How Would You Like to Add $7000 in Revenue Per Truck?

Jared Flinn: You're listening to the Bolt Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything, bolt freight trucking. Hey, guys. Jared Flynn with the bulk loads podcast got taller with me. Tyler Allison: What's going on? Jared Flinn: Hey, I'll let you kick it off with this truck feature. I think you, like, keep picking these blue trucks. Tyler Allison: I do not. Jared Flinn: Who picks the blue truck? Tyler Allison: I'm gonna. This is gear, but, yeah, I'm okay with it. I'll pick up every week. Jared Flinn: Awesome truck. Tyler Allison: Yeah. So this week goes out to Nick Miller out of Hammond, Wisconsin. Nick has been a member with back and transport since 2000. 720 17. So he's been with us for quite a while. Jared Flinn: Yeah, I was gonna say, I remember Nick. He's been with us for a long time. Tyler Allison: Yeah, it's beautiful scenery, too. It's like one of those. It's like one of those pictures you could put on a t shirt or make some kind of cool graphic out of it. Z got that classic Peterbilt pulling that tempty hopper. And just a beautiful combination. Jared Flinn: Speaking of our calendars. Yep, we're gonna be. We're already putting that together. We've had people ask, actually, I think I was on the road and somebody was asking how they get on the calendar. Make sure if you would like to be featured on the 2025 calendar, reach out to. Tyler Allison: Yep. You can send them directly to podcastleoads.com, supports.com. whatever way you have to get ahold of us, you can send them in. Garrett is actually been organizing all of them, getting all the submissions together over the year. We've had people just send them in here and there as they get good pictures. So go ahead and send them in. We want good quality pictures. So if you have a shot of your rig that you think looks good, that you want to submit, go ahead and send it to us. Tyler Allison: We'll take a look at all of them. In the past years, we've gotten hundreds and hundreds of submissions. So we spend a lot of time going through those, and we try to make them, like, fit with the correct months. So, like, January, we try to, you know, pick. Jared Flinn: Yeah. This one is Thomas, right? Tyler Allison: Yes. On our current calendar. Jared Flinn: I've said this before, but, like, in our boys bedroom, every night after we tuck him in and do prayer, I always see the calendar on my way out. Tyler Allison: So you always look at it? Yeah. So, yeah, definitely send them to us. You can send us on social. Social media or email, however you prefer. Jared Flinn: And if Tyler's picking, they'll probably be a lot of blue trucks. Tyler Allison: It's all blue. Jared Flinn: No, it won't so cool. We had winners from last episode. Tyler Allison: Winners. There were actually some really good comments. I don't know if you had the time to take a look at them but last episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, the task was to comment. The biggest takeaway that you got from that episode and last episode was Marcus Sheridan provided a lot of great content but we have the YouTube handles JK 2684 and Travis Smith 1924. You guys won the hats so we are going to get in contact with you. If you see this episode first just simply send us an email podcastleads with your address and we will be in contact with you. We'll let you pick what hat that you want of the new hats and we'll send some out your way. Jared Flinn: Speaking of last episode, the truck that we featured was totally a spoof. It was I nobody caught that. I'm a jokester. Wanted to just see if anybody caught on. We never received one comment. I think some guys internally office they asked like was that Garrett? Was that real? Is that a real guy? So my apologies. I wanted to be silly. I thought it'd be funny, I thought some people would comment on it. Jared Flinn: Maybe we did get some serious looks but if you go back to last week's episode in the very beginning look at that truck and again it was just totally a joke. Tyler Allison: Rusty, totally. Jared Flinn: But I'm sure it's actually somebody's truck and they're probably mad that we featured it so. But anywho so cool, well moving on to the show today we're gonna bring Justin Brevik on. He is with shop Connect view Justin was connected with me through actually an old friend from my high school so John Dewiner and actually John he's a little bit older than me but actually his wife Nicole we were in the same graduating class. My twin brother still he's back home and friends with their family they talk and actually over the last really six, seven months I've got to talk to John more and more. John Dooner owns a huge truck line coastal carriers out of Troy again started and I'm trying to get him on the podcast. I'm sure he's going to be listening to this podcast but I want to bring him on because he started with a freight brokerage out of college I believe but now runs I think they're probably over 100 5200 trucks he's building a big refrigerated warehouse but man they're on the track to be a super large trucking company and I'd love for him to come on and share that store. But anyways, John introduced me to Justin, who runs Shop Connect view, and he said, you got to bring Justin on the show. He goes, I've dealt with hundreds of softwares, maintenance softwares in the past, and there's not one like this one. Jared Flinn: These guys have hit a home run. And he goes, you need to talk to it. So I gave me Justin's information, and I remember I was driving, actually, to the state fair a couple months ago and called up Justin to talk, and within ten minutes, I was convinced. I don't even own a truck. And I was convinced. I was like, I think I need to, like, this sounds, like, really legit. And I'm not saying because he's a good salesman, because he firmly believes in the software out there. And I have never been in the truck maintenance operations part my whole life. Jared Flinn: I've always. I've driven a truck. I've done a little bit of that. You know, I worked on the freight side, matching up trucks, but I've never done kind of the operational piece. So a lot of this is foreign to me. But the things Justin talks about is just so imperative. And I think, too, we say this all the time, you know, to a certain extent, I don't want ridicule. Like, you can only manage the. Jared Flinn: The freight rates. The freight rates. There's a lot of market that kind of dictates that. But he goes, man, these companies that you see that have uber success or they're managing their costs, and especially on the maintenance side, he was talking about some of these statistics of what people are spending on maintenance that they don't have to. A lot of preventative maintenance that can really lead to saving on the bottom line. Like, it doesn't matter if you're making $10,000, if you're paying 15,000 on the back end and repairs, it's. You're. You're not getting anywhere. Jared Flinn: So the Justin's going to come on and we'll break down a little bit more of what he's talking about in the end of this. But, man, this is a podcast. You don't want to stop listening to. Listen to this. And we'll get in with Justin's contact at the end. So with that said, here is my conversation with Justin Brevik of Shop Connect View. Justin, thanks for coming in. Justin Brevik: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Jared Flinn: Yeah, we got introduced. Mutual connection, actually, buddy, from my hometown, John Doonert, and we were talking and recommended that I reach out to you, but more importantly, bring you on our show for your products and services, and we're going to talk about that today. But if you don't mind, give us a little bit about your background. Man, you were, we just had lunch earlier, but you're, you have pretty good story. Justin Brevik: Yeah. So I started in the industry in 1991. I worked for a heavy haul company out of Minneapolis. Did that until about 95. And then I left and I went to Transport America, large trucking company out of there. And that's where I say I got educated into maintenance. So I had a boss there that took me under his wing. Kind of showed me maintenance management had the ability to join the technology maintenance council from when I was working there. Justin Brevik: So worked in road service and then I took over warranty management. I managed their warranty team and then I became the technician training manager. And then in zero six, I actually went back to Perkins specialized, the heavy hull company that I'd worked for. And I worked there until the mid two thousand ten s. And then I went to work for Bayon Bay and I was the director of maintenance there. Left there. I was the director of maintenance for dedicated logistics in Minneapolis. And then I moved to Oklahoma and became the vp of maintenance for stone trucking. Justin Brevik: And then a little over six years ago, I went to loves and now I am the senior manager of fleet maintenance for loves. And my role at loves is to help our fleet customers be more efficient when it comes to their maintenance process. So I would say fleets spend a lot of time and effort into buying trucks, hiring drivers and hauling freight. And then safety and maintenance are a lot of times overlooked. So me and my team, we really try to help our customers be more efficient when it comes to maintenance, as maintenance is one of the highest expenses in a trucking company, by far the most controllable. So it's one of the biggest levers you can pull to increase your bottom line revenue. Jared Flinn: Yeah. And you talk about that and again, I, it's, I am so foreign when it comes to maintenance. And I've been in the trucking space over 20 years. I've always been on the freight side of things. Moving freight never was really in on operations, but it, but really just freight matching. So what I think is, when I think of maintenance, I mean, I even think of my own personal vehicle maintenance, like, like when I get that warning light or like the things up for, you know, I got to get the oil changed and it's just always one of those last minute things you do when you can. But you were telling me like, that's how it's even done with professional big fleets, like, it's really an overlooked item that can bit. That's probably one of the most crucial and costly parts of the business. Justin Brevik: Yeah. We have a lot of fleet customers today really struggle with it. You know, they have what we call a reactive maintenance program. Right. Once it breaks, they fix it. And we really try to help our customers not only go away from being a reactive maintenance program, getting them into more of a preventative maintenance program, and then eventually using data to get them into a predictive maintenance program. Right. So knowing it's going to fail before it happens. Justin Brevik: And, you know, my maintenance philosophy is very simple. I want to go from PM to PM with no repairs in between. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Brevik: Okay. And every time you reduce those repairs in between, two things happen. One, you reduce your maintenance expense to increase your revenue because you're not making any money with the truck sitting on the side of the road. Jared Flinn: Yeah. This isn't the most glamorous or fun thing to talk about, if I were honest, and I'm sure some of our listeners are like, but there is, like, so much meat on the bone about this conversation, because, again, if, you know, you can be chasing frontline revenue, but if it's dumping off the backside, you're not gaining or you're not making any traction. And like you said earlier, this is like one of the most controlled aspects. But talk about, you know, I was, I go on several customer visits, and some of these bigger fleets, I go in and you can see they got a big whiteboard and they got truck, whatever here, truck here, you know, da da da da da da da da da. But you're saying that's. I'm not calling anybody out, but that's kind of the way of the past. That's probably not the most efficient way to be managing that fleet, correct. Justin Brevik: Yeah. So once you get to a certain amount of assets, the whiteboards or even Excel spreadsheets really don't control what you need to see. Right. So with a platform like we have, for example, you understand your total cost of ownership. You understand your cost by vrms code, which is the vehicle maintenance recording standard of the American Trucking association. And you can look at your fleet and see what vehicles are costing you the most money, what components on that vehicles are costing you the most money. And also probably the biggest ROI on a maintenance software is your warranty recovery. Many of our customers today, let's say, for instance, the truck goes into a dealership in Dallas and gets a brake chamber replaced. Justin Brevik: Eight months later, that brake chamber fails, they're just buying another one because they don't have any way or any system to tell them, hey, that failed and it should be covered under warranty. So our system will notify the user, hey, that's under warranty, and they can recover that. The fleets that are chasing those dollars are starting to see the bottom line increases. Jared Flinn: You were saying a lot of companies have no idea what they're spending in truck maintenance and repairs. Can you explain that a little bit more? Justin Brevik: So a lot of our customers still to this day, have one bucket on their GL called maintenance and everything. All the expenses go into this one bucket, but they can't tell you. Is that tires? Is that this truck? Is it this trailer? Is it alternators, is it charger, you know, starters? Is it batteries? What is it? And when you can take that bucket and spill it out on the table and then see the buckets that are costing you the most money, now you can start negotiating on those buckets. Now you can start trying some different products potentially. But our whole mantra of our software is you can't manage what you can't measure. And one of the things we see with ours, traditional softwares are available, been around a long time, but they're not very easy to use and they don't give you a lot of reporting in return. So why waste the time of entering that information into the system if you're not going to get intelligent data back to make business decisions? Jared Flinn: Yeah, and the software we're talking about, it's shop connect, view, loves, provides, and it can go through this talk about when you look at it. Again, I'm not trying to fill these guys in a bucket, but like your typical company that gets started, like they get started, they buy the trucks, but like, it seems like the maintenance side is like something that never gets looked at or focused on. Justin Brevik: Yeah, so there's two, two parts. Jared Flinn: Like give us that scenario, what you see all the time. Justin Brevik: So I see two different scenarios. I see trucking companies that say, hey, let's start a trucking company, let's buy some trucks, let's hire some drivers, let's haul some freight. And we don't need a shop, we'll just have it, you know, we'll get a good warranty on the trucks or in the trailers. And when they need work, we'll just go to a loves or a ta or something and get the work done. That way it's a decent plan. Jared Flinn: Yeah, it actually sounds good to me. Justin Brevik: Yep. And then you got these trucking companies that you know, maybe a little bit more antiquated. Right. They bought trucks and they bought hired drivers, and they're hauling freight, and they said, now we need our own shop. So they hire some guys and. And put them out there in the shop, but they don't have any controls in place. They. They're. Justin Brevik: They're just out there fixing trucks. They're buying. They don't know what trucks the parts went on. They just, you know, they're just. Well, you know, we got a shop here. We do all our own maintenance. Okay, well, is that shop saving you money, or do you just have the shop? To have the shop? And many customers can't tell you if that shop saving them money or not, so we help customers understand. It's great that you have your own shop. Justin Brevik: There's a convenience to have in your own shop. But is it saving you money? Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Brevik: I used to tell all my technicians, I don't need any of you. I can farm all my work out to dealerships, to tas, to loves. I don't need my own shop. You guys were hired to work here to save me money. If you guys aren't saving me money, I don't have a need for you. And then I started helping them understand I'm a big believer, and you can't win if you don't know the score. So I would share, you know, their comebacks if I. If a technician did a repair on a vehicle and it broke a couple of weeks later. Justin Brevik: I want to share that so we can not let that happen again. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Brevik: Many customers, many fleets out there don't have that data to help improve their technicians. Jared Flinn: When we spoke, it was a month or so ago, and I'd ask you, I was like, you got to come on the podcast. Like, what you. What you sold me on. If I remember that conversation, you were just saying, on average, using the software can save. Is it. I don't want to get this wrong. 7000 per truck per year, or what was that number? It was like. But it was something staggering. Jared Flinn: Like, you're saying that you can save this much amount in maintenance by using this program? Justin Brevik: Yeah. So. So right now, we like to use the term 1000% ROI. So our platform, Shopconnect view, is a SaaS model. So it's per asset, per month. We charge a fee, and we have customers reporting to us over 1000% return on investment. And we got a calculator that helps. We put in the company's information. Justin Brevik: We got some calculators that we use to show real time, very conservative numbers but if you're not doing something to manage your fleet today, the. The rois are pretty large. So. Jared Flinn: Interesting. So, I mean, did I have that wrong? Like, there's a certain number, 1000% or like, usually, what is that? Justin Brevik: Thousand percent is the number that we use on that return on investment. So let's say you got a. Jared Flinn: So if you're spending $7,000 or $7 or. What was that number? Justin Brevik: Yeah, so let's say, for instance, we'll just do for easy numbers, you got 100 asset fleet trucks and trailers. At 100 assets, it's $10 an asset per month. That's a month. It's going to save you $10,000 a month to be on that system. Jared Flinn: Wow. Justin Brevik: So, you know. Yeah, pretty big number. Jared Flinn: That's really, really big. When you look at maintenance overall, though, what are these common trends were you seeing? I guess, for lack of a term, like a lot of money bleeding out or expenses? What's, like, the common thread you see when you're visiting these trucking companies and you get down in the details, you're looking at the, you know, the spreadsheets of where, you know, the cost and things spent. Like, what are the common ones that you're seeing where. Where things are being spent, where they probably shouldn't have been? Justin Brevik: Yeah. So there's a couple. One is tires. Okay, so tires are usually the biggest expense within a trucking company's maintenance department. And we have a report in our system called Tire Mile by brand. So you'll ask a customer, hey, what. What tire brand are you running? I'm running whatever's the cheapest. Okay, well, is it lasting you the longest? Well, they don't know. Justin Brevik: So we have a report in our system called tire Miles by brand. We keep track of how long that tire lasted on that position, on that asset. So you can start comparing different brands of tires and find out which one works best in your company, not necessarily the cheapest. So. And then you can look at those different brands across the x axis and say, okay, here's my different brands. What are the cost of these different tires? And then start coming up with what's the best tire for your business. Jared Flinn: Okay. You also mentioned when you go back to warranty, like this system helps you keep track of knowing what. What parts or what equipment is under warranty. That way you're not. If something is under warranty, you know that right then and there, you're not guessing, hey, how long? Or is this still under warranty? Can you explain that a little bit more? Justin Brevik: Yeah, absolutely. So we have the ability to bulk, upload all of the warranty information about whether it be the, what we call oe warranty or glovebox warranty. So that's the standard warranty that comes on the truck or trailer when you buy it, and then any extended warranties that you buy. So if you bought any engine or after treatment transmission warranties, we can load those all into the system. If that component or any one of them components gets an Ro started on it, it's going to notify the user in real time that that component's under warranty, and we can do that in bulk. So hundreds, thousands of vehicles, we can load all their warranties at one time. We also have a best in class parts warranty. As I mentioned earlier. Justin Brevik: A guy goes and buys a part, that part fails eight months later. We're going to notify you if you put a one year warranty on that part, we're going to notify the user in real time. Hey, that part's under warranty. Maybe you have the driver take it back and bring it back and you turn it in, or maybe you contact that company that you bought it from and say, hey, you need to pay me back for this because it failed. And the fleets that are chasing those warranty dollars are seeing a lot of return. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that's good. You know, we're talking so much about who this is for, but there's been examples of companies that have used this product that it didn't work out for. And you talked about one earlier off air, but talk. We don't need to name that company. But why? Why didn't this program work for them? Justin Brevik: Yeah. So the program is only as good as the people that use it. Right. So we have had a couple of customers that said, yes, yes, yes. We want the system, the ownership, the leadership. They wanted the system. They knew that what they could get out of it, but for some reason, they can't get their people to use it. So that's unfortunate, but we do see that from time to time we try to help them with that. Justin Brevik: We're there all the time. If they want us to come back in, do more training, but we can only lead them to water. Right. We can't make them drink. So definitely would like to see. Most of our customers are using it to its full potential. That's where you're really getting the return. And some are just using fragments of the system, but we would really like to see everybody be safe, successful with it. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that's awesome. I want to expand and talk more about loves and then we're going to kind of come back to the product itself. But hey guys, Jared Flynn here. Thank you for listening to the Bulk Loads podcast. We know that a lot of you subscribe and are members of bulk loads, but if you are not and if you haven't created an account, click down in the link below and we want to get you signed up on bulk loads. We have thousands of loads posted every day, a lot of content to help you improve your business. So if you get a chance, go right below bulkloads.com, click on the link to sign up and we will get you all taken care of. Thank you and God bless. Jared Flinn: You know, talk a little bit, if you don't mind sharing a little bit of the love story cause I didn't realize this, and for lack of other terms, when you, you know, I think maybe big truck stops have been kind of, the name's been kind of tarnished or there's been a frown when you think of these mega truck stops and there have been maybe some bad apples, you know, over the years. But talk about the history of love's because I think it's a, it's a really good story. Justin Brevik: Yeah. So love started in the, I think it was the mid sixties, early sixties with Tonga, Oklahoma. Tom Love bought an old abandoned gas station and that's where it started. And then in 1972, he bought his first truck stop, which is still around, which is the love's in Amarillo, Texas. Love's number 200. And then about twelve or 13 years ago, we got into truck care. So we offer retread tires, PM services. And then about seven or eight years ago, we bought Speedco, which is the oil change company for trucks. Justin Brevik: And we just kept expanding on that. And then three years ago, on the truck care side of the business, we brought in Shopconnect view, which my team heads up. So we've really went to whatever our customers needs are. We try to have a solution for that. Right. So a lot like bulk loads, customers complain that they need a solution. We try to help them with that solution. Jared Flinn: Yeah, I love the story when you're talking about this software and loves using it, but you were talking about, one of the executives were like, I want you to talk about this. But he was like, so this could actually help companies and actually grow businesses. Justin Brevik: Correct. Jared Flinn: Therefore that's more truckers on the road, that's more fuel that we're selling. It sounds like a win, right? Justin Brevik: Yep. Yeah. So, so fuel is kind of a race to zero, right? So, you know, loves comes in, cuts the rate, ta comes in, cuts the rate, pilot comes in, cuts the rate. And they, they just cut each other down. So the loves family really looks at how can we partner with our customers, make them more successful, and then that couple of cents a gallon really doesn't matter that much. Right. The partnership is more important. So, you know, Frank Love had said, so if you can help your customers be more successful, they'll be able to buy more trucks. Justin Brevik: And if they buy more trucks, they'll naturally buy more fuel. Yeah. And that's what we want to do. So we've really been trying to partner with our customers and help them be successful so then we can just continue our business instead of just having them switch from one provider to another. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Loves as a company across the US, talk about how many stops, locations, kind of what parts. Justin Brevik: Yeah. So we're over 700 locations now and we have 430 shops, 437 shops on the truck care side. And that, that's what I am more involved on the maintenance side of loves, but I know we're over 700 locations on the, on the fuel stop side and then 437 of those have shops. That includes speed company as well. Jared Flinn: Yeah. And employ 40,000 employees. Justin Brevik: Yeah, I think 39,000 some employees. So 40,000 employees. Jared Flinn: Yeah. And again, fuel is obviously the big business, but yeah, you got the maintenance side, the shops, the restaurants. You tell me that. One of the largest producers of def. I didn't realize that. Justin Brevik: Yeah. So def, we own love zones. Musket, which is a oil and gas provider, trillium, which is our alternative fuels piece of the business. So they're into CNG, LNG, solar, electricity, all alternative fuels, and then Gemini, which is our trucking company that's delivering fuel and death to all of our stops. So, yeah, very, very diverse portfolio. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that's awesome. I want to go back now because I wanted people that didn't know just to learn a little bit more Lowe's. But going back to shop, connect, view, you know, we're in a market that's a little bit of a truck recession. And freight rates tough right now. Profit margins, very slim. Operating, you know, margins, it's just like these guys, you know, they're hanging on by the skin of their teeth for lack of better words, you know, someone listening to this could be like, man, here's another cost that I gotta have. You know, like, it's probably something I need to do, but man, I can't. I'm barely surviving right now as is. Jared Flinn: What would be your reply to that? Person. Justin Brevik: I would. I would reply to most of those. If they don't have a system in place today, or they're on that whiteboard or an Excel spreadsheet, it's costing them substantially more money to be in the current situation there is that they're in than to have a platform like ours to help them understand where their costs are going, help them extinguish some of those costs. So I was talking to John a while ago, and I always give this example. We had a fleet customer that got on the platform, and after you get on the platform, me and my team will come in, we'll sit down with you, and we'll look at some data together. And one of his tough spots was trailer tires. So we ran a report on trailer tires, and then we ran a report on trailer tire by unit. And he had this one trailer that was four times as much tires than all of the other units in his fleet. Justin Brevik: So we started looking at the repair order history. That trailer had got a set of tires on it. 90 days later, got another set. 90 days later, got another set. Jared Flinn: They didn't even know that. Justin Brevik: They didn't know it. Okay, well, we start looking at the repair orders. We get the thing in the shop. It's got a bent axle. So the repair was. It was eating the tires off of the trailer. They just kept putting tires on it, but it wasn't solving the problem. But with our system, they were able to identify, hey, there's a problem with this particular unit. Justin Brevik: It's not replacing the tires. It's fixed the problem that's causing the tires. So, you know, $80 alignment or a couple hundred dollar alignment, whatever it took and fixed back up again. Jared Flinn: You know, talking about shop connect, view again, you were saying this, that you can. Lots of times you can see the data, but also, you know, say you got a fleet of 2030 trucks, though, but you can start seeing what trucks are costing you more money. Talk about that. Cause that's what I find fascinating. Yeah, we're getting. We're looking at, you got all these trucks running all the time. You're keeping up and, you know, booking loads and getting freight rates. But, like, there could be a truck out there that's actually bleeding. Jared Flinn: You don't even know. Justin Brevik: Yeah, and very common. Very common to see that. So you look at a fleet of trucks. For any of us out there that have had trucks, there's always a bad couple. Right. Jared Flinn: Even if you got a whole fleet of same makes and models. Justin Brevik: 100%. Yep. And it may be driver. Right. It may be driver issue that needs to be looked at as well. But we have some reporting in the system. Ro cost by unit, ro cost by system code. So we can go in and start looking at all those units, look at the average across your whole fleet, and then start looking at those outliers. Justin Brevik: And then when you drill into those outliers, you can see actually what components are causing those outlier trucks cost to be up. So maybe it's something you need to go negotiate back with the manufacturer on. We also have another report that's very helpful. I'm sure you got a lot of customers that are running multiple different brands of trucks within their fleet. Which one's the best? So we have a, we have a report, ro cost by model. Okay. So you can look at all your different models across and see which models are costing you the most money. Very nice. Justin Brevik: When negotiating a new truck order, right? Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Brevik: Also, what should your trade cycle be? Jared Flinn: Yeah, that was one that actually I've always been fascinated with because everybody's got. Justin Brevik: A different opinion on Ro cost by model year. So you compare all the different model years in your organization, you can see right away when that price goes through the roof. You should have probably got rid of that truck right before that, right. Jared Flinn: All this is in that software, correct? Justin Brevik: Yes. Very, very easy. Two, three mouse clicks. Jared Flinn: Well, and that's why I talk about ease to use, because again, you're talking about this as a software. Obviously, we have bulk loads, we have our own teams, we sell software all the time. We know that it's a barrier for a lot of people in our industry, and rightfully so. Like, I, you know, when I think of software and I getting on boarded a system and my anxiety starts picking up on trying to learn something new, and I got to train this and teach everybody how to do this, is it really going to pay off? Speak to that? Because I think that's the heart of this message, that it's not that hard to use. But I want you to talk about just the onboarding process, the customer service. Like if, you know, if I'm not a very tech savvy guy, but I have this fleet, I know this is something I want to probably look into. Man, how easy is this thing going to be for me to use? Justin Brevik: Yeah. So a big part of our go to market strategy is to not interrupt their business. Okay. We saw traditional softwares. They want to come in, they want to spend weeks at your business side track all of your people. That costs a lot of money. So with our software, we make it very simple. No money up front. Justin Brevik: We come in. Once we get an agreement, there's no. Jared Flinn: Money to get started. Justin Brevik: No, no money up front. So what's going to happen? Let's say we got a trucking company and they decide to go with our platform. We're going to sign a one year agreement. Basically that's just protecting us from bowing out. And then we're going to send you some templates. So we want your asset information, user information. If you have your own shop, who's your technicians, your parts and what vendors do you use and your warranties, we load all that for you. Okay, so prior to us showing up, I'm going to show up, usually fly in on a Monday or drive in, depending on where you're at. Justin Brevik: Tuesday, we're going to deploy your fleet. So we're going to get with the leadership team, we're going to show them soup to nuts, the whole platform, how it works, so forth and so on. Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, we're going to bring the text in, we're going to show them how to use it, and by Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday night, we're done. We're out of there. You guys are up and running. We have a app on both Android and iOS, so the technicians can use their phone or a tablet, create repair orders, charge parts out, all that. And the executive team can log in from anywhere. So you could be sitting in Cancun on the beach. Justin Brevik: You can see it real time, what trucks are broke down, when they're expected to be back up again, so forth and so on. We integrate with the telematics providers. We're integrated with all the major telematics providers, so we're pulling mileage and engine hours live from the vehicle. We're comparing that to the maintenance schedules that are set up on those units, and we're going to notify you when those vehicles are due for service. So it's instead of waiting for your light to come on in your truck. Right. We're going to tell you proactively not only what's overdue, but what's coming due. And we also have full Dvir compliance. Justin Brevik: So right now, you know, driver fills out his driver vehicle inspection report, it's going to come into our system as an issue. That issue then is correlated to a repair order. When that repair is done, we send a message back to the telematics device and tell them that that DviR has been rectified. So full 360 degree DVIR compliance with a lot of our customers struggles with DviR compliance. Jared Flinn: Wow, talk about you know, when I look at the trucking, you got so many different setups. You got some companies, all company drivers, some owner operators, lease purchase drivers and all that. I mean, as far. I mean, I guess the software can be used for all of it. But is there talk about the organization around that? Is there a difference or how does that work when you got some of these companies that have all different types of scenarios? Justin Brevik: Yeah. So we have a couple of different tools within the platform to help our customers organize that. So we have a grouping functionality, so you can have a parent company and parent child relationships of groups underneath that parent company. We also have full tagging functionality. Custom tags can be used in the system. If you want to tag a truck as an owner operator or as an outside customer, you can set up different rate cards for those. You can mark up parts to those guys. A lot of different functionality. Justin Brevik: We actually have customers that, you know, they may have. They may be a trucking company, but they own some other trucking companies. So they can compartmentalize those smaller trucking companies under their trucking company, and then they can look at those in aggregate or individually. They can compare them against each other. They can see which business units are doing better than other business units, all by using that grouping functionality. Jared Flinn: Yeah. So what was going back to John doing it, like, you know, after you all deployed with his organization? I mean, he. He was telling me when we were talking about this, I mean, I was showing you the text thread. I mean, just going on and on, ranting Raven. But you were saying even after you guys left, I mean, he was talking to other companies and is captive. But explain that. Because, I mean, he was pretty excited about what this was going to do to change his. Justin Brevik: Yeah. Jared Flinn: Company. Justin Brevik: You know, we've had several companies, we're up to 106 fleets on the. On the platform. Jared Flinn: That's something too. Like, I was going to talk about how many units are you guys managing right now and then. Cause and then you guys have a customer service department, which, like, isn't that big in comparison to the amount that you guys are managing. But you guys are. Justin Brevik: Yeah. So as of today, we have 106 fleets live on the platform, managing 77,000 assets, and we have three people. So that speaks a lot to the system and how you don't have to manage a system that works so efficiently. So in three years, we're at 99.9% uptime. And when I say we're managing that with three people, we're same day rectify the issue. So if a customer has an issue and they contact us, we're going to answer same day, and 90% of the time, we're going to fix their problem. Same day. Jared Flinn: Going back to what, John? I mean, he was, again, really pushing this out to other people, and there's no upside for him other than just getting this out there. But talk about that. Justin Brevik: Yeah. So he was on a competitors product. That's what we call a traditional product. It's clunky, it's difficult to use. No mobile app, no integration to telematics, and quite frankly, no reporting. So they were entering information into a system, spending a lot of time and money putting the information into a system and get nothing in return. Right. So why waste the time? Right. Justin Brevik: So he was over the top with just the ease of use. Like our technician training takes about 15 minutes to show a tech how to use it. We compare it to an iPhone. You didn't have to go to a two week class on how to use your iPhone. You just pick it up and start using it. The system is built on a very intuitive infrastructure, and throughout the whole platform, it's very easy to navigate. If you can navigate a web page, you can navigate our platform, which makes our deployment time very fast. Everywhere within the platform is bulk uploadable and bulk updatable. Justin Brevik: So within the organization, if something changes, hundreds, thousands of units of assets can be added to the. To the platform in seconds. Jared Flinn: You have companies as small and as large as, what, on the platform? Justin Brevik: Yeah. So from a truck, if you just look at, like, trucks. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Brevik: Truck standpoint, probably 25 trucks is probably where you get to when you probably start needing a platform like this. And we're up to, you know, 10,000 trucks, so. But once you get north to 25, it's pretty hard to start, man. You know, it's pretty hard to manage, especially, like, warranty and. And scheduled maintenance and recalls and campaigns. We didn't talk about recalls and campaigns. Most customers don't have any way to keep track of if a recall or campaign has been done. And then I should know. Jared Flinn: I know what a recall is, but what's a campaign? Justin Brevik: So a campaign will be a Oe comes out and says, hey, you got to get your truck to us, and we got to fix this because we noticed an issue, and what will happen is they won't fix it, and then that component will fail, and then they'll bring it to the dealer. And the dealer said, well, we had a campaign on this, but you didn't do it, so now you got to pay for it out of pocket. So another way to help save a lot of money, we can bulk upload all your campaigns into the system. And, you know, every time that a repair order is created on that unit, you're going to get a reminder that that campaign needs to be done. So next time it's at the dealership, maybe for something else. Hey, do this campaign. Jared Flinn: Yeah, I'm gonna get close to landing this plane here. But, you know, a lot of your history and your career in this you've talked about. It's not necessarily some companies, they, they hire people, they hire bodies to come in and fix this instead of just setting up systems. Justin Brevik: Yeah, processes. Jared Flinn: Processes. Talk about that. Because I think that's crucial, not just on this, but in all aspects of business. And if you're going to be. If you're going to run a company or be in charge, like, it's not so much about just throwing people in, but creating systems and processes. Justin Brevik: Yeah, no doubt. So when I was on the fleet side, I always had this desire to, you could go work for one truckee company and help them and build this ultimate maintenance process. But then once the process is built, you really don't bring any value over anymore, because now you're just managing that process. So me coming to loves, I really feel great, me and my team, because we can help multiple fleets build that process. So you don't need to be tied to that one trucking company. We can help multiple customers build that process. And then all they need to do is have somebody manage the process that we helped them build and then reap the benefits. So they don't need to go out and hire a maintenance management expert. Justin Brevik: They just need to process, help build the process and then somebody to manage that process. Jared Flinn: Yeah, that's so, so good. Um, so kind of last question for those that are listening to this podcast today, you know, and we're going to put Justin's information down in the show notes with how to reach out to him directly. But say they have questions, like, again, this is something that, like, probably it's one of those, man, I probably should be doing. Don't really have the time markets real bad right now. I'm just surviving. Again, what's your answer to those people out there that are listening? Justin Brevik: You can't manage what you can't measure. Jared Flinn: Yeah. Justin Brevik: You know, and anybody that needs any questions wants to see a demo of the software, wants to reach out to our team and get a gap analysis or some consulting, feel free to reach out. Shopconnectviews.com is our. Is our website. Go in there and look about the product. But feel free to reach out. Demos are free. We can come in, we can do a gap analysis, we can look at your business, see what you're doing today, see if there's some ways we can help you. Yes, I work for loves, but this is a standalone product that loves offers and we're truly here just to help our customers be more successful. Jared Flinn: Yeah, well, I can tell just by the conversations that we've had, this isn't about just market share and upselling somebody, but really this is part of that. Hopefully I answered the right or asked the right questions. Again, I've never been on the maintenance and fleet, fleet side of things. Mine's always been on the opposite. But again, as, as I've learned in trucking, especially over the past 20 years, like, you know, we've gotten kind of in trouble on our podcast by saying this, but so many professionals come in and like, the market always seems to be the market. Now, I'm not saying you can't, you know, negotiate rates and all that, but it seems like a lot of these companies that really get to that next level that really see success, it's the one that they're, they're laser focused on managing their cost and being super efficient at their cost. Justin Brevik: Yeah. If you look at the companies in the recent past that have not made it and went out of business, I will tell you the common denominator of those companies is they all had a horrible maintenance program. Jared Flinn: Really? Justin Brevik: Yes. So if you look at their assets, any of those, and I don't want to throw their names out there, but you look at the assets of the companies that are no longer around, they're all poorly taken care of. So there's a common denominator to saving that expense, reducing your cost. And it makes you, you know, a lot more successful in the industry. If you have less, you can be more competitive if your costs are less. Right. So everybody looks at rates, right. But if your cost is lower, the rates don't really matter. Justin Brevik: And then when the rates come up. Jared Flinn: It'S just even more money in the bank. Justin Brevik: Money in the bank. So, you know, I think there was a survey out not too long ago that said the average of breakdown in the United States happens about every 14,000 miles on average. There was some study done from some company. So we have customers that we've dealt with that are over 70,000 miles between breakdowns. Pretty great. I have one fleet that's 2500 miles between breakdowns. Right. So I don't think they're probably efficiently running their business. Justin Brevik: Right. But, and I'm not saying that 14,000 is a good number. 70,000 is great. I'm pretty sure those guys don't really care about rates because they're running so efficiently, the rates don't really affect them. Jared Flinn: Yeah, I have to clarify because again, I don't want to be bantered on this. I'm not saying that to drive down rates, like, we want to maximize profits and rates, but again, it seems like in especially situations like this, when you got a depressed freight market, man, if you can manage your costs so much more efficiently, like, you're going to be the one to weather the storm and survive. And that's my heart of this message, is like, how do we continue to promote companies like yours to come on and help these companies thrive in the business? We want companies to stay in business for years. We want to see those guys, one to two trucks, get to that ten truck. If they want to grow that ten truck to that 30 truck, 30 truck. And again, that's always been our heart and passion in that, you know, if they want to grow and how do we get there? And again, this is a product solution we have never really talked about on the show. And that's why I wanted you to come on. Again, it's not our typical loads market update, but, man, this is, it just seems like it's just a valuable one. Jared Flinn: So, Justin, man, thank you so much for making the trip up here to the Ozarks. And speaking on the bulk loads podcast, we'll put Justin's information down in the show notes so you can be go down there, click right to it and reach out directly to him. So, man, thank you very much. God bless you. Justin Brevik: Thank you, Tyler. Jared Flinn: Just a couple things I want to talk about that I found super interesting on this. First off, I mean, how many units they already have in the software, and really it's just a team of three. Tyler Allison: Or four that are handling it. Yeah. Jared Flinn: And he said that they're always available, that if people have issues or need questions that they can do. And really even just the onboarding process that they said just within a day or two, they can get your, the software fully implemented, onboarded, and then you're off to the races. Yeah, I think it's just phenomenal. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Whenever you introduce a new software to your company, especially a bigger company, like, that's the biggest thing people look at is how long is this gonna take to implement? And what's the customer support look like? Nobody wants to, you know, reach a call center out of the country, you know, and try to explain their problems. Jared Flinn: Yeah, I think I just, just perfect example I had. I bought this new deer camera, cellular camera, and it worked the first day. Now I can't get to work and stealth cam his name, by the way. But anyways, I've tried to call, email, and I'm having horrible customer service. And, man, I've paid $60 for the camera plus this. But anyways, I say all that, like, we know that customer service is huge. We're all customers of different products and services. We take a lot of pride in that. Jared Flinn: I know. I'll say this about our tms. We get raving reviews. Tyler Allison: We just had one coming in. Jared Flinn: Yeah, I mean, about our team, Samantha and all them on our software. So a lot of these things we were not, you know, perfect. But, man, we know customer service is huge, especially to an industry like this where technology can be a little intimidating. So, yeah, keep that in mind that we really try to strive for the same thing. But the last thing I'll say on this podcast, like even talking about, you know, they've had statistics done with a software where some companies that were averaging breakdowns within 14,000 miles now are going in excess of 70,000 miles by using this software. So anyways, again, I'm not trying to sell. We get, there's no upside for us in promoting this. We're all about promoting good, other good businesses out there, other softwares that can help the bottom line of our clients. Jared Flinn: Yeah, I think that's what we do. So we'll put all of Justin's information down below to reach out to them. Man, I know you won't be disappointed. He is very responsive, very, really excited about this. He's got such a passion for this. And, man, super excited for, I'll say. Tyler Allison: This, as we move and grow, as companies ourselves are realizing more and more how important the data is. And I think if you really want to go ten x within your business, you have to lock down the data and you have to get visibility on everything. And I think softwares like this, whether it's a fleet management software or it's a transportation management system, like we offer, like, the more that you can get your eyes on the data, on what's actually happening within your company, I mean, the more that you can save and you can actually grow your profit. Jared Flinn: Yeah, we talk about data all the time. You know, it's not the save all, but, man, it can really help the bottom line and grow your business. So we're going to have to actually have Justin at our next conference. Speaking of. Tyler Allison: Yeah, well, actually, right now we're going to have Garrett play the clip of the conference. Justin Brevik: You'Ll hear tonight. Jared Flinn: That's kind of how we. Tyler Allison: Last year's conference was great. It actually doubled our previous conference. And I think this next 2025 conference is even going to be bigger, which we're looking forward to. But if you have not made it to our last conference or you're thinking about going to it, you want to see what it's about, go to bulkfreightconference.com. you can see what it was about. You can view the videos, and also you can enter your email, and that way we can save you a seat whenever tickets do go on sale. We're starting to figure out everything. I think we've locked down. Tyler Allison: It's definitely going to be around the same time frame in April. Jared Flinn: It's going to be in April. Tyler Allison: Yeah. We're kind of open with a few different venues to lock down the exact dates. But as we start to figure it out, tickets will be limited. So go ahead and get your name. Jared Flinn: On one, two things. I'll say our guys, even this past week, last week, they were visiting some clients, and clients that actually came to the conference. And these people are thriving. I'm not saying because of our conference, but there is some correlation that their business is doing really well. So that's number one. And we are super excited about this next conference. Leagues. Like, we may have it at the same venue if you've been there, but we're trying to find a venue and we got a couple locked down. Jared Flinn: We're actually going to be able to bring in some semi trucks, maybe even some trailers, but we're going to actually have equipment there. We know that that's one of those, man, it's like. It's like going to a truck show. Like, you can sit there and have a. You can have a cocktail and just stare at a piece of machinery forever and just talk with somebody. Tyler Allison: Exactly. Jared Flinn: We want to have some show trucks there. We know some clients have already said that they would allow or bring their trucks. So, yeah, if you haven't yet, just real quick, drop down below. Make sure enter your email address. So when they go out there, you'll be able to get ticket. I know it'll probably get sold out, and I don't say that to rush anybody, but I'm confident that it will. Yeah, we're getting that much popular. Tyler Allison: Awesome about that. Jared Flinn: So a couple of things, too. We actually, you know, that I've been on the road doing these highlight videos. Actually I'm getting ready to leave next week for another one out in Idaho. We'll showcase. But I'll say this, mike Cordy, which his pictures up here, like this guy has had tremendous success. Tyler Allison: He's like a Hollywood star now. Jared Flinn: I said like he go every gas station like he doesn't even have to pay for a coffee. I heard. Tyler Allison: Yeah, that is true. Jared Flinn: He's on boarded like four new drivers because of the video. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Simply because they saw his dot on the side of his truck. They looked him up and they gave him a call and they're either seeking advice or they're like, hey, can I come and lease on to you? So he's, yeah, he's getting massive success. And that's, I mean, that's one of the reason that drives us to do these is, yeah, it's great content that we can use for our audience. We love to look at it. But also really, I mean, these companies, it's helping them out a lot. Jared Flinn: So two things I'll say, questions that we always get. We're getting more and more. We have actually a pretty good pipeline of visits that we got scheduled if you would like to be featured. Number one, the question we get like there's no cost on your end other than your time. Tyler Allison: Yep. Jared Flinn: So usually plan for at least a half a day. I mean, try to schedule most of that day so we can get some good footage and I, and get the tours and all that. So there's no cost. And just reach out. Like I said, this will like, I think, you know, we're in times where people are doing so much research online before they ever pick up the phone. We know that as a fact. That's why we've doubled down on our content and we want to have you be a part of that. So just if you are looking to grow your business, if you want to be more awareness out there for maybe recruiting, maybe for other customers businesses, I think Mike Cordy's actually landed even some new business from this reach out to us. Jared Flinn: Let us be a part of that again, you see our structure, watch our videos. We do it in a very tasteful way. We're not doing anything in depth that's going to be proprietary. Give away any company, you know, access or secrets or anything like that. So reach out. We want to be a part of that, man. We know that. It is super helpful. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Simply you can either comment down below or just reach out podcastle.com and we'll be in contact with you. Jared Flinn: Last thing I'll say. I've been on the road too, also with a lot of speaking engagements. Went to the state fair actually, a couple weeks ago. Just actually spoke at the college campus here. Justin Brevik: Local. Jared Flinn: I did an entrepreneurship class. And if you have conferences or places where you'd like me to come and visit, I'd be honored to come and speak. No cost. Like I said, I'll pay for the travel and all that. But if you ever want me to come speak to a class, church, any organization, I'm always honored to do that. Again, it allows us to get our name and message out there for others in the community. So you can reach out to anywhere you find us on social media. The guys will get a whole, but. Jared Flinn: Yeah, would love to do that. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Before we close out, last thing here we have, you're working on a new semi Sam book edition. Yeah. What is it? Semi Sam and the great Pumpkin hall. Yeah. Jared Flinn: And there's some good adult humor in there. Like semi Sam actually prefers apple cider flavored deaf. Tyler Allison: There you go. Jared Flinn: So. And there's some other play on, but yeah, we are on, actually, Joseph's wife who does our video. Joseph does our videos. His wife. She's getting to the very end. I hope we can get this out on time again. She's got another full time job, but she's helped me with the illustrations. So be on the lookout for semi Sam and the great Pumpkin hall. Jared Flinn: We'll have them available to send out. We'll also have them on, available on Amazon and any of our other books too. We actually just sent a big shipment out. Like if you have a parade or convention or class that you would like, especially classrooms, I really like that. We would be happy to send you some. Just reach out and we get you some awesome semi Sam books. So, yeah, super excited about that. So cool. Jared Flinn: As we close out, I wanted to just say something kind of more from a faith based approach. Our church, we're going through this series called the right to remain silent. And a lot of that obviously, kind of is leading up to election. We know that there is chaos. I mean, I mean, another assassination attempt on the next president. And the social media is just rampant. Like, you don't know what's the truth, what are lies and everything going on. But I want to encourage you to go to scripture and look, I mean, there's so much scripture to talk about. Jared Flinn: Don't listen to what the world is telling you. And I think we can allow it all to feed into our souls. And that's not what God in my belief wants. Now, there's times to fight and there's times to stand up. But, man, if you are joining in that rhetoric, you know, there was a reason why everyone wanted Jesus dead. The crowds were against him. Like, everybody wanted to throw stones at him, you know, but we can get fed into those same lies, and that's not the truth of God. That's not the truth of Jesus Christ. Jared Flinn: So, man, be cautious out there. That's my prayer for you, man. Don't get too fed into the lies that are on social media. I'm just as guilty. There's times as just last week and somebody was at our house and I started just ranting on about, you know, what's going on in politics and it, like, it doesn't help anything. Tyler Allison: Yeah. Jared Flinn: Really, at the end of the day, like, again, if somebody has one belief and I have another, they're still a child of God. Yeah, I'm still a child of God. We can still get past those differences. I think that's one where, like, I have a prayer one day, if I can help in public service and move to that, that I'd like to do that to just, man, be out there and be more of a light to this world and not that, you know, feeding into the rhetoric. Tyler Allison: Yeah. And I think that's what we're seeing with this election is really just person attacking person instead of actually, you know, in the past, elections have been more about policy and stuff. But, yeah, it just seems like, you know, the sides are so divided and I've seen people are so quick to cut off their own friends just on, based on different views. And I don't think there's any need to burn a bridge. You know, there's freedom of speech for a reason. But, yeah, the right to remain silent is a good point. Like, you don't need to engage in that. You know, you can simply, you don't have to agree with it, but simply, you know, you can just move on and not have to interact with it. Jared Flinn: This is my thoughts. I just, like, I have this visualization, like, man, the devil is just sitting there just like, twilling Islam is just like, smile. It's feeding into what he wants, division. And if he can divide people, he knows that he can get what he wants, and that's not the truth and not the God that we believe in. So. Tyler Allison: Cool. Jared Flinn: Well, I will close us in prayer. And actually, real quick, before I do, if you do have a prayer request, man, we got a slew of them in last week. Thank you for trusting us to pray. We know that there are real needs out there and thank you for letting us be a part of that. We are praying over those prayer requests. If you have a prayer request, send it to prayer oakloads.com and allow our team to pray over the your petitions to God. So cool. I'll close this out. Jared Flinn: Father God, we love you. Lord, we thank you for people like Justin that came on our podcast. We thank you for people like him that are helping solve real world needs and needs in our trucking industry to help those succeed. Lord, our heart is for the small business owners, the small owner operators, those companies that I witnessed struggles as a kid growing up in. Lord, that we pray that we can serve those to the best of our ability, Lord, that we can help them. And those times, Lord, I just pray for those out there that are lost, Lord, that we can be part of your crusade that helps those out there, that we can show them light. So Lord, just be over our industry, be over our farmers, our truckers, all of our agribusiness workers. And Lord, just be with them through this week in your heavenly and precious name. Jared Flinn: Amen. Thank you as always for listening to the bullclose podcast. If you know just two or three people, small ass, that can benefit from this, man, please share this. You can click anywhere that you're listening to this. There's usually a share button that you can share it, man, just send it to one or two. That's just a thank you. Or, you know, use that as a thank you for us for helping produce this content out there. We produce this to really be of value to you and help grow your business. Jared Flinn: And if you haven't yet, click the subscribe button down here in the lower left hand corner. That way you don't miss an episode. Thank you as always for listening to the Bulk loads podcast. God blessed. I.