AI in the Background, Brokers in Control

If you're still relying on check calls and spreadsheets to track freight, you're already behind. 

In this episode, Chain’s EVP of Sales, Kevin Coomes, joins the show to break down how his team is building AI-powered tools that make life easier for freight brokers, from exception management to proactive customer communication. We also dig into the origin of Chain, how their Autopilot tool works inside your TMS, and why eliminating noise is the real key to broker productivity. 

Key takeaways: 

• Most freight brokers still rely on outdated, reactive methods like manual check calls. 
• Chain uses AI to centralize communication and automate exception management directly inside the TMS. 
• Autopilot is designed to work in the background, taking care of low-value tasks so brokers can focus on what matters. 
• Visibility doesn’t just mean tracking freight—it means proactively alerting stakeholders before problems arise. 
• The freight future is about cleaner data, less busywork, and platforms that help you grow.

LINKS:

• Kevin's LinkedIn
• Chain's Website

WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE

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Chapters

• 2:48 Using Multiple AI Models to Power Automation
• 14:19 What Automation Really Looks Like in a TMS
• 23:01 Reducing Noise With Smart Exception Management
• 30:38 Why Freight Brokers Are Overwhelmed by Visibility Tools
• 37:53 What China Taught Us About Freight Efficiency
• 46:06 The Role of Trust and Branding in Freight Tech Sales

Transcript

Blythe Brumleve: 0:37

So welcome into another episode of everything. Is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and we are live at TMSA elevate in Austin, Texas. We've got Kevin Coomes here with us and you what's your job title at chain now

Kevin Coomes: 0:58

I am EVP of sales. And what does Chain do? So chain is AI. We just lost everybody who stopped paying attention. No, I'm kidding. No, actually, our core function is really doing, like, Operations Management and trying to bring all of the specifically on, like the visibility side, but now we're working in like, booking, offer management, carrier engagement, that sort of stuff. But specifically, we're trying to automate all the low hanging fruit. That's what we're trying to do. So on the visibility side, if you think about every load you're geo fencing it, you've got ELDs running, but there's still like, seven to 10 touches on a load that you've got to get an ETA, you got to get documents, you got to do a check, call, whatever. We're automating that stuff. We have workflow engine. We bring all the communication into one platform so it doesn't matter if it's email, text message, whatever, we centralize it to the load so it doesn't get lost

Blythe Brumleve: 1:57

somewhere. So it's not a million. I mean, you might have a million tabs open, but at least

Unknown: 2:01

exactly the dispatcher emails the driver. Text comes in one place, and then the reps can just chat back, and it can email back to the dispatcher, and it can text back the driver. But the autopilot, our AI function, we build all the SOPs, so a lot of that stuff they don't have to do. This happens. It's getting to this location, the eta is this, reach out and say, Hey, did you arrive? Or are you going to arrive on time? And it looks like it came from the rep. So like text the Driver. Driver just gets to, Hey, did you arrive on time? Driver says, Yeah, I just checked in. And then the autopilot actually takes it and puts it back in the TMS, and they never touch it.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:42

So is this all, I guess, like a open source effort, or is it all in house, like custom

Unknown: 2:48

built, some of it's custom built, some of it's open source. So, like we're using, we have our own model that we're training for a lot of logistics tasks. So it can identify exceptions, it can identify assistance requests for a lumper or, you know, something else that's going on. But then, yes, like, we're using a lot of other language models to plug into it, because certain ones are better at certain things, certain ones are better data image recognition.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:12

Oh, interesting. I would love to hear it like, dive a little deeper into that. Like, which, which large language models are the most beneficial.

Unknown: 3:20

Yeah, so we use, I mean, we use GPT. We use, what's the other one that we're using Claude or use clod, Gemini. We use Gemini. I don't think we're using grok right now yet, but we've talked about it. But they all kind of do different. They all like, like like, GPT is really good with language stuff, but like, other things, like Cloud and some others are really good with more abstracting images. There's like, so it just really depends on the situation. And that's kind of the cool thing about it, right? Because you can use them for different purposes. So if it's like, an image recognition, we can apply that concept. And for us, the autopilot doesn't really matter. It just gets the data. Oh, interesting,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:59

because I was going to say, like, how does a user, one of the bigger, I guess, complaints about, especially with chatgpt, is that, how do you know what model to use and from what? Yes, so the user,

Unknown: 4:09

right, exactly. So, like, that's the whole point. Like, that's what chain does, right? Like, our our product, our IP, we decide what needs to be done when. Oh, interesting, that sort of stuff. So, yeah, that's

Blythe Brumleve: 4:20

because I was listening to an interview with one of the co founders. Is Annalise, and she was great on the

Unknown: 4:27

conversation. Param are, like, two of the smartest people. And they

Blythe Brumleve: 4:30

used to have a logistics company, and they built chain, they had a carrier, they had 15 jobs. Oh, okay, okay. And so then they were in the business, and then they developed this technology to solve that, which I think is a little bit of like the inverse of maybe some other AI, you know, that's come into the market as of late.

Unknown: 4:47

Yeah, the story's wild, actually, like your story is wild. So Annalise was in medical school. Param was a chemical engineer, and not No, exactly, and they were together, but not married. And at the time, and param got bored with his day to day doing chemical engineering, whatever, and he wanted something different. And his family is Punjabi. They're all West Coast trucking, a lot of them, so he just quit his job and opened a trucking company. Wow, as you do. So you got 15 trucks open a trucking company, and then Annalise in her like spare time, like when she was out of school, or, like summer, or whatever she was, helping him dispatch do different things. And then they're both from San Jose originally, and they you. So they sat down and were like, this is just, like, broken, like, all these things we have to do to, like, deal with this broker or that shipper or whatever. Like, answer these questions, do these things or like, we need information, but it takes us two hours to get it back, but we need an appointment time or a pickup number. And so that's kind of what led them to do this. They literally were like, we think we could fix this. Priority One was actually one of their customers at the time. This is like, actually eight years ago when they first, like, formulated this idea, and Priority One was still relatively small, comparative to where they're at now today. And they sat down with them, and they're like, if you could just build a workflow engine that just connected to our TMS, brought all the data in. When these things happen, just alert our rep say, Hey, dummy, go do this. You know, like, do something. Don't forget about this. So that's where it started. And then two years ago, all kind of changed with all the AI and all the language models and stuff. And so they applied AI to it, and now it's just

Blythe Brumleve: 6:36

automated. Well, I think that that is so when you hear about all of these different workflows and processes, and I try to hammer home with my audience of just how much like process management and process documentation, willingness to rip it all out and start fresh with a whole new set of eyes on, you know, what should work and what shouldn't? I would imagine that, you know, working with chain that it would alleviate a lot of that brain power that you need to map out all of those different processes in order to even figure out where to put technology 100%

Unknown: 7:10

and that's kind of the thing, though. But when you come into these things and like, that's what I always talk about, like, I talked about this at BCS on a panel, actually, you still need to know your business, right? Like there's only so much chain or any automation solution or AI solution can do for you. You still have to understand your business and your SOPs and what you guys do and what your customers require. But the goal with chain and what we're trying to do is facilitate that. So it's easier, right? It's not like we're going in and programming all these. We have an engine. It connects to the TMS. We have all the data, okay, what's the mapping? Right? Like, this happens. These conditions are met do this. And so it's a whole engine that's easy to program or not program, but like, basically, pick your, you know, like a plug and play on a dev, you know, it's like, yeah, and so, but when you're coming into it change management, like, is important, like you have to understand your processes, what's required. So it's also about, like, it's about internalizing those SOPs. But it's not like, that easy that you just come in and it just works. Like you do have to understand these customers require these things, but you're right at the end of the day. Once you get that in, and the SOPs are there, there's no person leaves. Another person comes in. I don't have to retrain them on all those SOPs. There's no way. I have to forget about it, because it's all there. And so the autopilot just goes to work. A lot of our customers, 95% of those touches, they just, they don't even, oh, wow, don't even do anything.

Blythe Brumleve: 8:37

So what does a typical customer look like for chain I for chain

Unknown: 8:40

brokers and three, pls, primarily, okay? Because that's where a lot of that uplift is, right? A lot of that uplift is on the broker three PL side, because they're having to fill out those gaps to their shippers. We could service shippers and carriers. It's just not our core function right now, but they all have the same problems too. There's so many solutions in our freight tech environment where, I think brokers get very concerned. They're like, Oh, they're gonna go serve shippers are gonna put us out of business. It's like, but they're already these are all problems that you all face, right? Like, it's like, they could, they can make your life easier if a shipper uses chain, because now you don't have to wait for information, right? Because they're using chain, you're automatically getting it back out of their system. So for us, it's it's really about that experience of broker, carrier, shipper, and making speeding that up, right? The way I bring it up with people is like a human being can't monitor 1000 shipments at once and then have 1000 simultaneous conversations. But a computer can do that, and that's where, that's where the AI stuff becomes very interesting, because that's a lot of stuff that people are outsourcing to Columbia, right? Or whatever, after hours weekends that people don't do anyway.

Blythe Brumleve: 9:55

How do you find, I guess, the bound, because logistics has always been about relationships, but we've also had just an insurmountable like injection of capital and businesses it going into logistics tech. So how do you, I guess, walk that fine line of implementing tech but also keeping your relationships solid?

Unknown: 10:16

Well, I think that's the interesting thing. It's part of the reason when I left green screens and I was looking at what I was going to do next, that I came to chain, because I was looking at all these different solutions, and these AI companies, and there's a lot of different things that are going to work, but it was like, what are the, what are the one of the low hanging fruit problems that human beings don't want to do? One and two, they. It's not necessary. Nobody wants to respond to a tracking No, exactly right, just to get an ETA and like, a driver doesn't, like, pick up the phone, just like, give you an ETA, right? Or they don't want to pick up the phone. Have to call your dispatcher just to get instant response, to get an appointment time or something right. Like, it's there, it's in the TMS. We've got to just get it back to them. Don't wait on somebody to do it. That's the learning fruit. The stuff that isn't is that 5% of exceptions and assistance requests and stuff like that that you might have to get involved, send a com check or like, do something else. They blow a tire. You need to update the ship, or you need to get on it. And we, we help with that, because the autopilot identifies all those things, oh, there's a problem. Alert the rep. Respond and say, Cool, get us a new eta. But then tell the rep, you need to go maybe make sure this is all good for the shipper. But like, outside, outside of that stuff, it's like they should be trying to drive more business, right? Like the relationships are, how am I talking to my customer, seeing it for the servicing more of their needs. Can we get more of their business same side on the carrier side, right? Covering loads. Make sure you're expanding your carrier base. Make sure you're working with the same carriers over and over, with all the fraud stuff and stuff going on, right? Not post and praying. So it's like, it frees up their time to do relationship stuff, right? And the way I think about it is it's like revenue per head. How do you get revenue per head from a million to 2 million to 3 million to 4 million without having to hire more people to do all these menial tasks? So, like, it actually, it actually adds to the relationship, when you think about it, because it allows them to actually spend more time on what's necessary for the relationship? Yeah, we

Blythe Brumleve: 12:18

were just recording with Mike make a lick of SPI, and he was talking about how, you know, with a lot of their technology, like relationships still matter, and going and doing site visits with your customers, taking them out, golfing like that, creates that relationship with them. And, you know, just doing those simple things that aren't scalable. And I think with all of the technology, that's one thing that there's a lot of, I guess, sort of fear around implementing new technology. You're going to be not hiring as much. You're going to be. There's a lot of, I guess, unforeseen circumstances that might come from that. But if you're in this to survive as a business owner and as an employee of a business like you want to be as efficient as possible, because salaries are usually the first thing to get cut, and so yeah, when you can free up that time and go golfing with a customer that is doing a lot of business with you, you know that it's

Unknown: 13:10

weighing those relationship right? Well, and that's interesting, too. The salary thing and the headcount is, we're a low margin business, you know, like you, I work in SAS now, and I have the last nine years. Like the margins are much higher, yes, but the gross margins are higher because it costs a lot of money to pay people to develop these tools, right? It makes a lot of sense when you break it down. But the in our industry, on the trucking side and the like the brokerage side of the carrier, side, it's, it's very low margin, right? You're running 10 to 15% on truck, if you're lucky. Yeah, right. So it's how you know how to eke out more margin points out of that. And then also, like, I said, like you said, drive more revenue free more time to go out and spend that time with the people and do those relationship building tasks and that sort of stuff. And, like, that's where it's, you know, it's not popular to say, but like, yeah, we're not necessarily gonna, like, it's not about eliminating jobs, just about repurposing people, you know, into more revenue driving things or margin driving tasks, because at the end of the day, track and trace tasks, that sort of stuff doesn't. It's not helping the bottom line, right, right? If anything, it's only hurting the bottom line. Because you bring on more loads, you bring on more customers, like, oh, we need 10 more people just to manage the operational tasks. It's like, that doesn't, doesn't help, doesn't move the needle. It doesn't

Blythe Brumleve: 14:36

at all. And so you'd mentioned green screens just now, because I think you have such a fat and I think we kicked off this conversation with saying, like you have such a fascinating background. You actually opened up. I mean, you spent time with a TMS provider, green revnova at the beginning. I'm curious, how do you think the, I guess, logistics technology ecosystem is evolving with spending all this time at, you know, two really big heavyweights, and then now with it, with chain.

Unknown: 15:06

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm a glutton for punishment. I just keep going back to the beginning, right? I was like, the sixth or seventh employee at revnova, and we had eight customers when I got there. I was a fourth US based employee at greens. Wow. We had six customers, I think when I got there, and chains a little further along, which is interesting, because, like, they bootstrapped it, which is also pretty cool. It's different in the current environment, right? Like the current environments change. There's a lot of I'm a bootstrapper, exactly, right? And that's kind of what I liked about. A prominent lease because they bootstrapped it. I think the logistics landscape with tech, though, has changed in that we used to be so reliant and like when I got to green screens almost 10 years ago now, or whatever it was eight years ago, nine years ago, it was so heavily reliant on the TMS provider, you know, like anything you did, anything, you know, like workflows, or, you know, things you needed in the in the process of executing freight, it was like, Hey, can you guys go build this? Can you go build this? Can you go build this? And I think traditionally, if you look at the companies like McLeod, mercury, gay, you know, the traditional al Jax, those that were there ahead of time, ahead of a lot of these other newer solutions. That was kind of just the way they operated, because that's what was expected to them. Now you have this capability of doing what a lot of other industries have already done, and I liken this to like things like Google or Apple or whatever. It's like Google and Apple don't go out and just build all these apps, right? They leverage other companies, and then they integrate like Google has Google meet, but they integrate with Zoom and teams and all these other things, like, so choose your provider. Okay, Google doesn't care, because you're still using Google Calendar. I think we're kind of headed that direction, and I think the TMS providers are starting to get on board with that. Last week, I was actually in Birmingham, at McLeod, and they did their impact Summit, impact. And it was very AI centric, but it was very partner centric. And the idea was like talking about the certified partners that they have and their program, and leaning on companies like ours and others, highway and D, a T was there, you know, a lot of other triumph was there, representing green screens and all that, leaning on those people to fill a lot of those gaps, because McLeod's like, we can't build all of this, right? It's too expensive and too time consuming. So I think, like, that's the direction that is positive for our industry. Yes, because, like, the more in, more entrance to the market, more innovation. It allows the execution platforms to execute and then us to go fill all the space in between.

Blythe Brumleve: 17:47

I would think it too. It also creates that a stronger relationship with your customers, if you allow them the tools that they're already using and comfortable with and that they want to connect more with the data that they're using. That is that's one thing exactly taking advantage of from a business perspective, right?

Unknown: 18:02

And we see that, I mean, we're at TMSA, right? So you think about CRM, think about marketing tools. You think about HubSpot, Salesforce, they've been doing that for years, right? It wasn't go build a payments platform or go build something like, go build MailChimp, you know, like, just integrate these things.

Blythe Brumleve: 18:21

Don't reinvent the wheel. And

Unknown: 18:24

they've acquired some things. And I think we'll see that happening in the next few years. I think we're going to see some of these companies that have grown tremendously. You think about companies like highway that have grown so fast. I mean, green screens got acquired by Triumph, and they're folding a lot under their umbrella. They Acquired ISO, whatever, but I think we're going to start seeing some of that, which is also it scares people, because they're like, but I like having my little boutique tech company that I work with outside of everything else. It's like, Yeah, but at the end of the day, when you have more integrated solution with other solutions under one umbrella. That's just the way of the world, like, that's how tech

Blythe Brumleve: 19:01

versus, like, the closed ecosystem of what we kind of came from exactly where I remember trying to work in the cloud for like, sales and marketing efforts, or mostly marketing efforts to assist the sales team. And it was a goddamn nightmare. Good luck, I know, but it was a glorified, like, export this email list? Yeah, that was what I had to work with. But if I was able to integrate McLeod into like, a MailChimp or a HubSpot, like, it would have been a game changer for

Unknown: 20:53

me, right? And I think we're headed those directions, yeah, I think we're starting to see more of that. And again, especially with, like, the AI solutions and that sort of stuff, I think we're just gonna see it's too expensive to just develop all like there isn't a big enough player in our space on the tech side to just do this all themselves. We don't have Oracle, we don't have Google, we don't have Apple, we don't have SAP, whatever. It doesn't exist. So you kind of have to lean on the providers to integrate and do that stuff we've

Blythe Brumleve: 21:27

I don't know how to segue into this, except for the fact that you have had other career background in, especially with, you know, a country that is a, you know, top of mind for a lot of folks in the US, and that's China. You have an extensive experience with, not just like living there, but doing business there. Tell us about how that that journey started, because I'm super fascinated by just running a business in general. In China. That

Unknown: 21:52

was the first startup trial by fire. So I actually, I actually studied Chinese in school. So I graduated K State, no seven. I got my minor in Chinese. I lived there for a year as a teacher. Learned I wasn't a teacher. I and I didn't go I wasn't a teacher. By school, I was probably sci major and studied Chinese, but did it to keep studying Chinese so I could keep learning. Came back in, oh, wait, economy crashed, so it was back for a year and a half trying to find a way to go back to China, because I did really enjoy it. I enjoy the cultural aspect, the learning, right? Just being, you know, exposed to all that. And then I got an opportunity with a guy that I went to Kansas State with that was that was starting this company over there. So I got introduced to him. We started talking totally different world. We were doing energy efficiency, like building efficiency technologies, this sort of

Blythe Brumleve: 22:48

stuff, and that's why they're kicking their ass on energy right now. They got in way

Unknown: 22:52

early, or Yes, I mean, they did because they knew they had a problem, right? Especially they have way more people and way more energy usage. But so they, you know, a lot of these companies, when they go over to China, they don't want to do like, it's scary to do business there. You're afraid your technology is going to get stolen. You don't know the landscape. It's very different, you know, in the way that you do business and execute contracts and do all this stuff. And so that's essentially what we were trying to do for these people, was like, take these technologies in the US and other company in Israel, and help them get in to China so that they had a partner that wasn't necessarily, like a Chinese company that they were not so certain about,

Blythe Brumleve: 23:33

like a liaison. You're almost like a broker at that

Unknown: 23:35

point, kind of, yeah. I mean, we were, kind of, yeah, representative of their companies. This was like 2011 2012 right? So this is like, fast forward now, and it's like, even, you know, like all of this is blown up even worse with all the attention. But yeah, it was fascinating. Learned a lot.

Blythe Brumleve: 23:52

What do you think is it doesn't have to be logistics related, but what do you think are some of, like, the cultural, I guess, interesting moments that you were able to learn about, or because, I think for me, with China, like, I love learning about history, and with China in general, like they have so much history, you know, 1000s and 1000s of years of us almost a singular, you know, population and culture and, yeah, yeah, how what was all of that like? Like, the culture shock of from the United States, where it's a melting pot versus over there was much more uniformity, even,

Unknown: 24:27

even when you understand it and speak Chinese like I can't imagine. I had friends that didn't speak any Chinese, right, that wanted to move, do something different, whatever went over there. I can't imagine what that culture shock was like, like, because at least I could, like, speak the language and understand people. And then when I was there, I got pretty fluent. I was there for three years in total, at two different times, and so that made it easier. But yes, the culture shock is still drastic. It's it's interesting, because we have, like, our personal lives and our business lives, right? Like, and a lot of it, especially like, our industry is so small, it bleeds together. Like, so we all we've known each other for a while, right? Like, it starts to bleed together a little bit, but you still have, like, your personal life and your work life, and we kind of keep separation of that and how things work China, like, things are so deeply and I think this Asia in general, but specifically China, it's so deeply ingrained together their cultural stuff and their business and whatever that it's like. It's very hard for, I think, Westerners to come over and understand that. I see all you know, you see all this stuff with tariffs. You see all this stuff going on right now with the trade tensions or the back and forth and whatever. And I think part of what happens to us in the western world is like, we don't understand the negotiation isn't just like hardball, it's just very it's different for them. Like, there's a very distinct the government in China specifically, but then the people, it's there's this distinct nationalism, right? That surrounds everything that they do, and a lot of that has to do with history, because they're Chinese, and they're proud, and they're proud of their history. And, you know, having, you know, they kind of view the world as, like, infancy compared to a lot of the civilization that they had prior to a lot of the rest of the world, right? If you think about, like, the Middle Ages, and prior to that, like, Europe was still a mess, whereas, like, China was an empire at that time, right? And had a lot of advancements, and had a lot of civilization, money, gunpowder, you know, like, there's a lot of that stuff that's already happening. Yes? Paper, yes. Paper, writing, yeah, like, like, modern writing, right? It's calligraphy and so, like, so, like, they see that as a, you know, part of, not just part of the country, like, we're proud of America, but like, it's different in that, like, they see that as part integral to society, you know. So when they do business as. Sort of stuff, relationships, it also leads to problems, right? Because there's a lot of corruption. There's a lot of things that come out of this, because of my family knows that family and connected to these people, and we have political connections, but it's all China, so it's okay to, like, do that. So, so it's, it's, it's interesting in that regard, because I think there's just a very different outlook on your like, day to day life in China as a Chinese person, because of that culture and that history, and so I think that's what causes a lot of the misunderstanding, right that goes on when you have those those political escalations, that sort of stuff. Is it

Blythe Brumleve: 27:45

safe to assume that, like the majority of the US is more like individualistic versus like China, that almost moves like a unit,

Unknown: 27:51

exactly? That's a very good way of putting it 100% that's what I've always

Blythe Brumleve: 27:55

gotten from their their culture, is that they, what was the famous phrase, like they think in decades, not, you know, election cycles, yeah, or longer, yeah, you know, or no, they think in centuries, decade, yeah,

Unknown: 28:08

centuries, yeah, yeah, they do, because that's just, it's relative, right? And so, so yeah, they do. They kind of, it's changed a lot. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's changed over there, even since I was there, politically and politically it's, it's kind of gone backwards, a little bit right, where it's a little more nationalistic and communistic than it was before, where, I think, like, when I was there in 1112, was very different. It was a little more open, like, I joke about this with people and like, as a foreigner that was doing business, like you could have got away with murder, because really, it was more just like they didn't want international incidents. It was all economic, grow the country, grow the money, whatever. Whereas, like, now it's kind of taking a step back a little

Blythe Brumleve: 28:52

bit. That's because I've told people, like, I want to, I want to go to China, like I want to visit it, and I get the apprehension, like, Oh, you're, yeah, I think you're, you're not scared to go

Unknown: 29:01

over there. Safe. It's safe. It's always safe. It's just more so, like, I think it's just a different atmosphere now, yeah, right, they're a lot more scrutinizing foreigners in the Western world and that sort of stuff, because they've become a little more closed off than they were before. You know, I think it's still, there's still tons of expats there doing business whatever. So it's not like, you know, a scary thing. But I just think, governmentally, whatever, I think the nature of it's just changed,

Blythe Brumleve: 29:30

different landscape of problems.

Unknown: 29:32

Yeah, visas have changed. And getting over there that used to be so easy to get a business visa and go, really that stuff. Oh, yeah. And that's all kind of changed. And that's political, right? It's political, but, yeah, again, it's it. But you asked about, like, the cultural side of doing business and that sort of stuff. I mean, it's kind of how he got into freight, because they're an export economy, they're all, they're all more focused ocean, air, whatever. Like, people don't sit and talk about trucking, like we talked about here, where we're more closed off, like, in terms of that, right? Like we're more of a centralized economy. They are more, you

Blythe Brumleve: 30:06

know, I global. I was talking to somebody, and I don't know how accurate this is, so I Well, whatever. But he was from Germany, and he said that in Europe, they don't have TMS software. And I thought that that was this. I was like, why doesn't every country have a TMS software? Like, does China have a TMS software? What is their freight tech or logistics? I don't know if you know the answer to that. I'm just

Unknown: 30:28

spitballing they do. They do because I learned about our Chinese partner of our company was an importer, exporter, so he did a lot of steel, timber, commodity stuff, which is how I learned logistics a little bit, and then came back and ended up in it. But they do have systems and stuff that they use. It's a little more rudimentary. It's not as complicated as a lot of the stuff we

Blythe Brumleve: 30:49

do. Like, are they working off of client, a Chinese McLeod over there? Yeah.

Unknown: 30:53

Do have similar just like they do have, like, software vendors and stuff that work on that particular stuff. But again, they're very local logistics in a lot of those countries, well, specifically Southeast Asia and China is still very local logistics, right? It's pick up the phone, call people, whatever. We also have 1.3 billion people, right? You know, like, so there's a lot of people that have jobs. We worked out of our Chinese partner's office. The city I lived in when I owned the company was called Shaman. Shaman, subtropical, way south. It's right near Taiwan. It's like the closest mainland city to Taiwan. Oh, interesting. And we worked out of like the Trade Center area near the port, because that's where his office was. And so we would walk downstairs, and you'd walk through the Trade Center, and it was like, kind of like a brokerage floor, a little bit like a brokerage floor in the past, maybe a little more like boiler room, Coyote, original, you know, that sort of stuff, 1015, years ago. But, yeah. Or, like, you think about like a stock brokerage floor, right? Or like a commodities exchange, like, where they're literally all in these little pods and these little desks, and it's all different companies, but they're all like. Moving freight together, like getting containers or getting consolidation space or whatever. So it's, it is. It's still very manual in that way. But it is, it's, it works.

Blythe Brumleve: 32:18

You know, what did you learn about logistics in China that you brought with you to back to the states, well, so

Unknown: 32:26

the international stuff is, like, how I got into it, right? And that's really where, where it differs, right? Like there, I feel like, unless you go work for a freight forwarder or something, right, or you work in that world over here, we are very, very more focused. We're so much more focused on domestic trucking across border, Mexico, Canada, like, a lot less focus on international freight. And over there, everybody's an expert, like, everybody's an expert on Container freight and air freight and everything else, because that is the driver for their economy, yeah, because they're mostly export economy, yeah, most of their economy is on that, and we're a huge import economy, but that's also why we're bringing the goods in, and then it's got to get trucked and distributed and warehouse and whatever. And so it's different in that regard, like they're all there's, you think about, like, how many brokers and carriers we have in this country. It's like the same there, but freight forwarders. There's like, 5060, 70,000 freight forwarders in China, right? Because it's such a massive part of their economy. So it is very different. And that's, I got a huge crash course in that. And that's, that's how I ended up in logistics. Is I was working for a tech, small tech company when I got back in Kansas City that was building freight forwarding quoting platform deal. Got introduced to Joel Clum, who's a CEO of worldwide Express, who started Carrie direct with jet McCandless, who's P 44 now, but it was they were just doing Carrie direct, just now metaphor, right? And Joel and I met, he's like, Hey, we could use somebody that knows some of the International stuff to work with a couple people we teach you all the domestic stuff. Eight months later, after coming back from China, I moved to Chicago and then started work for them. Rest is history. So that was like, there were like, five or six of us in that office in downtown Chicago. Do you

Blythe Brumleve: 34:15

think any of your experience in China has helped you kind of navigate, maybe some of the education that's going on or needed to go on in the first six months of 2025

Unknown: 34:27

Yeah, it definitely the tariffs. I mean, every you know, you have that experience, and everybody's text, you, what do you think of this? You're probably like, Oh, you're my local China expert. What is happening right now? And I haven't been there, and, you know, I think the last I was in China was like, 2016 but, yeah, it does. It helps you understand it a little better, if anything, what I've told people is like, it's not as scary as we think it is, like it's a lot of bluster and brinkmanship and like, making business deals, yeah, like, there's no we're not equipped yet. We're in a better position than they are, because of Mexico and the young population and the ability to manufacture and still have that opportunity to do cheaper goods, whereas, like China, is not in an enviable position. They have a lot of aging population, and they have an export economy, and so they lose Exactly, they lose trade deals, they lose that sort of stuff. People don't want to work in factories anymore, right? Rising middle class, that's, that's bad for them, like, it's bad for their economy. So, like, there's, you know, it's, it's, I think, when you boil it down to the economics and the money, that's really where it becomes more important. And yeah, in doing business over there, and understanding that you have a lot of very wealthy Chinese people that are very, very, very wealthy, that have made their money on this type of economy and this type of backbone that they have over there, in doing trade with the West and different things, right? And that's been a huge central part to that. Government's not gonna pull that rug out from under them, because these people are happy with their billions of dollars, you know, like that. They've been able to do this when, you know, if your 50s or 60s in China, and you grew up as a kid, you lived in basic poverty, you know, and so you might be a billionaire now, so you just think about that, right? That's quite a leap. Yeah, it is like, we don't have, I mean, we have some people that have done that, but it's not, it's more millionaires. Yeah, there's people in China that grew up in abject poverty, because that was just the way their world was when they were younger. If they're in their 50s or 60s or 70s, a lot of them are billionaires now. So it's just a different it's a very different dichotomy. How do

Blythe Brumleve: 36:52

you think I would imagine that, obviously, tariffs are affecting every logistics company, but how are they affecting maybe some of your customers at chain, and how are you helping maybe navigate them through these difficulties?

Unknown: 37:03

It's. Tough. It's tough because, I mean, we've been in this freight market for what 20 I mean, I was at green screens, right? So we watched all the rates. This stuff happened

Blythe Brumleve: 37:12

2022 I think, yeah, yeah.

Unknown: 37:14

I got to, got to green screens in November of 21 so we watched it

Blythe Brumleve: 37:17

in mid, oh, at the peak. So you got in at the peak. And then, kind

Unknown: 37:21

of, and then August, I think it was August 23 and then after that, it just really tanked, right? So, it's, it's we've been, we were already going through all that, the post COVID stuff and what happened in the over capacity in the market and all that. So we're already having these issues. And then you introduce this stuff, with the political stuff and the tariffs and whatever, and then the the Pentium kind of switched. It's different from it's not rates as much as it is volumes, right? Because then, if you're we had the volumes before, but the rates were down because we had too much capacity. Now, if the volumes aren't coming in, it could be a silver lining, because it could not that I wanted anybody to go out of business, but it could put some of these trend companies out of business that aren't operating well, that still have trucks on the road that maybe shouldn't,

Blythe Brumleve: 38:08

the ones that came in during the came in during COVID, Fast Money and yeah,

Unknown: 38:12

that we still need to get ready, because we're still very loose. We still have too much capacity, so the volumes come down even more, and we're gonna we've already seen it. We're already seeing the effect of that a little bit. They pause the tariffs. But it's still, you're still 30 days out, or 60 days out that they pause shipments or whatever. So I think that's been the difficult thing. I think people now like they're just jaded at this point, almost three years in, or whatever we are now, they're kind of just getting jaded by the fact. So it's tough. It's tough on everybody, because it's still like, you know, depressed rates and tough to, you know, loose market and whatever. But

Blythe Brumleve: 38:48

everybody's pointing the finger at each other. You hear anybody immutable, yeah. But I think we've

Unknown: 38:52

gotten to a point of at least stability, where we're not, like, seeing the rates just go down, you know, or, like, fluctuate up for two days and then go straight back to the bottom. I think we've kind of come up a little bit. I think the rates have come up, so that's helped at least create stability. Create stability so people feel better at least, which is part of the battle. But, yeah, I mean, it's still been pretty tough, right? I think, I think we've still seen a lot of companies struggling, either getting acquired or going out of business. Hopefully, by the back of the year, we see some of that stuff change, if this turmoil stuff and the tariff stuff kind of works at some works itself out, which it seems like it will, again, with some of the stuff that's happened the last 30 to 45 days. But yeah, I mean, on the brokers and three PLS, and the carriers, it really puts that intense pressure on them. If your rate's already low and then volumes decrease, it's like, Okay, now we're not moving any freight. And there's some carriers

Blythe Brumleve: 39:44

that are saying, I'm just going to park my truck during this truck during this time and not move anything and just wait for everything to kind of settle out. And it's like, you you got to have a good cushion in order to do that financially better.

Unknown: 39:55

Hope you do. You better. Hope you do in those situations. But, but again, though, it's like, if they don't have a good cushion, Far be it for me to talk about anybody's job. Well, it might not be. It's economics,

Blythe Brumleve: 40:05

right? And it's applicable to every business. You have to have that safety cushion. You have to pay it. You can't keep your head in the sand about these things anymore. No, I think a lot of folks tried that and yeah, you know, tariffs hit you over the head, and you're out of business. And so you have to pay attention to these things. Is take

Unknown: 40:23

it full circle, though, the tech stuff, I mean, that's where it makes it's going to improve our industry with efficiencies, yes, so that these effects, the acute effects of having these rate fluctuations, or having these problems with volumes or whatever, aren't as bad if you're in a 20 to 25% margin instead of 10 to 15% margin, because you've improved your efficiencies, And you've raised your your lower to your OTR, right? And you're actually getting more gross or net margin, makes it easier to weather the storm than when you're running razor thin margins. And then this stuff happens. So I think that's where it's interesting, because the investment in Tech has, like, kind of waxed and waned these last couple years as this stuff has kind of worked itself out, but it's like, with that would be my lesson to people, is like, but, yeah, go invest in stuff that creates efficiency, because that's going to be your instant ROI. If you can raise a few margin points, then who market? Be damned

Blythe Brumleve: 41:20

if it's a bottleneck. Now it's going to be a bottleneck when business picks

Unknown: 41:24

up, doesn't matter, right? So create the efficiencies. Raise your bottom line,

Blythe Brumleve: 41:28

especially with all you should maybe have some extra time on your hands if you're not moving as much. And so work on the processes,

Unknown: 41:35

transportation, marketing and sales. There you go, go market, go sell and get more business.

Blythe Brumleve: 41:39

Well, okay, couple last questions here, because we are at, you know, TMSA elevate. What are you hoping to learn from like, a marketing and sales perspective? How are you kind of honing in on your own, like person, because you have a really great personal brand, obviously, you're a subject matter expert. How do you kind of define what you're going to invest in personally at the, you know, personal branding level, I'm

Unknown: 42:00

curious to see. So this is my first time in CMSA. Okay, right? So. Um, thank you. And I'm doing to a panel, and a speaking opportunity got roped in. It's funny how the speaking thing happened. Jen, they'd asked me to do a panel, and then, and I was like, No, I'm excited, like new, new speaking opportunity and like, new crowd and whatever, because I've been and and then Jen and I were at BCS, and Jen was like, somebody dropped Do you want to do this speaking? She goes, I told the Education Committee, you'd be great. Sure. So, and I don't mind doing that stuff. It'll be fun. But, you know, it's for me, though, first time here and talking to a lot of people that I don't normally talk to, right? Coming from tech, like I don't talk to a lot of the sales people. It depends on the different brokerage, or three PL depending on how their organization is set up, and whatever, and where the, you know, the technology applies. But I'm curious to see to talk to some of those people. Talk to Mike, right, Mike's actually my TMSA buddy from SPI. But like, talk to those people about, like, how, like, how are you approaching this market? Right? Because it's like, with chain now I'm very much focused on the operational efficiencies and that sort of stuff. But how are they approaching the market from a sales and marketing perspective, how are they differentiating themselves? Like, what are the opportunities there for myself, from a tech side to make that better for them and improve that because honestly, I don't think we get into that much on the tech side, right, like, they might use a CRM or something. But worse, we're so inefficient. This is gonna sound so bad. We're so inefficient in this industry. On the operational side, yes, we're so great opportunity, whatever, right? Like, like, we're so inefficient on that side that, like, we're so heavily focused from a from a tech perspective on that part of the business, that, like, we aren't really focused on the sales and marketing side as much from from a tech Avenue. And so I'm really interested to talk to some of the different people about that. And like, what their what their main focus is, how they're differentiating their services, doing that sort of stuff. Because even then, I mean, like, that's what I'm selling with chain, to the people that I'm selling to on the operational side, as well as, like, for your people, get more people selling, get more people driving more revenue, right? Get more people out there, differentiating your brand. But again, like, how are they doing that is, is helpful for me to understand from our perspective as a tech provider, but yeah, so I'm really interested to have some of those conversations with people. Heck,

Blythe Brumleve: 44:31

yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of people they hear that are either attending or speaking that are going to be able to speak to whether it's the marketing one person, marketing team in house, or the one that's building their personal brand, it just is all over logistics and, like, a good and a bad way, you kind of can cut your teeth on a lot of things if you're a one person marketing or a sales team. Well, in the personal

Unknown: 44:53

brand thing is interesting too. Like, that's what I've told a lot of, like, all the reps that I hired at green screens, and, like, different people I worked with at ravinova and whatever I'm like, you really want to get you really want to elevate yourself in this industry, get network, get to know people. And it's not about like going out there and, you know, being a influencer, but like you said, it's being a subject matter expert and like helping other people making those connections, right? Or where to go to for certain answers and that sort of stuff. I think that personal branding aspect has been really good for our industry, right? We have people like yourself and others that are like, come from the background of freight that are now doing this stuff to help people market their personal brand or like, do these things. And in our industry, with it being a such a incestuous network based industry, right? Everybody's worked for everybody like, that's

Blythe Brumleve: 45:43

trying to even get podcast guests who you know haven't done the round. Yeah,

Unknown: 45:48

right, exactly. Oh, just I said to you, I'm like, we've never done your podcast. Every couple years

Blythe Brumleve: 45:53

I'm excited about because you've made your rounds. And when I know, I know when the PR releases are going out exactly, you can kind of see the same, not necessarily you, but you can kind of see the same people going,

Unknown: 46:04

Yeah, for sure, for sure, it's good. Like, no, it is. It's good to like, have that experience, or, like, share that background, and as again, the younger people that are doing this stuff, or in sales or marketing in our industry, like, that's funny, impart that knowledge to like, build that brand and do these things, because that will help you just branch it. You'll get to write your own ticket and

Blythe Brumleve: 46:22

trust as well. Like, you're developing that like and trust factor, and that will be valuable no matter if it's within your company or a company you might, you know, join in the future. It's a way to level up. Yeah, for sure. All right, well, Kevin, any, anything, anything that you feel is important to mention that we haven't

Unknown: 46:38

already talked about, no, but, I mean, we're at TMSA, so I feel like it's like, you know, about to learn. We're ready for the brand. We're ready to learn. I'm excited for the panels. Awesome. You know, the opportunity to speak to everybody, Heck, yeah, it's that's actually really fun. Like, I have never done that. I've always done, like, I've done like aI panels, or like, stuff on rates, or things on tech or whatever. Now I'm actually speaking to my actual craft Conference, which is different, weirdly. Been a little nervous. Like, no, don't be nervous. Don't be fine. I've never done that though. Oh, yeah, this is how I do my actual job. Well, it helps

Blythe Brumleve: 47:14

people understand your role and how it could fit within their organization. And I think with the beautiful thing about TMSA is that it's not going to have the 1000s of people that you know, maybe, like a larger conference would have, yeah, so this one just it feels less like, it's like I have a certain length people battery, and at the end of some conferences, it's very, very low. This one, I always come away feeling re energized, because it's the intimacy level of you know, less you know. It's around 200 people that come to this conference, and you you build those more personal, it's more personal, and you develop those lasting relations. Yeah, some of these

Unknown: 47:50

conferences, you're right. It's just like, bounce one to group to group to group to group to group. And

Blythe Brumleve: 47:54

it's a lot, but it's a different it's a different intensity level that you kind of have to, like, gear up for. So I enjoy the, I don't want to say slow pace, because it still feels like we're doing a lot, yeah, but it's a lot with people that you have built a core audience with. You know

Unknown: 48:10

for sure, I'm excited. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Kevin, where can folks follow you? Follow more of your work. Get introduced to chain. They can find me on LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn, building my personal Yes, but yeah, our website is try chain.com So exactly how it sounds, exactly how it's spelled, try chain.com, reach out to us, get a demo. People can always reach out to me directly. I'm pretty open. People reach out to me on LinkedIn. I like helping newer people in the industry, or mentoring. Like, how do I do this? How do I get into this? Or who can I introduce people to? Again, it's trust factor, right? It's how

Blythe Brumleve: 48:47

you build the network. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of everything is logistics, where we talk all things supply chain for the thinkers in freight, if you like this episode, there's plenty more where that came from. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a conversation. The show is also available in video format over on YouTube, just by searching everything is logistics, and if you're working in freight logistics or supply chain marketing, check out my company, digital dispatch, we help you build smarter websites and marketing systems that actually drive results, not just vanity metrics. Additionally, if you're trying to find the right freight tech tools or partners without getting buried in buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the largest database of logistics services and solutions. All the links you need are in the show notes. I'll catch you in the Next episode and Go jags. You.