really great it's good because we get to see people's lives improve because we help them get that load that got out of the place that they didn't want to be or help them get from point a to p it just makes people do their business better helps them be happy and that's that's what truck stops all about

we're here at mats and uh you know folks we meet incredible people incredibly competent another one here in the hot seat jen mcquiston from truckstop.com jen it's great to have you thank you bush it's good to be here appreciate it tell us real quickly what you do what do i at truckstop.com we are one they're the oldest load board we've been around for 25 years uh originally we were founded as internet truck stop before the internet was a thing right and we were um trying to make sure that drivers could get loads is really what it came down to now what we do is we look at the end-to-end process for the drivers we help them get their loads we can bring in some rates so they can negotiate a little bit better and then we help them with factoring when they're done so that they can actually get paid for those loads quickly so kind of end to end for that we also help serve the brokers as well with a lot of tools for them and shippers as well well you know what uh you you certainly uh have a history as a company of meeting needs for the industry and you're like in the center of the dna of everything that's going on it's not an ancillary product or service you're like the heartbeat it's a fun place to be it's like really great it's good because we get to see people's lives improve because we help them get that load that got out of the place that they didn't want to be or help them get from point a to p it just makes people do their business better helps them be happy and that's that's what truck stops all about now let me ask you this how did you find your way there um personally i actually have been with another industry provider for about 17 years and i made the jump over to truckstop about a year and a half ago and never looked back truck stop is just an amazing company the way they treat our customers our our employees we call ourselves partners because we're all taking care of each other and it's uh just a really good family culture and we include our customers as part of that that group and it's something remarkable and you're in nashville i am in nashville that's exactly right now let me ask you this real quickly because we want to take advantage of your industry expertise where where do you feel we are as an industry right now i mean what what's going on what are the stresses what are the pressures well i mean certainly uh fuel that's a biggie like how do we help get drivers the right rates for the right uh costs they're also um just stress of finding making sure things are moving from point a to point b and where are the loads we always talk about drivers of course driver uh retention that's for the bigger all the carriers are having problems with that but those are some big ones for us just when we or from where we look at it definitely the fuel costs those are some biggies you know we uh we had someone that was a guest earlier talking about the amazing things that happened in the industry when people had downloadable apps and the opportunity to become kind of a manager of their own fate in some ways i want you to take a little time and describe a new app that you have and what it does what it responds to and and why it's working so well thank you butch i appreciate that we're um we've just this week uh launched our latest mobile application we've had a mobile app for years at this point it's been running hard been running strong but it was it just it was an existing system and it needed to be updated fully and so now we have a new product new name new logo new colors and everything uh this is truck stop go and we we've looked for the new things because it's helping those drivers keep going that's the point is to keep them going keep them moving uh it is working off of our full load board it's a reflection of what's on the load board uh it's got our rate insights tool built into it so it's able to help drivers see uh what the rate what we're estimating a great could be at a real time and they can pull that information and start to negotiate and it's also pulling loads depending on the version you can have it can pull them real time we were playing just this morning where we brought up 6 000 loads for one search and it was refreshing and bringing hundreds of loads up just as brokers were putting the loads on the board and it was so exciting it was from louisville to anywhere how you can get out of louisville was the question and it was louisville to anywhere it was just showing loads populating in so fast it was great that is so interesting so truck stop has really uh morphed through the years and changed through the years what is it about the culture of the company you love it's just something really different like we really care about service we even have a hashtag at truckstop serves and we are serving our customers we're serving our communities um and it's just something different and it's hard to describe we always laugh about it but it's hard to describe uh and we also are so we care about our customers too and i mean like in a different way like they're truly part of who we are when you talk about the company's culture though we're very technologically focused we hire talent we hire smart people and they work with us to make things good things happen but then at the same time once you're on board um this silly swag this is a coat for one year anniversary and you get it it's a seniority thing everybody and you all can see the people that have had one year coats and it's a thing and um that's just that's a company that respects their staff they're their intelligence and their net worth to the company and that's it's nice and then it lets us respect our customers like it carries on down through um and also it's a really transparent company we know what's going on all of the partners again we're partners we all know what's going on within the company we have bi-weekly calls with our ceo where he's telling us here's the state of the industry the state of what's going on here and within the company and you don't get that everywhere you don't you certainly don't now talk a little bit about uh how you deal with drivers that are not technologically savvy or you know you build a better mousetrap yeah so tell us about how you've done that yeah it's just we have people that are listening trying to hear what the drivers are needing what they care about um we had a breakfast this morning with our customers and our product managers were on site they're here this week talking to our customers and that's how you do it you listen to people you you try to do what they need and i mean we listen to everyone we do surveys once a month we're having what we call a customer pulse where we have read all the survey results and the feedback that our customers are giving and again i can't imagine a company being that in tune with the customers and i mean we're always going to have things that we're not you can't meet everybody's needs so if we get 500 requests for something we're going to have to go where the weight is so you're certainly going to have people saying well my one request wasn't done we had to do the other 400 there's almost so much you can do but we try very hard to listen to our customers and and make sure we're giving them what they need and understand their needs so we even have folks on the team that are from brokers or are from that are drivers or whatever and so they really try to understand what's going on and that's that helps build that mousetrap better so for example this mobile app has been informed by all the different facets of the driving experience yeah exactly and where it's really neat for us too is you have uh it's a junction of customer needs and technology and so this mobile app for example it was complete rebuild um building it so that we were able to bring in technology that was better technology new technology i mean we've had people say well you changed the platform it's like well you can't drive a truck from 1920 forever you're going to buy a new one you're going to make something a little bigger a little better and so on and not that our system was from 1920 but at the same time and now it's from 2022. new technologies latest advancements and then we're listening to the customers to make sure it meets their needs so there's needs and technology when they come together that's where we are you know our podcast listeners and viewers are always interested in a question i'm going to ask you now which is how did you in your life history get into this industry well how did i get into the industry it's a funny thing i was actually in the death care industry for real okay uh that so that's cemetery software worked in that i've always been in software i've been in cemetery or i've been in software for 25 years um about 20 years ago i said oh i'm going to try transportation software like i said that technology side that's half of the equation you have to know to make how to make good code um so you can stay within software and i came over to trucking like i said almost 20 years ago and i remember somebody said oh once you get in trucking you never quit and i you know i'm 30 years old at the time whatever and uh now now yeah i know i'm not planning to leave trucking um i had worked with a tms provider for almost 18 years and truck stop have been a close partner of ours and when i felt it was time to go was there something that drew me to truck stop made the jump and absolutely loved truck stop so i've been here about a year and a half like i said yeah you've got the jack the jacket approved you've got the jacket to prove it that's you have a programming background no i don't i mean actually i'm a product marketing okay and so um product marketing is this really i don't know if you're familiar with it versus marketing yes but we're the technical side with the launches uh and we do analysis and revenue analysis to see if we should go down these roads uh and so that's kind of where product marketing sits and so i have a technical slant to a marketing world you know i i understand that um you know i'm a licensed focus group facilitator and so i've gone to columbus ohio a number of times and other places to try to get real-time you know less formal input on whether products don't work or not that's exactly it and we do that we try to do with our messaging our pricing or everything like we we've even survey customers if we talk about pricing it's like hey where's how does this work for you that is so good it's really a lot of companies just don't take the time or make the investment to uh to do that yeah we have a customer intelligence team so we we take it so to heart what our customers think we're every day looking at mps scores we're looking at uh csat scores whether or not they're happy satisfac satisfaction ease of use and so on we we just ran this beta um on our mobile app that i was talking about and we've been testing our customers not testing we've been asking for feedback from day one tweaking things as we went just to make sure it was what met those customers so you were getting real-time input on what to do and how to how to do it yeah and the things that we could tweak we did the other things that we couldn't tweak we put on a road map and so we just you keep evolving you know as a company that's an idea incubator and you're putting your finger on the pulse of what's happening in the marketplace what do you see as you look ahead at some of the new products that are not there yet but we might be headed towards i mean where do you see all of this moving as an industry sport it's so hard such a tough question the answer sorry but um in terms of things that we're doing uh well definitely we're talking we got you talking about mobile how do we get things in the driver's hands i'm not saying that's the exclusive part of it but we talk about our mobile app it's like how do we get factoring to these guys how do we get factoring we have a mobile app right now but we want to keep making that better how do we make our load board better um one of the things that we always look for is the way to connect that whole path of a driver from end to end or when we talk about brokers for example uh on the other side of that coin we have an rmis system that is doing onboarding so it'll do onboarding then you come to the load board and we're going to help you get those loads matched up and then we'll on board them faster right or um so speed is always about it's always how do you make that line flat for people make it easy make their remove the friction and so we're always looking for the ways to do that and improve the workflows what what's happening in the brokerage world these days yeah just well just just in terms of how would this mobile app help uh in that area that's what i mean this particular version of the mobile app is going to be focused on our carriers this version first version but on the other hand um like we're talking about with onboarding the actual processes for onboarding and so on there's a lot of movement there a lot of companies coming over to us for onboarding we acquired a company called rmis back in april okay and so rmis is part of the truckstop family uh we've been selling them doing very comfortably with them since about june of last year and uh rmis what it does is it helps onboard carriers oh okay it has about 98.5 of the active carriers in the north america are in our database so what that means is you want to onboard but push trucking we want to bring them on board and the odds are very good they're going to be able to start doing their application all their data is already in the system and so it's been faster for them so you've gone for i've found a load i want to on board the carrier and just move along through that process that's where we're talking about making everything's faster and easier same thing there i love the how do you make it faster and easier i love the way you described getting rid of the friction yeah yeah because any time you've got another step or another direction or another process yeah uh it degrades things it makes it slower it discourages drivers like doesn't it exactly and that's like we talked back to the um if you imagine the continuum you have the load board and you want to see somebody get paid within a day or two so you've done the load let's help them get paid let's help them move through that like each step that we can move friction that's really our goal well and what's so interesting is that things like your your mobile app it really ends up being the thing that helps drivers in the end so that you dissipate their discouragement you know it i mean there's a psychology part to all of this it's you're not just technology you're affecting the quality of life for drivers right talk about that well it's a different thing too when we talk about not just technology a lot of companies software companies will say oh we're all about the software and it's great it's how you take care of the people is really what matters right and so it's having customer service there it's having people that are listening it's how can we help our customers um do better and so we look at it something that's in product marketing as you talk about portfolios and portfolio includes the service it includes the people so truck stop right now we're approaching a thousand partners and so they're all over well we're all over the country we're a fully remote company we still have an office in boise um but we're all helping the customers and you can go to a small company you've got load boards all over the place but if you've got a load with 25 people supporting it yeah how are you going to get help how are you going to get the people right you know um or people that are tired or embittered we've we've looked at some of our competitions just on glassdoor they're like oh the product's terrible it's like if your people don't like it why do you you know horrible yeah so it's anyhow so you always have to look at from a software you're not just buying technology you're you're buying the services to support it and that's a really important thing to us well you know one thing that struck me is just the way you describe the company and its culture and your commitment to it yeah you're not being paid by us to to do that you really love the company yeah and i wouldn't be there if i didn't i'm you know i'm a grown up i would be not be there well and the fact that you early on in our interview here said that you've been with another company for a long time you've only been there a year you've got the jacket now but now what happens when you're you get other jackets no i'm not sure i'm curious this was a surprise i'm curious to find that out you know in about five years you need to let me know what you're getting as you go along we'll talk real quickly as we uh end this 15-minute segment here talk real quickly about uh as you as you look forward and you look forward to the industry i i like to ask this you know trucking is known for being a male-dominated kind of industry what's your experience been there ellen boy is a good friend and uh so talk a little bit about that because we want our program to inspire women to become part of this industry exactly and um we're actually over right now at the women in trucking uh group we're a big sponsor of them okay and so we're actually i'm not kidding we're heading handing out things for them supporting that group right now we've got folks we love the helen we love the work is very committed absolutely and we are we're supporting women in many ways so that's one of the women in trucking is an association we i mentioned truck stop serves last year or earlier yeah it's one of the causes that last year we were actually like our partners were supporting uh we've changed truckers against trafficking this year absolutely so we talk about um supporting causes truck stop has six causes that we as partners donate to and the company matches and truckers against traffic is one of them so we can decide where we want our funds to go and how we can help them and so there's truckers against traffic and it's getting our funds but helping women get into trucking i mean it's 50 of the population how can you not be helping them get into the industry uh we have a truck stop we have almost i think over 50 percent of our partners are women and so it's a very it's one very focused our new ceo coming in the woman uh it's gonna be she'll be starting in a few weeks uh she's already i shouldn't say she's been with us for years um she'll be taking the role of ceo coming up very soon uh so that's going to be exciting for us and we just really believe in the net worth of everyone and so how can you contribute if you can contribute you can contribute and that's all that matters to us so we run into the same thing in technology getting women into technology roles is really a big challenge too it's uh not to digress too much from my daughter's an engineering student there's only 23 percent of the people there are women exactly you know exactly you got to change these things well and one of my dear friends in college long long ago was a woman who was in physics and i mean you just she's probably one right yeah i mean and and she got her phd in in uh in in physics and she can name her job because for so many different reasons but that is so good the culture of truckstop seems to be one that really understands what the marketplace needs you're focused on solutions you want to be cutting edge you want to keep a culture that has productive people it just sounds like a great place to work it is it really is it's neat and um like even just but it's fun when you're all remote the funny thing is you don't get to meet each other with covid not getting to come out or anything we've we've been so excited at matt's to get to meet coach like there you are where have you been yeah it's like it's funny but we all recognize each other because we've the company's done an incredible job of dealing with remote employees like we um when coveted hit i was not there at the time but they apparently surveyed all of the partners decided if they wanted to be remote or not and everybody the majority said i want to be remote we kept some offices open so people can go in but um we've made it work we've really done well and we've and as i said i'm in nashville would never have been able to work for truck stop if we weren't all remote and now i work for my office and you've learned to be creative with zoom meetings oh yeah it's just they're a little exhausting i think everybody's worn out but yeah definitely and you also other communication meets do we use teams do we use files emails and we're trying to trying to make sure that we're not always doing zoom meetings you know my i've done a lot of work in israel and my israeli friends talk about having a four eyes meeting where you have four eyes you're talking like and this is this is just a great way to do it yeah you have been a tremendous guest truckstop.com is is uh obviously a company that cares about the industry what does matt's mean to you have you come to mass before this is my first match all right i want you to do this just take a couple of minutes to talk about what matters our maps it's been just great like this morning we mentioned the breakfast sitting with the customers um getting to know them getting talking to the drivers of where i came from we were dealing with really big carriers and so i would go to tca tia ata i've been there for 10 years no problem this is my first match and it's just really neat to talk to the drivers these are the real people like i think that's what i enjoy the most about my job is these real people doing real work not that we're not but you know what i mean like the hard work let's say the muscle works right you know and it's so fun to see them and to talk to them and to hear what makes them happy and it it just delights me when you're talking to them and they're like oh that's how that works oh and that moment is like that is that's why i work you're able to bring light and life to them and they understand kind of the story behind the story and the why behind the what yeah well just a little bit ago we were looking at um some fuel optimization we were looking at a load board here's your load and here's what it's going to be if the fuel was optimized and it was like that's a hundred dollars difference and somebody's face lit up it's like can you imagine a hundred dollars just if you're talking about twelve hundred dollar load or a twenty four hundred dollar load to save a hundred dollars in fuel that's in their pocket and that is like that's that's the end of the day that's why it was worth it and this is hearing them today that is that ethic of we want to serve we want to help we want to provide solutions yep you have been a tremendous guest today we have a little gift to give you thank you so much it's a life by the mile hat it's our patriotic theme so be a brand ambassador i will sure bill she'll do over we have to remember truck stop hat for you too they're they're important to the world all right so thank you so much life of the mile delivered by freight works we're so grateful to have insightful guests like you it's my pleasure anytime thank you thanks for watching this episode you know life by the mile delivered by freightworks is one of the newest largest and fastest-growing podcasts actually produced by a trucking company now we want you to like and share this episode if you'd like to see more episodes click here and make sure that you subscribe to the channel by clicking here we'll see you there

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