The 72-Hour Supply Chain Hack Driving TikTok's Viral Sales Spikes

0:28This podcast features The Dude and Patrick Sugar and Malcolm and Jing Chen.

0:31Malcolm: Welcome to the Fastest 45 Minutes Afraid. It's another episode of What the Truck. I'm your host, Malcolm Harris, kicking off a fabulous hump day. It's August 5th, 2026. Thank y 'all so much for being here with us wherever you are getting this podcast, whether it's live, what's up, everybody, whether it's on the back end on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, you name it. We got you covered here for the next 45. Really appreciate you guys. Today, we're going to have an awesome show. I know you guys are wondering, where is my co-host, Michael Vincent? I think he's going to be here, but if not, we're just going to keep it moving because we got some great content and some great guests to talk with that I think are going to be fantastic and a lot of insight and a lot of value that we're going to bring to you.

1:14Malcolm: So you guys buckle up because on deck, we got, again, three great guests. Leading off is going to be Patrick Sugar, all right? But nothing sweet about Patrick at all, man. This guy is fantastic. He is the VP of operations at SIA. For those that don't remember, last week at the event for Freight Waves today, we actually interviewed SIA. Obviously, their presence in the LTL space is fantastic, what they've been able to do and accomplish. And Patrick's going to speak to that about the operations behind the LTL giant. And then Jinjing Chen, the VP of growth at Basic 3PL. Back to school shopping, of course, doesn't look like what it used to when I was a kid.

1:51Malcolm: All right, so a single TikTok video can blow up demand overnight. And Jingjing, she's breaking down how warehouses and fulfillment centers are keeping up when trends say move 72 hours instead of 72 days. And then finally, a great story, Brantley Fulton, the CEO and co-founder of Lamar Global, rethinking supply chain tracking when it comes to single-use tech and getting into why this matters for life sciences, cold chain, and total visibility across the global supply chain. So three guests in 45 minutes is going to be crazy. We got Brantley. We got Jing Jing. We got Patrick. And we got the dude.

2:28Malcolm: He's back in the building. Mr. Michael Vincent. Michael, what's up, baby? How you doing? I'm doing great, brother. Is that a statement of what you do every second of every day or what we should be doing? Listen, listen. This is the grind. It means, obviously, to grind, right? But it's an acronym. My really good friend, his name is Malcolm Colvin. I'm going to plug his shot for a second. So he's a Chattanooga fashion designer. And his label is called Grind. All right. So it's greatness realized inside never dies. All right. So one of the hardest working men I know. You can get this tee right now.

3:07Malcolm: This is official from Malcolm. Shout out to you, man. I love it, man. I got to get me a Grind t-shirt. Got to get you a Grind tee, man. Yeah, heck yeah, man. Grind while they parties. Work while they sleep. Live like they dream, right? No doubt. Grant Cardone. That's Grant Cardone, right? That's Grant Cardone. How you doing, brother? I'm doing fantastic, brother. How about yourself? I'm good, man. I'm good. I'm good. Were you panicking because I was a little bit late? I was. I was. I mean, we didn't have headlines, so it's like I was sad, but at the same time, I wasn't. I was sad, though, because I had a question to ask you, all right?

3:46Malcolm: All right, drop it on me. There is a contest happening right now from Akron football. We're going to pull up this graphic so you can see. The zips. The Akron zips. The zips. What is being said is that one lucky fan will be able to script the opening drive for their home opener. All right? You get an extra chance to win. Can't do any worse than their coaches. The drawing is going to be held on August 19th. My question for you is, what's the playbook look like if it's Michael Vincent with the headset on? I'm going to tell you mine, but I want to hear yours first. We're going to run to the left. We're going to run to the right.

4:19We're going to go, go, go, go, go. I'm going to pull out the four horsemen speech, dude. I'm going to pull out win one for the Gipper. Yeah, no, I'm going to run what we used to run in high school. We used to run. Yeah.

4:37Every play. Every play. Yeah. No, see, look, a forward pass. Three things can happen during a forward pass, and two of them are bad. So why would you do that? Right? I mean, that's Woody Hayes right there. We're going to go for two points every play the whole way down. No, I would run off tackle right, off tackle left the whole way down until they stop me. And then I'd do an off tackle dump pass right across the center to the tight end. Probably score. Pretty easy. I got a – this is the play call sheet right here.

5:15Malcolm: All right, so we're going to go Spider 2 wide banana, 42 jet, Debbie, Exxon, Mobile. All right, on to, on to. No, seriously? No, I might do. I might run the, I mean, the first play from scrimmage would definitely be the annexation of Puerto Rico. Okay. If I was the coordinator. Nobody remembers that from Little Giants? I caught what you were putting down. I caught what you were putting down. We're bombing them first play, man. We're going four verts. Stop it. Oh, yeah. Stop it. I'm going to put... We're doing a flea flicker to Malcolm on a jet ride. Come on. Come get the speed. It's either me or David Gabriel George.

5:55Malcolm: Who's faster? I'm going Malcolm Harris. That's just where I'm going. Maybe the fumble ruski. Might do the fumble ruski. Yeah. Never know. Never know. You can know if you sign up for that contest again with Akron Football. It's all over social media. It's one of the hottest stories right now. Shout out to Frazier for bringing that to my... Yeah, I heard Alabama's going to do that, too. Can you imagine like Ohio State comes out and says, look, we're just going to let some random fans script it. Oh, my God. I think. You know you ain't playing for nothing and you know you're not playing for anything when you do something like that, right?

6:25Malcolm: How insulted would you be, though? Last thing on this. How insulted would you be to be Akron's opponent to hear this? Like, they're letting a fan draft their first draft. Actually, if you want to be like, yeah, they suck that bad that they're just going to do, they might as well just give up right now. I mean, if I was a football player on the team, I'd be like, really? we just don't give a rat's ass about this season already terrible already we don't care yeah already we don't care um this show would not be possible without gnosis phrase you guys know it they've been a sponsor uh the gnosis knockies but for those that don't know gnosis are checking carrier websites copying container data into spreadsheets and chasing updates through email chains you're doing it all wrong and you gotta get gnosis it's an ai operating system for global supply chain logistics.

7:10Malcolm: One platform to check every container, automate execution, and protect your margins across the full container lifecycle. Man, they have saved so much money for so many different entities in logistics land, and you can be next. All you got to do right now is check them out, gnosisfreight.com, book a demo with you. And then also, if you happen to do that, feed, tell them that Malcolm and Michael sent you. All right, again, that is Gnosis Freight. We really appreciate all you guys are doing. And of course, we have to plug our biggest event of the year coming up because the Future of Freight Festival is live and coming to you quick and in a hurry.

7:44Malcolm: It's going to be here before you know it. October 27th. It's like tomorrow. It's literally like tomorrow. I feel like we were just in January. It's already August. You are already shopping for Halloween candy and you know it. So just get your tickets, bro, because this is before Halloween. Hello. 100 percent 100 all right so with that being said make sure you guys get tickets we have a promo code right now it is going to be uh my gosh i just lost it uh take 20 it is take 20 i was about to say code 20 it's take 20 uh make sure you guys are taking some time to uh fill out and register for our biggest event of the year it is going to be fantastic again the future of freight festival and uh it is going to be wonderful all right so is it true we're gonna have a gnosis snocky dinner there is that right oh that could be a possibility did i did i just did i just make that up i think you might have made it up but it's okay it might have been just me i'm gonna roll with you regardless though i'm gonna roll with you you know yeah no that frazier actually has been spreading that rumor no no no frazier's a good guy man he would never he would never um no he definitely wouldn't he would never eat licorice he doesn't eat licorice either did you know that uh i did not frazier do you not like licorice no he doesn't like okay oh i mean not like twizzlers but like the sweet and uh anyway um we are not talking headlines because for one we have a bunch of guests and then for two there is just so much to cover that we would be here until 12 o 'clock noon and we can't do that and i want to get to our guest i believe patrick is still in the wings so what i want to do is let's do you transition now to jing jing chen again the vp of growth basic 3pl all right with jing jing she has such a phenomenal track record of success.

9:29Malcolm: Very excited to get to know what she's doing with her team. And I believe we have Jingjing now. Jingjing, welcome to What the Truck. How are you? Hi, guys. I am well. How are you? Thank you for having me here. Thank you so much for being here. Doing well. How's the day and the week been treating you so far? Wonderful. Busy. Busy times. Yeah. No, I could imagine. I could imagine. Back to School is now here and in full effect. But You went to school for a long time, and I think Mike has done some research and has some things on the back end. I have. You know, Jingjing, it's wonderful to meet you, and your background is fantastic.

10:12Confusing, but it is, and I'll get to that in a second, but it's actually fantastic. When I first saw that you went to Fashion Institute of Technology, my immediate thought, as most people who don't know their history, thought talking heads. They came from there. They didn't. They came from the Rhode Island Institute and came to New York. But most people would say talking heads came from FIT, right? But you know who did come from FIT, Malcolm, is Stephen A. Smith. Oh, really? Yeah. And now we know where he got his fashion sense. There's Jing Jing helping him out with his fashion. It's really strange that her face is in black and white, though, on that picture, which is weird.

10:56It was a fashion statement is what that was. I think it was. Timely. Or maybe it was just, it was the camera, but yeah. So is it true that you actually advised Stephen A. Smith on how to dress? I mean, he was like really not a fashion guy until you got involved in his life, right? He's fantastic. He is. He is fantastic. But I can't wait to hear how fashion and all the things that you did in fashion, which is not a small list of accomplishments, became brokerage. It's unbelievable.

11:31Malcolm: It is unbelievable for sure. Jingjing, I want to start with this because, of course, as you know, retail has changed so much over the years. And social media, I mean, if you don't mind to walk us through, I mean, it's rewritten kind of the traditional retail calendar. How has this looked from your seat? oh you know it's changing in front of us right we're all using it we're all we're constantly shopping whether you know it's commerce you know space and the access to it has really evolved over times through technology and this is endless um you know back in the day you know it's traditionally it's um the brick and mortar that's your go-to where the evolution of moving to e-commerce moving into other market platforms.

12:18And now it's really the reaction to who can meet the demand faster. It's all about the experience. And now we look at brick and mortar almost as an experience to get outside and get in tune with the real world where it's more about accessibility, who can get materials faster in front of your doorstep. And I think that evolution, not just in this country, but globally has really changed the view of the shopper and just really how quickly we can meet a demand. So massive change and more to come, I believe. That makes sense. So the challenges in that shift back, and there were those of us who were predicting a shift back when brick and mortar was going away, going, this is basically a fad.

13:10And I believe that we're right because we're social creatures. There's no joy in sitting at home and having a guitar delivered to my house. I mean, the guitar is fantastic, but going to Guitar Center or wherever it happens to be, the boutique stores and playing those guitars and the amps and all that. And it's the same thing with shopping for most anything, right? Except maybe motor oil. That's not all that exciting. But like you said, it's that experience and changing those experience. how has that flip-flop, flip-flop, you know, is for logistics providers is difficult because you don't just change on a dime.

13:49You've got to build infrastructure and then reverse that infrastructure. And how do you play in both arenas? That's the difficult part, right? Absolutely. And I think that's why in this space, you know, supply chain is became explosive in this decade. You know, when the demand, the consumer demand starts moving faster than the supply chain behind it, everyone is spinning their wheels and getting creative on how to react. So how they're building the infrastructure, whether staffing, whether space, you know, the real estate or technology. And I think right now, you know, it's really in the technology playing robotics and how to, you know, elevate, you know, this ability.

14:28And you see different players in the game right now. And I think when it comes to, you know, it's all about speed. So we're doing something very different in our business just to, you know, accommodate. And it's almost really hard to describe. It's more like an intelligent way. Not like it is intelligence, right? It is intelligence. It is automation, implementation that a lot of businesses are instituting, you know, different methodology. But, you know, you have to build, in a sense, a new infrastructure, not to, you know, call what it was yesterday traditional, you know, methods, but you have to build a modern facility, a modern, you know, thought process and, you know, in order to accommodate.

15:14So it's quite a new force in what we're seeing and what we're building.

15:18Malcolm: I want to talk about, I guess, whenever a product goes viral on TikTok. I mean, I live on social media. We see it time and time again. You'll see this concept of a product and everybody's just instantly on it, right? When it comes to, I guess, what does this look like operationally when it comes to, I guess, anticipating that inventory staging process all the way down to, I guess, the last mile of the process. Absolutely. So traditionally, you know, coming from retail, coming from apparel, and, you know, when we start the competition with fashion, the reason why it's so exciting is that, you know, it's all about trend.

15:58Fashion is probably one of the most fast-moving consumer goods, products that we have. So traditionally, you have forecasting, you have your seasons, you have your, you know, the holidays, the peaks, the Black Fridays, right? So you have a lot more predictions in your, you know, biannual events. And now you have the competition across board in terms of these like micro, you know, you know, elaborate events and, you know, discounting holidays, all these, you know, special occasions that you're not following a traditional calendar anymore. So then when it comes to planning, it gets a little bit tricky.

16:37How do you plan in advance? And when it comes to development, I come from 20 years of product development. So you go all the way back to design, development, sourcing on day one, and how do you translate that onto the final delivery, right? The last mile, you say? So I think there's a lot of that focusing back in supply chain. What can we do best to provide that? And bottom line is we're really racing to data. is that visibility to show performance because through technology, the data is our facts, right? And you have to leverage this material to how to build a business so that when you do go viral, you have the infrastructure now go back to that where it all functions in one ecosystem, that end-to-end solution that everyone talks about.

17:27But how can we react to tomorrow selling from 500 to 5 ,000 versus them slowing back down again and having the cost in relation to that. So I think a lot of management and a lot of players, that has to go hand in hand to accommodate. And it's a very fascinating space to be in right now. And that data, what we provide for customers, that is the key. That is going to be the tell how quickly you can elevate your service, your customers and so they can succeed and their customers are happier so i think um yeah it's a lot it's a lot encompassed but it's just really exciting to be in this space right now no it absolutely is it's a it's a bit um it's the the what everything that you're talking about is kind of these new thought processes and these new things and there's new ways to try and not Like you're talking about, you have to expand this valve and then be able to bring it back down to normal size again.

18:36You got to fluctuate in and out based to virility and time of year and all the other kind of stuff. And we saw prime days in July start, right? We saw that a number of years back. And that's because, I mean, if you're in the industry, you realize that that was actually because alleviating some of that surge that happened during Christmas where, you know, you couldn't get everything through to everybody and Christmas packages said were arriving in January and February and so on and trying to. But when there's virility to this, when the viral social media and the people like Malcolm, who only live in the social media world and will buy literally anything certain influencers will tell him to buy.

19:19It's hard. It's it gets it gets difficult to do that because there's no way that Malcolm is buying his back to school stuff. He's not doing back to school in May. That ain't happening. No way. Because he's waiting until August 15th to buy the latest grind t-shirt or something like that to see what is really going to make that splash when he shows up in his threads and all his drip and everything when he walks into that school. You know what I'm saying? So, I guess. So, you get the question. How do you deal with that type of stuff? because your pipeline in retail, your logistics infrastructure is really driven by 16-year-old Malcolm.

20:08Mm-hmm. In many instances, right? Absolutely. How do you predict that unless you take control of the social media as well and tell them when and what to buy, right? Yes. And, you know, in a sense, you still have, you know, the new norm, you know, the new function of the calendar that you're working against, right? It's not that that has gone away. What you're really explaining is, what you're trying to describe is, you know, when this incident, this explosive, you know, surges and happens, it's a real testament in terms of, you know, other checkpoints, you know, it tests all the weak points in the operationals.

20:47Yeah. You know, are you able to, you know, deliver? And, you know, I just think that when you have many, you know, you're just speaking about the demand. But if you're not able to sell or deliver, you know, in the best reaction, someone is right behind you to, you know, make that. You have to also build momentum. If you run out of stock, it's not just losing sales or revenue anymore today. You lose brand status, right? When you're talking about social media, TikTok sellers, there's a status where you have a quota, you have to sell or else there's actual cost against it. And you have to have the presence.

21:29And I think it's truly extreme. It's very demanding. And it's very high pressure. So it's very intense. They turn on how we can support that in the right way and funnel through the algorithm. The algorithm is really the recipe to build a new calendar, the cadence. Instead of traditional deliveries, you have, again, the biannual, the seasonal delivery, the inventory, replenishment. Now you have to consider other strategies to approach this market.

22:03Malcolm: Jingjing, I know there's a lot of shoppers that, I mean, I guess schools, even in the area that I'm in right now, are starting back tomorrow. So school shopping has been completed or it's going to get completed this weekend. What do folks need to be on the lookout for in terms of back to school shopping just from, I guess, a supply chain perspective? And then also, this is a double sided question to conclude the interview. When it comes to the future of this and specifically in these, I want to say, hot type of seasons, whether it's back to school, whether it's Christmas, whether these heavy shopper Black Fridays, I mean, what do you think the future is going to look like from an e-commerce fulfillment perspective?

22:48Mm-hmm. Well, to answer your first question, it's all about speed and flexibility, you know, and some other, you know, variables as well to how to accommodate, right? You know, we have automation instituted in our infrastructure. So that really supports the speed aspect of this and the flexibility, again, how agile, you know, the system is, we're able to have that management management and control, continue building data and reports, we're able to support our customers in the right way. I think the future is going to be more aggressive. We all see how quickly technology advances. It's all within months.

23:31It's just right behind each other. I think from quarter to quarter, we're going to see up to the next few years, it's going to be mostly moved to the commerce space. it's all depending on how quickly you can have that brand recognition and able to sell it's all about the visibility as a brand of your product and then it's going to be that prime you know delivery field in terms of are you able to support me and my brands and you know we're also we're also thinking about outbound you know we're all talking about here you know how quick can you receive but you're not you know what about the rma the returns and the handling there's a lot that goes with that, right?

24:10So it's really changed the business. It changed the mindset. It's producing a lot of access as well. So I think there's a lot to do in this space and supply chain and how quickly you can build infrastructure so you have that flexibility to pivot and you don't become obsolete depending on how you're building your current workspace. Absolutely.

24:37Malcolm: Some great stuff from you, Jingjing. Thank you so much for just being here on What The Truck and providing us some education and some things to definitely take away from them. I'm absolutely fascinated just by this overall concept. And I'm excited to see how this unfolds and hope to have you back on the show soon. Appreciate you both. Thank you, James. Appreciate you. Thank you, James. You know, Malcolm, it's amazing how we learn if you have that intellectual curiosity. who would have thought a fashion career person could be instructing us on supply chains but it makes perfect sense with fat fast fashion and design and all that kind of stuff it's all supply chain anyway to make that happen absolutely absolutely and jing jing i mean just with her like credentials and what she's been able to do just to have that overall fashion perspective and then infuse it into something as dense as this and yeah like it's it's incredible man i mean i'm very very very impressed uh yeah yeah yeah i agree i agree did you get your trapper keeper already for school no no not yet not yet it's on it's in the mail it's in the mail you waiting to see what the other kids are doing and they're gonna go out this saturday and fix it up i mean it's it's pretty sweet i can't even lie but it's not sweet as sugar oh did you see that pun i just made because the sugar is in the building we got patrick sugar evp of operations at sire is officially joining us here on what the truck patrick what's happening man how are you How are you?

26:04Good transition. I think I've heard every sugar joke over the year possible, but that was a new one.

26:09Malcolm: Come on, man. I'm like DoorDash. I just deliver, man. Do people sometimes mispronounce your name Stevia sometimes?

26:19You'd be surprised how often my name still gets mispronounced. I'm like, you're trying too hard here. You're trying too hard. Yeah, yeah. No, it actually is sugar. It's not sugar or anything.

26:34Malcolm: So first off, Patrick, your team, man, and what you guys are doing, there's a lot. But there's not a lot of impressive people that don't have some affiliation to Georgia Tech. I want to give you a quick story. I tried to get into Georgia Tech. They said, brother, it's just not for you. So with that being said, I want to see this real quick. Y 'all pull it up because Mike has done a fantastic job of doing some investigative journalism. All right. Listen. Good reference. Good reference. Right? I mean, should we get into the story or just leave it as if you know? No, please. Please. Please. If you know, you know.

27:16Look, Malcolm, it's not all that hard really to get in there. You must have really done some bad because I had a buzz card for a little while. Actually, yeah, Freight Waves had a very strong affiliation with Georgia Tech in our very, very beginning. Absolutely. at an incubator there. Fantastic place, awesome university. And that's where I first heard of George Burdell, who actually, George Burdell graduated in 1930. Then he went to World War II, and he was a B-24 bomber crew, on a bomber crew, he listed. He served overseas, and he actually went back, and he was on the board of a Tibetan monastery.

27:59He was a member of Mensa, and he actually came back. He was co-author on Cignetic's computer chip patent in the 1980s. He actually showed up and his credits were on Revenge of the Nerds, if you remember that. He was in Revenge of the Nerds. He actually got his doctorate from Georgia Tech and he is completely fictional. It was made up by the freshman students in 1927 and they've just kept it going forever. ever. The more you know. The more you know. He's not even a real person. But we have figured it out. It was actually Patrick Suger. Sugar.

28:45Malcolm: Patrick, we're very impressed, obviously, with your background and everything. But even more impressed with the work that the team at SIA is doing. You guys just launched Rev. Talk to me a little bit about this. What's the biggest story behind Rev and everything happening at SIA right now? Yeah, I think the Rev concept and Rev for us at SIA, I mean, it's kind of been an intersection of what we've been doing with the business over really the last 10 years. And it's really the goal has been how do we get ourselves to be a national carrier? And all of this, I think sometimes that gets confused with, hey, we want to cover more area.

29:24We want to go get more share. The reality is we want to be able to provide more for our customers. And we've invested a ton in the business. We've opened over 80 facilities since 2017. We've expanded over another 100 facilities that continues to make sure we have capacity. But all of that has come kind of to fruition with Rev. And Rev is this intersection of what we've done to invest in the business, how we've invested in technology, the way we look at what does the customer really want with the customer's needs coming into Vision now. And them saying, hey, we want something that has more speed, more predictability and more visibility across their businesses.

30:03And so what we've done is we've kind of taken this and said, hey, we have this perfect intersection and we can be that bridge and we can offer that through what we've been able to invest in SIA. And we've branded that with this kind of emblem REV. And so what Rev is in total, it's this intersection of the investment that we've created in SIA with customer expectations changing and the customer saying, hey, here's what I'm interested in and here's what I care about. And us listening to that and being able to make sure that we provide that offering. So, Patrick, I'm really interested in some of the details on what those customers were asking for and what you guys are kind of bringing with that rev.

30:43Because I was in LTL for 12 years. I started in LTL, on the dock and then managing terminals, etc. So I'm interested in what things have changed. One of the most important things that I learned was it wasn't necessarily speed as much as when accuracy of when it was going to be there, right? Don't tell me today if it's really you thinking probably tomorrow type of thing. What has changed? What are they specifically looking for that this provides? Yeah, we talk about this a lot with our leaders. And as we talk with our teams, you can boil the best LTL experts in a room and you can put them all there.

31:24and you can say, hey, we're going to come up with everything the customer cares about. And you're going to be able to dial everything back to about three things. And that hasn't changed in general. The customer needs to be reliable and cares about reliability on the pickup side. Getting freight off their dock is critical. They care about, hey, the freight above all else better make it to its end destination whenever that is, and it better be intact and look the same way it was when it was tendered. And then they care that you keep your promise. And that was the last thing you were talking about.

31:55So if I say I'm going to do something, I better come through. And we can boil anything we do. And we've launched internally. We call this customer first. That's our core value. But it's all around. We tie all of our metrics. It's the first dashboard our operations teams look at is ties to those three things the customer cares about. Now, what has changed a little bit as this continues down is people have been exposed to things in their personal lives, too, whether it's an Uber Eats experience or think of a parcel delivery or something coming to your home. And we're all used to this information directly at our fingertips.

32:32And I can pull up an app and I can see driver coming and approaching me. And I get the ability to quickly text or be able to make a change. and I want stuff now and I want it earlier in the day. And I have Amazon deliveries as y 'all do showing up at 4 a.m. at your house. These are the big things that change. So take the core three principles that always have mattered to the customer and then layer in this idea of how do I get a little bit faster? How do I get the delivery done exactly how I want it? And then how am I very visible so I don't have to call and talk to a person? Those have probably been the biggest adds to just the core fundamentals of what LTL is.

33:17Malcolm: Patrick, let's stay there for a second because everybody's always saying visibility, visibility, visibility. What does visibility actually mean in practice? Because, I mean, Sia, you guys are living by it. I mean, the records, I mean, the awards. I was just at an event last week. You guys are recognized nationally. Like it's, you guys just don't just say this and put it in marketing material. You're actually doing it. Yeah, I saw you hanging out with Brad Hadley last week. A good little segment too. Yeah, certainly when we think visibility, I think sometimes people try to do too much with this.

33:53It's meeting customers where they are. And so for some customers, that's API and EDI connectivity and making sure they can seamlessly access their data wherever they want. And then your data better be very good. So ETAs, pickup confirms, anything that you need to do to communicate, you need to meet that customer where they are. Other customers, they want that slick UX or that slick user interface experience. And that's one of the pieces that was launched with Rev. And so the visibility aspect of what is going on with Rev, it has been all around giving the customer an ability to see and use visibility in the form of UX.

34:38And so the link we have, we can provide to a customer, that customer can provide it to their end consumer as well. And it feels like what you have at home. From all the way from pickup, all the way to delivery, we'll show you ETA is around everything that is going on that will adjust in real time. And then when our driver does en route to you, it'll actually give you a full turn by turn and allow you to be able to set up for that delivery or pickup experience, depending on what side of the equation you're on. It is a way to be able to get closer and give another method of visibility that feels a lot more like what you're seeing in your personal life.

35:19Are your big shippers, are they going to rely on that? Probably not. They're going to be using still traditional methods and feeding that through their TMS. But for them to be able to provide that to their end user is certainly where we think there's a huge opportunity and a gap in the industry today. Nice, real nice. Unbelievable. So when I was, I hate to date and go with this stuff, but traditionally back in the day, I hate that conversation as well, but it's true. it was ever ltl was ltl and service was service i mean it really they're basically all the same they they really were right i mean it was really who who got you tickets to the cma awards or who took you or who who was at your son's or who sponsors your son's baseball team or your daughter's baseball team or whatever it happens to be it really it really was and i'm not saying relationships don't matter they they absolutely do and even more and more as technology comes out but what are those things that are coming out that are like beyond what the normal LTL was?

36:23Because we talked about that. It comes down to three different things really that customers traditionally want. But we also see 3PLs and things coming out going, oh, let's hook into your ERP system. Maybe you shouldn't ship this on Tuesday, wait and ship it with everything else on a Thursday and you'll get the same service and blah, blah, blah. Are these type of things something that you are looking into and working with your customers as well, really advising them more on how to improve and or keep the same service, but limit costs and be more consistent because of their own shipping methods.

36:56Absolutely. And the more we have invested over the years and kind of the optimization technology we use both on the line haul side, as well as in our pickup delivery operation, allowed us with our really embedded customers and customers that can create their own density to have deep conversations that talk beyond just, hey, let us provide you a price in 55 lanes and you go optimize each lane individually. And so we have a lot of conversations where we're directly integrated our line haul team and our technology into what that customer's business is and figuring out solutions that go beyond just core LTL.

37:36The other piece of this is, look, we have 218 assets that sit strategically located across the U.S. Those assets aren't utilized to 100 percent. We have available capacity. We have the ability in space and yards that will look. We're going to continue to grow the business and we want to stay ahead of that growth. And in the meantime, we're finding more and more opportunities to be able to find offerings that think about supply chain holistically and not as much in, hey, we can go hold just your LTL and just do this piece. And a big component in that, as part of Rev, we talk about expanded and we talk about SIA Logistics.

38:15We've rebranded our SIA Logistics team. It was formerly known as LinkX. And it's all around, hey, what at SIA can we do all together? to be able to make sure we can say yes to you as a customer. With Rev, we talk about we're expanding kind of our final mile capability. Big and bulky is becoming more and more of a thing and people don't understand, hey, we have the network set up to be able to handle that from pickup all the way through delivery. Why not put that on our own assets, be able to provide that last leg so you're not creating these visibility gaps as you hand into final mile agents, trying to kind of put together your own network of let me build pool distribution models and feed them all the way into an end node.

39:01And so we are looking at that in Rev, with Rev, adding that expanded capability both on the final mile side, as well as in our expedite side of the business. The overall goal for us is how do we say yes to the customer to solve their supply chain need? Yeah, we understand LTL is going to be a major component of it. And that is certainly the bread and butter of what we do, but we also understand we have trucks, we have trailers, we have drivers, and we have facilities all over and strategically located close to the customer. What can we do to best fit the needs of the customer? And I think this has been a huge change in LTL over the last 10 years.

39:38And I think it's something that we'll continue to find opportunities with as we think of supply chain a little bit more holistically, especially with our strategic your customers.

39:46Malcolm: Patrick Sugar, ladies and gentlemen, of course, representing Sia. Patrick, thank you so much for being here, man. Learned a lot from you and always, always welcome back to be here on What The Shrug, brother. Amen. Awesome. Appreciate the time, y 'all. Yes, sir. I love to talk LTL, man. We could have an LTL show. I love it. I mean, people don't really understand how lucrative LTL can be if it's done right. And I think it really is an awesome. And how difficult it can be if you do it wrong. Oh, yeah. I've been pulled in a conference room for a chat because I didn't understand some certain classifications in LTO.

40:25Malcolm: But I've grown up a lot. I don't know if anybody understands classifications in LTO. I've grown up a lot. And, yeah, we do our thing. But right now, we're about to end the show with our third and final guest. All right. He is, of course, the chief executive officer and co-founder at Lamar Global. and his name is Mr. Brantley Fulton. Brantley, welcome, sir, to What the Truck. How's it going? Hello, hello. It is going great. Thank you guys for having me on the show this morning, Malcolm and Mike. Man, it's a pleasure. I want to thank your Mike, our Mike, Mike Bush, for putting us into contact so that you can be here on the show, brother.

41:03Malcolm: It's awesome. I'm underdressed, man. Absolutely. I'm underdressed. I'm underdressed, too. I'm underdressed, too. I need to get G'd up real quick. My goodness. No, you guys look great. You guys are doing just fine. Yeah. You know, I saw you were on the show, and you're such a friendly-looking guy, and you look so familiar to me. I've had a couple friends. You just got that look. Like, oh, this is my buddy. You know what I'm saying? And when I do some research on people, I like to, you know, have a little humor. With you, I kind of, like, poke at you a little bit. And I feel kind of feel guilty a little bit because, but it's all in good.

41:44It's all. He was a duck. Did you know that? You know, well, he still is. Yes, sir. Yeah. He's a proud duck, except for this moment when he and I met on the field,

42:02which you can see that's back in the day when you didn't in 2015, when you didn't have to wear a helmet. But those are protective glasses that I'm wearing right there. So I just wanted to bring that. But, you know, as slow as he was on the field, and you could see him just getting smoked by a white dude, he was a hell of a chemistry lecturer. And I attended a couple of his classes, and I think we got a picture of me in one of his classes there, just unbelievably good. Unreal. How interesting that chemistry was. anyways Brantley a little fun at your expense and I apologize but you just got that face like dude this guy is our best friend immediately right doesn't he Malcolm I mean look at him

42:49Malcolm: he's a friendly guy dude I'm loving it he was quick to hop on the show and showing love so yeah we had to show some love the only way that what the truck boys can do so appreciate you for having a good look for sure I appreciate that and I'm such an avid fan of our team in Eugene, and hopefully we bring the national championship home this season. Now you're Big Ten, so if Ohio State doesn't, I'm rooting for you. You're Big Ten now, so I'm rooting for you. Full disclosure, he did catch me right before the end zone there. He got me.

43:28Malcolm: Brantley, I want to talk Lamar Global for a minute. For those that aren't aware of Lamar Global, what do you all do, and what is the biggest thing that you're trying to solve in supply chain right now for the space? Yes. So at Lamar, we are a real-time track and trace solution provider. So we have both a dashboard and we also leverage some hardware technology in terms of flexible sensors. And for us is really being able to uh track i would say beyond just uh like geolocation of assets but also provide that condition monitoring around temperature uh humidity and shock of goods interesting interesting now uh go ahead mike i'm sorry uh yeah yeah yeah reverse logistics is something that has i've been interested in my whole life because i used to work osnd in ltl and what a pain in the butt it was to do reverse logistics back in the 90s and 80s but it has become even more and more important really through marketing and that type of stuff and more and more difficult because people you just hey order it and send it back you know what i mean so there's more people that are just ordering retail stuff and said oh i'll just send it back like i'm guilty of it i order like six or seven shirts from you know uh you know eddie bauer or something like that knowing that i'm only keeping like two of them i already know i'm you know people do this stuff all the time and you couple that with commercial returns right which happen as well reverse logistics is a huge problem that you guys tackle isn't it i absolutely and uh you know this is like probably the bane of the existence of amazon right it's like Amazon is really good at, you know, same day delivery, next day delivery, two day delivery.

45:22Yeah. But the issue, you know, for them is really kind of like the problem that you mentioned, you know, if I order, you know, a medium shirt, but I really wanted a large or I really wanted a small. And now when you magnify, you know, an issue like that, right, across all the customers that a company like Amazon might have, that reverse logistics problem becomes completely a nightmare, right? So for us, and one of the things that we were able to kind of see in our industry, some of our competitors that provide, I would say, you know, real-time tracking, those trackers, right, they either get to, you know, let's say that final destination in retailer, you know, that could be, you know, Target, Whole Foods, Walmart, and it's left with this problem now of, okay, who's responsible for the device retrieval?

46:16And when you think of this issue, let's say like in a fishbowl, right? Okay, I have 25 devices out there. I need to retrieve 25. It's not as complex of a problem. Maybe you can put your team out there, or maybe that in retailer is a preferred client that you have a established relationship with. But what happens now when you have 10 ,000 trackers out there, right? 100 ,000 trackers out there, it becomes far more of a complex problem to actually retrieve those trackers from those in destinations. Then, you know, when you're building a business, you then have to think about, well, you know, which of those trackers do they need to be repaired or refurbished?

46:57Are some of them charged? Do they need to be recharged? And now you're talking about infrastructure and manpower, right? Do I have to have a whole, you know, fulfillment facilities where these trackers, you know, go back to? Do I have to hire more engineers to do repairs or refurbishments on those trackers? And for us, we saw that as a kind of a huge problem where it was creating this whole new problem beyond just the condition tracking in terms of that reverse logistics. So we wanted to move towards, you know, solutions that were single use, using better materials, better technology, where when those end retailers get, you know, our FlexTag trackers, they're able to dispose of them.

47:50And, you know, it's not adding that extra load or that extra, you know, it's not adding that extra process or step for them to return or send them back to us.

48:03Malcolm: Brentley, let's stay with FlexTag for a second because you spoke on it briefly, but is there anything specific that we need to know about? I guess just how innovative it is, whether it's sustainability, that aspect, whether it's just like a differing type of tracking. I mean, you could just really break down FlexTag for us. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a materials chemist and scientist by training And, you know, when we think about flexible electronics, so, you know, most of the electronics that we come into contact every day, you can think of them as rigid or planar electronics, meaning that the actual circuitry in the board right in it is just flat, right?

48:45It's planar. So, you know, think of your iPad or cell phone or laptop or tablet, right? It's like all of these devices currently are, you know, completely rigid, completely planar. Flexible technology and flexible circuitry is really about, you know, this concept of, you know, how does it bend? How does it deform? How does it stretch? Can you fold it? Can you roll it? you know, think of a yoga mat, right? You know, I was reading an article and this was when I was in grad school and it talked about how the, you know, our next televisions would be like yoga mats where you would basically be able to, you know, mount them on the wall and then you dismount it, roll it up and then you remount it, you know, somewhere else in your house, for instance.

49:35And so this flexible technology, I would say, is just, you know, it's just really in a place we're starting to get commercialized more and more to kind of achieve these goals. But a lot of it is that, you know, you're able to reduce the size of electronics as a result of moving towards flexible, but you also can create these sensors more cost effectively because it scales at volume, meaning that we can use systems like inkjet printing for listeners out there and for you guys you probably have heard of inkjet because that's a system that is used on like standardized printers that you might have in your home or another process is called like roll to roll printing so think of like your christmas uh you know wrapping paper and imagine if that was uh cut into one inch by one inch squares uh to create you know a sensor array and so you know we're able to actually uh you know reduce that uh cost of printing and uh actually production of sensors uh by increasing uh the volume by leveraging uh techniques and processes like inkjet and roll-to-roll uh printing so you're basically printing a circuit with metallic or some type of metal ink right is what's going down yes yes and so exactly so uh you you can uh you know you first print the materials you still have to do uh what we would call like uh like the dye process which are laying some of those electronic components once uh like your base layer material has has been printed but uh absolutely mike you're you're right in the uh ballpark of how the process works So how does the sustainability work then?

51:30You just gather those and they go back once you have volume to then recycle those or something through e-recyclers, that type of thing? Yeah, so exactly. So one of the things with, I would say one of the things with flexible tech and in the space right now is also, you know, how do we actually leverage more environmentally sustainable materials? And so that is happening in terms of like the CPU units that go inside of flexibles. A lot of, I would say, advancements in battery technology. So traditionally, a lot of batteries for rigid electronics are lithium-based. Lithium is not very environmentally friendly or environmentally sustainable.

52:17There's been new chemistries and new technologies. There are now flexible zinc batteries. So the nice thing about zinc is that it is much more inert. It's much more environmentally sustainable. And so being able to, I would say, move towards better materials allows us to kind of take advantage of these new sustainable approaches with electronics. Thanks.

52:44Malcolm: Brantley, we are up on time, unfortunately, because this is the fastest, literally 45 minutes we have. We went over a little bit, but where can we get more information about you and what the team at Lamar Global are currently doing? And just appreciate you being on the show today, man. Absolutely. I want to thank you again, Malcolm and Mike, for having me on What The Truck. I'm Dr. Brantley Fulton. Everyone out there in the audience, you can find me Brantley Fulton. I'm on LinkedIn. You can also reach out to me directly via email. That's bfulton at lamar.global. I'm Brantley. We're Lamar Global.

53:22We track products so you don't have to. There you go. Look at this guy.

53:27Malcolm: Polish and put together. Let's make it happen. Thanks so much, man, for being here. Go Ducks. Absolutely. Thank you, guys. Hey, what? What was that? Yo, Mike, as we we're gonna be out of here. But before we get out of here, let's look at the road ahead. All right, because we're not gonna have a show on Friday. I'm gonna be out of town. But coming up on Monday, we're gonna be ready to rock and roll. All right, so we got three total guests. All right, Radkov Mitha, he is the CEO and co-founder at Terminal. Patrick Van Hull, of course, is with Tungsten Automation. And then the Razor is in the building.

54:01Malcolm: Danny Razor Ramon is going to be here to talk all about cargo theft and everything. Patrick is fantastic, as well as Rogov. It's going to be a sensational show. But that is it for us today. Make sure you guys like, subscribe, follow. Thank you to all three of our guests for being here. Jingjing, as well as Brantley, as well as Patrick. It was fantastic. And thank you to Mr. Michael Vincent for just rocking with the kid, man. It's peace. It's love. We'll see y 'all next time. I'll ask you. Peace and love, everybody. Peace and love.

54:46We'll be right back.