How 1 Anonymous "Bat Signal" App Stops Driver Turnover Cold

0:27This podcast features Michael Vincent and Trey Boring and Malcolm Harris.

0:30Malcolm Harris: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a Wednesday edition of What The Truck. I'm your host, Malcolm Harris, with my brother, my partner in crime, looking mighty fine, Mr. Michael Vincent, representing What The Truck West. Mike, what's up, boy? Hey, greetings from 146 Studios. What The Truck West. And salutations, my brother. How you doing? I'm doing fantastic, brother. How are you, man? Hey, listen, I've never been brother. Never been better. Shout out to the Boiler Room boys, man. It's been quite the day so far. They're awesome, man. Yeah, they are great. They're one-on-one, second to none. But I got love for them.

1:09Malcolm Harris: And they got love for me. That's all I need in this life, man. You know, if you know. You know those boys, they never freak. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, they stay cool, calm, and collected. There's no one in your show notes. There's no one in your show notes. Hey, we're starting in 30 seconds. They're like, chill, bro. They said, Malcolm, we got you. You know what? Checks bounce, we bounce back. Anytime something gets in our way, we're just going to keep moving and keep it working, man. So that's what we're going to do. That's it, man. Got a great show on deck today. Let's get to it because it's the fastest 55 minutes, not 45 minutes, the fastest 55 minutes in freight today officially.

1:44Malcolm Harris: We got three great guests. Kicking off the show with us is going to be Trey Boring. He's the president at IMS Worldwide. He's been navigating international trade and foreign trade zones for nearly four decades. We're getting into everything. Tariffs, reshoring, how companies are actually rethinking supply chains right now. That's Trey. He's going to hold it down for us. And he's the best-looking bald brother on the show today. He's looking great. I see him in the preview camera. He's got the goatee going. I'm excited to get to Trey. And then we got my man Alex Mai, man. He is on the way. He is, of course, a mother trucker news and much more, man.

2:16Malcolm Harris: We're going to get into his new platform called Driver Open Door. We're going to talk about how he has built one of the biggest trucking communities in the entire country, man. He's looking ready to go. I see him. He's got the merch on. He's looking fly. And then finally, to end off the show, Abdul Basharat, he's the CEO of Carthage, man. He's built Wilson, an autonomous logistics operator already coordinating over a billion dollars in freight. We're going to get into what's happening when AI stops assisting the world and starts owning it. So between Abdul, Alex, and Shrey, guys, it's one heck of a Wednesday episode for you.

2:50Three power brokers right here, bro. Come on, man. I'm telling you what, man.

2:54Malcolm Harris: I told you. I'm like DoorDash. All I do is deliver. All right? One after the other. Today's just back to back to back. You know what I'm saying? Fantastic. Not one, not two, not three. That's what it is. That's what it is. I'm excited. I'm excited. It wouldn't be possible, of course, without the knockies of Gnosis Freight. The knockies of Gnosis Freight is our sponsor of the month here at What The Chuck. All right. Again, if you're still checking carrier websites, copying container data into spreadsheets, and chasing updates through email chains, you got to have Gnosis. It's an AI operating system for global logistics.

3:33Malcolm Harris: One platform to track every single container, automate execution, and protect your margins across the full container lifecycle. So I'm talking 99 % coverage when it comes to container traffic. If you are in this space, definitely interested in getting in touch with Gnosis Freight. All you got to do is check them out right now, gnosisfreight.com, book a demo with them, tell them that the guys at What The Truck sent you, you can do that. I know you can, I got faith. thing. Yeah. You can make it happen. You can make it happen. And you'll be glad you did. Yeah. You can also make F3 happen. October 27th.

4:08Malcolm Harris: Oh, it's going to happen whether you're going to be there or not, so don't miss out. You know what I'm saying? Don't miss out. Ain't nobody going to call it and make it happen. It's already happening. You know what I mean? It's here. You just don't want to miss it. That's what I'm saying. You don't want to miss it. October 27th and the 28th at the Signal. It's going to be the Future of Freight Festival, the biggest event of the year here at Freight Waves. Of course, we're going to have the Freight Tech 100 Awards. We're going to have awards dinners. We're going to have conversations. We're going to have demos.

4:32Malcolm Harris: We're going to have discussions, keynotes, you name it. We are about it. So make sure you guys are checking this out right now. There is a promo code available to you all. It is TAKE20. All right. So that is 20 % off of your price of admission to being at F3. All right. So again, so much happening. It was a great venue last year. And I personally do think that it's going to be even better this year. All right. We got a great team. In terms of events, I'm just making this happen. October 27th and 28th in the scenic city in the heart of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Get your tickets right now, all right?

5:07Gotta take a sip of water. I'm on. Dude, you deserve it after that, bro. You killed it. That was a lot of talking. That was a lot of talking. And we're going to continue to talk. It was a lot of talking. And when you take that 20 % off for doing your Take 20, just save a little bit of that to buy my man Malcolm a drink because you're going to be doing a lot of talking. and he deserves it hardest working man in podcasting right there 100 100 and he never

5:33Malcolm Harris: sweats never sweats doing it i'm telling you 100 uh let's get to what's important right now and that's our guest oh because coming to us right now is going to be the president at ims worldwide incorporated all right he is joining us uh of course virtually right now and And that is going to be Mr. Trey Boring again of IMS Worldwide. Trey, welcome to What the Truck. How's it going, sir? It's good to see you. It's going great. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. How's the week been treating you so far? Well, ever since the Wednesday after the election, our business has been crazy.

6:15I mean, it changes. FTZs are important. And, you know, life gets thrown into the blender.

6:23Malcolm Harris: No, I can only imagine. It does. You're looking fresh, though. I'll tell you that. You're looking fresh as a daisy this morning, brother. Making me want to get the goatee back, right? You're looking good. I'm telling you. It gets grayer and grayer, but I try to keep it up. You know, Trey, I look at people's past, and I try to find, you know, it's easy to find fun things, dude. I found an interesting thing that you were doing. I was like, what in the hell is this stuff here? This cigar rights for Americans or whatever it was. And I came across some of your volunteer work, right? And you're like cigars for warriors, OCFW.

7:05And I'm looking at this thing. I'm like, what is going on here? The more I research, the more badass this is. This is really cool stuff, man. It's a nonprofit that Trey belongs to, right? It's a nonprofit that collects and disperses premium cigars, cigar accessories, coffee, magazines, et cetera, to members of the U.S. Armed Forces serving in combat zones on land, sea, and in the air. How do you deliver them to the air? We'll get into that later. But they also sent them to long-term deployment officers. And the idea here is to give them the ability to some type of normalcy and kick back and take care of their brain and chill and decompress with some really awesome premium cigars and other accessories that go around it.

7:51Look,$525 ,000 in revenue total assets. 81 % of its spending goes to programs and philanthropy. It's located in Alcala, Florida, 11 board members. It's tax deductible donations. These guys, 200 ,000 cigars annually deployed to the troops, right? And we're talking about multiple medical doctors and psychologists agree that the mental health benefits outweigh any potential health risk. Premium cigars have been named one of three items that help normalize an environment that is anything but normal. I've never been in combat. I work with people that do. I work for someone that went four tours. It's anything but normal.

8:35Fantastic job, dude, Trey. Thanks for your commitment to help those guys and gals. I've been part of that charity since 2013 and been the senior vice chair of the board of directors since 2017. So very, very big, very big part of my life. You know, as we get older, we try to look for fun things to do. I'm a big cigar guy. And, you know, it is just nice to give a piece of home to men and women who are out there deployed, you know, sitting in places you and I don't want to be. Yeah. And we're glad that they're doing it. Right. I mean, if they were out there doing it, we wouldn't have a better place to be than there.

9:16Right. I mean, that's that's part. Did Winston Churchill have any inspiration on this? You know, I think Winston Churchill inspires every cigar smoker in the modern era. But, you know, our big inspiration came from one of our founders who's still with us. He's the chairman of our board of directors. And when he was deployed, his friends would send him cigars. He saw the benefit with his troops. He was a first sergeant when he left the military. And he started the charity so that he could continue this work beyond just people you can reach out, touch, and that you know. And so that's what we've done.

9:551.85 million cigars sent since 2012. It's amazing. It's awesome.

10:02Malcolm Harris: It's great stuff. It's awesome. It's great stuff. And there's nothing like to me smoking a cigar with just like friends. Or I always smoke one with my dad and just being able just to kick back and relax and just talk. I think that is something that I'll never give up. It's a great thing. And again, shout out to you and the work you're doing, Trey. That's very, very cool. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Of course. Well, I want to get into, you know, obviously logistics, supply chain, and put you in the hot seat a little bit. So tell us about IMS worldwide, what you guys are currently doing. And of course, things have changed a lot since the election.

10:33Malcolm Harris: Walk us through just like the amount and the totality of the change that has taken place so far and just the inner workings of IMS, if you don't mind. Sure. Sure. So IMS Worldwide, we are what we like to say is an operational consultancy, meaning we don't just help people hit the application button and apply for FTZs with the federal government. We also work with companies to establish the processes and procedures that are necessary to compliantly operate in a foreign trade zone. I still think one of our biggest things we do is walk people through the analysis. Because while the Foreign Trade Zone program sounds good, just like anything else, it is not necessarily good for you if the business case doesn't work out.

11:18And if you're not saving money, it's not a good deal, right? And so that's kind of the main area we work through with companies is just sort of getting them through that analysis part and then helping them set it up and be able to operate it compliantly. But we've been doing foreign trade zones now in varying forms as our company, as IMS Worldwide for going on 40 plus years now. But our founder started doing foreign trade zones back in the late 60s, early 70s. So Trey, can you explain so everybody's clear on how a foreign trade zone actually operates, what it actually is? Because there's a lot of people out there going, oh, yeah, that's where I buy my booze when I go to the airport.

12:02Right, right.

12:08So a foreign trade zone is designed for U.S. operations to be able to designate their operation in a bonded status with customs, meaning I can bring the goods into my facility without paying the duty or taxes at the time of importation. and then I can manufacture with that material. I can just simply distribute that material, but I am not going to be liable for the payment of duty until that material leaves my facility destined for a U.S. customer. So if I export, I never pay U.S. duty, right? If it comes in, rests in my facility, and then eventually is exported, I don't pay duty. But if I bring it in, I do some work with it, packaging it, do whatever that is that I have approval for.

13:04I can then, when I distribute it into the United States, will pay duty at that point. So it's a time value of money savings for a lot of companies because I can take that duty payment that I owe the government and push it further into my supply chain so that it's closer to my revenue point as an operator. Gotcha.

13:26Malcolm Harris: Trey, what happens whenever, like from an operational standpoint, like if you're dealing with this, I mean, somebody doesn't have proper systems, records in place. What does this look like on the back end, just out of general curiosity? Well, my line that I always use for everybody is compliance in a foreign trade zone is inventory control. OK, the government's trusting you not to pay them up front for the taxes or duties that you're going to owe. correct? So they're going to make sure that you can manage the flow of that merchandise through your facility all the way to the ultimate conclusion of being able to pay the duty when it goes to a U.S.

14:07customer. So most of the systems that we deal with with customers is really centered around inventory control and proper management of the movement of your merchandise in your supply chain. That makes sense. So let me let me ask you this real quick. Is is it deferred payment of the duties, et cetera, tariffs owed at time of entry into the FTZ? Or is it sitting and waiting and you pay the current as it exits and you receive revenues? Yeah, no, the foreign trade zone is a little bit different. If you're familiar with the bonded warehouse program, which has a lot of operational restrictions, but still, it's a program that's out there.

14:55You pay the duty that's in effect when you pull it out of the warehouse. Foreign trade zone is sort of the trade-off here is that a foreign trade zone gives you a lot more operational freedom, but you have to apply the duty liability at time of receipt into the zone. So if I'm The equity rate is active when I bring it in. I got to pay that going out no matter when it goes out. Gotcha. So that would, so there's a big influx or a pull forward even in this area for manufacturing, et cetera, when there is a tariff hike that's on the table. Like, you know, we've had the August deadlines and so on and so forth over the past couple of years.

15:39Gotcha. you.

15:41Malcolm Harris: Trey, whenever you're seeing companies and they're obviously in the back of their heads rethinking where they're locating distro centers, is this because of changing trade patterns or is there something else that I'm not necessarily thinking of right now? Yeah, you could probably give me any option and I would tell you the answer is yes. We are dealing with right now that are impacting decisions companies make. I mean, right now, I have clients that are moving into the Arizona area because of the chip manufacturing that's growing there and the different things that are going in. And, you know, a lot of them have to deal with trade routes and trade policies because of that.

16:24In years past, a lot of people would make decisions based on what we would see relative to the trade agreements, right? you know the favorable trade agreements where would i need to set up some patterns and processes but uh in the current environment let's put it that way um in the current environment we are seeing that that is going away and duties tend to be universal around the planet so now we're getting a lot more people looking at you know decision making based on the strategy of how do I get things from point A to point B. You know, Trey, I was running container freight stations and learning how to do it as I was actually doing it down in Miami.

17:11And I had a 500 ,000 square foot container freight station. And the first time customs showed up, they don't knock on the door. They just enter. And they usually have dogs, guns, hatchets, whatever they want. and not like little guns. They got big guns. And I made the mistake of saying, do you have a warrant? Oh, no. Because, yeah, because it was the first time. And I quickly was reminded how I should just show them where the operation was and just go get us a coffee and some donuts before we shut down this whole effing operation for the next month. And I was just wondering, what do companies need to do to keep proper system records in the case of, I mean, because they're going to be audited, right?

17:58And how does technology help that situation for them? What do they need to be doing with their records and systems to be able to operate this correctly or think about operating this? So, like I said, everything is really about inventory control. And, you know, the records are audited in a foreign trade zone based on, you know, probably a little similar to what you dealt with in the CFS, right? Here's the product that came in. What did you do to the product that came in? and where is the product that came in now? That's sort of the questions that are asked in the audit process, right? And so your systems have to be able to track the audit trail for that movement of merchandise.

18:38Now you add manufacturing to that and you've got a little middle piece, right? This component came in, we made it into this finished good, where did the finished good go kind of thing? And so a lot of times we're dealing with systems, foreign trade zone software has become a very important part of the process because in years past, I'm old enough to remember hand typing customs forms and keeping things in, you know, manila file folders, right? And keeping documents in order. And so a lot of the systems nowadays really do that for you electronically. Plus customs has gone to e-filing. So the receipt into the zone, the 214 zone admission is now electronically filed and you have obviously your exits and your outbounds whether it's being exported or consumed into the US.

19:27Those documents are electronically filed so the assistance of the softwares has become critical and you can sort of see that where we used to have one, two or three options. There are now six major options of foreign trade zone software in the industry today.

19:45Malcolm Harris: No, Ray, as we come to a close, because obviously I want to be mindful of the time with our other two guests, when it comes to global trade, if we just zoom out, I want you to give me for a year and then five years. What are the things you're on the lookout for the most? Because this is not over. What we're saying, the evolution of this is just getting started, given the variables we've discussed today. Well, the advice that I give all of my clients is consistency. Okay. Right now, what you're seeing is not going away, as you pointed out. There are too many people right now that are waiting for this administration to end, the next term to come in.

20:27My response to that is I've never met a government who didn't like a revenue stream. And so I really do not believe that we're going to see any relief outside of working within the programs. So understand that I still think no matter who's president, what party, consistency in the trade issues we're having today should go forward over the next five years. That's my humble opinion.

20:55Malcolm Harris: Trey Boring again, president of IMS Worldwide Incorporated. Trey, thank you so much for making the time to be here, man. this was such a good and fruitful conversation and looking forward to having you back on what the truck you get you bet anytime thanks guys thank you thanks trey yeah we could we could just do like a a weekly session with trey because there's so much to go through i mean we unpack we unpack zero of it right we just like stuck our finger in a side frosting and tasted that's it i couldn't agree with you more that was literally so much too i mean we that was like talk about appetizing who's next oh man let's go to mother trucker huh let's go to mother trucker news man because coming yeah of course here alex my alex what's up man welcome to what the truck this is overdue brother this is so yeah i appreciate y 'all man thank you for having me when i got the call i was i was honored to have it you know i mean you guys have a great platform and you guys really put a lot of people on the map.

21:55So I respect the hustle.

21:57Malcolm Harris: No, I respect the hustle. I think the last time you were on, you were still Asian Mai, weren't you? Yeah, man. That's so confusing because it's like, what is Asian Mai? It's like, I'm Asian, my last name's Mai, and I got a show, and people are like, are you cooking Chinese food back there? And I was like, hey, listen, I like Chinese food, Panda Express, like the rest of everyone else. But no, I'm not. I'm talking about trucking here. you know you know so we should talk about look drivers you know they all they make like turbo beans true bro dogs stuff like they cook on their turbo have you ever witnessed anybody cooking any asian food like dan dan noodles or something like that on their turbo is that hey man there's the space man if you guys need it i'll come back be the asian my show and we can add that to what the truck segment while you guys are talking and i'm out there starting making some you know hey if you don't like orange chicken and you don't like, you know, uh, walnut shrimp, then, you know, we got an issue anyway.

22:54So I like it. It's the diesel soy sauce on it. That's, that's difficult to take. Your marketing ability, my friend is on a different level. All right. You know,

23:10I'm going to tell you what I'm nothing compared to you, bro. I mean, look, Sacramento state, right? You went to business school, Sacramento state. Okay, so there's one of the wildest sports stories ever comes out of Sacramento State.

23:25Malcolm Harris: All right. Okay, now check this out, dude. The state, Sacramento State's hockey team, all right, that I believe Alex may have been, I don't know, man. I suspect he may have been involved with this thing. There he is. See, there's the proof. Check it out. Check it out. See, he was the coach. He was the coach. Look at all this money here. Look, check this out. The team's captain was arrested on grand theft charges. I don't know. That looks a little bit like you, bro, right there. The world of technology and AI, my friends, you know. I'm telling you. And the team was disbanded after administrators discovered, check this out, Malcolm, only three of the 28 members were actually students.

24:14Okay, this is crazy. Three out of 28. That's breaking news, y 'all. That's breaking news. That is breaking news. 25 of the 28. 25 of the 28 players didn't even go to school there, bro. The scandal was exposed when UC Davis, the team's rival, got suspicious and said, I know that guy.

24:32Malcolm Harris: I know that guy. They look a little older, man. I don't know. How are these guys rolling up in G? How are they rolling up in G-wagons? There's no NIL money yet. I love this, man. I love having fun. I love talking with you guys. You know, this is great, man. You know what I mean? I heard earlier, you're saying I'm wearing the mother trucker merch and like, Hey, this is a tip for all brands and all businesses in the trucking industry. You know, self-awareness in brand awareness is very important and I don't have to be the most popular guy, but if I always wear the same hat, the same one shirt that I own, right?

25:14Then people will recognize you and go, hey, I've seen that guy before. But a quick shameless plug. I just want to show some love. We're feeling excited today because we got the word that we're going to be on with the truck. So, you know, 20 % off at BigRigTease.com. Use discount code MT26. You could get your mother trucker merch, hats, shirts. If not, then you could get your BigRigTease merch. We wanted to do something special for all the, you know, what the truck listeners out there so that you guys get 20 % off of just anything you need because you're buying it anyways. You might as well get it for a better price.

25:49That's so real. It's cool. Look at that. Look, see, we do service, right? I mean, it's brotherhood over here. There it is, brotherhood. Brotherhood.

25:58Malcolm Harris: We do the service. Alex, talk to me, man. How did this all come to fruition? I mean, you're a humble guy, but I'll speak for you. You built one of the biggest trucking platforms in the world. Amen. I'll see it. Amen. It's just what it is. You know how you do anything? And I'll be honest here is you do it by accident, right? Just like everybody, anyone listening to this show, the best compliment that I ever get is they go, Alex, when I meet you, you're just as bald. You're just as fat. You're just as Asian. And you're so ugly, man. You're one of us. It's like, you're such a normal guy and how does a normal guy do great things?

26:41Right. And, and the truth is you don't know you're everyone out there. You're trying to find your way. You're trying to grind. You're trying to hustle. You're trying to provide for your family and you know, you fall into some things. And so really long story short is my uncle every summer took me moving with him for North American van lines. And he, he wanted me to go with him to spend time, but also I think he wanted free labor. I mean, I'm just keeping it real, right? And through the years, I just love to spend time with him. And let's be honest, I went to college, went to Sac State, thought I was going to be some guy that was going to make a lot of money.

27:17Life doesn't quite work out. I end up with an assistant manager job at Walgreens, which they said, hey, if you work real hard, you can have that Toyota Camry LE outside like I have. And I go, wow, that's awesome, sir. And they pitch you those dreams. And you're thinking to yourself, you want a little bit more. So my uncle just took me back and said, Hey man, why don't you just do this trucking thing? And so I said, man, let's, let's give this a try. And what ends up happening is if you are not on the road, you are not going to understand that so many issues happen. You sacrifice your time, your energy, your family, and you're kind of just on the side of the road, looking on social media while everyone around you is having fun and a great time.

28:02And so be vulnerable a little bit here. You get a little bit depressed. And so my wife now, you know, and my girlfriend, then we've been together for about 16 years. She was like, why don't you start journaling or something? And I'm like, I can't read. I can't write. Well, you know, I'm just kidding. But it came down to the point where I was like, you know what? Let me share some pictures, share some videos. Now I'm sharing things on Facebook. I'm sharing it to family. Oh, this is what Las Vegas looks like while you drive past it. Right. And so it's, it's one of those things where you, you, I started to have fun and started to just shoot videos.

28:41And then here and there randomly as I'm shooting something like, Hey, I wonder if they've ever seen what a, a, a iron skillet looks like a driver goes, what are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, can I, can I do it with you? And I'm like, let's do it. And next thing you know, we're like, what just happened? I was like, bro, I think we just both YouTubed right now in real time. He's like, what is that? And we're just sitting on a curb in front of like the freaking TA looking for ourselves, like not knowing that it was called vlogging or anything like that. And a very specific moment happened.

29:19I was vlogging and just at the time YouTubing and a guy is like, hey man, you should interview me. And I go, sure, man. And he goes, I actually just got out of prison. I've been looking for a job for the last eight months. I can't find anything. And I did the video, maybe a hundred people watched that. But later on, I get an email that says, Alex, I saw that little interview you did. I am in a similar situation. And I actually called the company. they hired me and now I'm able to provide. And here's the coolest thing. He said, I was able to get my kid into a better school zone. You know what I'm saying?

30:00So it kind of like started doing that for me. And so all this really started selfishly. I, I, I, in real time learned about caring about truck drivers, you know, cause I was a mover moving furniture. We made decent money, right? I didn't know that majority of truckers didn't make a lot of money. Like I didn't know that. Right. And so long story, very long, I guess all of that experience and me trying to hit a target that wasn't there, it landed me into a hobby that made me passionate about just talking about anything to do with trucking. And then after a decade, 8 ,000 videos later, I found myself, doing Mother Trucker News now and just caring about the industry and just trying to build impact and provide value first before the good old mighty dollar.

30:52And so that's where I'm at today and I'm glad I can provide for my family by doing something I love. So, got lucky. At the end of the day, you need a lot of luck, y 'all. That's what it is.

31:03Malcolm Harris: You need luck and you need talent and it's clear that you got both, brother. Mike, I know you've been sitting, bro. What's up, Mike? Yeah, no, I just, I love Alex. He's a brother, like you said. He's a friend of ours. Alex is humble, but we sing his praises because it's awesome to see how God uses us as his vessels to bless other people in the strangest ways. All of a sudden, boom, you're blessing these people. It's fantastic. And it has led you to something that I believe is going to be a really good thing for the gap that's between the dispatchers, the managers, those that run companies, and the drivers that are out there getting things done.

31:44Because we talk about those things. And I'm starting to interview drivers now, which is really inspired by you, Alex, to go out there and do this because more people need to listen to these guys, really. But you're developing driver open door. Can we get into that a little bit? What it is, and then the mission behind it, right? Because it is, you're providing for your family. You're providing a valuable service for drivers and management for the whole industry, really. But your experience with the drivers, I mean, it inspired you to do this thing, right? Yeah, man. I'll be honest with you. I was at one of my truck stop takeovers type of thing.

32:22And then I see a driver, not going to say what company, had one of those million mile driver situations. And he just looked at me and he was just sad. and I was just like, man, you doing all right, brother? And he was like, man, I was hoping for a little raise and I don't know who to talk to. And I was like, why don't you talk to X, Y, and Z? And the guy's been there literally almost 25 years and said to me, who is that? I'm like, that's the president of your company. And so the disconnect becomes real, right? I'm not here to throw shade at anyone, but it's great on social media to say, these are my million mile drivers.

33:02These are the people I care about. The person in the seat is the one I care about. But then at the end of the day, they don't even have a way that they feel safe in connecting and communicating with their leadership. And they definitely only have the number to their dispatcher or driver manager. And so they're kind of nervous because they don't want to get backlash, maybe less miles, because a lot of jobs are connected to the way they get paid is by miles. And so they say nothing. And then at the end, they end up lying, right? They say, oh, you know what? I'm getting out of trucking. They're not getting out of trucking.

33:35They're just going to another company that they hope will respect them a little bit more. So I created driveropendoor.com. And what that is, is in real time drivers, we have a cool feature called the bat signal. I like Batman. You could just put it into the software after the fleet has connected with our software. And basically they could put their phone number in, a chat box will come down and they could be anonymous if they want to be or reveal themselves if it's something that they just need fixed, right? Maybe a repair issue, payroll or something like that. And when they do that, my AI will just read to see if it's going to be a situation where they're feeling hurt, in pain, pressured, HR, compliance, or want to quit.

34:20And if it fills those red alerts, it will actually send a message directly in real time to like the vice president of operations or the person that actually takes care and can make that change. And so literally, if you have a problem, you could go on driver open door if your company's using it and then talk to your leadership team anonymously, safely in real time and resolve your issue. Very simple, very easy. and that's what drivers need. They just need to resolve their issues in real time, not be the number that people say they are and just be heard because trucking sucks. And if you treat your drivers great, but that day it sucks for them, they need to resolve that day.

35:03And that's what driveropendoor.com does for them. So very simple and I'm very thankful. We have going on 10 fleets using this now and less than 45 day launch. First one to give us a chance, Chima Freight Lines, uh, Harmon Chima. He's a, um, he's, he's just a, a future thinker. He was using an inside retention tool and he wasn't getting the feedback that he needed because let's be honest. If your company right now says, Hey man, can you tell us everything that you're unhappy about with our company and you're safe? We won't, we, we won't use that against you. Nobody is going to do that. And so, you know, he used a third party tool, which is built by Mother Trucker.

35:46And now they're getting more resolves than ever. And people are signing up like wildfire because all these earning calls, I've been watching what the truck, I've been seeing it, you know, all the Warners, the Primes, the Schneiders, you name them. They've been making more profit with less trucks, meaning that that professional driver in their truck right now, that's the one they should be paying attention to. And that's the one that they should be saving. you know and amen this thing right here there's nothing wrong with recruiting the only problem we're recruiting is they are the first touch point to the driver and if the recruiter is like an old school used car salesman just saying anything to get them to the seat to get that mighty dollar then that's where the disconnect starts immediately so driver open door it helps figure out what's wrong with your company so that you can resolve the issue you know that's That's as plain, as simple as that is.

36:41Yeah. You know, Alex, that Harmon Chima's dad used to bribe him with Whataburgers to get him in the truck. You know that, right?

36:50It's a true story. It's a true story. Ask him. I love it. I love it. I love it. No, thank you for the highlight, guys. I'm so passionate about this because there's a lot of technology out there that can do things like this. and I'm not even telling you to use my software. What I'm telling you to do is if you have a company right now and you're not even surveying your company drivers and you're not even trying to find a way to resolve, then all you're going to have is this revolving door, this leaking bucket, and you're going to keep at that 90 to 110 % turnover rate. I mean, the truth is, if you're local, if you're regional, you're going to have better turnover rate because drivers get to go home and kiss their family.

37:36But if you're over the road, it already starts at a crappy turnover rate because you're over the road and life sucks, right? I'm not trying to be that negative, but that's how hard trucking is. It's a hard job. Yeah. And because of that, you need to know what are the pain points for these drivers. And, you know, that's why I'm help solving right now. And, you know, and so I tell all the fleets out there, anyone watching this, you don't have to use driver open door, but make sure you have some kind of some kind of internal tool where you're trying to resolve these issues for your drivers, you know, and if you don't got it, then, hey, hit me up, of course.

38:16But yeah.

38:17Malcolm Harris: Alex, last question before we get to Abdul and our final segment. But, you know, you're doing so much, bro. Like we've talked about it a little bit, obviously, with your platforms. Yeah. What's the rest of the year and into 2027 look like for you? If you win, when you win, how do you get there? What does that look like, bro? Yeah, I tell you what, man, give back more and provide more value to people than you can offer to yourself, man. Be a good human being to others and be real. Don't be this fake great person on camera and then behind the scenes not be the real person that you're saying you are.

38:56You know, so I leave with love first. I leave with being a good human being first. And hey, we're going to try and help as many people as we can here and jump in on any platform that can help us do that. Or if anyone would like to be on Mother Trucker News, you could do that. I'm just here to help, man. Anyone that knows me personally knows I leave with love first. And who knows where it takes you? Right. Because every five years can be a big change. And this this is going to be the year, you know, I could tell things are going back slowly. So if they're going back slowly, the trucking industry needs this so badly.

39:32And I'll be here just to be a platform for anyone that cares about drivers to have a voice, you know. So let's get it. Let's go.

39:39Malcolm Harris: You know, my ladies and gentlemen. Wow. Love it. Lead with love. Thanks, Alex. Lead with love. Yes, sir. Lead with love. Seriously, we'll see you soon. All right. Yes, sir. Thank you all. Appreciate you. Thanks, Alex. You know, Malcolm, I love what he's doing because, you know, I'm getting out there and we're talking to drivers at least a couple times a week, going to the truck stops and interviewing and asking, right? Yeah. And one of the things that comes up with almost every single driver is get in a cab with the drivers and understand what they're going through every single day, however you can do it.

40:12And this open door thing that Alex is doing is one of those tools that you can do it, right? I mean, it's not saying you're going to do it. They have to understand or believe that you understand at least.

40:22Malcolm Harris: No doubt. No doubt. I remember being a broker earlier on in my career and just not understanding the capacity of a truck driver and going to like a truck stop and like taking a shower. Right. Just to see and put myself in the shoes of being a driver. So like, no, like that's scratching the surface. I think the work that Alex is doing is incredible. And I think the work that Abdul is doing is incredible. We're about to get to the CEO of Carnage right now because he is officially live and in the Triple Dipper box. Of course, not presented by Chili's, but presented by Gnosis Freight. Again, Abdul Bashirat, you're the CEO of Carnage, and you are officially on What the Truck.

40:58Malcolm Harris: Abdul, welcome to the show, brother. How's it going? Hey, guys. How's it going? Nice to meet you. Hey, nice to meet you, too. What's going on, brother? Not much living in life. I've been listening to the show. It's a great show. Well, thanks, man. Awesome, man. Thanks for being here. Well, you know, I did some research on Abdul. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. There's some stuff in here, bro. I'm kind of shocked he has the time to even be here. You know what I'm saying? I mean. He's a busy guy. He has redefines giving back to the community. You know what I mean? From tutoring kids in physics and calculus to getting his qualifications as a military officer in the Canadian Armed Forces.

41:44private pilot's license, a member of the, what is it? Is it the St. John's Search and Rescue? I'm surprised this guy's not out flying a plane teaching kids calculus while he's, you know, dropping off. There it is. There you go. Check it out. There it is, man. That's Abdul right there, bro. This guy's doing everything, writing equations, skywriting equations for kids. and they're like, well, he's going to offer aid and support. I mean, it's crazy, dude, the insane things that you're doing. Not insane, just great things, dude. Appreciate people like yourselves that don't rest on their success but use their abilities and their strength and their drive to help others.

42:29It's awesome, bro. I mean, because I was going through the different things at St. John's, like the rescue there, the St. – what is it? Is it St. John's, Ontario that you are or something like that? Yeah. Yeah, St. John's and Village. dude, these aren't guys that are coming to the house because there's a cat up a tree. These guys are like 121 people on a ship that was on fire, right? Tornado disaster relief. Serious stuff that these guys are going and doing. So kudos to you, my friend. God bless you. No, I appreciate it. Different life. I used to do a lot of stuff. I was trained to be a search and rescue pilot in the military.

43:05And then I also volunteered search and rescue as well. So, yeah, it's a good time. That's awesome.

43:10Malcolm Harris: Abdul, I want to talk about a thing that we talk about on the show all the time. Obviously, we had an event, the Supply Chain AI Symposium a few months back, just talking about the inner workings of AI. With you, you've kind of been on the fence saying that AI can not only be a benefit to help aid people do the jobs, but it can do the work and streamline the processes itself. So when it comes to AI and your words, what does AI really mean to you, Abdul? Like, what is this in the future going to look like from somebody that's way smarter than Michael Vincent and Malcolm Harris put together when it comes to this?

43:46Malcolm Harris: Oh, wow. That's a difficult question right there. Look, I mean, underlying is just intelligence, right? So you can basically buy intelligence at scale and leverage how you want. It's also very malleable in how you implement it. So we have pretty custom deployments for every single customer. like the way you kind of hire Wilson like an employee. So Wilson joins your company. He gets his own emails. Like, let's say like wilson.freightwaves.com joins your team. And he's like maybe emailing a broker for a quote. How you want Wilson to work in your company is like relatively up to you. So if you want it to do things like more on the data side, flagging escalations, you can use it like that.

44:27Or if you want it to do the entire supply chain, like coordination intent, AI is also capable of doing that as well. But underlying, it's basically just like hiring a brain, like you're hiring a person. And then what do you want to do with that brain? It's kind of the same thing as like, if you hire an employee, how do you train them? What's their job, et cetera. Does that kind of land? Make sense? No, it definitely did land.

44:48Malcolm Harris: It makes sense. It totally lands. And one of the things that I find people are confused about is how exactly to utilize AI or understanding the different, the pitfalls that can happen that are out there in implementing AI as far as internally in your customer or using somebody like yourself who actually can consult with them and help them build something correct, right? Because you don't take sensitive data and just upload it into AI, into the free version of AI. Everything's cool, right? That ain't how it works. You utilize it to build agents, download those agents and use, you know, upload only unnecessary things.

45:32So there's security, enterprise contracts, that type of stuff, and ensuring people that you might use have those type of things. Right. Can you speak to that a little bit about how the difference in knowledge you have to have on actually how you implement it? Right. You can't just load GPT and go, wow, I'm using AI and everything's safe and cool. I think it's just it's so near. there's such a flood of like people also building it in the ai space as well so it's a bit of information overload i think there's like three types of ai essentially one is like a co-pilot um so that you can think of like a chat gpt or like a cloud something you can talk to ask questions to can basically help you do work maybe you can connect to like email but it's not autonomous right like you're just asking it to do things and parlaying with it um two is like actual agents.

46:20So these can actually be completely autonomous. The best versions of those actually have their own underlying model that you basically train for a specific domain, which is basically us. So we have our own model under the hood that we basically fine-tuned and trained to understand logistics and do logistics. And then third is super intelligence, which is what the open AIs of the world are trying to build. The first one is the one I think that people are the most used to. you should not throw data into like chat gbt on like a generic account they will store your data you want some kind of business plan and then you can basically the they don't store your data to like train other models but you're never that's good for like talking to an ai trying to understand and help do your own job but you can't really offload work to like a chat gbt or a clod or any kind of like co-pilot you would hide you you need some kind of specific like what we call like a vertical agent.

47:13So a vertical agent is like an agent fine-tuned to do a specific task, which is like Wilson. And then even then there's like a lot of work to actually get Wilson production ready. There's basically two things on our side that are like the biggest value as on the technology side. One is the model underneath that we've trained to understand logistics. So it's like real logistics intelligence. The other thing is actually running simulation. So we can basically talk to a customer, understand their like workflows of like, okay, so your supply chain looks like xyz we can basically um mock it simulate it run a bunch of like hundreds of tests behind the scenes and they're basically like okay like wilson is basically ready and trained to now coordinate your supply chain so there's a lot of work you're running like a digital twin like a digital twin is what you're doing right with that mike exactly yeah so like our sales process is we usually talk to executives they're like okay this sounds great then we talk to the logistics team understand how they work map out the supply chain and then basically run simulations and that's kind of like the digital twin side.

48:12Gotcha. Gotcha. Very cool.

48:14Malcolm Harris: Abdul, I guess my question is when it comes specifically to our industry, I mean, you could have done this for any industry. Why supply chain? Why logistics? Why was this like a pivotal focus of what you and your team are doing? So I was at Rose Rocket, which is like another kind of, it's like a TMS startup. and I think logistics is just a great application of AI because it's essentially a lot of it in terms of the coordination layer is just like data, right? And a lot of that data lives in phone calls, lives in emails, lives in documents and before you have to kind of like structure that data you need like an app or something like software, right?

48:53Now AI can just like read emails, write emails kind of turn the unstructured data into structured data so it's a great application layer and I think the other thing logistics of why AI is so impactful is like, I feel like 95 % of logistics work is repeat. It's like busy work that you actually don't need people to do and that actually distracts people. But 5 % of freight is like super, super gnarly. Like you really would need like a lot of human attention on that. So the value of AI is like free you up from the 95 % and then your team can just focus on the 5 % edge cases, right? That actually like need attention from a person.

49:26So to double down - I like an AI guy that smart that is also confident enough to say super gnarly.

49:31Malcolm Harris: super gnarly i love how you put that in there talk about digital twins and shit and just drop super gnarly on you and it just flows and it just flows oh god i wish we had more time if we had this conversation five years from now abdul when it comes to i guess the logistics operation if you could break it down for us based off the information that you've had obviously with wilson which we i wish we could get into in more in detail so you could really talk to us about but What does it look like to you, given what's available right now in terms of AI, technology, and much more? I think you'll need very few people, but the few people will be really, really good.

50:13And they will basically just have this intelligence layer in front of them that basically they will watch, they will manage. And then Wilson will basically just flag things that will basically require attention. You should be able to run a$500 million freight operation with one person, two people. if you're really, really good. That's kind of the vision I see. I don't see AI ever being completely like you need zero people. You still need one or two people just to monitor and manage edge cases, but those few people will just have so much intelligence in front of them, and that intelligence is also getting better and better and better every single day.

50:47It's crazy.

50:50Malcolm Harris: What's going to happen to people that? Wait a minute. I just wanted to know what's his hair routine, because you've got the best hair in AI. You got the best hair on the show, too. Well, that's for sure, but I mean, it goes way beyond that, bro. Way beyond that. I got a wife that's told me what to do. There you go. Perfect, dude. How much time we got left, Malcolm? We got time for one more Michael Vincent question. We do. Trust. Trust, dude. How do you convince people to trust the AI to build it into their systems, right? Because AI, if you don't use it enough, you understand that it is built to give you an answer.

51:32It will never say, I don't know, and it will lie, or they call it hallucinate to give you an answer. And people understand that and people don't use it enough. And those who are still resisting it kind of fall on that crutch like, yeah, but it's not always right or there. That's BS, right? How do you build that trust? yeah i think at the end of the day when when we sell it's like don't trust don't trust the ai trust us um we sell ourselves more than anything um there are so many bad ai applications i think but there's also really really good ai applications um if done well um it doesn't really make mistakes it doesn't really hallucinate um as much as you think across all of our runs i think it's like 0.3 % are actually any real mistakes.

52:18And even those are caught, right? Because you don't just have the AI, you have AI layers behind the AI. So like Wilson's doing things and then there's an AI monitoring Wilson, right? And then there's also humans monitoring it. There's like data visibility. It's like you can build a pretty sophisticated system. Like, yeah, if you just go ask ChatGPT to start emailing brokers, like it's not gonna work, right? You actually need some kind of sophisticated implementation to make it work at like a production level. Gotcha. Why isn't Cody running volleyballs across the screen right now with the handprint on it?

52:48That is the inspiration, isn't it, Abdul? Is it from Castaway? Is that Wilson? It's become Castaway now. We actually have a lot of customers who buy the Castaway volleyballs and they put it in their office. And we gave some customers like Wilson TV's and they put it on the volleyball as well. So it's super funny. There you go.

53:05Malcolm Harris: Abdul, again, Basharat, CEO of Cartage. Abdul, thank you for being here, man. This has been fantastic. I feel like, again, we just scratched the surface. I think we need another 30 minutes. It's just only going to make you come on with the truck, hopefully, before the end of the year. Yeah, yeah. I'd love to. I'd love to show you guys the product sometime as well. Yeah. No, this is awesome. Oh, yeah. I'd love to do that. That's awesome. Abdul, thank you. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Look at that. There it is. Cody's right on time. Come on. He is on it, man. Right now, as soon as I said that, he looked around the room and went, dang, I forgot he picked that up.

53:38He just locked in.

53:40Malcolm Harris: He's like, yo, I got to do this. Yeah, he did. What a show, Mike. This has been crazy, man. This has been crazy. Always. We're going to end the week on a high note because we got a live interview in studio. What? In studio. Got a triple threat, but two people from the same company, of course, representing Ashford Advisors is going to be a good friend of mine, Mr. Ryan O 'Leary. And then Ryan Frame, the Ryans are in the house representing Ashford Advisors, talking about logistics, supply chain, and the financial aspect behind it. I'm excited about that. And then Charles Clevenger, principal at UHY, is going to be on the show.

54:15Malcolm Harris: It is going to be a phenomenal one as we head into the weekend. That's it for us today on What the Truck. Make sure you guys like, subscribe, do all the things. Again, I'm Malcolm Harris joined by Michael Vincent. It's always peace. It's always love. We'll see y 'all next time. All right. And on peace and love.

54:54Outro Music