Speaker 1: 0:34

Welcome back to that's Delivered. I'm your host, trucking Ray, and the show we have today is going to dive into the stories and solutions shaping the trucking industry and freight. Today we have a truly remarkable guest that's helping the trucking industry get into something that's not just coming, it's already here. It's AI and logistics, and while some folks think artificial intelligence is just for billion-dollar companies, today's guest is flipping that idea on his head. Chris Condon is the founder of AirCon AI, captain Cargo two platforms using automation and predictive analytics to change how freight is quoted, consolidated and moved. He's been in logistics for over 26 years and now is helping smaller companies compete like the big guys. We're talking real-time optimization, machine learning, human AI, network and teamwork that works together tech putting power back in the hands of independent operators. So let's get into it.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Yo Chris how you doing today. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it very much.

Speaker 1: 1:37

That's awesome, man. Yeah, so taking the time out to talk to the people, tell them about what you do. So I want to start from the beginning of your background. In freight, you've seen the industry from all sides. When did it first realize that AI was just a buzzword? But it's the real tool that could transfer logistics for you and your company.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Yeah, ai is kind of funny right. So there's lots of different networks out there, there's lots of different buzzwords and platforms and marketplace and all that kind of good stuff and obviously, with the launch of LLM a couple of years ago, it really unlocks a lot of your traditional AI or ML, if you will, which really excites me, and I see LLM being a long-term solution to be able to connect the different ecospheres that are out in the world.

Speaker 1: 2:24

Nice and maybe can you explain a little bit about what that is for a lot of listeners that don't know what LLM is.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Yeah, no worries, yeah, I'm sorry. Llm is, you know, think OpenAI, think of chat, ptt, gronk, right, where you can ask a question to the, you know, to the platform and say what color is Chris's hair? It should get it very confused. So think of those type of things. So it's a large language model. So it's basically be able to read emails, digest those emails. We take those and we digest them into our rate optimization or route optimization tools. So you think about, like, how do you consolidate with multiple forwarders? That's the rate engine or optimization or optimization, and then use ML, which is machine, machine learning, and then you can think of things like predictive analytics, right. So what is my rate going to be next month? What are? What's my what if? What if the dollar or the value of the dollar goes from whatever it is today to 10X more? What does that do in terms of capacity with the airlines, capacity with trucks? What does that do in terms of capacity with the airlines, capacity with trucks? Those type of things.

Speaker 2: 3:39

We use it today in our booking agent for air freight to predict the on-time performance of a particular carrier. So I use this scenario a lot of Milwaukee to London, right? Most freight forwarders are going to quote that over Chicago. Right, they're going to pick it up in Milwaukee, they're going to truck it to Chicago, and then there's a direct flight on a plethora of airlines Chicago to London carrier is picking up and what is the probability of them making it on time to a particular cut on the airline. We also use it to give great probability information to forwarders on hey, you quoted it over Chicago, but since the freight's ready today, you can hit tomorrow's flight out of Cincinnati. Oh and, by the way, your cost is 50% less costly, so we're maximizing the profits for the freight forwarder. So that's really where we're using. Ai is really to. It's not it is to automate things, for sure, but it's really to maximize your profits and allow that our customers to spend more time with their customers, to meet their customers where they're at.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Wow, that's amazing. I mean, how did you get started in all this with logistics? I'm seeing 26 years, is that right?

Speaker 2: 5:00

26 years in logistics. I, you know, I'm a farm boy from Wisconsin originally. My, my mom was an executive at Burlington Northern, so I kind of had a weird upbringing right. So I had the corporate life from my parents and then I also had my, you know, the farm dairy upbringing from my, my aunt and uncle and my and my grandparents and I. And when I, when I got to the age where I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do, I didn't want to, you know, use my mom's name to, you know, I wanted to create my own way, for lack of a better way.

Speaker 2: 5:32

So I fell into Tower Group International had some great mentors Bill Goodgen and Pat Walsh and from there I went to Expeditors. Expeditors was I don't know if you know what Expeditors is. It's a great company. They moved me to El Paso, texas, where I was able to build what I'm going to call a VMI program. That was basically number one in the company when I was there and that allowed me to see a lot of different insights to different corporations, from Fortune you know, fortune 10 companies to mom and pop shippers and buyers on what their needs are. And it's interesting to me is that their needs are not necessarily that different. Interesting to me is that their needs are not necessarily that different. It's just really different vocabulary and or different expectations of good and bad in terms of service.

Speaker 1: 6:21

Wow, that's nice. And from there, can you tell us a little bit about the creation of AirCon, ai and Captain Cargo? What specific problems were you seeing in quoting and consolidating process that made you say, well, we can automate this.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Well, it's been kind of a journey. So it started with the concept of after X-Fires. I went on and did my own thing. I purchased the freight forwarding company called TransTrade, ended up rebranding that to Tricon, which was then bought by Visible Supply Chain and the year after that was bought by Maersk. Right.

Speaker 2: 6:58

But the idea of AirCon came up during this particular time because I could compete on customs, I could compete on trucking, I could compete on ocean, but it was very difficult for me to compete at air freight. There's lots of different reasons for that, but the main reason is the volume and infrastructure to consolidate. If you understand air freight, you understand that putting dense cargo with voluminous cargo reduces your chargeable weight. So it doesn't really matter what the airline is charging per kilo if you can reduce your chargeable weight, right. So if you put dense with voluminous instead of, you know you can reduce that by 50% or so. And so that's where the Aircon thought began. It's like how do we help small to medium-sized freight forwarders compete at scale, right? So that's how Aircon was created. We create a platform, a quote-unquote marketplace, so freight forwarders could go in. We're building out a network of wholesalers and or third-party logistic companies that we'll support, to give the capabilities to our customers to even quote.

Speaker 2: 8:04

A lot of people think about rates as being the biggest issue, but it's really secondary if you don't have the capabilities to quote it in the first place. So, building the capabilities first, which means truckers, which means warehouses, means TSA, government regulation, not to mention, obviously, airlines that do the middle mile right so built that network and then LLM really took off right, or was really introduced with OpenAI, and it solved a problem that we had. For what we're hearing from our customers, they'll say Chris, we love your platform, we love the idea of getting rates within seconds, door to airport, door to door. I love the idea. I love the idea of consolidating with other freight forwarders that they don't know that this is my product, but we both win right. So it's collaborative. They all loved it. But I don't want to go fill out another website or another platform to get rates.

Speaker 2: 9:05

So we use the LLM or the creation of Captain Cargo was really to unlock our freight forwarders onto our platform and within the first 90 days we improved our win percentage by 40% and we improved our revenue by 2.5x in the first 90 days and a light bulb went off. It's like holy smokes. This is working for us. Can you imagine if we could sell this to the freight forwarders so their customers could read it? We could plug in our network, we could plug in their network, oh, and we can plug in maybe a secondary network. So now the freight forwarder has all the tools available, from a capacity or capability standpoint, that we can quote 24-7. Speed to market matters more than rate hands down.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Yeah, I think about that. Sometimes I said, man, they really saw how data is valuable. But I think after a while time is going to surpass data because you can't get it back. It's going to be the true currency of time.

Speaker 2: 10:13

I think you nailed it on the head Time and data are the two, and I also think it's kind of like you know, knowledge versus wisdom, right, it's like you can have all the data in the world, but if you don't have the wisdom on how to use it, it's just data right, that's right.

Speaker 2: 10:28

And the timing of that. You know what's important at this time, like you know Timing of that, what's important at this time. Like that scenario I talked about using the Milwaukee to London there's summer schedules out there for flights or maybe the airport which Chicago has a lot of issues in terms of, I'm going to say, delays or wait times and whatnot. So, yeah, you might be quoting it over Chicago, but the trucker is going to charge you, you know, two or three hours wait time, which offsets any other benefits that you may have, possibly Right.

Speaker 2: 11:01

Um, and it's impossible for any one person to really know what's all out there. Like how many trucks are in the U S? Um, how many million different companies are in the U S? Right? There's there's millions of right and I think the average is five trucks per per company. I think is the average Um, ocean's relatively simple right, there's 20 to 25 different steamship lines out there. Um, there's millions of truckers out there. Um, there's about a thousand airlines globally. Uh, which is also kind of interesting too, like how, how can any one person really know what is the best solution and the best price in terms of all the truckers and all the airlines? So that's where we come in is how do we anchor that all together?

Speaker 1: 11:47

And that's a huge optic that the little guy can really look into and really help them to optimize price and control their revenue. That's amazing.

Speaker 2: 11:59

We think so we're pretty excited about it. We just closed our funding round in May, so we're off to the races and we're trying to connect all these things into this for lack of a better word anchor sphere, because we're not just a marketplace, we're not just an AI, but the AI is really what unlocks it, so you as an individual can be productive in meeting your customers' needs. That's really our vision.

Speaker 1: 12:30

Yeah, so let's talk about the AI revolution in freight. What does it actually look like on a day-to-day basis? Wow, an AI agent and an AI co-pilot. There's lots of co-pilots out there that really automate, or, if you think about it more of a kind of a I want to call scraper and OCR, right.

Speaker 2: 13:00

So it takes a document or a spreadsheet, it scrapes it and then inputs it into your ERP or your TMS or whatever system you want to call that whatnot or whatever system you want to call that whatnot. It will then take that, whatever your engine is, and produce an output, and then LLM or AI will actually respond to that. So I see a trucker, for example, be able to say, hey, I'm available in New York at this time tomorrow, and it will then meet it up with the loads based on your requirements and or or the truckers wish list. If you will say, hey, I got these. I, I predict I'm going to have these five loads, um to mail tomorrow. Which ones do you want? Or which ones do you want to bid on? Right, depending if you think of a load board or those type of things.

Speaker 2: 13:47

So I see email being the the use with the use, with the use of LLM AI, to be able to communicate back and forth. So people can work on their phone, right, so they have to worry about APIs, they don't have to worry about EDI, you know, sending a file or going to a web portal right To say, hey, what I'm thinking like a load board, right when hey I'm, you know, for these independents of, hey, where are we going to be? I'm going to be in Milwaukee tomorrow. Um, here's all my requirements and here's the loads types that I want and it'll it'll predict. Okay, here's, here's what you need to have. Here's on this one or that one.

Speaker 1: 14:26

That's amazing. That's going to save a lot of time. It's going to save a lot of time. It's going to help a lot of people out there that are just grinding it to kind of put those pieces of the puzzle together themselves. They can kind of do it right there. So nice, Nice job.

Speaker 2: 14:38

I appreciate that. I think the real benefit is again when you're selling. Obviously, as a trucker, you're selling it to people that are looking for those loads. The real value in my mind is that person that sources those loads. Now they have time to really understand what the requirements are. Right, is it time? Is it cost? Is it you know how much fuel they use? Right, whatever's important to that buyer. They can have more time to do what things are important to them, not matching who needs to be with what to meet those requirements, okay.

Speaker 1: 15:14

And so I'm thinking about the future. What do you see that kind of evolving to for a lot of companies or drivers?

Speaker 2: 15:25

Huh, yeah, From a driver standpoint, I might want to put a stick in that for a second, because I don't think for them it changes from a driver so much, with the exception of maybe they don't have the paperwork right, Maybe they have a tablet or a phone that takes pictures of PODs. I always kind of laugh when people say, hey, I need 48 hours to give you a POD 2025, you need 48 hours to bill me with the POD. Come on, that's just a. That's a scam, right.

Speaker 2: 15:54

But I do see the industry changing in terms of how they do quote unquote brokers, right. When you think of companies that are your traditional brokers. How do you maximize that load for the carrier? Right, Partial loads to LTL, and I guess maybe that's where I see most of it is the LTL side of it. Right Is hey, I got these 10 shipments out of Chicago that need to get to Dallas, right, Pick them up at. You know I'm gonna say yellow because we know yellow is no longer available. Pick up from yellow's dock and move it to roadway's dock in Dallas, right, and it's an independent carrier or asset that moves that and the tech controls that and consolidates to maximize backhauls and or whatnot. So drivers aren't driving. You know a thousand miles to get a load.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Gotcha. Yeah, that'll definitely save costs for the end user where shipping can be more affordable. I like that. So, man, it just kind of eases the fears People like to clickbait. They like to get people nervous when they hear AI because they're thinking that it's going to replace jobs. But you've said it's enhanced the human role. How do you see humans and AI working together in freight without pushing people out?

Speaker 2: 17:19

Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting I see people being an integral part of that. Touch on again what is important to this particular shipment, what is important to this particular company. What is important to this particular company? Right, when people talk about culture. Right, if you're, if you're in the automotive industry, you can't fail. Right, if the cost of not being on time far outweighs, you know, putting a team driver on it. Or or chartering a plane many times Right, chartering a plane many times right. So those things are more. It's more important there. Or medical, right? Hey, I need to have this medicine delivered at this time, right.

Speaker 2: 17:58

So I think the data that we collect and then matching the best party with the assets, that's where the magic happens with AI. But AI is only good as what the people feed it, right? So if you're thinking about, like, from an air con perspective, is we have three options, right, we have the cheapest, we have the fastest and then the most value, right, the most value, well, what is that? Right? Like, my value and your value is two different things in terms of what we think of that right, but each customer has a different value. So, like I use an example all the time of, let's say, dallas to Joburg, south Africa, and we flew it over London, which 29% of all freight out of the US goes over London. So this isn't a trade secret of any kind. But let's say it misses its connecting flight out of London and the next available flight on that airline that we picked isn't for three days. But we can reroute it on to, let's say, british Airways that has lots of flights out of London to Joburg, but it's going to cost an extra 10 grand. Well, as a freight forwarder, that's a hard conversation if I need to do it at 3 am in the morning to make that next cut. So one of our AI what does is okay.

Speaker 2: 19:18

Here's all your solutions. Here's what it'll cost you for your solutions. Hey, mr Buyer in Joburg, sorry I missed your flight. There was a flat tire or engine blew out, whatever the logic is. Here's your solution.

Speaker 2: 19:33

Which one do you, buyer, do you want? Do you need it there by tomorrow? I can put it on a BA flight in the next three hours and get it to you, or it's rebooked on the Virgin flight, which is three days from now, and if it's in the automotive world, it's very possible that it's worth the $10,000 to get there today or not, right and leave it as is, and life is good, but we're giving the information back to the buyer or the person that ultimately needs or is buying the product, right, what is their need and expectations for that shipment? That also means like hey, if I don't need it there in the next three to five days, I need it there in the next seven to 15 days. Maybe I'm pricing out on a carrier flight UPS, dhl, fedex, type right that we know the cargo isn't first priority, so it may get bumped, but hey, it's okay because I only need it there faster than ocean, right, as a buyer. So price isn't always the issue, it's what's the requirement, and that is known by talking to your customers, right, Knowing what their needs are, understanding their expectations, and AI helps you with data to be able to have that conversation.

Speaker 1: 20:51

That's amazing. It gives a big picture about all the moving parts. Like you said, you touch on a lot of different industries. You can see a lot of different things. Because you've been around the industry for so long, you can see that and understand that, and now you're able to pass it on to the guy like myself that has maybe not be able to see all those moving parts.

Speaker 2: 21:12

He's busy podcasting, so I'm not, I'm not sure which which swim lane is better, but uh, I do enjoy talking about it for sure.

Speaker 1: 21:22

That's awesome. Yeah, that's really great. Um, yeah, Also, there's some real time decision-making that you're talking about. There's a huge leap for companies using this. So, uh, reaching these markets. You know how does AI give operators, especially smaller ones, the edge when it comes to this moving fast, you know, not losing time and when rates are unpredictable, or you're you know for, also for your platform, Captain Cargo or Aircon AI.

Speaker 2: 21:55

Yeah, I think that's an interesting question because I think it's multifaceted. When you think about AI, it's happening. I'm talking to the largest freight forwarders in the world, talking about from a pitch standpoint. Hey, would you guys want this and lead this? Um? Three of the top five, um largest freight forwarders in the world told me, chris, you're doing exactly what needs to be done. We're just doing it ourselves because we're on our own ecosystem our own, we have enough volume, we have enough money. Um, we're going to build it ourselves, and so everyone else.

Speaker 2: 22:31

This is where we come in. Like, how do we help the smaller, medium-sized freight forwarder, even a larger one? When I say larger, it's multi. You know, $10, $15, $20 billion. How do we leverage that? So we maximize capacity with the airline, because once that airline flies, that capacity is out of the market. So how do we do that?

Speaker 2: 22:54

And that's where AirCon comes into play. We are connecting these two, but not competing against the two. Right, if that makes sense, we're trying to leverage the freight forwarder as the main person or main identity that has really the control with the buyer or shipper. Right, not the airline. Right, so, not the airline and, to be fair, not the trucker. Right, because we want to maximize the capacity, we want to maximize the rate, we want the trucker to make money, we want the airline to make money and we want the freight forwarder to make money. But we don't just want to take, we're trying to leverage and make, hey, what's the best possible solution?

Speaker 2: 23:36

And the scenario that I talk a lot about is Aircon. Aircon has our IATA. We have the ability to book cargo. In fact, we book a ton of cargo Well, more than a ton. We do about 200 to 300 tons a month currently that we're booking on airlines today and we're considered sometimes a co-loader or a consolidator or a wholesaler whatever that term you want to use there. Well, there's competitors out there, right? There's AMI, there's AWA, there's UAC, there's Shipco, aircon. Really, what we're trying to do is leverage those two together, all of them together. And hey, who has the best rate as a buyer from Dallas to Sydney? Well, that may be Aircon, that may be AMI, that may be Shipco, that may be AWA, don't care, because we want to leverage and make sure the freight forwarder is making as much money and exceeding their customers' expectations, right? So it's a fundamental shift in terms of how people think in the industry versus they're a competitor, they're a wholesaler, they're the first mile, they're the trucker. Right, how do we bring that all together? And that's AeroCon Nice.

Speaker 1: 24:43

What's one of your biggest missions? To bridge and gap the gap for smaller players, for independent forwarders. How exactly does your tech help them complete the global?

Speaker 2: 24:54

A couple of different ways. One is is you don't have to be in a. You know we can partner and again, we can move it on our IATA If the moving the moving other cargo air con has the ability to do that either through air con, through a network, wholesale. So we're unlocking that for the small to medium-sized freight forwarder who has a relationship with the buyer. So we strongly believe that people do business with people and as long as everything is relatively the same in terms of price, people will always choose someone they trust, someone that knows has their back when they you know they have a problem. My freight's stuck in London. I need it here, you know, in six hours because my line's down situation. Someone that shows empathy in terms of I got it, here's all your solutions. Oh, by the way, it's going to cost you $10,000 more to have that honest conversation is so powerful in this space.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Yeah, yeah, because it affects their company, their brand, the customers that they deal with. I mean it's a huge web that they're involved in and so that conversation is going to be felt not just between the two. I mean that's a lot of trust, like you said, it's huge in in the industry, in the trucking industry, when you know I feel that as a driver, you know when I have responsibility, uh, when I'm out there on the road and around all these other drivers, that's my, my duty to to be a guardian of the road, not to take it lightly.

Speaker 2: 26:27

So I told you what you're saying absolutely, and and and I think a lot of these texts with. Again, what kind of separates aircon from everybody else and or most most other brady else, is the fact that we are, we live it, right. So I'm a freight forward at heart. I move, you know, lots of air freight. Earl wakefield, one of our co-founders, lived it right. He was a gateway manager, uh, for many years. Out of dallas.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Our cto, dennis um has been writing ml, or predictive analytics, for 15 years, right, um, he could predict the next uh pitch an mlb baseball game in a 95 accuracy and this is before the whole, you know, beating on the drum standpoint, right, um.

Speaker 2: 27:11

So we live it, we know it, and I'll give you examples.

Speaker 2: 27:14

You know there's airports that you know are trying to do this appointment setter setting thing at the at the ground handlers, right, well, what they don't think of is that these freight forwarders, for a lot of times, will use two or three drivers or trucking companies, and so that one trucking company might have five or six freight forwarders that they need to pick up at American Airlines today. But the system was designed for one forwarder, one shipment, one driver, right, but the reality is it's one driver, 10 or 15 different pickups to maximize that driver's time and that company's assets, if you will right, because you don't want to go to the same place 10 times in a day. You want to go to American Airlines once. I want to go to BA once. I want to go to China Airlines once. Right, and so, as someone that came from the freight forwarder, we understand the challenges that freight forwarders run into and that's the problem we're solving trying to solve that freight forwarders run into, and that's the problem we're solving, trying to solve man.

Speaker 1: 28:17

so you've introduced the concept of gateway as a service. That's something new. Can you explain what that means as how it might apply to beyond air freight or into ground logistics and regional trucking networks?

Speaker 2: 28:31

Yeah. So I kind of split into two different things import-export. So on the export side, gateway as an air freight is considered a. It's a warehouse where we consolidate or build ULDs. Right, we got to screen the cargo, we maximize the what we call the pallet, which you know takes basically six standardized 40 by 48 pallets, and we build it up, we wrap it. You may see these when you're in the airline. They usually have nets on them, those things. So that's what a gateway does.

Speaker 2: 29:02

But the real benefit is that, again, you're maximizing the consolidation but you're also doing that negotiation with the vendor or the asset person versus the customer, the buyer, right. So the freight forwarder, we, we believe that there's there's two distinct skill sets. One is to make sure your customers are happy and one is making sure your vendors are are are happy, honest and meeting the expectations you need to make your customer happy. And those are two different skill sets, vocabularies, mindsets, and so we are taking really that back office logic of hey, how do we manage and leverage airlines, whatnot? So the freight forwarder can make more money or retain its customers by meeting their expectations but, more importantly, by being able to deliver on what they say they can deliver.

Speaker 1: 30:04

Wow, let's take a second. You know data and using it and trusting AI, especially with your platform. How do you help people see that you know that time sensitive or touching the information with. They're kind of maybe weary about AI systems making decisions. How do you help them feel at ease with that?

Speaker 2: 30:23

So we have. So we're just starting with, we're starting with a quoting agent on the air export and air import side of things. So what we've done to help ease is hey, we don't have to respond to your customer right away, right, your customer doesn't know it's us, they believe it's you right, we're responding as you right. But to ease your pain or ease your fear is, we'll set it up the first 30, 60 days or however long you want to do. It is we'll just respond to your ops team or your quote team right until you feel comfortable with our responses. To then go to your customers, we have an admin board that tells you your win percentages, um, it tells you your, your lanes. You're winning at lanes, you're not at. Um.

Speaker 2: 31:06

We will, in time, be able to give you market uh analytics. Um, if you think of the CNS IATA data that you get, it's really airport to airport. It doesn't really say door to airport type information Like, if you look at some of those data, it shows Anchorage, alaska, is the largest airport in the US for freight and obviously it's not Obviously it's a place where people or airlines land and or take off for refueling purposes right from a trans-Pacific standpoint. But we would like to give that data on Joburg, wherever they you know they're looking to move, their manufacturing or their source for their cargo is, we will be able to give you the AI will be able to give you, hey, here's kind of predictive analytics on capacity rate, on-time performance out of those regions. Because, again, it's not like a trucker right where I can say, hey, your route was Chicago to Dallas. I know you have some, some, some regulatorial things where you gotta can't rest today or you need to rest today, so why don't you pick it up tomorrow?

Speaker 2: 32:28

The airlines are gone, right, it's, you know, they're scheduled at four o'clock, they're leaving at four o'clockclock. That capacity is out of the market. Um, I can't ask a driver to wait 30 minutes. I can't ask, you know, the airline to wait for me, and that create creates, uh, what I call leakage or unnecessary cost, right, um, where we can maximize that again. So maybe it's vendor a or customer a or customer b that, hey, I don't need it on this next flight, but if, if you have space, put it on, great right. So it's a win for the win for the airline, it's a win for the freight forwarder, it's a win for um, everybody involved, because we maximize that capacity, right, we? We as much as we possibly could, and that's where it goes, where we're not competing against each other, right.

Speaker 2: 33:14

So it's not American Airlines against British Airlines or Swift versus Knight which, yes, I know they're the same, but it's not UPS versus FedEx, it's not DHL. It's what's best for the buyer, and I think that's fundamentally different what we're doing, what everybody else is doing, where they're creating tools for things that you already have or what you own. So, if you look at our quote-unquote competitors out there, it's built for their network, like who is their agent in London? Who is their agent in Dallas? Who is their trucker in Dallas? Who is their trucker in Dallas? Who is their trucker in Chicago?

Speaker 2: 33:59

What we're trying to do, or what we're building, is hey, great, you have, you know, you have Yellow in Chicago. You know Yellow's charging, their on-time performance is only 72%, where FedEx or UPS is 98% on-time, but they charge you a little bit more. So here's more data, here's more information. Mr Freight Forwarder or Mrs Freight Forwarder, what do you want to do to best beat your customer? And that's how AI is used From a data standpoint. It's used to allow you to make better decisions to either maximize your on-time performance, your KPIs for your, for your customer, or maximize your profits.

Speaker 1: 34:40

I don't know why, but I keep, when you're you're talking, I think, about golf. You know meeting at tee time and you know you gotta some. Some golfers are right-handed, you know they're different height. You know, if you buy just a standard golf clubs, you know your, your pitch and your angle, um, trying to get that ball in the air, uh, just the right way. I mean, man, that's, uh, it's a lot of things to think about, a lot of decisions to put in play, and people have been doing it for years. And you go out there and you're you're trying to hit your, your ball and there's a team behind you waiting and they're trying to get get going. I mean, man, yeah, that's a lot of moving parts, um, that a lot of people don't see when they, when you pass a golf course, you don't see all those moving parts yes, I think that's a great way to say it.

Speaker 2: 35:22

Like to give you an idea, there's 14 different companies and or departments or people that touch every air freight shipment, from the quote to delivery. 14 different organizations, slash companies, slash people, touch that or have something to do with those shipments. So you think about the fragmentation that happens from again, the $5 to $10 million trucks that are around the US to the government regulatorial things that you have to comply with, to the airlines. What is their schedule? It's complex and they all are trying to keep everything by themselves. So that's why we're trying to create this anchor sphere that brings it all together. And I love the golf analogy. That is fantastic. I love that. That's probably why I drink so much beer when I golf is that I can't hit the damn ball.

Speaker 1: 36:15

Hey, that's another cool part about golfing too. It's multi-class, that's right. Yeah, so that's amazing, you know, and so you get to see a lot of different things, and I really hope that it's a successful launch and getting this out to everybody and so they can use it as much as possible. So I appreciate you coming to talk on this. You know, one thing also is, when you think about the market and how volatile it's been lately, you know real fluid. How does your platform adapt? Can AI really keep up with the shifting freight rates capacity that you have to do, you have to crunch it. You know it's some loads that have to go. What about that chaos have you seen? You know, post-2020?.

Speaker 2: 36:59

Yeah, what's kind of interesting is, I think the chaos is just part of the game, right, particularly from a rate perspective. There hasn't been anything that has surprised me in terms of rates. That has surprised me in terms of rates and I think of trucking right, when the pandemic hit, you know people, maybe I'll say it a different way we don't have a rate issue. We either have a capacity issue or a paying issue, right? Is there's enough resources out there to drive trucks around the US if we want to pay for it? Right? The pandemic is a perfect example of that is how many companies were started during the pandemic when the rates were just off the charts, right? I mean, I don't even know what the average rate per mile was, but it was expensive, right. Probably 3 to 4x what it is today, maybe even 5x, right, in a lot of cases. And that's really how do we? Where the AI comes in is how do we predict some of these things in real? And when I say predict the next three days, the next seven days, and that comes just more data and sharing of that data, right, and then what changes that? Right, what kind of disruption Is it? A disruption in the ocean? The disruption in the economy. Is it a disruption in the economy? Is it the? Is it the economy in terms of the dollar valuation? So is it for us?

Speaker 2: 38:20

Obviously, I think a lot of the export international piece of it, import, export side of it. So I think about okay, well, where are they buying it from? Um, but the trucking side of it is is is always kind of interesting to me, because if we want to pay for it, because we want on-time delivery or whatnot, we can get people to do it right. But it's when we don't want to pay for it and then we switch as a consumer base hey, we want it cheaper. Well, now it becomes more about the rate per mile or rate per unit and whatnot, and the JIT portion. I'm sorry if I'm rambling here, but I think all these things tie into the rates right, as we have concepts of we just want inventory JIT, right, which means we've got to have more reliability in our supply chain, which means we're okay paying a little bit more for these routes because we want to make sure the driver's taken care of every single time home, when their home time's important to them and excuse me my ignorance, but whatever else is important to that driver's life is how do we get the best fit, the best driver with the best route right? Because, again, these five or six things are important to me.

Speaker 2: 39:37

I only want to work three or four days out of the week. I want to be home three or four days out of the week. Okay, so that's this route. Well, maybe one customer doesn't have all that freight to keep that driver occupied and or efficient enough, so the company can make money, driver can make money and, more importantly, the buyer is meeting or exceeding that expectation, so we can continue that route right. And that's where I think AI really comes into play is okay, how do we have A to B, a to B, and then how do we have C to D? That may be three or four different buyers, but how do we connect that through tech right, so it's a win-win for everybody involved. That's really the when I think of AirCon, that's really what I think about is is how does a win for everybody that's involved, how does it benefit or add value, win for everybody that's involved, how does it benefit or add value to whatever they're doing?

Speaker 1: 40:37

Wow, yeah, I can see that. No, thank you, that's amazing. I think, uh, I think that's so important. I mean, on time delivery was the main thing back in the days, but it's not as much anymore. Like you said, it's up to that individual that it's important to and what their needs are and what their desires and what they're trying to accomplish, and so we can hone in on that with AI, you know. So that's amazing. Great job, guys. Keeping up man On the flip side. You know what's one myth you know flip it for about AI or in logistics that drives you crazy that some people totally misunderstand. Maybe we can clear some of that up right now.

Speaker 2: 41:16

That 99% of the people that say their AI is not. It just pisses me off. Like, oh, I'm an AI. It's like dude, you're scraping. All you're doing is scraping data and putting it in. Yeah, you're automating. But that's not real In my mind and I'm sure in some world it is. But there's so many companies out there saying they're doing this or they're doing that, and then we go look into them. It's like, really Like, okay, you're a tool, like I mean that no, I shouldn't say that that sounded bad. You're a tool. You're trying to solve a problem with a tool. You're not. Yeah, so you get. Why. I didn't want to say it that way, but it's, it's really a tool, and a lot of them is.

Speaker 2: 41:59

Is what I say is a? It's kind of like the, the structure, abc, abc type structure in terms of hey, I have a shipment, what do I do? Right, so it's very textbook, right, okay, go get a quote. Hey, some MBA person said go get three quotes because that's the best way to get your, your rates down, which there's some truth to that, but more myth than truth. Best way to get your rate down. Okay, then you put it into this system, then you do this. Oh, then you got to create a commercial.

Speaker 2: 42:29

Whatever the process is, it's very good at automating it once you have the shipment, but nobody does the art of the deal, if you will, or art of getting the business or winning the business, and nobody is really doing the exception part of it, right, there's some visibility tools out there that says, hey, your container's stuck in LA, who cares? Right, just because I know where it's at, it doesn't give me any value. My value is okay, it's stuck in London. Okay, now what? Right? What are my options? Because something went wrong and something always goes wrong in logistics, especially when it's hot, especially when you know I need it here and you know my line's down situation. Stuff always happens, right, because, again, there's 14 different people involved in an air freight shipment, right, so a lot of things have to go right, and so when one of those things go wrong, it's a ripple effect of downstream issues, right, and that's where we really want to live. Right, obviously, we're dealing the booking side of it, right Booking with the trucker, booking with the airline, booking you know, notifying ASNs and all that kind of good stuff.

Speaker 2: 43:43

But the real magic is on the front and the back end of those of the transaction. How do I win it? What are my options? What are my routes? Hey, buyer, what's important to you? And then the third agent that we have, which is our exception agent, is okay, I got visibility and here's your options to help fix your problem.

Speaker 2: 44:05

If it is a problem, it may not be a problem, but if it is a problem, how do you fix it? Right, and that's where I think most people or most companies that say, hey, we have an AI for logistics or AI for transportation or whatever term we want in there, they just don't get it. They're doing a piece of it. They're not getting that thing. That really kind of pisses me off, because when we're selling our services to customers, oh, I need to get two or three other customers out there. Okay, go ahead, there isn't any right? And I've looked at all of them, right? So, in fact, I want to use, I use half of them that you're talking to, right? So, because our one agent has 25 agents underneath it that are supporting the courting agent, right? So that's my biggest. I don't know the thing that irritates me the most.

Speaker 1: 44:53

Yeah, I hope that that gets clarified. You know, you think about, you know the misconceptions that are out there. A lot of times it's social media or something else that's putting it out there just so that people can click on it, but that's real time talk right there. I mean that's putting people right in the action so that people can click on it, but that's real-time talk right there. I mean that's putting people right in the action so that they can see that there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than just when you say I do AI or I have AI, so it makes sense. I totally get it.

Speaker 2: 45:18

The challenge with that is all the marketing side of it and all the you know think of. Like LinkedIn or other social media. You know how your posts get promoted is an original thought, right? So if you're trying to do something that's original, it doesn't get caught and you know it doesn't do the you know go viral if you will which is a challenge in that messaging standpoint, but I like your golf one.

Speaker 2: 45:40

I'm going to give that to my marketing team and say hey, what if we're like? Think of it like a golf, a country club or a golf, whatever right, and see how they run.

Speaker 1: 45:50

Wow, I like that. Yeah, so you know thinking about things, we like to keep it actionable. What's one simple first step that someone can take? If they're listening to this podcast and you know they're thinking about things, they're trying to brainstorm something that they could do this week that could start keeping their freight operation modernizing, even if they're not tech people.

Speaker 2: 46:14

Yeah, they go to airconaicom and, of course, we can do a demo, we can show it, we can have you up and running relatively quick on the air side of it. Soon will be airconai. We are consolidating our captain cargo and an aircon into a anchor sphere, if you will. Um, because part of that, part of part of our marketing is really to identify or to explain what we're actually building, because it's not just just, like I said earlier, like everybody else, um, so, yeah, or you can reach me at sales at airconaicom. Would love to chat with you.

Speaker 1: 46:53

Yeah, I mean I feel your pain on that one, because getting an idea into someone's mind is probably it can be difficult, sometimes it's easy. But from a new idea standpoint, it has to give birth into the mind and has to actually grow and otherwise something else can take it away. People's attention goes elsewhere. I mean that's it can be a challenge nowadays because there's so much information flooding people, but yet those ideas are important for us to grow and to learn.

Speaker 2: 47:26

And identify what's what. Like, we've interviewed someone. Uh, you know we're hired. We hire engineers, obviously, and, um, I had, uh, one of the engineers who could clearly say, or or see that they were interviewing and listen to AI and they were telling, you know, the AI was telling them what the uh to say until you got to technical stuff to say, until you got to technical stuff, and I was like, oh, I don't know how to do this stuff. There's a lot of weird stuff out there. Um, people are trying to take advantage of it. A lot of competing priorities, to your point. Um, but we're here to help.

Speaker 1: 47:55

Wow, the real deal. I mean I love that you guys reached out, be on the show and I hope the more people can also understand that, hey, there's a lot more to logistics out there. You just got to be able to willing to give it a try, like you said, just reach out to you guys and get you set up to be a game player. You know, and they got great guys like yourself out there that are working hard at it. Man, you're like I said, you know you're a great individual doing great things out there. You know Minnesota and Wisconsin, britain and America yeah, and Wisconsin, america yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:29

Go, Pat go. But I do love Aaron Jones. So just for the record, he's an El Paso kid right. So a lot of love for Aaron, and so I root for Minnesota too.

Speaker 1: 48:40

Nice, nice. Yeah, we, we need some love over here. Man, minnesota just loves to get you worked up. And then, all of a sudden, what happened?

Speaker 2: 48:49

Right, what happened. Very true, man. I appreciate you very much and, yeah, I'm looking forward to the NFL season starting here in a couple months, right so? And trying to hang out with the family, which I really enjoy.

Speaker 1: 49:08

Yeah, time goes by so fast. Oh it, it's crazy, especially when you're working so hard. Uh, keep everything moving. I mean I can't imagine every week, the week, what it's like for yourself there.

Speaker 2: 49:15

I mean, what is it like to be you?

Speaker 1: 49:16

sometimes you know what do you all right it's uh, the brain doesn't shut off.

Speaker 2: 49:20

That's kind of the uh front of the challenges. You're always thinking about okay, well, what if? And and part of the challenge is you're always thinking about, okay, well, what if? And part of being a startup is to be able to hone that in and to okay, here is what track we're on, and we're going to stay on this track until our customers tell us, hey, we're on the wrong track. We're going to continue down this path.

Speaker 1: 49:38

Yeah, just real quick. What's the code of conduct? You got behind you, I like that Buffalo culture.

Speaker 2: 49:43

So I don't know if you know much about buffalo culture, but yeah, I'd love to. You can click on that or you can Google that. But really it's about protecting the herd. It's about hey, we're okay with conflict as long as it's what's best for the company. We protect each other, we pull the luck and it's really everything about buffalo just how they, which I think is a beautiful creature how they just live.

Speaker 1: 50:16

that's really what we want to live here at AirCon. Hey, I like that. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I have to check it out, man, I have to be honest. Yeah, that was new for me.

Speaker 2: 50:24

So, yeah, I'll check it out. We always find a way we head towards a storm, right, or some of the, the, the sound bites, if you will, that I really enjoy, right. It's like, hey, we got a problem, we're trying to solve a problem that's massive, we're heading into the storm together, right, um and uh, we're it with all about what's best for us, what's not necessarily best for the individual great job.

Speaker 1: 50:43

well, chris, I really appreciate you being on the show. Um, we'll break it down for everyone here. You know, everyone knows how to reach out to you guys. So if there's a way that you're applying AI that doesn't work or, like you said, isn't just smart, it's about learning to be empowering AI. It's actually giving options that work. So you're giving small and mid-sized and even large companies the tools that they may need to fight above their weight class, so that's something that we all can respect. So thank you for doing that and for anyone that's listening out there, please check out Aircon AI, captain Cargo, and especially if you want to take the guesswork out of the grunt work and the delays out of your quoting and consolidation game. So a lot of great information here, and there's more yet if you peer into it. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 2: 51:39

I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 51:41

All right, thank you. So this is the future of freight, and it's more accessible than you think. Until next time. This is that's Delivered. Stay sharp, stay safe and keep driving the industry forward.