The $711 Million Legal Trap Threatening Every Freight Broker

0:27This podcast features Hassan Korkmaz. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a Monday edition of What the Chubb... Sorry, it's that cigar smoke from my lungs because my University of Tennessee volunteers beat the Alabama Crimson Tide. I told you so. Listen to me. That's all you got to do. Give me a break. I told you so. You were doubting it. I was like, nah, Vals got him. I'm afraid you were like, I don't know, man. Come on, man. You were hedging your bets. 100%. What is up, Mike? It's good to see you, brother. I love it. You know, as soon as I saw him light up, I got, you know what? I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

1:14Yeah, you can't smoke it or say it. No, you can't do it, right? Yeah, it's a tobacco-free campus. You can't do that. But you can do anything when you beat the University of Alabama in football. I guess so. There's probably some group of morons out there that I'm inspiring to do, take legal action against what was really fun type of thing. There's probably some, you know what I'm saying? There's probably some mothers against college students smoking tobacco and having a good time out there. You know what I'm saying? 100%. Anyway, I wonder how many claim, how many, you know, they have to get like a number of complaints, right?

1:53There's got to be that person, right? Yes. Karen, right? What would your kickback be for inspiring this, for coming about? What would your kickback be? What do you mean my kickback? Like your fee. I mean, if they're going to sue, don't you get something off the top as a thank you for inspiring? Inspiring? Yeah, fighter's fee for suing the volunteer nation for smoking cigars. I want a couple million so I could buy the next round of cigars. All right. We're going home with the food. I'd funnel it right back into the university. Into the ecosystem. I would create a scheme where I would use trucking to import a bunch of really nice Cohibas for the next one, right?

2:39And then I'd give this to Phil Brink. We're going to talk about a scheme from Phil Brink. Well, it's not from Phil Brink. He wrote it, but we're going to talk about it. What? We're going to talk about it. I knew that guy was shady. We knew it. We knew it. We knew he was trouble. We knew it. Yeah, today. I feel like we're like the last ones to figure it out, maybe. I don't know. You're wild. On a Monday at your school. I'm wild. Did you watch college football this weekend? I'm the wild one? Holy crap, dude. I don't think we've ever seen a weekend like that. I mean, I'm sorry to Izzy. Those heathen Catholics lost.

3:17That's what I'm talking about. They lost. Georgia lost. Texas lost. I mean, Indiana lost, but should have won. You got to know where your feet are. Just a lot happened. A lot happened. See, I hate when people say that type of stuff. Should have won. He threw the ball too far out of bounds for the guy. The guy was out of bounds. How did they? It's like saying, well, the guy was tackled behind the line of scrimmage, but he should have ran for 50 yards. You know what I'm saying? They should have won, but the guy overthrew him by 10 yards. Well, they should have won, but he threw the ball perfectly.

3:51I love the announcer. That was a perfectly thrown ball. Really? It took the receiver out of bounds. Yeah, it was perfectly thrown. That was actually what we call, in reality, a shitty throw. Oops. I mean, you're not wrong. That's just me. That's just me. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. They should have won. How is that? I don't know. Notre Dame should have won, but there was those, you know, 50 plays that didn't score touchdowns. what okay so it was a wild weekend and uh we got a wild show today man we got a lot to get to and let's look at the i love it bro let's look at on deck and see who we're talking to all right we got three guests all right steve mcgarry is the first he's the ceo of iron metal but talk to us today about load work all right that's a platform built to serve the underserved carrier All right.

4:49So excuse me, underserved carrier expanding beyond cargo vans, box trucks with an AI assistant that lets brokers actually post the loads conversationally. All right. So we're going to get into that and then much more. Jim Arthurs is going to be joining the show as well. We've had him on previously. We're talking natural gas trucks. All right. So there's big news, of course, with Westport and Volvo, including this HDPI 3.0 system that we're going to talk with and about. Excited to get into that natural gas conversation. And then to end the show, Mr. Mike Branch, the VP of Data and Analytics at Geotab, is going to be breaking down the health of the U.S.

5:24supply chain report. All right, so we're using data from more than 6 million connected vehicles. He's going to explain why regional trucking is the fastest growing segment, what's happening at the ports and rail, and what truck movements tell us before traditional economic reports actually catch up. All right, so between Mike, Jim, and Steve, it is going to be a phenomenal show. Got some headlines to get to as well. So, Mike, are you ready to go, brother? No, you know I'm ready, bro. All right. I am fired up, bro. Lock in. This is going to be a great show. These guys are cool. They are 10 out of 10.

5:54You know what I'm saying? 100%. I know what you're saying. Real quick, before we get to it, though, we're going to do what we like to do here. No, I'm kidding. It's an ad read, guys. It's the month of October. Truckstop.com is the official presenting sponsor of What The Truck. We cannot do it without Truckstop.com. Of course, it has everything that you need for brokers. Of course, they have Truck Stop's broker assistant and risk factors, of course, which help you feel capacity and spot carrier risk before it becomes your problem. And then carriers, you got AVA. All right. So it's Truck Stop's voice assistant inside the Truck Stop Go app.

6:26You can search the live load board, check rates and get patched through to the broker all without taking your eyes off of the road. All right. So with that, again, truckstop.com is the official partner and sponsor of the month of October for What the Truck. And in about a week's time, it's that time. the Future of Freight Festival. Guys, we have been saying it. If you have not, please go ahead and get your tickets right now. Freightwaves.com. It is going to be the best event of the year. Again, the Future of Freight Festival at The Signal, one of the best venues in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We're going to have a lot of conversations.

6:59There's going to be fireside chats. There's going to be a great rundown of speakers. That guy's going to be there, and there's going to be a lot to get into. Again, the future of Freight Festival. Tickets are on sale right now, October 27th and the 28th. Make sure you are there. Again, F3. Looking forward to seeing you guys. We've got a lot planned. Let me give you a weather update. A weather update for the 27th and 28th. High of 76 degrees. Low 44. What you want to do is dress for a really nice warm day. It's going to be one of those days where the air has got a nice little crisp to it a bit.

7:36but the sun's going to make you sweat a little bit if you're standing around in a sweater. You know what I'm saying? It's one of those fall days. Nice one. You know what I mean? It's going to be beautiful. A little cooler in the evening, but just bring yourself a light jacket or a hoodie or that type of thing or a nice sports coat and head on over to Chattanooga Whiskey and buy your favorite podcasting host a whiskey. You know what I'm saying? With that 20 % off. That's all you got to do. That's all you got to do. That's all I'm saying. 20 is that code as well. That's all you're saying. I think that's great advice right there.

8:12So I, speaking of whiskey, was out Friday night. All right. Not going to name any names, but had a great time with a great one. Oh, that's trouble. Because, you know, when Malcolm has a great time in your town, there's usually a lot of cleanup that has to happen. A lot of cleanup that had to happen. And there was. My stomach was in 50 shades of, oh, my God. had the best fish fried fish man it was like a just a great fish plate but buddy it was the catfish place down there by uh utc down on the no no no i know what you're talking about uncle larry's no this was mean gene uncle larry's what was it it was called mean jeans mean gene yeah it was fantastic so i was feeling great right it was i'm saying the story for a reason but then i I get a text from the infamous John Kingston.

9:01All right. He's like, hey, I have breaking news and I need you to post it right now. And I was like, okay. He was like, can you please post it? Like, I am so sorry. I don't want to do this for you on a Friday night. And I was like, it's literally fine. So we're going to talk about that breaking news because the nuclear verdict is officially upheld from the Texas courts. All right. So for those that did not see this on Friday, we officially have been told that again, the nuclear verdict from the Texas courts with C.H. Robinson is officially going to be upheld. Now, I saw this come through and I was like, wow, okay, John, I can post this because this is really, really, really big news.

9:39All right. So again, Judge Diane Jones of the Dallas County Court on Friday affirmed again the July verdict of$604 million handed down again to C.H. Robinson as a result of the fatal accident that killed three people in March of 2021. One of the three persons killed in the wreck was Giorgino Gonzalez. He is an employee driver of the carrier Lupus Superior that was hired by CH to move a load for Arizona beverages. His death made finding the cause of the accident difficult to ascertain. So with that being said, talk to me, Mike, a little bit about this is there going to be an appeals process i mean what does this look like i mean can you appeal if you're ch what do you do next with this and then also with the acquisition of rxo and the the merger rather is there going to be any pause for that with this or how does that look well you know that's an interesting question is the is the the you know the acquisition right for sure yeah yeah yeah yeah um but as far as you know this is huge unbelievable news they're almost 100 upheld i mean it's not odd that that this was upheld yeah right it just it just isn't to say this is huge incredible strange wow i can't believe this happened news is not even close to accurate.

11:09These usually happens, but it's usually cut. The unusual part is that they upheld the full 604 million, right? It's usually cut sometimes significantly. Right. That's the unusual. Yeah, yeah. That's the unusual wow factor, right? But it's usually upheld to allow them to appeal. The part that is crazy to me that nobody is really talking about, and it's early, right? Because Kingston kind of broke the story here, which is usual because he's fantastic, is that do you realize that there's an interest there, right? That C.H. Robinson couldn't do anything about because it took this much time for the original trial and all that kind of stuff and because they weren't even named in the original one because it couldn't be, if you remember, right?

11:59This is the landmark Montgomery case and all that kind of crap, right? There's$107 million of interest that's added on. So now it's$711 million. It's not$604 million anymore. Not only did they not cut it, this is the wow factor. They didn't cut it by 75%, which is somewhere I think that's fairly usual, something like that. There's$107 million of insurance added or interest added on to it. That's the crazy part. And does it affect things? Let me give you some fun with math. and you tell me. That's 3.8 times their entire profit from last quarter. That's insane. It's 4.6 times the cash on hand that it has.

12:53And it's two times its first half 2026 net income. Really? Yeah. Their first half net income was$334 million. dollars. Now, the significance of that is huge for C.H. Robinson. It's not existential. It would be for a smaller. The point is this, if you're not C.H. Robinson with huge, huge, huge$4.9 billion a quarter revenue, you're screwed. You're totally done. That's the scary part. You know what I'm saying that's that's the real scary part in my in my in my book the fact that it was upheld means now they can't appeal they can't even start appealing till after it's upheld which is interest accruing time right it's like hello it's like when we were talking about the demurrage right for no not my fault you couldn't get my container but you're going to charge me 121 000 demurrage what are you talking about wait a minute you know what i mean in a case that i was i wasn't even legally involved in the first time you're gonna charge me insurance because now you decide i am what there's there's no way and we'll continue to talk about this throughout the week this is not gonna go oh yeah we just wanted to kind of glance over it but there's no way surely that 600 million dollar value is gonna stand there's just no way like that that's that's a lot well i mean that but that's that's the shocker that kingston's putting out there right is that it's Not that it was upheld.

14:23They're usually upheld, but usually almost always cut from the ridiculous$604 million. That's a crazy amount to settle for. I don't know. We'll continue to dive into that one, but check that one out, of course, from John Kingston. You could spend a whole lot of money on lawyers to fight$711 million. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I think you would stop at no option. You could spend somewhere around$710 ,999 ,999 to fight that. I mean, holy crap. I know that's going to be a topic of conversation as well at F3, specifically on October 26th for the Broker Compliance Summit. Excuse me, symposium.

15:07So make sure if you're in Chattanooga a little early and want a day full of conversations specifically surrounding this case and much more, you get some tickets for that as well. All right. So with that, our next one, let's go to California real quick. I saw this over the weekend from Phil. Wanted to bring this to you guys as well. All right. So a California trucking owner has pleaded guilty in a$2.1 million theft scheme. All right. So his name is Hassan Korkmus. All right. He is 45 out of Las Vegas. He operated the San Diego Logistics Group. All right. And stole, again, nearly 100 identities.

15:46This is out of Santee, California. Federal prosecutors detailed how he fraudulently processed credit card transactions through several businesses, including his trucking operation. The individual charges reached$18 ,500, ultimately causing more than$2.1 million in losses across two banks. All right, so Corkmas, he admitted to all 18 counts involving bank fraud, money laundering, and aggravated identity theft on October 15th. The operation ran through 2022 through 2023. What the hell is that? He stole our identity while he was mad? Is that what the hell is that? Aggravated identity theft. What the hell is that?

16:24What is that? That is crazy. The prosecutors, here's the biggest piece. They traced proceeds into financial accounts he controlled in Turkey. He remained overseas for approximately 18 months before returning to the U.S., where authorities arrested him in June 2025. All right. This operation was crazy because he obtained the names, birthdates, socials, and other identifying info. All right. And then he opened up numerous fraudulent credit cards accounts and then basically had a quote-unquote bust-out scheme. The method involved establishing accounts under the stolen identities, exhausting available credit without intending to repay the balances.

17:03He then submitted checks from non-existent accounts of those lacking insufficient funds and then temporarily restoring the credit limits to have additional purchases. So, Mike, this was a wild, calculated, methodical operation. dude this guy smart it wasn't smart to come back to the u.s and there's always a paper trail what are your thoughts about this when you read through it well okay so my first thought was i wonder if they're gonna say that the 18 months in turkey was time served you're not a come on that yeah i loved it i loved it i loved it that that was pretty funny that was pretty funny um The other is this isn't trucking fraud or freight fraud or theft or anything.

17:54This is a guy who owns a trucking company who's an identity theft guy and is fraudulently stealing and using credit cards. I mean, he didn't steal any freight. He didn't use his trucking company to fraudulently get freight and sell it on a black market. His side hustle was illegal. That's what this is. For sure. I completely agree with you. Because, I mean, he could have been the pizza guy. Instead of importing drugs, he could have been just stealing stuff. I think this was a case, and we'll move on after this. This was a case of a criminal that just happened to have ties to trucking. But he was a...

18:33100%. 100%. That's all this was, folks. But that's neither here nor there. You can read more on that from Phil right now. But one quick thing, right? What's up? What's up? Nobody caught the fact that his trucks were running somewhere around 983 ,000 miles a year.

18:55That's, you know what I mean? That's the part where I'm like, I would highlight that part of it and say, what's going on, boys? Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's stick with the state of California. All right. Because we're going to talk about a drug rink. All right. Involving truckers going from California to Florida. Two crazy states and some crazy stuff happening here. All right. So I want to put this in perspective. 40 kilos. All right. That's of cocaine traveled from California to Florida aboard a commercial truck without a carrier's knowledge. All right. So the investigators intercepted the shipment.

19:33Suspects began unpacking a pallet containing the drugs. Florida's Attorney General James Utimer. All right. He announced on October 13th that Operation Icebreaker. I see what you guys did there. Uncovered a trafficking network spanning three South Florida counties. Authorities charged 25 individuals in connection with the operation. All right. So again, 45.5 kilos of cocaine. It was announced again. And the takedown following enforcement operations across Palm Beach, Broward and other counties as well. Officers also recovered fentanyl, meth, prescription pills, as well as firearms. All right. This one was crazy.

20:13I guess my question is for this one, what if you didn't know and you're the truck driver driving the truck, you go to jail too? Yeah. Well, you do on truckload crossing border. Oh, because it's intra. Is it intra or intra? I don't know. I don't. I always mixed the two. I think it's intra. What do you mean? Like, if it goes across state lines, you're technically. No, that's inter. That's inter? Okay. Yeah. Intra is within. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So international going across, they haul their ass into jail. Oh, yeah. Well, then they're going in. You know what I'm saying? I mean, almost everyone.

20:52Because we've had that discussion before. I mean, like, how do you prove this dude actually knew what the hell was going on? I think there's extenuating circumstances that we don't know about where they do actually charge that guy or don't. Right? because uh they don't give us a lot of details and a lot of things that phil reports you don't know who the trucking company is or who's named and stuff like that because it's withheld right it's not because he doesn't know what he's doing phil knows what the hell he's doing he's a sharp guy and he's a great reporter he really is as much as i send him or shade it's just really because it's fun to to do that he and we makes us think but he you know they they usually hide this this type of stuff what i argue is this what's up it's ltl right they were ship you shipping stuff ltl that's what it was this wasn't truckload these were ltl these are single pallets that he was getting supposedly if it's if his braggadocious nature is actually true he was getting one of these pallets like every two weeks right yeah one of these things so that's a lot but i mean here's a thing it's ltl okay so we're you you don't solve that other than crime and you know enforcement stuff like that is ltl now going to have to have dogs sniffing you know every pallet because there's there's stuff going ltl that's illegal all over the place it's happening like a it's happening like a thousand times at least right now sure for sure areas as well they don't don't No, you can't account for all of that.

22:20I mean, you can't. No, no, no. They just figured out how to automate cube and cubic density, stuff like that. What's in it, that comes like next century. I mean, they're not x-raying these things and doing that type of stuff. You don't have, you know, homeland security agents at every terminal going, what's going through this thing? That stuff's happening all the time. This guy just happened to get caught outside that he's got this pallet through nothing having to do with trucking at all. learned that he had this stuff and it was on a pallet. Therefore, trucking is involved. 100%. 100%. Now, I want to talk about one before we get to our first guest because we've got a fully loaded show.

23:00You remember Operation Sideswipe and your Louisiana Slammers? You remember that? Yeah. Aren't they going to win the Banana Baseball League? The Banana Baseball League. You are hilarious, man. You are a funny guy. I don't think they're going to win the Banana Baseball League, but I do think they're going to win some jail time. Well, half their team is going to jail, right? Yeah, buddy. I think they're going to win some jail time because Danny Keating has officially been sentenced. All right, so if you guys don't remember, we actually talked about this one. This was the Louisiana Slammers where these truck drivers would, or trucks, it was a case basically of insurance fraud and hitting, getting into accidents and then taking the money.

23:38There was a murder involved. There was a lot that went into this. But Danny Keating - Yeah, that Mata, that Mata joke. Yeah, she was thrown up in court, all the crazy stuff. So Danny was an attorney, and he was representing one of the masterminds. He was sentenced Thursday to 32 months in federal prison. So that is, what, a little under four years. The interesting part is that's more than the prosecution was asking for. Crazy. Crazy. He's going to be in jail. I was like, what? He's going to be pissed at that dude. Followed by three years of supervised release, he's going to have to pay almost$660 ,000 in restitution.

24:15um this is crazy he pleaded guilty in june of 2021 he is the only attorney involved in the case to cop a plea um man this is this is wild look he he copped a plea he helped with the investigation and and the judge still gave him more than what the plaintiff was asking for no man what what did he do in court to make to make that judge mad you know what i'm saying he had to do something it is wild i'm looking at this right now it's like uh he didn't get that he also got more than two more than the two years prosecutors had sought but his sentence is less than the federal sentence guidelines of yeah in the 60 months this is crazy man that's what i'm saying he's got a report by january 11th 2027 seven yeah yeah yeah see that that's one of those things like if you're on a plane and it's going down you want it to like slam into like the earth at like a million miles an hour so there's no chance you're surviving right yeah absolutely you just slam just take me to hell out right and i you know you go into prison for you know four years but we're gonna let you we're gonna let you go home and think about it for three months what that is just brutal that that's a bad man that's really is that really is brutal uh well again those are your headlines this morning you can reach out right now uh to us of course always on social media to get the latest breakdown i want to be mindful and get to our guests we got a three pack of guests and our first of course is representing load work that's what he is relaunching but he is a ceo and founder of iron meadow joining us is mr steve mcgarry he is on the way shortly he's really awesome and he is officially on what the truck steve welcome to the show brother hey thanks for having me guys hey thanks so much for being here how's uh how's your weekend you're down there in florida man yeah yeah it was good it was good we got a little cold snap this morning so it's in the the 60s ish nice nice nice nice it's in the 60s i remember when i moved to miami we got like a um we got a cold weather warning or something like that because it was going to be like 53 i was like what and then my heater went on and i thought my house was burning right because that when that heater goes on it starts burning that dust that's inside there because it never you know it doesn't turn on, but maybe once every two or three years, your heater, right?

26:52Yeah, it's like that smell. Yeah, it gets that smell. Steve, you're a pirate, aren't you? Yeah. ECU. He's a Carolina pirate. Hopefully, we got our clawed picture of Steve to welcome him on the show here. I think we do. But if not, that's just the way it goes. But he is an ECU pirate nonetheless. He is an ECU pirate, man. And he was, I love it, dude. But, you know, you came out of there, when you came out, there's a lot of NFL players that came out of ECU, right? I mean, there's a host of them that came out of there. Chris Johnson. Right? Right? I mean, it's a legitimate thing. I mean, it's interesting that it was that way that you kind of didn't know about them, but now, like, the Pirates, I watch them, like, regularly.

27:49I do think we got something if you guys want to check this out real quick because this is there it is there we go I mean check this you know what I'm this is Steve obviously we made this whole thing up but Crash is an interesting thing that I looked at because Crash is kind of like a founder's fraternity that existed in like three places that you used to crash at, right? And you like lived with other entrepreneurs and developers, that type of stuff. Is that right? It's kind of an interesting thing. Yeah, that's right. Fraternity house where you were like, you're like the nerd drinking, you know, economics while these guys are like, ah, look at this guy.

28:34You know what I'm saying? But you're actually the one making money. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. And that is accurate. That is a real picture, almost real. very very close it's scary how that happens thank you uh if that was fraser or for man cody is back but that is fantastic guys i love it we got a full house today the boiler room boys are back in full so shout out to them and uh no it's fantastic work speaking of work let's talk load work all right let's start there give me steve the the background of this because this is a relaunch But then also, there's several things that are kind of, I guess, within it that have changed, but also kind of remain the same.

29:20Talk to us a little bit about it. Yeah. Yeah. So the company's been around for almost two years. And I've been doing a lot of research on the space. And once it kind of came across my radar, I reached out to the original owners who were these dispatchers who had built it. And I acquired the business in May and wanted to really just rebuild it to be lightweight, modern, and just have it be just very snappy for owner operators, small fleets, and just try to provide really cutting edge technology to kind of the underserved owner operator fleets out there and smaller brokerages, smaller operators.

30:05and we relaunched within 90 days of doing the acquisition and it's been growing like gangbusters I think the tailwinds of what's going on with fuel as you guys know is kind of a crazy dynamic so we see a lot of people coming to us from you know kind of they park their semi and they're trying to do something that's smaller more fuel efficient and we've seen quite a lot of growth over the first couple of months but we focus on cargo vans box trucks and sprinters and hot shots and we've really started expanding into uh more heavier heavier freight like flatbed step deck gooseneck just because of the requests from all the the carriers but yeah that's like a quick high level as to where it started and where we are now that's awesome so you you're bringing ai and technology into the load boards and stuff like that, right?

31:06I mean, that's kind of what you guys are doing. But the brokers and carriers, do they have to be integrated into this? Do they have to be up to speed and have that bandwidth to be able to utilize this technology in order to take advantage of this? Or what is it helping them do today that they couldn't yesterday? Yeah. So once they have an account, basically what these agents do is you can connect it through something called an MCP connector. And it connects to Claude, ChatGPT, Muse that just came out by Meta. And the idea is that it's conversational. So a carrier can just have a conversation in plain English to ask, hey, what are the loads going from the Tampa Bay area to Chattanooga, Tennessee?

31:57and it'll just basically pull information from our load board into their chat so they can see it right there. And, you know, they can do it in audio just because all those platforms are where they are. Many of them are operating day to day on chat GPT. They're spinning up images like the one that I had right before this on Claude. Everybody's using these AI agents. So going to where they are was something we were really excited about because the vast majority of carriers out there are currently on these platforms using them in one way or another to run their businesses. So making it super easy and conversational was important to us as step one.

32:43And then on the brokerage side, like we have small brokerages of five or six people all the way up to ones that are 50 to 100 people on the platform. And they want it to be easy to like they want to have this assistant that's helping them. And above all, I wanted to kind of mention that this is all stuff that operates in the background, like it should be boring, it shouldn't be something that everybody's focused on. This is like a, you know, super intelligence AI thing up front, that's branded, this is all technology that just operates smoothly in the background. We don't market it very heavily because it should just be technology that operates in the background.

33:25It shouldn't be the headline marketing tactic. And it should just be kind of boring in the background is our belief. So I think that what we're seeing so far is pretty wild in terms of the usage and how people are coming up with creative ideas as to how to use it. Steve, I want to talk about, I guess, brokerage because this is a world, as you know, I mean, it seems like a lot of folks are teaming up. Obviously, we talked about the CH and RxO stuff quite a bit. But when it comes to what's happening, the biggest players are continuing to gain scale. What does the industry risk losing if independent carriers, independent players, and smaller brokerages are squeezed out?

34:10Because it seems like that's kind of happening, no? Yeah, I would agree. I think that when the big players move, the kind of too big to fail players are moving around, kind of buying each other up. I do think that when a new technology comes out like this, it does give these smaller brokerages quite a superpower to almost not necessarily level the playing field. but let's say a five person brokerage now, if each one of them is integrated through, you know, whether it's RMCP connector or, you know, any one of these other platforms out there, I do believe that it's like having, you know, a hundred person team.

34:54Like the productivity is just supercharged to the point where I do believe that it's a, it's an opportunity window for people that already currently have a small brokerage to act as if they're a hundred person brokerage And that's an exciting piece of technology to kind of drop into everybody's lap. But at the same time, these bigger players, I do feel like they're kind of clunking heads at the top while you have these smaller operators and these underserved kind of brokerages that do need access to good tools. And they have the ability to grow extremely fast. Like as a small company, you can grow at a much faster clip than you can when you're a big chip.

35:39You know, you can move in different ways. So we really like to focus on the smaller guys and the smaller gals out there in the space. Of course. Yeah, I mean, you make a great point. When you're a smaller player, you're much more nimble, but you have to have those tools and knowledge of those tools to be able to utilize them to post those games. that are available to you through this type of technology, right? So tapping into this, is it allowing them into a sandbox to be able to build out tools that they can then use? Or is this prepackaged? They don't have to have that intelligence bandwidth to take advantage of these new technologies and these computing powers that can, one, save them a lot of money, but be revenue-producing tools.

36:41Yeah, and we're mainly just focused on building out a platform for these owner-operators, and they don't need any sort of technical, you know, deep, deep knowledge or skill sets to utilize it. It's extremely simple. the user interface is purposely lightweight and very simply designed. The actual AI assistant or super intelligent assistant, however you want to phrase AI nowadays, the actual integration is on the Claude and the ChatGPT. You're interfacing with it there in conversational language. So like I could say, hey, post a load from Tampa to Chattanooga right now. It's 3 ,000 pounds. It's one pallet.

37:33Here's my information. And it can literally just, you know, go ahead and post it on the board and you can get people calling you immediately. So the idea isn't like that you need to have, you know, a bunch of apps built out or anything like that. It's just basically connected to where you currently are on those platforms. And we're trying to make it as easy as humanly possible to the point where you can just click one or two buttons and then it's integrated into what you're already using, whether it's Claude or ChatGPT or Muse, and then you're good to go. So our goal is to make it as simple as humanly possible and just have the sort of crazy technology stuff operating in the background.

38:13Now, if we have this conversation, Steve, in a year, what would you have hope has happened that can change for the independent operators that you're building this platform to serve? And then also, what's next in terms of load work and how can our listeners and viewers stay up to date with everything that's happening from you and your team? yeah so what i'd what i'd really like to see happen over the next year just broadly in the space is that a lot of the owner operators and people even out there that are kind of struggling right now with the cost of fuel and diesel that are thinking about going into more of a like a lightweight equipment more expedited what i'd like to see happen is that a carrier and a broker They both have these assistants and these assistants are basically like their CFO, their CTO, their hiring managers.

39:10They literally have these assistants that are their team and they have the ability to do things that they never thought that they could do, which is exciting to me and my team. because I believe that with these assistants, the assistants are doing all of the credential checking. They're making sure that the best that they can, they're checking patterns for fraud on both sides in the event that they're trying to book loads. There's so much issues as I was just listening to the show before I jumped on about the case in California. There's just so many crazy fraudulent things going on that I do believe that AI isn't the total answer.

39:54It is just one layer of security that I believe will help. If two of your assistants are talking to each other, a broker and a carrier's assistants are doing the negotiating, they know their parameters that they have to operate within. I think that that is exciting to me to see those two assistants helping both parties, make it a better transaction, make it a better experience, and they get the outcome. The broker gets their load covered and the carrier gets the work. And I do believe that there is a world where it's actually more productive for everybody involved with that happening. So that's what I would like to see.

40:33What's next for us is we're gonna keep expanding into this heavier freight. I think the amount of users that are coming on every day from all different types of platforms that are requesting more flatbed loads, they're requesting more of these gooseneck loads. There's just so many requests for different heavier equipment pieces of freight. Even when it comes to the cost of fuel, I was under the assumption that expedited freight was gonna really boom over the next year, and I still have that. But I'm impressed to see the amount of people coming to us with requests for open deck freight. I wasn't really anticipating that, but we're seeing that coming in a pretty remarkable rate.

41:18So this time next year, Loadwork is going to have a whole operation called OpenDeck. We've just released OpenDeck, and that is more focused on that type of rate. So more to come on that, but I am excited to see that taking shape already. And applying this technology to that space is going to be just as exciting as it is with the expedited side. So that's where I hope that we're headed. Well, I know that you are headed there and just thankful to, you know, been able to hear you, of course, on your segment. Again, this is Steve McGarry, the founder and CEO of Iron Meadows. Steve, thank you again for being on What the Truck.

41:56And we look forward to hopefully having you come up. There's a direct flight from Tampa to Chattanooga. So let's do this in person next time. That's right. That sounds great. All right. Thanks for having me. Of course, man. It's great stuff, man. I think he's thinking about it the right way, Mike. That's just how I feel. But thoughts?

42:17Are you frozen? You better not be frozen. Oh, man, we lost my guy. It's all good. We'll keep it going. Because right now, we got a great guy on the way. He is the president, of course, of J.D. Arthur's and Associates. And he does a lot in the space. We've had him here on the show before. He is Mr. Jim Arthur's. Jim, do I have you here on What the Trucks, sir? You sure do. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. It's good to see you. How's everything been since our last show? Oh, it's been good. Been pretty busy. Yeah, it has been busy. Lots going on in the space. Lots going on.

42:50We got some announcements from you, too. Before we get to that in a second, you know how we do it here on What the Truck. We got a special image of you, our Claude image. And let's bring it up right now and see what we got. Oh, we got a glass of wine. Is that a red? What is that, Mike? It is red. That looks like a Pinot Noir. That is what, he knows, I mean, what an eye. And that's why that glass is in his hand, right? Because he knows it. Now, what's up with the Loch Ness monster over there on that lake? Yeah, what is that? What is that? Where did you get that? Well, that is, okay, so I live in a town, a city called Kelowna, which is in British Columbia, sort of right in the middle, halfway between Vancouver and Calgary.

43:33And we're on a lake. So the lake is about 80 miles long and a couple miles wide. and the legend is that there's a monster that lives in a lake called Ogopogo, and that's the monster. So it's just like Loch Ness. There's been sightings. There's been all these stories over the years. And around this lake, there's about 160 wineries, and we make some pretty good wine. So that's what Kelowna's all about, monsters and wine. Which, hence the sightings of monsters in the lake, right? It was enjoying a lot of really good wine. Too much wine? I love it. I love it. I love it. That's awesome. There's probably a moose swimming across the lake that you guys saw.

44:20Wow. We have moose and bears and deer and all that stuff. Like, literally, in my backyard, there's deer just about every morning. Yeah, there you go. It's Canada, man. It's wild up here. Oh, that's great. It's the great white north, eh? Eh, yeah. So, Jim, there's a lot that's happened, and I want to start with this at IAA Transportation. For those that may not be familiar, HPDI 3.0, what is it? Yeah. What separates this from, of course, the previous models, and what should we be expecting out of this? well 3.0 is just it's kind of an evolution of our technology so you know basically what we deliver is a different injector a different fuel injector on the engine that is what allows us to run with natural gas or hydrogen and and then you've got the different pressure control devices on the engine because we need to manage you know we have it's high pressure direct injection so we manage the pressure carefully.

45:24And so HPDI is just an evolution of the pressure control devices, the engine controls, that sort of thing that goes on the new generation Volvo engine, which is more powerful, more efficient. And so just think of it, it's an evolution that gives us higher efficiency and underneath that a bunch of technical stuff, better rail pressure control and that sort of thing. and we think you know better reliability although HBI is already very reliable so it's a it's an evolution and and we think coupled with the new Volvo engine which if you've you know read about that thing you know they've gone to 20 to 1 compression ratio the power is up 540 horsepower you know, it's a beautiful engine.

46:14So the two technologies together make for, you know, a really efficient and powerful truck. Great explanation. So it really is. So let's convert that to dollars and cents, which is incredibly important for most carriers these days, right? There's a lot of pressure on that gap between costs and profits. um so you guys ran a uh a business case reinhardt 500 truck case etc what were the economics what's it tell you about that what's going down well i mean natural gas it depends you know varies by state and by country and so on but i mean generally natural gas is going to be a fraction of the price of diesel so i mean if you look if you look right now it starts really with the commodity i mean if you look right now, you know, oil today is just ticked over$100 for West Texas and natural gas, you know, is$3 a million BTU.

47:16You multiply that by 5.8 to convert it to barrels, it's a little under$18 a barrel. So you're comparing$100 fuel versus an$18 fuel in the US. In Europe, the spread's not quite as big, but it's still pretty significant. And so what we really see with the Reichardt order is, if you think about when you adopt new technology, you know, a fleet's going to buy five trucks to try something. You know, they'll buy five trucks and they'll run them for two or three years to just see how the technology works over that operating cycle. And then the next order might be 50. And then when they really say, hey, this is a big deal, we really like this, you know, then you get the 500 truck orders.

47:57And so this was the first 500 or truck order that we think anybody's had in the natural gas space. And it just means that overall, in terms of fuel, but also operating costs and reliability and all the things that are important to a fleet, they're ticking all the boxes. And so now they've made the bet to say, yeah, this is the technology we're going to bet on to take us forward. And we expect we'll see additional fleets that are at the 50 truck stage now that will We'll go to 500, and our business in Europe is growing really, really well right now. Jim, to piggyback off of that, that was a perfect segue.

48:36What's next for the team, and can you share a little bit of insights? I mean, there's been several announcements, a lot of moving parts. You guys are working fast and furious. I feel like you're the Vin Diesel trucking right now, but can you give us a little insight as to what's coming next for you and the rest of your team? Sure. Well, what's coming next is launching in North America with the HPDI technology. So that's what we're working hard on right now. And that'll be a CNG product versus an LNG product. So LNG is the fuel of choice in Europe, but North America is really a CNG market, compressed gas, not liquefied.

49:14And so we're launching that product over the next couple of years. And starting, you know, we've got our main truck that's been going, doing, you know, lots of testing. And we're really, really pleased with the results. We've now got a name brand fleet that I can't give you the name today. But, you know, watch this space that's going to be, you know, doing the next sort of in-operation test. And it'll just grow from there until we do a full production launch. So that's the exciting step for us is getting the product into North America where we think it'll do very well, primarily because you've got this low-cost energy.

49:56But also we get about 30 % better fuel economy than the spark-ignited natural gas engines. So that's a big jump. It's a huge jump. And we're going to be sure to cover that jump and the progress that you guys are making. And I know we're about short on time, but Jim, thank you so much for being here on What the Truck. And we look forward to welcoming you back. And if not at the tail end of this year in early 2027, I hope. Yeah, happy. You guys have a great show. So happy to come on whenever you'd like or even come to Chattanooga. Let's do it. You're invited too. Come on. It's waiting on you. All right.

50:30All right. Right on. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it, Jim. Appreciate it. Thank you. Man, awesome stuff from him. And then lastly, he's been waiting in the bullpen patiently. but you got to have a great picture to close the game. All right. And we got one. We got one indeed. All right. You see what I did there. The VP of data analytics at Geotab. He is officially on what the truck with us. This is Mr. Mike branch. Mike, I appreciate the patience, man. What's up?

50:54Hassan Korkmaz: No worries. Great to see you guys again. It's great to see you. Check out this guy. Check out this guy. Really quickly. I just let, let's do this. Of course. Get his picture up there. This is, this is the claw. This is the claw picture. And I want to let you guys, I want, I want you to know, that when I put your information in, the feedback was, this guy's got the best substance of most of your guests that you guys have on this show. This guy's like classing up the joint. There's like nothing in his background to really find. And he's just, from a toddler all the way through, this guy's just been, you know what I'm saying?

51:30He is the guy. So I had to go a different way and make a bunch of shit up. I'm looking at this. This is hilarious. Y 'all show this one real quick. Cause this is, this is, that's the guy right there. So I just had to go with the whole McKenzie brothers, great way, nor, you know, take off a, and go, go for it. Cause there was nothing in your background that I could, I could really make fun of other than you are the quintessential Canadian. I love, there you go.

52:03Hassan Korkmaz: Ironically the, the only Canadian that is not such a huge hockey advocate. Which is funny.

52:13Hassan Korkmaz: I have really struggled to help my middle kid figure out how to put on his goalie gear this weekend. See, there it is, though. At least you're struggling with equipment. In Tennessee, they don't even know what that is. I was going to say, it's so crazy how we all live the same life, but just in different things. It's like I would struggle with helping with football pads. It's crazy. That's wild. Well, I want to be mindful of time. We've got a few minutes and I'm sorry that it's just been a jam-packed Monday with everything going on. But Mike, I want to talk about this report because this is really important.

52:45And before we get into individual kind of things that we want to talk about, can you give us a holistic view for our listeners and viewers about this report, the data within it, and just kind of let you take it from there? Yeah.

52:58Hassan Korkmaz: So what we did is we looked at across over six million connected vehicles across the entire U.S. And we were really interested in understanding what the health of the supply chain looked like. And again, keep in mind, this is actual data aggregated. We're not waiting on reports from the government from three months ago. This is real live data. And so what we wanted to understand was based on vehicle movement patterns, what did the health of that supply chain actually look like? And so we baselined it based on the end of last year. So last year is Q4 2025. And we've done a few quarters since then.

53:39Hassan Korkmaz: And the goal is to do this twice a year and we'll keep things up to date. So this is our inaugural report. So excited about that. And what we did in the report is we looked at four key corridors crossing kind of north, south and east, west across the entire United States. And we picked also four different cities. So we picked Los Angeles, we picked New York, we picked Denver, and we picked Atlanta for their kind of strategic location, geographically a bit dispersed. And we want to understand what the health of the supply chain was. Um, now what we do when we're looking at that is we kind of classify the kinds of vehicle movement patterns.

54:21Hassan Korkmaz: You have some that are kind of long haul movement patterns where they're going over usually 400 miles a day. Um, and then you look at, uh, uh, regional travel as well too. So, um, more, um, localized within a specific region hub and spoke is whenever somebody goes back, uh, from like a, um, a warehouse and usually multiple trips a day and then door-to-door delivery. So these are your delivery workers going door-to-door throughout the course of day and coming back to a hub. So it was a really interesting study. Again, inaugural. We're excited to do another one in 2027 as well, too. So it's interesting.

54:59Yeah, fantastic. The information is really interesting, and I'm sure your data geeks are having a great time pulling it apart and looking at it. Seriously, this is the type of data I'd go crazy with for pulling stuff out. So this is the inaugural. So the real thing is predicting and or realizing what the changes are to all of these different data sets that you have over time, right? Do you guys have a, did you, were you able to glean a sense of that going back and going, okay, look, here's at least anecdotally what we know has been changing as far as China to West Coast, China to East Coast, tariff, that type of stuff.

55:46Was there any type of information out of that or what you're looking for in the future as far as next year and what you're pulling from this data?

55:54Hassan Korkmaz: Yeah. So what I can tell you is what happened from 2025 till now and just some general trends and what I think I'm interested in looking at over the next couple of months, the next report. So what we did see was on the long haul side, we didn't see a huge fluctuation in trip volume. It remained pretty steady and stable throughout the entire study period. We did see an almost 4 % increase in the regional travel. So that, for me, indicated potentially, you know, we're looking to get loads closer to where the customer is, close to the warehouse. And that was quite interesting. um on the uh on the drayage side it was kind of interesting in the los angeles area what we noticed was that uh the ports had reported a spike in activity yet we saw a slight dip in the activity of the trucks for me what that potentially indicates is that you're seeing some of that maybe getting offloaded onto rail uh instead yeah so it was interesting to see what was happening i'm really curious to see in the future, the next report, what happens with long, are we going to see that same steady rate?

57:05Hassan Korkmaz: Are we going to see a contraction in regional? Are we going to see expand from a regional perspective? So those are a couple of insights. And then there were some really interesting tidbits city to city as well. Mike, we can't wait to get into, I'm sorry, go ahead. Just super quick comment on that. It's interesting because when you look at IANA's data themselves, they show an uptick in a port-to-rail capacity as well, or demand, during the same time period, right? So it's interesting to push this against other data sets to really get a full picture. It's fantastic. And that's the thing, too. It can only be taken really in isolation, right?

57:45Hassan Korkmaz: It needs to be taken into account with all these other data sets. right so if you're an executive mike and you are looking at this report what's the biggest takeaway that you think that hey like as an executive i need to be honed in on this and be preaching this to my team when you're taking it from geotab i think it's using it as a bit of a benchmark a litmus test a bit of a barometer right we're telling you what's happening across the entire industry if you're not seeing that happen uh within uh your own organization then you may ask some questions why. We're seeing, again, a lot of the movement out to the regional operations.

58:21Hassan Korkmaz: So if you're not seeing that within your own operations, you might ask the questions why. So I think, again, it serves as a bit of a benchmark so you can see what the industry is doing in near real time versus waiting months and quarters. That's fantastic. Mike Branch, again, representing Geotab. Mike, as always, it's good to see you. Cannot wait to have you back on the show. Oh, man. Yeah, let's make it happen. Yeah, good to see you guys again, too. Thanks. Good to see you. Thank you. And something just got in my throat. Thank you, guys. This has been a crazy show, to say the least. But we're going to have an even crazier show, hopefully, on Wednesday.

58:56It's going to be jam-packed with some folks. Let's take a look at the road ahead before we get out of here. We got a four-pack for you on your Wednesday. Holy mackerel. First, it's going to be John Moore. He is the product and marketing manager at Volvo Trucks. Got some big news out of Volvo to get to. Anna Bothwell, founder at Freight411. That conversation is going to be about fraud. Guy Yehoff, all right? He's a president of SmartSense. He's coming back to finish up his interview that we had a few weeks ago. And then talking law and talking trucking with Matthew Allsbrook, all right? He's the founder of Texas Law Dog.

59:25That's it. It's going to be a great one. It's been a good one here. We appreciate you. Love, peace, peace, and love. We'll see you on Wednesday. We're out.

59:43We'll be right back.