The Fascinating and Frustrating Aspects of Cargo Crime

In this episode of Everything is Logistics, Blythe Brumleve interviews Ron Greene, the VP of biz development at Overhaul, about the world of cargo crime. Greene discusses his experience in cargo risk management and how his company works with various industries to mitigate the risk of cargo theft.

They also talk about the importance of establishing risk protocols and recovery systems in case theft does occur. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the fascinating and frustrating world of cargo crime.

LINKS: 

• Visit the Overhaul website

TIME STAMPS: 

[00:02:10] Cargo theft risk protocols.

[00:04:22] In-transit cargo risk management.

[00:08:48] Reducing theft risk by 80%.

[00:12:54] Cargo theft on the rise.

[00:17:00] Cargo crime in Brazil.

[00:22:52] Preventing cargo theft.

[00:23:33] Highly targeted shipments.

[00:29:02] Cargo theft and recovery.

[00:31:23] Cargo criminals and police response.

[00:35:21] Cargo theft around the world.

[00:40:00] Machine learning in risk management.

[00:42:48] Logistics technology start-up.

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

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

Ron Greene: 0:00

LinkedIn presents

Blythe Brumleve: 0:10

welcome into another episode of everything is logistics a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve. And I am happy to welcome in Ron green. He is the VP of Business Development over at Overhaul and we're going to be talking about the fascinating and frustrating aspects of the cargo crime world. So Ron, welcome to the show. Thank you glad to be here. No, for sure. And this is something that this is a topic that I love discussing I there is you know, shows on television that talks about you know, cross border and things getting you know, stopped at the border from you know, cargo crime, I guess, perspective. But for folks who who may not be familiar with, you know, Overhaul or even you and your career, can you kind of give us that backstory of how you got involved in the world of cargo crime?

Ron Greene: 1:00

Yeah, happy to, um, I've been in the cargo, cargo risk management or supply chain risk management is a term we use. For most of my career. I started out, working in consulting, a consulting firm building risk models around cargo theft issues, for big fortune 500 companies, you know, you know, what they can expect from a cargo theft standpoint, if you analyze your global supply chain operations, did that for many years, and moved into more of a supplier or provider role, with some companies that were actually deploying solutions to help mitigate cargo theft around the world? You know, today, we worked with the who's who, of the, you know, the pharma, high tech, food, alcohol, tobacco, in a variety of different industries that have cargo set problems and do need to put programs in place to mitigate that risk and primarily prevent it from happening. But if it does happen, have to have systems in place to recover it.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:57

That's, that's interesting. You talked about like, sort of the risk protocols of even just establishing that how do you establish a risk protocol?

Ron Greene: 2:06

It Carla theft is a is predictable, it happens in the locations year over year, the same heat maps or risk maps around cargo theft, they haven't changed in in 20 years really happening in cargo theft tactics. You know, we analyze what criminals are doing, how they're executing thefts, and you know, put in put in mechanisms and tools and procedures to circumvent their operations. But it boils down to every every region is different. And you know, there's different tactics in North America versus Mexico versus Brazil versus Europe versus other parts of the world. And you have to adapt your solutions to, you know, what's happening on the ground, and from a real tactical level in a cardiothoracic standpoint.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:55

And so when you're looking at what's happening, is it looking at just you know, sort of, I guess, crime reports or crime logs? Or maybe it you know, in insurance, incidences? How do you even know, like, where the heat maps are to create a heat map?

Ron Greene: 3:08

It's, you know, there is not good cargo theft reporting globally, you know, some countries do it. Some countries don't. Most of our intel comes from our network, law enforcement relationships. There's some reporting by governments, but it's really just been in the industry. And in being in the in the nope,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:27

Oh, wow. So it really is like, it's almost like that a lot of people are talking about, you know, first party data. So it sounds like you guys are right there in it, where the first party data can really affect the future shipments of your own goods.

Ron Greene: 3:40

Correct? Yeah. And we, we get very granular, you know, we even study criminal crews, you know, what are their tactics? And where are they operating? You know, and part of that comes from, you know, having a good relationship with law enforcement, they can share what they can, you know, part of that comes from just our own operations around the world and, and touring these attempts.

Blythe Brumleve: 4:02

So So let's give the give the listeners I guess, sort of an overview of of Overhaul. Is it security software, I have a general idea, but for folks who who may not be aware, is it you know, an insurance policy is it software is it kind of both wrapped up, you know, who was I guess, the target customer, all that good stuff.

Ron Greene: 4:21

It's really all of the above, but our core service is tracking and monitoring freight, providing visibility and risk management, you know, layer over the movement of freight, we specialize in, in transit, cargo risk management. So things that are moving, whether it's on a truck, train plane or over the ocean, if cargo is moving, we have a risk management solution that we can apply. applied to that to mitigate these issues. And most of our cases in our our customers operations, we insert IoT devices and cargo for real time tracking and monitoring. We have control centers around the world, we call them G sock operations and global security operations centers where we track and monitor freight through software. It's our own proprietary software. And if something goes awry, if there's an event that happens and not supposed to, whether the container doors open trailer doors open, stop was not supposed to is off Route. There's a variety of factors that we look at continuously. And then if something happens is not supposed to, our system identifies it, and we address it, you know, through actions in our our operation centers, it could be as simple as getting the driver moving where he's not supposed to be stopped all the way to, you know, calling in law enforcement in private security operations to recover cargo.

Blythe Brumleve: 5:46

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 brokerage his book of 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. And so when is the customer essentially? Is it a carrier? Or is it a shipper that wants to you know, protect maybe high valuable goods? Like who is the I guess, maybe installing the tracking devices and sort of the Internet of Things.

Ron Greene: 6:37

It's all the above. You know, we we sell directly to shippers, the cargo owners, if you will, we sell to carriers, we sell to freight, you know, freight brokers, intermediaries, who, you know, are contracted to move, move freight for shippers. So we kind of whoever, you know, we whoever is touching the freight has control over the freight, you know, we sell into that group of people.

Blythe Brumleve: 7:06

And so what when, after somebody, you know, essentially becomes a customer, what does, I guess the process look like monitoring for a potential crime to occur? Sure.

Ron Greene: 7:18

So, I'll give you just a couple of use cases. You know, we'll start with a over the road movement in North America. So at the point of origin, you know, we're placing an IoT device inside that cargo as it's being loaded at the at the warehouse. We're also, you know, clicking a lot of data on who the carrier is who the driver is, many cases, we take pictures of that truck and trailer for our own internal records. We're also connecting, you know, to the telematics or, you know, ELD system in that truck through integrations. So we have multiple data points on that truck, giving us a live real time data of what's happening with that vehicle as it moves from origin to destination. So as soon as that shipment is loaded, in the truck, we're monitoring it in our control center through our software, it's kind of an automated process. Once that data is captured, our control center automatically puts it in their in their queue for monitoring and monitoring begins. Most of our most of the monitoring activity is software driven. So we don't really engage with the shipment or even, frankly, look at a shipment activity until something goes wrong.

Blythe Brumleve: 8:32

So how did that point? I was gonna say, what are those early signs that it looks like, you know, how do you know if like, maybe the driver stopped off to use the restroom? Versus Okay, oh, there's something serious that might be happening here.

Ron Greene: 8:46

One of the one of the rules of thumb in North America specific to the US is, if we can get drivers not stop for the first 200 miles from origin, four hours of driving, that decreases the risk of theft by 80 to 85%. Oh, wow. So that single activity if we can get that driver just we departs the origin warehouse to drive for four hours, or 200 miles before he takes he or she takes a restroom break or a do tea break or stops for any other reason. So if we can, that's step one. Step two, we're able to monitor is the shipment making logical progression towards destination? Is he on the right road is he or she on the right road? Is another alert that we could generate? Meaning if the driver goes right and says have left or even North versus south? We can immediately alert that and start to escalate that and investigate what's happening. Do we call the driver do we call this dispatch operations, all these different things come into play. In addition, we have the ability to detect if a door has been opened on trailer or a container. So if if something happens with door gets opened, we can immediately escalate that that'd be a high risk alert. We're immediately make an action to figure out what's happening. If we don't get if we don't get resolution, we can't figure it out. nobody's answering our phone calls, you know, we'll call on private security to invest, investigate or call in law enforcement to do a wellness check or, you know, investigate what's happening with that, that truck and trailer.

Blythe Brumleve: 10:17

So you're almost acting as like the track and trace department within a typical brokerage operation, is that a safe assumption?

Ron Greene: 10:25

We're definitely much more granular in our in our analysis in what we alert to track and trace in brokerage operations, typically, you know, they're there, they're checking, as the truck departed hasn't arrived, they're not looking at all the intermediary steps on what's what's transacting as that shipment progresses, you know, from origin to destination. And what's, you know, another use case would be, you know, an international move from Asia to Europe, where we actually IoT devices placed in the cargo at the point of manufacturing in the container. And we're tracking it to if it's an air shipment, we're tracking it to the airport, then we'll track actually the flight through integrations as the cargo transits on an airplane, or will track through integrations as a transit, the C, or IoT devices do require cell signal. So if it's out to sea, we don't have cell signal. But we can do through integration still track that shipment, you know, all the way to destination. When it gets to the destination airport airport, you know, we'll continue to pick up signals with our IoT device, and continue to track and monitor that shipment all the way to destination, we alert on different security, you know, alerts, whether it's off Route, door open, stop where it's not supposed to, there's a variety of those, we also alert on integrity, situations, whether it's temperature, humidity, shock, all these different factors can be integrated into the program. So if it's handled rough, it's out of temperature, there's too much humidity in the container or trailer, you know, we can immediately escalate that and notify people and take action accordingly.

Blythe Brumleve: 12:11

Now, there was a there was a quote that I was sent over from, you know, sort of the the pre show prep for this interview, and it was said that cargo theft continues to be a serious issue plaguing global shippers, and as thieves adjust their tap tactics and focus on high value goods, the need for additional security, the need for additional security to protect in cargo trans or in transit cargo is paramount. Now, are you mentioned that there are different ways that in North America handles, you know, a cargo crime, you know, sort of situation versus other countries? How is North America? I guess maybe is the safe answer, like is North America handling this? Well? Are there improvements that should be made relative to what the rest of the world is doing?

Ron Greene: 12:54

Definitely, you know, cargo theft is at an all time all time high. In North America, you know, people in the industry are saying cargo theft was one thing, pre COVID, post COVID It's a whole different animal. Oh, wow. There's a lot of factors for that, you know, both operationally and you know, society ID level. But cargo theft, globally, is just increasing, you know, as supply chains expand, companies are moving manufacturing around the world, as well. As you know, as as a general rule, crime is up globally, post post pandemic, for one reason or another. We're seeing that across the board in North America, we're seeing it in Latin America, other parts of Central America, it is increasing. And parts of the other parts of the world, you deal with more aggressive criminals. Armed hijacking is a common tactic in parts of Mexico and Brazil. We have different response protocols and to respond to that effectively.

Blythe Brumleve: 14:01

Fascinating. And so when you had said something to the effect of you know, cargo crime has relatively like the tactics in the United States have been my quoting you correctly, that they've been kind of the same for the like the last 20 years.

Ron Greene: 14:16

The locations where it occurs has been the same for the last 20 years. There are cargo theft hotspots that have been relatively consistent, year over year, you may have a flare up in a different city based on the criminal acts and criminal activity. But as a general rule, the hotspots where crime occurs, crime occurs has been relatively consistent tactics have changed. Criminals are getting more sophisticated. Even as in the last 12 months, they've kind of increased their level of sophistication. There's cargo criminals that are setting up trucking operations with the primary purpose to steel freight. Oh, wow. That's relatively new to the US US market. Where they're the started trucking company, the operator legitimately for a period of time, they build relationships across their business. And they get work into an operational level where they they feel they can start skimming freight off off off their trucks. And one of the more recent activities we're seeing is these criminal companies will book a load through a broker, pick it up, take it to their warehouse, decide if they want it or not. If the truck has, say, 20 pallets on it, they'll take four, they'll scan the bol into that into a PDF editor, edit that PDF does not have that No, no, it says 16 pallets still adjust the weight and all the different data points on that on that BOL, deliver it the recipient receives the bol I have 16 pallets, 16 pallets, all good market is delivered, and the driver drives off. Now that shortage may not get noticed for months. So people even know what's happening for months down the road. And they do an inventory check in they're realizing they're missing several pallets, and they have to do a whole new backtracking to see see where it went. Something went wrong. Wow. So it's that's relatively new to the US. You get to places like Brazil, where it's the level of sophistication on cargo crime will will boggle your mind, and how how organized and sophisticated some of these criminal crews are in that part of the world. Santa goes Mexico, but you get to those parts of the world it does get very violent. Where there are violence as well as armed armed criminals are, are typically operating in that area.

Blythe Brumleve: 16:45

What is an example I guess of a sophisticated cargo crime operations in Brazil.

Ron Greene: 16:51

So organized criminal groups will invest in people, they will identify young, young, bright students who maybe not might not be financially well off. They'll pay for their schooling, all the way through college education. They'll get a job, you know, with a company work there for many years up into middle management. And they'll come calling now you just have to pay their dues back and through that insider information. They're able to get into details of what's moving when was moving in and execute, execute thefts with insider information that and those criminal those cargo criminal crews have up to 10 years invested in that individual Wow, before they before they started using them as part of their network and part of their criminal operation.

Blythe Brumleve: 17:43

I wonder why that's not going on in the US? I would any insight into that as to why maybe

Ron Greene: 17:49

there's a lot of social, social and economic reasons why. Part of it is cultural. Part of it is just rule of law. Part of it is just societies, you know, majority, the Moral Majority, you know, of societies, and there's a lot of a lot of just cultural and socio economic factors that play into that.

Blythe Brumleve: 18:12

Interesting now, you had said, you know, there are certain areas of the US that have been impacted by cargo crime that are sort of the hotspots, what are some of those locations, and then what kind of freight is being targeted in those locations.

Ron Greene: 18:27

So it it cargoes, cargo criminals go where the cargo was the most deaths, it is major,

Blythe Brumleve: 18:34

Miami, LA,

Ron Greene: 18:36

you know, LA, Southern California has been the number one card with a tosspot for many, many years. Comparing states, California has been number one the last couple years, but California and Texas would go back and forth, who has the highest level of cargo theft, year over year. Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Chicago, Miami, New Jersey area. It's a combination of just it's really based on you know, where is cargo moving? And where is Where's where's it the most dense.

Blythe Brumleve: 19:12

The more cargo you have, like the more problems that this is going to be something that you're gonna have to

Ron Greene: 19:16

work at, you know, the more opportunities they have to target specific facilities target specific, you know, operations to steal. If you if you look back, you know, 25 years and the cargo theft trends in the US. Cargo theft really started to ramp up in the mid mid 90s. You know, during the high tech boom, you know, when everybody started getting personal PCs in their home and all the different electronic component electronics you have in your house today that are standard. If you go back to the 1990, that really wasn't the case, you know, the 80s people did not have how many different laptops you have in your house when we didn't have cell phones you have in your house? That was a completely different scenario, and what criminals do allies during the ramp up of some of that high tech boom, they call it is that very expensive goods were moving through unsecure supply chains. And they were right for the picking, to be able to capture and steal a multimillion dollar load with very little to no security around it. And their tactics, and have have really continued to evolve and increase ever since that.

Blythe Brumleve: 20:26

I think it was I was working at a freight brokerage about 10 years ago, and it was around the holidays, and we had a shipment of X boxes that was stolen. And it was we believe at the time it was the because of the driver. Because the truck ended up I mean, it was we had to file a police report go through all this, you know, is very expensive shipment, obviously, that got stolen, but we ended up finding the truck abandoned on the side of the road, got the full shipment got everything back. But I imagine that that doesn't necessarily happen all too often here in the United States that a safe assumption,

Ron Greene: 21:03

very safe assumption, you know, carnival thieves are also they will they're known to steal a load of afraid if they get the wrong one, they don't want the product, they'll just leave it, you know that they're targeting something of certain value and they get a load of paper products or something that doesn't have any black market appeal to them. A lot of times they'll abandon it, it's not worth their time and energy and go back and get something else. The majority, you know, if you look at the full truckload stuffs in North America, the vast majority of them, if they're targeted, the criminal organizations will case facilities case warehouses, maybe have some insider information, you know, by an informant, pay somebody for some information actually works in that warehouse, be able to identify when a load that they want is leaving that warehouse to surveillance, in other means, follow that truck for several 100 miles in some cases, and wait for that driver to stop at a truck stop or a yard, which that load is unattended. And within minutes, they'll break in hotwire that truck and drive it off. Most cases they'll have a they'll have a second tractor or truck in the area, they'll swap out that that tractor trailer dispose of the stolen tractors down the road somewhere. In many cases, paint over the logo has changed license plates on that on that trailer. So when they're driving back to their location, it's very inconspicuous, to to the law enforcement that that's a stolen truck. Stolen trailer.

Blythe Brumleve: 22:40

And you had mentioned earlier that the you know, one of the bigger ways to prevent, you know, a situation like this from happening is the driver not stopping for you know, the first few hours of the shipment. Why is that?

Ron Greene: 22:54

That comes back to kick tactics. Cargo criminals were when they target specific loads. Historically, they would, they would only follow them for 5060 miles and give up and go back for a different one. And if we got the driver to drive 200 miles without stopping, the chances of that being stolen or much less. Today, we have a few examples of criminal groups falling following a load several 100 miles. So they've adapted to that technique. But the rule of thumb for the we call the red zone, driving through the red zone without stopping still holds holds true. For the most part today. It's a tactic we we push hard for for drivers to follow those rules to help prevent theft.

Blythe Brumleve: 23:43

And so with with a lot of the I guess the electronics are probably the first thing that I think of that are going to be the highly targeted, you know, shipments. But as there may be some other type of commodity or shipment that is really highly targeted that most folks that would be shocked to find out.

Ron Greene: 24:03

Electronics are definitely you know one of them highly higher targeted commodities, but household goods, you know, alcohol, tobacco, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, anything that can be stolen and resold. There is a there is a market appeal for it. The majority of cargo criminals have fences. So if they steal a load of, you know, whether it be dishsoap or you know, some kind of food product there, as soon as they have control of that product, they're calling their fences and say I got a load of this product, how much you want to give for me and they're shopping around who am I going to sell this to? And they'll find the highest bidder deliver that that load to the highest bidder highest and then in many cases they'll have that load unloaded in their their fences warehouse, they'll take that trailer and just dump it somewhere and they don't even they don't even want to mess with With the trailer,

Blythe Brumleve: 25:02

that's crazy. So for, I guess for a lot of these cargo thieves it, it almost sounds like you know with. So there's two facets that I'm thinking of, as you were talking is that all of this technology that's coming into supply chain and logistics, allowing for visibility, and try additional tracking and things like that load boards, which isn't new, but they've been around for forever, are either those two things subject to cybersecurity threats almost, and this might be out of I don't know if this is in your wheelhouse, or maybe you know, Overhaul's wheel wheel house in general. But it almost like as you were talking, it seems like you know, maybe putting a load of like electronics up on a public load board. That seems like that could be something that could easily be targeted by criminals. Well, 100% load board not off base and that

Ron Greene: 25:50

load board activity is a prime target for criminal programs, you don't see the extreme high value loads on load boards. Because of that reason alone, companies who are shipping sensitive products were knowledgeable of cargo criminal activity will try to, through their brokerage operations, not have the lowest posted on both ports for that specific reason. And so

Blythe Brumleve: 26:14

that's more of a private thing that they're going to reach out to their private carriers people that they trust or

Ron Greene: 26:19

or only have a dedicated group of carriers that is approved to call it to call their load that they've been agreed to security protocol. It's not open to the mass market of carriers to load with that load.

Blythe Brumleve: 26:31

Do you have like a favorite crazy story that's happened in sort of the cargo crime world.

Ron Greene: 26:38

I have a lot of them.

Blythe Brumleve: 26:40

Give us a couple.

Ron Greene: 26:42

We had. I'll give you one from last week. Last week. We had a load picked up by a carrier. We did the load didn't fell a security protocol. It stopped within the within the first 10 Miles went to a yard. We also had a light alert does that mean the door was opened we had proved to the door had been opened which it shouldn't have been open it should have been sealed and shut and remain that way all the through all the way through destination was a filter to contract and full truckload shipment. So we immediately called try calling the driver tried calling the dispatch operations, contacted the broker let them know what was happening. We weren't getting any communication with with either the driver, the carrier, the dispatch operations, we investigated this carrier online just through standard, you know, online online data tools. figured out that the owner of this load, sorry, the owner of this carrier is a name we recognize that's tied to a different criminal group. Just the like the same the name, they don't know you can you can figure out who owns that trucking company by online researches and the name match to a criminal group that we were aware of contacted the shipper. So this is what's happening. And we agreed to go get that load back. So we hired another driver and went and picked up that load from that yard and took it back.

Blythe Brumleve: 28:08

Nice. So what kind of I guess what kind of security has to be involved in something like that? Because you're for I guess, for the yard owner, who may be oblivious to to what's going on? How do you I guess sort of navigate the intricacies of that kind of operation?

Ron Greene: 28:25

Yeah, we're not, you know, we're not calling the shots, we give recommendations. The counter, the cargo owner is calling the shots. And it's their product. And, you know, they, if they gave the instructions to go pull that load the same time, they were communicating to that, or trying to communicate to that carrier saying you're no longer in charge of this load. We're pulling it back to origin. And that was the end of it. The trauma,

Blythe Brumleve: 28:52

I imagine is probably such a rush, when something like that is going on, but not like in a rush but also kind of panicky, is there also a level of like trying to calm down the customer that they're, you know, we're gonna do everything we can.

Ron Greene: 29:06

The customers are, you know, they're they've been through the, through the wringer. You know, you know, they trust us to do our job. We kept them informed of what's happening and we provide them recommendations what what they should do and give them, you know, ideas for how we should we should respond. There's an other cases where a load was stolen, the entire tractor trailer was stolen. This is Chicago, and it was stolen at night. We had the load. It was declared stolen by the trucking company. You know, we got pulled over by law enforcement. But the trucking company when they filed that police report, the officer went on duty and did not enter that police report into the police system. So when the law enforcement you know, a couple of counties away pulled that truck over, there was no formal record Have that truck or trailer being stolen? So they'll let it go? They had no right to retain that driver. So we were scrambling to get the officer who actually took the police report, have I forget who it was, but have he or she go back, enter in that information into their law enforcement database and declare that truck stolen, which allowed us to then have that truck pulled over, down the road further, in that mess when we were able to make a recovery? Because it was formally reported stolen in the police databases,

Blythe Brumleve: 30:36

how often are the I guess the drivers complicit in what's going on? Are they just kind of oblivious to the situation, or maybe it's case by case,

Ron Greene: 30:45

case by case, but the vast majority of drivers are not involved. You know, the kind of the onset of kind of criminal carrier groups operating in certain parts of the country is relatively new phenomena. But in my experience, most the vast majority of drivers are trying to do a good job and do their job efficiently. But many of them are oblivious to the risks of the load. They're, they're pulling,

Blythe Brumleve: 31:11

and then, of course, they get caught up.

Ron Greene: 31:15

Another factor is that most cargo criminals specifically in North America, you know, will not come confront drivers. They're not violent criminal crews. They know that if they don't threaten assault, or even speak to a driver that they crime will be classified as a property crime theft. But if they do assault or threaten the driver, it'll be classified more as an assault, which gets increased police awareness and response. Property crimes are in many cases not high priority for law enforcement compared to assault, or somebody being injured, you know, through through that activity, so that that raises the level of crime that raises the level police response. So criminals know that they know that if they don't commit assault, they don't stop the driver. The likelihood of a quack and and police response is less likely.

Blythe Brumleve: 32:12

It sounds almost like a lower risk, higher reward payoff for a lot of these groups. It is it is crazy. 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 manage 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. So earlier this year Overhaul had made an acquisition and it becomes the with that acquisition Overhaul becomes the largest in transit supply chain cargo security provider offering shippers a comprehensive real time solution for mitigating the risk associated with theft damaged chain of custody and other cargo security threats, no matter where the load may be throughout the globe. Now with this acquisition, can you kind of give us a little bit of a background on why this acquisition was important for Overhaul to make?

Ron Greene: 34:00

Well, we acquired a company that was called sensor guard, they were a direct competitor of ours and in the coal market. You know, we I many of the founders of Overhaul worked for that same company years ago. So we knew the company knew the team knew the operations. And it solidified our, our position as a leader in this space in terms of market share and revenue. It gave us that boost and an ability to position ourselves stronger in the market. You know, we're one of the only global companies that do what we do. We do have competitors around the world but providing a global solution. We're one of the few that can provide this service globally.

Blythe Brumleve: 34:45

And so with being able to, I guess, provide, you know, sort of the world security, I guess, how are you I guess monitoring how cargo crime is. I'm sure you guys are of monitoring how it's evolving unique to the car and treat itself. Because you mentioned earlier about how different it is, you know, say from Brazil to Mexico to the United States, but what about relative to like, I don't know, European countries or even, you know, like India or you know, Japan? Like, do they experience a lot of the same cargo crime, I guess storylines? Or, or are they all vastly different, like Brazil, Mexico and the United States,

Ron Greene: 35:25

all vastly different. We have a whole Intelligence Group designed to keep track of that and provide our customers the latest intelligence on what's happening relative to their global supply chain operations. You know, countries like Japan have very little to no cargo theft. India's China has very little no cargo theft, as our parts of Asia that have high high rates of cargo theft, Europe has a relatively high level of cargo theft, but does vary by country. And the tactics are much different in Europe than they are around the rest of the world. In Europe, if, if companies can, most sick, most cargo theft in Europe happens at unsecured parking areas, rest stops lay bys, areas where drivers stopped arrest, you know, as they're transmitting, and then our our mode of operating in Europe is if we can get drivers to when they do stop for a long period of time, you know, for arrest or more than an hour, we require them to stop in a secured parking area, you know, with access controls, hopefully some guards and just you know, some level of security. And that is a very effective tool for mitigating cargo theft in Europe, because drivers are not parking on the side of the road or just a simple rest stop, you know, for the for the hours of service rest. And that's where the majority of cargo theft happens in Europe is at these unsecured parking locations.

Blythe Brumleve: 36:51

So with the US with truck parking being such a massive issue for a lot of drivers, are we seeing that happening to a lot of drivers who stopped for a break or, you know, they don't can't find anywhere to park so they're just forced to pull over on the side of the road.

Ron Greene: 37:05

It varies by area of the country. There's definitely bottlenecks in the around the country, just from a parking standpoint, there's also areas of the country where parking is wide open. But, you know, there is some people in the industry thinking that the market will demand secured parking in the US at some point in the future. Today, the market is not there. And there's very little there's very few participants in that in that space. But there are some companies looking at it and putting up some secured parking additional truck parking around the country.

Blythe Brumleve: 37:39

So we we've talked a lot about sort of the theft of you know at electronics like he's very costly goods, but there's also protection measures that you guys offer that protects against non delivery and spoilage. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Ron Greene: 37:54

Yeah. So, you know some of the some of the challenges we in risks we we mitigate against our as I mentioned temperature, we do monitor for temperature real time. So if if the temperature of a specific shipment, whether it be a food or some other temperature sensitive product goes above a certain level, those thresholds are sent are set by product type and by shipment. So we will get an alert can notify the appropriate people hey, this shipment is increasing his temperature. Let's figure out what action can be taken, you know, is it getting the truck into a reefer repair shop is it simply telling the driver to turn down the reefer things like that can go along to go along ways to mitigate that exposure from temperature sensitive products. Non delivery it does happen often. Many times you know shipments are just misdirected, especially the parcel or LTL level. And being able to quickly identify a shipment has is not routing where it's supposed to or not meeting its its its waypoints, you know through the parcel or LTL networks and be able to work to that have plans in place to escalate that to the appropriate person to figure out what's happening. You know, it could be as simple as a pelican a pallet was forgotten at a warehouse, and then may not be noticed for many, many days. And that and that made me days that could expose that, that pallet to to theft. But if we can understand it, as you know, respond to that, fix it before it becomes a costly problem. That's sort of cool.

Blythe Brumleve: 39:31

And so with you I mean, you can't really like read any article right now without reading about like artificial intelligence and Chechi Beatty and all of that, you know, new technology that's coming into the space. You've mentioned a lot with Overhaul's technology, are you guys incorporating any kind of you know, a I imagine you are, you know, from a monitoring standpoint, which curious to hear how you're implementing or plan to implement, you know, these tools in the future. We've been in

Ron Greene: 39:58

big data and we call me we You use the term machine learning, we think that's more suitable for our space. And, you know, we've been investing in that space for a couple years now. And building teams around that, and, you know, using using data to make more accurate predictions and using data to help mitigate, you know, prevent risks from from from happening before they become a problem to identify a risk, and be able to address it corrected before cost somebody more money. But we are we are heavily invested in that space. And using big data and machine learning to make our systems more efficient, make them more accurate, and a better product are all around.

Blythe Brumleve: 40:39

So what can folks I guess, maybe expect or maybe customers, people who are, you know, interested in becoming a customer, what can they expect from Overhaul, you know, in the coming months, or even the coming year?

Ron Greene: 40:50

You know, we're we're a fast growing company. We're constantly evolving and iterating on our tools, expanding to new markets, incorporating new modes of transit, new kinds of modes of operating within our, our control center environment and our monitoring operations. I think we're, we're also, you know, going down the, you know, an area of visibility, you know, right now, we're pretty heavily focused on, you know, risk management, but we are moving into the visibility space, you know, and in competing with other players or players in the visibility space and providing, in our opinion, a better tool. That is risk, visibility, risk management, solution set for for shippers.

Blythe Brumleve: 41:34

So is there any other I guess, sort of a, you know, the last couple of questions here, is there any other aspect to cargo crime or Overhaul, or kind of maybe a combination of the two that you think is important to mention?

Ron Greene: 41:46

Yeah, so we're also incorporating insurance products around our solution. We have specific insurance programs, we have an insurer tech division, we're seeing that companies when they do implement our services, they're the rate of loss, their supply chain runs more efficient. It's more optimized, which translates to lower risk across their global supply chain operations. And they should be be able to be rewarded or take advantage of that in their insurance programs. So we've set up specific insurance programs with some of the larger underwriters around the world where if companies do buy into Overhaul solutions, they're eligible to step into an insurance program with a theory that it will cost them less money. And we've seen significant reductions in insurance premiums for our customers under these programs. So they implement a program. They bundle that with an assurance program. And the end result is they're saving money across their operation,

Blythe Brumleve: 42:44

saving money and saving from hopefully potential headaches, all in one solution. All right, Ron, this was a fascinating conversation for me, for folks who, you know, are listening to the pod and they want to reach out to you or they want to reach out to overhaul and maybe get a demo of the product. where can folks follow more of your work and overhaul.

Ron Greene: 43:04

Now we're we're on all the social media accounts, our website is over dash Hall will be er desk ha ul.com. That's the best place to reach out to us. There's all the different tools to schedule a demo or get in touch. I think that's the most easiest way to reach out.

Blythe Brumleve: 43:20

Oh, perfect, I great stories today, thank you for shining a light sort of on these issues that I think are, they should be more at the forefront instead of you know, an on the back burner or you know, when something goes wrong, that's when you're looking for a solution, it's probably the wrong time to be looking for a solution in that regard. So I thank you for your time today and sharing all of those stories. So thank you very much

Ron Greene: 43:41

for the opportunity. Absolutely.

Blythe Brumleve: 43:47

I hope you enjoyed 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 could find that email signup link along with our socials in past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm Blythe and go Jags