Leveraging Shared Truckload for a More Efficient Shipping Strategy | Episode 30

Hi, everybody. It's Patrick Escolas with another episode of Banyan Technology’s Tire Tracks Podcast. I'm here with Chris Pickett, the COO of Flock Freight. Hey, Chris, how you doing today?

Hey, Patrick. Great.

Thank you so much for joining us. I know that Banyan has a great partner within Flock Freight. I'm going to do something that's very tough for me to do. I'm going to play stupid and dumb a little bit. I'm going to say – it's not that hard. I mean it. First off, Chris, I always like to get a little bit of introduction on who I'm talking to, and the organization. But let's start with yourself. Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you with Flock and in the freight world now?

Let's see, I guess –

Yes, it’s a loaded question, right? You don't have that all right here. Where's your elevator pitch?

I've been in transportation for 25-odd years. I probably don't look that old. But –

You've got a lot better head of hair than I do. So, you're doing all right.

So, let’s start with Flock. I've been a flock for almost three years. I joined the Flock team in early 2021. What Flock is building is the really the world's first scaled shared truckload platform. Fundamentally, what that means is we're providing truckload service, which means one truck, one driver, no terminal consolidation to shippers, but they only have to pay for the part of the truck they need. So, what we observed is on this market, the hypothesis that in the modern supply chain, you can have two ways to ship surface transportation, including intermodal. You've got LTL, you’ve got FTL. Full truckload, less-than-truckload.

If you have orders that don't require the full truck so under 40,000 pounds, you're under – you’re 20 to 22 pallets, you don't have very good options. If you're filling out the truck, use full truck, that’s great economics. Great if you do that great service all day long. Fantastic. When you don't need the whole truck, it's either you're going to pay to ship air. There's plenty of you know, half-loaded trucks out there –

You got your Lay's potato chip shipments, right?

I mean, half the trucks on the road are half-empty. Think about that half of the trucks you see are our half empty, 30% of US public capacity is wasted. There's a reason, right? Because shippers are choosing full truckload, if they only have half a truck, because that's their cheapest option. Trucker stuff, I've got a volume LTL rate that's crazy, because LTL carriers don't want shipments of that size going to the hub and spoke. Here's my truckload. It's cheaper. I know, I'm not going to use the whole truck, but what choice do I have?

So, you're going to tend to that load to a truckload carrier broker. Once they get that shipment, they're not going to try too hard to find more freight to put in the truck. There are getting a truckload rate. It's a light load, easy to move, relatively less fuel consumption, versus fully loaded. Move on to the next one. We're going to say, “Hey, don't do that. Ship with the Flock and we'll give you a rate that say 75% of your truckload rate. We'll find another shipper that's got another half a truck somewhere in route and we're going to save them 25%.” So, they're stoked. 

Now, we have, theoretically 150% of the revenue in the shipment. We can then go pay a motor carrier, 20% more what they would make for a tip one, pick one drop over the same miles because there is an extra stop and yield and attractive margin to reinvest in the business. By the way, we're also going to use 20% to 40% less carbon in terms of the emissions just by making smarter use of the capacity that already exists in the market today.

So, what Flock is looking to introduce as a third mode, shared truckload, right in the middle that says, “Okay, based on the dimensions of the shipment, what mode makes sense?” I can ship it to the hub and spoke which is going to take a while, variable transit time to get to touched. Cut along the way which means –

Different hands, different options, different points for pain, correct?

Well, I can ship at full truck and potentially pay to ship air. Or I can access that saved full truckload service, using Flock Freight, and basically in a way that's never existed before at least consistently turns the way we do it. So, what makes this unique relative to say, traditional parcelers, your consolidators is, there is no consolidation point. The freight is never touching a hub.

So, is that – and that was going to lead me to a question. Is this something that just got done ad hoc before and you're putting an official process? Or what did this look like before if someone was doing it? When you talk about a consolidation point, give me a little bit of explanation to that.

Yes. There are folks that will say, “Yes, LA to Chicago.” If someone goes out as a consolidation warehouse in LA, they'll find shippers in LA that have smaller shipments that they're shipping to Chicagoland. They’ll go around almost like a local LTL pickup or delivery. You grab those small ship and they'll come in and hang on the consolidation warehouse until they have enough volume to actually build a full truck. Send that full truck to their consolidation point or deconsolidation point in Chicago, then do final mile, local delivery.

So, you're still hitting a bunch of hands?

You're limited in terms of network but that really is just LA to Chicago. Or what we used to do, before I joined Flock, I spent 15 years building carrier logistics, non-asset-based truckload brokerage, you have a shipper that's got that half a truck. You'd say, “Okay, I'm going to quote you assuming my full truckload cost.” Worst case, it's a break even. Once you give me that load, I'm going to stand up and say, “Hey, someone else got to have a truck moving from Southern Cal up to High 5 to Portland.”

I was going to say, at a certain point where you actually in a bullpen standing up, yell that out? 

Nine times out of 10, no, or not. You go get that freight, and you end up just moving it and break even.

You do what you can.

We're trying to build a more consistent, reliable way for shippers to rely on that capacity, and consider shared truckload and independent mode option right there in between LTL and FTL, not just for spot, but also for contract. So, the neat idea, I'm going to tell you why some people haven't done this before. It’s not even like taking LTLs and creating multi-stop truckloads. We don't claim to invented that. God knows we didn't.

We'll put the disclaimer at the bottom. Don't worry.

What we have invented is the execution. To make this work, in terms of how do we do that, at each shipment, we're making effectively three informed guesses in terms of how we price that. So, I'll take an account at the point of sale. For that, LA to Portland shipment, we're going to guess, can we find a truck? Sure. We can find a truck.

We're going to make that assumption. Correct.

Well, what are we going to pay for the full truck, which every broker carrier is doing the same thing. Or what are you likely to spend on a full truckload over this –

You got a pretty idea of where you're heading.

Then we have to guess how much of that truck does this shipment need? What about the dimensions? And what's the likelihood, what's the probability of that shipment finding a companion shipment or more precisely, a companionship is showing up in the right space and time, to be able to merge with this shipment, to create a fully utilized shared truckload.

So, that one, that becomes the fun one. How do you wrangle number three there?

So, that’s where the tech comes in. You got to have great tech. We've got Panda Tech for not only the pooling algorithms, which you would expect, we would need. How do you go through all the different permutations? It's all based on permutation math. Today, the freight bills we have on our platform today, there's 120 trillion, 120 trillion different combinations by which that freight could move and deliver it. The vast majority of which are infeasible.

I was going to say, okay, that makes sense.

– based on the laws of physics and hours of service and pick up an appointment window.

And Jimmy and his bike is not picking up this pallet, right?

Because we also load these last in, first out. Because freight never gets reworked on someone else's dock. So, we need to make sure the last shipment on the tail is the first one that gets delivered. Within the 120 trillion potential combinations and we filtered very quickly to the ones that are feasible, based on pickup delivery requirements, and commodity exclusions. Industrial products probably can't ride with food and beverage, food grade.

Generally, no. That would be a bad idea. There would be less permutation and more straight mutation at that point.

Exactly. That kind of goes through kind of the process and the system will come okay. “Of this, here's the optimal combination.” We're solving our entire network in real-time. We're doing it every 60 seconds, right? Because we may get a new ship that says, “Hey, we thought this was the best aggregate solution. But hey, this four-pallet shipment just showed up.”

So, you’re throwing new data in as accounts.

Now, we have better shipment. So, once those shipments, go through that process and get paired into multi-stop truckloads. Again, the vast majority of our pools have two to three freight bills. These aren't six picks, six drops, seven pick, seven drops, where if you're the load in the nose, and there's a 95% chance you're going to deliver late because all stuff that happens, or that could happen with each incremental stop.

I can imagine that, “Where's my stuff?” “Well, I'm sorry, you're number 11 in line. It’s in there. So, we’ll see you in a few days.” Yes, exactly.

Once that gets set up, there's also tons of methods of, okay, how long do we hold these loads before we release them? So, we’re trying to fill the trucks. All that 30% wasted capacity, if we don't come up with an optimal fully utilized share truckload internally, we're more than happy to top somebody else off. That carrier that got that half truckload tethered from broker B, getting paid full truckload money, really loaded half full, come to Flock and let us top you off, give another half load, doesn't compromise your service on the load in your nose. All of a sudden, you've got a massive opportunity to increase the revenue yield of that trailer. You could be making 150% of the truckload rate by better utilizing the capacity app.

So, you're putting yourself in a position really where you can take the shipper’s peanut butter and the carrier and the truckload driver’s chocolate and put them together and it's really kind of bringing to pieces that it'll work out better for both together, right? So, I would imagine that the – so are you working with truckload carriers that are independent? Is there assets you have? What does that look like? 

It’s a gambit. Why would a shipper be interested in a platform like this? It's well, “Hey, it's faster, less damage, better to environment than traditional LTL.” So, it's a better service. It's more reliable transit times. Emerging your CPG brand delivering into an OTIF penalty way. It's a Walmart, Costco. There's a huge penalty for missing the window. This window is going to be tough with traditional LTL.

Who doesn't love the Walmart compliance book?

You will go to Flock just to get the peace of mind to minimize your OTIF penalties and they'll pay more. Why you share truckload versus underutilized truck? That's a little more obvious. You pay less. Service is comparable. Why would a carrier go to Flock to get loaded? One, you can make more money and we can prove you can make more money for a Flock multistep shared truckload. Or we already believe we have the largest concentration of partial shipments to get topped off.

So, from a carrier’s perspective, it’s two very unique options to maximize the revenue yield of their fleet, in a way that hasn't existed in the marketplace before. Multi-stop truckloads have existed. That’s part of the challenge. We’ve got to change behavior and kind of win the hearts the minds of the asset-based care that had bad experience with multi-stops in the past and we’re here to tell you that multi-stops don't need to suck anymore.

We put a lot of investment engineering to building the fidelity and the reliability of a multi-stop route such that when a carrier signs up for, there's two pick, two drop, that's going to take three days and pay $6,000. You can be high – it's going to take three days and you're going to get paid $6,000, versus stop to your unplanned layover, it ends up being a five-day run, and you don't get compensated for it.

I think you put the words be like, the podcast that episode is going to be multi stops don't have to suck.

Not anymore. Exactly.

I like that. I like that.

So, you get small carriers. It's been such carriers. It's large carriers. Some of the larger nationals. What network problem are they trying to solve? Do they have consistent underutilized truckloads to top off? Hey, fantastic. They just want to get paid more per mile than they can with your more traditional undifferentiated truckload products that are out there in the market. “Hey, come to Flock.” These are the conversations we're having, you’re really on the supply side.

You had mentioned it a few times. You're saying that because of this model, it's closer to carbon neutrality? I think you'd mentioned actually being carbon neutral. How does that work? I know that there's a difference between what my mind says because we've got trucks spitting out fossil fuels. How do we make that a carbon-neutral transaction?

Yes. To be clear, the most of the capacity we're using are still operating on your internal combustion engines. They are still diesel-powered trucks and I don't think that's going to change the marketplace for a while. Alt fuels are coming along and I can't wait. I'm cheering for him. But there is going to be a transition time for that. The first thesis is, hey, just by making better use, increasing the load factor, talked about half the trucks are half empty. The load factors for traditional LTL are even worse.

That makes sense.

Do the math. If you're going to use shared truckload as opposed to LTL, your methodology, which has been your [inaudible 0:13:27] and by number bodies, such as that, let’s say 20% carbon savings. Just by increasing the load factor.

Because you don't have empty? You're already going there. You might as well put something else on the truck.

Use shared truckload versus traditional FTL, that's got a load factor of 70%, you know, on average, “Hey, it's 40% more efficient, because we're effectively taking empty capacity off the road.” So, 20%, more carbon-friendly from a mode transition standpoint. We also have progress for certain shippers that you will buy offsets, subsidize offsets for the rest. Part of that is definitely offset conversation, which isn't really – the carbon neutral comes from taking the offsets and reinvesting in environmentally friendly investment projects, for sure. So, it's 40% offset 60% from the base efficiency of leveraging shared truckload versus other options.

So, I think in 2023 alone, just by shipping FD, our shippers avoided you over 46,000 metric tons of carbon. We’ll also offset another 15,000 metric tons for the offset program. So, it’s like taking your 10,000-passenger vehicles off the road for a year.

Oh, I think that puts an image I can work with right there, without the numbers. Okay. I like that. So, I guess is one of your main concerns getting STL to be a real thing and compete with the acronym for St. Louis? What does that look like?

I mean, shared truck is definitely a term that Flock did kind of invented here. How do we think about this? It's sharing. You're buying a share of a truck. Effectively a shared product where you are ride-sharing. That’s up to the shippers.

Yes. I'm thinking I'm thinking very much of the packages jumping on their Uber and getting out to wherever they need to go to.

Think about, we've got LTL, less-than-truckload. We’ve got FTL, on the other end, where you can put a vernacular that folks will kind of get. Here's STL. That's just another standard mode option. Again, what makes it different than LTL. You're bypassing the hub and spoke, but we still need dimensions. But avoid reclasses, reweighs, NFC codes, all the archaic things that go along with LTL.

No reweighs and reclasses. That might be a selling point in of itself. I wonder how bold you guys have that because that has been – I know, it's always been a thing. But more and more, especially this year. I have heard reclass and reweighed being painful and excessive.

It's tough. It's not like it's an individual LTL carrier’s fault. This is definitely not a passenger on individual care. It's just a function of that strap and that model where if you're running an asset-based, CapEx-heavy terminal consolidation network, this stuff really matters and getting accurate dimensions from a shipper is tough and we're dealing with that.

It's different than LTL because of this, and different than truckload because of this, but what it makes it different with truckloads we need dimensions to quote off of, because we didn't know how much of the truck shipment needs. So, I think, trying to drive that adoption on the shipper. So, to really look at this as a truly differentiated class of service, that is a different way that freight is moving. And therefore, as you should look at STL, for lack of a better term, again, as a standalone mode option, and again today Flock is probably the only provider that executes in this way, but that surely will always be the case and that's okay.

It also means, we should also run this idea of a new mode right there between LTL and FTL. We're going to get to the point which makes us so excited about the partnership we have with Banyan, around allowing shippers to at least get that shared truckload rate at the point of planning. Here's my stuff. It's eight pallets. It's 15,000 pounds. I'm going to go with Banyan. Here's my LTL route. All the carriers I have LTL rates on, here's my option –

I can have my LTL. I can have my shared truckload. I can have truckload right next to each other, so as I'm looking at the data I can go, “Okay. Price on this might be better. Transit time on this might be better. But in between might be Goldilocks right here.” I think that's where you’re proposing that many times the Flock Freight shared truckload model could be that Goldilocks for a lot of shippers.

Precisely. We don't profess that every load should move share truckload. Again like I said, generally speaking – 

Are you sure? This is the time to do it.

Not yet. But we’ll get there.

All loads are shared truckload. That's right.

All loads should go through the LTL, hub and spoke. Whether it’s short haul, one or two pallet shipments. The LTL community is fantastic and there a lot of fantastic operators that operate in that space. LTL [inaudible 0:17:55] by any means. But there's a bunch of freight that especially over dimensional, that will be better served by moving through it.

That ugly freight, right? All the ugly freight. Everything that those LTL guys were trying to price off platform anything over 12 linear feet, your non-palletized, prone to damage. That's the gold for us. We hope that 10 to 40-foot middle space of, call it 5 to 20 pallets, under 36 thousand pounds, is precisely what Flock was purposely built for.

I think that prone to damage, you bring that up. I know you had mentioned it earlier. But now that I'm thinking of it, I can see where there'd be a nice upside there for that, like you said, lack of terminal – lack of touch. It gets put in, it gets moved, and it gets put out. It's not, people aren't managing it or manipulating once it's in the truck. So, I can see a lot of advantage from that, especially with again, like the reweighs, a lot of claims, a lot of claims left and right in this new year as well. I guess it's not, we're almost at the end of the quarter, so I can't –

I don’t think someone else hasn't done this before. The idea of taking small shipment and creating multi-stops, it's we not invented it. But I think, you need three things. The tech has to be there. And we've got fantastic not just to drive our pooling algorithms and grind through the 120 trillion potential permutations, but also the probability-based pricing that's in real-time, we're making those three bets, to get a really weighted price commitment to a shipper. Hey, there's X percent chance that we're going to have to pull this, therefore it's 30% cheaper than your truckload rate. Once the customer has that rate, we're on the hook. Whether we get whole or not, we’re going to deliver.

So, it kind of runs on this idea of your portfolio math to some degree where we're going to have a probability-weighted bet that says, “Okay, experts can't change when I pull it. If we do, it's going to cost this much to move. If we can't, it's going to cost this much. Maybe we’re the dummies, paying a full truck rate to move your four pallets.”

You guys are doing you guys are doing stock market work with truckload is kind of what it sounds like to me when I hear it. So, the tech has got to be there. You got to have – this a super talented group of operating professionals, because we were acting as a service provider, right? 

Are you still stepping up and yelling at each other to, who’s got room?

A little bit of that. For sure. Some of that hasn't gone away. But we still need a group of really talented operators that one can execute those shipments, manage the appointments, deal with challenges the transit, build out our carrier network. Hey, once we have these multi stops, we still have to go out and then we use tech here too, to match that freight to carriers that want it, based on a million different variables, then also manage those carrier relationships, develop those folks, keep them in network, help them maximize the revenue of those fleets. All that's going to work really well.

But the most important thing is, we need scale and density. You need enough of the right-sized Tetris pieces in the right places at the right time to allow those Tetris pieces to come together, to create your high levels, high service, multi-stop pools that make unit economics work. So, to get that level of network density and scale, that's what requires a lot of commitment, and a decent amount of capital to build that, because early on, you're not going to be pulling out of freight. Got to give it to shipper instead to do something different and you're not pricing freight to lose. But you're pooling probabilities are much lower. But as the market as you start to kind of buildup that network, and the market starts to evolve, now all of a sudden, you're pooling probabilities start to go up. When you're pooling probabilities go up, your cost to your shipper could go down, your rates getting more attractive, relative to the other options. Your rates get more attractive, share truckloads the right answer for more and more shipments. We get more share truck loads. They combine in more creative ways to create more attractive multi-stop truck loads that then get the attention of more carriers that come on platform, where, “Hey, I've got an empty truck. Where can I get paid the most? I'll go to Flock first. If I can't find a multi-stop, shared truckload, then maybe I'll move one of their full truck loads before I go somewhere else.”

Or, “Hey, I just got paid full, not full. I've got seven pallet positions available. Let's go see what Flock has based on the route I expect to run, to try to get them more revenue on trailer.” That’s the self-reinforcing. Feedback loop to build these market.

That makes sense. The more shippers you get engaged, the more leverage you have within the carrier pool as well to get buy-in. So, within that, where are you in that stage? Are you in a good Yin and Yang? Is it one where – two parts, where are you in that stage? And while I'm thinking about it, is the first shipper that gets a quote from you and one of your shared truckload is going to get a slightly higher one, that may be someone that's second on that? Because, hey, we've held on to this for a certain amount of time and we're still trying to fill it and we'll take whatever we can just to get it out. What does that aspect look like? Or is there some live price dynamics?

I mean, the models are constantly checking in the current network. Those probabilities are constantly shifting. Time of day, day of week, lane in question, seasonality. What else is in network? The probabilities are all being calculated in real-time.

So, it really is like a ticker going across, thinking about it every second.

But it's been telling me. It’s a tough business to grow and scale. You're doing different things. You're having to change behavior on the shipper side.

But yes, you're doing something new.

Behavior on the carrier side, in a radically shifting freight market. We're in the, what I think is the ninth inning of the most painful, deflationary correction, at least in the truckload market, which has been, creates his own challenges. And while navigating a very interesting, overall economy, but also a very interesting late-stage venture tech. New environment where your priority has suddenly shift. Capital has to be allocated in different ways. It's been a tough road. But one thing that gives us absolute conviction is just the operating numbers we see in front of us where in the bottom of the most painful, your freight correction history, the pooling probabilities are rising. There’s people that put together at higher levels of your success. The margins are evolving in a way that is conducive to kind of future growth.

A lot of things with the business are looking really, really strong. Now, we're in the position where you just need to find the most efficient way to scale, to get more surface exposure to the demand side of the marketplace. Getting them more routing guides. Get to the point where more shippers are enabled, from a tech standpoint, to look at shared truckload as an option every time they're planning a shipment.

How does someone do something like that? Is that something where they got to get crisp picking on the phone? Or does your website have a place where they can type in the information on what they're looking to move? If that's where your next step is to get to, how does someone come and engage with it? They hear this, they go to a website?

Yes. So, they can come on the website. We definitely have a self-service channel. Right. Again, the early stages of Flock, in building the business, there was a lot of smaller SMBs, mid-sized companies. Any way to save money, they're all for it. They'll come to the website, they'll self-service. A lot of smaller carriers. I'll do a little bit maybe extra work, if I had to do that second stop, if I get paid more. So, let's do that. As the business has scaled and evolved, we're going upmarket so to speak on both sides, where now more and more of our businesses with middle market enterprise shippers, which have more sophisticated operations.

I would say you're not complaining about that, I'm sure. No. I mean, they're fantastic. There's a lot of pool freight, a lot of freight that's would be better served by moving shared truckload. A lot of pay-to-ship air in that segment. But they've got very established processes. They've got sometimes monolithic –

I would say, hard to fight, hard to press the change management thing.

Until they figure out from integration standpoint, how can they access shared truckload rates, in their current workflow. Same thing on the carrier side. Now, we're moving up market work with larger and larger fleets. What's the most efficient way for us to surface multi-stop pool matches, or top-off options for these larger fleets, which is probably the phase of shared truckload, and a lot technical integration opportunities.

So, we've got you super talented folks or enterprise sales teams on our carrier-facing teams that are engaged conversationally, it just takes time. You have to find kind of the right inspired carrier and shipper partners that hear that story and say like, “Here's a new way to save money. Here's a new way to mitigate carbon. Here's a new way for me to kind of work towards my ESG or carbon neutrality goals. Here's a way to cut OTIF penalties. If I could just do a little bit of work here to kind of clear the way. Maybe it's an IT project, fewer and farther between as we get more integrations in place with TMS platforms. But that is kind of the – that’s where are those conversations. So, sometimes it may take a little bit of time to get LinkedIn from a contract standpoint. Everything we talked about our three or four bets in a spot pricing scenario, we'll make those same bets with a one-year freight agreement, with a one-year –

Okay.

So, we’re working through that process with shippers that have, again, target freight. What shipper loves is, it's a shipper that has a lot of freight in that 10 to 40-foot –

That in between.

Right. And depending on how much opportunity is there, how big that dollar sign, tends to be the level of effort, naturally, that a shipper is going to put into that. What we are seeing, as the market starts to bottom out that truckload market, the last 18 months, the cost to ship air has been pretty low, relative to what it was. The next 18 months is going to be quite the opposite. If the cost of shipping air gets that much greater, you were seeing a lot of tracks with shippers that, “Hey, we think there's a great opportunity here. Our truckload rates are super cheap for now, but I can see where some of it still make sense” –

That pendulum shift.

– as it gets, we want to make sure we're in the best position to be to leverage this mode opportunity in different ways as the freight markets and the economy is rebound.

I mean, I know you mentioned the partnership with Banyan, as well as getting into merchant TMS, everything as far as having another mode sounds like something that on the Banyan side we're excited because we want to show as many things as you can. Why the partnership with Banyan? What excites you about that? Where do you see the upside from that? Not to sound too much like a Banyan advertisement here. But they do pay my salary.

Yes. Banyan’s been a great partner. It's where do we see shippers aggregating that have freight that we believe would benefit from shared truckload? It looks like this, that 5 to 20 pallets. I don’t know if there's 36,000 pounds. Today, at Flock Freight, how do we bound this complexity? We bounded by focus. Right now, we service domestic lower 48 US, drive then only, as there are plenty of wasted space and reefer trailers sure. This problem exist in flatbed no doubt. But we're going to start with drive-in and start – start at one place. We’ll figure out everything else as you go.

Things dropping trailers can be challenging. Hazmat team service kind of specialized loads. We don't do a ton of that. So, if freight live that looks like this, that will be great –

That you can put together.

I think a lot of those shippers in the Banyan platform and you'll wear the platforms that have enough kind of inherent flexibility, that one, see the opportunity of shared truckload and providing a differentiated service for their shippers, then there's huge advantage of Banyan offering shared truckload as a standalone mode option, whether Flock is the carrier or not, as we kind of move into this brave new world of just more options. I think having engaged, motivated, forward-thinking, innovative partners that have a flexible enough platform where this is even viable, that I've kind of leaned in. I kind of made this the perfect combination of great mutual customers, great tech stack, and a flexible platform that Flock can kind of plug into, and I think a common worldview where we just believe that more options typically work better for shippers. And if shared truckload isn't the right option for that shipment, hey, so be it.

You’ve seen it. You know exactly where it is. And I think the fact that you guys have the rating comes through in an API is amazing, because A, historically, if you go in truckload, you maybe have one to three options for API. Whereas LTL you have a plethora. So, the more automation within just having that show up next to it, makes it that much easier, and it makes it easier to manage that change or the hesitancy to change it. They go, “Oh, well, that's cheaper and the same time. Why wouldn't I go and do that when it's right next to it?”

So, I love that. I love being able to talk to my clients about it and put it in front of them. I know you talked a little bit about like, where that future is, but if you've got, right now where Flock is, and you've got your team and you've come a good amount of way here into what sounds like a pretty sweet spot and really trying to get a little, as you’re at the enterprise level. Where's the next milestone for you? What does that look like for Flock Freight? What is the future look like within the shared truckload industry?

I think we've got plenty of runway in front of us. Yes, with that small confined, couple of $300 or $400 million of drive-in, lower 48. We're plenty of runway there. I think the next steps beyond that is going into adjacent equipment groups like refrigerated. Going into flatbed. The pooling algorithms aren't different. The capacity assured and the freight is – depending on kind of how tricky you get with different temperature zones, reefer campers in its own challenges.

I was going to say, you all need a new computer, just for that part.

Cross border, Mexico and Canada.

That's huge.

Again, it’s not that different. We think there's great opportunity with domestic intermodal from – the train is not going to stop along the way necessarily. But in terms of creating –

You just go up. You just go up fast enough along and just throw it in. I can see right now. It's the next Fast and Furious movie. Fast and Furious 14 Shared Truckload Intermodal. I got it.

But you could certainly put two freight bills on a dredge container, on an intermodal box, and first in, first out, railhead, pick it up with a terminal railhead, and then drop out in reverse order. That is absolutely feasible. Ocean too. Can you build a kind of a less-than-container load network without having to stop through consolidation points? Same thing. Just creating multiple –

I was going to say, you get that part straightened out. I know that's where so much pain is that consolidation point from the ocean. 

Then, on the supply side, we talked about kind of Flock pools, and we're just now getting into more top-offs. But I think our long-term vision is your mode is somewhat obsolete. Here's my stuff. Here's a shipment. And these are the dimensions. These are the requirements.

Get it to where it needs to go.

All different ways I could move it. Let me choose. I've got a share truckload option or kind of whatever you want to call them. So, I think eventually, we're kind of building a new mode, but long-term, we think the idea of mode –

Defining mode isn't as important as just what you need to move and when you need it to get there.

Right. So, we're trying to build for speed. This idea that we talked about all the – if you've got a loader that doesn't require full truck, you've got a bunch of bad options, pay to ship air, or ship a three LTL hub and spoke. What a lot of shippers will do is they'll just hold the order. So, it came off the line, can't flip a truck. I really want you a truckload you do economics for transportation. I want to put it back in inventory. I’m going to wait until another half truck comes off for that same shipper. Now, I can fill up that truck. Okay, you do that. Now, you're eating up inventory carrying costs, which in a high interest rate environment, ain't cheap, and you're extending order lead times.

So, what if there was a way, is that order came off the line, can supply chain just making release? Can you have high confidence that the portion of the truck that you need is going to bump that dock, when that order comes off in a line it's ready, just ship the order. So, in this world that maybe operates like that, said, “Hey, we've got real-time visibility.” Where all the empty capacity is, it's not just enough to have a driver's cell phone ping or even the ELD. Sure, it'd be useful to understand where the power unit is, but we're going to know not just how much space is in the truck, but more so, how much space is not on the truck. What's the available capacity? So, if the supporters are come off right off the line, I've got four pallets going from Memphis to Albuquerque. In real-time surface, those four pallets to a national carrier that's showing for pallet positions available, where, “Hey, I've got four pallets two exits down. You want to stop and pick this up, drop off, make an extra thousand bucks, not interrupting your delivery times on your trailer.

Just money on top.

They make and release, it’s like, we just came through at St. Patrick's Day in Chicago, painted the river green, and you're dropping duckies in the Chicago River. We got the Chicago River flowing, omnipresent visibility of where all the capacity is way as the US, eventually, the global supply chain. Again, to be able to leverage that visibility to drop those pallets into the river, the capacity river, again make better use of the capacity already exists in this world where now it's kind of dynamic, top-offs and add-ons.

Within our own Flock, that we dropped off that last in, first off, we have time to actually pick up another four pallets, and top them off again, and still have time to make service on the ship into the nose. There's all kinds of –

The shipment never ends. It just keeps piling on.

Absolutely. You're always partially or fully full as you kind of navigate your way through the Flock network depending on eventually where that driver wants to terminate to, you'll get home for the weekend or –

He's like, “Please stop. Stop loading my truck. I'm home now.” That's awesome. I think that I'm excited and I can start to imagine where some of the consolidation and some of the logic goes in of making that choice versus where the choices are now. I really like, you're trying to get rid of modes because at a certain point, it's just dropping in the river and it needs to get to where it needs to get. It doesn't really matter what you wanted to find that as, just want to have the appropriate service options that makes sense.

I get to talk to all 12 and a half people that listen and watch this. So, I'd like to – I always like to offer up to my guests and Chris it's been very informative and exciting talking to you about what Flock Freight and shared truckload do and is doing. But here's my opportunity. What's your message to anyone listening whether they're a potential share truckload user, whether it's the logistics industry as a whole, or like I said, all 12 and a half people that might just really like my haircut.

Sure. Yes, man. I think, if there's any interest at all based on what we've covered. I mean, obviously, you go to flockfreight.com and there's a bunch of stuff there. You can reach out to me directly, chris@flockfreight.com.

We’ll put his personal cellphone with it. Don’t worry.

Call me at any time. [inaudible 0:36:39] what FLOCK is enabling, right? So, if you're a shipper, it's we're enabling speed. So, you rather than let the order sit, ship it. If you can kind of offer the higher level of velocity, I think this problem is only going to get more severe. These to 10 to 40-foot shipments, I think you're going to see more of there. I think there are secular tailwinds where I think order shipment sizes are getting smaller not bigger. But it’s comprised of demand is getting harder to predict, you have more demand finding its way to closure the endpoint of consumption, or support the next-day delivery.

Same day, man. Same day. 

Don’t want to hold inventory. There's a higher penalty for sitting inventory idle for any period of time, not selling or you made too much. So, if you can basically delay that shipping decision until the you can postpone, postpone, postpone, knowing you have you know flexible elastic shipping capacity without compromising on transportation unit economics. That's what we what we're kind of building for.

So, if you have a high-velocity supply chain, if being your reactive, you is important, minimizing inventory levels or kind of right-sizing inventory levels on folks who aren't really stacking up at pre-COVID levels, because heck, why should you?

Exactly.

Flock can help with that. I think it's more give a freight for either you believe could benefit from faster transit, more reliable transit, less damage, don't pay to ship air. You can go to the website or contact me and talk, pretty geeked out on this stuff. If you're on the carrier side and you're in the business of wanting to maximize the revenue yield of your fleet, here's another way to do it. Is it right every single shipment? Maybe not. But here's an alternate solution to consider given, again, your mission to maximum –

Or to say, as a carrier, but who, just to have you in the network for when it makes sense to get some more loads on the lane you’re already doing. 

[inaudible 0:38:30], “Hey, let’s just get set up, put [inaudible 0:38:33] would make sense, but get set up so you got option. As this market shifts, which it’s going to, the penalty cost of shipping air only gets more severe. Here’s another club in the bag.

I like that. Chris, thank you so much. You heard it from Chris Pickett, the COO of Flock Freight. Saying, if you're a carrier, Flock it, give it a call, make some more money. And if you're a shipper, don't wait, ship it. Just get it out there. It's going to cost you anyways, look into shared truckload.

Chris, thank you so much for the time today, the information, and just overall your attitude. I love the energy, and man, you got me thinking about it. So, for everybody out there listening and watching. Thank you very much for watching and tune in to another episode of Banyan Technology’s Tire Tracks Podcast. I'm Patrick Escolas. I won't grow anywhere anytime soon, but you should definitely check out shared truckload and Flock Freight. If you're looking at a TMS, check out Banyan. There's a little bit for you there. Stay tuned and thanks again, Chris. Really appreciate having me you on today.

Thanks for having me. Thanks to Banyan.

All right. Thanks. Bye.