How Fake CDLs Are Passing Gate Inspection

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0:57Malcolm Harris: Welcome to a Monday edition of What the shrug? We are officially in August. They say August is the best month. I tend to agree with them. I'm your host, Malcolm Harris, joined by my partner in crime, the dude Michael Vincent. Mike, what's up, boy? Happy August. Who said it's August is the best month? Who said that? That's what I heard. That's just what I heard. I've never ever I've never heard it you know but so did you watch any baseball last night in particular like come on the Red Sox yeah right Scooble walking around going hey man I'm your new pitcher as they get their ass whooped the Dodgers you know we're not going to have baseball in 2027 you know there's a lockout imminent.

1:51Malcolm Harris: You told me that's coming, man. Are you calling that right now? Is anybody else saying that? I'm calling it right now. There's not maybe 50 games. Deferred payments. The Los Angeles Dodgers have about a billion dollars in deferred cash over the next decade or so to pay out to the current roster. It's never happened in any sports organization ever. A billion dollars. It's crazy. It's a lot of dollars. It's a lot of dollars. We're going to talk about some dollars in our stories today because Phil Brink is the most important man in America. You might as well just say, hey, the Indians are going to go 50-0 in their first 50 games.

2:30100%. Because that's what's going to happen. Cleveland is going to go 50-0 because they're my team, and then we're going to lock out. And I'll be like, yeah, see? Son of a bitch.

2:39Malcolm Harris: Happens every time. Happens every time. Honorary ring. How was your weekend, man? What's happening out there in Texas? Fantastic, dude. It was only 72 degrees this morning, man. I almost put on a jacket. It's like, whoa, what happened? It's beautiful, man. Love it. It was a great weekend, man. Good, dude. Good. Same here. Same here. You didn't miss me. Chilling with the family, bro. Chilling. Real family guy. You're a real family guy. I love that. I am. I am. I am. Yeah. Do not mess with me and my family because that's what's happening. You part of my family now, Malcolm. You know what I'm saying?

3:14Malcolm Harris: Oh, man. You're part of my family too, man. My mom was like, I love that Michael Vincent. Is that how she talks? Yeah, I love that Michael Vincent. Yeah. I love her. We went to a, we'll talk about a little bit later. We went to a flea market, my wife and I. Yes. This lady looks at me, looks at my wife and goes, you shining. I was like, what's she saying? You shining. You shining, baby. I was like, what? She goes, you shining. Lord shines on his servants. You shining. She looks at me and she goes, you shining too. God bless you. And she runs off. I was like, oh, man. Oh, my God. The weekend can't get better than that, bro.

3:56Cannot get better.

3:57Malcolm Harris: It can't. Well, it might because we're going to shine on today here on What the Truck because we got two guests that are absolutely shining. Let's talk about On Deck and who we got coming up here on What the Truck. All right. A formidable duo consisting of Paul Singer, the co-founder and CEO of Fleetworks. All right. He's come out at Uber Freight. saw firsthand how much of the industry still runs on phone calls emails text now he's building ai agents with him and the rest of his team to actually talk about carriers and negotiation covering loads doing all the things so paul very innovative high energy guy i'm excited we got some photos of paul too that i think our uh our crowds are really gonna really really love man yeah he's a he's a fun guy he's a fun guy can we show him at work or should no we they're work they're work appropriate we're good we're good really not it's going to be amir hasa founder and ceo of eagle all right so he's joining us virtually and of course freight yards are still running manual processes and everything else uh is digitizing around them amir is using security camera facilities all ready to automate the gate cut theft and give operators real visibility and what's happening in on their own lots all right so between amir as well as paul is going to be one heck of a show to start out the month of August.

5:10Malcolm Harris: It could not happen without you all. So buckle up and get ready because we're going to rock with you guys for I'd say the next 50 minutes or so, and I'm excited about it. But before we get into that, before, we would not be here. It would not be possible without our new sponsor of the month. I'm kidding. It's the same sponsor from last month. Our sponsor is Gnosis. Hold on. Look at these guys. They're going to double down. They said, you know what? We kind of like the bald guy. We like Michael Vincent, too. We're going to stick around for another month. All right, again, if you're still checking carrier websites, copying container data into spreadsheets, chasing updates through email chains, you got to have Gnosis, all right?

5:50Malcolm Harris: It's an AI operating system for global logistics, one platform to track everything, whether it's a container, automating execution, protecting your margins across the full container lifecycle. They got you. Of course, they have helped companies save millions of dollars when it comes to fees and much more. So go check them out right now at gnosisfreight.com. Book a demo. Make sure you tell them about the guys at What The Truck sent you. All right? Perfect. Gnosis, appreciate you guys for doubling down here in the month of August. Gnosis Gnocchis. I'm telling you, man. Gnosis Gnocchis. Hey, listen.

6:20Malcolm Harris: There's nothing wrong with that. I like that. I like that. I like that. A little vodka sauce on some gnocchis. Ooh, baby. Man, there is a bunch of good pasta shops here in Chattanooga, Mike, that have a really good vodka sauce. I'm a vodka sauce guy. I really do. Oh, me too, man. Me too. Yeah, I really do enjoy it. But, you know. I tell you what, homemade is better because you can really get that taste in there, bro. You can get it in there, man. And Tito's is fantastic for making vodka sauce. It's absolutely awesome. Well, we got Tito's and we got vodka sauce and we got pasta here in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

6:54Malcolm Harris: And for those listening. You know what else you got there? What is that? F3, baby. F3, baby. The 27th and the 28th. I like that segue because the Future of Freight Festival, the biggest event in freight waves for us is going to be happening again, the 27th and the 28th. Guys, this is the main stage when it happens. All right. So when it comes down to it, we're going to have demos. We're going to have conversations. We're going to have networking events. There's going to be conversations again that are going to be happening surrounding what's currently going on, whether it's, you know, surrounding the Montgomery case, whether it's about new tech, whether it's just in general about what we're going to do.

7:31Malcolm Harris: what's to come in our space. For those that want to be there, I highly suggest you take us up on our offer right now. We currently have a coupon special going on. It's just Take 20. All right. So T-A-K-E 2-0. Use that code right now for you to get 20 % off of admission into the future of Freight Festival here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is going to be fantastic. Of course, Craig Fuller is going to be in the building, the new owner of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Shout out to Craig as well as Max. Some good stuff happening with them. Make sure you guys are fully in attendance. Going to be some awesome folks.

8:07Malcolm Harris: Again, Future of Freight Festival going to be here October 27th and the 28th here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All right. So with that, make sure you go register and let's do our thing. Now, let's get down to business because what a weekend for news, y 'all. This is ridiculous. Did you see this rundown of stuff that I gave us, Mike? yeah it's crazy is it phil brink day is that what it is today listen it didn't i didn't want it to be phil brink day like i'm not just sitting here just like hey like i love phil's writing but it's the things that pop up that we have to report on and i know but it is yeah it is it is what were you about to say i'm sorry i cut you off no i was just saying you didn't want it to be but you made it you made it phil break day i did i did i mean we we got about six stories i think all six might be from phil uh i well they are i think they might they might all be fulfilled but they're important so um you know it's a common theme and uh i shout out to my boy chris richards he he commented on linkedin does malcolm think he's el chapo because all he talks about is cocaine i don't i promise i don't i would stray away from it if it was not here and uh on on on top of mind when it comes to our operations uh but we got to do what we got to do so let's look at this first one all right it's a cocaine case for those that don't know all right 20 million dollars worth of cocaine officially all right absolutely wild federal officers at the calexico port of entry in california sees 1002 pounds of cocaine that's 454 kilograms worth more than 20 million and it was hidden underneath the wooden floorboards of a commercial truck's attached flatbed trailer.

9:52Malcolm Harris: All right. The truck entered the U.S. from Mexicali, Mexico. The driver was the only person inside. There are also 269 bundles of rebar on the trailer, which provided the legitimate looking cargo around this operation. What caught my attention is how they found this. They x-rayed the trailer and saw some things that were going kind of left when it came to the wooden floorboards. And then drug sniffing dog alerted officers, investigated, unloaded, of course, and then removed the planks. And then they found the cocaine underneath. All right. This is the second largest cocaine seizure in the Southern District of California this year.

10:29Malcolm Harris: The driver has pleaded not guilty. This is a charge, if convicted, carrying a mandatory minimum of 10 years max of life in prison. All right. So that's that. Mike, thoughts, man? I got a ton of takes on this, bro. I'm all ears. I'm all ears. Let's hear it. Yeah. First of all, the bundles of rebar is fantastic. I'd have actually thrown loose rebar up there. You know what I'm saying? Make them work to find that shit, right? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Just like 40 ,000 pounds of rebar just randomly strewn across the top of the trailer would have been freaking fantastic, right? this is phil going old school saying you know look ai my ass they've been doing this shit since the 1970s and they still doing it you know what i'm saying yeah for sure hiding stuff in floor boards and all that kind of stuff's been going on forever and you know i mean look cheech and chong made a truck out of pot right cheech and chong pool in 2026 is i i like your ball game man i I like what you're doing right now.

11:43Malcolm Harris: Keep going. You know what I'm saying? Remember that wagon up in smoke driving along? Yeah. And, like, there's been 170 tunnels discovered since the 1990s. No. I had no idea. Did you know that? No. 170. So, I mean, this is crazy, but this is, like, here's the big news. And I like to report this because this is what Phil always misses. He misses this all the time. So, look, wholesale. In the 1980s, a wholesale for a kilogram of Coke was about$40 ,000 to$50 ,000. All right? So if you take the mid-range of that, what we found, 454 kilograms, would be worth about$20.4 million. So the wholesale price of cocaine has not changed in 66 years.

12:34Malcolm Harris: So what are you saying in terms of inflation? Are you saying that there's no change? There's no, there's nothing. I mean, according to inflation, cocaine's relatively worthless now since the 1980s, right? In the wholesale side, it's the same, right? And here's what's even worse, okay? On the retail side, once it hits the street, at the most conservative, in the 80s, it was$600 for a gram. and today it's about and today it's about 135 a gram on the street okay that's it i mean you talk about deflation bro in 1980 what they had here street value 272 million bucks so okay we've we've learned quite a bit about the the comparable in terms of the value of cocaine which uh i appreciate you letting me know i guess people are curious like what does this this mean for for freight and just saying this is because like this is doesn't mean anything these guys have been smuggling drugs forever and it doesn't do anything to freight at all it doesn't mean anything well you can check out this story out of california i'm trying to make it semi interesting for people because everybody's like oh they smuggle cocaine duh Like, how does it work?

13:59Really? I'm shocked.

14:01Malcolm Harris: Let's stay in California for a second. Let's go. Let's do it. Actually, in Southern California. All right. So California Highway Patrol has officially recovered more than$500 ,000 worth of stolen merchandise from a discount retail store in Rialto, California, following a July 28th search warrant. All right. So again, with the California Highway Patrol, they determined that the retailer was storing merchandise connected to multiple cargo theft cases across Southern California. They recovered the goods and returned them to the victims. All right. So this is something that is crazy because apparently there was multiple, quote unquote, heist and they were kind of stored in one specific space.

14:43Malcolm Harris: And then there was a bust. I'm assuming that somebody had some inside information as to where this stuff was. No. they must have under but i mean here's the thing dude i mean it's again since the invention of the flea market and the discount store um everybody's known where this stuff goes i mean this was you know what i'm saying i mean holy crap you i walked into like i said a flea market you shining i went to the flea market this weekend right and where do you think there's you get like 12 cases of press stone antifreeze at a flea market yeah gee i wonder where those come from or the seem a little hot to me or the yeah or the pallets of huggies now you know i i get it but guess where they coming from i mean it's not hard to find this stuff and here's the here's the other thing right what's up shipper carrier collusion this is a real thing and freight waves has has reported on this and this is a real thing you get phil on here he'll talk about shipper carrier collusion all day long and throw in 3pl you don't think the shipper when we talk about in inside jobs and stuff like that like a guy making a or gal making a call off the dock saying hey this truck's got this on it or whatever it happens to be right that's also in the shipper in the carrier and in the in the in the broker you know come on man how much you gonna make let's let's get this this truck stolen claim the insurance and then sell it at the flea market downtown fort worth uh how easy is that bro i mean you don't think that's been happening for years come on you're not wrong you're not wrong that is for sure big lots gee i wonder where that's coming from let's talk a little bit more crime i told you guys this is uh an unintentional uh phil brink segment but it is phil brink day august 3rd quite a few articles let's kick it from california let's go to the carolinas real fast all right because law enforcement these guys these boneheads these boneheads for sure south carolina and north carolina uh law enforcement recovered 13 semi trucks, three trailers, and two additional motor vehicles with a combined value of more than$1 million.

17:04Malcolm Harris: All right. So this is out of Florence County, South Carolina. Authorities arrested two North Carolina men last week. They're each facing nine counts of grand larceny, along with allegations involving criminal conspiracy, unlawful entry, and malicious entry to property. According to the investigators, these thefts of the nine commercial vehicles occurred over a period of almost three years. So this is from November 8, 2022 to October 4th of 2025. The nine vehicles alone again were approximately around a million dollars eight hundred and seventy six thousand all right investigators recovered 18 vehicles total again 13 tractors three trailers and two other motor vehicles um so mike did these guys just think like well nobody's nobody's gonna catch me ain't nobody thinking here bro come on there's zero logic zero logic and they sure as hell did not own a calculator yeah i mean it's just like you know what i'm saying i don't like dumb criminals you know it's like if you're gonna do something all criminals you know i'm not saying all are dumb but like if you're making stupid decisions you got to pay stupid prices and i mean yeah you know yeah you talk to my man zach strickland about my thoughts on aggressive versus lazy stupidity aggressive stupidity is is the most dangerous form of stupidity that there is right i can deal with lazy stupidity but aggressive is these guys were just come on malcolm hey i got this scheme in three years we could split a million dollars but we might go to prison for like 10 years yeah yeah a quick quick quick look on your little uh calculator watch that you got there um and you're gonna go nah i'm good i'm good on that we're uh we're gonna keep that one in the chamber i i just i saw it i was like all right you guys couldn't be more idiot it's not listen to this here's two things that are disturbing one is one is this this is how dumb these guys are stolen stuff so maybe this stuff was worth a million bucks maybe right so at best and here's the statistics at best on they sell for about 20 to 40 percent of their actual value so a million dollars in value which you know is pumped up because if you're going to charge somebody you go for maximum value right to throw the book at them so let's say it's worth 20 to 40 percent of the actual so these guys are roughly let's say they netted 30 percent we'll put it in between right so over three years 263 000 bucks it's ridiculous yeah ridiculous and then they're going to split that yeah that's just get a job at this point you know like it's like this is i don't know i get it i get people like in compromising situations but this is just you could go to mcdonald's and make that and and get tuition reimbursement

20:01golly bro where's your where's your high school counselor at where do you know what i'm saying

20:09Malcolm Harris: let's go from the Carolinas and let's go to Pennsylvania. Are you a fan of Bud Light, Mike? No, no, you don't like Bud Light. You mean that beer, if you just, if you just like to urinate a lot and you, and you don't like the taste of beer you drink, like if you don't like beer, but you just like to pee a lot, there is your beer. A cold, refreshing Bud Light or Bud Platinum on a football Saturday at like 12 o 'clock watching Ohio State take on Chuck E. Cheese Tech is pure heaven. Is that what we're calling Michigan now? Chuck E. Cheese Tech? I'm going to go into this next article because you're crazy.

20:48Malcolm Harris: Police in Erie, Pennsylvania say a driver operating a 2022 freightliner crashed into nine vehicles that were stopped at a red light on Myrtle Street. All right. So the driver is identified. And guys, I'm going to butcher this name. Erebucha Ezekiel allegedly fled the truck after a collision and police say he was carrying a case of Bud Light bottles when he ran. All right. So an affidavit says witnesses chased down and subdued him behind a nearby U-Haul. Officers later reported a strong odor of alcohol and bloodshot watery eyes and obtained a warrant for a blood draw. Blood alcohol levels were still pending when the complaint was filed.

21:29Malcolm Harris: Eight of the 10 people identified as crash victims went to the hospital with two suspected of serious injuries and six having minor injuries. All right. The number that jumps off the page, 22. All right. 22 current charges. Listen to this rap sheet. Aggravated assault by a vehicle while driving DUI. All right. Multiple DUI charges, including commercial vehicle alcohol use, reckless endangerment, reckless driving, and property damage counts. All right. Again, allegations, not convictions. his hearing is scheduled for friday august 7th it is not looking good for my man though mike it doesn't look good for my man i mean i read this the first thing i thought was what were nine vehicles doing carrying bud light maybe this guy hated bed light and he was just trying to take out the nine vehicles then i remember punctuation is a thing and the guy was running away carrying bud light as he was running away exactly and then i realized that bud light wasn't an actual weapon and had nothing to do with the case whatsoever other than he must have been on his second case because if he was that drunk to crash into nine vehicles you gotta drink a hell of a lot of Bud Light I mean that's a lot of Bud Light man that's a bit excessive it's like at some point you gotta take ownership like this is crazy yeah really really if you that drunk on Bud Light you drank a lot of Bud Light holy crap and then I went huh why does this matter and then And I went, hmm, it doesn't.

22:56It's just one of 4 ,100 DUI arrests that occur every day.

23:03Malcolm Harris: 4 ,100 DUI arrests. Is that crazy? On average. Ridiculous. On average. I know mistakes happen. I don't want to shame people for that. But it's just like, again, smarter decision making, I think, is the moral compass and the overall story. Are you saying you should have been drinking like a better beer or like you shouldn't drink and drive? We're taking an Uber. We're not just doing your job behind, you know? Like, I'm the first person that want to have a good time. But I just think that's crazy. We're taking you guys all around. It absolutely is, brother. It's nuts. Don't drink and drive, dude.

23:354 ,100 arrests every. And this guy here, I mean, that's just crazy. He ran carrying his beer.

23:42Malcolm Harris: It looks like a Family Guy episode to me. Like, this is crazy. Yeah. I want to continue our trek around the country. We're going to go to two more states, the first being Florida, and then we got a really juicy story out of Louisiana that I cannot wait for Mike's take on. Starting in Florida right now, I've always wanted to win the lottery. That's something that I've always wanted to do. And apparently, Lakeisha Lockhart wanted to do the same thing because investigators eventually traced a winning lottery ticket because, again, Florida lottery player mailed a winning pick-four ticket to its intended destination.

24:20Malcolm Harris: It was$2 ,600 as the winnings. Nice little payday. But the ticket never arrived. All right. Investigators, eventually, they saw Lakeisha Lockhart again, and she redeemed it for herself on June 19th. All right. So she was a USPS letter carrier. That's why I keep saying her name. What happened was Lockhart was arrested July 23rd following a joint investigation involving the Florida Lottery Special Agents in the USPS Office of Inspector General. According to investigators, she admitted to stealing the ticket and redeeming the prize. She's now facing six charges, including grand theft, dealing in stolen property, filing a false claim for payment, two charges involving a two-way communications device, as well as mail theft and fraud.

25:04Malcolm Harris: This one is a real stupid way to go to jail. That, again, has been a common theme of today. Dude, it really has been, right? That's it. That's like$2 ,600. Like, you're like this, like, the Bud Light thing is one thing. But to steal a lottery ticket, go through somebody's mail, try to cash it, and think nobody is going to find out about it, is crazy. That is, that is bizarre. Dude, it was$2 ,600. Like, man, like, like, that's a lot. I get it. Times are weird. Like, I understand. But like, that, that's, you're just asking yourself to go to jail for the stupidest reason. And now she is. Lakeisha's LaGon.

25:49Malcolm Harris: I don't know. Yeah, she's... Dude, I mean, this is... Further evidence why we should shut down the USPS, dude. I mean, rampant ignorance and just lack of critical thinking. I mean, come on, man. How is this person actually reading addresses and delivering mail correctly? when this is the type of critical thinking that is going on here. Come on, man. This is, I don't even know what to say, except it's Broward County. Broward County. Hey, listen, man, there's been some talents that come out of Broward County. Lamar Jackson, Kodak Black, you know. The hanging Chads, if anybody remembers the election.

26:41Anybody? Chad Johnson is also out of Broward County, I believe.

26:44Malcolm Harris: I think he's a Miami boy, too. Cody, correct me if I'm wrong. I used to have a shirt that said Broward County. We put the duh in Florida.

26:55Malcolm Harris: Oh, man. All right, let's go to Louisiana. Let's go to Louisiana. And then Paul Singer has been waiting patiently. Man, we had a lot to cover this weekend, so I appreciate your patience. And then we'll get to Amir as well. All right, so our last story, I think our best story, is going to be coming out of Louisiana. Federal prosecutors say a Louisiana bribery scheme helped at least 124 people fraudulently obtain CDLs they hadn't actually earned. All right. Three defendants have pleaded guilty to the scheme and it operated from August 2020 through February of 2024. How extensive this was, applicants reportedly paid an average of about$5 ,000 for the credential.

27:32Malcolm Harris: All right. So what happened was there's three major pieces of this qualifying process. All right. You got the knowledge testing, the entry level driver training and then the skills test. All right. What's happened is the leader of this, Mahmoud Alatab, admitted to bribing two employees in Donaldsville, Louisiana. All right. So the motor vehicle locations, their information was sent by cell phone and employees allegedly entered correct answers into the knowledge test. fake learner's permits then followed. Then the training records were falsified. One participant admitted to really reporting successful completion of this, even though they never received the instruction at all.

28:11Malcolm Harris: And then also an examiner created fake score sheets. Again, Alex had admitted to causing at least 124 folks to receive these fraudulent CDLs. A defendant admitted involvement with at least 118 out of those 124. Again, this offense carries up to 10 years in prison three years of supervised release and a 250 000 fine whoa whoa do you know how scary this is um it's really scary because this is this is this is one of how many that we could possibly uncover yeah this is like this is something that we just found out like this isn't something that's actually been you know put out there on display like this is something that is just just this is one of many that i'm sure is happening and these people on our roads with yeah exactly so that are getting driver's licenses and permits and my sister that is a new driver who's 17 who just got a driver's license like this is this is wild bro this is wild it dude it's it's it's scary and And it's crazy because, look, here's the thing, right?

29:22You could, I could see the CDL school, right, getting bribed, people getting bribed, right? Not forgiving it. I'd just say it's private enterprise. Shit could happen. And there's zero regulation over them. Very, very little. I mean, just look up or ask Grok or whatever you want to do, what do you need to, what is the coursework required for a CDL? And it's so ambiguous. Literally, if I were a lawyer, and I could argue the thing, like legally could go to court, I can argue that you don't have to go to CDL school. All you got to do is go and sit for your exam. Because, I mean, you don't have to drive for a number of hours.

30:13You just show proficiency, period, the end. Okay? Okay. I get it. People are smart or whatever. These guys bribed government officials because the school doesn't give you a CDL. You don't get a CDL from a school. All you do is get a certificate that says, hey, you can go sit for a CDL. That's it. Okay?

30:34Malcolm Harris: I'm following. So if we're charging CDL school, who the hell did the government was getting paid off? Oh, I knew you were going to take it. it there i knew you're gonna yeah well i mean seriously bro because i mean you you don't get a cdl from a school you just you don't you get a certificate that you can go then to the state and say hey i want to sit for my exam so you're saying that this is deeper than just these individual schools and that we need to look at it well it has to be i mean it has to be or not that there's people on the take but there's there's definitely not the serious attention or concern that needs to be there yeah i don't think that's conspiracy quote-unquote that you're saying i don't think yeah yeah i don't i don't know i'm actually behind that take all right but yes yeah no that my take is like i the whole industry right is there's not this huge well maybe there is in certain cases there are conspiracies obviously people scheme and do things we just read about several that were very stupid but effective um but this is a barrier to entry dude the lack of barrier to entries lets people do get things hey i can make money doing this so let's do it right and then you have issues i'd see your headlines round up from us a long one but a good one for all those articles make sure you visit freightwaves.com and uh check them out we getting to paul we're going to see paul we're going to Paul right now because again for those that don't know uh Paul and his company he's a co-founder and CEO of Fleetworks uh they were named a next billion dollar startup by Forbes a couple of days ago so this is no small fleet all right and then also um they are just doing so much good uh right now their team I can't say enough about them the energy that we had on our pre-show call uh was fantastic so with that being said as we get him in I want to welcome officially the co-founder and CEO of Fleetworks, Mr.

32:30Malcolm Harris: Paul Singer. Paul, good morning. Welcome to What the Truck, man. Happy to have you. Hey, guys. Good morning. Tough follow. We're talking about cocaine, beer, and now AI. Yeah, yeah. It is a tough follow, but I think if anybody can do this, it truly is. Those are the ingredients for a good AI party, aren't they? That's what I would say. I don't know. not at fleet works but certainly maybe you guys don't have cocaine fridays at fleet works good we have fleety fridays actually so we vote on uh what we're calling our next product that's usually what we do on friday no no illicit substances involved oh yeah yeah yeah i think we're we're good on that um so i think we are let's let's steer away from that before we get in trouble please please please but uh there's somebody that steers something right mike somebody that's well yeah yeah yeah paul so paul went to greenwich greenwich high school is that right yeah went to greenwich high school he was a crew he was crew at greenwich high school and then he went to yale and he was like in a yale concert band and i think he he he actually was a coxswain you know the coxswain and crew but he i think he actually like played a banjo or something in a boat to like do the actual cadence or something there it is there he is i knew we had a picture world's largest coxswain ever yeah i would i would slow down the boat a lot yeah i don't there he is crew in the boat there uh stroke stroke hey i ran it to my good friend kyle taylor at the TIA regional last week, Fleetworks, and talked to them about what you guys do there.

34:23Fantastic stuff. I love it, dude. I love it. Is it true that you've traveled the country actually interviewing people? Is it true you traveled the country interviewing people before you started the company to figure out what their actual issues were so you could actually build a product that mattered instead of just going, hey, AI, I'll just solve this that may or may not be a problem? That is 100 % true. I so when we got our seed funding, first thing I did was we were paying ourselves like basically minimum wage. So we had enough money to last for a while. I was like, well, if we're going to work on this problem.

34:57So after leaving Uber, after getting our seed funding, I basically put everything that I owned into either storage or two suitcases. And I just traveled like Dallas, Chattanooga, Chicago, Phoenix, mostly talking to other brokers. because the way that we brokered freight at uber was i learned like obviously super different from how the rest of the industry is running um and so that was honestly like money really really well spent you know staying in like holiday inns flying like uh basic economy um and just lugging around like gigantic bags but yeah that was the that was the genesis of fleetworks well i want to ask you

35:38Malcolm Harris: I mean, we had this, first off, the Series A announcement, which, again, congratulations to you and your entire team. I know it's a lot that goes into that that people really aren't understanding of. But just at a 50-foot glance, I mean, you've come out of Uber Freight. We've talked about it, right? There's been a lot of evolution to happen in your career, and now you're here at Fleetworks. What got you to this point? And tell us, what is the problem that you're trying to solve right now? What does that just like tunnel vision look like? For sure. Yeah, I'll start with like what problem we're solving.

36:12I'll kind of back up into like how we even got here from Uber, from Yale, from slowing down the boat playing a banjo. So, you know, really we're – Fleetworks is a lot of things to a lot of our customers. But our core product and what makes customers choose us is that we are an agentic marketplace for freight. So if you're a broker who has an available load, or you're a carrier who has an available truck, you can come to a Fleetworks agent. You can use phone, email, or text, or any of our platforms. And you can make matches without going to a load board and without searching. Because we've actually already searched all the available options for you.

36:52And based on an AI memory, we've fit you with the best truck or the best load, depending on who you are. That's really what we do at that high level. you know kind of how we got here so i feel like i was probably one of the least likely people to get into freight like growing up in suburban connecticut going to yale um joined uber freight in 2018 and i thought this was going to be you know a two-year stint in tech and kind of move on to the next thing and super quickly i was just like this industry is insane like there are just basically problems everywhere you look. And the thing that really kept me in the space for so long was building products in particular for carriers.

37:35So my parents are immigrants to this country. So I'm a first generation American. So like the immigrant story of many drivers, of many carriers, really resonated with me when I joined. And then recognizing that, hey, if you, I love building for carriers in particular, because they're going to be the first people to tell you that your product is terrible, but they're also gonna be the first people to tell you that your product is awesome and it's like changing their life. So they're super vocal about their opinion and their take, regardless of whether it's good or bad. And as someone who's like a very product-oriented person who loves building new technology, that is like what gets me up in the morning is building things that like get other, get my customers, get people really excited.

38:21so at Uber you know I built the industry's first automated carrier scorecard so we put performance management on autopilot for hundreds of thousands of carriers we then use that to evolve how we matched our freight to carriers and I'm just immensely grateful to Uber Freight for number one getting me into the industry I think number two introducing me to just hundreds of amazing people like behind the scenes at Uber Freight are just so many like smart talented ambitious, and empathetic people. And so the company and the people behind it are awesome. But I think what I saw there was, you know, we built all this amazing technology, right?

38:59And we had some of the best engineers in freight. And still, when I kind of looked around at our Chicago offices, you know, we had big offices in Colombia and in Mexico. And we had so many people handling sort of routine, rote operational tasks. And a lot of those tasks were happening on phone and email. And when the first version of ChatGPT came out, I don't know if you guys remember it, but it was super bad. It basically could rewrite your emails and tell you a really bad joke. But you would be like, hey, what's 5 plus 7? And it would be like, oh, it's 57. And that was ChatGPT 1. But it was kind of obvious when you saw where the tech was going, that this was going to have a huge impact in freight because there's so much unstructured data and so much unstructured communication.

39:48And so we were some of the first people to build in voice AI. This was back in late 2023. The tech was like nowhere near where it is today. And we launched a really, really bad MVP to the market in late 2023. We tested ourselves. And what was crazy was, I think as a founder, what you look for is you launch something that you feel like is barely good enough. and the thing works. And the thing was an AI that was talking to carriers. And we found that carriers would actually talk to it even though the tech wasn't really that good. Like we didn't feel amazing about it. And so we took it offline. We spent like a couple months actually improving it.

40:26And then once we like relaunched it, you know, basically the conversations went parabolic. So today, you know, we handle about 100 ,000 plus conversations every single day across our broker customers, across our carrier customers. And it's all in service of really matching freight better, faster, easier than the industry has ever had before.

40:48Malcolm Harris: I want to double down on, I'm sorry, Mike, just two seconds. I want to double down on, I guess, this follow-up one. Because where my head was going is, there's kind of two questions and two pillars of this. It's the broker aspect and perspective versus the carrier aspect and perspective. And I know being in a broker seat, what was important to me. But then for a carrier, it's like, all right, like I'm trying to fight and jockey for position. Can you tell me how Fleetworks is planning to be advocates for both sides of the pendulum? Yep. Totally. Yeah. You know, we've what we've seen actually is like there was a huge rush to help the broker, right?

41:27Because brokers are asset light. They're basically it's people and technology. And so there's a huge rush to help the broker. And what we saw was, and as someone who's been now in freight and freight brokerage for eight years, what we saw was people were forgetting about the folks who are actually picking up the freight and actually moving the stuff. As powerful as brokers are and as important as brokers are, it's really important that we remember that the stuff doesn't work if a carrier doesn't actually go and pick up the load and deliver it on time. um and so we we we kept hearing from carriers who are talking to our broker ai hey where where is where's my ai like how can i get in on this how can i use this how can i take advantage of it and you know we realized ai is really good it's really good at like we talked about unstructured data unstructured communication but it's really good at then structuring that and then remembering that data forever and so what what we do is we give an ai agent to carriers they can talk to it on phone, email, or text.

42:29And they can access most of the freight that our brokers are actually running. And we're able to help our carriers move freight faster because we remember exactly what they're looking for and what their pricing parameters are. And so when a carrier calls a new broker and they have to reintroduce what they're looking for and try to maybe build a relationship if things work out, but they have to do that dozens of times a day trying to fill maybe one or two trucks. And obviously that problem really scales. Like if you're running like 40, 50, 60 trucks, that problem just goes linearly up. And so we connect to either their TMS, if they have a TMS, or they just talk to our AI agents, Chet and Sophia.

43:13And by remembering their preferences and putting their bid directly in front of the broker or even booking it outright, we actually help our carriers get in front of carriers who might not be using Fleetworks. And it's great for brokers too, because suddenly you're able to cover loads without waiting for a carrier to call you or sending an email blast to 100 carriers and hoping like two of them get back to you, right? So we can be like much more targeted. And so in a world where like AI, I think can create a lot of spam, we want to be the anti-spam. We want to use AI to actually capture data and help our customers almost use our product less, but use it less, but also use it really successfully.

43:58And so far, that's been working out. Since we launched our Marketplace product, our customers cover anywhere from 10 % to 20 % of their daily load volume through the Fleetworks Marketplace, so through carriers that are using Fleetworks AI agents. And then brokers in general are covering, we've seen brokers cover anywhere from 75 to 80 % of their freight through Fleetworks with our outbounding agents, with our inbounding agents. And so Fleetworks is really helping both sides move freight faster, more effectively, at more accurate prices. Also, we can talk about our integration with Sonar and what we do there, but that's kind of how we help both sides.

44:37We really index on speed. Fantastic. So this is really interesting stuff. And I love the fact that you're utilizing and giving people the tools of AI and how it's supposed to be used. I love the application, but I love the focus on let's make it smarter and more targeted to have a greater percentage of win and efficiency and effectively and not just give us more numbers to try and win more often or more, you know, at a lower percentage, but more wins, right? Which is typically what you see in a lot of cases that people are doing. When wondering this, it implies to me that a carrier and or a broker are opening more towards a broader market on either side to either move freight or get freight more effectively because it's what they want.

45:30It's priced right and all that other kind of thing. How does this impact freight fraud? Right? Because it seems like maybe you're working with somebody who may have not worked before and they're really the actual great fit. Right now, that's a kind of a turn as well as a great thing at the same time, right? It's kind of an oxymoron almost. That's true. Totally, yeah. Making sure our marketplace is safe is probably the most important thing. When you look at marketplaces that you trust, like let's say Uber Rides or Airbnb, they have trust-based systems. Uber has their star rating, Airbnb has reviews.

46:09And so building trust in a marketplace, particularly if you're trusting that marketplace to go towards autonomous booking, is really, really important to what we do. So first things first, we have a lot of great partnerships, you know, partner with folks like Highway, partner with folks like Genlogs. So these are folks who are much more specialized in like specific types of fraud prevention. And I think we kind of take the approach that, hey, there's really no silver bullet in preventing freight fraud. If there was, I think it'd probably already be solved. um so so we have we have partnerships on one hand on the other hand through our marketplace we're actually seeing we're able to see which brokers are moving with which carriers and we're also able to scorecard those carriers so like scorecarding is super near and dear to my heart and i think doing it in a way that is like fair and transparent to carriers actually creates better outcomes so what we saw at uber was when we scorecarded carriers uh we ran an ab experiment So we gave some carriers a scorecard, some carriers did not get a scorecard.

47:16What we found with carriers who did get a scorecard was they actually took more freight with Uber Freight. And so giving carriers performance targets, telling them where they are in their journey, I think some people might view that as, oh, scorecards are bad, scorecards are punishment. But scorecards are really just education. And if you're a carrier with good intentions, you're going to want to get your scorecard as high as you can make it. So between our partnerships with our upcoming carrier scorecarding, and then the fact that we're actually connected to a lot of different parts of how the carrier operates their business.

47:54So some of that is a little bit proprietary, but we basically connect to a few data sources that help us understand, is this carrier behaving like a normal carrier? Or are there some indications that this carrier might be fraudulent? and certainly I think we leave that up to the broker to decide that but we give them some more tools so they can make a more informed decision.

48:17Malcolm Harris: Paul Singer, co-founder and CEO of Fleetworks. Paul, this was such an informative interview. I really appreciate you, your team, the things that you guys are doing in this space and just for being here today on What the Truck definitely took away a lot of great stuff and work that you're doing so I appreciate you. Yeah, thank you guys. Appreciate the time. Happy Monday. it's fabulous stuff paul and paul just one quick question what instrument did you actually play in the yale concert band i played clarinet and i quit after the first year because i was i wanted to do other stuff and unfortunately you wanted to play the banjo on the crew team is what you want exactly i needed to free up as much time as i could awesome brother thanks man appreciate it thanks guys.

49:01Malcolm Harris: Bye. Of course. Bye-bye. Now, uh, that was a great segment. Uh, man, that was fantastic. And, uh, we're going to end at the top of the hour. Uh, and this next guest, because I'm excited. Oh, we are going to ask him. Yeah. I'm going to ask him if he played an instrument. It's been a, a wild, wild show. Uh, Amir Haas founder and CEO of Eagle is now officially on with the truck. Amir, you've been patiently waiting in the bullpen and they say the best is for last. So thank you so much for being here. How are you? Absolutely. Thank you very much. Nice meeting you, Malcolm and Michael. Thanks for having me.

49:33Great to be here.

49:34Malcolm Harris: Great to see you, man. You look shining, man. That's the theme of today's show, shining. You look so good, man. He's shining. Paul looked great, too. You're just shining, man. You know, thanks. And also I found that we have a lot in common, including the La For Vodka sauce. I've been watching the show. I love it, man. You know, the other thing is is, is, I, I, I lift every day. I work out every day trying to keep the old man out of me. I was never, I do have a cousin who's a power, a power lifter, or my wife has a cousin that's a, that's a power lifter. And I know you weren't a power lifter at Ontario Tech, but you were heavily involved and i think um with are you kidding me there are you kidding me cody right yeah i mean it's crazy right i mean look check it check it out here this is there's no way now that's uh man i want to say um i forget what the guy's the guy's name i can't even pronounce the guy's name who that is that's that's actually but yeah a silver medal at the at the world uh powerlifting in sweden uh attributed to uh ontario tech but not without the help of amir as a training tool there see that was uh that's key because many people don't know this amir and maybe you can speak to this is like you you lift like a couple hundred kilograms of like weight, but then lift like 100 kilograms of like a person, this dead body weight, right?

51:16That's much more difficult, right? Oh, yes. And I like that analogy. Yes.

51:28Especially if you're talking about all the fraud and theft and all that bad stuff. So I think. Dude, you guys are crazy.

51:35Malcolm Harris: You guys are crazy. We use AI to its fullest. Thank you. 100%. This is what it's meant for. This is what AI is meant for. It's just pure humor. Exactly. Exactly. And I've been enjoying it. Thank you very much. The problem that we want to talk about is the freight yard, right? And the things that are happening because the space, as you know, is, you can feel manual, right? After all this time. And sometimes it feels like we're in 1996, even though we're in 2026. Talk to us about what you and the team are doing at Eagle in order to kind of push us into the future with digitization and much more.

52:13Malcolm Harris: Digitization, that is such a hard one. I went for it, too. You guys saw it. It is. It is. But good try. I think it was good. Thank you. Good try. Goodness, Grace. You shining. You shining, Malcolm. So, yes, gate automation and yard automation and digitization, I think that's a niche problem that we identified as a big gap. Thanks to one of our customers, which is the largest grocery retailers globally, that we got exposed to this operational gap back in 2021. They asked us, hey, can you look into this problem? We have significant manual process that leads to a lot of inefficiencies and inaccuracy in the data, which impacts the operation downstream, which is in the warehousing.

53:11And so we looked at it. We built a solution for that retailer, and they loved it. It was very successful. And after that, we said, wow, what an interesting problem. It's a known problem. every other clients and every other, whether it's a retailer, CPG, manufacturing, whether they are carriers or 3PL, they have a similar problem. And sound like nobody really looked at it because obviously there are certain technical barriers to solve that problem. And so we are happy that we've been the first mover in the inland distribution market that's seriously looking at this problem and trying to solve that.

53:50And it comes down to two things. One is you have manual process at the gate, which is the whole starting journey of the connection between the carrier and the shipper or carrier and the receiver. That start the whole process within four walls or four fences of a warehouse. You have the manual check-in, check-out process. You have the manual data input that goes without validation. It's very important. And then that leads to a lot of theft and a lot of high cost of operation. And all of that translates to a very significant large volume of claims, first between the warehouse operator and the carrier and the receiver and the shipper.

54:38And so what we're solving here is that as a result of automation, you improve the accuracy and then you solve all those claim and inefficiencies problems. So that's in a nutshell what we are focusing on and what we've been delivering over the last four years to our customers. So let me ask you this because yard management and the connection between the carrier and then the inside of four walls is that yard operation there, right? And you've got to get everything across. It extends far past just the efficiency of getting a driver or a load into the yard or out of the yard. And are you solving fraud specifically first and then going after the efficiencies?

55:29Because the efficiency model implies, I mean, you go all the way upstream and all the way downstream and the yard can impact it, right? Based on orders, input, productivity, and all that kind of stuff, it doesn't end how far it reaches. Just like every other thing does, right? Every other part of logistics. Are you going into that level of efficiencies into the ERP system, et cetera? Absolutely. And you touched on a very important point. Yes. We automate because we want to make the yard secure. So it's not that the security is a byproduct of automation. No, security is one of the key outcome of that automation.

56:18I'll give you some examples. We stop a lot of fake driver license. We stop a lot of fake BOL. We stopped a lot of empty trailer or loaded trailer theft. The example that you had in the beginning of the show of the California border and the drugs that they hide underneath of the trailer, we do undercarriage inspection. we flag a lot of damage detection just this this past weekend we stopped some drunk drivers from getting into the facility and causing not just security and safety issue but a lot of non-compliance so the security piece is a big big part of the automation but to your point mike what automation solve is hey number one we had prior to automation you have human in the loop that step out of the guard shack, they go talk to the driver.

57:16You have a 20 minutes dual time, which leads to a lot of delays down the road. And there's a paper that they put information in, but nobody validates those information. You just log those information in, and then you are reactive to any claim that comes down the road. What you solve here by automation is that you remove that source of inaccuracy, which is that human in the loop at the gate, and just you leave them for exceptions, you leave them for edge cases. And so let the automation, which is the AI is part of that, solve for 90 to 95 % of transaction. And you leave that human resource. Now you make it upgraded, like more educated, more trained human resource for edge cases that they can handle.

58:02And so you're solving the inefficiency, high cost of labor, like some facilities we operate, They used to have upward a million dollars on just labor costs at the gate. I'm not talking about a dispatch. I'm not talking about the shunt trucks just at the gate. Our average of cost labor savings is around half a million per year for a normal 200 trucks a day facility. It's significant dollar. And then the more importantly is what you point out. Now that you have digitized the data collection, now you can digitize the data validation against the warehouse management system, transportation management system, telematics, systems like what Paul creates, right?

58:44All of those can be consolidated here for not just validation, but more importantly, orchestration. So now all of those systems are talking together because what's happening at the gate is the source of consolidation of all this data.

58:58Malcolm Harris: Amir Haas, founder and CEO of Eagle. We still have so much more to cover, but we are up on time with our production team. So I'm sorry about this, but we will have to get you back on the show to double down on this. And thank you so much, Amir, for being here. Some great insightful stuff from you for sure. Keep shining, man. Thank you very much. Thank you, boss. I appreciate it. Of course. And who else is going to be shining? Is my man right here joining me on the desk. It is his last day officially, man. This is the guy. This is the guy. Well, tomorrow, but today. All right. This guy is amazing.

59:33Malcolm Harris: And I just want to say thank you, bro. No, thank you, man. Like for real. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the boiler room boys. Couldn't do any of this about them. And hey, Michael Vincent, remember that one time we shared a hotel room in West Virginia? That was fun.

59:52Malcolm Harris: Oh, man. I didn't think you were going to bring that up, bro. What did he say? I can't hear him. He said you didn't think he was going to bring that up. What happens in West Virginia stays in West Virginia, man. Come on. we watched alien remember that yeah yeah we watched daily that it was the inspiration for the weird wild wonderful whites of west virginia that show i think it was um seriously we we really appreciate you like i appreciate you i appreciate you you're my guy yeah yeah i'm gonna go ahead and uh elevator out of here okay let's get up out of here road ahead ladies and gentlemen we got a couple of guests for wednesday it's gonna be excited led off by Patrick Sugar, Executive Vice President of Operations at SIA, going to be talking all about earnings and much more with one of the best LTO providers in the country.

1:00:42Malcolm Harris: And then the VP of Growth with Basic 3PL, Jingjing Chen, and then Brantley Fulton with Lamar Global. That's it for us. I'm Malcolm Harris. That was South Cert. Of course, Michael Vincent. Peace and love. Thanks for one hell of a show. See you on Wednesday. We're out.

1:01:19Outro Music