FreightX is so back

Blythe Brumleve

Aug 12, 2023

Episode Transcript

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Fascinated by the social and media giants of today, Grace Sharkey and Blythe Brumleve are shining a light on the freight communities growing on X (read: Twitter) and Discord. Plus Dave Portnoy buying Barstool back for $1, war-time CEOs, best hustles in freight, cargo crime, and our fav ‘logistics of’ stories for the month of August.

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See full episode transcriptTranscript is autogenerated by AI

Blythe Brumleve: 0:05

Welcome into another episode of Everything Is Logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI Logistics. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve, and we got Grace Sharkey back with another episode of Freight Friends. We record these once a month. I go on her show on Sirius and then she comes on here. We try to make these shows last. We try to be timely with them, but they have been pushing the two hour mark for a little while in the past couple of episodes. We are going to try to make it to an hour and a half because we both got calls as soon as this show is over. So let me go ahead and talk about the roadmap for today's show, hopefully. Yeah, mics all good, we're good to go, all right. So, roadmap for today.

Blythe Brumleve: 0:45

We're going to talk a little bit about Freight X and the we Are so Back movement. We're going to talk a little bit about Dave Portnoy, ceo of Barstool, founder returns as the owner of Barstool, full owner. Then we're going to tie that into a little bit of Andrew Silver. He is the former CEO of MoLo and I think there's some interesting comparisons with those two stories. And then next we're going to talk about our favorite hustles in freight, one legitimate and one criminal organization. So that cargo crime. I love watching and digesting different cargo crime stories. I find it fascinating, so I think that'll be super fun to dive into.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:25

Then we're going to talk a little bit about Grace's retail shipping story on the death of ultra-fast shipping. Is it 15 minutes? Is it a day, is it two-day shipping? What do we have to look forward to, I guess, or to remove from our feature requests in that regard? And then we're going to end, of course, with our favorite logistics of story to round out the show. So it's a very heavy social media show that we got for today, freight media themed, so let's just go ahead and dive in. First topic, freightx is so back.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:02

We are so back.

Grace Sharkey: 2:04

We're back Maybe not fully the freight market, but Freight Twitter is back. Yeah, well, it's not Twitter anymore, so it's FreightX is like we like to call it. Now We've been having a lot of fun. There's a big group of us on Discord. We've been rounding, bringing the troops in, getting everyone back on X. I guess we're calling it. I love it.

Grace Sharkey: 2:33

First off, I will say I probably have said this in the past episodes of this show Twitter has never been my favorite, just because I always felt it could be honestly, a tad cruel. There's a lot of haters a little bit on Twitter. I think people use it a lot to just kind of spew hate a little bit more here to others. So I'd say that's kind of why I've stayed away from it. But I will say I'm on the wave now. I've been having a lot of fun. We're really using it better at Sirius as well. That was a big part of it is. I?

Grace Sharkey: 3:13

One of our producers over at Sirius was telling us that the content that we were doing that was they were retweeting and stuff like that was actually getting really good feedback. Like they're the Road Dog Trucking. Twitter was growing pretty quickly. So it's like okay, maybe there's a trick to this, right, and it's much like other platforms. Right, you just got to make content post, post, post interact as much as possible, and I've started to meet a lot of great people on there.

Grace Sharkey: 3:45

So, yeah, we are part of this huge Please Advises group, right, and we're bringing Twitter back and we're asking the tough questions and we're pushing in each other to maybe look deeper into the aspects of freight, whether it's technology or just businesses, and everyone's getting involved. And I love seeing right, like our CEO, founder Craig Fuller, on there like really engaging the people and getting everyone amped. And it's yeah, it's back, baby, we're back and we're rolling and hopefully everyone out there can join the fun a little bit more too, and because I full disclosure we were supposed to record last Thursday but I left which Disney instead and scheduled for today.

Blythe Brumleve: 4:41

And I check in on Twitter and I'm seeing every, every freight related social media account that I follow on Twitter is tweeting. We are so back. I'm like what the hell is going on? I literally was gone. I did a check Twitter for like 48 hours and all of a sudden there's like a movement going on. So explain to us a little bit. Is this story from Ben Accurate or what's the, I guess, the behind the scenes? Where did this, this sort of movement meme, come from?

Grace Sharkey: 5:08

So it is really funny because this kind of shows you just the power of a group, right To really think about it. Probably actually, yeah, when you were at Disney World last Thursday. So every Thursday we have a huge Discord called Please Advise, where a large group of freight people and it's not, it's honestly less leadership and more of like entry level employees, people building technology, individual business owners, etc. All come together and we just talk about different topics. And so every Thursday we have our freight therapy group where we just kind of vent about things and and everything that Ben said in there is right, like we're kind of venting about like where the industry is going, what we're working on, how not only like maybe there's not that volume that's back, but just different things that everyone is working on is like really impressive. And it's when you it's kind of like when you go to a conference, right, and you you're in these discussions and you leave, like you feel powerful, you feel like, okay, it's not the negative rhetoric about the industry that's winning, right, it's not the brokers versus carriers, like that's all clickbait to me, like there's a big group of us that are from every bit of the industry, that are that want to do better, that want autonomous vehicles that are considering. I mean, you even read ask that. And one of our group sessions last week, like when someone owns a truck stop, he's like what are you doing to diversify, to be ready for electric vehicles? And and you know he had an incredible great answer for that and it's and it's.

Grace Sharkey: 6:52

You know, sometimes you just get into, you hear these narratives that some of this stuff is like not good or not and it's just a. It's a group of people who not only are venting during freight therapy but speaking their truths and even maybe questioning some tech or accepting others. And and so a lot of times when we do these groups to kind of like to leave it with like a, like a mission or like a goal or like something that will do, whether it's like we, we all in this situation, tweet something or we, you know, maybe start a different initiative or or look into something. We have Billy who, who's under the freight band at Handel, who likes to write kind of like onion articles, so like sometimes we're like Billy, this is what you got to write about this week and stuff like that. So I love that his name is.

Blythe Brumleve: 7:40

Billy, yeah, yeah, no, I've followed this account. I didn't know. I almost reached out to them thinking that they would want to be to do an interview and I was like, well, they're an anonymous account, so probably not to know that like you should be behind it. And Billy, like that is just such a perfect freight it matches up great throughout the sessions.

Grace Sharkey: 8:00

We're like Billy write this down, so it's I think you just wrote one that was like carriers arguing against the other carriers that are arguing against each other, and so it's like he just really writes really good kind of satire stuff, and so at the end of it, you know, there's this kind of like bro saying that's starting to come out, that's like we're, we're back, you know, and so we're all. We're like okay, let's all just like we're trying to get it trending at the time. We're like let's all, everyone just go to your accounts like read his letters, like everyone go to your accounts and tweet, we are so back, and then everyone go retweet everyone else's we are. And so the next morning it just like caught on and I mean even like Adam Newman's chief of staff account like jumps in and like is part of it too, so like he's got like 22,000 followers or something like. So there's like a lot of really interesting accounts.

Grace Sharkey: 8:53

I will say, just last night Craig joined the discord, so I think he's going to show up to our. We have tech bro Tuesdays where we kind of talk about technology and there's actually yeah, there's regular show because, for folks who don't know what discord is, it's kind of like a Reddit.

Blythe Brumleve: 9:11

It's kind of like a forum where you can join specific groups, you can join specific specific communities, and then you are Slack channel is probably maybe a better way to describe this is. It's a dedicated Slack channel for all of your friends to join, and so you guys also have regular content, so you all it's not just something that you can engage with throughout the day. There are several discussions. Are they video based discussions? Are they audio based discussions? What does that look like happening live on a tech bro Tuesday or what is it? The Thursday show as well, where you also like share your grievances or you share your frustrations or something.

Grace Sharkey: 9:50

So the Tuesday show we do inside discord and it's audio but, like some of the individuals will showcase some of the tech they're just personally building for the work that they do at at, whether it's a brokerage or a carrier, etc. It's really cool because even last, like this past week, there's a company I never heard of that someone had introduced me to and I got to talk to them this week and it was. It was funny because I told them like how I found out about them and it's you know, a lot of times in the spot that I am in I hear about a lot of the high level technology. You know big investors, but it's like in this space there's a lot of even tech entrepreneurs themselves who are working on things. Gatego is a company I like just met through them and so they'll go through and they'll like kind of showcase things that they're building. And I don't want to kind of give up any of these people's identities, but they there's. I mean there's people who work at large brokerages who will will showcase, you know, things that maybe they're not working on for the actual brokerage but just themselves are interested in coding and are just younger individuals like Jen even Jen Z's that are like, yeah, I mean, who doesn't know how to code these days? So like, let me show you how I've built a routing software which you know. It's just so funny to me because I mean I will say there's a company I recently wrote about that's coming out of stealth mode, which probably won't give it away because there's a lot of them that one of our Discord members is like they've already built it.

Grace Sharkey: 11:33

So it's like it's just like really cool to like see what people are working on and like what technology is out there that people just don't even realize is being utilized, that you get one, really. I mean this one person I'm thinking of in particular. Just he quit college because he already knew how to code and he wanted to build something that mattered. So he joined a company and helped them improve their processes and now it's like something a company got tens of millions of dollars for last week that's not even developed yet, you know. So it's like it's really cool for me, in my view, to like kind of listen to these people and hear from them like what's working and we'll.

Grace Sharkey: 12:11

We have deep discussions, especially in the tech one, about adoption and why, you know, things are so segmented and why it's so difficult to get. You know maybe companies integrated with each other and on the same page, or even just you know change management and then things of that nature like why is that so hard? And so that's another fun one. And then on and Reed's funny too, because he does hold us like Tuesdays is tech, only Thursdays is therapy. So it's like if someone starts complaining about brokers he's like no, no, no, not today. And so on Thursdays is more freight therapy. So that's where people are just like why is this happening?

Grace Sharkey: 12:55

And we kind of talk through problems and and make each other laugh and and have a good time. And sometimes it's serious and sometimes it gets imped. I mean there's a ton of truck drivers in this thing. So, trust me, sometimes it goes off the rails a little bit. But you just have to. You have to laugh because that's just how people are. But it's it's funny because everyone is doing the we are so back thing and literally it's because you know all of us are like yeah, screw it, let's all go, retreat each other and like get this rolling. So it shows you just like I don't know the power of community right and like all all voices matter.

Grace Sharkey: 13:34

I think that's. The big thing is like I'm, you know, went to school for politics. That kind of was like my goal when I first like was like, what am I going to do with my life? And it feels that way, you know, it feels like when you put together like a rally or like a, a movement or like a picketing for something right, like, and you leave there and you're like, yeah, like maybe we didn't fix something 100%, that's, you know, structural today, but we've got the energy out there and people are joining and it's that's. That's really what it's become.

Grace Sharkey: 14:06

And you know, I definitely don't want to take any any I guess responsive, not responsibility, but it's 100% read right, it's. It's something that he's put together and is passionate about. I know right now he's really trying to figure out you know where, where do we drive this thing? And and me and Justin are kind of helping him with that too and it's it's just at the end of the day, it's fun and a lot of us work from home. We don't get that. So it's that community. So have a great time. And I think it.

Blythe Brumleve: 14:40

It sounds like it's fun, but it's also channeling those, like you said, those discussion points. Like I joined the Discord but I still have issues with like trying to navigate. Like I'm part of like seven or eight different Discord and it's taken me a little while to kind of grasp the, I guess, using that platform. And I think it's maybe a little bit more challenging for, like, the older folks in freight. I would probably put myself maybe in that box as well. But for folks who you know I'm very experienced Reddit user but Reddit has been around for more than 10 years so I'm used to navigating and finding all of those different communities and Discord it's been a little bit more of a challenge. So I'm technically part of that group but I just logged in while you were talking and I was like crap, I need to redownload the app, cause it's one of those like if you don't access it in, you know a few weeks, then Apple puts it on. They, you know, just remove it from your phone or whatever. You have to download it again from the cloud. So I just downloaded it again from the cloud.

Blythe Brumleve: 15:42

So you have convinced me to become more active in there because you're right, from a community perspective. He is doing such an incredible job, not just on Twitter, but it also like I've seen him starting to post more read. Um is starting to post more on LinkedIn, like, for he nails it as far as his social media is concerned, and we're going to get into a little bit of his other um projects that he has going on a little bit later in the show. Um, as far as like those businesses that we think, like those those different um hustles in freight a legal one um. That is actually really interesting and I think that that's sort of just you know, the tip of the iceberg for him.

Grace Sharkey: 16:20

Yeah, yeah, go follow him and support him for sure, and buy a hat. Uh, actually, where's mine? It's right here on the other side of my microphone. Uh, and he just came out with dad hats, which I got on him for because, as a female, I feel like dad hats are cuter than trucker hats. I love a good trucker hat, but, uh, so he that's.

Blythe Brumleve: 16:40

He listens to the people, right, uh, so I was one of the I think me and you were one of like the first 30 people to order a hat from him, and I wish I had. I know it's somewhere around here, I don't know, but it will be. I'll tell you where it will be. Is that F three?

Grace Sharkey: 16:59

Well, yes, because everyone will have them. It'll. We're like planning on like a group event about it and I'll it's. I'll give you a kind of a sneak peek of like how clever that he is like, even down to when you guys go to his website to buy a hat, like right now, the dad hats are like 99% off. The original price was for 42,000, $69 like. That's the kind of that's like the the comedy behind read where it's like down to the like very little little points of like how silly can we make this so?

Blythe Brumleve: 17:41

I'm gonna try to pull up the b-roll for it. But yeah, he is. He's definitely one of those like I I need to get him on the show to just try to like pick his brain about. Oh yeah, glory of like the rest of freight marketing. Because he did ask something recently about, like which brokerage has the best marketing in, and I it took me like I feel like I should probably know the answer to it, but I had to think really hard and I keep coming back with like the same answers. And it's like freight Vana, like yeah, it does, freight Vana rocket shipping. I think they're probably the best 3PLs as a team when it comes to Marketing.

Blythe Brumleve: 18:19

As far as a break freight brokerage is concerned, I don't know a very many other companies that are doing a better job of. Freight plus is one that creates great content, that posts the social media or LinkedIn in particular, but that's kind of it as far as like really good marketing, which is kind of sad. So maybe a conversation with him Will really help sort of unlock the creativity and I think also not just from a creativity perspective, but Feeling okay to be a little weird, like it exact being a little weird like stands out, and I think that that's just a more of a testament from the stuffiness of the perceived audience of freight and kind of shaking that up a little bit and saying like no, this is a really cool industry, there are lots of really cool stories to tell, and that's sort of the goal, I think, with his initiative and then with a lot of or not a lot, but a few of the content creators out there.

Grace Sharkey: 19:14

Yeah, it's like Japan, like their commercials are all kind of like that. They're like so wild that you're like what's even this product? And then it gets to you like what? But it's like memorable, where you're like, oh okay, like remember, flock freight, what was it? What was that? So they got Steve from Blues Clues.

Grace Sharkey: 19:32

Yeah, what what to say. What the flock? You know, like that that's funny and honestly as a custom, if you, if a customer said to me, you've lost my business because of that Of, then kick rocks, you know, like that's fine. Uh, karen, we don't need that energy here.

Blythe Brumleve: 19:47

So, sorry, all the Karen's out there Imagine yeah, I know imagine having that name and then, all of a sudden, my cousin's name is Becky, and so for a little while she was kind of wrapped up in that. Yeah, yikes, yeah, maybe it, maybe in a slightly better way than, uh what Karen? Karen's have to deal with.

Blythe Brumleve: 20:09

All right, let's let's um, we're gonna come back to read in a little bit, so let's uh move on to our next topic and that's getting a second chance at your dream job. I'm gonna kind of set this one up a little bit. This is, uh, dave Portnoy buying back his media company and so he is the CEO of barstool, founder of barstool sports, and, uh, he got started. He has one of the more interesting. I know a lot of people just they don't like him because he's kind of a jerk and he kind of is. But I think you gotta gotta be a little bit of a jerk in order to be a good CEO, especially of a media company is very, very challenging to be In charge of a media company. But he got his start by writing out stories, printing them himself in a little newspaper format and then he would go on the streets of Boston and hand them out himself. He eventually got advertisers, obviously, started up a barstool sports website. He made his first expansion into Chicago that's where Dan Katz it comes from with, uh, what is our show? Oh, my god, pft, not PFT. Pft is the co-host. Part of my take, yes, part of my take. Monday, wednesday, friday probably the best sports show in, or the by far the best sports podcast, and it basically started up that media empire within barstool. So Blogging, sports blogging in general, blows up and then he decides to, he built it up to a huge company. You know city is all over the country that have dedicated reporters that are covering college sports, pro sports, I mean really like a huge sports ecosystem and then he Builds it up enough to where he's gonna sell it. I think Peter, the, the churning group, um that also sold, sold to a portion of the company, to uh Pen gaming, which is a betting platform, and so since then, um it, the brands weren't really aligned. So Dave still had a good portion of his shares but did not hold majority stock.

Blythe Brumleve: 22:07

Um pen is a betting company. They're trying to make sports betting legal and uh it's states all over the country. They've only been able to make it legal in a certain, a very small amount of states. Um, with the nature of the barstool kind of content, they're kind of raunchy, they're kind of um, they're not afraid to be weird, they're not afraid to, you know, uh Be a little edgy, a lot edgy in some instances. Uh, and that doesn't really mesh well with a brand who is trying to keep regulators happy. Who has a stock price? Um so the barstool content it affected, the pen stock price it affected, you know, states granting licenses, betting licenses, to this company. Licenses threatened to be pulled just because of Dave Portnoy and his barstool like content style.

Grace Sharkey: 23:00

Um so, it was probably one of those.

Blythe Brumleve: 23:02

Oh, what would?

Grace Sharkey: 23:03

you say this is a big cat. Uh, for years he's done like his and he would do it on shows too, like, uh, my favorite shows bars besides the yak is uh, the barstool advisors, right where they it's more of like uh, uh, uh, of course, betting, but also helps a little bit with fantasy and stuff like that. Uh, big cat has this uh bet that he calls cannot lose parlay. It's satirical because it's usually so crazy it will probably lose. So the win is, if you win, you usually win big time, uh, but they got fined over $10,000. I think in illinois for it, because the way that it markets cannot lose. People were getting it thinking it cannot lose when they don't realize, satirically, it's supposed to lose, uh, so yeah, I tell that right there. It's not clicking very well, that's for sure.

Blythe Brumleve: 23:58

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Blythe Brumleve: 24:51

So what happens is pen. The stock price has been falling and they eventually try to negotiate a deal with disney. Disney owns espn, um, and so they work out a deal in that regard. But disney says no to barstool. We do not want any kind of affiliation with them. If you keep your relationship with barstool, then this deal will not happen. Pen needs espn because they're a little bit more brand safe. They still have probably, I think, twice the amount of audience as barstool does in a. I don't know how they actually determine it, but that's just the tweet that I saw. Is that or the Post that I saw? I don't know how to refer to tweets now but Is that? Espn has doubled the audience, the cumulative audience, that barstool has, so it's a win for pen.

Blythe Brumleve: 25:42

But also, dav knew that he had an opportunity, as, as I think One tweet says that you know, he had pen bent over a barrel pretty much Because of the fact that he knew that disney was not going to do pen needed to do the deal and disney was not going to do it.

Blythe Brumleve: 25:58

If barstool was involved, he uh, dav, originally sold his company for 500 million and was able to buy it back for one dollar, which is, I think, absolutely incredible that you're able to make all of that money and then you're able to come back and buy your company back. Sole ownership says he's never going to sell it again. His content, content, content is what they're going to be focused on. Um, so now he is full owner back at barstool and there's been A really fun like uh, I guess you know tweets that that have come out of it and videos that have come out of it, but initial thoughts from from you when, as this news is going down, Well, I will say that at the very peak of a the next day of we are so back, this happened.

Grace Sharkey: 26:42

So in a personal level, I was on, I was on, can I say the f? We're at a fucking high. I was, I was like already busy with we are so backs that I was like, oh my god, like like knows I'm. I love Dave Portnoy. I People can judge me all they want. I've never disagreed with him. He is an asshole sometimes but he stays asshole. You know like. You know. You know what to expect from someone he's not like one of. Sometimes you get those leaders who are assholes when it's good for them. You know he will be an asshole across the board.

Blythe Brumleve: 27:16

And won't apologize for it either, which is what I like that I love that consistency.

Grace Sharkey: 27:21

So, as a stoolie For some time now I was I was amped about it. I was like, yes, let's go. Like we need some more day portnoy, right, like that day one no one was in the office that energy like, yes, let's, let's go for this dude. Um, and you know it is interesting Because I do have my concerns Personally. I had my concerns with betting and sports and the way that they were doing it. I guess it's kind of opposite of everything, uh. And so I was kind of glad to see that they got away Away from that and they have had to really watch their content Because of it. Uh, not that it was like getting so bad where I was like I'll never be a bar, I'll never have taken barcel content again, but uh, I know there was times where it's like, okay, I think they're censoring themselves a little bit just because of the the betting side of things. So I loved it and I think it's Listen, whenever someone as an I looked at it honestly as an employee in that situation like I I think I love working for freight waves because of how craig is and and how he's, he's definitely I wouldn't say as anywhere near as rude or as aggressive as jave point Portnoy is, but he's, he's all about that pirate mentality.

Grace Sharkey: 28:54

Like he's. Like let's take this thing over, screw what everyone else has to say. Like and I'm into that, like I know I hope there's someone from linkedin watching this now. I know there's a bunch of haters out there and linkedin and I love it. There's nothing I love more than when you share our content and hate on at the same time, because that's just clicks, baby, and I think it's hilarious that you think that that doesn't fuel me. And doon are more than ever. Like doon are and I are on the same page when it comes to this stuff. Like I, when we talk about disruption and everyone in the site industry is like, yeah, it's ready for some disruption. Like no, we're, we're bringing the disruption and we'll tell you when it's good and we'll tell you when it's bad. And he can tell us that we're wrong, but guess what, we're usually right.

Blythe Brumleve: 29:43

So I, I, I'm gonna let you cook.

Grace Sharkey: 29:48

I I hope someone hates me for this no, I just I, truly I love it and that's part of the reason I worked here.

Grace Sharkey: 29:54

I will say I had there's someone I worked with in the past role that I was in who who did not like freight waves, didn't thought that we attacked people, uh, who didn't deserve to be attacked, and I think that's bullshit.

Grace Sharkey: 30:12

I think that if you're running a company and that your company has problems and it gets to the news and, trust me, we do our due diligence, like I, and that's the best thing about working here is I get to see the work that we do on.

Grace Sharkey: 30:26

Some of these stories have been a part of the work that we do. We do our due diligence and so for people out there that want to push against us, we are here, we're not going anywhere, and I think what we're doing for the industry, especially Right with the word, we are so back and like getting people motivated, is just like the same exact feeling that I feel like the employees at bar still probably had in that moment when Dave. But I mean, there's nothing better than seeing a leader who says I'm, I'm taking, we're taking the ship back over and we're getting this stuff done, so I was so pumped when I saw it and I think that it was it's. I'm happy for them. I'm excited to see where bar still goes. I'm really excited to see what the Chicago office is all about.

Blythe Brumleve: 31:13

Uh, in the work they're doing there, clearly just being a skip away from that, but uh, pumped, pumped for it and uh, the same vibes over here as well, that's uh, as you were talking, I I had an image just up on the screen and so this is the day after Dave announces that he has Bought back 100 of bar stool and he's in the office. So if you're looking at it, it's an image on the left. It's at 945 in the morning. Dave posted a video. He said my employees are so brain dead that they didn't show up to the office on time within a reasonable time frame on the first day back and he was very upset. And then later on in that day, at 521, you can see the same part of the office and every desk is filled. And he said, uh, everybody is afraid to leave now and this is at 521 pm, which I I really dig.

Blythe Brumleve: 32:05

I really like you know, to sort of echo your statement as far as, like he's a wartime CEO and I I don't know that I could come, I would call Craig a wartime CEO, but I would say that Dave is definitely a way more like of an unapologetic asshole than Craig is. Like Craig just speaks facts. I think Dave like wants to shove the facts in your face, Like I think that that's kind of the difference between the two of them and some of the things that Dave was saying in his video is he. He said we don't want to watch what we say or what we do. The pirate ship is back. I'm never selling this company again. When I die, I'll leave it to Dan or I'll leave it to I think he said some other employee name and he pounded the desk. He literally said it's content, content, content. And I thought that what it'll be so interesting and I'm curious to hear what your take is Is what do you think they do from a content perspective?

Blythe Brumleve: 33:00

Because the way that barstool was built is that An athlete has, uh, some kind of it. Because I I worked in sports blogging for a little while. We were trying to follow the same barstool model and it was very, very challenging. You know it's a college football saturday and you are writing anywhere from 30 to 40 articles in a day, which is so draining. But essentially what you're writing is you see something trend on reddit. You see something trend on twitter. You write up a blog post really quickly, like no more than 300 words. Include the tweet, include the reddit post. Hit send goes out to all the social media channels. We submit it to all these other different partner websites in order to get it trending as quick as possible. That was back in the day. Now I don't know that that model works in sports, because we have as an audience, we have such a direct relationship and I think the algorithms in each social media platform have gotten so much better that they'll automatically recommend those posts to you.

Blythe Brumleve: 33:59

So I'd be curious to understand, or maybe think about, what are the content plans for barstool next? If it's content, content, content. What does that look like? And I think From my lens, it's probably double down on video and podcasting. Um, I'm not so sure about the blog route, though. You know I did see one tweet from Dave that said you know, it's smitty or somebody, I'm not that in all, I watch a couple of their shows. I don't watch everything, um, but he said something to the effect of smitty wrote seven blogs all month, all month, like. It kind of got the impression that it should be double or even triple that. Yeah, I'm curious what you think as far as like content plan. What, what's? What do you think barstool does next?

Grace Sharkey: 34:44

I think that, uh, it sounds like from the chicago office that so dan and a large majority of the group just moved the whole Into a huge office in chicago and it sounds like they're playing theirs. There's phones up, content made right. Even dan's era, david said in an interview that If there's an argument or two employees aren't agreeing on something, uh, there's no hr department here, which I love, right. Ha, yeah, pens like thank god, that's gone. Uh, we pick up, we pick up the cameras and you solve it. Right, that's content. I think it'll be kind of that TMZ s kind of look, and, and I love that stuff, I think it's, it's, it's so cool and it's. I think it's a new form of, like reality tv. Right, it's, it's, it's in the now.

Grace Sharkey: 35:34

And I will say, in regards to the sports aspect, they're bringing on a hell of a lot of athletes, I think, on to their platform too. I think that's going to be part of it, right, uh, who's the guy that just moved to the Sixers who has a podcast with ron? Uh, that's huge. Uh, there's. Uh, even though dav hates them, like lebron's been posting about different shows and stuff like that. So I think, I think they'll win the athletes over, which will bring some of that sports content back. I, I agree with you.

Blythe Brumleve: 36:08

I think the blogs, uh, what I've seen is that they a lot of times use the blogs as like a follow-up to maybe, uh, uh, a fight or a situation that happened on camera right, um, I'm trying to kind of give the whole backstory, I guess, so on on, not just showing the tweet and kind of explaining it, but giving a, a bigger backstory of of where this comes, the new, the nuance to it, I guess.

Grace Sharkey: 36:35

Exactly like a couple weeks ago. Uh, there was kfc show. He was talking about how much he hated the barbie movie, which pretty much every girl that worked at bar still wanted to murder him. So they did a little segment on the kfc show, maybe 15, 20 minutes long, but each of the girls wrote a blog about it, right. So like gave that content. So it's almost like connecting them all to each other in a different way. So I think that's where it'll it'll still be that nuance. And, um, it's funny, they picked up francis. They brought francis back, right who people don't If you're not a barstle person, you definitely won't know this but francis got fired a long long time ago because there was a girl who went missing and he had Joked about her and francis has very dark humor, uh, and he wrote a blog about how she's probably dead.

Grace Sharkey: 37:29

In like 10 minutes after he posted it it came out she was dead. So like it was like they ended up having to fire him because it was just like wasn't, but he's back. And even dave said in an interview yesterday like Francis came up to me and he was like you know, a lot of my blogs have been getting denied. So like, is this back? And he's like, yeah, we're back, and so I think you're gonna see a lot of like interesting humor that we haven't seen on those blogs before too, but a lot it sounds like a lot of. It's gonna be kind of pick up the your cell phones, grab a camera and and film the disputes in house, which when he was like I'm sure upset with no one being in the office, Like we can't do that if you guys aren't physically here.

Blythe Brumleve: 38:12

So I, I love that approach, yeah, I, I think that's a that's a really interesting point because it's something as I I sort of grapple with like or I think a lot of writers they grapple with like AI and what does that have? How does that affect your job and how, what content can you create? That's, you know, value added that AI can't replicate? And I think that that reality type situation turning your, your bloggers, and your, your broadcasters into Reality TV kind of talent I think that that could be a really interesting play and I think that, yeah, that that that makes a lot of sense to me, because it's something that AI can't affect, whereas AI will probably, if you know, help them write articles faster, but it can't replace that sort of in-office drama or in-office debates or friendly debates that happen Really organically, and I think that that the audience would really resonate with that because it feels like you're getting a peak behind the curtain.

Grace Sharkey: 39:12

Well, and to bring this back to the whole discussion of like we're talking about people who have the best marketing right in our industry. Uh, you brought up freight vana. They, they do that kind of stuff all the time, I mean even down to. I mean, ricky at one point was even posting about her own relationship problems that she was having and a and and how she was. You know I step not stepping up but uh, I think going through a separation, like whether and it's like even that type of stuff, like you don't see anyone doing that, but it's like for a couple weeks there and it still are. But you know, I'm checking in on ricky and like checking out her content, making sure she's doing good, and like that's the kind of stuff that it's like that's interesting.

Blythe Brumleve: 39:56

It gets you invested.

Grace Sharkey: 39:58

Yeah, exactly, and then if I go if I was ever, I wouldn't well, yeah, you know, hopefully not have to, I guess if I was to work there. It's like I'm already invested in your employees, you know like, and so I think that can even Trickle over into our industry and and how companies are. Dude wipes is like a really great company. He does the same type of stuff in their content that they make. There's a lot of companies that are kind of saying like let's just Talk about what we're doing, like what's life like inside the office and that's the content we make.

Blythe Brumleve: 40:33

It's definitely much better than like here the commodities I ship.

Blythe Brumleve: 40:38

Yeah, there's only are here, the rates that I got and some of this stuff is the same across the board. So, thinking about those moments of what helps you stand out and what helps people, I mean I could make an argument that sometimes I would imagine that a lot of people frankly don't care about what's going on in your personal life. They only want to care about how you can help them. But I think that there's a balance with, uh, there's something called the KLT method, which is sharing, you know eight. If you think about your Does your over the course of a month, uh, you're gonna make a post. Let's just say, for example, you're gonna make a post every single day on linkedin.

Blythe Brumleve: 41:13

80 percent of those posts should be about knowledge, about how you share your industry knowledge.

Blythe Brumleve: 41:19

Then 20 percent, or no, let me do, uh, then something like yeah, I messed my math up, so 70 percent of those posts should be about what you know.

Blythe Brumleve: 41:27

Uh, 20 percent of the post should be about what you like and then 10 percent of the post should be, um, something that allows uh, the audience to develop a trusting relationship with you. So KLT, and the trusting part is the vulnerability part. So maybe that's a good example of, like Ricky, is sharing a bunch of recruiting information, but then that one trust post probably made you really resonate with her and feel empathy for her and now you're probably going to see the other you know 70, 80 percent of her posts that are about the knowledge and about you know other things that she likes. Um, not necessarily about sort of the, I guess, the, the, the gloom of a relationship ending, which is, of course, sad, but it kind of is a good, I guess, collection of posts that make you more than just a robot that is just publishing about you know the services that your business provides, so it adds a little bit of a personal appeal.

Grace Sharkey: 42:26

Yeah, and that's you know, I've been on at least the broker side of a phone call right With shippers. Like my best shipper relationships were the ones that knew about the last time I hung out with my nieces, or or every Monday we're talking about the new Housewives of New York episode. Like it was rarely. Like, oh my God, like you're so good at what you do, that's why I love you. It's like, no, not at all. So I think, even more so, relationships are going to become more important because of the tech side of things, because it's like, yeah, okay, the transaction I can give to you and your AI machine learning tools, whatever will get the work done, but like, what's going to keep me as a customer right? Because in that, in that digital era and this is a, I think, part of the reason why surge has ended up having so many problems when you build these tools, like you're investing a lot of resources into a model that a shipper can still jump away from as fast as they as they came to you, and so what else is there that's holding them right? Like, what's that relationship like?

Grace Sharkey: 43:38

And I think people at work for Freight Vana and I've seen the pictures that they take with the drivers and people their trailers, like they have Freight Vana hats, like they're invested in the brand. They're not just invested in a really cool system that helps improve shipping through drop trailers. Right, it's much more than that, I mean. And it's funny because I mean I just posted an article where I talked to like one of their senior engineers and like he is just as cool as like Lars or anyone else we met, like it's engraved in that company. So, yeah, I think it's.

Grace Sharkey: 44:18

I hope people you can have their thoughts on Barstool et cetera but I just hope that people take maybe away from it what's helped it grow to the point of staying, and the same with Freight Waves, and I think that's why we focus so much on our personalities and people that are part of the crew, and people like me and Mary and Thomas like we also have fun and it's like how do I say this without sounding like a complete asshole? When we go to events, people want to hang out with us, you know, like they want to see us too. It's not just like while we're here to like see all the tech people, it's like I mean especially even a lot of people in the Discord like they want to meet us face to face and like get a drink with us and that's great for my narcissistic ass, but like it's also like it's really the Freight Friends ecosystem.

Grace Sharkey: 45:10

Yes, exactly right, yeah, and it's. But also that helps me, because you guys would be surprised how often I go to our events and like the secrets I hear and the stories that end up revolving out of them Like it's not the group chat is on fire. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, you know, the group chat stays, stays private.

Grace Sharkey: 45:33

But it's like even the last event we had, I was like there's like an hour and a half where people are just like pss, pss, pss. Like you know, it's like I'm trying to Ooh, I love the drama, but it's like, yeah, y'all are adding to it. I don't know why you think, sorry, we're just delivering the message, but, um no, it's, it's fun and I think I just love it. I'm having so much fun with it, and so that's what I mean. Like we're so back, like that's just one sentence way of putting it.

Blythe Brumleve: 46:07

Well, um, somebody probably, who wishes they were back is Andrew Silver, former CEO of Molo, which is a hell of a transition. He and speaking of being vulnerable, speaking of being you know you know, I hate this word, but I have to use it here being authentically yourself.

Blythe Brumleve: 46:30

He is that on LinkedIn and uh, Grace, give us a little bit of backstory before we get into Andrew Silver's LinkedIn post. Give us a little bit of backstory on his sort of rise to fame and he's probably the best I think at you know sort of logistics, linkedin marketing. I think he has the best engagement out of anyone doing a very close second. But Andrew Silver, former CEO of Molo, give us a sense of the backstory here.

Grace Sharkey: 46:58

Yeah. So for people who don't, if you hear the last name and you know about the history of freight, then you probably are like Silver. That sounds right. This dad was a big part of uh, really, the technology side of where this industry is today. That's all I'm going to say about his lineage at this point, because I think Andrew has done an incredible job making his own path within that I do.

Grace Sharkey: 47:25

I want to start this off, too, by I love Andrew Silver. I think that I've talked to him before. He's a wonderful guy. I think that he has a really great. He has ideas that can help change the industry. I think there's you know, it's that legacy comes through in a lot of what he's doing.

Grace Sharkey: 47:42

So he started a company with Matt Volkerage I think that's how he says last name who he met at Michigan because he's a Michigan graduate. So go green, go white MSU. But they started their own brokerage on Lolo Solutions and, using technology, helped build a massive offering. That, of course, grew to. I'm trying to figure out exactly what they're at, if it's possible. Um grew to okay, so in 2021, they were projected to hit about $600 million in revenue. Well, they were only around for a couple of years. So that shows you how insane their growth is, and if anyone's going to figure out how to do that, it's going to be Andrew and the connections that. He has not surprised at all that that was obtained Well for him.

Grace Sharkey: 48:37

Now, what people might know them most for is that they were acquired back. Wow, it seems much sooner than that, but in 2021, end of 2021, November, they were acquired by Arkbest for $235 million and with a potential future earn out payment, so a possibility of earning even more, which brought Arkbest is brokerage up to about $1.2 billion. So great. Honestly, I heard some incredible stories at the time when this happened. People were saying, because especially you guys might know Arkbest or ABF LTL, this added a huge brokerage opportunity for them. I had people at competitors that were like I'm just getting swept away with this Molo thing. Arkbest is coming in and just promising the world and taking a lot of it. So I know that it was very advantageous for Arkbest and now we're at this point sitting here today. Where possibly, will they earn that earn out? We'll see. I will say I'm kind of like lightly working.

Blythe Brumleve: 49:45

And that's the former, like Andrew Silver, will get that buyout because of what's going on in the market. Is that what you're saying?

Grace Sharkey: 49:53

If they earn. So if the brokerage earns a certain amount or hits certain obtainable goals, they'll get that earn out. We'll see. If that happens. I will say I'm working on stuff for that, so stay tuned.

Blythe Brumleve: 50:12

Do you do diligence?

Grace Sharkey: 50:13

Yes, doing my due diligence right, because there's some weird things that have happened since they got bought out. For example, andrew was at Food Shippers last year and, without notice, was fired by Arkbest to head Molo along with Matt. So there's some drama going on there, that's for sure.

Blythe Brumleve: 50:35

I'm sure it's definitely unexpected from reading in between the lines of his social media posts Very unexpected, yes, very unexpected.

Grace Sharkey: 50:42

So that's kind of where my interest is right now. But yeah, that's kind of the story behind them and I mean there's and here's. The thing I love about them is and I talk to people about this all the time I don't know who else is what other digital freight brokerage is going to find in exit, like that that's. I mean, that's how you want to go right. You build a beautiful platform, you get a ton of revenue in a short amount of time and you he got rid of it. Imagine if you waited two more years. Yikes, like that value would have just collapsed. So it's like he talk about moving and getting things done at the perfect time. That's this is, I think, that story for sure.

Blythe Brumleve: 51:28

And this is why I wanted to tie in the Andrew Silver post with what we just talked about with Dave Portnoy, because Dave Portnoy was able. I think for a lot of leaders. You think about starting up your business and then, you know, possibly selling it later on down the road for money you could have never imagined. And that's the ultimate dream, right Like as soon as you sell your company. Then you're set for life and you don't have to worry about a damn thing after that. But then the transition period. It puts almost handcuffs on you.

Blythe Brumleve: 52:00

I can especially speak to my old boss that I worked for. That he was a former truck driver. He worked his way up at the brokerage office and he ended up buying out. Everybody else owned that brokerage office, sold it off to another company and that company they put him up in an office. He was filthy rich. But the problem was is that he they put him up in an office with a glorified title. He sat in the executive suite and he wasn't able to go on the brokerage floor, sit down next to brokers and have the conversations with them. He had an open door policy with any driver that worked at that company that they could walk right into his office and have a meeting with the CEO, like that's. He was in the trenches with everybody else and when he sold his company that wasn't happening and he hated it. He hated every moment of it because he was on a completely different floor of the office building compared to the rest of like those workers that he loved engaging with. So he said, fuck the non compete. I'm going to go and I'm going to start up another brokerage. And that's when I started working for him. So watching him get almost like his wings back and build up another company felt like a wartime CEO.

Blythe Brumleve: 53:13

And I couldn't help but think that when I'm reading this post from. Because, getting back to Andrew Silver, when I'm reading this post that he just posted up on LinkedIn a little over a week ago I'll link to it in the comments just in case you haven't seen it but he basically goes into you know him, I guess, complaining about sort of the inauthentic content of what you see online and how he just finds that it's just a bunch of dribble, it's a bunch of BS and he'd much rather see something from the heart and he just lets it all out. And he said, and he basically I'm just going to read it from a little bit here. He's going through all of the motions about you know the fluff that he sees online.

Blythe Brumleve: 54:01

And then in this post he says while my loss pales in comparison, I lost the business I poured my heart and soul into for five years of my life, a business that was once just an idea in my head, and then I had the most incredible experience building it, with so many awesome people, ripped away from me at a moment's notice while I was still at a conference I had just spoken at just a day prior.

Blythe Brumleve: 54:22

I could not imagine getting that news while at a conference and having your baby that you worked so hard at to build up, and then it's taken from you.

Blythe Brumleve: 54:34

And well, first it's probably happened a little slowly where the decision making was taken from him or he had to share the decision making, which is probably, I would imagine, really tough for wartime CEOs like a Dave, like a Craig, like my former boss, and it sounds like tough for Andrew as well.

Blythe Brumleve: 54:51

And I just I really resonated with this post and I think that this is the kind of content that people do resonate with. So I agree fully with his, with his sentiment here, and I just kind of wonder, like, what is next for him, because the next company he's going to build is probably going to be incredible, because it's it's, I would imagine. I can only speak for myself, but vengeance and wanting to prove somebody really drives you, and I think that that might be the case of what we're witnessing here is that he's starting to use channel that anger into something new and he doesn't exactly say what he's going to do next. But I would have I would place a lot of money, maybe a barstool bet, on a that he's going to build up another brokerage and he's probably going to do it very, very well and probably maybe never sell it again.

Grace Sharkey: 55:47

Yeah, and I mean even with the bag that he got, like I would be very excited to see if he starts his own VC and starts to maybe help some of those individuals build the tools that he knows how that can be applied to the industry right. And I think great things about people like Andrew who, I mean, they're literally born into this industry is you have this knowledge that a lot of people don't have. But you also have the ideas of how our industry can be digitized and how it can be approached appropriately for that to actually follow through and bring some actual efficiency into the industry. So I mean I would love to see him right, start his own thing again, but I would also love to see him maybe mentor those who are trying to make the difference. Like, I think he's a really great. From the times that I've spoke with him or been in conversations with him, I think that he could really help people bring that technology and that human touch and the problems of transportation together right. And that's where you know someone like Andrew. The sky is the limit. So it's like I agree with you I put money on him doing something great next, but what is it that's? I think that's still out there to be said as well. But he is incredible at pushing the buttons and being and just saying what really I think people really want to say, and it's funny because he doesn't really.

Grace Sharkey: 57:35

I mean, I will say a little bit of that post. You know, initially I was like, okay, as the Gen Zers now say, this is like my newest favorite slang touch grass. You know, like like you did just get acquired for two years, you know, get acquired for $235 million. So like, yeah, you could, or you could like not and still be like really fine, but like the, the expertise that I know, know that he has, and the knowledge and just the relationships around him. I almost hope that he doesn't do another brokerage. I just I wrote I'd really love to see where he can get creative and and maybe do something that no one's thought of performing his. Again, I hate to bring up his dad, but I have read his dad's MIT thesis paper. Like his dad revolutionized.

Blythe Brumleve: 58:29

Yeah, give us a backstory on on his dad. So his dad is.

Grace Sharkey: 58:35

I'm kind of American, he was a part of American backhaulers, right. So he's he helped develop kind of like the Chicago style brokerage, right. Like how do you, how do you take all these available loads? This was like right after not right after, but right after deregulation, so now that you have all these available lanes that don't have to be handed out by the government, etc. Like how do we optimize a truck of finding a load, how we rate the load, etc. So he was like the mathematician behind what you have to consider when doing this.

Grace Sharkey: 59:13

I almost like want to pull up his paper, if I have it still. His name is Jeff Silver and there it is. I also say I know in here I've read many times and so like just to kind of like showcase a little bit of what his LTL consolidation, okay. So here's a perfect example of the overall problem with LTL freight. In this problem there's also no assumption or uniform demand shipment size or products of some products, such as carbon, black or paper cannot be shipped. The object is to minimize the total combined cost of shipments and he goes into how you could do that and how to put this all really into like an algorithm. At the end of the day, there's a lot of math within this thing. Literally all you have to Google is MIT paper, jeff Silver, and it'll pop up and he even showcases like the average cost per mile from different states and literally comes up with I came and figure out how to read this math problem, like a way of literally like figuring out the distance between locations and specific lanes, how to actually price it out. But he also dies into the problems that we have, like the inconsistencies, the fact that in a perfect world which, for anyone who might not know as well, american backhaulers ended up being Robinson, being taken in by see a Robinson at the end of the day. But it's, it's just interesting because like yeah, at the end of his paper he kind of brings up the fact that the hardest part about all of this is that when you're creating like these connections, you're creating them in a technical environment where it's it's not static, right, like. So the problem is there's always going to be a new shipment and there's always going to be a new lane and there's always going to be a new company which could change the environment of a certain freight market at any point in time. And like, how do you consider all of that and that's, I think, a lot of what the technology that's out there today struggles with. It's like, yes, in this exact second, that's the correct formula for finding the best load on the slain. But all it takes is target opening up a new warehouse in your neighborhood for the the market conditions in your neighborhood to completely flip the truck parking right. Like there's no truck parking within a hundred mile radius of your warehouse, like your conditions will change. So it's like there.

Grace Sharkey: 1:01:53

What he's really, really, really interested me about that paper is like these different areas that he brought up that make it difficult for there to be a perfect model. So, yeah, that's what his dad is from and he's got, I mean he, he, he's built mastery, which is a huge program. When it really called TMS was just throughout their TMS out there. But go Google, yeah, google the family, his mom was a part of that too. So that's I mean Matt Silver's, his brother, which was forager, which got bought by arrive. It's a technology that helps with cross border shipment. So I think, like I said, I'm excited to see where Andrew goes and I think, with the tools and relationships and his network, like I don't know, I just I hope he I was hoping doesn't go into another brokerage.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:02:40

I'd like to see Definitely a builder you can tell that it's one of those situations where he is especially with the sentiment from his LinkedIn posts. He is itching to do something and I maybe he's working on you know a couple different things at the moment, but I just I find that those types of people like a Dave, like Andrew, like my old boss the money doesn't, the money's nice, but they want to be in the trenches, that they want to be right there on the ground level of something beautiful getting built, something that they're passionate about, that they can wake up in the morning and be super excited and can't wait to get to the office on time, unlike some of the barstool you know, employees, that are showing up late the next day and I think that that that's sort of to put a nice little bow on.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:03:28

You know, the way that I guess companies media companies and freight companies are being built is with that strong leadership at the top, and if you don't have that strong leadership and a strong sort of visionary, I think it's really challenging to make it to that next level where you could sell your company for millions of dollars if you don't have that kind of a CEO. So I think all of these CEOs that they're this is the next level or the next step for them, and Dave has, you know, gotten the opportunity to to get that second chance. I don't know that that happens for any other company besides barstool very unique set of circumstances. But for you know, andrew, for some of these other you know CEOs, that maybe you've sold your company off and you know it didn't turn out the way you thought. There's nothing quite more fun than building a new project, that the challenge of it, and so I think that Andrew will definitely find his way and I hope that he keeps being like, raw and honest with everybody about that process and the struggles, because it is a lot of real and, you see a lot of fluff on LinkedIn and you see a lot of the highlight reels. I think LinkedIn and Instagram are famous for showing the highlight reels, whereas, you know, maybe like a discord and maybe like a Twitter or X, they're showing like the more like rawness of it, the snarky of it, the, the, I guess, the, the edginess of it, and so I think that that's it's going to be really interesting to watch both of those things unfold. Okay, well, I guess you know this is kind of related.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:04:59

Going into our next topic, interesting hustles and freight. So the idea behind this is to replace the conspiracy theory segment, because I might get us a little trouble eventually. It hasn't gotten us in trouble yet, but let's, let's, let's, let's try to avoid, I guess, trying to be edgy without being a tinfoil haddie. That that's the. That's the goal of this new segment is interesting hustles and freight. So the idea behind it is to pick a legitimate business and then pick a crime. So we're going to with cargo crime. I'm truly fascinated with it. I you know there's a show called to catch a smuggler. That's on Nat Geo. I do not miss an episode if the marathon is on TV. I watch it all day. And. But with the business side of it, I think there's some really interesting businesses going on and you were speaking to this earlier. Especially that's going on in like the discord of like younger people like building up different things. So tell us what.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:05:56

Maybe I should start with Reeds first, because we hinted at him earlier and what he's building with his please advise hats. And what I think is really cool about this is that I think he's such a good community builder and he's gotten so good at it so quickly that I don't even know if he knows how good he is at it, but this is my favorite thing. So everybody that has bought a please advise hat he has this image that he shares every now and then, like, I think, one at least once a month, of everybody in the United States or even North America it looks like that has bought a please advise hat. So you can see in real time or not real time, but you can see almost real time of everybody everywhere all over the United States that has purchased a hat. It looks like if you're just listening to this, it looks like it's I don't know, maybe maybe 70 hats. Looks like I'm going to have to my little hat there in Jacksonville looks like I think I'm the only one, but I'm going to fight the other.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:06:53

You know seven people that are in Florida in order to Keep the Florida title in my name. Actually, there's eight people, yeah, the eight total people in Florida, which hopefully will get those numbers up. But are you? I'm assuming you're represented in this, because you mentioned that you have the hat as well. So I think that that is one really really interesting, you know sort of business model, and it's one of those models where it has no effect on the actual business that he runs. It just well. I would say it definitely has an effect, but it's not like he's out there creating specific content like there. I don't even think his logo is on these. Please advise hats, it's just a movement.

Grace Sharkey: 1:07:35

Yeah, by the way, I like just texted him. It was like this that will upset is just turning into a chat about you, so we were two women just two women is talking about a man the whole time.

Grace Sharkey: 1:07:47

No, no, it's a. You know, I did text him this the other day. What is interesting about this, though, is the tool that he is created, or his, like. His business that he's working on is a, basically a way for carriers to send out their available truck list to to customers and or to brokers etc, shippers, whoever and so that people know about your available assets. Right, and I was telling him, like you know, what I think this can help with is that you're building a very big group, especially of truck drivers, who trust you In an area where drivers, in particular, are great. Another app what are you doing with my data? How great is it to have attached to you a brand that says you can trust me and I know your problems and not to anything against them? But when's the last time MacroPoint had a 100 driver chat about how this industry could improve? An authentic chat, not like a panel with the head of the ATA, a wide eye, literally people you've never heard of who are driving trucks.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:09:16

Real quick with part of that group, the Discord group, which one of my favorites is Gord. He's a truck driver, used to be on Twitter. Not I don't think he's on Twitter anymore, but he has a great podcast. He was on an episode of OddLots and every time he or not every time, but he said he was mentioning the ATA and he says, immediately following didn't miss a beat. He's like may they burn in hell. Anytime I hear someone say the ATA, I hear Gord's voice in my head saying may they burn in hell, yeah.

Grace Sharkey: 1:09:44

Lumbar Tube. Oh boy, we had a freight therapy session because, like I said at one point, I was deep into politics and I was like, yes, you know, you could. Technically, we could take over the ATA. I mean, all you have to do is become the president of your state and then we would eventually. I told them if we could get 28 states who's going to be the wartime CEO?

Blythe Brumleve: 1:10:10

for that it's got to be.

Grace Sharkey: 1:10:11

Lumbar, I think Then we go in, we flip it, we vote a new president, and then it's just. And then we're like that can't be possible. It's like that's how it's run. It's the ATA is the American Trucking Association, so we just have to lead each state's association and then we Vote ourselves in, we yeah.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:10:31

A hostile takeover yes, succession style, but the people are doing it. Lumbar has got to be the leader for that. I think he gets everybody fired up. As far as his motivational videos, these are all if you hear us talking about these people. This is why you need to get on X. This is Twitter. You need to get on Discord. This is why you need to be on these channels, because these are the up and coming personalities that are not afraid to speak exactly what's on their mind and to call out the bullshit that exists in the industry, and it's very refreshing.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:11:07

I think it feeds my internal anger when I see these big institutions that have all failed us in over the last few years. And what's going to rise from those ashes after, hopefully, they get burned down? Probably going to burn down a little bit slowly, but what's going to rise from that? And I think it really starts with folks like the people that we've been mentioning pointing that out and pointing out the hypocrisy that goes on. And he's doing it. And going back to Reed, he's doing it in a way that he is building community and then also building trust, to your point with his business.

Grace Sharkey: 1:11:49

Yeah, exactly. So I think that is. You can look at it as a way of marketing in a way, right, but it's also I mean, we all know from our own businesses and this is any industry a lot of building a business is who you know and the network you're pulling knowledge from. So let's say that even he had a different business in front of him, there's a lot of people he's talking to. I mean even myself I was just saying, from that group I've learned about different technologies that I had never heard of and that are doing really incredible things. So it's helped me reach out to new people and learn more.

Grace Sharkey: 1:12:27

So I think it's a really strong network group. I think there's really none like it. I mean, like you could, I wouldn't count Freightways as like a network group. You know it's like we're really the news, if anything. But you know this is it's a group that's open to anyone. You could be a warehouse worker and be a part of it. It's not like a trucking association or a broker association. We have joke before of making the TIIA the Transportation Intermediaries Intermediaries Association. Like that's funny. You know what I mean.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:13:06

That's almost the. Yeah, that's almost the name of the stadium, or it used to be the name of the stadium here in Jacksonville TIA, bankfield. So it's the first, just missing that extra, that extra, I Exactly.

Grace Sharkey: 1:13:18

It's like that's it's all about having fun, but networking at the end of the day, I think for him.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:13:23

Did you have another business or was that kind of like your choice for like a business hustle that you admire going on in Freight right now?

Grace Sharkey: 1:13:33

Who. I mean that is definitely one that I admire and like kind of have opened my hand to like how I can help with this, other ones out there that I can think of off the top of my head. I mean, I think what you're doing is awesome, right, I've said that a thousand times, I think, of course how you're growing your your own thing and contributing to the space you even Chris Jolly right is working on stuff. I think that's really Caviar, paul, with what he's doing.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:14:07

The newsletter that he writes is really clever. There's another one. Think Freight is another kind of a similar like newsletter media platform. It's really cool watching these stories, like being covered by more people. It lights a fire under my ass. I'm sure it lights a fire. There are other creators asked like we can't just stay complacent, we can't be like a macro point and not innovate and not get better at doing and not to say that you know, not to, I guess a slash or against macro point.

Grace Sharkey: 1:14:39

But Dan, over at Day Cards, we still love you. Yeah, yes.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:14:43

Great technology, but I think that they're sitting on like a gold mine of content that they could be creating, and so I think it's just maybe a challenge to the rest of the Freight industry that you have really cool stories to tell within your company and you can find those different avenues to do it. You might not be able to, and you probably shouldn't try to tie a direct ROI to it, but just focus on creating that stuff that that matters to you within the industry, because if it matters to you, chances are you know it's going to matter to someone else as well. And that's where I think a lot of magic happens is from that collaboration over competition, and even though there's still a little competition in there, but competition is good for everybody. So OK, so those are the legitimate, like business side of things that we admire. What about on the crime side of things? Did you have one for this one?

Grace Sharkey: 1:15:39

So I guess for this one do you mean like, is there a certain crime right now that's interested me, or do I have a good crime story? Because I've got both.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:15:47

Either, or I think we're fleshing this, this new segment out of what to pick, because I picked like a story from that actually got in the thing for a new letter that came from CDL life. So there was a four point three million dollars worth of meth found in a semi shipment of vegetables Going back to I guess you know my earlier point with to catch a smuggler. It shows all of these different crime syndicates and how they try to get drugs and merchandise counterfeit merch even like plants and seeds and animals and things like that, and how they try to get them over different borders to bring them into the country and how the customs and border patrol they try to stop it. So they try to stop it through a variety of different ways. Most of the time it's imaging and the imaging can scan for organic materials, it can scan for irregularities and as soon as they find that then they will send a shipment off to somebody else to be checked out more thoroughly.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:16:48

That's what happened in this meth case, where I'll share an image of it for you, that it was basically stored in a bunch of different vegetables, the street value four point three million, which is just insane If you think about that all of the shows that I watched, like the to catch a smuggler, most of those I try to like guess what the street value is and I try to guess like, okay, how many kilos did they get caught with? Which God we're going to? This video is definitely going to be demonetized on YouTube after all of these topics. Hopefully LinkedIn even allows these kinds of terminology.

Grace Sharkey: 1:17:23

Vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. We're talking about vegetables, yeah.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:17:26

Exactly. We're not the ones doing it, we're not advising you how to do it, but these idiots thought that they could get through the border with this and it was a 488 pounds of meth concealed and a shipment of vegetables Street value four point three million dollars, which is just insane. And it was all on board a semi truck arriving from Mexico which they found, they noticed some irregularities and then put it over to the secondary screening. And that's when the secondary screening they get them. They get them during that regard or during that aspect of the shipment. And I think that's that was my favorite like sort of crime story of the week. And again, that came from think freight, also courtesy of CDL life, which I just find especially those, the image scanner machines. I don't know if you've ever seen them like in action, but they can from a suitcase to a car, they can tell the different materials and if you've the inconsistencies throughout, like if you're trying to shove a bunch of kilos of cocaine in the bed of your truck or, you know, in the engine of your truck, like, they have all of the tools, even from as simple as like the fanciest merchandise or the fanciest scanning equipment, to just taking a stick and just just tapping around the car to hear if it's hollow or not, like they go from, like all of those different types of ways to find these different shipments. And it's like I said, it's not just drugs, it's also like counterfeit merchandise, which is a big deal Seeds, of course, plants which can contain sometimes live insects.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:19:05

So if you're trying to bring like a particular kind of plant through customs, then they will take that plant over and if they find like one bug on it, they'll send the entire freight shipment back. If the bug is dead then they tend to keep the shipment. But if the bug is alive or if it's like there's chance, like a moth, for example, can lay some larva in a shipment of vegetables, and if the moth is alive and during the shipment they know that the larva is somewhere in that shipment, so they'll turn the whole truck around because they don't want to mess up. You know the agricultural systems in different countries New Zealand is infamous on to catch a smuggler Like they will not let any kind of live like plants, anything like that, because they live on an island and so they can't have that kind of disruption to their ecosystem.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:19:54

So I find the aspect of like cargo crime, really, really exciting. I'm going to be covering more of that. I've done a couple of interviews with Overhaul, which also stops like crime syndicants. I'll link to that in the show notes in case anybody wants to check those episodes out. But I love it. I don't know if anybody else loves it as much as I do. What are your thoughts on the cargo crime? So it's interesting.

Grace Sharkey: 1:20:17

This is kind of a cargo slash, fraud, loadboard situation all mixed in one. I don't think I've told this story, have I talked about this tire situation on this show before. So back at my brokerage there was a load of, like you know, those giant tires that like go on, like equipment and stuff that are like as tall as you are. It was an oversized load and we were moving some of those tires from like Southern California up to Alaska. It was a really long lane and it was we're shopping off of the load boards, which is just so funny. But we ended up finding a company could do it and their MC number. Everything looked great, even if I remember right too, even like the email, everything checked out, fine, insurance is good, etc.

Grace Sharkey: 1:21:10

What saved us on this, and good job to the. I remember like overly shaking the carry rep's hand making sure we tracked it. We're like you know we need a phone number for the driver and they're like OK, well, he's maybe a sign that like something was up this. You know he's like really busy, he can't really talk right now, but here's his phone number. I told him to watch for a tracking notification and he'll like take it, or etc. So yeah. So we started tracking the driver, because it was like a Friday pickup too, so we just had to make sure he'd be there on time and all that.

Grace Sharkey: 1:21:45

That's where we're more concerned about at the time. So he got there, fine, picked up, loaded on the road, and it was a Friday, and I remember, probably like an hour or two later, the rep had come to me and said, hey, this guy's like driving pretty south, like he was. It was very Southern California, but he was like basically riding the border through at that point, like Arizona or something like that. And I'm like, well, maybe he's, because I remember the phone number being like a Texas phone number. So I was like, well, maybe he's going home for the weekend, you know, and then going to trek up to Alaska, even though it was like a long drive and it had a delivery deadline. So it was like, well, I guess, if the guy knows what he's doing and can make the hours work, like screw it, let him go home. And then, like a couple more hours go by and the rep's like, hey, you know, this dude is just like we need to like check in on this situation. So the rep calls him, calls the carrier, and he's like you know, we're like we just want to. We saw that you're riding pretty south, Like we just want to check in. You know, are you going home for the weekend, etc. And he's like no, he's like I'm headed towards Miami to make this delivery. And we're like Miami, like what are you going to Miami for? Like this thing is supposed to go the opposite, it's supposed to go to Alaska, right, you know? Like it's like no, not even close, sorry, yeah, and I was in the guy who was like what are you talking about? And we're like what are you talking about?

Grace Sharkey: 1:23:19

And I remember like calling the guy, like the original dispatcher, and just like blowing up his phone and no one was answering and I told I was like listen, can you just please like just pull over and not go anywhere. Give me like 15, 20 minutes to check this out, because you know drivers like he's like well, I only have so many hours to like drive, so like I'm not trying to sit somewhere. And at this point he's like more confused by me than I am almost with him, and and so we just keep calling and no one's answering or picking up. And I text him like can you send me, can you send me the paperwork that you have, like the rate confirmation, everything that he got? And so he sends me it and there's this address and it says he's supposed to be going to Miami and it's nothing that he got from our shipper, it's just like it's. He's like yeah, they told me it was a blind BOL, so they said the delivery address is going to tell you Alaska, but that's just who's paying for it. It's supposed to actually deliver Miami.

Grace Sharkey: 1:24:18

So then I Googled the Miami address and it's like a tire shop. So like what I think this company was doing was searching low boards for equipment, for description types of tires, and has probably been stealing loads left and right to get inventory and then resell it either on the black market or to people who need it. Wow, and so it took us. I remember I had it. I was like I need you to go back and get unloaded, like he's. Like no, like I. It took forever for us to convince the driver and I didn't. I wasn't truly upset with him because it's like how does he know I'm not being a fraud?

Blythe Brumleve: 1:24:55

Yeah, I was about to say like is he? How does he? Is he part of the fraud or how does he know?

Grace Sharkey: 1:25:00

Yeah, and he wasn't. He was just. It was a double brokered situation where they brokered it to him and and said it was his driver, and and. Because we were smart and didn't give a pickup number or anything until we got it, I think what happened is the double brokers, once we got our hands on a phone number, realized they were going to get caught and just like said fuck it, you know, like we're just going to ignore all phone calls and keep it moving, and I think we ended up. I was like listen, we will like either.

Grace Sharkey: 1:25:32

It was either like a cash app or a com check situation. I was like I will send you a com check now to go back and then, once you're unloaded with those tires, I'll send you even more right then, like enough to like build up this confidence that we weren't flying. And then, I think about a week later, I got a phone call because I ended up going on Care for 0 and 1, letting people know what happened, and the actual owner of the MC called me and was like I saw what you put on there. Someone stole my identity, is using it to like steal tires, et cetera. So it's like a whole organized thing. That's why you track your trucks everyone but and check in on them.

Grace Sharkey: 1:26:13

But yeah, I mean that could have been serious. I mean those tires are expensive. I remember right, there was more insurance on it than 100,000 and it's like insurance isn't gonna cover negligence in most of those situations. So, yeah, we saved ourself that day. But I think that I mean that was that kind of stuff happens all the time and we are, at the time, one of like thousands and thousands of brokerages out there. So there's other people I've gotten screwed and I think it kind of shows you right, like how it's not just about double brokering and making a margin, right, it's even buying your inventory.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:26:50

Cat fishing.

Grace Sharkey: 1:26:51

Yeah, cat fishing and building a black market Like so crazy stuff.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:26:55

It's all kinds of interesting stuff that goes on in the transportation of goods, and especially from a like a historical perspective. So I think this is going to be a fun one for us to cover more often in the future. So I know we only have a few minutes. Do you have to leave there at a three? No, we can. I could go a little bit over. Okay, perfect, cause I wanted to talk about your story, about the yes, get into your story about the future or death of ultra fast shipping, and then we're going to end it with our favorite logistic story. So okay, so give us, give us the rundown on fast shipping. Is two day shipping going away? Is it evolving, or is it more or less like the same day shipping that's probably going away?

Grace Sharkey: 1:27:36

So I will say I called this a mile away About a year and a half ago. I said here's my hot take. 15 minute delivery is dumb. No one should invest in it. It makes no sense to me. That's the ultra fast we're talking about. We're talking about the go puffs. We're talking about the people even in a lightweight door dash. But I'll get into why. Door dash, I don't think counts anymore. I'm talking about I want something now, I order it and it gets to me in 30 minutes or less. Situation Like an Instacart, yeah, yes, like an Instacart too, and I'll get into why. Instacart has has gotten themselves kind of out of this type of trend. The big ones in particular would be someone like go puff, gorillas, getter bolts, flink those are a couple of those are more European than American.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:28:24

And so they seem all of them.

Grace Sharkey: 1:28:27

Yes, yeah, exactly, and they've got. They got a lot of money and, of course, we're all stuck in our homes and we really cared about getting stuff to us as fast as possible, but they've seen a huge fall off. So in 2021, in this segment alone, there was $7.8 billion worth of investment across 46 deals. Today, 2023 year, to date, there've only been three deals for less than $500 million. A number of these companies have their valuations have just imploded. Getter, in particular, went from 11.8 billion to 8.8, and that's after acquiring Gorilla.

Grace Sharkey: 1:29:11

Flink is trying to find money but isn't able to. The problem is and I kept like this is my problem with ultra fast delivery and this is how I'm gonna kind of showcase it Someone like Domino's right, like Domino's, like they've got that, like whole, saying that we'll get to you, I think, in 30 minutes or less. Well, the way it works for Domino's is because you'll see this, when you drive past Domino's, there's usually four cars sitting right in front ready to go, and in order to actually make these type of ecosystems work is you have to have assets deployable, drivers deployable pretty much at the location of pickup, the moment that this order is put in, and there's already been a fall off of drivers for Uber, et cetera, and you just have to have a massive capacity network in order to make this work, and almost to the point where you have too much capacity. So now you're overpaying, and that's, I mean, what. Uber just came out last week that they finally made profit after what like 10 years or something like that.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:30:20

Yeah, holy crap, it has taken them so long.

Grace Sharkey: 1:30:23

Exactly, and that's Uber, like that's the one we all actually kind of use. So these companies have just been fallen off completely. I'm not surprised at it at all whatsoever. If you want even more in-depth information, go see my recent episode of Point of Sale on ultra-fast delivery so you can learn more about it. But between, of course, economic uncertainty, most people aren't willing to spend an extra 10% on a good just to get it to them in 15. If I want something in 15 minutes these days I'll drive there. You know like, if I really I mean honestly, I've even considered I haven't used DoorDash as much because I'm like you know what With work gases, yeah, it's like, oh my God, taco Bell and DoorDash. They added like $1.50 to every single item. Also, if I'm not a well, I am a DoorDash member because of something I bought, but the fees are just insane.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:31:21

Then you have to tip them and so it's like tip is more than and you have to tip them before you get the service, which I cannot stand.

Grace Sharkey: 1:31:27

Yes. So it's like at this point, it's like I'm just gonna get in my car and drive. I'll spend less on gas. So I think that's why you're seeing the failure. The reason why DoorDash's and Instacarts, though, have helped themselves is they've kind of moved more away from just the ultra fast delivery, so they are grocery delivery, right. That's a big part, so they've got. They're not only looking at the business model of restaurants, but the grocery retailers are a big part of it, and so that's a.

Grace Sharkey: 1:32:03

Gopuff is probably the one that's valued the highest, but GoPuff also has its own ghost kitchens, so it's offering something that's not able to be bought anywhere else. Say the pizza. I think it's like one of their biggest ghost kitchen items, right. So they've opened themselves to different markets and different avenues for revenue generation, and that's what's, I think, helped them survive and grow this far. The ones that are just like we're gonna get you something in 15 minutes, Like people just don't care anymore and I knew people wouldn't care and they would say 15 minutes, like if it's a 15 minute delivery, that means you're less than 15 minutes away, which means I probably should just drive to you unless something crazy is happening.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:32:50

So 15 minutes is crazy. I don't. How do you build the infrastructure for that, which I imagine is you know probably what a lot of these companies are experiencing. Especially you noted earlier which kind of I gravitated towards is that a lot of these are Euro startups, where Europe is so much different. I was just talking to Carrie, ceo of Trucker Tools, and I asked her I was like because she worked for Uber Eats and she worked for them abroad too and I said, well, what's the biggest difference between Uber Eats abroad and Uber Eats, you know, within the US? And she said, with a lot of them, the overseas locations.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:33:24

It's concentrated in very high urban, dense settings where everybody's on an e-bike making deliveries. It's what I noticed in New York. Everybody is. It's very much a system of.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:33:37

You very rarely see the big semis in New York City, like the city part of it. What happens is that they will park those trucks, they'll offload them to smaller trucks, even like box trucks, and then they'll take it even a step further where, like the box trucks, will go into the city and then have unloading sections of like parking lots where they unload it even more into bicycle piled or powered carts and then even the e-bikes. So it gets like small, it gets from the large shipment of a semi and broken down even further. And so I think to your point, with Uber Eats or for DoorDash or anything like that, these ultra fast delivery services, I think they're kind of gonna evolve into just urban settings where it makes the most sense. I mean, having Uber Eats in like a small town in Georgia probably doesn't make a ton of sense unless you already have that infrastructure built out. Using Uber drivers or using, you know, just people who are not only working Uber but they're working Lyft, they're working Instacart, like they're working several of these different gig economy type jobs.

Grace Sharkey: 1:34:45

Exactly, and that person has to be basically as soon as that purchase is put in. Has to be what Within probably a minute or two from the store to originate and it's, and then you have to hurry.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:34:58

And they have to still buy it.

Grace Sharkey: 1:35:00

Yeah, and then you also have to have the inventory there and like and it's just, it's just something people care that much to have, something that fast, so it's imploding inside itself and I'm happy about it because I called that. So there we go.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:35:17

Well, that's a super interesting story. I thought that it was definitely for my lens. I think that consumers care about the expectation of when the delivery is going to arrive, not necessarily about the speed of it. I think there are still folks who will pay for convenience. But if you give them the option like an Instacart I use Instacart all the time.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:35:37

I've never once grocery shopped in my neighborhood in three years. I just order everything off of Instacart. But they give you I'm like I pay the annual fee, so it's like a hundred, it's kind of like prime or it's like a hundred bucks. You don't have to pay the extra fees for delivery and things like that. But they also give you an option. If you, if you want it super fast, if you want it within an hour, you're going to pay an upcharge.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:36:00

But here's a three hour window where you can choose. That's in your plan, that's no extra cost and that's typically what I choose, or I'll schedule it for the next day. It's more about the convenience of like not having to stop everything I'm doing, go to the grocery store, pick out everything, probably pick out extra stuff that I don't need, and then you know the hassle of like bringing it back to the house and unloading it. I would rather just make all of those decisions in the app and then choose a delivery window that makes sense for my schedule. It makes sense, for you know the cost, I guess, of Instacart doing business.

Grace Sharkey: 1:36:33

Exactly. Yeah, I could see that for sure.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:36:36

Okay, we hit on that one now it's part of the show for the logistics of. I wish we had some like noise or horns or something Like bam, bam, bam, bam. Okay, Do you want to go first?

Grace Sharkey: 1:36:49

Yeah, I will go first, just because this is a bring it full circle back to Barstool real quick. So I recently there's a guy that's actually kind of contracted through Barstool. His name is Wonton Don and he's traveled the world. He, barstool, originally found him when he was teaching English in China and he had some really funny skits that he would do with the kids and like teaching them about like athletes but like as it for like English lessons, but like teaching them like who's bad and who's good and why. It was really funny stuff. You go check him out. But he recently he's on this adventure right now following if you've seen 14 peaks, you probably know what I'm talking about Nims.

Grace Sharkey: 1:37:37

Nims has this really cool business where he sets up tours and trucks up to Mount Everest and so he's in there's probably four or five episodes and he this is Wonton Don on the screen right now and he's he's not going to be going to the peak but he's going to Basecamp One, which is, oh my God, so beautiful. Go check out this episode, but throughout it they're talking about the. Every once in a while I get to touch on the logistics of how stuff gets up to these areas and I tell people all the time, like one of my favorite parts of supply chain right now is is companies like Flipkart, who are growing in like India, like helping these type of communities get things fast because they actually need them, not just because they're like Americans who want things now, but like actually delivering and creating digital marketplaces for like getting these areas like desolate areas you know groceries and stuff like that. So are you going to show both clips?

Blythe Brumleve: 1:38:44

you think, yeah, I can hit play. Hopefully you can hear the volume in it. But I'm going to play what the first 10 seconds you said is good for this one, and then I'll play another clip right after that. So let's play the first one. So that first 10 seconds. He hoped to be already. So I'm going to be watching the rest of this conversation after the show. But you said go to, I think, the 1445 moment.

Grace Sharkey: 1:39:21

So I will skip, yes, and so they're going to get into Sherpas, who are individuals that deliver everything all the way up to Basecamp One Like it's in, and I'm talking tents, chairs, infrastructure. So this will kind of show you how we move things in these areas. Thank you. Oh, one of the easiest loads is an understatement. In the episode where he gets up to the base camp, there's a guy who's, I swear to God, carrying, stacked on top of each other, probably 20 folding chairs, wow, and so to kind of give people an overview of what exactly how they're moving a lot of stuff. So there's four main ways that they, that you move things and goods to these areas. There's helicopters, which are extremely expensive, very expensive and hard to land, right, so it's like there's only so much. Oh, perfectly, bringing that up. Shout out to C H Robinson, who had apparently a worker who climbed.

Grace Sharkey: 1:41:12

Mount Everest and was a blog. It's all about that.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:41:15

So this is a graphic for hold on. Sorry real quick for folks who are just listening. This is a graphic from C H Robinson. If you want to follow along this graphic, check out the show notes. We'll link to it.

Grace Sharkey: 1:41:26

So if you, if you scroll down a little bit, yes, you'll see, in the lower logistics area you have helicopters, yaks, which were the Guinness Yaks, right, which is like funny, because that day Guinness, he was been waiting two episodes for the Guinness to arrive, so that he was all. That's why he's all pumped about those Yaks. Then you have some of the climbers right, we'll bring some of the stuff themselves in the porters, which are basically the Sherpas. And if you scroll down a little bit to the upper mountain transportation section, so Sherpas are again just, they're just people. They're people of the area who help move everything that you can think of from the lower base of the mountain all the way up to the top. I mean, these guys, we're talking insane altitudes, like where if I I mean if I was to go even to the point in the last video that Wontondan was at, I would be like gasping for air likely.

Grace Sharkey: 1:42:28

Altitudes is no joke. Yeah, they're already super high up. They're probably I want to say maybe, hmm.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:42:39

It's got to be thousands and thousands of feet, because I know with that 14 peaks documentary they were covering all of the highest peaks and I went to Machu Picchu before and that was about 13,000, I guess, feet above sea level and I was dying as far as, like altitude sickness was concerned, and some of these mountains are double that. So it's very, very significant. With the kind of altitude that they're dealing with, it will get you if you're not used to it. It will gas you out. Just simply walking down the street will gas you out. So they're climbing up and down mountains with supplies, heavy supplies, in that kind of, I guess, environment which is sharp, as I imagine are used to that, but for maybe, like the, the, the barstool guy, maybe he's not so much used to that.

Grace Sharkey: 1:43:30

Well, that's what I would highly recommend watching this one. First off, it's hilarious. He's very good at making serious but funny documents, documentaries. This is one of them. But it's incredible because throughout all of the episodes I mean even, like I said, up to base camp one the Sherpas are up there moving everything that you can think of. They really. They're like. They treat them like in a way, like gods, like there's no disrespecting them. You better tip them or else you probably don't have water infrastructure here. So it's incredible and I'm just sitting there watching it and it's like what we're working on? Digital freight markets and we're still moving stuff up mountains by Sherpas Like boy. Is there so much to cover in this industry? Again, content, content, content.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:44:23

That's a great story and I love that CH Robinson took that extra mile to turn that into an infographic. Like I said I just mentioned earlier, there's so much content that you can create within your own company that you know shout out to them for recognizing that with their own employee and able to take that story to the next level and share it with all of us. Because you know, for folks who are in logistics, content creation we're always looking for. You know, unique stories and you know as we complain about, you know, our lack of, you know, 15 minute shipments. I think those Sherpas would probably laugh their ass off at the expectation of getting something within 15 minutes.

Grace Sharkey: 1:45:01

They're just like casually carrying 20 chairs on their back like and just just raging past like all the climbers to. It's just hilarious to me. One of them had like crocs on, oh wow.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:45:18

Which I mean, damn, those shoes are comfy. But I would, just I'm not going to trust them enough yet to like, go to a. I don't even trust them to go to like a Disney park yet. So I wouldn't, definitely wouldn't trust them to go hiking. But mountain people are so different from us, what they call us a flatlanders, which they weren't.

Grace Sharkey: 1:45:39

They weren't even sports mode, like that's what the crazy I was like. This guy is just casually climbing up these hills.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:45:46

He's showing off at that point. Yeah, so yeah, that's a great one. Thank you for for bringing that one up. I'm going to get into mine for a hot second and I want to talk about the logistics of garbage cleanup in oceans and rivers, because I think this is, you know, I obviously sustainability, you know pollution, things like that, and I think there are all things that as a consumer, it's really tough to grasp as far as, like, what you can do to help and how you can solve these big, complex problems.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:46:18

But there is one person that is trying to solve this problem and it's 19 year old.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:46:24

Boy in his name is boy in.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:46:26

He has started up a ocean cleanup fund, where I'm going to show this on the screen, but, just in case you're you're not watching it, essentially what it is is that there's the Pacific garbage patch, which is like hundreds of square miles in the Pacific Ocean, with all of this plastic waste, everything that comes, you know, out of rivers and everything we dump out of boats and things like all of this pollution is gathered up into one space.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:46:50

And so what's happening is that, with the Ocean cleanup initiative, they're taking two giant ships, cargo ships. They're attaching a specialized net to each one of the ships and forming a U shape around this garbage patch and starting to tackle it sort of one by one, and they're making a tremendous amount of progress with it. They partnered. I mean, like I said, this guy is 19 years old. He recently has announced a partnership with Maersk, so Maersk is helping to donate a lot of the equipment that is being used shipwise in order to make this, make this reality happen. And so, just really quick, a quick video that I want to show, with all of the trash that they just oh my God, we're disgusting.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:47:58

And, as you can see, like in the video, it's a. It looks like so much trash it's barely putting a dent into this Pacific. I mean to put it in perspective. We've that we've only collected about one of a thousand I don't know how you say that one one, one, the fraction, one thousand. We've only extracted just a very like point, five percent of it, of the total size of the patch. A lot of these videos that they share are 100,000 kilograms, whatever that is in American. I can't make that kind of you know, distinction between the kilograms and you know what the American metric system, but do with that information what you will.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:48:40

What's really cool is the next step of this process, because the boy in who is the founder of this company, he just recently shared their new river system, so we talked about the ocean part of it where they have these two giant ships, but with rivers. Only one percent of rivers are responsible for 80% of plastic entering our ocean. So his concept is well, what we can do instead is we can target the rivers in addition to this ocean, this big giant like ocean patch, and so if we can stop it from ever reaching the oceans, then that's going to be a situation that's better for everyone involved and take a look at these like disgusting rivers that are being cleaned up and, like I said, what was the point? One percent of rivers are responsible for 80% of plastic in our ocean, so let's take a look at this video.

Grace Sharkey: 1:49:35

Oh my God, eww, it's like straight up taking diggers to it.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:49:45

I mean, if you're just listening to it, there's a couple different diggers as a giant river, but you literally like it's probably maybe like a square mile, just nothing of but trash. Yeah, it's honestly breathtaking how much trash is here. But knowing that these new river systems that he has developed will then take that trash and they'll sort it out. So the next step if you're still watching the next step of the process is all of the people who are sorting through all of these different materials, finding what's salvageable, finding what's recyclable, and then the next step after that process is to turn some of these, because plastic is largely regarded as something that can't be reused. But there are companies that are coming out with different methods now of being able to take those that the plastic leftovers you know a lot of, like our plastic containers. You know a single use plastics. You can't recycle those and a lot of people don't know that those, even though you put it in the recycle bin, it has the recycle symbol on it.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:50:46

The overwhelming majority of our plastic cannot be recycled.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:50:50

But there are new methods that are being developed where they can take those single use plastics and then turn them into bricks and then use those bricks to build housing. So there's a lot of really cool stuff that you know with, like we kind of talked earlier about the younger generation and freight coming up with these new examples of how to tackle some of these really big problems, and I think that this is just such a brilliant example of a young person seeing a problem and attacking it at a tactical level, so much so that he has now partnered up with Maersk, one of the largest probably the largest, you know logistics company, shipping company in the world and able to tackle some of these problems with smart ways. I was really impressed with, like, the ocean cleanup, part of it and tackling that. But the river just makes so much more sense because if you can tackle it at the source, then you can stop the flow of that garbage that eventually makes it to that Pacific garbage patch. So that's my logistics of story.

Grace Sharkey: 1:51:52

That's incredible. I mean, it makes sense because you could continue to try to take what one 1000th away, but I'm sure as soon as you clean up that one 1000th you've got one whole other. You basically have one step, two steps forward, one steps back, right, Right.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:52:09

And there's one more quick video that I thought was super, super cute that I'm just going to throw in here at the last minute while I have you, but this is called the logistics of cattle and how you get cattle to an Irish island. This is on TikTok, so you probably haven't seen this yet, grace, but let's let me see if I can show this full video.

Grace Sharkey: 1:52:36

Oh Moos, oh my God, look at the Moos all swimming.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:53:00

How cute is that.

Grace Sharkey: 1:53:02

So cute. Who doesn't love a good Moomoo?

Blythe Brumleve: 1:53:06

Yeah, that's one of those. How did they figure out that cows are strong swimmers?

Grace Sharkey: 1:53:09

I do wonder Probably what they just did there. Just threw it in the water and saw what happened. I'm like dang, you're just going to push her in there.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:53:18

Yes, so, but I thought that that was really, really cute. I did not I don't even know why, I didn't think that Ireland had like farm animals like this, but I guess you know, obviously it makes sense.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:53:30

How those cows get there Right and then shipping them over to the island. I just think that's really cute, so I thought that I would throw that one in there to end the show on a really fun note. Grace, I know you have to go and thank you for staying a little bit longer with us in order to share these fun logistics of stories. Where can folks you know follow more of your work, get in touch with you, join all of the different communities? All that good stuff.

Grace Sharkey: 1:53:55

Yeah, I would say I feel like I say this every time. Google me, so awful. Rachel said that yesterday on the radio show and I said you know what? Go girl power, google me. No, for real, though, if you, I'm on LinkedIn Grace Sharkey, s-h-a-r-k-e-y. A lot of times people forget the E. You should find me. I'll pop up really quick because I put some emojis in my name. Differentiate yourself so you can find me there, and anywhere you find me at my profiles whether it's on Twitter, instagram, linkedin you'll find my link tree. That'll get you to everything we're doing I have. I'll have a kind of. There's two exciting things I'm going to be talking about in the next couple of weeks, so likely. One we'll talk about the next time. Yeah, two we'll probably talk about the next time I'm on the show. One's freight rates related. One's more independent. So, yeah, it's going to be a fun episode next month, that's for sure.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:54:53

Heck yeah, and we'll both actually be seeing each other at the upcoming CSCMP conference in October. Might mix in a little Epcot drink around the world trip, so stay tuned, follow us on social for that. That'll probably be really fun. And then waves F3.

Grace Sharkey: 1:55:11

Yes, so so far this year. For the rest of the year there's a couple, I might add. You can find me at the CM, cscmp there we go Conference in Orlando. You can find me at, of course, f3, and then manifest rates in the books for next year too. So there should be a couple. Might be one or two more in between there. Techno nation is the other one I might, or Technovations, oh Diego. Yeah, that one I might be going to. So I'll let you guys know when I confirm that, but yep, excited to go back around.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:55:45

I do wish that we were going to his freight fest friend of the show, romile Wattley of truck and hustle hosting. Yes, I believe freight fest bum to miss it, but it's at the same time as CSCMP already agreed to go to that one first. So that's one that are freight fest is going to be one on my list to attend next year, so great call outs for those to check out more of this show. Be sure to follow and subscribe on YouTube and your favorite podcast app of choice. But this has been another edition of freight friends with Grace Sharkey and we hope that you guys will tune in for the next series, also uploading our backlog of content videos from the same series, up to case anybody wants to check them out. But thank you guys all for tuning in and we'll see you real soon in the words of Disney.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:56:53

I don't know about another company I operate and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:57:00

Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co workers 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.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:57:16

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 $1500, 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 digital dispatchio. 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 and go Jags.

About the Author

Blythe Brumleve

Creative entrepreneur in freight. Founder of Digital Dispatch and host of Everything is Logistics. Co-Founder at Jax Podcasters Unite. Board member of Transportation Marketing and Sales Association. Freightwaves on-air personality. Annoying Jaguars fan.

To read more about Blythe, check out her full bio here.

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