Name: The 2025 EOY Parcel Roast: Where Shipping Strategies Get Served (Extra Crispy)
Uploaded: 2025-11-17T23:32:13.725Z
Duration: 1 h 2 min 40 s
Description: The 2025 EOY Parcel Roast: Where Shipping Strategies Get Served (Extra Crispy)

Transcript for "The 2025 EOY Parcel Roast: Where Shipping Strategies Get Served (Extra Crispy)": Alright. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining today's webinar, the twenty twenty five end of year parcel roast. My name is Taylor Puelka, and I'll be your host today. I'm the VP of marketing alliances at ProShip. Before we get into the meat and potatoes and before we get into our speakers, a couple housekeeping items. So, we are streaming on two places today. We have the webinar platform. If you're on the webinar platform, there is a q and a box. If you think of anything, submit it. We will get to those at the end of the session. There's also a docs tab in case you wanna download some of the really great links that are in there. We're also streaming on LinkedIn Live. So if you're joining us there, there is a chat function that you can chat us if you think of something, if you agree, if you disagree, if you forgot to submit a strategy. Please do so, and again, we'll get to those at the end of today. Lastly, just a quick disclaimer. So we have anonymized submissions because this isn't a roast of people. It's a roast of strategies. So if you see something familiar, don't worry. We're laughing with you mostly. You might see your strategy pop up in a couple different places or woven into multiple examples, but we're keeping everything anonymous as possible. The goal today is to have fun, share insights, and learn together. So without further ado, let's get to our panelists. These guys are the Gordon Ramses of logistics, in my opinion. They've seen every flavor of shipping disaster, and today, they're ready to flambe some bad strategies. So, Justin, do you wanna kick us off with an intro? Sure. Sure. Many of you already know me, but, for those of you who don't, I'm cofounder of ProShip, which means I've been in the logistics industry for over twenty five years now. In that time, I've had the privilege of working on, over 300 individual customers, as either, selling, architecting, implementing, you know, so on and so forth. Those processes have allowed me to work with single companies that just have a single location all the way up to companies that have have, been shipping across four continents. Customer security, just a few package a day all the way up to customers who have hit over 3,000,000 packages per day. So I've been pretty lucky, with my exposure in the industry. Great. Hello, Thank you, Michael. Yeah. Hello, everyone. I'm Michael Falls, chief customer officer at Reveal. Our company is a shipping intelligence software solution. So that includes everything from analytics to audit to carrier contract strategy and beyond. Over the last decade plus, I've worked with hundreds of shippers, every shape, size, and and vertical. And, I've seen a lot. I've done a lot, but this is definitely my first time sitting on, a roast day. So excited to be here today. Thanks for having me. Happy to have you, Jamie. I'm Jamin Dick, and I lead JDick Advisory. I've been, working with brands and retailers to serve their customers via, direct to consumer ecommerce businesses for the better part of the last twenty five years. Now I work with up and coming businesses to do the same thing and help them figure out how not to make the mistakes we're gonna talk about today. So I think we're gonna have some fun. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Alright. With the disclaimers out of the way, the intro's out of the way, let's turn up the heat. Grab your popcorn. Grab your cocktail. It is happy hour because we're gonna dive into the roast now. So let's begin with probably that was, like, the biggest group of submissions that we got, where these people, these shippers were very, very much loyal to a single carrier. And this could be for a variety of reasons, but excuses aside, they always seem to assume that their carrier reps have good intentions. So panelists, how have you seen this play out in real life? Let's start with you, Justin. Yeah. So, my first job as a kid was on a on a car car lot. We sold new and used cars, and I just can't help but when I when I hear customers talk about, the trust and the the family like nature that they have with their carrier reps, that's exactly what my car salesman used used to work on. I mean, not to not to push too hard into it. And remember, we're we're we're not, we're not roasting people. We're roasting ideas here. But this is kind of right up there with going on to the lot and just trusting that that car salesman to get you the right car when we all know he's more incentivized rather than selling you that that minivan or that SUV for your family of four. He's a little bit more incentivized to sell you that nice little two seater sports car, because, you know, he makes he makes an extra few bucks there. I just don't see my carrier reps not following that that, incentive that their companies have put in place for them. So, yes, know your your carrier reps. Know who they, know what what features and functions they have to offer. But trust them as far as you would any business relationship. Yeah. Justin, I I love that car dealership analogy. I mean, like anyone else, I've spent my fair share of time in car dealerships over the years. And, you know, despite Internet being a a great equalizer, it always strikes me when I'm going through the car buying experience, how, the dealer benefits to a certain extent from from information asymmetry. Right? And they know more than the buyer, and that helps them in the transaction, which is why as a buyer, you you know, you probably shouldn't be loyal to a single dealer. Like you said, you should, you know, as the saying goes, you should shop around for the best deal. So it's a simple principle in car buying, and it's it's one that applies to parcel shipping as well. You know, I'd be, you'd you'd be shocked at how many, companies with significant parcel spend. And, I mean, I'm I'm talking in the ballpark of a $100,000,000 or more annually are either single sourced or almost entirely single sourced with either UPS or FedEx. And, you know, from time to time, I'll walk into one of these companies corporate headquarters, and I'll see a picture hanging in the wall, on the logistics department wall where there's an executive at that company shaking hands with an executive from one of the national carriers, you know, typically from a decade or more in the past. And, and when I see that, I always think the same thing. Right? I think here's your sign. You know, you guys remember that, the blue collar comedy tour, Bill Engvall, here's your sign. I mean, there can be some benefits to being entirely or almost entirely a single source shipper. And those deep carrier relationships can result in benefits for the customer just like in any vendor relationship. But in most cases, and especially when we're talking about an enterprise shipper, the UPS or FedEx customer has to realize that in the land of give and take, there's likely gonna be a lot more give and take for the company deploying that single sourcing strategy. Michael, I think I've got the sign you're looking for here. Oh, and it's gonna not work. It says this is not The fire sticker with the dog. Right? fine. Exactly. Yeah. Unfortunately, the, the the logic is pulling it out. It thinks it's background. Yeah. So that's basically a lot. This is not fine. That's your sign for a lot of people. Yeah. I I would just add carriers, are you know, will always claim to be very customer focused. And and to some degree, they they are as far as it goes, but you have to remember, you own your you own the relationship with your customer and you know your customer best. So what's right for you is what's gonna determine what your carrier strategy should be. And, you know, I I don't know how many times I've seen it where, you know, the swag and the baseball games and the dinners kinda cloud, what you really should do for your business. And, you know, everybody thinks they've got the best rate card and the best relationship, but, you know, in in the end, you gotta think about the customer. And, I I'll even confess. I remember being this guy, early in my career and thinking, you know, this this these are pretty nice people here and, you know, they're gonna take care of my customer. But, you know, you get burned on that a couple times and you start to figure out, I should be a little more skeptical. Yeah. You know what? As as skepticism comes into play, I've always got this one thing that I try to tell customers. You know what? Your friends, don't try to avoid certain things. Your carriers do, and they do that with pricing. They will try to avoid a particular type of package, a particular distance, you know, something of that nature. And if you're single carrier and you have those you have a certain percentage of your of your packages that fit that we don't like it, you are really paying a lot extra when maybe there's another carrier that could take those packages at a significantly more competitive rate, lowering your overall cost. But then again, Just have to have more than one carrier. Right on. Any other thoughts from the team here? yeah. I mean, you know, there there there are a lot of directions we could go with this. I mean, I've I've lost track of how many times the customer has told me or my team that, you know, quote, my carrier rep says we have the best rates they've ever seen. Now in fairness, there are a lot of carrier reps out there. Maybe they just haven't seen better rates. But, you know, I've heard this statement from shippers recently that I've really had to to to grapple with a little bit. And because I think the principle is good, but the impact in this current, you know, carrier pricing climate is is really suboptimal. And that's, you know, a shipper will say something to the extent of, hey. You know, I I signed a a three year agreement with my my carrier partner. I'm not gonna go back to them midterm, you know, to get an amendment or change pricing because we don't shake down our our vendors. You know, we treat our vendors like partners. And if a company chooses to do that, right, because they think that's the right way to do business, that's their decision. But you know who does do business like that? FedEx and UPS do business like that. Right? Like, Justin, I'll I'm gonna give you a multiple choice question. Are you ready? Yeah. Sure. Alright. Which one of the following months did UPS and FedEx announce an unexpected pricing adjustment? Was it June, July, August, September, or October? Got 2020% odds to get it right just. saying, can I go with all the above? Oh, alright. You you you you got my trick question there. Yeah. It it was all of them. Right? I mean, it was fuel fuel tables one month. It was additional handling and weight thresholds the next. Then it was zone based, large package surcharge. Then it was new demand surcharges. Then the GRIs came out. I mean, we're living in a world of, you know, I've heard people describe it as incremental pricing. Whatever term you want to apply to it. You know, FedEx and UPS have they've changed the rules. Right? It's a it's a revenue quality strategy for them, where they're constantly changing pricing throughout the term with a shipper. And that's not even that's not being critical of the carrier strategy. It's just recognizing that is the landscape that we live in. Right? And so as a shipper, the sooner you can realize that's the landscape, that's the world in which you're operating, and your carrier partners are expecting you to respond to that. Right? Those shippers who are armed with the best data are gonna be the ones who are able to go back to their shippers and be adept enough to keep up. Couldn't agree more, Michael. I think that's a really good point. And, you know, this is where if you do have a good relationship with your rep, it's, you know, a good time to sit down and say, hey. The market's really moved here. And I know we have a contract, but, you know, we should have a conversation about this because, you know, it looks like I'm paying you more than the the market rate for fuel or whatever. That's wild out there. Anything else for for these single carrier worshipers, or shall we move on? Alright. Well, now that we've covered the number one yikes of the shipping world today, AK shippers who are so dedicated to their carrier of choice, you're adorable but expensive, let's shift gears to the other end of the spectrum where there are shippers who are excited about change. They head first into technology without a second thought with the utmost confidence. So this shipper in particular loves a buzzword. What's the biggest buzzword right now? AI. And is convinced that machine learning can do everything. So this includes predicting the future and maybe even folding your laundry. Panelists, let's unpack the reality behind the mindset of applying AI and logistics. Michael, let's start with you on this one. Sure. Well, yeah, we're hearing this a lot. Right? Especially from prospects who we're talking to in the market because, I mean, a AI washing is real right now. Right? I mean, every every company, every software company in our space is promoting AI. Right? So I'll preface what I'm gonna say here by saying, you know, I I think AI has great potential. Right? Both in terms of practical use cases today and for the future. And I, you know, I totally agree with the the concept that companies who are gonna incorporate AI into their workflows are the ones who are best prepared to to lead and win in the future. The CEO of my company, has a great saying as it relates to to AI. Josh Dunham, our CEO. He says, you know, it it's a funny thing with AI. AI is only about 60% right about the things you know everything about, but it's a 100% right about the things you know nothing about. Right? And his his point is that we're at a we're at a place with AI where, you know, we have the expertise or when we have the the expertise and resources to evaluate its competencies on really complex topics, we realize that it's a tool to utilize and partner with, but it's not ready to outsource our, you know, strategic thinking to. But we hear all the time from AI enthusiasts who are convinced that you know, we're ready to outsource everything. Taylor, you mentioned laundry. If, we could outsource our laundry to AI, our family life around the false household would be, would be optimized for sure. But but around things like strategy and analysis and everyday thinking. And so, you know, here's my word of caution. Companies, including companies in in our space, parcel spend management, shipping intelligence, companies are preying on these types of people right now, who are all in on AI through, again, a AI washing, which if you don't know the term, basically, it's when a company markets themselves as using AI when their product, you know, really does it in the way they advertise. And so, you know, the deal is if you're gonna be the AI enthusiast, you better become an AI expert first who can who can sort the fact from the fiction. Or, you know, you're gonna find that instead of procuring the right products for yourself, you're gonna become the product. Yeah. The buzzwords out there are amazing. And so my my 2¢ here, so you don't end up printing your NFTs on your pet rocks. Right? Two really buzzy things back at one point in time that, some people made a lot of money on and a lot of people lost a lot of money on. When we're looking at AI, I'm gonna go back to to Josh's analogy. You know, 60% of what you know it's right about. The reality is that's probably the case for everything. This is just to put it out there. When we look at AI, it is great at probabilistic things. K? That 40% is where we hallucinate. Some people have heard me in the past say, you can't have AI hallucinate a shipping label. Right? You can't have AI estimate shipping costs. K? So when you have a discreet option out there, you know you can get the answer. That's where AI shouldn't apply. Okay? AI is not gonna be used in your accounting department to create bills, nor does your accounting department wants you to calculate shipping costs with AI. They want discrete algorithms that go along with that. So it's really just a matter of using the right tool for the right job. And and, Michael, you said it, and I'm gonna repeat it. There is great use for AI in our modern business society, but it's not, it's not gonna cover everything. Just like NFTs only made a couple of people rich, AI, when applied in the right spot, will help, but will not help if you try to use it on everything. Right? In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it's not Windex. You can't put it on everything to cure everything. I I'll just add to that. You know, I think there's a one end of the spectrum is sort of the AI skeptics who are saying, you know, like, it's just hype and there's nothing there. And then there's the AI sycophants who are like, it's gonna it's gonna solve every problem. And and I think, most of us live in the middle there somewhere. We're trying to figure out where should we apply this, where does it make sense. I mean, if you've been around for any length of time, you remember all the different things that we've had that we're gonna solve every problem. And you mentioned a couple a couple of them, Justin, but raise your hand if you've ever heard, once this new TMS or OMS is in place, we will see all, know all, and rainbows and unicorns will fly out of our customers' orders. You know, so I mean, like, of course, these things have to be you have to think about what's the right application for me. And it could be that it's a while before we have AI replacing things like human decision making about, you know, what should my network look like? What what should I do when my parcels are late during holiday? There's a lot of decision making that are we just are gonna need our teams to do. They they might be using AI to support those decisions, but it's still gonna be the humans in the seats figuring out what's right for your customer. You know, Jammin, as Claude would say, you're absolutely right. I think that's another problem we have with AI is AI has such a high level of syncopancy. It feels good to not only get this answer that sounds right to you, but also be told that your question is super intelligent. Now I'm not saying there's such a thing as a bad question, but what I am saying is is is if a human were to speak to you like that, you probably wouldn't trust them. Yep. K? And and, you know, to to pull a a a quote from, Reagan back in the eighties, with AI, you need to trust but verify. You need to run it past an expert to say, is this the the 40% where it's wrong? Is it gonna lead me down that path? A a path that's gonna cost me a lot of money? Or is it that 60% where there's really some good insight here because all of us knows more than one of us kind of thing. Right? And that's really what AI is, a large language model. There's so much information available there. But where is it telling you what you wanna hear versus where where, it it's hallucinating, and it's telling you that you have created room temperature fusion. Yeah. And we just actually, we got a question that's really specific to this. I think I'm just gonna ask you guys now instead of waiting till the end. Do you have a specific example with logistics? Is there a good part of it to use for AI? Is that, like, reporting, creating redundant shipments? Is there a good use case today that you're seeing AI being really useful? I'm gonna steal this real quick because I know that Michael and Jammin have a significantly broader portion of the logistics world. From ship and execution, there is one clear place to add AI, and that is in time in transit. Everything else, the costs, the labels, the EDI, all of these other parts are discrete pieces, but understanding what that time in transit could be could allow you to move to a lower cost carrier service level, and and leverage that with a higher probability, because let's face it, delivery times are probable anyway, for for your customers. Micra Jamming? Yeah. I have. just one thing I would add. there is probably the most immediate use that I've seen is just, you know, kind of dirty, unstructured data, you know, throw it in there to get an answer. And a lot there's a lot of that in logistics. Right? If you got a multi carrier environment, you're gonna get multiple different types of files back from different carriers, and and AI can help with that. I think it's it's easier than trying to normalize it in some database, and so I think a lot of people will will use it for that for quite a while. I that's how I use it. And there's probably better uses coming, but that's what I use it for right now. Yeah. No. I mean, Jamie along those lines, I think, you know, especially leveraging, or gaining insights into large datasets, especially when you're looking to compare period over period. You know, I mean, a lot of times shippers need to understand, hey. What what changed week over week or this this period this year over this period last year? What was different? What was the the factor that led to an increase in pricing or decline in transit performance? And answering those questions really quickly rather than having to have an analyst, you know, do a deep dive into the data. Yeah. That's that's the best application in our space. So, I've just said something you guys both did there is you both used AI as an advisory role, human in the loop. Sorry, Jaman. Go ahead. Well, yeah, that that's exactly right. And I also think, on the back end, you know, we engage everybody engages with, you know, parcel and freight audit companies, and and I think that's a good thing to do for sure. But I've also used it in that regard as well. You just take take your own data and feed it in there. You don't have to pay a fee for that. Yeah. I mean, there's there's some benefit to that as well. I think it's both and, Jamin. I mean, you know, you you talk about using unstructured, datasets. I I think really the power of AI is when you actually have structured datasets that are really clean, really normalized, but they're too large to make sense of. And you wanna do really complex analysis and modeling over, you know, long periods of time and and forecast out into the future, you can do that, right, with a partner in call it the parcel spend management space who's cleaning, normalizing the data, and then putting these modeling capabilities on top of it. So I think there's a room for both end for sure. Yep. Admittedly, I'm self interested. I'm in the the parcel spend management space. So And and by the way, I've never not used a partial spend management provider. I mean, I think I I agree. Because but there are times when you just wanna know, you know, is there a is there a there there? Is there is it worth it? How much of a prize is there, in my in my parcel spend? And, most of the time I found, oh, yeah. It's bigger than I thought, and that's where you need a a partner to get. involved. Well, here's the litmus test, and here's where I'll bring it back to the roast. If you can do the same thing your parcel auditor or parcel spend management provider is doing in Claude or in chat GPT, then you probably don't need that provider. Right? But if they're providing value above and beyond that because they're they're contributing to the data stream and the value stream along the way, then then there's room for both hand. Right? So put put everyone to the test out there. Thanks, Jody. That was a good question. It was? Yeah. Thanks, Jody. Alright. We I'm sure we could talk about AI forever, but we gotta move on. We got a couple more, shipper strategies to roast. So let's go to the shipper who has every carrier connected via API, instead of a platform connection. It's all APIs. Because if it's connected, it means it's working. Right? Jamin, what's the problem with equating this type of tech with reliability? Yeah. I think the biggest issue here, and I I see this all the time. I've lived this personally. It's it's, like, you know, well, we've got a new system, so, you know, everything is gonna be fine. And or we've tested this system, so the tests say it's gonna be fine. And it misses an entire quadrant of of what needs to happen, which is, are your operations supporting that system in in the appropriate way? And and one of the biggest areas is just data analysis. Do you know does your team know how to use it? And so many people spend millions of dollars on these on these implementations, but they they don't have the muscle memory internally to be able to leverage that data when the time comes, when there's a problem, in the operations, you know, when a truck goes missing or something like that, and, you gotta figure out what was on that truck. There's a lot of a lot of that that has to be that needs to be sort of a playbook internally that supports the technology. And I think people think the tech is gonna do the all the work. And like we've talked about here, no. That's where human judgment is still incredibly important for that. Yeah. And and let's not talk about the fact that, you know, two things, reliability and automation. K? Here we are a a a week before Thanksgiving, and, well, let's just say one of the carrier APIs is running at one point one nine seconds. K? I don't usually talk in seconds as a software engineer. I talk in milliseconds, and so that's one thousand one hundred and ninety milliseconds. K? Not to mention the fact that almost every carrier's API in the next two months is gonna either have an extreme slowdown or small amounts of blackout. K? So reliability is something that you have to think about. Are you ready to send everybody to lunch two hours early, two hours late, when when those things happen? But also, well, let's say, you know, we want less of those, less those people basically just being human, label applicators, so we automate that. K? Well, if we're automating that, if we're taking those humans, we're moving them to pick, pack, and quality assurance. K? Now what do we have? We have a bottleneck at the printer applicator. Right? Printer applicators generally are sub four seconds. K? We're seeing a lot of of of sub two seconds. Well, if you got one point one nine seconds just to pull a rate and another one point one nine seconds to, to apply that label, well, guess what? You just hit the jackpot. So your hospital lane is just gonna start pouring with packages. Right? That's why we call it the jackpot lane. Right? Because when something goes wrong, when those APIs go out, guess what? Everything ports of the jackpot lane. And now all those people that you've moved forward in the process to provide value where humans can provide value, you're gonna have to take them away, and you're gonna have to manually process those packages in a slower but more, error resistant matter. Boy, you're you're you're giving me, a twitch. This this reminds me of some some, holiday peaks recently. And, Katie, I see your question. What do you do when it goes down when the API goes down? I think I think you you go into a broom closet and scream into the void for a minute, and then and then, rejoin your team with, hopefully, a better look on your face. But, it can be pretty harrowing. You're exactly right. I've had that exact situation happen, and it came from over overconfidence, on our partners sometimes and sometimes on ourselves. And, you know, just a lack of skepticism about what can break when you really need it to work. And to to answer Jody's question, there are two there are three types of technology out there, if you will. There's carrier APIs within everybody with a midsize business is used to at this point in time. There's a lot of products out there, multi carrier shipping products that just consolidate those APIs. K? There's also the other extreme, which is a 100%, on platform solution where where your multi carrier shipping vendor has the ability to actually produce the labels, calculate the cost, and create, EDI. K? So this is asynchronous, if you will. Doesn't matter if the carriers are up. They could be down for two or three days. That EDI is always ready to send to the carriers asynchronously. K? And then there's a hybrid solution that can use a little bit of both. Right? A little bit of that premise and a little bit of those APIs where necessary. If there's something that's only available via API, yes. When the carrier goes down, you may not be able to use, multi carrier, I'm sorry, multi package dangerous goods from a carrier that's, uses a similar color as my shirt at this point in time, but that's the that's a very small use case. And so most of your packages, 80% of your packages now are still moving. You're still getting progress. Right? You don't have to melt away into a corner and disappear. K? You can keep working. You can keep making your customers happy, and then you can deal with the significantly smaller set of of error cases, and try to accelerate them or things of that nature. I see Jody's asked a good architecture question, which I'm not the right one to answer that. But I would say I've used ShipStation before, and I've used many other partners, in the past. And, I think the question that needs to get answered when you're making those kinds of decisions is when I'm adding another layer so I've got the carriers, and now I've got another layer. Am I adding complexity, or or am I making it better? And and it can be either one. I mean, sometimes, an API broker or somebody in the middle is actually helping the situation. But, I've seen those things get stacked up to the point where, you know, now it's going through those two systems plus you've got your, you've got your internal system, sometimes multiple layers there. And if there's, you know, compounding latency in those systems, you can end up really creating a Do of a Rube Goldberg machine you have any are you you just put t balls up here for me. Okay? Because that's one of my areas of expertise is is the structure of an enterprise software stack. The systems analysis of set to enterprise software stack. So a product like that product, they're a competitor of mine, so I won't call them out, because, again, we're we're looking at concepts, not, individual products or companies. They can allow you, you know, if if carrier purple is down, you can switch to brown, you can switch to to blue and white, you can switch to so on and so forth. So there is already by using a multi carrier shipping software, there's a little bit of built in redundancy. Okay? Now the question is, you know, how much do you need? Going back to the car analogy, do you just need an economy two seater? Because because you're, you you're just you and you you just wanna get great gas mileage? Or do you have a family of four and you need a minivan or an SUV or something of that nature? Or, you know, are you now, empty nester and now is the time to get that two seater sports car? You really need to understand what your need is during the failure to determine what the correct answer is. And yes, if your enterprise software stack isn't doesn't have appropriate separation of concerns, so ERP data goes in one spot, inventory data goes in another spot, you know, etcetera etcetera. No matter regardless of what system you use, you're gonna have a bad time in the event of failure. Good answers. Alright. Okay. One more, Jody. One more for this section, then we gotta move on. Question. Do you recommend more more than one software like this, outside of your primary ship station vendor, or for a backup? Or what do you do? So this is where I would and understand ProShip is a multi carrier shipping software, which goes from API to through hybrid to all all on platform components. Clearly, we would recommend somebody like ourselves, because we have that experience. But, again, are you looking to we do understand that we are not the, we are not the Honda Accord on the on the lot. We are priced more in the Cadillac area. So, I can't say anything bad about the Honda Accord because it's a great car. K? And it's served it's perfect. But it's not gonna have the luxury comfort that you would expect at the higher end. It's not gonna have the options, the features. It's not gonna have the four wheel drive to get you out of out of that problem. I'm sorry. The all wheel drive to get you out of the the snow and ice problem. You know, it may not have as much of those amenities as you're looking for. So I would say that that having multiple systems can be an option, for your higher end systems. That should not be a requirement because the higher end system should be built with failure in mind. Justin, I don't know whether you sold ProShip right now, but I I think you convinced a few of us to buy a new car. I know. That's was gonna say, can everyone tell that he loves cars? I love. it. Let's okay. Let's move on to our next roast candidate. So, shippers who live in constant reaction mode. Everyday feels like a fire drill and planning is kinda like the back seat. They'll plan for the day, maybe the week, but not an overall strategy really. So what about the shipper who's one trailer pull away from a meltdown? They hold everything together with duct tape. Duck duct tape is great except in the shipping world. Hoping nothing changes, which is exactly probably what's gonna happen to you, especially during peak. Justin, how does the front of line planner set themselves up for failure? Okay. This is the person who thinks that things aren't gonna change in the next week, month, day. Right? I'm sorry. Right now, we've had a lot of customers that are that are calling us for that. We're just now need to a refresher on how we we change last carrier pull times, how we adjust and and tweak these things that that usually we only do during peak. So it's it's not an uncommon, it's not an uncommon request that for this time of year because things are changing. Because that front of line planning right. I think it was, Eisenhower that said, you know, plans are useless, planning is is, invaluable, right, or or overly valuable, you know, however you wanna whatever that word is. It's not coming to me. But, the idea here is is that if you expect things to go perfectly throughout the day, you're not going to you're you're you're not going to be able to take advantage of positive changes on your side. What's an example of a positive change? If you have multiple trailers pulled during the day and a carrier says, hey. We'll add one more trailer for you today and we'll pull two hours later. K. What does that do? Especially if that's your your lowest cost carrier, what does that do for your logistics cost that day? Okay? On the other hand, you've horse traded that later carrier pull today for a earlier carrier pull tomorrow. Now it's tomorrow. What are you gonna do? You're gonna try to plan all that out? Would you rather have a solution that as those packages are crossing the scale, is gonna say, okay. What carriers do I have? Which carriers are today? Which carriers are the next business day? Right? What's the lowest cost? What's my customer expectation? And given all of that data, this is your label that is gonna give you the lowest cost to meet or exceed that customer's expectation based upon now, not 08:00 in the morning, not yesterday, not last week. K? That's really what I think a lot of of of these planners can't keep in the can't can't understand that, you know, a plan, a a plan never how does another one go? Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right? No plan, makes it past first contact. So if your systems won't adjust with those those left hooks with those, you know, with the the line in front of you all of a sudden that you didn't expect, Are you really going to get the best out of out of your ship and execution, or are you just going to suffer because you can't make changes? Can I just I just wanna add one thing here? Sorry, Michael. Just real, I was this. just gonna say, Justin, if you really wanted a great metaphor, you just said should've said, what what would happen if the wheels fell off the Honda Accord? It was waiting out there for you, but missed it. Sorry. Go ahead. Cars. That's right. Yeah. So, I mean, this is part of me wants to defend the reactive shipper a little bit here because, there is no I've never met any any supply chain person who was able to plan their supply chain so well that they just skated through, and there was never, a problem in the Suez Canal or a huge snowstorm or a hurricane. I mean, like, so but that being said, it's not about how how well you you prevent things from happening. It's more about how well are you positioned to not be fragile when things do happen. You know? And I think that's that's the issue here is too many people right now forever are, they're best case scenario people. They've got you know, if everything goes right, we're gonna have a great holiday. Well, have you met anybody like that? I mean, it isn't it never happens. And and so, you know, I think it's just important to to be thinking about stuff's gonna happen. Do we have the resilience internally and in our supply chain, in our network to be able to absorb it and pivot when when things happen. Yep. And if you do it right, the system will absorb and pivot for you. Right? If we have rules that are more conceptually based, I wanna use the lowest cost carrier, I need to meet this time, and then the reality is the data changes and the rules react to the data rather than you having hard coded those rules, you have a better time. You may not like the results of how the data has changed, but you know that as the data changes, the business rule is gonna continue to do the best for you. Right? It is a little bit of trust. It is a little something that I recommend somebody, you know, start with Mother's Day, start with your July 4 peak. Don't make this for your Christmas peak. Right? Test those things out at those at those lower times and understand them. But if you try to hold on, right, when you try to hold on to a clump of sand, it's all gonna come through your fingers. I Michael, I don't really know how to make that one involved a Honda Accord. Alright. Anyone else on this topic? If not, I'm gonna move on. Alright. So we started out the roast today with shippers who were very much single carrier shippers. But what about the shipper that's stuck in the eternal loop of chasing better rates, having more RFPs than carrier pickups. Sounds a little bit like commitment issues. Michael, have you seen this? I'm sure you have. You're in the space that you probably have seen this multiple times. How does this impact shipping strategies? Yeah. I mean, I think there's the chasing better rates with carriers, which, you know, to the earlier point of the conversation, I mean, right now, there are so many pricing changes being introduced that it is really an ongoing, you know, pricing negotiation situation with your carriers. But I I've seen a lot of shippers where it's just constant, you know, vendor RFPs across, the entire kind of supply chain tech space. Right? And I think it it's actually kind of funny. Right? I think a lot of us probably know people like this where they've kind of figured out, hey. If I'm in a constant RFP cycle, well, hey. I'm I'm probably being wined and dined by, you know, my perspective vendor or carrier. That that's pretty nice, Jamie. You mentioned that one earlier. You know, if I if I'm constantly in an RFP cycle, I'll always feel wanted. I mean, everyone likes that. If I'm constantly in an RFP cycle, I'll always keep my vendors on on their toes. Right? They're always gonna be scrambling to support me because they know I'm I'm bidding out the business. And if I'm constantly in an RFP cycle, you know, I'll always have a meaningful project to tell my boss about, which is, you know, that equates to job security. And I I say these things tongue in cheek, but I I know that these this thought process is going through some people's, minds. And so, you know, what I'd say to that is that at the end of the day, carriers and and frankly, any vendor in this space must be viewed as an important partner and trusted to be an extension of an organization's goals. You know, I think, supply chain operations are as much as any, competency or discipline, a people business as much as a technology business. And so constantly cycling or switching, chasing a better deal, it damages your reputation and, damages your own leverage points. It limits what carriers and vendors are willing to offer. And, you know, in the case of carriers, it means their their revenue is less reliable. Right? So you can't have an everything with everyone all the time strategy. I think, you know, vendor relationships should follow the the higher slow, fire fast business principle. You know, take take the time to pick the right vendor relationships when they work. Keep them for the long term. Obviously, modifying terms along the way. But if there are question marks on the front end, you know, leave yourself an out so that if that relationship doesn't work, you can move on to one that will work for the long term. Yeah. Michael, many of us have that friend that, went through, like, 10 majors in college, and they don't really they're not a master of anything. Right? I think in the world of logistics, if you're a logistics master, you are a logistics manager, you have to be a master of logistics. You have to understand the data flow, the carriers, the options that are available to you. And if you are cycling through carriers like Sox, right, you're never gonna be with one of them long enough to truly understand their strengths and weaknesses. So I agree with you. Hire slow, fire fast, but spend enough time so you really understand what that carrier can do for you. That being said, we've got a question. I'm gonna throw this one over to Jamin because we talked about this earlier in the prep, about and we talked about you you have you have 10,000,000 or a $100,000,000 in logistics spend. What about the other side? Should I diversify my carriers all the time? Yeah. Yeah. This this is a super important question, and we we sort of kicked off with the overly loyal single carrier person. This is sort of the question for the other side. And, you know, I I'll I'll raise my hand and say, I'm the first one to say, let's try a multi carrier strategy. And I think that makes sense when you've got the volume for it. And I've I've seen this problem happen where you've got somebody comes from a walmart.com or Amazon or something like that where it's, you know, hyper multi carrier. And then you come to some place that's, you know, maybe they're half million or half billion dollar business, which feels big. But if you're chopping up your your parcel volume into five different carriers, that means you're using up a lot of doors at your DCs. You're using up, you're not using your trailers on the outbound side. They're probably not full, and you're not as important to any of your carriers anymore. So there is a lower end to this where, you know, being multi carrier doesn't make sense. And and so, you know, just because that plate made a lot of sense in a very large brand or retailer, it doesn't mean it makes sense for everybody. And so there is a point at which you say, you know what? I'm just adding complexity to my world and overhead, and I'm not actually solving a problem. I'm actually creating more problems. So I I definitely think that's an important consideration for mid to small shippers. Yeah. No. Yep. All all great points. I mean, I I would just add to that and say, you know, the the goal itself, the end goal cannot be carrier diversification. Right? You gotta keep the end goals, customer experience, profitability, efficiency. Right? If carrier diversification supports, you know, those end goals, then sure. Explore a carrier diversification strategy. I mean, to your point, Jody, there there's a lot of complexity there. Right? Depending on the size of your program, there may be, you know, revenue tiers in play. Right? Volume commitments. There may be rebates at play. I mean, there's a lot to balance, let alone you may negotiate different types of discounts with different carriers. So within the complexity, you know, the the data is really important, understanding the data and, again, modeling out that data so you really know how is this gonna play out. So, I mean, don't get me wrong. Plenty of shippers should have a wide diversification strategy. Right? And that includes the national players, regional carriers, consolidator consolidators, local carriers. I mean, they all have their place. But for the people on this call looking ahead to 2026 with a carrier diversification initiative, just, you know, go through that five whys exercise, right, the root cause analysis. Make sure you're back backtracking to the the end goal in mind, which, again, customer experience, profitability, efficiency. And if it's supporting those objectives, then then great. Alright. And okay. You just kind of messaged this. What was that quote you had? Because when we were doing, like, the the prep, it just resonated really well. I don't want you to forget it. did. Sure. John Wooden, famous, UCLA college basketball coach, famously said, do not mistake activity for achievement. And, I think about that all the time. And I think in the case of carrier diversification, frankly, a lot of the topics from from today, right, it's there's all sorts of initiatives that we can explore, and they all sound like great ideas. Right? But just because there's a lot of activity in your, in your shipping program, as it relates to to vendors and diversification and strategies and technologies, Just because there's activity, that doesn't mean you're achieving anything that's actually aligned with your end goals. So to that concept, look, I wanna take a second and give some very specific advice. You know, if if you have a relatively small shipping spend and well, that relative is a relative word, you can still often if you're primarily FedEx, primarily UPS, you can often add The United States Post Office because it it works well when we talk about carrier rationalization. Now diversification is just adding more. Right? We do this in our stocks all the time. You do it in your four zero one k. You try to to broaden and and spread your risk. Right? But you also, as that implies, you also miss the chance to actually gain a lot. If you are a very small shipper, the United States post office is a very easy secondary carrier to add in The United States. The reason I say this is because that means you're gonna be too deep on every address. You can use your primary carrier and you can use United States post office. You may not be getting everything you want. Maybe you're not gonna get the service level that that you would expect, but you're going to get the item shipped. So when we talk about about carrier rationalization, we are talking about, backup coverage. We are talking about, potential sweet spots for costs. We are talking about, actual time in transit. We are talking about all of these features of a carrier. And, generally, what we don't want to see for any even if we have, a $100,000,000 logistics spend, knowing that you are five deep for a given address isn't exactly good rationalization for your carriers. K? So this is why I say, the simplest one to add is generally United States post office because it delivers everywhere. K? And that's what I usually see for our for our smaller customers. That's their first rationalized diversified carrier. So that would would be my advice to Jody and anyone else who has a similar question. Taylor? Alright. Well, more housekeeping. So if you haven't submitted a question, you have one, now is the time to do so. Please do that. If you forgot to submit something, you can you can ask something in the chat and not be anonymous or ask something in q and a and be totally anonymous. So please please do that. We have a couple more things to roast that have come in. But right now, I wanna get to final advice from our panelists and then we'll go into some of that q and a. So, Michael, let's start with you. What should shippers be doing for 2026? What's one thing you you would recommend? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, sitting on the parcel spend management side of the table, you know, what what we're experts at is taking all of the data associated with all of the shipping activity and then figuring out, hey. Are we measuring the right stuff? How are we monitoring what matters forward? And how are we using that data to optimize? And so, you know, the the end of the year is a great time to really figure out, hey. Do I have the right strategy around data and around my metrics? And so what I'd encourage anyone on this call to do is, you know, measure what matters. Right? Get get the right metrics in place. You know, you you can't manage what you don't measure. And at the end of the day, this stuff is really simple. It it really is simple. I mean, simple does not mean easy, so don't hear me wrong there. But in terms of what you're measuring downstream, right, you're measuring service levels, weights, package dimensions, lanes, zones, surcharges, transit time, you know, on time performance. I mean, every parcel shipper has the same KPIs. You might slice them a little differently or add in a few business specific metrics, but, you know, the key cost and performance drivers are gonna be the same for every parcel shipper. So if you don't have a way to measure all of the KPIs I rattled off, we need to have a conversation. Right? Because once you start measuring those things, you can start avoiding some of the pitfalls that we've described today. You can start building out more robust strategies to support your business objectives, and you can monitor. Monitoring doesn't only work in reverse. It also works forward. Right? You wanna model forward your data in light of GRI plan changes to your volume and network, and then you can actually use that data to to optimize, get better pricing, diversify your carrier base, and even implement, you know, multi carrier software like Justin was describing. The Cadillac software, of course, Justin. So I I'd just say if you don't have the ability to do any of what I just described heading into 2026, then let's have a conversation. Alright. Jamon, you're up. What would you say? Well, what I tend to to do this time of year, I start thinking about, my New Year's resolutions. And, and and one of them is always sit down and think about with a clean sheet of paper, what is the right, configuration for my shipping for 2026 or whatever year that my customer needs? So it it has nothing to do with, you know, my yesterday's investments. It's what's the right thing that might I'd start with the customer and just work backwards from that. Am I shipping too too slow for my customer? Or am I, do I need to figure out how to bring my cost down and then start backing into a strategy from that? What do I need to do to to, you know, to serve my customer better? And a lot of times, there's a technology component to that, you know, and it's almost always, in fact. And then there's probably a carrier relationship component to that. You know, am I over diversified, or do I need to, start to spread spread my volume around and get better backup options on the table? And then, of course, you know, where should I be bringing AI into the mix to empower me to serve my customer better? Not AI for its own sake, but what does it do for my customer, and and how does it help me serve my customer better? That's really what I'm thinking about right now. Great advice. Alright, Justin. You're up. So clearly, I'm gonna advise everybody go out and buy an AI powered Porsche nine eleven. K? Because we have to was gonna be a this. car reference. Yeah. I was gonna say Honda Accord, but no. Seriously, I always look at, if if you wanna have a successful company, you have to have a good enterprise software stack. You have to have that ability to know where your your sources of data are, how they should flow, and then we can think about what do we want to do with that data. Right? It's very helpful to know where our data is so we can provide partners, like Reveal, like like Jammin's company. That data so that they can do their jobs is very important when you're trying to actually execute something which needs data driven business rules to know where is the master source of that data if I'm shipping internationally, if I'm shipping dangerous goods, if I'm shipping something like that. So as a systems thinking guy, I always think about the system first because we can put a really great piece of software, inside a poor system, and it may not work as well if we apply I'm sorry. Would work better if we applied some very clear principles of separation of concerns inside the rest of that enterprise software stack. Taylor? Thank you. Alright. Awesome advice from all of you. I just put in the chat, Okay. now is your last chance to put questions in, ask anything. Please please do. But there is one submission that we got that was very, very particular, and I thought it would be great to roast without making any modifications. So, here it is. Right now, we are in the process of using a vendor to help with contractual gains. Our current state is having three different workstations, UPS, FedEx, USPS, and using brokers for LTL shipments. I would also like to note that our FedEx software is out of date. Our world ship stations are all set up differently at each facility, and there's a lot of tribal knowledge that is undocumented, which leads to other issues. That is a lot to unpack, but, Justin, would you like to try first? Yeah. I like I said when I first saw this one, you don't have a shipping process. You have an exercise program. Right? You gotta run from system to system. If you wanna check carrier a versus carrier b, let alone LTL, which you gotta run into the office to check, you definitely do not have a true solution. You have an exercise program. So clearly, there are a lot of other multi carrier shipping softwares out there that can bring this all into one location. Yes. Maybe the ROI is not there to bring small parcel together with LTL, and so that's a big, a big area where you may push off to later. But still within those three carriers that you're using already, any multi carrier shipping software will now make it not that you have three different stations to ship, the three different stations to ship, one for each carrier, but you'll have three different stations to ship any carrier. Right? So you just gotta you just gotta look at that and and go, am I really wanting to, you know, get my 20,000 steps in for the day, or do I wanna make a profit? Anybody else wanna try? No. I mean, that was a great response, Justin. I think this is probably a longer conversation than we have time for here. Right? But, I mean, we've got three components. There's strategy, there's execution, and then there's analysis downstream. And I think all three here, could require some, or could could benefit from some further discussion and review. So I would be happy to participate in that discussion further. Great. Alright. Looks like we have time for one more. Here's another one that came in. And I think we've at ProShip, we've had this experience quite a bit, but there is a shipper who who launches new systems and processes or tries to right before peak season, oftentimes skipping the adequate amount of testing time that we usually recommend and assumes everything will work out just fine and gets mad if you're unable to do it on time. Who's had experience with this? Because I've heard stories. Don't do it. Don't do it. It's yeah. Do anything but that. Yeah. It it really depends on, you know, the the seasonality of your business, of course. Right? There are some rare companies that are counter seasonal, I guess, where, you know, they have quiet q fours and congrats to them. But, for all of us retailers out there, no. That that's don't do it. You know, get your testing done. Break things in in March, not in in November. You know, if your if your warehouse breaks in in March, you can survive it, for a couple weeks, but you can't do that in in September, October, November. Mike, you wanna go? No. I think that was great. Yeah. Nothing to add. I I, haven't been in this for a while. You if you're watching this on YouTube later, look for, for our seasonality, our compression testing. We've got other things about this. Here's the reality. There are ways to test everything. Okay? There are ways to test volume. You you you can you cannot ship for the first six hours of a day and try to do two hours at the same speed that you would normally need to, for for a regular peak season day. And it doesn't matter what time of the cycle you're in. You could be pool supplies, so you're busy first part of the year. You could be school supplies, so you're busy at the bottom of the year, so on and so forth. There are ways to go about. There are very great plans out there to go through requirements gathering, which is what you should be doing now. You should have a notebook. You should be saying what worked, what didn't, what shouldn't we remove. So So when you get to January, if you're if you're a q four peak, you can know you can remember, and this is an every week thing. You can remember what worked so you don't throw it away. One of the biggest problems I see with my customers is they get to January, February, and they're like, throw everything out. No. We just you're throwing out the good things as well with the bad things. So know what you need. Watch those videos on on, how to plan through. It's like a six six segment cycle, that you need to go through, which can include compression testing and other things to ensure that you don't go into peak without, without those those edge cases tested. So that would be my final advice, and I I get really heated about that because I've talked about it for a long time. So with that, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop complaining and turn it over to Taylor. That's alright. Thank you guys so much. Thank you everyone who joined us today. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate the questions. If we didn't get to you, we will get to your question. After this, we'll email you or something. If you have any feedback or anything else, let me know. Were we too harsh? Not hard enough harsh enough? Let us know. I think that's all I got. So until next time, really appreciate it. Reach out to these experts directly. They're awesome. They're awesome at what they do. So please, please do that. Don't be shy. And, again, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. A lot of fun. That was fun. Thanks, everyone. Thanks all.