4 Massive Fleet Problems Wex Solves for Trucking Companies with Noel Glasgow

Speaker A: Hello, friends. Welcome to the logistics of logistics. My name is Joe Lynch. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today's topic is four massive fleet problems WEX solves for trucking companies with my friend Noel Glasgow. How's it going, Noel?

Speaker B: How are we doing today, sir?

Speaker A: Doing great, Doing great. So I should mention to everyone listening that we are talking about your company, wex. We. So Noel, please introduce yourself and your company where you're calling from today.

Speaker B: Yeah, Joe. Noel Glasgow. I, um, am vice president of sales on the OTR division of WEX over the road. So trucking and Class 8 vehicles are our sweet spot when it comes to the WEX side of the business. I'm in Nashville, Tennessee and, uh, very excited about our conversation today. I think if you talk about trucking and the ways that we, we help WEX right now, if you think about WEX overall, we're a payments platform claimants company that plays in a lot of different spaces. But the main area that our team focuses on is the OTR and transportation space.

Speaker A: Yeah, we'll get more into each one of those things in a minute. We were supposed to do this interview at Trimble, but then we pulled it ahead. So this is the Friday before Trimble begins on, um, this Sunday. But I was very excited to interview guys at the Trimble Conference in San Diego, but we pulled it ahead for scheduling reasons. By the way, that makes it a little easier on me because I do seven interviews, Trimble every year. So I'm glad we're doing it now. But who are. One more time. Who are wex's customers and what problems are you solving for them?

Speaker B: Yeah. So first and foremost, it would have been great to be in San Diego with you guys next week. Unfortunately, my schedule doesn't allow me to be out there. But WEX will have our annual booth at the Trimble show. We'll have a team out there.

Speaker A: All the cool kids are there.

Speaker B: All the cool kids are there, obviously. Yeah. Especially with me not showing up. So. No, we have a wonderful partnership with Trimble in multiple ways. It depends on if you're talking from an ELD perspective and using the Trimble ELD base to make sure trucks are in the right spot, to help with fuel tax, to make sure trucks are traveling the way they should to turning on and off fuel cords. All kinds of ideas that we do with their ELD space and then their transportation management. So software. They're tmss. We also have full integration from a reporting controls efficiency standpoint for our customers. Who are our customers? WEX overall, from a trucking perspective, we deal with fleets of one truck, all the way up to fleets of 60, 70,000 trucks. You name the largest fleets in the country, they're carrying our fuel card. You name the single owner operator who's the backbone of our economy, he or she is carrying our fuel card as well. And so the partnership with Trimble is a wonderful one. Our ultimate goal at WEX is to be customer focused and customer centric and make sure that the customer is getting the best experience, the best opportunity to be a good business and to run the right way and to make sure that all efficiency, security and protection is in place. And so that's what our day to day operations look like.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Before we hit the record button, we were talking and talked about this problem with fuel cards. So if I, if I'm filling up a truck and I think you said that the, uh, price of diesel is up to 650something right now. And so to fill up a tank, I'm guessing it's several hundred dollars, right?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. The average fill is about 110 gallons. So you're looking roughly a little bit over $700 to fill up a truck right now.

Speaker A: So those gas cards can have, filter fuel cards can have, um, I'm guessing a pretty high limit if I got to fill that thing up a few times.

Speaker B: So typically the way that we manage it, especially for our customer base, is we look more at a gallon limit than at a actual monetary limit, which allows the fluctuation of fuel price not to stop a trucking company from being able to be on the road. Because the last thing that you ever want to have happen is a, uh, trucking company's fleet cards not work. If a fuel car doesn't work and a truck can't get from point A to point B, then that's catastrophic for the truck, the carrier. So we do look at the gallon limit, but yeah, right now with the diesel prices where they are, the importance of carrying a fuel card is, can never be more spoken. Having the controls, having the limits, having the fraud security, having the ability to make sure that you're purchasing fuel, where you should be purchasing fuel, when you should be purchasing fuel. All of that is so important right now. For every trucking company, like I spoke about earlier, we have trucking companies as large as 60, 70,000 trucks and we have trucking companies that are made up of one truck. Fuel is probably their second largest expense. So it has to be controlled and made sure it's looked at and done the correct way. Otherwise you're just letting money come right out of the back end of your business.

Speaker A: Right. And one of the things I think you guys are doing, and I don't think you're the only ones doing it, but I think having a partnership with Trimble allows you to connect with the company. So if my truck, if my truck is in California and the system knows that and I'm trying to fill up in Michigan, you guys catch that and go, nope, not so fast. We know your truck's not there. You're not. That is some hacker.

Speaker B: Correct. You're right. We're not the only ones that do proximity checking when it comes to fuel cards. But we were the first one to do it with Trimble about a decade ago. So we've been doing it for a long time and we built this with them and we have it with other ELD companies out there as well. Because you're right, unfortunately, when diesel prices go high, diesel becomes a commodity that is wanted by the bad guys because they can resell it at half the price on the black market. And it's a very well oiled criminal machine that we have to combat. And so having the ability to use someone's ELD on the border of their truck to let us know is that truck where the fuel card is being swiped, then we allow that transaction to continue. If that fuel card is swiped. And we know that to your point earlier, you're trying to buy fuel in Iowa, but your truck's in California. We're not going to allow that fuel transaction to go through. We're going to make sure that is blocked and stopped because we don't want the ability for fuel fraud to happen to our customer base.

Speaker A: Yep. And I'm going to put some words in your mouth, push me in the shell and if you need to. But the power of that partnership isn't the one time innovation. So you guys were first with this innovation. Very cool. But next year we're talking, uh, one year from now, I guarantee there's some other innovation that you guys have to prevent fraud or to cut a cost. And that's why these partnerships with Trimble are so important. Because we're not looking for one time innovation. We're looking for it to happen over and over again. And the innovation is between the boulders. So Wex has got a great product, Trimble's got a great product. But the missing link is, or I should say the real value comes when you can connect the two.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think integration between two top Technology partnerships is probably the best way to put it. And it's not just on the ELD as we talked about. But you're right, we're continuing to evolve from a product perspective on the WEX side when it comes to helping from a fraud and security standpoint. We're working with Trimble and with their ELD portion of their business to allow for, for drivers to turn fuel cards on and off inside the cab of their truck, for drivers to be able to not only make sure that their truck is in the right location, but to get a secure code that will allow them to pump into the truck, from the truck into the pump to allow them to get fuel. But we also have not just integration on the ELD side, but like I spoke about earlier, integration on the TMS side. And when we look at the TMW Suites and the Innovatives and all of those businesses that they have, when we have integration, where a driver swipes a fuel card, we know immediately that driver is on trip 1, 2, 3, and cab of the truck 4, 5, 6, and he's got fuel card 7, 8, 9. We're sending that information directly back into the TMS of the company and in real time so they're able to see how transactions happen, where they happen, when they happen, um, monitor them again. Second largest expense for a trucking company is fuel, maybe the largest expense right now with it being over 650 a gallon. So having complete visibility into the transactions as they happen is a game changer. Not having to wait until the next morning to look at a report, not having to wait until, if you're a single owner operator, or having the ability to look into our mobile app, which we'll talk about later, and, and seeing transactions in real time is just a complete different way of doing business. And it really helps control exactly what these companies want to control. Where they buy fuel, when they buy fuel, how they buy fuel, et cetera.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And this stuff just all of a sudden the trucking business is so hard and there's so many small companies that are, you've said it earlier, the backbone of not just the trucking industry. It's the backbone of our economy

Speaker B: 100%.

Speaker A: So we need these guys to keep rolling. And it's not easy all the time because you spend a lot of money on that truck. Margins are tight. You drive across the country, then you got to turn around and come back and somebody says, hey, how much? How much you make on that? I made. I don't know, whatever you made on that route. And you go, is it enough to fill up my tank and get back on to the other side of the country? And we're going to talk about factoring at some point too. This is why. This isn't just a nice to have. This is a must have.

Speaker B: No, it's a must to have. And I think the way that you just said it is so true. One, every truck that's running on our highways is the backbone of our economy. I remember when I first got into this industry being told, if you look around a room, everything in that room except you was on a truck at one point or another

Speaker A: truck too.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. But it, it without the trucks, and when you're not in this industry and you're driving down the highway, all you think about is these big machines that are

Speaker A: on

Speaker B: the side of the road. What good are they? But they truly are what keeps economy afloat. And if we did not have the trucking companies and drivers that this country has, we would be in a whole different economic situation. And so we have to be able to help them do every single thing they can to only worry about getting from point A to point B, take all the worry, how to run a business, all of that off their hands. And so if you're talking about a single owner operator and they're using our 104 application to help them buy better fuel, that's one thing. If you're talking about a, uh, fleet that has 10,000 trucks and you're wanting to make sure that their trucks are where they say they are when they're buying fuel, or the reporting and controls and security options that can go through their tms are all in place. All of that is what we want to do. Because you're right, trucking is hard. It is not an easy industry to be successful in. And it is one of those that those, these guys have to be able to just worry about delivering the goods that keep this country afloat and not have to worry about all the other stuff that surrounds them as they try to do that.

Speaker A: Yep. I love it. I love it. We'll come back and talk more about that in a minute. But first, Noel, tell us a little bit about you. Where'd you grow up? Where'd you go to school? Some career highlights before you joined the juggernaut that is Wex.

Speaker B: So I'm, uh, from Nashville, Tennessee. Grew up here, born and raised, which is a unicorn these days because a lot of people,

Speaker A: things changed things. It has

Speaker B: changed quite. It has changed quite a bit. I left after high school, went to the university of Tennessee in Knoxville. Was there for four and a half years, had this crazy idea to go into journalism and sports television. So for the first 13 years of my career, I was a sportscaster on TV. Worked in East Tennessee, West Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas. Had

Speaker A: a wonderful

Speaker B: time, um, wonderful career. Career highlights. I've interviewed Tiger Woods. I've been to multiple Final Fours. I've been to Super Bowls.

Speaker A: Oh my God,

Speaker B: place the best golf courses in the world. I got to drink champagne from the Stanley Cup. I've done a lot of cool stuff when it comes to sports. And I can talk about sports with anybody at any time for as long as you want. Still to this day, I love. There's several things I love, and talking sports is one of them. I don't know. This is a Friday before the Trimble show, but this weekend is a massive weekend of college football and I'll be heading up to Knoxville tomorrow to watch the number one ranked Texas Longhorns take on Tennessee. But I got out of television about almost 20 years ago and moved back to Nashville. My wife and I were ready to start having a family. We moved back here. I went and worked for my family business in the gourmet dessert business for a few years. That led to me meeting someone who was leaving their current company and going to help a company called EFS grow. And EFS was a fuel card business. And they recruited me over in 2012. I, um, went there and started in. We went through several different ownership changes, but in 2016, WEX bought us to be the over the road fuel card for the WEX business. WEX at the time had. If you think about WEX as the North American fleet side, the gasoline stations, the front, front of the house type folks, they had a dominating presence there and they were ready to get into the transportation over the road space. They acquired Wex and that's been 10 years ago. It seems like just yesterday, but we were actually, it's almost 10 years to the day. We were at the ATA in Philadelphia in 2016 when we announced it, and here we are. We'll be at the ATA in Charlotte here in a couple of weeks. That's what. That's how. That's me. I love football, I love sports. I love Pearl Jam, favorite band of all time.

Speaker A: I see that you got the posters.

Speaker B: I can talk about that as well. Sometimes people probably get sick of hearing about a band that's been around for that long. But I love them. I love good food, I love good wine, I love friends, I love hanging out. So

Speaker A: like all the cool stuff. Um,

Speaker B: yeah, you know, hey, you got to take advantage of every day we have. And so, um, if you're not having fun and you're not doing the fun stuff, why are you doing it?

Speaker A: Yep. By the way, that University of Tennessee versus University of Texas. I woke up this morning and I should have been getting right to work, but I went for a walk and I kept seeing that content hitting me all day. And there's people wrote songs about the UT versus ut, and I was like, oh, my God, this is. Besides a national championship or something like that. This is one of the biggest early season games in a long time.

Speaker B: Oh, it's. That's awesome. Texas is number one in the country. Their quarterback is a Manning. Obviously, Peyton Manning was huge at Tennessee. President Trump's going to be at the game. If you really ask Tennessee fans, they're the real ut. I think that for sure, because University of Tennessee was a school before the State of Texas was a state. And it, had it not been a little history, had it not been for Davy Crockett going down to help Texas battle and save the Alamo, Texas would have never become a state, which led to the University of Tennessee adopting the nickname the Volunteers. So thanks to all of that, is coming full circle this weekend. So it's going to be really interesting.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. And it's an interesting time, I think, when 20, 30, when they have, uh, the next census, I think 40% of the population will be in the South. And you're old enough to remember when the south seemed like an afterthought. If you're talking about business, that was the east coast, the Midwest, and some stuff out in California. Now you look and go. Kind of the center of the universe has moved south and west and arguably two of the most important growth states have been Tennessee and Texas.

Speaker B: You're right 100%. You look now, the

Speaker A: culture's changed. That's where the culture lives now.

Speaker B: Culture, massive change. You look at a huge shift right before COVID a major shift after Covid. But you have Oracle moving to Nashville. You have Amazon in Nashville now you have Starbucks bringing their headquarters to Nashville. You have Nissan having their headquarters here. Nashville has changed the world. And you're right, for years, the south was Atlanta and that was it. That was the only really big business city in the South. And now there's tons in Texas, in Tennessee, in Florida. Everybody is coming here. The universities in the south, especially in the sec, the Southeastern Conference. The explosion of applications from the Midwest and the Northeast is massive.

Speaker A: I Saw one of the billionaires from the All In Podcast talking about his son wanting to go off to college. And so you go, okay, you're a billionaire. Where are you going to get your kid into Stanford or Yale or Harvard or blah, blah, blah. Nope. He goes, my son is real interested in what's happening in the Southeastern Conference, and it's cultural capital, and we could do a whole episode just on, um, that shift. I heard somebody say we used to get our entertainment from Los Angeles. And they said, now you go there and there's a whole bunch of country western people walking around, and it's not one in, um, a million. This is. The world's changed a lot. And that, again, it used to be looked at. I tell my kids this down south was behind. They were behind for a long time. And I said, my dad used to joke he's long past. He'd say, boy, the south might have lost the war, but they sure as hell won the peace. You got that nice weather. Yeah,

Speaker B: we have great weather. It's great. There's. There is talk this week Paramount is going to move their headquarters from Los Angeles to Nashville.

Speaker A: I wonder what. I wonder why that is. I wonder why that is.

Speaker B: I think there's a lot of reasons. I don't want to go into all of them, but a lot of people have moved here in the entertainment industry, so a lot of people are already here. You have no state income tax in Tennessee compared to California, so that's a big deal. You have beautiful property, beautiful land to be able to do all of this. And. And you're right, it. We have all four seasons. It's a great area. It's great. But I will also say we're good. We're full. We don't need anybody else to move here. It's fine.

Speaker A: Uh, see, there's pale faces like me. I can't be down there. It's just too hot. I love it. This. I love it, though. Anyway,

Speaker B: back to while we're on here.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. So I want to talk about a few topics that we agreed to in advance. So the first one was the fuel money pit. Talk about that. Fuel costs a lot of damn money. Talk about that problem and how you guys solve it.

Speaker B: We talked about it earlier. On a typical day, fuel is the second largest expense for a trucking company. No matter.

Speaker A: And what's first? The truck?

Speaker B: Typically, payroll. Payroll is their highest expense. But if you don't have control over your expenses, money is going out the back door. And so we. Our goal from a card perspective, Is to help customers understand where their fuel purchases happen, how they happen, when they happen, and then allow them to control how they happen and when they happen to make sure they're getting the discounts that they've negotiated or the discounts that we have for the smaller fleets. We have a fuel card called the Fleet 1 Edge card that has fuel discounts already negotiated to give the smaller guys the edge. Because all large trucking companies have fuel discounts negotiated with the fuel vendors and this gives them the edge. We have our 104 app for the single owner operator which gives them the ability to buy fuel at a great discount. I think we were seeing on average somewhere around 26, 27 cents per gallon savings. So if we can help a trucking company, no matter the size, help their second largest monetary expense to make sure that they are like we have the ability. Joe, if you had a trucking company and you said, um, I'm not going to use anybody's name, but I have a discount with fuel vendor A and I want my drivers only to purchase fuel at fuel vendor A. I only want them to buy 75 gallons when they purchase that. And in fact that fuel vendor has 500 plus locations. I only want to use these seven. We can do that. We can control it. We can control the time of day, when they purchase, where they purchase, how they purchase. We can even make recommendations based on some partnerships with Trimble with expert fuel and what they want to have from that perspective. And so helping trucking companies control an expense. This high national diesel average this week, right? About $6.53. Now, again, most of them are paying with a discount. But still, no matter what, even if you're getting 20, 30, 40 cents off at the pump, that's still you're paying six bucks a gallon. We talked about it. Average fills 110 gallons, $6, $660 to fill up your truck. So making sure you take full advantage. You have the security to make sure that your fuel is going into your truck. All of that is where we want to help the trucking companies. And that's what our fuel card does. It is so important you're able to get a discount a fuel card at the major fuel vendors, the pilots, the loves, the TAs, Mavericks, Casey's. I could name them all. Typically we don't do it as consumers, but trucking companies on the marquee, cash price, credit price. When you use a fuel card, you get the cash price. If you use a credit card, you're paying 6, 7 cents per gallon more so that just right there is a good savings for you. So it's just being educated. That's the other thing. We've got to educate the consumer on how to use the fuel card, why the fuel card is important. And that's what our wonderful sales team and account management team and customer service team all do such a great job of, is continuing to educate the end user on why they need to have this and what the controls actually do and mean to them from a monetary standpoint.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I love that. I love that. And I know there's the savings when you get a discount on a big number like that is significant. So when you. I've heard this last couple years when I was at Trimble, people said, this is the dip and it's not more than one product. This is the difference between us making money and losing money. We're not going to talk about mapping today, but that mapping is a big important part. And I heard one of the companies said we map ourselves by where we're filling up. So there's more than one way to get there and say, I'm going to go a little out of my way, but I'm going to save this much money. I'm going to cost myself seven minutes. But I got that seven minutes to spare and I saved this much more because I got to the right pump.

Speaker B: And that's what we help customers do, is to make sure they buy fuel in the right locations as well and get educated from that perspective. So you're right. It is such a massive expense. And if you're not watching it, this trucking, we hear it all the time. It's a pennies industry, literally. Pennies are important in every single transaction. So if you're saving, even if you're just saving 6 or 7 cents per gallon, that's way better than spending 6 or 7 cents per gallon. It's just at the end of the day, pennies lead to dollars and dollars lead to revenue, and you got to have revenue and profit. In this industry of such small margins, anything you can do to help control it are so important.

Speaker A: I've talked on my podcast over the years to industry experts who are a lot of times in the mergers acqu Space private equity backdrop of the mergers acquisition conference last week in Chicagoland and that this logic conference was great. Somebody said to me not so long ago, oh yeah, the biggest trucking companies in the country own 2% of the market, which is crazy, right? 2%. But they said, don't be surprised if we start to see them grow. And the reason they're growing is because they buy better. Now. It's not that they're just buying gas better. They're buying. They can obviously get access to capital a little better so they can buy trucks cheaper. But also they're always riding full because they've got these network effects. But you gotta start somewhere. So imagine there's lots of small guys going, hey, that's cool for the big guys. But it doesn't matter for us that discipline matters. From the very beginning,

Speaker B: discipline is very important. And you're right. If you look, there's 90. I think it's 94 and a half percent of trucking companies are less than 10 trucks. So all those big trucking companies you know of make up a little bit of 5% of the industry. And yes, they have, um, phenomenal buying power. And then I think we'll talk about this a little bit, but just to kind of preview it. That's some of the things that we're trying to help as well. We have some relationships with other vendors out there, not just fuel, but helping trucking companies save money in all different ways of what they're doing. And so I think having partnerships and having vendor relationships that we can educate our customers on and help the small guys compete with the big guys, which again I said earlier, we have the fleet one edge card. It gives them an edge that they don't have because they're able to save on fuel. But also we're helping folks save on hotels, we're helping folks save on tolls, helping folks save on navigation. There's all kinds of ways that we can do this. And you're right, the large guys buy better. But the large guys at one point were the small guys, and they just worked their way up. So there's always going to be the next opportunity to be the next large guy. And if you take full advantage of it from the beginning and take full advantage of what is out there to help you get better, you can eventually be the large guy.

Speaker A: Exactly. I like it. Uh, so the next topic, and this is one that I've been scammed on this one before as just the consumer. It's these. The card skimmers, the unauthorized swipes, the fuel theft. I'm going to tell you my own personal story. I went to Vegas for a conference years ago, and you're spending money on while you're traveling. I don't, I didn't gamble. And I got home and I just glanced at my bank account online and I was like, oh, uh, God, I spent A little more in Vegas than I thought. And then later on, I was like, I'll go back online. And I go, and it seems like it's a least of thousand or so less. Went online. Somebody had went on my dream shopping trip. They went to Home Depot, bought a whole bunch of stuff. They went to Best Buy. I think Circuit City was still a thing. Then they went to Lowe's. They went to six stores and bought a couple thousand dollars worth of stuff. And I went to my bank and they were good about it. They go, do you use your credit card at gas station? I was like, yeah. They go, uh, yeah, that's where it went. They have, they have skimmers. And I was like, what? Uh, I was like, what's a skimmer? So why don't you tell us what the hell is a skimmer? How is this happening?

Speaker B: Okay, so, um, I will go back back when this happened to you. Card skimmers were on, trucking were on the point of sale system at trucking locations, fuel vendors, they would put a big thing on there. When you swiped your card, it gathered all your data. They would then go like every couple of hours in the middle of the night, take that piece off, download it in, recreate your credit card, and then go out and use that credit card. As you saw today, the bad guys have gotten brilliant. Now they can put a tiny piece of equipment inside the point of sale system, and then they can be miles away, thanks to technology. And when your card is swiped, they're downloading all your information immediately. And then they can take a hotel key or anything that has a mag stripe on the back and make it look like you're saying fuel card and go out and buy fuel. So we have controls in place to fight that when where we have prompts that the driver has to put in trip number that they're on or dynamic prompting and all of that. That's one way. But some trucking companies don't take advantage of that. So our first foray into trying to fix that was what we talked about earlier, our secure fuel product, which we debuted about 10 years ago, working with the ELDs to make sure that the truck was at the location that the fuel card was being swiped. So when that fuel card was swiped, we said, all right, Joe is in Las Vegas, Nevada. His truck's in Las Vegas, Nevada. At this fuel vendor location. We're going to allow this fuel purchase to go through. So we did that. The second piece that we have a couple of years ago, the skimming went away. And then during the Ukraine war, when that started and fuel prices spiked like they have again today, the card skimming got bad again because like I said earlier, fuel prices, when they're above $6, it's liquid gold to the bad guys. They can resell it on the black market at, ah, pennies on the dollar and make a ton of money stealing from you. So we debuted our dynamic prompt, which a driver would go into our mobile app or even their company's mobile app select get Fuel, and they would get a prompt that would allow them, after they swipe their card they had to use, that would last for 30 minutes. And then if that didn't work, if that prompt was not correct, the fuel purchase would not work. We have since now we have two new additions to that, both dynamic prompt and Secure Fuel still being used. We now have Cardless fueling, where in our app or a company's app, we can allow, by giving them the API connectivity from our systems into their systems, where they just say, get fuel and they get a quote flow code that will allow them to pump in, not even swipe a card pump in. That's that digit. Let's think it's six or seven digits. Put that in at the pump. We know the fuel vendor knows it's our company, the fuel vendor knows our card. We have their card on the backside. We check all their limits just like they swiped a card, but they never did. And then that way they have the ability to continue on and not worry about getting their card skimmed. We also have, for folks that don't want to do that, we have a product that's called Freeze and Thaw, where a driver can turn their fuel card on when it's time to swipe it and then turn it right back off when they're finished. And they thaw the card, allow the fuel purchase, and then, uh, it actually automatically goes back into freeze mode as soon as the purchase is done. So that way, if that card happens to be skimmed, nobody can take advantage of that when they're out trying to buy fuel. So again, Equs, our ultimate goal is to take care of the customer. And so I think you said it earlier, innovation is wonderful, but innovation always continues. So we start with Secure Fuel, then we have dynamic prompt, cardless, Freestyle. We're getting to where we will have Freestyle and Cardless in the cab of the truck, and the driver won't even have to use an app on their phone. There's all these evolutions of security and fraud detection and fraud prevention that we're working on. And Trimble has been a great partner in working on that, as have all the fuel vendors in the industry. Because the fuel vendors don't want the fuel stolen either. Right? Nobody wants it to. And no matter what done. One thing about the trucking industry is we all, no matter what we do in it, if you're a driver, a fleet, uh, a vendor, we compete against each other, but we work together. Because at the end of the day, backbone of the economy, we have to make sure that trucks continue to stay on the road. We got to do everything we can together to make it better.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. And this sounds. Am I right to say this is like a two factor authentic authentication?

Speaker B: There's all kinds of two factor authentication there, I think.

Speaker A: I can't say that. So I could never work at one of those companies. Companies. 2fa is all I'll say.

Speaker B: There you go. You think about it like this. You can't go buy a sandwich on the Chick Fil A app without giving half of your blood type and everything else to be able to allow it to go through. Why should a truck, truck, trucking company be able to buy fuel without having to do the same thing? So we're using our own two factor authentication. We also recommend for all of our drivers that are using mobile apps to have a pass key or use two factor authentication. Now, I can't say it on their phone to make sure that the more secure you can be, the better. You got, you talked about it. You got hit by it personally in Vegas. I will tell you, my parents just got hit with fraud. It's not just in the trucking company. It's not just fuel cards. The bad guys are going after us everywhere. And anytime a card is swiped or spent, anything that you can do to take advantage of helping you do a safer transaction, you should do it 100%.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And you're right to say the sophistication level just ramps up, uh, higher and higher. And by the way, you mentioned eld, that's electronic logging device for people who aren't in the trucking business who are listening. Electronic logging device is supposed to measure your hours of service. You're only allowed to drive a certain amount of hours. So companies always had electronic logging devices. It became mandatory for certain size companies. And I'm thinking 2017, 2018. And it was a big hubbabaloo for a minute because there was companies saying, I'm not doing it. I was like, yeah, you are. But the digital revolution that's spawned the unintended Consequences. So I think most people I talk to would say that ELD is more hassle and it hasn't saved lives necessarily. But we connected all sorts of uh, technology like yours to that eld. And when you think of the ELD is probably a better way to think about it is there's a tech stack for the driver.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's their own little computer system inside their own truck that tells them what to do, when to do it, how to do it and everything in between.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so when you see that tablet that contains an ELD and a million other things that helps them do the job right. And hopefully do it with as much efficiency as possible because again, this is. The leakage in this business is going to drive you out of this business

Speaker B: 100%.

Speaker A: Next thing I want to talk to you about is fuel waste and blind spots for in spending patterns. I have not run across that one yet, but I'm sure once you describe it I will understand it.

Speaker B: We've kind of talked about it at high level. But if you think about if you're a driver for my trucking company and I give you a fuel card and I say, hey Joe, go on your way, I need you in Sacramento in three days. Go get them. And you just go. And you're a driver and you're trying to do what's right for the company and you're trying to be economical in your decision making. And you look up and you see this truck stop says it's 485 a gallon. And this truck stop says it's 489 a gallon. You're going to go to the 485 because that's saving four pennies, which I think every trucking company would love fuel to be 485A gallon right now. But

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: you're going to save 4 pennies per gallon for my, for our trucking company. What you might not know is that I have negotiated with that trucking, that fuel vendor to have. It says it's 489. I'm actually getting retail minus 30 cents. So I'm paying 459 over here. So from controls put on the card that uh, dictates where you purchase the fuel and when you purchase the fuel. It allows you to make sure you're not just thinking you're saving money, but you're having better spending of your money and controlling when and where you spend it. That's the front end of it. The back end is we have tools that if you have fuel discounts negotiated with fuel vendors that we're running data on the backside and looking at the transactions to make sure that those fuel discounts actually were applied when you purchased the fuel. We're making sure we can send you data that shows drivers or who are compliant the most in your network who are not compliant. We can recommend fuel stops and recommend where you go to buy the fuel to make a better solution and a better selection for what is needed in your situation. And so we want to make sure again, can I. Enough. Second largest expense, maybe largest expense for a trucking company right now is fuel. Anything that you can do to help you control where that fuel spend is happening, how it's happening, when it's happening, why it's happening, the better you're suited. Again, it's a small margins business and every penny needs to be looked at.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I've done a lot of, I'm an automotive guy originally and I've also. You mentioned Nissan down there. I used to do some inbound logistics to Nissan and they tell all their suppliers all your shipping goes through the company I was working at and that compliance isn't easy. So what you find out is right away 50% go, okay, we'll do it, we were told to do it. And then you got to kind of fight the next 60 to get to 60 to get to 70. And then at some point you're going to go, yeah, we're pretty successful. All but these 10 guys who say we're not doing it, uh, and usually there's a good reason they can't do it, we would save them. I'm just going to make the numbers up. I'm going to save you $2 million when everybody complies. But right now, only 50% of your suppliers have complied. And that goes the same with gas. So this works when everybody does the right thing. But if 20% of your drivers just say, ah, uh, the hell with it. I just bought it over here first off. Now it's outside the system, so I don't have good KPIs on it. And it's non compliant. You might not think of it that way, but it's non compliant. You've spent more money. But on top of that, the overall spend within this card got smaller. Your company's discount is impacted by you not doing the right thing.

Speaker B: You've negotiated a fuel discount with a fuel vendor because you're going to give them X amount of gallons per month. Now you're not giving them those gallons because your drivers aren't being compared to client to where they need to purchase. You mentioned you made, you said 2 million. You say, hey, you might only be saving pennies per gallon, but you have X amount of trucks and pennies. Add the dollars, add to a lot. And so anything that you can do and control and save is so important. And the large guys do a really good job of doing it. The small guys are getting better at it. We're trying to provide the tools to allow them to get better at it. They're just as important, if not more important than some of the large guys. And so we have to allow them to learn and to educate and we have to continue to be good partners. All of our vendors in this industry have to be good partners for these drivers to help them run a better, smarter, safer business. And anything that we can do to help you do that is the way we want to be thought. That's you want to focus on your customers. If you're not listening or helping your customers be better, smarter and safer, you're not doing a good job.

Speaker A: Yeah, it seems little, but I'll tell you, I use the term compliant and non, uh, compliant a lot more than I ever did in the past. And I say we live in a compliance culture. I don't want to get too far down this rabbit hole, but I love college football and I know you do too. In the olden days, not so long ago, if somebody did something wrong and came to the coach or came to administrator and said, hey, this happened, they would go, uh, okay, I'll talk to, I'll be with that guy and I'll explain how he's get back on the right track. That's the olden days. No more good old boy network. Now it's somebody told me about a violation. We have a process, we must follow it. And you'll notice I'm a University of Michigan alum and fan. We have had that where somebody did something wrong and even when it was reported they didn't do the exact right thing. They thought, we'll handle this another way. It doesn't work. Covering up the non compliance is worse than the non compliance, so.

Speaker B: Oh, for sure, for sure.

Speaker A: We got to get to the place here as a truck. By the way, I think also truckers and trucking companies a little bit of the spirit of the cowboy and we're all for it. But when it comes to the no cowboy wants to comply, but this is for our own good. It's like taking your blood pressure medication.

Speaker B: You are so right. That is a great description of the especially the independent Owner, operator. They're the cowboy. They still are the cowboy. They don't want Big Brother watching them. They don't want to have anybody telling them what to do. But I think they are all getting much smarter in how they spend their money, thanks to products like our 104 app that allows them to see how they can purchase fuel when they can purchase fuel at a much better discount. Again, anything that we can do from an education standpoint, so much better for them and to help them. And you're right, compliance is very important.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I should also say, guys, that compliance applies, uh, across the whole industry. So when somebody asked me, I was just at a conference and one of the questions while I was speaking was, what about these nuclear verdicts? Uh, a lot of those nuclear verdicts. You're in a state seven states away from where you're based, and maybe somebody was hurt or even killed. And what do the lawyers focus on? Everything you did, uh, that showed non compliance, not fuel cards probably, but everywhere else where you did, oh, you've skipped that training day. Oh, my God. I think this speaks to, uh, the way they do business.

Speaker B: Yep. Everything's under a microscope.

Speaker A: Yep, yep. The next one. And this is a biggie. And it's the freight cash crunch. This is waiting on money. And I'll describe it because I've heard it this way. You got a load to go back from. Let's just say you went from New York to California. Now you gotta get back and you don't have money because you didn't get paid on that load like you thought you were gonna get paid. Talk about that cash crunch. Describe it for us.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think trucking companies deliver the goods, but they don't get paid for delivering the goods for 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120 days.

Speaker A: Right. Regardless what the contract says.

Speaker B: And, and so, uh, especially for those. And again, we talked about it over and over. It's a pennies industry. And so when you're having to spend, especially when fuel prices are high and you're having to spend that money to, to your point, to get back to buying another 110 gallons of fuel or 600 gallons of fuel or a thousand gallons of fuel, whatever you need, you've got to be able to pay for it. You got to have cash flow. You've got to have money coming in and not just going out. And so for trucking companies that need help, factoring or AR financing is a wonderful way to do it because we here we have WEX capital, which is our factoring division. It allows for companies to give us, we will buy their invoice from them and give them a very high percentage of that invoice, very high percentage. And it gives them the cash up front and then we collect from the vendor as they go. And so cash flow doesn't become an issue. That stops them. It allows them to continue and trying to figure out how to make that money. And I have seen it. Unfortunately, trucking companies win a huge deal. They're going to carry for this amazing company who's going to pay them and they're going to pay them a ton of money, but they're only going to pay them every 180 days or every 150 days or every 120 days. We, you still got to buy fuel every day. You still got to pay your drivers every day. You still got to have a truck every day. You still got to pay for your insurance every day. It's everything. And so having the ability to let someone else collect and pay you for it, it's a win win for all these trucking companies for sure.

Speaker A: Yep. No, I bet you have some of your customers that just bake it in and they say, we are going to let, we are going to let WEX do that part of our business and we're going to factor virtually everything. I'm assuming you can say I don't want to factor these two, but everything else goes through Wex because we're not in that business and I don't want to be starving on the road.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We have a very large customer base and we help, we, we do that. And we also again, continue to help educate them and let them know that this is it. Sometimes it's people look at it with a bad light. It's not, it's helping them continue to do business. Tons of companies in all industries have open line of credits with banks, have AR financing. It's just a different way of doing it. It's helping the transportation industry continue to. At the end of the day, I say this all the time when I'm fortunate enough to be on podcasts like this or do interviews. The backbone of the economy is trucking. And what truck drivers and truck and carriers need to worry about is getting from point A to point B to help our economy continue. They shouldn't have to worry about all the minutiae in between. Let other folks like Wex help you with that.

Speaker A: Yeah. My own personal story about factoring, I haven't told it in a minute, so I'll tell you say it again. Uh, my dad owned an engineering business. We did mostly, uh, we were automotive. We had a relationship with a bank so we could make payroll every. Every week. And then we weren't getting paid. I won't mention the big three automaker that did it to us, but they weren't paying us. And we go to the bank and say, hey, we just need a little more money because we're gonna get paid on some of these invoices. And they're like, no, so we're not gonna make payroll coming up in two weeks. And I was flipping through Sports Illustrated, and it said, sell us your invoices. And I was like, you don't want our invoices. And I remember I called. It was a New York company, and they explained what they did, and I was like, wait, what?

Speaker B: Yeah, so.

Speaker A: So they connected me with a local company that would buy my invoices. And when I'm. When I'm telling my dad this, he's looking at me like, what did I do to get this kid? This makes no sense. It's founding nonsense. And then I call the company and they're like, yeah, get my dad on the phone with him. And they're like, yeah, yeah, bring us those invoices. Yeah, they're from XYZ Big 3 automaker. Yeah, yeah, of course. It was a miracle. It was honestly, a miracle. I couldn't believe it.

Speaker B: It's a savior to a lot of fleets out there. And again, it's just. It's a way to help them continue to worry about the main thing, and that's getting the goods from A to B.

Speaker A: Yep, yep. Now, this is not going to air until after Trimble, so, um, from what I understand, talking to Johnston earlier, your PR guy, he said you guys had some announcement that you were going to do at Trimble we could hold. This isn't going to publish until. So can you tell me that announcement or do I have to cut this whole segment?

Speaker B: No, no, we could. So we are going to announce a partnership with our verified vendors. Partners. Partnerships. And we have an area. I think I mentioned it a little bit earlier, but we have a. An area in our. On our website and for our part, our customers, where partners can put their product in front of our customer base. And like I said earlier, we have a partnership with a hotel company. We have a partnership with a tolling company. A partnership.

Speaker A: Oh, nice.

Speaker B: So that way, again, our ultimate goal at WEX is to take care of the customer. We got you when it comes to fuel and payroll and payments, but we would like to also help you in other areas that you need help. And so we have partnered with a company called Engine from a hotel perspective. We have a partnership with tfg, which is a financing arm which helps trucking companies buy trucks at a great rate. We have a partnership with BestPass from a tolling perspective. So we, ah, we continue to add to this and we will continue to add to our verified vendor list. It's just a phenomenal hub where they can go online and look at and see people that we partnered with, which we think we're. We think they are worth doing business with because we have put out, uh, the partnership with them.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was supposed to talk to Engine. I don't think I'm going to. There's timing issues. But I love the idea of getting truckers into hotels or motels. Somebody just said to me not so long ago, and they had some research that said the average truck driver is sleeping five hours in his truck when they sleep in their truck. And by the way, that also keeps a lot of women out of this business. They don't want to be away from home, but they certainly don't want to be sleeping in a precarious location. We have not done a good job for letting our drivers have a good night's rest. And you think about what they're doing all day. They're driving those massive trucks down the expressways where our families are driving. We need to do a better job on, um, getting them home. But if we can't get them home, let's get them a good night's rest for all of our good

Speaker B: 100%. Yes. Again, it's the safety for everybody, not just the driver, but all people. Let's get the good night rest every night that's needed.

Speaker A: Yep. And then there's another. There's a company called nonprofit, I think, called Project 61. The average truck driver is dying at 61 years old. And life on the road isn't easy. And we need those drivers. We're going to have autonomous vehicles sooner, sooner than we think. But we still need drivers. I'm telling you. I think the role will probably morph, but is going to be just as important. And I think part of it might get into the security of this stuff.

Speaker B: I agree. We got to do everything we can to make the driver's life better. They're the backbone of the economy. I've said it 15 times on this interview, but anything we can do to help, anything WEX can do to help, anybody in the industry can do to help We've got to make sure we take care of the driver at the end of the day.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Boy, oh boy. I did this one time. I drove a six wheeled vehicle. Somebody paid me. It was a whopping $200. So what I wouldn't do for $200. I drove it from Chicago to Detroit. It had six wheels and it did take diesel and it snowed the whole time. It was horrible. And it took me eight hours instead of four and a half. And I remember every time I called in, people yelled at me. I was like, uh, look outside man, there's eight inches of snow and I'm driving. What is wrong with you? I felt, God, if this is how these guys live. I was getting paid a flat amount to go that four and a half hours that turned into eight and a half, I think. And it's treacherous. And I thought, Jesus, why would anyone do this job?

Speaker B: Yeah. Again, they need, they deserve respect more than anybody we think about it is truly, it's a hard life, but it's so important. And they are, they're the heroes that don't get mentioned a lot.

Speaker A: Yep. So I'm going to summarize what we talked about then. I want your final thoughts on the topic. So I'm talking to my friend Noel Glasgow and we're talking about the four massive fleet problems WEX solves for trucking companies. So the first one is just this leaky margins and zero spending discipline. This is when you're spending money, which is the second largest budget, buying gas and you don't have controls on it and you're buying it anywhere looking for a good deal. But not using a fuel card is going to cost you money. And there's fuel cards for big fleets, obviously, we all know that. But they also have programs for the smaller companies, again, the smaller companies that we all count on. And again, if you're a broker and you're listening, this is also Talk to your, talk to some of your companies because you need them to make money too.

Speaker B: Yeah, we want to help. No matter what the trucking company size is, we have the tools for the small guys, the big guys, the large guys, the owner operators, the. The company owned. We have it all. No matter what you're doing, you all buy fuel and we can help you.

Speaker A: Yep. And the second thing we talked about was card skimming, unauthorized swipes, fuel theft. And this is where that WEX has gotten high tech. And they're, they're connected to the Trimble ecosystem. And it's not just the Trimble I know they're connected to other systems. They're basically going to say the truck is here and the trying to get gas somewhere else, we aren't going to do it. It gives you the visibility that you need. But this kind of thing is what we need in our industry to scare off the crooks because they're looking for the low hanging fruit. As soon as they realize, oh God, you can't steal from the trucking business, they'll be gone. But what they see in us is this is a casual industry that everyone seems to know each other, so they aren't safe.

Speaker B: Yeah. As technology improves, the bad guys get smarter and better too. So everything that we can do to help curve what they're trying to do, that's what we want. If it's our secure fuel, if it's dynamic prompting, if it's cardless fueling, if it's freezing thawing the fuel card, if it's working with the eld, if it's working with the tms, whatever we can do to help. And partners like Trimble are great at doing that.

Speaker A: Yep. And we talked also about the fuel waste and blind spots and spending patterns. So you got to get all your spending on one card, one place so you can start to have KPIs and also talk about, hey, why were you non compliant? And as soon as you find out we're non compliant, help me become compliant, help me to understand or help WEX to say, hey, here's my problem, they'll go good, we'll fix that.

Speaker B: Data is important and we can help you control and look at the data. Like you said, the KPI is an important world today that we all have to play in. And so anything we can do to help you control it, when the when the how, the why, we want to make sure we do that.

Speaker A: Yep. And factoring, we could have led with factoring it is critically important. You mentioned the backbone of our industry is trucking. One of the backbones of trucking is not only the gas and the trucks, but it's the money. And I joke about on my podcast every once in a while, the number one question in our business is where's my stuff? The number two question is where's my money? And when I say number two, often it's number one.

Speaker B: Yeah. Anything we can do to help from that perspective. You're right. It is a pennies business, a small margin industry and being able to have cash flow is so important. And so if you need help from that perspective, that's what we're here for our Wex Capital team is phenomenal and can help in any way.

Speaker A: Yep. And the last point, and this was one that we weren't going to talk about till we got to Trimble. So this is brand new news. This is the WEX has a verified vendors program. So anything that helps a trucking company do a better job, whether it's lending, lending money at a better rate than you could get on your own or getting a hotel, I'm assuming navigation, the stuff is going to continue. So this again is a starting point. I imagine if we're talking a year from now, it's going to be much bigger part of your biz.

Speaker B: Yeah. All the partnerships are with companies that we see are out there to do exactly what we want to do and that's be customer driven and help the industry. And like you said, if it's financing a vehicle or a trailer, if it's getting a hotel room or paying for tolls or figured out how to get from point A to point B, all of our verified vendors are wonderful and you have the ability to see those right in front of your day to day operations through the Wex portal.

Speaker A: Excellent, Excellent. So Noel, put a big old bow on this one. Final thoughts on the topic?

Speaker B: Final thoughts. First and foremost, thanks for having me on. Wonderful to talk. Uh, thanks for supporting the industry that we are such a part of and that is such an important piece to our economy. Just know I, uh, want the industry to know that WEX is here for you. That WEX is the ultimate goal is to make sure that the customers get better, faster and smarter. We can help you in any way when it comes to buying fuel, controlling how you buy fuel, reporting how you buy fuel, all of that and having control and spend and fraud mitigation. And again, I thank you and also I thank every truck and driver out there because without the truck drivers, you and I would be not talking on a podcast, not sitting in a chair, not sitting inside a house that has four walls. So thank you so much to that industry. And then I guess the final thought, I'll just say is go Vols.

Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. Sorry for all the Texas people I've joked about. In my podcast, I only talk to people from three, three places. Texas, Georgia and everywhere else. But there's a lot of Tennessee in that everywhere else lately.

Speaker B: Yes, sir. Thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker A: Yeah, and thank you. No, I'll make sure I put a Link to your LinkedIn profile, link to your website, any other links you and your Go to Market team Give me. I'll put those in the show notes and what conference we see you guys at.

Speaker B: We will be at ATA is the next one that I will be at. Ah, but we will have a booth at Trimble. We'll have a whole team there. And then we will have. We'll be at ata. We'll be at the TCA in March. That's typically the main two that we go to, but there's a lot. Johnson has a full list.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen you guys at Manifest and others, so I always joke, big companies like yours get to all of them, whether they like it or not.

Speaker B: That's right. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. And thank all of you for listening my show. Your support's very much appreciated. Until next time, onward and upward. You have been listening to the Logistics of Logistics podcast where we engage with leaders in the logistics and supply chain community. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, hit the like button and leave us a nice review on Apple or Spotify or wherever else you listen. Also, please check out our videos on YouTube and, and connect with us on LinkedIn. We're very big on, uh, LinkedIn and you can also reach us on the logistics of logistics.com, our website.