Industrial Insights with Nick Biondolillo

Nick Biondolillo 00:24

And yeah, of course. Thank you for having me on. Excited to share a little bit about myself and any way I could help.

Nick Biondolillo 00:46

Yeah, believe it or not. it was, it was great. It was hard though. I was still, working at the time. COVID hit, I had a full-time job. I was trying to go to school as well and had a toddler have two now, but my, my, my oldest was, I'll never forget this. My wife came to me and said, as we're starting orientation, Hey, I'm pregnant. So about a quarter of the way.

Nick Biondolillo 01:18

What's that? I did exactly everything all at once. Right. so yeah, it was, it was great. Still in a fantasy football league with some of those guys. but it was, it was tough, man. They make you work for it.

Nick Biondolillo 01:44

Definitely a lot more analytical than I thought it would be. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know what they say? Bees get degrees in business school. But, you know, poured my effort into it and it was worthwhile. Learned a bunch.

Nick Biondolillo 02:04

Yeah.

Nick Biondolillo 02:37

Yeah. Not really. that was an internship way back when I think really it was, the first major one was GE. I was a, co-op or kind of elongated internship, in the, industrial park where they're making appliances. And, especially kind of the second rotation there, the, the mentor I had went on bereavement.

Nick Biondolillo 03:09

And so I was pretty much responsible for the production of the dishwashers for three or four months as a 20 year old kid. What made it even more interesting too is they were revamping the plant to be more lean and Six Sigma oriented. So my assembly line was going away. And so everyone who kind of had a clue or had seniority would bid off of the jobs that were on this line.

Nick Biondolillo 03:36

Right. So it's kind of like a flux of new employees breaking down machinery, anything that you could imagine. so I was, and I was responsible for that daily production number. I think like they were going to demolish it in three or four months time. So they were building the new one. Right. And, yeah. So everyone was trying to.

Nick Biondolillo 04:00

Like they didn't want to be the odd, it was musical chairs for the laborers, right? So it's like union jobs, they've set union jobs. So if you had seniority or a lot of bid points, you could bid on a different job, right? And so no one kind of wanted to be the last labor standing on the Titanic without a new job to get, right? So you can imagine people didn't really want to be on that line working it, right? And if they did, they were just kind of like clueless, right? So.

Nick Biondolillo 04:29

It was, it kind of taught me that I prefer the math and the quant side of things. but it was great experience.

Nick Biondolillo 04:40

What's that? Right. And just like, what gives you like stress or like how you want your career to be shaped? Right. So I quickly realized and I was still in school, right? So was like, you know what? I think I might, I liked moving around, but I'm like, I think a desk job would be better for me. It was pretty stressful being responsible for, you again, the daily production of all the dishwashers coming out of there. so that was interesting. I went to University of Florida from undergrad though, Industrial and Systems Engineering. It was when Tim Tebow was there. So I probably had, what's that?

Nick Biondolillo 05:30

Huge, huge. Someone recently asked me who my favorite athlete was and I said him and I was ridiculed in the room, but I stand behind that.

Nick Biondolillo 05:42

That and like athletic prowess, at least at UF was unmatched, right? Like he was a three time Heisman finalist, two time national champion. Can't, you can't compete. You can't knock that, you know, like that's good. like maybe it wasn't as as, typical as people or as throwing emotion wasn't what's word I'm looking for? Like as mechanical as they'd hoped, but he got it done.

Nick Biondolillo 06:11

anyway, I had a lot of fun there, probably too much fun was looking for roles around like supply chain consulting and was a little bit like striking out, but ultimately landed a nice job at a company called CHEP. If you haven't heard of them, they move, they, they sell pallets, right? So the next time you're in Costco, you're going to see a whole bunch. Yes. The blue pallets. Yeah. They're big rivalry, the blue versus the red.

Nick Biondolillo 06:38

At least when I was there, there's a black one that was plastic. That was kind of like the upstart and,

Nick Biondolillo 06:51

They're everywhere. They're everywhere. You'd be surprised. They do all the repairs of the pallets all over the, United States. Excuse me. And, yeah. So it was kind of sold as like, you're going to be this quantitative planning role, yada, yada, yada being as naive as I was. was like, that sounds perfect. And, logistics coordinator was the official title. And I was just kind of booking loads and learning freight and

Nick Biondolillo 07:23

doing the grunt work, but it was, it was good. Cause I learned a lot about communication and there, you know, people were reactive in that role. And I try to take like a proactive approach and be like, if you haven't returned pallets in a few days, you probably got some, you know, starting. you know, built dashboards and Even did some like optimization that I learned in school where it's like, Hey, where's the best place to return these pallets too. So I kind of had like the solver and Excel and I'm kind of geeking out now, but I kind of built like this whole little optimization model and like, where should I return my pallets this week? Right. And, that helped gain me some notoriety or, or, you know, recognition within there and quickly ascended to transportation analyst where I was responsible for doing kind of the line hall. bidding, freight and working with vendors and negotiating and all that. Right. So not necessarily industrial engineering work, but again, just like kind of opened my door to all the freight side of things. I met my now wife there, probably a tangent, but I like to say I was like the only one at work who didn't talk to her. And I think that that's kind of helped me out very male dominated culture and supply chain.

Nick Biondolillo 08:42

And, she actually got a job at craft Heinz. So we, moved up to Chicago. I was kind of already toying around the idea of pursuing an MBA and what better place for freight than Chicago. Right. So I'm like, you're more important than any palette was is what I like to say. And, moved up here with her without a job and quickly landed a role at CH Robinson as a supply chain engineer. I love my time there. Did a. went, it really was great. Cause I went back to doing what I studied in school, right? Where it's like, Hey, what's the best way to route a truck? can you convert a bunch of LTL shipments to truckload and then working in the pre-sales and with existing customers on, network design, which is, know, how I saw some of your posts and how we linked up. And so I was kind of like there, I was fortunate enough to be the one guy who had like the Lama soft license. And eventually more people got more. yeah, that's a, that's a throwback, but that was a modeling tool in the 15, 16, 17 for supply chain design and really dove head first into that tool and tried being a subject matter expert in that. Right. So, built my career in Robinson really around, Hey, having an act for techie things and would try to code things here and there. working with, yep. Working with their routing.

Nick Biondolillo 10:07

software and help them build a new one and then doing supply chain design with like 75 percent of my time.

Nick Biondolillo 10:18

I know. And what's wonderful is, is, they had so many customers coming to them asking questions and the GMs or the brokers who were good at their job knew that, Hey, I don't just have to sell freight. could sell a bunch of other things, right? I can answer any questions. So I was cranking out models left and right. Like it was, it was great. I really learned that tool, really got to meet so many customers. had a quick and dirty way too, that they had developed where. They called it NA Lite for Network Analysis Lite. Shout out Ryan Bischoff. But they even had like a little map they would update in Excel and you could turn on and off locations. like did a whole bunch of those. It was great. Love my time there. Couldn't speak highly of the team. But.

Nick Biondolillo 11:21

Yes. think what really helped me is having that background in industrial engineering and taking like operations research classes. Cause I knew under the hood, at least like, Hey, this is the objective function. This is what they're trying to do. All these tables are then putting in the constraints and variables. So I had that like concept or knowledge of it. Right. So like intuitively it made sense when I first opened the tool. I think really throughout my career where I try to bring value because there are.

Nick Biondolillo 12:12

countless other people who are better than me at coding and, and operations research, right? Like I can't compete with PhDs, but at least what I think I try to do and what I've learned at Robinson and then Alvarez and Marsal did a little bit of product work, but ultimately opened up my own firm and working with others is how to bridge the gap between the P and L and what you're modeling. Right. Great example is, excess and obsolete inventory, right? For a novice modeler, they might just cut it out of the model altogether because it might make it not run, right? Or it just kind of sits there. So what's the purpose? Well, the purpose is that someone might have to write down inventory, right? Or if you take it out, you might ship something off into a location that doesn't have that.

Nick Biondolillo 13:10

that space for it, you know? So things like that, understanding working. Go ahead.

Nick Biondolillo 13:32

Right. Right. And it takes a while to get to that level, right? Like, if I optimize my network, what does my working capital impact look like? Right. And that doesn't even hit EBITDA. That's just like a slow reduction of inventory, you know, or what, level of safety stock do I need? so being able to tie that all together, at least is where I try to play and, whether it's myself or subcontracting through a few other firms, it's, you know, trying to help middle market companies, executives, operating partners solve their problems. It doesn't end. To your point as an engineer, I just try to approach the supply chain holistically. I've done a recent project where just look just at transportation. A client had come to us and said, Hey, what if I wanted to have my own trucks? Where can I deploy those? And it's like,

Nick Biondolillo 14:47

What's up? Mm-hmm. Yeah, this one was even like the owner of the company who's 10 steps removed. The theory was that he had started as a, as a trucker or he had hauled freight when it's teens and he wanted to get back in the business. At least, that was a working theory. And we're like, this doesn't make any sense. But I, looked at it and from my Robinson days, back then we had some guys who had developed like a lane pairing tool. Right? So it's like,

Nick Biondolillo 15:28

I got an outbound, I got an inbound. Well, isn't that great for finding your own truck to do it, you know? And identified really short haul lanes where it made sense. And those lane pairing ones where it made a lot of sense where it's like, you have enough volume going back and forth that this could work. Right. And, you know, help them execute that as well. So that was really cool. Ended up even bidding on trailers through Richie Brothers, right? So a little bit of. I'm happy to help in any way, right? Yeah, so that mean not just doing the analysis, but actually diving into the execution side as well if the infrastructure is needed.

Nick Biondolillo 16:14

Right.

Nick Biondolillo 16:42

Yeah. So I will say during my time at Alvarez and Marsal and they're a phenomenal, phenomenal organization. would say world-class and understanding the impact and tying everything back to EBITDA and really just providing clear, concise answers to their clients. One of a kind, different, different class. Like it really opened my eyes to like how good people could be at this stuff and really helped me step my game up. one thing I know, what's that?

Nick Biondolillo 17:26

They've got a whole bunch of different. Yeah. So they've got a, capital division where I think they're, they're running companies or making investments. was part of the private equity performance group though. So think a, an operating partner comes to us and says, you know, I may, have this investment thesis. I thought that there were synergies here and here. they're not being realized why. Right. And so. A lot of that comes down to operational excellence and improving, right? margin. And, that's where we would dive in there. Right? So again, they, they did a lot of the execution stuff as well too. One thing I think for consultants across the board, those, you make these shiny slides, you have all your analysis, you read out to the executive level and you're like, okay, here you go. And then like 12 months later, the problem is persisting because you got to teach your man to fish, so to speak. Right. So at least that's how I try to differentiate myself a little bit. Aside for cutting out the middle man and everyone who's kind of kind of take a bite out of the, the fee. but it's like, I try to at least give the tools back. Right. So it's like, Hey, when I go, here's how I did this.

Nick Biondolillo 18:51

Here's the buttons you got to click. If I got a code in Excel macro or whatever. and here's how to make this sustainable. So you can do your own network model, right? some of the network modeling stuff, even I'll, you know, say I made this model, but if you want to work with the software company, we'll ship it into your environment and you can run it quarterly. Cause I don't want to do it. I'd rather you refer me to someone in your network than me have to come back and work for you over and over and over. Right.

Nick Biondolillo 19:21

Doesn't seem fair.

Nick Biondolillo 19:28

Right. Right. Yeah. I think that is, especially with AI, right. Being able to pull in information and people who have a decent idea on how to code can now like do a lot of that ETL work or set up a, data warehouse, right. And be able to do that plumbing that didn't exist. Like it existed, but it required teams of people five years ago. Now it's like some, could probably hire one person and get it done in three weeks. It's crazy.

Nick Biondolillo 20:29

There was a beer I used to drink where I think it was called, I'm so excited. I'm so scared. And that's kind of how I feel about AI, right? Cause soon it's just going to be like, we're just going to do it. or at least that's my dystopian tinfoil hat version. you do, you do. Yeah. Yeah. but the way it speeds up analysis and just kind of like,

Nick Biondolillo 20:55

the copywriting for slides. still review everything I put out there, but, um, just allowing for like the framework of things. And even recently it was like, Oh, I wonder if I can make a tool and push it out there. So a little shameless plug. If you go to a cameo consulting dot stream lit dot app, I've got a LinkedIn posts. If you want to navigate through LinkedIn and find it that way, we did a center of gravity where I had developed some script over time that helped do it. I'm like, I wonder how quickly I could just put this online. And with the help of one other guy, cause I'm currently working on an engagement now, I didn't have too much time and he's a developer. So he's seen it. I mean, he had it up in a day or two and to like, we spent a week testing it and it's very, very lean and mean, and it's not anything crazy, right? It's almost more for marketing, what have you, but I mean, if you're an econ player and you're trying to figure out where to put a warehouse, this'll tell you, right? Like you load up all your customer demand and where they're located and it'll give you the center of gravity, right? And I think two or three years ago, people were charging 10 to 30 grand for this, right? Yeah. And now it's like, well, if at least you want to know the first three, it's there for you for free.

Nick Biondolillo 22:34

You feel like, uh, and this is going off on a little crazy tangent. There's a book called like thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. Everyone's probably heard of it. I think only 7 % of people who have actually finished it. I'm one of the 93%. I think I got about halfway through. Um, but in the, in the beginning parts, he talks about achieving flow and that's like something that your brain kind of just.

Nick Biondolillo 23:01

ends up like locked in, you're enjoying it. And that's when you get the most efficient work. I feel like AI almost like induces flow because you're just getting so much pro progress so fast where it's like, instead of working on something for 15 minutes, an hour and getting, you know, two steps in. Now you've put that hour, your 20 steps, you want to keep going. Right. And

Nick Biondolillo 23:25

I at least I feel like I achieve flow working with these apps sometimes, especially in the coding arena, the whole vibe coding thing. I think that's what it is. It's like, my gosh, people have flow and something they've never had before.

Nick Biondolillo 23:59

Yeah.

Nick Biondolillo 24:08

Right, yeah. And I mean, I'm sorry, can you go ahead?

Nick Biondolillo 24:33

Little bit, little bit. When I, to be honest, when I started the website, I probably need to update it. done some skew rationalization and really like customer rationalization for a few clients. We'll circle back to that because that's a really cool, way to use optimization in that piece or that example. But, there are a few, that's the power of booth, right? there are a few people who either are looking for work or have a job, but

Nick Biondolillo 25:02

aren't really fulfilled where it's like, you know, I know they're experts in that and I will try to link people up with those people who have kind of told me, yes, I would be happy to do a project if you sell one. So typically stay away from it. But if someone were to ever approach me and say they need it, at least put them in touch with the right people or subcontract through that kind of stuff. Did one with a intermodal company with about 1200 asset units and they were kind of just like shipping their stuff willy-nilly all over, right? Like they had different markets, but they didn't really have a way to balance it. So actually use network optimization and that lane pairing tool together, right? First made all the different pairs, had assumptions on, you know, if it's going west, it's got to come east. Transit times probably about the same. We're at a high level view, right? But really like, if you think of like an airline company, how do you, how do you pair?

Nick Biondolillo 26:02

The freight, right? So made a matrix of all of those and then ran an optimization on top of it to say, what's the best margin lanes. I also allowed for deadheads to come back to, right? So it's like, if it's really high margin, right? And, they didn't end up going with it because it cut their revenue and, and a third and their trailer pool by like a half. And they were more like trying to get growth, but, they were losing money and this made them, you know,

Nick Biondolillo 26:31

I think it saved them like if they would follow it, I think that they would improve like $2 million a quarter or something insane like that. They'd have to do the, the Southwest strategy and shrink their fleet and really focus on what lanes they need. Right. But that was a super fun project where it kind of looking at something that you hadn't thought would fit in a network design or optimization.

Nick Biondolillo 27:08

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, mean, I'm always kind of making little tools or trying to help out. We had one that, it's like a CRM for three PLs that we did for a client. And so,

Nick Biondolillo 27:28

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we need a bingo card. I probably got a few more that we can get to, but yeah. in the three PL space though, we had a client who was, who had like a decentralized kind of methodology where all the GMs could kind of quote, opportunities. And, a lot of those guys were just putting their finger in there and thinking of the local market and saying, I can get 50 bucks a ballot a month. Right. And it's like, well,

Nick Biondolillo 28:11

What's your contribution margin on that? Like, is this actually, what's your profit on it? And I, know, this may be a little silly, if you think a contribution margin, right? Like that should, if you have a full warehouse really be the driving factor. And is this a new client or not? Right. Excuse me. Or even not, right? Like, what's that? Right.

Nick Biondolillo 28:52

Yeah. Yeah. And even if you're empty, right? Like people will say, it takes space. Well, it's got to at least have a positive contribution margin or else you're digging yourself into even greater hole. If you don't even cover your variable costs. Right. so it was like half form where they fill out all the specs and then half Excel automation where it then took the number of employees it would need to services, the space.

Nick Biondolillo 29:22

You name it. And we modeled every variable and fixed costs down to like the lowest common denominator, whether it be square foot palette, did a whole cost build up and this allowed a cost plus model, so to speak. So it's like, Hey, this is actually what it costs you. If this person needs 8 % and then you need to take another 4%, well, here's that 12 or 13 % that you should end up pricing this at, right? And then, you know, building out from there. So It was like half CRM, half, managerial accounting tool for three PLs. so the network design thing was at least kind of like a POC for us too, where it's like, how many little tools can we put out there in the world for people to, to try to use with this AI piece too, right? yeah, really interesting times.

Nick Biondolillo 30:36

Mm-hmm.

Nick Biondolillo 30:46

Yeah, here's the profitability of every customer, right? Down to the forklift driver, down to any way you want to slice it, right? So you know on that pallet, how much of this is going to the labor, overhead, et cetera, right? So at least you know the bottom limit that you can price something, right? sophisticated 3BLs can certainly do it. And maybe I just don't have a grasp on VMSs, but I feel like they're more in like the weeds of it, right? Like the operational efficiency of it and less on like the opportunity pricing element of it. I could be wrong, but

Nick Biondolillo 31:29

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Nick Biondolillo 33:04

Yeah, that example thankfully was, I mean, not thankfully, it hurts anytime you rationalize your network. That was more like contracted 3PL locations, right? So hopefully no one really lost their job over it. But I've worked on stuff where it's like, to your point, yeah, we got to get down to, we got to get down to three warehouses. How many do you have now? 12. Okay. Well, do you have an exit clause in any of your leases? No.

Nick Biondolillo 33:34

Okay. What about a real ad option? No. is it accelerated? Yes. Well, it's like, well, you know, you're going to have to pay. we hadn't thought of that. So that, that all comes back to any time I do a consolidation or rationalization, you have to make a pro forma for the next 12 months and say, okay, yeah, you're EBITDA long-term is going to, yeah, it's going to be great. But over the next 12 months, your, cashflow is not going to be looking that good, or you're going to have to take a two, three, $4 million hit, right? So, and then you have to think about service level as well. That's the big trade off too. especially if you, if you're shipping parcel, I want to close my, I want to close my East coast warehouse. Okay. Well you're going to be shipping everything from Reno, Nevada to New York now. So your, your customers better expect a, six day transit or five day transit instead of, of two. Right. So there's a lot of intangibles, right. And the incremental cost, if they're on, if they're on the hook for the freight, right. if that's already a dicey relationship, now you got to pay a thousand more bucks a shipment every time you want to want to order. Right. So there's a lot of intangibles that when you put it in the P and L, you really got to, that's gotta be an outsized number, cause there's some stuff that You can't quantify that will definitely weigh on that, right? So is a $500,000 or a million dollar hit worth, worth going through that. And as we kind of started talking about my, my favorite thing, the excess and obsolete inventory that's probably sitting in there, you don't want to ship it. Do like it. You could, you could kick that can down the road if you want, but that's another write off element. Right? Like why would you ship obsolete inventory? You could. The only reason you would do it is to avoid writing it off.

Nick Biondolillo 35:50

Right, right exactly. Or the food companies at least, hopefully they give it to like a food pantry or something.

Nick Biondolillo 36:55

It is, it is. So I always put the service levels, you know, as part of the analysis, but gosh, you're, you're so right about the, the consumer expectations. Cause when I was at Robinson, that was when I feel like Amazon was really in its heyday in terms of like, which is six presence. Obviously they still are, but don't get as much publicity. And, I would always have to tell clients like, have to remember you are not Amazon. nor are your customers buying from Amazon, right? Like you make a industrial car part, right? You don't, I mean, maybe that's a bad example, right? But someone making kegs or widgets or what have you, right? Like you don't need to deliver same day or one day out, right? Like you don't have to guarantee two day service. you could, but it makes your life that. here's how much it costs now. And they're like, my gosh. It's like, there's always a trade off.

Nick Biondolillo 38:07

Mm, it really is, right?

Nick Biondolillo 38:37

Yeah, great question. I would say any consulting firm that you reach out to, unless you are very, very specific in your needs, they typically will come in and do an assessment of some sort, myself included, right? First and foremost, it's to get the size of the prize, understand what you're working with, right? And not get tripped up on something down the road later, right? You don't want to... jump into and I'll use procurement as an example. You don't want to jump into a procurement event and not know what the savings are going to be, if any. Right. So typically there isn't that assessment phase where you do benchmarking, quantitative, qualitative understanding of the business. Right. So we start with that, you know, some folks know exactly what they want and you know, roll with the punches if something changes thereafter. But yes, I would say, and that's not any firm, I would say if you do reach out to a firm and they don't offer an assessment, it may seem like you're getting a deal that's too good to be true. Um, and that's likely the case, right? Cause someone who doesn't want to understand the baseline of your business, uh, is a red flag, at least in my, in my view.

Nick Biondolillo 40:10

Yeah. Yeah. Anytime someone wants to do a warehouse assessment without doing the warehouse tour, it's like, stop, stop that conversation right there. got to, some things you got to look and feel and touch and, understand a little bit better.

Nick Biondolillo 40:37

Yeah. And sometimes it's little things. Uh, this sounds silly, but way back in school, I had like a senior design project with an aerospace company and they were getting a lot of, um, defects on their chips that they were making. think it went into like a, uh, airline panel or something like that. And, uh, they had no idea why or how. And so we went there and looked at it. And essentially they were transporting them in boxes or trays and they were just like rattling around. And we found a company that cut little foam styrofoam things out and baking trays. And we're like, I mean, that is something that is so simple, right? Here, test this out with one. Here's a baking tray with the baking sheets and we cut the foam for them. Defects went down to like.

Nick Biondolillo 41:34

They have less than 1%. And we're like, here you go. Right. So you would have never, ever, ever thought of that unless you're there touring the facility. Right. And it's such a low tech, um, way to solve a problem. But again, uh, as much as I love analysis and technology, sometimes just being there, seeing things that's, that's how you dive in and solve the problems.

Nick Biondolillo 42:17

yeah, not so much. I, that's more me helping out kind of the local community. if there's like a small medium sized business, you need someone to step in and like a somewhat part time. that's kind of how I try to help out at least. I don't want to say I do free work every so often. If, if someone knows me, you know, I try to help out and like assess the situation or.

Nick Biondolillo 42:47

code a little thing, help my son's school for a little bit. But yeah.

Nick Biondolillo 42:54

Yeah, that's kind of what makes the world go around. Takes a village and it's not just with the kids.

Nick Biondolillo 43:06

Yeah, no, always.

Nick Biondolillo 43:33

Yeah, great question. I will say that and I'll answer it with a question. from a transportation space, there is some rumblings that the market has flipped. And so we were advising clients to run bids. If we found savings, some did, some didn't. I think those savings are possibly eroded and all of a sudden people are going to wake up who don't have contracted rates on freight lanes. They're going to wish that they did because buying spot may not work anymore. Um, you'll see that on the freight waves and DAT started to post about it a little bit. Um, But I would love to know what your take on the warehouse commercial real estate market is looking like because of her. starting to tighten up a little bit too in terms of pricing.

Nick Biondolillo 45:07

Mm.

Nick Biondolillo 46:25

you

Nick Biondolillo 48:20

Right.

Nick Biondolillo 49:31

Right.

Nick Biondolillo 49:53

Yeah, I took a class at booth on negotiations and one of them, we played the role of you. And I was like, wow, that was hard. You've really got to focus on a win-win. So it makes a lot of sense.

Nick Biondolillo 50:28

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Nick Biondolillo 50:43

A lot of moving pieces there. There's the labor market data centers. think we'll know in six months if that's a real deal or a red herring. I mean, they're talking about putting them in space. So who knows? stocks are getting whacked by even AI is it's starting to say slow down, but we'll see a lot of unknowns and how it'll play out. at least for now, the, I think everyone's looking at tender, load acceptance and rejections and Rejections are starting to go through the roof, at least for brokers are feeling a squeeze for sure. Now, is that just a peak or long-term? We'll find out if I knew. If I could forecast the market, I don't think I'd be doing this.

Nick Biondolillo 51:34

Sure. in, in very simple terms, and I'll even take a step back. Freight is, a very unique market where you can have a contract contracted rate, or you can buy spot, which is you just go out and try to procure freight that day. Right. freight is super unique that you can try to put guard rails on and, and what have you on a contract, but you can call up the company that you've, contracted to haul freight and send them a load, which is like an order to move the freight and they can simply tell you, no, even contract be damned. Excuse my language, but, so that is called a tender rejection or you can tender it to them and they can accept it. Right. So rejections are really starting to go through the roof. and software called TMSs, transportation management systems capture your on time performance, your tender rate acceptance or rejectance. There's something even because this happened so often, there's something called a waterfall where you've got your first carrier, your second carrier, your third. So a lot of the analytics and bigger companies, they look at, yeah, you might have the best rate, but you're not accepting anything. So get, this guy out of the waterfall, right? It's something you hear.

Nick Biondolillo 53:04

So you're the, think sonar and freight waves have published something that they're really starting to see rejections go up to a, two or three year high. Don't quote me on that, but it's definitely, substantial pre COVID. was the number was still probably double what it is today, but after COVID, and I think it's suppressed demand.

Nick Biondolillo 53:33

as well as some regulations around, and I'm no, by no means an expert at this. This kind of is very in the minutiae, but non domicile, CDL, which means you may not have to even, work or live here to, to haul a truck. Right. So a bunch of supply flooded the market. Demand is low. rates have been repressed for quite some time. and we're starting to finally see an upswing.

Nick Biondolillo 54:09

Exactly. think a lot of it will be, unfortunately, we're going to eat that, the consumer. Because if you get a four or five percent increase on transportation, right, what does that translate to on a $15 shirt? Right. Someone's probably just going to end up raising the price, you know, one or two percent and call it a day. But and we'll you know, we will feel it. unfortunately, not necessarily the companies, but you know, it's life, I guess.

Nick Biondolillo 54:48

I certainly hope so. Until the machines do it.

Nick Biondolillo 55:17

Yeah, I would love that. Thank you so much for having me on. I've got, are you a size large? I've got one extra shirt I could send you from the, gift rotation if you'd want it.

Nick Biondolillo 55:33

This will make you feel good. They run a little big then. Send me your address, I'll mail you one. Yeah. Awesome, thank you again for having me on.

Nick Biondolillo 55:47

No, you're the man. Thank you. Take care.