[00:00:00] John Wharff: what we’ve seen time and time again is that the time and transit is less important to consumers as keeping your promises. If you’re giving them

[00:00:09] John Wharff: an estimate for when things are gonna get there, you have to hit it, or you’re gonna start running into problems real fast.

[00:00:36] Scott W. Luton: Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luton and Tevon Taylor with you here on Supply Chain Now welcome. Tevon. How you doing today?

[00:00:38] Tevon Taylor: I’m doing great, enjoying Nashville, Tennessee. Temperatures are wonderful and the people are nice as usual.

[00:00:45] Scott W. Luton: You just checked off all three things. I usually start with, especially the weather and the temperature. We’ve got cooler temps here in metro Atlanta, but Tevon,

[00:00:54] Scott W. Luton: we got some straight up fire on today’s show. Great show teed up here today. Timely. Highly relevant topic too, folks, we all know that carrier networks and whole shipping landscape is, is shifting by the day, but what are the most important moves that you need to know about and how do these evolutions impact your supply chain organization?

[00:01:13] Scott W. Luton: What opportunities or risks do these market changes present? Hey, we’re diving into all of that and more as we host a couple of business leaders that are helping businesses of all sizes save big ship successfully and absolutely delight customers and folks. The time to act. Right now it’s passed.

[00:01:32] Scott W. Luton: Now, now Tevon, all of that and we got a whole bunch more.

[00:01:36] Scott W. Luton: All that’s music to my ears. how about you? You, you ready for our great show here today?

[00:01:41] Tevon Taylor: I’m ready. 30 years in the transportation business. I’m still confused,

[00:01:45] Tevon Taylor: so hopefully we can work that out today.

[00:01:47] Scott W. Luton: Undoubtedly, we’re gonna unlock all kinds of secrets and strategies over the next hour. And Tevon, to your point, given your significant track record of doing big things in supply chain,

[00:01:56] Scott W. Luton: Alright, Tevon, you ready to bring, bring on two of our faves.

[00:02:00] Tevon Taylor: Let’s rock and.

[00:02:01] Scott W. Luton: Uh, I want to welcome in back by Popular Demand, Lori Boyer, director of Content with our friends at EasyPost, and her dynamic colleague John Wharff, director of Sales and Solutions Engineering with EasyPost as well.

[00:02:17] Scott W. Luton: Lori Boyer, back again. How you doing? Lori?

[00:02:21] Lori Boyer: Oh, so good and really, really excited for today’s convo. It

[00:02:25] Lori Boyer: is timely and gonna be with John on board. I’m super excited. Woo.

[00:02:30] Scott W. Luton: Man, we got a one-two punch here today. John, how you doing? Welcome back.

[00:02:34] John Wharff: I am doing fantastic. I’m right where I wanna be.

[00:02:37] Scott W. Luton: Oh, well man, that makes my day. I’m gonna go tell my mom that. Well,

[00:02:41] Scott W. Luton: great to see y’all both. Uh, we got a great show, very timely show teed up because Tevon, as we talked about on the front end, the time is now, we should have already been making changes and enhancements and improvements to our, how we ship and how we, uh, manage and prepare for peak.

[00:02:57] Scott W. Luton: And we’re gonna unlock some solutions there, aren’t we? Tevon?

[00:03:00] Tevon Taylor: We are indeed.

[00:03:01] Scott W. Luton: but first, let’s start with a fun warmup question. So, in the pre-show folks, we were discussing what is perhaps the biggest movie Blockbuster of the Summer. We’re talking about the new Superman movie. I’ve got a little still shot here from Lori.

[00:03:15] Scott W. Luton: Look at this. I love this at the end, Superman and, Man’s best friend. So get this Superman’s grossed over 600 million at the Global Box office on a budget of 225 million plus. They spent 125 million in marketing, which goes to show you even the best of the best needs some marketing spend. So I want to ask you this.

[00:03:37] Scott W. Luton: I’ve seen it talked with my son, Ben. I’m gonna go around the horn. Lori, starting with you. What’s your verdict? Good or bad or indifferent? What?

[00:03:44] Lori Boyer: I loved it. for me.

[00:03:46] Lori Boyer: Superman is, it’s a classic, I, grew up with it, but I also really love kind of the quirky take on it. I love movies that kind of. embrace the cheesiness, like it’s just part of that’s what normal

[00:04:00] Lori Boyer: life is because that is my normal life.

[00:04:05] Scott W. Luton: I’m with you. it was a great tip of the hat to the famous, the Once in a Lifetime, Christopher

[00:04:10] Scott W. Luton: Ree portrayal of The Man of Steel, but it was definitely different and updated. John, what was your take on Superman?

[00:04:17] John Wharff: I have a reputation for being somewhat of a harsh movie critic, so I have to, uh, always set standards for

[00:04:22] John Wharff: myself. First of all, I loved it, but the

[00:04:25] John Wharff: only rule that I said

[00:04:26] John Wharff: going into the movie is I said, if I finish and I walk out of the theater and I just. I want to be a, little bit better. I wanna try a little bit harder, I wanna be kinder, I wanna be more helpful.

[00:04:38] John Wharff: Then the

[00:04:38] John Wharff: movie has succeeded and I felt like it did that in spades. And that’s kind of what Lori was saying, those earlier Christopher Reeves movies, that’s what they did for me. They made me wanna try to

[00:04:47] John Wharff: be a little bit better of a human being and uh, that’s what it did for me. So it succeeded big time.

[00:04:53] Scott W. Luton: Well said. couple great reviews there, Tevon. Now the train’s gotta stop for a second because you haven’t seen the movie yet, is that right?

[00:05:02] Tevon Taylor: I have not seen

[00:05:03] Scott W. Luton: Okay. But were you a big fan of, Christopher Reeves back

[00:05:06] Scott W. Luton: in the day?

[00:05:08] Tevon Taylor: Absolutely. So now I’m kind of excited about it. I, I guess I’m embarrassed that I didn’t even know there was a new movie out. I’m to the point where I don’t go to the movies anymore. I wait for it to be on Netflix or you know, where I can watch it at home. I, I travel a lot and I gotta be honest, I’m married to somebody that literally will not go to the movie theater, so I don’t really like going by myself either.

[00:05:28] Tevon Taylor: Yes, you won’t.

[00:05:29] Scott W. Luton: Well, the, the experience certainly has evolved greatly, uh, over the years, for sure. But hey folks, if you haven’t seen Superman, the newest one, it is a movie built for the movie experience. See it at home. Sure. But, uh, go check it out. Uh, and let’s look at TE’s verdict next time.

[00:05:44] Scott W. Luton: So let’s get to it. Um, I wanna do this though. You know me, me and you both, I think are kindred spirits that we don’t get enough context in this ever fast moving environment. So for folks that may have missed your earlier home run appearances, if you would tell us a little about yourself and EasyPost.

[00:06:00] Lori Boyer: Yeah, I’m Lori Boyer. I am oversee our content team here at EasyPost.

[00:06:05] Lori Boyer: Basically just means I spend all my time reading up on trends, and I am a nerd at heart who is constantly quoting studies looking at the data. I also host our podcast Unboxing Logistics, So I get to meet with tons of really, smart people, smarter than me. and I love working at EasyPost love the supply

[00:06:25] Lori Boyer: chain and logistics industry. I think it is fascinating and just love to be here.

[00:06:30] Scott W. Luton: we all greatly benefit from your research and, uh, how,

[00:06:34] Scott W. Luton: neck deep in the market with what’s going on out there. And really quick level setting from a what EasyPost does how would you cate, uh, categorize that?

[00:06:43] Lori Boyer: we make shipping easy. I mean, that’s, we’re EasyPost, but we are connected to a hundred plus carriers through a single API that is massive. So you can sign up with us, have access to a hundred plus carriers. We offer tracking and shipping insurance, and really just everything a shipper needs to make the, process as smooth and easy as possible to get those labels.

[00:07:07] Lori Boyer: We’ve recently really leaned into ai. I love ai. We have a, a cool new AI tool, Illumina, that. helps you, you know, cut costs route faster,

[00:07:18] Lori Boyer: all of the kind of things that you need to take the pain outta shipping.

[00:07:22] Scott W. Luton: I love where you wrap there. I love all of that. ’cause who doesn’t need an easier day, but a more successful day and also a more painless day if I use those words right. Alright, te really quick before I switch over to

[00:07:32] Scott W. Luton: John. we’ve enjoyed our chats with Lori and the EasyPost team. Huh?

[00:07:37] Tevon Taylor: We absolutely have, and, and it’s, it’s amazing. I, I learned something new on each

[00:07:41] Tevon Taylor: chat, so it’s like. Even though it’s a lot of, it’s the same information, it’s

[00:07:45] Tevon Taylor: amazing how it’s evolving, even as we have multiple podcasts.

[00:07:48] Scott W. Luton: It’s like my, phone calls are changing just in the last two hours, man. Uh, it’s tough to keep up with. I’m glad, I’m glad we got innovative companies like Lori, John, and, and

[00:07:56] Scott W. Luton: EZ Post to help make it easier getting pain out of our day.

[00:07:59] Scott W. Luton: Alright, so, John, you joined us a while back. I wanna say Tan Bellamy was my fearless, co-host for that

[00:08:05] Scott W. Luton: session. Welcome back. It’s like homecoming. Tell us a little about

[00:08:08] Scott W. Luton: yourself.

[00:08:09] John Wharff: Yeah, so I manage, uh, the sales and solutions

[00:08:12] John Wharff: engineering over here at EasyPost, so basically helping all new prospect. X know what we do, what products we offer, how they function, how they can best benefit

[00:08:21] John Wharff: them, offering demos,

[00:08:23] John Wharff: uh, helping with onboarding, integration, Getting ’em set up for success.

[00:08:27] Scott W. Luton: That is outstanding. Getting them set up for success and then helping them find that success is my favorite part.

[00:08:34] Scott W. Luton: okay. We got a lot of stuff to get into here today. I want to establish a little bit more

[00:08:38] Scott W. Luton: context.

[00:08:39] Scott W. Luton: Especially focused on the key

[00:08:40] Scott W. Luton: shifts that supply chain leaders have got to be aware of as we’re already in peak. Uh, and there’s been a ton of ’em. I wanna start with, there’s three buckets I wanna walk through here, right? I wanna start with the first bucket, which is some of the cool things that the major carriers are up to.

[00:08:56] Scott W. Luton: Uh, Lori, why don’t we start with you? What, what do folks gotta know in terms of the shifts that the major carriers are making?

[00:09:02] Lori Boyer: Okay.

[00:09:03] Lori Boyer: Major carrier. So today, a big goal, we’re coming up on peak. What do you do about carriers? We live and breathe carriers all the time, so we wanted to give you a little bit of info of what we’re seeing with carriers. and what kind of changes are happening, what different shippers are doing When it comes to, carriers.

[00:09:20] Lori Boyer: So obviously Scott, you asked about the big ones. let me give you a little general background. so if you’re looking UPS, I always recommend UPS is a great option when you’re a B2B shipper if you’re needing some really guaranteed time, definite shipments. That’s kind of their general bread and butter. FedEx.

[00:09:42] Lori Boyer: FedEx is kind of the go-to for residential and weekend coverage. They deliver Saturday and Sundays typically with no extra cost, which is really helpful for weekend stuff. And I like to think of USPS as kind of the godfather of lightweight shipping. So if. Rural PO boxes or lightweight USPS is almost always gonna be your most affordable. They don’t have residential surcharges. They go to every address in the United States Downsize there. If you are shipping heavy, you tend to get expensive really fast. Your tracking’s not great. and so when it comes to, shifts, however, if we’re talking what’s different? 2025. I would say like we’re seeing some lean shipping UPS is definitely has consolidated routes.

[00:10:32] Lori Boyer: They’re reducing some of their sorting capacity. We haven’t seen UPS’s fees yet. Their surcharges. FedEx though we have. we’re kind of seeing some consolidation and kind of some leaner shipping routes coming into peak 2025. I wanna hear what John’s seeing as well.

[00:10:46] Lori Boyer: He’s on the frontline constantly, John, what, what are you seeing?

[00:10:51] John Wharff: Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the major things on the head. Uh, one of the big things is 2025 has been kind of a weird year for shipping. Uh, there was a lot

[00:10:59] John Wharff: of. Kind of slow down, uh, around the doldrums of summer July was extremely low as far as overall shipping volume went, and that means heading into peak season.

[00:11:10] John Wharff: We’re going to see all of those things that Lori already called out. We’re gonna start

[00:11:13] John Wharff: seeing limited routes. We’re gonna start seeing maybe a little more constriction about overall volumes that these carriers can handle, which is why you have to start considering other options. You have to make sure that you’re never pigeonholed into.

[00:11:26] John Wharff: Being stuck with just one thing. the more you can kind of diversify, the more you can split up how your volume is going out the door. It just ensures a smoother process. It ensures your customers are happier and it gets

[00:11:37] John Wharff: rid of all those potential pain points that may be upcoming with the overall volume increase that we normally see in peak.

[00:11:43] Scott W. Luton: John well said. And I know both of y’all are up for a phone call. If folks wanna kind of dig deeper with what you’re seeing in these shifts out in the marketplace, I know y’all love doing that. I really

[00:11:53] Scott W. Luton: value that. Tevon, I’m not gonna call out certain parts of your background, but you spent a whole bunch of time, big chunk of your career at some of these major carriers.

[00:12:01] Scott W. Luton: what’d you hear there from Lori

[00:12:02] Scott W. Luton: and John and their market observations?

[00:12:05] Tevon Taylor: I work for Brown and purple, right? So I can

[00:12:07] Tevon Taylor: really speak from both angles. The big guys, you know, during peak season they usually cut you off and especially when there’s capacity constraints. So you, you

[00:12:16] Tevon Taylor: absolutely have to forecast, manage. when John says diversify. It’s like there are other options, right?

[00:12:22] Tevon Taylor: So you have to look at,

[00:12:23] Tevon Taylor: just besides those three, what other options are, in the market. you hear about roadie, you hear about Vho, you hear about DoorDash even, or Uber. how can you make sure that you’re satisfying your customer

[00:12:34] Tevon Taylor: service and not impacting them when you have these ebbs And flows In the market?

[00:12:38] Scott W. Luton: let’s talk about regional carriers. Lori, let’s get back to you. What are, what shifts are we seeing with regional carriers?

[00:12:44] Lori Boyer: well, I think it’s a great question already, bud, about Amazon, so that Amazon shipping has really been taking off. When it. comes to, our customers, so we’re seeing a large shift in people wanting to move to Amazon shipping. They also, when we’re talking weekends, have, no additional surcharges.

[00:13:04] Lori Boyer: They’re really good, I would say, but especially they’re really good in the metro areas. They can be really, really fast. So we are seeing a big movement towards Amazon shipping. They’ve really done well this last year. but in other regionals as well, on track. LaserShip and OnTrack, you know, uh, merged.

[00:13:23] Lori Boyer: They are kind of the biggest regional player these days. They cover 70% of the United States and they offer all seven days. other regionals, speedy, LSO if you’re Texas, like Tevon And I uh, lone star. there’s a lot of really, really good options. One of the things that’s really cool about regionals is almost a fourth of packages.

[00:13:45] Lori Boyer: It’s like 3.5 billion packages now a year are going through regionals. They’re not like just this little hunky dory that’s probably

[00:13:53] Lori Boyer: not the right term, but, you know, small deal anymore. They’re, they’re part of people’s ongoing strategy.

[00:13:58] Scott W. Luton: I love it. And I

[00:13:58] Scott W. Luton: hadn’t heard the word hunky dory in a long time. So Lori, thank you for bringing that to the show. and by the way, does, does any of the regionals get a really cool nickname, like the Godfather that you gave to USPS? Lori?

[00:14:09] Lori Boyer: Oh, I’m gonna have to think of

[00:14:11] Scott W. Luton: Alright, think of one, we’ll get back.

[00:14:13] Scott W. Luton: alright. John Regionals, what are you seeing?

[00:14:16] John Wharff: Look, they’re essential now. it’s One of those things like Lori said, where it kind of used to be this kitschy off the wall type of thing, but now. With their approach, with their methodology. The whole idea being if you can service the major metros throughout the domestic us, you’re actually covering the huge, vast majority of percentage of where people, live.

[00:14:38] John Wharff: So through, uh, kind of stringing together this series of regional carriers, depending on where you’re located, where you’re shipping to, everything like That they’ve created this really cool infrastructure and network throughout the domestic us. Where you can cut costs, you can still have really good delivery times.

[00:14:55] John Wharff: You just have to understand where their strengths are where they service, kind of what their capacity is. But if you can get in and you can have a good network of these regional carriers, they can take a huge chunk of the major carrier volume. And save you some money. In the meantime, keep customer service really high.

[00:15:14] John Wharff: Keep make sure that you’re delivering on time, that everybody’s happy. Removing those pain points like returns and exceptions

[00:15:21] John Wharff: and any problems like that, but it’s becoming more and more the norm,

[00:15:24] John Wharff: that it’s no longer uncommon to ship with regionals. It’s almost an essential part of the playbook.

[00:15:30] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. Uh, and John, kind of to your point, Lori’s data point there, 3.5 billion, right? Uh, going through those regional carriers,

[00:15:38] Scott W. Luton: Tevon, curious to get your thoughts on what you’re

[00:15:40] Scott W. Luton: seeing with regional carriers.

[00:15:43] Tevon Taylor: it’s interesting, five years ago, I’d say the regional carriers,

[00:15:47] Tevon Taylor: they were just basically picking away little bitty pieces of business. But the one fourth number I actually didn’t

[00:15:52] Tevon Taylor: know. It doesn’t surprise me. Um, I see Amazon out there actually

[00:15:56] Tevon Taylor: trying to get market share and it makes a lot of sense so that that final

[00:16:00] Tevon Taylor: mile.

[00:16:01] Tevon Taylor: Amazon’s gonna pick up a lot. the regional carriers.

[00:16:04] Tevon Taylor: are

[00:16:04] Tevon Taylor: gonna pick up quite a bit. But look, there’s still the three big ones, right? At least here in the US there’s FedEx, there’s UPS, and

[00:16:10] Tevon Taylor: there’s the post office. So they’re gonna continue to be the big

[00:16:13] Tevon Taylor: cruise ship and the L. The other guys are gonna be the motorboats.

[00:16:16] Tevon Taylor: Trying to kind of grab some

[00:16:17] Tevon Taylor: market share here and there. It’d be interesting to see more consolidation

[00:16:20] Tevon Taylor: and merger and how that’ll compete against

[00:16:23] Tevon Taylor: the the top three.

[00:16:24] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. Good stuff. Tevon. Uh, alright. This third bucket I wanna talk about

[00:16:28] Scott W. Luton: this, juggling act that’s been around since, uh, we were, battling dinosaurs. Uh, the, that’s, do y’all know why that analogy came to my, my, my brain? But we’re juggling costs. With time in transit, right? Trying to establish that peak season balance.

[00:16:44] Scott W. Luton: So, John, speak to that, especially as it relates to the service offerings out there that are helping organizations maintain or find that balance perhaps.

[00:16:54] John Wharff: Yeah, I don’t think that there’s any secret that it’s very easy, right? Coming from EasyPost, coming from something where our main focus is shipping rating. You know, you wanna make sure you know what you’re paying. It’s really easy to kind of obfuscate cost and only focus in on what shipping costs are.

[00:17:09] John Wharff: But if you’ve ever worked for any company that shipping. Thing. Cost means a lot of things, and if you’re saving a lot of money on shipping, but it’s impacting other areas of your business, like customer service returns, anything else like that, and those costs inflate, well then maybe you’re not actually saving money in the long run.

[00:17:27] John Wharff: One of the things that we have to do constantly and what my team has to do is kind of dig into all of these different businesses, operations, their procedures, what they do, what’s important to them, where do they see value? And most importantly, where do their customers see value? How do they continue to get return?

[00:17:43] John Wharff: Customers, how do they build loyalty? How do they build a brand? And it’s always by. Finding that balance between, Hey, we gotta get stuff out the door, we’ve gotta get it to people, and we need to get it to them within the time that we promised to them. Now, that can mean a variety of different things. That could mean overnight, depending on what you’re selling.

[00:18:00] John Wharff: That can mean five days. But what we’ve seen time and time again is that the time and transit is less important to consumers as keeping your promises. If you’re giving them

[00:18:12] John Wharff: an estimate for when things are gonna get there, you have to hit it, or you’re gonna start running into problems real fast.

[00:18:18] Scott W. Luton: John, been there, done that perspective. And I love your comment there about, uh, while it’s important for us to really know our numbers and know, get past the obfuscation, I think is a great word you used, but more importantly, know where our customers see value, right? And look through that prism. Lori, your own comments around this, this long, longstanding balance we’ve gotta find.

[00:18:40] Lori Boyer: Think John really hit it on the head, but there’s a couple of pieces I wanna point out here as a consumer, research shows that they don’t really care which carrier you’re using. As John really mentioned, they just want their package to get there. So it’s okay to to try switching things up. If you feel like that service level is going to be what meets the customer’s needs, in addition, the second piece, which is huge.

[00:19:05] Lori Boyer: So as John mentioned, sometimes it’s not the time in transit that matters as much as, Getting it there when you say you will, but if you don’t get it there, when you say, you know, we all run into problems that that just happens, there’s exceptions that occur. If that happens, transparency and visibility.

[00:19:23] Lori Boyer: Making sure you’re notifying that you’ve got tracking going simply letting them know like, Hey, we’ve had a hangup. That’s gonna make a giant difference in that customer experience as well, so I want to make a point that the tracking can be really, really critical. The ability to track and the ability to

[00:19:39] Lori Boyer: have that visibility for your consumer into where the heck is my package.

[00:19:44] Scott W. Luton: Yes. And that reminds me, Tevon. I love when Lori joined us last

[00:19:48] Scott W. Luton: time we spent a, a lot of time talking about the WiMo,

[00:19:51] Scott W. Luton: and one of the things you that, that you shared there reminded

[00:19:54] Scott W. Luton: me.

[00:19:55] Scott W. Luton: Organizations gotta lean in new technologies so they can automate that, that critical communication to customers rather than

[00:20:02] Scott W. Luton: tying up their, their in incredibly important human resources and answering all the questions, you know, are gonna come with the whole Where’s my stuff movement we’re in.

[00:20:11] Scott W. Luton: But Tevon, what you hear there from John and

[00:20:14] Scott W. Luton: Lori when it comes to the balancing act,

[00:20:16] Tevon Taylor: I’m hearing communication, visibility, transparency. You know, trust in your carrier. And

[00:20:22] Tevon Taylor: if you, break that with a

[00:20:24] Tevon Taylor: consumer, they’re gonna switch their business. Um, I’m okay if you fail, but let me know before I

[00:20:29] Tevon Taylor: find out. Don’t make it where I come home and think something’s on the porch. I’d love to say, Hey, sorry there’s

[00:20:34] Tevon Taylor: a weather issue. Your package is being delivered tomorrow, then I’m okay. But it’s gotta happen proactively. And with all the AI

[00:20:41] Tevon Taylor: tools and the,

[00:20:42] Tevon Taylor: data resources, everyone should be providing that to consumers. And if you’re not then

[00:20:48] Tevon Taylor: the good old saying from Fred Smith,

[00:20:50] Tevon Taylor: you know, if you don’t like change, you’re gonna hate extinction.

[00:20:52] Tevon Taylor: Right? So you gotta

[00:20:53] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. And maybe we’ll touch on Luma, uh, the cool AI play y’all got amongst others at EasyPost.

[00:21:00] Scott W. Luton: there are better ways, folks, especially if you ship packages out there, gosh, turn to technology and take out a lot of the manual interventions that can really just eat away at your, your team members’ dates.

[00:21:09] Scott W. Luton: alright, let’s keep driving. Uh, I wanna walk through some other critical topics and themes that,

[00:21:14] Scott W. Luton: um, it’s gonna help folks, uh, tackle the next, few months here.

[00:21:18] Scott W. Luton: So, uh, John, I’ll stick with you here. What are some smart ways that you’d recommend to folks in terms of how they can cut shipping

[00:21:24] Scott W. Luton: costs without hurting customer experience? Something you and Lori both

[00:21:28] Scott W. Luton: touched on earlier.

[00:21:29] John Wharff: Yeah, And this is where it comes down to the, the marriage of realtime data and data analysis after the fact, right? One of the biggest things That is going to really help improve,

[00:21:42] John Wharff: upfront cost across the board, regardless of what you’re doing, if you’re not rate shopping, you need

[00:21:47] John Wharff: to start. End of story. I wish that there was, uh, an alternative. There was another way to do it. But the fact of the matter

[00:21:53] John Wharff: is with all of these things that are consistently flexible with surcharges, additional fees, maybe, uh, a carrier cause

[00:22:01] John Wharff: charges, weekend fees, maybe they don’t. If you’re not

[00:22:04] John Wharff: actually looking at and having a quick performant, really high speed ability to look at a package and know where’s it

[00:22:12] John Wharff: coming from, where’s it going to?

[00:22:14] John Wharff: What are my different options? What do they cost? That’s step one. Step two then is looking back at all of that data, where are you, performing? Where are you not? Are you actually hitting the time in transits that you’re, uh, you’re setting for your customers? you’ll know if you’re not because they will let you know.

[00:22:31] John Wharff: and then it’s just all about options, right? one of the biggest things that is not unique to our industry, but we see a lot is. Hey, we do this because it’s worked, right? We’ve done this for 20 years. Oh, we just manually process shipments. Oh, we just go to, you know, an online site and we print off UPS labels.

[00:22:50] John Wharff: ’cause that’s what we’ve done for 20 years and it’s served us well so far. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re not looking at what options are available to you. There are so many ways that you can get boxes to consumers. And you can keep costs low while keeping customer service expectations really high.

[00:23:08] John Wharff: But if you’re not even in the market, if you’re not looking around, I guarantee you’re leaving money on the table. And sometimes the like actual monetary amounts that we see when we do analysis for customers, it’s a staggering amount of money a year that they don’t really even realize they’re spending because hey, it’s business is

[00:23:27] John Wharff: normal, right?

[00:23:28] John Wharff: We already anticipated this cost, so. Who cares, you should.

[00:23:33] Scott W. Luton: Oh my gosh. I would just add, as we all know.

[00:23:37] Scott W. Luton: If we are doing business as we’ve always done, there’s all kinds of risks and costs we’re incurring, and I would take your your disservice. Comment a step further, John. Not only are we doing ourselves and our businesses a disservice, but we’re making life harder for our team members that are already working hard to delight our customers.

[00:23:52] Scott W. Luton: Let’s make their days easier. Lori, your comments here.

[00:23:56] Lori Boyer: Yeah, I’m just gonna add a couple more ’cause John hit those so well. If we’re talking about ways to cut costs without impacting the customer experience, that’s really big, again, when you’re looking at all that, that rate comparison, make sure the customer experience is still gonna be perfect.

[00:24:13] Lori Boyer: But there’s a couple of other easy things looking at your packaging. Research shows that like mostly box volume is about 40% too big most of the time. So on your dim weight, we know carriers don’t just charge us based on how much it actually weighs, but also on its dimensional weight. So.

[00:24:32] Lori Boyer: Change your packaging. Don’t send a t-shirt in a shoebox type size where you know, we’re seeing people being able to cut like 10% off of shipping costs hundreds of thousands of dollars simply by changing the type of packaging they use. And another one big one that people don’t think about. And this is a massive thing.

[00:24:50] Lori Boyer: Your USPS specifically claims. USPS claims 40% of the claims, so something does go wrong. 40% of the time those claims never get filed. That is money that’s due and available for you, and just because the process is kind of a nightmare, people don’t do it. But that is one thing I wanted to bring up because we’ve recently added this really cool new, just automated way to do it through EasyPost. our USPS claim system. Super easy. If you ship USPS and you get claims, please just file those claims. EasyPost makes it

[00:25:24] Lori Boyer: super, super easy, doesn’t cost stuff, and you can get money back that you, you deserve.

[00:25:30] Scott W. Luton: Lori that is.

[00:25:31] Scott W. Luton: terrific news. So if you wanna work with the Godfather, the U-S-P-S-A little bit easier

[00:25:36] Scott W. Luton: and automate those claims that so many folks clearly are missing out

[00:25:39] Scott W. Luton: on new feature, that is outstanding. Alright, so Tevon,

[00:25:43] Scott W. Luton: we heard there from John and Lori about how we can find ways to innovate, how we ship, taking costs out, while really serving the customer and our team members.

[00:25:51] Scott W. Luton: Even better. Your thoughts,

[00:25:53] Scott W. Luton: Kevin?

[00:25:54] Tevon Taylor: Well, I heard breaking the status quo, looking at options, using data to kind of drive some of

[00:26:00] Tevon Taylor: your, behaviors. the other thing I would mention is. There’s still some old fashioned things that people need to look

[00:26:06] Tevon Taylor: at, like zone skipping and consolidation. I mean, the conference I’m at right now in Nashville, they talk about shipping in bulk

[00:26:12] Tevon Taylor: to regional hubs.

[00:26:13] Tevon Taylor: They’re setting up to be closer to the customer, so then you can inject into last mile networks versus longer zones by having

[00:26:21] Tevon Taylor: one DC And you gotta do some cost analysis there,

[00:26:24] Tevon Taylor: but you know, if you can reduce zones by

[00:26:26] Tevon Taylor: doing zone skipping, those are things you should look at as Well, But this is one of those questions where it’s like, what I’m adding to, it’s

[00:26:32] Tevon Taylor: nothing compared to, to what you’ve heard so far. So

[00:26:35] Scott W. Luton: it’s good stuff. Tevon. Uh, it’s just Lori and John are like in the 21st or 22nd century with some of the cool things they shared, man. Gotta have both. Gotta have old and new ideas.

[00:26:45] Scott W. Luton: let’s keep driving. John’s go back to you.

[00:26:48] Scott W. Luton: Uh, EasyPost is working with a variety of organizations of all sizes.

[00:26:52] Scott W. Luton: You can go check it out and a brand new spanking, uh, website looks so good. Uh, let’s talk about some of the big brands and some of some of the ways that they’re leveraging savings that I bet a lot of companies of all sizes can, can lean

[00:27:04] Scott W. Luton: into. Give us some examples.

[00:27:06] John Wharff: Yeah, absolutely. So what’s really really cool about our

[00:27:09] John Wharff: industry in general is that the biggest shippers in the world have the exact same

[00:27:13] John Wharff: problems That you do. The scale is

[00:27:15] John Wharff: just a lot bigger, and they had

[00:27:17] John Wharff: to find out how to resolve those problems because

[00:27:20] John Wharff: at the scales that they’re shipping. The costs can be enormous.

[00:27:24] John Wharff: you’ve probably heard, and I bet Lori can even

[00:27:27] John Wharff: quote off the top of her head, for some of these big industries, if they

[00:27:30] John Wharff: can’t ship for 5, 10, 20 minutes, the amount of money that they are losing in those minutes is staggering. It’s huge. But I think we’ve already hit on a couple of them. the biggest thing is.

[00:27:43] John Wharff: There’s a whole bunch of new tools that allow you to do really, really clever things, with how you ship, whether that is cartonization and load planning, uh, software where you can solve a lot of those problems that Lori, brought up about using the wrong box sizes, putting stuff together that you shouldn’t, should I split ship?

[00:28:01] John Wharff: Should I not? Should it all go in one big box or should I kind of break it up as needed? And then as far as rate shopping goes, uh. You’ve kind of alluded to it, we may talk about a little bit more, but we basically have an AI powered thing that takes a look. You set up some basic rules about what your expectation and your customer’s expectation is for time in transit, and we’ll tell you the cheapest service level that’ll get it there within that time period.

[00:28:24] John Wharff: And it’s all of those things that we all know that even instinctually as you work in this industry It’s kind of like a no dumb moment. the more you can take it away from the manual process like. All of us, I’m sure, have worked at different organizations within this industry where there’s so much tribal knowledge where it’s, oh, go ask Doug.

[00:28:45] John Wharff: He’s done this 30 years, and he’ll tell you the way to ship it. We have to get it out of people’s heads, and we have to make tools that will intuitively and quickly do it for us. And that’s kind of always the drive, but we are seeing some of these huge brands. Save, uh, to Lori’s 0.6 figures in packaging a year, let alone high six figures of shipping costs.

[00:29:07] John Wharff: you get a two day order and the instinct is, I’m gonna go buy a second day air label. Well, what, if USPS ground advantage can get it there in, two days? Why not at least look at it Especially because, as Lori pointed out, the consumer doesn’t care what the logo

[00:29:22] John Wharff: is on the box. What they care about is you and your commitment to them and whether or not you’re going to hit it.

[00:29:28] Scott W. Luton: Good stuff. John and Lori, your ears were burning throughout his response there. same question. Some of those examples, uh, that we wanna spike the football on that will help people kind of visualize how they can make some of these big gains. Lori, your thoughts?

[00:29:41] Lori Boyer: John really hit it on the head, but taking a look at the data, we’re in an industry where pennies make like a giant difference, Right Just because of the volume, it adds up so, so quickly. So being able to shave off 3 cents here or being able to shave off some minutes there, that all adds up in a really fast way.

[00:30:06] Lori Boyer: This is an industry that was made for technology, for data, and we’re a little bit slow moving into that. research shows that our industry kind of lags a little bit. We don’t always like to implement our technology as fast as we should, but the big companies we’re seeing really do well are doing just that.

[00:30:25] Lori Boyer: They’re finding the little tiny things they can shave off. That adds up to a huge amount of savings, whether it’s, cartonization, whether it’s the shipping time, whether it’s paying for USPS and a regional instead of UPS ground on a certain route. All of those things can really add up fast. And so that’s, that’s really where I see all of our different retailers doing well.

[00:30:51] John Wharff: One of the things, Lori, that you just said that I always talk about is if you wanna know how quick our industry is at adopting new technology, go into any location to ship something and just take a peek at their monitor. When they’re trying to make a label,

[00:31:05] John Wharff: you’ll immediately know

[00:31:06] John Wharff: what, what generation that software was made in, and it was probably before you were born.

[00:31:11] Scott W. Luton: Oftentimes the good old green screens or the purple screens or you, you name it. Um, Tevon, John and Lori just shared a lot of good stuff there. I wanna go back

[00:31:20] Scott W. Luton: to kind of a theme you

[00:31:22] Scott W. Luton: you brought up in your last response, kind of a, a

[00:31:24] Scott W. Luton: throwback. I think one analogy here

[00:31:27] Scott W. Luton: that if we can automate

[00:31:29] Scott W. Luton: things in a very innovative way and have access to all the data

[00:31:34] Scott W. Luton: that John and Lori are talking about, so we can make faster decisions, better producing better outcomes,

[00:31:40] Scott W. Luton: not just for the organization and our team members, but for the customers.

[00:31:44] Scott W. Luton: Imagine that it’s kind of like when I got my first pair of Velcro shoes, I didn’t have to worry about struggling

[00:31:51] Scott W. Luton: to tie those laces anymore. It was just slapping across and take off running and Tevon little throwback. I thought you’d appreciate that ’cause I bet you had a moment like that too. But what’d you hear there from John and Lori

[00:32:02] Scott W. Luton: with some of those examples?

[00:32:04] Tevon Taylor: Well, I look forward to wearing Velcro shoes again, and green screens were in my past, so that brings back some Memories. But really there’s one common thread. they’re hitting the all the key points, but people don’t just chase discounts. You have to redesign your network.

[00:32:19] Tevon Taylor: You have to redesign your operations. You have to think about how

[00:32:22] Tevon Taylor: you can be leaner and more customer-centric. So if you’re just gonna be tactical, chasing a discount, you’re gonna miss out on the opportunity and the fact that You, might need to revamp

[00:32:32] Tevon Taylor: your operations or your network.

[00:32:33] Scott W. Luton: That’s right. Well said. Tevon spoken like a true, uh, operational pro.

[00:32:39] Scott W. Luton: I wanna talk about red flags for a minute. And Lori, I wanna

[00:32:41] Scott W. Luton: start with you, uh, here on this question here because

[00:32:44] Scott W. Luton: you know, every strategy,

[00:32:46] Scott W. Luton: especially in these fast moving global business times, velocity off the charts and growing every strategy needs a refresher and a reboot.

[00:32:53] Scott W. Luton: So what red flags when it comes to shipping strategies, when organizations see it? Should they just hear in their ears? Reboot, reboot. Lori, what comes to

[00:33:03] Scott W. Luton: mind?

[00:33:04] Lori Boyer: Right off what John was just saying about. Maybe look at what kind of technology you’re using. if it is slow, if it is outdated, that’s just a red flag. Another one if you’re using a single carrier or if you’re highly dependent on a single carrier, that’s a big red flag.

[00:33:23] Lori Boyer: You’re wasting money. There’s a lot of money going down the drain that you could be saved. I wanna point out surcharges. We didn’t get into quite that much around surcharges for this upcoming peak. We are seeing high surcharges. We’ve had some of those come in. I wanted to make a note. USPS is also bringing back surcharges for the first time in a few years.

[00:33:41] Lori Boyer: this upcoming peak. So you.

[00:33:43] Lori Boyer: really gotta watch those surcharges during peak season. They can add up super fast. So kind of run an analysis. Are your surcharges running, You know, 15, 20% of your spend? If your surcharges are really high, that is a red flag for me. what else? WiMo, we

[00:33:59] Lori Boyer: talked WiMo You you’re getting people complaining.

[00:34:02] Lori Boyer: That is a red flag.

[00:34:03] Scott W. Luton: John, before I get your take, folks, lean in to not only your feedback’s a blessing. You get it from customers, it’s a blessing. And to be able to act on it, it’s even better. But the same thing with team members. Look at every opportunity. Go to the gemba, see what they’re experiencing, get their ideas.

[00:34:18] Scott W. Luton: And better yet, when you get ’em, act on it. John, reboot. What red flag should folks and business leaders and supply chain leaders out there look for?

[00:34:26] John Wharff: Yeah.

[00:34:26] John Wharff: I would say once again, few carriers wanted to You, it’s a bad sign. Manual processes drive me crazy. I know that that’s my soapbox that I talk about way too much, but like the more manual processes You have The slower you’re going and the more cost you’re leaving on the table. And I would also just say data is your friend.

[00:34:48] John Wharff: chances are, regardless of what system you’re in, regardless of how long you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing, you have some amount of data that, you can look at. you’re fielding tickets, you’re taking calls, you’re helping customers, you’re getting feedback. like Scott said, both internally and externally.

[00:35:05] John Wharff: You know, the old saying, you know, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, chances are it’s probably a duck. If you keep hearing the same problems time and time again from both your internal stakeholders and what your customers are saying, chances are it’s a problem you need to take a look at.

[00:35:20] John Wharff: Even if it’s something that maybe you wanna avoid. You have to avoid stagnation it. Like every year it gets more and more important. and I know that Lori has this kind of mentality about life. I have this mentality about life. I never feel like I know everything because it’s changing. And the second that I close myself off and I try to say like, oh no, I’ve got this all figured out now. you know, I’m the

[00:35:43] John Wharff: expert. I’ve got everything just perfectly tuned. Then I’m usually behind because if you’re not opened up to new, technologies, new ways of

[00:35:52] John Wharff: doing things, you’re probably in bad shape.

[00:35:55] Scott W. Luton: John, I love that, uh, spike in the football, keeping it real. Uh, and I, I would, I would debate you ’cause Lori knows everything in my book and she’s demonstrated it,

[00:36:07] Lori Boyer: John. I mean, that was like to me, mic drop on

[00:36:10] Lori Boyer: red flag. If you think you know everything,

[00:36:13] Scott W. Luton: That’s so true, Lori. That’s right.

[00:36:16] Scott W. Luton: that’s like a, uh, football size red flag. Tevon, uh, what about you, what’d you hear there from John or Lori? Or what do you think should be screaming reboot

[00:36:25] Scott W. Luton: red flags

[00:36:25] Scott W. Luton: for folks that need to, need to change what they’re doing?

[00:36:28] Tevon Taylor: You know, if, if you haven’t changed your carrier network in over two to three years,

[00:36:32] Tevon Taylor: it’s kinda like car insurance. You’re probably paying too much and you’re leaving money? on the table. So Lori said that, I agree.

[00:36:39] Tevon Taylor: If customer promises don’t match reality, there probably needs to be a

[00:36:43] Tevon Taylor: reset. And last but not least,

[00:36:46] Tevon Taylor: if costs are climbing, service is not improving.

[00:36:49] Tevon Taylor: There, there’s a signal, something stale in their model.

[00:36:52] Tevon Taylor: So time to make some changes. Like you just gotta stay on top of it. If you get too cozy, something’s wrong. Right?

[00:36:59] Tevon Taylor: I apologize to anybody on this listening that’s car insurance related,

[00:37:03] Tevon Taylor: but if you don’t manage that car insurance, it just keeps climbing and it’s like, I’m not getting anything out of that.

[00:37:08] Tevon Taylor: Like there should be

[00:37:09] Tevon Taylor: some kind of proactive management. So I would say those

[00:37:12] Tevon Taylor: would be the three that, that kind of weave into their, their comments.

[00:37:15] Scott W. Luton: agree with you Tevon, and, and it reminded me one more thing that John said earlier, the only thing worse than a problem, especially when you let down a customer, is when it repeats itself from time and time again. We gotta get to root calls and fix it for all parties, the whole ecosystem.

[00:37:30] Scott W. Luton: all right, so John, let’s get back to you here.

[00:37:32] Scott W. Luton: We can’t stress enough. Uh, time is of the

[00:37:35] Scott W. Luton: essence and we gotta move.

[00:37:37] Scott W. Luton: And the cool thing is a lot of what y’all both are speaking to, you and Lori and

[00:37:40] Scott W. Luton: Tevon, for that matter, are very actionable, right? so peak season is upon us. What are some

[00:37:45] Scott W. Luton: quick, quick, quick, quick testable changes

[00:37:48] Scott W. Luton: that you would recommend supply chain leaders explore to optimize

[00:37:51] Scott W. Luton: peak performance this year, John?

[00:37:54] John Wharff: Yeah. I think that step one

[00:37:57] John Wharff: is to realize that Peak season’s gonna be volatile. It is. Every year things are gonna change. you. are going to

[00:38:03] John Wharff: have to be able to pivot on a dime. And the only way you can do that. is if you’re figuring out how to do that. Now, if it’s the 11th hour, if it’s

[00:38:12] John Wharff: December 22nd and all of a sudden, you know, one of

[00:38:15] John Wharff: the major carriers is saying, we’re not gonna pick up anything more.

[00:38:18] John Wharff: You’re not gonna find a

[00:38:20] John Wharff: solution that day that’s going

[00:38:21] John Wharff: to keep your customers happy and keep your brand satisfied. So I think the most important things that you can do now is you can start diversifying. You need to start looking at what other options are available to get goods out to your consumers.

[00:38:34] John Wharff: That’s all there is to it You need to have technology that moves fast. You need things that are accurate. you need to be able to trust the decisions that are being made. and the best way to do that is to

[00:38:45] John Wharff: test it now, right? get that under your belt. Understand how it works, how it operates, how it’s coming to the conclusions. is it saving you money? Are you getting more tickets? I think it’s really important. Once again, that balance between. How much money are we saving on one side? Is it costing us on the other side? And really the sandbox for that entire environment is right. now you have to start making these changes. If you are someone who’s listening and you are saying, oh, I do only have one carrier or two carriers, start looking now.

[00:39:16] John Wharff: Start contacting regional carriers in your area. See what they can do for you. See what’s available. Because the better setup you can get now, you’re going to have a much smoother peak season throughout and you will be grateful. ’cause look,

[00:39:30] John Wharff: peak season’s gonna be hard on all of us. There’s no way around it Make it as

[00:39:34] John Wharff: easy as you can.

[00:39:35] Scott W. Luton: knowing all the things outside of our control, especially in this type of current environment, man, we gotta pull hard on the levers that are within our control. And if you don’t take action, you get what you get. Uh, Lori, your thoughts on, uh, any other steps you would recommend that supply chain leaders do to optimize peak performance this year?

[00:39:54] Lori Boyer: I’m gonna just bounce off of John’s there. I want everyone who is listening right now. I

[00:40:01] Lori Boyer: want you to schedule for some time in the next week or two, a war room meeting. I want you to gather your shipping people, everyone who needs to know and you need to be doing what are the surcharge issues?

[00:40:13] Lori Boyer: You know, are you having a lot of. Oversized unauthorized packages. look into what is happening with all the surcharges. Look into di minimus what kind of impact is that gonna have on checkout your, you know, fix your HS codes, carrier import charges, all of that kind of stuff.

[00:40:31] Lori Boyer: You know, UPS just announced a $2 and 50 cents new import fee. You need to get that data. where as John mentioned, what regional carriers are you going to be testing? It’s time to AB test right now. Peak is upon us. Let’s not do this in November. So five to 10% of your volume. See if you can get some relief valves out there.

[00:40:53] Lori Boyer: Do a little bit of testing because as we mentioned, the big three carriers are reducing, they’re cutting down because of that consumer demand issue. That means they will cap you. They’re not gonna cap the giants out there, they’re gonna cap you. So regionals, look into doing that. Look at your cross-border hygiene.

[00:41:13] Lori Boyer: Argue one of those people who ship USPS and are not filing claims. find out where you are leaking money, but schedule that war room now. it’s

[00:41:24] Lori Boyer: time right now. And, and figure out there’s small ways and, it’s gonna be different for each company, but I promise you can find ways to save tons of money.

[00:41:33] John Wharff: Lori, I know you skipped over it really quick, but one of the things you mentioned unauthorized, oversized packages, isn’t it

[00:41:39] John Wharff: $1,800 Now

[00:41:41] Lori Boyer: $1,800 fee. So

[00:41:44] John Wharff: we’re not talking a $2 and 50 cent

[00:41:46] John Wharff: fee.

[00:41:47] Scott W. Luton: That dog’s got a lot more bite than bark. Holy cow. Uh, and two other things, Tevon. I, I love what Lori said there.

[00:41:54] Scott W. Luton: she suggested war room, which I love that. But you had like a romper room moment. Lori, you’re peering out into our audience.

[00:42:00] Scott W. Luton: I love that. And then that cross

[00:42:01] Scott W. Luton: border hygiene, Tevon, we’re talking about this the other day. there’s all

[00:42:05] Scott W. Luton: sorts of ways we can do things better. Some leveraging technology, some leveraging better process. Some, some depending on better communication

[00:42:13] Scott W. Luton: and a better challenging all assumptions.

[00:42:16] Scott W. Luton: And really knowing the laid the land instead of leaning on long held assumptions. So dangers in this environment. Tevon, what’d you hear there from John and Lori’s

[00:42:24] Scott W. Luton: recommendations?

[00:42:25] Tevon Taylor: we’ve talked about diversifying. If, if one thing you, you remember off this podcast is you, you need to be doing that. She mentioned five to 10. I’m gonna, I’m

[00:42:33] Tevon Taylor: gonna up that say 10 to 15. Let’s just go higher. Why not? but the two things that are outside of transportation that can help, that I’ve done for iconic launches, like with iPhone or with even the Harry Potter book 20 years ago. you can pre-package and pre label your top selling SKUs. Go ahead and get that done in fulfillment, get it done while things are slower before peak. And then push inventory closer to where it’s going, right? So you can actually have temporary, stocking locations that are closer to demand

[00:43:04] Tevon Taylor: and start doing that in regions.

[00:43:07] Tevon Taylor: And then what happens is you’re reducing your zones, you’re helping make sure that you don’t get caught up in the,

[00:43:12] Tevon Taylor: you know, the line hauls

[00:43:13] Tevon Taylor: take in and there’s no capacity. So those are the

[00:43:15] Tevon Taylor: two things I would add on

[00:43:17] Tevon Taylor: to the transportation side.

[00:43:19] Scott W. Luton: Love it. So I got a hall of justice here between Lori, John, and Tevon. Folks, if y’all need something, here it is, right.

[00:43:25] Scott W. Luton: okay, we got a fast and furious finish coming up. Uh, and I want to do this before we learn from John, just how easy it’s to get started with EasyPost. I really want to Lori, build up the why. I wanna build up the why and check this out folks. Uh, Lori, if you’re not over there checking out, uh, the blog series that Lori and the team publish at EasyPost, you’re missing out.

[00:43:50] Scott W. Luton: We’ll talk about the podcast in a second. But you recently wrote, Lori, this great article about from math to memorable, how to level up your delivery experience. And you had this nugget here, 84% of customers say a bad delivery experience would stop them from shopping with a brand.

[00:44:06] Scott W. Luton: Again, as Lori says, that’s not just a bummer. That’s a business risk, major business risk. Lori, your thoughts here,

[00:44:15] Lori Boyer: it’s a huge part of your brand is the shipping experience. and so again, for me, if we’re gonna be talking about, yeah, jump over there, that article has tons of really great, tips from research of, of what makes a difference. But I think it. really goes back to visibility again and being super proactive.

[00:44:34] Lori Boyer: Customers are far less likely to count it as a bad. Experience if you were proactive. So again, people don’t need you to be perfect. They understand things happen. you can make up for that and they’ll actually consider it a great delivery experience. Maybe if even when something was late but you were proactively reaching out, you were often hearing a little bit of a coupon or something to hop on to make up for a bad experience.

[00:44:59] Lori Boyer: I wanna say all

[00:45:00] Lori Boyer: those challenging experiences that you do have with shipping, those are actually incredible opportunities. To create an above and beyond experience, so don’t worry when there are mistakes. Just be really proactive and, communicative

[00:45:16] Lori Boyer: and, make sure the visibility is there for your customers.

[00:45:19] Scott W. Luton: as research points out as Lori brought to us, the risk is real.

[00:45:23] Scott W. Luton: But John, there is a better way and there’s some good news here ’cause it’s really easy to act on a lot of what y’all have shared. Just how easy is it to start working with EasyPost.

[00:45:34] John Wharff: incredibly, uh, like

[00:45:36] John Wharff: uh, Scott mentioned earlier, we have a brand new revamped web. Website, come check it out.

[00:45:40] John Wharff: There’s a whole bunch of calls to action. There’s a wealth of information on there available for you to see. Uh, you can also reach out to sales@easypost.com. That’s, uh, handled by a whole cross-functional team of both business stakeholders, technical stakeholders, everybody else.

[00:45:56] John Wharff: We are always willing to chat whether you have interest in, in continuing business with us, or you just have some questions you need answers to. Reach out We are happy to talk. This is what we eat, sleep, drink, breathe all day long. We Love

[00:46:10] John Wharff: talking about it. That’s why we’re here. maybe that makes us mentally unwell, but we enjoy it.

[00:46:15] Scott W. Luton: Not at all. You know, we gotta all maintain a healthy sense of

[00:46:20] Scott W. Luton: humor in global supply chain, especially these days, right? and one thing I’ve learned in collaborating with Lori and John and Tevon for that matter for so long, is that they do love to have these conversations. Even if you don’t do business with EasyPost, they’d love to have the conversation and help, because we all know, uh, the pains folks are having out there.

[00:46:39] Scott W. Luton: And, and hey, we all love to delight customers. Uh, I wanna point out, uh, that new website John mentioned. Trisha, is Johnny on the spot? it’s right there. easypost.com. It’s just that easy. Amanda has shared Lori’s great article. Hey, check out all the blog posts. You’ll enjoy them.

[00:46:54] Scott W. Luton: I like to keep it real

[00:46:55] Scott W. Luton: factor and the sense of humor.

[00:46:56] Scott W. Luton: Y’all bake into those.

[00:46:58] Scott W. Luton: All right. And one other thing, man, Lori, I don’t know where you, when you get any sleep, ’cause you also got this unboxing logistics podcast that you host that we’re big fans of. Uh, and y’all have had some great episodes here lately. You were talking a minute ago about cross-border hygiene.

[00:47:13] Scott W. Luton: That was, I think that was the theme of your last podcast. Is that right?

[00:47:16] Lori Boyer: Yeah. Yeah. Lots of just, there’s so many smart people out there. You know, Scott, you get to meet with them all the time. I love meeting and, and

[00:47:25] Lori Boyer: learning from others in the industry, so yeah, for sure. Check out on boxing logistics.

[00:47:30] Scott W. Luton: Tevon, let’s get your key takeaway in really quick. we’ve covered a lot of ground here. John and Lori brought it on time and in full. But what is the one patent of key takeaway

[00:47:40] Scott W. Luton: that you gotta share with folks?

[00:47:42] Tevon Taylor: Yeah. So to me, a lot of good things I’ve heard, but with a customer in mind, don’t chase discounts. Diversify who you’re using, use technology, and most importantly, you gotta break the status quo. And when you do that, you’re gonna ship smarter, not harder. We’re all good.

[00:47:59] Scott W. Luton: Oh, I love that. And we’re all good and we all need to be good, uh, to get through these turbulent times. Okay. John Wharff, uh, folks can find you on LinkedIn and elsewhere, rock and rolling out across the industry. Is that right

[00:48:13] John Wharff: Is

[00:48:13] John Wharff: absolutely right.

[00:48:14] Scott W. Luton: Lori Boyer. How else can folks track you down, Lori?

[00:48:18] Lori Boyer: Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn as well. I’m totally open to if you have suggestions for topics, anything you wanna learn, l voer@easypost.com. I’d love to hear from you

[00:48:28] Lori Boyer: and, and chat and, give advice and just. Connect.

[00:48:32] Scott W. Luton: what a terrific session. Big thanks to Lori Boyer and John Wharff, both with EasyPost Sheriff Tevon Taylor. Always a pleasure. I love your keep It Real Take, uh, here today.

[00:48:43] Scott W. Luton: and I look forward to having you back soon, all three of y’all back really, really soon. Uh, but folks, I’ll tell you this session here there’s so many actionable ideas. I’ve got at least four pages back in front and my hands hurting from all the notes from John, Lori and Tevon. here’s a homework and here’s a good thing.

[00:49:02] Scott W. Luton: There’s plenty of opportunity to take at least just one thing that was shared here today. Put it into practice, share it with your team. Hey, do something for your customers, your suppliers, the whole ecosystem, your team members that are working so hard to make it happen each day. the clock is ticking, the time is is well passed now.

[00:49:20] Scott W. Luton: And now the choice is yours of all’s in your court. So with all that said, uh, deeds not words, folks. Now it works. With all that said, on behalf of the whole Supply Chain Now team Scott Luton challenge. You do good, give forward, be the change that’s needed, and we’ll see you next time right back here on Supply chain Now.

[00:49:33] Scott W. Luton: Thanks everybody.

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