1,800 Lbs of Weed Crossed 5 States and Nobody Got Arrested

0:28We'll be right back.

0:34Malcolm Harris: The last Friday of August, man. I'm Malcolm Harris, joined, of course, by my partner in crime, Mr. Michael Vincent. Mike, what's going on, man? Happy Friday, brother. Happy Friday. So good to see you. What's going on, bro? Listen, man. College football, baby. College football is back. The UTC mocks. You know what's better than zero and zero? One and zero. 1-0, the UTC mocks over the University of West Georgia. 24-10. Go mocks, man. How about it? 24-10. Is that like a big win for them? No, no. I'm just happy they won the football game. I mean, it's a big win for some of them. Is it a warm-up type of thing?

1:16Malcolm Harris: I wouldn't say it's a warm-up. I just think there was a lot of uncertainty for the mocks. But they played a good game, man. Took a couple big plays. A lot of good defensive football was played. It was overall 10 out of 10. I enjoyed watching it for a little bit. It was a 10 out of 10. Sweet. Sweet. Sweet. My alma mater, Mercyhurst University, put up a solid 10-point showing against Youngstown State. Listen, it's okay. They scored 43. They scored 43. But did they have fun? That's the important part. That's it. As long as everybody had fun, you're all winners. Thanks. Thanks, Mom. Oh, man. What do you got playing for this weekend other than watching the University of North Carolina and the Texas Christian University?

2:05TCU and North Carolina. Is that, like, the only game that's, like, of any interest?

2:10Malcolm Harris: I mean, you got USC playing. I mean, there's a couple of folks, but nothing really crazy. NC State, Virginia. I am so sorry. Shout out to Izzy. NC State and Virginia are going to be playing as well. They still got a team, NC State? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, NC State, Virginia's got like a bunch of folks on the injury report. They've been hitting this summer. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. They've been hitting. Hitting what? We're going to be hitting the ground running because on deck, we got two great guests to end out your Friday. Let's get to it, and let's show you what they are and who they are and what they're about, most importantly.

2:46Malcolm Harris: All right, first off, we're going to have Bill Schmidbauer. All right, he is the vice president of solution design at ODW Logistics. All right. So Phil's going to be talking to us about freight consolidation. All right. It sounds simple on paper, of course, but you combine shipments, fill the truck, save money. And he's going to break down how it goes wrong in the real world. And most importantly, who ends up absorbing those hidden costs and much more. All right. So that's the conversation with Phil. That's going to be later. But then to lead off the show, we're going to have Michael Schramm. He is a CEO and co-founder of Nordian.

3:19Malcolm Harris: All right. So before this, he was building an electric scooter fleet during the bird and lime boom. All right. And then that experience exactly ended him in this position of connectivity where there's problems he's solving now. So we're getting into centimeter level positioning and what physical AI actually means and why connectivity might be the biggest hurdle of all right now. All right. So between Michael and Phil and Michael Vincent and Malcolm Harris, it's one heck of a show to send you into the weekend. And the fastest 45 minutes is going to commence right now. All right. Would not be possible, of course, without the knockies.

3:54Malcolm Harris: All right. I'm talking Gnosis. Great. Ladies and gentlemen, Jake Hoffman was here a couple of weeks ago, and I was so blown away by the conversation with him. And again, if you're still checking carrier websites, copying container data in the spreadsheets and chasing updates throughout email chains, you're doing it all wrong. You got to get Gnosis. All right. It's an AI operating system for global logistics. one platform to track every single container, automate execution, and protect your margins across the container lifecycle. All right, I'm talking so much cost savings when it comes to different companies that have utilized Gnosis.

4:26Malcolm Harris: And for those that have some interests, it's very simple. All you got to do is check them out right now at gnosisfreight.com, book a demo with them, and make sure that you tell them that Malcolm and Michael sent you. Again, that is Gnosis Freight. They are changing the game. All right, we're also changing the game here at What The Truck, and really at Freight Waves. And the game is going to be changed on October 27th and the 28th because the Future of Freight Festival is officially here. All right.

4:56Malcolm Harris: This is the biggest event of the year. The sound effects are going to be there. The people are going to be there. The demos are going to be there. That guy, Malcolm Harris, is going to be there. Michael Vincent is going to be there. There's going to be so many folks in the building October 27th. Zach Strickland's going to be there. Zach Strickland. Zach Strickland's going to be there. Greg Fuller, the lizard. You're going to have Frazier Goodgame there. Isaiah Buchanan's going to be there. The homie Trace is going to be there. Everybody, Cody Dollar, you name it, we're going to be full house there October 27th and 28th.

5:32Malcolm Harris: Tickets are on sale right now. There is a promo code. You can use the code at Take20. That is T-A-K-E-2-0 for your chance to be there. And tickets are limited, So make sure that you guys are taking the chance to do that again, October 27th and 28th at The Signal, one of the best venues here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All right. So that is that. The bills are officially paid, Mr. Vincent. Sweet. Let's get to what we do and how we do it. All right. All right. We didn't balance any checks, did we? No, no, no. We're good. We're good. They cash. All right. They cash. They cash. All right. We're good.

6:06Malcolm Harris: We're good. There's this company. Chet. Boy, I could not say it better myself. We don't even know how big it is. We don't even know how big this check is. It's got to be pretty big. Good for my man, Matt. I mean, wow. Let's get to this one right now out of Arrive Logistics because Arrive Logistics officially is scaling big. They are hiring 1 ,000 folks after this huge capital agreement with Mubadala. Did I say that correctly, Michael? Mubadala? Is that what we're thinking? I think it's Mubadala. Okay. I'm not sure if that's correct. But yeah, of course, you guys know Arrive. We've got some - Frazier told me that and it was Mubea, Italy.

6:52Malcolm Harris: That's what Frazier said, so we can blame it on Frazier if this goes south. I think he might have been just messing with me, though. He might have been, man. He might have been. Well, they are investing heavily into Arrive Logistics. This deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to customary closing conditions. Now for Arrive, the new investment can translate into significant expansion into both its workforce and freight offerings, all right? So this is from your boy, Matt, all right? So this is actually from a statement that he issued to FreightWaves via email. We've already begun to increase our hiring for sales, modes, and technology.

7:27Malcolm Harris: Of course, the CEO and co-founder of Arrive said in an email yesterday, we will hire a thousand new team members in 2026 and even more gross slated for 2027. and beyond. All right, so they already, guys, have... So they're going to grow by 50 % by the end of this year. All right, so let's talk about this for a second. I know the recruiting game. I know it... I'm not trying to be braggadocious by any means, but... Well, they're in Austin, man. You could dangle enough money to get 1 ,000 kids out. You could, but, like, man, like, that's an ask. That's an ask and a half, bro. Well, it depends on what quality you want, dude.

8:08You could hire 1 ,000 people. Yeah, for sure. Any of them going to stick.

8:14Malcolm Harris: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's aggressive. It's really aggressive. It's really aggressive. I mean, dude, you were like the master recruiter doing cartwheels down the hallway and all kinds of crap, dude. Come on. We got to find some of that footage somewhere. Please don't. I hope that footage is burned down to the ground, man. Dude, you were like 50 pounds heavier doing that shit. What the hell, man? You know what I'm saying? I mean, you're like, they had like, didn't they have like drywallers and stuff on staff to fix the walls after you went down the hallway?

8:48Malcolm Harris: I adore you, bro. You are a mess. But let's get back to Mudap. Yeah, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Dude, this is crazy. I mean, this isn't, this isn't, people look like, okay, look, this is, you know, like private equity coming in and investing. This is a strategic bet by Abu Dhabi, basically, right? On the freight market and on it changing and on the flip, the growth. Their position, they're dumping a ton of money. If they're going to just randomly say, look, we're going to hire 50 % more people. I'm pretty sure. Look, Matt, I love Matt Pyatt. He's fantastic. I think he's done a great job at Arrive.

9:35I remember when they had. He's got a great team too, man. He's got a. You remember when they opened like three desks in the back room there at Steam? Yeah. Right? When Steam was like one room itself. Yeah.

9:48Malcolm Harris: And then you had Arrive that was in kind of like the back corner. Yeah. They like the back corner. They had like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They rented out like a closet or some shit. Hey, they had a location though. They had a location. They had a footprint. But now they're going to say, we're going to grow 50 % this year. I'm pretty sure they don't have 50 % more volume banging on their door going, please hire enough people to handle this, right? So they're betting big time. They're big time. It's a huge bet. It's a huge bet. I will say infrastructurally, they got 10 locations. Obviously, they got an operation in Toronto.

10:19Malcolm Harris: They also got an operation in Guadalajara. So this is possible. And they're going to have more. They're going to have more, right? This is possible. It's North America. It's nearshoring. it's Abu Dhabi going, okay, look, there's policies in place here that are changing things, and we're betting that it's going to be successful, and it's, in my opinion, it's smart money. This isn't, look, Arrive is just going to explode. It's acquisition money. I mean, that's where it's going. And most people probably out there going, no kidding, Vincent, everybody knows that. But I mean, I'm just saying the obvious.

10:52I think I'm saying the obvious, right?

10:54Malcolm Harris: I do think you're saying the obvious, but I think you have a way to break it down. Um, they also, which is really cool. Uh, their additional spending on risk management and, uh, cargo debt prevention. So, uh, Matt, like he's no dummy at all by any means. No, I mean, if he wasn't looking at either one of those, you'd have to question his sanity, right? They'd be like, Hey Matt, let's have a conversation, bro. You might want to look at these two issues. It was cool too, bro, is that the operations aren't necessarily going to change under this new deal either. I mean, it's still the Arab logistics that you know.

11:33Malcolm Harris: It's basically just that they're getting an infinite cash. They're pouring gas on the fire. Yeah, that's all it is. They're pouring gas on the fire. Yeah, 100%. 100%. It's, hey, things are going to change. We're positioning ourselves to the consolidation game is about to heat up. And let's get in front of it before things turn around and people get too expensive to buy and get market share. I mean, that's what I'd be looking at. That's what I'd be looking at. What a breakdown from Malcolm Harrison, Michael Vincent on that. read that from New England especially America especially from now stop it man hey did you get a manicure bro your fingernails are looking fantastic they look good oh thanks no man this is just me man this is just this is just your boy I mean you wear that shirt that says I woke up looking like this is that what you no I'm actually I'm actually like sick sick right now like I'm this is because I love you man like yeah I'm doing this with the love of the game All right.

12:30Well, there you go, bro. You don't win without it. I mean, it ain't about what you do in front of people. It's what you do behind the scenes. Oh, man. You're the best.

12:37Malcolm Harris: You want to talk about some weed going to Atlanta and Orlando? Do I?

12:44Malcolm Harris: Thought you'd never ask. I thought you'd never ask, man. Georgia authorities in Butts County, man. I always used to laugh at Butts County as a kid because I thought it was a funny name. The county in Georgia. Butts. Butts. They intercepted approximately 1 ,800 pounds of marijuana on Tuesday morning. Sheriff Gary Long announced they posted a public statement at 12, 13 p.m. on Tuesday. The original shipment was coming in from. Look at this mess, man. Coming from Sacramento. Carried marijuana towards destinations in Atlanta or in Orlando. All right. So Long wrote that roughly half would go through Atlanta.

13:21Malcolm Harris: All right, so they were going to break the shipment down into basically split 50%. The remaining is going to travel to Orlando. Georgia does permit marijuana only through medical provisions. Florida allows medical marijuana as well, while California permits adult recreational use. All right, so we saw this. Look at the three states' economies and tell me if it's a good idea. Yeah, buddy. This is wild. you know my first my first take on this right is like looking at the pictures going okay look perfectly nice packaged shipment of perfectly legal marijuana right you look at those those pallets they're perfect right i mean this is and then i got to george and i go look we got to make this like look better so let's like make it look like we busted these guys in the middle of a field look at this setup look at that it's political bs is what that is it's like hey look look at all this illegal marijuana of course we haven't charged anybody named anybody the sheriff spent 80 of this article talking about his opinion why georgia shouldn't do this uh maybe 10 of the article the guy sheriff actually talked about facts it's it's it's it's here's here's what it doesn't get into right which it should talk to me how did 1800 pounds of illegal marijuana make it across the whole way to here and not name it not name a broker a carrier a driver nothing and maybe i'm thinking about this wrong but like if it made it from sacramento wouldn't it have to go through multiple kind of facility i don't know wait stations like am i am i tripping on that no no you're not i don't think you are tripping that's what i'm pointing out i mean it made it the whole way here and he's perfectly banging on through all this kind of stuff right here that didn't get nailed till butts county florida and then or georgia and then they said you know what screw this warehouse and forklifts and legitimate operation let's take it out into a field and make it look like we busted a bunch of guys driving across here in a camaro with some pot in their back and make it look like we really like we really did something here they look so cool like they just like just busted out the output i'm just like man like yeah actually i don't know like they're gonna torch this shit right there in a field come on man oh it's whatever whatever it's a functioning look dude a functioning smuggling operation caught one load no and nobody's being held accountable oh there's there there's your headline that's your headline and a half no i don't think you should be sorry you can read this one in full from phil brink of course always putting out the latest and greatest from him man check that out right now at freightwaves.com that's our headlines report for this morning you can also make sure to see your morning minute in full detail today on freight waves today with julie vandekamp as well as mr craig fuller it's going to be a good one as you head into the weekend it's going to be a good interview that we're about to have right now because our guest has been patiently waiting in the queue.

16:33I wonder what he's got to say about this marijuana tax evasion. I'm excited, man. This isn't marijuana.

16:39Malcolm Harris: It's tax evasion. It's tax evasion at its finest. It is. Who's coming on here first? In the triple dipper box, man, we got Mr. Michael Schramm. He's the CEO and co-founder of Nordian. Michael, you are officially on what the truck. What's going on, man? How's it going? Happy Friday. Good. Happy Friday. Hey, thanks for having me on, guys. Good to see you, man. What is up? It's the coach in the house. It's been great listening to you guys this morning. And the irony of it, it's such a small world. We actually started in the same office as Matt and Eric over there at Arrive back in 2014. Oh, really?

17:21There you go. With another company. And so it's just so funny the way the world works. But David, you guys are so excited for these guys. I mean, they've just met and teamed. They've just been killing it. And it's been such a ride. So anyways, I appreciate you guys having me this morning. It's fantastic, dude. I know we're going to get into some things here. But, you know, I was going back and I saw Goat and I was like, you know, I used to trip on those on scooters and things in Atlanta. I'd be like, who the hell? You know, people just lay them all over the place. and, you know, of course it was always like at a conference or something like that where you might have had a couple drinks and you're like, your shins are all beat up and stuff.

18:04But what I found interesting is that you had such a good time at Texas A &M. Was it Texas A &M? It was Texas A &M. It was Texas A &M. Once he got out, he created a social platform where you could have all this fun with your, and nobody could, all encrypted messages, right? The whole thing's like, look, we don't need people's buying on our good time unseen the unseen and for all you gravity falls fans out there i've got some actual photographs of of of michael here from the unseen it has been unseen in the society of the blind eye there he is right here with the society of the blind eye from gravity falls check it out we got another picture i think with the actual medallion i actually have one of these medallions right here, the Society of the Unseen.

18:54There are probably three people out there who know what I'm talking about that are laughing right now. So just trust me, it was a good joke.

19:01Malcolm Harris: Listen, I trust you. I trust you with my eyes. Michael, how do you feel about Johnny Manziel being an A &M grad? What's your overall take on Johnny? Man, it gives you perspective on just human nature and what happens. And the rise of Johnny Manziel was incredible. I mean, it was zero to 100 overnight. It's hard for people to deal with overnight fame and growth like that. I actually think it's such a privilege to see incremental improvements over life and kind of struggle and earn for every piece of success. And it's not just, it kind of prepares you for that next level. So, for example, if someone were to, you know, if you look at what happens to lottery winners overnight, I mean, the vast majority end up in bankruptcy and severe life issues.

19:52But it's just the overnight piece. It's really hard to manage. And so I have a lot of I give a lot of grace with the Johnny Manziel. What he did for Texas A &M was fantastic from I don't know if you've seen the new stadium and infrastructure there. But Texas A &M has been up into the ride and it's a fantastic school. It's a very, very unique school. I was, you know, another conversation for another day. Heavily involved there at Texas A &M within student government and started in a lot of other organizations there. But it was, man, what a great place. What a special place there at Texas A &M and for students there.

20:29Man, I'm now in the SEC and football season kicking off. I mean, it is a dream. And I know they're in Chattanooga. and man, I've visited Chattanooga once before and man, what a beautiful place. But yeah, good school.

20:47Malcolm Harris: Fantastic, it's fantastic, man. Gig 'em, I'll say that just for you, man. So I want to talk about this, man, because what you're seeing, what's up, Mike? Is that correct, Gig 'em? Gig 'em. It is Gig 'em, yeah. Yeah, it actually dates back to when we used to play TCU. I know you had mentioned Texas Christian University because you gig frogs. And so you have Hocum for Texas, and then you've got Get Your Guns Up with Texas Tech. So it was very much, I think, a Big 12 or maybe even dated before that. But we all have our hand signals. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aren't you guys, isn't it a home of the 12th man?

21:29Home of the 12th man, yes, with E. King Gill dating way back when. They had 11 players. You needed someone in case someone was going to get hurt. E. King Gill was this small guy, no football background, volunteered to be the 12th man and stood there as a backup in case there were any injuries on the team, dating back to a blank on the year, a long time ago. And so now it's become more of a symbolic piece of we're all the 12th man. A lot of people don't know this, but the student section stands the entire game. uh as the 12th i knew that yeah yeah yeah yeah i knew that i knew that that's cool that's very so much more i want to talk about um just on the foot on the football yeah yeah you want yeah let's let's skip the talk about the centimeters let's just talk about

22:18Malcolm Harris: um so you built this company of scooters that michael vincent used to trip over in atlanta and i would have paid money no i think it was a different one But how did your experience managing this physical fleet eventually lead you to, I guess, the positioning and connectivity problem that you are solving right now today? Yeah, so there's a lot of things I want to separate. One, there's like GPS, which is, you know, a lot of people use. It's in your phone. It's in a lot of these basic technologies. And GPS is accurate within about three meters. So, and I want to, you know, um, 10 feet maybe. Uh, and then just for, you know, your, your viewers today, I mean, just if you think about a lane of traffic, that's 12 feet.

23:03So it's real hard. You know what road you're on, but you don't know what lane you're in. Um, going back to, to the dockless scooter craze, which was, and you guys had talked about a company even before that, which was wild, by the way. Um, there was unseen and kind of that social networking. Um, but, uh, dockless, scooter period was was also um man just fast moving so bird had just launched lime hadn't even launched yet uh we were the third in the country first in texas we launched here in austin texas and we didn't have uh it was you had a lot of geolocation pieces so you are geo-fencing so there were a lot of problems with these scooters so you talked about tripping over them you couldn't have them in certain areas and then you had like the chargers like the people who would go and pick up the scooters and then they would go and charge them overnight because they were all battery powered and so finding the scooters it was a constant operational and logistics problem as related to just relying on gps and so we were in essence just the integrator so we had integrate in precise level positioning to get centimeter level accuracy it was incredibly difficult and then you have a lot of interference within these dense urban areas and we'll talk a little bit about why we originally focused Nordian on South America with agriculture to just make it the ideal solution for dense urban areas with transportation, logistics, and a lot of those things.

24:32But yeah, so we started within the Dockless scooter craze and then a lot of, and then we exited that. So we sold that business. It was just a fantastic time. And then we entered into, and this kind of adds some context to what Nordian does today is we had actually started and we still run today and it's, you know, at full scale and it's a fantastic business, is called Echo 54, where we build people sensors for the US government and defense organizations. What we have to do is we have to work within these air-gapped environments. So we build all the hardware from scratch. It's very, very, it's in these mission-critical environments, outdoor and indoor.

25:11So you think some of the most difficult environments in the world, super, super hot. There's a lot of dirt. But we work in these air-gapped environments where you don't have the ability to have a backend or internet connectivity. So you have to be able to run AI at the highest levels in the world on the edge entirely. And so you have to be able to run these networks and these things. And so we got really, really good at edge compute. So building these really highly capable, highly sensitive for these mission critical environments, AI on the edge without internet connectivity. And so we had the goat experience or just the dockless scooter piece of being the integrator and integrating in precise positioning and connectivity into the device itself at the device level.

26:04And then we coupled in this AI capabilities that we've been building on now for the better part of 10 years. And nearly every major government organization here in the US, and then obviously our allied forces. So autonomous machines need three things. And that's really the problem that we're solving is they've got to know where they are, they've got to stay connected, and they need to be able to think for themselves. And so if you look at kind of those experiences within the micromobility solutions. You look at the government sensor development company that we have built. And then if you look at Nordian now, it really combines these two things.

26:43And so we've created the simplest, most reliable way for OEMs on the factory line to be able to integrate in a single device that can do these three things. It can know where it's at, it can stay connected, and then it can think for itself on the edge. When you've got a semi traveling, you know, 65, 70 miles an hour, latency is not an option. And so you have to be able to think and be able to manage all AI and autonomous aspects of the machine in real time on the edge in the small event that you lose connectivity and precise positioning.

27:19Malcolm Harris: Mike, I want you to follow up on this. Oh, yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, bro. Which one of six million questions should I start with? Like, I mean, holy crap. Yeah. So, man, there's so many to ask. So you're building the infrastructure for physical AI, right? It's kind of what you're saying here, right? So just real quickly describe what do you mean by on the edge? I get the latency. You can't have latency, right? But you're describing or very, very strongly implying you're in the middle of a desert somewhere and you've got zero connectivity and you need to know within centimeters where things are that you may not even expect to be there, right?

28:04Right. So and then bringing that into I guess you're bringing that into the logistics piece or right here in the here in the United in the US and and beyond, I suppose. Seems like pretty sensitive information. So you're probably dumbing it down maybe a little bit. But because it sounds like technology that maybe we're not supposed to understand completely. But so how do you do that? I guess explain on the edge and how this actually works and what it means to those OEMs like out there on the street. I get it. Like you need to know what's going on. But if you don't have any connectivity, how the hell do you know where the hell you're at?

28:46Exactly. Yeah. So that is a problem that we're trying to abstract. So it is complicated. It is very difficult. Right now, a lot of these OEMs are piecing together four, five, six suppliers. They're bringing in these solutions. If you think about Aurora or a lot of these other autonomous trucking services or a lot of just autonomous robots, machinery. So this isn't just we've started with agriculture in South America, which I'd love to just unpack that on why, you know, knowing my background, building sensors for the U.S. government, starting a microability company here in the U.S. why I'm focused on autonomous tractors in the middle of South America.

29:30There's a lot of reasons. Is it really that important to know where that banana tree is within centimeters? It's the hardest. It is the hardest thing in the world to know where that banana tree in the middle of South America is within centimeters. And that's why we started there. Being able to know within centimeter level accuracy on a truck, on a paved road here in the U.S. is a walk in the park. The hardest thing is, can you tell me? And these are mission critical applications. You go over into South America, you're out in the middle of nowhere. No cell towers for hundreds of miles. There is just zero connectivity.

30:06There are no paved roads. You're in the middle of a field. Infrastructure doesn't exist. And we are today deploying with 80 % of the top 20 ag OEMs within South America, providing centimeter level accuracy for reliably at a level they have never seen before. And we've done that through a lot of different things. Edge compute, which is another one of our, no one is better than Nordian at edge compute and just being able to build these edge AI capabilities for a lot of the reasons I'd mentioned. But none of that matters if you don't have precise positioning and communication. So we've already rolled out a device called Ultra, which can provide the precise positioning really, really well.

30:48And just, again, deploying that in the hundreds of thousands of units. But what we have moved into is this. The objective here is to abstract the precise positioning and the connectivity. It was a very, very difficult problem to solve. We went to South America to do that. and I had mentioned that interference issue that you get in dense urban areas. No one realizes along the equator, you have a thing called scintillation and it's a lot of atmosphere interference. So within the ionosphere, what it does is it makes it insanely difficult to know centimeter level accuracy in areas of South America.

31:25So nobody was there. It was complete blue ocean. It was a very difficult problem to solve. Nordian has come in and solved that problem. And now we're ready to come back to the US and be able to deploy this solution. There's nothing that competes with just the accuracy, the uptime, the consistency we have. But we want to abstract the whole layer. Precise positioning and connectivity should just be invisible. Like now, when you guys, you spin up a website right now, you want to sell tennis shoes. You're not thinking about the servers. You're not thinking about the payment processors. You're not thinking about, you know, writing code in PHP or, you know, you just load up a WordPress or, or any one of these things, or even a lovable this day and age.

32:09What you do is you have these layers of abstraction. So what we do is we take all the complicated stuff and we just remove it. So there's really even the idea now that we're still talking about precise positioning and connectivity will be laughable in 10 years, the same way we're not talking about ram and hardware and you know your your hard drives for opening up a website

32:33i'm sure your brain is i could see the steam coming off the top of malcolm's head right now you know what i'm saying because there's so many questions does this all right edge computing right there are you and and and centimeter you know will become millimeter and so on and so forth right positioning etc because you know then you start talking about precise positioning in production and all different types of things right you when you start getting into there i can see this going crazy does this so if we bake back this out into the just the logistics idea does this pave the way for where we're going towards like the machine the actual piece of capacity being the tms and controlling it and knowing exactly where everything else is and take away that latency of going back out to a TMS and say, well, we should do this and do that.

33:26And then it just is occurring at the transactional level. Yeah. So this kind of brings us to that third leg. So whenever you have like precise positioning and connectivity just taken care of, it's just ubiquitous. It's plug and play. And with the Ultralink device that we have, it's plug and play on the factory line for these OEMs. So it comes out and it's just done. But it's the third leg of what we do that is really kind of leaning into what you're talking about, which is, okay, cool. The technology's done. What are the benefits of this? And what we've done is we've built a third layer to this.

34:02That is, it's the, they have to be able to think for themselves. And so the, the third one, what we've built to, so not only do these companies can build these machines at scale, but we've added this layer that right now we're calling ultra OS. And it's a platform where what you can do is now you can take advantage of all the hardware, all the machine learning, all the AI, everything there. And we add additional compute, like additional resources within the Nordian antenna, uh, where you can, and developer tools. So like an SDK, like a software development kit, we add a lot of these developer tools, like a developer environment where you can write new applications.

34:42So think about right now, some of the biggest problems within freight are this thing like insurance, theft, a lot of these other things. What we're doing is we're building a developer platform where a lot of these end users, a lot of these end customers, a lot of these freight companies can build applications on top of it. You also have, I would actually probably, this is a bit more similar to imagine if someone in like 2002, 2003 had talked to you about building mobile apps, apps on top of a mobile phone. It would seem kind of one abstract. You'd be like, what could you possibly build on there?

35:20And what happened was you have these companies, let's just say Apple, build all the tools for developers to come in and build applications on top of it and then just give them and let's see what happens with it. What we're doing here with the Ultralink device is we're building a platform where we're abstracting out the precise positioning and the connectivity, which is just unreal from a performance perspective, comparable to the next best alternative out there. But then we're providing this, this ultra OS platform where what happens is you're going to start seeing a lot of these trucking companies build applications and tools.

36:01We're already talking with one major transportation company. They want to build a tool to help with insurance rates. So they already have a lot of cameras and a lot of these things that will feed in data and visuals and all kinds of things into a device that they have, but then it just sits on that. So they're replacing all the hardware with an ultralink device that we have, the Nordian antenna. And then now what happens is we're giving them developer tools where they can build an insurance application. They can build a remote monitoring product. They can build, even in one case with a major bus manufacturer we're working with, they want to build a wifi app that anyone on the bus that is traveling in those buses can automatically use.

36:45And it's all built and housed right there. And when I say on the edge, it just means on the machine itself, on the truck, on the drone, on the whatever it is that you're building, you can build those applications on it. So it really turns a lot of these issues from infrastructure into more of just a software problem. Yeah. And I mean, that's what I'm saying. When now the equipment becomes the TMS. It's housed there. You don't need it outside of there. Yeah. Exactly. It's crazy. It's awesome. And then when you have a truck, and just from just like an autonomous driving piece and what we're seeing here, and I really think this is going to be less of replacing jobs.

37:23I actually think this is the best time in history to be a truck driver. And I know that sounds absolutely crazy, but if you think about, I think it's like four and a half of an 11-hour shift, only four and a half of those hours are actually spent driving and they're paid by the mile. There's a ton of efficiency issues that right now are, that the truck industry is facing. And what happens is when you start to have better data, you have better tracking, you have better tools and resources, we can find ways to create efficiency within these places. So think of like just-in-time arrival. And then it's also, it's very layered because let's just say you're like heading to go to a drop-off.

38:11It can regulate your speed in order to just get maximum fuel efficiency. Also, the unnecessary lane changing, the wear and tear on tires. Every single penny that you save and just maintenance and things of that nature are just pennies that go in the pocket of these drivers themselves. But I actually think right now, the efficiency, four and a half hours on an 11-hour shift, four and a half hours of that driving is just absurd. And I really think what's going to happens, you're going to be able to accomplish just as much in half the time and then have, you know, equal from a revenue perspective, you own the truck.

38:47And I think this is going to be just a huge, huge win. And so I think a lot of times there's a lot of doomsdayers out there for AI. I think AI is just going to be an absolute unlock for efficiencies, for value that a lot of these truck drivers will be able to extract from truck ownership. But more importantly, I think you're just going to be able to get a lot more out of the minimum time you spent.

39:10Malcolm Harris: Michael Stram, CEO and co-founder of Nordian. Michael, thank you so much for being here on What the Truck, man. I cannot wait to have you back on the show. And hopefully we get you back down to Chattanooga. We got an event. I know you heard it at the top of the hour, but F3, 27th and the 28th. I would love to see you here if you can make it, man. Man, I would love an opportunity to come back out to Chattanooga. It is the hills when you're heading out there. I mean, it is just beautiful. So I love Tennessee. welcome you back you might have a Tennessee Vols shirt waiting on you whenever you get here from me so look at that Michael Schramm ladies and gentlemen Mike thanks so much for being here brother thanks again guys go get him man that was awesome Mike man they got a lot going on in a positive way you think it's a lot going on bro it's a lot going on man man there's a lot behind that scenes that you can only imagine golly right uh it's crazy uh let's look at our next guest man he's joining us in the box as well he is uh been waiting patiently and he's gonna close out the show with us he is a vice president of solution design at odw logistics it is mr phil schmidbauer phil good morning welcome to what the truck man how's it going good morning gentlemen i'm awesome man how are you guys doing well doing well thanks so much for being here fantastic we are doing fantastic you know i was digging into your background dude and you are just solid all the way around but but but i you know he was a paper boy dude like like a paper route yeah i had a paper on my first job when i was 10 years old man He was.

40:57He never gave it up. Check this out. Look at this. The paper guy. Check it out, guys. By dawn, Cincinnati knows him as just another guy with a newspaper route. But by day, he stalks the last mile watching delivery trucks, studying bad turns, missed windows, empty miles, and dispatch decisions that should probably be considered felonies. When the darkness falls, he becomes paper boy. He slips through the shadows of logistics companies armed with nothing but a laptop, a terrifying knowledge of routing, and absolutely no respect for the phrase, that's how he's always done it. There you go. I love it.

41:35I don't pay you enough for that. That was impressive. That's good. That was pretty good, wasn't it? Yeah, that was great. Here's the real reason. I asked Claude to check out your background, and I said, look, there's nothing crazy. This guy is just a really solid guy in logistics. There's nothing here that you can make fun of. He's just solid guy is what it said, basically. So I was like, all right, let's make something up. Well, it's not very good. There's plenty of things to make fun of here about. Well, you've kept it hidden from the digital world very well, sir.

42:06Malcolm Harris: Yeah, we've got a clean rap sheet. That's a good thing. You've got a clean rap sheet. We can't say the same about Michael Vincent, so that's okay. i'm clean because there was no digital beat what i was doing nefarious stuff bro that's right no no evidence there's no evidence maybe on a polaroid picture here or there but that's about it yeah listen those are on the base no evidence of when it goes wrong uh but when consolidation goes wrong let's holler at you about this phil because of course when something's poorly designed in terms of freight consolidation strategy what does that look like once it leaves the actual spreadsheet and carriers actually have to execute this thing uh you know that's interesting we were talking earlier about the waste that you see with truck drivers and their jobs today and you guys are talking with your last guest about that um and i learned a long time ago there was a truck driver i used to design routes for the toyota plant in evansville indiana and i would ride with the drivers after we designed these routes and you'll learn from those guys what's a good design and what's a bad design and what's tight uh what's too tight for them to execute on where the where the hiccups um and so you find out really quickly you got drivers waiting you got detention costs you got uh fines and fees you got stuff showing up late mad customers um michael vincent's hair product isn't at the store on the shelf when he needs it all the things that break down when stuff shows up and it's not on time that was good that was really good michael you just need to come to the you need to come to the dark side brother come on man we're right here for you look i'm getting there i'm getting there it's not going to be that long before i just say screw it yeah it's a good look i don't know if i can pull it off though man i don't know if you look good uh but no it's it's like that's when consolidation goes wrong it's all those things it's all the additional costs in the network and the supply chain and consolidation is no different than any other any other you know failure in the supply chain and late delivery but uh we try to make it a little bit easier, eliminate some of the multiple different deliveries in LTL trucks and, and, and pooling things together on trucks and better utilizing those trucks.

44:13I think it was a statistic I heard one time that like 60 % of the trucks on the road are basically empty because that's how underutilized the equipment is out on the road. So it's, it's trying to, trying to eliminate waste. That's what we're trying to do. What, let me, let me ask you this. What is something that planners mistake for efficiency when they try and do it? Like, hey, we're being much more efficient doing this. Yeah. I think when you're planning stuff, we go back to making it efficient for the drivers, but also making it efficient for the facilities. That's really tricky. So we have a warehouse, right?

44:53And we're trying to plan loads together. And all of a sudden, Friday, we have more loads that the warehouse needs to prepare and get shipped than they can actually handle from a capacity standpoint. So our planners learn the hard way sometimes that you can't overplan for both the facility that has to load, the drivers who have to handle that freight and then deliver, and then also the appointments you're dealing with on the back end from a retail standpoint. So, you know, when you boil it all down, the ideal state is you have one truck going from one origin to one destination. You preload it so the driver picks it up, leaves and goes and meets his delivery appointment and delivers it on time.

45:27So there's a lot of things to look at from a planning standpoint when you're actually doing a good job. And then instantly is loaded again. Yeah, hopefully. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a lot when you're looking at your stuff, it's a lot like LTL crosstalk, right? The best production you could possibly have is zero because you don't handle any of the freight, right? Single handling, just go. That's the same kind of thing. Yeah, and we have a lot of warehouses that have multiple customers in them, and we try to put the same customers in the same warehouse going to the same destinations, right?

46:00So as we're loading trucks, you're loading multiple different customers going to a Walmart, going to a Target, going to CVS. Yeah. And so there's a lot of planning that goes into that. And how do we plan to be more efficient? And then when we actually plan for the drivers and their work, same way. So, I mean, there's just so much waste. And you guys talked about it with your last guest and the amount of time drivers aren't actually driving. Same thing goes for warehouse employees. The amount of time they're actually doing something other than physically moving product to where it needs to go.

46:31Malcolm Harris: So I want to talk about, I guess, poorly designed consolidation strategy when it comes to actually wasting carrier capacity. How is this happening right now? And it's really not maximizing it. I mean, I guess that's the case, right? Yeah, I mean, carrier capacity, and when you think about consolidation and carrier capacity, our goal is to get trucks doing less work. So our goal is to pack that truck full, go into one location. Now, when we first started doing this a number of years ago, 10 plus years ago, we would actually have a customer and we would do a multi-stop truck, Target and Walmart together, right?

47:12and that's that's more complex target is difficult to deliver to in the sense that they hold the truck for a while while they count everything um so we would do it the difficult way multi-stops now what we're trying to do is take that work and that planning into um into consideration at the warehouse so we'll do some shuttling between our warehouses in columbus bring all that freight together and then we're loading trucks that are single stop single drop we work with a lot of different carriers and it's like all right we'll load drop trailers for you the day before so you come pick them up the next day and your driver's not waiting you get in you get out you get paperwork and then you go make your deliveries so from a carrier capacity standpoint uh malcolm i think it's a great point we try to go back and make those carriers efficient so we can get better rates from them they can keep their drivers moving um and i love the narrative that we're starting to hear in the in the um in the in the the supply chain today which is more about driving efficiencies for those drivers they're only getting paid by the mile um and and so how do we make them more efficient so that we can make the supply chain more efficient overall.

48:11And so that's really what our goal is, is to drive out waste all across that. And hopefully we can help improve capacity on the roads and more efficient loads, right? Less trucks on the roads, less traffic, less congestion, fewer traffic incidents, et cetera. So, efficiently really planning and managing what we used to call, four years ago, trap trailers in the LTL or the final mile, right? It's multiple BOLs to a single delivery point and more efficient routing, which is fantastic. The better use of capacity, as you extrapolate this out, you have these fluctuations, right? Where you have too much capacity and then you have too little capacity and the market keeps going out of whack because they build up capacity as to, you know, we just coming out of that where we had to build up capacity because the amount of freight.

49:08And now we have we're coming out of this kind of supply driven, you know, it's coming down. The supply of capacity is coming down. You have this demand kind of from the supply side. Right. The band is relatively higher because supply has gone away. Does this type of planning help with companies to try and smooth that line a bit more? Yeah, for sure. And we saw exactly what you described during COVID, right? We have one customer that ships out of central Ohio and they ship plexiglass. So during COVID, you can imagine their business just double overnight, right? So that oversupply of drivers certainly helped at that time.

49:43And now we've got this oversupply of drivers in the market that reducing that, it's really been a supply driven market correction that we've seen um and again when you go back to the way we're trying to plan uh we're trying to make sure the trailers that are shipping out are more effective now if you think about transportation rates and where they've gone ltl slowly slowly increases over time okay maybe they go um maybe we've seen seven or eight percent gris this year from a lot of the carriers posted if you're on gri uh standard tariffs but truckload has just exploded right and the rates went up 30 40 percent uh since the beginning of the year and and so if you think about the curve where truckload and ltl intersect it is still fairly cheap to send some ltls and trying to build truckloads you got to be really efficient in your truckload builds now otherwise it's just more cost effective to send ltl um and so that's one of the things that we've kind of seen and and that will continue to as ltl kind of catches up to the truckload explosion if truckload stays pretty stable where it's at today and ltl catches up to that with their increases then it'll make more and more sense to ship less utilized truckloads but you know i don't think we really hire them intentionally here but our planners really are ingrained with man if that truck's only got 18 peloton and you got a bunch of space try to find something else to go on the back end whether it's another stop or sometimes we'll take a truck going to california and put ltl in the back and drop it off at a terminal ltl terminal they'll do the final mile on the LTL and then we'll make the other stop at the destination we're going to.

51:12So it's just all about driving more efficiency and helping customers. Really, it's about helping customers reduce their freight costs. Inflation went berserk in 2021, 2022. And so you and I, we're all buying stuff at grocery stores and prices have gone through the roof. You're starting to see some of those come down now, which is nice. But think of eggs. Remember when you had the explosion of the cost of eggs? It's all about helping customers drive lower transportation and logistics costs so that you and I aren't paying so much at the store.

51:43Malcolm Harris: My last question for you, man, before we head into the weekend, if you could give shippers one piece of advice as they rethink this, I guess, freight consolidation strategy piece heading into the next phase of the market, what would that one piece of advice be, Phil? Yeah, when you say heading into, I think we're in the next phase of the market. I think transportation rates have settled much higher. I don't think we're going to go back down to where we were, but I think this is good advice for everyone in general and life. Get help and work with people, talk to other people, see what kind of creative ideas they have.

52:18I tell my kids that all the time. Don't be afraid to ask for help. And so from a shipper standpoint, you might think you've got a really good setup, but it's always good to look at different options and get help from the people and the professionals that are good at doing this. And, you know, I don't think anyone is really against highest quality, lowest cost insurance lead time. Right. So it's all about eliminating waste and getting better at what you do. So ask around and try to get help from the professionals and getting better.

52:43Malcolm Harris: Absolutely. Phil, once again, thank you so much for being here on What the Choke, brother. This has been an amazing one. And we hope to see you as well at F3 if you have some. I'll be there. Let's go. Let's go. I'm excited. We'll get Michael shaved up. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to bring our clippers out for Mike. Don't you even worry, Mr. Vincent. You're going to join us. Hey, you know what? Maybe I'll just shave my head there. I'll let Phil just shave my head there. Let's do it. I'm in. We'll do it on air. Let's go. With a straight razor. Oh, man, that's trust. That's trust. I don't know about that.

53:17Malcolm Harris: We'll go Clippers first. Anybody from Columbus, Ohio, I trust. Oh, man. Always. Always. Always. Oh, baby. Schmid Bauer. Phil, thank you so much for being here, brother. Appreciate you. Thanks, guys. Take care. Of course, man. Peace, brother. Peace. The paper boy. The paper boy. Thanks to Michael Schramm as well from Nordian for being here on the show today. Let's look at the road ahead before I get you out of here for the rest of the weekend because we got a baller or two coming here on Monday. You guys saw him a couple weeks ago. Ed Benning from Rutgers, man. We had this interview with Ed a few weeks ago but the thing is, I don't like the audio.

53:57Malcolm Harris: All right. So we wanted to go ahead and get him back here in studio with us. Yeah. So we're going to have Ed again, Rutgers University's very own. And then this story with Josh Clayman. All right. He is the founder of one of the biggest and largest CDL driving schools in the country, man. All right. This guy is impeccable. Love the pre-show call with him. You guys are going to love him. We got Josh. We got Ed. We are out. The music is here. It's time to go. You ain't got to go But you gotta get up out of here. We'll see you on Monday. Peace and love.

54:56We'll be right back.