Blythe Brumleve:
0:42
Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I am your host, Blythe Milligan, and we are probably sponsored by SPI logistics, and we've got one more, our last interview at manifest, the future of supply chain and logistics, at least the last live one. And we've got a repeat company, not repeat, yes, but a repeat company coming back on the show. We got Jonathan Ryan Overhaul's, Chief Product Technology Officer, to talk about the state of cargo crime for 2025 along with a new, I guess, a product that you guys are launching. Here are you. Is the press release dropped today. I don't believe it dropped today. I think it dropped it a little while ago. But, yeah, going to talk more. Going to talk more about it gotcha, and that is your new fraud. Watch AI solution, the 55 million in funding that they announced previously, as well as broader trends happening in supply chain risk management and cargo rift risk Theft Prevention space. So that was a mouthful for myself, so I'm going to let the expert take over from here. And Jonathan. Give us a give us a preview. Give us an overview of how you got into logistics. How you got into, you know, working for overhaul, all that good stuff. Yep. So, you know, unfortunately, I don't have a 20 year story to tell you about how I got into supply chain logistics, but I completed a computer science degree in Ireland. I'm from Ireland and worked in finance for a year in Ireland. Really wanted to go to the US and explore more on the technology side and get into something there. And I kind of expected, after a year in the US, I'd return to Ireland and have to find a new company, but come back with some experience. But I found overhaul. And, you know, I started working in the product and kind of tech support space eight years ago, almost nine years ago now. And you know, one of the lucky things about that, I guess, is it meant wearing a lot of hats. And as we kind of pivoted into the SaaS solution that we have today, I moved more into the product space, engineering space. And over the years, then, as we found that product market fit, moved into engineering management, VP of Engineering, and then year and a half ago, we consolidated the product and engineering orgs into technology, and then I moved into the cpto role. And so with your your role, with overhaul, what does sort of a day to day look like for you? There is no one single day for sure. But you know, we have a we've a global team, engineers and product managers. So a lot of what I try to do is just make sure that everybody's on the same page around what we want to achieve, what are some of the challenges we're facing. You know, what I really like to try and incorporate into all of our technology teams is good industry understanding. I think it's really important that whether you're an engineer or product manager, you understand the space, and you know why you're solving the problem, and so it's a lot of that coordination, and then also just, you know, working with our sales marketing that go to market strategy, things like that, and are really just, you know, pretty broad still, I think we're coming out of that startup phase, and we've been out for a while, but as someone who joined the company fairly early, you know, you still kind of wear quite a few hats and try to solve, tackle quite a few problems. So from a high level, what does sort of risk and prod fraud prevention look like in the modern day 2025, logistics company? Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, that's the that's the first question everybody asks is, what does risk mean to you? And so, you know, our software is risk management solution across a variety of different risks. So the risk might be on time performance ETAs and the risk that that means to your customers not arriving on time, and how it can affect your relationship. But more traditionally, what we focus on is security and risk. And so what that means is the actual integrity of the goods and the load, and also the the safety of the driver is part of that as well. And so what will what we set out to achieve is, you know, first and foremost, be preventative. You don't want to stolen goods. You don't want pilferages That you're having to respond to. So we try to, through incorporation of our technology technology, improve our customer supply chains by bringing in best in class processes, procedures, trying not to overwhelm, you know, I think it's important that you're able to keep very close to the procedures and processes they follow today, but incorporate technology in the right places so that you can get that data back and help continually monitor and improve their network you just mentioned, you know, sort of the, I guess, the safety of the driver, which is, I think I haven't really heard any other sort of risk prevention, fraud prevention company talk about, can you expand on that a little more? Yeah. I mean, you know, in the early days, before we kind of pivoted into the SaaS solution, that was something that we were, we were very focused on, was, how can we help the drivers, carriers, you know, find these higher value shipments and loads, and somebody who's been performing, you know, at a very high level for years, but maybe struggling to get into that continual, reoccurring operations. And so as part of that driver focus, you know, we wanted to ensure that there was safety from their perspective as well, particularly when you're operating globally in some of these more dynamic environments where there.
Jonathan Ryan:
5:37
Can be, you know, concerns around that. I think that's as important as ensuring the cargo. You know,
Unknown:
5:43
when I had a previous guest from from overhaul on the show, we were talking before we recorded that, they had mentioned all of the, I guess, the differences between countries of Brazil versus Mexico versus the United States, of how they try to have, you know, try to implement fraud prevention, risk, risk management, things like that. I'm curious how that's evolved. What is sort of, I guess, a high level process look like, because you mentioned that some of those things that are happening in other countries are now coming to the United States, yeah, and so maybe to even take a step back a little bit and speak to what overhaul does. So we are a software company, and we look at integrating all of the various data that already exists out there. And so we're not hardware. We don't build devices, but we do integrate with them, and we are device and IoT agnostic. And so what that allows us to do via maybe TMS, ERP, WMS, OMS integrations, is create that customer shipment, and then, via our telematics, ELD IoT integrations, populate that shipment with with those data sources and those pings that that allow us to track a shipment. And so what that does from the security perspective then, and maybe getting into you know, what we see across different regions that provides a higher level of visibility and higher frequency and a higher resolution network. And so when it comes to cargo theft, you know, what we've typically seen in areas like our regions like Mexico, Brazil, is a lot more risk to the driver in those areas. And it can be, you know, I'm not sure what the right word to put on it is, but, you know, an environment where the driver is definitely, you know, a little more aware of the issues they might might encounter while on the road. But what we've seen over the last, you know, couple of years is a lot of those methods that were happening overseas, outside of the US, actually come into the US now, and we've seen things such as the Romanian role. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's honestly like something straight out of Fast and Furious. You know, where the load is moving down the road at high speeds, and they're actually pilfering it and unloading the cargo while in motion, and taking things out of the back of the trailer. So that's just an example of some of the methods that we've seen that have started to become more frequent in the US, where we had typically seen them overseas. Wow, that is absolutely insane. There was another thing, and I don't know if this is happening yet in the United States, but there was another thing that he had mentioned that for in Brazil, they almost try to recruit high schoolers to, you know, get into with the cartels and the local gangs within Brazil, and then they recruit them to start working at different logistics companies. And so then they have an in once that person graduates high school, or graduates their schooling, and then goes and works for these logistics companies. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's not something that we've encountered too much of in the US. But you know what ties in similar, very closely to that, is that you know people on the inside and you know carrier companies that are set up and trying to look as reputable as as can be. But part of what our fraud watch solution does is it incorporates, first of all, you know, a very rich historical data set that we have from an intelligence perspective, but then also integrating with third party data source, sources such as the FMCSA data, along with a variety of other sources. And so what that helps us identify are those illegitimate carriers or carriers that are trying to appear as if, as if they're legitimate, and they've been working in the industry for a while, and so that's where our fraud watch. When a carrier is entered into the system as part of the process, I was able to flag that, hey, this after passing through our rules engine, this doesn't meet the criteria that we would expect. And you might want to, you know, reconsider shipping that load with this carrier. That's super interesting. And so it's almost like an alert system prior to maybe it becoming a problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And maybe just even speak a little more to fraud watch in that context. So a big problem that a lot of our customers had, and that a lot of people still have in the industry, is double brokering and shipment being created, maybe via their TMS platform, and, you know, a certain carrier being assigned, but then who actually shows up on the day to pick up that load? And that's where we have software that's available at the dock that allows them to capture the carrier who's showing up at that time, and then we assess it against who was the originally booked carrier through the TMS and then compare if that's double brokered, and then at that same time, run that through our fraud watch system to be able to understand, you know, is, has it been operating for more than six months? Is there more than one driver there? Do they have more than one tractor trailer registered? There's a lot of these different nuances, you know, that we've understood through our our history, but also through our intelligence teams that work at overhaul. Yeah, it's really kind of define and make that fraud watch product very useful and impactful for our customers. And so when somebody is using fraud watch, is it almost like they're they have a screen open on, you know, say, like a traditional like broker's office or something. They have four screens, and they're booking lows or calling their sourcing carriers, or doing all of that stuff. Do they have fraud watch as like one on some one of their screens as they're looking at on a day to day basis? So there's, actually, there's a few different ways that they can use fraud watch. And so first and foremost fraud watch is, you know, preventative, and we try not, as I said before, to disrupt their flow of how they do things. So for example, if if they want to create shipments in a TMS, then at that time, via an API, we will assess the carrier that they've assigned so that can be completely hands off, just through the TMS system, and then we can send that as a notification or an alert to whoever at the at the customer wants to be notified of that, to say that, hey, you've potentially put a risky carrier on on this load. So that's kind of hands off approach. Then we have software that can, you know, be loaded onto a tablet, a mobile application. And we're also looking at app list, because who doesn't have app fatigue at this point? And that's where it can be a little more hands on, where you're capturing at that point of departure who the carrier is, and so that's that's alerting that to you. But then, as you mentioned, there is also a web app that has the carrier dashboard where you can enter carriers in. And you know, maybe it's not that one time checkout where you're assessing that particular carrier, but you're uploading multiple carriers, and you're getting that bulk check and just assessing your network for any of the latest risks. So exception management, maybe, yeah, yeah, exactly. And one thing is that, you know, people will will talk about AI every other second. Word here is probably going to be AI, but you know, you're only as good as the data that you have and the intelligence that you have, and that's where on the overhaul side, something that is very unique to us, is 16 years worth of intelligence data from an intelligence team who has worked in this space. You know, we have some former law enforcement with over 80 years between them who are working in tandem with huh? So you actually have officers too that are working for overhaul, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, you know, we really aim to combine machine learning AI data, but with subject matter experts as well, you know, to validate, to review, of course, not every shipment that ever travels is captured in overhaul. So we do have other integrations, and we do have team members that are focused on understanding what are the latest trends, what do we need to be able to respond to? I can actually give you another example of something that we're seeing and how I would love to see it here. So that was gonna be my next question. Is here some of those latest trends, commodities that are targeted, maybe. So there's been a 50% increase from 2023 to 2024 in cargo theft, and 30% of that has been around electronics. So electronics is heavily, heavily targeted. 50% of that has been pilferage, and I think 25% has been full truckload. So you know, we're seeing a big uptick in cargo theft. But you know, to speak the overhaul, one thing we do also see is that, for the goods that are targeted frequently or are maybe more high value, one out of every 2000 loads that aren't monitored by overhaul will see a theft event, you know, maybe a attempted pilferage, a pilferage things like that. Does that mean, you know, somebody's trying to steal, like the Romanian road, that what you were talking Yeah, they're just trying to take, you know, a couple of couple of boxes off the back, maybe some TV screens, consoles, things like that, you know, just trying to use the moment get away with, with what they can. And so that's one in 2000 that we see targeted that aren't monitored by overhaul. But then when you are monitored by overhaul, it's one in 35,000 so our preventative measures is what we really focus on, as you don't get yourself into that situation where you're susceptible to cargo theft, or you're driving on a lane or in a region, or using a carrier who is going to, you know, potentially put that load at risk. And so that's, you know, super interesting stat, I think, from our side, is that we are, you know, continuously beating that industry trend for those who target high value goods. But sorry, I forgot. I was going to get back to the the example. And so one thing that we're seeing is speaking to the sophistication of Cairo criminals today is that they will take the bol at a at an origin facility, and then get in transit, and they'll actually have printers in the cab with them to Doctor the bol and then show up at the delivery location, give the you know, receiver, the updated BOL, and then leave with you know, the rest of of the goods. And so that's where that double brokering and preventative step is so important, and that's the kind of issue that fraud watch is. Acting. And honestly, that's been that's been growing rapidly. Wow. What are some other, maybe trends that are evolving? Because I have heard, I think it was around 2020, or maybe 2021 that it wasn't necessarily electronics that were being targeted. It was more like perishables. So energy drinks, where, I think, were a big one, pistachios were also a big one. Are there any other like commodities? Maybe, because for a lot of, I think, for the audience, for a lot of those examples, there's no tracking those products, because once they're eaten or used, that you can't find, you know, a VIN number or UPC number on the back of that, versus like an electronic device. So I'm curious if you know any of those other sort of commodity trends you're seeing in your data? Yeah. I think, you know, one of the recent stories that came up was maybe you saw it around the eggs, eggs being stolen? No. And so, you know that kind of speaks. Did you see an X Wing stolen? Sorry, eggs. I knew the Irish accent was gonna get me in trouble here. Yeah, and so and so we saw recently, and I think, you know, it hit pretty much mainstream news as well, around eggs being stolen. And that, you know, speaks to how agile a lot of these cargo criminals are, because it's not necessarily about the value of the goods, it's also about demand. And so, you know, eggs is something that's been very topical over this last while. And so they know, and a lot of these carrot criminals are also wholesalers, the good one, the good ones. And so to them, it's about margin and how quickly you can shift that. And so sometimes, when you see something like demand for eggs, and you know that there's market there for it, that's actually, you know, there's can be more incentive than going and taking TVs, because they know that they can just move that so quickly, and it's once it's gone, it's gone, there's no traceability to it. What other trends, I guess, are you seeing for maybe, you know, 2025, and beyond? You know, I really just do think that it's the continued sophistication of how these cargo criminals are operating. I think that example that I gave of the updated bol shows that they're much more familiar with what's happening in terms of how people are monitoring goods and how they're responding to it and and so that's, you know, a constant evolution on our side is, how can we stay ahead of that? You know, we can bring out the latest technology, and then we might see them respond. And so we got to keep being ahead of it. And from my perspective, overhaul, being device agnostic and being able to leverage the variety of different IoT sources across many of the manufacturers, gives us that advantage because we're not tied into a specific type of device. We've introduced new things this year, such as the Bluetooth seal, where it's a seal that's on the back of the trailer, and when it's cut, it communicates with the device that's inside to let them understand that. You know, this has now been targeted, and it's a definite this, this door has been opened. So you know, our flexibility there from a data point of view. Then there's door switches that can be installed for when the door opens, and a lot of different solutions and configurations like that and and it's that configurability that I think resonates most with our customers, is that we're able to respond, you know, and be very agile to these challenges that occur as criminals get more sophisticated. Is there a, I guess, a recommended tech stack for somebody to avoid fraud in particular, like you mentioned the Bluetooth device, maybe the door sensors. What would if you were starting a trucking company and you were worried about your freight? How would you secure it? Great question. And you know, it honestly comes down to to the use case. You know, are you multi modal? Are you using rail? Are you shipping over overseas or air vessel? Because there's a lot of different intelligence that we can pull into those, you know, container tracking or master air way build tracking to understand if the route is changing dynamically and make sure, because that's one of the most important things. Is how accurate is the data from A to B, and are you able to define, you know, the lanes and the risks that might be occurring there? But you know, maybe, just to try and answer your question, I do think incorporating a Bluetooth seal or a door switch depending on you know how you're going to be shipping, those are the solutions today that I think are the most effective to combating it, and yeah, having multiple integrations and data sources. So for example, what we'll always strive for as a device an IoT agnostic company is, can we integrate the ELD or the telematics that are going to be on the tractor trailer? Can we combine that with an IoT source? So for example, if a trailer got separated, or if cargo got got separated, you're understanding that separation, because we have multiple data points in real time on that shipment. So yes, there are configurations that I think are the, you know, best in class with, with seal and door switches. But then I also think just continuing to push and incorporating more of what's already out there into overhaul, and then we can detect any separation. Or anomalies that occur outside of just, sort of, you know, the, I guess, the IoT devices, or, you know, the fraud watch. Is there any like, sort of, just base level things that companies can do to try to avoid their risk profile? Yeah, I think that, you know, going to the preventative measure, and that's where we've really been focusing more of our attention on the last couple of years, because I think we've done a fantastic job for the in transit, A to B, once it's left. Got extensive Law Enforcement Network to back us up there, but it's really about being more preventative. So you know, working with us to look at your carrier network, look at the lanes and regions, seeing what's the theft profile for those for those lanes? Are you an electronics customer who's operating on a lane or region that has seen a growth in electronics theft? So that's the the base level thing is just getting ahead of it, and what we've termed shifting left, back into, you know, the network, the lanes, the regions. And just as you're setting up for maybe, you know q3 q4 launches of new products or things that you know will be targeted. It's just doing that work ahead of time to ensure you know you're as safe, secure as you can be. But you know, nothing is perfect. There's always ways it can happen, so but, but I do feel the preventive measures are what's what's really important. So say you're you're a company, and you you've done the hard work of you've got the preventative measures in place. You've got, you know, fraud, watch. What happens if it still gets stolen? What happens if there's still an issue? Does overhaul play a role in that? And, yeah, and look, obviously, you know, you don't want to see that happen, but of course, it does happen, and that's where, you know, I think that we've excelled, is in response, I think it's a 96% recovery when something does get stolen. And we have extremely detailed, extensive networks globally with law enforcement. I think there was a theft in Poland on a rail shipment, and we had boots on the ground law enforcement there within 20 minutes, I think just over 10 minutes. And this is in the middle of nowhere, you know, really out there. And that just speaks to kind of how extensive that that network is. And so, to answer your question, what we would typically see is an event that occurs in the system. So, you know, maybe the IoT sources come off Route, or it's deviated from the delivery location that it's been moving towards, or perhaps we see a sensor event like that, seal open or door switch, things like that. And so what we would do at that point is, once the event is generated, it goes in front of our security operators team. So we kind of have two stages. We get a lot of raw data into our system. We have over 7 billion data points now of that raw in transit risk monitoring data that gets assessed by the overhaul rules engine. Once something is triggered there that gets routed to the appropriate personnel. So if it's something like a seal break that might go direct to the Intelligence Team, they'll kick off their response with law enforcement and say, Hey, we know that something bad happened here. Get law enforcement involved, and then respond. They kick off a session where they'll have, you know, the intelligence team member law enforcement contacts there, and they'll respond and get people on the ground to recover that or track that. And you know, it's, it's really interesting. You see some, you know, high speed chases, and it's pretty intense a lot, you know, really, like I said, going back to Fast and Furious, it's not too far off the what does your what something like that happens? What does like your company look like? Is it like a war room where everybody is, you know, on the phone and checking systems, and, yeah, you know, we've, we've got the process down in procedure. So it's not like something where it's an all hands on deck. We've got the appropriate people who are working, you know, to respond and resolve these events. So it's, it's pretty like clockwork, procedural things happen. It goes through that process of getting the right person in, in touch, monitoring, responding to the event. So it's, it's really, you know, obviously, I'm on the technology side and product side, and I love what we've been able to do, but I'm always in awe of the law enforcement guys and how they've kind of built that network and communicate. It's just super efficient. Yeah, it's just, I think it's absolutely crazy that, you know, this not crazy, because I think fraud and just sort of cargo theft has always existed since, you know, the dawn of man, but how it has evolved over even just the last handful of years, and how it continues to evolve. And it's just this constant game of, like criminals trying to, you know, one up the tech providers like yourself, and the, you know, the risk providers or risk protection like overhaul. And so it's an interesting, like cat cat and mouse game that just continues to evolve. Last couple questions here, is there anything important that you think you should mention that we haven't already talked about? You know, I think also you touched on the fundraising there. And you know, that's we're continuing to invest in our AI solutions as well. And you know, our machine learning and. Data capabilities. We completed an acquisition a couple of years ago that basically doubled the amount of in transit security events that we had in our system. And it actually was very well timed with Gen AI and the emergence of that as a technology that people wanted to leverage, because it made us centralize our data repository, where as part of acquiring that company and bringing in that data set, we knew we would need a more refined and robust data infrastructure architecture. And so what that meant is that we have all this data that basically everything that's in the overhaul ecosystem lives there, and then, when GPT came about, it meant that we could easily pass that data back and forth. So, you know, while people are talking about AI and how it can affect business, you know, it really depends on how how good that data set is and how rich it is. And so we were very fortunate that we went through all that effort to centralize it just as GPT emerged, and now we're able to pass that back and forth. So, you know, I just, I do want to call out that today, GPT is the worst it'll ever be, or Gen AI is worst. So it's important to incorporate that as much as you can into the functionality and products that we're building, because then we'll grow as that continues to develop. And then, just on the, you know, the funding also, you know, continuing to look at M and A as you know, referring to that previous acquisition that helped us bolster the security perspective and the data set we had there. And so we're always looking to expand and grow into adjacent markets and improve our visibility and the data that we have. So that would be something for this year as well as we continue to assess what's out there and how we can bring more value to what we do today, I imagine that data migration project was killers, absolutely. Yeah, that was, how did it take? So we actually had a six month timeline on it, so it was very hands on deck, yeah, but you know that on the infrastructure side, that's one of the areas that I'm most proud of. Got a fantastic team there that was able to, you know, get that done, while also competing projects that you go through as an acquisition anyway. So the timeline was aggressive, but yeah, we've got a great team, thankfully. That's awesome. Six months. That's very admirable, because I'm thinking of like, all these different data sets that you have in order to rework, I guess, the architecture, and then migrate all of those into that new architecture and have a talk to an LLM like, that is a major undertaking. Yeah, kudos to you. I'm sure it was a nice vacation at the end of that, six months, still waiting on it. I guess that's sort of the nature of the beast when it comes to fraud prevention and risk assessment and things like that in this industry constantly evolving. Yep, yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's the data, and it's incorporating, you know, in my opinion, humans into that to enrich and refine and create that loop where, you know the system is assessing the raw data, but then you have that enrichment. When it gets to that law enforcement escalation, you have somebody that's then labeling it, tagging it, and it's going back into the system, and it's continually improving and making our solution more intelligent. That's a hell of a way to end it. Perfect ending. Laura, So Jonathan, where can, where can folks follow you? Follow your work, get maybe get a demo with overhaul all that good stuff. Yeah, I think over dash hall.com, that's our marketing site. That's the best place to go. And then can also follow us on LinkedIn. Awesome pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics.com and in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co worker's child, a neighbor down the street or stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website. Well, that doesn't happen at Digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009 but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. 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