157: Tim Dooner Explains Operational Excellence in Transportation and Supply Chains

Transcript

When you hear the word infrastructure, what comes to mind if it’s transportation or IT and not business infrastructure? Don’t worry, I won’t get offended. But seriously, transportation infrastructure truly is the lifeline of any country’s economy. If goods can’t be distributed in a Timely manner, then it can have an adverse effect on your ability to provide your company’s products and services.

Hi, I’m Alicia Butler Pierre. You know how they say you never miss a good thing until it’s gone well?  we don’t have to look any further than what happened in 2020 with the pandemic.

Supply chains backed up, prices rose and employees were either too scared to go to work or simply didn’t have the means to get there. And that includes broadband too. Don’t think you’re immune to the whims of supply chain disruptions if you offer digital goods or services. As you’re about to discover, there’s significant parallels between transportation infrastructure and business infrastructure.

It’s all about stable interconnectivity and seamless flow. This is season 13, episode 157  Let’s start the show.

welcome to Business. Infrastructure, the podcast about carrying back office blues of fast growing businesses. If you’re a business owner or operator looking for practical tips and solutions to scaling your business in a sustainable manner, you’re in the right place. Now, here’s your home hostess, Alicia Butler Pierre.

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Introducing the HubSpot Podcast Network. It’s a one stop audio destination for business professionals looking for education and inspiration on how to grow better. With access to a collection of marketing, sales, service and operations shows, you’ll have all the information you need as your company goes from startup to scale up and beyond.

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The number is 1-866-584-6804 or visit us online at getmytablet.com now that’s smart. Think smart. It’s season 13 and we’re focusing on operational excellence, what it is, what does it look like and how to achieve it, and joining Me Today in Chattanooga, Tennessee is Tim Dooner, the director of audio at Freight Waves. He’s an award winning new media content producer who in less than a year built FreightCast, the world’s largest logistics and supply chain podcast network. Over the past 16 years, Dooner’s seen a lot in the transportation industry. He’s held director positions in operations, sales, consulting and marketing. And he’s going to share with us what he’s seen in terms of operational best practices. We’ll even compare transportation infrastructure to business infrastructure.

Now, before you think this topic doesn’t apply to your business, I can assure you it absolutely does. You might not produce a physical good, but you still require certain materials like a laptop to communicate with your clients or gasoline to fuel your transportation to see those clients, or even office supplies to provide a service. So pay close attention, donor. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you. You have no idea. It took 150 episodes to finally have someone representing supply chain and logistics on the show. So welcome. How are you?

Yeah, no pressure. I hope I can. I. And you know, I mean, kind of my brand over at Freight Waves too is acting as a gateway to logistics and supply chain. So I probably make what the Truck is probably the broadest show we do. It doesn’t just focus on supply chain, it also brings in business leaders. We’ve actually had you on there talking about business infrastructure. So I’ll try not to go, you know, too  buzzwordy or too terminology heavy in this conversation with you and I think it’ll be a good one.

It is, it absolutely is. Because there’s so much that I want to ask you and I know we, you know, we can’t go on forever with this interview, but for starters, I just have to tell you I love what you’re doing in this space in the industry and I’m always on the lookout for your posts on LinkedIn because I think what I’m most impressed with is how you’ve been able to take what some might consider a really boring topic and make it fun and educational. But as I understand it, your career didn’t start in supply chain management, right?

No. So my career started when I was in, at a school. Immediately I jumped right into the music industry. And you talk about infrastructure. Well, the, the biggest blow to infrastructure in the music industry was this site called Napster, right? And I was in college in the late 90s, early 2000s and that was like right at the height of, of when Napster was coming out. I went to college to be A rock star. I went to California Institute of the Arts to learn how to produce music. And, yeah, my first job out of school was with a record label.

I kind of got to see firsthand what was going on in that space and digital transformation. And I think that that really gave me a great guiding light when I eventually did move over to logistics, because that has been a space that over the past 10 years has been in a lot of flux and has seen this big sea change, especially over the past five years, in terms of digital transformation and getting technology up to speed with logistics.

Yeah. Now, how did you go. Because that. That record company was in Hollywood, right? Yes. So how did you go from Hollywood to landing your first supply chain job? Was it at FedEx or some. I can’t remember. I’m going off of memory here.

Yeah, no, it was at FedEx Trade Networks in Boston. And what happened was. So I was in the music industry for a while, that, that. But I saw that the opportunities were really drying up. The business was shrinking. It wasn’t growing, and it was shrinking really rapidly because of the amount of losses that were happening to sales. And the music industry hadn’t really figured out, you know, Spotify was now yet iTunes wasn’t created yet. So they didn’t really know how to sell and market digital music. So the industry’s lunch was just getting eaten. So at a certain point I’m like, you know what? I want to be a rock star, not a suit. So I don’t want to work for a record label anymore. And I gave up the ghost a little bit on the rock star thing. And I took a year. My parents had moved out to California and I lived with them for a year. And I was a waiter, and I was trying to figure out what to do, and I just couldn’t figure it out. I miss Boston, though. And a buddy of mine said he had a room open for 400 bucks a month and I could swing that. So I moved back there after a few months, though I didn’t land the job I wanted, which was with Harmonix making Rock Band, which is a very popular game at the Time.

And it seemed like a very natural progression for me, but it wasn’t in the cards. So my dad was like, hey, I’m not going to send you any money, so you better go and figure it out. You’re about to be off our health insurance. You have to go and get a job. So he had worked in the supply chain, he touched the supply chain working for Roanoke Insurance, and he knew a guy over at FedEx Trade Networks named Bob Connealy. And he said, I heard they have an opening, they need an entry rider over there. I know you don’t know what that is or what a brokerage, anything, but it’s a paycheck, it’s health insurance and fine, so be it. So I went in, I went for the job interview. And after three months of rejection, getting an offer seemed really good. I had no idea what I would be doing. And as is the nature of the beast in supply chain, FedEx had just landed this Reebok account, right, Reebok Adidas account. And they needed entry writers to run it. So they were bringing these completely inexperienced people, me being one of them, to run this account. So it was trial by fire. And that’s how I first learned the business was running a gigantic. The air freight for a gigantic account like Reebok at FedEx. And then, you know, once I got in the industry, I was. It’s kind of like a roach motel. Then I got stuck.

And you moved around and as we mentioned earlier, over 16 years. It sounds like you had different positions across multiple areas. Not just operations, but sales, consulting, marketing as well.

Yeah, you know what I. Cause I went to. I’m a college dropout. I went to California into the arts. I left because I got that record label job. I was like, I don’t need school anymore. So, you know, I’m coming into a position now. I’m 25 years old and I don’t really have a degree that aligns with the industry that I just joined. So I knew almost immediately. Like I looked around that office. It’s an older industry. It seemed like a lot of the other entry writers that weren’t the newer people in their 20s, like me, you know, women taking on second jobs who were in like their late 40s, 50s. There’s a few guys, but it seemed like, look, I can’t. This is good that I have the job as a starting point. But in order to advance in this, I am going to have to do my education internally and externally. So I knew it was important that like after I did air freight for about a year,

I wanted to get switched to ocean freight so I could learn how that was done. Then an opening happened in a vertical called Duty Drawback, which is something I hadn’t done. And it gave me experience with dealing with exports and all those kind of things. So that was really cool. And FedEx did a great job of training. And the only real issue with that company is that their headquartered in Memphis I was in Boston and I got to a senior position and it was, you know, move to management or the wait. And I was sick of waiting, you know. So when an opening happened at the clothing company Talbots to help them with the CGPAT revalidation, which is basically CGPAT, something that came out after 9 11, it’s a security standard that you can set for your supply chain. There was an opportunity to work with a shipper, which is Talbots, that’s what we call it on our side of the world is a shipper company.

So import things and make stuff. That. That opened up. I got the job there, did that for a bit, switched over to sales just so I could learn more about the business. That didn’t really go so well for me. And then I got into. Actually, I got fired when I was in sales. And there’s. If I did a big TEDx on.

This and if you’ve heard it, but yes, I have.

Yeah, I went into. I went into rehab for alcoholism and dealt with depression and all these sort of issues I’d been putting off because life had been sort of comfortable enough, I guess, In logistics, I was finally forced to deal with it. And I really wanted to get into marketing. And I felt the best way to do it was through podcasting, because, again, I didn’t have a marketing background or education, but I knew that podcasting logistics at the Time sucked. They were, as you mentioned, very dry field, right?

I don’t think it is, but it can be if it’s presented in that way. And most people were. What they were doing is like ripping audio out of webinars and calling it a podcast. And it was all wrong. It wasn’t like any of the podcasts I listened to. So that’s how I got kind of on the direction of where I’m going now. And the cool part is that it’s almost a look back at getting into music production, those things. So I combined a couple skill sets I had to put me on this path.

Wow. Now, I do know from having watched your TEDx talk, and that’s TEDx Chattanooga. So you mentioned how podcasting helped you find your voice and how you first introduced this idea of producing a podcast to a certain employer. They weren’t on board, but then eventually you heard from this company called Freight Waves in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and you were like, hey, why not, you know, let me relocate from Boston to Chattanooga? Because they understood and saw your vision. So can you talk a little bit more about that as well?

Yeah. So when I got When I was fired at the end of 2016, I like, I knew how to do two things that was like, deal with the depression and the alcoholism and get that in check and also really start this podcast. So I had something to pour a lot of energy into. And almost immediately it started doing really well. I would get a few thousand downloads per episode at the beginning. And if you, if you’re familiar with the download numbers on Logistics podcast, that’s really good, especially for the Time. And it got noticed and it’s not a huge community, the logistics community, so people took notice. One of those people was this guy named Steve Aborn, and he started paying me to ghostwrite blogs for them and eventually paid me to join the company and build a podcast out for them. But that first year was so tough. I only made like $10,000. I almost lost my house, almost went bankrupt. We had our second kid there, so it was real struggle. And God bless my wife for supporting me. But when I got that opportunity to start consulting logistics and work with Aborn at a certain point, after about a year there, I interviewed Craig Fuller, who was the CEO and founder of Freight Waves, and I thought he might be an easy get.

And one of the reasons I targeted him was because I was doing all these blogs and these ghost writing for Aborn at the Time. And I would always search, like Google search for freight stories to aggregate. Right. And to put into our newsletters. And I just noticed throughout 2017, 2018, freight waves just getting higher, higher and higher in the search rankings. I love the look of their, their conferences and the, the attitude and everything that went along with it. So I reached out to Craig Fuller because I saw on LinkedIn that they were out promoting these things called Freight Futures, and they were doing a roadshow. And I’m like, great. He might welcome the opportunity to come on the show. And then I want to be on his radar because I think that the next progression for me would be to go join Freight Waves. So just start on LinkedIn.

I DM him, said, hey, you want to come on the show? I interviewed him about a week later. He DMs me back after the show comes on. He goes, hey, I thought that was great what you did. If you ever want a job down in Chattanooga, come down this way. So I was like, I was over the moon because, I mean, my wife wasn’t at first because like I mentioned, we had those young kids, she’s a triplet, her family all that way. My family had all moved back to the Boston area, but I think she also understood, she knew that two, three years of struggle that I went through and the trajectory that podcasting was going on, and she was like, you know what, it’s pretty obvious that this is a natural progression here and this is going to be a great career move. And, and so far it’s really proved to be. It’s been everything and more than I thought it would be when I initially decided to come down here to Chattanooga in 2019.

You know what’s also so incredible about your story is that again, you’ve, you’ve touched almost every aspect of, of a supply chain, right? And so I’m wondering, considering your, your breadth and your depth of experience, donor in chain and logistics, what in your opinion does operational excellence mean from a freight perspective?

Gosh, you know, that, that is, that’s a tough one. But just because of how unique supply chains and everything are. But the best run companies that I have really encountered tend to have incredible leadership, right? They have a really strong CEO or a really strong founder, and a lot of Times that CEO or founder is multigenerational. They understand freight because they grew up in freight. Like I look at Craig Fuller, whose dad is Max Fuller from a giant carrier called US Express here in the United States, and it’s in his blood. You know, I grew up around this industry. This is an industry where so many people are multigenerational that I think that they put up with a lot of like the nuances that go on in supply chain, but greater operational excellence. You know, the organizations that I have seen that in, to me, like, FedEx is a great example. When I was working with FedEx trade networks, and I know I said it was a little silly of them to put an inexperienced person on air freight, but they give great training and I did a great job under their tutelage. And from top to bottom, the way they intake employees, train employees, deal with customers, protect their brand, protect the purple promise that I can’t say a bad thing about FedEx other than they weren’t willing to pay a guy named Dooner enough in 2011, so I had to move on. But they’re an awesome company and my thing, and this can happen to a lot of people. So if you’re out there and you’re at a job, and I know they always say this, but like, be careful of the grass always being greener.

And right now there’s a lot of great opportunity to go chase some money and chase new opportunities. The labor market is a mess, right? We talk about capacity and freight all the Time. When you talk now about the capacity of human capital, you know you have Elon Musk on Twitter. Elon Musk himself is out there recruiting. So is nearly every CEO that’s come on what the truck in the past two months, including Craig Fuller himself at Freightways. Because everybody needs to bring in talent and we’re all trying to get back from that pandemic world. So it’s a, it’s a great place. But the places that I’ve seen that foster the great, the best sort of consistency and operational Excellence are those FedExes of the world. And I think they do it through, they do it from the very beginning by giving their people great training. I went to other brokerages and I was just shocked at how little training went into it, how toxic some of those environments were. And there were so many Times that after I left FedEx that I regretted it so much.

Oh wow. Wow. You never know what you have until it’s gone, right?

I don’t know what you got till it’s done. I think Cinderella saying that one.

Well, dinner. Let’s take a quick break to hear more from our sponsors and when we come back I want to express examples of well known brands who’ve had some, some of those supply chain struggles that you’ve been mentioning and those who seem to have rebounded quicker than others. So let’s take a quick break and when we come back we’ll, we’ll explore those topics. As your business grows, things get more complicated. A CRM platform that has been cobbled together gets clunky as you add more users data and processes, slowing you down just when you need to speed up. That’s why HubSpot built a powerful CRM platform that’s easy to adapt to your customers expectations and changing business needs. It’s built from the ground up to help you solve for that complexity, not add to it. With HubSpot you can customize your CRM platform to meet new customer expectations, move quickly when new opportunities emerge and and easily manage a growing user base as your company scales. With out of the box automation tools, a centralized customer database and a scalable platform that’s delightfully easy to use, your team can pace with the changes in the world, however unexpected they are.

With over 650 ready made integrations, HubSpot makes it easy to add the world’s most popular apps to your tech stack, allowing you to adapt to your customers needs. Always learn [email protected] we’re back. And before we explore those examples that I alluded to earlier, I want to compare transportation infrastructure to business infrastructure in my eyes. And please correct me if I don’t get this right. Dooner, please chime in. Transportation infrastructure basically connects different modes of transportation via air, sea, and land to ensure the opTimal flow of people and goods. What do you think about that?

I think so, but I think it goes bigger than that, honestly. I think it starts with the founder. I mean, it starts with the company, because there’s no need for a supply chain until a product is created. Right. And that starts with within the companies, and that goes over to a factory overseas, and then that gets on a truck and then. Or a train, and then that goes on a boat, and then that gets to a port, and then that’s trade to a DC and that’s put on another truck, and then eventually it ends up at Walmart, and then if it’s a shirt, it ends up on your back if you choose to buy it. So to me, what transportation infrastructure really is, is the lifeblood of the economy.

It’s a circulatory system of every single business that produces any good that’s sold. But something you said in the intro is that it also touches businesses that are in the digital space who don’t sell things, because things like inflation, cost inflation, employee inflation, that does a lot to the movement of the other capital out there, the human capital. Right. As we’re seeing right now in this job market, because inflation’s going up, people are seeing the cost of living is going up. They’re all seeing opportunity costs coming up with other jobs willing to pay them more money. So they’re going to seize that. So you could be like some SaaS company that’s just hiring programmers and. But you’re a programmer that was getting $150,000 maybe in 2019 or 2020. All of them are coming back now asking for 200,000, $250,000. And that goes all the way down to, like, McDonald’s workers who initially were like, you were paid minimum wage to $10. Now they’re like, look, we want 15 to $20 in a free iPhone.

So you’re seeing this dramatic shift. And, you know, we still haven’t figured it out. And that’s a. Was one of those. That’s one of those wild things. I’m actually curious on your perspective on that, too. When you’re looking at this sort of hiring market right now. What do you think about that?

I’m so glad you mentioned the labor shortages, because I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this. So I think it seems as though this root cause happened Last year in 2020 as a result of the lockdown. And so many people staying at home receiving these checks. And you and I kind of hinted at this before we even started this recording when we were talking, but a lot of people, and let’s say in blue collar type jobs, they either couldn’t work or if they were frontline workers, they decided, well, you know, I’m just going to kind of sit this out because we’re going to be getting these checks from the government. So. And I can collect unemployment, so why would I go back to work when I can just stay at home, maybe even get a remote job and do something else?

And so now that things are starting to open up again, people are finding that they can’t supply the demand. And this goes across whether it’s a service based business, you’re providing a physical product or good. And as to your point, these workers, I was just reading an article right before this interview about workers demanding higher pay. And not only that, but there being a mass exodus of people also. So I also wonder Dooner, is it also a function of people through a period of introspection and self reflection saying, you know, I didn’t like that job anyway, so I want to do something else?

Well, I think, yeah. I mean, especially, look, there’s a lot of like in this industry, there’s a lot of brokerages that are high pressure. Like if we’re just looking at supply chain very narrowly, there’s a lot of brokerages that are very high pressure. They tend to have entry salaries that are anywhere from like 35,000 to 55,000. And it’s one of those things that I think when you’re making, when you have that amount of mobility and as you said, you’re getting these checks and you’re starting to figure out these side hustles with your free Time because you’re not making these commutes and your life is less stressed.

It’s very hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube or you look at the McDonald’s. It’s no surprise to me that this was always going to come to a head, this minimum wage thing. And people could vote against it all if they want and we could debate minimum wage all we want. But the fact of the matter is if you get a check for $300 when previously used to, you used to work just under 40 hours because no fast food place is going to give you 40 hours because then benefits, God forbid, and then you look at that. And you’re like, what’s 725 by 39? That’s like 256 bucks a week or something before taxes. Like, you know, you can take that job and shove it once you realize the actual cost of money or the free money that you’re getting.

And the, the other thing too is, you know, the domino effect, right? So the cost, you know, rent rates are going up, the cost of lumber is going up because of these supply chain shortages. So if the cost of lumber goes up, when you go to your local Home Depot or Lowe’s, and you know, if you are a builder or a real estate developer, for example, so now what you may have charged for a house, let’s say if it was $250,000, you could build and sell a home in that same area. That because of the cost, the rising costs in those raw materials, that house may now go for $350,000 US so it just has a domino effect. I’ll tell you when I, when I go to the grocery store now, Dooner, oh my God, sticker shock big Time. I told my husband, I was like, I think we’re going to become straight up vegans because of the cost of meat and poultry. Its insane.

I’ll tell you, being a vegan or a vegetarian, I’m a vegetarian. It’s no bargain either, especially if you gravitate towards healthier foods.

I mean, that’s true.

Everything’s just jacked up. But here’s. So you mentioned lumber in your housing and yeah, that, that hits the home buyer. But think about the wider spread version economy. When we talk about these shortages and you talk about lower income workers who are interested in used cars right now, there’s a, there’s a giant chip shortage. So car manufacturers are cutting production volumes and they cut production volumes. This all started at the beginning of the pandemic because remember, at first in March, everyone’s hair was on fire. They thought the world was ending. They thought nobody would be buying anything anymore. So across the board, just production lines got shut down.

I mean, there’s also reasons like Covid outbreaks within factories, port shutdowns, all these kind of things. But either way, the roosters have come home to roost in 2021. And there’s not enough chips to make the cars that are needed. So what this has done is, is used car prices are up 30%. So if my wage isn’t up 30%, but the car price is up 30%, hey, how do I make ends meet? Well, I’m going to need more money. And when you talk about used cars, something that so many people are reliant on, that is such a massive indicator of, in my opinion, where inflation’s going to go and where wages are going to have to go. But then you look at how that domino effect, because it doesn’t matter how much you’re making, if everyone under you starts making more money, then you go, well, I want more money too. Right?

Yes, of course, of course. So, you know, I’m glad we talked about that definition of transportation infrastructure. Now, for those who are listening to this show for the first Time, business infrastructure, similar to transportation infrastructure, actually connects your people, your processes, and your tools and technologies to ensure the optimal flow of work and information. So, Dooner, when it comes to companies that seem to have quickly recovered or rebounded from kinks in the transportation or supply chain, especially as a result of the pandemic, and please, again, correct me if I’m wrong, because this is me as an outsider looking in on the industry, but it’s me seemed as though, for example, Clorox and Charmin with the toilet tissue, they seem to have eventually caught up with the demand for those disinfectant wipes and the toilet tissue are those good examples of companies that seem to eventually be able to recover or rebound from the mess that was 2020.

You know, that is a hard one to say because my Buddy Daniel Stanton, Mr. Supply Chain, he always talks about the bullwhip effect and every Time I talk. And this came up when there was the toilet paper, the great toilet paper shortage of the spring of 2020 and the great Clorox shortage. And what happened there, and you know, everyone was like, the media narrative or the mainstream media narrative was it’s people hoarding, right? And on social media, you’d see like a random person with shopping carts full of toilet paper. But then you got to think to yourself, that’s one picture is that that’s not everybody, right? You’re not seeing every. Because what happens is. And the same thing, what just happened with the Colonial Pipeline hack is that there’s not a shortage. What happens is everybody at the same Time goes to top off their tank, or everybody at the same Time goes and buys a pack of toilet paper or goes and buys Clorox. The store is not prepared for that. They already have demand planning for normal Times. And most supply chains work in a just in Time environment, meaning they. They look at algorithms, right? They look at trend lines, and they do their best to make sure that the Right amount of inventory is there. And the reason for that is warehouse space is expensive, right? It’s in short supply. It’s expensive. And something like toilet paper, very dense, right? Very lightweight, but dimensionally very big.

So it takes up space. And in transportation, what you’re paying for is space. So you don’t want to have a, no pun intended, an S load of toilet paper because it’s going to cost you a ton of money. And it’s not just like a giant, huge margin item. And I think Clorox and the other one’s got a handle on it. But I think one of the more interesting case studies to look at is what Home Depot is doing now. Home Depot, everybody in the pandemic, when they realized they were locked down, they had to better their homes, they had to better their environments, their internal environments for their office spaces. So many of us are on camera now. So you had to start considering what your environment looked like behind you. You might have to build a home office. You might want to build up a go to outside, you know, or, or a credenza or whatever you want so you can go hang out and enjoy your living space.

So Home Depot saw a ton of demand. So much demand, in fact, that like right now, there’s a thing in supply chain called inventory to sales ratios, right? And all that means is that there’s a certain ratio of the amount of inventory you want that can match up to the sales. Now, as inventory comes up now, inventory is on a static number. It can be dynamic depending on how many people are buying. What’s happening right now is that the narrative coming into the year was that, okay, pandemic, people are getting vaccinated. America has done a, you know, a great job this year of getting its citizens vaccinated, opening everything back up, especially when we look at what’s going on overseas. So, you know, congratulations, America, for finally getting things in order. But what isn’t in order is all of the human supply chain, the business infrastructure and the supply chain infrastructure. All those ends aren’t meeting. So, you know, people who are going to go on a bunch of vacations, it’s not as easy as you think.

Airbnb prices are insane. Cleaning costs, insane. American Airlines just announced, I just canceled 120 flights on Saturday. And they are. They said that throughout July, they’re canceling at least 80 flights a day because there’s not enough labor, there’s not enough pilots, there’s not enough ground controllers, enough air controllers. There’s not enough people working in the Warehouse, because I don’t know if your listeners know this, but on aircraft that passengers are on, in the belly of that, there’s cargo that’s put on each one of those planes. So all of these things, even the flight you’re on, is interrelated into the supply chain and the cost of goods that you pay, including that bottle of water at the airport or that, you know, organic bagel that you might be buying.

And that’s, that’s. I’m so glad you said that because it’s all interconnected. And that’s why I mentioned at the beginning of this episode or this interview, don’t think this doesn’t apply to you. Don’t think this doesn’t impact the way you do business, because it absolutely does. So pay attention. And with that being said, you know, I want to share a story with you and get your take on this. So a couple of months ago, I had an opportunity to be on a TV show. So it was going to be an in person type thing. No, thank God, no more zoom sessions. But this was actually going to be in person. And I realized, I call it my Covid baby fat, you know, because I.

I know the feeling.

So I was like, okay, I can’t wait. Fit anything. So let me go to the mall shop, which I hate doing. I absolutely hate shopping for clothing. But I went to the mall and I started noticing as I went from one department store to the next, they were largely empty. And it was almost like walking into a ghost town. It was quite a sight to behold, I have to be honest with you. And so it wasn’t until I went into. I walked into a Bloomingdale’s just looking around, and I struck up a conversation with a lady that worked there. And I said, you know, I don’t mean to offend you, but are you all in trouble, like, financially? Are many of these stores about to close down? Is the mall itself about to close? What’s going on? Because I’m looking around and there are no clothes hanging on the racks. I don’t see things on the display, displays being set up. What’s going on? And she said, this goes back to the Suez Canal situation. She was like, you know, we’re waiting on shipments, there’s nothing we can do. And now that things have. That they figured out, you know, the situation that went on with the Suez Canal, now that these boats can start passing through again, now they’re all coming to dock and, you know, obviously they can’t all dock at the same Time.

So we’re just basically lying in wait. We just have to play the waiting game. And as soon as we can get our inventory off of these ships that come into the ports here in the US then we can start restocking and resupplying the store. So I just thought that was so interesting. Again, here it is. I don’t sell or produce a physical good, but I am a consumer and it impacted me. Even though that’s really minor and trivial. But it’s just an example of this is how it can affect you.

Well, I’m glad you brought up the Suez Canal too, because I love when stories like this get mainstream attention and a spotlight put on supply chain because it creates a great educational opportunity for people like me. Now what’s really going on is like the Suez, A lot of that phrase is going to Europe. That’s not really the problem. But what is. The problem is what’s been happening at the ports in the west coast, like in LA the entire year. Only just recently have we been down to 10 ships that anchor a day. There was 20 to 30 ships at anchor. So what that means is in good Times, you’d order something from a factory in Shanghai, right? The, you know, Sears or whoever is the clothing manufacturer.

I don’t know why I use Sears kind of boomer brand is that I just picked. I don’t know. Well, whatever you’re talking about, I don’t know. Lord and Taylor. All right, so you’re buying some clothes, but you usually. They would order them, right? You order them from overseas. It takes about 26 days to get to a port. It takes a few days to clear customs. And, you know, but the turnaround Time is like less than 60 days before it can end up on a store shelf. And especially with clothing, if you think about fashion, it’s like perishables. Like, you may as well be sending vegetables. It has a very short shelf life. So all these goods and containers sitting on a port, the longer it takes them to get offloaded, the longer it takes for the stores to receive these things. And then they got to go on a train. There’s this thing called the garment train. And the dwell Times. Dwell Times just means the wait Times for a container, once it even gets on the train is 11 days. Then once it gets to the train yard, there’s congestion there. So it takes even more days for a truck to get it.

And then there’s congestion at the dock when they get to the distribution center. And then there’s warehouse labor shortage within the distribution center. And there’s capacity issues, meaning that there’s not enough trucks or truck drivers right now to pull this stuff to the store. So not only is it incredibly expensive, but a lot of that inventory is just locked up and held out. So entire spring fashion lines are awash right now, as were winter ones. Because this has been persisting for a while now. And I think for your listeners, because they’re familiar with business infrastructure, the best way to parallel that with supply chain infrastructure is in business infrastructure. You’re talking about the chain of communication within a business. Well, very fundamentally that chain of comm. It’s still communication, but it’s just transportation communication.

But it’s a ton of different intermediaries from the design team within a company all the way to the factory, to the customs brokers, to the airlines, to the trucking companies, to the retail locations themselves. All of these things have to come together to work in function and process. And that process is fundamentally broken right now because of the market conditions. And you know, they talk about how like Congress is going to meet and they’re going to fix port congestion, but I mean how you need more labor at the port, you need to expand the ports and then have more boats pull up to dock because they’re sitting up at anchor any. Anyway, there’s all of these challenges that I wish I was a little bit smarter to solve that are going on in supply chain. But you know, it’s. It’s wild to see the impact that it’s having throughout.

And if it wasn’t having such an impact, it wouldn’t be such like mainstream and common knowledge. And you know, when things like Suez happen, the Suez Canal happens. It does make it that so as bad of a situation as that is. And by the way, that boat is still stuck there. They only just now agreed to. To release that boat. So all that stuff that’s on there still was still stuck. And that happened in March. That happened in March.

And it’s June as of this recording.

Have you. I have a couch or a couch from West Elm. Right. It’s not, it’s not even scheduled to arrive until October. And I order this at the beginning of May. I ordered a table from another company that’s not supposed to be here until the beginning of September. And I’m not the only one. If you look online at all the different stories of people, these crazy, crazy wait Times for these heavy goods and one of the reasons is a couch is big. It takes up a lot of space on a boat, you know, so you got to sacrifice other Freight to get that on there.

And right now it’s been at such a standstill and it’s just long waits. And it’s happening at a Time where we are in an Amazonified world where like just before the pandemic, we’re like, yeah, drones are going to deliver that to you in 15 minutes. Right now you’re going to wait nine months. It’s like as long as it takes to birth a child to receive a couch. Now.

Now, speaking of, you know, of Amazon and just this expectation that I think Amazon has set this precedent now where we expect, as customers, we expect to get our goods relatively quickly and we don’t want to wait. And this is to the detriment of several companies because it’s starting to sever some of those relationships that they’ve had with their clients. Just as a really quick, very small example, I went to Starbucks a couple of weeks ago. My husband and I were kind of running around like chickens with our heads cut off. One morning we were scrambling and I was like, okay, I’ll just go to Starbucks, pick up some stuff and then I’ll come right back home and that’s what we’ll have for breakfast. So he asked for oatmeal. And when I got there, there was a sign at the drive thru that said, listen, there are several items on our menu that are just currently out of stock.

We don’t know when it will come back in. And it just so happened oatmeal was one of those things. But what if, you know, if as a loyal customer to Starbucks, I’m only going to put up with that for so long right before I eventually go and find, oh, McDonald’s has oatmeal and they always seem to have oatmeal. Okay, I’m just going to start going to McDonald’s. But this is. I wanted to ask you this question, Dooner, because of an article that I read at on Freight Waves website and that had to do with insurance. So is it possible, especially for those who are listening, who may actually provide certain products or tangible goods, is there some type of rider or portion of your insurance policy that you can have in place to protect yourself against?

I forgot what the exact term was. Darn it. I wish I would have written that down. But there was a very specific term that I remembered reading in that article and I was like, oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t realize that that was a thing that you could, I guess, include an insurance policy for your business.

Yeah, you know, I’m sure you get Someone to underwrite that. But the problem is how many businesses were underwriting that because they haven’t been faced with this sort of black swan condition before. And I’ve sold freight and, you know, just getting people to get like, marine cargo insurance to protect their freight. So many shippers would turn that down. And it’s like 25 cents on $100 of invoice value. So it’s incredibly cheap. But you’d have. You know, the thing with supply chain is for the longest Time and this is starting to change a little bit. For the longest Time it was considered. Even though in my opinion, it’s the lifeblood of every single company that sells anything. Right? It’s the circulatory system.

It’s the movement of goods, their goods, their inventory. Their inventory is their money. Right. But for so long, it was thought of like it was this job that was looked down upon. It was the guy in the basement. You put your cousin in charge of it. Who is an executive level. You know, it’s the executive who. Who’s getting haste, right? It’s like their first year, their initiation is, okay, survive in the supply chain here and then we’ll move you up the board and you’ll get higher up in the company. And that’s how it was treated. So there weren’t like these great practices or principles in giant companies and giant Fortune 500 companies. That’s changing as things like chief supply chain officers are coming into the fold, as tech is coming into the fold. And I think a lot of, you know, tech entrepreneurs speak maybe the business language a little bit better than the freight guys, and maybe they present themselves a little bit better in these environments. So it’s taken a little bit more seriously.

But for so long, the supply chain was an area of neglect, despite its absolute prominence and need. And I think, like you said, we got caught off guard. So many of us, you know, you that little, like, Karen inside of you that wants to yell like, I demand to speak to the manager, where’s it? Where’s the right. We’re so used to just like, you go to the store and what you want is there. Like, what do you mean it’s not here? It’s always here.

That’s right. That’s right.

We’ve had a system shock and we’ve had to adjust to it. And, you know, hopefully, hopefully people like, remain sane and don’t do. Don’t go too crazy. I mean, I think we’ll be okay. And consumers have, like, just voracious Appetite right now. People are just buying stuff. People are just buying junk nonstop. Prime day just happened that’s supposed to grow another 20% this year. And you know, it’s, there’s no end the amount of junk the American consumer has their eye on.

Now you mentioned Home Depot earlier as a really great example of a company that has weathered that storm. Are they experiencing a labor shortage that you are aware of?

What’s really interesting about what Home Depot is doing is they are understanding the power and importance of supply chain. And Home Depot has always been one of the best companies in terms of a shipper or what’s also known as a beneficial cargo owner, a bco. That’s what you’d call a giant place like Home Depot. They’ve always had a very well run supply chain. So they’re one of the, it’s no surprise to me that they’re one of the first shippers to take the drastic step of chartering their own boat. Now granted, they’re going to have to deal with all the port congestion, all the difficulties like everyone else. But the problem is it’s not just the port congestion, it’s the capacity on the vessels. All of those slots that all this freight that’s been promised to all these shippers, they’re starting to realize that that capacity does not exist. So Home Depot’s like, we got to charter on boat, so at least we have those freight slots. So even though we got to wait at the port, at least we can actually load a boat with our stuff and then move it out.

And it’ll be interesting to see how successful Home Depot is with this and what that might actually do moving forward with how shipping is done in the United States. Because right now in terms of ships like in the United States, there really are no major steamship lines. All the major steamship lines are owned by overseas foreign entities. We used to have shipbuilding United States that went by the wayside. It’s been 20, 30, 40 years since we’ve really been a player in that space. And the major prominent lines that we had, we sold to both Europe and I believe South Korea. We sold the other one too. So it’s curious to me though to then see Home Depot be like, we need the USS Home Depot.

And I wonder if the Lowe’s of the world and the Walmarts of the world, the targets of the world that have the freight volume to support that, start becoming their own carriers, start becoming getting their own vessels and then in turn maybe they become the biggest competitors, ironically to the steamship lines, because this is getting a little bit deeper in the weeds that I want to. But the steamship lines, they have this thing called a vessel sharing agreement, which means that it really doesn’t matter who you book with because you might not end up on that vessel. You might end up on a completely different steamship lines vessel because they, they share space with each other. So it would be curious to see if a Home Depot, they build out a fleet of ocean liners, then they’re able to do kind of what Amazon is doing on inland freight or offer their own space with, on their vessel and start taking business away from the ocean carriers. And it’s kind of cool to see this space be, be so in flux, especially if you’re a, you know, a nerd who lives in it all the Time like I do.

You know, I want to make sure I ask you this question before we start to wrap up Dooner, and that is I know there’s currently an infrastructure bill before Congress here in the US as we speak. There are so many bridges. We’ve been talking about shipping freight, but if we could talk a little bit about land freight, if that’s the right term to use. But with so many bridges and interstates just old in need of repair.

I don’t want to make this too political, but is it just the result of pure negligence? Is it politics, improper auditing, or a combination of all of the above?

Voter apathy is one. Obviously like we got to blame ourselves a little bit, right? Because, well, maybe recently that has changed. But you know, you like to think ideally politicians like to do the will of the voter. But I don’t know, you see some of these measures where, you know, on both sides, they’re not listening to voters at all, they’re just doing whatever they want. And you know, in the past I’ve never facepalmed as much as I have in the past year. You know, regardless of who’s in charge, it’s just like there’s some mind boggling stuff. Infrastructure is one of those ones that when you look into the bills that have been put before the hill, right, in terms of the needs like the American infrastructure society, you know, the builder society, they all look at this and they go, look, we need X amount of money. We need trillions of dollars to really rebuild America. And it’s needed. And you can just drive around, you can look at all of these needs and the thousands of dollars of damage. Like I think in Connecticut alone, the roads there are responsible for $800 worth of damage to every single car on the roads. There they also have some of like the highest gas taxes in the country. So it’s not even the, it’s not even collecting the money. It’s the use, the appropriation of the money. But every Time these bills came up, it always seems like there’s some stupid sticking point that comes up or someone tries to slip some poison pill in the bill and it never gets done. But I’m with you. I think there’s two massive, massive needs, and that’s roads and bridges and also the digital infrastructure of this country. So every single American in a reasonable amount has access to, to broadband and digital technology. And the need for that never, ever became more necessary than what we saw last year. We went to this, this homeschooling and this home working environment where everyone is digital. And you’re talking about the most important things in our country, which is education and business. And you have people who can’t even be participants. They’re left out because we are allowing systems to become antiquated.

Yes. Wow. Hopefully we’ll do the right thing and start to bring this to the forefront and actually do something about it. Because you’re right. It is a shame. We just make the assumptions that everybody has high speed Internet at home. And to your point, for so many families, I knew of several people where, yes, they have high speed Internet at home, but there may have just been one or two laptops at the house. Well, if you have three kids at home, a husband, you know, the mom and the dad, and everybody needs to be on their computers. You know, again, it just, it just plays such a strain. That was unanticipated, but now I think I’m hoping more and more companies will actually start to look at business continuity planning as well as disaster recovery planning and weaving in what we’ve learned as a result of the pandemic into those plans. But sadly, you know, Sometimes it’s not until the problem actually surfaces that people actually try to do something about it.

Well, you know, here in trucking, when we look at that space, an infrastructure built would be a huge boon for, for trucking as well. So I would, I would love to like, like you mentioned, I hate when these things become partisan. Right. And because one party has the majority power, people want to be petty or spiteful and not allow bills to go through because they don’t want to let them get. And it’s stupid. It’s like, look, this is America. We really have to fix these roads and fix this infrastructure. Like how many bridges have to collapse, how many, how many incidents like that one that happened a few years ago in Minnesota have to happen where you get swallowed by the earth while you’re driving to work before people say, you know what? Maybe this is something we really, really have to focus on. And the frustrating thing, too, last year was all of a sudden, like, all this trillions of dollars comes out of nowhere, right? All the Time we’re like, arguing over, like, oh, $30 million going to this. And out of nowhere, they’re like, here’s trillions of dollars in PPP loans to. In very circumstances. But you can’t fix a bridge. You can’t put a bunch of people back to work doing construction, hauling these goods that will ulTimately benefit this country, make us quicker, faster, and a better place to be. That, to me, is frustrating.

It is. And. Well, I think this is another topic for another day. But, you know, from the very beginning, I was like, where is all of this money coming from? From? Where’s all of this money coming from? And people are just like, oh, Alicia, you haven’t gotten your money. Get your people, girl. You better go into. And it’s like, I know. No, where is this coming from? It just. It just seemed like a real. I understand the purpose of it, but again, the critical thinker in me just couldn’t help but wonder, where is all of this money coming from? And I think once the dust settles, a lot of people are going to be in trouble because there’s so much fraud that has taken place in the distribution and the receiving of those. Those PPP funds. You know, I keep wanting to say Tim, but I have to remind myself, you’re called Dooner. Forgive me, but Dooner, you know, I know you and I could go on and on about this, but I’m curious, I’d love for you to talk about some of the resources that you can share with those who are listening right now who are finding everything that you’re saying so intriguing and they want to learn more. And I know there’s the Freight Waves podcast network, which includes the very popular what? The Truck Podcast. I love that name, by the way.

Yeah, like a good pun, right?

It’s very catchy. But seriously, what are some other resources? Can you talk a little bit more about the Freight Waves Podcast network and some of the other things that you have going on over there?

Yeah, we have a ton of stuff going on over at Freight Waves, and it’s all free. And I mean, some of the entry points for a more. More casual audience like yourself, they might really want to gravitate towards some of the things that I produce, so I’ll lead with those. You mentioned it what the Truck. It’s a video podcast and an audio podcast. So you can look it up on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitch or wherever you get your podcast. Just look up what the Truck. It’s published three days a week. It’s live Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at noon Eastern Time. It also airs on our free TV network, Freight Waves tv. There’s an app for that that you can download on your Apple tv, your Fire stick, whatever you stick into your HDMI port or tv.freightways.com if you don’t want an app, just go to a website. You got that app fatigue? Sure, we got you covered. We also do a ton of virtual events that if you go to live.freightways.com every couple of weeks we have another virtual event. Fortunately, live events are coming back in November.

We got a cool event there, but if you really just sort of want a gateway in there, some of the things that I would recommend would be the what the Truck podcast that I do. If you want to hear conversations with business leaders and their journeys in this, I do another one called Freight Waves Insiders. It’s one on one brand story, personal journey kind of a thing. We touch on topics from the industry, but generally there’s a lot of parallels you could probably find in there within business because we’re talking to founders and CEOs who have built companies from the ground up and how they were able to do that. I also published a newsletter, the what the Truck newsletter. Again, it’s very casual. It’s sort of a morning brew style rundown of news that I find interesting in freight and I think my audience will as well find [email protected] WTT comes out every Tuesday at 6pm Eastern Time. And then there’s just a website, FreightWaves.com where there’s a ton of different articles where we cover everything from trucking to global trade to the EV electric vehicle space to drone delivery to mental health to even freight sales. So there’s a huge broad diversity of content within what some may consider a niche. But we try to cover the business world as well as we can with, you know, obviously an eye on what is going on with supply chains. Those are the resources I would really recommend. And I think that a lot of our creators here are very cognizant of people at all different levels. You know, someone like myself making more gateway entry stuff all the way up to that really sort of narrow, incisive sonar data driven breakdown of market conditions. If you’re someone who, who that appeals to.

Yeah, well, this, this has been fantastic. We’re going to also make sure that we have a link to your TED Talk, which I found very fascinating. That’s how I learned so much about your background. So we’ll make sure we have a link to that as well. What’s the best way for people to connect with you? Dooner.

I’m usually most active on Twitter, so you can find me there at Tim Dooner. That’s D O o N E R. If you’re interested in talking to me. You want to learn more about freight, you think you might be a good guess. We also talk to business leaders. We don’t just talk to freight people. Like I said, I think in business there’s lessons that very much apply to the audience on my side. And if you want to be exposed to the largest audience, largest curated freight audience, business audience in this space, reach out to me. TDoonerraightwaves.com Again, T D O-O-N-E R8 waves.com or find me on LinkedIn too. Tim Dooner. I’m always willing to connect, talk, chat and share stories. Talk war stories. It’s a good Time. Like you, I kind of live this stuff. I mean, I really don’t unplug that off, you know, and it’s not like I’m checking my phone all the Time, my family or anything like that, but like, I’m always thinking about how something applies to what I do or business or how I can make that where I can take in that input and the output in a way that I think an audience would like and they would understand.

And that’s, that’s what I love, especially about what the truck podcasts, because I remember seeing a post about the gorilla glue incident. So I just love how you’re able to take trending topics and find a way to, to relate that to supply chain. I think it’s absolutely brilliant what you’re doing.

And wait, that was the girl with that gorilla glue?

Yes, yes.

Man, I hope she’s doing okay.

Well, I, you know, I, I, well, that’s again, another topic for another day. I, I, I don’t believe that she did that. But anyway.

Oh, oh, I like that there’s a conspiracy theory now.

Oh, yeah. Oh, okay, I’ll tell you, yeah, I’ll send you some stuff about that. But anyway, yeah, I think that was a hoax, but, and sadly it impacted gorilla Glue. So for those who don’t know about that, you know, I might even put a link to that article because I know I’ll make sure to link to your article on freight waves about it because I remember reading something there a couple of months ago. But I just want to quickly recap some of the things that you share with us. I know we have to start wrapping up here, but I thought it was really interesting, Dooner, how you mentioned that operational excellence from a freight perspective, it has a lot to do with leadership. And the fact that you said that leadership tends to be multi generational. That’s very interesting to me. And you cited FedEx as a great example sample and that at the end of the day, the reason FedEx is such a great company and the reason they’re so good at what they do is because of excellent training which goes back to investing in that human capital that you’ve been talking about throughout this interview. Also, I definitely appreciate your definition of transportation infrastructure with it being the lifeblood of the economy. It’s absolutely directly linked to a country’s economic prosperity. And it’s all interconnected. Whether we’re talking about shipping, trucking, rail, it’s all interconnected.

An impact in one area definitely has an effect on the other. And the fact that you said that it starts with the founder, which sets the culture which again leads itself to investment in that human capital. I also appreciated the fact that you cited Home Depot as a really good example of operational excellence. And they seem to have these really good best practices when it comes to operations and being able to sustain the blows of economics from year to year. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned that they’re actually chartering their own boat and the fact that they really understand the power of the supply chain.

And so if you’re listening and you’re not still really familiar with what a supply chain is, just really simply it starts with the supplier, goes to the manufacturer, onto a distributor, then to a retailer which ends up online or in a store. And as a customer we actually purchase these different goods. And in terms of examples that are of industries that are really struggling right now, thank you for telling us about used cars, the airline industry, American Airlines in particular, and the fact that they’re canceling so many flights due to labor shortages. And we also talked about the fashion industry. This has been absolutely phenomenal. Dooner, I can’t thank you enough. Every business depends on materials to provide goods and services. If you want the latest news and trends on factors that impact the delivery of those materials to you and your business, make sure you follow Dooner subscribe to the what the Truck podcast And check out FreightWaves.com again. You can, you can find him on Twitter. Tim Dooner. That’s D O O N E R Dooner. Thank you so much for taking Time to come onto the show. I know you’re very, very busy with all of the podcasting that you have going on, so I really do appreciate it.

Can I leave your listeners with one thing to consider, please?

Absolutely.

Sustainability, right? Sustainability, huge. Especially the young generation caring about that. So you mentioned the supply chain and where it ends, but it doesn’t act, especially when we talk about sustainability. It does not end with you buying from the store. We’re talking about recycling and we’re talking about repurposing and we’re talking about reusing. That’s also the supply chain. That’s the reverse logistics. And when you talk about sustainability, the number one opportunity for increasing, for bettering the environment, increasing sustainability is right at the biggest source of pollution and that’s in the supply chain. On the oceans, on the land, at the factories and the use of. So if you care deeply about supply chain, start caring deeply. I mean, if you care deeply about sustainability, start caring deeply about supply chain. Again, they’re interconnected.

It’s all in beautiful point to bring up, Thank you so much. Now for our listeners  don’t forget to check out Business Infrastructure TV. That’s where you’ll be able to access quick links to all of these resources that Dooner has shared with us. There’s no need to type out that web address. Just click the link in the description of this video episode. Wherever you’re listening to this podcast and it’ll take you directly to this list of resources that we’ve been talking about. You’ll also find more information about the HubSpot Podcast Network as well as our sponsors. Please support them when you do. It helps us keep this show free for you. Again, click that link in this episode’s description.

Thank you so much for tuning in and for being a loyal subscriber. Remember, stay focused, be encouraged, keep operating as good on the inside as you look on the outside. This entrepreneurial journey is a marathon and not a sprint. Until the next Time, thank you for. Listening to Business Infrastructure, the podcast about Curing Back Office Blues with Alicia Butler Pierre. If you like what you’ve heard, do us a favor and subscribe. Leave a rating and review and more importantly, share with your colleagues and team members who could benefit from from the information. Join us next week for another episode of business infrastructure with Alicia Butler Pierre.