Why C.H. Robinson Just Bought RXO (And What It Means for Freight Rates)

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+.

0:55Malcolm Harris: coming in hot ladies and gentlemen welcome to an october Oh, what the truck? I'm your host, Malcolm Harris, of course, joined by my partner in crime. It is Mr. Michael Vincent. Happy October. Michael Vincent, what's up, brother? Oh, the music stopped. Sorry. Rocktober, brother. It's Rocktober? Rocktober. Yeah, you don't remember? It's Rocktober, baby. We're rocking it through the whole month, man. Are you serenading me right now? Your voice. I mean, it normally sounds good, but my word. Hey, baby. Just remember, if you don't get any tonight, it ain't Barry White's fault. It's never Barry White's fault, man.

1:40Malcolm Harris: What is up? You cannot blame. You can't blame Barry White. But you can blame Aaron Rodgers for, I mean, and Patrick. How is it that the Browns are 3-1, dude? they can honestly be four no that's the crazy thing that's the crazy thing the Kirby Smart School of Football that is uh what Isaiah Buchanan said uh Todd Monken man he is uh gotta be coach of the year if it's the first month of the yeah I mean they're they're fantastic the Cleveland Browns three and one what yeah that's it's just not it's in I don't know Yeah. I don't know. And they're not going to lose this. They didn't, they didn't, they're not.

2:25What? I don't. I'm confused. Words are hard. Words are hard. At this moment in time, words are, words are very, very, very hard. But I had a great weekend, bro. I mean, you know, PJ Fleck, flexing. You see that? Flexing his football miles.

2:42Malcolm Harris: Man, I mean, the Minnesota Gophers taking down Michigan for the first, what? First time. 70 years, bro. Yeah. man look at this look at this merchandise from cody dowler we're gonna start selling these on the what the truck shop right here all right because uh they need more than one second because they officially got two losses now it's not looking good for uh the the school up north as michael vincent calls it yeah did you do you see that ai the the uh with uh underwood who said he was leaving michigan because he got a hundred million dollar nil to become the greatest sandwich maker at subway you know man he's throwing a bunch of catfish po boys and a bunch of uh chicken parm sandwiches out there because he uh is severely overrated and uh that's he he's look here's the thing he said he was the greatest player to ever come out of michigan or will ever come out of michigan and but here's the thing right now he's like the only player there i think is part of the problem.

3:43Malcolm Harris: Listen, I love the confidence, but man, that's a bad watch up there. And for those that do play the college football game, you know that Bryce enters the transfer portal every year. He just does. So I know Isaiah is back there laughing right now because he knows that I'm telling the truth. So, yeah, I can confirm. To see if anybody will take him. Oh, he's in the portal. Constantly. Listen, man. We got a five-star quarterback as a guest today, and I'm excited to bring him to you. Are you ready to talk about P? You want to talk about some P? P dispose. Let's talk P dispose, man, because the founder and CEO is going to be joining us today, Mr.

4:29Malcolm Harris: Mark Ryland. All right, so Mark, fantastic call that I had with him. And he actually reached out and was like, hey, I think this would be something that would be a really cool topic. And I was like, all right, what do you want to talk about? Well, he was like, well, I want to talk about pee. Is that okay? And I was like, yeah, we can do that. And he was like, I got a lot going on. And I think it is fantastic. Of course, he has the best haircut in freight because I said so. And what we're talking about essentially is him, his journey as an over-the-road driver. He became an entrepreneur. And then he lived this problem firsthand with seeing these bottles everywhere.

5:04Malcolm Harris: He used an example, and I'm hopeful that he has the bottle on standby because he can tell you better than I can. It's an exciting, exciting interview, and I cannot wait to have Mark on the show to talk about infrastructure. It's a lot. It's a lot that we're going to get into. My words won't do it justice, so we got a full interview segment coming up with Mark. Excited, bro. Excited. You boys sipping out some of Grandpa's cough medicine? oh my it's it's you know what you make me laugh like this on a monday morning is you're you're nuts man you're nuts you're nuts and um dude is it monday it's monday it's a new month so you know what that means i gotta get i gotta get to work you're at work silly oh yeah that's right yeah yeah we got a new sponsor all right and uh it's a familiar face all right so the team at truckstop.com.

6:01Malcolm Harris: I want to thank you guys so much for being the official sponsor of What the Truck for the entire month of October, right? For more than 30 years, truckstop.com has helped carriers and brokers move more freight profitably. It's an all-in-one freight platform covering load matching, compliance, and payments, all right? So you can go to the app. They have Truck Stop, their voice assistant inside the Truck Stop Go app. You can search the live load board check rates and get patched through to the broker all without taking your eyes off of the road. It's included with load board advance and pro at no extra cost.

6:36Malcolm Harris: All right. Brokers, truck stop broker assistant and risk factors help you feel capacity and spot carrier risk before it becomes your problem. You can learn more, of course, at truckstop.com. All right. That is our official sponsor of the month of October here on What the Truck. And speaking of October. It's officially the month, all right? In about three weeks, three weeks time, we have the biggest event in freight. I'm talking F3, the future of Freight Festival is officially here, and I cannot be happier. We're going to have so much to discuss. We had some breaking news that we're about to get into that will, I'm sure, be some of the biggest talks and conversation points that we're going to talk about at F3.

7:22Malcolm Harris: You're going to see that man, Zach Strickland, provide a full detailed breakdown when it comes to all your sonar data. You're going to hopefully see a What the Truck Said. I think that's going to happen. You're going to see a lot of truckstop.com there. You're going to see some sonar folks, I'm sure. You're going to see a lot of different booths, a lot of different conversations to be had, some great keynote speakers, hopefully some live music. I'm pretty sure Jen Wiggins and the rest of the team are going to be there. You're going to have the Lizard that is going to be there, as well as Craig Fuller, but not at the same time, because that is my conspiracy theory, and I am sticking to it.

7:55Malcolm Harris: All right, tickets are on sale right now. All you got to do is go online, FreightWaves.com, and say you want a little something off of admission. All you got to do is use this code. It is TAKE20, T-A-K-E-2-0, 20 % off of admission into the future of Freight Festival. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be at the signal, located, of course, in the heart of downtown Chattanooga. Might even see some Chattanooga whiskey and Mike Vincent together. You never know. There we go. We got that code right there, take 20, and you can take 20 % off of admission. All right, F3 Future Freight Festival, October 27th and the 28th.

8:33Malcolm Harris: Michael Vincent, are you ready to go, brother? I am. I just want to put out there, you could add 20 if you just want to donate to Malcolm and I's whiskey fund. That's perfectly acceptable as well. That is acceptable as well. And at a glance, I want you guys to look at the whole totality of F3 because this week is going to be outstanding. All right. So of course, you got supply chain day on day zero. So this is the 26th of October, followed up by, of course, the freight brokerage compliance symposium. There is limited seats for that as well. So if you are in the brokerage space, I highly suggest for you to take advantage of this.

9:07Malcolm Harris: This is going to be an outstanding event for you to talk all about the things that we're about to get into, as well as insurance, of course, Montgomery, the things that have really hit hard in the brokerage space. this year. This is going to be an open dialogue to talk about it in a symposium type format, which is going to be fantastic. Of course, we're going to have the F3 awards dinner led, of course, by the Freight Tech 100. That is going to be outstanding. Doing things a little different with day zero, but I'm liking it. All right. Giving us a true, true total event. And this is going to be fantastic.

9:38Malcolm Harris: And then you're going to have, of course, on Tuesday, day one, all right, the 27th of F3. That is going to be the big day. All right. And then followed up, they're going to still be a big day, but just not as big as day one. It's going to be day two on October 28th. So that's your week at a glance for F3. Again, use that promo code, take 20, and we are running a million miles a minute, getting ready for this outstanding, outstanding event. All right. So with that being said, we got breaking news. We got breaking news. News is breaking news. All right. This is a big play. I was, I woke up a little late this morning, as you can tell because I was running a million miles a minute and I was like, okay, let's look and see what we're going to talk about.

10:20Malcolm Harris: Oh, my goodness. There's been an acquisition. So I want to reach out to some folks at RxO to see if they'll comment, but I'm sure that there's a lot of pieces happening, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But C.H. Robinson is officially acquiring RxO. I mean, this is something done. This is something that I, for one, did not expect. All right. You can look at this tweet from John Kingston. All right. He kind of flagged this. All right. He was like, all right, what's going on with RXO? It's risen 16.2 % in the last two days. Trading volume today was at 3.87 million shares. It's usually trades around 1.9.

11:03Malcolm Harris: And the last month it's up 18.1. It has short interest around 10 % afloat, which is a lot. So maybe some short covering pushing it higher. All right. I know John is going to be on Freightwaves today at noon to talk all about this with Craig Fuller as well as Julie Vandekamp. But Mike, was this on your bingo card at all? Because it surely, surely, surely wasn't on mine. It wasn't on mine, but doesn't the fact that John could sniff this out last week indicate that there was some insider trading shit going on? Listen, I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to say it. I don't want to say it, but that, yeah.

11:44Malcolm Harris: Go ahead, go ahead. I'll get to my point. No, that's all I had to say about that. The other thing that I did want to correct in the editing is that the ratio is in.856 because that would have 157.72. The actual ratio is.0856. Oh, I'm so sorry. This is what happens when you don't. This is what happens when you don't wear your glasses. No, no, no, no, no, no. You read it correct. The article missed. They missed a zero in the article. Oh, okay. Okay. Because somebody's life changed if that was the case. If it was, in fact, 0.85. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want anybody to go, holy crap. Look at that.

12:18No, it's actually 0.08. It's just a small thing. But, I mean, it's easily done. Right? Right. So put it in perspective.

12:26Malcolm Harris: You want my take on this? Yeah, please. No, no, no, no, no, no. You can roll. I don't want to roll. this is this is this is big like let's let's talk about it this is big we can have a whole show on it's huge and most people go oh crap i mean they got a regulatory i mean it's got to get delayed by regulatory review right i mean you're thinking this will probably go through by january it'll probably go through there's no reason to suspect that it really that it won't right i mean but it'll it should definitely get get looked at by regulators which would just be a really kind of a delay you know what i'm saying i mean question because i'm i'm a young guy you know in my head i'm a young guy i'm still learning all right we're always learning if you're learning you're doing well what happens to rxo's headquarters in charlotte and all their footprint across like is this ch like like is this like from a branding perspective like what happens with everything like what happens to the leadership what happens to to all this stuff like is it a Is it a merger?

13:29Malcolm Harris: It sounds like an acquisition. It sounds like we're getting you outright and there is no more RxO. Is that what I'm hearing? I mean, we don't know all the facts, but that's kind of what it implied to me. But we don't know all the facts. We just know that it happened, right? So, or is planned to happen. Nothing has happened yet. They're just, they're filing to do it, I guess, or have filed to do it. Here's this. It hasn't occurred yet. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, you're not talking about assets. You talk about very few assets. The assets aren't actually what make the money in this case, right?

14:01So you can pump more and more through computing power. So in this type of situation, yeah, right? People on the streets, there's dual networks that don't need to be there because they're not physical, actually, right? Other than offices. You know, I don't know. There's that huge cable company that has the other half of that building over there, right? So maybe they'll take it over. You know, I don't know. I see what you did there. Who else is in that office? Who else is in that office? Isn't Maersk in that office too? They're in that same building. I think Maersk North America is in there. I don't know about the building.

14:37Nobody really here cares about the building. My big thing is there's this guy out there. Perhaps you heard of him. His name is Rico Montgomery.

14:49Malcolm Harris: I almost spit my coffee out live on this. I almost did. Rico Montgomery is crazy. He's still out there. You know what I'm saying? So I don't know. There's some there's some friction there. There's some politics there with the whole RICO case, which may not go through or anything like that. But the forced labor aspect of it. And now you could argue if C.H. Robinson and RxO goes through. You've got an even larger behemoth that can, you know, legally. at this point squeeze out certain carriers and that's the see like it's not really a a uh and i trusting or or anything like that or a a um you know they're not going to have it they're not going to have a a monopoly on the market or anything like that but as far as impacting carriers 100 being able being able to shift what capacity survives and not, that's a very real control issue that they would have.

15:56Malcolm Harris: I want to read this statement from them, from CHI. The acquisition of RxO brings together two complementary networks and diversifies and strengthens CH Robinson's multimodal platform to accelerate its growth and increase penetration across all modes and segments. Combining both companies, robust trucking brokerage and managed transportation business, along with CH Global Forwarding Network and ArcSo Strength and Expedited in Last Mile will create a comprehensive offering for customers across a larger and denser network. That was a statement that was sent around 8 a.m. this morning to Frey Waves via John Kingston.

16:34Yeah, yeah, I get it.

16:37Malcolm Harris: So what do you do? I mean, it's interesting. We'll see how it happens, dude. You know what I'm saying? Your TQL this morning, How do you feel? How do you feel? The same I did yesterday, the redheaded stepchild. Everybody likes to beat up on TQL, and now they just roll as the same. Their persona stays the same. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. We're definitely going to have more on this, of course. Make sure, again, that you are tuned in to FreightWaves. I mean, see, that's what I'm saying is they don't have more power to get rid of smaller brokers or anything like that. they have more power to control the narrative on what capacity is in the play in my opinion i mean maybe i'm wrong i mean craig is fuller's a lot obviously sharper than i am in looking at these strategies and where things are but i see the carrier capacity and maybe it is also it can it can i don't know the capacity of smaller brokers etc but smaller brokers are already getting killed by insurance etc for sure no 100 i think this is going to have huge ramifications on the carrier your aspect and the network specifically and like uh yeah rico montgomery that was hilarious by the way um i don't think you're wrong at all i don't think you're wrong at all i'm just i'm curious to see how this is going to shake out though because it feels like there's a lot of things missing and of course it is breaking news we just got this about two and a half hours ago so i do understand but yeah very curious yeah but what i what i what i will tell you is this is whatever does happen will will blame it on this or attribute it to this in hindsight it won't be like holy crap that's why this has happened it'll be like why did that trend oh yeah it was that it was that uh more on this of course at noon freight waves today make sure you go check it out and uh with that being said let's pivot to our next story all right this is going to be from annoy mahoney this is in regards to his Borderlands report.

18:38Malcolm Harris: All right. So identity thieves target customs payment and cross-border freight. All right. This is happening. All right. Javier Canendez, he is the president of the Mexican Council for Foreign Trade's Northeast chapter, said the organization has recently encountered identity theft cases affecting importers and exporters during customs operations during a news conference just last week, according to El Norte. All right. In one case, A foreign trade company made an electronic payment that it believed was going to a legitimate customs agency. Instead, a third party had stolen identities connected to the transaction and impersonated both the importer and customs brokerage as well.

19:17Malcolm Harris: The fraudsters can create these internet domains resembling these legitimate companies and then impersonate these executives and send messages claiming that there's something and then providing banking information that, of course, is not accurate. it i saw this and i thought of you immediately because you know we we talk about some dumb criminals on here you remember the other day that we talked about somebody in philadelphia going to get some uh some beef we've talked about some sand this seems like a very sophisticated type of operation and i was like holy smokes well yeah i mean they're i guess you know i mean they're doing some nefarious things and it seems like it is kind of I guess sophisticated but where my mind went to is how unsophisticated are these 70 year old grandmas that are answering the phone at these places just randomly changing where they pay payments to without double checking.

20:21Malcolm Harris: Freaking hello. Hello. Oh you mean 24 hours before it's got to deliver i have to change my banking information holy shit you don't say i i won't check i mean come on man use your freaking brain i mean seriously that's that's where it i can't find anything other than that right you get new banking information 10 minutes before it's got to deliver and says you have to pay this otherwise we're going to come to your house and steal your first born and they buy it you know what i'm saying oh yeah you're right i do need a new roof what uh you were you were the gift that keep us give it question and it has to do with this article as well with the borderlands report uh there is uh some recent stuff about legos you play with legos at all were you a legos guy i don't think i was lincoln log legos i think were like too expensive for my family when i was growing up yeah well look at you now you can buy buy legos if you wanted them now because you're the man i don't know they're pretty darn expensive man but they're cool they're very you know you can for like 400 bucks you can get like the uh home alone house really oh yeah dude and it's got like the van that they that pesci uses to knock knock off the house and all yeah it's got it's freaking phenomenal anyways yeah lego i think was the bigger story much much bigger story i mean i would have made i would have made that an entire article, man.

21:50$400 million are dumping into Monterey for a factory there. And the real interesting thing about that is if you dig deeper into the facts that are going on there, is that they're putting, what is it? $1.5 billion into a factory in Virginia. So when you see this $400 million going into Monterey, you go, oh, wow, look at all the freight that's coming across laredo not so fast my friends as uh as you may know where i got that phrase from i do you're not slick you're not slick at all i like i like it i like it god bless him uh right um you know that's that's probably more like uh south america and maybe west coast where eventually because virginia will take care of the east coast all the kind of stuff but yeah but it's it's it's interesting right Because$1.5 billion in Virginia and$400 million in Monterey, that has a lot of implications on tariffs, right?

22:50The USMCA and what you need to understand about what's going on there and my opinion, right? I mean, hey, we're going to end this. So let's put it on an annual review. Yeah. That means let's get the headlight out there, scare the shit out of China and Canada and not really do anything.

23:09Malcolm Harris: No. You know what I'm saying? And then Lego comes in and says, hey, we'll take that bet. Here's$2 billion. Let's funnel it right now. It's going to increase everything, specifically, what, 30 % when it comes to its Mexican supplier base. So this is going to really kind of be a shot in the arm to the economy there. And, yeah, I saw this one. I was like, this is a pretty substantial one as well. You can read this entire report. Of course, Borderlands drops every single week from Noy Mahoney. And that is going to be on FreightWaves.com. We've got a couple more left. And we will then, of course, get to our guest here on What the Truck.

23:44Malcolm Harris: All right. This is another story from Mr. John Kingston. He's been very busy. This is a busy guy. But some positive news coming from John Kingston. Trucking jobs are now more than they were a year ago. The truck transportation jobs figure for September did something it hadn't done in more than three years. All right. It increased. The Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly report released on Friday showed 1 ,473 ,100 truck transportation jobs in September. That is an increase of about 2 ,600 jobs from August. But what was more notable is that this year-on-year comparison reported that the September total was 800 jobs more than a year earlier.

24:25Malcolm Harris: Doesn't sound like much, but it's the first time again since April 2023 that the year-on-year comparison for the truck transportation jobs report was positive at its widest. The year-on-year comparison gap was either side of 80, excuse me, 60 ,000 jobs in June and July of 2024. This is just showing exactly where we're at. There is, of course, a quote that we see from Jason Miller. For those that don't know, Jason Miller, he is on FreightWaves programming quite a bit. He is a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State. Go green, go white. And he said, all right, I'm not convinced these data won't be substantially revised because seasonality adjusted administrative records showed payrolls declining in March, not reaching a bottom like the survey assumes.

25:13Malcolm Harris: If the employment data is indeed correct, this runs counter to the arguments advanced by the public truckload carriers that capacity continues to exit on net. These data point, of course, to the opposite. Capacity is slowly recovering. Mike, whenever you hear that from Jason, and then also just your take on this article in general, what is the general consensus? Are we starting to get out of the woods a little bit as things turning around? Or is this kind of like a false positive? It's not even a positive. Yeah. it's a yeah it's you know i i laid this i laid this pitch up to you you just knocked it out i mean first first of all i far be it for me to agree with jason miller because you know i'm not a huge anyways he's not he's not wrong here i mean we're talking about i mean look it's 800 jobs in reality right and it's trucking and transportation right absolutely or trucking and trucking and logistics, which doesn't mean they're drivers.

26:14They could all be coming from somewhere that has nothing to do with truckload. Okay? It's a big, big category. It's also a big, big category that moved 0.05%. Yeah. Okay, there's this thing called statistics. 0.05 % isn't a positive. It's well within the margin of error. It's actually, okay, so we bottomed out on a month that was from a year ago that was incredibly bad a year ago so we've matched an incredibly bad month a year ago that's not a positive to me no that's a i'd say okay we didn't do worse than possibly the worst month in the last four years okay i guess we'll take that as a positive right i mean i i guess um for sure but we're still look here's the we're still at the bottom yep the market is still super super tight and it's not because there's more freight it's because there's still capacity leaving right there isn't there isn't more volume but rates are up that means capacity still leaving right it's not a it's not a demand rise and regulation is still cutting into the

27:34Malcolm Harris: supply 10 000 drivers take that is a great take that i can fully support now for time's sake i'm going to skip this next article all right john kingston's been a busy guy uh i think it is uh the less interesting out of the five that we're talking about all right we're going to go now to noise the last article i'm just being honest i'm just being real i i i have to agree i'm just being honest i'm just being real like i love him to death i just for time's sake all right let's let's talk about this go read the portal go read the portal one and you'll probably go yeah yeah you'll be like all right those guys that's uh again all right let's talk about this blitz real quick all right we're talking u.s and canada all right this one here is showing of course that federal state and local authorities placed scores of truck drivers and commercial vehicles out of service during a series of enforcement operations conducted from scores from mid-september through october 1 across the u.s and canada all right putting numbers behind this thing you guys see the number 350 but i will break it down for you a little more at least 124 drivers 226 commercial vehicles or loads placed out of service and enforcement actions again from mid-september through october 1 all right again this was one of the largest operations and it was called operation saturday night fever that sounds like a really weird movie uh and it more than likely more than likely has yeah that has like ashton kutcher or something i don't know it just seems like a very weird thing all right and this was involving state police going south carolina north carolina florida and georgia then of course authorities conducted 552 inspections placing 78 drivers and 25 drivers out of service and uh the the 12 drivers that were sidelined uh for English language proficiency violations were, again, according to the FMCSA, they checked driver credentials, ELDs, fatigue, which is odd, distracted driving, and cargo securement.

29:41Malcolm Harris: All right, so you got a full breakdown of this. This is Illinois, Arizona. You got Texas, which is big on there, Kentucky, Nebraska, Iowa, New Jersey, and then in Canada specifically, I want to talk about this one. It was, again, a three-day commercial vehicle safety alliance operation out of Starconia County in Alberta. I am so happy I said that correctly. Resulted in 77 commercial vehicles being placed out of service. They examined 192 vehicles and said 40 % failed inspection. Mike, whenever you went through this and you saw these numbers, I mean, in Saskatchewan, in Virginia, to be exact, uh there was uh 19 taken out and then in ontario you had another uh 37 uh notices with 10 taken out so this was like a worldwide sweep bro this is crazy i almost choked myself dude are you okay yeah i got my my headphone wire caught my shoe listen we're gonna we're gonna flag you here in a minute i was I was frantically looking up what a score was.

30:50Do you know what a score is?

30:52Malcolm Harris: I don't. I don't, to be honest. I don't. Is it a group? It's 20. It's 20. Oh, so a score is 20. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to make sure you're right in, like, scores. I want to make sure we were correct. And we are. It's scores or dozens. I mean, we could dozens or scores or whatever. But, yeah. So, yeah. I mean, it's interesting. It's an interesting recap of a bunch of completely unrelated roadside checks that weren't blitzes. Yeah. And out of counting a bunch of stuff that was random because there's a bunch more if you do it. There's one in Arizona that wasn't counted. But it's interesting.

31:35It is, I mean, it basically means if you go down into the rates of things that are going there, English proficiency was like only 2 % of the inspections. That's a great point. That's a great point. Right? And the baselines are pretty flat. It didn't show any super increase of anything as far as put out of service. They're pretty much the same. About 14 % of the drivers were sidelined and under 5 % of the vehicles, which would say it's more about hitting drivers than it is vehicles, which, you know, hey, in my mind, that goes bing, bing, bing, political, you know, targeting safety as far as CDL, mills, et cetera, that type of stuff seems to still be the focus, right?

32:32Yeah, I couldn't think of more. They're not looking at brakes. They're looking at drivers. it was what it seems to be because that that percentage out of service rates about the same but why is changing it's more drivers than it is the vehicles itself right i agree um which is in those are interesting the 350 is like ho-hum okay what are you talking about in three days during international road check 10 350 were taken out in three days so if you're gonna you know you could play, you know, lies, damn lies, and statistics and go, look, over three weeks, only 350. And it was 10 ,350 just in three days.

33:09Look at how much more safe drivers are. You know what I'm saying? You could play all kinds of games with this.

33:15Malcolm Harris: So you're saying there's some distorting of the numbers and the data surrounding it? No, no, no. I don't. No, no, no. I'm not saying there's intentional distorting. What I'm saying is the 350 is not the interesting part of this to me. It's like, okay, that's like a normal hour and a half, you know, when you're talking about three days and you got 10 ,000, if you really did look hard, right? It is the percent changes that's interesting to me as to what they're looking at and where the problems are. Absolutely. Well, listen, that was your headlines roundup. A busy day leading off again with some breaking news, talking CH, acquiring RXO.

33:52Malcolm Harris: You can have a full detailed breakdown of all the articles that we talked about today on FreightWaves.com. And of course, make sure you tune in to Freight Waves today, Julie Vandekamp, as well as Craig Fuller for a full breakdown of those articles. And you'll see, I'm sure, some of those in the morning minute as well. But now it's time to talk about what you guys have been waiting on. Let's talk some pee. All right. Let's talk pee dispose with the founder and CEO of pee dispose. He's got the best haircut in freight. He's looking good this morning, looking jolly, looking dapper. i'm bringing now to you mr mark rylan mark you are officially on with the truck what's happening brother how are you doing good how about yourself thank you for having me on today hey thank you so much for being here man we're really excited to speak with you i've been uh excited for this one and i think it's going to be fantastic and uh you know how the show works mark is that claude is our best friend we use claude for a lot of stuff and we make it we make it ours We use Claude better than anybody, I think, in the world.

34:55Malcolm Harris: So I'm going to let Michael Vincent take this. I'm going to take a sip of water, and I'm going to try and not laugh because I saw the description of what he came up with. This is nuts. Oh, God. No, you're not going to have to laugh about this. This one is a true look, dude. Cody, bring up the picture, bro. This is where I go back. Nice. That might actually be a real picture. And this one here, usually I go for, you know, let's find something funny. Let's find us in here. But what I found in your background was thank you for your service, my friend. Two tours of duty. You're welcome. Appreciate it, my friend.

35:30Absolutely. You're welcome. Thank you. I love it, though. That's a great shot. I'm looking a little more buff in that one. You might. But I do have to ask you this question right off the bat. When you, like, go to a conference and you're shaking somebody's hand and they say, so what do you do? And you explain it to them. Did they immediately let go of your hand and use like hand sanitizer? You know, I haven't had that yet. That's a great question. And Malcolm was actually asking, do I bring the bottle? Did I bring the bottle? Yes, I brought the bottle. It's a great conversation because nobody expects it.

36:08Did you invent the stadium buddy back in the day? Was that you too? No, no. I personally wish I invented the traffic barrels and traffic cones because there's millions of them everywhere. But, hey, I'm here.

36:20Malcolm Harris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you, brother. You know, we got a lot of questions. And, Mark, you got a lot of answers. So I just want to just crack open the seal and go, all right, you were an over-the-road truck driver. You saw what I did there. You were an over-the-road truck driver. You mean this seal? That seal right there. Look at that, man. We brought the juice with us. Nah, that's something else. Don't drink that, y 'all. Don't drink that. Don't drink that. No, it's not. No, I'm playing. That's apple juice right there. Come on now. Yes, it is. You should have just taken a swig and let Malcolm lose.

36:58Malcolm Harris: That would have been crazy. I don't know what I would have did. No. No. Mark, why did you start this? What got into you to be like, yo, this is an issue. I want to know everything for our listeners and viewers. Great question. You know, the biggest thing is, as a former driver myself, I've been in the industry for about 18 years. And as a driver, I was out on the road. And whenever I stopped somewhere, whether it be a truck stop, rest area, staging area at a company, I realized people are dropping bottles everywhere or dumping them. And that, to me, yeah, it was just, it was terrible. And I realized that, you know what, we got to do better.

37:38And it was not a good sign when you go to a place. and you're in the middle of Texas or Oklahoma in the middle of summer, and it is, you smell it. You smell it right away. And then let alone guys are doing pre-trips and they're dumping bottles in the back of their trailers, behind their trailers and whatnot. I realize it doesn't bode well for us. It doesn't show that we're good stewards. And I said to myself, there's got to be a better way. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There definitely has to be a better way, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, well, I mean, because your mind starts thinking, well, if we just let them use bathrooms, that would work.

38:19But that's not necessarily the issue, is it? I mean, that is an issue. I'm not saying that it's not an issue. But this issue is I got to make money because this is the way we've set up this crazy business, which maybe we can argue that all day long, whether that's correct or not. But it causes you to have to run down the road like you're in a fraternity trying to do 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes without breaking the seal, right? I'm sure Malcolm has done that once or twice. By your smile, I think you know what I'm talking about, right? I think it relates to not just the transportation side.

38:55I mean, everybody I talk to, this bottle I bring to meetings I've had with other people. And I always ask them, raise your hand. Have you ever been on a road trip? And some people say yes and say, have you used this? And when they say yes, they go, their hands gently, quietly come up. But I realize it's not just truck drivers and parcel delivery folks. It's the everyday backpacker traveler that realizes they have no place to resolve this problem. And truck drivers, I don't know about you guys. In my time, I've never seen a truck driver carrying their bottle of pee across a truck stop or anywhere I've been at.

39:32And I wouldn't do it. I've never done it. So, yeah, no, I've never. This is I think Lloyd Christmas could use this product. Actually.

39:41Malcolm Harris: So for for somebody the first time and they're saying you're talking about P dispose in plain terms, what is P dispose? What is the concept of this? The concept is quite simple. It is an infrastructure. So basically, you can go online and buy Amazon bottles. You can use your old Gatorade bottles that you have in your truck and you're driving. But the point is we're giving you the whole infrastructure. And what does that mean? Well, basically what that means is now we're giving you the mechanism and means to go to a station, basically right near the fuel island or wherever we want to place one, utilize the bottle.

40:20But the bottle we're going to provide and create is going to be the ID that you're going to use. And you're going to be able to basically dispose of your own liquid waste discreetly, right, with dignity and quickly so you can get back on the road, do your service, and have the same bottle reused so it's not being dumped on the side of the road or behind your truck or dumped out. So the whole concept is that, one, you can use the product and use a system, which is infrastructure. So it's basically a no touch and go, and you get the job done. And then on top of that, the whole back end of it is that we'll have a mobile app associated with it where, guess what?

41:02What if we tie in points and tie in rewards for the vendor that utilizes it? So if it's quick trip, pilot, love, whoever, hey, if you get fuel points for filling up your car and vehicle, right, for diesel and whatnot, why won't you not be able to get points back for doing something good, a positive behavior? And so this is a whole infrastructure environment that I'm looking to create. Wow.

41:28Malcolm Harris: I wish we had like 40 minutes. Oh, my God. This is crazy. We can talk to you in 40 minutes. I don't care. I love it. I mean, yeah. I mean, this is something that's a real solution. It's kind of one of those sophomoric type of, I mean, it's ripe with sophomoric humor. But it is a serious issue, and it's a great thing to solve. Now, you said it's a reusable bottle. I mean, how is this system, is this in play right now, or is this something you're developing to get out into the market? And how does that interaction work? I assume I get a bottle. It's identified so it knows it's my account at least, right?

42:10Because you're going to tie rewards and stuff like that for utilizing. So how does that interaction? I get, okay, I get a bottle. What happens now that it's filled? Well, our intended goal is it's not developed just yet. We are in progress right now. So the intended purpose is you gain a bottle. You can link it to your app. This will be RFID or whatever mechanisms we have. link it to your app. Your app doesn't even have to be on when you use this. Then you go to a station, right? You go to fill up, for example, the fuel island, right? You fill it up. You take two steps, grab your bottle that's sitting on the floorboard, walk over to the station, put it on the station.

42:51The station will automatically read it and then obviously extract the fluids out, sanitize it right afterwards, and then extract the remaining fluid out again. So now you get the bottle back. That's the incentive. So you're not dumping and wasting a bottle because what's the point of not doing this if you're just going to throw the bottle away? We want you to have the bottle back. So now it employs reusability. And then now, based upon how much volume you've accrued, you can actually earn the rewards points linked to the store that is basically stationed at. And again, it's going to reinforce that behavior.

43:27and at the end of the day, it's going to give that driver and the company the driver works for, whether it be an owner-operator or the company driver, the opportunity to say, hey, we're doing something good here and we're quick and easy and we're out the door and we're back on the road again.

43:43Malcolm Harris: Mark, my favorite part about the story is, I mean, you're not working just by yourself. I mean, across Wisconsin universities, you got partnerships and you have, what, about 33 or so students that you're working with to bring Peedisposed to life. How did this partnership come together? And then also, what are their contributions to this cause? Because this is pretty substantial, brother. It really is. Yeah, we are creating. This came about because I've had associates I know that say, hey, reach out to university systems. They're smart kids. They're intelligent. They are bright. And this is an interesting concept.

44:21that we have UWM, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. And the idea is that we're tying in all these senior capstone projects together. And the exciting part is that these students are not just doing a capstone senior project for a semester and done. Now they're going to work together through the very end through spring of 2027, to which we're going to actually have them build up the entire prototype system. And we have we just recently just have the environmental professors come on board and say, hey, we will we see the opportunity here because you are now closing the loop on the recycling aspect of bottles.

45:02And we want to see how we can prevent 150 metric tons of plastic going in or into our ecosystems every year and a million gallons of urine and nitrogen getting dumped. So we want to basically incorporate that. And they're excited because now they're working on a real world problem. It's not just a little project. Now we're actually tying in mechanical, electrical, software engineering in the AI world as well. And then obviously getting the actual structure built. So it's a really exciting process to watch their eyes light up and see how creative they can be. It's really, really interesting. So the collection, I mean, it really, well, the issue is really interesting because is there a change in the classification of the waste when you do it in this manner?

45:52I mean, like you go to a flying J, you go into the restroom, it's just, it's sewage, right? But if you collect it and put it in a container, does it now become bio waste or does it change the classification in some way? doesn't it? Yeah, it could be, but basically it generally is still waste. We're going to have five different variations of this model of the station. So we're going to have one that's going to be a standalone station. We're going to have one that's going to be inside. So if you do, if we do give you the bags and the bottles, which will be darkened, you can go in, you can discreetly dispose of it in the restroom area.

46:27We also have larger units for festivals and other types of forward areas that are outside for the mobile workforce in that fashion. But it is waste. But here's the fun thing is the systems will verify that it's urine, but it's not going to drug test it. It's not going to do anything except verify what it is. And then after that, it can be dumped in the system. But some of the proposals that I've had brought to me was saying, what if we use this for a circular economy? Meaning, what if we can utilize this for process fertilizer and other byproducts. So we're now we're doing another level of returning this to the customers.

47:04So, and to our economy. So again, it's exciting and I think it has great potential.

47:10Malcolm Harris: Well, for one, we cannot wait to have you back on the show to talk about this. I want to ask this final question before we get out of here. I mean, you've got two technology patents. You've got these engineering teams at these universities. Of course, you've got this 2027 pilot. You've got so much that you discussed today. What is the end goal for this, Mark? Because it seems that there's a lot of passion surrounding P Dispose from you, but it seems like it's coming from a place of personal investment, unless I'm reading this wrong. Yeah. No, you are reading it correctly. As a driver, I basically came out and said, you know, I got tired of seeing it.

47:47I think we're better. Our drivers are better. Our communities, our owner operators are better people. And where I see this is literally if you go anywhere where a truck is parked a staging area a trucking company themselves after they get done with their their day and their week and they're ready to do the 34-hour reset or at every truck stop and rest area if you have a place where you park your truck you want to have a place where you can actually get rid of the contents of your inside the truck that's in bottles strewn about or flow sitting wherever uh it just it just means we're better we're more accountable.

48:22And I think the biggest thing is the trucking community is more about truck sustainability, right? We see EV trucks and all those things, but I'm looking about, what about driver sustainability? And that's where I'm looking at saying we as drivers had to be sustainable and we can do it, but we can, we can do it in a way that's gets rewards and does something positive, not just talking about it.

48:43Malcolm Harris: For sure. For sure. Where can we learn more information about P-Dispose and what you and the fantastic team of students out in Wisconsin are doing right now? Certainly. You can visit us at pdispose.com where we have a lot of information. There's also an opportunity if you are a driver or a fleet that want to take part in the pilot or want to get signed on the waiting list to when the products come out. We are forecasting by this time into June or July of next year that we'll have everything moving and live to acquire product and be part of the pilot. You can go on there and actually get news about it, get information about our fleets, and sign on for the waiting list that we have.

49:24Malcolm Harris: Mark Ryland, founder and CEO of P Dispose. Mark, keep up the great fight. You're doing amazing and looking forward to having you back on the show here in 2027 to talk a little bit more about P Dispose and what you guys are doing. I'll bring the bottle back next time. Bring the bottle, bring the heat. I appreciate it, Mark. Love it. Oh, man. Thanks, brother. Fantastic stuff. Fantastic stuff. It's been a fantastic show. And Mr. Michael Vincent, his boy is going to be – It's done. Your boy is going to be on the show on Wednesday, though, so we're going to have to really extend this because we got Tristan Bordalo.

49:56Malcolm Harris: He is going to be on the show this upcoming Wednesday. Tristan is fantastic. We got a lot to talk about with Tristan, man. Been doing some research. I got to come ready. That's it for us. Another Monday in the books. Like, subscribe, do all the things. You know how we end it. Peace and love. And love. See you next day.

50:43We'll be right back.