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. #59: Dan Manshaem, CEO & Founder of Ally Logistics
In this episode, Andrew welcomes Dan Manshaem, CEO and founder of Ally Logistics, for his first podcast appearance ever. In 2012, Dan and his cofounder Jeff Chidester started Ally — they quit their jobs, put $2,500 in the bank, and signed a lease for $300 a month for some office space. He calls that time, “One part exhilarating, one part terrifying.” Today, Ally has grown to a team of 95 with a projected top-line revenue of $145M in 2025.
In this episode, Dan shares:
- How his initial finance career aspirations led him to freight brokerage, starting as an intern before founding Ally Logistics.
- Practical tips for launching a brokerage, winning early customers, and differentiating in a competitive market.
- How Ally integrates AI tools like FleetWorks and Qued to enhance operational efficiency, how Ally team member roles have evolved to support AI, and the biggest challenges in implementing new tech.
- His perspective on selecting tech providers, managing vendor relationships, and using a “super user program” for smoother integrations.
- How he thinks about remote work in 2025 and Ally’s approach with “earned flexibility.”
- Valuable advice for interns and young professionals entering the logistics world.
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*** 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 FreightPod listeners. Before we get started today, let's do a quick shout out to our sponsor, rapido Solutions Group. Rapido connects logistics and supply chain organizations in North America with the best near shore talent to scale efficiently and deliver superior customer service. Rapido works with businesses from all sides of the logistics industry. This includes brokers, carriers and logistics software companies. This includes brokers, carriers and logistics software companies. Rapido builds out teams with roles across customer and carrier sales and support, back office administration and technology services.
Speaker 1:The team at Rapido knows logistics and people. It's what sets them apart. Rapido is driven by an inside knowledge of how to recruit, hire and train within the industry and a passion to build better solutions for success. The team is led by CEO Danny Frisco and COO Roberto Lacazza, two guys I've worked with from my earliest days in the industry at Coyote. I have a long history with them and I trust them. I've even been a customer of theirs at Molo and let me tell you they made our business better. In the current market, where everyone's trying to do more with less and save money, solutions like Rapido are a great place to start To learn more. Check them out at gorapidocom. That's gorapidocom, okay, welcome back, welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of the Freight Pod. I'm your host, andrew Silver, joined today by a special guest per usual. Mr Dan Mansheim, did I say your last name right?
Speaker 2:manshim, but um, I've been hearing it butchered for many, many years, so you did pretty good at least dan is easy dan manshim welcome, there we go hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:so dan is the ceo of ally logistics, um, a fast-growing bootstrapped freight brokerage, and I like the idea of bootstrapped. I think we're going to give our audience something they want to hear today. I think your story is just a really interesting one. As far as I know, and you can confirm this, you started as a freight intern and worked your way up and then eventually went off to start your own business, and I think that is, in some ways, kind of like the freight American dream for all of the brokers out there who currently are in a role whether sales, account management, I don't know. Many of them have thought I would love to run my own brokerage today, and I'm hopeful that, as we get into your story, that maybe there are some nuggets for people who have similar ambitions. Um, but let's start with your. Let's start with how you got in a freight to begin with. So you started as an intern. How did you even get into the business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess, um it. Uh. It was essentially I was a college kid and I had to pay for my own college and I was just looking for a job. I was going to school at Western Michigan University, tuition kept going up and so I saw some posting this company called Transcore come work with a bunch of young people, high energy, fast pace. I said what's it hurt to apply? And then next thing, you know, I had a phone call and yeah, I got. I got hired as an intern, turned into kind of more, more like a co-op, I think. I ended up working there for about a year and a half, two years during school, just kind of scheduling around my courses and just, yeah, learning from the ground up.
Speaker 1:For sure, so you kind of fell into it, like a lot of us did.
Speaker 2:For sure I did not have dreams of becoming a logistics broker or owning a logistics company, I guess, to elaborate there, I was going to school for finance. I still thought stock brokers were a thing and that was really my dream. I wanted to light the finance world on fire and then graduated it was actually summer of 2008. So got what I thought was going to be my dream job Edward Jones Financial. As Bear Stearns, lehman Brothers are collapsing, I've got these finance professors that are pulling their hair out and they don't know how the world's going to function. And yeah, so it didn't take me long in that job to figure out. Maybe I should try this freight brokerage thing out a little bit. And I guess the other piece there too, is you weren't really a stockbroker, you were just kind of a walking billboard. Is you weren't really a stockbroker, you were just kind of a walking billboard, so it didn't really feel like you could add value, whereas in freight you can feel the value that you're adding on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:And what about the job did you enjoy? What were you good at that? You were like, hey, I think I can make a career out of this. What were you good at?
Speaker 2:that you were like hey, I think I can make a career out of this. I think I'm just drawn to solving problems, and this industry just is chock full of different problems, of varying complexity, but there's a lot of really complex problems and so, yeah, I think that's kind of addicting for a lot of people. Um, there's, there's the income potential. Obviously that comes with the market size of freight, Uh. But yeah, I just think, uh, all day long I'm getting stimulated by seeing problems that I think are solvable and I just can't help myself but from trying to make a dent wherever I can.
Speaker 2:And at what point did you decide I want to start my own business? Yeah, so I think that was a thought I kind of had, even going back to high school. Growing up I'd always started these little stupid businesses that wouldn't do anything. I think Beanie, baby Sales at one point was something we did for about a month with a friend, but just had always been entrepreneurial, just wasn't sure what that business was going to be. Even during my time at my previous employer, I helped start an intermodal department, just because I had been dabbling with sales a little bit and we couldn't find competitive intermodal rates. And so next thing, you know, I'm setting up contracts with the CSX and, uh, working with it was called Streamline at the time and, um, yeah, next thing you know, we're, we're, we're draining our own containers and we're setting up trailer and flat car, uh, for the trucking company that was attached to the brokerage. So I just tend to go down these rabbit holes and solve problems and yeah. So I guess back to the original question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, while I was working at that brokerage I got really curious on the technology side. I've always kind of been techie, started dabbling with some things, and my best friend from high school decided he wanted to start a business as well. We tried a small business where we were buying and selling store return TVs on the side while I was working on the brokerage. We actually had warehouse space. He built an inventory management system for this business. I think we sold like $250,000 worth of TVs in a summer. But then we got to the accounting part and we started running the numbers and by the time you added up the damaged TVs and the returns and all the rest of it, we just weren't making money, and so that led to uh, that was actually a tough time, like seeing my first like real business not turn out. Um, but a couple months later he said, hey, I got this guy from my work. He always wears these bold, colorful socks into work.
Speaker 2:Socks are the opposite of TVs. They're small. There's tons of SKUs. Why don't we take the inventory management system, take what we learned and we'll start a sock company? So that's what we did. We started buying clearance socks, listing them on this website and, yeah, it took a while to get some traction. But a couple of years I think probably a year and a half in, we started seeing sales grow and we went from $5,000 a month to $10,000 a month to $15,000 a month. And then, finally, I was 26 and I said there's not going to be a better time in my life to take a leap of faith. I didn't have a girlfriend, I didn't have kids, I didn't have a lot of commitments, and so it's kind of the the origin story of ally.
Speaker 1:And so the sock business and the TV business you were running while still working at your old job. So this was like kind of a side hustle.
Speaker 2:This was a side hustle Plus. I was trying to like teach myself to code. I was on lyndacom trying to learn PHP, trying to learn Ruby on Rails. I have ADHD, I don't have the attention span, so I never really got good at it. But I think learning to code does teach you a certain way of thinking about things. So I think that's kind of been the benefit. But but yeah, that was all stuff, just doing it on the sidelines trying to figure out what the next pivot could be.
Speaker 1:I mean, I like the idea of just kind of throwing yourself into something you know, especially while you have your kind of main job that's paying the bills, and then just following the ambition to whether it's a sock company, a TV company. I'm curious if there were any lessons you could take away from those experiences that you brought with you into the ally world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean a ton of them. Hard to know where to start there. But I think, just making a commitment, being willing to try different things, I think when I go into something new, if I go into uncharted territory, I always think to myself worst case, I'm probably going to learn some really valuable stuff, and so I think there's. I guess the way I would sum it up is like really just this idea of embracing failure as a stepping stone to your eventual success. I know definitely my story has been filled with a lot of those smaller failures that just I really genuinely view as building blocks, just because that's what's helped get me to where I am.
Speaker 1:And when did you decide to start ally logistics again?
Speaker 2:yeah, so that was october of 2012, uh, so I had a roommate, uh, uh at the time, who worked in operations at the same brokerage. I had made my way into a sales role. The company was called uh transcore. Now they're called, they're called venture. Um, so, convinced, convinced him, I said this sock business is starting to take off. Let's take a leap of faith. He was all in, so we both put in our notices.
Speaker 2:I think the unique thing was we actually went and signed a lease on an office for two years. We found a small office building. We got our office space for I think it was 300 bucks a month Initially. It was ridiculously cheap. It was some uh extra space in the upstairs of uh, you had to go through like an unfinished stairwell, but um, but yeah, we quit our jobs. We joined a small agent, uh brokerage. Initially, cause, neither of us had any capital. Um, I say any capital. We put 2,500 bucks into a bank account. Um, I say any capital. We put 2,500 bucks into a bank account. We went on eBay, we went on Amazon. We, I figured out where to buy desks and phones and um, yeah, I mean, we, we just started dialing for dollars. We trusted in our skills and we respected the non-solicit agreements that we had.
Speaker 1:And we just started cold Months of bootstrapping a business from scratch with no money, I mean $2,500. You, and I guess just one other guy, walk me through those first few months, first six months, what, what was that? Like you know, there's, there are hundreds of people who are listening to this, who probably thinking I'm 26. I want to take a chance. I want to start my own brokerage. Like for those that are listening and have similar ambitions, what are they walking into if they do take the leap?
Speaker 2:yeah, I would say one part exhilarating and one part terrifying. Um, I mean, definitely had a big vision for what I wanted to build on the logistics side, um, but but yeah, the rubber meets the road when you make a commitment like that. My co-founder, his name's Jeff Chidester. What we always said to each other is the best way to get really motivated to sell is to have a dwindling bank account, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. So we just failure wasn't an option. We were just going to keep going, and that's what we did.
Speaker 1:And just for context, because we're going to get there. But I want the viewers to kind of understand it now. How big is ally today? What? How large is the team? Whatever you're comfortable sharing in terms of the size of the company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. We're at about 95 people right now. We should finish the. It's early in the year but we're projecting 140 to 145 in terms of top line. We did I want to say around 120 million in 2024. So just starting to see maybe the market pickup just a touch, yeah. So that's to see maybe the market pick up just a touch, yeah. So that's kind of our profile, I guess. Customers we serve enterprise, cpg, big food and beverage customers. It makes up a lot of our volume.
Speaker 1:A lot of truckload drive-in. Refrigerated type stuff. Yeah, Full truckload, A lot of truckload drive and refrigerated type stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, full truckload Um, probably 70% of our truckload business is dry, 30% refrigerated. Um, automotive makes up a big part of the business. And then, uh, drayage is something we got into about three years ago. We're moving about a thousand containers a month there, um, and then there's a there's a tech component of our business that we're kind of weaving in over time, yeah, trying to just yeah, I guess, make our people as productive as possible.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Okay, thank you, I appreciate. I think that helps give the audience understanding. Is we're going to kind of go through the story over the last I guess 12 years that you've been running this business. I think it helps for people to understand on the front end, like where's the business now, as we kind of walk through the early days. So you and Jeff get started. Failure is not an option. Dwindling bank account $2,500 becomes 24, becomes 22, becomes 2,000. When you buy a desk, you know just day by day and your job is to go out and get business. So what does that look like when you're just getting started and you're calling people in the first few weeks, months, trying to get opportunities? What are the roadblocks you run into? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I want to say that it was harder than I thought it was going to be. I think there's a lot of people that move into the agency model from a call center brokerage and they have the skills, but they may be under credit, like the benefit of having, like this strong brand behind you and all of that. So it was just, you know as many cold calls as we could cram into a day. We were making them. Um, yeah, same with the carrier side. If we, if we got a load on the board, I mean, that was uh, that was a big deal. And you bend over backwards to figure out what you got to do to service that load. Just because, yeah, when there's an element of scarcity like that, like it again, failure not being an option, you turn up, you turn up the, uh, the intensity a couple of notches, I guess. I guess you would say, and then, and then, um, yeah, things start snowballing a little bit.
Speaker 2:We go from you know our first load, uh, to you know, maybe five loads a day, seven loads a day, and then we actually brought on a third partner. His name is Brandon, so he came on about six months into the business, worked for the same company actually. He actually used to be my manager for a period of time. Jeff and I had said, hey, if there's one guy from that last business we'd love to have on our leadership team. He just represents the values that we want to bring to the business and coincidentally he came knocking on our door and so at that point it kind of felt like fate. So we had to I think we made him buy it a thousand bucks and start commission only or something like that, so he could kind of earn his way in and uh, yeah, so that's, that's great. That's the early days.
Speaker 1:And what, what are you? What's the message? Right, Like you know, as you're getting started and you're calling X Y, z shipper, X Y, g, x, y, whoever, and you're saying hey, this is Dan Mansham with ally logistics. We just started three months ago. We'd love to haul your freight. And they said well, why should I choose your company? Why should I give you an opportunity? Like what's, what are you selling?
Speaker 2:I think at that point in time, I guess, at least in my opinion, there's there's really only one approach for it, and it's I'm going to out, brine the other guy. I'm going to be available any time of day to answer the call. Maybe there's other approaches that work that early, but that's the one that I've always heard about and that's definitely, I guess, what kind of sums up the approach we took.
Speaker 1:I mean, as you think about it, it's like what else is there Right? You know, in your earliest days, it's not like you've got some technology that others don't have that you can offer. It's not like you've got more resources than others can offer. You can't say you've got more carriers or better carriers. I mean you can say whatever you want, but it wouldn't be true and I kind of always defaulted to.
Speaker 1:That too is like when I felt like there was nothing else, I just sold myself and one I think I could count on myself. You know, I knew that if I'm making a commitment that I will always be available, or I will make sure that any issues get remedied in a timely manner, or I will proactively communicate. Get remedied in a timely manner, or I will proactively communicate, I'm not counting on anyone else to follow through there versus saying, like you know, I've got great private fleet capacity and then you know you go to XYZ private fleet and these other private fleets to move your loads and whatever. It doesn't work for them. You're kind of stuck there.
Speaker 1:So you know, I just think that's really interesting because it's hard To me. It's the hardest thing in this industry is getting opportunities for new shippers, and it's because of how saturated the space has become, where brokers are a dime, a dozen I don't know if it's 25,000 or so, whatever the number is that people say now there's a lot, to the point where when a shipper gets an email from a broker they've never heard of, it's not likely that they are eager to respond. I'm curious, as you've seen your business mature over the years, how do you think about sales and how do you think about giving your employees the ability to stay? How do they stand out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess backtrack in just a second Betting on your your your ability to grow outgrind the other broker.
Speaker 2:what I think of is, like the establishing the chain of accountability, and while I think that's especially necessary when you're an agent, if you're in a call center brokerage, it's the same thing and I think that's a big part, just holistically, of even selling your organization to an enterprise account. Right, they want that chain of accountability, they want to know that somebody gives a shit and somebody is going to respond when, when needed. But um, yeah, sorry, kind of went on that tangent um, um, but yeah, refresh my memory where, where were we?
Speaker 1:going. I tend to do that, by the way, you're fine, I'm an adhd guy with you, so it happens. I'm curious about selling in our space. I'm curious about brokers like yourself, who are good companies, hardworking, bootstrap businesses that don't have the same resources that the largest players in the industry have, and for your salespeople, how can you put them in a position to win in such a saturated, competitive, challenging market?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. No, I think of it as a game of inches in terms of any sort of differentiation you can get in this industry, and so I think that's what we're always working to build wherever we can within the organization. It's not that we are going to change the game in any particular way, but if we can be an inch better in a hundred different ways, I think that's really how we can stand out with our customers. There's a tech element. We've got our own proprietary pricing engine. That's been a big part of our pitch to enterprise brands. We've built that to be embedded in our culture so that it works more cohesively from the account managers to the technology team Doesn't mean we're doing anything revolutionary, but we're getting enough proof from the market that it's working and it's gaining some traction, I would say at a high level. Just moving freight better is our company mission, and it's just this commitment to continuous improvement, wanting to be scrutinized, wanting to hear the constructive criticism if our team has to step up in a certain way.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of little things with the technology One. For example, we're integrating on the DRAID side OpenTrack so that all our load statuses get updated from the ocean liners Anytime a shipment gets updated, we're going to be able to build that into our portal, give our customers access. We're going to be able to track per diem, demurrage. All the extra charges make some of those things easier. So there is a tech element to that. I don't want to suggest we're the only company doing that. I know there's a lot of people going down that path, but kind of across the board we're just always looking for how can we make sure we're doing all of those little things to set ourselves apart, um, wherever we can.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. I think that makes sense and I don't know that there's a better answer. I mean, I think it's leveraging the resources you have to create the most value possible for your customers, and I think the challenge for yourself and a company like yours is with limited resources, how do you decide where to spend them? So you know, I think it's it's pretty easy I don't want to say easy, but the decision-making is probably easier in your first year, when there's no money in the account and you're just, there's not a lot of decisions other than just sell, go, get the freight. As your company has grown, you know, by years three years, five, seven, nearing 50, 75, three years, five, seven, nearing 50, 75, $100 million in annual revenue. You are starting to build some traction and you're seeing success and all of a sudden, you are put in a position to start making some financial decisions around how you want to leverage the resources you have. What I'm curious about is, as the CEO of a growing company like that, how do you think about using your resources most effectively?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's kind of two sides to that. The two areas of focus for us have been I mean, it's always going to be a people industry trying to bring in expertise. I think post-COVID we or I guess during COVID we maybe went a little crazy. You could get freight from all of these customers, and so we built a team that, in hindsight, was maybe a little oversized and not as efficient as it could be. And so now, yeah, bringing expertise into the fold.
Speaker 2:I think that pairs with the other side of it, which is technology. I believe that having the right people behind the technology is going to be critical to make it actually work. There's a lot of new problems that are created when you layer in a new piece of technology, and so what we talk a lot about internally is getting our people to participate in the experiment and then de-risking wherever those experiments are for rolling out a new technology, and we're going to have an AI system read a PDF and build a load. Well, it's super important that those loads are all double-checked by the account manager, who's working closely with the tech team to make sure that that doesn't create any issues. And I think, yeah, we're just kind of investing in those two different areas and then culturally trying to bring those things together so that we can, I guess, get as far ahead as possible in terms of some of the new emerging technologies.
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Speaker 1:So what you just said I think is so fascinating. If you zoom out and think about all of the technology that's been brought into our space in the last decade and the companies that brought it and those that succeeded and those that failed, I think that there were these heavily VC-funded new entrants to the space in the last 10 years that brought more technology than the industry has ever seen before and with it they wanted to transform and revolutionize and whatever other buzzword you want to throw in there our industry On paper, like the idea, makes sense, archaic industry. Throw technology at it, everything gets more efficient. But that's not really how things played out and I think what you just said. There was something very small in there that is very representative of why and a big reason why there are some that have won in implementing new technology and others that have lost. You talked about how, when you bring new technology into your business, the thing that you mentioned is having an account manager who looks at how the technology comes in during the experiment, checks the impact to the customer and validates that things are going how they should be before just pumping it out.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's what a lot of the big VC funded companies did and I think it's a big reason why they failed. I think a lot of the companies that came into this space just were innovating whatever they could without understanding the impact to the customer and without understanding how it would alter their ability to execute and when in an industry where the exception is more often the rule and you don't have a system designed to support that, slash people designed to support that. When the system doesn't do it right, you fail, and I think these shippers that got burnt. They got burnt because new technology was brought into the space that didn't have all its T's crossed and I's dotted in a way that set up the broker, slash digital, whatever and the shipper to succeed. So I just think it's really interesting because what you said I don't even know if you realized you were doing it, but like talking about a priority while implementing technology, as making sure my people and the customers are aligned and how the technology is going to work. That is so crucial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think for me, having spent 18 years probably 12 or 13 of those in the trenches doing the jobs I think it's hard to really think about it a different way. And so, yeah, I do agree with you. I think there was I think we've all seen a little bit of maybe arrogance from some tech players who come in and kind of underestimate the value of of the broker. Um, I think that's created a lot of vitriol over time from brokers saying you, you just think I'm some dumb hillbilly? Uh, right, I'm sure. Uh, I'll, I'll say it.
Speaker 2:Maybe, maybe you shouldn't on your show, but I feel like there's kind of that perception and in reality, as you know, there's so much nuance and there is just so much that goes into every single step of this process and if you ignore one of those details, you're going to create as many new exceptions as you just fix and and.
Speaker 2:Are you really helping anything? So I think one of the things that changed because I haven't necessarily been an early adopter, ally hasn't necessarily tried to be an early adopter for a lot of technology, but I think that's one of the things I've seen with the rise of AI a lot of those problems that existed with the other technologies of not being able to get that last 10%. That's where I see AI really coming in and being able to fill those gaps and, while certainly it's not there yet and I'm certainly not advocating for fully automated process I think it's going to be able to solve a lot more problems and I think people are starting to see that and that's why you're starting to see, I guess, this new wave of technology companies gaining a little bit more traction, because I think there's a little bit more respect for just the depths of some of the problems, because there's kind of this history now and there's maybe some skeletons that approved it over the last five to seven years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a great point. I do think that if the new entrance to the logistics tech space that are being founded in the last 12, 24 months that are bringing the newest, latest and greatest, whatever, if those folks aren't learning from the skeletons and the graves of VC funded past, shame on them, because I agree with you, there are a lot of lessons to be learned there. I think your comment around AI, filling the gap on that 10% is really interesting. There's one problem I think about immediately that gets solved with, you know, in that kind of 10% window, and that's the voice AI, something that you and I have briefly exchanged some communication about. You sent me a text about this thing, sesame. I don't even know where that's from. Maybe you can fill me in, but my point in bringing this up you sent me a yesterday morning. You sent me a text with this Sesame dot com or Sesame dot AI.
Speaker 1:I would assume is the website, and it's a simple. Assume is the website and it's simple. You open the website. There's two choices between a woman and a male. I can't remember the woman's name, maybe Molly. The male is Miles. I hit Miles, the male, and boom, he and I were having a conversation. I talked to him for five minutes sitting there with my wife. I was talking to him about if I was starting a brokerage and I wanted you to talk to the trucking companies or the drivers, what would that look like? And it was the smoothest conversation I've had with AI ever. I mean it was smooth. There were definitely elements where, if I was really nitpicking, I could tell you this is not a person, this is an AI, not a person, this is an ai. But it wasn't something that mattered materially in a negative way at all. Um, yeah, and I even asked him. I was like are you able to think on your feet? And he's like think on my feet, I dance on my feet. So he's, he's making jokes.
Speaker 2:Um, how did you feel after that call?
Speaker 1:I, aside from like kind of amazed, I I felt like he could do what I needed him to do, which is the point I was about to bring up, which is one specific problem I've talked about three or four times on the show now, given that I've interviewed some folks is brokers managing inbound phone calls from carriers and the ability to answer all of them in a timely manner.
Speaker 1:Barriers and the ability to answer all of them in a timely manner. It's not possible today for many companies to get that done as effectively as possible, and by as effectively as possible, I mean 100% of the phone calls get answered in a timely manner. Even if AI didn't exist, even if you didn't have too many phone calls for the number of people you have, there are times where someone gets up to go to the bathroom, there are times where someone is busy dealing with another issue. The idea that an AI can answer the phone, take the information the carrier needs or give the information the carrier needs, handle even simple problems or just be an assistant to take the notes that is a material improvement from nobody answering the phone. Yeah, so we can talk about voice AI all day, and there's a lot there, but I just bring this up to talk about that little nuance of even if it's 10% of your calls that you can't answer in a timely manner. This can solve that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you had Paul from Fleetworks on the show recently. Yeah, I've gotten to know Paul pretty well we were one of their first commercial clients but still vividly recall the first demo. We're sitting in my office with, I think, two or three Ally team members, paul's on the other line, yeah, 11 am. He said what's your 800 number? So I gave it to him. He calls the number and he just he just sits there and we just hear it ring and we hear it ring and, as I'm sure you would be, I'm like starting to fume right Like somebody pick up the phone.
Speaker 2:But we're in a loose market and the reality is there's some of these loads, there's a lot of calls that come through and you have to vet these carriers and it's just really cumbersome.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I think that was kind of an aha moment for me as well, where it's like, man, even if we're just helping get to the remainder of those calls, those carriers are going to get access to information they wouldn't have otherwise had. Carriers are going to get access to information they wouldn't have otherwise had. They're going to have a better outcome because they at least had that opportunity for access or for information and the humans on the other side who a driver can ask for at any point during the call are more likely to be available because of the fact that this system is helping alleviate some of that burden. None of those systems are perfect. The kinks are still being worked out, but that was the moment in time that I said this is an experiment that we need to be participating in, and if this is the worst that the tech is ever going to be which I definitely believe is the case this is going to have a place in the industry, and let's work with Paul and the team and figure out where that place is 100%.
Speaker 1:I think a couple of points coming out of that.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's so much we can talk about, but one you're right this is the worst it'll ever be. That's a very simple, true fact, and the idea that it's the worst it'll ever be and can only get better hard not to want to be involved in some capacity there. The second thing which I think is interesting is, anytime something new comes along that could disrupt us in any way, shape or form especially, you know, we're talking about humans being quote-unquote, replaced or supported by robots we're always looking for the negative. How do we point out that this is not going to work? And so you're just like looking for these negative things like, oh, I could, there was a pause there that felt a little too long, or oh, it was, his accent felt a little too fake, or whatever it is you're looking for.
Speaker 1:I noticed that in myself as I've been testing these things, but as I was talking to the Sesame guy, miles, that you sent me, I can't remember what exactly I said, but he made a point, a counterpoint that I thought was so exceptional. Where he's like, he's like besides, like it's not like. People don't make mistakes.
Speaker 2:And then I'm like wait a second.
Speaker 1:Hold on. I haven't even considered that. Let's just talk about, let's say, 100% of the calls are answered by my carrier reps and my team. Do I have full confidence that 100% of those conversations are going exactly how I want them to? The answer, undoubtedly, is no.
Speaker 2:And especially this market gets, gets, gets going a little bit. There's going to be brokers that are bringing in new people, right, and those people are half are going to have to get trained and they're going to have to get acclimated. And then you start comparing the AI voices ability versus, versus the new guy who's three months in on the floor. Um, so, again, I think the key is figuring out where are the right places to use the technology and what's overkill and what's not ready, and so that's something that we're still actively exploring. We still have, uh, humans involved in that booking process, um, and yeah, we kind of a trust but verify approach at this point, uh, but very bullish that there's going to be a place for it. The example I always bring up, too, is like pod collection, right, like if, if, five years from now, you're at a brokerage that still has humans calling on every POD request, I think that's a massive sign that you missed something right.
Speaker 1:Or I'm wildly impressed that they're somehow still in business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that as well. It's definitely impressive in a way, but I just feel like there's so many. I remember the headache I used to have after a 12 hour day of brokering freight and if you really dissect what were the things that gave you the headache, certainly a lot of those exceptions a human is still required for, but like there's a good chunk of those things I think about where it's like man AI voice could probably help make that headache a little bit lighter if it could do this thing, that thing and that thing a little bit lighter if it could do this thing, that thing and that thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean just time itself, like that is the one of the biggest gripes people have about freight is the amount of time you have to personally invest to make yourself available, to support your customers, your carriers. The idea that I can work with an assistant, an AI, whatever assistant and it can support dealing with all the stuff that I don't want to, that doesn't mean I'm never available. It just means that there's someone else and by someone I mean an AI bot that's going to qualify any situation before I have to get involved. And if I can manage that relation, like all I'm, the more and more I think about this. The winners of the future are going to be those that can manage the best In conjunction with their team.
Speaker 1:Knowing what do I put a person on versus the bot? And I don't. I don't. There's not a playbook for that today. It doesn't exist. I know that there's no way. If there is a playbook for it already, it's full of crap because nobody has been able to utilize real experience to do this yet, which I think is what makes this really interesting to do this, yet, which I think is what makes this really interesting is there's no reason that you, dan, who is theoretically under-resourced competitively relative to, I don't know RxO, you know one-on-one, you know they've got more resources, more a lot of things, but that doesn't mean you can't come up with a smarter, more effective way to combine your team with the AI tools you're going to use to support your customers in a more effective way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that definitely matches how I think of it.
Speaker 2:I think something else that ties into is uh, yeah, there's a lot of companies that went heavy near shore over the course of the last three, four years.
Speaker 2:And uh, yeah, there's a lot of companies that went heavy near shore over the course of the last three, four years. And uh, near shore can be great, I think, for an organization our size is there. You kind of have to go go in big enough right To really establish like a near shore culture. Ultimately, we we thought long and hard about that, but like one of the reasons that we decided not to go as heavy on the nearshore side we do have some people nearshore but was because we really liked the idea of having our expertise right in one place in Grand Rapids, michigan, working alongside of our tech team and really solving these problems hand in hand. Again, for a lot of organizations they can manage that effectively. For us, we didn't see that being possible and so we kind of decided to leapfrog some of that phase and go right to kind of the AI technology integration to try to optimize our process.
Speaker 1:Does that mean it's fair to assume you are not a remote first company?
Speaker 2:We are not a remote first company. We are not a remote first company, we are not anti-remote. I'm a big believer that remote work has a huge place. We have hybrid work available. Yeah, we do have some remote work within the organization, but we just believe that that collaboration especially right now in the season that we're in with this new technology it's just so much easier to get these tools collaborated when you can just quick hop in a room and show something to somebody and you can do those things remote it. Just for us it's more efficient to do it in person.
Speaker 1:What do you think a good remote policy looks like in 2025? We're not going to spend a ton of time here, but you kind of walked me into this door so I'm going to sit here for a minute, but I just I was very pro-remote when COVID first hit and I just don't think you can. My perspective has changed on it. I think it's one thing to give remote work to people who you already know and trust. They've earned it from you, they've worked for you for a while. You have confidence in how they show up every day. It's another thing to be a remote first company that hires a lot of new people over time because you have no idea if the person you're hiring is good or not. I mean, you have confidence in your hiring team, but they're not right all the time. They're definitely.
Speaker 1:Even the best teams miss sometimes of a hidden remote employee, I think is way bigger and takes way longer to find and manage than people who are sitting in the office with you and I. Just in an industry that continues to get more and more seemingly commoditized, where it's harder and harder to tell the difference between five brokers standing next to each other, I really think how your employees show up in conversations with carriers and customers matters, and there are new technologies and AI even that will allow you to manage that in a remote world better. But I do think there's an intangible element to culture that there's more of a negative in a remote world than it is in person. I think there's more positive for being in person and seeing the people next to you osmotic learning. I'm not intentionally listening to the guy next to me on the phone, but when I hear something I haven't heard before and it piques my interest, there's a chance I'm going to learn something.
Speaker 1:And now I'm going to tune in and try to pay attention. I'm curious for someone like yourself who's led this kind of hundred person company over the last few years that's been through. You know it says nothing to do with you, but like the, the world has gone through this kind of cultural shift over the last three or four years from like the most pro employee employees are the kings of the world and they decide everything to now we're on the other side of it where it's like employees are going to do what they're told or they're going to get fired, and I don't mean to make it seem so dramatic on both sides. But that is kind of what the cultural shift has felt like in the last few years, and I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:I think we had a little bit of an advantage in terms of like experimenting with that prior to COVID, especially coming up through the agent model, and we collaborated with some different offices early on in the model and we had some reps that came in and they wanted to be remote or hybrid. So I guess we dabbled, and so what we kind of came up with is earned flexibility is what we call it. It's not a perfect solution, but if you're hitting X KPI, you're in sales role, you gain eligibility for a certain amount of remote. We give our managers discretion to make some of those decisions for specific roles, whether or not remote might make sense. I think the toughest roles for us are some of the operations roles where things are still so tribal, knowledge-based and information flows from one person to the next and they're helping their neighbor out, and that also tends to be where your new trainees would come in and they'd sit and they just learn so much faster when they're kind of engulfed in that environment. So I guess earned flexibility is kind of the way I think of that.
Speaker 2:I'm optimistic, though, that the technology, as we're forced to, like dissect process and AI is going to force us to really get more granular in terms of how we think about freight brokerage process.
Speaker 2:I use the word orchestration a lot. That's the next thing we need to really be working on is not just how to plug in the right tools, but how do you keep context on what those tools are doing, and so I think this technology over the course of the next couple of years is going to be conducive to maybe making it easier to consider more places where remote could work. Yeah, don't want to put the cart in front of the horse, but optimistic that the world will continue to become a bit more remote friendly, I guess. The last thing I would touch on, though, is we've also had a lot of people come to us looking for employment who were remote, and they don't want to be remote anymore. I think hybrid is what we hear the most demand, for. Most people want the interaction that they can have, and it depends what season of life you're in, how experienced you are, et cetera, where you fall on that spectrum. But that kind of sums up my thoughts on it.
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Speaker 1:That's interesting. I've never heard I haven't heard that take yet that we're at the point where people actually are interested in wanting to come back to the office a little bit. It doesn't surprise me, I think that it's hard to speak and you'll find someone who fits into every bucket of remote in office, hybrid, earned whatever. I mean, there's different flavors for everybody and I think your take is a very wise one, and I think it's. You know, I spent a lot of time thinking about, if I were to start another brokerage, what it would look like. I mean at least a few times a day thinking about, if I were to start another brokerage, what it would look like, I mean at least a few times a day.
Speaker 1:And in doing that, one of the things I find myself thinking about the most is this kind of in-office remote concept, and I always end up where you're talking about, which is this kind of earned flexibility. I don't want people to feel like they're required to be at their desk all day, every day, but I also want our best people to positively impact our new people and people who need help, and that's a lot harder to do when they're remote. So how do you create a delicate balance? How do you make sure you're not getting burned by new employees who are taking advantage of the system? I mean, there are people who get four different remote jobs at the same time and just see if they can juggle all four of them to get four paychecks, because they're sitting at home on four different, like the world has changed drastically in terms of how people approach life, and there's not exactly a handbook for CEOs like yourself on how to navigate it.
Speaker 1:You just kind of got to go figure it out and deal with whatever comes at you. So I do appreciate your perspective and I think you're thinking about it the right way.
Speaker 2:I think the first time I really thought of it was when we started Ally right, like well, had my roommate, we were going to start a business, we lived in the same place, we could have done this from the condo right, but at the time time I just said, no, I want to be able to focus, I want to be able to focus on on the business, and I want a separation between my personal life and my work life. And that hasn't necessarily worked as well as I would have, uh, would have hoped all the time. But I do think there is something about leaving an office at 5 pm as well and trying to leave whatever you can there, um, um, yeah, again, never a perfect science in brokerage, but uh, um, yeah, that that's.
Speaker 1:That's kind of the first, uh, first time I really thought down those paths something you said before that's sticking with me is around the idea of tribal knowledge, and you talked about the value of having people in the office, especially on the operations side, because of the, the tribal knowledge that exists there, and I've always thought that tribal knowledge, to some extent, has been a almost a differentiator or a um, a stand out, and it certainly once upon a time was an advantage in playing the market game. I mean, if you, as a broker in 2014, if you caught wind from some of your carriers that produce rates were picking up already out of South Florida, you could adjust before 99% of the market. Your shippers weren't hearing from anyone, freight waves didn't exist, there weren't the indices. None of these tools were available that really gave you real-time or near real-time within a few days updates on what's going on in the market. So there was value there.
Speaker 1:What I'm curious about what I'm about to mention is, like you talked about process and how much better at process we're going to have to be as a result of AI. I'm curious if there's a world where AI kind of kills the entire value add of tribal knowledge. To make our AI tools most effective, your job is to take every ounce of tribal knowledge that exists within your 95 employees' heads and get it dumped into this AI tool and once it's there and it understands how to leverage it the right way, I think it should be able to improve your business in meaningful ways. I think I'm curious as I think about tribal knowledge and what you, what your thoughts are on how that plays with AI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, definitely, I think, having good SOPs so that these AI co-pilots can do more to to help, it's going to require them to have some sort of digital context, for sure. I guess. The one example I would give is is like our, our pricing engine, and since we've launched this pricing engine and started connecting this to enterprise shippers kind of what we've experienced, right, like on one hand, you might theorize like, oh well, this would alleviate the need for the relationship with a shipper because that pricing is happening more automatically and that tribal knowledge is being pushed through the algorithm. Right, I would say what we've seen is, yes, the pricing is no longer the central focus of the relationship, but there's a lot of other problems that need to be solved, and what it's doing is it's allowing us more time to help, I guess, develop deeper relationships with our clients and focusing on other problems. I guess one example I would give is we have one client that we're working with pretty heavily on the API side and one of the things they need help with is helping get their data cleaned up, because if you're going to be more automated, kind of across the board with your supply chain, you need help from your partners upstream and downstream really to be able to maximize the potential of some of those automations. So I think there's a lot of collaboration opportunity with projects like that.
Speaker 2:Sustainability within brokerage is a challenge that I'm talking to one of my shippers about just really trying to figure out how do we start better measuring with these small carriers very fragmented base, starting with measurables and then trying to translate them into more actionables.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot more challenges beneath the surface. I think there's a lot more challenges beneath the surface if we kind of get away from, I guess, the very transactional, sometimes mind numbing tasks that a lot of people do currently view as a significant portion of their jobs, and so, yeah, I think people need to start thinking about that right, how can they be more intentional with their focus if they get a little bit of this time back? But that's what I think we'll see. Certainly, if your job is just dependent on moving data point from system A to system B, that's probably not a great place to be in a couple of years. But I think most people want to elevate and they just need the leadership and they need some direction of what they can do to elevate kind of in this new ecosystem that's developing 100%, 100% 100, 100.
Speaker 2:I, I think, a couple of the roles internally to some of the things we're doing is we're we. We created a power user program or a super user program. So now we have, I guess, uh, one woman in particular. Her job previously was just building and scheduling shipments. She's in a leadership role at Ally. She is now becoming a super user for Qt and she is just going to get the Maddie Barker is her name. She's going to get our Qt systems dialed in so that she can help the rest of the account assistants is what we call them account managers learn how to use that tool as we get it connected to more systems and as it gets better calibrated.
Speaker 2:I guess, to shout out one more employee, jason Lacey the wizard. Maybe you've seen him on LinkedIn before, but he actually used to be a roommate with Jeff and I back in the day, but he's techie but he's not a coder and he just is kind of Mr Everything on the technology side. Well, now we have all these tools at our disposal, we've been able to kind of repurpose his role and he just got a promotion to director of process automation because he's just going to town. He's got all the contextual understanding that you would need to be able to connect these dots and build these automations. So that's what we're thinking about how do we keep pivoting these roles internally so that we have more people helping facilitate this evolution that we believe is coming in the next couple of years? And and so far so good on that, and so far so good on that.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned kind of getting your sales team and employees to a place where they're solving bigger problems, better problems. And I'm just curious, like how do we get our salespeople to do that? Because, like, if I were to pull my old sales group and ask them how many of you have had a conversation with your customer about sustainability in the last month, the number that would raise their hand is probably one person, I think, who would have said they did and that's just because they personally cared about it. Um, and I'm not saying ESG is like the only thing. There's a bunch of things and ESG is an interesting one because you know the latest administration is less interested in it than previous and you know that may change how companies behave. But what I'm more interested in is like how do we take our sales groups and employee bases in general that are so used to doing things a certain way and help them pivot to be focused on these newer things that we think can create and add more value?
Speaker 1:It's a hard question to answer, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:It is a hard question to answer. I think if we see obvious opportunities for growth and expanding knowledge, we have to chase after those. Like, let's say, we put together the infrastructure for measuring sustainability. Well then the next thought would be how do we get our sales team into a room where we can train on this? And then how do we make this something we can showcase to our customers? So I guess that would be one step. Yeah, I guess what I've just seen and maybe I theorized this might happen.
Speaker 2:But the more connected we get to our customers, the more organically we start to see these conversations happening, because you're just not focused on the same type of problems. You're focused a little bit less on what went wrong with this shipment right now and you can raise up a level. Yeah, I don't have all the answers for how that's going to evolve, but yeah, there's trailers as a service. Wabash has their offering, repower's got an offering out there More flexible access to drop-and-hook capacity for brokers. That's something we're starting to dig into and learn more about, because I think that's something that's coming in the next couple of years. That's going to have a learning curve, but I think that's going to open up more interesting conversations with our customers If we can say hey, ally has the ability to provide a universal trailer pool for large enterprise CPG customer.
Speaker 2:I know there's a lot of enterprise CPG customers that I think would be interested in having that technology, or uh service technology, that, that, that service capability, and if we can get our sales reps in the coming years up to speed on uh, I guess first we have to build out the internal infrastructure but then we get our sales team up to speed of how to sell that and how to approach those conversations. I think those are the things that are coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how do you even know? Like just you mentioning a few of those companies like Wabash and Repower, I am sure you're inundated with companies, vendors, who want. There's a bunch of different offerings. Whether you're focused on drop trailer capabilities, voice, ai, pod, collection, apar, whatever it is, there's numerous options for every potential problem you may want to solve. How do you think about and approach new technologies that are available to your business? One, from the idea of like, should we build versus buy? And two, okay, if we're going to buy it, how do I know if I should use Paul at Fleetworks or Dave Bell at CloneOps or Javi at Happy Robot? I'm just using them as a simple example. But how do you think, how have you thought about those problems?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm endlessly curious so I tend to kind of keep a pulse on everything I possibly can. That's out there. But in terms of the vendor relationships, I'm always looking at, okay, how, what's the lowest hanging fruit in terms of the problems that we're trying to solve? Is the technology there where it can actually make an impact on solving this problem? And then from there, what is the lowest risk working relationship that I can put together with this vendor to give it enough inertia where it has the commitment to be able to work but also hold that vendor accountable to have to deliver on their end and continue to improve their product.
Speaker 2:So I think what we're doing and again, so far we've had really good results with the Fleetworks guys but we have quite a few different vendors who we believe in and we chose them because we think they're the best. But we didn't go sign five-year deals and we are going to monitor, I guess, how the rest of the environment evolves. Who else steps up? Is somebody else doing something really interesting? Majority of the vendors we're working with five years from now will be the same vendors, but we're giving ourselves the flexibility that, if something better comes along, that we're able to think objectively and build the organization to be able to flex and change as the resources around us kind of change.
Speaker 1:Are those trials challenging to set up? I mean, you know I appreciate how you think about it in terms of like the least risk and least investment on your side to get a test and understanding. But then, as you've got your kind of toes dipped in several ponds like, does that create its own set of challenges to navigate? And like how to like what is the integration process challenging? The implementation, are those challenging with a lot of these? What does that look like for those that haven't yet gone?
Speaker 2:down the path you're on. Yeah, we've had to kind of establish a cadence internally, like we. We do have quite a few tools that we're weaving in, but that's been kind of on a sequence. Over time we figured out who the internal stakeholders are going to be, that are going to be able to maintain and manage those vendor relationships. The super user program has been a big part of that. I wouldn't say we're setting them all up. As you know, 30 day trials Like we're generally looking at one year commitments is kind of the go to. We have made a couple of longer commitments. It really depends how strong of conviction do we feel going into it that, how much change is happening.
Speaker 2:I guess in the tech space related to like voice AI is a brand new thing, Right so so for us we knew we love what Paul and Kwong are doing over there, but like the world can look entirely different in voice AI in a year and so um yeah no, they're, they're delivering for us, um, and and, and I'm thinking they're going to be around for a long time, um, but at the same time, like a one-year chunk is kind of a good opportunity for both sides to operate in good faith and make sure they're still feeling aligned.
Speaker 1:At Molo, we built a great company and I'm proud of the work we did. We knew when to ask for help and sometimes that meant going outside of our own company. I'm proud we built an ecosystem of trusted partners like Metaphora own company. I'm proud we built an ecosystem of trusted partners like Metaphora. When we needed differentiated industry expertise in business consulting or technology services, we looked at Peter Ryan and the team at Metaphora. They've consistently delivered value in the transportation and logistics space for over a decade for mid-market and enterprise brokers, for shippers, carriers, private equity and freight tech companies. At Molo, we use Metafora to solve problems we simply couldn't on our own. Metafora is the only partner you should trust to help you win, whether that's doing ops and tech diligence, growing revenue, optimizing spend or selecting and building software. Go check them out at metaforanet. That's M-E-T-A-F-O-R-A dot net.
Speaker 1:I'm curious about the data sharing and it's, you know, part of what I think the secret sauce is.
Speaker 1:You know we talked about tribal knowledge and we definitely think that's a secret sauce within a business, and a differentiator is how well your team knows their customers and knows their processes and how to support them in a way that keeps them happy.
Speaker 1:The way the AI tools get better is by digesting all of those trade secrets and information and then actionizing them, and what I'm curious about is, for AI to be at its best, it has to have the most possible correct information digested into it or brought into its system, and from my understanding, a lot of these AI companies are not just training their AI with your data. They're training it with all of the brokers that they work with, and so I'm curious how you think about that. The tool you're buying and using yeah, you're giving it it's, it's giving you results, but your data is being used potentially to make your competitors better while also making you better. You're benefiting from other people's data. To an extent, it's kind of putting everybody's data into one mosh pit, so to speak. Curious if you think about that. If that matters, it doesn't matter, I mean.
Speaker 2:I do think about that a bit. I would say that the world is moving. As soon as you can come to the conclusion, the world's moving in a certain direction. There's going to be a big conglomerate of data and it's really a bigger question of do you want to participate in helping shape the way that technology looks, because you're going to probably have to get on board at some point or another. Anyways, I do think with some of the tools there's, there's opportunity and there's places where you'll want to silo your, your data.
Speaker 2:Um, hard pricing data is something. Yeah, we don't, we don't rush to to give out Um. But um, if it's appointment scheduling data, I would say the net benefit of joining a network like Qt, where everybody has the potential to get way more efficient at a role that hasn't necessarily been maybe super popular, at least at our company. It's not necessarily a 10-year path to schedule these appointments. It's near short at a lot of companies. Yeah, I think the net benefit is a lot greater than the net cost, and I mean we live in a world where we're all giving Google a huge amount of data. It's probably finding a way to listen to this. It will when it comes out, if it's not already listening to this, so I don't know. I guess I just prefer to kind of stay on offense guard against the biggest obvious risks there. But in general, just bet that the net benefit will outweigh any cost that comes with it.
Speaker 1:Last thing, on technology. Here I'm curious as someone who's been running a bootstrap brokerage for 12 years in the last call it 12 to 24 months, what have you seen change the most in terms of technology to operate a freight brokerage, in terms of the tools available, whatever? What have you seen since I got fired let's say so, since I was last operating a freight brokerage March 8th 2023, what have you seen change? I'm curious because I don't know. I'm not there anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean voice. Ai has been a big one since that came along. It's definitely the most popular to talk about, right? Because it definitely divides people into these. There's a lot of strong opinions there, I would say. Api pricing, real-time rating, is something We've seen a lot of growth there, but I think that when the market turns, there's a lot of people that are kind of slowly moving in that direction. The adoption of that has been big.
Speaker 2:I think one tool in particular that's been really high impact for us. I've posted about it a bit, but there's a cool tool called Sola. Called Sola, it's an RPA tool that has an AI element to it, just makes it really easy to move data from here to there without having to get developers involved. Rpa has been around for a long time, but AI powered RPA again. It gets you that last 10%, that traditional RPA where it fell short.
Speaker 2:That's allowing us as a mid-sized brokerage, to do a lot of things we couldn't otherwise afford to be able to do in terms of the number of devs we have on board. It is hard to really pin it down, though. I think it's just the culmination of so many of these problems needed that last 10% to 20% that AI can bring to the table, and a lot of these automations are kind of dependent on something else being automated, and so I think there's almost like a flywheel effect that we're starting to see you solve this problem over here. Well, that actually makes this other problem a little bit easier to solve, and I think that's just going to accelerate in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. What's been the biggest challenge for you and your team as you've implemented these new technologies under the business?
Speaker 2:I think I think we've made a lot of progress, but I think culturally, there's that's always going to be an ongoing challenge. Just there's a lot of people that are really good at their jobs and they're great at brokering freight and I don't think it's necessarily that they don't want to participate, but, as you can attest to, you get very busy and it's hard to maybe dedicate the time, sometimes their role, to be able to focus on appointment scheduling, automation or whatever the next thing might be. I just think that's going to always be a challenge. I think building a tech team, a bootstrap tech team, is something I'm really excited about. I'm really happy about, but, like we have had to try to do these things without we don't have a 50 person tech team, so we have to really find these right people that are talented but like they're willing to maybe be good at three or four things. So that's been a stretch exercise for those people.
Speaker 2:That said, I think we've got the right people for it. Those would be the two biggest. I mean, honestly, I'm just kind of a kid in the candy store with with this stuff. It's just fun for me, um, uh, so, so just uh, it really reinvigorated, coming, uh, feels like we're coming out of this freight recession knowing that we have what I view as some really exciting stuff in front of us in terms of just making the freight brokerage job more effective, something I get pretty geeked about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great points across the board, especially when it's changed to someone's job that you know they've been making good money, or however much money, for a long time doing it the way they know how. And there's got to be some part of every employee's back of their mind where they're thinking like one day this tech replaces me in some capacity, and you know, I don't know that.
Speaker 2:I don't, I don't think that I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's true. I don't think that's a patently true statement. I do think that these, the technology that's coming to the fold, will allow brokers to operate with fewer people. That's the truth. Um, but it doesn't mean that because I'm giving you this cued tool or flea works or CloneOps or whatever tool, it doesn't mean that you're out of business and there's no more need for people. Just, things are going to change and people hate change, especially if that change potentially feels like a risk to them. So I get that.
Speaker 2:I think AI has made a lot of people think about their vulnerabilities. And yeah, I mean the brokerage model in general. You hear people say freight broker. I mean, you've been hearing this for years. Right, tech is these companies are going to come in and obliterate freight brokers. It hasn't happened yet but, like I know that feeling of vulnerability of is is is some super genius going to come in and next thing you know there's no more loads on the board. I think you have two choices there, right, you either sit around and you think about the fears that you have and you dwell on those fears, or, I think you lean into your vulnerabilities and you choose to attack and accept the fact that this is a reality, that's coming, and so that's what I'm doing and that's what I'm encouraging the rest of my team and, I would say, the rest of the industry to do. There is some level of inevitability here, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned coming out of the freight recession. Are we coming out of a freight recession? Are we coming out of a freight recession? Are we coming out or are we still there? I'd love to understand, as someone who's been sitting in the seat of a 100-person brokerage. You're as close to this as anybody and I'm curious what are you actually seeing in terms of this year's bid cycle? What are customers saying? Are rates going up? What are you seeing? What are you feeling from carriers? I just threw a couple of questions at you to sit on.
Speaker 2:If I had to summarize it, I would say we are very slowly coming out of this rate recession. I'm kind of a data geek, so I'm looking at all the charts and trying to keep track of this versus that and just even revenue per load. We're starting to see small increases happening on revenue per load. You start seeing the capacity charts and where trucking companies are versus where you would expect them to be, based on kind of historical inflation in the market. I look at the cast index a lot and yeah, so I don't know that there's a dramatic recovery coming in the next three months. I would never make a bet like that. At the same time, sometimes you just get a feel when you look at all these data points that it's coming close. So I guess that'd be my best way to describe how we're feeling Slow recovery ahead.
Speaker 1:So you're trusting the data, but your gut does say there might be something coming.
Speaker 2:You got to be prepared for the fact that you got to be prepared for either scenario. That's how I view it. We need to build the business so that we're prepared for it to be a flat, very slow recovery, so that we're prepared for it to be a flat, very slow recovery. But we also need to build the business so that we're prepared if things do go nuts, and we're kind of ready for either of those scenarios.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think best case scenario it goes nuts and all the brokers are like oh my God, there's too much for us to do. I mean brokers. If there's one thing they know how to do is navigate chaos. Even if many have forgotten, because it's been over two years since they've seen it, you know it's like riding a bike. So having too many loads and needing to figure out how to cover them is not something that brokers struggle to navigate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you've been in, I mean you've been in the industry a long time, I think it's.
Speaker 1:I always think back to how quickly things can change on a dime in this industry, and so you kind of you never want to get settled in, right, you always have to be prepared for that next pivot. And so, yeah, as much as possible we're trying to kind of build that into our strategy as you think about the next few years for Ally.
Speaker 2:What's coming? What's the focus? Yeah, super excited. I feel like we are building a really efficient way to serve large enterprise CPG companies in particular. We're seeing a lot of traction, becoming a strong contract provider but also a strong recovery provider to those shippers. I think we're going to be able to grow without the same headcount growth and I think we're going to be able to do that by not hiring for some of the roles that maybe were some of the pain point roles within the organization. Yeah, and we're just going to maintain flexibility. We don't pretend to know what the future holds, but we're going to be ready to flex in whatever direction we need to.
Speaker 1:What advice would you give to the interns of today's freight world who want to be the CEO of tomorrow's yeah, I would say view everything as a learning experience.
Speaker 2:If you don't love the job you're doing, just realize how much you're gaining just in terms of, uh, of knowledge. And then, uh, yeah, taking taking risks, being willing to raise your hand, uh, being willing to put yourself out there, I think, uh, I think for me that was a big part. I haven't, I've never been afraid to shoot my shot, and that isn't easy. That's something I've had to kind of train myself to do, um, but at the end of the of the day, you lose a lot more by just sitting on the sidelines and wondering than you do by just putting yourself out there and seeing what happens. Yeah, so that'd be my advice.
Speaker 1:All right, last one what's your proudest moment of your ally career? What's your proudest?
Speaker 2:moment of your ally, career man? That might be a timely question.
Speaker 1:Uh, we we we just won the craft noodle award about two weeks ago the noodle award.
Speaker 2:Um, he had Jake Otto, our VP, and I. We traveled down to Chicago. It was our first time ever being uh invited to the award ceremony. So we traveled down to Chicago, it was our first time ever being uh invited to the award ceremony. So we had very low expectations. We thought we were just going to go watch everybody else collect their uh, collect their hardware. And then, yeah, they got done with six awards and, uh, we noticed there was one more on the table and so, um, yeah, super proud of that team, uh, for what they were able to do. That's craft isn't easy, but they're fair and they run a tight ship, and so I think that's kind of the culmination. To be able to win an award like that for a blue chip shipper Just says a lot about, yeah, us and hopefully our ability to maybe move from the minor leagues into the majors in the next couple years here that's awesome, man the noodle award.
Speaker 1:Why isn't it called the macaroni award?
Speaker 2:I don't know. You're gonna have to take that up with michelle, I think I you know. You know, michelle, right, you can shoot a text on that one I've known mich myself since I was 19 or 20 years old.
Speaker 1:I worked on site at Kraft before Mondelez, when it was just Kraft Foods. I spent a year working on site after my junior year of college at the old Oscar Meyer plant in Madison where I made many great relationships with folks who either are there today or have gone on other companies but Adam Haas and Michelle who helped run that business over there. They're great.
Speaker 2:I heard you were her full-time bouncer at Food Shippers for a couple of years even.
Speaker 1:I've been a lot of things for her. She's a good friend of mine, she's great. She's great. Their business is hard. It's a tough business to support, but it's a good business. So congrats to you guys. That's a big deal and there's nothing better than, I think, seeing your people receive praise that you feel they deserve for really hard work from people or customers who are important to you. There are few feelings as good as that one, because you see how much your team works behind closed doors. They don't, uh, you do, and you hope that your customers will show some level of appreciation for that, even if it's just continuing to give you loads, uh. But when they get on stage and give you a big noodle and congratulate you, it feels a little bit better yeah, I mean we can.
Speaker 2:We can talk all we want about what we're doing, but when a customer is actually willing to raise their voice and say you did something pretty good, that's a. That's a good feeling for sure. So very proud of the team.
Speaker 1:I'm with you. Any parting thoughts before we call it?
Speaker 2:Man, I think we covered a lot of topics. I nothing nothing, man.
Speaker 1:I think we covered a lot of topics Nothing on the tip of my tongue. I thought you did great for your first podcast interview ever.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. I used to say I'm not going to do podcasts until we hit a billion dollars in revenue, but we're only at 150, and I'm getting old, so I figured when you threw the invite out there, it's time to spread my wings a little bit and do one of these things.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it. We'll have you back on when you guys hit a billion in a few years. Just in a few, that sounds great, I'll hold you to that.
Speaker 2:All right, man. Thanks so much. All right, appreciate it. All right, everyone. Have a great week. Have a great week. We'll see you.
