“Businesses are not going to lose millions or billions of dollars just to make sure that you have toilet paper at Walmart in case another pandemic hits.’”

– Tim Dooner, Director of Audio at FreightWaves Radio on SiriusXM

Buying surges and product outages have caused supply chains to hit the front pages of many newspapers since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. And while consumers seem to have a newfound awareness and respect for supply chains, the details of freight logistics still escape their notice.

Podcaster and SiriusXM host Tim Dooner has worked with FedEx, Reebok, Adidas, L.L. Bean, Hasbro, Louis Vuitton, and many more high level clients across the full spectrum of the supply chain. His honest “human-to-human” approach allows him to combine his knowledge of freight with the frontline perspectives of shippers, carriers, drivers, and brokers.

In this conversation, Tim tells Supply Chain Now Co-hosts Greg White and Scott Luton about:

· Which stocks and industries he sees as bellwethers for how long consumers think they are going to be staying home due to COVID-19 restrictions

· The ‘love/hate’ dynamic that exists between brokers or load boards and independent owner-operators, and why regulation is not the answer

· How companies are going to handle the shift (or not) from ‘WFH’ back to a traditional office setting and what advantages and disadvantages people should expect

Intro – Amanda Luton (00:00:05):

It’s time for supply chain. Now broadcasting live from the supply chain capital of the country, Atlanta, Georgia, heard around the world. Supply chain now spotlights the best in all things. Supply chain, the people, the technologies, the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

Scott Luton (00:00:29):

Hey, good afternoon Scott, loot and Greg white back with you here on supply chain at welcome to live stream number two for the day. Greg, how you doing? I am doing fantastic man. Am I excited about this? So we, I am too. And this is a, it’s great to have our guests today back with us. He was with us roughly a year or so ago. Uh, they have gone on to continue to do some huge things over freight waves. Uh, today’s show, we’re featuring one of the true voices of industry, the one and only Tim duner. Uh, again, having him back, uh, first time on video with us last time around. It was official podcast, which was great and very well received, but there’s nothing quite like putting a face with a voice is or Greg. No. And what a voice her has. I mean, just he’s an incredible skill. Real, live a professional. That’s right. Right. So, and we get the chance to connect with him and talk about, uh, three or four big topics in industry. It’s looking forward to that. Hey, in the meantime, uh, to our audience, if you, uh, enjoy our live streams, be sure to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. Okay. So with no further ado, let’s welcome in. Let’s see. Hey, we’ve got too much to get to so we gotta get started. So let’s welcome in. Tim duner with freight waves.

Tim Dooner (00:01:51):

Hey Tim, how you doing? Hey, what’s up everybody evidence. It’s cool, isn’t it? I wish we were in person though, man. I’m sick of like I’ve been doing live. So you’d mentioned it too. I used to do just the traditional audio podcasts and the add the via component. You got more moving parts and now you make it even another degree of difficulty where we’re putting all of us in disparate places and we’ve got to connect and bring ourselves together. But you know what it feels like home will make it feel like home. Absolutely. And, and you know, uh, really have enjoyed since we connected last, uh, roughly I think it was June, 2019 and get to know you and your back story a little better man. Y’all, y’all keep knocking. Add the park over waves. And I love, we’re talking some of the variety of projects that you personally have driven that put that coffee down series is a really unique, really creative and there’s been some really, uh, no, uh, informational and impactful episodes as part of that series already.

Tim Dooner (00:02:49):

Yeah. You know what, and what’s funny is it, it all ties back together. You know, life is a flat circle. Like they sit on true detective Matthew McConaughey, they got out of this romantic movies but a time at home. Well, when I, when I spend some time with you, last time Scott, we talked a lot about, we talked about a lot, a lot about mental health and uh, entrepreneurial spirit and, and being good to yourself and channeling negativity into positivity. And this week on, put that coffee down. We’re going to be doing something similar. We’re talking about the, the mental health that drives sales. And, uh, one of the things we neglect the most, which is ourself, especially freight salespeople. I’ve been there. You’re, you’re out on an Island. We’re all kind of experiencing sort of, I think what freight salespeople usually do, which is right.

Tim Dooner (00:03:31):

There’s a big disconnect where, you know, you’re, you’re having video meetings where everything’s via email and, um, in a business that’s driven by wins and losses, that can, that can be very cumbersome after a while. Yeah, great point. And, and, and further along those lines, the first episode, we did really dive in more to the Tim duner story. This episode, we’re gonna do a little bit of that on the front end, but it’s more about your thought leadership and your insights on the industry. So looking forward to kind of having that side of the conversation here today. Um, real quick, uh, tell hello, say hello to a few folks have joined us here today. Diana Chumley via Facebook. Hope you’re doing well, Diana. Great to have you. Uh, Joseph Maretta. Uh huh. I’ve been checking out and have a wide variety of our podcasts and our live streams.

Tim Dooner (00:04:13):

Hopefully you’re going to be right a part of round three of supply chain trivia and they’re good to have you here today. All right, so Tim, let’s, let’s tee things up for folks that may not have seen that last episode or may not check out one of your million projects you’ve got going on, which is, is really serving the industry or one of four people on the planet doesn’t know what freight waves is. Right, right. Tell us about yourself. Uh, let’s see. I’m, uh, I’ve been in supply chain since 2005. I started out in the music industry actually, and it’s very interesting coming from that industry and then coming into freight because when I was there in 2000 to 2003, digital transformation happened because of Napster and file sharing, super disruptive. Flash forward. I ended up in the music. I ended up in the, uh, the logistics industry starting with FedEx trade networks.

Tim Dooner (00:05:03):

I’ve worked in operations, sales, consulting, marketing, and in 2016 I lost a job and I was like, you know what? I’ve always wanted to start a podcast. I kind of need a resume to get another job. Maybe I will start a logistics podcast. A lot of the ones I’d heard at the time sounded a lot like webinars and that’s not really my personality. I listened more to like Joe Rogan, bill Simmons, and I wanted to kind of bring the conversation that people, not the one that we’re having on stage during keynotes and stuff like that. The prepared super raised ones, I preferred more the the human to human connection to the people who actually work in supply chain, putting contracts context to it. That way the conversations you would have in the networking areas and outside in the hallways and just having some fun with the programming.

Tim Dooner (00:05:44):

So what is it, 2020 now? So I’ve been doing that for like four years. Last year I interviewed Craig fuller. I moved from Boston to Chattanooga and it was like, do you want to start a podcasting network for us? So now I’ve started the biggest podcast network in the world freight cast over at Freightways and now like you guys, we started at video and stuff too. So yeah, well the lines are starting to cross all these things that were produced as podcasts, which is a little bit different. A medium than video, right? Right. Different things to consider. So my job there is as we develop a lot of these projects, I still really liked the idea of podcasting and the idea of, of making things that are dual purpose. So I’m always telling people like if you show something on the screen, you must speak to it.

Tim Dooner (00:06:22):

You must bring the listener in. It ultimately me that like my favorite thing to my favorite, and I don’t know about you guys, but I imagine cause you started podcasting was like, just like going to the gym and that intimacy you have of having right or have headphones and and consuming and almost a passive way, you know, like video. Great. But you gotta sit there and you gotta and you gotta watch it and you’re gonna what are they doing? Whereas like when I put it on a podcast, I can just go about my day too. So it fits into my lifestyle very well. Yeah, I think that’s well said. I think, um, Mmm taking a deeper dive and not having to be in the moment as much as with live streams and even to some extent video interviews you feel more compelled to be in the moment versus what we’ve seen Greg and as we continue to experiment and you know, chase after R creative passions is you can really experiment in that podcast setting and, and you know, and connect with, I think there’s an audience for everything. Greg’s got a different phrase that we love here, but there truly is having been one that spent more time on YouTube the last say three months cause it’s fascinating to see all the different niches on there and the instant following you can check. You can see it’s very tangible. Um, yeah I think the podcast space is very similar

Greg White (00:07:36):

and it, I mean it, you know, it’s truly on demand. I mean it’s, I have found myself over the last couple of years reaching for the, for the radio in my car to rewind it because I wasn’t paying attention in that instant and I wanted to capture something that they had said. So it is truly in demand on demand because you can be in another moment and still still come back and get that content whenever you want it right there in, in the session. So I think that’s what’s so powerful about it. You know, it’s that thing that trips your trigger during that 30 or 60 minute podcast.

Tim Dooner (00:08:14):

You can focus

Greg White (00:08:16):

in on that and let the rest of it kind of drift away, whatever. Right. So,

Tim Dooner (00:08:20):

so is that, you can say my favorite thing to do now is to bring the audience in and bring in a lot of engagement and kind of crowdsource a little bit of the content. Cause it’s great having that feedback in real time. And I got very used to it doing Freightways radio for Sirius XM where I could have people call in and well, the topic out there and if nobody calls in, you can be like, okay, this one sucks. Let’s move on. Let’s move on. Like with LinkedIn live and and Facebook and things like that now live. You can interact and network with an audience, they can ask questions to you, you can ask questions of them, and it really helps. To me, it’s awesome. Like that is, that’s the most fun thing about it, having that live interaction so much so I hate recording anything that tape.

Tim Dooner (00:08:58):

Now when people ask me to do interviews, I’m like, we’re going to take this and put it out in two months. I’m like, I don’t want to do it. Because first of all, that guy two months ago was the worst version of me who knew less. It was more of myself and I don’t want to listen to, I don’t even go listen to my old episodes, you know, like after it’s done, I’ll critique myself, the guests, my cohost, that kind of stuff. The technical aspects of it, but I’ll never, ever, ever revisit it. Mm Hmm. That’s really interesting. Yeah. Well I think we both have a real passion for these live events because of exactly what you’re talking about. Instantaneous response and, and you know, like we, we’ve done a number of episodes with Mike Griswold from Gartner and we keep, we just keep going back to the live vehicle for that because he’s so knowledgeable. He connects with the audience. They have a ton of questions because he’s practitioner, he’s expert, he’s authority figure now. Right. Um, and, and people like that who can interact with the audience. It’s so powerful. We learn, they learn and the audience learns. It’s kind of a weird twist on instant gratification for sure. From a digital content standpoint. All right. Hey, real quick, want to say hello? Speaking of which, that’s right. Roll from Barcelona. How are you doing? Just talking earlier today about Barcelona, Spain, Barcelona.

Tim Dooner (00:10:18):

I forgot. Yes. Forgot to press that button. Where all those balconies. Just by the way, I’m here in America and we got nothing. I got a noise complaint from my cowbell. Well, I haven’t had anyone singing on balconies here or serenading none of that stuff in America. We’re going to walk them down the streets and singing. That’s okay. And Don long Don hope you’re doing well. Um, uh, the consultant author, you name it, air force veteran like myself. Uh, Don, hopefully you’re doing well. Had a good Memorial day weekend. Um, and that the one of our cherished holiday traditions that we have here on the American calendar at least. Okay. So Tim, we could spend hours diving into the wide variety of projects from, put that coffee down, which we spoke about freight wave insiders, what the truck of course and many others. Um, but let’s start, let, let, let’s kind of keep moving forward. Let’s talk about some good news that you’re seeing out in industry. What, give us some good news here.

Tim Dooner (00:11:18):

I’ve heard, I don’t know if this is related to supply chain, but this one, this guy got reunited with his donkey. He was in quarantine, right? For like two months. Finally see this donkey and it’s not you seeing him right here and you know how much it takes to get a donkey to break. The other stories of like supply chain is actually convoy just recently, so we all heard the stories. Like the one good thing about coven is a, it’s unveiled little bit of the curtain on the downstream supply chain from people going to the stores getting goods and how that’s, that’s slightly different to imports and from warehouses and how uh huh. Even though stores themselves are kind of just in time in stock, like if you remember in the eighties I remember like buying Nintendo games with my parents. If you didn’t see it on the shelf, you could actually go up to someone at a store and you’d be like, do you have any in the back? And that would be a realistic request where nowadays there’s really not what stuck in the back. All the floor space is the optimum space, right. Translates during a pandemic with a bunch of toilet paper missing and all of that kind of stuff. Well, another thing we were hearing about was one second, I hadn’t heard about this toilet paper we finally got, it’s been easier to get now. You don’t have to, you don’t have to.

Greg White (00:12:36):

Scott’s done a half dozen.

Tim Dooner (00:12:40):

Hi, the heartless of Chattanooga, trying to get a roll of toilet paper anyways, so no thing, right? So we were all hearing stories like, Oh, this is terrible. All the farms were throwing their milk away and they’re throwing produce away and all of these kinds of things. The reason is, is the same reason with the toilet paper. There’s a, like a retail industrial stuff, there’s a retail supply chain, there’s the industrial supply chain. There’s, there’s the milk that goes to restaurants and to schools and stuff. And that’s the stuff that’s getting done. You can’t just pour that stuff into a gallon of milk and then have it. It’s already been produced. So convoys has been doing something really cool, this dairy collective, and they have been offering to move all the milk for free and they’ve moved, uh, something like 80,000 gallons of milk to people in need. And I don’t know if you knew this, but this fact shocked me is that from food banks, the average American family uses the food bank only gets one gallon of milk a year, which is like what symbol or a year? One gallon of milk a year.

Greg White (00:13:35):

Yeah.

Tim Dooner (00:13:36):

Like what do you get? Like what do you get? Like one of those little ads creamers. I mean we’ll take forever but cool to see them step up and I liked the education aspect that a lot of these things are having to teaching people about the difference that is going on in supply chain. Operate big silver line there and and love that story. Convoy continued to do some good work there. Greg, what’s, what’s some of your good news here?

Greg White (00:13:59):

Mine is, mine is a, it’s almost a throwback. So a Rakuten super logistics who is kind of an alternative to F a fulfilled by Amazon. They have this contest called Oh ship. They want retailers to share an embarrassing moment where they miss fulfilled or unfulfilled or over fulfilled or or something like that. And I just think it’s a blast. It also reminded me of the only good thing that Kmart ever did possibly in their existence, uh, before they went out of business was their ship, my pants, uh, commercial when they, when they finally got to e-commerce in 2011 or 12, whenever that was. Um, and I just thought, I think it’s, it’s hilarious. It’s okay to have fun again and we’re having fun by laughing at ourselves by, you know, our mishaps and in commerce. So

Tim Dooner (00:14:50):

I think agreed. Really creative. I mean, I mean, you know, uh, it’s always neat to recognize some of those things because so many companies fall into the trap of delivering the same promotions, the same way, be the same channels. And when you see something like that, they’re really has clearly, they got there, their brain a trust together and really figuring out a way that to really stand out and be more creative and make folks smile. And yeah, we need that right now. Um, go ahead. Well, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got this affinity for these ABA companies, right. But Amazon class of companies that allow that allow companies to kind of break the ties, or at least, or at least shed some of the bondage with, with Amazon and have some other services as alternatives. Yup. And I had never heard of, I’ve heard of Rakuten, but I had never heard that they had a three PL, a fulfillment organization. Right. I thought they were just the people that, that paid you to shop or whatever. So I think a brilliant, Mmm brilliant way to bring themselves. So the awareness of the marketplace. Agreed. And one brief, one I’ll share, you know, nonprofit to move on from Amazon bondage here.

Tim Dooner (00:16:03):

Comment on that dinner. Well, so real quick. So MedShare which, which is a nonprofit, it’s been doing good work for years and years. You know, what can be lost in all of this, this pandemic environment is these nonprofits still have needs, right? That doesn’t change. They’re still trying to serve folks in organizations and whatnot. And I saw where MedShare, uh, had, has hit the 1 million [inaudible] PPE units delivered to frontlines, to hospitals, to clinics, um, and other nonprofits. Uh, and talking about, yeah. Helping out and helping folks in the organizations get back to serving others and see a nonprofit like MedShare serve other nonprofits, other folks that are serving people and organizations and fighting the good fight. That’s good to get to see. So quick, a URL, mindshare.org. You know, these nonprofits need everyone’s help probably right now more than ever before given all the other conditions.

Tim Dooner (00:17:01):

So check out medshare.org okay. So now that we’ve got some good news, um, uh, out front and center and there’s there and that’s just tip of the spirits, a lot more good news out there happening. If you go look for it, Greg, we want to pick Tim’s brain a little bit. Yeah. On, on, on just how, you know, surprisingly pervasive, uh, that Cobra 19, which I know we’ve, we’ve said a millions of times now, it has impact the global supply chain, right? Yeah. I mean, we’ve, we talked about covert 19 or Corona virus as much as we do. And Tim, this is probably different, different keywords in your industry, but as much as we do IOT and blockchain and AI, so you know, when it’s gotten into the big four that it’s obviously top of mind. And of course it’s been very disruptive. And in addition, right, we’ve had this seismic societal disruption, quote Brad Jacobs where we have virtually shut down commerce for this period of time.

Tim Dooner (00:17:59):

So it’s, it’s more than just the pandemic itself, it’s also our response to it. So it’s been an issue. I’m fine. Yup. So Tim w with that, uh, tee up a little bit. Tell us about your initial thoughts in terms of just how far coven nineteens truly impacted what many folks thought in some cases, at least were, were Bulletproof global supply chains. We don’t, Craig fuller, the, the CEO and founder of Freightways, he has been tracking Covitz since, since late January. Really. I remember he was going to be a guest on Freightways radio on Sirius XM. And before he called in, he texted me and he’s like, you know, and this was January 25th and I think it was when we hit, we just had our first case in the United States and there were shutdowns going on in China and Chinese new year was going on.

Tim Dooner (00:18:43):

This is going to impact us in some ways. So we have to start talking about it. And the initial thinking like in January 25th was, well we don’t know if it’s going to spread, we don’t know if it’s gonna stay contained, but we do know that at least with like an expert and at the time it was like two weeks extras time shut down for factories. So we knew that would lead to some cancellations in orders and that would eventually hit the shores and that would bring in less freight flows. And one of the things I learned during this is that there’s a lot of different perspectives in supply chain is probably one of the hardest disciplines to teach without doing it. Because you have people with the sort of global perspective and you have people with a port perspective. Then you have people with an inland perspective and even terms like three PL, some people just think of a three PL as like an inland three PL, like all they are calling carrier were.

Tim Dooner (00:19:26):

The global carriers don’t really think much about the inland side of things, but they, you know, they just pass off the Dre or the move to a trucking company. They don’t even care about that end of the world. And I think what, what we’ve found out is, um, these things all affect you. I mean, we knew that, we knew that you guys did that. I think what a lot of people found out is like, Oh wait, there’s some blinders going on here. And if you take, if you, if you screw up this link of the chain, that ripple effect is eventually going to come downstream and it’s going to hit you. And what happened here is that it, it was so pervasive that it hits so many different industries. And the worst thing that can happen in business is uncertainty. Like, well, we’re not sure what to do.

Tim Dooner (00:20:03):

And the unfortunate aspect of that, a lot of companies start just for lowering or firing employees. Cause that’s the first way to cut costs where it goes, you’ve got to cut costs. And they’re like, well okay. And then I, you know, I think you, you sometimes see some things happening right now too where companies that weren’t doing well, they’re, they’re kind of sweeping it under the covert rug. So time to, it’s a good time to, to blame, you know, bad business on it when it’s really the sense of 2019 and before so, but are the bigger things we’re seeing. And I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it. Like I think freight flows were up 7% in the United States. Inland freight flows work. Hmm. But we’re also looking at like outbound port flows. And one of the interesting things I read today was, you know, you hear, okay they’re, they’re starting to remove some of the blank sailings that the steamship lines did. That must mean volumes

Greg White (00:20:48):

are increasing. But it really just turns out that they were overly correct. The steamship lines where they took a lot more shifts out of service that they didn’t Brittain lad, he put up this really interesting report that’s online. I saw it on LinkedIn. I don’t have a link handy that I can put on screen for you guys, but definitely, yeah. And it sort of talks about those impacts, but for all of us, we’re hearing things about like Christmas shopping season, like the, the new Xbox and the Apple iPhone and all these things getting delayed or pushed out and they’re already giving guidance warning people because that mean it may happen, but think of all the retailers and everything that this is crucial too. So I don’t think that we’re over the rainbow or anywhere close yet. Yeah, it’s great that inland volumes are coming through and, and there’s, there’s some positivity to be had there, but I think it’s going to kind of come in waves because know you can’t cancel.

Greg White (00:21:34):

Like we were just reinforce the Ernie sports, like Kohl’s, Kohl’s, and a number of other companies canceled like between 10 and 15% of the retail orders. And I think the average is like 12% of fashion orders have been canceled. Well that turns into freight and that turns into commerce and that turns into things people buy. And I don’t think you can just remove that from the system and have it replaced by bye. Nothing. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So Greg picks pick one or two things that Tim just shared there and weigh in. Well, I think what we’re seeing is we’re seeing the most massive whiplash effect that we might ever see in our lifetimes may ever see in the history of earth, frankly. But, but if you think about it, this whiplash effect where, you know, the lack of demand creates, creates excessive demand and then overcompensation up and throughout the supply chain we’re starting to see that that effect go ripple up through retail, into a distribution and manufacturing and transportation.

Greg White (00:22:34):

And then back down the line. I mean, we just did, what we talked about today was how e-commerce demand is up by 75% if you’re Walmart. Mmm. And, and retail demand is down by 17% nationwide and the just in the States. And, and we talked about 27 retailers that are at risk, significant risk of going bankrupt, 24 of them have gone, 24 of those 27 have gone bankrupt in the last three days. In some cases, as Tim said, it is a manifestation of bad business management over time. JC Penney’s is a good example of that. Macy’s is a good example of that, that both very poorly run companies well past their prime. And, um, but, but there are other companies that like Kohl’s who’s on the edge or like GNC who are simply short, who are simply short on cash and that’s what’s put them at risk. Right? The, the, yeah. And, and the back and forth effect of that is of this whiplash effect. It isn’t over yet. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, uh, an order

Tim Dooner (00:23:45):

gets canceled or a company goes belly up that impacts all the carriers, all the vendors, all the manufacturers, all the raw materials, suppliers, and of course all the employees of all of those companies. You know, one of the interesting observations as we’re talking about it’s impact in some cases it’s surprising impact of a 19 on global supply chain is the food industry. You know, uh, that has put, put a big spotlight and Tim, you alluded to it early on about how you’ve got these two parallel supply chains, you know, one for retail and one for commercial. And, and hopefully one of the biggest learnings that the industry is going to take out of this and months ahead is how to have more crossover between these two supply chains. We all know why they exist, right? Because commercial kitchens need, needed, delivered in a way, shape or form that we don’t need in your home kitchen, or you don’t want to pick up from the grocery store.

Tim Dooner (00:24:37):

However, to eliminate waste, we’re all after waste, right? And supply chain waste is, is evil wasting all forms. We gotta figure out in the food industry how to be able to, to tackle that more effectively. So we prevent, you know, up, um, uh, crops more often or you know, poor milk out or uh, unfortunately, uh, euthanizing a lot of, uh, livestock. One of the quick thing, the thing is going to be ultimately be a big silver lining here is, you know, we’ve seen Tim curious to see your take here, but in recent weeks, the last month or so, we’ve seen them much more of a voice given to protecting our supply chain workforce. Right. And almost in terms of how we’ve got to protect first responders in our, in our healthcare. That’s a welcome shift that I know Greg and I are really pleased as a silver lining and we’re hoping, especially as Greg alluded to, e-commerce and we know that fulfillment centers and warehouses that drive that we’re hoping to see technology very practically applied to protect the workforce just in that or truck drivers, you know, protecting them more.

Tim Dooner (00:25:43):

So hopefully treating them better in many cases. But I think all in all, uh, that’s going to be a big silver lining in terms of how we protect our supply chain workforce. Tim, your thoughts? You know it’s been, it’s that that call to action has been a necessary one. I think of all the unions that have been dismantled and, and you know for, for warehouse workers, I mean they were saying what you want about unions, but they were a voice for our collective group that is pretty voiceless and they are often the first ones to be put in a harm’s way and then put back into harm’s way. Really. Like you know, one of the chicken plans shuts down where there’s a big coconut infection and right. Yeah. They’re wasting no time putting people back in there. And the fact is we don’t know if it’s safe or not, but they’re like, you got to get back to work and process this chicken’s people, you don’t want to buy chickens off the shelf.

Tim Dooner (00:26:25):

People at Amazon, they had a love questions about the, the safety and the protocols that were being followed. They’re management at times can be a bit arrogant. Amazon, I think one of the responses they were talking to them, I think it was on 60 minutes, it was like one of their operations heads. I’m not sure exactly the guy was, but to paraphrase it, he was like, well, the number of are not important. And that’s, to me, that’s been completely arrogant statement because your workers are protesting, they’re saying it’s important. So if it’s not a huge number, then why not put them at ease? Why are you afraid to state that that number? So I feel really bad for employees that are stuck in that situation. They don’t have the luxury of just bringing some equipment home or bringing a laptop home or just hooking into the VPN and then then continue working. They really have to go right back in there and they don’t get the accolades that, that, uh, you know, nurses or other frontline workers do that it’s just like, right.

Greg White (00:27:12):

And the wearing point.

Tim Dooner (00:27:13):

Yeah, they’re one of them groups.

Greg White (00:27:15):

Great point. They’re stuck between the need to get a paycheck. Right. And, and the need to protect themselves and that’s that. That is no person’s land right there. Greg. Uh, as we kind of wrap up this first segment, gosh, this could be multi-hour series here so much to dive into. But Greg, your quick response and we’re gonna move on to next stop. Yeah. Well first of all, I think when we think about frontline workers, we think about the obvious and in some cases the already glorified. But we’ve got to think about those people checking you out at the register. Yeah. At the grocery store, the people who are cleaning in in health facilities, right? Nobody’s talking about those people and we should be and they need be equal, uh, protection as well. And the other thing I think we want to be careful about is leaping too.

Greg White (00:28:03):

I know we all want to in there, in some places, as Tim was alluding to before, there are areas where we can create efficiencies, but for instance, toilet paper is not going to be solved by having a crossover between industrial right in retail toilet paper. And that wasn’t the problem to begin with. The problem was that man went up 753% in one day, no problem. And, and it’s impossible for any supply chain to respond to that. And I want us to recognize that as we come out of this because we don’t want to overreact to this and wind up creating tremendously unnecessary inefficiencies and backstock and things like that. Excellent point. And we knew that that was not true demand that was going to be around for years and years. It was a very finite period. So even we who didn’t hoard, um, that sounds like it sounds like a money group doesn’t even, we had have excess right now because when it came in stock, we bought it. Yup. Right after a long time out of stock. Two to avoid having to go back to the store again and risk the possibility that it’s never in regular stock. So that’s right. Anyway, that’s, that’s just a tactical thing. But overall we’ve gotta be careful not to overreact to this. This is, I will say this from now and you can hold me to it. This is the biggest supply chain disruption that any of us will ever experience in our entire lives. We’re going to hold you to it.

Greg White (00:29:40):

Good. And I hope you’re right

Tim Dooner (00:29:42):

there real quick. A lot of things. Hey, real quick. Uh, Don has weighed in a couple things I want to recognize the second point here, Don long says, Hey, great points are retail Gregg. And I think that retailers need to begin to think of ways to collaborate to share resources much in the same way, some fast food restaurant chains. And he says I got Kentucky fried chicken KFC and taco bell share space for interest. I think that’s a great point. And we’re probably, you know, for years now we’ve seen some really creative uh, and new and forth forward looking forward thinking, collaboration take place in the supply chain space. I think Don’s right and I think this will only accelerate it but no thoughts cause we’re going to keep moving. We got a really looking forward to Tim weighing in on the second point here. Uh, so Greg lead us into the second topic. Yeah, sorry, I should probably be paying attention.

Tim Dooner (00:30:37):

Put our seatbelt off. Mmm. Well, I think we’ve talked a little bit about this second topic some but, but Tim, you know from your perspective, and I know we talked in the pre show about this, we can’t, we can hardly complete a sentence without saying COBIT 19 but give us some of what you’ve seen with the, the many people that you’ve talked to and the pervasive effect that Covin 19 in this seismic societal disruption have had on supply chains. Not the supply chain in general, but any it precise examples, specific examples, you know, you know what I think is going to be a really interesting company to watch is Peloton. So we talked about these, this bullwhip effect or these, these demands coming in and all these demands come in for it’s expensive workout bike, right. And [inaudible] trends like that. Those lifestyle trends, they tend to come in cycles. If you’re old enough to be around the eighties and you’ve probably been over plenty of people’s house who had a, a StairMaster or an exercise bike or a or, yeah. You mean a close over? Right.

Tim Dooner (00:31:44):

I’m curious cause I’ve been reading a lot of articles about how they were overextending their supply chain orders are 60 days out. It makes sense that they’re fulfilling all of them. People are buying them, but like when they show up are people going to be back out in the middle of summer? They’re not going to sit on the bike. They’re not going to form the habit. And what happens to to Palatine in a, in the long term. So I’m not getting stock advice here, but I would say go short on Peloton recovery standpoint. It’ll be really interesting though because I think that they’re a good sort of telltale sign of how long people feel they’re going to be stuck and locked down and not be able to do these things at gyms or outside society. So I think Jim never memberships will be a great place to look that you might not for consumer health and consumer spending.

Tim Dooner (00:32:27):

That’s a really good point. I hadn’t even thought about it from that standpoint. I know my daughter, student athlete still, I mean, what, six years out of school still works out every single day and she been going buzzard waiting for her gym to open. Dude, I want that digital bench. You’ve seen that thing, that tonal thing. That thing was sick. Who makes that tell him I’d make it. I’m not sure, but I’m in an apartment. I don’t know if my landlord will let me like my fault. I think there’s maybe should I do it and then just beg for forgiveness afterwards for the dry wall. Right. I don’t know. In terms of other big changes though, like instead of just indicators, the big changes, uh, a lot of people lost jobs. I mean a lot of, a lot of owner operators apart their trucks. A lot of people have brokerages have lost jobs.

Tim Dooner (00:33:14):

That’s for a load people. And I think, I mean all those people aren’t going to be coming back into the same places and the work structures aren’t going to change that much. But you guys did mention, put that coffee down earlier and last week we talked about returning to normal. And one of the things we found out is that brokerages are still pretty traditional and a lot of these places that once they’re allowed to go back to offices, most of the people are returning back to offices and this sort of industrial space apocalypse where everyone was actually, I’ve heard two takes, I heard one take, everyone’s going to get rid of their office space. Then I heard one that everyone’s gonna buy twice as much office space to deal with social. That’s the thing. I don’t think any of that is going to happen. And when you go into government buildings, like I was at the DMV, they made everyone wear a mask, like socialists thing realistically enforced.

Tim Dooner (00:33:53):

But in the private sector in Tennessee at like any store you go into, none of that stuff is abided by. Nobody’s wearing masks. Nobody seems to care. There’s 10,000 people in the pool and you know, it’s just craziness. So let’s, uh, you’re talking about the brokerages. I want, I want to dive into that topic here. Uh, because as in talking pre show with you, we were talking about the impact on freight rates and we also were talking about kind of the broker versus trucker feud and some of your observations there. Tell us more about that. No, that was really so that Hornets’ has nest got whacked in a, a kind of an inadvertent way. So freight volumes first started to dive when the pandemic first first hit and then there was a big spike up, uh, for about a week as as B. But it was, we talked about this to me like forties, like there’s a big spike but we think it’s going to be a cliff.

Tim Dooner (00:34:43):

So don’t go out and buy a bunch of or rent a bunch of new equipment or, or sign a bunch of contract commitments or any of that kind of stuff cause we think it’s going to drop off. This seems a lot like, like surge buying. No we didn’t. Yeah that far ahead. But, but in the midst of it, it was pretty obvious what was going on. And what happened is so that for for a week or two weeks, because the load boards tend to lag behind, like rates are not sold in real time. They’re there. There’s kind of a lagging indicator maybe about a week or two just based on some of the reporting we do based out of sonar and then what we see in the market. But I remember we were first talking about the freight cliff, especially on Facebook, like chucking groups for like hi like laughing at us like this, look how much we’re getting like per mile.

Tim Dooner (00:35:21):

And then suddenly rates really bottom down. They got to like eight, 9 cents a mile on some lanes. Just no trucking company can operate a truck at 89 cents a mile. Sometimes they do cause there’s things called like the head haul in the back haul, they might position equipment, they might take lower freight. You need that, you need that bigger bite, right nugget to send you in that direction that that wasn’t happening. And what this caused was a lot of brokers were like, well we’re getting price gouged by, we’re getting price guys electronic. If you’re saying that you can price guys by the time, by the brokerages, you know, they’re pocketing all of this money and they’ve done and they’ve done and not every company is, is a, you know, the, the most outro Ristic in the world. I’m sure lies brokers are trying to make money, but at the same time when you look at their earnings, they’re not making that much money.

Tim Dooner (00:36:05):

And, uh, the, you know, the brokerage groups at Tia, they’ve looked into it. I think it’s about a 16% margin that they’re seeing people angry. And I think that the reality of the business is this though. A brokerage is like a sales and marketing arm for you. And if you’re a trucker or a carrier and you think that you, it can get frayed for less than 16% with your own sales and marketing company, then why wouldn’t you go ahead and do that? I mean, it’s easy to complain. Uh, but I think a lot of times people forget the value that brokerages in three pills work in. I worked in a three PL that did a lot more than just brokering the truck. They also created the relationships and the carrier pools, right? They did a customs house brokerage and they did overseas freight movements and all of that kind of stuff that brought a lot of value to them.

Tim Dooner (00:36:47):

And that freight would not be available to an independent owner operator unless they were to go through a load board. So they do serve a necessary function. It does suck though in the market bottoms out. But the problem is what they’re screaming for a lot. It was regulation and I don’t think it would have the intended effect that they would want because let me button for one second here because, well, you made a beautiful point about, um, how a lot of folks with the best of intentions are calling for regulation, right? But a bunch of thought leaders in the space, however, it’s, uh, Greg, as you put it, the unintended consequences that may be is just below surface level. So, so Tim, tell us more. Anything regulatory, right? Who wins in that battles? Is it the small guy? Is the mom? And pop store that wins when regulation comes in, or is it the big global conglomerates that have the money to the higher the lawyers into the lobby and place to make sure the regulation favors them?

Tim Dooner (00:37:42):

You know, because if you have a cap on the bottom, what kind of cap do you think those brokers are gonna fight for on the top? You’re going to be getting that $4 a mile moving forward. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a business that’s constantly in flux. And actually it’s funny, I think Alex is your posted article that said that’s a trucking was one of the only recession proof businesses can America. And you guys were assisting as to what the mainstream media is covered. Supply chain more often. But lot of times orders don’t really know the business that well and you can smell it from a mile away. And then you write headlines like that and you’re like, you talking about this is one of the recession susceptible businesses in the world because it’s literally driven by demand. It’s interesting. Yeah. But ultimately I don’t think, I don’t think regulation, especially from the perspective that they have would benefit truck drivers in the way they were. And I think that the, uh, a better methodology would be to try and not rely so heavily on the, on the load boards that spot freight, which is very good transactional business and instead try and create some of those relationships with some of these shippers and cut out the middleman if you think you can do it and forge those relationships.

Greg White (00:38:43):

That’s a big point, Tim, is that, you know, to me, you know, and you know, I don’t come from the freight or the transportation industry and I come from the shipper side. So I have a, have a fairly cavalier attitude around, um, around freight and shipping, which is get what you can, right? Um, but the truth is 16% for a sales organization, especially if that sales organization is also doing services for you, that’s incredibly cheap in a technology environment. You’re, you’re trying to get between, you’re trying to stay below 20% cost of sales and that includes winning and losing sales and you only pay brokers when they win. So you know, there, this is an incredibly valuable piece piece of of a third party, third party service. And I think the problem is that when money gets scarce, everyone who’s taken a bite out of that it, the pain is, is, is exacerbated. Right? So you have, I think people are feeling very emotional about it, but they have to recognize exactly the point you’re making, which is you don’t want to pay someone else. You’re still going to be paying yourself and probably a whole lot more because the third party organization has economies of scale of working with your trucking company and a dozen or 10 dozen others. Yup. Hey, going back to regulation, I think some listeners may not appreciate just how many independent

Tim Dooner (00:40:11):

single truck owner operators are, are that, that are the backbone that make up the transportation industry. Tim speak to that a little bit and how they aren’t going to be lining up with sending armies of lobbyists that they see? Right. Well, I mean there there’s, there’s, there’s tens of thousands of independent owner operators and I don’t think people like, especially if you’re from the ocean freight side, you’re like, well there’s the there agreements, there’s you know, which basically means there’s just three different steamship lines. Even though there’s what like you’re eight or nine that make up those conglomerates. One of them is what the ocean Alliance and you got. The other one is the Alliance like capital letters. Like every time you controller they can really control their, their rates, capacity, all of those kinds of things. When you have thousands of independent owner-operators doing it, how do you differentiate yourself?

Tim Dooner (00:40:56):

Then you get guys like Greg white here who worked for a shipper and when he’s there from his perspective, he needs to do a couple of things. He needs to protects us rate, protect his bottom line and protect his own ass. So if he goes out and he starts giving us these random owner-operators and going through a list of 10,000 different, why would he do that? When he can go to a broker who’s vetted all of them, the broker makes it does. It makes Bragg’s life easier. Cause brag is the shipper and the shipper is King. And where the rates finally end up in that load board that started with a shipper saying that rate, because they called up some broker and they said, you know, I know we have a contract but this is freight and these don’t mean anything. And I’ve looked at those load boards and I want to, who’s moving freight for a dollar 25 a mile?

Tim Dooner (00:41:35):

Because you, yeah. And then they’re like, no, no Greg, no, Greg, we can find you. You know, it might take, it might take an extra day. Yeah, I think Frank will be like, well, you know, I’m not paying, I’m not paying attention. I don’t sound exactly like me. Truthfully, you know, in so many companies in so many of these shippers, you know, I worked for the largest auto auto parts chain in the country at the time. And my purchasing team, our merchandising team said, this is what you need to buy. My purchasing teams cut a PO. And that was for the product. They didn’t even care what freight line it came on. That PO went into a dark room with three or four people. We called expediters who I never met in seven years of the company by the way. Um, who then figured out who was going to carry our freight from where to where. And I think that, you know, that there is a huge, and we talk about this a lot, especially because Cove has exposed it. We talk about silos within organizations, but there are even silos within departments, within functions, within organizations. And um, you know, it’s, it’s uh, this hopefully will be a catalyst for, uh, breaking those silos down and creating some continuity between those organizations.

Tim Dooner (00:42:58):

I think that we would all agree that we are supply chain value advocates and uh, I’ve worked for four PL and I’ve also worked for a shipper and one of the things that you fight when you are working for the shipper is that the C suite above you, they don’t really care that much about shipping. They’re like, this is 10% of doing business, which is not, it’s a lifeblood of your company. It’s way more expensive, but it’s a lot of times shipping departments are thought of as a stepping stone to another part in the C suite or another part in the company. There’s not a ton of attention poured in there and there’s certainly not a bunch of guys sitting around like a boardroom being like, how can we F over the truckers today? That’s not really what’s going on. What’s happening is they’re going break.

Tim Dooner (00:43:34):

This is the budget. You got to go and figure this stuff out. And then your job is to figure out what the market is and yeah, people are getting that and you’re looking at the same data that everyone else is and you’re going, you’re going to hit up your broker and they’re going to hit up the truck and they’re going to say, Hey, if you can’t move that this amount, and that’s business. And no one’s sitting there thinking about whether or not you can feed your family or not. That’s just, it’s too far down the chain. They’re just not. Right. Right. Excellent point. I mean, I think, and I think that we need to recognize that no amount of regulation is going to fix that. And as you said, Tim, the, you know, the issue is that those, those truckers that are underrepresented today will only be underrepresented all the way up to the government. Mm Hmm. That’s a good point. Alright, so I want to say this last segment, we can dive even deeper in freight rates. I’m sure we’re just, we’re just scratching the surface. However I want to talk about this whole work from, um, movement. I mean, there has been a massive shift. What was that phrase? You always say? Societal, seismic. Societal disruption. Okay.

Tim Dooner (00:44:43):

So massive shift, right? And, and we know that number one, then the new normal is, is going to look in many ways, there’s gonna be some things that went away. They go away forever. There’s gonna be some things that are here for the short term and then there’s going to be some [inaudible] larger shifts that are here permanently because of what we’re going through when it comes to work force, there’s going to be some percentage and, and, and the trillion dollar question is just to what percentage they’re going to stay working remotely, right? We’ve seen, uh, is it OpenText, the technology firm based in Canada that has, uh, I think a hundred offices, I believe is what they’re giving up. Um, so there’s gonna be, there’s gonna be some company. Yeah, that’s right. But the supply chain organization attempt to your earlier point about how brokers are trying to get folks back into the office because of there is that the esprit de Corps, there’s that problem solving.

Tim Dooner (00:45:36):

There’s some things that you just are very tough to replicate remotely. Let’s talk about the supply chain, that general vague terms, the supply chain organization, the right, the global supply chain organization. How long does this general space stay in the work from home or more working options before they, a large parts of it revert back to the pre pandemic modus operandi. Did I say that right Greg? No. Okay. So Tim general observations or take a stab at, what’s your crystal ball telling you? You know it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s funny cause you wish you could just say, Oh there’s one company that does this way and then that’s how they’re all going to fall into play. Like no better example is Slack. Like Slack. Slack is a remote working til a team building tool, right? But they, they’re famously don’t like did not let their developers work remote until this pandemic hit.

Tim Dooner (00:46:27):

And now I think in Silicon Valley they’re like, well we have to fight these wage battles to pay for employees now because we just had the world’s largest work from home experiments. They’re like, well if we all agree to do it, you know, cause everyone’s probably a leader in business especially, right? Like was like, well, if we all agree to let people work remote then and then we all have to do it because then that’s a perk and then everyone will want to do it. We referenced that survey. We didn’t put that coffee down and a lot of the salespeople listen come from traditional brokerages. A lot of them are being uh, as soon as possible they’re going to be brought back into their room. You have some companies that were built virtually, they’ve never had offices. Some of the more freight tech based companies, they haven’t, although that’s even interesting.

Tim Dooner (00:47:04):

Some of the phrase tech ones were built versus, but other ones were built. They’re like, yes, we’re a freight tech company. Yes, we enable cloud-based stuff, but our company was built with people being off straightaway is actually built with people. Being an officer. Sales team only worked remotely for the first time when this pandemic happened. I can tell you though, just anecdotally from Freightways is now that also on the TV and audio team have that extra space. I don’t know if we’re in any rush to give it back to this is space that we’ve needed. It makes sense for the office. So we’re not reducing our footprint or building it, but we’re other uses for what we already have. And I think that a lot of companies stuck under leases. We’ll probably be doing that. Some are going to retreat. If you can save money and it makes sense to do it there, they’re going to do it.

Tim Dooner (00:47:44):

I don’t know how much the, that old sort of, and I don’t want to say boom, I don’t wanna make this gender or generational thing, but there wasn’t, well, there’s sort of line of traditional thinking. We need optics. We need visual on people, right? How to build teams that way. We want people back in front of me. They liked that style of leadership and some of the, you know, they want the praise of being the boss. They, they work their way up and they had to come into office. So you gotta come in office too, because we love abuse in America. So I’m gonna if I can weigh in right there because uh, mock Tom’s a spit in metal stamping when we were solving some barriers, technical challenges that any, you know, um, precision manufacturing operation, we’ll go through those days where we brought someone around that proverbial table from each department as we are trying to crack a quality issue or all the other complex issues.

Tim Dooner (00:48:32):

I can tell you, I know that that’s been roughly 10 years or so and technology has come a long way, but the whole people around and share the same documents and same prints and same errors and get to close that root calls solution as fast as possible. I couldn’t imagine doing that in this current environment. And I’m not saying folks can’t do it and it’s not happening. I mean there’s some, there’s some neat graphics, information sharing platforms we didn’t have 10 years ago. But gosh, problem solving, I would think in, in some of these, these technical industries are going to take a hit. They don’t strike the right balance between the work from home and being in person. I don’t know. That’s just my take. I’ve seen some articles saying exactly that Scott and I think, I think we need to draw the line between what Tim has is talking about is being face to face for tradition’s sake and being face to face for effectiveness.

Tim Dooner (00:49:26):

Say and you know it happens everywhere in every business that you’re passing someone in the hall, you’re standing by the water cooler or the microwave while Tim is making popcorn and, and I’m making salmon and complaining, but we’re sharing ideas during that time and it may not even be business topical, but it triggers that something that you can only do with sort of downtime, not scheduled time to, to ideate and discuss. Right. But that hearsay sometimes can help you stop dumb ideas too. Right. What meeting did that occur in when, when, when was this decided? I, I had no idea that this was going to happen. It was like to jump in front of that train to Scott’s point in terms of looking at drafting, I think that the other end of that point is that if you can have peers review it out, that that stigma of having to yell out in a room and that social pressure of maybe not being, you know, at a high enough level to say things.

Tim Dooner (00:50:32):

I think that if you can anonymize some of that stuff, you might even get a better feedback thing. It’s sort of a feedback loop. Yeah. Maxwell real feedback channel, especially from some of the junior guys who are like, have I earned, have I earned my voice in this room yet? That’s a great point. Alright, so along these same lines, you just made me think of something else I want to pick your brain on. As a fellow digital content creator, and we talked about this a lot here, uh, here at supply chain now about how, um, you know, you were accomplishing a lot more every, every group that does what we do. It’s figuring out ways to accomplish things remotely. And there’s been some neat innovation there. However, you know, a 10 I think we talked about it. Appreciate it. We’d love to get into the studio and have that camaraderie and those kindred spirits and ha and, and deliver the best stories, the best content.

Tim Dooner (00:51:18):

What’s your take on content creation and guests and all that stuff that goes with that in person versus remote? What, what, what’s your take there? My take is that I was too beholden on in-person before, so I would be like [inaudible]. It couldn’t have so many in person. I might reschedule it or be like no, a little reticent to do it. Where now that it’s, you know, you turn on the, the, the highest budget produced. Sure. You’re alive, you turn on the news and it’s sort of democratize this look, we’re all like in these squares in our and our bedrooms now. Like I knew there were some supers on there like the news doesn’t and we gussy it up. Yeah. Well I do like that it’s done is it’s changed my production style on what the truck and I’m not going to change it, which is we do the headlines.

Tim Dooner (00:51:58):

Then we have three guests and it’s opened the door to just bring in way more guests because I’m not like, okay, I want them to walk in the book now. Now it doesn’t matter now I don’t care. I’ll bring them in via Skype. I’ll bring you in via phone. Uh, and when we can have you come in, then I’ll do it and I won’t, it just changed my thinking and my viewpoint because we all have sort of our own biases against things. And you guys are probably saying, we were like, that’s over zoom. It’s so impersonal. Like he’s in a square. I’m in a square. How are you feel about co-hosting? Cause I work with cohost too and I’ve had to do it, you know, via webcam. Yep, yep. Yeah. You, uh, I feel a lot of kindred spirits. I’m just wanting to share it because Greg, just being very transparent, I could think about that mental, um, um, kinda mantrap where if we can’t get here, she end, you know, and get through those logistics and traffic, then we’d reschedule or figure out a different way or just change the whole game plan versus now I’m much more apt to, to capture some of these stories that need to be heard remotely and heard right now.

Tim Dooner (00:53:01):

Yeah. Right. Because scheduling somebody when you don’t have to schedule them physically, even when you’re in the city of the busiest largest airport in the world, you know, when you don’t have to schedule them physically, you can do the right now. Right now. Yeah. Good point. All right, so Tim, uh, in this last segment about remote working and working from home, one of the things in particular we talked about was onboarding. And there were some good comments made. Yeah. You know, when we get back into the new normal and, and we’re seeing signals, right? Some, some places are, are really close if not already there. And other places are around the world are still figuring, you know, a little bit behind, um, talent acquisition and talent management and onboarding new talent. I mean, there’s going to be some cans of worms at this pandemic has opened.

Tim Dooner (00:53:51):

Um, give us some general observations in terms of what you think that looks like. I mean, before even going any further than what we do, I think it would be very hard to like and everyone, and so I would use my own example, but like, yeah, bringing like a cohost or someone who would be on the network, like a TV talent, especially someone who’s a little bit raw that maybe as a market expert that we’re converting into your talent that would be very hard without, without, I don’t know, maybe I just like having a little bit of control, but being able to sort of guide them through there. Uh, it, it’s an emotional thing. Putting yourself out there and being really good at this kind of stuff and not having fear and being able to do the improv and all of that stuff, but also having, you know, the bullet points and sticking to a schedule like Scott’s doing and keeping everything on the rails and quarterbacking.

Tim Dooner (00:54:35):

It’s hard to do remote now. Granted it’s stuff you learn while doing it on the fly. I think you can, you can do it. I think what you mentioned about that high level ideating, uh, overhearing that, that definitely does get lost in translation and I think that maybe a methodology to that is to schedule more team meetups and stuff. But the problem is that it becomes a little bit unorganic right? It’s sort of like, like what you talked about is just sort of art because someone can’t be there. You’ve arbitrarily decided that, well, we’ll have a conversation three weeks from now. What if it’s, what if they’re not relevant to the story or the narrative that supply chain now wants to put out there or that, that the news cycles putting out there that what the truck wants to put out there. It’s great to break those walls down.

Tim Dooner (00:55:16):

There’s advantages and disadvantages to both. What do you think would be, and I worked in sales that was super easy. Like, yeah, it was just fine because all you did was come in for a week and that, that was at the place that did a lot of training. The other place was like, here’s a business card, laptop, get the F out of here. So I’m gonna make, maybe I’m to make maybe a counterintuitive point because we all are familiar with the whole digital native, uh, badge that folks are just not graduating college or the folks that have been industry just for a couple of years, you know, they, they get stuff, you know, I go back to the example with clay Phillips at an event. Greg, he’s our dog, our one of our producers here. And, uh, we were showing him a new, uh, platform.

Tim Dooner (00:55:56):

We’ve been using a while. It was kind of new to him and I was overexplaining and, and he said something like, uh, uh, Scott, uh, I, I get it. Uh, I’ve been dealing with technology since I was born or something to that effect and it hit me in the face. This is, these folks get it quicker. Anyway, the point, the counterintuitive point that I would just throw out there is, yeah, think of your, your college graduates this year just started or not wrapping up in these tough and maybe some of them already have jobs and maybe these companies, some of these folks are not going to get back to normal in the office so to speak, whatever that means for months to come. And so their earliest relationship with the company and their new hire, their first real maybe maybe full time job trying to, trying to digest that the culture and the DNA and Oh by the way, do their job and learn the business. You know, despite how they are digital natives and can do remote and technology and build those relationships maybe better than than the other generation. Are they still kind of at a disadvantage, but because of that, I would argue they are more a disadvantage than they are at an advantage. Greg, what’s your take?

Greg White (00:57:07):

Uh, boy, that’s tough. Um, I think, you know, I think what you have to do is you have to think about how people have learned to learn in their paradigm, not in your paradigm. And, and they may be better equipped than ever

Tim Dooner (00:57:24):

[inaudible] then

Greg White (00:57:25):

our generation or baby boomers or generations before that to learn without,

Tim Dooner (00:57:31):

you know,

Greg White (00:57:32):

w with different constructs. So I think that’s sometimes the difficulty is to have this sort of blessing of naivete and say, Hey, that if it works for them, then make it work. Right? Mmm.

Tim Dooner (00:57:46):

But

Greg White (00:57:46):

yeah, I could see, I can see both sides of that coin and I can see an argument for a counterintuitive a model like that. I think it’s important to have some human contact. I can tell you that I have a millennial and to gen Z as kids, right? And they relish human interaction. They absolutely clamor for it. And I think the pendulum, even for these current generations will swing back the other direction. Too much of anything is not good.

Tim Dooner (00:58:21):

Yup. Right. Tim, what’s your take? My take is, well he just brought up the kids. My kids do zoom kindergarten, they’re definitely not engaged with that. It’s very hard to keep their attention span and they wanna just run off and show a new toy. Like that dead star we just built or something to the kids. There’s, there’s not a lot of learning. The nice thing is there’s a lot of internal learning going on. Like I like that leg, that’s 4,000 pieces. I just trick my kid into doing pattern matching and math for like, like thousands of times building this Deathstar by himself, you know, and motor skills and you didn’t even know it. And I’m like, ah. Got you. So for our listeners, just cause I’m not sure if that was pre show or at the beginning. So Tim went out and purchased a, uh, the death star Lego version for his son.

Tim Dooner (00:59:00):

Your son’s name is Ronan. Yeah. Ronan, five years old for over 4,000 pieces. And Tim, he had that sucker put together in no time. Right. Well, Hey, I’ll tell you why because the reason I got it for him was I got challenged, right. And I’m an impulsive person. We were watching YouTube and they were doing these unboxing videos. I think it was like Evan too. There’s all the other YouTube get. My kids only watch YouTube, they don’t watch like forget networks, do all that other stuff again all day long. Well they watch these unboxing videos and he was watching one on that star and it said ages 14 plus on the box and he was like, and he just finished like an a thousand a thousand piece Harry Potter. And he’s like, do you think when I get older I can build that in a moment? I was like, I think you could build it now. Well, because I say yes. It’s like I’m making an artificial barrier, but I think, I think he could, hi. We’ll be like face palms and she changes the eBay password but not quick enough.

Tim Dooner (00:59:52):

I gave it to him and it wasn’t a special occasion. It was like a quarantine gift. It was like, Hey, yeah, you’re a good sport while we’re stuck in here. And then he built it over. Yeah, five days. And it was like I helped with a couple of bricks, but for the most part you can do the entire thing by himself. And it was, it was super cool. It was fun. I love it. And just do, hanging out with it, hanging out with the kids and getting that, that time that otherwise we wouldn’t really be afforded. And they’re still the age where like, they’re not teenagers, so you don’t want to like, it’s not a negative, they’re still lovable kids that, that loves to spend time with the parents. I’ve, I’ve been warned about the days and months ahead. That’s right. Uh, so as we start to wrap up, uh, say ed has asked a great question and it’s along though.

Tim Dooner (01:00:35):

I mean, it’s runs, it’s a perfect fit for the soul conversation we’re having. Um, all right, so this has got to be in [inaudible] a nutshell answer. Uh, so feel free to go as short as you’d like to be. Ask. Hey, do you think organizations are now ready to build necessary measures to handle future spikes? Similar Tacoma at 19 and Tim, you go first. Well, here’s a great thing at Freightways live at home, right? We’re doing it with that indirect Slack channel and one of the big topics actually came organically in that and it was just in case versus just in time shipping. Now we live in a just in time world and so I got to talk to a ton of supply chain leaders about, well, do you think just in case we’ll, we’ll be dominant and no one thanks. I mean it’s, it’s still going to be just because of the cost associated with it.

Tim Dooner (01:01:24):

Businesses are not going to lose millions or billions of dollars just to make sure that you have toilet paper at Walmart in case another pandemic hits, especially when like that’s what the paper was back three weeks later and the word now means because he has the word down there, I’m also going to say no because I don’t think that they’ve built that in place now. I think that a lot of companies are still are starting to pivot and starting to react, but I don’t think any new measures have really been set forth over these paths. A couple months. You know, the trade war, look at the trade war. Well, all we talked about was like, let’s take everything out of China. Back in 2016 Donald Trump’s gonna be president, but all these tariffs that was going to move their supply chains, well, it’s not that easy.

Tim Dooner (01:01:58):

You can’t just pick up a supply chain and move it and source it. There’s a lot of parameters that come into play, right? And a lot of due diligence, and it’s not just as easy as, Hey, we’d love to have everything right here, coast to coast. Well, okay, that’s what you want. You can pay three or four times as much and we’ve gotta be willing to embrace that. Not in every case, but in some cases. Uh, all right, Greg, your take [inaudible] I hope not. And here’s why, because as I said before, and again, you can quote me on this, we will never see another disruption to the supply chain as dramatic as this. And here’s why, just to be clear, because the impact was not covert 19 it was somewhat Cove at 19, but the majority of the impact was that we instantaneously shot shut down commerce and sent everyone home at virtually, even though it was over a period of weeks, virtually the same time.

Tim Dooner (01:02:51):

That will never ever happen again. Yeah, good point. Uh, great question society. Um, yeah, I would just add based on, based on what Greg and Tim put out there, something we’ve, this is a dead horse on these shows, at least our shows, is that, uh, organizations are getting really serious and putting money in hiring behind true risk mitigation and management and, and of all the things that’s going to do, one of the things is bringing up some of these risks and some of these scenarios to the surface that have never been thought of much like what Greg just painted, you know, who was thinking even six months ago, except for Craig and maybe maybe a few other folks, you know, Sarah said that we’d be here. Yeah. Um, so I think that with that, with that investment is going to come, uh, more the greater ability, especially leveraging automation and technology to look around corners. And B at least bet. Even if you’re not a hundred percent position, right. Even if you’re, if you don’t have your, you’re a perfect Superman suit for that one kryptonite show, at least you’re maybe 20% better prepared. I’ll take 20% who wouldn’t? Right. And that’s to decide what that level of preparation is and what they can afford. Because you can’t afford a once in a lifetime. You can’t afford to plan for a once in a lifetime spike in warehouse space though. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Right. [inaudible]

Tim Dooner (01:04:15):

alright, so Tim, uh, R give you one last question here in a minute, but I want to give you the last word. We’ve really kind of had a wide ranging but focused conversation here over the last hours. We start to wrap up. What’s one thing that we touch on or you touched on that if you’re a supply chain practitioner or supply chain leader, you really need to keep your finger on the pulse up. I think that you, you need to look, you need to use, you need to use, interpret and understand data. I mean, that’s why, and that’s my Freightways. That’s something like passport. It’s something that I use where we crunch the state. We have professionals are crunched the sonar data. We have the sonar terminal, a lot of information in there. It can be hard to funnel through and there’s a passport research team that, that breaks it all down and puts it into the appropriate, I know silos, it can be a bad word, but the appropriate silos that you need.

Tim Dooner (01:05:07):

So the right person, right shipping department can read what they need to know. How about demand planning and demand spikes. And I think the other thing is what Greg mentioned is just understand risk because now [inaudible] 19 pandemics have entered the chat. And I talked to my dad, he used to work in Marine cargo insurance for Roanoke for a very long time. All the incense insurance and pandemics typically don’t cover, guys don’t typically cover pandemics for all those things. So that’s going to be a whole new vertical. So if you’re a, you’re looking for a new job in sales, become a supply chain, sell a lot of pandemic policies and the Cummings. That’s right. Great point there. Hey, uh, I’m going say it one more question. Uh, and I remember last time, Greg, how you ant we wouldn’t, we weren’t able to get Tony Schroeder’s question and the right of the end. And he gave a one word answer. I think you surprised him. What? That’s gonna me back home. Air bean asked ed, do you think there’s a good future for visibility solution providers in the supply chain world? I’m going to use the most popular word in podcasting, Tim. Absolutely.

Tim Dooner (01:06:08):

Alright, great. There there’s still too many data sources, supply chain technologies, pretty good. But I still, a lot of it still doesn’t interconnect properly. Some of it’s still, it’s not as seamless as it should be. There’s plenty of room for improvement and we’re still kicking that can down the road. So absolutely I have to, while you’re, I also have the question of whether visibility is just another description for and the analytics or BI or what we used to call reporting. If it’s true visibility and I mean visual visibility then there is good. Yeah, I agree with you. Uh, Greg and I like how Tim was talking earlier about the ability to interpret data and, and, and even if, you know, look, I’m not sharpest tool in the shed. If you get me a a million page report, you know, you get overwhelmed with data. However, if you’ve got a resource or a teammate or the time and ability to sit down and figure out what the true signals are quickly so you can make decisions quickly, I mean that, that’s the multimillion dollar, uh, angle here.

Tim Dooner (01:07:12):

Alright, so Tim really have enjoyed this last hour. It was, it was about what I’d expected. And again, like we said on the front end, I love how our audio podcast was more about you and today it was about the issues and your expertise and your insights and observations. So I really have enjoyed it. What is the best way of the million of different ways that folks can connect with you and the Freightways team? Yeah, so the easiest way to get me is on LinkedIn. Timothy duner, that’s DWO NDR or on Twitter at Timothy junior Dean Devlin here, that’s where I’m most active. I frankly the same things Freightways company, you follow Freightways you’re going to get out, you’re gonna get notifications that are like on LinkedIn you’ll get notifications whenever our live shows go up every day at noon Eastern time, Monday through Friday.

Tim Dooner (01:07:55):

There’s either what the truck, there’s the mid day market update, there’s put that coffee down tomorrow. There’s another mid day market update, which is like our news show in the middle of the day. And then there’s, there’s what the truck, which is just like variety and chaos. But having fun. We had some real big supply chain leaders too. It’s a really loosen up. It’s a good time. So I’ll follow Freightways then follow me and I’m more than more than happy to open to network with people. Hey, that’s what put that coffee down. It’s all about I’m warming a cow bell, Tim Dooner.

Tim Dooner (01:08:29):

Hey, you’re really good at what you do. And I love how you bring that levity, whether folks like it or if they’re buttoned down like some folks are, and I’m pointing my fingers here or they are, none of that truck is like a trucker show. It’s not. That’s my radio show. Freightways radio. That’s where my trucking audiences. Well the truck is actually, it’s like C suite and executives. They’ve been like, they’ve been dying to banks and cowbells and stuff. Oh yeah. We’ve been watching it. I love it. That’s right. I love what you bring to the table. We all need some levity and, and you do, you’re, you’re really good at what you do. So great to have you here on supply chain now and we’ll be reconnected with you again real soon. Uh, Tim duner the one and only with freight waves. Thanks so much Tim.

Tim Dooner (01:09:12):

Take it easy guys. Thanks for having me, Tim. You guys are pretty good yourself. Thanks man. Man, that was fun. That was, uh, you know, every, every show is not equal. It just, you got different dynamics and personalities and takes and subject matter. Um, but that one was really engaging and genuine and I really enjoyed the heck out of that. I, you know, it was, it was fun. It was engaging. Tim is truly an expert in supply chain and particularly his segment transportation. I think he made a really, really valid point and you and I have experienced it as we’ve been, you know, on interviews on USA today and then BC and CNN and whatever. There are so many people out there reporting on this topic today who have no idea about it. And as he said, it’s a very, very complex industry supply chain right there.

Tim Dooner (01:10:10):

There are aspects of supply chain that Tim doesn’t know much about. There are aspects that I don’t know much about. And even gluten. There have to be sound though. Everyone. Yeah. Plenty. Plenty. But as, as side to your point, Greg, Sid, uh, also, you know, great show, Brett should appreciate your great questions. That was a great Mmm kind of question to wrap up on. So appreciate all of our audience tuning in and um, and to do all of that. And the point I was trying to make there at the end is it’s important to have these conversations and, and you don’t always get a whole bunch of fun baked into it, but Tim is really good at that as well. And that takes a difficult balance, right? Cause cause you go too far or you don’t go far enough, you lose people either way. And Tim, uh, I’ve really enjoyed watching his approach, maintaining that balance, bleeding, a fun and informative conversation. So all of that said, Greg, we’ve got to wrap up. Right. Um, so it is a shame. Um, but we’re going to wrap

Greg White (01:11:14):

up on this note. You get a chance to, to our audience, tune in tomorrow as we do feature Mike Griswold and his key takeaways from the gardener splotchy and top 25 which came out a week or two ago. All those things that Tim was talking about, you can learn about tomorrow and hear from the authority in the industry. That’s right. Absolutely. Go to supply chain now, radio.com to sign up. We’re still taking registrations probably up until tomorrow morning about 9:00 AM Eastern time. Looking forward to that. Of course, supply chain trivia, the third installment, June 3rd at 9:30 AM Eastern daylight time with our friends over at st Pixar, Eastern hemisphere. Additional looking forward to that. All right, Greg, why don’t you take us out today? Alright, well look, if, if you didn’t get to see all of this or you’d like to see more of these, you can always find us wherever you get your podcasts.

Greg White (01:12:06):

Subscribe so you get notified where we know we’ve got a ton of subscribers because we get like a thousand listens in the first hour now. Um, so, uh, do subscribe or if you like these alternate channels where we actually show video, you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, a YouTube and Twitch now and listen to or view any of this content. Look, be sure to Mmm, be aware of what’s going on. There is there are brighter days ahead and as Scott has encouraged us, we are now starting to see them. I think we’ll see. We’ll probably see a little bit of a blip up, but remember, we were trying to flatten the curve. It would be, it would be, uh, on thinkable for us to eliminate a pandemic, but at least we have flattened the curve. And I think we’ve done a fantastic job of that. So congratulate yourselves world, um, and continue to look forward to brighter days ahead and, and do, follow whatever direction that you are given or direction that you give yourself that makes you feel comfortable in these times. That’s right. And to everyone out there watching us. Thanks everybody. Thanks everybody tuning soon. Spot. You now have a great week.