How Mexican Cartels Are Using Pizza Shops To Move Meth Across the Border

0:28This podcast is brought to you by The Dude and Carl Rundell and Keith Miao and Malcolm.

0:30Malcolm: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a Wednesday edition of What the Truck. I'm your host, Malcolm Harris, joined by my partner in crime. You know what time it is? It's Mr. Michael Vincent. Mike, what is up, my brother? Ah, man, I am just, I'm ready for this one, man.

0:47The Dude: It's been way too long, my brother.

0:49Malcolm: What's up? It's been way too long. It's so good to see you. I texted you this morning early because I'm officially going to see you in a couple of days in Dallas, man. I'm excited. We're going to have to do something out there, something fun. We're going to do something? Yeah.

1:05The Dude: We're going to do something, aren't we? We're going to do What the Truck from 146 Media Studios here in Fort Worth. That's right. That sounds good. What the Truck West. What the Truck West. What's up, brother? How was Labor Day, man? It was fantastic, dude. It was three days and one second long.

1:29The Dude: We tagged an extra second on that weekend.

1:32Malcolm: Did you watch your Ohio State Buckeyes? Did you watch any good football? I mean, did you smoke a brisket? What did we do?

1:42The Dude: I watched 60 minutes of good football. 60 minutes and one second of good football. Well, 60 minutes of good football and then one second of bad football on Saturday night. That whole... You know what I'm referring to, bro? Oh, I was going to say, that team up north? The clock was at zero, zero. The clock was at zero, zero. You can watch it all day long. There is no secret clock. It's complete bullshit. When Kirk Hurd Street and Reese Davis and everybody else who's been covering football for 30 years goes, what secret clock? We've never heard of any secret clock. Yeah, no. I love it. Well, we have a secret clock here in Michigan that we use in case we're losing.

2:24Malcolm: Well, the AP voters were not nice. David Paschal here in Chattanooga. Nor should they be. Holy crap. And he literally left Michigan off his ballot entirely. Rightfully so. Michigan does not deserve to be. Yeah, yeah. So I knew we were going to talk about it.

2:41The Dude: The investigation has to move on. They have to find out what the hell is going on and make this right. Otherwise, every call that goes any Big Ten team's way the rest of the season is going to be called into question because Michigan cheats. And that's all there is to it. You know what I'm saying? And then how ridiculous they are that the student body storms the field after beating Western Michigan by a point. Yeah, I thought that was excessive. You know what I mean? They should have torn down the goalposts and beat Kyle Winningham's ass until he left Michigan.

3:16Malcolm: They say, you know, what a great victory.

3:20The Dude: Holy crap.

3:21Malcolm: For real. It was crazy. It was crazy. Yeah. For sure. I loved it. Yeah. Likewise. It's been some crazy stuff happening since we've been away. We're going to get all into it. Let's look on deck and see who we're talking to. And then, of course, we got to get to the headlines, pay the bills. You guys know how this thing goes. Pay the bills. We got three total guests today. All right. Leading off for us are going to be two guests together. All right. So the first one is going to be Keith Meow. He is the CEO at Birdstop. All right. So with Keith, he's joining to talk to us about one of the biggest issues.

3:53Malcolm: in the industry, truck parking. All right. So we're going to talk with him. And then also Carl Rundell, he is the president and CEO of Truck Specialized Parking Services. He's going to follow up on that same conversation. So TSPS is deploying Birdstop's tech around freight routes. All right. And this is feeding Detroit and the US-Canada border at Windsor. So he's going to break down what they're learning into putting this into a real operating environment. I'm excited about that conversation. And then he was supposed to be on the show a few weeks ago. He had to go to Europe, but he was like, Malcolm, I'm going to double back.

4:24Malcolm: All right. So Guy Yehoff, he's going to be on the show. He's the president of SmartSense. All right. We're going to talk all about cargo theft. So I'm super excited about this one. Of course, things are grabbing headlines left and right that we're going to talk about today, which we've got some good ones in store. But between Guy, Carl, and Keith, we're going to have three amazing guests as we are back in the saddle here on Wednesday. day but before we get to it we gotta get to it all right and i'm talking about our sponsors our presenting sponsor is going to be of course our title sponsor daycart all right with daycart this segment and the show would not be possible without it all right introducing daycart macro point eld plus a new dual sense source tracking capability that combines eld and mobile app tracking in one session spot discrepancy sooner capture proof of delivery and gain a greater confidence in every single load learn more right now at descartes.com again that is descartes thank you guys so much for all you all do again the show is presented by descartes but the show would not be what it is of course without our friends at kooner fleet management solutions love the team at kooner Thank you guys so much for what you all do.

5:40Malcolm: And again, a truck that isn't moving isn't making any money. Every breakdown means lost revenue, misloads, driver downtime, and added pressure on your business. That's why fleets across North America trust Kooner fleet management solutions for mobile maintenance, preventative service, DOT inspections, and nationwide repair support. Kooner's tailored services help maximize revenue by keeping trucks moving, drivers earning, and freight right on schedule. Visit KoonerFMS.com slash WhatTheTruck for your complimentary fleet maintenance review. Again, this is Kooner Fleet Maintenance Solutions. And last but not least, it's time to still get your tickets, all right?

6:17Malcolm: Because October 27th and the 28th, we got something for you, and we are ready for you here in the scenic city. The only way we can do it, the FreightWaves way, it is the Future of Freight Festival. Ladies and gentlemen, at The Signal, F3 season is officially underway. October 27th and the 28th. There's going to be so much happening. Of course, the Freight Tech 100 is going to be happening. There's going to be just an array of different items that, guys, I cannot wait for. That man right there is going to be there. I saw him yesterday, Zach Strickland, and had a good conversation with him. And then also, that guy's going to be there.

6:53Malcolm: What the Truck is going to be there. I'm excited. You're going to see so many different faces. You're going to see a lot of Sonar merch. We had a great event yesterday. Shout out to the entire team at Sonar as well as Freight Waves. TPC, I'm sure, is going to be in the building. Hopefully, we got some live music and some trucks in the building. The Lizard is going to be there, a.k.a. Craig Fuller. We're going to find out. We're going to have much, much to discuss. Again, October 27th and the 28th. I hope the armchair attorney, Matthew Leffley, is going to be here. Dale Prax better be there as well.

7:22Malcolm: It's going to be a fun time. Make sure you get your tickets. There is a promo code. Charles Gracie I know is going to be in the building too that promo code is going to be take 20 t-a-k-e-2-0 take 20 off right now of admission into the biggest event in freight that is of course the future of freight festival f3 October 27th and 28th and Michael Vincent might be there with some chat whiskey so you never know you never know man I help you spend that 20 you save help the people spend that good 20 again October 27th and 28th tickets are on sale now only at freightwaves.com. All right. So with that, ladies and gentlemen, the bills are paid.

8:04Malcolm: Let's get into what you guys came to see. I know we joke around a lot. This is kind of like our thing. We have very serious shows. We have educational shows. This is a serious topic. So I'm not even going to get into it like in a joking manner. This is crazy. Utter devastation, guys. You guys have seen this. Of course, we broke this news over the weekend. And man, this crash. We're going to talk about this on Freight Waves today, actually, at noon with Eric Kulish. So we're going to go straight to the source so you guys can tune in for that later. But of course, this was just utter devastation at the Miami International Airport.

8:42Malcolm: I mean, man, this is just wild. I mean, it left vehicles, infrastructure, everything just kind of completely in disarray. I mean, a Flight 7598, a Boeing 767-300 converted freighter operated on Amazon's behalf by 21 Air on its third run of the day when it arrived to San Juan, Puerto Rico on Sunday. And yeah, the rest, it was crazy. During the landing, it struck navigational aids and equipment and then slammed into a 2012 Ford van owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp, a contract cleaning company for airlines. And then seven people were on board of the van. So, Mike, when you saw this, I thought about you immediately, man.

9:28Malcolm: I mean, this is this is nuts. This is nuts. It is.

9:32The Dude: I mean, we don't know anything that happened. We know that they've got the black box. Obviously, it's there. The plane wasn't destroyed or anything like that completely. or that type of stuff. So, and the pilots are there, they can help. And investigation, I think, is, there's some things happening today that we should shed some light on it. But what we know right now is it overshot the runway and it appeared to some observers that it floated, I guess, which is a technical thing that can happen. It floated when it was coming down and the pilots failed to do some type of flare move or whatever it is that brings the nose down and it floated and they overshot the runway.

10:09The Dude: to appear i mean from that from what i read i'm not an expert from what i read was that there was there was an apparent possible miss of something that would have corrected the situation there was crosswinds or something that i don't i don't we'll find out from the investigation right now it's conjecture there's people dead there's people hurt that shouldn't be and it's tragedy uh and we'll find out more we just we just don't know other than it missed the runway man it's

10:34Malcolm: overshot for sure no and that's what it seems like and of course i mean this is a tragedy and i mean yes the lives obviously were lost and this is this is crazy uh according to the article teams of experts will analyze every aspect of the incident with the investigation right so this is going to include operations pilot performance flight history flight crew experience training 21 air policies and procedures the contractual relationship with amazon faa oversight of all operators, air traffic control, radar data, pilot transmissions, aircraft systems, engines, and everything else. So this is very, very extensive, bro.

11:09Malcolm: I was in shock, honestly, when I saw it come through from Eric over the weekend. I was like, this can't be possible. This is ridiculous.

11:17The Dude: Well, you know, one of the things I think that is going to come under scrutiny is not only the event itself that it occurred, right? Why did it occur? You got to find out why it occurred. Like the flight pattern that it did is nothing new. It's a regular flight pattern they do all the time. They went up to Detroit, then out to San Juan, and then back. I mean, they do this triangle constantly. It's constantly going on. But from what I understand, reading the article and some others, is that there's a lot of safety catches that aren't in place at Miami International for some reason that are in other places.

11:53The Dude: And I think that'll come into scrutiny as well, right? So there's, you know, like when you have the runaway truck ramps and that type of stuff, there's certain barriers, et cetera, that can be put around airports that are, in many, that aren't in Miami. Yeah. No, 100%. And I was curious about that, too.

12:14Malcolm: I was curious about that, too.

12:16The Dude: Yeah. So that'll come into scrutiny because apparently they do not have. And I don't know that they're required in any way or their grandfather didn't because they didn't have them once they did. I don't know what all those laws are. I just know that there are barriers, et cetera, that aren't there that other places do have. For sure.

12:32Malcolm: You guys, obviously, again, Freight Waves today at noon with myself and Julie Vandekamp. We are going to talk with Eric Kulish about this in detail and get the latest updates on this. But you can read his article right now to prep for that interview only at FreightWaves.com. All right.

12:48The Dude: So I don't want to go to a lighter. He'll get you the good information, bro. Oh, yeah, he will. He's a great writer. He's a great writer.

12:54Malcolm: Eric will get you for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He'll figure it out. On a lighter note, well, it's not a lighter note, but I just want to transition, and I'm very, very awkward about it. So my favorite song by the story of the Ivy was going back to Cali. All right? So with that, let's go to Cali for a second and talk about this one out of Cali.

13:13The Dude: I think the Beastie Boys did a pretty good job with that. I see what you did there. Going back to Brooklyn.

13:23Malcolm: Federal prosecutors have charged a California restaurant operator after agents have seized more than 40 pounds of meth. Investigators found the drugs inside his residence and Hyundai Sonata, according to a federal affidavit. These searches uncovered three firearms at digital scale and$11 ,800 in cash. But the kicker is the operation grew from a wider organized crime investigation involving, of course, truck drivers. All right. So Kowal Preet Singh, he's 50. And this indictment contains five counts, including two meth distro charges from May 12th and July 13th. Two additional counts, accusing of possession with intent to distribute.

14:07Malcolm: And then each drug count involves at least 500 grams of meth. You guys can see the evidence. There were also weapons that were possessed as well. Seeing operated a roundtable pizza restaurant in Dineba, California. All right. With this as well. There's a lot that goes into this because, again, there's the trucking aspect of this. FBI's Fresno Residency Agency actually opened up an organized crime investigation during February of 2025 last year. So intelligence connected the suspected participants with drug trafficking, extortion, human trafficking and cargo theft. And then they received a tip.

14:46Malcolm: Cami was so-called his name as a trafficker. And then eventually his identity was revealed. All right, so where the truck aspect comes with this is that the source claimed that there was basically an operation who transported these narcotics, you know, with intent to distribute. So it was cocaine, meth, and much more to the Mexican cartel as well as repeatedly into Canada as well. So there's a lot of questions and a lot of stuff to be uncovered here.

15:19The Dude: Yeah, there is.

15:23Malcolm: I'm not obsessed with this one, but I thought this was a very fascinating thing.

15:27The Dude: I loved it because it turns out my parents were right. Nothing good happens at a pizza shop after midnight. No way. No way. When I was, yeah, like when I was at junior high and stuff like that, going to Pizza Hut and get my personal pan pizza and playing Galaga until one in the morning, they were right. Of course, we didn't have meth then. We might have smoked a tube or two, but that's about it. You know what I'm saying?

15:48Malcolm: For sure. I thought this one was wild. I mean, how did he think that he would get away with this? When I was reading this, I was like, I mean, 500 grams is a little pencil, bro.

16:01The Dude: That's a lot. Here's what we know. Here are the facts, right? Yeah. Singh exists. He runs a pizza parlor and he had 18.7 kilograms of meth on him in his home and in his car.

16:14Malcolm: Yes.

16:14The Dude: Okay? That's what we know. He had some guns and he had about 18 grand in cash. Supposedly, he was distributing the meth through a pizza restaurant. There's no evidence of that, but they think so. He owned a restaurant and he had some meth on him. That's what we know. and like greg brady he said those aren't my cigarettes they're my friends that's what he's that's what he said he admitted to storing them for a friend yeah he does exist he is a Sikh Indian truck driver the rest of it is complete hearsay Mexican cat the kilograms of cocaine all that kind of stuff there's absolutely zero evidence at all for anything else yeah that there is there's zero a source said the fbi didn't the fbi didn't investigate any of that stuff there are No name, nothing at all.

17:02The Dude: Singh owned a restaurant, a pizza restaurant in California, had meth on him, guns, and some cash.

17:09Malcolm: Yeah.

17:10The Dude: There's your, that's period. That's it. That's all we know.

17:12Malcolm: Point blank.

17:13The Dude: The rest of it is somebody said, hey, I saw the guy drive a truck once. Really? I meant there was cocaine on it. Yep, there are. We're investigating that. That's the rest of it. That's the rest of the story. In reality, it is. Read more. Just breaking it down. Just breaking it down to reality, dude. That's what happened.

17:28Malcolm: That's all you needed. That's all you need. That's what happened. Read more on this from Phil Brink right now, brightwaves.com. Let's sit with Phil for a second, because Labor Day, we've oftentimes talked about this. And again, this is not anything breaking news like we let off with our first story from Eric when it came to the Amazon crash. But it is something to put in perspective, because the time for cargo theft, and we'll talk about this with Guy, I'm sure, on the back half of the show. But cargo theft oftentimes does increase more whenever there is a holiday. This has always been an aspect of the industry.

18:05Malcolm: Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. I say more times than not because there's little overstock, right? Careful. Careful here. Careful. Educate a young buck. I'm all here. Tell him this story. All right, all right, let's get into it. All right, so CargoNet, all right, this is a story from CargoNet, all right? They've tracked 31.8 million in Labor Day thefts as criminals breached trusted freight accounts. All right, so I'm going to take you guys through this real quick. All right, so with this, the annual count increased from 33 incidents in 2021 to 56 during 2025. That change represented a 70 % jump.

18:47Malcolm: Activity reached a five-year high with 70 cases in 2024. Cargo Net found that the risk remained materially above levels recorded early within the period. All right, so Friday led every weekday load with 55 incidents. Tuesday then followed with 49, while Thursday produced 46, and Wednesday recorded 44. Saturday had 24, with Sunday having 28, and then Monday recorded 27. So three states nearly accounted for half the stuff, to put it in perspective. And you guys know the big states. We are always, always talking about them. It's not a surprise. California at the one spot with Texas following and with Illinois shortly after that.

19:28Malcolm: All right. So that's 130.

19:29The Dude: And if you can't figure out why it's those three states, then you just, you need to go back. We haven't done our job. We haven't done our job. You need to go back to What the Truck 101. You need to go back to What the Truck 101 and start learning freight all over again.

19:40Malcolm: Oh, Cali has 70. All right. All right, so Cali had 70 of those 130. Texas with 38, and then Illinois with 22. All right, food and beds. Cali's always number one, man. They're always number one. Food and beverage was the leading commodity, which I would not have guessed. I would have thought the third one was going to be the highest one. Household goods were 27th, which is the second. And then electronics were the third at 25. And then vehicles and accessories accounted for 20 cases, while metals were at 11. All right, so you can kind of see.

20:09The Dude: Is that number of cases or value? That is number of commodity shipments. I'd like to understand the value, too, because, you know, as we've reported before, and it's true, and I'm sure our guests will corroborate, is that they're getting better. They're not just coming out there with bolt cutters and shotguns and hoping to get something good. They know what they're stealing, right? For sure. For sure.

20:33Malcolm: They said that the average commodity value reached$341 ,580. Yeah. I don't know if that. Yeah.

20:39The Dude: Is that true? Is that true? They say it's true. Here's the other part of this. Okay. So listen, cargo theft, it's important that we stop it, right? Yeah. It is still a very small percentage of stuff that gets stolen. I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that. I mean, it's facts. But here's the thing that this actually says. Here's the lesson that you should learn from this, kids. Playing with numbers, okay? Okay, cargo nets own numbers show that the average week, there are$13.8 million worth of freight stolen on the average week. Yeah. Okay, over the last five years, right?

21:25Malcolm: Absolutely.

21:26The Dude: This$31 million is a cumulative of each week for the past five years, Labor Day week. Okay? It's accumulative. It's not each week. They're all added together. So what they really reported, they didn't lie, but they misled. Yes. I'm just going to tell you this. They did. Cargonet basically is pulling the wool over your eyes, trying to make themselves relevant because it's Labor Day and it's current. 6.4 million. So what they basically just said is during Labor Week is the safest time to ship. Okay. Tell me I'm wrong. With that logic. Tell me I'm wrong. With that logic that you just said.

22:12Malcolm: Tell me I'm wrong. I'm trying to have to. It goes against everything I've been taught as a broker in my past life. But you broke me down that way. You're not. You're not. Based off of the information you just provided, you're not wrong. Now, I guess my biggest question, which I know the answer to it, low-key, but like food and beverage, is it just because the amount, it was just easier to assess? I mean, you wouldn't think that the value would be that high. Like you would want to identify something else like Alexa. I would love to have the stats to go through

22:46The Dude: and dig and find out all the different type of what season this gets stolen, what season that gets stolen, and all this other kind of stuff I think would be really, really intriguing. It's really cool. But I mean, this whole report from Cargonet just shows you how you can manipulate numbers to make yourself relevant without actually lying, but you can mislead a little bit. Because when you look at this, you think, wow,$31 million in one week. No, no, no, no, no. That's across five years of Labor Day weeks.

23:15Malcolm: Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree more. I could not agree more. So check this one out. This is a really good article. Also, shout out to the boys in the back for chopping up that graphic. It was really good.

23:26The Dude: Their graphics are fantastic. It outlays it.

23:29Malcolm: Of course, they got it from CargoNet, but just putting it in, thank y 'all so much for bringing it back uh it shows you the estimated total loss value at the bottom of it uh the target location types on the left side with cargo theft incidents of course that 273 number uh and then the target commodities in that right column with the areas of course california texas and illinois that we talked about so look at this in its totality right now on freightwaves.com and now the article that i want michael vincent to speak on oh i know i know that you had some thoughts about it. And I'm excited to hear if you think it's true or not.

24:06Malcolm: Let's talk about our president for a second. Because he's talking a pretty big game. And this is a significant, significant statement that he claimed, all right? So President Donald Trump said, Mexico has little the U.S. needs and suggested Washington could stop trading with countries where it runs trade deficits, escalating rhetoric against one of America's largest trading partners. We've talked about this a lot, of course, with Noy in the Borderlands report that we bring to you guys every single week. President Trump, of course, suggested the U.S. could stop trading with Mexico and other countries where it runs large trade deficits during, of course, an Oval Office news conference last Friday before the holiday that America could prosper by reducing its dependence on a foreign trade.

24:49Malcolm: From President Trump, we could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries. All right. Trump singled out Mexico, one of the United States, of course, the largest trading partners and a critical link in North American automotive manufacturing and agricultural supply chains. So with this posture from President Trump, Mr. Vincent, one question. Is this realistic? Is this just kind of banging on the drum? Is this looking out and keeping America first? Or is this something that objectively love or hate politics? Is it something that we need to kind of put some more stock into?

25:26Malcolm: How do you feel about this? Well, I mean, you know, love him or hate him every time he speaks.

25:35The Dude: You got to put some type of stock into it. Yeah. There's a motive there. For sure. He's motivated by everything, whether it's because he's 85, has billions of dollars, doesn't care and likes to troll people, or because he's actually playing chess and it's really targeted at somebody other than what he's talking about, which is the case here, I believe. Yeah. Because he threatened Canada and Mexico.

25:58Malcolm: For sure.

25:59The Dude: Right. And so the numbers that he said there, first of all, were pretty correct, except for Canada. He like almost doubled the numbers with what we would lose with Canada. So he should have checked the numbers. He was close enough in his in his in his numbers, but he was way off on the Canada deal. He's threatening the Fed, OK, is what he's doing. He's trying to get interest rates to come down instead of going up because of the economics, because of the great unemployment statistics and manufacturing statistics, etc. That's one motivation. The other one is not against Mexico or Canada per se. like if you don't realize that the steel coming from canada into the united states is actually chinese steel and canada is helping china win a trade war then you're not paying attention close enough to understand why there's tariffs on canada okay it's not keep cooking you know it's it's not because we dislike ontario or or that we need a place to put our data centers and Alberta would be fantastic.

27:07The Dude: So we like Canada. It is them playing with China that's the problem. And you know who else China plays through? Who's that? Mexico. Near shoring and everything. This whole thing is through them to China. And so if he can convince China that he's really crazy and would actually cut off our nose to spite our face and end trading with Mexico, then maybe he's got some leverage with China. It's the Fed and it's aimed at China, period, the end. I mean, I'd like to see Noe dig deeper in this because he knows this stuff too. He just doesn't have this, I guess, the space to dig into this further. But it would be great to dig a bit, a couple more layers into that onion because there's a lot more to it in geopolitical and trades.

28:00Malcolm: President Trump, he provided some quite the sound bites in his C-SPAN interview.

28:06The Dude: Well, all we get are tamales and tomatoes, right?

28:08Malcolm: I mean, all we need tamales and tomatoes. A couple of things. We got everything we need. We got oil. We are good.

28:17The Dude: Look, all our friends from Mississippi chime in here. Mississippi, every parish and all the little cities in Mississippi fight over who makes the best tamales. Did you know that? I did not know that. Oh, my gosh. Yes. No, the Mississippi Delta and Mississippi, that whole area. Oh, dude. No, no, no, no. Now I want some Somalis for lunch, man.

28:39Malcolm: I might go to Champions and get some Somalis real quick.

28:42The Dude: Champions are pretty good, bro.

28:43Malcolm: Yeah, they got some good Somalis. Yeah, looking at this statement, though, you guys just saw it on the screen. It's wild. I will say, this was just not an attack on Mexico. I mean, he talked about Canada as well. I actually gave some kudos about the good relationship that he had with, of course, Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum. So definitely, I think it's just looking at it objectively as a business. But yeah, some big bravado from big Donald Trump. So we'll see about the president's next move and how this is going to work out.

29:14The Dude: Still cracks me up that Mexico's president's name is Claudia Sheinbaum. Yeah, very.

29:22Malcolm: That threw me for a loop, too. Not going to lie to you.

29:24The Dude: Sounds like some lady I ran into in Carroll Stream, Illinois. or something you know what I mean oh man well lady we met at uh the freightways event in in Chicago yeah Claudia Scheinbaum you know her well listen let's give you guys what you came to

29:42Malcolm: came to listen to you guys have heard us yap for a minute we're gonna go to the quad box and get it ready here momentarily but we're bringing you guys two guests uh kind of teased them at the beginning of the show we're going to be speaking uh about Chuck Parking all right it's one of the biggest issues right now in supply chain i'm excited to bring both of them to you the ceo at birdstop it's keith meow of course and we're going to speak with keith and i'm pretty sure i'm butchering that name my best friend's name is keith so i'm going to ask him how to say it and then carl rendell is the president ceo of truck specialized parking services tsps carl keith officially welcome to what the truck gentlemen it is good to see you all on this wonderful wednesday how we doing Good.

30:24Good.

30:25Malcolm: Good. Keith, I need you to tell me your last name, man. It's getting on my nerves. You got it. Oh, my God. You got it. It's the best I've heard. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Fellas, thank y 'all so much for being here. You know, before we do anything, I have the best researcher as a wide receiver. I'm a quarterback. But my wide receiver, I'm putting up with Jerry Rice. I'm putting up with Calvin Johnson. and Michael Vincent does a lot of great research and he has something for both of you all. So Mike, go ahead and take it away, brother.

30:59The Dude: There you go. So listen, Keith, this guy is so accomplished. You know what I'm saying? This guy, look, when I looked at your background, Keith, I was like, how did he get into what he's doing now? But then it makes perfect sense. You studied at the, well, you were a researcher at the Earth Institute at Columbia, right? And then you were an analyst at the International Monetary Fund, correct? And now you're doing what you're doing at Birdstop with your autonomous drones and structuring infrastructure. So basically you've, and I don't know if we have the graphic here of everything that, like, kind of the culmination of who is Keith, but here's Keith's personality.

31:37The Dude: This is Keith right here. He has taken everything he's studied and understanding it and applying it to technology and trucking and infrastructure, which is absolutely fantastic. But this is basically Keith right here. If you want to know Keith's personality, that's him. And that's what I did. I dumped everything that you did into Claude Sonnet and said, show me Keith. Who is Keith? That's you. And I looked one up for Carl as well. And I hope this one came out as good because this one to me was a little bit funny. Yeah, there it is. So this is Carl who's actually a, somebody put a comment on his LinkedIn once that said he was a Olympic caliber marathon runner.

32:18The Dude: I don't know if that's true or not, but they said it. He's also a Commodore from Vanderbilt. So you got the Commodores there. There's Lionel Richie handing him some water as he's running his marathon. So that's our man, Carl. There you go.

32:31Malcolm: I'm loving it. Carl, I can't even give you any jokes. I can't even give you any jokes about being from Vanderbilt because you guys kicked our tails in football last year. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Go Commodores. Oh, man. Go doors anchored down, man. All right. So, fellas, truck parking. Let's talk about it because it remains one of the biggest industries, of course, biggest challenges in the industry. What are you seeing on the ground right now? And is the problem getting better? Is it getting worse? I mean, Keith, Carl, either one of you guys, feel free to start and just kind of just piggyback back and forth for us.

33:09Yeah, I'll jump in. I think it's, well, it's always been bad. I think it continues to be bad, but it's just it's sort of morphing. If you think about it now, you're adding in, you know, autonomy, electrification, a whole nother sort of layer of variables that just sort of is compounding, you know, the actual issue.

33:29Malcolm: Makes sense.

33:31The Dude: My question is this is and I love the study of what is going on here, but you just talked about autonomy and et cetera. is so now we're we don't even have the infrastructure for just like regular everyday analog drive trucking and we're trying to and we're already on to the infrastructure for autonomy which isn't even here yet uh and and trying to find that have we are we missing the boat here dude i mean don't we still need to worry about the cassette tapes and we're already on to you know, iPods here, so to speak? You kind of nailed it. Really, you need to set that foundation. And it's all about, you know, they classify it as real-time, you know, truck parking information.

34:15So real-time now for current truckers is defined as like five minutes. But when you start to go into the autonomy world, you know, you need to know a lot sooner than five minutes that if that truck is going in with no human action, if that spot is available or not.

34:32Malcolm: Yeah. It becomes more important. It adds to the data. That makes sense. Keith, I want to ask you to follow up on that. But then also, let's take a look in your brain for a second. All right. Because what was the original idea behind these autonomous drones when it comes to addressing this issue of truck parking? Because I want to really get into the details. I'm kind of a dork about it. Yeah, I think so. So you guys mentioned that, yeah, I started my career at the Columbia University Earth Institute working with satellite imagery and essentially deriving deriving real time intel from a constellation of sensors, flying sensors in this case, in space in the form of satellites.

35:17And we're doing something pretty similar with drones today, essentially deploying out a constellation of autonomous flying sensors in the form of drones to be able to capture real-time intel and provide that to critical infrastructure operators, people who need this information in real time, such as the trucking industry. and being able to close that information gap that's preventing truck drivers from finding parking spots quickly and safely. So I think the analogy, the way I think about it is very similar to my previous work using satellites, except this is using drones. We're much closer to what we're trying to look at instead of being hundreds of miles away in space.

36:06We're hundreds of feet, tens of feet away from what we're trying to look at. getting real-time intel, really high-fidelity real-time intel, and giving it to people who need that information to make decisions.

36:19The Dude: So let me ask you this real quick, Keith, because, I mean, you're on the high-tech end of this. Not to say that Carl isn't, but you're in the high-tech end of this with the sensors, et cetera, right? So I have an electric car, all right? And I just moved to Texas from Chattanooga. Now, all I did was in the electric car say, hey, I'm going from here to here. And it mapped out my route perfectly. Okay. And charging where I could charge, where I could find chargers the whole way. Why can't this just be done for parking? We have electric cars that are just recently starting to proliferate. You see more and more of them out on the street right now.

36:58The Dude: It's becoming more. I remember just a few years ago, it was like, oh, wow, there's a Tesla. Look at that. I haven't seen one of those in Chattanooga before. Not everywhere. I mean, not everywhere, but they're commonplace to see those or Rivian or a Ford F Lightning or whatever happens to be. And it is no issue to drive across country with an electric car. The people say, hey, the charging is a big problem. They're insane because it is not. It is super easy. And it took about a half hour longer than it would by normal car, right? Why can't we just do this for truck parking? What's the disconnect?

37:31The Dude: Why can't a driver just punch in and say, hey, look, I'm going from here to here. Here's my route. Oh, stop here, here, and here, and you're good.

37:40Yeah, I think that's what we're trying to solve for right now. Right, that's what I'm saying.

37:44The Dude: But I mean, why the difficulty in doing this? Explain to us why this is such a huge undertaking.

37:54So I'll explain it from my side first and pass it to Carl. But yeah, exactly as you said, to the average person driving their personal vehicle, this is crazy that based off of the DOT zone statistics, truck drivers spend an hour a day looking for parking. Now, some of us maybe spend a little bit of time looking for parking if we're in major metropolitan areas. But the average truck driver spending an hour a day looking for parking and often ending up without safe parking, that's something that's pretty inconceivable to the vast majority of us driving passenger vehicles. And from what we're doing, we want to close that gap by providing the right information that maybe doesn't really exist in real time right now in the world of where the parking spots are along the route.

38:57We would like to, using drone technology, using these essentially programmable flying sensors that can be manipulated in three-dimensional space to capture data really quickly, to essentially look for these parking spots on an automated basis, be able to supply that information really, really quickly and have that populated to truck drivers through TSPS and the platform that Carl and team have. have built that are in the hands of truck drivers across the nation. Because I think the problem is kind of twofold. One is there is a true lack of parking spots, and that's something the federal government is investing a lot in.

39:42I think in the past year alone,$300 million has been invested in trucking spaces to kind of alleviate some of that strain. but in addition to more spots, there's also the information of how do people know those spots exist and that's the problem that we're solving and that's I think the lower hanging fruit problem because in many cases the spots do exist but that information is not uncovered in a timely manner and supplied to the vast network of truck drivers to be able to make those decisions.

40:25Malcolm: Carl, I want to go back to you for a second, because what made TSPS very interested in deploying this technology and this partnership with Keith's team, for one? And then second off, the area specifically, if I read correctly, it's Detroit into Canada is really like the prime aspect of what you wanted to seek first. Why was that identified as the space? Yeah, so the match comes up within TSPS and Birdstop. Keith kind of highlighted when he was talking about a constellation. So if you think about it, he started up in the sky as satellites. Satellites don't actually ever land again. His drones need a place to land.

41:05So his constellation needs a network of nodes across the country in order to sort of fulfill that vision. And that's really what TSPS is trying to do for the truck parking. We're building a minimum viable network across the major freight corridors. And if you think about it, there's about 6 ,000 private truck stops that are out there and about another 2 ,000 public. So that would give a lot of great nodes or a lot of nesting places for his drones to sort of land. And if you think about it from a fixed sensor versus a mobile sensor, obviously having eyes in the sky, fixed sensors can't see around corners and trucks tend to park in all sort of unique kinds of ways.

41:41I'm sure you guys have seen them if you ever have driven by a truck parking location. You know, there's a lot of corners. There's a lot of, you know, obscurity. So drone can actually check that out. The second facet is really around the multi-business use case. It can be when it's in the sky, it can actually be counting trucks. And Birdstop is unique that when it's in its nesting position, it still has an active PTZ camera on it. So we could be monitoring for security because that's really our main mission is the safety of the truck driver. You know, we believe that if you start with the safety of the truck driver and you know that that truck driver is in a safe parking location and the general public is safe.

42:20And if that truck is also in a safe parking location, just going back to when you're talking about all the theft, then you know that their load is safe, too. So start with the safety of the truck driver. Everything else kind of follows on from there. And the second part of your question about Michigan, if you think about it, it's one of the major, you know, obviously, you know, all the trade going back and forth between Canada. There's a lot of activity there. It's only increasing. They're actually building and opening a new bridge. They're estimating thousands of trucks, you know, coming through there.

42:49So it was a prime, you know, prime location. The second thing, it really is a mobility hub. There's what's called Michigan Central, sort of a conglomerate between Ford and Google. They're trying to really pull together a lot of these high-tech ideas. That's what brought Birdstock into the Detroit sort of fold. I grew up in Detroit. You mentioned I went to Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who founded Vanderbilt. I mean, he actually transformed transportation. We're trying to transform transportation once again. He did it with rail. We're doing it with freight.

43:20Malcolm: Could not end on a better note. Keith, Carl, thank you guys so much for being on the show. This was fantastic. If we had another hour, we would use all 60 minutes of it. Looking forward to having you guys back on the show. This was fantastic, man.

43:34The Dude: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, we're just scratching the surface. We're just scratching the surface of what this is going to do. This is fantastic stuff. Thank you, guys.

43:40Malcolm: You guys are doing great work. Thank you, guys. All right. Thanks for having us. Of course. Of course. Fantastic. And we got a great guy on the way. You got to see what I did there. All right. He is laughing. He knows that I'm a cornball. and he is officially going to be in the triple box with us all right now welcoming of course the president of smart sense guy he is officially on what the truck he's the guy's guy guy what's going on man how are you sir hey thanks for having me on your show fantastic you are i'm excited to have you we got about 10 minutes before we gotta call it so i wanted to get to you Oh, man, we got to get into this, man.

44:21Malcolm: I know. We got a boogie. We got a boogie. We got a lot to talk about, guy. Michael, I want you to take it away first, brother.

44:30The Dude: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, check it out. This guy's in logistics. I put in he as well into Claude said, hey, show me guy's personality. And this is what it spit out. So I don't know if you got that there, Cody Forrest, or what you got. Oh, he's got it. He's got it. Yeah, so he actually is an analog astronaut and spent time in a simulation in Utah. Or maybe he was actually on Mars. I mean, there's he and Matt Damon playing trucks on Mars. I don't know if you remember this scene from The Martian, but there it is right there. So it appears to me that he's planning on being the transportation innovator on the Red Planet eventually.

45:15The Dude: That's how he's kind of lining himself up. Claude is part of the family by now. But yeah, that was actually a LinkedIn ad by my daughter, who is planning to go to Mars for sure. Yes. There you go. I love it, brother.

45:35Malcolm: Guy, I mean, this is what you do. We talk about cargo theft on the show, if not daily. I know for a fact weekly. All right. So I want to ask you a question. And it's probably the most important question. Whenever you're looking at a shipment and its totality, all right, what is the most vulnerable aspect of a shipment? Like, what is that point? Can you identify and share some of that information with our audience? Absolutely. You know, I've been in loss prevention, working with loss prevention executive for the last 20 years. And so if you step back and you look at your transportation systems and everything that goes in, it's all digital.

46:11And I believe cybersecurity is critical to that. But on the physical route, the worst place is a pit stop that is close to the pickup. And so if you're thinking about a valuable load like a Victoria's Secret fashion or anything like that, coming out of the warehouse, the first 150 miles are so critical for a no-stop zone, right? And if you stop at that pit stop, the high risk of being stolen goods from your truck is very high. Now, on top of that, there's different zip zones. And obviously, you have the high risk, low risk. All truck drivers know that you have systems that look at the route and actually compare the risk zone and ask you not to stop at specific areas.

47:00But if you have a cyber security leak and someone can get into your route planning, then they will plan where is the best way to take the goods out. I don't know if you looked in March 2026. There was 12 tons of KitKat track stolen between Italy and Poland. Have you read that? Yeah. We actually, yeah, we reported on that.

47:28The Dude: They were like Formula One Kit Kats or something. Candy bars, yeah, bro. Yeah. So they are after anything. Anything from high-end valuable goods to even a Kit Kat. You know, they also needed a break. Obviously, they're merchants. Spin it out. Spin it out nicely. But those thieves are out of anything that they can grab, right? They can repurpose it. Yeah, so I mean, this is insane because we talk about all the high tech and where freight theft is going through this high tech, right? And here you got high tech utilizing it for like your hammer and chisel type of theft, right? Just let's hack in, see where they're going, and then we can plan where we can break out the bolt cutters and just steal a few boxes off the back.

48:17The Dude: That's really nefarious stuff right there, right? Because you can't, now you've got to track two different types of things instead of just one. Like, let's just go down the digital route or let's just go down the analog. Don't stop at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, when you're coming off the New Jersey Turnpike, duh, type of stuff, right? And now they're combining both. Are you getting into like the GPS spoofing where they come in and they say, okay, we can get into your route and we can actually route that driver a different way, but you think he's going a specific way, a different way? Absolutely.

48:52Absolutely. So, you know, you have a few pillars of theft. You have the redirection, basically asking the truck driver, you know, you split something with them. They go a certain route. They redirect the route. And then they stop on a pit stop. And you have the, you know, the theft going on. You have fraudulent pickup, right? I'm coming, I'm representing the 3PL, I'm coming to pick it up. It's my truck, it's not no one else's truck. I'm actually loading the bill of labor and I'm going out. And this truck will never be found again, right? So you have different pillars. But the prevention is everything from digital prevention, cybersecurity, to directive of your drivers of where to go, where not to stop, etc.

49:48But also making sure that you're actually tracking your pallet. If you track your pallet and the organized retail crime, which is a misconception, they are very organized. It's not an impulse theft. It's not, oh, I see that's tracked. Let's go and try to grab it. It's very organized. And so because it's organized, if you actually put the trackers that are stealth mode, trackers in the pallet, And, you know, I have some here, like it's that small of a credit card size type tracker that doesn't submit any signal. It's random submitting signal. So if you have a reader, you will not see that there's a there's a tracker in it.

50:36And the organized reader crime know about the fact that you have those tracker and there's a way to actually publicize that. then you'll have less of those high-value items being stolen, right? So it's a prevention and recovery come together.

50:54The Dude: You should put those trackers in there and ink bombs. You know what I'm saying? You saw those YouTubers. Yeah, that's fantastic. I also wanted to add one more thing. You mentioned before about your numbers and the average lies, right? We all know average lives. When I prepared for your show, I saw that NRF was saying on one side, hey, there's 677 incident of stolen trucks down. 677 incidents down. That's amazing, right? But then when you look at the dollars, it's more than double. $304 million compared to last year,$136 million. So the average actually went up, but the incidents went down, which means those that are interested in valuable goods staff know where to track them, where to steal them, and how to steal them.

51:55And so the goods are going up, but the number of incidents is going down.

52:00The Dude: Yeah, that's what you're talking about. They're getting more intelligent and more organized. it's less it's less uh it's not a shotgun or they got sniper rifles they know exactly what

52:11Malcolm: they're going for absolutely guy this is our last question i want to ask man first off thank you for being here we cannot wait to have you back on with the truck and uh have a longer segment with you but in the next let's just say one year versus five years where do you see cargo theft going if you could give our listeners and viewers a bit of insight as to where we're headed with this thing I think we're having bigger and bigger issues, and it's because of the cybersecurity that I mentioned. What you will end up with is specifically the high value for organized retail crime people. Like, for example, when you have a new shoe that is coming to market, it needs to be much more secure than the regular shoes that are being shipped because it's valuable.

52:58It has a higher value to get to the market before the regular shoe comes to the market, right? And so when you have a new product coming out, like the new Metaglasses, like the new, anything that is coming new needs to be more secured. There's a lot of great technology out there that can secure it. And so it will continue to be the fight against how to secure it, prevent it, how to recover it better, and how to basically prevent and make organized with a crime personnel to go and search for another job.

53:29Malcolm: Makes sense. Guy, we really appreciate you for being here on the show. We cannot wait to have you back. You absolutely did fantastic. And thanks again for being on What the Truck, brother. Thank you for having me, man. Of course, of course, of course. Thanks, Guy. Thank you guys for, you saw what I did. Man, that's just, I'm getting too good at this thing, Michael Vincent. I'm hot now. I'm just telling you, bro. I'm hot.

53:52The Dude: Just roll with it, bro. Just ride the wave.

53:55Malcolm: I'm going to ride the wave into the road ahead. Let's ride that wave. Let's see who we're eating the week out with. All right, because on Friday, we got a couple of great guests. All right, a triple threat, a three-pack, if you will. Johans Arians, he's the CEO of Range Zero Emissions. I'm excited for that one. And then we're going to get into it with the executive director and director of philanthropy at the St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund, Miss Diane Hutzel. And then the boss lady herself is in the building. The boss lady logistics founder and CEO, Hannah Hurts, is in the building. Hannah, Diane, Johans, we're out.

54:31Malcolm: I'm Malcolm. That's Michael. Let's put another episode of What the Truck? Peace, love, all the good things. Be nice to each other. We'll see you on Friday. Adios.

54:45We'll be right back.