What is FleetOps? Chris Atkinson. Is This The New Tool For The Freight Broker?

Is this the new freight broker training for beginners? Freight broker training for you? Chris Atkinson of FleetOps explains a new way to make efficient use of your trucks. The truck driver will love the optimizing of freight brokers freight, their mileage and time.
FleetOps helps you make more money per mile!


FleetOps centralizes your data and delivers personalized dashboards for each of your operations staff so they consistently make decisions that increase margin and asset utilization.


Website: https://www.fleetops.ai/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/productstrategist/

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Transcript

0:23

There we are welcome to another episode of the Dawg On-It Trucking Pawedcast. My guest this week, Mr. Chris Atkins, Atkinson, how are you? My friend. I'm great. It's great to be on here. It's going to be fun when you and I haven't chatted in. I got to think a couple of years or maybe longer. Yeah, I it's, it's been a while. And that marks my several years now in the, in the industry, I guess in a freight tech, you disagree, but trucking, trucking more broadly, maybe five years now. Well, yeah, you, I mean, you started out with an ELD developer manufacturer. I'm not sure. Well, we, yeah, we started out trying to, I actually to go back and tell the whole story. We started out trying to offer a real enterprise grade solution to the largest trucking fleet in the us in Canada. And that solution was a hub and multiple sensors. And because it was a hub of multiple sensors, you were able to do things that other solutions weren't able to do with this hub. So you could measure up to eight zones, wireless the, in a trailer, you can handle tire pressure sensors. You can embed a fax machine into your truck very easily. So stuff that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do, create a hotspot on that vehicle. And after having built that, that out and looking at the industry and chasing after large enterprise contracts, you know, the mandate was in 2015 and it had taken about 10 years for the industry to get to vote for 30%, 40% penetration on telematics products that ELD mandate, it was going to jump within two years to 100. So just those numbers, again, it took about 10 years for about 40% of trucking companies to have some kind of telematics product. And then it was going to take to the next 100. So it was a gold rush. So if you were in the business, opting them to sell an ELD was just a really obvious, and that's why we, that's why we started going after that. But our ultimate goal was to build a freight marketplace on top of our ELD subscribers. Okay. Can you say that again? Your ultimate goal was To build a freight marketplace on top of our ELD subscribers. So we looked at the freight market. It kept becoming true that when we were trying to expand our products in the telematics space, people would want features that were more focused on improving their ability to optimize revenue per mile. Their ability to source freight opportunities, managed freight opportunities, even embedded in a telematics solution. What was really clear was telematics data was this missing link that a lot of these freight management and, you know, load sourcing products did an offer so thought, okay, well, if we can sell a low cost ELD, we can build this free market place on top of it. And, and that's, what's going to drive real value for these fleets. That's, what's going to help reduce empty miles. That's, what's going to help people better identify what routes and what load selection is most optimal for their fleet. And that's what we were going after at the time, which is actually not what we do now, by the way. But that's, that was sort of how we got to where we are now. Yeah. All right. Well, what is, what is fleet ops? This is the name of the company you are, what's your position at fleet ops? Let's start on the CEO or CEO, CEO, CEO. And what is fleet ops? Well, we match truck drivers or shipments using vehicle data and artificial intelligence. That's your one-liner we partner with ELD companies and build freight matching solutions inside of their ELD product. So I can't name, you know, everyone that we're partnered with. I actually, I actually can't name anyone we're partnered with, but there's, there's a bunch of these yields in the marketplace that also supply a load board and attached to their ELD. And in some cases in the market where you see that product, it's, it's actually operated by fleet office. And so tell me exactly or not exactly, but tell me a little bit more about fleet ops. Cause I don't understand the concept. I used to be a dispatcher way back. When are you helping me get loads for drivers? Yes. Yes. So in fact, if you look at the suite of load more products, so if you look at like a load Lang or dat, what you might find as a dispatcher is, okay, so you're sitting down at the beginning of your meal, you have 20 trucks and you've got 30 loads that you have this week across those 20 trucks, maybe more, maybe less. And you're trying to identify which truck is most appropriate for which shipment. You're trying to do this in a way that is optimizing for revenue per mile or optimizing for profit for miles. So doing this in the most elegant way possible. And then you're also managing all the edge cases that occur along the way. So someone's late someone, you know, someone's held up at a shipper. Someone is, you know, trying to find some kind of back haul opportunity that saves you the cost of empty miles. So a, if you're a dispatcher, you're using a telematics product you're using ELD and your goal to track your drivers using that ELD. But if you have a fleet ups solution embedded into that product embedded into that ELD, you're also going to see what freight opportunities you should access, what areas you should execute on instead of, or, or in addition to the ones you're already executing on. So we help with two things. One is optimization and one is just sourcing additional loads, probably to put it more simply load boards. We run a network of them. We have a bunch of them logging in the market and a differentiator with those is that they leverage the data from your fleet and they also work closely with dispatchers. So it's not just sourcing loads. It's also handling a lot of that workflow aspect of them. So, okay. Some of this conversation went way over my head, Sorry, we're local workers and we have a bunch of load boards, you know, I, yeah, yeah. We run, run several load boards in the market and those load boards are, they can be found inside their ELD. That's what we do. So let me say it in my words, and then you can say it in the correct technical words, you, you take a bunch of data from load boards. So you know where all the loads are. You've got the GPS data in the information. So you know where all the trucks are for my company. You do, you know how many hours are left on that driver? Whether he can meet the deadline of that load being delivered, things like that. We do. So you're making my dispatch job a lot easier for me. Are you also making more profit for the company? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're going to find, there's a couple of areas where that works and there's a couple of ways you might want to talk about two main ways are helping you can proactively identify opportunities. A and then B helping you identify when, if the spot market trade or the spot market load is preferable to when you have committed to, you know, when you should take that action. When you look at that opportunity, See, now you're talking a little more, my language, you got to remember, I'm a safety guy. It's been a, a number of years since I was last in dispatch. I used to dispatch, but God damn, it's been a long time ago. And you know, I think we used pencils and erasers the last time I dispatched. Certainly I, I don't know if you're old enough to know about the card system that we use. Yeah. I, I do know about it. I remember when we were first building the products, I spoke to a lot of industry veterans who spoke about how fantastic the card system was. And you know, how like actually a lot of this new technology that people there, some nostalgia about the cards and they were like you to recreate the card system, but digitally. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure you need to recreate the card system because the flaw of the card system, the way I see it is it's only the loads that I personally knew about, or the loads that were given to my company to move where you're doing it much more efficiently. You're taking not just one load board, but several load boards and allowing me to pick, and this is I'm, I'm imagining this is toy. You do it. You now allow me to pick the best load for making my truck the most efficient and cost-effective that we can possibly do it. Yeah. Yeah. I can actually show you some stuff. I don't know if that's something you typically do. Okay, great. Well, yeah, I, I wanted to just recreate some screens for you, you know, take out some information, but this is really exciting. There's imagine the load board experience that you're familiar with and take a look at this. So in the screen you're looking at now you uploaded the freight that, you know, you have to take care of this week, right? So you've got several loads or, you know, a bunch of loads that you have to take care of this week. So you've uploaded that to our system, either through your TMS or through a CSV or through just tender files, whatever it may be. And our system is then indicating which loads are most appropriate for which drivers in your fleet, like it's creating routes, it's creating schedules. So that job that you have as a dispatcher, that card system, this is taking that freight and then it's helping you allocate it and helping you plan it. Now I want to point out to, if you can see here under a, can you see my cursor? So see where it says C2 recommendations. So this is showing you two alternatives to the load that you've already selected. And then underneath this person's name, you have a, when they're working, you have their vehicle type, you have their preferred rate per mile. How many times, how much time they have left in their shift, how much time they have left in their cycle. And I want to point out to something else here, which says optimize, right? And it says optimize and return. Now that means this particular driver in your fleet. They generally speaking, want to come home as often as possible. So you're not optimizing for following the money you're optimizing for some sort of return trip. I want to show you a couple other screens here. So one is that you can move different drivers in different sort of lanes or different schedules. And then here, you're seeing the ability for you to just select and approve what, what loads have been built out by this sort of optimization system. And here's sort of the load board part. So if you look here, you have a back haul that's empty, right? You can click that second and then you're gonna bring up several different load options from the open market on the right hand side that you can then select. So then you can, you can very easily fill in, you know, what are those gaps in the existing schedule that aren't going to just improve operations for the fleet? So were you thinking ELD data, we're using the data we're using your existing shipments to help you plan, but also to help you identify what opportunities in the spot market exist, sourcing those for you. And we've got a lot of, a lot of great partners, you know, like actually I, I'm not even sure which by our partners, I can mention smart is one of them, loads of orders. One of our partners that I can certainly mention, and some of the other large digital brokerages that you would be familiar with, we can, yeah. You'll find that freight in our system. So a lot of what you do, I call it white label or Brown paper bags. Well, you're when I worked in the insurance industry, one of our sister companies was exactly that they were, their name was never mentioned, but they were the supplier of the service. So fleet ops is similar in that you're supplying the service, but you are integrating with different, different ELD providers. Are they your main Source? Yeah, that's right. So ELD providers, we're white labeled. And then on the other side of the marketplace, the broker side of the marketplace will fleet ups. Like we go to market and we sell our services and we sell this, you know, aggravating capacity package to, to brokerage rinks. Okay. So if most of my listeners and viewers are trucking companies, so if I'm a trucking company and I wanted to take advantage of fleet ops, what would I have to do? You would have to be using the ELD of one of our partners and you'd have to go using one of our partners, ELD, like you wouldn't be able to access this will change, but you wouldn't be able to access for the opposites as, so you'd have to be using one of the products. So I would full my ELD provider and say, do you have access to fleet ops? Well, it's white labeled. So they wouldn't necessarily say that they, they can, they can, or can't give you access to fleet ops. But one thing you should do, one access to these features is to tell your ELD provider that you want access. We'll tell you if you have or not, but you know, if you want access to it, that's one way to get it For sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, if I was ELD provider, if I had an alternative to it, because as a salesperson, I would say, well, why do you want such an item? Okay, well, here's our solution. The, yeah, they're not going to say, Hey, this is fleet ops. They might, but as you say, you've white labeled it so that they don't have to, they are offering the solution. That's right. That's right. There's only one. I'll say like, keep trucking is load board experiences, keep trucking load work experience. Like we have, we have nothing to do with it. And that's, that's also sort of just an indication of the fact that this is more becoming table stakes, like ELD providers. You know, if they're not thinking about building something out like this, I think that they, they probably should be, it's going to reduce your customer acquisition costs. It's going to increase your retention and your lifetime value of your customers. And we also have lucrative revenue splits if every yielding provider that you work with. So it's, it's a, it's a great package to take advantage of that's going to help ensure that your, you remain differentiated in the market and competitive. Well, I mean, we both know that trucking companies don't typically make 10, 20 or 30% in profit. So anything that adds to the bottom line is huge in trucking. Yeah. There is a, there's a magic beans crisis and trucking. I, you know, and Sorry, say that again. There's a Crisis, there's a magic beans present. So I think a lot of trucking companies have been sold the magic beans. Like this is the solution that's going to solve all your problems multiple times. And for that reason, it's really hard for a trucking company or, you know, a dispatcher or any operator to look at a new solution without any level of skepticism. And, you know, to those folks, I say, being in Toronto has been a huge advantage for us. We've been able to recruit some fantastic AI engineers from university of Waterloo. We've got access to really valuable data, but still that's, you know, that might not be enough for you. You just have to try it out. I think the main point I want to make, it's nice to say that you can have that value, but you have, you've got to prove it. And we welcome the test, but we also know that there's a very healthy level of skepticism in this market because there's been a lot of vaporware and sort of less than fantastic technology solutions in the market, for sure. Oh, well, I mean, I not to compare this to an ELD solution, but there's been, you know, most recently that's the most recent thing I can think of is the E L D S and it's been terrible. There has been some outstanding ELD suppliers, and then there's been way too many other ELD suppliers. Yeah. I mean, what is self-serve information, right? Like that's a, that's a little bit bricks and I think it's caused a lot of problems for a lot of you. You're seeing more enforcement now, which is good, but there's a ton of ELTS out there that are, they don't have wired backing to ensure that they're able to, you know, prop up the customer support that a lot of these drivers need and prop up the efficacy of this solution, that, that a lot of drivers, and that's challenging if you're in the market, your strategy, if you are operating one of those yield nieces to sell it and low costs. And if you're a driver and you're price sensitive, and that becomes a very obvious decision for you and, you know, it's going to be true in many cases that that low cost solution is fine and that it works really well, but there definitely are operators out there that are, you know, providing something that is going to be less helpful to you. Wow. It'll be interesting when the Canadian mandate comes in and all the ELD is, have to be certified to do what the government wants them to do. So Yeah. Canadians love regulation. So I think it will be, I think it'll go different For sure. It's going to be fun, but so fleet ops, what else do I've never heard of this service before? What else should I know about how your service, even though it's white labeled, how can your service assist me? Well, I, you know, I want to touch on another thing, which is one way we look at the market it's about democratizing access to freight. So if you're, if you're a trucking company that doesn't yet have access to some of the larger brokerages, if you're not yet onboarded with them, if you're not yet familiar with them, if you don't have a relationship there, we will forgive the term broker, that relationship will help you get onboarded with them will help them gain access to that freight. And another great thing is a lot of this is more valuable frame that you would be speaking in the market, you'll find in these applications. So just the opportunity to source it is important. And then another critical thing is our ability to make recommendations. So we, we're using this data to help take that, you know, cognitive load off of the dispatcher a little bit and help identify where, why you should select that opportunity. But yeah, other than that, I try to keep it simple. Like we're, we're a low board, we're a good one. We're easy to use. We've actually done some work to make it fun to use, which we, you know, we haven't seen some of these other sisters do and w we'll also help them. I think that we're a great tool. Well, there's a couple of things like most, unfortunately in a lot of trucking companies, the dispatcher is the least trained person in the whole company. And so it sounds like your solution really helps that individual make much better decisions. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's true. Some dispatchers are, you know, they'll, they'll be more familiar with, you know, some route optimization tools and some optimization tools out there, but the majority will have access to those tools. The majority of you don't have access to that technology. And it's, it's a really hard job. Like the market is moving, the trucks are moving, your having to juggle problems that arise that day. And you're also having to deal with the, you know, the multi-variant problem is trying to, you know, send these trucks on the right route and send them with the right price. It's actually impossible for a human being to do perfectly, unfortunately, because of all the things you have to consider, you know, you just can't do it. It's not the, the human brain is not capable of downloading all those factors and analyzing all those factors. And that's why solutions like this are necessary and can help with that. I think it's awesome because anything that can help, well, I think of it from a driver's point of view, if you, if your solution is going to help me one, make more money and get me home when I want to come home, I'm like, as a driver, I'm all for it. And as a dispatcher, if I want to keep my driver turnover low, I've got to satisfy my driver and my driver to make money and get my driver home when he wants to come home. No, indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Or you'll be, be every driver's least favorite just veteran. Right. So if this solution is going to help me meet my objectives of keeping my drivers happy, it's going to reduce my turnover, which is another source of saving money. And your solution sounds like it optimizes my trucks so that I can make more profit per month. So yeah, I think it sounds pretty awesome. I wish I was a dispatcher again. No, I don't. I love my job. Oh God. Two or three years. Okay. I mean, I go back far enough that EDI was the acronym. And I can remember one day sitting in dispatch when the internet went down and we got all of my information from my one customer. They were in Vancouver. I was in Brampton and a three o'clock in the afternoon. That's when I got tomorrow's deliveries. And my internet went down at two 30 and, you know, I had all my trucks waiting for this. I had to do my dispatch. I was there till about 10 o'clock that night, because by the time it got all up and running and like, cause I couldn't just say we're not delivering tomorrow, but it was that's how long ago it was EDI. I don't know if that's a term that's even used today anymore. Yeah. It's not gone, but it's, it's a really tough job also because you have to deal with the information requests from the other side of these transactions, but you have to deal with the information requests from the shipper or from the broker, whoever you're working with. And that's, that's really challenging. You're now dealing with drivers who are, you know, maybe reluctant to be maybe set up and you're dealing with maybe shippers or brokers that want to babysit shipment or, you know, need a lot of information from you so that they can appropriately communicate to whomever. So not only are you planning, but you're also handling all this back and forth communication as a, as a middleperson and the solution actually mentioned, like you're also handling the ability to very easily send updates, quickly, easily handle back and forth documentation, like all of that stuff. Well, it just sounds like what helped me as a dispatcher do my job because we know in trucking things happen every day my load gets canceled. Well, I planned on that. I built my whole route for this driver around that one load and all of a sudden it's gone. How do I satisfy my driver now? Exactly. Yeah. And you're the hook for that, right? It's a hundred percent your fault that, that lived in Kansas. Yeah. Chris, anything else that you want to have out there in the world could recover everything because I have never heard of fleet ops before and I, as I say, being removed from dispatch, I was very curious as to what the heck is, all this is about. That's partially deliberate, but if you're a broker, we can help you move freight. And if you're a carrier and yielding, doesn't have a load board solution, tell your ELD providers. But other than that, I don't have anything else. Awesome. Thanks Christina. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much. I hope you love the show as much as I did, please leave us a, like a thumbs up a review, a comment, a rating. If they say thank you so much. And I do really appreciate your time and join us again next week for another exciting interview.