Coffee w/ #TheFreightCoach Episode 868: YardView's Heather Giordano & Jeff Roche
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of coffee with the freight coach. My name is Chris Jolly. I am your host, and I am the freight coach before we jump into the episode, as always. Thank you guys so much for coming out and listening to this podcast. If this is your first-time tuning in.
Welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show. And what I mean by that is I only speak to transportation professionals on this show, as well as my weekday live show, because I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do, or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve.
So, you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Um, I do have one small favor to ask if you get value, I know you will, but if you get value in what you hear today. So, then you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there, dear network, because this is how we grow.
But most importantly, this is how we can help more people because if you see value, your network's going to see value as well. All right. I got very special guests, plural. You guys, I don't always have multiple guests on the show at times, but this time I do, and we're going to talk about efficiencies, and you might say, well, some efficiencies are needed everywhere, but how do you make A yard more efficient?
How do you make a shipper's location more efficient? You know, downtime in today's day and age with e-logs and everything else, it’s down to the minute and we need to run in, in, in there are areas of improvement of when it comes down to staging trailers—getting them ready, having them set where you can start pre-cooling them.
And we got a, literally a ton to talk about. So, I got my friends over at YardView to join me today. So, I got Heather Giordano and Jeff Roche on the show today. So, Heather and Jeff, thank you guys so much for joining me. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Heather. We're going to start with you. Cause ladies first, um, YardView.
How did you get your start there? What, what is YardView? Let's kind of lead in with that. Sure. So YardView is a yard management software platform. So, we are going to help folks, uh, track their trailers in their facility. So, um, How I got started with YardView is they were my vendor. I worked for a 3PL on the East Coast for over 10 years.
And for five of those years, I was the yard management expert, that in-house yard management expert. And I loved the product. You know, it's one of those times when I was assigned a project. You got to roll this out. You have to train 278 users next week in North Jersey. And I was like, what? Um, I loved how easy the product was to use, and jumped right in.
It really Helped, the office went from screaming radios to complete silence to the point that everybody got the giggles because it was so quiet. So easy to know that I wanted to work here. So that's how I got my start. Jeff, what about you? What, what you brought, what brought you in? Um, so similar to Heather, I, worked for a third-party logistics company out here on the West Coast.
And, um, we were also YardView users and I just, um, found a niche with YardView. Heather reached out one day after I left that 3PL and said she had an opportunity for me, and the rest is history. Um, so while I was working at that 3PL, I had a lot of exposure to YardView. I was the main point of contact working from the customer's perspective.
Uh, Reaching out to Heather for different configurations and, uh, options and requests and things like that. And, uh, just so happened there was an opportunity for me to join the RVU team and, uh, and wear that hat. So, you guys both have extremely unique skill sets and experience to be able to bring to the table with this, right?
Because like, I talk about this a lot and it's not that. Outsiders cannot come into this industry from a technological perspective and build a successful product. But it's that firsthand tribal knowledge that somebody like yourself, Heather, who has worked in that role for years in your career can. I can, I can sympathize with what you're trying to say about all the challenges in your day-to-day life, like you're talking about, you had multiple radios to silence overnight with, with technology.
So like, what was that thing when you were in that role, while you were using yard view that you were like, this is going to solve literally everything. all our problems. This is the software that we need to look for. Right. Just knowing what's in the yard, you know, it's a tremendous blind spot for people, you know, everybody cares about what's coming in, what, but once it hits that gate, it's like, oh, it's here somewhere, but it could be nine acres of somewhere, you know?
So, um, watching, the person walks the yard for eight hours, getting a yard check, and coming in with some scrappily piece of paper. I was like, What? That's not active anymore. That's not even remotely accurate. That started at, you know, 8 a.m. this morning and it's now 3 p.m. That's what is happening. Um, so being able to see all the assets in one spot, whether it's visually through, you know, maps and things like that, or even just a report running a quick report of where are my empties?
How long have they been here? Which one do I need to grab first? It made it so quick and easy. It's such an easy decision and it's, it's a drop in the bucket, right? It's just a. It, it, it should be a simple choice. If you have visibility, you're going from no visibility to visibility. Um, pen and paper to digital.
It's just awesome. You would think, 'cause it's like, I mean, I've obviously worked in this industry for a long time and there are some like very large companies out there that are very antiquated in their processes. And I think some people would kind of be shocked at it. What goes on behind the scenes?
And it's like, I always wondered that, right? Because it's like, I mean, I've delivered and picked up at some very large facilities before. And sometimes, we don't know where the trailer is. And you're like, what do you mean? You don't know where the trailer is. Like we dropped this here 48 hours ago per you.
You said it needed to be staged, and loaded, and then it would be ready to go. And now you lost it. And, oh, and on top of that, you're not paying. Detention or wait time or anything for the driver's trailer that you lost. And it's not their fault. And it's just like, because, to me, it's, you know, again, none of this is like a simple, like solution, right?
It takes a lot to kind of build this up. Especially when you're transitioning from a paper-based organization into a technology-based one in streamlining it. But I would assume that. From a workflow perspective alone, this is going to save on time spent on so many menial tasks that are out there.
But then again, most importantly, it's going to retain your guys' customers. It's going to make you, you guys, your, and especially your guys users, a facility of choice, right? Because who wants to go in there and sit for four hours too, until a yard jockey finds the trailer to load and everything else, and, you know, It's to me, it's building up those efficiencies because this industry can be extremely inefficient at times.
And there's a lot of different moving parts that are going on out there because it's not like there's just one trucking company who has a trailer staged at one of these yards. There are 10, 15, 20 different trucking companies that might have 10 trailers each there. And how do you keep that organized?
Right. How do you know? And then on top of that, because this is another thing that people like some of these large carriers pick up their competitors, trailers at times. And how do you keep all of that straight though? Like, honestly, it's not a simple equation that's out there. No. Are you asking me how? No, no.
Yeah. Cause like that was from my perspective, Heather, this is one of those things that you guys can implement on day one and see those improvements from them, from an efficiency standpoint. Right. Right, exactly. And then we know exactly who's picking up what trailer, who left with the trailer that's recorded at the gate on outbound.
Um, so, and a lot of people do broker loads. So, you'll have a mom and pop, you know, dropping off. Um, but that's why we always drive whose box is it? You know, I call it a box, you know, whose trailer, is it? Um, that way when they inventory it, they know whose trailer it is. And then we know who picked it up so we can track, you know, who's bringing it in and out versus whose actual assets are in the yard.
Right. Um, kind of like that responsible party. Um, and the great thing is, is like with our product, we let people have a carrier account so the carriers can log in and see what assets they have at a site. Um, so when they're trolling around for empties, they need an empty at one site. They can kind of look in the yard view environments and say, hey, we have three over here, um, that we can grab.
Um, rather than calling the sites and dealing with the office personnel trying to figure out what trailers they have on site. Let me get a yard audit. Let me find out. They can log in and find that out immediately. Um, they can't update things, but they can see their assets, which is, you know, night and day from calling in.
So, Jeff, I was going to say, yeah, go ahead. No, that goes along with something that I wanted to mention as to how, um, the company I used to work for found a yard view. Um, we, we had a YMS system, and it was, we were hosted platform, which means, uh, we had to host the server. We had to host the, uh, database. We had to manage that.
We had upgraded all those things. We had to control the network connections to it. Uh, it creates, uh, a lot of management, uh, from an I.T. Perspective. So, one thing we were looking for when we switched to YardView was cloud-based. YardView hosts the server. YardView, all you need is an internet connection.
Like what Heather was saying, where, uh, outside carriers can connect to get that instant visibility right into the yard. Um, one other thing that, that also really that cloud connect makes, uh, I want to draw a point here is that it helps with driver retention. Um, we found that a lot of drivers don't have that good network connectivity because you had to connect to your Wi-Fi where you had to light up the yard. After all, it was a hosted One and you had to be on your local network on your company's network Drivers get frustrated when they lose connectivity and when you use a like a cellular connection And you're connected out into the yard where you have you always have connectivity You'll see that drivers get way less frustrated and you can retain those drivers.
I used to have drivers who were getting mad at the tablets that were out in the, in the yard tractor because they're losing connectivity because the Wi-Fi or the, the, the network wasn't there with yard view. When we switched over to yard view, all those problems went away, and you just see less upset drivers and less upset drivers lead to more productivity.
Yeah. So that, that was one thing that, you know, I wanted to kind of draw a connection there as to, uh, to kind of build on what Heather was saying. No, I think, you know, a lot of it, you know, work workflow optimization is, is key, right? Because of some of these. You know, I've, I've picked up at some of these large 3PL facilities and they have multiple different customers and they're pretty, you know, some of the manufacturers, like production facilities that I picked up for food, you know, there's like eight to 10 different brands that are out there and mismanagement of the shipments. Like I've had this happen numerous times in my career where the driver gets loaded and then, Oh, it's the wrong product. And the driver's 200 miles down the road and now must return to the facility to swap the product out, or they forgot two pallets or whatever that looks like, because it, you know, again, it, there's so much that's out there that can kind of go into it.
And again, at the end of the day, we're always dealing with human beings, right? People are going to make mistakes and everything else, but if we can minimize That and I think like again, there's none of nothing's here to replace anybody per se, but we want to increase everybody's output and then increase their efficiencies because in the real-world mistakes cost money and you know, and then time on top of that.
And if you know, cause again, like one thing that doesn't necessarily come into people's thought processes is that driver might have had his hours out to where he could arrive. To the receiver, deliver that trailer. And then he had to do his 36-hour shutdown. Well, if there's a misloaded product, that's out there now that trucks can't even take their shipment at that point.
So, have you guys identified workflow, like massive workflow improvements from that perspective, Heather, from like an operational side? So, one of the things that we during, you know, the COVID times we were forced to come up with was a contactless check-in where drivers could check themselves in through a QR code.
So, they, we knew what it was, they had appointments. So, the site not only knew who was coming to pick up or drop off, but the drivers could do things themselves where they're scanning the QR code at the gate to get gate access. Um, there's no actual manned gate there. They scan. They would roll up to the scale, scan that QR code, um, you know, validate their cell phone number.
Um, and then that way, when the inside users in that instance, what would happen is that drivers put into kind of like a live bullpen. Um, so he's waiting for his load or waiting to be unloaded. And the inside users would see him in the in our they see him in our environment, and they just drag and drop him to the door.
And then the driver will receive a text message saying, Oh, we're ready for you at door four. Please proceed. Or if they're doing a pickup and they enter their bill of lading that they're picking up. Our system can return exactly where that trailer is in the yard. It's in yard spot 14. So, no finding the spotter.
Hey, do you know where this trailer is? Yeah. You know, it just drives that efficiently because we know where all the trailers are. We know what's loaded in them. We know what's ready. Um, and then we're trying to build that relationship with the drivers. And sometimes it's hard because you do have OTR guys that are coming.
It's not always dedicated guys that are coming to the same site. Um, and In my, I try to put my hat on of, you know, not that I was ever a driver, but I empathize. And I've been in lots of trucks with drivers. So, um, because I always want to see what it's like from their perspective. Um, you know, I don't want them to have to install an app and figure out an app and share their locations.
And it's just a lot. It's, you know when people in boardrooms are telling me like what they want, I'm like, Hey guys, I understand that sounds like it's great, but these guys are driving a loaded trailer down the highway, dealing with bad drivers and you want them to tinker on an app like what is happening.
Um, so we do a lot of efficiencies with, um, integrating with e-logs and, you know, integrating, um, anywhere we can. So, when people make load calls or empty calls, we can trigger things off those actions. So, lots of integration possibilities to drive those efficiencies. And again, really considering it from the driver's perspective, um, and the new generation of drivers that are coming into the fleet, right?
I mean, it's a whole different. So, we are trying to do things. I'm going to go a little sideways, but we are trying to do a little bit of gamification in the yard to keep people engaged and have fun in there too. No, I would agree with that. I think that I speak about this all the time. Heather is, is if you want to attract the next generation of drivers into this industry.
What works for me as a 38-year-old is not going to work for a 22-year-old. Right. Like, it, it's, it's getting that out there, it's getting that technology out there because they're, well, it, it's, I think it's not a shock to anybody. We are in a complete digital age. It is official. All those individuals who are resistant to it should probably look at it from a different perspective because I, you know, for, for me, it's always about.
You know, it's about attracting that talent in there. And then from an organizational standpoint as well on, on implementing this, because I guarantee all your guy’s prospects and customers are probably like, we need to improve our downtime. We need to become more efficient. We need to become more organized.
This is probably a general thing that goes on out there time and time again. And again, like, like you're talking about the QR code alone. I don't think a lot of people out there can comprehend how powerful said QR code is and how much organizations can drive to reduce downtime, reduce waste, and everything else.
I mean, I, I think that you know, again, from my perspective and Jeff, I'd love to get here, hear your opinion on this again. Like what I love the most is, is you guys worked in the field that this product serves. This makes my wheels continuously turn out there. I mean, Jeff, how many times in your career have you sat there, and you have your customer calling you asking, where's our product at?
Has it been loaded on a trailer? This is a hot shipment. This must get out for a holiday sale that's going on out there. And you're telling them, oh, we're, we're looking for it. We're looking for it and everything else. I mean, this must improve your, your, just your life on so many different levels.
Unfortunately, I live that life too often and thankfully, I did it here in Southern California. So I didn't have to run out in the yard and too bad weather too often, but unfortunately, I did live that life often and, you know, running out with a pen and paper and checking a yard check and running out to a spot where, you know, It's supposed to be based on our last Excel audit that was emailed out yesterday was just not a very efficient way to get things done.
Um, you know, we've seen massive improvements with just having the yard check and the lot check done at the driver level real-time. Just a quick check daily to ensure that those trailers that you say are out there out there. Those trailers that you say are loaded are loaded. Those trailers that you say are empty are empty and just have that trust and faith in the system that you don't have to run out in the middle of a rainstorm or in the middle of a heat wave to run out to that spot to validate that that's there.
You can just trust the system. Um, but yeah, I used to live that life unfortunately far too often for that exact scenario, the holiday shipment that needs to get. Before that they're hitting the, the, the ads, um, with the client. So, I've lived that life, you know, far too well. One of the coolest things, uh, well, at least to me, because I'm kind of a freight nerd a little bit was, is your guys’ ability through this system to turn on reefer trailers and pre-cool them before it.
I mean, are you guys able to essentially manage that drop trailer capacity there? Checking fuel levels inside of the tank and everything else kind of walked me through that. Yeah, sure. So we have a, um, a really neat reefer integration with a, um, uh, I guess a reefer, I would just call it a reefer client.
And, and they gave us access to their API and we're able to pull that information over live time. And we're also able to post information from a user perspective from YardView over to, uh, that reefer system. So, um, It can turn reefers on, it can turn reefers off, it can pre-cool them, and it gives us a live feed of the actual and set, uh, the, this actual temperature that is set on that reefer.
As well as the fuel information, we get all that information in that API, it comes over. So, you know, when the fuel guy shows up, we can quickly have a report of all the reefers that need fuel right away. There's you know, it's not anything old. You're not in cotton alert. Um, the pre-cooling functionality is awesome because the drivers, um, you know, we'll move the trailers and, you know, then this way the docs have visibility to what is the actual temp right now.
So just because the trailer hits the door doesn't mean they can start loading it, especially in the middle of summer. They must make sure that it's all the way pre-cold before they start putting that frozen stuff in. Um, and it's without anybody's interaction. That's just an integration that rings every 5 minutes updating those temperatures the set temp and the actual time.
So, we can get those. And then we also have those alerts where, If it's outside of a certain threshold, it's going to send monitors and alerts to everybody. So, you don't lose a whole load of ice cream in the yard in August. Um, it's going to, it's going to tell you right away. How has that improved? I was going to say like, how does that improve insurance issues and everything out there with claims?
Because I mean, you're, you're bringing that up right now, you know, a load of ice cream in August that that's going to go bad. I mean, do you guys have direct data that can tie that in from a cost perspective? So, from our customers, we would have that. I mean, they don't lose the trailers. They don't want to tell us because they don't want to pay more, right?
But, um, it's a cost savings. You know, they tell us how many, they'll tell us how much a trailer is worth, you know, like it's 70, 000, um, a trailer sitting out there, and then boom, you know, they're not losing those trailers anymore. So, it's, and it's an instant savings where right now they might be blind to it until there's ice cream dripping on the ground.
I have a picture of that from one site, but, um, this is why we've never, this is why I don't haul ice cream for that reason right there. You can't exactly refreeze that product. It seeps out of every crevice in that trailer. The other thing we do for him too, is we keep that, that heartbeat. So, we keep a heartbeat monitor.
If we haven't heard from a trailer in a certain amount of time, uh, we have a heartbeat monitor that'll go off that says, hey, we haven't heard from, uh, the, the reefer system in an hour. Um, you may want to go check that trailer to make sure everything is okay. So, um, the other thing is that like Heather was saying, those alerts.
So, when your fuel level hits that certain tolerance that you define, uh, hey, I want to know whenever it's below 25 percent full, we can send out an alert right from yard view, right to the maintenance team to go fuel that, uh, reefer unit. So are you guys able to, you know, from like a dock scheduling perspective and, and really help people, you know, like, cause I'm also trying to think, you know, like obviously I'm just doing a lot of food and beverage early on in my career.
I know. Certain 3PL facilities are graded by the actual manufacturer, supplier, producer of goods like I will only use, you know, that's usually on a couple of your contract that they have these on and they're graded like, Hey, these trucks are, you know, they're, they're, they're having too much detention time.
There's, you know, there, there's a bunch of different factors in there. Do you guys’ kind of have a scoring system that kind of comes in within your guys’ system? Yep. We track all of that. So, from if we're doing doc scheduling or we call it appointment scheduling because we do multiple facets of that, not just docs, but, um, so we track when carriers are on time.
We know when they check in compared to their appointment time, we can provide carrier scorecards. Um, and then we even keep track of commitment level. So, most contracts will have a commitment level with their dedicated fleets, right? You must always have 25 trailers here for outbound loads. Um, we track that we alert people, so we will alert the carrier when they're falling short of that so that they can keep on top of it.
So, helping them, but then also for our clients, letting them know, you know, okay, when it's time to do your carrier contract evaluation, you can pull that aging on the commitments and the, um, detention. How much detention did you have? Are there drivers arriving early, or late? Um, and then, um. Being able to score them that way, you know, we give them all the details that they need to do their evaluation.
Um, okay. No, for sure. And then I like, I feel like you guys could tie in and like an inventory on, on this as well. Right? Like, do you, are you guys able to monitor, uh, monitor inventory levels and everything and kind of implement something like that inside of some of these organizations? So, inventories of trailer assets for sure.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We track by carrier how many, you know, loaded, how many empty, how many damages when trailers get damaged, we alert the carriers right away that they're damaged. Um, if there's a picture attached, we send the picture, so they know, do I send a record or do I send my maintenance guy?
Um, there's a lot that's available in the system. That's just trying to drive those efficiencies. So, people don't drive out of the yard with broken lights, you know, things like that. So, I mean, what, what's one of those, what's, how do you, how does this system get smarter, right? Like I I'm, I'm thinking like the more, obviously with a lot of cloud-based systems and a lot of data that comes through, are you guys able to pull a, you know, cause I, like, obviously I was on your guys’ website.
You guys have multiple different industries that you guys serve. Are you guys pulling data? From like, say cold chain or cold storage into the beverage in a sense of like, you guys are comparing who's performing better and then maybe finding weaknesses inside of there, uh, uh, organizations to be able to show like, hey, this is how these industries stack up against each other.
So, I wouldn't say exactly like that. We are. So just to kind of take a step back when we implement the new site, we like to meet the customer where they're at. So, we mirror what they do. So, we're we get a lot better user adoption because we're not just an out-of-the-box solution. We meet them to mirror that.
And then what we do is Jeff and I from our industry. knowledge. We look at the numbers, we look at that data and we start to tell them, hey, this is where you can drive some improvements. This is the best practice over here that, you know, we've rolled out at this site, and we do it as the customers are ready.
We don't like forcing them to do things because then they're not going to adopt it. Um, we like to ask them, what are their challenges? What do they perceive as their challenges? Um, and then I always like to joke, don't try to hide anything because I've been on way too many yards. I'm going to be able to identify it immediately.
Uh, and then they laugh. But then it happens. I get there. I'm like, Well, what about this? You know, and they're like, Oh, that's for later. Um, but we put forward the best practices that we've seen. And those have just become the kind of our company standards that we're going to bring you up. We're going to meet you where you're at, but then we're going to bring you up to another level.
And then we're going to continuously improve on where you still see gaps after having a program like our view. Okay, yeah, it's I'm sorry. Go ahead, Jeff. Yeah, and I think I think to go along with what Heather's saying, we see some immediate impacts went from going from no yard management system to implementing yard view.
Um, I think of 1 off-hand where we were able to reduce a trailer pool. A client had a dedicated trailer pool at their facility. They didn't know how often they were using trailers or how many trailers they needed. So they just threw an arbitrary number out there that we want to rent 120 trailers from you and we need 120 trailers for a trailer pool.
Within the first three months of using YardView, they were able to reduce the amount of trailers that needed trailer pull down to 80. Just from seeing that, hey, look, just this, this trailer hasn't moved out of this location in four days. I don't need it. And they were able to reduce that. So, and, and that's the type of, um, quick reaction that you're going to be able to see and identify and close those gaps quickly.
Same thing with your yard driver productivity, when you're out there and I need 10-yard drivers because I need to get things done. But then when you start putting it. In front of, um, users that can see, I, I always use, I like to use a saying, if you can measure it, you can improve it. Yeah. So, once you start measuring productivity and measuring how long things are sitting in the yard or measuring whatever it is, that gap that you see in your operation, that, that you want to close, if you can measure it, you can improve it.
And that's really what we work to identify and help, um, you know, clients with. You know, one of my big things is, is I'm a, I'm a big, big, big fan of data. I think that there are a lot of improvements that can be made across the board because I'm more about driving efficiencies than anything, because I always want my team to be equipped with the best tools for themselves to succeed and grow, and I think that there's a lot of stuff out there because at the end of the day, you guys, let's call it what it is.
Humans make errors. All right. And. It's not that any product out there eliminates everything, but it's how do we minimize it. How do I deliver a better product to my customers? Because, you know, in the freight brokerage world, it's highly competitive. I mean, if you guys were on the, uh, warehousing side, I'm sure you got 80, 000 calls a week.
Trying to get your guys’ business at that time. But, you know, from my perspective, those are always going to be the real separators. If you can utilize something that shows on paper where you are performing at a very high level on, or, you know, in my opinion, as a leader of an organization, where are my greatest weaknesses inside of my organization?
So, we can fix them. Right. And then, you know, you brought up the trailer. Differential there, Jeff, about, you know, you thought you needed 120. You only need 80 to talk about cost savings right there. Cause you know, just for easy math, some of these trailers are 500 bucks a month to rent right there.
I mean, you compile that throughout the year. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. In waste that you guys can clean up. And the other thing that you can't measure with that is the yard efficiency that you gain. You can't measure how much quicker now that I can work because my yard isn't as jam-packed.
I have more, I think of yard is like, um, a set of lungs, the lungs of the operation. It needs to breathe. When you jam it in there, your yard can hold 300 units, but you're going to jam 340 in there. You can't breathe, therefore you can't, you can't run it optimally. So, when you take that 300 maximum capacity and you only fill it with 250, you're able to run it 120%.
Compared to only being able to run 75 percent because you just can't breathe. Your yard can't breathe because you're overstuffed with trailers that you don't need and that aren't moving. So, when you clear out that junk, that's another, um, tool that you can, it’s hard to measure, but you, your efficiency will go up by just being able to see, I don't need all these trailers.
See, if you're not moving it if it hasn't moved out of that location in 48 hours, you got to start thinking, do you need it? Right. Yep. And another one, just from a yard driver perspective, um, and efficiencies there, there are so many things that happen in a yard that just happen throughout the day.
But when you have, once we implement it, we'll notice that all the shipping and receiving doors save their trailer till the end of the shift. And they release them all at the same time, instantly putting the yard drivers 90 minutes too, you know, two hours behind on their movements. Because everybody just released their doors at the same time, and it's one of the first things that's a call out.
I see it immediately just because of my experience. And I'm like, hey, we might want to talk to shipping and receiving and tell them to release the doors as they're loaded. Don't wait until they're done with the shift. Um, and it's just an easy call out because then the drivers in the yard can remain efficient by keeping on top of what's ready to move and moving it when it's needed.
You want, it's time rather than stacking them up. I also think from, a staffing perspective alone of how many people over hire for, for roles or, you know, with you, like, let's just call it like with peak season and stuff like that, when you guys are going in there and assessing somebody's operations, I mean, I know, you know, I won't large parcel services.
We'll call them that. I always hire. Large seasonal workers that are out there and I would think that, you know, being able to utilize some of this data to see like, hey, you know what? Maybe I only need to hire 10 people instead of the 15 that we had anticipated and that saves from their overhead perspective, you know, alone.
And I mean because I know everybody who I talked to staffing is an issue. At some point in time, they're going to come across, either they hire too many or they can't get enough people inside of there. But again, it's like, do you need 10 people, you know? And cause that's like one thing that I go through all the time in my head is, is, you know, I know I'm going to make mistakes in, in growing my business and stuff out, but you know, the transportation industry is notorious for hiring a hundred people.
And, you know, then if you follow the industry headlines, six months later, they laid off 80 of them. Well, why isn't there data that says that we only need to hire 20 instead of going through this every single cycle that's out there? Cause again, I want to equip my team with the most tools to amplify their output, not from a profitability standpoint, yes, that's why I'm in business, but from an execution standpoint, and then me, you know, If I'm going to hire 20 people, I know that those 20 people are what I need to sit in those seats.
And I don't have to have that tough conversation with somebody. It's hard enough out there to, you know, want to get people to come in and, and, and work at a high level. And then I always be constantly thinking, are they going to, uh, let me go in three months or something like that? I don't know. This is just the stuff that I think of.
No, it's a hundred percent. And I think what drives that is fear and just how we've always done it. That's how it's always been done. We're doing a startup. We're hiring a bunch of people instead of sitting down and looking at like, okay, what tools do we have in place? And if you don't have tools, you're going to need to over-hire.
And then when you get tools in place and can start to track the data and understand what's happening at the operation, that's when you can make those decisions. But I feel like people. You know, in our industry and transportation, they just, they've always done it this way. So, they're just going to mass hire and then figure it out from there.
Um, not the best practice, but you know, that's how, and a lot of things are quick, you know, things move so fast. So, I get it. But then it's just if they could learn to put the tools in place first, they would maybe understand, okay, we don't need so many people, um, and start with the right size. No, I, you know, cause to me, it's like, you know, again, if just, it's just coming from a business owner's perspective, I want to have a company that people want to work at.
I don't want to have a reputation of, they just get rid of you after 30 days or 60 days, or we know whatever that looks like, and then you're on constant. You're recycling through people. And then again, I feel like that inevitably affects your customers though. Right. Because how many shippers out there, how many people out there get a new point of contact every six months?
And they're like, how stable does that look? Right. It doesn't look stable at all. And all it takes is. Looking at your operations. And again, like I'm from the old school in the trucking industry. Like I believe in that tried-and-true method that's out there, but I also understand the need for implementing technology to amplify my output, to bring a higher level of service to my customers that nobody else is out there.
And everything that we're talking about today seems like, I mean, I went to public school, so my math skills aren't the best, but we're talking about. Six figures, if not seven figures in savings, just by implementing an actual system that tracks the data that's out there instead of an Excel spreadsheet or a sheet of paper.
Because I know I write like a fifth grader. My son has better handwriting than I do. And then it's like, oh, did I put the wrong equipment out there? You know, I don't know. This is again, I I'm just, I go through these things all the time. And I, cause I, every, you know when I'm out there prospecting shippers, Operational efficiencies are constantly what they expect from their service providers.
Right? So it's like, if that's on the top of their mind, like this to me seems like a, a no brainer like every single warehouse should have something like this out there. They should be using this. Yes, we agree. Yeah. I mean, I would, I would have, I would expect you to say, yeah. I'm like, I just want to keep you in my back pocket.
Yeah. Right. Um, so as we're kind of wrapping things up today, like where does this go next? How does this improve? Where does this go from here? Sure. I mean, so we are always embracing new technologies and trying things, you know, right now we're doing, um, machine learning and cameras in the yard and, um, With Jeff and I, though, coming from the industry, you know, we try not to be naysayers because we're a lot of it.
We're like, I don't know if I always were, you know, we're like, um, you know, but because you've been out there, you can identify when somebody tells me an idea, I can identify the first three gaps, like right off the bat, it's straightforward for me to see like, oh, well, they're missing this information. Um, but you know, we're trying to get there.
We're, we're trying to help, um, partners in the. In space, you know, from cameras, um, to help them understand what does it mean? We're not just tracking what's coming through the gate. There's a lot of detail that goes into that, um, using cameras in the yard to verify things are in their proper spots.
Um, trying to. Make it so the yard check, um, is more of an automated process, which is kind of tough for me because I'm going to say I'm kind of old school. I want eyes on that equipment for real realize, um, you know, the, the camera might tell me that it's there, but the guy that walks by it or the gal that walk by, it's going to see that the door is open and it's empty.
You know, and they're going to update it and now it's usable equipment. So, um, but we're continuing to grow and continuing just to find out from our customers, like what are the efficiencies, what are the remaining gaps? And I think a lot of times who will get caught up in technology and like that it's so cool, let's do this, but is there a reason, you know, we, we can't get caught up in the shiny new objects.
We just had to, we must get it to work, um, and people to adapt it, use it, get that real data, and make decisions from it. Yeah, a big, a big direction also to add on what Heather was saying was, um, trying to get a lot of our clients to leverage our API. Through integration, whether that be with your TMS, whether that's with your WMS, um, whether that is with, you know, uh, similar what we do 3 for integration.
We also had a GPS opportunity there. Um, so let's leverage what you already have. What information that you have, do you already have that? We can close some of those gaps so that we can help your cost savings, reducing labor by reducing data entry so that you don't have to inbound something in the yard view.
And then you must inbound that into your TMS. How can we create efficiencies there? If your driver's just going to show up at their site and you know that geofence on your TMS is going to inbound that dedicated equipment, well hey, send us that notification as well. We'll inbound that unit, um, in Dr. View so that you, your guard doesn't have to, and we, we want to create efficiencies there as opposed to coming up with, you know, million-dollar solutions for, um, expensive cameras and expensive hardware where we could, we could find a, a.
A relatively inexpensive solution just through, um, leveraging integration through APIs and real-time updates. Right, understanding what people have and aggregating that data for them where it makes sense into the yard, right? Um, because a lot of people get a lot of data from a lot of different streams, and we can help not only just aggregate that data into one location, but then we can help the people make the decisions rather than.
Then they must sort through all that data themselves. It might take six hours to decide on planning tomorrow. But if we had all that data in one spot, we could generate reports that do all that decision making, you know, based on business rules, and that comes down to operations, understanding and knowing their processes well enough to know where we can automate.
I think that's one of the other small, I don't want to say small. It's another gap. It's just people not knowing the process that their people are following and why. And people might be following the directions that are on a post-it. I hit F4 enter three times, then F2, and then hit enter one more time.
And I'm good. They don't know why they do any of those things. So, when we sit down and we ask them, why are you doing those things? Then once we understand, we might be able to build in business logic that automatically does those things for them. So, there's an automation piece that we, we work on that a lot.
No, I, as, as it should, right? Like, I mean, again, having like in, in this, like you said it earlier, Heather, it's like, this is the way we've always done things. And I think that in today's day and age, this is just my opinion. That is the ultimate death star. For an organization, if you are not looking at ways to improve, there are going to be people that are investing heavily in technology, inside of automation.
How do I improve my customer's experience with there, the end-user experience, making sure, you know, again, there are no guarantees, but making sure that that rush holiday order is on the shelves? Your customer stores, like you had promised that they're going to have eight truckloads of a specific energy drink, all those things, right?
That is where I think that things need to be looked at and improved upon. I appreciate your guys’ time. I could nerd out on this stuff for hours. Like I'm a yard management nerd. Do you want to talk about yard management? I'm the nerd to talk to you. I love it. How does anybody reach out to you guys though, and find out more about what you guys are doing at Yard View?
Sure. So, they can access us through our website, of course, at yard view. com. And then, you know, I would invite them to reach out directly. I, I mean, it's Heather at yard view. com that easy. Perfect. Well, hey, that works out. And I know my fellow supply chain nerds made it this far, the episode because there was a lot of value in here.
And if you guys have value in it and you guys want to find out more, reach out to Heather or Jeff. If you need to reach out to me, I will gladly put you in contact with my friends over at YardView. As always. If you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. You guys share it out there, dear Network because if you saw value, chances are your network's going to see value as well.
I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon