault is it? And

Grace Sharkey: 1:33:48

honestly, it pisses me off, because I think they do that purposely so that you purchase the item, and then you're just like, you'll, they know you'll wait for it, right? And have you seen

Blythe Brumleve: 1:33:57

also with their practices, is, is that if you have a prime membership, and you're obviously, you're going to stay logged into Amazon. You are paying higher prices for that item than if you were just a normal user, like a if you look on like incognito mode, or you look on someone's regular, you know, Amazon account, they will give you a cheaper price than your Prime membership. So your pay. I'm paying $120 a year for Amazon Prime. I would say it's still worth it, but it's definitely gotten to the point where I very similarly to your experience with temu, I'm willing to take the gamble and for a lot of these products, that's where Amazon is getting them to begin with. They use the same pictures for a lot of these products, too. And so there's like, these different layers of like, well, why should I support Amazon? Should I even support Amazon with, you know, a lot of their company practices and the way that they treat their workers as well, which is just as much of a complaint as to how well I was, maybe not as extreme as you know. Of these places overseas. I'll just say that. But

Grace Sharkey: 1:35:03

now think of that perspective as a third party shipper on their site, right? And I think that's what's interesting to me, is like, I'm pretty certain that the mere company in particular isn't a, I mean, it came from Indiana, so I only had to travel one state to me. And clearly it's not a Chinese I know morph it is, and it was brought here way early and put into a warehouse near me. And I just, I wonder if temu and she and some of these sites are, they've, they've want to establish themselves in the market fast and quickly to compete with Amazon, right? Like that. We all know them that they would go to Amazon because it's probably something we need in the next two days that we can't get in the store near us, and we that's just like, our only option to go to that's for me, if I purchase off Amazon, it's usually because of that reason, right? So, like, if a lot of times, if I bought something on Amazon, like, I rarely am I choosing Amazon because it's shipping a long time. I'm usually there because I need it in two days and I, and it's I was just very thrilled by the shipping experience I did get from temu again, there was some items they never over promised that. And I think that's what's interesting, is like, their fulfillment centers seem up to date and and what they told me, they've they followed through.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:36:32

And that's, it's, it's great that you brought up, like, the fulfillment aspect of it, because we've seen just such an explosion in cross border trade, and so for a lot of like, you know, especially with the election coming up, it's a lot of companies to your earlier point, they're trying to get ahead of maybe some potential tariffs that are going to be coming down, especially against China. And so they're, they're shipping these goods to Mexico as well and storing them in warehouses. And I actually talked to a company called prosper fulfillment earlier this week, and they were talking about, you know, how their their business, is doing very well by just focusing on those relationships with shippers that you know, have that are shipping at least, like, you know, like 600 packages a day, I believe what was the quote, but they are specifically targeting that merchandise, that it can fall under the $800 threshold, that it extends only to China, or does it extend maybe to the rest of the world, where your merchandise, if it's under $800 in value, then then you don't have to pay taxes on it. But I believe that that's what, exactly what they're focusing on, and they have film centers in Mexico, and so it helps for some of those manufacturers that are located, you know, across the the sea, in order to ship their goods there, and then they can get that faster fulfillment time, whether it's Shein or whether it's temu, I think that that's just going to continue to be an issue, and an issue for Amazon only. It's great for for folks like us, because their returns are pretty seamless. I think the overwhelming majority of the products that I get from temu have been very good. The only thing I would probably like caution against is electronic related items. One in particular I bought, like a knockoff GoPro shit, like absolute like, shit quality. If you see any of my TMSA interviews from the TMSA elevate conference, you probably only see one camera view, because the damn go. I call it a faux Pro. The faux pro messes up, doesn't hold a charge on the battery. It died in like 20 minutes, and it didn't even record that footage. And the footage that it did record, it said it was supposed to be 4k nowhere near 4k so I would caution against some of the electronic purchases, even though you can still return them, so you can still roll the dice. I mean, it was only like a$60 you know, faux Pro, but I don't think it was worth $60 avidly returned it with aggression, because it was just, oh, I was so mad, and I it was just it cemented the point that I can't go cheap on this kind of equipment that I'm going to have to be forced to take down, you know, the camera that I use here in order to take it to events, and run that risk of damaging that equipment. Well,

Grace Sharkey: 1:39:20

and if I did have to throw a negative in there, you touched on this earlier, and I've noticed it ever since, because I might have to turn the notifications off, and I'm trying to see these guys are just, they are a bookie. If Timo is a bookie, I swear to God, I'm like, trying to scroll through right now, and I feel like, sometimes I don't know how they know, but I feel like they're sending me this stuff, like, when I'm sitting on the couch trying not to even, like, think about it, but these guys will just send me so their logo is very good, yes, oh yeah. Like, and because we're talking, just wait for. It, right? We're talking about it, and I'm sure they're going to, it's going to pop up, but, yeah, it's, these guys will send me probably four times a day that, oh, you qualify for $300 and free stuff, and blah, blah, blah. And it's, it's, it's turned into, it feels like a draftking situation, where it's like, oh boy, I need to to avoid it so, but I will again, like I was happy with what I got. I don't think again I bring this up because I don't think I go to it for items like to be delivered right away, but for deals and just where it could grow. And I just again, I think sometimes this little like bookie feeling, I think they're doing that to grow the platform, and I see it becoming maybe a little bit more, let's say, like professional or something, over time. But I can totally understand why companies and clearly she is a little less bookie. I think of a site,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:41:05

but I have those kind of like, as soon as like, say, I'm going into the app just to track something I've purchased. Is a big one, because I'm buying a lot of things for the wedding and so or a lot of outfits just to see what I want and what I don't want, but I'm just opening up just to check tracking. I'm not trying to buy something, but they won't even let you do that until you see the pop up and, yeah, maybe spin the wheel. And I'm like, God, stop. Like, has

Grace Sharkey: 1:41:33

that ding wheel? I get it and and every time too, it lands on, like, the highest one, of course, Oh, of course, it landed on 90% off, of course. Like, so don't believe you. Like, yeah, it got me. I can't I was a middle of the night. You know me. It's been an emotional two months. They call me an emotional mood. And I said, you know, I just sold my car. I do have some extra cash on me, and let's go and stricken, yeah, but I said, like, I think I spent$60 and got well over 100 to$200 worth of stuff. So and I was, I was pleased with this little guy. I mean, look at how, yeah, so cute, like, and I wish there's a way for me to, like, show what it does a little bit better. But

Blythe Brumleve: 1:42:21

no, it is very cute little space guy.

Grace Sharkey: 1:42:23

Yeah, he's a cute space and he comes in black or white.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:42:28

Well, that's, I think the little space guy is a perfect segue exactly into our next topic, and that is my source to porch story. And so I want to see what your reaction would be to a company that says, I want to be the shipping container that is making space a transportation layer for earth, and the mission is to be that fourth transportation layer for Earth. So, air, land, sea, they want to be the delivery companies in space, no in space, with warehouses in satellite orbit all over the globe, that they can deliver cargo to you in under an hour that is being held as the next shipping container.

Grace Sharkey: 1:43:20

I do laugh at it is because right now, we're struggling to get, like two guys off of

Blythe Brumleve: 1:43:27

Boeing is struggling, we should say, government funded contractor who is just not innovating and not doing a very good job. And so companies like SpaceX have to come in and save the day because they're privately held. And they can reiterate, well, they can't do it apparently that, you know, the a lot of issues with the with that Boeing Dragon, not Dragon capsule, because Dragon capsule is SpaceX. But, yeah, the the Boeing capsule, they already brought back. They brought that back first before they brought the humans back. So what was supposed to be what like a week long mission is now turned into something that's going to be like six months. So shout out to Boeing for being the use case of why they're not a they're technically a government contractor. But that's sort of the issue with a lot of the landscape, especially in department of defense budgets and even NASA budgets, is that, you know, you have these companies that are just so used to getting a paycheck and they get unlimited funds, there's no incentive, to reiterate, to be efficient, to be lean. And so what you'll watch, and especially if you watch the the wild, wild space documentary, I just did an episode on this, but go watch that documentary. It's on max slash HBO. But if you go watch that documentary, it really highlights the parallel between private companies and the. Companies that are, you know, just ingrained in NASA and have been like Boeing for years, but, you know, a SpaceX or a Rocket Lab kind of comes onto the scene, and they are really re are revolutionizing, I should say, in a real way, not just some marketing gimmick copy, but they are revolutionizing space travel to where reusable rockets have changed the game. And because you can have reusable rockets, it brings the price down to travel into space tremendously. So with all of that said, I want to talk about inversion space. They are the new warehouse. What they are building is a component. Instead of kind of going through, I want to bring up one of their videos, which hold on, but they are called inversion space. And so what they're essentially doing is what they would want is around 30 of these warehouse locations in space to store goods. They start by funding, or getting their funding and working with the Department of Defense disaster relief for the idea that they have a certain amount of goods that are stored in this warehouse, and that if you need it, if you need some of these items, whether it's a disaster going on, hikers who are lost that need supplies, you know, a shipwreck on an island, or something like that, all of these different components. Or you need a, you know, drones that need to be shipped, you know, to a, you know, secure location. That is the the goal of what inversion space is trying to do is create the, the set of, you know, a distributed, uh, distributed warehouse model where you have the same kind of goods, very similar to Amazon, the same kind of goods, and all of your warehouses located all across the globe. So then that when someone needs them, the Department of Defense, or maybe someone's in trouble or disaster happens, that they can take their vehicles, that they're fully autonomous vehicles, that have this cargo, and that they can go to that position around the globe and be able to drop that cargo right where you need it. And so in under an hour, that is the promise. They have their first launch scheduled for this October, and the vehicle is called Ray. And so I'm going to bring up a quick video to play. So I want

Grace Sharkey: 1:47:21

to see what this looks like.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:47:25

Let me I'll bring this full screen. Okay, let's play it this quick, one minute video.

Grace Sharkey: 1:47:42

You all these cute manufacturers i where they Oh, wow,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:48:13

that's one of the capsules that they're dropping as a test. I

Grace Sharkey: 1:48:40

Yeah. So that, like, black box at the end would like, hold it good, and it would like fall from space.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:48:49

So if you are just listening, and you didn't, you weren't able to watch the video. So they're basically, they're, they're building everything themselves, except for what's already available on the market. So the the founder, whose name is Justin fiaschetti, he has a company in version space that's about 25 people at the company. So they're very lean operations. They focus on sort of the Andrew funding model, which is Andrew is another sort of private company that is proving concepts first before they try to do business with the government. So for folks who may not know, typically, you know, a lot of the big contractors that work for Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin comes to mind. There's a, you know, a few others North Northrop Grumman is another one. But these companies have been doing business with the government for years. They've had these contracts locked down. There's not really an incentive for them to be as lean as a startup. That's not, you know, any shade whatsoever, one way or another, to each company. But startups typically run leaner, and they. Have to prove, you know, sort of profitability a little bit sooner than some of their counterparts now you can, kind of, they are funded, I think they, their first round was only ten million and I say only with obviously salt, but you're going to space like ten million a drop in the bucket, compared to someone like a Boeing that's, you know, wasting billions of dollars on equipment that doesn't work. But, yes, so, so their goal is to be the shipping container, but in space, and that little capsule that you saw, those are the capsules that have the goods inside of them. And so they're, they're the way that they sort of pitch it is that we have the same products in each of our warehouses, in each of these capsules, not that, you know, they have probably disaster relief supplies in one of the capsules. And, you know, different supplies drones, maybe in another capsule, and that's part of that one warehouse. So they want around 30 of these warehouses all across the globe. And so then that way, working with their customers, working with their partners, like the Department of Defense, they can prove the model. First, they can prove the usability, the profitability or not, not necessarily profitability, but cost structure, cheaper costs dependent on the need now for somebody like the Department of Defense, they don't have to now, you know, have a company that jumps through all of these hoops and hopes to become a defense contractor. They can just see in the market, okay, Andrew roll is building, you know, this type of product we like the way that looks and that function. So we're going to go and buy some stuff from them. That is the same model that inversion space is using as well. So they're proving the model first. And so they're hopping on these different cargo missions from SpaceX, from Rocket Lab, companies like that, where they can put their cargo on those missions, send it up into space, and then do do a test. And so when that video, that was one of their tests, by taking one of those capsules that have the goods inside of it, and then focusing on the, you know, the wherever it is in the globe that somebody is going to need those supplies. Yeah, so that 30 cargo spots around the globe that acts as a distributed warehouse. There was a lot of just really good takeaways. Going back to the this tweet where they kind of break down a lot of these different functions, it's their next big launch is happening in October with their their device called Ray, and that device is going to be their first test run of this concept, of this product. So when Ray goes up into space, then they'll really be able to test it. So in the in the video that we played, they're testing that capsule from high altitude planes. The next test will be testing delivery from space, and that's coming up in October. I'm really surprised that no one else in our industry has covered this yet. Hopefully that will, you know, we'll have some more coverage afterwards, because this, this, I really love this concept, and I can't believe that, you know, there are people out here that are thinking this way, that one of their taglines is making space a transportation layer for Earth. So they have a really slick website, not that that, you know, kind

Grace Sharkey: 1:53:21

of has a nice website.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:53:24

So this is, let me pull back up. I'll start at the top, but it says making space a transportation layer. You can kind of see that that capsule that that's right on it and or that's right on the homepage, with the little parachute of the item being delivered. And so basically, these items are going to be stored in space until somebody needs them. And then what happens after? When somebody needs them, they put in the call, they find out which warehouse is the closest to the location that they need. It dropped. So the inversion space team will go in, they'll put the coordinates. And then after they put in the coordinates, they're done so that all of the tracking is supplied to whatever customer is making that order. Their use cases right now is Department of Defense and then disaster relief. And so once they prove the model with those two markets, then it kind of opens up the door to do more of like the privatization so, you know, different goods. Now he does kind of theorize that this could be a concept that, you know, and maybe, like, five to 10 years, when you order something from Amazon, that it's actually getting dropped in your backyard. I don't really think that that's going to be feasible, because we crazy to even think about, you know, the expenses of that. But as we do this, more as more private companies become involved in space, then it creates a situation where there's incredibly more demand. There's much more supply. Prices come down. The you know, the cost to book even a flight right now to get into space is around $25,000 but that is a way it is coming down 10. Years ago,

Grace Sharkey: 1:55:01

yeah, it's in order to Caprio was just kicking himself right now. It is. It is crazy to, like, I'm like, reading this, and looking at the site, and it's crazy to think that, you know, we might be writing about the tech innovation behind a re entry vehicles, you know, like, and

Blythe Brumleve: 1:55:19

that's another thing that they're building, too. The other product that they're building is called Arc, and it's a fully autonomous vehicle inside of space, so they can kind of propel that vehicle for both reusability and re entry. So then that way they can keep reusing and if you can reuse it, and that also brings down your prices. And so these are just really, really the less than $1 global delivery.

Grace Sharkey: 1:55:46

I like the the and I'm sure it'll go down, but if you go back up to the arc, it says mission duration less than five oh, so it probably means it can be in space for about five years. Okay, cool. You're going to get your item just three

Unknown: 1:56:03

and a half years.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:56:06

But that lazy accuracy within 50, yeah, of the GPS coordinates is just crazy. So there was a couple other little notes.

Grace Sharkey: 1:56:16

So it's like when we are, like, sending letters back to our packages, back to our parents from Mars in like, 40 years, like it's gonna get that gonna get

Blythe Brumleve: 1:56:26

my only, I guess, concerns? Yes, a few concerns. So I'm trying to get inversion. I'm trying to get Justin on the show. So I've reached out to him on LinkedIn and Twitter. Haven't heard back yet. So maybe this, the segment, will help in that regard. I'm going to send it over to their PR team. Yeah, I see you writing notes over there. You're trying to, no, I'm somebody to beat me to the punch.

Grace Sharkey: 1:56:55

I'm going, I'm looking up right now, their investors,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:57:00

oh, they're Y Combinator and so they're YC, I'm not sure if they're actual investors, but they're a YC funded company or a YC alum, but that's how they they got their, you know, sort of initial funding round of ten million which feels like peanuts when you talk you're talking about, like, space investments the only concern. So, you know, as I'm learning more about, like space logistics and things like that, there are no government bodies in space where it's like a from a regulatory standpoint, it's kind of a very much a Wild Wild West, like there's no rules, there's no laws, there's no regulations. It's just kind of like a loose set of agreements that we're not exactly sure if like other countries are going to follow. One example in particular is Russia wanted to test one of their missiles, and so for a satellite that they already had in orbit that wasn't working anymore, Russia decides we're going to send a missile up to do a missile test, which is essentially just like a show a force. So they do this missile test, they blow up their own satellite, but it sends all of these pieces of debris into orbit, and so you're creating, like this debris field that's going to impact all of the other I mean, the global, like space community apparently, was, like, just pissed off that this happened because of all of the issues that we're going to or secondary issues that were going to be caused because Russia wanted to do a missile test. And so when you think about the debris field that they created from that one missile test, just think if, like, you piss off the wrong country, or you piss off the wrong person. There's also like, companies that, you know, I talked about this all also in in the NASA series that I dropped, that there's companies now that monitor the debris and so you can get, like, visibility into debris fields, so you can maneuver your satellites around it, so they don't get damaged by a screw that is traveling 1000s of miles an hour, that if it hits your satellite, it's going to severely damage that satellite. So my main concern is with these warehouse locations, with the focus on the Department of Defense, what happens if one of these things gets attacked? What happens if you're storing something that's not necessarily a drone, um, it's, you know, some kind of explosive devices, things like that, that you're storing, and somebody else gets a little mad about it, or, oops, my satellite ran into this warehouse, and it causes it to explode. Like, what happens then, if there's no regulatory bodies in space, who is at fault, and who does that affect? If that debris field doesn't actually stay in orbit, and that debris falls to earth and kills somebody like, what happens then? Who's responsible? None of these things are being answered yet, because these are all completely new problems. Um. And there's, there's one stat that sort of like blows me away, is that we have about 8000 satellites right now in lower Earth orbit. In the next 10 years, it's projected to be 200,000 and so if we have all of those sort of moving parts going on in space, all it takes is one bad actor, one bad actor to mess it all up and to ruin weather satellites, GPS satellites, communications, anything like that that. You know, our life is powered on Earth by satellites, and so one bad actor messes up and does something I should have load something. It's crazy. Secondary effects that could happen from that.

Grace Sharkey: 2:00:43

At the Samsara event, we're talking to the girl who's like, VP of product for that space company that and she was like, there's some really crazy, I don't want to call it conspiracy theories, but like, like, end of the world type of theories around just the space trash alone and, and, oh yeah, you know me. I was, like, already fangirling over this girl. Yeah? Well, I had one of my banker buddies with me and, and I'm like, listen to this girl, like she so I should connect you guys, and maybe we can do an episode with her. She seems like I had brought up space trash, because I was trying to explain to him, like, you know, there's an app I use to look at the stars and stuff like that, find planets, and you can actually see all the trash satellites and stuff and wow, in space. And she was brought it up as, like, a huge deal, and like, looked like it was like a do I was like a doomsday event situ. So I 100% agree, and I and we have someone working on the inversion interview for you. So hopefully, yes, for for those out there, you'll, you'll be able to have that episode soon.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:02:02

Come on, Justin, get on the show. We want some of these questions answered, which I'm sure that he's, he's, he's thought about, because he does seem like a very thoughtful founder with the way that he is approaching this. So I that is one. But he hasn't done very I've only, I tried, you know, Googling, YouTube, that kind of thing. He's only done a couple interviews. And so I definitely want to hear more about their plans on becoming, you know, that next shipping container, because if you can standardize some of this stuff, this could be the next sort of like the box, you know, revolution that, you know, that the container that revolutionized global trade. Maybe this is that next thing that's going to revolutionize global trade. Costs continue to come down. I mean, obviously this is not something that's probably going to happen in the next five years, but it might happen in the next 10 years, especially with the growth of space. And you know, the we just saw the the Polaris mission the other day, when you know you have four four just civilians that you know go on a commercial flight and do it, get to do a spacewalk. So these things are happening at a rapid pace, and I don't know that a lot of people are aware of everything that's going on. So I am going to link to a couple of the interviews that I found just to prep for this story because I couldn't believe it hasn't been covered. I mean, if you're calling yourself the next shipping container, this this, to me, needs, you know, definitely some more eyeballs on it. And I would love to know, you know, from the shipping community on what they think the likelihood of something like this will mean, because there's a lot of debate also around the supersonic planes. And you know that that was supposed to be sort of the next wave of revolutionizing delivery is with these super or hypersonic planes. And so with hypersonic planes, or, I guess, comparing, comparing it to inversion space, Justin was saying in one of the interviews that there's a lot of complexities with landing the craft, and so if you can remove the landing of a plane, then it it removes a lot of that complexity. Because there's another company called, like dream scope, or Dream Dream site, or something like that, that was trying to do something a little similar to inversion space, but they are focusing on sort of the plane model, and the landing of it is proving to be much more complex. And so for Justin's company, inversion, they are focusing on these capsules that they can just parachute in and drop in, and it creates significantly less barriers for that cargo to get delivered. So crazy.

Grace Sharkey: 2:04:44

Yeah, looks like he was at SpaceX before, too. So, yep, interesting stuff.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:04:50

I know it is going back to that wild, wild space documentary. A lot of these animals from, like, the same, they come from, like, a lot of the same kind. Companies I'm really interested to hear. Because I, after watching that documentary, I became such a fan of Robert peak. That's his name. He's the CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. And now I like, I follow, yeah, it is Robert, Robert Beck, or Peter Beck. That's his name. Peter Beck got it finally, but Peter Beck apparently interviewed over at NASA and wanted to work for them, because he was such a space enthusiast, and he said that everybody at NASA was talking about all the things they used to do, they weren't talking about the things that they wanted to do in the future. So that caused him to not take the job at NASA and to startup Rocket Lab. And now Rocket Lab has over 50 completed reusable rocket missions or takeoffs, versus, like a Blue Origin or Astra, is another company that they're trying to do, you know, reusable rockets, very much like SpaceX, but they're, you know, they're still running into, you know, some, a lot of issues, which you'll see in in that documentary, much less, not not so much on Blue Origin, but more on that other company. But Rocket Lab kind of just feels like they're being led by someone who is like a mad scientist, but with a good soul. That's what it feels, yeah, to me, like he's just, he's doing it just because he's, like, been a space nerd his whole life, and he's building rockets in literally his backyard in New Zealand and launching them. And so it's just, it's an awesome kind of thing to see. Highly recommend following them on social media too, because they just have a lot of really cool stuff, and they've done over 50 successful missions using reusable rockets. And so that's another company to kind of keep an eye on. But that documentary is great, and I love the parallels that they were talking about, just from the privatization of space and getting into space, and sort of the name of it wild wild space leads to sort of the wild wild west and sort of the lawlessness of it, and who's going to be making these rules and regulations, and are they going to have a responsibility to follow those rules and regulations like it has. It's going to have to be a global effort, because it's not just the United States and Russia that have space programs anymore. I mean, we were talking India has a very strong space program. Japan has one that does, just to name a few of these different companies that are, you know, trying to get their stuff into space and trying to to ride this ride, this wave. Well, you know,

Grace Sharkey: 2:07:31

it's, it's interesting too, because I don't know if you got a chance, and by the time this comes out, it won't be from yesterday, but probably the past week. But I don't know if you got a chance to see the Oprah special last night on AI. Oprah did like, you know, Oprah, she loves to do a special on things, and she did a really good AI special with Bill Gates and the chatgpt guy, and also, just like historians as well. And, yeah, open. And, you know, something that they brought up, and it kind of reminds me of this exact situation is like, you know, with the invention of the car, because of how slowly that moved, they're able to, at the same time, create regulations and rules and driver license protocol and and street signs and all that, while that that technology grew, and what they're struggling a little bit with, AI and I kind of see the same thing with space is because it's like ramping so fast because it's being introduced and it's it's able to be used like anyone with A credit card or even get a free version. Can use chat GBT today, it's hard to figure out the process, like, where it's moving faster than the regulation, right? And, and that's it just reminds me the same problem with with space. It's like, it's not that any of this technology is bad, but it goes back to, like, your fear of like, okay, well, all this stuff could be really useful and helpful, but you know, who is going to be standing behind it? Are we going to have to build, like a space or like regulatory body with different countries and but again, we are already, like, discovering ways to do the things that that regulatory body would look over. So it's, it's like, we're, we're running behind the the technology, instead of, like, moving along with it at the same time and building the rules that go with it too. And so just an interesting thing to think about, like, how, how can we slow it down? Slow down the adoption so that we can build the cybersecurity measures to keep AI safe and, again, make sure that it's, it's being utilized in the correct way. So I same thing. I think we have a problem with space, which does, yeah, make me nervous as well as I'm sure it does you, yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:09:54

and it's, it's too some of these things start off with the best of intentions. Yes. Did. And it gets evolved into, you know. So I think Planet Labs was another one of the companies that was featured in the wild world space documentary, or where they talk, they started off as an imaging company. And right now, even Justin says, The only way you're going to make money in space, or the only things making money in space right now is imaging and internet. And so he hopes to, you know, be that, you know, sort of, you know, storage company for companies in space for a variety of reasons. That's sort of the ultimate goal. But like Planet Labs, for example, they started off with imaging because they wanted to stop deforestation and be able to take images of the earth. But then that evolves into, well, who's you? Who's really going to pay for, you know, sort of deforestation. But somebody who will pay for imaging is monitoring military movements, monitoring equipment movements, monitoring, you know, disasters and things like that. So they have

Grace Sharkey: 2:10:55

the same way I need to get clearance from the what is it, FAA, and the only way to do that is to make it for medical supplies. And, yup, so that's why a lot of those startups say, so, yeah, it's, it's interesting. That's what. That's what makes the whole like inventor slash investment like arena really fun, because there is this, like, the speed aspect of it. That's like, something I'm sure a lot of people for Craig Fuller, talk about, right? It's like, not just about, like, you know, building something, but building it fast that you're, you know, beating everyone to the punch, but also finding that, how are we going to make it profitable, right at the same time? So, yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:11:34

and probably watch. So speed profitability, obviously, you know, matters for for a lot of companies. But then also, when you're, you're talking about space and you're talking about all these additional complexities, it makes, you know, sort of the rules and the regulations, and then who decides those rules and regulations, and then it makes it all a little bit more, I guess, juicy to to participate in, or to, I guess, kind of hope for the Best, but plan for the worst, because that was another to go back to that that documentary, they said all of the problems that are here on earth will follow us to space. And so how are we going to address these things? And they these are big questions that need to be answered, and I don't think that, you know, inversion space has to answer them, but I do think that they have to answer what are the contingency plans if something gets attacked, if you're storing goods for the Department of Defense? I think it's a reasonable question to ask of if you're storing weapons and things like that, who's protecting that cargo number one in space, and then what happens if, oopsie, you know, like a Russia we need to do a missile test, or,

Grace Sharkey: 2:12:41

right explodes up in the air, right?

Blythe Brumleve: 2:12:44

So there's a lot of there's a lot of questions I think, that still need to be answered, and they, anytime you have innovations like this, new questions are going to come up. So I'm sure that they have, you know, answers for some of these. And then there are going to be more questions that pop up that they probably never thought about. And so how they address it in the future, and how I think space logistics addresses it in the future will, will maybe lead to, you know, one hour deliveries. And, you know, you don't have to pay Amazon Prime anymore. You can just pay conversion space,

Grace Sharkey: 2:13:16

trying to remember, like, how long? Oh, hello, everybody.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:13:20

She said, this show is done. Grace, hello,

Grace Sharkey: 2:13:26

cow. Um, well, if it makes you feel better, he was just staring into the space's eye, oh, for like, the past two minutes. So I'm like, I don't know, contemplating the hard questions. Sounds like I remember the Red Bull guy who, like, fell from space, like, what? Like? That took him, like, 20 minutes to fall so, like, for the last 20 minutes of our delivery, we'll just be able to, like,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:13:48

watch it might hit you in the head, and then

Grace Sharkey: 2:13:50

who's totally on its way. I can see it right there, alright. Well, I

Blythe Brumleve: 2:13:56

think that that's a good spot to end it. We hit over, you know, two hours. That's about typical for our shows. So it was, it was great to have you back. What else are you working on in the future? I know Freightways have three is coming up. There's we'll probably be talking about that for sure over the next couple of months. But anything else you're working on or got your eye on?

Grace Sharkey: 2:14:17

Yeah, so yeah, we have three coming up. So make sure you guys go check that out, and you can use the code the stock out, S, T, O, C, K, O, U, T, 24 for a nice little coupon code for you excited for that, of course. And I mean, honestly, we're, we're focusing a lot on a freight fraud right now, and seeing how that's affecting the industry. So you'll see more stories from you on that. Of course, watching the ILA thing over the next month is going to be huge too. So we're covering all types of ways here. Ways go check that out as well. And, yeah, you know, it's the it's the end of the year, and I think we're really hoping for a turnaround in the market. Markets right, hopefully near spring 2025 it's just it'll happen in January. February. Is just silly. That just never will happen for any type of market. But, yeah, no, I'm excited to see if we finally see a turnaround. I think shippers are looking at their carriers and their logistics providers and saying, it's time that we prepare for a turnaround. And yeah, let's see what type of Market that brings. The the industry so excited to wrap up this. It's so crazy. Say that wrap up 24 and see what 25 brings. Soon,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:15:34

they say the days are long, but the years are short. So yeah, yeah, glad to have you back. Well, we will link to all of the things we talked about, including Grace's work, where you can find, you know, obviously it constantly refreshes, because she's publishing like 30 articles a day. Yeah, maybe not that many, but yeah, she's definitely

Grace Sharkey: 2:15:54

close. But you can find one. I am using chat GPT. They write all 30 articles. There's no bad

Blythe Brumleve: 2:16:01

that'd be crazy. Well, I in my sports blogging days on college football Saturday, 30 was typically the minimum, true, awful, awful job. I would never do that again. But anyways, that about does it for this show. Thank you guys for watching and tuning in. We will have more episodes like this in the future. So So Thanks again, and we'll see you real soon. I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics.com and in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a coworker's child, a neighbor down the street or a stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website. Well, that doesn't happen at Digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009 but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as$1,500 along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight, marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digitaldispatch.io, just check out the pricing page once you arrive, and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go Jags, you?