Mike Mikulik [00:00:00]:
Thanks for coming out to our office. I know it was a long trip. Where’d you coming from?

Jordan [00:00:03]:
I’m from Dallas. So we’re based in Dallas, Texas. So you

Mike Mikulik [00:00:05]:
just blew up Dallas to here just for fun?

Jordan [00:00:07]:
No. No. Just come see you guys.

Mike Mikulik [00:00:08]:
Come see you guys. That’s awesome, man. I love the I love the support we’re getting from you guys too. And, basically, I wanted to make Something up, just a little talk a bit about your company, how it can benefit shippers. Just the overview even where the market’s heading as well too. So May 1st, I mean, there’s a ton of challenges going on with bullbroker and fraud in the market. Like, why was highway formed and, like, Like, what’s it gonna do to help us, so we can try to avoid this or at least eradicate a lot of the double up front?

Jordan [00:00:36]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So, my background is in software development and and banking. And so and the banking side, you know, what’s interesting to me is we have Imagine you went to a bank and you wanted to borrow $250,000. Right? The bank’s gonna know everything about you. Right? They don’t just hand you the money and let you walk out or it’s, you know, KYC or an underwriting process. And what was interesting to me as I was running TriumphPay prior to this, you know, we, You know, we would get calls from brokers being like, hey. Stop payment on this load.

Jordan [00:01:04]:
Don’t pay that carrier. And, you know, maybe ask the question, why? What happened? What do you know that you don’t wanna pay the anymore, then they delivered the load, and and that’s where I started to uncover. Okay. They didn’t want you to pay because they got double broker. They’re holding a hostage or something’s happening, and it led Let me see. Like, okay. Well, how do we prevent it from happening here? How do we go upstream of what’s, you know, before the payment? How do we prevent them from even getting on the load and getting in the network at all. And that led me to, like, doing some investigation about what the underwriting process looked like, in the in the freight broker community.

Jordan [00:01:36]:
And I just saw this opportunity to bring Some of the standards that we’re used to in the financial services world and bring that to to light for brokers so they can see who’s really hauling their freight. You know, there’s there’s 380,000 roughly carriers at Interstate Motor Carrier Authority in the US. Right. And what I talk to people about a lot is What’s scary about that number is there’s nowhere near that many carriers actually running in the US. Right? From the data we saw when I was running TriumphPay on the payment side, from the data we see on the the insurance stuff we work on at Highway, it’s nowhere near 350,000 carriers. And so What we tell people is having carrier authority doesn’t make you a carrier. We we wanna we wanna help brokers have transparency to who they’re really about to put that load on with so So that it’s preventive care. Prevents bad things from getting into your network at all, and, yeah, it may be more painful on the front end, But what we’re trying to do is weed out the the the sheep from the wolves.

Jordan [00:02:34]:
Right? And and it’s hard because as you know, like, There’s a there’s not a lot of transparency today, and trying to bring transparency into that market, we we do get pushback at times from from carriers. But What we’re slowly seeing is carriers see that highway is not here to make their life harder, not here to take advantage of them. We don’t charge them money. We’re not trying to take money out of their pocket. We’re trying to bring the good ones to the surface. And so if we do that, then the brokers want to work with the carriers that provide that transparency. And it’s a cycle that’s gonna make this this industry better and get rid of a lot of this nonsense that’s going on today.

Mike Mikulik [00:03:05]:
That’s that’s exactly what’s needed. I mean, the whole thing with double broker fraud. This has been around for a long time, But, like, how what what did it all accelerate to the point we’re at today? Because it’s horrible right now what’s going on.

Jordan [00:03:17]:
Yeah. So if you think about, fraud or just Specifically, freight fraud. Fraud needs 3 things to survive. So, like, so, like, fire needs heat. It needs it needs fuel. It needs oxygen. So when you try and Got a fire and try and put out 1 of those 3 or 2 of those 3 things to to extinguish a fire. Fraud means anonymity, needs urgency, and it needs the prospect of gain.

Jordan [00:03:37]:
So the prospect of gain is pretty easy. Right? You got a $200,000 loan, and you’re paying someone $2,000 to, you know, to to run it for you. There’s a big upside if they do something nefarious. The urgency freight and especially in the brokered freight community, there’s a ton of urgency. This needs to pick up today. It needs to pick up in 2 hours. Right? There’s a lot of that urgency that allows For the it just creates a greater opportunity for fraud to to occur. And then the anonymity.

Jordan [00:04:02]:
Right? A lot of what we deal with when we’re working with carriers is is over email or phone or they they found us on on the public law board, and so we’re trying to pierce the veil on the anonymity and let you see who’s really on the other side of that transaction, And that so those 3 things together. Okay? Those 3 things together is what’s led to this this explosion of fraud over the last 18 months. You know, 20 years ago, you didn’t have the same level of urgency. 20 years ago, you weren’t able to move carriers through your network as fast as you were. 20 years ago, it wasn’t that the shipper’s horn is demanding about, hey. I want this to pick up in 2 hours or 4 hours, and, you know, expecting that you would get that done for them. So this industry’s kind of Let itself to this point where you’ve you’ve created so much efficiency and speed in the transaction that now combined with the anonymity, there’s just A ton of opportunity for people that aren’t even in the US or Canada. Right.

Jordan [00:04:54]:
If they’re overseas, they’ve never set foot in the US, but they have US carrier authority, and they’re able to, you Now they’re able to make themselves appear like they’re a motor carrier. Wow.

Mike Mikulik [00:05:04]:
So DC is getting worse. Like, we may we’re coming into 2024. 2023 has been Crazy year. I mean, we’ve all had horror stories. I mean, our company, we’ve seen aspects of fraud take place just within our own company with carriers. What’s it gonna look like for 2024? Do you have thoughts as is it getting worse? Is are we gonna slowly start seeing things mellow out a bit, or is this I I promise here to stay.

Jordan [00:05:26]:
Yeah. And I’d say let’s talk about the the the market as a whole and then talk about highway brokers specifically. So the market as a whole, yes. Like, there used to be increases in not only, stolen loads, but, like, the the double brokering, the load phishing, all of that is continuing to It increased because there is still opportunity for these for for criminals to create a gain for themselves. With highway brokers, we’ve seen on Average across all the brokers that use us, a 97% reduction in fraudulent activity with highway.

Mike Mikulik [00:05:58]:
That’s huge.

Jordan [00:05:59]:
And so it’s made a huge difference for a lot of brokers saving, saving them not only the the losses. Right? Not only the financial losses of having to to to pay the deductible and stolen load or double pay on a double brokered load, But also the reputational damage. Right? You think about a stolen load. It’s not just paying the deductible. That shipper you’ve impacted that shipper’s business, And and that’s that’s 10 times more expensive than the financial cost, and that’s where you lose the customer because they say, okay. Maybe Yeah. Sure. Your insurance covered the cost of the load, but I missed out on a sales opportunity.

Jordan [00:06:34]:
Right? The goods that I needed to get out to the retail distribution center or the wholesalers Distribution center didn’t make it, and so I didn’t get that revenue opportunity. So, you know, you’ve you’ve negatively impacted their business. So we we talk a lot about Highway about owning the outcome. And so at Highway, we’re not just a software provider. We don’t just say, hey. Here’s our software taken and use a good look SPI. Good luck SPI agents. Let us know how it goes.

Jordan [00:06:56]:
When something bad happens in your network, I mean, we care deeply. We wanna engage, and we’re gonna help you figure out what happened and how we prevent it from happening again, and if we can help in recovery. And today, we’ve been very successful in helping brokers that had something bad happen recover recover, and then also, like, Preventing it from happening to to other brokers.

Mike Mikulik [00:07:16]:
Okay. So, like, I mean, a lot of this is all falling on 3 people companies like ourselves and even our Competitors. That’s that’s happening to them. But I’m finding talking to shippers, I don’t think they’ve really see how bad it actually is out there. I think they’re just relying on All the brokers to deal with the problem and to ensure they’re putting a carrier that’s reputable and it’s gonna move it from point a to point b in a in a timely manner and communicate along the way. Like, what can shippers do? Like, how do we educate shippers, and what what should be your message to shippers about utilizing tools like Highway to help us?

Jordan [00:07:47]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So So highway, we only sell the freight brokers. We we we believe deeply that we serve 1 you you can’t have 2 masters. You can’t serve 2 masters. Right? So, You know, some people in the freight tech industry like to serve brokers, and then they take brokers data and they go sell it to shippers. They take, you know, their customers’ data and go sell it to their customer’s customer. And we just We don’t do that.

Jordan [00:08:06]:
But what we do do and what we have, we probably have a half dozen, if not 10 shippers now that that We say they wanted to use highway. We say, hey. You you can’t. We only we only we only serve brokers, but if you wanna use brokers that use highway, like, You should do that. And so we have some shippers now, some big ones that say, hey, brokers at our mind network. If you’re not using highway, you’re not gonna be invited back to the bid season Because they see the benefit of the the they see the benefit of having a a tool like Highway that’s looking across 400 brokers for fraud and fraud events to protect their freight. And so it’s creating more opportunities for highway brokers And that’s what we’re looking forward to in 2024 is we wanna create a a program where we can help brokers that are using highways stand out. Like, they’re they’re going the Sure.

Jordan [00:08:52]:
Because it’s it’s harder to do this right. It’s harder because you just hire every carrier that comes through and says, hey. I’m a carrier. I want this load. So you’re doing more work. You should be rewarded for that, and you should be rewarded for that by having more opportunities with shippers and being able to tell shippers, hey. We don’t just hire any carrier that shows up I sent an email, and we don’t just take any email and trust that it’s the carrier they claim to be. We take these additional steps.

Jordan [00:09:15]:
We verify them with MFA. We make sure They have presence in the US, and if they have some red flags, we make sure we can see their ELD before we hire them. We know that we’re not just booking something in the dark. We can see the chart that we’re about to put it on. Right.

Mike Mikulik [00:09:28]:
So, like, what cut so as a shipper, what questions should a shipper be asking a broker before he does business with them? Yeah.

Jordan [00:09:34]:
Yeah. I think the first question is, what does it look like For your carrier on for your carrier vetting process. Okay.

Mike Mikulik [00:09:40]:
What are the what are the what are

Jordan [00:09:41]:
the tools that you’re using to to vet carriers today? The second thing I think you can ask is around, should we should be asking is around how are you protecting the rate confirmation and pickup information? Right? Because if you you a lot of this load fishing, They’re not even onboarding. They’re just trying to get you to send the right confirmation to some email address that they control while pretending to be this carrier over here. And so that’s where, you know, with the Outlook plug in and and, and being able to look up emails in in highway, but also having highway be able to send the right confirmation for you, make sure it gets where he needs to go. Those are the those are that’s the second thing I would say to a shipper is, like, how is your pick of information being protected? Because if that becomes compromised, number 1 doesn’t matter. If they have the pickup number, they’re gonna get they’re gonna be able to steal that load. And number 3, I would say is It’s how do they think about this holistically in terms of reporting, in terms of their business. Right? You have a network. SPI has this network, and it’s our job to be the firewall for your network and prevent bad traffic from from getting in.

Jordan [00:10:40]:
Now what can happen is that can slow down some good factors. Some good carriers may look Bad on the outside because of some choices or some things that factors out of their control.

Mike Mikulik [00:10:49]:
Right.

Jordan [00:10:49]:
And that is a part of any filter. You’ve gotta Continue to refine that so the good carriers have a great experience and get get through while keeping out the bad actors and that are gonna cause problems. So if I’m a shipper, I’m asking those 3, those 3 questions of my brokers.

Mike Mikulik [00:11:04]:
Perfect. So like even a shipper, what can a shipper do to work with a broker that try to help? I I mean, is there a communication flow that should be happening when there’s a load a load confirmation sent out and the communication between shipper and broker to help them alleviate Some of these challenges when the the carrier shows up on the dock and ready to pick up their cargo?

Jordan [00:11:23]:
Yeah. I think, you know, for for a shipper, like, they wanna know that the brokers that they’re using has These processes in place to make sure that there’s protection of their confidential information. It’s confidential information that rate that that pickup number, that pickup information. That information, they need to know that a broker is doing the right things to protect it like FBI. Like, you guys are using Highway to make sure that once you have that valuable information, it’s only going to not only the right carrier, but a carrier that would meet the standards of SPI that you’re gonna that you’re willing to send in to go pick up that load. You know, We talk about this a lot. As a as a freight broker, you don’t actually get to show up and and own the you don’t actually physically there. Right? Right.

Jordan [00:12:03]:
Your carrier that you’re in is the extension of your brand. Right? So we’ve talked

Mike Mikulik [00:12:08]:
about that a lot. Like,

Jordan [00:12:09]:
is this someone that you want representing your brand At your customers or at your customer’s customer’s doc. Right? And and so that’s why this preventative care is so important, and that’s why working with carriers that are willing to provide transparency is so important. Because if they’re willing to go through the process and they’re willing to do things right, Then that is gonna save you so much headache and pain on the back end of maybe they don’t just steal the load. Maybe they don’t broker, but maybe they give your shipper a really bad experience.

Mike Mikulik [00:12:40]:
And trying to get out of that is is hard.

Jordan [00:12:42]:
Yeah. Exactly. So, like,

Mike Mikulik [00:12:43]:
the process with highway, we’re trying to weed out these these carriers. What are some of the things that or the milestones or safety points that you guys check out to to verify a carrier?

Jordan [00:12:53]:
Yeah. So we think about risk Matrix. So this is my background in banking. When you think about, risk, you think about here’s the high risk, low risk, and there’s all kinds of factors Along the way that can make you look high risk. So there’s this basic principle we use at highway. There are 2 kinds of people. There are good guys and bad guys. Very simplistic.

Mike Mikulik [00:13:14]:
Simple things. Alright. Okay.

Jordan [00:13:15]:
But here’s the difference. So the so how do you tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy? Well, Bad guys don’t wanna leave footprints, and so a lot of what we do in highway is if we can’t see footprints. Right? Because if you leave footprints at the scene of crime, you’re gonna get caught. The same is true with people that are trying to commit freight fraud as they are trying to hide and obfuscate their identity. And so as we We we do through our process is identify high risk carriers and say, hey. Like, give them the chance to to offer us the His ability to know that they’re a great carrier and a good carrier. If they do, they’re gonna pass their flying calls. And a lot of that is around, you know, mobile phone verification.

Jordan [00:13:53]:
It’s around ELD verification. And it’s around, you know, insurance and making sure all those things are aligned and telling the same story. And if that’s happening, they’re gonna make it through great. And there’s about a 100 and 40 to a 150,000 carriers that are approved, passing the rules, insurance on file Right. Ready to go on highway. But now the carriers Don’t wanna do that. That’s your warning sign. That’s the sign of, like, if they’re not willing to show and give you that transparency if they’re not willing to give it to you before you give them the look, why would they

Mike Mikulik [00:14:20]:
give it to you after? Makes sense. So, like, thinking about let’s just delve deeper now into our business. I wanna talk in with our agents and Yeah. Yes. We’re on highway. Yes. You know, there’s hiccups with any type of software that comes in. And I think your agents wanna know I see the potential as this is a huge selling feature as to what we’ve We’ve invested in technology wise into highway to protect our customers.

Mike Mikulik [00:14:45]:
So how can our agents use this as a tool, as a selling tool to give, you know, peace of mind to their or to their customers and also to help them get other customers.

Jordan [00:14:54]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So when you when you think about, Freight brokers. Right? There’s 8,000 freight there’s there’s 30,000 registered freight brokers in the US. There’s about 8 to 10000 active. So how do you stand out? So you’re talking to your customer. How do I stand out as SPI or an agent of SPI? One of the ways that you you talk about what the shippers care about is Service and stability. Right? Those are 2 components they care about in their supply chain.

Jordan [00:15:18]:
You are you are literally being given the keys to their revenue cycle. Right? And so when you show up and say, hey, at SPI, we don’t just we don’t just make it easy for we don’t we don’t just let anyone get in. Right? We wanna make sure that we’re working with high quality vetted carriers. And if they’re high quality vetted carriers, yeah, they can get in really easy, but we make sure we make sure shippers that We are taking the the security of your freight seriously. We care about we care about the outcome for you as a shipper, not just, You know? Hey. What’s the cheapest carrier we can find to get this load moved? And and that, I think, is what separates the high quality brokers and agents like SPI From a lot of these people who, you know, are just trying to make a dollar and putting risk. You gotta think about the risk that can be put on that shipper’s business. In Talking as an agent and you’re talking to your customer, that shipper, you wanna be communicating that you’re not just taking the easy way out.

Jordan [00:16:14]:
Right. You’re here Here to think about the long term and building long term relationship by executing day in, day out, and using high quality providers to get them great results.

Mike Mikulik [00:16:24]:
I’ve I fully agree. I mean, I I see it, but you have a carrier that the funeral just lasts. It’s like, oh, yes. There’s my potential to make a few a little bit more money. Coming along with that, also risk. And the customers, they’re asking, like, boy, yeah. They’re still about rates. We a lot of customers are still about rates.

Mike Mikulik [00:16:39]:
What’s the rate gonna be? And I think we need to say, like, Hey. Yes. They have this carry a couple $100 less, but I’ll tell you what, how he shows up in the system, I have some reservations about it. This carry, for instance, is a few dollars more, which is actually more in line with what the market rate is, but I feel comfortable with this carry. This carrier is going to do a good job. We’re not gonna have any transactional issues. We’re have open communication with them. So I think there’s that segregation that you gotta segregate and also sell it to our customers that way.

Jordan [00:17:07]:
Yeah. And, You know, there’s so many scenes around this, you know, stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime. Right? Right. And and, you know, you think about you’re putting at risk potentially 100 of 1,000 of dollars of freight on that load. And not only that, but the relationship with that shipper to save a couple $100. And I we we we talk about this a lot during our in our training process with with customers is carrier authority does not make you a carrier. No longer like, that doesn’t work anymore. There’s too many shell MC numbers out there.

Jordan [00:17:39]:
I mean, there are tens of thousands of shell and seeing numbers out there that are just sitting dormant that people have registered that aren’t actually active motor carriers. And We need to do more to make sure that who we’re about to hire is actually a true carrier, has the equipment they say they do, Equipment is insured and that they’re actually gonna show up and do what you need to do. And a big, big part of that is the willingness to provide transparency. And I just I can’t I can’t emphasize it enough that if we’re thinking about building long term value for your agents and for SPI Mhmm. We need to think about service level through the cycle. We need to think about carrier usage through the cycle. Absolutely. Today, Shippers are more rate sensitive, but that’s gonna change someday soon.

Jordan [00:18:25]:
And we and we we wanna make sure that we think about what we’re doing through these these cycles and building long term value for SPI’s agents and SPI, whether it’s a down market or up market. And one area that we don’t wanna we don’t wanna compromise on is the quality of the Carriers that you’re allowing in the SPI network because that is brand. Right? The carriers are an extension of your brand, and So we need to think about when we’re bringing them into our network, are these brand ambassadors? Right? The people that we do want representing our SPI or SPI agent At the dock of our customer.

Mike Mikulik [00:18:58]:
Yeah. Makes so much sense. Interesting enough too is the fact that a lot of how do you say it here? These carriers the good ones the good ones are gonna give our our customers a really good experience. The bad ones can leave things in a bad experience. But do you think there’s value in our agents or just any any broker, for instance, going to the customer and saying, listen. I go, What impact does a fraudulent if your load is stolen have on your business? Or, you know what, if you also gonna lose complete visibility of that load because it’s been double appropriate, how does that affect your business? And painting that ugly picture to a shipper that when these bad things happen, there’s an impact to you.

Jordan [00:19:37]:
Yeah. And and I mean, it each case is Each case is different. Right? So for a CPG company, they have certain they have certain quote thresholds and delivery velocity. They have to keep up with the food retailers or the food distribution distribution, you know, the wholesalers for those food retailers. If they don’t meet that velocity, they’re not keeping that Amount of good flowing when they’ve committed to deliver it, they they’re gonna lose business. They’re gonna lose revenue, and it’s not just and, again, like, it’s not just about replacing the cost. When you replace the cost of retail, they don’t book that as revenue. And every single one of them have investors, every single one of them have financial reporting, and they’re all trying to grow their revenue.

Jordan [00:20:15]:
And so with even just 1 truckload not getting to the Wegmans distribution center when it was supposed to, it’s gonna negatively impact their quarter. 100%. Their quarter will be impacted by them. Now you’re talking about 2, 3, 4 loads that get stolen. Now we have a real problem that now c He is gonna be hearing about it at that that shipper. It gets worse when you talk about like branded apparel. When you talk about things that are licensed, No licensed goods, and you potentially have a customer that’s in possession of another brand’s licensed goods like Nike apparel or some other brand apparel. Mhmm.

Jordan [00:20:49]:
If that those if that truckload disappears, now your customer’s customer is involved. Right? Because now you have their product on the black market, their Product going into flea markets, give their product just to go into, you know, illicit distribution channels, maybe showing back up on Amazon and creating Bad outcomes for consumers, and that’s an even bigger issue for them reputationally. So I think, again, it just comes back to, like, Showing up and being a service provider that thinks about providing quality through the cycles, in through the cycle. This will turn. This day will pass. Right? There will be a strong mark. The market will swing back the other way, and it will happen in the middle of the night when none of us expected. Not even you know, my good friend Craig Frode was gonna know pretty well predict it.

Jordan [00:21:32]:
Actually, the agents are probably the best at predicting it because they’re so close to the metal. They’re so close to the hell.

Mike Mikulik [00:21:37]:
They can

Jordan [00:21:37]:
Feel it. Right? But it’ll come. And just being, you know, keeping the discipline, there’s certain disciplines that we need to refine and And build that muscle in bad markets and good markets, and this is one because this is when you think about the impact of a stolen loader, impact of a hostage load, Even if it gets delayed 2 days, like, that those impacts last forever. It you know, it takes what is it takes, you know, Reputation is gained by the inch and lost by the mile. You know, it’s the consistent, continual execution that allows you to build that reputation, that brand, Then just 1 bad character, bad 1 bad actor can mess it up.

Mike Mikulik [00:22:16]:
And that’s the thing. I mean, this this ties nicely, man. We painted the big ugly picture of how this could affect Our customer our customer’s business and even their customer’s customer. Yeah. All of over saving 2, $300 on a load going with a carrier that’s a low cost Fair. Like, it doesn’t when you paint the ugly picture, all of a sudden, the shipper’s gonna be like, yeah. You know what? I’d rather go with somebody a little bit more solid and reputable.

Jordan [00:22:39]:
Well, then and I, you know, and now let’s let’s talk about so we talk about use the term, you know, I don’t like to use the term carrier when we talk about fraudulent actors. Like they have carrier authority, but they’re not a carrier. Right? The The people out there, the carriers are actually running this freight. Like, we wanna create great outcomes for them as well. So, like, whenever carriers are willing to engage with highway and bring transparency, They they find more business. They’re gonna find more brokers willing to work with them, because they’re gonna show up in more search results. We know that carriers that provide transparency or connect a DOD device, they show up 20 times they’re 20 times more likely to show up in a search result Then a carrier that doesn’t in highway. Because brokers I mean, tens of thousands of brokers

Mike Mikulik [00:23:18]:
And not everyone’s doing it.

Jordan [00:23:19]:
Highway sourcing every day, And they’re seeing these carriers that are willing to provide transparency, and they’re getting more freight. We talked to a carrier that’s got 6 trucks. It’s a reefer carrier out of the Midwest, And they they, you know, they were hesitant about connecting their ELD, and I ended up on the phone with them talking through. I was like they’re like, why would we do this? I was like, here’s why. We’re doing this to protect you. So someone tries to pretend to be you and picking up a load in Florida, it’s not you. You don’t run outside the deadwax, and we’re gonna help protect you there. The second is it’s gonna bring you to the surface.

Jordan [00:23:48]:
People wanna work with people that provide transparency, and, like, whenever you people are searching for reefer carriers in the Midwest, they now show up in the top five Because they’re they’re providing that that transparency, and we want to reward them with great outcomes because they’re great actors and because they are good people doing good work out there. And the 3rd thing we talk about with them is as a broker, you are you know, the broker prior to Highway, before you could see the ELD data, before you could see where the carrier was, You’re booking in the dark. Maybe you can go to SAFR and see something or maybe you got some data in your TMS, but you’re booking in the dark. We want that to go away. We We want that to be a thing in the past, where in the future, we have great carriers and great brokers working together. Right? And, like, there’s Gonna be disputes. There gonna be frustration.

Mike Mikulik [00:24:34]:
Of course, sir.

Jordan [00:24:35]:
It’s just it’s just the natural order of things, but it brings the the cream of the crop to the surface, and it leaves These fraudulent actors on both sides. There’s fraudulent actors pretending to be brokers ripping off carriers, and there’s fraudulent actors pretending to be carriers ripping off brokers. We need to get where those people aren’t allowed inside the game, and so that the people that are are doing good work, both brokers and carriers can So you can can feed one another.

Mike Mikulik [00:25:00]:
And that’s the way it should be. I mean, there are there are brokers that are that shouldn’t even be being broke. I mean, I guess, again so let’s talk a little bit about You guys are you guys are partnering now with with the, the TIA, and I think that’s that’s great. Can we talk a little bit about, you know, that partnership and what you guys are looking to accomplish? What are some of the goals

Jordan [00:25:17]:
Yeah. So our partnership with, the TIA is around the watchdog program. So the TIA watchdog, was is this there’s A fraud reporting service. The TIA has had around for probably 10, 15 years, and it was kinda put up on the it it wasn’t getting a lot of over investment. I think, you know Yeah. You probably saw it before it got redone. And so we’re losing adoption. Brokers were wanting to to use it.

Jordan [00:25:40]:
And so what we did is we we took, it took about 6 months. I worked with the CIA on redesigning it and providing a lot more value, to to brokers that are TIA members. So So if you’re a TIA member, you can log in to ti watch dog .com with your official TIA email, and you get a lot more value and you did before. We’re gonna show you things like insights. We’re gonna show you, a couple, you know, free looks, at carriers and show you If we see real detail, what it is, we’re gonna give you some lot more information so that you are being able to protect yourself. And then where that what that leads to is that’s where fraud reporting happens at the CIA. So 2000, 25 100 member companies roughly with the CIA, and they’re now using that more active. I think we’ve seen 20 times more, carrier views that that were previously we see a 30% 30 x increase in the number of fraud reporting, and that’s really helping cut this stuff off before it gets legs.

Jordan [00:26:40]:
And a lot of that fraud are pointing, Mike, is not, hey. You know, my load got brokered or stolen. It’s it’s catching up before it turns into that. When the email phishing campaigns are coming out. So these guys, these fraudulent actors pretending to be carriers are emailing in, you know, to with you a little email bestonelogistics@gmail.com, but they’ll use a one instead of spelling out one, which is the right way the right email. And they’re trying to get the broker to give them that load pertaining to be a carrier that’s already in their network. And that’s what’s getting reported, and that’s Stopping the fraud from happening because now that email’s flagged. Every broker that uses TI Watchdog or Highway is now gonna have visibility that That email’s compromised.

Jordan [00:27:21]:
Don’t trust it.

Mike Mikulik [00:27:22]:
Yeah. Which is huge. So we’re finding these ways here to try to try to weed this out, which I think is great. So, I I mean, this seems like this is an evolving process for you guys. Like, what we have now, you gotta continue to evolve. So what are some of the things on the horizon for highway, some of the new Tools that we can probably expect coming out, and how are they gonna benefit us?

Jordan [00:27:40]:
Yeah. So we’ll talk about tools for both brokers and carriers.

Mike Mikulik [00:27:43]:
Okay.

Jordan [00:27:43]:
So, You know, we’ve we’ve spent a lot of time so thus far building a lot of products from brokers. Why we did that is, one, that’s where my relationships were was with the freight broker community. The second was We believe that if we can stop the fraud at that point in the cycle, we can prevent a lot of downstream, and we’ve been able to do that. But the next step is we’re rolling out a carrier product that’s gonna be free for carriers that are, in in register with Highway and and providing transparency. That they’re gonna be able to go and see and look up brokers and see a lot of the same things that brokers can see on carriers. And it’s gonna provide a lot of transparency about Where is this person actually accessing highway from? Are you know, is this really the broker they claim to be? You know, what kind of payment data have we been able to see on this broker? Like, You know? They’ve had authority for 2 years, but no one’s bought an invoice from him in 2 years. Like, what you know, what’s going on? And provide a lot of that visibility to carriers so that they can Vet the people that they’re about to do business with. Additionally, we’re gonna provide a rate confirmation delivery tool for for carriers and brokers a secure way.

Jordan [00:28:47]:
It’s available today. They can just use their MC number at gohighway.com, and they can be protected when people are sending them rate cons. Highway’s gonna tell tell them That’s not the broker it claims to be. They’re trying to pretend to be another broker, or we don’t know who that broker is. You should make them go verify their identity before you work with Those tools for carriers, I think, are gonna help a lot. Prevent a lot of fraud that they’re facing today. My buddy, I told you this earlier. You know, For instance, kindergarten.

Jordan [00:29:14]:
Went to high school together. He runs 2 trucks out of West Texas. You know, he got stopped. And it impacted personally. You know? And it’s and there’s nowhere for him to go. The the dollar price are too low. It’s not worth the time going to, you know, the collection agencies because, You know, he’s like it’s just it’s and he’s stuck, and no one’s no one’s helping him. And so that’s where a lot of inspiration with this carrier products come from is how do we help Carriers prevent bad stuff from happening to them and their network before it gets in.

Jordan [00:29:45]:
So that’s gonna pass carrier broker relations

Mike Mikulik [00:29:48]:
the way this is going. I I like I think it’s it’s it’s beautiful. It’s just it’s good stuff, and it’s gonna everyone’s gonna win. It’s gonna become a win win for everybody. You have people.

Jordan [00:29:58]:
Yeah. And, you know, we and that’s why we try and be mindful of when we talk about the fraud, not carriers. They They’re pretending to be carriers. You wanna talk about the fraud. They’re not brokers. They’re pretending to be brokers. And what’s what’s what’s hurting the good actors, right, the bad apples are spoiling the whole lot Is there you know, brokers are getting burned by these fraudulent actors pretending to be carriers, and carriers are being burned by these fraudulent actors pretending to be brokers. Uh-huh.

Jordan [00:30:23]:
And it’s causing just reputational damage across this entire industry. The need both these industries need each other, and they and and And there is great outcomes that can be had for all. And and, yes, there’s gonna be disputes along the way, and people are gonna be frustrated. And there’s miscommunication, and there’s, you know, unmet expectations about when they thought they were gonna be voted versus not in their and there are bad actions taken by both sides. I think ultimately, the more that we can bring Transparency and trust. The the trust that I’m working with something like SPI. So so think about this. Like, a carrier that’s been around In the business 6, 9 months.

Jordan [00:30:59]:
Never worked with SPI. They may not know how big you are. Right? And, like, so part of what we wanna do in the highway is exposed to these small carriers. This is a big broker. That means they’re credit worthy. That means reputationally, they’ve been doing this a long time. He’s been doing something right. In then 3, it’s like, you know they’re gonna have more freight for you.

Jordan [00:31:19]:
So you’re willing to take that load. You wanna go engage them because they’re gonna have Freight.

Mike Mikulik [00:31:23]:
And they don’t have an active Salesforce out there selling their their their carrier services to the markets. They for them, parking up with a broker could be a win win for them.

Jordan [00:31:31]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And with your agent model, what’s great, I think, you know, we wanna do a better job as per to showing to these carriers, to these carrier products is, hey. It’s not just like SPI, this one broker. There’s 60, 70, 80 agents out there that are out there hustling all day every day getting ship or freight. Like, Come work with them because you got 60 at bats. You got 60 salespeople out there for you now Yeah. Pushing freight for you.

Jordan [00:31:54]:
So we’re gonna work on, like, that messaging, and that’s what we Worked with you earlier. It’s just like how do we how do we communicate value prop that, you know, these brokers that do good work and are paying carriers Or not trying to work people over. How do we raise that to the surface so carriers know where to go home? Know what what carrier what brokers they should be working for. Yeah.

Mike Mikulik [00:32:15]:
And that I guess that’s a trust factor. So alright. Let’s let’s break it down a little bit a little bit more here. So, you know, we’re we have a great vetting pool utilizing highway, like, Brokers that are that don’t have a vetting program. Like, what are some of these the the the challenges and the rest of their experience kind of moving forward as as we’re seeing right now. Do you

Jordan [00:32:35]:
have any stories to share? Or Yeah. I mean, the the sophistication, level is is getting Pretty pretty incredible. Right? It’s it’s getting they are trying new things. They’re Some of the things we see one of the ones that I heard the other day,

Mike Mikulik [00:32:54]:
like, this stuff changes daily?

Jordan [00:32:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s why I like you know, when people will say, like, oh, you know, let’s have a, Yeah. You gotta move fast to keep up with these guys because they’re they’re not they don’t have some committee where they’re sitting around talking about, oh, what should we do? Or, you know, They’re like they’re trying stuff all day every day. So some of the some of the statistics, we see 200 Reported phishing attempts per week. Wow.

Jordan [00:33:21]:
That’s crazy. 200. I mean, the scale of it is That’s 200 sorry. That’s not 200 total. That’s 200 unique email attempts. Yeah. So there’s probably a1000 Or more with those same emails. So that’s 200 unique emails that they’ve used to try and finish.

Mike Mikulik [00:33:39]:
It only takes 1 to get us started. It only

Jordan [00:33:40]:
takes 1. See, they’re playing for a lot of tickets. We’re playing defense. So, One of the ones that was I mean, the subtlety of it the genius was in the subtlety of what they did, and these these guys are this good. They they They got a carrier sales rep at a large broker, and they use a a a reasonably sized large carrier, 50 50 trucks. And they Said, hey. I want that load that you posted on on this load board. And, hey.

Jordan [00:34:04]:
Send the rate confirmation here. And they gave the domain that was The exact match for that carrier’s email domain. Like, it was they didn’t try to spoof email domain. It was a corporate domain. And they said, hey. Email it to this user c The last was at this domain, and the did the right thing, and he went and checked the domain. He sent the email, Didn’t hear anything back, and all of a sudden, you know, an hour or 30 minutes after pickup was supposed to happen, he gets a call from someone pretending to be the driver and Play the whole played the whole role. Frustrated.

Jordan [00:34:37]:
Pickup number’s not working. You know? What did you do? The pit’s not the right pick up number. Give me the pick up number. What’s pick up number? I’m sitting here. I’m about to leave if I don’t get this pickup number. And the carrier sales rep gave him the pickup number over the Oh. And that’s all it took. The the see, the car sales rep in his mind had sent it to the right place.

Jordan [00:34:56]:
So he nothing was amiss to him. Right? And he just assumed they hadn’t responded. And then when that phone call came from the driver, in his mind, the continuation of the experience was, oh, yeah. Like, I mean, how does that happen? Right? The driver doesn’t get the pickup number or can’t read the pickup number on the rate con because there’s, like, 80 numbers on there. Right? And they they fell for it. Load got stolen. Just like that. And they were smart enough to know they picked a company domain that didn’t bounce back.

Jordan [00:35:23]:
Right. See, well, that was a fake user at that company. Uh-huh. So they sent that email to, you know, carrier you know, cblast was at carrierlogistics.com. That was Domain. I wanna say who the carrier was, but they knew that that email wouldn’t bounce back. So they tested it because, you know, some email servers you send in, there’s no user there, it’ll bounce back. Right.

Jordan [00:35:41]:
Right. No one here. And it’s Kind of a security thing. Some people decide not to do that or do that. So it was sophisticated. It was thought out, And the subtlety of the that last move there where they call the Jerry Sills and pretend to be the driver is is act it’s it’s really good. It’s Scary. And they’re gonna

Mike Mikulik [00:36:00]:
come up with new tactics all the time, and they’re gonna keep on trying it. Yeah. So I mean, the rest of these smaller brokers that don’t have a real bidding process in place or ways to alleviate this are gonna have some challenges?

Jordan [00:36:11]:
Yeah. You you’ve gotta be you’ve gotta be vigilant. You’ve gotta be on your guard all the time, and that that’s our job For you, for your firewall. So, like, you know, every network has a firewall, and that’s the tip of the spear that’s out there trying to protect Things from getting into the network. That’s what our job is. So, like, we look at all this data coming in, and we’re looking at, you know, how they’re fishing for For these loads, we’re looking at what kind of loads they’re fishing for, and we’re tracking this data, and it allows us to proactive. And that’s kind of the next step with the broker communities. We’re gonna start providing this proactive intelligence about where we think they’re trying to strike or what loads we think they’re going for, and that will help you be more high alert.

Jordan [00:36:50]:
Right? So So the key is focusing your energy on high risk situations. Right? So they’re not stealing bottled water.

Mike Mikulik [00:36:57]:
No. They’re still bottled water. They are stealing pickles. We had a pickle load that got stolen. Yeah. They’re not selling bottled water loads,

Jordan [00:37:03]:
but they’re they’re targeting certain commodities that are either easy to move or high value or both. Right. And then they’re targeting in certain ZIP codes. There’s there’s certain restrictions.

Mike Mikulik [00:37:11]:
What what kind of areas then are they targeting right now?

Jordan [00:37:13]:
We don’t we don’t say that publicly. Okay. We we It’s it’s in highway. Right? Like, that’s Yeah. That’s the job here. We don’t wanna disclose what we know because then it’ll shift their tactics. Right? So we wanna, you know, we want to, as much as possible, Hold what we think we know. I’ll deliver it to you in a way that in in highway.

Jordan [00:37:30]:
That’s why sometimes in highway, you’re like, why is this more challenging for This is curious because there’s something we’re seeing about a pattern that we may not reveal to the carrier or reveal to the user, but we’re testing out in the background to say, okay. Let’s try that to See if that stops some of this activity. And we measure. We everything we do, we do AB testing where we’re saying, hey. We’re gonna try it on this carrier or try it on that carrier to see what happens. And and we’ve had some that yield great results that we don’t publicly disclose what we know, that the pattern that we see, but it’s running in the background if you’re a highway broker and it’s checking that. And, you know, that will always be how we attack things. And then once something has become revealed or known, then we may publicly

Mike Mikulik [00:38:07]:
disclose what it was. But as

Jordan [00:38:08]:
long as we know It’s working. We’re not gonna disclose it.

Mike Mikulik [00:38:11]:
Good on you for not sharing it with me, man. Yeah. So I know our agents probably a question that they may have is, like, Yeah. I’ve been dealing with this carrier prior to highway. I’ve been dealing with a carrier for years. I know I know their kids. I know. Awesome.

Mike Mikulik [00:38:25]:
Right? I know them well. Then all of a sudden, they get onboarded at the highway and it failed. Yeah. What’s the child what how how talk let’s talk let’s talk through that a little bit.

Jordan [00:38:34]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So every firewall It’s gonna his his goal is to only catch all the bad traffic and let all the good traffic come through. But in reality, there’s an overlap. Right? There is there’s traffic that’s gray. It’s not all black and white. And what I would tell you is if you know that to be true, that’s great. Get that carrier through.

Jordan [00:38:50]:
You know, there’s a process to to bring them through with the overrides, and, Like, maybe there’s a story that that needs to be told, and and we’re always receptive. We talk to carriers all the time. We’re talking to carriers, I’m trying to understand different situations, what’s happening, and it it it’s difficult because the wolves are in cheap clothing. Right? They’re they’re hiding. They’re trying to hide as a sheep, and they’re trying to look like a a carrier. So I would say every there are absolutely new on situations, and we’re always Open to hearing and learning about it. I will say, though, that that is the lever that people try and pull, and there are Dozens, if not a 100 or more stories of carrier brokers have done live with highway that it’s revealed something in their network that Scares him a little bit. Like, we’ve been working with this carrier for how long, and we didn’t know this was going on.

Jordan [00:39:37]:
There’s,

Mike Mikulik [00:39:37]:
like, there’s a key there. Yeah. Could be stuff that we don’t even know about. That it’s something was you guys picked up, and that’s where the red flags come.

Jordan [00:39:44]:
Can we talk about yeah. And so we talk about green, you know, green, yellow, red. Right? And when you see those yellow flags, those insights, it’s an opportunity for conversation. It’s an opportunity to have a conversation. Why you know, and we’ve been working there a long time. I didn’t know you had broker authority. Or why is there broker authority 3 houses down from you? Or, you know, can we talk about that? Like, you know, well, you only got 1 truck you’re scheduled on, but you got 10 that have been inspected. Were these leased on carriers, Based on drivers, are these your drivers? Right? Yeah.

Jordan [00:40:10]:
It’s an opportunity to arm you with a conversation, and that is that’s worth so much. Because when you show up to a conversation with information to be able to ask really good questions. You’re gonna find out whether you push on a nerve that, man, maybe there was something going on that you you wanted to be aware of, or Maybe there’s a story. Maybe there’s a reason why. Maybe they have a certain type of freight that they’re moving that’s making it look like they they have They’re running more billable miles than they can when reality. They’re they’re doing everything right on the up and up. I’ve seen it both ways, and and I’ve seen it both ways, but I will tell you More often than not, you need to trust the data, and the insights leads

Mike Mikulik [00:40:48]:
to be There’s something there.

Jordan [00:40:50]:
More often there’s the conversations had and you walk away being like, I probably should be a little more cautious than I was before.

Mike Mikulik [00:40:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s the key. Yeah. That’s the key. You know know what? Everyone has a story too. Not everything is gonna be rosy, but After you could pick those things up and find ways to protect yourself is huge. So And

Jordan [00:41:07]:
you think about proactive communication setting expectations in any relationship. Proactive communication, setting expectations, reduces conflict because of unmet expectations down the road. Having a conversation with, you know, this carrier who Before you didn’t know he had the broker authority under his name across town or whatever. You find out how he’s got broker authority or you find out now he’s got lease on drivers. Just having the conversation about, hey. I’m aware of this now. Hey. Can we can we make sure that my freight doesn’t end End up in your broker side.

Jordan [00:41:35]:
Like, let’s just be clear. Like, I know you have broker authority now. Like, it can’t my freight can’t be brokered. If you can’t cover it, your truck breaks down. Don’t be a hero. I need you to be here, and that happens. Like, carriers wanna be the here. They don’t wanna get the freight back.

Mike Mikulik [00:41:46]:
And their intentions are good.

Jordan [00:41:47]:
They’re good. But what they don’t understand is the the The liability that’s created when that Yes. That’s right. That’s an education. We do that all the time. Like, carriers will say, man, I was just trying to do the right thing. I get it. Sometimes bad things can happen when you do the right thing, and that’s where we say, hey.

Jordan [00:42:02]:
Look. It’s better for you to get the freight back than to do something that’s outside the contract That introduces risk not only to themselves. They don’t they don’t realize they’re reducing risk to themselves because their insurance isn’t set up to cover Another carrier calling this load that was tender to them as a motor carrier. It brings risk to the broker. It brings risk to the shipper. It brings risk all along the the chain of of custody there. And that’s a we’ve had a great opportunity to educate a lot of a carrier on that that risk. And again, like you said, it’s Coming from a good place sometimes.

Jordan [00:42:32]:
Mhmm. And, you know, and and most guys get it. Once you explain it to them, then they get it. And it’s it’s okay if trucks break down. We also we also work whenever we see these reports come in about, you know, people frustrated because a 1 truck carrier didn’t show up because his truck went down. Trucks went down. We we don’t file those reports to get published in Hollywood because we know how hard it is for these guys. Like, we we we We have friends that are in the trucking industry.

Jordan [00:42:59]:
We people that, you know, we’ve financed for a long time. Like we care about their their outcome and we’re not gonna allow like Something bad happened. The truck broke down. They hit, you know these things happen. It’s Okay. Transperation. It gets sick. You gotta You gotta actually physically move this stuff.

Jordan [00:43:16]:
It’s not just like, you know, software, and so we wanna make sure that carriers’ reputation small carriers’ reputations are not damaged just because Something bad happened that yeah. It stinks for the broker. Right? They they have to go find another, find another carrier. They get because they fell off. Like, That’s the nature of why we’re compensated from the broker trade community is to provide that stability when a small carrier, Something happens, and they can’t make it to go find another one. That’s our job. Right? And so we shouldn’t punish people because of their their things that happen in the world that How’s breakdowns?

Mike Mikulik [00:43:49]:
Oh, I agree. I’m glad we’re able to do this. I think our agents, they needed to hear exactly what highway is, even the goals that are taking place in the future. But I think also too we’re talking about maybe having a Zoom discussion and having our agents jolt in there and asking questions back and forth to you. You’re cool? I love

Jordan [00:44:06]:
it, man. I love talking to the users because they, you know, the feedback is always valuable. I learn more about the product when I’m talking to users who are, like, Hey. This stinks. Like, when I hit the back button, this happens. I’m like, I never thought about that. So that’s the kind of stuff that, like, we learn from and grow from, and so, yeah, I’m excited. Tell me I’m I’m ready for Bring the Heat.

Jordan [00:44:24]:
I know they’re gonna they’re gonna come out.

Mike Mikulik [00:44:26]:
Get some heat.

Jordan [00:44:27]:
Yeah. It’s good.

Mike Mikulik [00:44:27]:
That’s the thing. Like, we went I remember when we changed from, CMS to Reva Nova. And you know what? You’re going through using a new tool. It’s challenging. You have your your ups and downs or it’s like, oh, it’s cumbersome, whatever it is. Over time, you know what? You get used to it, and you just kinda work through it. I think the same thing too. I mean, yes, we’ve had challenges here, you know, with the onboarding of highway and, you know, You know what? There’s been some frustrations, but the more we use it and the more we fine tune things, get the right carriers of the system that are approved, I believe things will be easier, and this is gonna be work in the background.

Mike Mikulik [00:44:58]:
Like you said, like, your firewall. That’s the one stuff and you’re not getting affected too much by it.

Jordan [00:45:02]:
Fair to say. Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s also us learning your business. You know, we we we respond you know, there are things that we know that we absolutely wanna do, right, and then how certain protections and data analysis that we’re doing that we know we wanna do. But then there’s another layer of here, like molding highway to fit your business. And so we’ve Absolutely made changes based on market that need us feedback, like, specifically around the inter Canadian carriers in that process. There’s some great feedback about how you all How do you all view the world.

Jordan [00:45:31]:
Right? And the things that you all know, because you move a lot more in Canadian freight than than we have. Yeah. Right? And so we make sure that our process It’s malleable. Like, it can fit around what you want it to do. Like and that’s you know, there’s some things that, like, are ground truths that we care about, and there’s a lot of things up here that we wanna make sure Makes great sense for SPI and its agents, and be responsive to feedback. And things are gonna change. Like, Mike, the the you know, as As things change, as your biz as SPI grows and brings more agents and boost and does more types of modes of freight, we wanna make sure that we’re meeting those needs not only today, but in the future, and you will always again, we we talk a lot about owning the outcome at Highway. Like, we don’t just deliver software and say it’s perfect.

Jordan [00:46:14]:
Hey. It it works, like, you know, it’s it’s software. It’s workflow. Workflows change and workflows break, and workflows have to be amended to make changing circumstance. And so we fully understand that, and that’s something that we I care deeply about personally. I write a lot of the code that goes in highway, and I Party wrote got some code that we’re right for feedback we got here. Like, I I’ll ride it on the plane tomorrow because you you know how much I care about SPI. You guys you guys took a bet on me when I was starting to try and pay starting to try and pay, and, like, you all good to me.

Jordan [00:46:47]:
And so, like, I Will not sleep if I I mean, after we talked to Freight Wave, and you’re like, hey. We got these 6 things we need you to fix. I worked on it that night because I I care that much about It’s because you’ve been so good to me.

Mike Mikulik [00:46:58]:
I appreciate it, man, and it’s a good partnership. It’s only gonna continue to grow too. And like I said, I I think we were talking about even coming rendezvous. Yeah. Maybe getting maybe getting fired on some more over our rendezvous, but the biggest key, and that’s why I thought it was important that we do this Yeah. For our agents, and we can also multipurpose This information on other channels, education. I think the big thing is understanding why we did it, why we signed with Highway, what are the benefits, and how can that help us so they’ll find better relationships with our customers and educate our customers. I think that was kind of the missing thing that we needed, and I’m glad we’re able to get this.

Mike Mikulik [00:47:33]:
Awesome. Hold on video and audio as well too. So thank you everyone for listening. We talked longer than we expected, didn’t we?

Jordan [00:47:38]:
That’s great. You’re good. Thanks, Mike. Alright. Thanks a lot.

Mike Mikulik [00:47:42]:
That was great. That was actually really good.

Jordan [00:47:45]:
Yeah, man. Absolutely. Anytime. Anytime. And we’ll do that Zoom with the agents and all, get on there and There are some thing, like, there’s so, like, there’s certain patterns we see in emails and Gee, like a Gmail authority rating addresses that I your estimate your bill be, and they don’t tell you why. And it’s it’s

Mike Mikulik [00:48:06]:
it’s the agent understand why we’re doing it, but I think they find it’s like, what’s hindering you’re not using it as a sales tool like this.

Jordan [00:49:07]:
Yeah. Awesome.

Mike Mikulik [00:49:11]:
Yeah. Before we set up the as well as make you send up, like, break out the the intros and the or the. Yeah. We all started and kinda make it like it was an interview. Maybe send it to the whole executive team go ahead. Or have a look at it

Trey Griggs [00:00:46]:
What did you do before this that, put you in this position to, to jumping on the on the carrier procurement side.

Mark Funk [00:00:52]:
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, prior to working here, I was actually the director of carrier procurement at A company called R&L Global Logistics, and, you know, I did a 3 year stint there. And then prior to that, I was director of carrier operations at Total Quality Logistics for 10 years. And then, prior to that, I was the, administration supply chain manager for Sara Lee US Foods, and and Prior to that, I worked for a company where I would actually travel internationally and and, you know, vet, suppliers and do some of the the, Shipping from overseas into the states.

Trey Griggs [00:01:26]:
Yeah. The one that stands out to me is Sara Lee. Did you get some good pies or something out of that deal?

Mark Funk [00:01:31]:
You you know, Trey, one of the things about Sara Lee, when I right there, I was thinking, you know, pies, it’s great. But, you know, at the time, you know, certainly it’s so much larger. Right? You you’re talking Hillshire farmer, Conn’s, back then it was Hanes Kiwi shoe polish, you know. It it just goes on. It’s $18,000,000,000 company. So, Yeah. But, yeah, I did eat my cherry pie.

Trey Griggs [00:01:51]:
Yes. I I figured you might have gotten a good cherry pie or something from time to time. Well, I

Mark Funk [00:01:54]:
was hoping the camera would make me a little

Trey Griggs [00:01:55]:
bit bigger, but that doesn’t is happening. Well, you know, we do what we can around here. We do our best. But it’s clear that you you’ve been around the block. You’re not a newbie at this. You’ve seen a lot in the industry. You’ve done this for a long time. And, you know, right now, there’s a lot of issues that are facing, you know, the industry, freight brokers in particular, Agents in particular, and I think about this a lot because especially for what you guys do with agents.

Trey Griggs [00:02:18]:
I mean, the reason why somebody becomes an agent is usually because they’re really good with customer and, again, good with sales. But in terms of, like, grabbing carriers, you know, booking freight and that type of thing, maybe they don’t wanna do that. Maybe you guys are helping them out with that or maybe they are doing that. But The vetting process has been a pretty cumbersome process over the years and is especially cumbersome now because of all the fraud, theft, and double brokering that’s going on in the industry. How are you guys helping your agents really tackle that problem, so that it’s not an issue for them as little as possible? It’s almost impossible to eliminate. We’re getting close to it, I think, with some technology. What are you guys doing?

Mark Funk [00:02:52]:
Yeah. You know, so, Trey, that’s great. Right? When you think back about, you know, what happened in the industry in 2008, 2009, you saw a rise in a lot of fraud and and things like that. But that is nothing to compare to what’s happening right now. You go to any conference, you talk to any customer, you talk to any agent, We’re with SPI or other other companies. One of the things that they run into is this whole fraud and and scamming that’s happening. Right? And and when you look at the different types of scams that are out there, I mean, you know, you got the ComCheck scams, you got the double brokering scams, you got the double brokering with theft Scams. You got the triple brokering with warehouse scams.

Mark Funk [00:03:29]:
You and it just goes on. Right? So, you know, here at SPI, what we’re doing is we’re really leveraging In in diving into technology. See, one of the things that that’s different now versus what it was back, you know, in 2008, 2009 when this stuff really became prevalent, is the type of technology. Right? So, you know, we’re we’re partnering with with great vendors in the industry right now. Shout out to Highway, you know, we’re we’re with Highway, great platform. A lot of, technology there. You know, another shout out to Carrier Assure. You know, Cassandra and what that team is doing over there, which is just fabulous.

Mark Funk [00:04:06]:
Right? And and, you know, we we bring in a lot of different technology, but That’s a little bit different with with SPI. Instead of going with just 1 single platform, We’re taking that platform, and we’re using our internal IT expertise and bringing all of those together. So when our agents go to look at a carrier, they can quickly say, this is a carrier that I should be able to to trust calling our customers from.

Trey Griggs [00:04:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s huge. You know? And you we saw, the partnership between CarrierSure and Truckstop recently. We also saw the partnership with Highway and TIA with their Watchdog product. And so It’s also good to see these companies really starting to work together to eradicate an issue that’s it’s causing a lot of problems for the entire industry. And, You know, there there’s really there’s really no way to completely eliminate it, but the the closer we can get to it, the better it is for the industry. And that’s what I like about, like, what Highway is doing is because they’re keeping the bad players out of party altogether until the bad players probably figure out a way to circumvent around that.

Trey Griggs [00:05:05]:
We’re I feel like we’re constantly gonna have to iterate to stay 1 step ahead of the the bad actors in the industry, kinda like hackers. Like, you’re never gonna completely eliminate hackers. You gotta keep Changing your security protocols to make sure you can keep them out. It it’s a never ending game, it seems like.

Mark Funk [00:05:21]:
What? You’re you’re exactly right. So, you know, one of the things that, that We used to look at a lot was inspections on carriers, right? So, you know, this was the days before we had highway carrier insurance, some other technology, we would look at, you know, carrier four zero one. We will look at inspections. If care didn’t have inspections, they weren’t business for, you know, 18 months, 2 years, maybe a little bit shorter than that as well. You guys start wondering, okay, why is that?

Trey Griggs [00:05:43]:
Yeah. Right.

Mark Funk [00:05:44]:
Right. So but so we would start excluding here, not just us, but other brokers and agent and and agencies in in the industry. So you know what they do? The the scammers, the bad actors, so what they do is they go out and they get a straight truck. They rent a straight truck, and they get these placards made up, And they slap it on the side of a rented straight truck, and they drive through and they get an inspection. So then you know what? Boom. That MC now has an inspection. You know, and and some ways to prevent that and and find that, but, that that’s a a great thing that, That that, we were able to to identify with the help of of external partners, but that’s that’s one area as well. You know, some some of the issues that we have too are just related to how MCs are handled and how they’re issued, and and there’s some things with that.

Mark Funk [00:06:30]:
But, You know, technology has been able to help us out a lot. And, you know, again, leveraging some of our internal technology, we’ve been able to link in Some of our telephony solutions as well and be able to identify that maybe this number is associated with a a known bad actor and things like that, as well as an email. So before you go to send that out, we can check that and say, hey, wait a minute, that’s that’s not a good

Trey Griggs [00:06:55]:
Good answer.

Mark Funk [00:06:56]:
Or it’s not associated with that carrier. Yep.

Trey Griggs [00:06:59]:
And that’s what I love about what Highway is doing as well is they’re bringing financial data into the equation as well. They’re being bringing in, you know, VIN numbers in the equation as well. If you got a carrier that has 2 trucks and has, you know, 60,000 in payables in a week, that’s not that’s not possible. Right? I mean, that’s So so being able to line all that up and say there’s something wrong here. There’s a flag here. We need to we need to do a further inspection or we need to just have a tolerance that eliminates them. I think those are the types of technologies. And as they continue to iterate and get better and better, are gonna make it a lot easier for brokerages to do that.

Trey Griggs [00:07:30]:
You guys provide that for your agents. That’s all included. When a agent on board with SPI Logistics, these services are all just, you know, par for the course. These are table stakes. Correct?

Mark Funk [00:07:39]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. There there’s no no additional charge or anything like that to the agents at all. Right? So so if you’re an agent for SPI, you know, we have that technology. We make it available. Obviously, it’s in our system for the agents. It because look. I I don’t know if you’ve actually tendered and out there on slum freight before.

Mark Funk [00:07:54]:
Right? But you said

Trey Griggs [00:07:55]:
6 months. You know that fun? I do.

Mark Funk [00:07:57]:
Okay. So you get it.

Trey Griggs [00:07:58]:
Right? Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:07:59]:
You spend all that time, you you’re getting that that relationship together with a customer, you made all these cold calls, they’ve hung up on you, they’ve hung up you finally, okay, hey, I’m gonna give you this chance. And it’s always some load going from nowhere to nowhere. Right? Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:08:12]:
So you’ve got Hardest load possible. That’s right.

Mark Funk [00:08:14]:
Hardest load if it wasn’t hard, you wouldn’t have it.

Trey Griggs [00:08:17]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:08:17]:
But that’s your that’s your chance. Right? So the last thing you wanna do is risk that load on a a carrier that may be less accept.

Trey Griggs [00:08:25]:
That’s right.

Mark Funk [00:08:25]:
You know, so what we try to do is we make sure that when our agent looks at a carrier, that they have all the updated information. They know what they’re getting. You know, one of the things also that that we’ve done is we’ve integrated a character scoring model where we take in components From all these different sources, well, as our own proprietary information. And we can take a look at that in in a real quick one letter transfers into a number, our agents can look at that and say, okay, this carrier should perform, you know, to a level of expectations that we would want, Right? And what that does, it does look at different data data signals and says, okay, hey, this carrier because of so many different Insights, we’re gonna exclude them.

Trey Griggs [00:09:07]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:09:07]:
Right? So yeah, that’s all part of the package.

Trey Griggs [00:09:10]:
And I think that’s the best thing about one of the best things about, you know, SPI Logistics and and freight brokerages and agents coming on board. You know, if you’re a small freight brokerage, you just might not have the capital to invest in these technologies to avoid some of these risks, Especially if you’re an agent. You know? I mean, a small agent is really a super small business, and they might not have the resources when they think they might need a TMS. They might need all these things. The technology is already there. They get to come in and plug and play and just stay in their sweet spot of selling or customers customer experience, whatever it might be. They’re able to sustain that, but they get all the benefits of a big shop just by joining with SPI.

Mark Funk [00:09:45]:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Right, Trey? So if you’re an agent and you’re gonna come to SPI, You’re getting top of the line technology. You’re get you’re getting excellent back office support. If there’s an issue, if there’s a problem, You reach out and and and the team takes care of that. Right? And and when I’m talking about top line technology, you know, we’re talking Salesforce. We’re talking revenue. We’re talking access the highway, we’re talking access of carrier, sure, we’re talking all of those different things that come together to make it as easy as possible for an agent.

Mark Funk [00:10:14]:
You know, look, A year ago, right, the the market was totally different. You could call a wrong number and probably get

Trey Griggs [00:10:22]:
a load from a customer. Right?

Mark Funk [00:10:24]:
But trying to find a truck was hard.

Trey Griggs [00:10:26]:
Right. Right.

Mark Funk [00:10:27]:
Okay? And now now everything’s changed. Right? Yeah. You know, so now you you post a load and, oh my gosh, your your phones light up. They blow up. So what we and that takes a time and energy. So what we wanna do is make it so easy that when when an agent goes in And they put this information in, and and you know what? I left this out of of of what we’re talking about too. You know, we partner with Parade. Right? So Parade is capacity matching solution.

Mark Funk [00:10:50]:
You build that load inside Revnova, inside Salesforce, and you’re gonna get a listing of carriers that you know have ran through our grading system, have met all these criteria, And you you know what you’re what you’re getting at, and you also know whether they have the the LD tracking and where they’re at. So it it’s just So much easier

Trey Griggs [00:11:09]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:11:09]:
In that regard. Agents have have their own stuff to worry about.

Trey Griggs [00:11:11]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:11:12]:
They shouldn’t have to worry about banning the carrier. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:11:13]:
No. It’s huge. And I got to be up in the in the headquarters About a a month ago, back in the middle of summer, I got to got to go up and and see everybody, meet the team, see how they worked with agents. Everybody up there enjoys working with the agents and making sure that they they, are there to support them and make them, make them helpful. That’s the sign to me of a really healthy organization when the frontline workers enjoy the jobs that they’re doing. They’re in the right seats. They see the value they’re providing. They see their purpose and their why.

Trey Griggs [00:11:39]:
And the leadership At SPI, I’ve been so impressed with that, you know, with, with Joe and with Mike and James and and and all of them. It’s just been impressive to see the the leadership. What attracted you to come be a part of the SPI team to support agents?

Mark Funk [00:11:54]:
You you know, it’s funny you say that, Trey, because What you just said, I probably couldn’t say it better. This this leadership team at at SPI, it’s totally different. You know, I I I’ve worked with some companies that that I I still feel very fondly about. Right? But, You know, when I got a chance to actually sit down and talk to Anita, Joe, and Mike, and the team, there there was that sense of of of of just, Hey. We love what we do, and and they they truly when they spoke, it it meant something. So, You know, my interactions with everybody in the team from, you know, on the customer support side all the way up through the the executive side, they believe in servicing the agents. They truly believe that. And and that’s great because, you know, the last thing you wanna do is is work somewhere where you don’t, You’re working with people who don’t believe what what they’re what they’re what they’re representing.

Mark Funk [00:12:52]:
So the commitment to quality to the agents was the number one thing for me. And as I was speaking to the team, the leadership team, you know, it came through that, hey, Mark. If you come on board with SPI, we’re gonna be here to support you. You’re you’re gonna be able to do what you need to do, and you’re gonna help us in our mission to serve the agents. So the leadership team is what sold me, but all the way all the way just their commitment to the agents, I guess.

Trey Griggs [00:13:15]:
Yeah. And I think that’s that that that’s the best part of organization is the leadership in terms of evaluating if you wanna be a part of an organization. So I think the SPI has that going for him in spades, and it was really funny to get up there. Have you been to Vancouver? What a beautiful place. Man. I love it.

Mark Funk [00:13:28]:
I have been. I’ve. It it is absolutely beautiful. Thankfully, I I was up there in the springtime, and, you know, it was really nice and it was warm because I’m down here in Florida, you know, so I I love this.

Trey Griggs [00:13:39]:
That’s quite the hall from Florida all the way to Vancouver. That’s like a 6 hour flight.

Mark Funk [00:13:44]:
Yeah. Well, that’s a 6 hour flight, but you got some layovers in between the way too. So But, yeah, you know, it’s a beautiful office. You know, it’s it’s a great environment. And and even the just Sit into the room with with the the agent or with the people who are supporting the agents and hearing those calls and and just the intensity in your voice, make sure that they’re pleasing the agents. It’s key.

Trey Griggs [00:14:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:14:06]:
It it it’s it’s exciting. It really is exciting.

Trey Griggs [00:14:08]:
Yeah. And SPI has, has its annual agent conference every other year in Vancouver. So that’s a little perk because they get to go to Vancouver every other

Mark Funk [00:14:17]:
year, and next year, it’s in Nashville. A perk.

Trey Griggs [00:14:19]:
I’m excited about Nashville, but, But being up there in Vancouver, it’s hard to beat. It’s so beautiful up there.

Mark Funk [00:14:25]:
Yeah. You know, you mentioned that, you know, we it it’s called rendezvous, and what we do is we bring all of our agents in, and it’s a chance To to celebrate who they are and their accomplishments for the year, you know, we go over some of our our our road maps of what we’re looking for and

Trey Griggs [00:14:39]:
what we’re gonna

Mark Funk [00:14:40]:
be rolling out. So it’s a it’s a great chance to to actually, mingle, have a good time, but then also set our sights on where we’re going as a company.

Trey Griggs [00:14:49]:
Yeah. Awesome. And I was in Nashville, recently for, a charity golf tournament. That’s a great that’s a fun town, man. It’s gonna be a good time next year. I think it’s gonna be in April. I know. So it’s gonna be a lot of fun to Yep.

Trey Griggs [00:14:59]:
See the agents and be together, that’ll be that’ll be a good time for sure. That’s that’s true.

Mark Funk [00:15:03]:
Fun note, this year coming up, or in April that you’re talking about, it’s it’s actually May, our 45th year in business. So very excited

Trey Griggs [00:15:10]:
about it. Nice. Excellent. I’m sure there’s a special name for 45. I don’t know what it is. I’ll have to look it up. But, yeah, that’ll be fun. That’ll be a good time.

Trey Griggs [00:15:17]:
We gotta pause for a minute because we’d like to have a little bit of fun on the show, Mark. And so today, we got a couple of things. First of all, we’re gonna look at a random question of the day. Now listen, we come up with it. Our podcast director come up with this question, every every show. I don’t know if it’s a funny question, serious question. Could be a good question. It could be a dud.

Trey Griggs [00:15:34]:
I don’t know. See what it is. Today’s random question of the day is let’s see what we got. What has been the most memorable moment of your We’re so far oh, kind of a serious one. Okay. What’s been the most memorable moment? Funny, serious, whatever. What do you got?

Mark Funk [00:15:48]:
Oh my gosh. I I wasn’t prepared for that. So most

Trey Griggs [00:15:52]:
No one ever is, Mark. That’s always why we do it.

Mark Funk [00:15:54]:
Right. No

Trey Griggs [00:15:54]:
one’s no one’s prepared.

Mark Funk [00:15:55]:
You know, most memorable moment of my career is is probably a time where I where I failed. Right. You know, we’re going way back to when I first started. And, you know, long story short, I I put all some information together With all the leadership team and and I was supposed to send over 1 document, I ended up sending over all of the notes to the meeting.

Trey Griggs [00:16:17]:
Oh, no. To,

Mark Funk [00:16:18]:
to an opposing party. Yeah. So, I was young, and, The I I thought for sure that I was gonna lose lose my career at that point, but, the individual that that I reported to Said, hey, listen. You learned a lesson. We move forward.

Trey Griggs [00:16:34]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:16:35]:
And and the thing I take away from that is is I go through my career And when I work with people, when I encounter people where they may encounter an opportunity, it’s that forgiveness.

Trey Griggs [00:16:47]:
Yeah. And that,

Mark Funk [00:16:47]:
you know what?

Trey Griggs [00:16:48]:
Right.

Mark Funk [00:16:48]:
We we we’re all human.

Trey Griggs [00:16:49]:
That’s a critical moment for you. That could have been a moment where, you know, you you became harsh because somebody was harsh with you. Or Or but in this case, you know, there’s somebody showed you mercy and now, you know, now you’re showing mercy as well. That’s a that’s a powerful moment. Clearly, you’ve never forgotten that. That’s Very memorable. And the mistakes are usually the ones we remember the most. That’s for sure.

Trey Griggs [00:17:09]:
That’s for sure. I’ll tell you for me Yeah. I think the most memorable that I had, and it’s not really a moment, but it was a season, was when I transitioned from education to door to door sales to learn sales. I had a friend who said, I think you could you could be good at sales, and the only job I could get was going door to door business to business to sell office supplies. And so I’m 32. I have a master’s degree. I’ve got a family. My wife isn’t working.

Trey Griggs [00:17:33]:
It’s a 100% commission. It was the hardest season of my life. It was like It was like boot camp, like Navy Seal training. I mean, I I don’t wanna compare to that because those are heroes. Those are true heroes. But it was really, really hard, and, and I hated it. It was so hard. It was just constantly getting beat down and constantly just just fighting for everything you could get and just figuring things out and learning.

Trey Griggs [00:17:55]:
But when I came out of that 15 months later, I was prepared to do sales. And the next sales job that I got, I did very, very well. And it wasn’t, I remember this will be this is like if there’s a moment, this is the moment. I’m sitting at lunch one day, Mark, and one of my one of my associates, on the sales team comes to me and he goes, hey. What are you doing? And I said, I’m having lunch. And he goes, no. What are you doing? How how are you selling so many people? And I started to to, like, just talk through it. Like, well, what are you doing? You know? Like, I mean, this isn’t that hard, and I started to describe what door to door sales was like.

Trey Griggs [00:18:29]:
I started to say, it’s not like we’re going into their business and meeting them for the 1st time, and we gotta sell them today because we’re not coming back tomorrow, and it’s a 100% Shannon. You only eat what you kill. And as I’m describing it, that’s when the light bulb clicked of how valuable that door to door experience was. Yep. Right? It’s the same prepared to. Yeah. It was the same thing. And I just remember that season and that moment in particular of the of how valuable door to door sales.

Trey Griggs [00:19:01]:
And now I’m a salesman at heart. When I meet other salespeople and they start talking, I can almost tell which ones went through door to door like I did, because it’s it’s almost like a rite of passage to to do that. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a memorable moment in my career as well. So that’s a good to go. Those are those are 2 good ones. So it’s a good question. Good question today.

Trey Griggs [00:19:16]:
That’s good.

Mark Funk [00:19:17]:
Awesome.

Trey Griggs [00:19:17]:
Alright. Also, it’s time for us to play this or that. This or that. Okay. This is a fun game that we play. I think we might even have graphic for this. Do we have a this or that graphic for this? We we do. Let’s play.

Trey Griggs [00:19:28]:
Uh-oh. Alright, Mark. So I’m gonna give you 2 option 2 options. You just have to tell us which one you prefer. That’s it. Alright. Okay. We’ll make them real simple.

Trey Griggs [00:19:40]:
Alright. We’ll start with 1 super simple. I think I even know the answer to this one, but I’ll just throw it out there. Okay. Beach or mountains? Beach or mountains? Beach. Beach. Clearly. Beach.

Trey Griggs [00:19:50]:
Yeah. You don’t have to get away to the mountains. You like the beach. You actually I

Mark Funk [00:19:53]:
can look at the mountains maybe beach.

Trey Griggs [00:19:57]:
You’re a beach guy. That’s for sure. Okay. Alright. Okay. Hot dog or Hamburger. You’re at a barbecue. Hamburger.

Trey Griggs [00:20:04]:
Hamburger. I was at With cheese? And if so, what kind of cheese?

Mark Funk [00:20:07]:
Oh, absolutely. What kind of cheese? Cheeseburger in paradise, man.

Trey Griggs [00:20:09]:
Oh, that’s true. I should. That’s right. Good call. What kind of cheese? Do you go regular, like American, pepper jack, do you do something different, Colby? What do you American? Just American? Just American cheese. Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:20:18]:
Just American cheese. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:20:19]:
That’s a good one. Okay.

Mark Funk [00:20:20]:
Now you’re making me hungry. I know what I’m gonna do after we’re done here.

Trey Griggs [00:20:23]:
The next one is also food, so I apologize. Okay. Apples or oranges, let’s go healthy. Would you prefer to eat an apple or peel an orange and then eat that?

Mark Funk [00:20:30]:
You know what? I’m gonna say orange, because it goes with a lot of drinks.

Trey Griggs [00:20:34]:
Oh, okay. Alright. Very good. Orange, that’s a good one. Orange is not bad. I like Apple because it’s just not as messy. That’s why I like Apple, but oranges are good. Oranges are good.

Trey Griggs [00:20:43]:
That’s a good point. Okay. Alright. Sports car or truck?

Mark Funk [00:20:50]:
So I own a truck, but eventually, I’m gonna get Sports car. So right now, I think that’s what everybody wants to do. Right now, it’s a truck.

Trey Griggs [00:20:58]:
Right now, it’s a truck. But, yeah. But but you like those do you have a sports car picked out? It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this. Do you have one that you

Mark Funk [00:21:04]:
I have, but, unfortunately, I just can’t bring myself to to to get to that level as far as what the commitment is. But I really love the new Corvettes.

Trey Griggs [00:21:12]:
I think those look

Mark Funk [00:21:14]:
really nice, but

Trey Griggs [00:21:14]:
Would you like a new Corvette or would you like a classic like 77 Corvette?

Mark Funk [00:21:19]:
You know what? I really like the new ones.

Trey Griggs [00:21:21]:
Yeah. They really do. They are they are nice. They they look like Lamborghinis kind of. They kind of got the feel. Right? Right.

Mark Funk [00:21:27]:
Yeah. I just can’t I can’t I can’t bring myself to pay that, so I just drive my truck.

Trey Griggs [00:21:32]:
That’s a that’s a good one. Alright. Well, you know, that’s that’s a good one. Okay. Last one, vacation. Are you staying in the states? Are you going over

Mark Funk [00:21:40]:
Going on vacation next week and are gonna go up to another part of Florida.

Trey Griggs [00:21:43]:
You’re going to Florida?

Mark Funk [00:21:44]:
Panama City Beach.

Trey Griggs [00:21:45]:
Let’s let’s do this. A dream vacation. Let me make it dream vacation. Somewhere in the states or somewhere overseas?

Mark Funk [00:21:51]:
States, actually.

Trey Griggs [00:21:52]:
Stateside. Alright. Cool. You like to do national parks? You like to just like, what do you like to

Mark Funk [00:21:56]:
I’d go to Iowa or I’m sorry. I yeah. I’d I’d go to Hawaii.

Trey Griggs [00:22:02]:
Hawaii. Yeah. Have you ever been there before?

Mark Funk [00:22:05]:
No. I have not. It’s on my bucket list.

Trey Griggs [00:22:06]:
Bucket list.

Mark Funk [00:22:07]:
Yes, Brent?

Trey Griggs [00:22:08]:
I have been once. I’ve been once, and that was, that was last, last year, last May. And, I’ve never been there before. It was pretty cool. I got to take the kids too, so they’ve been there as well, which is nice. Kinda get that out of the way for them. Nice. That’s pretty cool.

Trey Griggs [00:22:20]:
Alright. Well, everybody, that was this version of this or that. So hope you enjoyed that. Alright. Let’s get back to this. We got just a few more minutes here before we wrap up, Mark. Just a couple of other things. So, know, we talked about your work at SPI.

Trey Griggs [00:22:33]:
What is your favorite thing about working with agents? What do you just enjoy? What gets you up and and just, you know, gets you excited? And are you working hand in hand with the agents? Are you really behind the scenes? About that interaction.

Mark Funk [00:22:43]:
Yeah. No. So I’ll start with the latter first. I’m a I actually go out in our in our business or visit our agents. I was visiting an agent, last week over here in Miami. I’m visiting agents a couple weeks from now. So, you know, part of my role, my job, It it is behind the scenes where I’m talking to carriers, I’m getting their equipment, I’m getting their requirements, I’m talking to our talking and working with our IT group

Trey Griggs [00:23:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:23:07]:
Making sure that any solution We bring we bring on matches and but, you know, what I really like and something I found about my career a long time ago, and Trey, I like to help people. I don’t know what it is. I’m sure somebody can analyze that, but you know what? I really like to help people. So when I can walk into an agent’s office And I can sit down and I can see that they’re spending a lot of time doing something that could maybe be automated and or that we already have a solution for, Then you know what? I’ll jump right in there. Hey. Let me show you this. Check this out. Right? And and we go through all that type of stuff.

Mark Funk [00:23:46]:
I absolutely love Helping people. And it isn’t necessarily agent agents, but it it does transcend nicely into that. Right?

Trey Griggs [00:23:53]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:23:54]:
So yeah. No. I’m I’m out probably 30% of the time with the agents. You know, another 70% of the time, I’m I’m working behind the scenes to to support the agents.

Trey Griggs [00:24:05]:
It seems like that’s the culture of the company because I know that Mike travels a lot to spend time with agents. He’s told me stories of, you know, going to a Kansas City Chiefs game with an agent in town and They’re doing these other activities. So it seems like that’s really a part of the culture is not just to support the agents from afar, but to really go and spend time with the agents in their neck of the woods.

Mark Funk [00:24:23]:
You know, Trey, it that is exactly our culture. And here’s the thing too. It it transcends just business. I mean, there’s agents that that I talk to on the phone all day. Hey. How’s it going? You know, and I know their family. I know their They’re they’re they’re kids. I know what’s going on in their personal life.

Mark Funk [00:24:41]:
And and, you know, it you build relationships. I mean, it the key and you get this because you’re a sales guy. The key To everything is relationship.

Trey Griggs [00:24:49]:
And if

Mark Funk [00:24:49]:
you can find people where you have that commonality and that you actually care about, it makes it so much easier to help them because It’s like an extended family, and I know that’s gonna sound corny if nobody’s ever experienced that. And and I get it, but It it is. It’s an extended family.

Trey Griggs [00:25:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:25:06]:
It really is.

Trey Griggs [00:25:07]:
No. It it seems like that’s the culture. And, again, talking to Mike, and, you know, he’s on the road a lot traveling, which is hard being away from home and and doing that, but it’s a commitment that the company has to its agents which, which is really great. So I love hearing that. I love hearing your heart for helping people And just wanting to really be a support for the agents, which I think is more differentiated for it. Yeah. How you guys great. Mark, thank you for being on the show today.

Trey Griggs [00:25:30]:
Appreciate that, and, much, much success to you as well. Looking forward to seeing you in Nashville, you know, maybe sooner. I don’t know.

Mark Funk [00:25:37]:
Yeah. I I think I’m gonna see you up in Tampa here shortly.

Trey Griggs [00:25:40]:
Oh, nice. Are you going to the broker carrier summit? I am. Yeah. Excellent. That’s awesome. Looking forward to seeing you out there. That’s gonna be a great event. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:25:47]:
We’ll be right Yeah. Good here, looking forward. I know. That’ll be great. Mark, again, thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you again real soon on another episode.

Mark Funk [00:25:54]:
Thanks for having me.