How to Measure Emissions in Transportation with Trax Technologies

This episode discusses how companies can measure and reduce transportation emissions. Josh Belk explains the 3 scopes for emissions reporting and why large companies are now focused on this. He outlines how Tracks' transportation management platform helps calculate emissions across modes and regions to optimize networks. Listen to learn practical steps companies can take to be more environmentally sustainable.

LINKS: 

• Connect with Josh Bouk on Linkedin
• Check out Trax Tech website

TIME STAMPS:

[00:01:34] Managing Emissions with Data.
[00:05:37] Transportation spend management platform.
[00:09:29] ESG culture shift.
[00:11:52] Carbon emissions and scopes.
[00:17:42] SEC requires emissions reporting.
[00:19:25] Carbon Emissions Manager.
[00:23:32] Environmental impact of shipping.
[00:26:24] Carbon accounting and emissions allocation.
[00:30:24] Reducing emissions in transportation.
[00:34:07] Measuring vehicle emissions.
[00:38:00] Brands adopting transparency for ESG.
[00:42:21] Green fuel technology and innovation.

---------------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!


Are you experienced in freight sales or already an independent freight agent? Listen to our Freight Agent Trenches interview series powered by SPI Logistics to hear directly from the company's agents on how they took the leap and found a home with SPI freight agent program.


Tai TMS is designed to streamline your brokerage operations and propel growth for both FTL and LTL shipment cycles. Book a demo with the Tai team today and tell them Everything is Logistics sent you.

Maximize your website’s performance as a sales tool with Digital Dispatch’s website management.

Transcript

Blythe Brumleve: 0:05

Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host Blythe Brumleve. And today I am happy to welcome in Josh Bouk. He is the President over at Trax Tech. And today we are going to be talking about emissions in the transportation space and how we can all make a little bit better of purchasing and buying decisions. So Josh, welcome to the show.

Josh Bouk: 0:27

Hi, thanks. Thanks for having me thrilled to be here to be part of the conversation.

Blythe Brumleve: 0:32

Absolutely now, for folks who may not be familiar with with you and your company, can you kind of give us that high level overview of where the company came from, where you came from, and how you all kind of fit together?

Josh Bouk: 0:43

Sure, yeah, happy to try to keep it brief. But in back in 1996, Trax was founded to be a Global Freight auditor, that means that our primary job has been managing large companies spend transportation spend across all modes, all regions around the world. And so today, we manage approximately$24 billion in transportation spend, and companies private equity held, and I was brought in as part of the leadership team to take that, take it to the next level and grow that business further. But along the way, we've discovered that the same data, a lot of the same data that we use for auditing and verifying expenses related to transportation can also be used to verify emissions. And so that's what we're here to talk about today is really how we how companies walk first of all, why companies should be thinking about emissions and managing their scope three emissions for their for their organizations, and then how they can go about doing it. And, yeah, so that that's the background. And today, we're 530 people around the world, in all regions, and serving customers in 120 countries.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:06

Wow. So did you have you know, did you work in the logistics industry before you joined Trax? Or is it kind of a newish I guess, venture for you,

Josh Bouk: 2:15

I've been more of a private equity leader than I have been a logistics leader. And so the logistics side has come along over the last few years, maybe the last seven or eight years. And it certainly the last three here Trax.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:29

And it's specifically when it comes, you know, to I guess overall awareness of the industry. It's been interesting to watch over the last few years, especially since you know, what is the ever given got stuck in the Suez Canal, I think that was the sort of supply chains like shining moment of getting, you know, on more people's radar and a big component, you know, I think of getting onto more people's radar is the the supply chain person or the logistics person, finally getting a seat at the table, within the boardroom within the meetings. And so people are starting to pay more attention to how much money they actually spend on transportation, which I think is, you know, a good conversation for us to have today, especially as it ties into environmental benefits. But I want to kind of before we dive in, I want to kind of back up just a little bit from sort of a high level view. Is it possible to have a environmentally friendly transportation company? What does that baseline look like?

Josh Bouk: 3:25

Oh, gosh, that's a great question. To me, that's a company that's investing in options. There's the reality of where we are today. It's it's not reasonable, I don't think to expect a transportation company to autonomously create an emissions free solution offering that is, unfortunately, you know, price competitive to the traditional offerings. Because we're still developing, we're still optimizing those technologies that are used to cut emissions. But, but they can create options and they can partner with their customer customers to be able to provide, you know, better fuel choices to be able to provide or start to invest in more robotics more. I'm a little hesitant on the self driving, just personally, self driving tractor trailers that are coming out alone. Right, like it just makes me a little nervous. But but that's coming and and, you know, the more that we invest in that the more are our large transportation leaders. I don't expect Joe's trucking to do that. Right. But I but some of our larger for peels, and global transportation vendors, whether they're in air, whether they're an ocean, whether they're in trucking, certainly rail, have the opportunity to support innovation, and doing so with the partnership with their customer base who's willing to pay for it. is all in all I think we're looking for.

Blythe Brumleve: 5:03

And I think that that that ties into sort of the the Trax mission statement because in one of the the briefings that I was reading through is that, you know, the meshing the cost optimization, carbon emissions management and reduction all into one platform and and for trucks specifically, you stated in a recent interview that your company has invested$30 million into the world's first transportation spend management platform. This is the course of over a handful of years. Can you break down what a transportation spend management platform is? And who benefits?

Josh Bouk: 5:37

Yeah, so let me let me reverse that. Our, our TSM platform benefits, anybody who ships large volumes around the world. So companies that use us typically are spending somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million or more in there just in their transportation costs globally, we have some that spend multiple billions of dollars a year in transportation. So these are the companies that you and I have both heard of, and that we you know, that we trust with our consumer dollar day, day in day out. These companies are increasingly looking beyond what was traditional frayed audit, which was just is the bill Correct? To instead want to take make sure that the bill is correct, that's that's table stakes, but then be able to take data out out of that billing process, to end concern, combine it with a lot of other data in the organization, to be able to understand better how decisions are being made, how their network is operating, where they're seeing delays or events that are they're driving costs up. And being able to take action on that. And so transportation spend management is about broadening from just a traditional freight audit value proposition to being able to truly optimize a for cost and for service, the transportation that

Blythe Brumleve: 7:08

so and I think for a lot of folks that just don't when you hear numbers like this, like billions of dollars, or hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on transportation, that you know that the overall transportation budget is somewhere around like 50%, upwards of 70% of you know, a manufacturers costs of, of getting their goods to the end user to the the end user consumer. And so if you can have when you're spending hundreds of you know, millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, a small fraction of a savings on your transportation can mean so much to not only the company that's spending that money, but then also for the consumer, they can get that item at a lower price, you know, hopefully, you know some of those savings would be passed down,

Josh Bouk: 7:50

should trickle down a little bit. Today's world where we keep seeing 10s of 1000s of people being laid off, I like to think of it as as an opportunity to reduce cost and preserve your human capital. So that and that's one of the ways that we think we're adding value to our customers is allowing them to reduce budgets, by reducing the cost of transportation and not by losing important human capital that they might have.

Blythe Brumleve: 8:19

This episode is brought to you by SPI logistics, the premier freight agent and logistics network in North America. Are you currently building your freight brokerages broker business and feel that your capabilities are being limited due to lack of support and access to adequate technology? At SPI logistics, we have the technology, the systems and the back office support to help you succeed. If you're looking to take control of your financial future and build your own business, with the backing of one of the most successful logistics firms in North America, visit SPI three pl.com. To learn more. I've heard this comment before that, you know ESG is the culture of a company not the task of one person. It's a top down approach. That's another tactical approach in risk management. And so first, could you sort of explain you know what, I feel like a lot of our audience and you know, just me in general, we we've heard the term ESG for a while now. But can you explain what it is and then break down what the different scopes because there's there's three different scopes from what I understand. So if you could just broadly define what ESG is, and then those three different scopes for us.

Josh Bouk: 9:29

Sure. And I appreciate us talking about this because it's I think it's really important to all of us. It's extraordinarily important to me as I'm as I'm starting to get to the age where grandchildren are, you know, the next step in my personal life and I really want them to have a wonderful world to live in. Absolutely. And so when we think of ESG for large organizations, large enterprise, it really I think I don't know who you quoted there, but I think it's awesome. It really does have to be a cultural shift, it has to be of strategic importance, if it's a company that saying, we understand that for our company to be sustainable in this world, we first need a sustainable world. Right? And, and then, and so we're going to do our part to make sure that we are creating a company that provides returns to shareholders, that's what all companies are trying to do. But also are being good stewards of the environment that we're given. And, and so when I look at the best companies out there that are doing this, well, they're, they're literally creating a culture, it's not just one person who's supposed to be doing ESG reporting to the SEC, that's important. And we'll talk about that in more detail here in a minute. But the but they're driving down, the idea that we're not just here to manage cost, we're not just here to manage service, we're managing sustainability as the third leg of the stool, and it's part of every person's job in the organization, whether you're creating a product, whether you're managing vendors, whether you're shipping product around the world, we all had our making decisions daily on the not just the cost impact, but also the the emissions impact to to, you know, to what, what we're deciding. So if you, for example, if you decide, You know what, I really have to have this palette overseas, tomorrow, and I need to go rent a plane. Or, conversely, you know, I could wait three weeks and I could put that on a ship. Well, the the the there's a cost component to that there's a service component to that. But there's also a huge emissions impact to that. Yes, airfreight is extraordinarily high in carbon emissions. And so that gets that takes us to so how do people manage emissions? And what are the scopes that everybody talks about? So that you're right, there's three scopes scope, one, scope two, scope three scope, one are the carbon emissions are the greenhouse gas emissions that are created by building your product by manufacturing your product, it's think of it as the direct emissions coming from your factories, your plants and so on. scope two is your indirect emissions. So that is the you run certain processes within your plant those consume electricity, well, that electricity was created somehow was it was wind or solar Great, then there wouldn't be any emissions. But if it's by coal, or, or, or natural gas, or some other form of fuel, generating that electricity, then there's emissions related to that. So scope, one is direct scope to sort of indirect, and then scope three is, is are our emissions that are outside of your direct control. They're your third parties that are providing you service, but that, that you need to get your product to market or to run your business. And as a result, you incur emissions costs, your business is responsible for those emissions. So as an example, if you're putting a pallet on a truck, or you're putting a container on a ship, the portion of that vehicles emissions movement that's tied to your particular product, is your responsibility from a scope three sample. And so those three are the three scopes.

Blythe Brumleve: 13:48

And I guess maybe a good example of this would be like Apple, for example, with manufacturing the iPhone is your scope one, and then the scope two is the energy that it took to produce that iPhone, and then scope three is the transportation of that iPhone to the end user consumer. Is that is that? Uh, yeah, perfect. Okay, good. Now that I kind of have a good grasp of what all because it sounds like, you know, scope one and scope two, can really have a higher impact if the company cares enough. And then scope three is really making your vendors care about it.

Josh Bouk: 14:27

Yeah, you're right. Scope. One and two are sort of within my control. Right. And so that and that's where most ESG programs are pretty well versed. They've been studying this for a few years now. They've got their arms around it in most cases, not all but most cases. And so they're, they're in a good position to be able to report on those scope three, you're absolutely right. You're dependent upon all your your wide variety of vendors. So I get on a plane. I happen to be a huge Delta fan, being here in Atlanta. At the end, so I get on a plane and I go over to our office in the Philippines. My personal move on that plane is responsible for certain amount of emissions, right? And if I'm trying to calculate that, for part of my scope through reporting, I need to understand, well, how much how much did did that plane incur, depending on whether it was a 747 of 777, a 320, whatever the type aircraft, it is, type of fuel that burns where it went, and the route it took, all of those things shape, how much my purse that the impact of me going to the Philippines did created in terms of an emissions value. And so when we think of large enterprise, they might have hundreds or 1000s of transportation vendors out there, carriers, right, that are moving across planes, trains, and automobiles, all these different moves. And, and if they really want to measure scope, three, they need to get good data, consistent data from those from all of those vendors, or have some other way of calculating it to be able to get accurate value.

Blythe Brumleve: 16:17

So it's not just I guess reporting on or data collection on the company level with, you know, at the with different products, but it's or services. But it's also being calculated at the employee level twos. Are you seeing maybe this is anecdotal, but maybe are you seeing where employees are starting to be asked, you know, what options maybe you had for that flight? Versus the option that you took? Is that being factored into?

Josh Bouk: 16:43

I don't see that happening culturally, in very many cases. Because while I use it as an example, I was just trying to give an anecdote because it's the this it's a relatively small impact. From an admission standpoint, if I go to the Philippines compared to if I move, I won't use apples today, but millions of electronic devices around the world, then, you know, how do I? How do I measure that, and that's, that's what's really changed. So last year, the SEC announced their intention to create new rules that require all public companies of a certain size. And it's just about everybody who ships a reasonable amount to start reporting on their emissions scope one, scope two, and scope three, as part of their financial reporting. So now CEOs and CFOs are going that when they sign on my, on my submissions for my quarterly reports, they're going to need to be or maybe maybe annual, initially, but they'll need to be validating their emissions volumes as well. And that goes into effect in 2025, for the 2024 year. So as of Jan 120 20, for every public company on the planet, sorry, every public company in the US stock exchange, NASDAQ will need to be able to measure scope one, scope two and scope three emissions and be able to report on those in their financial filings, which is great from an investor standpoint, we can invest in companies we believe are taking care of the world and and you know, we can vote with our consumer dollar. But it's now it's a much higher, higher level of reporting and transparency that the SEC has created.

Blythe Brumleve: 18:43

And I think to that one of the then that same story briefing that I had mentioned earlier, that one of the missions from Traxxas is really highlighting the importance of carriers working with shippers to help reduce those scope three emissions, since tracking greenhouse gases as well as evidence of setting and meeting reduction goals are soon going to be included in those SEC climate reports. So how does going back to the transportation spend management platform? Is that how you're tracking all of these different scopes? And then within the transportation spend management platform?

Josh Bouk: 19:19

Yeah, so it's, I understand your confusion, because it's not about spending anymore, right? It's transportation spend an emissions management platform, but that's a really big word or big phrase. So

Blythe Brumleve: 19:32

the acronym doesn't exactly flow off the tongue.

Unknown: 19:36

So in in October of last year, we released carbon emissions manager which is a product within our suite, that is that we developed in partnership with advi, the large pharmaceutical company to to be able to measure, calculate and measure carbon emissions across all modes all Uh, carriers, all regions, all countries, every single place you send a, you know you have a shipment you have a move, we're able to collect that data coming as a result of the invoice that that that carrier is going to submit to you. And then we use data that we collect and data that is coming from the carrier to be able to then create a consistent method of calculating carbon emissions for for all of your transportation. And so carbon emissions manager, to me is an is just a really important part of the overall certainly value proposition for Trax, but more importantly, the overall spectrum for for these large corporations who all of a sudden need to need solutions to being able to meet their SEC requirements.

Blythe Brumleve: 20:55

And so when you when we talk about those, those new SEC requirements, and you know, comparing it to the transportation industry, where historically a lot of these bigger companies, even the different modes of transportation, they like to keep their their data and their operations within a silo. So how do you sort of encourage these companies? Is it really just the the selling point of hey, this is going to be required from you from the government in order to make this happen? Is there more incentive for them to optimize their optiver operations? Outside of the environmentally friendly? Is there? Is there a cost savings? Or is it really just about, you know, doing the right thing for a lot of these companies?

Unknown: 21:37

For the carriers or for the for the shippers for the the

Blythe Brumleve: 21:41

Well, I would imagine it would impact both decisions that the shippers would want to pick carriers that are prioritizing that. And then vice versa.

Unknown: 21:48

Yeah, so so from a carrier standpoint, we see a lot of good participation in trying to measure and manage at the very large carrier or I'm using carrier pretty generically, but LSP level where we but you know, we'll go back to Joe's truck, it probably doesn't make sense to expect Joe's trucking to be able to understand exactly what the greenhouse gas emissions coefficients are of his particular trucks, you know, and he's got five, sitting in the back, right, he's worried about getting his loads from A to Z, he's not trying to optimize his emissions footprint. What, what the approach we've taken with our customers is, let's not push that down to, to all of your carriers, let's not push the responsibility of reporting consistently, there's a standard that the world has more or less adopted, en 16 258. That's a European standard. That tells us how to calculate carbon emissions across all different types of modes, we've used that to be able to then take data that that Joe's trucking would submit to us. mileage and address to and from addresses and type of truck and type of fuel, all of those kinds of data points come in via the invoice the invoice they're already submitted, right. So if we just say, You know what Joe's trucking, just just submit us your invoice, we'll then do the work of extracting the data, combining it with some additional environmental data and data that we have in terms of mileage and distance and some of these things and and then bring that together use that to following the European standard to calculate the emissions for that particular move. That means that we don't have to put that burden on each individual carrier. It also means that if there are differences in how carriers calculate things, that doesn't mess up the the it doesn't mess with the standard that that company or that corporation is trying to implement, right? Because if you've got 200 carriers, and they all calculate emissions differently, how do you roll that up into one number for the right and feel and feel good about it? Instead, let's collect data, let's count let's do the calculations ourselves in a consistent manner and then use that as the basis for our for our SEC reporting.

Blythe Brumleve: 24:25

So I would imagine that it would still cut because I come back to this this other company that I'm aware of called freight vana where they they plant a tree for every load that they ship. Now, they're not the largest company in the world. They're growing super fast, but they're not the largest company in the world. And so for them that is now having a business impact, because shippers are seeking them out because of that goal. So I imagined that even though some of these smaller, smaller carriers, you know, something like 90% of all carriers within this country. have, you know, seven trucks or fewer. So imagine if maybe the awareness around some of these different environmental goals are made public and their awareness is, you know, greater than some of the smaller carriers could also compete and win the business of some of these shippers, I would imagine.

Unknown: 25:19

Love that example. I didn't hear I didn't know about that example. And we'll check them out. But

Blythe Brumleve: 25:24

Well, again, because now they're getting they're getting shippers coming to them. Because they know that it's they want to be more environmentally friendly, their con, their their customers want to be environmentally friendly. So now they're seeking out transportation partners, and they sought them out because of that goal. So I think that there's, you know, some lessons may be that, you know, carriers can take some of those smaller Mom and Pop ones, they want to earn some of that, you know, additional business because of those goals. Yeah, it's my thought process.

Unknown: 25:51

No, I think I think that's brilliant. And you're totally right. One of the one of the benefits of being able to deploy a solution like ours, is creating that transparency for let's say, you're a big company, you've got 1000s of products, you have different product managers, and different transportation managers for each of those products. Just because your CEO needs to say here's my total emissions, doesn't mean that you know, what your individual product emissions are and how your how your transportation decisions impacts that. But if if we calculate emissions at the individual move level, and then we allocate those emissions, just like you would allocate transportation costs down across throughout an organization as a sort of a p&l owner, if I'm now using what we call carbon accounting, to be able to assign individual product owners carbon emissions to so that when they start thinking about okay, my my boss has given me a goal of reducing my carbon footprint by 20%. For my product category, I can now as a procurement person, go and meet with my carriers, go look at other vendors like Carver, not Carvana Oh, freight, Vana. You gotta write it down. But I can go look for those options. And and, and because I have a baseline, because I'm calculating my emissions on a monthly basis, based on all my moves, I can then see it trend down, I can see that I'm actually as I say, implement freight, vana give them so my loads, and I can see that that that carbon footprint is lighter, it should go in that should go into my reporting, I can, I can see that I'm making progress. And I might at some point have to make a decision about do I take a little bit higher cost, so that I can get a little bit lower emissions. But what we see most often right now is that companies are trending towards decisions that lower cost and lower emissions. So better packaging is an example of that. Because if I'm shipping less air, I'm getting better density, I'm reducing my overall shipping costs. But I'm also able to reduce if I can consolidate loads I can get from two trucks to one or five trucks to for my admissions goes down to

Blythe Brumleve: 28:22

do you wish there was a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit employees, and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business? Well, all of this should already be on your website. But too often, we hand that responsibility of building our online home off to a cousin, a neighbor's kid down the street, or a stranger across the world. Digital dispatch believes in building a better website at a fraction of the costs that those big time marketing agencies would charge. Because we've spent years on those digital front lines. Our experienced team focuses on the modern web technologies to bring in all of the places you're already active online, show off those customer success stories, and measure the ROI of it all in one place. With managed website plans starting at $90 a month, head on over to digital dispatch.io to see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. We've got explainer videos right on the website and the ability to book a demo immediately find it all over at Digital dispatch.io And so that I think brings up I guess the the next question is if you have the platform that has these benchmarks and then you're you're educating your audience and your customers about you know, the these different goals that you can that you can achieve if you use the different scopes and you focus on you know, scope three but once you've done that hard work of maybe, you know asking your vendors what their emissions reporting processes like, how do you make sure that they continue because that's another problem that I hear with, you know, apparently, like scope three is that you can do all the due diligence, and you can get these vendors to sort of buy in and into your environmentally friendly plan. But how do you make sure that they stay there?

Unknown: 30:20

I think that's a wallet share game. Right? I mean, you can do things contractually, as a as a large, remember, my customers tend to be very large shippers. So they have a lot of buying power. And so they can, they can require commitments like that, commercially. But to your point earlier, if they're if those if their partners aren't making improvements, and demonstrating how they're helping that enterprise manufacturer reduce their overall footprint, their their emissions footprint, they're going to move, they're going to choose to move those dollars elsewhere, they're going to choose a different carrier that that is willing to make those decisions. So I do think that it is incumbent upon the enterprise manufacturer, when I say shipper I that's what I'm referring to right as the enterprise manufacturer, to really be the the driver, the advocate of emissions, because in the free market, the vendors are going to do what the what their customers ask. And so what we what we try to do is we try to meet with all of our large customers. And thankfully, most of them are ahead of us to be honest. And the customers that I've talked to many of them have have had a strong commitment to strong ESG programs, and a commitment to reducing their overall emissions footprint, where they've started is traditionally in scope one, and then maybe they've done a little bit of work in scope to where they've had a lot of trouble is in scope three because of the complexity of collecting that data and not having a consistent way to really measuring. And so when we when we engage with our product, now suddenly they have a solution to do that. And so we're seeing some really great gains, or actually great losses in emissions volumes, great progress as a result of that.

Blythe Brumleve: 32:25

And that's interesting that you say that, because I would I would almost imagine that some of these business owners are like, Oh, another thing that I have to do, like is this really gonna have like a business impact. But it with with the Trax technology, and it sounds like what they can do is not only managed to spend, but then have something that they can kind of mark it to with their partners and their vendors, and then not just save money in the process, but you know, do something that's better for all parties involved, including future generations. That's right. And it's encouraging to know that they care about it sooner than you know, maybe they might be able to track it.

Josh Bouk: 33:02

That's right, yeah, now we have customers who are now using the data that we provide and the dashboards and in the product to bring their vendors in and share with them. Look, you know, you're operating at this level, your friend over here is operating at this level, your competitor, you know, here's how you stack rank, what are you going to do to drive emissions down in your so that I can afford to give you more I can I can justify giving you more business and they're allowing sort of that again, that free market of competition to drive innovation and in transportation efficiency. And that's I think we all win in that regard.

Blythe Brumleve: 33:51

What are some of those data points that yeah, I can log in and I can see you know, how I compare to a competitor compared to you know, a similar company is it broken down by like fuel or you know, packaging costs or or what are some of those data points that you're collecting and reporting on? Yeah, so

Josh Bouk: 34:08

you know, missions we measure well two wheel and take two wheel. These are ways to measure both carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions more more generally, and simply tanked a wheel is the emissions created by that vehicle as it moves. So just specifically, like if I get in my car and I drive 50 miles and I know what kind of engine it is, and I know what kind of gas it takes and I know something about the weather that I'm in I can pretty accurately calculate the emissions caught of the vehicle right the weight of the vehicle and so on. So tank to wheel is pretty simple. Well to wheel takes into account the emissions that were that were created by in the creation of The fuel. So I'll give you two quick examples. In a traditional vehicle using unleaded gas, you've got a cost for in tank to wheel, it's just whatever gas I spent, and the amount of emissions that came from that. But my welder wheel calculation also has to take into account the emissions that were generated by creating that gas that I pumped into my car, right? It's more complicated than that. But some sure I level that's what we're talking about in an electric vehicle. Tank to wheel there's no emissions, right? It's not burning anything, there's no fuel being consumed. It's an electric car. Tesla would like us to just stop right there. In our conversation, however, it to create that battery to charge that battery consumes electricity, that electricity is being generated somehow. Now if it's being generated by windmills, all the better or water or solar, but a lot of it isn't right. A lot of our grid is powered by other types of generation. And those those types of generation have emissions. And so when you look at well, two wheel, those emissions are for an electric vehicle aren't zero. There's something else there. There's there's actually there's real emissions that are that vehicles responsible for. And so when we do carbon emissions reporting for our customers, we're reporting on both well, we'll intake to we'll both for carbon alone and for and for the broader set of greenhouse gases that are created. And that's how companies are benchmarking reporting to the SEC, but also then benchmarking their individual vendors so that they can show their vendors, look, here's, here's the amount of emissions, that the tonnage of carbon that came from moving our product on with your vehicles, here's the tonnage of carbon that came from moving our product with that guy's vehicles. Right, and his are performing better. So I need you to make improvements in your, in your emissions efficiency.

Blythe Brumleve: 37:22

And then from I guess, from a consumer standpoint, I would imagine that because my first inclination is for a lot of these companies out there, you know, they're obviously very, we live in a capitalist country, you know, people just, you know, they want to maximize profits. So what do these companies care, you know, about, you know, sort of ESG goals, but then on the consumer side of things, they are becoming more aware of the environmental impact, they are more concerned, you know, with the future generations and being able to leave the planet, like not a disaster. And so that, in turn makes the companies care, because the consumers are going to start making those buying decisions. Are you seeing, you know, sort of anecdotally, are you seeing any kind of, you know, manufacturers or, or just brands in general that are sort of adopting that transparency when it comes to their own ESG rating, so the consumer can make the better buying decision. And then Thus, these companies were largely responsible for a lot of these emissions responsible for lowering their own is that I think that's a really roundabout way of getting to how do we make these companies start abiding by these, these, these rules that should be for instilled for future generations?

Josh Bouk: 38:33

So I'd say it's been building but over the last six months, it's it's becoming a boardroom conversation that just about every large company in the country, and, and it's because of what you just said, that it's it has, it's not just the right thing to do, it is going to impact their top and bottom lines, if they can't, you know, particularly for consumer facing brands. So we all know who, what consumer facing brands or anything we would go by. But the more the more consumers care about this and and the groundswell is significant. Already in increasing, the more these companies are realizing we're going to lose sales, because consumers want a product that they believe has been sourced produced sustainably. And, and that that is driving real behavior change in starting at the board level.

Blythe Brumleve: 39:34

And so whenever I guess these conversations are happening in the board room, you know, maybe it's that that sweet spot between they realize it's a problem, they realized they need to develop a solution. And then the end goal for you, of course is you know, for somebody to become a customer of Trax. What does that middle ground look like? What are some easy ways to get started with ESG goals that then leads into investing in a transportation spend management platform

Unknown: 40:00

Yeah, that's a marvelous question i, if it were me, I'd start to build my organization, first, I create, I would create a head of ESG. But the best companies have that head, but then, but then appoint leaders within each business function to participate, and usually the that, and that's how you build a culture, right you build, it's not just this thing that sits over here, it's ingrained in everything that you do, because you have somebody who's whose part of their job in each function is to carry the flag for, for ESG goals. And AbbVie, as an example, is a great example of that they have a formal ESG program, they have a formal ESG organ governance organization, but then within all parts of their supply chain organization, they have people assigned, who have raised their hand, they've stepped forward, it's not a burden, they're saying, Look, I'm passionate about this, I want to participate. And then there's a tremendous amount of communication, that that surrounds what they're doing, how they're doing it, why it's why it's good for, for both advi and their customers in the world. And so they they tend, you know, they make a really serious commitment to being part of their overall corporate culture. And until you do that, you know, you can vote you can put in a solution like mine, and we'll give you good reporting. But I have less confidence that you'll actually see that that number trend downwards. trending down is a is a collaboration between my tools and capabilities. And and then my customers commitment to use that to make decisions business decisions to drive down emissions.

Blythe Brumleve: 41:56

Yeah, I think that that's really well said, because in unless it's done at the cultural level within the company, then it doesn't make much sense for you to to spend money on a program, when you're not quite ready for that yet. But then if you do, do take those extra steps, and then it makes a whole lot more sense that you're doing good, not just by the company standpoint, but by your customers. And then overall, you know, future generations. All right. Well, I think that about does it for all of the questions that I had is did you have any more questions or not questions? But was there any questions that I should have asked that I didn't ask,

Unknown: 42:30

Oh, gosh. I don't know what comes what that wasn't one that were that I prepared for. What comes next is something that we sometimes talk about, we're seeing a lot of a lot more investment in green fuel technology, in a variety of different applications, whether it's automobiles, boats, or ships or or trucks. We're seeing a lot of interest in rail, as a as a way to reduce emissions overall, and, and sort of it starts you start to think more about when you when you start to build your network strategy around. Not just cost and service, but also emissions and that third leg of the stool, we start planning our networks differently. And so what we're seeing is the companies that are taking this seriously are thinking more about, okay, where's my where's my next distribution center, not just based on cost and service, but on the impact of the globe? How is this going to help me reduce my carbon emissions footprint? And they may design some of their transportation network around that that concept. And so we're seeing more innovation in that space as well, which is the fun to watch. As we're because I think there's a lot of oars in the water rowing in the right direction. Other than that, no, I think I'd leave you with, we'd love to chat with anybody who's interested. And they can learn more at www dot treks. tech.com tra s te ch.

Blythe Brumleve: 44:14

You took the next question right out of my mouth. So that's a great way to end the show. And we'll we'll make sure that we put all those links in the show notes to make it easy for folks to check out more about how they can you know, start developing these standards and when they are ready after they've developed the standards from both a company level and a cultural level, then it'll probably be a good fit for them to partner with a company like Trax. So Josh, thank you so much for for sharing your perspective and explaining what all of these I guess sort of newfangled ideas and concepts are not really new, but just a better way to track them. It's probably a better way to put it.

Josh Bouk: 44:50

My Facebook time. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.

Blythe Brumleve: 44:54

Absolutely. Likewise, I hope you enjoy this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter, but it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus, we drop a lot of gems in that email to help the one person marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work in order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You can find that email signup link along with our socials and past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm Blythe and go Jags