Speaker 1: 0:03

Today we're diving into how AI, cleaner tech and transforming a trucking not just big rigs, but also delivery vans right down to e-bikes making their last stop On this episode of that's Delivered. I'm your host Trucking, ray, and our special guest today is Richard Savoia. He's a patent holding engineer and founder of Adionia, an AI platform optimizing routes for everyone, from fleet operators to delivery drivers. If you ever wonder how tech is reshaping a driving experience, this is the episode for you, richard, glad to have you on the show. How are you doing? Very good, ray. How are you, richard? Glad to have you on the show. How are you doing? Very good, ray. How are you All right? I wanted to be right by you and say the name of the company that you're working for there. I mean that you're making big things happen.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Adiona. Did I say that right? Yeah, adiona, as we were just joking around backstage. You know, just imagine it in an Italian accent. It really helps, adiona.

Speaker 1: 1:02

Adiona, yeah, I got to put the gesture with it.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Edeonia, Pretend you're ordering with some pasta. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:11

I love it. So, man, I mean most of the time we get things started warmed up. Here, we talk about a little bit of the backstory and some of the motivation as to where you are today I mean the CEO and engineer you're on a great journey here. You got some passion behind this with the logistics and stability. What made you get into this industry or what drove you here? What can we learn about what your dream was to start out with?

Speaker 2: 1:35

It's a weird story how we got here, because originally my background I went to school for engineering. I was making medical devices, cardiology, cardiovascular equipment totally not related to logistics at all, but a lot of manufacturing. So you know, I was working in these companies that were manufacturing hardware and shipping it globally, and all that based out of Boston initially, and now I'm in Australia. I was kind of wrapping up with one of those medical device companies and thinking about well, I think I'm ready to go and start my own venture, but I don't know what it's going to be, and any engineer that you've probably met has like a million ideas of things that they want to build, and some of them are good ideas and most of them are terrible ideas. That's fine, that's normal. So I had a lot of terrible ideas and I had a couple of good ideas and went out and started just kind of workshopping some of them. And one of them was around my sister, who is she still lives in Boston and has always worked in retail, and so the story that got me was that she was driving past three instances of the same grocery store like the same chain to get to the one that she worked at and I was like well, why don't you try and get like a transfer or something to the one that's closer to you no-transcript company? They feel like they're being looked after, and then the company benefits because they have lower recruitment costs, less turnover, less training and all that stuff from churn, from employee churn and then of turnover, less training and all that stuff that you know from churn from employee churn. And then, of course, the rest of us benefit too, because then the transport network the roads, the bus network, the train network, all that, less people on it, going less distances, less emissions. It's just like this really winning scenario.

Speaker 2: 3:38

But of course, to make a long story a little bit shorter, it didn't work For many reasons. Like we were trying to get the business up and running, we had a lot of interest and it wasn't really working. But I met my co-founder through that process and he is a PhD in optimization, so he's the real brains behind this organization and he had all this capabilities to build optimization models and was a specialist in machine learning and AI. So we got an introduction to one of the Coca-Cola bottlers here in Australia and they said oh well, you know, you guys seem to be really clever with optimization. Can you optimize all these different parts of the Coke ecosystem? You know, placing products in coolers, how do you maximize revenue, how do you minimize things being thrown away and waste and all that?

Speaker 2: 4:29

But the one that really stood out to us because of the emissions reduction component was fleet management and logistics. And they said could you apply the models and the work that you did for that previous experiment, basically the previous business that we were trying to stand up, could you apply that to trucks, to delivery trucks? And we said, well, we'll give it a try. And because we were outsiders from the industry, I think we came at it from a different angle than they'd seen before and basically we built like a custom route and optimization engine for them. And then, since 2021, we've been just building on that and commercializing it and selling it to all sorts of different companies.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Now Wow, I mean, man, that's a huge breakdown. I mean there's a lot of moving parts and how do you guys keep it all together? I mean that's a lot to consume for optimization and to be able to get those results, like you said, for a company like Coca-Cola, to get them what they need. What were some of the initial steps that you have to take?

Speaker 2: 5:29

Well, it's a great question because basically, this is where having a great team means everything right. So my co-founder he's really just so skilled in optimization and algorithm development and AI. My job really is to translate that into stuff that the real world can work with right. The gap between what he has in his head and what an allocator, a dispatcher or delivery driver is going to use in the field is quite different, you know. So really we had to think quite carefully and work with our early customers to say, well, what is it that drivers actually need? Like what makes a drivable delivery route that they want to drive versus one that's just super efficient and optimized.

Speaker 2: 6:12

Because I think a lot of the previous software and solutions over the last 20 years in this industry and trucking generally have been not great and there's lots of different reasons and that's probably something we can unpack over a beer sometime. But like the end result being that there's this big gap between what a delivery driver wants to do in the real world versus what a software will tell them and that's a beautiful application of AI to say, well, actually we can use AI to do both. We can create really efficient, beautiful solutions on paper, but we can also be looking at what drivers want to do and what dispatchers and allocators want to do and warehouse managers want to do, and then use that to then train the algorithms to provide a more humanistic result. So that was kind of the North Star guidance that we followed to say we've got all these moving parts, we've got all these variables to consider. At the end of the day, what's the best mashup of efficiency plus usability?

Speaker 1: 7:16

Nice. So you got to find the strike to balance in there and make the impact that's be most successful and save money and drive revenue. I mean that's huge. Can you just drive and describe a standout implementation? Let's say, with Coca-Cola or PepsiCo that save fuel, time and stress, or either one, just one.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Yeah, all of the above usually. But also you hinted at something too. Like you know, we're we're trying to help people save money, and by saving money they save hours, they save fuel, they can be more efficient, they can increase revenue by delivering more products in the same amount of time, or less time use less vehicles. All of those cost savings. And that's a way to sneak in also to the sustainability picture to say, well, by doing all of that, we're actually reducing the emissions that they create to do that same amount of work. We're actually reducing the emissions that they create to do that same amount of work. And then a big thing for us as well is there's a lot of companies that do want to move towards lower emissions vehicles. So either hybrids, electric, hydrogen, and we allow them to do that on the platform too.

Speaker 2: 8:18

So, kind of to double back to your question, that initial implementation that we did with Coke years ago. What really got them excited is it was just an enormous reduction in kilometers. It was 48% reduction in miles to do the same amount of work. So the amount of distance that they had to cover 48% reduction was enormous. And we all kind of didn't believe that that could be, you know, realistic until we put it to the test and got out there. And you know, realistic until we put it to the test and got out there and, and you know, rode along with the drivers and saw the reason that the models that we were creating, the software we were creating, was allowing them to really take control over the operation in a way that they hadn't before. And I remember vividly the first ride alone I did, um was with their bulk water delivery. So you know, like, like the Poland spring style, cooler water, these big bottles of water. So Coke down here owns one of those companies, the biggest one in Australia. So I go out on one of those trucks and, um, you know, just getting to know the driver and we're driving around and we're doing these deliveries and it was a long day and, you know, through the course of the day I'm talking with him about just his life and he was saying how he hadn't had a vacation in three years and the reason was because his route was so complicated that there was no casual cover driver that could do it to go on vacation.

Speaker 2: 9:41

He would just get blown up with phone calls and WhatsApp messages of people, you know trying to trying to get him to solve these problems and figure out, you know like, how to do his route. It just wasn't worth it. So, like you know, this guy's got kids. He hasn't been on a vacation in three years with his kids. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 9:57

And he's working, like you know, 12 hour days, and so that's what was so exciting when we were able to implement this solution for them and see that his total keep in mind too. These are owner operator contract drivers, right, so they're getting paid on a per piece rate. He gets paid per bottle of water that he delivers, do the same amount of work, make the same amount of money in like 30% less time, and then have the route to be so predictable and repeatable that any casual driver could come in and take over for him for a day or a week or two weeks was so cool because it just, it literally changed his life in such a positive way and so saving money, reducing emissions, driver's labs are improved. It's just, it's a win-win.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Wow, yeah, I mean think about the impact for the driver also, the customer right on down to you know that provider in that area of helping that community. So, yeah, that's a great impact. It's making great changes for many places around the world. Great job, you know, like you mentioned, you're in Australia, so bringing that same mentality from your area too can help other countries, like here in the US. So I'm glad to talk with you guys and got that going. Talk about radius routing, grouping stops nearby how does that change for drivers day to day? I mean, like you know, maybe they could do that themselves or is it something that the system can make easier for them?

Speaker 2: 11:36

You nailed it, ray. That's exactly the insight there. So radius routing is something I'm really excited about because it came from, it was an idea from our customers, especially like uh couriers, like parcel couriers. So if you're in um, you know you're in Minnesota, right, and you're you're, you got this dense grid network in in downtown and you're a parcel courier, you work for any one of the typical parcel couriers UPS, fedex, usps, whatever.

Speaker 2: 12:03

Um a routing system, typically the same type of systems that we build. It's only kind of aware of every individual drop, every individual delivery that you've got to make, right, it doesn't really know the relationship between the different deliveries. So if you've got a big mall and you've got a massive mall in uh in minneapolis, right, the routing system's probably going to take you to, like, the, the northwest corner because there's a delivery up there, and then if there's other deliveries on the one-way streets on the way to loop back around, it's going to make you do all those deliveries and then loop back around to, say, the southeast corner. Okay, do you know what I'm saying? Like no, like it's going to just take you on this trip to do all these deliveries. But any parcel car here will know that if they get a parking spot at that mall or whatever, they're going to park that one spot and they're going to smash out as much as they can do on foot with a two wheel dolly or a cart or whatever, cause who knows where they're going to get parking again that area, especially if it's like the middle of the day. So what radius routing does is we developed an AI algorithm to look at the relationship, both in distance and like if it's on the same block or you know connecting block, so that it guides them to the most likely parking location and then says cool, here are all the deliveries that you can do on foot in that area. Park once, do as many as you can on foot and then go off and do your next job, and for a courier, that's matching what they want to do, and so it's creating a world that actually suits them.

Speaker 2: 13:41

It's efficient by the numbers, just to be really clear. Maybe that's like 1% less efficient than what an algorithm would say to do. Maybe it's 2% less efficient, but it's so much more important in an instance like that to look after the driver and do what's actually practical for them than saving that extra 1% or 2% because you're going to get the long-term payoff of that driver's happy. They're happy with the work. It makes sense. The tools are helping them rather than just annoying them like it's it's. It's worth it to do that. So those are the types of little things where, again, using ai to be humanistic and and look after the people is really important yeah, it closes that gap and, like said, it makes less impact on the driver.

Speaker 1: 14:26

More human-like algorithms. I think that's what we want. I think it's. You know, you just look at one thing on the paper and then you know in reality it's a whole different picture. So I was glad to see that that's important to a company like yourself and to also those customers that you're providing it for so great. Being a driver myself and also working for a parcel company, that is a big deal. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 14:51

That's good to hear. You know it's one of those things that we're always looking for the best ideas from the people that use it. You know it's not us just sitting in a lab or in an office trying to figure this stuff out, which, you know, it's what's happening in the real world.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Nice. Any driver feedback or surprised you when you drove, or drove further updates that maybe say, hey, this is going in the right direction.

Speaker 2: 15:17

Yeah, definitely, we're always talking to drivers. It's kind of funny. We're always talking to drivers and it's it's kind of funny, Like when we're talking with a company in the early stage. It's about implementation and they're like okay, we want to do this, but how do we test that it's working and how do we know that it's going to deliver the results that we want? That's usually where it starts is let's go talk to the drivers and find out what's limiting them right now, what's annoying them right now, and oftentimes it's stuff that's not really related to, maybe, the optimization piece, but there's other things that are problematic, but we might be able to still solve that for them or improve it.

Speaker 2: 15:58

So it all starts with having those conversations, and you also might appreciate that, like you know, some people are more into technology than others. Some people are more old school and they don't want to use any technology. They just want to paper manifests and and or or no, you know, and just go out and do everything on their own and choose their own adventure, and that's fine too. So we often start with saying, okay, well, find us the people who are the most resistant to using technology, and if they're happy with the way that this technology works or everybody's going to be happy. Um, and oftentimes happy is a really interesting, you know, uh, measurement too, because it's more like if they don't hate it and complain about it constantly, that equals happy.

Speaker 2: 16:43

It's like you know what I mean If, if it's like, okay, cool, this, this technology is fine, and and and it works, then that's usually a good score. Because there's just so many things that can go wrong in the real world with traffic and weather and you know, and line halls coming in late. There's a million things that could go wrong. The last thing you want is for the technology to be another headache and another distraction. You want those people who you know, who use it, to tell you oh yeah, this actually is fine and it works and helps me get through my day faster or easier or whatever.

Speaker 1: 17:15

Yeah, I mean, if a tool in your toolbox isn't good or efficient, it typically goes to the bottom or to the back, so that's great. I mean you guys see that's important. It's nice to know that, from a leadership standpoint, an owner standpoint, that you see that it's very valuable. I mean I think that's going to resonate in how you produce your quality of tools that they can use out there. I was thinking about you recently released a report stating electrifying commercial vehicles yield out size impact. Why is EV trucking a low-hanging fruit?

Speaker 2: 17:51

Oh yeah, that's a really interesting one because we did a big data analysis on um in the um, department of transportation releases data, uh, on you know what types of vehicles fleets use and what their efficiency is. And then there's all this um voluntary reporting that they can do to the EPA so that um, you know they can be measuring what their emissions scores are. And what we found is that, you know, articulated trucks, big rigs, semis, things like that they're only 1% of the population of vehicles. So you know, for every vehicle, only one out of 100 vehicles in the US is a big rig, but they're responsible for 15% of the emissions of all vehicles. And that kind of makes sense because they're bigger of all vehicles. And that kind of makes sense because they're bigger, they burn more fuel, they run longer hours, they do more miles, you know, and so you compare those to passenger vehicles and of course, they're going to emit more.

Speaker 2: 18:49

But what we see is the focus on reducing emissions and, especially in the electrification of vehicles world, mainly the money and the attention goes to the passenger vehicles. So you know, people talk more about passenger vehicles. What if you are electrifying vehicles with Tesla or Uber robo taxis? That'll be, you know, built on the Tesla platform, be fully electric and all that it's great. But when you look at a passenger car I don't know about your car, but my car sits around doing nothing for most of the time, you know it's not running as many miles as a delivery vehicle, right? So that's where the low hanging fruit comes in, because you know the amount of emissions is so much easier to address in a vehicle that's running more miles and doing more time, and so if you can address it there, you can actually dramatically reduce the amount of emissions.

Speaker 2: 19:45

But the way to do that is very different. Electrifying a commercial delivery fleet is very, very different from just selling your Hyundai or your Ford and switching to a Tesla. It's such a bigger conversation because you need to think about electrifying the depot and charge infrastructure and all these other things. So what we're trying to help fleets do is stick with what they have. We're not anti-diesel or anything like that. It's more about, again, the long-term journey. So let's optimize what you got. Today. We can help drive some emissions reductions and that's cool.

Speaker 2: 20:21

But also our platform was one of the first in the world that has native electric vehicle routing capability, and I'll unpack that for you just for a minute, like for people who aren't in the field, it's not always obvious that the way that you would route a delivery route for an electric vehicle might be very different from the way you would route a diesel one, and the main reasons are the temperature, the um, attitude of the road, the road angle so his hilly versus flat um and the the payload, so like what's the weight that you're actually carrying, and that can vary depending on the type of deliveries that you're doing. Right, parcels versus beverages versus food versus other thing. You get a different weight profile, and so the main differences are that an electric vehicle battery will deplete much faster under a heavy load than a diesel will. Okay, you won't burn quite as much of an increase in diesel as you will deplete an EV battery under a heavy load.

Speaker 2: 21:21

Second thing is that attitude of the road piece, so some electric vehicles can't even start on a hill that's above a certain grade, and that gets much worse if they have a heavy payload.

Speaker 2: 21:33

So you got to be really careful that you're not, like you know, routing in San Francisco or something like that, where you're on a hill and then the vehicle is going to get stuck and stranded and then the temperature being the other biggest one, which is, you know, super cold versus super hot, electric vehicles aren't going to perform as well and they're going to.

Speaker 2: 21:51

The batteries are going to get depleted faster than, again, the diesel equivalent. So, having all of that in the platform so that, as companies do want to do experiments to transition to other types of vehicles like electric or hydrogen, they can do those experiments right within the same platform, they can get all the answers they need to plan it out and then they can do that with confidence. They can do it with confidence that it's going to work and they'll have a journey to do that. So we were working with some really big retailers in Australia, but also in the US too. So we are growing in the US and that's one of the key pieces is just providing the experimentation and simulation platform for them to start having those conversations and making some plans and then, obviously, once they get ready to invest some real dollars in deploying it, they know that it's going to be a success, not a failure.

Speaker 1: 22:46

Huge. I mean you got to get used to a new system and get used to new vehicles. I mean you already have them used to your platform and all they have to do is start thinking about how they can move to the EV. I mean that's great to help them with that transition process. I think that's going to be a great tool for a lot of companies to save costs. So good foresight in doing that, that's good Thanks.

Speaker 2: 23:12

Yeah, it is a bit of a build it and they will come type of strategy. You know what I mean. Sometimes you have to be a little bit ahead of the curve and then everything catches up. But then you know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 23:22

Sometimes you have to be a little bit ahead of the curve and then and then everything catches up, but then hopefully, you're in the right place to capture them and and help them when they're ready. That's what it's all about, hey man. So yeah, when you're helping people, you're, you're definitely going to make changes. Uh, because that's what we need in this world is, uh, that teamwork and helping each other out. I mean, even you just coming on the podcast too, from a whole different time zone, I think that's huge.

Speaker 2: 23:41

So I appreciate that. Thanks, ray, and honestly, you providing a platform, especially in this industry which is like so under the radar for most people. You know, one of the things I love to do is talk to kids about this stuff because they don't tend to think, you know, like oh, where does my Amazon delivery actually come from? And like how does it get to me? Right. But I think that awareness is super important to kind of like peel back that layer of the matrix and help them realize like this is a huge, huge machine that literally runs the world Supply chain, is like the operating system for the entire global economy, and yet it's just not a dinner table conversation, but I think it should be yeah, I try to talk with my wife quite a few times about it and you can see your eyes glaze over right it might do.

Speaker 2: 24:30

It's just like they're like I don't know what you're talking about, but I feel like this is this is the time in the world right where it's good to talk about these things.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Nice. So the industry shows insights You've presented at Home Delivery World Move America. There's quite a few things you do to get the word out there. What feedback or trends have stuck with you throughout those experiences?

Speaker 2: 24:57

Yeah, conferences are always really interesting, those experiences, yeah, conferences are always really interesting, move America, home Delivery World being some of the bigger ones that are focused on last mile delivery, but also just delivery generally. And then there's ones like Manifest in Las Vegas. There's lots of them out there and we're always interested to see the different ways that people are addressing the same problems. So same problems, meaning that you know it's, it's pretty kind of easy to understand that you've got raw materials that get dug up from the ground or whatever and they go to a manufacturing facility and they get turned into something and that gets shipped to a warehouse and then that gets shipped to you somehow and we all kind of know how that process works. But there's so many different angles to address different parts of that problem. And then there's this, the other thing that I really pay attention to and might be interesting for your audiences.

Speaker 2: 25:50

You know, in the software world which a lot of these conferences, right, it's a lot of software companies. There's kind of this division between either you provide an end-to-end platform that does everything, so maybe the most famous ones being like SAP and Oracle and Salesforce, right, these really massive monolithic software companies that they literally will do everything, including optimization and all sorts of stuff, right, but they're super expensive, they take a long time to configure and customize and all that. And you've got all these startups at these conferences that are kind of trying to replicate that model, but to do it better. And then you've got the total polar opposite, which is more companies like us I'd say we fit into this opposite bucket where everything we do is available as what we call an API, an application programming interface. So if you want to just optimize the sequence of a route, you could take that one little piece. If you want to use AI to mine your historical data, you can take that one little piece. If you want real-time estimated time of arrival tracking and a link for your customers to follow along with where the truck is, you can have that piece. You can have them all separately, which suits bigger organizations because they tend to have already this like massive rat's nest of software that they just want to like plug different problem solutions into. So that's what we learned and we are getting feedback at these conferences, like how are people approaching solving all of these pretty well-known problems but in very different ways, either end to end, or plugging and playing different pieces, puzzle pieces along the way.

Speaker 2: 27:28

Yeah, everybody does it a little bit differently, and of course, it's different all over the world too. You know, one of the cool things about Australia is that it's about the same size as the US geographically. Is that it's about the same size as the US geographically? So continental US you could overlay it on top of the map of Australia and they're about the same size. So we also have this problem of, well, how do you get multimodal transport and regional carrier transport all linked together for a true solution? And so those learnings are something that everybody's kind of figuring out too. It's like this disruption of it used to be more driven by these major national end-to-end carriers, but now there's this massive increase in smaller regional carriers that are then using technology to kind of link themselves all together. How is that going to play out in a future AI world? We don't know, but we're following it really closely, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:23

Wow, yeah, I mean people forget that you know the size of you know those continents or how they play a part with each other logistically. You know the miles and the fuel, the cost to get things from here to there. We don't think about it and, like you said, we expose that to get that out there and talk about it. That's huge. Any antidotes from these events or driver conversations or any aha moments that come around from starting these conversations?

Speaker 2: 28:54

Yeah, I mean, oftentimes at a conference you meet so many interesting people and some of the ones that stick with you are those human stories where you see the impact that something has made. You know, I'll give you one that's maybe also a business idea for your audience too in the electrification space, which is that there's, you know, all this great activity and we talk about EVs and things like that at the conferences and one of the things we realized from some conversations is that while it seems really attractive to invest in EVs, who's going to service them? You know they have a lot less moving parts than a combustion engine, which is great, but they also still require maintenance. They need tires, they need brakes, they need, you know, service and all that. And there's no like dealership network or service network set up around the U? S to service all these.

Speaker 2: 29:51

So we were talking with a couple of really massive companies and they were like that's the biggest limitation is they really want to invest in electrification but they don't know how to handle the service thing.

Speaker 2: 30:04

So one of them, an interesting company I can't say exactly who, but it's a name you'd know um, and they have a massive footprint around the us. They're actually building their own service and training company. So they're basically like spinning out a company that will almost be like a? Um, like a trade school for electric vehicle service technicians, and they'll obviously use it for themselves, but then they're gonna have it as a separate, wholly owned company that will then do service and maintenance for everybody else's fleets too. It was like, wow, that's, that's really cool to see that the entire game is being changed there and some companies are going to come up with entirely new businesses that they can spin out. So that was really eye-opening for me, because you know we're thinking more like oh yeah, you know, you buy the vehicle, you use the vehicle, you charge the vehicle, but the service component is such a big missing gap that it's cool to see people addressing.

Speaker 1: 31:02

Nice. Yeah, the service industry is definitely taking a hit. No-transcript and we just got to buy a new one. I mean, yeah, that's frustrating. So it's good they're planning it.

Speaker 2: 31:37

Yeah, and you know, reskilling people in an AI world, I think is so critically important and it's something that as a society, as a world, we've kind of screwed up a bunch of times.

Speaker 2: 31:48

You know, like since the original industrial revolution with the Luddites and stuff. You know, people are scared when there's a big change on the horizon and they should be because their job might be under threat. My job might be under threat, your job might be under threat. So, yeah, we all should be really cautious about how a new technology, any new technology, whether TVs or AI being the ones we're talking about, are going to impact the job market and the ability for people to feed their kids. I find that stuff to be super important and not often the top priority of big companies, right, they just don't really care oftentimes, unfortunately. So, yeah, I think having those conversations around oh cool, well, service industry that's a really good opportunity to take people who are struggling already, like you said, it's a shrinking industry. How do we actually proactively reskill those people and give them that ability to still have a trade that they can invest in that can't be replicated by AI anytime in the near future, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:49

I think that's huge. And enabling the, the bottom user, to feel empowered, that they have a future ahead of them, I think that's huge. I mean, you think about a mechanic. If they were to operate like a barbershop where they just rent the stall and they were able to have their own personal clientele. That would come back to them and they get to know that mechanic. He can also project out his future on the bottom end.

Speaker 1: 33:17

But a lot of times it gets put, like you said, a turn a grind hard to retain drivers or even employees because they're not happy. It gets turned into a grind. You know where. They're just grinding out people. So if we can just change it around, where we empower people to be more of the end user with a good result of reaping production from their hard work, you know, I think that's going to be huge. I think that's going to play out.

Speaker 1: 33:45

And you know, if there's a publicly traded company that can't make those moves, if they're able to diversify and have a privately owned company, like you said, if they have that little thing that they're trying to do to get those mechanics taught and trained to work on electric vehicles, I think that's going to be great goes. I think that's going to be great. So, um, kind of going off the subject a little bit, but yeah, I mean that's huge. I mean we, we get excited when we see people do big things. You know, um, big company changes like that. So yeah, there's also one to be scared, but also another to be excited about when we see great things happen. So, uh, champion, any company out there that wants to look out for mankind, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 34:22

So great job. I love what you said about the barbershop model too. I think that's that's really smart because, um, it's a personal relationship, you know, um, there's there's some things that you can't replicate with technology, and and just the ability to like, trust a certain person that just kind of knows what you want, um, you know, has that kind of that, that kind of relationship with you that you uh feel comfortable with with your vehicle.

Speaker 1: 34:47

That's actually really important, and I think you're right, companies should invest in disrupting traditional business models, but still keeping an eye on how to make them personal, yeah, as a company it's not just or a business-minded individual is not all about just making money, but look at what the impact you can leave behind, the footprint that you can leave behind for generations to come. I think that I mean, I always get excited about that. So when it comes to business, yeah, I love that stuff.

Speaker 2: 35:19

Yeah, me too. It's good to hear that.

Speaker 1: 35:22

Yeah, I mean, look at what you guys are doing so optimizing, making things, change. For that grind out there for the driver, like you say, you couldn't take a vacation for three years and you're able to make that change, so that's huge, thank you. So, yeah, so for the next six to 12 months, maybe what's the future look like? Do you have any partnerships or new features that are coming on the horizon?

Speaker 2: 35:58

Yeah, we're really excited about the next phase of our journey. So you know, a little tidbit that I can say right now, because it just happened last week, is that we won the Australian Startup World Cup with Pegasus Ventures, tipping in a million bucks in investment if we win, which is really exciting. So give us a little bit of positive cheering in the background, because that would be transformative for us. Transformative for us and, yeah, and the next phase of growth is I think we've done a good job of proving that this technology works well here in the Australian market.

Speaker 2: 36:33

But the Australian market is very small. It's, you know, about one 11th the size of the American market, and then if you start thinking about Canada and Mexico and Central and South America and Europe, you know there's massive markets out there that we can now deploy to. So we're really excited about starting to address that more seriously. And that's one of the reasons that we have been spending a lot of time over in the US at places like Home Delivery World and these conferences, because we want to do it right and we want to adapt it specifically for every country that we expand into, and I think that's again where there's this amazing power of AI to help you customize culturally and geographically and linguistically and all that stuff for every market that you enter into. So we're working that out right now.

Speaker 1: 37:23

Beautiful, Great job, man. Thanks for taking the time to explain that and share that, Something for us to get excited about. I think there's great things on the horizon for you guys. Keep up the great work. I think it's going to be a lot more that we can look forward to. Like I say, AI is just making things a lot more easier, accessible and something that a lot of people may not have thought about before. But now they can play into the game and make changes where there's necessary. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Richard. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 37:52

Yeah, thanks, man. I really appreciate you having me. It was really a lot of fun to talk about this stuff with you.

Speaker 1: 37:56

Yeah, stuff that's passionate to you and it means a lot coming from the heart, so I appreciate you doing that, so anybody that's interested in what's going on over there. Thank you so much for unpacking that from the AI, making things safer, cleaner and smoother for fleets, drivers' wellness too, like I said, for keeping drivers happy To our trucking audience. If you get a chance to work with tech like this, it may feel like it's getting you know, it may feel like getting a co-pilot, so it will help you avoid gridlock and it's going to also help where you can charge and keep your electric vehicles up to date and then where it counts, so let's finish the day where it's less stress. Why do we want to add more to the plate, right?

Speaker 2: 38:45

So any call of action that you want to put out there, Maybe any last words of wisdom you want to share with the audience. Just really grateful for the opportunity to talk about this stuff and if anyone is interested in not just what we do but just really about the intersection of AI and supply chain generally, really encourage them to reach out to me personally. Go to our website Our contact details are there and, again, we're just really excited about this next phase of the technology in supply chain and logistics and passionate about it. So happy to talk to anybody about it.

Speaker 1: 39:24

And do I have that right? Is there a free trial platform to take a look at?

Speaker 2: 39:28

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a great point. So anyone is welcome to go to our website and there's a free trial button.

Speaker 2: 39:35

they can get immediate access to the platform, upload data with the CSV file you know, an Excel file and start optimizing their own routes immediately and they can use that, you know for their own personal use or for commercial use and see what the impact really is, and the platform allows them to even upload their historical routes, like what they did yesterday, and then optimize it to see what the comparison would be. So it's a really powerful way to see what the results can be with your own data.

Speaker 1: 40:07

Nice. All right well, and you can also find Richard on LinkedIn. You can connect with him there and also listen to his latest on sustainability, fleet electrification and also logistics tech. So thank you for listening in, and that's another episode of that's Delivered.