The Trucking Age Discrimination Lawsuit (And the Shift to Alternative Fuels)

0:01Malcolm Harris: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Let's move on. We have a show to do, don't we? We do, we do. We do. We got some guys in the building. We got two special guests looking at a couple of studs, a couple of studs in the building, man.

0:38Malcolm Harris: On deck, we got two amazing ones. All right. So the first one, Steve Logue. All right. So Steve, he is a general manager at Sensolis. All right. With Steve, he does some amazing work with their team. All right. We're going to talk about the blind spot in supply chain. All right. So we can track a truck, a shipment, even a container, but a pallet tote crate can still vanish between the trailer, the warehouse, and the factory floor. So we're going to get into why non-powered assets are so freaking hard to track, how much money companies tie up in pallets they can't find, and what changes when you finally see dwell time and utilization instead of just guessing.

1:15Malcolm Harris: All right, so that's the conversation with Steve. He is awesome. He's also a Georgia State Panther, all right? So shout out to ATL. That's my hometown, man. I saw that, and he's going to be awesome. And then Sam Gerard is the VP of Customer Success and Senior Site Executive at Angie Energy. He's going to talk to us all about CNG as well as RNG. So fleets are moving away from the hunt for one diesel replacement and towards a mix of energy sources. So we're going to dig into that, what it looks like, the multi-energy shift, and how it looks in practice, as well as the fueling infrastructure and how to figure out whether the economics actually work for your operation.

1:54Malcolm Harris: All right, so we got Sam and we got Steve. We got Michael. We got Malcolm. And, of course, the quarterback behind this, he's going to get a special shout out. Frazier, good game, putting the team on his back today. All right, so there's some well-deserved vacations in the spot. I mean, the boys, they work so hard, as well as Jess, work very, very hard. So Jess and Frazier holding it down. Cannot thank y 'all enough for making this happen, and we're going to get to it. But before we get to it, we got to go do it. And we can't do it without our sponsor of the month here for the month of October.

2:24Malcolm Harris: That is, ladies and gentlemen, TruckStop.com. All right, TruckStop.com, of course, is the sponsor here, presenting sponsor for What the Truck. For more than 30 years, TruckStop.com has helped carriers and brokers move freight more profitably. It's an all-in-one freight platform covering load matching, compliance, and payments. Carriers, of course, meet AVA, TruckStop's voice assistant inside the TruckStop.com Go app. Search the live load board, check rates, and get patched through to a broker, all without taking your eyes off of the road. It's included with load board advance and pro at no extra cost.

2:57Malcolm Harris: And then brokers, truckstops.com, broker assistant, and risk factor help you fill capacity and spot carrier risk before it even becomes a problem. You can learn more right now. Yes, right now at truckstop.com. Again, that is the presenter sponsoring of the presenting sponsor of What the Truck for the month of October. And October is here. And that means that the future. Rocktober. Locktober. Rocktober. The future of Freight Festival is off and popping. 26th through the 28th. Ladies and gentlemen, it is going to be the event of the year. We're going to have so much happening with the Future of Freight Festival.

3:40Malcolm Harris: It's going to be, again, the 26th through the 28th. Technically, it's the 27th through the 28th, but we got a day zero. It's like a week zero thing that we do. That's going to encompass a lot. So with that being said, make sure you guys are attending. Spots are limited. We are about to get out of the way when it comes to ticket availability and let our events team do what they do. So again, that's going to be the 27th and the 28th. There is going to be so much to discuss, and tickets are on sale right now. So make sure you go get them only at freightwaves.com. All right, Mr. Vincent, the bills are paid.

4:13Malcolm Harris: We did what we had to do. The bills are paid. True. That's a good feeling, isn't it? Yeah, it's great. Just knowing that, you know, you're good to go, that you can just kind of just. You're good. Chill for a sec. Yeah. Let's talk about it, man. Let's talk about some seafood. I'm not Jameis Winston, but we're going to talk about some crab legs for a little bit. Yeah, we're not 100 % sure if they were crab legs or not. I don't know. We do not know. If Jameis was involved, you know there's some crab legs in there. You know there's some crab legs in there for sure. So I sent this one over this morning for you to look over.

4:48Malcolm Harris: All right. So for those that don't know, there was a fake freight broker redirecting 273 ,000 worth of seafood in a shipment in New Jersey. And a potential, well, it wasn't even potential. It was an actual cargo theft attempt. So to put this in perspective, a truck driver followed instructions from someone impersonating a freight broker. This happens all the time. They placed more than 273 ,000 in frozen seafood at risk. So the unauthorized diversion brought approximately 29 ,000 pounds of cargo to North Arlington, New Jersey. This is on October the 3rd. So this is a little over a week ago. Two individuals, guys, began moving pallets from refrigerated tractor trailers into a smaller box truck.

5:32Malcolm Harris: Police arrived before the suspects could remove the shipment from the area. This is crazy. I mean, this happens quite a bit, but this is pretty difficult to do in a frozen aspect, is it not? Apparently not. Like, is it not? Like, based off of everything I'm reading, I mean, this is... It depends, man. Are you having a clam baked that weekend or what? You know what I'm saying? It's got to thaw before you cook it. And here's the thing. Look, they didn't steal 29 ,000 pounds. They stole part of it. For sure. For sure. Okay. I mean, no, they did. They did. That's what they did. They only, they asked him to divert part of it to a different truck.

6:12They transferred it on the side of the road is what it, I mean, we don't know that for certain, but all indications are that they just, they did this. It was reported by somebody who saw suspicious behavior happening. Right?

6:27Malcolm Harris: It was indeed. Yeah. Why is it that a truck driver coming across the border and has, like, cocaine stuffed inside of meatballs or something like that? Or what was it? It's a cabbage. Remember that? There's cocaine stuffed inside of cabbage and shit like that. This guy goes to jail under suspicion. But this guy goes, well, they called and tricked me. He's fine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pull my other leg and plays jingle bells. Look, sometimes it isn't like an electronic thing or sophistication or anything like that. Sometimes it's some dude who didn't make commission last month who called a buddy.

7:09He knows and says, hey, have this 18-year-old and a miner go over there and move pallets of frozen seafood off of this truck onto another truck on the side of the road. And the driver never suspected it. Okay, sure.

7:25Malcolm Harris: So with this 18-year-old, his name is Jonathan Poligari. I believe that. Jonathan Poligari, he's 18 out of the Bronx, and his buddy, I guess, got the word. Now, are they held responsible? Were they detained in this thing? Because the article doesn't make it seem like they were, but it feels like they are, no? I'm sure they are detained. I mean, what do they think? They were working for a legitimate company that was transferring a couple pallets of seafood from this truck onto a box truck that's not refrigerated or anything like that on the side of the road. Come on, man. Everybody that was on the side of the road was involved.

8:02This isn't sophistication. This isn't anything like that. Listen, describe to me the situation how somebody hacked into a computer system, found out who the broker was, pretended they were a broker because they just happened to get the driver's phone number, and pretended and knew what was on that truck and had him pull over on the side of the road, just tricked him into it. Yeah, that's 100%. No, you would walk out halfway through that movie. You'd walk out going, that's bullshit. Yeah, yeah.

8:29Malcolm Harris: It's not good. It's not good. No, no, no. I could have Grok make a better script than that. No, that ain't believable in the slightest. Here's what's crazy, dude. What's up? Food and beverage thefts jumped 47 % in 2025. Really? Yeah. Yeah, and the largest targets. Yeah, they jumped that much. Meat and seafood and guess what the other one were the most targeted commodities. In beverage and food, and it's not Guy Fieri's crappy tequila. I was going to say it was an alcohol, but no, that's... No, it's not alcohol. I'll give you that hint. Meat, seafood, and what? Meat, seafood, dairy. Three. Nope, tree nuts.

9:17Malcolm Harris: You know I wouldn't have guessed that shit. well i figured you might i wasn't at your nickname in college anyways i look like a peanut right now i'm glistening on here oh man yeah yeah yeah yeah and and the meat and seafood is the northeast obviously right you're not stealing seafood in arkansas like don't you don't go into right you don't go into rogers south rogers arkansas and get like sushi right there's no lobster out there in little rock Yeah, not all that fresh, right? You're not having fresh creamy in Little Rock. You know what I'm saying? At least not at the Circle K, right? No. So listen to this.

10:00In Q3 in 2025, meat and seafood theft grows 189%. That's crazy.

10:10Malcolm Harris: That's insane. That really, really is. 26 and in 226 overall theft overall freight theft in q2 in 2026 fell 26 but seafood thefts went the other way and went up 11 so i'm very very curious is there a market for this type of stuff like what what generally happens is it all right we get the shipment and then we offload it somewhere at somebody who's a distro provide like how does that i don't want to say like how does that operation of like criminal activity work but i'm very very curious yeah i'm asking how does that how does that work i think it's density of population where the stuff happens to be i think there's a lot of extenuating circumstances or uh peripheral environmental issues or or demographics that bring this into play right i mean like the northeast has always been traditionally huge in theft, especially right coming out of New Jersey into Pennsylvania right there by Camp Hill.

11:14There's huge Pennsylvania on the turnpike there. There's a huge amount. That corridor, Golden State Parkway, all that stuff coming across the turnpike into Pennsylvania. There's a shit ton of freight goes through that area. And just law of averages and number of people involved somebody's trying to feel steal something right for sure and now you're talking about a massive amount and meat and seafood frozen seafood etc moving through that area so why wouldn't that be right you're not like moving right i mean that's just where it is you make a lot of sense

11:48Malcolm Harris: sometimes if you've really listened to the attention michael vince is gonna drop uh a dominolech here and there bro so yeah well yeah just just try and apply occam's razor to it and think through it logically right i mean isn't it it's that's the commodity that's available you can offload it quick and it's consumed really fast so who knows where it came from and it's gone real quick yeah so i couldn't agree more i couldn't agree more you guys check this one out right now freightwaves.com i got two more before we get to our guests let's go from new jersey let's go to texas all right mike i want to get your opinion on this one all right i'm gonna read some details of it but a texas trucking company is to hire a 64 year old driver with more than 20 years of experience because its insurance provider allegedly would not cover him according to the federal lawsuit all right with this the eoc filed a suit on september 24th so a little under a month ago against far texas-based uh tranqasa usa incorporated alleging that the company systemically rejected older truck driving applicants and imposed stricter driving record and medical documentation requirements based on the age all right the lawsuit filed in u.s district court of southern district of texas and mcallen alleges that trans casa violated the age discrimination in employment acts of the adea which prohibits employment discrimination against individuals that are 40 and older all right so they operate this is trans casa they operate 171 power units and employ 198 drivers with approximately 18.8 miles reported in 2025, according to the FMCSA.

13:24Malcolm Harris: So, Mike, my question for you is, my good brother, is Vince Casa, are they in the right for what they did based off of the medical records, or is this discrimination? Is this discrimination? You know, I don't know, man. I mean, this is a really tricky one. And my take on this whole thing is that we're in a situation where this becomes a very real issue as far as how do you deal with this? Because even the EEOC just said, hey, just because you can't get insurance, you still got to hire him. Well, that's bullshit. You know what I mean? I can't even insure the guy, but I got to hire him anyway. What are you talking about?

14:07Right? Then their other one is like, you don't have to hire them if the insurance is cost prohibitive to the company. Well, you can't get any. That's pretty cost prohibitive, right? And then you can't. What are you going to do? You're going to force the insurance companies to do it? Okay, so the insurance companies have to insure a 64 or 74-year-old guy with a heart problem and two accidents. So that they can get in there and then someone's going to freaking nail you for a$640 million nuclear verdict. For real?

14:44Malcolm Harris: I see both sides, though, because you got to think, man, we always talk about barriers to entry, barriers to entry. That's what we're doing. All right. This is a 64-year-old man. His name is Gilbert Serta. All right. He has a clean record, two decades of experience, literally scot-free, clean. Why would we keep him out of the space? But then also, to your point, it's like if you're not insured that something medically goes awry, then we as an organization are on the hook for your mistakes and your slip-up. So I see both sides, but I don't really know how you care about this. Well, exactly, right?

15:22I don't know that. I mean, it doesn't seem like Tranquasas. That's the name of the company, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not the only ones. There's a ton of them. They're just the latest ones to make a headline, okay? Somebody saw this and said, ooh, this is a good headline. Let's talk about this. And rightly so. But they're not the only ones. This happens all over the place. This has been happening for a long time if you do the research and go back. This is not new. 2014, Atchison Transportation paid$85 ,000 to settle a suit. And that's a little, that seems like peanuts, but it's one of thousands of these suits.

15:57They happen all over them. Ask Leffler. They're all over the place. It happens constantly. They really do, right? And that should be a show. Ask Leffler. yeah exactly it'd be prime yeah but but but here's so but here's the case nobody's offering a solution to these guys right so a trans trans trans is not going hey look you're 65 i don't want you because you're an old bastard that ain't it they can't insure the dude they can't afford a 604 million dollar thing or 21 million dollars which was the average in 2020 the average six years ago was 21 million we're not surviving a 21 million dollar verdict now the average is 51 million and you're going to say oh hire the dude that you can't insure well couldn't agree you know what i'm saying how do you do it isn't right that it isn't right that this dude can't get a job that sucks because i'd hate to be that dude i'm quickly approaching his age and it would suck if i couldn't get a job and i'd be bitching i'd be trying to get that job and i'd scream unfair and the EEOC would be on my radar.

17:00I'd be calling them every second for this type of stuff, but I don't know how to fix this thing other than don't let a jury emotionally award$604 million for an accident. I get it. People were killed, right? But was it$604 million and ruin the entire economy and people's lives and everything worth of an accident? Or was it just an accident.

17:24Malcolm Harris: It's been a surreal trickle-down effect, and I get your point, what you're saying. No, I think we definitely, we've hit the overreaction button. Well, we haven't done anything. Juries have hit the overreaction button. Yeah, you and I ain't done nothing. We just call it. We just call it how we feel. We report it, right? You know? Yeah. Yeah. You guys make the, look at this article again on FreightWaves.com. You can get more information. Again, this was a really substantial one. I want to talk about our last one before we get to our guest, because out of Orlando, we've been all around the world.

17:54Malcolm Harris: So we started in Jersey, then went out to Texas. Let's end it in Florida. So an Orlando trucking and freight brokerage owner has pleaded guilty in a scheme that collected more than$1 million. This is what the Fed said on Friday. This name is something. And I've been practicing all day. Let's see if I get it. Kayem Arifoglu Farijov. He is 40 years old. He operated Talishko LLC out of Orlando. though his company participated was he playing for seattle last night and dropped the ball real quick yeah something like that so much his company participated in the usps freight auction program for nationwide bulk mail transportation all right and what happened is that he essentially was doing some fraudulent stuff right he eventually consolidated the funds into two personal investment brokerage accounts he invested the proceeds in the stock market for personal enrichment according to the department of justice and then federal investigators traced the money and seized both accounts mike when you saw this man this this was wild but i want to know your thoughts about this because man this guy here mastermind it was pretty clean too but i guess wasn't clean enough well i mean he picked the right place right the USPS.

19:12I mean, God. Oh, I couldn't make that delivery because my driver had the mumps or his toe hurt. He was sick. We lost the transmission. Oh, okay. We'll just leave you on that load. Give it to somebody else and pay you anyways.

19:28Malcolm Harris: I mean, he did this over and over and over. I mean, he literally said, like, they didn't pick up. Look, each one of those counts is just another tick mark on my side of why the USPS is crap and should go away. There's absolutely no reason for it. You could say it's not taxpayer subsidized but follow the money. It actually gets to them. The taxpayer does. You can't lose billions of dollars every year and still be in business and have a government agency, through mandate or not, compete against private enterprise, which it does. It's all illegal and it's stupid. dude they they self-reported delivery no verification it's so much wrong with this i was just gonna say with verification our guy says to deliver oh no we did we self-deliver it we we verify it oh okay cool here's the money oh wait a minute didn't we pay malcolm to deliver that too all right well forget it who cares what are you kidding me crazy bro crazy the inspector After General Review found 69 ,225 paid trips totaling$197.9 million without any proof of delivery.

20:40That was their audit. Shut it down.

20:45Malcolm Harris: Listen, you might not be wrong, and you might have been curious at this point. This article was a lot, and I want you guys to take a look at it. Of course, for Press for Time, that was your big three from us. much more on this. This is also in your morning minute as well. On all social media platforms. How many years did we watch Yellow not be able to operate before they finally went under? Come on, man. Cut your losses. Cut your losses and get up and get out. That's what they say. Get up and get out is by an artist named Outkast. That is a song from one of Atlanta's best rap groups. Speaking of Atlanta, this guy has some Atlanta ties.

21:23Malcolm Harris: Let's speak to him right now. He's the general manager of Censolas, and he is joining us here on What the Truck. Very excited to have Mr. Steve Logue within the mix. Steve, we got you here on What the Truck. We're excited. And with that, welcome officially to the show, brother. How's it going? Well, I hope I wasn't on camera during your previous conversation stretching and doing all this kind of stuff, looking like a crazy guy there, but doing well. And, you know, I'm really happy to hear you're from ATL. Yeah, man. Yeah, our office is here, and I live here in Norcross, Georgia. Norcross. I lived in Norcross for a minute, Steve, believe it or not.

22:10Malcolm Harris: So I was born in Tucker, but my hometown that I claim is Conyers. So I'm ATL through and through. Why is that? I was born in Tucker. I lived in Norcross, but I claimed Conyers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I lived everywhere, man. My mom wanted me to go to a good school system, man. She wasn't. I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere, man. You know, I did the same thing, Steve. Steve, I did this last week. I was interviewing Ann Ranke, president of Viana, president, CEO of Viana. And I was waiting for her to come on the thing. And I had my computer over to my notes. And I was looking at it. And I stood up.

22:47I started doing some deep knee bends and stuff like that and everything. And I went over and checked it. And I turned it on. And she goes, I was just watching your exercise music. I was like, oh, God, she was on the whole time I was doing it. It's hilarious.

23:01Malcolm Harris: Hey, you guys, we're talking about football. I have to take this moment to say there's another kind of football. This is my team right here. Can you see the jersey? Let's see it in its full totality. All right, here we go, here we go. This is Fulham Football Club. It's a different kind of football. It's the one with the round ball. Yeah. And we got an American on our team. It's a team out of London in the Premier League, and his name is Anthony Robinson, who's one of the best American players. So I'm a fanatic fanatic. You can see the sign in the background there on my wall. So you guys were talking about Buffalo Bills and all this sort of stuff.

23:40Malcolm Harris: So I just thought I'd do a plug for the other football, the other football. I don't think we mentioned Buffalo Bills. But anyways. They played a night. You know what? Yeah, actually, yeah, probably not. Seattle, we mentioned Seattle, but you were like head coach of USA soccer. You were in that for a while, right, back in the day? Were you not for like 11 years? I've coached youth soccer for many, many years, and I play. I still play in an over 50 league, mind you. So old guys league there, the only two requirements. You've got to be over 50 and you've got to be breathing. Those are the only two requirements.

24:23You play half pitch? Is that half pitch? Or you play full pitch?

24:27Malcolm Harris: Yes, thank you for announcing to the whole world that we can no longer run on a full pitch anymore, given our age. But yeah, it's true. Oh, by the way, you guys were talking about age discrimination. I worked for Google for a while, and I remember one thing that was said to me, you know, careful with age discrimination because it's discriminating against your future self. Yeah, 100%. And that's why that last was so difficult, right? I mean, I get part of it, but then I see the other side of it. It's a really hard thing to do. You know what, though? We don't have a full boiler room packed with the guys who make this thing fly, but Frej is all you need sometimes, bro.

25:10He got me my pick. I got my Steve Lowe pick.

25:16Malcolm Harris: There it is. Hey! Hey! Atlanta United. All right. Yeah. Check it out, man. Tacos. Tacos. I worked at, lived in Mexico for many years. That's a great, great one. Yeah. Well, look, you're coming down to tech giant down there is going, he's not going to do anything. And then you promptly just took over. Did you not? Is that not the story pretty much? I think I got your, I think I got your career with, with Virgin mobile, right? You did, yeah. I was with Virgin Mobile working for Richard Branson, if you'll know who he is. Younger generation doesn't seem to know him. But yet, you know, I have to say, Malcolm, what the truck, man.

26:04Malcolm Harris: I mean, I love the irreverence of that name. And when I worked for Richard Branson, he had a philosophy, screw it, let's do it. Screw it. And I think he would approve of your style and how you guys handle these topics. I love it. It means a lot to us. We really appreciate it. Fantastic. Yeah, it really does, man. We do, oh, man. We try really hard, and we really appreciate it, Stephen. Hey, shout out to Fray's, too, man. Get those graphics in. Boy, he's talented. Let's talk about what we came to talk about, though, because we prefaced this earlier. We can track a truck. We can track a shipment and all these things, even a container, but somehow pallets, totes, things of that nature, they kind of get into this black hole.

26:49Malcolm Harris: So I guess, Steve, my question for you is, why is this such a problem in 2026? Because we should think we would have this figured out by now. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, trucks have telematics and telematics connect to the battery source there and are measuring all kinds of stuff like carbon emissions and driver safety and engine diagnostics. But pallets, crates, racks, they have no power source, right? Sometimes they're low monetary value as well, right? I mean, you can have custom pallets that are steel carrying the wing of an aircraft that or 10 grand each, right? But a lot of them are low value.

27:35Malcolm Harris: And so, and then last, they change hands many times, right? And also the trailers that pallets are loaded on to change hands too, or maybe they're not owned by the same company that owns the truck. And so I think for all those reasons, we lose track of them. We lose visibility. Are we talking about the, you know, when we, somebody said, look, we got visibility from end to end on your assets and your car, right? We're talking about that doesn't necessarily ring true, right? They may have visibility at the beginning and at the end and then verify that nothing happened in the middle. But are they actually seeing what's going on through each waypoint of that shipment?

28:18Malcolm Harris: That's true, Frej. I mean, normally the visibility is in controlled environments like, you know, factories and distribution centers inside the four walls. But once you're outside of those controlled environments, you lose visibility. And the other thing to think about is the time you spend looking for stuff, right? I mean, labor cost is a huge cost for companies, right? And so when you're out wasting time looking for stuff, you know, that hits the P &L. The P &L shows labor costs, but it never shows, well, I just spent 7 % of my time wasted looking for stuff. No one ever reports on that because it's embarrassing, right?

29:00Malcolm Harris: And if you look historically, how are people looking for stuff, right? They're making phone calls, right? You're in the distribution center. You make a phone call to the customer or to the factory. Did you receive the pallet with the goods, right? Or you're walking around with an Excel spreadsheet. Or better yet, you walk around with this thing right here. Y 'all see this? What is that? Yeah. Okay, so this is for the younger generation, right? This is called a clipboard. And so you got this clipboard with a pen, and here's the little clip right here. And inside this thing, you got what's called paper.

29:42What are those weird markings on that paper?

29:45Malcolm Harris: Those are the location of my assets, where my assets are, which ones are missing. You know, so there are some industries still walking around with this little clipboard, you know, like, oh, yep, here's my asset, got it here. And then others are going to excel. All this stuff is being replaced through digital technologies, right, where you can have online visibility into where your assets are, their movement, and their condition. So that's the kind of stuff my company Senseless offers. It's fantastic. I mean, first of all, cinema with the clipboard was, I mean, that's Hall of Fame level type cinema.

30:26Malcolm Harris: I love it. I prepared. I prepared for this. I love a good show. Come on. Love it. Freaking love it. All right. So where does. So do you take inventory with an abacus, too? Is that weird? Yeah. You know, what I do, what I do, Frasier, is I go to my Rolodex and I look for the right person to consult. Right. And then to the advocates, right?

30:54Malcolm Harris: So where does cellular connected tracking close the gaps that traditional warehouse systems simply cannot do right now? Yeah, I mean, the warehouse systems, you know, these are controlled environments where you have built infrastructure inside the factory walls or inside the distribution centers, right? You build infrastructure and you tag all your assets within those four walls. But cellular tracking helps when you're outside of those four walls, right? So a trailer moving from the factory to the customer site or a pallet moving to a supplier site or from a supplier to the factory. So cellular tracking helps outside of those four walls.

31:44Malcolm Harris: Anywhere there's a cellular signal then with our technology, you can get visibility and control into your assets in movement. And just a little plug into the tech, we actually have a patent for data recovery. And so if you, as you all know, you all are cellular consumers, right? There are some dead spots still to this day, even though Verizon, AT &T, and T-Mobile have pretty big networks. There are some dead spots. And so if you move into a dead spot, we store the last location that your asset was. And then when you move back into the cellular coverage, you get alerted again. And so we have a data recovery patent to handle that.

32:31Malcolm Harris: Mike, I want to double down. No, go ahead, Mike. I'm sorry. No, no, no. Please, please. No, I was just going to say the returnable packaging is a fascinating piece of this, Israel. Because companies, they send the pallets, the crates, totes, all these different things. Why is getting the assets back so difficult whenever they do kind of go in this black abyss? Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes it's not on everyone. It's on my mind about pallets, crates and racks, but it's not the priority for everybody. Right. And so, you know, sometimes this stuff just goes missing and it's lower value. And I'll just give you an example.

33:11Malcolm Harris: We work with a major American producer of cable reels. So it's kind of like a pallet, right? But it's these circular reels that carry cable from point A to point B. You see trucks hauling those, right? Cable for power companies, for example, right? And so those cable reels, they're losing tons of them every single year, right? And what happens is that the cable, the inventory on the reel, the cable just gets used, and then the cable reel just gets forgotten on the customer site. Or get this, people take that cable reel, the wooden cable reel, they flip it upside down and they make a bar table out of it.

33:50I was going to say we had a few of those in our house in college. This is really fun. Hell yeah, we did. They were all beer stained and stuff like that. So you probably didn't want it. There's a couple of burn holes on them and stuff like that. You didn't want it.

34:04Malcolm Harris: Yeah. So, you know, so I think for all those reasons, they're low value. once you've delivered something, then no one remembers anymore to return the reusable pallet. But economies, especially in Europe, are going that way now to use reusable packaging because it's sustainable and better for the environment. And regulations are driving the use of reusable packaging. And when you have an asset, like say a steel pallet that can be used for five years, it invites tech-enabled tracking technology so you get the most out of it. so how do you deal with the cost aspect of that right because isn't that the big a big driver of this like in automotive and in specialty movements in closed environments so to speak like managed transportation that type of stuff uh the the packaging is very specific to the parts because it's used over and over and over and it's used for the modules that go into production lines and stuff like that if you've ever done the automotive type of thing or other production Give me modules one, two, and seven in that order on this trailer for the production line.

35:08And the packaging is built to fit into that entire system. So it's very important. It's expensive. But when you're talking about a wooden pallet with a couple cases of whatever on it, widgets, it becomes dunnage a lot of times. Or it becomes what I like to use it for is for Fourth of July. It's really good for securing mortars, too, for blowing off fireworks.

35:36Malcolm Harris: well um yeah uh tracking fireworks is another another story you need special certifications for flammable goods but um it's a great question and in fact it goes to the heart of what we do right um uh how do you deal with the cost how do you justify the roi um the business case exactly enable enable that's your question enabling uh tracking of pallets crates racks trailers containers that kind of stuff. Well, so first, there are three scenarios where this stuff makes sense, right? One of them is when you have a compliance issue, right? You need to know not only where the pallet is, but the high value good on that pallet, right?

36:14Malcolm Harris: You need to know that it's been delivered on time and not this he said, she said sort of thing. Yep, it was delivered to you two days ago on your site. Here's the data that proves it, right? And so compliance-driven

36:29Malcolm Harris: requirements justify the business case frequently. The second part is high value goods. If you're tracking tomatoes, probably if you lose a pallet of tomatoes, who cares? But if you're losing a pallet that has a high value engine, and we do track engine for automotive companies, engines that move from Detroit to Mexico. And so when you lose a high value good, that's a problem. or trucks. We track trucks in Mexico that are being stolen, right? And so, you know, the thieves know to cut the telematics. And so we have a tracker on the truck there as redundancy. And then the third, so compliance, high value goods, and third is critical goods, right?

37:12Malcolm Harris: For example, with Pratt & Whitney, we just had a press release last week or the week before. We work with Pratt & Whitney to track their trolleys on the production line, right? that are containing parts along that whole manufacturing process. If those critical goods are not where they need to be, when they need to be, the line stops or it slows down. And that's a huge cost in doing that or when that happens. And so these are, I would say, the drivers of the business case. And I'll tell you where when we pitch a client or we run a trial with a client or prospect and they say, well, I don't need this tracking technology.

37:53Malcolm Harris: That scenario where someone concludes tracking technology is a nice to have, not a must have, is what slows down the whole digitalization process, right? And that works if you've got a few assets, right? But when you're operating at scale, you really need to digitize your supply chain and logistics flows. Does that make sense? yeah 100 i mean it's just it's so robust to the point where wow steve i i got a question this my last one because obviously we got sam waiting in the bullpen and you got you know that you got to have a good closer for the show um with us all right say there's somebody specifically there's a a manufacturer uh logistics operation executive i mean that they're looking and they have this conversation a lot within their organization and it's maybe one pallet of tomatoes or it turns into two pallets of truck engines, or four, eight.

38:49Malcolm Harris: This is becoming a problem that's festering on and on and on. What do you want from them to take away from this interview? And how can your organization help them mitigate the issues that come with the misplacement of pallets and totes and things of that nature? Yeah, hey, thanks for asking. By the way, thanks for having me. This has been good fun. I hope you know who Fulham Football Club is now.

39:17Malcolm Harris: there's like two Fulham fans in Atlanta, me and my son. Now you got four. Yeah, we got four. Hey! So, look, I mean, we build industrial-grade tracking solutions, and so if you need visibility and control into your assets and movement, right, between controlled environments, non-controlled environments, that's what we bring to the table. If your people are spending time, wasting time looking for stuff, you know, and you're operating at a degree of scale, right, This is where tracking solutions can help you become more efficient and reduce costs. And just a little plug, I'll just end by saying pretty soon we're going to be releasing an index that tracks the velocity of pallets, crates, racks, trailers, containers, how often they're being used, and vice versa, how often they're idle.

40:08Malcolm Harris: What we think with that index is that it's a leading indicator for economic activity. Most people report after the fact, like this is my revenue, these are my sales. We're going to be doing it before as sort of a leading indicator of economic activity globally. So that's going to come out very, very soon for my company, my senseless. But that's really what I would like to share as we conclude this, Malcolm and Frasch. That's fantastic. Well, Steve, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate you. And you're just down the road in Norcross, so you can come up here to Chattanooga. Let's do this in person next time.

40:44Malcolm Harris: Chattanooga would be amazing, man. In my former life, I put up cellular coverage in Chattanooga on Lookout Mountain. Oh, wow. You know where that is? Yeah, I know where that's at. I'm going to live there one day. I'm going to live there one day. Gentlemen, hey, have a good week, a good rest of the day. Thanks for having me. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers, brother. Love. Man, Steve was fantastic. Again, Steve Lowe, Griffey, and Senseless. Man, Mike, you are hilarious, by the way. You're the funniest guy. You're just a funny guy. You're just a funny guy. And we're going to end it with my man, all right?

41:21Malcolm Harris: He is a VP of Customer Success and Senior Site Executive. That's a long title, but it's worth it because he's about that action. From Angie Energy, he is Mr. Sam Gerrard. Sam, welcome to What the Truck, man. It is so good to see you. You've been all smiles all episode. I've been seeing you in the preview window. And, man, either we're really funny or you're just having a good day. It could be both. You know, it's both. And I got to tell you, Mike's one-liners, now that I'm getting to know them, they're subtle. They're subtle, but they hit you between the forehead. It makes the show. It makes the show, Sam.

41:54Malcolm Harris: That's what I tell people all the time. It's like, you got to have them. You got to have them. Hey, in the absence of good content, a joke will work. Right, Mike? Right. It's 100 % right, dude. Baffle them with bullshit. You know what I'm saying? I mean, if you can't beat them on service or price, I'd like you to lie and call it marketing. That's why we're not in sales. We just deliver the facts here. That's all it is to us. Just the facts, man. I got facts for you, bro. I put your facts into Claude, and he made a picture for you. Uh-oh. Let's see what I got here. What do we got here? There he is.

42:28Look at that. There you go. He's a cheesehead. You know, I am a fourth-generation cheesehead, so the only time I've ever seen my dad cry is at a Packer game. So I just want you to know, he's never cried his entire life, But at an NFC championship game, my dad said, I remember my first championship game with my dad back in the 60s. And he gave me a big hug, and I've never seen him cry. Before or after, just for what it's worth. Is it true, Sam, that you were a groupie and followed the Kenosha Kickers around all over the place? No, but I have three daughters that did. How about that? They did. There you go.

43:03I mean, my favorite was the cabbage rolls and coffee. That was a fantastic polka. Exactly. You know you're polka, therefore you're a fan. I love it. Yeah, I do. Or polka, polka, polka, a.k.a. the Kenosha kissing polka, I think it was. Yeah. That's how I got married, so we're all good.

43:23Malcolm Harris: Speaking of marriage, in order to have marriage, you've got to have love. Do you believe in Jordan Love? Is that your guy? You know, I do, only because Wisconsin is just this kind of old school, blue collar, get to work kind of thing. And you had Aaron Rodgers, who was a little bit emotional, unstable. And then you had Brett Favre, who just liked to live large. And now you have this guy in the middle who's even keel, relates to everybody, brings his wife to games, talks about his family a lot in a family environment. So what's happened is you had this kind of redneck from Mississippi, the cerebral guy from California, and now you have somebody that just relates to the people and cares about the people and cares about the community.

44:07And that resonates in a small city like Green Bay. Yeah. It's been a good morning. Yeah, I imagine it would. Have you ever gone to breakfast on Thursday for Big Ass Ham Thursday? I have not. Evidently, I'm missing something. Apparently, every time I went to Milwaukee in a former life, we'd have to go for Big Ass Ham Thursday breakfast. And I thought it was like a big Wisconsin thing. But everybody I talked to, I guess I think I was being played. No, on Sundays. I guess it's not a real thing. Growing up, getting hot ham and rolls and having that is your pregame. My family, not to get too geeky, but you do some pheasant hunting or duck hunting in the morning, come back, hot ham and rolls, watch the game.

44:53As a kid growing up, that's just how it was. So it is a thing, hot ham on Sunday. It's a thing. It's a thing. There you go.

45:01Malcolm Harris: I love it. I love it. Well, we could talk to you for the next 35 minutes about life, but we want to give the people what they want to see. So with that being said, Sam, CNG and RNG, break it down for me at surface level. Obviously, we know what it is. We've talked about RNG and CNG a lot. But what is the evolution and really the appetite for it right now when you talk to your clients and what you know in the ecosystem as well? Yeah, so I'm going to kind of come at it from two angles. The first is, you know, going the way back machine a little bit. there's approximately 400 landfills in North America that have now been tapped.

45:40Not all of them, but close. 400 large landfills. There's a lot more landfills than 400, right? And those landfills are producing a lot of RNG. So you clean the RNG, you compress the RNG, and then you move the RNG and turn it into CNG, which then vehicles or pipelines can consume. You could put it right back into a pipeline and you could cook food on it in your stove at home. Right. So there is this this this resource called landfills that have produced an excess, a lot of excess capacity. Right. And right here in our backyards. But it's it's it's tapped. It's clean. It's compressed and put into a pipeline or put someplace else.

46:20So you have this this this great environmental impact that, oh, by the way, is very, very inexpensive as compared to diesel. right okay now you go to the other end and you say well there's a lot of risk in the middle east there's a lot of supply chain constraints there's a lot of people worried about the ability to have have stability right in their fuel consumption so you have excess capacity over here very very low cost high risk over here very high cost and now what we're hearing from a lot of fleet customers very large fleet customers is hey it's time for us to do a risk reduction play and also also a cost reduction play.

46:59And that's where we come in. I love that. So I spent about five years building out technology and working for sustainability, trying to build out a sustainability company, which is not what this is. But just to say that this is near and dear to my heart. And I've studied a bunch of this type of stuff. So So what you're pulling out of or what is happening in landfills now, right, is utilizing what is the largest waste problem that we have, which is the bio waste. And not like human bio waste, like you have the hazmat crap. It's food waste, right? It's vegetation. It's the excess food. It's all that other kind of stuff that is incredibly useful for this.

47:50what is the what is the potential percent of our energy consumption at at scale that this could that this could replace right and and its impact on the environment i'm not a i'm not a an environmental alarmist or global warming alarmist or anything like that but it makes sense to not pollute the environment if if you cannot pollute it right i mean i don't know where it makes any sense to just dump some shit on the side of the road it just doesn't make any sense right yeah You know, I will add one other thing to that, right? It's dairy farms, right? So you have food waste, you have landfills, and you have dairy farms, and if you ever get to Green Bay, Wisconsin, there is a large digester just outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where about a 20-mile radius, all the farmers bring all their manure, put it into a big vat.

48:41That's cleaned up. That's digested. All the methane is taken out of it. The methane is put into tube trailers. Those tube trailers then move the methane to a pipeline and unload it. So there's this capturing of all the waste. And by the way, the farmers sign a 10-year agreement that they get paid for all their manure. You get paid for shit, right? What a great deal. You then are reducing the impact on the environment. You're reducing the impact on the infrastructure that it goes through. So it's a win-win for everybody. So even, I don't care if you're an environmentalist, non-environmentalist, not throwing stuff away is a good thing.

49:17And then being able to generate for our farmers who need help financially, being able to generate a lot of revenue from that, amen. So you have reduction in waste, they're making money, goes into the pipeline. We use it when we cook our food or when somebody drives a truck down the road from a CNG vehicle, right? All good. So there's a lot of stuff going underneath the water line that nobody talks about. And those are some, so the food, the waste from animals, and then landfills is all being captured and then being used. A lot of excess capacity right now. A lot of excess capacity. Yeah.

49:51Malcolm Harris: So this is my follow-up question. We got a couple of minutes here, Sam. So everybody knows cost is what drives us in. All right. Whenever you are getting questions about cost, what does the infrastructure look like in terms of transitioning to this model from a diesel model? Because, I mean, you're in a customer success role. I mean, you work with these clients all the time. What does this transition look like? And can you give us some insight into the biggest questions that are being asked? Yeah, there's a couple things. So once a, and I'm going to use just general math, right? Once a site has more than 50 trucks, the cost justification, the ROI was there.

50:28100%, the ROI is there. If you change your fleet over, now there's two types of fleets in our business, right? And you all know this better than I do. There's fleets that come back to a mothership every night. Think of a UPS, waste management, the GPL, right? They go out on the routes, they come back, and then they do a slow fill overnight. That's slow fill, right? That way they come back in the morning, jump on their vehicles, out they go, do their thing, come back. Once you get to about 50 trucks, that's a very healthy ROI. The difference between diesel and CNG is very good. Secondly, the maintenance costs on CNG for a vehicle are significantly less than a diesel vehicle over the course of time.

51:09So you have lower maintenance costs. I have with the new regulations coming into play. I want to be really clear about that. You have the lower cost of maintaining, the lower cost of the fuel, and I have it coming back and forth to the mothership, which makes things easy. The other one then is corridors. That's fast fill. So I'm moving a truck from East Coast to West Coast, whatever the case is. The corridor build out is now starting to happen, and the new Cummins engine is really being adopted. So that means I have more power with the new Cummins engine, and I have more length that I can travel on a corridor, which allows me to get from fuel stop to fuel stop to fuel stop for CNG with a fast fuel.

51:46So I have trucks that come back to a hub. I have trucks that go across North America. There's a lot of excess capacity, and the build-out of those corridors are happening, which is just driving the cost structure of C &G way down. Now, the new Cummins engine, which is fantastic, and David King, I'm going to have him talking to him. Awesome. Yeah, he's a great guy there. We should get him on here as well, Malcolm, and talk about this. 100%. Are there others following suit as Cummins is? Because, I mean, he's been, David and people at Cummins have been driving forward with this for, wow, ever since I've known him, which is a number of years.

52:29Are there others following suit? Yeah, there are. There's a couple other companies out there that are going after the same market. One of them is out of Canada, and I forget the name of that company. If you guys did some research, he would be able to tell you what those are. But what's happening now is because of the economics, some other companies are starting to jump into it. Cummins is just much further ahead of it than anybody else. Gotcha. Because, I mean, that's that's ultimately what happens with with something like this, right, is you have to have multiple players really to make it to make it really take off.

53:00Not that it's not taken off. We've been trying to make this take off since, dude, early 90s. We were running tests at Roadway Express in Copley, Ohio. Yeah, and if you just, again, look at the publicly available information on waste management and UPS, where they're now the majority of their fleets, a lot of big parts of their fleets are CNG. And then, you know, I don't have any other information than looking at the publicly traded information. Their financials are pretty healthy, right? Their cost structure is really dropped over the course of time. I think the other thing that's happening is you have big fleets.

53:35Well, then what do you do about the small fleets? because of tube trailers and other things, you don't have to pay for a fixed asset infrastructure on site. People are moving CNG to a site. And therefore, if I have, so we have mobile solutions, small mobile solutions for small fleets. Well, now I can put all my CNG stuff on a back of a trailer bed. I can move that to a site where I'm just filling up 10 to 20 trucks. Well, now they get the benefit without having to build up all that infrastructure for a big fleet. So think of it is the circle is growing from the ability to go after big fleets to small fleets and also based upon the infrastructure that's being built out by loves and other companies that are building out loves freedom psi other companies are building out those corridors then once those corridors build out the same thing with ev once you have corridors of ev all of a sudden people like oh this is great now i don't have to worry about charging i don't have to worry about filling because now i have stops along the way that's all that's all happening and there's a lot of

54:32Malcolm Harris: investment going into it right now four things for you sam number one has been a fantastic fantastic interview segment number two we need to do this again and sure we make you be our only guest because you have talked to two rng and cng nutcases on the show like we we probably have that we have to ask because we we love the topic oh god yeah we really i love it i love it um number three, GoPackGo. That's from me to you. Just to thank you for that. And then four, if I'm a fleet executive, I'm watching this, right? And this is closing in 30 seconds or less. And I still have some questions and I'm thinking about my strategy when it comes to my fleet and this transition, but I have no idea where to start.

55:14Malcolm Harris: Where's information I can go to connect with you? Yeah, there's a, where I would start with, first of all, just my information, you can go, you can go, I'll talk to anybody about this stuff. Because I didn't come from the industry. I came from IBM and then JCI. So this industry just, I came here because it fascinates me. So you can reach out to me. One of the best places you go is to the Transport Project, right? The Transport Project is the think tank that works with Congress, that works with the governmental agencies. They also have the Department of Energy tied into them. They do all the research on the future of CNG.

55:48All the major freight companies sit on the Transport Project, all of them. So if you're wondering, right? So if you look at, again, any of the major UPS is there, Cummins is on this, waste management is on this, we're on this. It's the who's who of the entire industry. And what they're doing is what's the future of CNG and RNG for the freight and logistics industry? And it's a think tank. So there's no agenda. There's no sales process. It's how do we reshape the industry? The transport project, go there and you will find everything you need to know in a non-threatening way. It's just research from your peers and what they're doing.

56:31Great stuff.

56:32Malcolm Harris: Great stuff, Andy. Great stuff from you, Sam. We really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time here on What the Truck. All right. Next time I'll be in Chattanooga for you. You better. I'll come to Chattanooga. You better. I'll be there. I'll be there. We'll be ready to have you for sure. All right. Great show indeed, guys. As we end up going to the road ahead, we got three awesome guests as we head into our Wednesday show. It is going to be a fantastic one. The first guest you have seen already, Alex Frazier is going to be in the mix. He, of course, is the VP representing Cox Fleet. And then Jane Josuari, she has been on the show as well, CEO at Carrier's Edge.

57:09Malcolm Harris: And then he is not playing for the Kentucky Wildcats or the Washington Wizards, but we got John Wall in the house, man. He is going to be fantastic. That's it for us. Another What the Truck in the Books. Like, subscribe, follow, do all the things. peace and love we'll see you when we see you bye

57:54We'll be right back.