The Freight Pod
The Freight Pod is a deep dive into the journeys of the transportation and logistics industry’s brightest minds and innovators. The show is hosted by Andrew Silver, former founder and CEO of MoLo Solutions, one of the fastest-growing freight brokerages in the industry. His guests will be CEOs, founders, executives, and leaders from some of the most successful freight brokerages, trucking companies, manufacturers, and technology companies that support this great industry. Andrew will interview his guests with a focus on their life and how they got to where they are today, unlocking the key ingredients that helped them develop into the leaders they are now. He will also bring to light the fascinating stories that helped mold and shape his experiences.
The Freight Pod
Ep. #46: DAT Acquires Trucker Tools
In a special episode to announce the acquisition of Trucker Tools by DAT, we are joined by Trucker Tools CEO Kary Jablonski to break down the deal. She walks us through why now was the time for Trucker Tools to go to market, why DAT makes the most sense as the long term home for the TT platform, and what the future looks like for Kary and her team.
This move helps further DAT's position as the premiere freight marketplace and rate analytics platform, enhancing their product pipeline and capabilities. Tune in to learn everything you need to know about the deal.
***Episode brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services.***
Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.
*** This episode is brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services. Visit gorapido.com to learn more. ***
A special thanks to our additional sponsors:
- Cargado – Cargado is the first platform that connects logistics companies and trucking companies that move freight into and out of Mexico. Visit cargado.com to learn more.
- Greenscreens.ai – Greenscreens.ai is the AI-powered pricing and market intelligence tool transforming how freight brokers price freight. Visit greenscreens.ai/freightpod today!
- Metafora – Metafora is a technology consulting firm that has delivered value for over a decade to brokers, shippers, carriers, private equity firms, and freight tech companies. Check them out at metafora.net. ***
Hey listeners, before we get started today, I want to give a quick shout out and word to our sponsor, our very first sponsor, rapido Solutions Group, danny Frisco and Roberto Acasa, two longtime friends of mine, guys I've known for 10 plus years, the CEO and COO respectively, and co-founders of Rapido Solutions Group. These guys know what they're doing. I'm excited to be partnering with them to give you a little glimpse into their business. Rapido connects logistics and supply chain organizations in North America with the best near-shore talent to scale efficiently, operate on par with US-based teams and deliver superior customer service. These guys work with businesses from all sides of the industry 3PLs, carriers, logistics, software companies, whatever it may be. They'll build out a team and support whatever roles you need, whether it's customer or carrier, sales support, back office or tech services.
Speaker 1:These guys know logistics. They know people. It's what sets them apart in this industry. They're driven by an inside knowledge of how to recruit, hire and train within the industry and a passion to build better solutions for success. In the current marketing conditions, where everyone is trying to be more efficient, do more with less near shoring is the latest and greatest tactic that companies are deploying to do so, and Rapido is a tremendous solution for you. So check them out at gorapidocom and thank you again for being a sponsor to our show, a great partner. We look forward to working with you To our listeners. That's it. Let's get the show on the road.
Speaker 2:Welcome back.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to another episode of FreightPod. We've got some breaking news here today. I'm joined by CEO of Trucker Tools, Carrie Jablonski, a returning guest, one of our first returning guests. She was an incredible guest the first time around. Even better, the second time around, I'm sure, because we've got big news to announce. I'm sure because we've got big news to announce Trucker Tools has been acquired by DAT, the leading freight marketplace and rate analytics platform in the industry. This is big news. Welcome to the show, Carrie. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me on. I'm doing great. Today's a really, really exciting day for the team, for me, for our customers, so doing great.
Speaker 1:How proud are you, how proud of your team and yourself are you?
Speaker 2:I am extremely proud. This is certainly the highlight of my professional career so far, looking forward to many more you know down the line, but as of now, I couldn't be more thrilled. We can go into details about what I'm so excited about, but I think this outcome is just phenomenal for everyone involved and I'm really excited about the future.
Speaker 1:All right. So for those that anyone in the industry knows both of these organizations, but just in case we have some novice listeners, give me just a quick 60-second idea of who Trucker Tools is and who DAT is, if you don't mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So on the Trucker Tools side, we actually started out as a mobile app for small fleets owner-operators, drivers back in 2009 and have evolved a ton over the last 15 years up until this moment now, which is the beginning of our next chapter.
Speaker 2:Primarily, we are a visibility load tracking solution for free brokers and carriers. We collect data from carriers, from their ELDs, from the mobile app through our texting solution to provide real-time updates on where they are and then pass those along to brokers to eliminate check calls and prevent fraud, and then, furthermore, go on to their shippers to help brokers really smash their shipper scorecards. We also have a number of carrier sourcing solutions that we've built out over the last couple of years as well, and DAT, I think, needs no introduction in this industry and you explained it up front. They are the single largest load marketplace freight marketplace for over-the-road transportation in North America. They also have a large rate intelligence platform, dat IQ, and we're really excited to be joining forces to bring best-in-class visibility to bear within the platform that freight brokers are working in every single day.
Speaker 1:And how did this acquisition come to be? I mean, was taking back to the origin of when Trucker Tools decided to go to market, or was this something where DAT approached Trucker Tools and said, hey, we want to talk?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is this is an inbound driven event. We've actually got a lot of interest from the market over, I'd say, the last two years, as we've really built out the category leader in load tracking. And over the last couple of months I've gotten to know the DAT team through this process and it became totally clear that they were the best home for this business, that we had a lot of cultural alignment in the way I've thought about running my team and the way that Jeff Clements, who's the DAT CEO, runs his team and what they're doing there, and just such incredible overlap of who we're serving brokers, carriers and shippers that it made complete sense to join forces and come together.
Speaker 1:It made complete sense to join forces and come together. And when they reached out, did you think we should run a process at this point and see who else is interested, or was it more? Let's get to know these folks and see if it makes sense for us to partner, and we'll come up with a price that makes sense and if they want to pay it.
Speaker 2:let's make it happen. Yeah, we talked to a couple of parties in the space. Let's make it happen. Yeah, we, we talked to a couple of parties um, in in the space and um, I can't I can't share more details on, uh, some of those things behind the scenes, but uh, we're really, really happy with where it ended up.
Speaker 2:Well, talk to me about what made DAT the right fit for trucker tools? Yeah, so, first and foremost, I think it is like that customer overlap. So DAT is the broker marketplace. You know, I go into a free brokerage and I'm looking at screens and 80% of them are probably on DAT at any given time. It's pretty wild and, as I thought, about the future of our business.
Speaker 2:We're a load tracking business, a visibility business with a really strong carrier network.
Speaker 2:I thought what made sense was for us to tuck into a larger platform that already supported a lot of the core broker workflow and carrier workflow out there, so that we could be an additional kind of quiver arrow in the quiver, so to speak, for a freight broker to use to automate processes. Because there's so much. There's one thing to automate processes kind of in a vacuum and take care of something. There's real magic and when you're able to take something like you know you book a load and then a track automatically starts those are that's where you really start to get kind of compounded savings from automation and see the real benefit of it. Um, so I think DAT absolutely makes sense because we're bringing together our carrier networks to have a largest carrier, uh trusted carrier network in the country or in North America, and they are already deep in the business of automation and saving brokers time sourcing capacity. We are bringing a ton of that and an additional capability that they hadn't had previously which was tracking invisibility.
Speaker 1:So I want to make this statement because I think a lot of shippers will probably watch this and I think there's a misnomer about the way that brokers utilize DAT, or at least the way that brokers should utilize DAT, and there are many shippers that I've heard say we don't want our providers using load boards, and I understand there's nuance to that that I think needs to be understood. I think that no broker should solely utilize load boards as their sourcing capacity strategy as their sourcing capacity strategy. However, every broker, or 99% of brokerages, do use DAT because it's a useful tool to source capacity. What you do once that capacity has been brought into your network is completely up to you how you utilize it. If you utilize it, the vetting you do thereafter, that's on the broker.
Speaker 1:But I think, as a broker, it's my job to get my freight in front of every carrier out there and use whatever tools are available as many tools as possible to ensure that I have the best chance of finding the right carrier for the right load. I think that every broker wants to, or should, focus on relationships first and foremost in trying to book the same carriers over and over, but there are new carriers that show up all the time, who are potentially very good and high quality, and they might be sitting on DAT as their first avenue for how they're looking for loads. I don't think it's a bad thing for someone to be sourcing capacity this way whatsoever. I think it's more about how do you vet the capacity that comes into your network, and DAT is a great tool to do so, and I think that shippers should keep that in mind as they consider that or consider how they kind of engage with their potential carriers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've actually even pushed back a little bit on the notion that, um, you need to do vetting outside of DAT, just given what. So I? Something else I should add is that, um, as part of this acquisition, I am joining the DAT team. My entire team is coming with the business and I'm actually taking on an expanded role, not just running trucker tools but running the broker business, so happy to talk more about that. So I've I've been able to start to see kind of what we're cooking up now as a larger team, and so much of the roadmap is around fraud protection.
Speaker 2:Obviously, tracking is a big part of that. We think of tracking as just a core table stake when it comes to maintaining a really safe, secure carrier network. But DAT and the product team there is driving a ton of innovation when it comes to carrier trust and safety, or trust and safety on the platform. Last week, actually, we launched a we being DAT, now launched a biohackers application that makes DAT counts unfishable. We're also in the progress or the process of launching DAT's carrier management suite. Some of that was announced at DATCon earlier this year. So there's there's actually a lot of really interesting product that is getting worked out right now to come to market very soon. That, I think, is going to make DAT an absolute leader, not just in spot marketplace and that place where you come to find, like you said, all those inbound eyeballs, but actually to work with really trusted and secure carriers. So I'm really excited about that because I think it is the natural next evolution of the load board.
Speaker 1:It does sound like this is going to take the load board as it is today and advance it into a kind of new realm, so to speak, or new kind of identity. Can you talk a little bit like how do these tools marry up now? Will trucker tools still exist as its own tool? What will the connection be between the two platforms? Will there be an opportunity to actually book a load through DAT that will connect into trucker tools to be tracked? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have a ton of exciting ideas, as you can imagine. First and foremost, you know, you've been through M&A, you know what it's like to bring two companies together. The priority is on making sure the team and the customers coming over from the Trucker Tools business are in a good spot and everyone is, you know, continuing to get the same sort of level of service that they're used to. We're still driving really strong product innovation. So to answer I guess to answer your question, your first question, first, trucker tools we are keeping the brand. Dat was actually really excited about the brand, which is another thing I take a lot of pride in. Thank you, Prasad and Murali. Our founders built an incredible brand that I think they were brilliant by really building the love from the small carrier base, because that really is ultimately what makes this industry go around from day one, and we've been able to build off that brand equity for the last 15 years.
Speaker 2:So, trucker tools, we're still flying the red flag among the DAT blue and we're still operating business as usual.
Speaker 2:So really nothing is changing per se for customers of Trucker Tools right now.
Speaker 2:Of course, there are benefits to scale here, where we're now able to take advantage of being part of this larger organization that has these really deep customer relationships.
Speaker 2:And that is the first point of integration here is just helping all of those brokers, like you said, that are using DAT understand that we are the number one tracking solution in the market and really lean into DAT's deep customer relationships to build out and grow the tracking business. Because over time, as we build those interesting points of integration, those are going to be real value adds for brokers who are taking advantage of the DAT broader suite of existing solutions and the trucker tool visibility platform. You know we've got telematics integrations, We've got all of our proactive exception management tracking capabilities, We've got our fraud toolkit. Over time there's going to be a real ability to take advantage of not just what's existing on the DAT side and on the trucker tool side, but to come together. But you know the specifics. We're, of course, already moving out on and have a lot of ideas that we're exploring. But point one is let's just introduce our tracking solution to the DAT broker base.
Speaker 1:Yep. So as someone who's gotten to know you decently over the last year and a half and has interviewed you in the past, I'm excited to see you kind of get into the DAT world. I think it's great that you're staying on the business, continuing to own or manage the trucker tools product. Talk to me a little bit about this new role within DAT. What is it again and what is kind of what does that look like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm very excited about it. It was really important to me that I continued with the business into this next chapter because there's so much opportunity for us and I'm competitive and I want to win and I think we've got traction, serious traction right now, and this is only going to be the VP and general manager of trucker tools and broker growth, which is quite a mouthful. But essentially what that means is that you think about all the products that touch brokers. Dat is kind of oriented around three customer personas broker, carrier and shipper. I'm going to be overseeing that whole broker business. So of course you know, there's the core freightightMatch platform, dat1, dat IQ, used fiber. I still need to get some of the product nomenclature down. So shame on me, but today's my first day as an employee, I guess.
Speaker 2:But you know we're adding trucker tools into that suite and then really again, like I mentioned, there's a lot of new product at DAT that we're excited about bringing to bear in the market. So that portfolio is just going to expand over time to make sure that we're delivering the most value to brokers we can.
Speaker 1:And when you think about, like, what do you think is, what is your message to brokers, as you're now kind of the face of DAT brokers, of the face of DAT brokerage, which DAT has kind of historically not had a very public persona at the C-level, and I think that you're going to be a perfect fit for this, frankly, but what is your kind of message to the brokers out there for what they should expect and what you kind of want to bring to them in the future?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think another is a couple of thoughts on that. First of all, this is day one as an employee, so I I appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of DAT, but there's a lot of people who are, you know, more capable than I, probably today, to speak to it. But I think this is an exciting moment and I think it represents two things for brokers that they can continue to see a lot about of DAT. The first is what's underpinned with Trucker Tools and DAT, which is a radical customer obsession and building products that solve customer problems. When I started at Trucker Tools a couple of years ago, we actually didn't even have a product team. We were really a founder-led company, but a really core part of the business over the last couple of years is building on our product team. So shout out to them Jess, jarrett, ethan and Jonah for identifying what are the massive problems that brokers are thinking through every single day and working through and how do we build solutions to make their lives easier. I think DAT takes a pretty similar approach to solving customer problems and I'm excited to keep doing that. That is really like the core message is we're going to keep building product that helps you solve problems. And then you know, I just I forgot the second one. I had some other point I wanted to share out with brokers.
Speaker 2:Ah yes, I guess I'm already sounding like a broken record on here, but something I'm also really proud of with Trucker Tools is that we have delivered a ton of new product over the last two years. You know we are not. This has not just been kind of a let's run the business and sell and see what works. We have built a ton, and last year I can think of five, six, seven like real meaty features or even full products that we've built. We built our fraud toolkit, our temperature tracking integrations, our carrier sourcing tool, our text to track tool, like there is. There are a lot of real innovation that's been coming off the conveyor belt, if you will, and that's certainly a plan at DAT.
Speaker 2:We are, um, you know already category leaders in market leaders here and the plan is just to kind of pour gasoline on that fire. The team at DAT is awesome. I've gotten to meet um product engineering leadership, customer leadership, marketing, sales leadership over the last couple of weeks and, like I'm so you can probably hear it I'm just so energized about the opportunity here to actually build. If you want to impact the freight industry, dat is the place to be kind of full stop. You're not. It's hard to think of a place where you can have more influence and to hopefully make a change and make it make a difference for customers. So building out really value add problem solving product is what I'm most excited about and what I want brokers to take away from this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think it's one thing to talk about the load board and the pros and cons of it, so to speak, but undoubtedly nearly every, if not every, broker is using the rate intelligence.
Speaker 1:It is second to none in the industry today.
Speaker 1:And as shippers think about creating new ways of benchmarking pricing or moving away from kind of the age-old annual bid process to do something that's a little bit more fluid, to do something that's a little bit more fluid, it is often DAT that is looked at as the gold standard for what pricing should be, and I just think having that that's what gets the hooks in on all of the brokers and it's something that they all need.
Speaker 1:So once you have that, it's a matter of like, what can you do with it? And I think that DAT is making a very smart move buying a company like yours, because all it does is extend the service offerings but also extend the level of trust I think that the organization can have with its customers, because you have a deeper touch into the carrier itself, which is kind of, to an extent, an answer to the rampant fraud problem that we're dealing with across the industry at whole. So, as people concern themselves with a load board. One potential solution to that is how do we get more entrenched in the carrier network itself, and this is a way to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. That's was a huge part of the deal coming together was the trucker tools carrier network is second to none. Um, and we've built, we've spent a ton of the last three years. I want to give a shout out to to uh, justin Schnelly runs our ELD uh program here. Our telematics integrations have just you know, they've literally been exponential over the last three years. So we are just so in touch with carriers where they are and not just in a single individual trucks but entire fleets.
Speaker 2:Having that like, just like you said, being able to understand after the load is booked what's actually going on, is a huge value add for brokers and also like it's. You know, when I started in this job three years ago, I was like people are really still making check calls. That is crazy. So I think we've. It's been pretty remarkable to see the compliance growth when it comes to digital tracking, like like we're doing over the last three years, and I think carriers absolutely have bought in on the value prop of. I do not want Andrew the broker calling me every two hours if I can just do this digitally.
Speaker 1:Why me?
Speaker 2:Respect, of course. I just random name, I just picked you know common broker names.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know this is, I'm curious, before this happened.
Speaker 1:You know, in the last month there's been a few new entrants to the carrier procurement space, a few new entrants to the carrier procurement space, convoy or, I guess, flexport with their Convoy platform, which is a completely new kind of way or tool for brokers to utilize Uber with their tool broker access, which I have my own thoughts on, but we're not going to get into that today.
Speaker 1:One of the thoughts I had as both of those companies came to the fold was DAT kind of almost looks like it could fall behind in this just in terms of how this is a step further from what the traditional freight marketplace load matching looks like, where typically a broker would just go on and see the capacity there and then call it if they want to or email it if they want to. But now DAT comes in with this deal and I guess furthers their own. You know status in the race, you know whatever to stay ahead certainly is ahead in terms of the size they have by far. But I'm just curious, give me your thoughts on, like, how the industry is kind of shifting with respect to some of this and you know what the potential is. If you have any thoughts on how carrier procurement for brokers could continue to evolve as deals like this happen or new solutions like the convoy, uber stuff come into the fold, yeah, yeah, um, I mean, I I appreciate you seeing the value in the deal.
Speaker 2:I think a lot. You know, what you just shared is a lot of what is so exciting about this and how dat continues to really push itself forward. Um, some some, you know there's a. There's a tool that we launched or a product that we launched. I mentioned all the products we've been building um back in. Uh, we launched it in April at TIA called carrier sourcing. Um, and you know this.
Speaker 2:This product still exists again, everything at trucker tools is continuing to be out there and we're going to figure out how do we take advantage of the value of bringing these two companies together.
Speaker 2:But it's using a lot of carrier intelligence that we're collecting from carriers through our mobile app as they submit offers on loads on our load marketplace, so on and so forth, to identify high-quality carriers that are good fits for lanes and not just based on, oh, these carriers run these lanes, but these carriers run these lanes and they are a high quality, high service level carrier.
Speaker 2:How do we know that? Because we track the trucks and we actually are a big part of their scorecard. So I really see, like that you mentioned kind of DAT having this behemoth of such valuable rate intelligence and data. So I think pulling together all of these pieces and really moving further upstream in procurement and identifying not just, oh, there's a truck available, but this is a good fit, high signal carrier with high service levels, that is the appropriate again fit for this load, is kind of where I think all of this technology is going, and just moving further and further up in the procurement cycle, as opposed to at the end having to make double checks on things and say, okay, was this it? So that's where I see this whole space going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to disagree there. I mean, I just think the more data you have at your fingertips, the more you can leverage to create a solution that I guess solves a lot of the problems that brokers have. I mean, I just the fraud is such a focal point right now, and if you can find a way to get basically into the truck with the ELD and allow that to be part of the solution that the AT is offering, I just think you're making hay at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's so. We, like I mentioned too we we released a lot of fraud product. Um, I think we released it in October, but we've got more coming where we're proactively verifying to when there's no truck assigned to a load. Okay, is there a VOIP in play here? Is this actually hitting an offshore data center? There's a ton of early signal that we're picking up and we're thinking about how do we move that earlier into the procurement cycle as well to identify ahead of time.
Speaker 2:This is a bad actor. And I'll add to again day one at DAT, but they've removed a ton of carriers from the network. Again, I mentioned kind of making accounts unfishable with biometric authentication. I am, of course fraud is going to remain a major issue. I am, of course fraud is going to remain a major issue and, just based on the data I'm seeing, we are, I think brokers are becoming a lot more effective at managing fraud and bad actors are continuing to get vetted out of the system. And this sort of tech like I'm mentioning, like our fraud toolkit with our tracking product, that's just going to become such a. Again, it's a table stake that everyone is going to be eager to use because if you're not, you're just exposing yourself. It's like you don't have, basically not having some sort of basic insurance at some point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, I mean. The challenge really, though, is like, as we brokers and you tech platforms get smarter and better at fighting fraud, the fraudsters get access to technology that makes them better at being freaking fraudsters, so it will be a never-ending battle, but I think that, again, it's leveraging whatever tools and data you have available to get as close to the physical truck as you possibly can is the best way to fight fraud. I mean, knowing who is driving the truck, and having the ELD data is going to be immensely helpful in that battle.
Speaker 1:So, let's talk a little bit about the integration process. What does that look like? Is the deal officially closed? I mean, you said you're a day one employee, so you are now. The deal is closed, it's done. Tell me, walk me through, what the integration plan is. How do you make sure that you keep all your people happy and excited about the future with this organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the deal is closed and I am very excited that all of our employees have made the transition over to DAT. So, again, same people. You know, if you're a customer out there, you've still got your same account managers. We still have our awesome customer support team shout out, pat and Adam Sam um holding it down for us. Um, so, really like nothing. In some ways, this is it's, of course, not anticlimactic, but in some ways it is it's. You know, you, I woke up this morning and we continued to build software and support customers and track trucks. Um, and that really is is kind of the plan for the near future. Um, we, we want to.
Speaker 2:Again, I mentioned that DAT was really excited about the Trucker Tools brand. Maintaining that brand and operating it as is right now was really an easy choice, I think, because we've got such great customer advocates and loyalty and brand trust in what we do. So we're keeping that all the same. We're still going to be at all the same shows. We're going to be with the DAT team, of course, and most of the business is still reporting directly into me. We're taking advantage of places like on the sales and account management side. How do we just make sure that the DAT team is speaking with the Trucker Tools team as much as possible to drive that growth, like I mentioned with the DAT broker base.
Speaker 2:But I wish I had something more exciting for you. But really everything is kind of business as usual. Over time we're going to find ways that we can take advantage of this point of scale. But honestly, it's something that I'm grateful for right now because the last couple of weeks have been really hectic and just getting to a point now where it is like all right, we're business as usual, we're going to keep growing this business. It's been a refreshing change from the chaos of getting things tied up over the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:I know this is a podcast, but it's not all about excitement. I mean, I think I think it's a good thing that you can say nothing's changing and that you know everybody's. You know same account managers, your same account manager, your salesperson, your salesperson. The product team is staying how they are. I mean, I think that's a win. You know, in a lot of cases those integration processes are way more challenging and the turnover is high and there's still a lot more risk.
Speaker 2:I totally agree and that is something I am also. I'm excited about that. The DAT team saw how much, how strong our team is and they were eager to have everyone join the broader DAT business, because I'm really one of the things I'm most personally proud of is the team we've built here. I've already mentioned a number of folks individually, but I think we've got a players. I saw you comment on one of your brother's posts maybe, or maybe someone else's post, like it's not realistic for a business to have a players top to bottom at certain scale, which I probably do agree with. We're not at the scale where it is possible to business like ours to have a players top to bottom, and I'm I think we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I can tell the pride you have in your team just by every opportunity you've had in the 28 minutes we've been talking. You've found a way to shout out individuals where you can, across the various teams, and I just think that speaks to being a good leader who understands that, like you didn't do it on your own and there's a great group of people that got your team to where they are to have this kind of moment.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, I mean, you said it. We would not be here without the team. I could not be more proud of the work everyone's done and I'm really really grateful to folks for buying into my leadership. And people spend a lot of time at work. People spend a lot of time at work Like it is a serious, it is a non-trivial amount of our time as people in the working world who have lives and families and other priorities. So I don't take it lightly that people have chosen to commit to the vision that ultimately, as the CEO, I was responsible for casting, and I'm really excited and I just I really do believe in the DAT leadership team. It's been awesome to get to know them and I'm really excited and I just I really do believe in the DAT leadership team. It's been awesome to get to know them and I'm really excited to work with them, and I think the trucker tools team is going to feel similarly, working with that expanded leadership team. In addition, to me.
Speaker 1:I think it also says a lot from the other side, from DAT side, that they want to keep the team intact. They want to keep the brand intact. They want everybody to report into you. That's not only an ode to your own leadership and where you've brought the team, but it's an ode to the team itself and trying to make sure the best way to make sure you don't lose people in an acquisition like this is to change nothing, to change as little as possible to keep the right people on the bus. So I mean credit to you, credit to the team, for you know putting yourselves in this position. Let me ask you, like you know, I interviewed you I don't know a year ago or whatever, and we talked about your personal journey. Did you expect to be where you are right now, at this point?
Speaker 2:It wasn't even a full year ago. I it was in february. Um, which is crazy, how much has happened since then. Um, the freight pod has blown up and become very influential, might I add uh in that time.
Speaker 2:Um, I, I. Something I'm learning about myself and just in the conversations with my friends or my fiance, or even people at work, is that I have very high standards, that I don't even think of being high standards, I think. Um, and I run really really fast. So, um, I think, if you've told me in February that I would be sitting here doing this on December 17th, I would have been surprised. But, um, I'm learning that. Um, I, I, yeah, I shouldn't be, and it's, I'm excited, I'm, I'm excited to keep up that pace of play at DAT. Um, I think it's, it's certainly possible and there's some really awesome people there and it's going to be really fun to get to work with them. Um, but yeah, it's, I don't know, it's, it's hard to it's. It's been a pretty surreal experience going through this. Um, because of you know this, this sort of moment was always just such a hypothetical in my mind, so it's, it's hard to even say what I thought was and wasn't possible, like 10 months ago. Um, but yeah, it's hard to say.
Speaker 1:What kind of lessons have you learned in the few years you've now had as as the CEO of this business? You know you came into it and it needed some change and needed a boost to keep going, and you've certainly provided that uh to to the to the other kind of entrepreneurs out there, or people who want to one day be a CEO and start their own business. Like, what have you learned?
Speaker 2:Power of focus, first and foremost. That is when I came into Trucker Tools three years ago. We were doing a lot of things Some pretty well, some okay, some it wasn't really clear where we were. It was just it was too much and choosing a very specific problem that we wanted to absolutely knock out of the park, which was becoming the leading visibility provider for freight brokerages and 3PLs oriented everything else. It became so clear how do we focus? What kind of customers do we need to be working with? Who might not be a good fit customer?
Speaker 2:Um, it that really that, to me, was the big takeaway was focus, um, for kind of on the product and solving a customer problem side. Um, I've also learned that, uh, yeah, if you hire awesome people and give them room to run, that is the single biggest point of leverage you could ever have as a leader. Uh, and I, I it is actually a I'm starting to see in a lot of ways that is. It's great when I feel like I have, I'm looking around like, oh, I actually don't have anything to do right now, which, to be honest, is not the case. There's always stuff coming up but customers to talk to or anything but empowering a team and empowering leaders and hiring people who culturally align with what you are looking for. People who are humble, hungry, smart, don't take themselves too seriously, interested in solving problems, analytical. I really do believe in the power of like multipliers in a business. That's a good book. Rec. Read multipliers. If you're looking for a business book, maybe you are this holiday season.
Speaker 1:That was a nice little. Maybe you are yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think power focus, hiring strong talent and really empowering them and then I'm going to sound so trite but the power of relationships, especially in this industry.
Speaker 2:I think the story of the last three years definitely does involve the story of I came in and I remember going to my first uh, I went to my first trade show in early 2022 TII in San Diego and, um, I was, like you know, the new kid on the block and I I I saw what so many other founders and CEOs and leaders in the industry were doing and just kind of the depth of the relationships they had with their customers and partners and leaders in the industry were doing, and just kind of the depth of the relationships they had with their customers and partners and their team.
Speaker 2:And I was like I need to do this, I need to build something like this for myself and, more than anything, I think this is something you do really well. It had to be authentic to me. It had to be. I couldn't show up and like cosplay as CEO. I had to be myself, talk about the things I care about, own who I am, and I thought that sort of authenticity would attract talent who were excited to work with me, attract, you know, customers and really I thought it would just kind of help evangelize the brand and I do think that has really worked.
Speaker 1:I thought it would just kind of help evangelize the brand and I do think that has really worked.
Speaker 1:So let me credit you there because just in our journey together which is not that extensive or deep, but like I first really got to know you when I interviewed you on the show which you said it was in February. Before then I barely kind of knew who you were, other than knew you were the CEO of trucker tools. From that point I started paying attention and, whether it was on LinkedIn or at conferences where I saw you, it was very clear how out there you were putting yourself and it was clear that you were developing these relationships with people. Just in conversation I was seeing you having and hearing your name come up from people who were like, oh yeah, you interviewed her, I know her, I've gotten to spend time with her with this, or saw this or do this, whatever, um, you've, you've done a really great job of that and I, you know I appreciate you bringing that up as a point. It's just something I had noticed on my own, not realizing it was even something you were doing so intentionally, um, but well done Um thank you.
Speaker 2:I don't want to make it seem like this has all been like an evil plan, but uh, I just saw like relationships matter and if I wanted to be, if I wanted to be involved and have a right to um kind of play in this industry, I I I saw it was necessary and I started playing golf and I think that's how so that was something I was going to mention, but I I was going to say it wasn't something that was like, oh, she's she's like had this plan.
Speaker 1:it's more just like you were just being out there and being yourself and being your authentic self and sharing who you were and what you were interested in, what you cared about and like, yeah, I just got to know a lot more about you as a result of that, and I think everybody else did, and, um, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I just think there's power in that. I think putting yourself out there is something that people are timid about sometimes, but you get a lot out of it. I mean, you mentioned this podcast. It's like I never would have expected that I'd be involved in announcing acquisitions like this, and here we are and it's just a product of showing up every week and doing an episode with people and having good conversations, getting to know people like yourself and enjoying along the way. I think you've got a natural curiosity to yourself that lends to this whole process and is something that you know was not natural for me but has has, is something that I've almost developed as a as a skill that I think everybody could benefit from, and it's. It's definitely worthwhile, so credit to you there.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, listen, I think we've done a pretty good job, I think, of kind of navigating the strategy, vision, the opportunities you see for both organizations moving forward. I hope we covered as much as the audience was interested in with respect to this. If I miss something, send me a note and I'll try to get it next time, on the next deal, if it happens and I get asked to be a part of it. But thank you so much for letting me participate in this and for sharing more about kind of all that's happening here. And do you have any kind of parting words or thoughts you want to share with the audience?
Speaker 2:I'm just feeling, I'm feeling really grateful right now to have, you know, everyone talks about oh, I didn't plan to get into freight, I didn't plan to come into brokerage. You know, no one grew up saying that that's what they want to do and I I mean I certainly feel the same way. I, um, I was kind of vaguely interested in transportation broadly, and the fact that I found this industry and um feel so connected to it and have had the opportunity to build a business and give our team awesome opportunities professionally, economically, everything to give our customers the ability to scale and grow their businesses is a really I'm just feeling really grateful for those opportunities and I'm so excited about what's to come, because I really do feel like Charger Tools and now, as part of DAT, we're just getting started and the next couple of years are going to be really, really fun.
Speaker 1:Love it. Well, I'm excited to see what you can do with that business and see how you guys can continue to build on a great legacy that both companies have. So with that, we're going to call it To all our listeners. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time. Thank you.
