Jared Flinn:
You're listening to the B Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything bold freight trucking. Hey, guys. Jared Flynn with the Bulk Loads podcast. Got Tyler with me.
Tyler:
What's going on?
Jared Flinn:
You've been traveling, man.
Tyler:
Yep, yep. We had a great week at the Nebraska Ag Expo. We took a bunch of guys up there and had a really good experience. I'll have Garrett throw up some pictures, but we got to meet a couple clients out there and take a couple out to dinner and just really visit with some of our guys. And it was a really cool experience. Got to walk around the Ag Expo to see all the equipment. That's always a fun time. Everybody likes doing that.
Tyler:
But we also talked to a lot of farmers and was seeing, you know, how they were doing, and it was a really good show. We had a show truck in our booth this year.
Jared Flinn:
You gotta mention this show truck and throw some pictures up to show this thing.
Tyler:
But yeah, Jason and Brad Hommes, they're really good guys. Yeah, they let us put it in there. 2023, 389. I mean, it's sharp. I mean, everybody was in awe whenever they found out it works every day. Pulling a belt trailer. And they did a really lot of custom stuff to this truck. And it was really fun explaining that to people whenever they walked up and they were trying to see the truck.
Jared Flinn:
And so what did people find most fascinating about the truck? What did people talk about more than anything when looking at the truck?
Tyler:
Well, there were a number of things. I mean, the classic look, the classic paint job. So I mean, whenever you said it's a 2023 model. 2023. But whenever you're asking these guys, like, what year they thought it was, you're getting, you know, 97, 98. And so they were just in shock. You know, it was almost brand new truck, 45,000 miles on it. But there was a lot of other cool little stuff kind of did to the truck.
Tyler:
So one of the things was it's not deleted or anything like that. So it has def, but nobody could find the def tank on it.
Jared Flinn:
Oh, yeah, I've seen that where they hide them.
Tyler:
They hide it under the saddle strap. And that was another cool talking point that people were like, man, that's genius. I love that.
Jared Flinn:
So it still kind of keeps that.
Tyler:
Old school look, classic look. They haven't done a whole lot on the inside, but I mean, it's super clean, all digital dash. And it's really cool.
Jared Flinn:
Does he show that truck?
Tyler:
I don't think they have.
Jared Flinn:
Well, they were at Matt's last year, right?
Tyler:
Yep. They have. I mean, the Hummus trucking guys, they have multiple trucks. They show that we are actually talking at this next year at Matts. They're going to be there with another brand new truck that's getting painted right now. So they love that stuff. And I believe one of the trucks placed second last year. So they do a good job with it.
Jared Flinn:
I remember talking to their dad and I think he's passed away, Dan. Way back in my Bartlett days. But I'd call on Dan and always kind guy. And that's when we were moving. You know, we'd move some grain out of that northeast Kansas into Atchison or St. Joe or Kansas City. But his dad was very nice. Never really got to talk to Brad or Jason that much.
Jared Flinn:
But now they've taken the reins of the business. Looks like they've multiplied it. So, man, kudos to you. Thank you so much for also having the truck up there in the booth. Allowing that. That was a man. A showstopper. Allowed us to just get more traffic to the booth, talk to farmers and some of our clients.
Tyler:
So, yeah, another thing we did at the expo is gather all this content. That's what we were just talking is, you know, we had Joe there going around and we were doing a Hopper trailer, Battle Wars. And if you haven't checked that out, go on our YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, wherever and see these videos. They're. They're going viral on TikTok right now.
Jared Flinn:
I've never seen anybody do that. That was genius. It was thought of that. But like it's the battle of the hopper trader. It's like people are always asking what to get or what's what. Man. He went and did these quick little vids. I mean, totally consumable.
Tyler:
Yep.
Jared Flinn:
But went around and kind of showed the differences. So. Yeah, that was awesome.
Tyler:
Yeah. So we got another one coming out today, I believe were shooting this and then we also have another video that'll come out that's all about the show truck that we had in our booth. So they had. He had Jason and Brad get up there, walk around the truck and talk about. Talk everything about that truck, which I'm super excited.
Jared Flinn:
I keep hearing over and over this week. I've heard it several times where people talk about how much they love the channel and the content that Joe. Well, we're all producing, but that Joe's putting out there. So, yeah, make sure. I always say this at the end of the show, but make sure and subscribe. So anyways, we better get going here. Enough about that truck. Let's talk about the featured truck today.
Tyler:
Truck. Truck. Today's truck feature we have Jeremy Wendling out of Manchester, Iowa. He's been a member with us since 2023 and it looks like he's got, he took that picture in a cave in Iowa somewhere. It looks, it's sharp track. I always love the purple too.
Jared Flinn:
People don't realize how much material and product, especially bulk material, gets stored down caves. I know there's a lot of people go up in Kansas City, the caves up there where there's a lot of ddg, a lot of it gets transloaded, it looks like in this picture. And I didn't know Iowa had caves. Well, right down here in Springfield.
Caleb Kindle:
Huge caves.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. So yeah, that's a big part that you don't realize how many truck drivers and how many specifically of our guys that are going in and out of caves.
Tyler:
That's a video idea that we should do is just go and see.
Jared Flinn:
I just come up with these. I was just telling about this other one. So cool. Well, yeah, thank you for sending that in. If you would like your truck featured like we do every week, just send it to podcast, bulk loads.com or anywhere that you can get connected with us. We will be honored to show that on there. Real quick while we're speaking of that, calendars are out. There's a link below.
Jared Flinn:
Those are free of charge. We send those out every year, no cost whatsoever. There's a sign up form down in the link. So if you want, just fill out the form real quick and we'll pop you a calendar free of charge. That way you got it before the new year and you can start off fresh with a nice bulk loads calendar.
Tyler:
Yep. Awesome.
Jared Flinn:
Yep. Cool. Well, we're going to go into the podcast. We'll talk a little bit more about some other things on the outro here. But before the end of the year I wanted to bring our bulk TMS guys back in. Awesome. Caleb, we've talked about bulk TMS before. Some of you know that we have it.
Jared Flinn:
A lot of you guys are users of it, but some may not be. We have been working day in, day out improving this system and the one reason I wanted to get these guys in here, number one, just to let you know where we're at with this, the development on that are now on year five of development and man, we are super proud of this system. Number two, we also know a lot of people still aren't using a system at all. And again, whether you use Bulk TMS or another system. We know that using a TMS is one of the most valuable things you can do from an efficiency standpoint and profitability standpoint with your business. So make sure if you are not using a system out there, talk to us. If our system's not compatible, we can refer you to other ones. But Caleb and Austin are going to talk about a little bit what they've been doing kind of this last year reflection.
Jared Flinn:
But I want to get you guys started off right for 2025. So if you haven't looked at a TMS system, reach out to us. Links are down below. We would love to talk to you again. It's not about Sal selling you on bulk tms, but making sure that you are profitable in efficiency. There are so many manual processes done in trucking. A lot of those can be driven out. And I do know this trucking, it's all about an efficiency game.
Jared Flinn:
Everybody's on an equal playing field. It's about the guys that can be extremely efficient are the guys that become more profitable and keep moving forward. And we want you to be there.
Tyler:
Yeah, we know there's a lot of pain points with some of this software and integrating it into your team and everything. And it might be comfortable carrying around a clipboard or whatever and writing all your dispatches and keeping track of it that way. But we want you to take a look at this software and Austin and Caleb will kind of dive in that today of all their implementation process onboarding and how actually simple it is to get set up and get started.
Jared Flinn:
And this isn't a knock for those people that are old school. We love that. But I care more deeply about our people to be profitable and sustaining. And we know that there are tools out there to be more efficiency. We are in this digital revolution and we want people to be maximizing that benefit, growing your business, growing your profits, more time at home. This product can do it. So with that said, here is my conversation with my colleagues Kale Kendall and Austin Holt with bulk tms. Caleb and Austin, thanks for coming in.
Austin Holt:
Thanks for having us.
Jared Flinn:
I mean, you just come across the hallway.
Caleb Kindle:
We had a long journey to get here.
Jared Flinn:
Well, I feel kind of bad because we've given bulk insurance a lot of love, probably Smart Freight, but it's been a while since we've had you all back on the podcast and talking about bulk tms and we've had a great, exciting year. You guys have been on the road a lot, visiting clients all across the US getting on boards. So wanted to bring you back in. Since it's been a while and the podcast keeps growing, I want to kind of talk about the beginning just so people know what bulk TMS is. And we'll talk about kind of where we are now, really, four years later into starting bulk tms. So just to kick it off, Caleb, you were one of the first ones when we launched bulk TMS back in 2019. But talk about why we started this.
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah. And for the kind of the audience that don't know me again, I'm Caleb Kendall. I'm the director of our TMS platform. And really kind of the idea was when being on the load board, you hear a lot of feedback of what other people are struggling with or how you can be better. And that's really what came into this idea of designing a tms, which people don't know what TMS means. It's transportation management system. And so many of our users and so many people that I knew of were just using spreadsheets. They're using the old pen and paper method for dispatching and sending out info to drivers.
Caleb Kindle:
And the idea is, how do we make this process a lot more streamlined? How do we make it to where you guys are spending less time having to write things down, less time having to modify your spreadsheet, less time having a text drivers out, less time doing invoicing and bundle all that into one system to really streamline that process? Because just with technology as more of advances, as more of your competition in the trucking world advances as well too, how do we give you the technology to give you an edge in that marketplace?
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. And I think we witnessed in bulk loads, and we're proud to say that companies that started on our platform, not all, but a lot of them, have grown significantly. They're not just one owner operator, they're not running just a couple trucks, but now they're running five to 10 trucks. And as you scale up, you got to figure out processes to simplify that. You can't be doing the pen and paper process. You can, but you're going to get left in the dark. Yeah.
Caleb Kindle:
And you could have maybe done it with six trucks, but now that you're at 10 trucks or 12 trucks, that's a whole different ballgame to work with and keep track of. So that's where it has helped out a lot of people.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. Austin. Talk about as you've started, because it was just a year after counting Caleb, we kind of tasked him to start this and branch this out, you kind of came on board. But talk about what that process has been like, working with these clients. What's been really interesting to see.
Austin Holt:
Yeah, I'd say some of the biggest stuff because when I came on, we had just released some of the invoicing features for receivables and that was something we kind of knew from the the get go that was going to be necessary because that was the biggest time coster of a lot of these companies. So really going in to each business. And that's what we've learned too. Every business runs a little bit differently. Your five truck operation is going to run different than my five truck operation on the back end. So really going in and seeing what those processes look like in unique situations, whether you're running, you know, hoppers or indumps or walking floors, whatever your need is, it's been really interesting to see how people handle those in different ways. And kind of coming in and saying how can we standardize that and really how open people have been to that has been really neat to see.
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah, it's been helping out a lot too. Just because when we do travel, you mentioned us traveling, but we get to be over the road, we get to see these processes and firsthand and it kind of is really awesome. Part of this job is to be real intimate with these customers and really see these processes and how can we be 10% better at this?
Jared Flinn:
It makes sense though, when you think about everything you do from start to finish, like for carriers and companies, it's about making money and getting paid, which requires invoicing. So how do you simplify and make that process your process easier?
Austin Holt:
Yeah, for sure. Whether you're billing the customer direct using a factoring company. And we always talk about this in the office and you talk about all the time, but cash flow is king. Well, what does cash flow really mean? If you're waiting a week to get that ticket from the driver and then it's taking you the weekend to get it invoiced out. Even if you're using a factoring company, you're still seven days out from getting paid next day on it. So how can you actually get that ticket in hand that day, get it processed for invoicing? At that point in time, you're getting your cash flow sped up by seven days on average just by having a system in place where you can get those tickets, process all of it. So that's been a huge help to a lot of our customers as well. Because that seven day difference is huge.
Jared Flinn:
Talk about that Austin, how we've been able to do that for People that don't know our process and how TMS works. But in simple terms, how are we making that process?
Austin Holt:
Yeah, so the dispatch is generated, the driver still gets a text and email like they normally would, and then they get a bulk loads notification. Compared to that driver holding onto that ticket until the end of the week when he's back at the yard or mailing it in via mail, the driver can actually just grab their phone, snap a picture of the image and it goes back to your dispatch board and it's already like in an invoicing queue to process. So compared to waiting that time that it normally takes you to get the document, you're literally getting it back as soon as the load's delivered. So at that point you can get your hands on it, process it, get it invoiced, and you can bundle it once a day. That's what a lot of our customers do now. They were on like a weekly invoicing schedule. They just go through at the end of the day process. They're getting, you know, checks cut to them every day.
Austin Holt:
Now, compared to once a week, I've.
Jared Flinn:
Heard, and this was a while back and I've used the slide a lot, but there was one customer that it was taking 30 something hours a week in invoicing. And once they implemented bulk team S, it brought it down to.
Austin Holt:
Was it usually three or four? Yeah, yeah, half a day. And we, we have multiple uses now that we have, you know, more customers on where it's like, hey, this used to take me and my wife all weekend. Now this, I can just process it first thing Monday morning and I'm done with it for the week. And then we do both ends of it. So traditionally what most groups do, today is Monday's my, my day where I'm going to do processing my receivables and billing my customers. Then Tuesday I'm going to do my payroll for the drivers. We just have all that all combined now where it's in one place. So really you're going to cut it in half just by doing that process?
Jared Flinn:
Playing devil's advocate here. You know, when people hear this, there's always that cringe of changing something, doing something different. If it's not broke, not fix it. What's been your experience with that? Because again, this is something you're asking someone for them to trust our system to perform their functions, to make their business better. And that's not an easy task because it's one thing for. I always said it's a load board. Yeah. If load Board doesn't work.
Jared Flinn:
I mean, it's not. I mean, it's not sacrificing your business, but bulk team s, you're putting your book of business, your livelihood invested in the system. It better work.
Austin Holt:
Yeah, I think probably the biggest thing, you have people that are on the opposite side of the spectrum. You have people that are open and willing, saying, hey, man, I need help, like, I'm overwhelmed. And then you have some that probably know they're there, but they're super hesitant. And, and really when you go in and sit down, and that's why we try to visit everybody we meet with, because we want to come in and see how you're doing it. When you really sit down and have that conversation and say, hey, this is where you're gonna save the time. This is where you're gonna save the money. And just say, hey, if you're on 10 trucks, start with one. Like, let's just test it out, see how one truck works.
Austin Holt:
And then you kind of get a feel for it. Cause we've had groups try to start with, you know, hey, I run 15 trucks, I wanna run one or two through the system. Usually at the end of the day. By the end of the week, all the other drivers are already calling them, like, hey, can I go ahead and just upload my tickets to you? Can I go ahead and just do it this way, then go and drop them off in the mail? Or having to swing 15 miles out of the way every week to go by the shop? Yeah, so there's, there's a lot of little things, but like you said, there's a lot of hesitancy to change. And I think a lot of the hesitancies to change are just there's complexities in the billing process in our side of the industry. I think it's just giving that up, saying, okay, this system can probably actually begin to understand the pains that I go through on a week to week. That's really why we've tried to focus it on the bulk sector. I'd say there's more hesitancy in the bulk sector than the general freight space just because of the complexities that we run into with billing.
Jared Flinn:
Well, I think about the onboarding process because this isn't something you just flip the switch and you're off to the races. I mean, there's a process to get trained up on this. But like myself and every other business owner out there, I'm busy. Like, I can't focus for four hours on one thing. I know it's probably important, but like I don't have time to do that. What would you say to that person out there?
Caleb Kindle:
I think a big piece of this as well too is that if you're really thinking you're going to spend four hours every day a week for five days, the system isn't really that complicated. When building the system out, we really had this idea and this vision of we don't want to make this some complicated over situation that it's going to be extremely hard to implement. So typically within our implementation process, after getting set up, we schedule a 30 minute to 45 minute call to walk through this. We get some information to help you import data into the system so you're not having to spend however many hours uploading your customers and everything into it. And then after that let you utilize it for a period of time, schedule another call and then you can call in at any given time with any questions. You have all of our supports in house so you can always get a hold of us and kind of figure out where that issue is or where that pain point is that we can help get solved.
Jared Flinn:
So yeah, I want to just plug on. Plug Samantha. Yeah, she came on this past year. Has it been. Yeah, it was like earlier this year, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's just been phenomenal. I think, you know, she came from a larger co op and worked with truckers and I think she's been a blessing from our back. And just that voice or that person that people can reach out to and they have trouble navigating or using any part of the system.
Austin Holt:
Yeah, most definitely.
Caleb Kindle:
And some people will look at other systems that were designed like in the 90s or early 2000s and yeah, like sometimes you hear about the implementation process taking three to six months before it's all good to go. I promise you that will not be the case for tms.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, that's awesome. Talk about. Cause really people listen to this and there's, you know this. In our industry we got all different operations. There's one truck, two trucks, 10 trucks, 50 trucks, broker, carrier, carrier, shipper. I mean all the, I mean you can just go through this. There's so many different dynamics. There's not just one customer out there that's the same how who is bulk TMS for and who's it not, I guess is the big question.
Jared Flinn:
And when does somebody realize like, I think this is a system we can use versus this is a system that we're probably not ready for or maybe it's just not. We're not capable of this, it's. It's this system. We're better off with a different system because I don't want to say that this is a. This is for everyone. I'd be lying for our audience to say that this is for everyone.
Austin Holt:
No, for sure, yeah. It fits specific operations with specific needs. And I would say when we kind of started building it out, thinking about what we wanted it to look like, we wanted to keep that same ecosystem feel as bulk loads to where it was fully encompassing for anybody that could be involved. Now, there's going to be limitations of that based on your operation, but at the end of the day, we wanted it to be this flow of information because at the end of the day, shipper needs that document, broker that's involved needs that document invoicing. Accounting person for the truck company needs that document. So we try to keep that ecosystem clean enough and smooth enough to where everybody could utilize it to some extent. Now, a carrier will utilize it in a completely different fashion than a shipper. The functionality is a little bit different, but the principles the same.
Austin Holt:
That you're still going to be getting that same use out of it. As far as getting documents processing things of that nature.
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah, I think that's just a big thing. It's like for people who need this, it's asking yourself this question, how much time am I spending on invoicing? Is there a better way to be doing this? What does it look like to reach out to drivers or different carriers that we have? If you're on the shipper end of things, do you think there should be a better way to streamline that process? I think those are a lot of the kind of simple questions you can ask yourself if you need a system like this. Because if you're struggling with any of those assets, this is something I can help out.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. It's interesting sometimes when you go to. Not to be judgmental on anybody's operation, but you see the time they're taking or spending on documentation or invoicing, and you think to yourself, man, if you could cut that out or save that many hours, how much money and time that saves over the course of the year. I'm not plugging it just towards bulk invest, but just thinking outside of the box of like, hey, through my whole business, what are the things that I can streamline to create efficiencies? And again, we know this. Every business is. It's about efficiency. But one thing I have learned more than anything this year in trucking is it's an efficiency ballgame because you're competing against everybody else who can drive. I mean, more efficiency out of the supply chain, for sure.
Austin Holt:
Yeah. And with us being on the road and seeing so many different operations of different shapes and sizes, there's been many instances where we walked in and said, hey, what you're doing is working. Like, it might not make sense to switch right now. And the spreadsheets that some people build are pretty extravagant, too, that they've been building out for 20 years. That's where we really want to step in and say, because we can break pieces off, too. So there's some groups that might just utilize the app to get a document back. There's some people that might use it front end to back end, full scale. That's really what we wanted to try to do, is build a compartmental system where you could take the pieces that you needed to solve your pain points.
Austin Holt:
Because at the end of the day, we don't want to come in and say, hey, you've been doing this for 20 years. Let's just flip it upside down and start fresh in here. We try to plug where we can, and that helps a lot.
Jared Flinn:
We talk about the carrier side a lot, but we have a fair amount of shippers now that we've onboarded into bulk tms. But talk about how they use it and maybe even some specific examples of some of our customers use it, because I think that's where we've seen an incredible amount of efficiency done, too, versus the old way.
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah. I think the biggest things we'll see within our system and just talk about some features that we have. Our system is pretty unique in the idea that we have a contracts piece built into the program as well, where other than just having regular loads, like if you were a carrier, you can actually upload, like your contracts of 100,000 bushels or 2,000 tons. You can upload that into the program, peel loads off back from that, and dispatch it out. That helps out tremendously because how many loads are in 100,000 bushels? We don't know exactly until we get some of the documentation back of, this guy hauled a thousand bushels. This guy hauled 900 bushels. Being able to add all those up to get to it. There's a mixture of that.
Caleb Kindle:
The ecosystem aspect of things too. Like Austin touched on being able to get these tickets back, Being able to get the communication back that you've been wanting from your carriers of, hey, I'm loading, I'm en route, I'm done with the load, here's my ticket helps these guys out tremendously. Because how many times have you kind of been in the situation with your background in Bartlett of, okay, this contract's coming to an end and I either overbooked it or I underbooked that contract.
Jared Flinn:
Oh, it happened all the time. A lot of times you're just hoping like you were guessing. Right. Because you didn't want to leave stuff there that have to schedule something back. But you know when you got multiple trucks running back and forth. Yeah, it's a guessing game a lot of the times. Yeah.
Caleb Kindle:
So this has really helped people keep organized. And we've heard some of our shipper customers come back to us and say, this thing's probably saved us half a million dollars. Over a million dollars.
Austin Holt:
Oh, wow.
Caleb Kindle:
This efficiency aspect of things of, okay, here's all of our loads we have for the week facilities. Look at how many trucks are going to be coming into your facilities to grab loads. Here's all the data and information that's coming back. Here's all the reroutes that we're going to be running through the system as well. And yeah, it's just been awesome to see Austin.
Jared Flinn:
Can you touch on, I think, in your alluding to it, but the automatic booking piece? Because I think that's something that, that we've really revolutionized. I don't even know if another TMS system has. And maybe we're giving away the house by talking about it on this podcast.
Austin Holt:
But yeah, it really takes like Caleb was alluding to the contracts, and instead of having your email list that you put together trying to find capacity for trucks, you can just break sections of that contract off and shoot out private offers is really what it is. And then through bulk loads or through an email, the carriers can actually accept those private offers. So you can send it out at a flat rate or you can allow for some fluctuation with bidding to an extent. But really it takes that piece out of even, you know, picking up the phone, calling this carrier. He can take a couple or he can't take any. We just put it out where it's a digital offer. They can accept them or decline. They're automatically booked.
Austin Holt:
And then a lot of groups will say, well, I like talking to my carrier still. Well, now you can call them and actually talk to them and catch up. And it can be more personal than, hey, when's this going to be here? Where you at with this? So it really frees up the time for the merchandiser or the dispatcher to really mend and build those relationships compared to just check Calls all the time.
Caleb Kindle:
And give you a lot of the valuable data that you need of okay, it looks like this carrier a is doing 30% of our loads out of this facility. I need to talk to them a little bit more on how this has been working out for them and go from there because you could have an idea that this is my main carrier in the facility. But you can be completely wrong with actually knowing who goes. Who goes to.
Austin Holt:
Yeah. And we've had situations where a load offer will be sent out and within minutes, 100 loads booked. It's like, okay, well maybe we need to step back and kind of analyze our rates a little bit.
Jared Flinn:
I'm glad you touched on that because again, you talk about that efficiency and again, when you're dealing like most co ops and bigger grain companies, thousands, thousands of loads per week, like you have to be efficient. And by going through a list and trying to text or email individual companies can be cumbersome. But man, if you can send that out there, I mean it's a little bit of what bulk loads is. Only this is bulk loads 2.0 because it's given the details out to a private group and let them automatically book it through the site.
Caleb Kindle:
It's like I've always would explain it to customers as like this private offers is like the rifle approach or bulk loads is kind of like the shotgun approach. Yeah, you need both for a lot of different circumstances. But one might be a better fit in circum certain situations.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. One is you're kind of getting it out there because you don't know who that, that capacity that's out there that exists. You're kind of advertising there. The other one is I know who you are and I'm giving this out there for you specifically to bid on. You've been vetted, we've got, yeah, you're.
Austin Holt:
Set up, I have your coi, you filled out our carrier packet and we can just get the ball rolling that much quicker.
Jared Flinn:
What are some other things that we haven't talked about that bulk TMS encompasses that are that our customers, carriers, shippers, brokers really like or really enjoy.
Caleb Kindle:
I think one big piece of it to talk about is the ease of communication because like in the days of using text message or email when sending out a confirmation, you'd want to put as little information on there as possible because you want to get it out and get onto the next thing. Within this system here we can actually have pin drops dropped on where the pickup, where the drop off is, have notes on hours of operation. Different notes that are autosaved for each lane or each load. That saves so much time with just communication with carriers, Especially some of these locations that don't have an active address. They might be a bin out in the middle of the field. You can actually drop a pin directly on that location where Instead of averaging 25, 30 phone calls from carriers, carriers or your drivers want to know where this location's at. We can automate that whole process.
Jared Flinn:
Nice. What other ones? I know there's a lot in that system that we've developed over the past couple years, even this last year, different features.
Austin Holt:
And yeah, we, we did a new project this year too, where essentially it was a use case because we hear this a lot too. It's like I don't dispatch my loads to my drivers. They just know what they're doing every day. So that's really hard to fit into a tms. So what we did was we took the app and a lot of groups use this for like off farm loads. It's like, hey, you're going to be hauling these for the next two weeks. Hauling for this farmer. I don't know how many are going to do a day, so I can't tie a dispatch to that or a load number.
Austin Holt:
So we just have it to where the driver doesn't technically have a dispatch, but every time they complete a load, they upload the scale ticket, upload their weight and submit it. That way you're still kind of building that queue for invoicing. The customer's still getting the data they need in real time. So that one's been really neat too. And that one's super prevalent in the aggregate space. I feel like too off farm and then your aggregates where it's, hey, you're gonna be hauling out of this mine or this field for X amount of days and I don't know how many you're gonna do. It just gives the driver the power to go ahead and get that all to you.
Jared Flinn:
Nice. Where do you see? I mean, it just seems like, man, we're, we're in warp speed now with technology and development. And I think even post Covid, it really revolutionized the digitization of, of the freight process and the booking and all that. But if you look out, you know, in the next couple years, five years, I'm not talking about just bulk tms, but the industry as a whole. You guys, because you guys are visiting with, with hundreds of co ops, thousands of shippers, or excuse me, thousands of trucking companies. You're talking, you're Getting that feedback. Where does this continue to go, this process?
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah, I think a big piece with all of this is just like you said, just the automization of all of this. I feel like this is an industry that's still super reliant on paperwork. It sounds like what the future of this is going to look like is more of the automation of scale systems directly into a system of some sort so we can keep track of these tickets. Kind of like how the van industry has been. Instead of just like grabbing pictures of tickets for a lot of these facilities and a lot of these groups, it's just uploaded into a cloud and the other tickets able to match up for it for bill of lading and proof of delivery. I'd imagine there's going to be a future here the next couple of years where people aren't going to be needing to capture tickets the same way that we're doing today.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, yeah. Somebody was one of our clients. They haul for Costco and they said that they don't have to bill anything. Anything they haul. Costco already knows all the information that they have to pay them and they.
Austin Holt:
Pay them like that day.
Jared Flinn:
That day. And it's ach, yeah. And it's all automated. There's no collecting of documents and bill ladings and all that. Like you said, green can be a little bit different because there is a lot more details that they need off those documents. When you're talking about weights and measures and grades of all that, who owns the product? Who owns the product. But that not saying that can't be done, you know, without the truck drivers involvement.
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah, but at the same time we're just seeing that happen in the van industry and in the reefer industry. And a lot of times if they've done it, it, it'll come to us in a certain period of time our customers are going to want to start seeing that.
Jared Flinn:
Are you all seeing AI yet in these processes?
Austin Holt:
Yeah, for a lot of tickets. And we've incorporated it to an extent, but a lot of groups now have it to where when that ticket's received, it's fed into a system that automatically reads the weights, grades, all that off of the ticket.
Jared Flinn:
Now is that in. Not to go down a rabbit hole here, but there's OCR which is reading the documents.
Austin Holt:
Correct.
Jared Flinn:
Is that a form of AI or is that different than talking about AI reading it?
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah, so that's. It's OCR is kind of what the technology Austin's talking about. And it is AI because the idea is that after it Sees a certain amount of tickets. If a number's fudged up or something's messed up on it, it'll use AI and machine learning to predict what that would be at that point where it can then feed that information to it. Or we've had situations where we were reading this one ticket for a facility down in Missouri and then the same company had a facility in Nebraska. Ticket came through and this AI said hey, are you wanting to read this information off the ticket and automatically put the fields in that we wanted to see? It's like yep, that's exactly what we wanted to see.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. It just seems like the. We're trending more and more of where you're going to see less human involvement whether you like it or not in this process.
Austin Holt:
And even with the dispatching process like you see that to an extent in the general freight world it's like, like I don't. Best example I can think of like C.H. robinson I would assume that they have something where a load comes in, they know the best carrier at the best rate and they just automatically book it. Like I think we're a little bit further away from that in the grain space but I would hate to guess how far away we actually are where there's no human involvement. Carrier is going to get pinged that notification. They've been dispatched and the AI already knows that. They're going to say yes if it fits their needs.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, I think your grain can be a little bit different because of just the. It's different than the general freight. You got more local loads back and forth loads versus I would say CH and some of these bigger brokerages for sure moving long haul coast to coast. You know, really just unique van freight versus a high sided hopper or aluminum in dump or not.
Caleb Kindle:
But these are things we'll see. Other companies and dispatchers, shippers have brought this up to us to see something similar to it or wanting to look forward to the future as well. So just trying to on our ends know what we can do exactly like the big guys. And sometimes hey, we need to make this our own little spin or twist on it as well too to solve the same issue.
Austin Holt:
Yeah. And I think it's kind of just a well known out there but tracking something that's coming in the future as well. It's something we're hearing pretty close. Shippers, we have carriers that are utilizing the TMS calling us. Hey, how can I share my tracking with my shipper? It's. It's really seemed to come in the last six Months really we've heard it more than we have in a long time.
Jared Flinn:
I think what I think about this overall because you can almost get for me a little anxiety thinking about all this stuff coming in the future and almost like probably like our listeners are hearing like maybe I don't want this to change. This is. I kind of like the way I was doing. But there's a certain aspect of it that it, it's gonna happen no matter what whether we like it or not that this change is gonna come because it ultimately is gonna create efficiency.
Austin Holt:
Yeah. And we've built a buffer in the system. Like Caleb was saying earlier, you can mark yourself as loading in route, unloading. We timestamp those events. Some customers are still okay with that. It just takes the driver and really there's some buy in from the driver. It's like if you don't wanna be tracked, just hit these buttons. And that's kind of the mediary between true live tracking and no update at all.
Austin Holt:
So we've had some success with that and, and shippers are completely okay with that still at the current state.
Jared Flinn:
But well just to kind of segue and end here for people listening and they're not ready to buy but they just want to kind of see if this is right for them. What's really the next step on looking into bulk tms?
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah. So I think there's two ways you can kind of go about it. One, you can just reach out to us. Our email is dispatchloads.com you can reach out there, get a hold of, of me or Austin. We can go through the process. We're actually going to have a survey down on the bottom of this video as well too where it'll ask you a few basic questions where you can kind of respond, reply back to and it'll give you a recommendation on what next step should be as well too. So even if you're at that step of I really don't want to talk to anybody just yet. We'll have a little questionnaire down at the bottom.
Caleb Kindle:
You could fill it out. It'll kind of tell you what our recommendations would be.
Austin Holt:
Yeah, yeah. And I would say if you're in the market or you're not in the market. Let's start with if you're not in the market, you probably need to get in the market to an extent. There's options out there. We know that. Look at all the options because we want to help you find the thing that's most efficient for you. And we're going to be Pretty honest with you if we're a fit for that or not. And then we can even give suggestions on who might be a better fit because at the end of the day our heart is helping the carrier, it's helping the shipper.
Austin Holt:
Similar to Smart Freight, we don't do any sort of contract. I know that's something we've believed in from day one. We want to give you the opportunity to get in there and get your feet wet. Then if you want to pull your feet out of the pool and run, you can. But we're going to help you get through that process, give you a little taste of what it's like and be pretty, pretty up and honest with you if it's going to be a fit.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I think that's where people get hung up to when you got to sign a 20 page, they don't even understand document and there's penalties if you don't perform or decide. It's always been in our DNA and heart that we don't push people that way and we don't punish people for lack of their performance or our performance.
Austin Holt:
Yeah, and I will touch on too, we do integrate with QuickBooks on the billing side. So we talked about a lot of the automation. This isn't a replacement to QuickBooks by any means. For some groups it can be, but we integrate with QuickBooks so you can still get your receivables, payables, keep track of it in there. So that's kind of part of the onboarding process too. We connect those two things and then you're pretty much off to the races because you have a lot of that data in QuickBooks books. So we kind of help through that process. Process too.
Austin Holt:
If it's something that you use today, awesome.
Caleb Kindle:
I think that'll see. We'll see that more and more in 2025. You'll probably see it as our marketing team pushes things out. Our partners will do it as well too. But partnerships and integrations are going to be a very big thing that we're going to be working on in 2025. So just keep checking out. We can't really necessarily list out them all just yet, but you'll be seeing them come down the pipeline with different, different advertisements and stuff.
Jared Flinn:
We'll be doing so and you'll see for our listeners that we have verbiage on bulk loads, but they can also go to bulk TMS as well and see kind of our process how it works. And there's going to be links Below here. Yeah, I'll just end this. And we've been talking about this for a while, bringing you guys into the podcast booth and getting this aired, especially before the end of the year. We know at the end of the year, especially at the beginning of the year, people are looking at changes. There's goal setting. How are we going to help help the business? What are we going to do to change, increase profitability and all that. We wanted this to be out there for those people to kind of plant that seed of maybe bulk team s as an option.
Jared Flinn:
Or could it be a good option if you don't have a system out there right now to optimize and really take advantage and see how much this can improve the business?
Austin Holt:
Yeah, you bet. Change is all about timing and switching your system and switching your accounting is the best when you're closing the books for the previous year. Year.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah.
Austin Holt:
So, yeah, if it's something you want to look into, just feel free to reach out to us and we can get the ball rolling as quick as we can. If you're wanting to change stuff for 2025.
Caleb Kindle:
Yeah. Awesome.
Jared Flinn:
Caleb and Austin, man, appreciate you guys. You guys have been hard at it, man. Proud of you guys and what we've done. We've had an awesome year. The hundreds of companies that we've on boarded, we're excited for 2025. So keep after it. Merry Christmas. What surprised me more than anything when I talked to guys still today is the amount I said this in the intro, but the amount of manual processes that are involved and how much labor that cost.
Jared Flinn:
And again, I know people want maybe, you know, they have someone that, oh, well, I've always used so. And so she handles these documents and she gets them together. But like, we know that trucking is such an efficiency game and. And man, I'm proud of bulk TMS and what these guys have been doing and hearing those success stories. They talked about a few of them on there, but really what it's done for our clients. And again, we are still building that system out, just like we do with all of our systems. We're working hard to push out more features on bulk loads. But bulk tms, it's something that I'm super proud of and it's been really cool to see the fruit of that and how it's benefited our community.
Tyler:
Yeah. And I think whenever we started bulk tms and getting companies onboarded, I gained so much respect by seeing how these guys are dispatching now, just because, you know, they got the whole family involved, you know.
Jared Flinn:
Yep.
Tyler:
The wife is helping them do, do all their invoicing and everything on the weekends and everything like that. It's a, it's a very time consuming process and I think that's one of the reasons that we want to develop this out is to give guys their time back to maybe help, help their wife. You know, instead of spending 20 hours a week on invoicing, she only has to spend three, three hours.
Jared Flinn:
I look at it this way, what would you do with an extra $40,000 next year?
Tyler:
Yeah, there's a lot you can do.
Jared Flinn:
Would you take your family on another vacation? Would you do remodel your house? Would you buy more property, another vehicle, roll it into the business? That's what you can do with this, this process. It's saving so much time. But people, it's. Sometimes it's hard to put, put numbers on efficiency. You know, you can look at, you can look at gross numbers and profit numbers, but man, look at the time savings and what that does and how much that buys your time. I know as I've gotten older, especially in my 40s, man, it's all about maximizing my time and with everything going on. So yeah, enough said on that. Links are down below, man.
Jared Flinn:
Start 20, 25 off, right? Getting a TMS system, it's a simple onboarding process. Doesn't. There's not a lot of legwork involved. No contracts either. And we want you to be proud of this, man. So get ahold of our guys and we'll, we'll show you around on it. And if it's a fit, man, we'd be glad to serve you in that realm again. If not, we can help you in other aspects of it.
Jared Flinn:
So we know it's not a tool for everyone, but yeah, if you're a shipping company, brokerage carrier, there are all tools and functionality to help your business. So reach out.
Tyler:
Yeah, you can reach out bulk tms.com or we have a link below that you can click. It's real easy. It'll get you connected to Austin or Caleb or one of the guys in here. But they are also going to be at the conference talking TMS as well. They'll have their own table and kind of station set up to where they can give out demos. We don't want you to wait till the conference. But also if you're just unsure, they will definitely be there to talk to you about it. And speaking on the conference, we just released our agenda so you can finally see exactly what's going to be going down all three days.
Tyler:
You can go to bulkfreightconference.com and you can click the agenda tab. And also while you're there, make sure to get your tickets. We are selling tickets fast and hotel rooms are booking quickly. So we want to make sure that you can get hotel rooms at half price rate and you don't have to worry about where you're staying.
Jared Flinn:
You know, I was down there last week at the conference center and it was a beautiful day and I forgot just how cool it is down there. Like it was neat over there at the White river conference behind Bass Pro because it was connected to Bass Pro. But you're in the middle of Springfield. Like this is down at Branson if you've never been. It's right down the landing. So you're down there's the lake Taney Como, trout fishing down there. There's a Bass Pro right there. But there's all this shopping.
Jared Flinn:
Like you don't have to leave. You can park the car and walk anywhere. And there's so many cool things to do. So just the, the venue itself, where this is going to be, I'm really, really excited. I was a little like, just change is a little bit different. But this one, after I went down there and looked at it again, I'm like, this thing is gonna blow people out of the water. They're gonna be impressed. And yeah, it's gonna be just a great, great memory.
Tyler:
Yeah, we've got a lot of cool stuff going on.
Jared Flinn:
Get signed up for a conference to.
Tyler:
Get your tickets now.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. April 16th through the 18th. You can go to bulk freightconference.com we also have rooms blocked off. Those are going fast. Just this last week I had a lot of people ask. They went on and reserved those. They are at a discounted price. If you go ahead and reserve your room.
Jared Flinn:
The links are on the website. So get your rooms booked, get your tickets bought and we will see you there.
Tyler:
Awesome.
Jared Flinn:
Yep. Anything else before we close out?
Tyler:
I think that's it.
Jared Flinn:
Awesome, man. Well, hey, we're getting close. We're one week away from Christmas, man. We hope your family's doing well. We hope that this has been a prosperous year for your family. We know some that it hasn't and man, we are praying for a great 2025 for you and your family. As always, before we close out, we do have a prayer line or prayer email. It's prayeroloads.com man.
Jared Flinn:
Last week I was reading through some of the new prayers that we got and again, some ones we hear over and Over. It's praying for my family. It's been men and women that financially been in a struggle, maybe business has been down careers, been in the, in the tank. We are praying for you out there. And we don't say that lightly. We know that God answers prayers and God blesses those.
Tyler:
Exactly.
Jared Flinn:
And man, we have. We just petition our prayers to him. So if you do have a prayer, man, be so bold to reach out to us. Prayerocloads.com always say they're confidential. They stay inside here, here. We want to be around and surround you in prayer. So please send that out. And with that said, I'll close this out here.
Jared Flinn:
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for this community and the opportunities that you give us. Lord, we know that you have placed each and every individual listening to this podcast where you want them to be at this specific time in their lives. Lord, I know that many are struggling, many are going through different financial hardships, diseases, Lord, and I just, I lift them up, Lord. I lift them up to you, Lord. I pray for peace with them, Lord, that I pray that they see you through this season, Lord, we know that this is, you know, a season where of reflection, Lord, and just being thankful for you coming to this earth and, Lord, just showing what it's like to, to live the life that you've called us to live. So, Lord, I lift up our community, Lord, as we get close to this Christmas season, Lord, and Lord, we just pray over each and every individual in your heavenly and precious name. Amen.
Jared Flinn:
Thank you as always for listening to the Bulk Loads podcast. If you haven't yet, hit the subscribe button down the left hand corner. That way you don't miss episodes like this. And some of the great podcasts are shooting some of the great content that Joe is producing out there. He's got some really cool videos lined up. I keep begging him to get out quicker, but he is a perfectionist and you can tell by watching those videos how awesome they are. So make sure subscribe send us to somebody else that would find value in this. And as always, we appreciate you and God bless.