Blythe Brumleve:
0:05
Welcome in to another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in a parade. I am your host, Blythe Brumleve. We are proudly presented by SPI Logistics, the best freight agent program in the country, once again joined by Grace Sharkey for another edition of freight friends. And for those of us who are those of you who are new here, we typically go through a couple different top stories. Grace joins us once a month in order to cover those top stories and then we get into some cargo crimes. We get into our favorite households or businesses going on and freight right now, and then we also talk a little bit about our favorite logistics of AKA source porch story. So we'll save that one for the end. But, grace, how you doing.
Grace Sharkey:
0:50
You know I'm doing good, I am getting excited for F3. We have that next week. So when I say I get, I'm getting excited for it, I'm cramming a bunch of two weeks of work into one week. So that's fun. No, I'm really. It's going to be really cool, it's. If anyone's been to the event in the past, I think it's going to be twice the event that we've seen before, which is, yeah, exactly Like I mean, we have the puppies are in town again. So, thank goodness for you, we've got puppies back here right now at Chanuga. I think there's going to be some really cool events between like three and six more than we've had in the past. Of course, we've got some really great musical guests lined up too, and just some of the companies I've seen that are coming this year I think are new. A lot of new companies from the past year. A lot of shippers as well We'll hear from. So, yeah, really getting excited for it and I'm just happy to see everyone in one place as well.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:50
Yeah for sure. So I think, you know, for a little bit of like historical context of the first freight waves conference, I think that ever happened was 2018, maybe 2019. I know I went to their first one and then that's when I was blown away. I was like wow, this it feels like something for millennials, it feels like something for, like, the younger generation. I've been to freight conferences before, but this was the first one that I was like wow, like it really like wowed me, for lack of a better phrase. And then now to see it, you know, being housed. This is the second year because they took a, you know, a COVID break during, I think, 2020 and 2021. And then 2022 was the first one. Back to big conferences, I think in Arkansas and then Chattanooga, and then Cleveland and then now back in Chattanooga. But this time I think it's going to be, like you said, even better, even bigger, because they're shutting down entire blocks. So I saw Craig's tweet the other day that mentioned he was like you know, with certain conferences it's just a convention center and the hotel that people are normally like congregating at, but with this one, they're shutting down the entire blocks of downtown Chattanooga, I believe. And so, basically everyone that you walk around is going to be involved in freight somehow, so the networking capabilities are going to be, you know, just off the charts. I'm curious, though what does the week look like for you? You know, working for freight waves. You got the nice freight waves sweater on for folks who can't see. So what does the week look like for you working for freight? Because it's different than a traditional conference that you go to, where you have a little bit more freedom, I would imagine.
Grace Sharkey:
3:39
Yeah, there is a level of. So I'll be actually working registration first thing in the morning, so, as everyone's checking in, you'll see me there. I then throughout, I believe first day I have one fireside chat at the freight waves TV stage. So that's the stage that's out in the hallway for everyone. And then I have a course in doing the radio show both days, the first two days as well, and that'll be at the freight waves TV stage too. I already the fun thing about this event is people will go on stage and they'll present new technologies and things of that nature. So there's I already have some planned writing time to likely cover a lot of that stuff. There's some. Clearly our editorial staff would bring a small group of us and we cover a lot of the chats as well. So there's some work I'll be doing there too. But a lot of this time for me is kind of meeting up with everyone. I like to go through the booth, see what technology people are showcasing and anything new, kind of get a gist of who's doing what. Like I said, there's a lot of newer companies that are coming to this year, so I'm excited to shake hands. I spend a lot of this time kind of meeting the marketing people as well, and meeting people at the booths and introducing myself, and I will say too, like I do, I would say last year left with a couple of scoops. Wouldn't be surprised if I leave with a couple of scoops. You know you get people everyone in one spot and you'd be surprised how often people come up to me with gossip or things of that nature. So it's, it's really, it is no, it is kind of fascinating, like this happened in Cleveland, probably the most it ever happened. You know, whenever this industry gets a little bit tighter and more risk, you could say, involved with it, people come out of the woodworks with different stories and things like that. So yeah, that's, it goes by fast. I'll say that that's the one thing that I love about the conference part is like I have to make sure I have to like there's a couple of speakers I do want to see, so I need to like be smart about making sure I'm there. But I mean, you get it. It's one of those conferences where you and I barely walked down the hallway without being grabbed for something I was about to.
Blythe Brumleve:
6:11
My first question was going to be like how do you, how are you going to manage that, knowing that you have to pay attention to these talks, but also you want to be friendly to the people you're talking to, but you're still. You know you're there to work as well. So how do you? Do you have any tips of like maybe you could give? Me, other folks that you can cut the conversation off and get to work but. I know.
Grace Sharkey:
6:35
I will say one aspect that, like really is helpful and it was not as easy in Cleveland, but easy if it's the same type of, it's the same venue, so I got to be able to do it. There's like a back hallway that I could use to get me to the other side of the other hallway. So there's probably going to be a lot of that happening, which is fun, because then I get listen, I'm like I like you'll see me do this too. I really like to thank staff at these events. Like I think sometimes people forget, like about all the work. So I'll walk this like back hallway and like I see all the chefs and stuff and I'm like thank you so much, because I'm like what are you doing back here? I'm like escaping, trying to get to the other side of the hallway in five minutes. So there is a back hall. Always try to find a back hallway is one and then the other is like yeah, just like kind of being. I think people get it. You know, like hey, I need to get over there right now or anything. Use it like as an opportunity, like at other conferences. Right, if you're here about to present, like hey, I need to go present this thing, but come with us, come see what I'm talking about, like, come enjoy, enjoy this. So that's, it's a lot of that in the new brain. And maybe hiding behind, maybe tall Shriver, he's so tall, I'll just walk behind him. No one will see me. So yeah, that's that's I will say too, I'll probably wear a heel in the after party, but I am bringing a flat for the conference.
Blythe Brumleve:
8:08
So that's bringing any boots. It is Tennessee.
Grace Sharkey:
8:15
You know, I do have my sparkly Beyonce boots.
Blythe Brumleve:
8:18
Bring them, because I have sparkly boots too.
Grace Sharkey:
8:20
Okay, I will. They're just so heavy. I get so nervous. I'm over. Where am I? Oh, what if I did? I should wear my sparkly boots. Okay, okay, cool, cool, I'll wear, I'm gonna wear.
Blythe Brumleve:
8:32
They're so ridiculous.
Grace Sharkey:
8:34
They're so ridiculous. Yeah no, I'll wear, I'll bring them, We'll figure out how to get them there.
Blythe Brumleve:
8:40
So if you're listening, you're hearing us outfit plan live on the show right now and seeing our excitement of just coordinating outfits. I love coordinating outfits.
Grace Sharkey:
8:50
I know I got like two. You know me, I got like two new shirts and stuff like that, so I'm pumped. Yeah, I've got it all figured out. Now it's not in the suitcase yet. It's everything's in a corner of my bedroom, but it's well, it'll make its way there.
Blythe Brumleve:
9:07
Yeah, I just ordered like 200 new everything is logistics pins. So if you listen to the show, find me, come see me, I'll give you a free pin anytime. That's kind of like my low key marketing strategy is like anytime someone tells me they love the pod, I immediately pull out a pin and give it to them because I don't know, it's like you know just little things to make people happy and remember the show. And y'all know I love pins because I'm a Disney fanatic and all that, all that jazz. What about the event itself? Are you looking forward to anything in particular outside of TI, because I think both of us are definitely looking forward to that? What about any particular talks or you know any parties? What are you looking forward to the most?
Grace Sharkey:
9:49
I think. So there are definitely a couple of things that the course of TI parts can be really fun. I've been listening to like TI Spotify Playlist nonstop for the past week. The first one I'm really pumped for is we got Brad Jacobs as our keynote speaker, so that's listen first off. He's writing a book that's coming out and I'm actually getting an advanced copy of it, so we can probably talk about it even like a month before it comes out. I should be getting a copy in December called it's called how to Make a Few Billion Dollars, which is like cool, so cool, what a cool thing to do, casually Awesome. Can we hear you the book about that? So I've seen some of his talks since then, kind of discussing the book. So if it's anything like that, I think people will leave with a really interesting leadership tips and just on how he builds a team, how he evaluates companies, how he runs meetings there was a really good talk about I'll send it to you too so you can see it but about just how he like how they pre-plan meetings, how they prepare all this really cool stuff.
Blythe Brumleve:
11:04
So I would love to see that, because I think meetings are just such a giant time suck and waste of time, and it bugs me to no end when people are just like, no, we just need to have a meeting and hash this out, and I'm like, no, you need to hash it out in your head first. Yeah, come to the meeting with specific goals so you're not wasting everybody else's time with your brainstorming on a call. I cannot stand it. I think we waste so much time during the day on pointless meetings. So that's my little mini rant. Sorry, carry on.
Grace Sharkey:
11:34
No, and I'll send you the video where he talks about it, because if that's your critique, like you're going to just absolutely love how he runs meetings because it's very almost more work in advance to the meeting so that once you're at the meeting, like we're discussing how to get stuff done. So, yeah, I think that'll be great. I'm really excited actually like set a personal meeting to like meet him. I think he's like one of the coolest people in this industry and I mean any. He's like what a camera that the folklore guy's name or what everything he touches just turns to gold. So King. Midas, king Midas, yeah, exactly Right. So, um, yeah, I'm pumped to meet him and to listen to him speak. So that's like I said, if I am running past you it's likely because I'm going to go watch Brad Jacobs talk. So that's, that's going to be a fun one. I will say another one I'm pumped for that. I just recently heard about. So when we were at CSCMP I was talking to oh, what's his first name? Now it's going to be Spencer Frazier from JB Hunt and he is doing a chat with BNSF and it sounds like they're going to be really discussing intermodal and really what JB Hunt and BNSF's long-term goals are and how they see the industry changing. And if you know, I'm trying to like broaden my education a little bit more in spaces I don't know, and intermodal is one of them. And over the last year, I mean, they've had their own issues, right with labor. I think what's fascinating about Intermodal in particular is that all of them are publicly traded companies. They all have insane operating ratios. So like we talk about what the average trucking companies operating ratio is like in 90 percentile, 90 percent ish area, right, so for everyone out there might not get that stuff, like For every dollar they make, they spend 90 cents, you know. So it's like your very small margins where Intermodal is like they're like the 60s, hmm, and you see all these issues so like remember like they had all these issues with pain, drivers more and giving vacation time. So you sit here and it's like now you have to operate and in a public space where you're working to, of course, have a better outcome for your shareholders, but now you also have to invest in safety. No pressures on them with all the derailments that we've seen, all derailments happen, but of course, with Ohio derailment and some of them are like toxic ones. There We've had I think it was CSX had just recently had an issue with trainees getting killed Just from the safety of railroads, and I think people just don't really truly understand it as a Mode in this industry, let alone the safety behind it. One of my good friends I'm not gonna say who the person is, I hope they're listening though, because they know how they are her husband actually works in in the railroads and it's just fascinating hearing the stories and and we're over here just like focused on drivers and stuff like that. And it's like so when I say we really myself, and so I'm excited to kind of hear them out and hear more about that space, and from two really great companies in the space as well, and two companies that have incredible assets in the space. So Talk about, you know, containers and things of that nature. Jv Hunt is one to listen to and Spence was just seeing very, very enthusiastic about the chat, so that one I'm excited to see maybe learn more about too. Last one, I'll say and sorry to to Use this as a time to, of course, talk about freightways too, but I we have some solar updates coming out and some that I think people are really, really, really, really gonna like, and so they're gonna be announcing that stuff during F3. I'm not gonna give too much detail more on it, but I can say, if you've used so not in any way, shape or form, the announcements that we're gonna make are, I think, mmm 100% of our customers are gonna be very, very happy about, and those who haven't Maybe bought sonar yet or we're even looked at sonar are gonna be really interested in too. So now those are, I think, the biggest areas that I'm also dying my hair blue, so like that's gonna be super fun and the dye all came in a freightway favorite. Yeah, we're gonna do a little this. Listen, this is gonna look, so I've done this before, so I'm not nervous about it all. A little like aqua marini more.
Blythe Brumleve:
16:27
That looks a little teal, looks a little jaguar's teal.
Grace Sharkey:
16:30
Yes, it is very jagged teal it's and that's gonna be kind of near the bottom. So when I like curl it, you know it's dimensional and then this will be like more of the top. I'll probably separate a little bit of the bang to like. Do like two strands of this.
Blythe Brumleve:
16:43
So you got your own hair.
Grace Sharkey:
16:45
Oh, yes, yes, Okay, I own hair. Yes, I have done it before. Honestly, I need to cut it too, so I'm probably gonna cut my trim up some bangs a little bit. How this works in my house is I always underestimate the time it takes me to do this, so that Friday, after I got the radio show, I'll probably eat dinner, be lazy for like two hours, then around 10 o'clock at night, I'll start doing this, and I always start with gloves, then I immediately take them off and just start getting in there with my hands and my little brush, and Then I'll sit around and it'll be like three o'clock in the morning and then I'll wash it and then I'll go to sleep and then I'll leave it on for that long. Well, I might take me about an hour and a half an hour. It's to like get it in there and like get every piece of hair done, like that's the biggest things. You don't want to like miss anything. And then I usually keep it in. I like to keep it, honestly, for like close to two hours, just to make sure it's like there and in, stuck in there, and then I'll wash it, wash it out, and my favorite part is I'll wake up in the morning and I'm like, oh god, like, yeah, you ever like, yeah, you ever like get a extreme haircut or like something like that. You just forgot you did it. Or like you got your face painted. And then you look in the mirror and you're like that's every morning, I do this, I'll. I'll wake up oh geez, that's right, like your hair's blue now.
Blythe Brumleve:
18:17
So yeah, and I think it's important to kind of make the distinction of, like, the prep work that is involved With, like, men who go to conferences and women who go to conferences. Totally different, your nails, your outfits your hair is you got to plan your hair wash days because you got a plan Out all day and your hair still kind of look good from morning to night and that's very, very time-consuming, very challenging and very expensive.
Grace Sharkey:
18:49
Yeah, thank you for saying it's like I have to Mine. You survived me. I need to get some dry shampoo, yeah, but yeah, you know that the hair washing schedule is like a whole thing and I think that's what takes me so long to do it. It's like people are real. I have very thick, long hair, so like it takes a lot of time for me to color this and it'll stay probably for a good yeah, oh, yeah, no, yes, that's, it's very long, so Like I'll use almost of this dye, yeah, yeah, how long do you keep the dye in? It'll start to slowly like fade out, so, like probably around Thanksgiving, it'll be more of like a kind of a cool teal than like anything else but perfect for a Jag season. Yes, Well, yeah, you know what I'm not no to, I'm screwed I. So you know, uh, uh-huh, we've lost. I've lost my boy to an Achilles surgery For the rest of the season. So my fantasy team was just guys. Can I swear on the show, but they're fucked. The Vikings are screwed. Oh man, it's not good.
Blythe Brumleve:
20:05
It's like Justin Jefferson went down earlier this season. He was my number one pick in my. I am either in Next to last or last place in both my leagues. I'm like this is how is this possible to have three or four people on? I are already and I'm just screwed, it's. It's a sad story to tell and unfortunately you did mention the parties. Um, Ti is the big one for me. There's a couple of other musical performances too that I'm not exactly Sure they are but I've heard drivers and Kenny we shepherd.
Grace Sharkey:
20:38
It's like a pretty good Artist as well. I haven't really listened to anything, but I've heard that he's great. I mean a DJ. I Think DJ can't screw it up. I hope, yeah, like We'll see what happens. But you know it's, that venue is so cool and yes, and I've, if there's anything, I told myself I'm gonna yeah, I remember last year like not eating food, so I'm just gonna like make sure that happens more.
Blythe Brumleve:
21:06
It's almost like a wedding where you have to force yourself Okay, we're gonna eat because we've been running around all day Like that's not good for our health. And don't end up like me where you leave a conference and you're sick and you just keep going. Yes, I got the most sick I've ever been After going to CSCMP and then immediately going on a bachelorette party and after an Epcot trip with you. So, yeah, if you heard the last recording, if my voice sounded strange, it was me powering through, not being able to blow my nose for two hours and just Disgusting sickness for a week. Nobody wants to hear about that, though what I do. So a couple of other things the block party vibe I wanted to cover that. Adam Wingfield I think this is for his first time speaking at a freight waves conference long overdue. Glad it's finally happening because he's literally one of the smartest people in all, afraid, and he's helping small carriers to dominate in 2024. You know we'll get into a little bit of you know, like freight fraud and cargo crimes a little bit later on, but you know a couple of those talks are centered around that, which is great. We're at a 10-year high for cargo theft right now and then try and pay. They got a little barbecue going on in Tennessee, so I'm I'm excited to get some good barbecue. Chris Voss and then also I don't want to butcher his name, but the scientists who's always on, like National Geographic and Discovery Channel and all that I'm not gonna try it the Michi Kukaku, is that how you say his name?
Grace Sharkey:
22:37
Yeah, it's Japanese. You know me, girl. Oh, there you go. Nice, I might have said it's first is first name. Might have another syllable in there, but I think I got. Cocky was his last name.
Blythe Brumleve:
22:48
Yeah, cocky was his last name, mishio Maybe his first name.
Grace Sharkey:
22:52
Michio yeah, it's a.
Blythe Brumleve:
22:53
MI CHI.
Grace Sharkey:
22:54
Oh yes, yep, Michio, okay, oh yes.
Blythe Brumleve:
22:59
New York Times bestselling author. The God equation, the quest for the theory of everything. Yeah, that's theoretical physicists, professor and futurist. So that's gonna be really exciting conversation. Then Chris Voss is like the famous like FBI negotiator Teaching you like sales tips, so that those are a few of like the must attend Ones that I definitely want to hit up. I think that about covers it as far as, like the preview, I was gonna have this show be centered around the Sort of freight tech and what we think. Like you know, the 2023 told us kind of hints into 2024, but I, with everything you just said about you know the stories that are gonna be coming out. I think that'll make for a great episode for next time to be able to talk about all of the cool companies you know we saw at f3. And the cool thing about f3 is because I mean typically a little late to conferences, like I don't like getting there at like seven in the morning like some freaks Um, I get there, you know, like nine, 30, 10, um, but you can. The best thing about freight waves conferences is that you can just pull up the live streaming app and I can watch everything while I'm getting ready and then feel like I haven't missed anything. So, unlike other conferences where you can't really do that, this one you can, which is awesome, that's a good point. Yeah, it's gonna be a good one.
Grace Sharkey:
24:11
Are you in freight sales with a book of business, looking for a new home?
Blythe Brumleve:
24:15
Or perhaps you're a freight agent in the company You're not going to be able to go home, or perhaps you're a freight agent in need of a better partnership. These are the kinds of conversations we're exploring in our podcast interview series called the freight agent trenches, sponsored by spi logistics. Now I can tell you all day that spi is one of the most successful logistics firms in north america who helps their agents with back office operations, such as admin, finance it and sales. But I would much rather you hear it directly from spi's freight agents themselves. And what better way to do that than by listening to the experienced freight agents tell their stories behind the how and the why they joined spi? Hit the freight agent link in our show notes to listen to these conversations or, if you're ready to make the jump, visit spi3plcom next topic logistics girly. Yeah, I forgot, that was a hamlet. So I I want to hear all about. This is a new initiative to sort of set the stage for you. New initiative, um, for you it's a sub stack, it's a linkedin page, also a twitter account, um. So so tell us a little bit about sort of the, the goal around logistics girly, the, the concept of it. You know what, what do you, what do you want people to know about it?
Grace Sharkey:
25:32
Yeah. So I guess, like right now it's it's gonna evolve into something, and for me it's just kind of like an outlet for me to kind of share the cool, uh, more female driven stories, I think, in this industry and just highlight a lot of what women are doing in this industry. I guess the way I'm treating it right now is maybe kind of like, um, and I'm really working on more blogs coming out and and working with actually others in the industry there's, uh, I'm really passionate about getting especially those in the lgbt, qi plus groups like writing their experiences. Like I just don't want, I don't want this to just be, I don't want this to be involved around me. But, um, I, you know something that we're talking about and listen, I, I love how do I, how do I say this? Uh, I love the movement that we're seeing and and right right now, of of kind of coming together as community, laughing at ourselves and and and coming up with solutions to really hard problems. And I don't know, I never, I always speak the truth anyway. So my truth is that sometimes, though with that is, it's also grown a tad bit more freight bro-y at the same time, and there's nothing wrong with that I think that we all laugh at the freight bro and we all know we've worked in offices et cetera, but with that energy is like it's almost ignoring more of the female experience in this industry, like for an else. Gonna be a quick example the like tobacco jokes, right, like, that stuff is funny. It is funny that a lot of people in our space like to you know, dip right, yeah, dip right Like, and Zen is a little bit different than dip, but still. But also it's the grossest thing in the world, like I can't tell you how frustrated I would be in an office, especially you know like, where you just have men spitting in bottles all day and it's just she's a lot of masculine energy, a lot of testosterone, a lot of like which is not bad. No, it's not bad. But also women don't like that, you know, and it's, and I'm just like it's gross, it is stupid gross, it's stupid gross and it honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we did a study in a female-driven logistics company, compared to a man, how that's probably not even allowed on the floor and it's just. You know, for me it's just like you should have to go outside with cigarette smoke and listen. I smoke cigarettes for a long time. I gave them up about four years ago and it was the hardest thing ever. I understand the tobacco addiction but, like when we start making fun of it, what you're saying is like everyone has to agree that this is funny and everyone has to feel like this is appropriate to be in an office. And I know that's not true and I think it's tough for women to see. Sometimes offices make rules like that, but also like, okay, if men get to and I understand some women chew too but if they get to do that in office, then can we get tampons. You know, like, for me it's like that equality aspect, right, like I wouldn't bet against-.
Blythe Brumleve:
28:56
I wouldn't bet against Not to. It is something but Freight Brokerage's attended. Like hand these things out, like hand out the tins to the guys on the floor.
Grace Sharkey:
29:06
Well, they'll just let the bottles sit there all day long and let them do it all day long, which is gross. I mean, if you're spending, not a hundred percent of it's going in the bottle at the end of the day. You know, it's just like it's not something that I would say a lot of women want to be around. And you know what, there's probably a lot of guys that don't like it either, to be honest with you too. So, anyways, back to Logistics, girlie. So I'm like I'm seeing this start to come even more into fruition and this kind of like testosterone driven culture.
Blythe Brumleve:
29:37
That's very testosterone heavy.
Grace Sharkey:
29:39
Yes, and I just wanted to create a space that women can go and make those jokes too, or make a joke that's like, that's disgusting, you know, like and not have a bunch of people jumping on them saying that, oh, here we go, the women's rights type of stuff. So, and not to say that that's happened in all the experiences with certain groups, but it has happened to me on Twitter before. I mean, there's times where even some posting some of the individuals or thought topics on the radio, people will push back again. So I wanted to create a safe space where it's like almost like a Buzzfeed or something like that, where women can go and see on LinkedIn or on Twitter, more female focused content and what's interesting. And I just wanna help it improve in the algorithms. I want people to see it more when they're going through their timelines, and that's I understand. In order for that to happen, like there needs to be the engagement behind it. So I just wanna create kind of this space that like push that same energy out there and you know what's interesting like is like I've noticed doing it that I guess I wanted to kind of make it funny at first and I started like looking and I think there's some blog post and kind of opinion articles that I could write that could make it kind of clever and funny, but it's really hard to find female focused content that's not cynical, like which I'm like kind of interested in and find fascinating. Like a lot of the stuff that I'm able to share, retweet et cetera, I'm noticing is like very uplifting and that's like I think that goes back to kind of that like the energy that I want to put out there. It's like no, like what are we doing to move this industry forward and how are women a part of that conversation and what are we doing out there? That's really getting stuff done and I'm just finding incredible people across the globe who've been contributing to logistics that would have never made your timeline through the some of the Broly stuff.
Blythe Brumleve:
31:56
So I just that's kind of like where it started is like let's make some space for women and, yeah, shine a light on other stories too, Because it does it especially just in my experience working at. You know two different freight brokerages. It's very. The men outnumber the women like nine to one. So it's very, and I don't know if there's ever been any kind of study on this, but I think I've maybe known three or four female freight brokers and two different companies, and these were, you know, we had over a hundred employees at each company. Most of the women that worked there were working in accounting. I was the executive assistant and also the marketing person, but typically you'll find a lot of women in marketing as well, and I wonder why that is. I wonder why that happens. So I would love if, like any associations, are out there any companies that are doing this kind of research. I would love to know what the ratio of women working in this industry. You know who's working in sales, who's working at? You know we met Carly Gunby, who works at Transfix, and she's a sales leader at her company. So I wonder how many other like Carly Gunby's are out there that you know their stories could be told as well. So it's just it's not to like bash the freight bro mentality, because I think it's a lot of fun, but it's also like the more stories I see around that is like well, what other stories aren't being told? And I think that that's a good place to find yourself in, especially with logistics girlie. Is, you know, being able to tell some of those other stories that aren't being told? Because you know, we've said it a million times on the show there are so many stories that could be told within your own company that you know, look for those opportunities to tell those stories and you know, I think that when you think of it from that lens of like logistics girlie, you could think of it from the lens of what kind of women's centric, focused stories within my own company maybe could be told, you know, through this platform.
Grace Sharkey:
34:04
Yeah, and I do want to touch on something too, because I don't want it. It came from a spot of bringing more female focused stories to the limelight. But the reason I call it like logistics girlie is because I think even on, like in social media, we use like the term girlie like I'm a Taylor Swift, girlie like boys will say that too. It's kind of like the you're like a stan or like a fan of a certain thing, and a part of this is like I want men to feel like they're a part of it too and that they are, you know, passionate about other types of stories in this space as well. But I also and something I just really want to make sure I can focus on is I know that there is a lot. I know there's a lot of gay, lesbian again, lgbtqia plus people in this industry who may not feel like they have a space to open up about what their lives are like in this industry as a whole, and that's something that, as even just writing in a space, has been really hard for me to find, and I think it's hard to find those individuals because they don't have a space to go to, to feel safe as well and tell their stories and I just if myself, as just a straight white woman, doesn't always feel comfortable in some spaces in this industry I cannot even imagine some of the situations that those groups have felt and what they felt in meetings or even being a part of just like health insurance talks or family talks, right, adopting children or looking at growing your family and having to, or even just transitioning, like in this industry. And how do you find the perfect tire? Who's willing to have a bathroom available for you? You know like, and that's I'm passionate about that kind of stuff. Outside of just logistics. It's something that I mean honestly, like what I went to school was just kind of help these groups in particular, and so I want to be able if I always said, if I ever had like a platform, that I would do my best to open it up to other people, and that's kind of like where a lot of this energy is, too is like not just getting more women out there, but like how many you know lesbian leaders are there out there in this space and what are they doing? And investors even like opening that stuff up so that maybe they're what if there's like a really great freight tech guru out there who just doesn't feel like she has or he has anywhere to go. They have anywhere to go to get financing for this great idea they have and our industry is hurting because of that. So there's a lot of places that I kind of want to take it, but that's where it's at right now and you know, it'd be cool at some point to like make merch on it and like have people like kind of in this logistics girly space. My goal at Manifest actually is to like make pins as well and hand those out. So yeah, I'm excited about it and I'm just we'll see where it goes for now. But I will say the even the LinkedIn page I was going through analytics, like I'm starting to get engagement, like 20% engagement over there already, with some of just the posting that we had. I'm trying to do like a sleigh of the day, like every day of just someone in the space doing something really cool. So I'm getting there. I do a lot of stuff outside of it and I want to make sure Freight Waves and when my work comes first. But this is kind of like my side hobby until we'll see where it goes.
Blythe Brumleve:
37:57
And I think that that's so important for a lot of creators who have you. If you're lucky enough to be in a position where you have a full-time gig, to have that other outlet that you can do whatever the hell you want to do with. It doesn't matter. Whatever media company I've ever worked for, I've always made sure to have that other outlet just so I can post whatever the hell I want. Where I'm EIC, I'm editor-in-chief over there and these are the editorial decisions that we're gonna make for my platform, versus when you're getting a check from someone else where obviously you have to cater to what those needs are. So kudos to you for the launch and the initiative getting it going. It's not easy to balance something like that in addition to a full-time job, but I imagine you'll probably see you've already seen a little bit of success already and so that just going to continue to snowball and continue to build. So kudos to you, thank you.
Grace Sharkey:
38:51
Yeah, and if you see anything we're sharing on LinkedIn or Twitter, just share it. Like I said, for me it's about getting that content in timelines that haven't seen it before, and I think that's really the first step is just getting this whole other piece of our industry out there.
Blythe Brumleve:
39:08
Yeah, I'm making a note to myself right now to include those social links to LogisticsGurly in the show notes, just to make sure and make it easy for you folks to follow along with those initiatives. So I guess it's time to move on to the next topic, and that is favorite ideas or hustles in freight. So I have one that just happened from a conversation from yesterday. But do you want to go first? You want me to take it first.
Grace Sharkey:
39:36
Let's see, I just talked for a while. Let's you take it. Let's go there, All right, all right.
Blythe Brumleve:
39:41
I want to talk about yard management solutions, which sounds like, oh, maybe like initially like snooze fest, but I so, while you know, as we're on, you know the conference talk I was at CSCMP. You know you're walking around the expo floor and you're kind of deciding what booths to go up and talk to and which ones you kind of will, and just you know, just keep on walking, don't make eye contact. So then there was one that really caught my eye because he had these big LCD screens that were surrounding their booths. So they had one of the bigger booths and this is yard management solutions, not just YMS technology, but their actual name, which I think is brilliant from like an SEO perspective. Your name is actually like yard management solutions. So I talked with Colin and Seve from the yard management solutions team yesterday. That pod is coming out soon, but there are also Colin I was already following him on Twitter already before even connecting the dots, so it was a great interview. He was wearing his Please Advise hat, so he's part of that crew, you know as well and they really broke down like sort of the importance of a yard management solution. So, at you know CSCMP, they have these big screens and you can. The way it kind of looks is like an eagle eye view of your entire yard. So where the trucks are parked, where you want them to move, you can literally take hold your finger on a container and drag and drop it to another dock just simply by the touch of a button. When you do that, it notifies the driver, it notifies the dock worker, it notifies everyone that's involved with that shipment that that dock placement or that truck placement has been moved, which streamlines a lot of. Because what Colin was explaining is that for the overwhelming majority of warehouses in this country, essentially how they're tracking inventory, how they're tracking their trucks, is they walk out into the yard first thing in the morning and they just write down the different trucks that are in the yard. Very, you can imagine, that's very time consuming. Obviously that information is updated throughout the day. So there's a lot of inefficiencies when you have to stop what you're doing, go outside and count how many trucks are in the yard and count what inventory is on that truck and you know, just keeping tabs so you can unload those trucks in an efficient way. I was a little confused at first because I just assumed that a YMS technology would already be incorporated into any sort of WMS, a warehouse management software platform. But it's not the case that, or it's the case that, with a lot of software and freight, that the software does one thing really well and then they try to add in components and the add in components just aren't as good as something that is dedicated to it. So, talking with that team over there at the YMS technology, they were talking about things that increase efficiency, such as having, like, say, you have all of these trucks that are ready to get unloaded in the morning. Well, which one are you gonna prioritize first? Which one makes the most sense first? So they were giving examples of, like a reefer load. If a reefer the temperature inside of the truck, if the temperature is getting a little bit too hot or the freight inside of the truck is in danger to spoil, then what you can do is that it would upload and it would update all of your systems to let you know that, hey, this freight is about to reach a spoilage level temperatures. You need to unload it quick and you need to get it into a space that's dedicated for that reefer shipment. So instead of that freight getting spoiled because you're inefficiently tracking those kinds of things throughout the day that software can alert you to that specific problem. Or another problem was like at one of the warehouses where they get a lot of manufacturing facilities, where they get a lot of tire shipments or different sources of materials that they need to make their goods. Well, if you're unloading one dock with a bunch of tires on it and you have four other shipments that are scattered all throughout the yard, you might wanna prioritize all of those truck tire shipments to come in through that same dock so all of the workers can get all of that freight off that's all the same and get it to the same area instead of splitting those teams up and creating those additional inefficiencies. There was another example that they had too was at a steel manufacturer and they had two different shipments. One was for actual steel that is ready to be used and then the other was sort of scrap steel, and with the scrap steel shipment they loaded it in the wrong truck, but they were able to find out about it ahead of time, before that the good steel that's ready to be used went to the wrong place. That you know a high valuable steel versus scrap steel. They would have lost a lot of money on that shipment. So using the YMS software or using just YMS software in general can help you increase those efficiencies and you know they can integrate into any kind of WMS or TMS. But I thought that that was really really fascinating is like that's one area that you can increase productivity. You can increase your efficiency, save money, prevent fraud all of these things that we talk about you know on a regular basis. I didn't know how important a YMS solution is, but now I do. So stay tuned for that episode. It was really really great conversation and just hearing the different perspectives on how the growth of this particular part of software in freight has grown.
Grace Sharkey:
45:09
Yeah, I think we're going to see even more investment in that piece too, because you know what, a couple years ago, visibility was a big thing, like where's my shipment, where's it now? But there's a very, it's very difficult to you lose that visibility within the yard. Right, like I know? Okay, they checked in. But like what does that mean? Right, like how, how soon are they going to be unloaded? There's a company that recently just got a really nice chunk of a chunk of investment terminal industries. I want to say it's called, yes, terminal industries, and they're using computer vision for kind of the same thing, like, basically, their cameras will, as a truck pulls in. They don't really even need to check in, they just they're able to pull the vid number and the license plate number from the truck, know what it's there for, what it has on it. As that carrier, you know it goes to its dock, they have visuals on that and, which is helpful, because it's like we talked about detention being a big issue. I mean we're talking about that up yeah, like, let's get to a point where You're not sitting here. You're like, yeah, you probably understand this. Like, especially when the carrier side like so many times you deliver somewhere and let's say the driver is 15 minutes late, and they're like, well, you're going to sit here for six hours that like there's no way you're telling me in the next six hours that there's no open spot. Some places there might be, but I guarantee that there's someone else who probably will be late or something where you can slide them into that. And that's the same thing. That's like where the importance of that that type of software goes. Because if I can, if I can tag that up with visibility software and say, okay, you're 15 minutes late, let me look at the rest of my analytics showcase that, okay, truck number 10 is supposed to be delivering to us in an hour, is behind. Well then, I know I can probably slip you into that appointment and then work on putting him somewhere else or her somewhere else as well. So I think that's when we talk about a lot of the issues for drivers in particular where it's going to get really interesting. Plus, you're able to with the right yard management system. That's more into like drop shipments right where you have the trailers just sitting there and you load them up and carriers coming in now and that's the best way to get rid of tension is driver just comes in, locks up the trailer and keeps it moving and does kind of the power only situation or drops another trailer and takes this one instead. So, yeah, I think, happy that you're fine at space. Interesting because I think that's where we'll see a lot more investment over the next couple years as well.
Blythe Brumleve:
47:53
Yeah, I'm super glad you brought up the fact of, like driver detention or just wasting drivers time and because anytime they're sitting they're not getting paid. And so one of the bigger issue or one of the bigger complaints that I see on Twitter, I see on discord, is, all you know, drivers talking about getting their time back and making their time much more efficient so they are making more money, so they can stay out on the road and so you don't lose a lot of those really good veteran drivers and so you just don't keep filling up the pipeline with inexperienced, you know drivers and trainers and trying to inexperienced trainers trying to teach the new drivers and they just wash out very quickly because of the way that they're treated. And then you have the veteran drivers who are having their time wasted as well. And so if you can have different solution like don't just like, don't just check in the freight and think it's done If you can optimize and you can make your, your processes more efficient within the yard and how you manage that freight, it can make the rest of the process much run much more efficiently, much more smoothly. And then you have a situation where drivers want to come to your facility, they want to deliver to your facility and you're not one of these. You know shippers or manufacturers getting shamed on social media.
Grace Sharkey:
49:07
Yeah, and it's like I'm tired of this like whole situation of like oh yeah, just write your like in and out times on your paper, like there's got to, we have to have receipts. You know like, and this is the, this is what's going to get us to a point where we have the receipts. There's no like oh well, it's as a broker, right, like tricky, you didn't write it on your P O D, so you didn't write it. You weren't, you didn't have detention. It's like shut up there.
Blythe Brumleve:
49:37
Yeah, I care, the damn drivers.
Grace Sharkey:
49:39
Yeah, and this is going to be an easy way to look into it and showcase hey, you were late, hey, you weren't late. There's no, it's a third party type of answer, you know. So, yeah, I love it and I think there's a lot of problems to solve from a like just a business perspective.
Blythe Brumleve:
49:56
you save a ton of money when you're not paying detention. So I think Michelin, which is one of the the YMS clients that they were talking about in the interview they saved I don't want to say millions, but I know it was at least hundreds of thousands of dollars at different facilities just because they're using this technology. And so it pays for itself in less than a year. If you can decrease detention, if you can decrease these kinds of payments, you make drivers happier, you make your team more efficient. So in tough times tough economic times, like you need to be more efficient, you need to be more productive, and this sounds like you know a really good way to make that happen. Okay, so, so what's your, your your favorite idea? Or hustle going on and freight.
Grace Sharkey:
50:41
So this goes into areas that I'm trying to learn more about as well, and we're so we're going to go a little bit more globally, and there's basically the hustle is creating better systems for regulatory bodies. So the company in particular I've covered a numerous times is a company called cargo X, and what they do is they help with document scanning, creating electric or electric electronic BOLs for companies, but they've been actually focused more on these big governmental groups. So I first learned about them when they started working with Egypt A couple of years ago. Yeah, so and this is where I think this kind of stuff gets fascinating so Egypt has this 2025 vision and their goal is to basically prepare their customs for a more e commerce, more trade type of environment, and in order to do that, they are going to have to invest in technology to make themselves faster. So basically, I think I'm looking up the year right now. I want to say it was in 2021 when they first started, but basically, cargo X came in and started working with Egypt to create this system called and or NAVSA, so the national single window for foreign trade facilitation. Now it's working with Egypt system called MTS, and it's owned 80% by Egypt, but they're using the blockchain technology of cargo X and their cuts or their documentation capabilities to basically make customs faster. So this went into effect in October of last year and sorry, egypt 2030 vision that's what it's for and basically they went from to do to do to do. They integrated over 26 cargo clearance related government systems, so before, when you're going through Egypt, you had to go through 26 different cargo clearance systems. They reduce the number of documents needed from 18 to six, so all of those 26 systems are now under that one national single window and you only need six different documents in order to actually facilitate trade through in and out of the country, which I think is really cool. Like just think about it. Like the again, these are not just problems that small businesses are having, but these are big governmental problems too, and fun facts like learning about this stuff. Egypt is the only country in the Middle East and North Africa to avoid any type of economic recession, so that that's their like goal is. They want to focus on that, continue to be a good trades partner, basically, and it looks like sense. They've started using it. It's been used by over 32,000 importers, 20,000 exporters, 2200 brokers, 300 shipping agencies, over 74,000 foreign exporters, handling about 12,000 trade transactions a day, which just sounds like some really incredible data at the end of the day, if you think about it. Right like this thing is learning even more and more every single day. Now, the reason this came back into my mind a couple weeks ago is that they actually just announced to cargo X as well that they're now working with Uganda's government to do the same exact thing. So, yeah, and that's what I think is like really interesting is, like you know, a lot, a lot of countries around the world have nowhere near as even the small technologies that we have here today in the US, and so I think it's just interesting to see, like who's out there facilitating these transactions, who's out there building these partnerships and oh, I got an update when asking them about the Ghana situation on the Egypt one but after the past year of all this happening, they've been able to, in Egypt, bring import compliance costs from $600 down to 165 and release times on cargo from 29 days to under nine. So, and that's just gonna improve, right, as the system gets smarter and smarter, and I just think that that kind of stuff is really cool to like see who's behind some of like our big regulatory bodies or governments that's actually getting this stuff done, because you know we can, we can invent, especially on a global scale, like all of like the blockchain or or documentation type of technologies that we want, but if the government's actually not using them, it becomes even harder to integrate a larger scale. So that's like what I think is just interesting is like, okay, who's focused on this? And there's there's a lot of these type of initiatives. I know Singapore is like a big one that they're focused on. So, yeah, I like learning about these kind of these areas a little bit more. I've talked about this too. Like sometimes the global aspect of supply chain can get just like so complicated that it's like overwhelming. So for me it's like these small use cases like kind of helped me understand the bigger picture of it all too and to actually see some really. I mean we're we're talking about especially something like Egypt or Uganda. Like we can easily go and buy anything off of a team who today just know that we'll get it delivered in a certain amount of days. Like we're talking about different economic groups who, if this doesn't happen, won't be able to ever ship something to themselves in two days, let alone a week, you know. So it's it's the fairness and the equality aspect of it to that kind of find fascinating.
Blythe Brumleve:
56:57
And I just you know, for, for folks who may not be aware, like that, the bill of lading and the fact that we haven't evolved into an electronic bill or it's taken this long to evolve into, you know, electronic bill of lading is so fascinating to me because there's clear evidences. It just from a historical concept that you know, I just Google this, but there are clear evidences of the use of a document similar to a bill of lading in Roman times. Yeah, the purposes of this discussion and maybe said that the modern bill of lading was born in the 11th century, which marked the rise of the great commercial cities of the Mediterranean. This comes from the Yale School of Law when it's talking about a bill of lading. And so what? Cargo X beautiful website, by the way, I love a good freight website and that one is really one of the best I've ever seen. But the electronic bill of lading concept is just, it's so intricate because I just did an interview earlier this week for Spire Global. They they do an interview, do a podcast for them called maritime means, and one of our recent interviews that we did is from Pauline with Doc flow, and Doc flow helps maritime freight forwarders and they help them. You know, with freight forwarders it's very different than like a freight broker relationship some of the same capabilities between those two roles, but a freight forward or you will likely have that relationship with someone for 10 years. So she specializes in building in a logistics enablement solution. I think it's the first logistics enablement solution. One of the things that she said was that just the clearing customs, you making sure that the bill of lading is is properly filled out and signed that so much of our industry, especially in other countries, is just done through paper and fax machines and that's going to be a reality for a long time. And so for a lot of forwarders they spend so much time just using whiteout on PDFs that have been scanned you know a million times and trying to fill it out where you have the small box of information of where you can put some of these. You know the cargo is and you know different you know cargo information and so she was saying that for a lot of these companies, especially all over the world, it's very challenging for them for the language barrier to from all of the customs rules for each of you know these countries and just making sure that you're following all the rules so your shipments don't get held up. And so it sounds like cargo X is also helping with the electronic bill of lading, which would, I think, complement you know, dock flow immensely for what you know she was talking about, with a lot of the persistent issues that that go on within this industry, mostly because it looks like cargo X is powered by blockchain, which you know there's a record of transaction that's electronically seen. All parties can see it, you know it's less likely, you know, to fall victim to fraud. You know, as I just mentioned, like the whiteout part of bill of ladings, like that. So that's super fascinating and beautiful website to, by the way, so cool.
Grace Sharkey:
59:59
Yeah, yeah, they're really, really interesting and I think again it's it's like these fascinating use cases out there, and especially blockchain. The biggest critique is like the it will take this massive option in order to really work so we can get governments on board. I think that'll that'll help with that too.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:00:17
Yeah for sure, great find, Okay. So I think that you know that kind of segues nicely into the next story that I wanted to talk about in this article was was tweeted out by one of our favorite founders in freight, and that's Ryan Peterson of flexport. I know there's a lot of drama we talk about. There's a lot of drama around.
Grace Sharkey:
1:00:38
Yeah, even more now Say hi yeah.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:00:42
Since the convoy news quickly, do you, do you want to recap that for for everybody of what's what, the high level view of what's going on with convoy and flexport?
Grace Sharkey:
1:00:50
Yeah, we'll stick high level because it's Geez so. No, it's not, it's just so and I will say Okay. So long story short, flex port it was rumored for a while that they were for, I guess, a week. They were interested in buying convoy. For those that might know they are and do you know, brought this up actually and what the truck to. He has actually a lot of, spent a lot of time and more of the Customs freight forwarding role and, and he said even some of the toughest part of freight forwarding is, once you get it here is getting it on a domestic truck and following through that side of the transaction and Because it's quite different than everything that you do, just like you're saying, on the freight forwarding side. So there's an opportunity right for for Peterson and flex for to purchase Convoy's technology and apply that to their brokerage unit, their domestic unit that I believe Bill Draegar from Ubers freight right is leading and it's still leading today. He's wasn't one of those cut from a lot of Pearson's cutting, but so then it came out yesterday that there was an internal email sent out saying that that transaction is going through and we don't know what the purchase number, what the actual cost is. I'm sure Probably figure that out. I will say. I'm hoping to figure that out. I did. I'll tell you this, I'll put I'll put my whole life on it that it's not $3.6 billion, but they are looking to integrate that to their system. It sounds like bringing in multiple people from Convoy as well, including Dan Lewis, and as part of probably a leadership role in that, in that spot. The one thing I will say about this real quick too, is that they are purchasing just its technology. They are not purchasing the company convoy. So in this situation it's not gonna be like a Situation where you see convoy powered by flex board or something like that. It like, for instance, trans place I believe technically is goes by trans place still, but they're owned by uber freight right, and so it's not gonna be that. It's just they're purchasing the tech, the behind-the-scenes stuff. They're not taking the name. They also are not taking its liabilities, and, which is interesting to me because, just as this market is tough and we're talking about Capacity, leaving the market, I'm and this is again just something I'm interested in and I have not got answers on yet but looking into like, does that mean is there carriers out there that are still not being paid like? And that's, I think, my concern is it's like okay, are we gonna see then a bankruptcy filing from convoy? We're likely carriers will get paid like what's happening with convoy as an entity next, because again they're just purchasing their tech, which means that asset is now gone right and they're only and from the numbers I've heard nowhere again near billions. So I have heard from drivers that in the last couple days of convoy they did get quick paid, so I'm hoping that everyone gets. That's good. I'm and that's something I'd like to really try to investigate into talking to even Rachel about a little bit. But that's one thing and that we won't see like a convoy within Flexport. It will just be flex for purchasing and applying that technology to their tech suite.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:04:34
Yeah, that that's super interesting because convoy just I'm I'm gonna isolate this point separate from everything else. Convoy just has such a cool name. They have cool branding. Yeah, I, I'd love their brand, the branding itself, like the logo, the graphics they, you know, I think that they had had at one point at least in three in-house graphic designers and you can tell that with a lot of their marketing, so that I mean, I would hope that the convoy brand will live on to see another day. But I think that you hit the nail on the head that you have to get these small carriers paid, medium-sized carriers paid. Even going, you know, 60 days, 90 days, is tough for small businesses. You know they need that cash and they need it quickly. So my only worry is that if some of this stuff, you know, does have to go through arbitration or go through, you know, bankruptcy rulings and all that is going to make it tougher for these small carriers to get their money and get it quickly, because there are the small carriers are always paid last and they're the ones that should be paid first and I, you know that. That's one thing that you know. It's unfortunate about this situation. I hope gets solved quickly, but I guess kudos to to the Flexport team for you know buying the technology on. You know Penny's on the dollar, apparently for what they were.
Grace Sharkey:
1:05:52
That's the thing for me. So the the big part I will say about this is they have already been using convoy. So I'm interested. I Would love to kind of know the numbers because I'm wondering if, when convoy shut down, if that hurt them in the domestic side, and and exactly what they did a pain for for it, because Flexport has been integrated into convoy for some time to help with that domestic shipping. So what's cool is it's not going to take too much integration in regards to like processes and Customers or customers are likely already been using it. They might see more of the convoy interface now, like the user interface, but a lot it sounds like they they when I remember actually writing about this forever ago but they, they've been integrated into the system and been using them for the domestic source. So that's that's. It seems interesting to me. I'd love to know what's a data play just more of. We can't cover it ourselves. We'll use you guys to do that, okay. So I'm just interested like okay, maybe they were like a strong partner for flexport and For flexports, like we got to purchase this or else you know we're we're falling behind so very good point. Yeah, I mean, and I think we find that out probably by, like, the number that it sells for. But that's something Rachel put in there that I actually kind of forgot about, even though I think I wrote about it forever. It was a while ago, um. But so that's the other part too. It's like I wonder if it's, it's almost a purchase that they kind of needed to make, which, would you know, be helpful in the price? I think I'm convoy side, but we'll see if we can get a number out of them.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:07:42
Yeah, for sure, and I think, what with flexport, I the main criticism that that I saw from, and it's like, oh well, you, you laid all these people off and then you're gonna you have all this money now to go and, you know, buy out convoy. And so I, you know that that could be the re you're, at your point, making that they probably need this software In order to keep themselves in survival mode and, you know, during a down market, which is everybody is experiencing right now. So maybe that's the justification behind it, because that was one of the bigger criticisms that I did see yeah, so we'll figure it out.
Grace Sharkey:
1:08:13
Let's see if we can find the price out on it and we'll go from there. But yeah, it's a, it's an interesting one, and I I just said, well, we'll see what happened. I'm making a joke the other day, like the team that comes on, like I wonder how long they'll stick. You know it's a. There's a lot from the energy of cost cutting that Peterson seemed to be on about three weeks ago, and then you're gonna, you know, purchase this and then Clearly they I know that they had some, some cash on the hand. There wasn't anything that crazy, but I don't know, peterson, this just seemed a little bit all over the place for me recently, and Not in a bad way, but just in a strange way. So again, you know it turns out.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:08:59
It's. I mean, maybe he's tried to find different ways to save money and and also spend that money and so, obviously, with the cost cutting and with different investments to keep the you know, there there's it, guess, their solution moving forward. There was also another cost cutting initiative and that was an article titled the great train robbery. This comes from Flex Sports, vp of global physical security, but everything that basically Cargo theft is at an all-time high, 10 year high as it is, and From talking to, I had an interview that that posted earlier this week with Taryn, who works over in accounts Payable yeah, accounts payable with SPI logistics, and she said that she has been trained from some of their internal Teams that have been around for a while that typically in economic downturns you see rises in cargo theft, and so this happened in like 2008, 2009, and so it would really sort of you know, pair well or not pair well, but that data tracks with what we're seeing right now with cargo theft being at a 10 year high. So I thought that this article from Flexport was really interesting that talked about the different Stages of train robberies and how they occur. Most of us had heard, you know, about a lot of the trains Getting robbed out. In Port of Long Beach, the Port of LA, you just sort of saw these sort of like dystopian train tracks with like boxes and packaging materials just thrown everywhere. But it turns out like the spikes in the cargo theft and this is I'm reading from flex ports article right now Says a spikes in cargo theft, along with successful efforts to curb the trend, have hit the news cycle several times over the last couple of years. Known simply as shopping the thieves board trains while they're passing through built-up populated areas that have yet to pick up speed. So these trains that are moving from the port to different warehouses and facilities they go very slow. But so with with flexport, what they've done to try to solve this. It says by inputting data on recent thefts, rail schedules, police movements, etc. Flexport can now track connections between rail lines, criminal gangs, carriers and more, which I think just leads to just sort of like the overall, like what are you doing to combat this? Because from the research that that I was in, shout out to commercial carrier carrier journal, who had a two-part Series on their YouTube channel, is really really good talking about cargo theft. They posted it like a few weeks ago. It was really really insightful. But they said that there's two kinds of stolen freight. They're strategic, which is like the bad guys sort of trick you into giving you there the freight, and then there's there's also straight, just straight theft. So the what's going on at the rail lines is just straight theft because it's the freight is, though it's. They're moving so slow that the freight is just sitting there. The thieves will see the trains coming through. They don't really have an idea of what kind of freight is on those different containers that are moving through, and so they're basically just like hopping on, cutting open the the doors and then just going inside and just opening up boxes. That's why you see that material just sort of thrown out everywhere. But there's also where the strategic freight now it's becoming more of like a high impact, like high-scale, like just thievery, where you know they're, they're trying to. There was one situation that he talked about in particular that if there is a high value load, like, say, you know, electronics that hits a load board, what will happen is that these Networks of thieves will essentially flood your location with phone calls. They'll try to get, as they'll try to get as many people within their network, within their crime ring, to just flood your phones. So then that one of them has access to that load and they will sometimes pay a cheaper rate in Order to or offer you that the cheapest amount possible to move that freight, and a lot of brokers they're gonna say yes to that because they're trying to you know, move for us, you know, as much possible or trying to make their margins as much as possible. So they'll just go ahead and accept it and so what? They'll watch that freight move from place to place and then they will Strike when the iron is hot. You know that typically what happens is that you know drivers will, unless you are routing properly. So say, for example, if you're gonna be, if you're a driver and you're gonna be hauling a load of flat-screen TVs, what they're now doing to try to combat, you know, just, a truck just sitting or sitting overnight, is they want the driver to have their full hours available, they want them fully rested, they want them fully fueled up so as soon as that freight hits their truck they can drive as long as possible because they're getting hit at truck stops. They're getting hit at rest stops. Thieves are just straight up, just cutting open the back of the truck but they're tracking it. So it's really like strategic Fevery that the driver is a lot of times unaware of what's going on. So shout out to commercial carrier journal because I learned a ton about you know just how you can prevent it, sort of. They also talked a lot about the golden rule of a stealing freight Is that you don't steal what you can't sell and. The cool. I guess the interest is a cool thing. The interesting thing about this kind of freight is Is that food and beverage has been the top commodity that has been stolen for the last 10 years up until 2020. It was the top freight that was stolen because once you steal it, it's consumed and there's also no serial number on. You know a bottle of liquor or you know seafood shipments. You know things like high value, like steaks and seafood, things like that. Like it's consumed, that, so it's gone. So once food and beverage is taken, it's, it's, it's just considered a loss, whereas, like a TV, has a serial number on it so you can easily track that back to, you know, a stolen shipment. So I thought that that was really interesting. In, food and Bev is the number one commodity stolen, and that was the case from 2009 up until 2020 and then in 2020, while we're all at home. Remember that golden rule. So that theft evolved into home goods and then it evolved into electronics because everyone is working from home, the you know kids are learning from home. But now in this year, it's back to food and Bev as the number one commodity stolen. So he you know he goes on to talk about different prevention tips. So focus on your I loved this approach. Focus on your processes. Before you buy any tech or tools, there are these different locks that exist. That is there, I forget. What they're called is like a specific kind of hard locks on the doors and Landing locks on the truck itself to prevent the truck from even moving. So it says to focus on your processes. First, have cameras at entry docks, entry points and at the docks don't let anyone in the yard unless they're allowed to be there. Kind of going back to yard management solutions, but that you know thieves will just drive into a yard and just take a look around and just see what kind of freight's being Unloaded and just sort of watch things. So if you have those different checkpoints of when thieves arrive and or not thieves arrive, but all of your trucks like no one should be allowed into your yard unless they're supposed to be there, simple things like focusing on that, that part of the process, before you invest in technology and like different locking, security cameras, things like that Checking paperwork when drivers leave to make sure it all matches up, because that's another scam that's been going on is that you know they'll get the paperwork and then the driver is unassuming when they get different kinds of paperwork, so they don't have any idea. Cross-talking is also another high point of where, you know cargo theft can happen as well, and I what I love about this is they also you know it preach the power of education. You know, empower your drivers to be that next line of defense and make them aware, because drivers, you know that they don't want to. You know, they know when they're hauling dangerous freight, but they also don't lose that dangerous, that high value freight as well. So empowering them to be rested up, field up, so when they do leave they can drive as long as they can, securing rear, rear doors while the driver is sleeping, staying overnight only at secure lots because truck stops are also highly targeted. And then there really is an association for everything but TAPA, which is another association I've never heard of until after this. You know video series, top, top us, top us, and it's for Transported asset protection Association. Apparently they have a record amount of people that are going to be attending their conference in coming up in December in Boca Raton. So I thought that I never knew that there was, but it makes a lot of sense that there is. And then they said also Education. So cargo net is a cargo theft prevention company. So they said to use them as well, but make sure you get your processes in order. And then conferences like TAPA, companies like cargo net also overhaul. All of these companies help with prevention tips, monitoring, things like that. So I I thought that that was just a really fun like sort of deep dive into, I guess, the criminal world of Moving freight, which unfortunately happens more. You know, as the as the economy is not seeing you know such, you know good times. So I thank you for listening to my cargo crime rant and and speech.
Grace Sharkey:
1:18:48
Well, you know it's a. I actually said this at TIA too. It's like, don't put me in front of an audience. I Kind of called out because you know that's a room full of brokers and so, like, this is a perfect opportunity for me to be kind of honest. And you know, when it comes to cargo theft, yes, there's like there's clearly highway. There's a lot of like carrier share programs carrier 401 one that you can use to kind of like Guide you into the direction of like whether or not this carrier is risk for cargo theft, etc. Cargo nets a great one to you right using and reporting to that over time. My biggest fear, especially when we see that number gets so big yes, I do agree, it's like a lot of it has to do with recession. There are people that are struggling right now and are, of course, stealing more, but what percent of those are? I'd love to know what that number looks like if we take out what was almost self-induced by our own industry. So what I mean by that is how much of that is from your carrier rep, knowing that they're incentivized off big rips saying to themselves you know what this guy's known for putting it on a train, fuck it. I want this $500 rip. I'm gonna put them on it Because I see that stuff happen in these brokers all the time and there are compliance steps and I think there's a lot of digital players that have steps to avoid even a rough making that decision, like they can't even be on this. But like how often are we overriding that function? How often are our reps using highway, seeing that they're at risk and still giving the load to those carriers? Right? And that's like my biggest fear is in an environment we've talked about, especially at freight waves, where brokers are having a rough time. I can guarantee your sales reps haven't seen the commission checks that they saw two years ago. And because you only incentivize them off of their rips, which is dumb to begin with, and people aren't doing that anymore, so consider not doing it either they're actually like doing this on purpose and knowing that at the end of the day, like it's gonna be an insurance claim. Possibly there's different steps that's gonna avoid them truly being in trouble. For I mean, I've seen C-level executives like just let even some shipments gladly go without insurance coverage. So it's like how worse could it get? So that's my biggest critique is like I hope that our industry is not just like hearing this news and being like, yeah, cargo theft is like at its worst. Like, what steps do you have in compliance that's making sure this isn't happening? And when Joe Schmo comes up to you and it's a rough day in your brokerage and you're not hitting your goal and Joe Schmo says, hey, listen, this carrier is kind of shady, but he's gonna do it for a really good price, can I just put him on it? How often are you saying no to that? And how are you saying no to that? Are you saying work on it, see what else you can put on it? Are you saying no, that's not how we operate, and so that's like a big thing. I just like to challenge our industry is like are you being very serious? And how you're implementing ways to stop cargo fraud? And also I think that this is not gonna go away. I think this is gonna become just a bigger issue over time. We're not seeing the economy flip anytime soon, and so for me, it's like there's gonna be a point where a shipper is gonna ask you what steps are you taking? And if you aren't taking those steps, I mean the insurance isn't gonna pay for it, it's gonna come from your company. We just saw we lost a broker the other day right, clarissa just wrote about it for what they really got hit with and I think it was a $700,000 claim that put them already back in the rear and then they couldn't get out of that situation so they ended up having to file bankruptcy. And I appreciate the way that the owner kind of talk through that situation, but I also wanna know more detail about how that happened, because to say like, oh we're cost are too high in this industry, no one can play and be a part of this. I'd love to know how that insurance claim got put together. Like, how did that end up falling apart? Because that is a big claim. Someone did something wrong, and the fact that you ate it tells me you did something wrong, because I don't know any broker who I would. If a shipper made me eat a $700,000 claim to keep them as a customer in this industry, I'm gonna buy you now you can go anywhere else. Like again, bad customers, but I can guarantee if you ate that $700,000 claim, you did something wrong. So that's just kind of where I am when it comes to what are we really doing, and I think that will become a value at some point in time in the next so many months. Maybe it takes a couple of years, but shippers will wanna know that It'll no longer be. Hey, I've got a cheap truck in the area. It's like great, is your cheap truck gonna steal my shit? Like, and what are you doing to avoid that? Because I've been dealing with this left and right and the more that you get into expensive freight especially and you touched on this and I love this expensive freight that can be easily offloaded, like I'm not used to when we steal, I'd have drivers all the time be like if you don't pay us an extra 50 bucks for detention, we're gonna take this off our truck. I'm like, yeah, okay, where are you gonna go find an overhead crane in New Jersey and pay for that to take this off your truck? And then where are you sitting? Like, how are you moving? You know what I mean. Like there's some freight that's like, yeah, buddy, it's gonna cost you more than the freight itself to steal this load. But when you're dealing with produce and small packages, boxes, a lot of the freight in this industry we talked about like almonds, right, like or pistachios, like those things are expensive. The truck lords pistachios. I'll gladly steal that truck if I can, like. That is like that's like, depending on what country you're from, generational wealth right there. So it's just be smart about it and I hope that that's like part of the training in providers. Out there is like not this, like come to us in situations. No, these are our standards. We stick to them.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:25:29
Everyone else can say goodbye, and I would imagine that a lot of shippers would value that approach and use it as a market. We would talk about how do you market yourself, how do you differentiate yourself. This is one of those ways you can use these reports of skyrocketing cargo theft and say this is how we're gonna prevent that. And guess what, during bid season, I would imagine that a lot of companies, a lot of shippers, are gonna be looking at those different kinds of criteria versus just somebody who is just gonna be bottom of the barrel cheap. So having some of these initiatives set up in advance, I think, will definitely help for a lot of brokers out there trying to find an edge. Otherwise, you're gonna end up in a situation like this situation that's happening currently over at TQL. I love this. Duneur had this great tweet that was and if you're just listening you're not watching a driver pulled up. He spray painted the side of his truck says TQL, pay me my $8,000. And then on the side it says I don't run for charity. So he parks this truck right outside of TQL headquarters and basically trying to get the rest of his money and instead of calling, instead of being ignored, he took a very creative approach to park his truck in front of it and ended up getting his money or not all of his money, but he got $5,700. Is basically what Matt Dahl had a live stream with this guy earlier and he said that they caved and paid him the driver, $5,700. So shouting in different ways kind of works.
Grace Sharkey:
1:27:06
Yeah, and I think I might have said you the other one too. It sounds like this is like a play this dude does. It's like, apparently, like he will gladly spray paint anyone on the side of his truck that owes him money and go like I don't know if this is the first time he's done it or if he's gonna keep doing it as he goes forward, but it sounds like, yeah, when I spray anything on my trailers, I don't take it down until I get paid, and all my trucks will only run local. That's the best part only run local. So it's like this dude's like we're only taking Cincinnati loads until you pay us up. We just drive around this. Honestly, gabriel, if that's you, I don't hate it.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:27:48
It's so crazy I don't hate it either. Get your money.
Grace Sharkey:
1:27:51
It's so good. It's so good Because you know that he pulled up and everyone starts saying like, oh my God, is that my?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:27:57
driver, oh shit.
Grace Sharkey:
1:27:58
Yeah, like I mean, it's like, oh my God, who is this dude? And he ended up getting. He didn't get the full amount, but he did get what he, I guess, deserved. And when we see more of this? You know, I've never experienced this. To be honest with you, I've never had a driver show up for a check. I will say I have visited a customer once to ask where a check was going, which lawyers said was not illegal, and just to like spray paint your truck. So so awesome. Like, imagine just sitting outside the stadium, like TQL stadium, like that, Like so, and then you drive. Honestly, I understand the local part, but like, even if you were to drive like nationally, like if I'm a driver and I see that in someone's truck, I'm probably thinking twice when I take a TQL.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:28:55
Very, true, the truck space, the lack of advertising on truck space, is really interesting. Well, I was tasked with this when I worked as an executive assistant, where they wanted me to find ways to monetize the sides of the trucks because it was just pretty much just free billboards driving down the highway. I mentioned that to Matthew Leffler recently and he's like ah, he's like I would kind of argue against that because advertising can have a different approach where you know if you get, if that truck gets into an accident or a car around you gets into that, it gets into an accident and they could blame your truck for distracting them. So I mean, at least like this method of spray painting the side of your truck like it works and if you, especially if you're saying but it works in a variety of ways to get paid.
Grace Sharkey:
1:29:44
Lawyers ruin everything Except for Edgar Allen poem poems. I think that's what we've learned. Matthew Leffler, like I was just trying to put a cool ad on my truck and you're telling me I once knew like that guy's a murderer. Like that is some lawyer advice ruining everything.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:30:05
All right. Well, let's switch gears a little bit to the last segment of today's show. We've already been going an hour and a half. Yeah, these shows. I guess we just got a bucket for two hours each time. I don't know how we cut it down because there's so much cool stuff to talk about. So the next one is or the final segment is a source to porch the logistics of. We each get to choose our favorite story of the month, and you have one, so I'll go ahead and let you kick this one off and present it for us.
Grace Sharkey:
1:30:33
Yeah. So this is a story about Canada's largest supply chain loss of all time, and it's tied in with our favorite target. So about seven years ago, target was announcing its first stores in Canada. However, behind the scenes, it was an absolute disaster. The goods were just coming into distribution centers faster than they expected. Of course, a ton of issues with barcodes, computer systems not matching up, shipments just piling up, and at some point, target actually had to fly some of their supply chain people in the United States up to Canada in order to try to figure out some of these long-term solutions, which didn't last long, because they aren't in Canada today. Now, from what we've heard, it sounds like their contractor at the time was not the best and wasn't that's what I'm explaining this well-versed in the logistics of Canada in particular. Now, so to launch in Canada. It was called Project Bacon, which is like, so interesting to me I don't know how to argue. I guess, oh, I guess, like, yeah, like the ham of Canadian bacon. Maybe that's it, and so it was supposed to be. Of course, they decided they wanted to open up stores coast to coast, and more often than none when companies do this in Canada, when US companies and retailers move to Canada. They open one store at a time and it slowly progressed. But Target was like no, we're Target, we're gonna just kick butt here and we're gonna open up all across. Now their distribution in the United States at the time was just a best well oil machine of all time, no issues at all. But in Canada they're using a company called 11 Points Logistics to manage three large warehouses at the time. So they're located near Quebec border, outside of Toronto and also near Calgary, so again across all of Canada, about 1.5 million square feet. And as they arrived there was just a ton of discrepancies with what was in the boxes. Computer records were really delayed and, for example, a lot of their boxes they would say 24 shirts were in there, but there'd only be 10. And so just a lot of supply chain problems went with it. It looks like one of the biggest issues they had in their warehouses at the time was like the biggest Christmas item for them was these Barbie SUVs, so you're like you know the toddler SUVs that you can take two kids in. Well, they had ordered just way too many, apparently, like the order sheet was wrong, so they had just like literally so much space in their warehouse was just covered in Barbie SUVs that weren't selling at the level that they had accidentally ordered. And at the end of it, all this ended up costing Target about $941 million before interest in taxes at the time. And other retailers like Home Depot and Walmart apparently have tried to do this too open in Canada and just don't realize or understand the local markets or just supply chain within Canada as well, which is kind of interesting because I've talked to I remember talking to like Uber Freight at one point, like when are you guys going to open up in Canada? And they're like it's a lot more difficult than you think. It is routing and, of course, pricing et cetera. So we're like slowly going to move into that. And I think this kind of showcased it I mean especially someone as big as Target who I think even today has really interesting supply chain and how they use their stores now for warehousing and how they deliver from home to see that, yeah, it's the largest supply chain loss of all time in Canada 941. I have read other reports too that said it was closer to like $1.6 billion. So yeah, just trying to expand your supply chain, don't do it all at once, don't order on accident, one of, like, the largest things that can't be broken down into pieces, including Barbie SUVs, and they haven't been back since it sounds like. So yeah, be careful of Canada. It's harder than you think. You think that'll be like a Mexico problem, you know, just like trying to expand into Mexico, but I guess it's a. Canada has always been an issue for US retailers and if you think about it, how?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:35:06
many of those. How long during the year can little kids use those SUVs? It's not exactly. There's a lot of snow on the ground. Maybe, like for your problem, all the time.
Grace Sharkey:
1:35:18
Yeah, Well it took you a little bit of a splitting To give you a little bit update too, because when I was doing this I was like, well, what other big like supply chain loss has had there been? One of the other ones I found pretty interesting was where is it to do Apple? They actually lost a billion dollars from unfulfilled orders back with their launching their power book laptops. Because they didn't. There was some other HP that was coming out at the same time and their provider just couldn't keep up with, like the chips and everything. So this stuff happens quite frequently and I just think it's interesting how these like problems. It's always like weird situations that lead to these huge problems.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:36:10
The ripple effect. They call it a supply chain for a reason.
Grace Sharkey:
1:36:13
Yeah, right, exactly. So, yeah, some fun losses. I'm gonna be covering some of them throughout the rest of the holiday season because I think they're interesting on the radio, so you can check that out too.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:36:26
Yes, I definitely co-signed that because I had no idea that that would even be a problem. I would just assume that you could just sell those things off eventually. But you're right if the more real estate you're taking up inside of a warehouse and that means less turnover, there's less things that could be coming in and making more money, it's just taking up a lot of space and unfortunate. So I guess that's a really good one, especially from the fact of just thinking of it from the overall supply chain and just trying to get a grasp on what some of these big retailers are doing, and I think a lot of other companies could learn from that as well.
Grace Sharkey:
1:37:05
Okay, Yours is interesting, so I'm excited to hear this one.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:37:09
I needed to take a sip before I started on this journey, because mine this time is the logistics of Tend Fish and canned tuna. So I have eaten. Do you eat canned tuna at all, or Tend Fish? Oh, yeah, yeah, you do.
Grace Sharkey:
1:37:28
Is that true? That's true. That's strange. I just said I have a cat, you know, so it's like tuna. There's nothing like seeing a cat when you open up a can of tuna. Yeah, tuna, like you never had a tuna for sandwich.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:37:42
I have it all the time. I did it I thought I was maybe like the strange one who did that all the time. I have literally at least three or four. It's almost like orange juice in my house, like if I run low on tuna I'm going out that day and like getting an entire new order. So I always I keep that thing strapped on me.
Grace Sharkey:
1:38:01
Or chicken too, because I make a mean bubble of chicken dip and canned chicken is like perfect for those recipes.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:38:06
Smart, yeah, really smart. So I grew up eating canned tuna my whole life, so I thought I was one of the weird ones that still like keeps it in their house and I eat it at least two or three times a month. It's just a really quick, like good protein, affordable thing that you can keep in your in the cabinet. You don't have to worry about it spoiling. So I'm a big fan of CNBC videos on YouTube. They make these great breakdowns that are sometimes as short as five minutes and sometimes as long as 30 minutes to an hour, but they really cover with a lot of the things that they talk about the logistics side of it. So I wanted to share this quick little video about that popped up on my timeline this week about canned tuna and how I guess millennials have kind of fallen out of love with it. So let me play this quick clip. Hopefully we can hear some audio from it.
Speaker 3:
1:39:04
Can tuna has been a staple in American pantries for years, and for good reason. It's cheap and loaded with protein. The process of how it gets into American homes looks something like this Thai Union and other similar entities primarily gather tuna from global fishing fleets in tuna rich zones. Fishing vessels spend days or even weeks catching fish before returning to ports. Some even prolong their time at sea using trans shipment, a process of where they offload their catch to a carrier ship resupply and head back home for more. Once caught, the tuna is prepped for rockers and nets in Thailand, so with frozen, and from there it's transported to places like Lyons, georgia. The tuna shipped from Thailand is then thought at Chicken of the Seas canning facility to about 38 degrees. It's then unwrapped from its plastic casing, cut to size for cans filled with brine, oil or water, then pressure cooked in its retort process, where about 18,000 cans are cooked at a time. Once the tuna is done cooking, it's then ready for shipping. But there are other ways to prepare.
Grace Sharkey:
1:40:03
Yeah, so that's a quick clip from as soon as that starts playing. I should smell it through the. You smell the tuna through the computer.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:40:11
Grace is holding her cat up to watch the video about tuna, in case you're listening to the podcast version of this but they talk about the logistics of it, the transportation behind it, and so I thought that that was super interesting. But what's more interesting is that obviously, catching tuna, catching any kind of fish, is susceptible to a lot of the rising costs, inflation that we see. There's rising vessel costs, fuel costs, and then there's also the trouble, specifically when it comes to tuna, of migratory patterns. So the tuna migratory patterns are changing and so, if you think about rising costs and vessels rising costs and fuel and then trying to find the damn fish, there's a lot of money being wasted on a product that is traditionally thought of as very affordable. So Thai Union, which was the company that they were just featuring, is one of the largest seafood buyers in the world, so they're the owners of Chicken on the Sea, also Red Lobster Group, so they operate on a 3% margin, which is crazy to think about. I mean that just speaks to the amount of costs that are involved, which I know your cat sounds like she's very upset by this as well. She's just very upset. But then there's another article, because, with a lot of these stories. It leads me into these rabbit holes, because what originally sort of back it up just a little bit. My TikTok for you page has just been flooded with a tend to fish talk and it ends with next week'sブレー君. In addition to Cantuna, tend Fish is also making a gigantic comeback because, basically, you can keep it for a lot of the same reasons as Cantuna you can keep it in it's shelf stable, you can keep it in your cabinets for a while and it's affordable and also very like the sustainable approach. I'll get into more of that in just a second, but recently Forbes had an article that said since the start of the pandemic, tend to seafood sales have been on the rise, especially with the abundance of TikTok recipes and tend to seafood boards. The segment has and continues to grow, with the global canned seafood market expected to reach a little $50 billion in sales by 2030, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of close to 6%, so 5.9%. Then there's also some sustainability questions, specifically around tuna in particular and just seafood as a whole, which has led to this trend of tend to fish. And this little bit courtesy of Morning Brew. So I'm going to share this little because I love their their graphics that they shared for this article.
Grace Sharkey:
1:42:56
Love this.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:42:57
And they talk about sales of canned seafood shot up by 10% in the US in 2022. The primary driver has been TikTok and while because TikTok creators are creating it very an aesthetic way. But I love this line that says while some users claim, the trend is giving great depression, yeah, that's literally what I was going to say.
Grace Sharkey:
1:43:20
It's because we're so poor that we're just can't hear. I mean, I love that aspect of it Giving great depression. It's giving poor. Your tuna fish obsession is giving poor.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:43:37
Then they go on to say the hashtag of tend to fish dinners had now has 20 million views that that hashtag, this article, was written back in January. So I went and looked last night to see how much has grown. That hashtag now has 110 million views of tend to fish. So to you're probably wondering how do you make, like, how do you make like this kind of stuff, I guess aesthetic, like? How do you make tend to fish aesthetic? Well, I got a good recap for you is this one creator who went to Spain recently and he spent. It was a challenge that he goes to every country and he tries to find, I guess, just different things to try in that country for 30 days straight. Spain is one of the top places where it comes from, where a lot of tend fish comes from, so I'm going to switch to this talk really quick.
Grace Sharkey:
1:44:34
I love the expression of tend fish.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:44:37
It's just, it sounds gross, but it sounds more like the word tend. All right, let me play this quick video of all the different ways that you can use tend fish.
Speaker 5:
1:44:50
Because I love all of them and I just didn't think it was fair. Tough list. Starting at number five, we got the baby eels with fries and fried eggs.
Grace Sharkey:
1:44:59
Oh, my God.
Speaker 5:
1:45:00
Coming up at number four is the sardines with the olive and tomato salad. Oh, I'm still dreaming about that. Number three we got the classic Spanish snack, the bean chos, which is octopus, and all of skewers. I could not do a list without the bar quimets. I mean, I know I didn't do the actual tend fish myself, but this was an experience of a lifetime. You have to go. Number one spot uni on toast, the most simplest we've ever done. But man uni in a tin. I'm still thinking about what. The 30 day challenge.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:45:36
So yeah, so that is the growth of sort of the tend fish market Because, going back to the sustainability issue, there's a couple different web sites that I found. That one is called, like, the tend fish market. They have a all cart options that you can order these different tend fish from, or 10 seafood I guess that is what I should call it. They also have subscription boxes and they said that from tend fish market they said the canneries we work with subscribe to sustainable fishing practices such as pole inline fishing, which reduces by catch and does not damage the sea bed. So they specifically go after fishermen who are using a line and a pole and not like these giant you know, just conglomerates of you know these vessels, like red lobster group and things like that. There's another company too called Wild Planet and they use the same methods. It's very focused on sustainable fishing and just trying to make sure that you are eating, if you love seafood, if you want to find little ways to become more sustainable, things like that. This was another great example of just trying to be more responsible with your consumption. I mean, obviously you know I preach that companies as a whole are responsible for sustainability options, because overwhelming majority of carbon emissions are by like 90% of carbon emissions are by like the top 10% of all companies. So but if you want to come up with better ways to make your, I guess you know just a little little sustainability tricks at a time. So I thought that that was a really just like fun deep dive. So shout out to Wild Planet, shout out to the tend fish market. I have since ordered a bunch of seafood from them, so I'm excited to give it a try. I'm a I'm a star kissed girly at heart and so I'm excited to give other areas of different seafood a try, especially like the octopus. I've even seen with a lot of the tend fish that they will just put it right in pasta and cook the pasta in the same oil that the tend fish was in, so it makes her like super quick dinners and just spruce it up a little bit with your own stuff, of course.
Grace Sharkey:
1:47:53
Tuna helper yeah, which is good, like sometimes tuna helper hits if you make it right to the tuna salad.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:48:02
Like pasta, like love it yes and so you know, being a Floridian, I love my seafood. I'm a little bit of a seafood snob, as I say this after talking about tend fish.
Grace Sharkey:
1:48:14
Yeah, I kind of like my seafood. I'm a snob about it. I get it in a can.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:48:21
Well, I would say that about fresh seafood I definitely like. When I go to Landlock States I can tell oh yeah, stuff is like you know, just not as fresh, which I'm spoiled. I know to live here, you know, right next to the best shrimp in the world. I will say that that Jacksonville Mayport Fisheries has the best shrimp in the world and I'll fight anybody on that topic. But I am looking for more ways to be sustainable with my seafood consumption. And this just the TikTok aesthetic, just made it look a little dreamy.
Grace Sharkey:
1:48:52
I'm not going to lie, I'm giving four Blake.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:48:55
I have been influenced by giving great depression. Yeah.
Grace Sharkey:
1:49:01
I'm just trying to be sustainable over here, so we're going to stick to the can stuff. No, that's really cool. Especially, yeah, I feel like I need to maybe expand my my tend fish thoughts because, yeah, I'm just tuna pretty much over here. I'm not going to be able to yeah.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:49:23
I'm going to be able to get my chicken, sometimes for a dip, but interesting. So I'll let you know how my my order goes.
Grace Sharkey:
1:49:33
Yes, little, but a little bit more expensive, where, like a wild planet, for example, is like six or $7 a tin, which I'm used to paying that for like a four pack of star. Yeah, Let me know how good it tastes, because that's about that's about the best way to get your chicken.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:49:49
Well, I think that's a. That's a really fun place to to end this, this edition of freight friends we talked to. There's a lot of, you know, drama and crazy stuff going on in the world just in general. Obviously, in freight we talked a lot about with it. You know, cargo crimes, but there are some bright spots. There are some cool things happening in the world, you know, with sustainability options, trying to avoid cargo crimes, and you know all the Barbie SUVs out there. And then, of course, we have freight waves at F3 coming up next week. So there's a lot of good stuff going on within the industry. There are bright spots out there. So hopefully we'll have another show for you after F3 and you know we'll be able to shine a light on on more of those important initiatives, including things like logistics, girly.
Grace Sharkey:
1:50:34
Amen, sister Amen.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:50:36
And I will. I'll link to all of that in the show notes, including your link tree. But, grace again, thank you for coming on the show, another jam packed episode that we will schedule this out live to all of the different, you know video platforms and podcast, of course too, to get you ready for F3. But until then, we'll see you real soon. Go Jags, I guess, go Vikings, vikings.
Grace Sharkey:
1:51:00
I guess. See where our new quarterback is. I'm a Jags fan now, baby? Yes, no, I'm not. I'm a Lions fan. Let's go, lions. We're going back. I'm finally on bandwagon.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:51:14
All good things. I'm sure the Lions will take all the band fat bandwagon fans that they will take it as well as Jagwars too. It is a very cat heavy episode today, yeah, so shout out to the cat teams and then shout out to Grace's kitty too I love it All right, we'll see you all real soon. I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show, sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everythingislegisticscom. And in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co-worker's child, a neighbor down the street or a stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website. Well, that doesn't happen at digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009, but we're also early adopters of AI, automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as $1,500, along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus, freight marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digitaldispatchio. Just check out the pricing page once you arrive and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon in Go Jags.
