$500K Cargo Heist, Fake Deliveries & The Global Trade Crisis

0:07Thank you.

0:42Malcolm Harris: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a Monday edition of What The Truck. I'm your host, Malcolm Harris. Another Monday, another week of the fastest 45 minutes in freight. What's up? What's happening? Thank you guys so much for being here today. We have an awesome show. I took a little time off, man. turned 32 over the weekend so happy belated to me had a good time it was uh not as good as just being here with y 'all so i'm excited to get to it because we got two phenomenal guests on the way my brother is waiting in the wings we'll bring him out here in just a second but before we get to him let's look at on deck and see who we have that's going to be on the show because we got two great phenomenal guests the first one you guys are really familiar with all right he needs no introduction but just in case if you forgot the man is in the building danny ramon all right so danny of course is with overhaul if you guys watch friday's show i missed this so shout out to cody because he put this together uh had scott hall aka razor ramon as his uh headshot i thought that was hilarious but uh we're gonna be talking uh about this case worth half a million dollars that wasn't flag tracked or fully recovered intact until it started deviating from a route in California.

1:58Malcolm Harris: So this is a really, really cool case that I want to dive into. And then also some things as we head into the fall, just given the current climate, what we can be doing to protect ourselves from cargo theft and everything else. And then to end the show, Patrick Van Hul is going to be here. Of course, he's with Tungsten Automation. We're talking about tariffs and trade policies, of course and how they're changing fast. Patrick's breaking down what regulatory uncertainty actually looks like on the ground and plus how document heavy workflows are becoming the biggest bottleneck in global shipping.

2:31Malcolm Harris: So between Patrick as well as Danny, we got one heck of a show coming up for you guys, but let's bring them out right now because my man is in the building. Mr. Michael Vincent from What the Truck West. What's up, baby? Emily, I got all my sisters in me. I always made fun of that. I love Pittsburgh. Love Pittsburgh sports. I'm from Cleveland, so I loved to hate the Steelers back in the day. But it always made me laugh when the Pirates would come on and they would be singing, I got all my sisters in me. I was like, okay, you guys, whatever. We're feeling a little black and yellow today. like i'm whisk yeah what's up with that dog what is that is that a is it you got a cynthia crosby you sure no no no no oh my gosh i don't even know is that mario it's mario it's mario yeah it's gotta be you don't even know who's on the bed no it's really for fashion purposes i'm gonna be completely honest with y 'all i have no fandom i just like the color coordination so yeah it's good to see you how was your weekend bro you look good in that black gold brother Hey, listen, I got a thing for it now.

3:40Malcolm Harris: Come on now. It's fun. I'm telling you. Great weekend, bro. Went to my favorite restaurant out here now, Marty B's. Awesome. What'd you get? It's awesome, man. What did I get? I got brisket, nachos, and fajitas. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm a huge brisket guy. I do enjoy brisket. I enjoy nachos and I enjoy fajitas. You went three for three for me. Boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom. And a local IPA. Yeah. Oh, nice. Revolver. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice, nice, nice, nice. Yeah. Badass. Badass, man. Huge place. Live music every Friday and Saturday. Local bands. Some stars stop by every once in a while.

4:23Very cool place, dude.

4:24Malcolm Harris: Love it. They're not as cool as the Gnosis folks. And that's just... No. That's the one thing I was looking on the menu for Gnosis Gnocchi. But we got it on the menu here at Worth It's Truck. because if you're still checking carrier websites, copying container data in the spreadsheets, chasing updates through email chains, you got to get Gnosis. It's an AI operating system for global logistics, one platform to track every container, automate execution, and protect your margins across the entire container lifecycle. All right, so with this, they've saved companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of savings.

4:58Malcolm Harris: So make sure to check them out. All you have to do is visit them at gnosisfreight.com, book a demo, and make sure that you tell them that Malcolm and Michael sent you from What the Truck, all right? That's all you got to do. That's all you got to do. That's it. And all your problems will be solved. We can also solve your problems on October 27th and the 28th at the biggest event from Freight Waves this year. Of course, I'm talking the future of Freight Festival, located at the Signal here, of course, in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, home of Freight Alley. All right, this is going to be a spectacular event, As you see by the B-roll that we're looking at, conversations, Adam Wingfield's going to be in the building.

5:38Malcolm Harris: Of course, TPC is in the building. We had live music. We have different displays going on. Oh, look at the lizard in the building. Conversations, of course, with Craig Fuller. It's going to be happening. The best food. I mean, we had these food cards last year that were awesome. It's fantastic. Had Chattanooga whiskey tasting as well. It's a fantastic time. So for those that are still wanting to be involved, you can do that. Register right now at FreightWaves.com and be sure to use the code TAKE20, T-A-K-E-2-Z, T-A-K-E-20. That is a code to get 20 % off of admission. Again, Chattanooga, Tennessee, the 27th and 28th.

6:15Malcolm Harris: Be there or be square. That's all I got to say about that. All right. I love it. Hey, who's the lizard? Do we know? I have no idea. I have been dying to know that. It's like the lore behind FreightWaves. I genuinely don't know who is going to be. The weird thing is nobody's ever seen Craig and the lizard together. No, no. And that is a, that is a kind of a fact. I'm just being honest. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Produce a picture of Craig and the lizard together and I'll stop my, my nonsense. But right now, I think it's a good theory. I don't know. I've seen him do the, what's the floss or whatever it is.

6:55And it looks like him. He's got moves like that.

6:57Malcolm Harris: Eerily similar. No, it does. It looks eerily similar. It really does. You know, we were on the topic of baseball. And I want to talk about the Mariner. We are family. I want to talk about the Mariner. Not talking about Seattle, though. I'm talking about a new ball coach at Mariner Logistics. And he goes by the name of Justin Turner. For those that aren't aware, we've had - From Flock Freight. He is from Flock Freight. He was also with Journey with Will Jenkins. So shout out to Will and the rest of the Journey crew. Justin officially has a nod. Yeah. Like, he's a small town boy. Yeah, but he is no longer.

7:37Malcolm Harris: He's no longer in a small town world, man. He's taking over Marinette Logistics out of Coppell, Texas. 4PL, they run trucks, warehouses, managing transportation, and its own technology stack all under one roof. All right. So for those that know what I call the Jet, Justin Turner, Proven track record Really think highly of this guy He is phenomenal And they got a great person A really smart human being And an even better leader So just wanted to show some love I saw this article this morning from Thomas Watson Shout out to Justin Turner New CEO of Mariner Logistics Proud of you man Yeah let me say this about that real quick Yeah He came out talking about Sentinel And how they're vetting carry and doing all right yeah you got all these issues you got you when you own your own network when you got your own network your own assets you got to be on top of things and we do this and we're vetting that and doing all this other kind of stuff that's how we roll we and all this kind of thing shot dude that's how you lead bro you don't come out and go oh uh we're gonna start doing it better now no not at all just not at all just just i can't get enough of that 604 public relation,$604 million public relation snafu.

8:54Yeah, shout out to Justin. He's awesome. And his PR people because they hit it straight on, man.

9:02Malcolm Harris: If it's one thing that Justin knows, it's marketing. I've known that quite a bit. I'm with you. I'm a believer now. He just understands that. So to have that at a CEO level is very impressive, man. You know what's crazy, though? If you dig deeper into this, right, like sentinel it's a great thing that they've built in-house and i encourage a lot of people to do things in-house if they can i mean why not why wouldn't you but don't rebuild the wheel if you don't have to but build it in-house if you can do it better and you want to have full control of it so shout out to them for doing that stuff and and actually using ai and technology for for a good thing you you realize that we're talking about like a four and a half billion dollar industry over the next couple of years that that continuous vetting is becoming you realize that it's unreal no when you really put it in perspective like that and put a number beside it no it's it's fascinating to say the least it's it's freaking nuts and it's it's not it's not eliminating cargo theft it's it's it is it is eliminating nuclear verdicts on your company is what they're trying to do you know what i'm saying that's the motivation it's crazy i couldn't agree more bro i couldn't agree more what else is crazy is that little debbie is now getting stolen man little debbie all right there is fraud happening right now and little debbie you know they're getting desperate if they're stealing that stuff come on man come on man this is crazy a west virginia uh distributor faces 15 criminal charges in pennsylvania involving a little debbie snack delivery fraud scheme all right so the city of Washington Police Department of Pennsylvania filed charges against James Powell of Valley Grove, West Virginia.

10:45Malcolm Harris: Authorities are seeking$17 ,168 in restitution, according to a department release provided directly to Freight Waves. Powell remains in custody while undergoing extradition from West Virginia to Pennsylvania. So what police are saying Powell has created fraudulent delivery invoices while working as a distributor. So these records show that little Debbie products uh reaching pennsylvania retail stores when the deliveries actually never occurred all right so uh there's a bunch of different locations uh that have been hit the shop and save the giant eagle and walmart locations in pennsylvania have all been hit and um yeah i guess the charges seven first degree misdemeanor counts uh complete charges filed against powell three involved tampering with records of uh or identification separate counts accuse him of theft by deception and unlawful taking two additional charges involve deceptive or fraudulent business practices all right so uh yeah this is crazy man this is what do you what do you think the progression of his story is over 20 years in prison right you know like the fishing story it was this big he's getting extradited from west virginia to pennsylvania for 17 000 of fraudulent little debbie deliveries and he's getting faced 20 years in prison i would feel so stupid it's like man like i did all this for 17 000 and now i'm gonna be like special ed there or something oh my god

12:32Malcolm Harris: it's a read more on this article man check it out right now uh from phil came in over the weekend uh looking at this one out of indiana that came in at the tail end of friday all right so uh indiana truck inspection sideline more than 11 000 uh 1100 excuse me drivers and vehicles all right this happened uh with data that we got provided to us directly from the indiana state police inspectors. They uncovered 8 ,600 commercial trucking violations and placed nearly, again, 1 ,200 drivers and vehicles out of service in the month of July. All right, so this is a multi-safety operations kind of sting.

13:08Malcolm Harris: If you guys don't remember, we were talking about the Indiana State Police Department when it came to cargo theft training. So I think that they have really kind of taken the lead on this. And looking at this chart, and thanks to Cody for breaking this out, it shows the entire enforcement results. So it shows the inspections, total violations, drivers placed out of service, vehicles placed out of service, combined drivers, as well as vehicle out of service. And then what I thought was really interesting was overweight violations versus oversized violations. So when you saw this, Mike, I know your head went to, all right, Indiana State Police is getting pretty busy, man.

13:48Yeah, no. And then there's a little bit on the whole Operation Shield, right, or whatever it was called which like is indiana illinois ohio there's like a group of them up there that are that are getting involved here because indiana's kind of leading the way um what hit me was that graphic right there from cody shout out to cody is i mean you look at that third from the bottom combined driver vehicles out of service so you're talking about a sample of 4700 commercial vehicle inspections in indiana and 25 percent were immediately sidelined it's nuts that number should hit you like a two by four in the face and go holy crap 25 percent of our commercial vehicles trucks semi-trucks 80 000 pound missiles going down the street are were deemed to be sidelined immediately we should be marching in the streets i saw a thing on LinkedIn today, a guy was posting, it feels like truck drivers now, when you're driving a truck, it's just, they're just pulling you over.

14:48It's like a checkpoint instead of a job. Now you're just taking people. We should be demanding more of that. We should, they should just randomly stop every single truck and still it drops from 25%. And even if you look this up, the elite of the elite are only 10%. Only 10 % of the trucks, one out of nine is potentially going to kill you. No, that's not acceptable that's a good start dude that that is you are coming with the heat this morning i mean dude listen and every driver you people like oh the driver's gonna be mad at you no no no that's bs i talk to the drivers several times a week i go to the truck stops and i interview him i talk to him i get out there i talk to him like just like my friend a uh alex my did he inspired me you know mother trucker fantastic guy we got to have him on the show brother by the way he's i talked to him last week he is solid and doing some great great things for drivers right now but these these guys you talk to them they're like yeah take those guys off the street we don't want those people on the street yeah go get them man for sure let's stick in west

15:51Malcolm Harris: virginia for one more article and then we have another one do we have to do danny yeah we unfortunately got to go back to west virginia all right because i want your take specifically on this because i mean you you've seen and kind of been around fuel cards right so with this A West Virginia truck driver admitted to stealing more than$510 ,000 from his employer through fuel card schemes that never required pumping a gallon of diesel. All right. So this federal prosecutor say that Jeffrey Jeffers, what a name. He created a fictitious service station through online payment platform and then processed fraudulent charges against the company issued fuel cards.

16:28Malcolm Harris: The payments flowed into accounts connected to those fake businesses. Then, of course, he took stuff over the top. All right. So investigators determined his normal delivery routes almost never required refueling away from the company's distro facilities. So he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. And of course, court court records show the scheme generated five hundred and ten grand fraudulent charges between November 2022 and July 2024. Yo, dude, this is this is pretty nuts. Pretty significant. This ain't this ain't a little Debbie story, bro. it isn't a little debbie story but it is at the same time it is and it isn't i agree with you half no i agree with you and then i but i want to i want to i want to explain how it is you got to talk to craig fuller man he's the guy who knows fuel cards yeah yeah yeah i came into it after i mean he built fuel card right yeah yeah no he's like an encyclopedia when it comes to fuel cards yeah no he knows he knows his shit when you talk about well he knows his shit when you talk about just about everything i mean he's pretty pretty smart guy um as far as getting into the details of that what i'm looking at is this dude what's up these service stations weren't even in route they weren't even in route bro who's who's who's looking at these charges going oh yeah that seems right he went 50 miles out of route to fuel that's a good point how the hell did our mpgs go down to like 0.4 they're like nobody's gonna notice this surely nobody's gonna notice that we're paying twice as much for

18:08Malcolm Harris: so when i saw that i was like man like did you just not think he would get caught like this is just not right like what was the plan what was the ending point i don't know but it's just like they said hey dude you've been doing this goes yeah you got me sorry you know call me you got me but you got one guy you got one guy who literally just changed his report card when he came home from school right he just he signed this yeah i got seven cases of moon pies and i really didn't outside here sign it then you got this other guy who's just like yeah they won't notice if they fuel up in new jersey when they're going to you know lower borough outside of pittsburgh I mean, you're like, what?

18:51There probably weren't even service stations in the towns he was picking, right? Yeah, for sure.

18:57Malcolm Harris: For sure. The U.S. attorney was not happy with this one. Just had a real, real big statement. Again, fraud is not a victimless crime. Every dollar stolen through deception is a dollar taken from a business, its employees, and ultimately the community is served. So I'm going to keep reporting on fraud. Look, my favorite quote in that was, fraud doesn't beat smart people. It beats inconsistent processes. Dude, what a, I mean, just a bam. Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree more. All right, let's talk about Michael Vincent's favorite thing. All right, let's talk about the USPS because Michael Vincent is an avid supporter of the USPS.

19:32Malcolm Harris: And on Friday, they said a partial surcharge implemented in April to cover rising fuel and transportation costs and higher stamp prices helped boost overall revenue to nearly$20 billion for the fiscal third quarter. as it continues to manage through, of course, its cash crisis with Postmaster General David Steiner criticizing regulatory folks for recently limiting more frequent price hikes aimed at restoring the organization's financial viability. I guess my question here is because there's been a lot of issues with the USPS. I mean, what, like, this is great, but is it, what is the fallout from this?

20:13Malcolm Harris: And what should we as normal Americans be thinking about the USPS right now from your from your standpoint? I don't want you to speak on behalf of freight waves on behalf of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to know how you feel about whenever you've read this, where you just like, all right, this is this is that. Yeah, no, it just it just it just it just confirms my thought that it needs to be completely disbanded and abolished. See, yeah. I mean, here's the thing. A lot of people think that it's a government agency. It's a government mandated entity. Yeah. So technically it's not supported by taxpayer money.

20:46They do get some subsidies for certain things because of mandates. Like they have to provide service to every place. And there's certain handicap and certain things that they get money for. But it's not like they lose$2 billion and taxpayer money makes up for it, right? Yeah. Which would actually be somewhat less offensive than the fact that they're just not paying into the benefits, the retirement benefits of their employees. They're stealing money from their employees to stay in business for a business that doesn't even need to exist anymore, except that the mandate back in the day for security reasons, national security reasons, everybody need to have access to information.

21:29So you had to deliver to every address, right? You don't need to do any of that anymore. None of that mandate needs to happen anymore. It's BS. And if you're going to tell me they're losing$2 billion a year or they lost, what, 2 point something billion in a quarter? And somehow we're not fraudulently sending taxpayer money into there somehow? Bull. And they're stealing money from their employee benefit. I have a very good friend who is actually a business agent for the union in the USPS, right? And he agrees with me. It's a joke. And it's actually a crime. People should be going to jail. In 2027, the money runs out.

22:12Then you're going to see we're going to have to bail them out or disband it. So let's start talking about it now. And that's what we should be doing. I mean, there's a ton of important things out there. But here's billions of dollars per quarter going in the shitter because of this ridiculous. They don't even raise the rates enough to be solvent. They raise the rates and they still lose$2 billion. Come on.

22:37Malcolm Harris: Yeah, I mean, and you hit it on the head. I mean, it was literally, excuse me, it was$2.5 billion. So, like, you're right there on the nose when it came to that figure. We raised money so that we only have to steal a little bit less from our employees' benefits. Yeah. Really? Try that. You know what I'm saying. I got you loud and clear. You can read that one as well on fretwaves.com. Again, that's our headline roundup as we, of course, are getting into the next segment of the show, which is our guest. This guy needs no introduction, but of course, I'll give him one. He is a subject matter expert at the overall.

23:16Malcolm Harris: This man is fantastic at what he does, and I'm happy to bring him out right now. We officially have him locked in the Triple Dipper box. One day it's going to be brought to you by Chili's, but today it's just brought to you by Frazier and Cody. right now welcoming my man, Mr. Danny Ramone. Danny, welcome to What the Truck, brother. Malcolm, thanks for having me. Of course. Danny Ramone, good to see you, dude. I mean, I remember the first time I met you was at the CBGB. You remember when I snapped this picture of you? Do you remember? You were like, there it is. See what I'm saying? That's my 20s, right?

23:58Yeah, when I was crazy. Yeah, back in 1974 when you were 20.

24:07I was eight. I was eight. I was hammered in the front row of the CBT.

24:15Malcolm Harris: Did they not ID you at the time, you know? No, there was no fake IDs, dude. It was easy. I got you. I got you. You know what I'm saying, bro? I mean, come on. It was the village, man. They don't ID you in the village. No, dude. No. Danny, you've been a busy dude, man. Walk us through this electronics, 500K, high luxury items. Paint a picture for myself, Mike, and the rest of the audience, brother. Yeah, yeah, no problem. So, you know, I was listening in on the beginning of y 'all's, of the show today, and you're absolutely right. You know, we're talking about you verifying carriers and everything like that, right?

24:50But we're in a new age, right? A new era of cargo theft and not being the low hanging fruit is no longer enough, right? We're in a scenario now where you can't prevent everything just by checking the carrier information before they arrive, right? You also need to check the entities that arrive, the physical entities, the person, the equipment, make sure everything matches, make sure everything is on the up and up. But I mean, the reality is shippers are more and more unknowingly handing off their cargo to the bad guys now. So it's no longer about, you know, making sure the driver knows the procedures, because in some cases the driver is the bad guy.

25:25And unfortunately that's what happened in this one, right? We had, we had a shipment that was uplifted from California, unbeknownst to the shipper. The folks that came to pick it up were not the folks that they were expecting. It's not, it was not a legitimate business. They were not legitimate truckers. So they uplifted that load, half a million dollars of consumer electronics. They started down the normal route for a little while. And again, this is where, you know, you need more than prevention, right? You need eyes on all the time. You need compliance monitoring. So they, yeah, they went down the normal route.

25:56Everything seemed normal. And then we got a couple of exceptions. I don't want to go into exactly what they were, but we started the escalation process, right? During that escalation process, the shipment actually backtracked beyond the origin point, right? So it turned around, started going the way it had come from, and then went beyond the origin point. At this point, you know, we increased the escalation, so to speak, and got in touch with some folks and ended up having to coordinate with three different agencies in California, which is where, you know, this is where the rubber really meets the road, right?

26:30Yes, prevention is definitely the goal, but we're in a new era now, right? And fraud is such that even with, you know, I believe Mike said it was a$4 billion industry now for carrier verification. Excuse me, carrier verification. Carrier verification is fantastic. Everybody should use it. But because of the nature of fraud, nobody's ever going to be able to prevent 100 % of fraud just based on verifying a carrier, right? Sometimes. And Danny, that$4 billion is continuous monitoring, dude. You know what I'm saying? So you're like daily getting monitored and this type of stuff still happens. Exactly.

27:09Well, because of the nature of fraud, right? How does it happen? These folks are eyeing companies every day. They're creating companies every day. They're posing as new companies every day. You're never going to be able to prevent 100 % of it, right? So where the rubber meets the road is when things go wrong, when you've unbeknownst to yourself handed off your cargo to a bad guy, how do you notice as soon as possible that it's not doing what it's supposed to do? and how do you get it back, right? And the rubber meets the road again with the response, the recovery. And it's not calling 911 in whatever area it's in.

27:41You need to know the procedures, right? You need to know how to explain this to law enforcement who may have never dealt with this because on the surface, it seems like a civil issue. It seems like a contract dispute rather than a fraudulent theft in progress, which is something that they can actually pursue, right? Because they're not going to go slap cuffs on somebody for a contract dispute. They're going to tell you, you need to take that before a judge and have him figure it out, right? So you need relationships that have already been established. You need to know the protocol and the procedures for how to get these responded to.

28:10And that took, in this particular case, coordinating between three different law enforcement agencies with those pre-established relationships that we have and getting them to talk to each other. And that actually got wheels moving before every official box had been checked. That is crazy. Hey, can I ask a question? No, let him fly, man. Let it flow. So, you know, we tried as much as hard as we could to prevent fraud and mistakes inside of the four walls. Okay. With scanning and stuff like that. Even had cross-doc facilities and warehouses in a former life at Express Global Systems when I was working for Craig at another company, for his family, another company.

28:56was, and there was no, we didn't even have signs like, you know, for this different cities. Like it was, you know, there wasn't a Fort Worth sign or a Dallas Fort Worth sign. It was just a number because it could change doors and we didn't want people thinking. We wanted them to scan and then the system told them where to go. And if they scanned or went to the wrong place, it shut down their forklifts immediately. Immediately. Like if you were out of route by a door, it shut your your stuff down, right? And a supervisor had to come and go, hey, what are you doing at the wrong door and get this figured out, right?

29:33We still had stuff going to the wrong place. How far are we to the point where your technology goes, oh, these guys are out of route and they get derated like they ran out of DEF, right? And it slows down to five miles an hour until you can catch them. what are you doing? Our technology can do it now, right? There are solutions that will, that will do that. Even out on the road, there are engine interlocks, right? Where you can say, okay, if I decide that my risk tolerance is so low that I want to be able to shut off my driver's engine, if he's not doing what I want him to do, and he's not answering my calls to tell me why that's something we can do.

30:14And it's a solution that we implement in certain parts of the globe. So that's definitely, that's definitely an option, But beyond that, you know, I've been on this show a bunch of times. I've been on other shows a bunch of times. And I've been asked here and I've been asked other places, what's the one thing? What's the one thing you can do to prevent cargo theft, to reduce your risk, whatever it is? And I've got an answer now. And that answer is engage with your security program, right? Don't just have a security program. Don't just sign up for it and expect that, okay, cool, I've got one. I'm out.

30:46I'm safe, right? You've got to engage in that security program. And that's not a monthly or quarterly thing. That's a weekly or daily thing, making sure that there are people on the escalation path who are going to answer after hours and on the weekend. Because guess when cargo theft happens? After hours and on the weekend, right? So if there's escalations on there, if we need information, you've got to be able to provide that information to us, right? We have a top tier system where we can notice patterns of behavior that indicate fraud, notice patterns of behavior that indicate theft. But if we don't have the ability to engage with the actual owners of the freight, you know, in many times, that's what it takes to report a theft to police.

31:28As a security services provider, I'm not the owner of the freight. I can't call police in Compton, California and say, hey, my client had their cargo stolen. Can you go check this truck stop? I mean, I can and we do. But again, that's because of relationships, right? but depending on where in the country it is, how busy that particular police force is, a lot of times they may not respond or they may not take a report and they actually cannot file a report unless the victim of the crime is the one filing that report. Wow. Really? So you can't enlist... That got me through. I was about to pass a follow-up.

32:06We talk about the NCIC. Wait a minute, that's insane. Yeah, so like, yeah, You've got the NCIC, right? The national database of stolen products that has serial numbers and descriptions and all that, that all law enforcement officers across the country have access to. Yeah. If something gets stolen, it gets entered into that. And then an officer in another jurisdiction can see that, hey, this is stolen, right? By serial number, by description, whatever it may be. If I'm not the victim of a property crime, I cannot file that police report. And therefore, that information cannot make it into that national database.

32:39That's insane, man. And so, I mean, even though they know it happened, if it's not the right person doing it. Let me ask you, you said you look for patterns that indicate theft, right? Is that a preventative measure or during a thing, right? Because, like, you look for different patterns and you can understand who, you know, there are people out there that are creating engagement platforms that will tell you, hey, this employee or this group of employer in danger of just, you know, quiet quitting on your ass. So you need to start paying attention and stuff like that. Right. Is there a way to like, say, look, Malcolm is stealing pencils.

33:17You know what I mean? Or the potential for him to steal paper from the machine and take it home and make airplanes is high or something. You know, that type of continuous monitor. Yeah, absolutely. So both sides, right, before pickup and after pickup. And we all know Malcolm stealing pencils. That's not the point. We'll let him have pencils. But yes, I mean, before pickup, we call them red flags. He builds log cabins at home with them. He likes to glue them together and make log cabins at home. Yeah. Pre-pickup, we call them red flags, right? It's not necessarily a pattern of behavior because you're not tracking their behavior.

33:51You're just looking at the physical entities that come in. One of the biggest red flags for me, especially when it comes to fraud as an indicator of, at minimum, illicit double brokering, is if somebody comes through your gates and they have two things in tandem. One, a magnetic placard that is on the tractor, right, which is not illegal. It's pretty common. But I tell folks all the time, there's a lot of things in this industry that are common and legal but are not secure. So by itself, a magnetic placard doesn't raise my hackles too much. It does a little bit. But if I see that magnetic placard coupled with a license plate that is zip-tied to the grill at chest height, that really sets off my spidey sense.

34:31That indicates to me they're changing the markings on this tractor so often that they don't even want to bend down and unscrew the license plate. They're going to stay standing and just tie it to the grill. And then they're going to go to the side. They're going to peel off that magnetic placard. They're going to put it in their cab, take another one out of the file folder of magnetic placards that they have and slap it on there. At that point, turn them away immediately. If you're not going to turn them away, at least document the VIN number on the tractor and the trailer. Okay, not the VIN number that is printed on the placard that they have control over, but the actual physical VIN number, right?

35:06Because they can't change that. Now, that should start making them a little nervous if you start taking pictures of their VIN number, and that's not something you normally do. But don't count on making them nervous being enough to prevent theft. But yeah, and then after that, you know, after pickup, absolutely. When we're doing remote compliance monitoring, there are absolutely patterns of behavior that indicate fraud. Again, I don't want to get into too much of what they are, but it starts with noncompliance, right? If they're not complying with what they're told to do, at the very least, that could be penetration testing.

35:35They're like, hey, I'm going to do this and see if anybody calls me. And if not, next time I'm going to go a little bit more out of compliance and then a little bit more out of compliance. And I'm testing the line. I'm towing the line, seeing what the response is going to be. And if there's no response, then nobody's watching or at least nobody that cares. Then that reads as no consequence. What do you do when there's no consequences? Or if it's like CE England instead of CR England. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like, you know, we were talking, you guys were talking about that fuel fraud. Yeah, that fuel fraud.

36:06What was the plan, right? Well, the plan was the first time, see what happens. The first time I'm going to get$500 in fuel, see if somebody calls me and then I have to give that$500 back and maybe get reprimanded, right? Didn't get caught. Well, I'm going to do it again. Well, I'm going to do it again. Now I'm going to do it bigger. I'm still not getting caught. Nobody's calling me. Nobody's noticing this. I'm going to keep going. and then half a million dollars later somebody finally notices and yeah that guy's going to jail

36:29Malcolm Harris: yeah yeah for a long time uh we could have a 45 minute show just with danny of course danny ramon representing overhaul as always it is so good to have you on with the truck it's an open door policy anytime you have anything for us reach out and uh we'll always give uh danny razor ramon the time man because you are one of if not the best when it comes to what you do in the space and I just appreciate you sharing with us, brother. Man, I appreciate y 'all having me on. Let me share what I have. Yeah, man. Gabba Gabba Hay, brother. Gabba Gabba Hay. Gabba Gabba Hay, indeed, man. Danny Ramona again is representing Overhaul.

37:06Malcolm Harris: And we are now going to get to our final guest. He's been patiently waiting in the bullpen. It's the closer. I feel like he got to play the trumpets. He's about to take the mound with us. I'm excited to bring him in. This guy is a consultant. He is fantastic at what he does. He is representing, again, Tungsten Automation. of course, other entities as well, but he is phenomenal, phenomenal. And I'm excited to bring him to you guys now in the triple dipper box presented, but not presented by Chetly's. We're going to now have Patrick Van Hull again with Punkston Automation. Patrick, welcome to the show, brother.

37:40Malcolm Harris: It is so good to see you. How are you doing this morning? I'm great, gentlemen. Thank you for having me. Man, thank you so much for being here. It's been quite the show. It's been quite the show, man. Yeah, it really has. There's a whole lot going on today. it's crazy i like that they played trumpets before he takes the mound yeah you gotta let them know that it's about to be done like you got the closer in the building it's it's it's done hey after k after k you know you know living up in boston you know chapman comes in he starts throwing triple digits you know he's just letting them rip you know what i'm talking about a rough weekend but you know that i the trumpets there were trumpets being played too when he walked up listen being in boston you can't you can't win them all man but the a's yeah that's a rough weekend for sure but it's okay yeah yeah listen to the a's it's like they don't even have like the exact reciprocal record it's worse than the reciprocal record yeah the craziest part is all the talk about the like people immediately assume it's boston you know checkered history people are starting to call out cheating they're saying that the red sox have somehow hacked into pitch com all of these different things like you know just just let them let them have their run they're gonna cool off they looked a little tired this weekend yeah yeah there they'll be just one i'm liking what i'm saying you know i looked up i i looked up i went in i said i went to claude and i said look give me some cool facts or interesting alumni from from plymouth canton high school and it came up with nothing it came up with nothing it's zero i said there's absolutely nobody cool came out there and i said but what about i said what about patrick van holen oh yeah we'll accept him yeah you know except except him but and it and it just it told me what you've done which is really cool stuff but i i did find some pictures of you from across your travels like when you were in london yeah i got a picture of you in london yep and yeah that was a good day and you were yeah and then you were in dubai you're you're there and yeah i just i think you Tom was hanging off me on that one.

39:45That was awkward. Yeah, I mean, you saved the whole thing. And you were in Delhi for a little while, which may not have been the best, but you were there. And I believe you were in Shanghai as well, right? Yeah. Oh, come on. Yeah. And then he did spend a little bit of time in St. Petersburg, which is a really obscure one. But if you remember Mikhail Gorbachev and the White Knights, there he is doing his thing in the White Knights. Very interesting career, dude. I didn't know you were a ballet slash tap dancer. The thing I was going to point out is that progressively with those pictures, as you got deeper and deeper in the list, it looked less and less like me.

40:26By the way.

40:30It's like that old Michael Keaton movie where they had the clone and the clone and the clone. It was kind of that. I do remember that. I remember that. That was a good show. I like that one. I was thinking more of like Dipper Pines on Gravity Falls, if anybody knows that. But anyways, look at you.

40:49Malcolm Harris: Look at you. The Rolodex in here is just so impressive, but it's not as impressive as. Can you name every one of those movies, Malcolm? No way. I'm a music guy before a movie guy, but like I'm a 2000s on music guy. Like anything free like I'm showing my age, too. I just turned 32 the other day. So I got a lot to learn from you guys. Happy birthday. Thank you, brother. Patrick, talk to us a little bit about, because obviously navigating the challenges today is absolutely crazy. These regulatory changes that are happening, whether it's tariffs, whether it's compliance, whether it's trade policies, what should folks really be on the lookout right now for, given the uncertainty and everything happening in the climate today?

41:33Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that we're in a place where the processes that are required to do the job, we're still doing a whole bunch of this stuff manually. We're scanning off our phones. We're doing spreadsheets. We're doing Excel. We're sending emails. I've got my own horror stories of times that have shut down factories because I sent the wrong version of an Excel file, didn't refresh a pivot table, all that kind of stuff. And so I think the biggest thing that we run into is, let's take a lot of that stuff where we're manually just brute forcing our way through it. Let's find a way to do it better.

42:07Not just do the old way, but better. But actually, let's look at it from a transformational aspect and just stop doing the stuff that's manual. And let's do it the right way, but so that we can actually get to the work that's meaningful. You guys have talked about compliance. You've talked about a lot of that stuff. I mean, the truck inspections, I'll bet a bunch of that's paperwork related. And so how is it that we can actually go and detail all of these documents that come into it? Because when you think about what it takes to ship a single container, at least on an ocean vessel, to go from origin to destination, you're talking 30 different documents over the course of that chain.

42:42So that's that place where we can really start to get into automating some of that work, that process to ingest it, to extract the data, to classify the documents, and then start to take the information on it so we can actually do something with the information as opposed to just trying to piece it together with duct tape and gum and straws and whatnot.

43:02Malcolm Harris: Mike, I want to double down, excuse me, I want to double down, Mike, on this one because with the documents that you just mentioned, you know, given Mike and I, we both have experience when it comes to OCEAN. So like BOLs, you talk about just different things, obviously like agreements, like how do you automate those things? Because it is creating a bottleneck effect, but it's like if you don't have certain things, even, I mean, we can take it as far as customs entry too. It's like certain things aren't going to happen because it's just always the way it's been. How do you see this happening to create, I guess, change and to create process improvement?

43:36Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot of it actually comes down to, A long time ago, somebody told me that maturity is different depending on the industry. But if you're heavily regulated, you're trying to stay in front of the regulators before you get fined. And if you're in something else, you're going to be dragged by the regulations. And so you start getting into tariffs, for example. You could take a single document and just process it in a whole. But now we're at this place, and we work with many big freight companies. I'll just leave it as a nice generic term. but millions of invoices a year, millions of documents, millions of shipments.

44:10And now you could have processed it in whole and had one document, but now you're actually at the place where you have to process it by line. You have to know origin. You have to know destination. You have to know the codes. You have to know the description. You have to know all of that. And so trying to manually piece that together is just brutal. So we're at a place where it says, look, this is the way that it's been done, but the information that's required now, we need to do more because our people just are maxed out. You can't just throw people at the work. It's actually needing to take the information off the page and put it in a usable form.

44:42And that's a real example. I mean, we're talking 15 million invoices a year in that one example. And in a moment's notice, they had to be able to do that. So using Gen AI, using OCR, using a lot of this technology, you can actually get to the point where now you start to look at tariffs, You start to look at what the codes are because it's not just a single point of information anymore. It's connecting three or four different points of information. The bill of lading's got to match the ASN. It's got to match the receipt. It's got to match the PO. Got to be able to tie all these things together.

45:14That's the place where it's really starting to get very cumbersome.

45:17Malcolm Harris: That's such a solid answer. Go ahead, Mike. I'm sorry, brother. It is. No, you're great, man. So, Patrick, this is kind of a difficult one. But we're talking about an industry that, to Malcolm's point, especially in maritime, doesn't change fast. I mean, just look at the styles of TPM. They're top hats and double-breasted coats and canes and stuff like that. You mean they're not rocking Penguins jerseys at TPM? No. Yeah, no. I mean, you know what I'm saying. I mean, it's legacy type of stuff. And they don't move super fast. And even those who want to, it seems like you use the down season to train, right?

45:55And to get ready for the heavy seasons. But things are changing so much with tariffs and stuff like that. It seems like you're in the heavy season craziness all the time. And you're naturally in a job where the personalities are very similar, where it's like, get in there, get it done. Get dirty, get sweaty, make it happen, right? It is get it done. And stopping to plan or change things feels like you're doing all this. It feels like you're not in the game, right? Like you're doing game planning instead of actually tackling and blocking and stuff, which is what people in the industry want to do, solve problems.

46:35That's why we get so addicted to this industry is every day is a new puzzle to solve. How do you get them to stop that or at least add the planning? Because that's what you got to do, right? You've got to implement better processes. And that's hard to do when you're locked in and just getting this shit done. Well, I mean, to use a sports analogy, I mean, look at somebody that scripts all the plays. I know you guys were talking about Akron last week and whatnot, but you script 10 plays, right? And you're like, here's the 10 plays we're going to run. Well, if you script 10 straight run plays and they're stacking the box against you, at some point you need to stop and take a step back instead of just trying to force the same thing over and over again.

47:18And I think there's a big element here. When you think about being resilient, the idea of being resilient isn't that you can just, you're going to deal with everything that's going to come at you because you don't know what's coming. That's your point. You don't have time to slow down. But there's a level that says, hey, I know that I'm going to do these same things over and over again. And I know that this is the stuff that it's consistent. And that's 50 % of my day. Great. Let's take that 50 % off the table. And let's be confident that that 50 % gets done. Those processes, those documents, Let's automate that.

47:49This isn't somebody taking your job. This is somebody taking the work away from you that's not meaningful to you so that you can actually go do the other stuff. That's the place where being resilient is almost a mindset, where you have that confidence that the system in place is going to take care of the stuff that you don't need to so that you can actually focus your effort on the high value work so you can actually do something meaningful. That's the place that I think we're at. It's just that there's too much work to be done. To your point, if we're just going to grind it out every day and look at what's next on our list and just keep going, there's never going to be a shortage of work.

48:22There's always going to be something to do. But is it the right thing to do? Is it something that we could have done 10 minutes and where it took us an hour? Those things are real questions just because the amount of work is never coming down. And oh, yeah, by the way, there's a whole bunch of cost sensitivity and we can't just throw people at it.

48:39Malcolm Harris: Man, you are absolutely brilliant. I wish we had another hour to talk to you because I feel like I just scratched the surface on like what we really need to get to. But Patrick, thank you so much for being here on What the Truck. We are going to have to boogie, but we need to rebook you for an episode down here in Chattanooga ASAP. Let's get you in person because this was this was dope. Yeah. I appreciate you, brother. I'll come on down. Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. Come on. Come on. Appreciate you, Patrick. Thanks, guys. Be well. Of course. Of course. Thanks, Patrick. Appreciate you guys for being here with us today.

49:08Malcolm Harris: I told y 'all we're going to start the week in an amazing way. All right. And, man, we have my dude with me, my brother, Michael Vinson. Of course, shout out to Danny as well as Patrick and our awesome, awesome headlines that we had. Before we get out of there, I want to say appreciate to everybody, you know, just Izzy, happy birthday as well. Didn't do that as well. What? Shout out to Cody. Yeah. Izzy's birthday on, we're birthday twins. We're birthday twins. All right. Look at you guys. Happy birthday, Izzy. Happy birthday, Izzy. Let's look at the road ahead before we get up out of here, because right now, joining us on Wednesday, we got Trey Boring.

49:43Malcolm Harris: But he is nothing boring about him, man. He is representing IMS worldwide as their president. He's going to be in the building. We might have a surprise guest, too, for Wednesday. They're about to be confirmed. That's it for us for another Monday here on What the Truck. Just get started this week. I'm Malcolm Harris. That's Michael Benson. He's got the guns out. Peace and love. See you on Wednesday. Bye. Peace and love, everybody.

50:19We'll be right back.