Driving the Future of Auto Logistics with AI (Jeremy Louisos)

In this episode, special guest host Jamye Carpenter, VP of Customer Success at Privacy4Cars, joins the Mile Marker podcast to chat with Jeremy Louisos, Senior Vice President of Pre-Owned Auto Logistics (PAL). Jeremy shares the origin story of PAL and its evolution from a small dealership to a tech-forward logistics company serving major dealer groups, fleet managers, and OEMs across the country.

The conversation dives deep into how AI is transforming auto transport logistics—from predictive pricing and instant quoting to improved delivery ETAs and smarter carrier communication. Jeremy also discusses how PAL is navigating the challenges of EV transportation, the push for industry-wide GPS tracking standards, and the potential of load-building with AI.

With insight into auction readiness for EVs, autonomous transport, and driver safety innovations, this episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the future of connected, tech-driven vehicle logistics.

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Transcript

Angela Simoes:

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mile Marker podcast. My name is Angela Simons, your host, and I am here with a special guest host, Jamie Carpenter, VP of Customer Success for Privacy for Cars. Welcome, Jamie.

Jamye Carpenter:

Thank you. So happy to be here.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah. And we are here with Jeremy Lozo.

Jeremy Louisos:

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Jamye Carpenter:

Also known as PAL because they are pals to the industry.

Jeremy Louisos:

We try to be everyone's friend.

Angela Simoes:

I love it

Jeremy Louisos:

That as much as possible.

Angela Simoes:

So Jeremy, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the industry and then what PAL does.

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah, of course. So my time in this industry starts almost 25 years ago. Somehow! Time is flying when you're having fun, I guess. So back in 2002, I started working for a small independent car dealership called Pre-Owned Auto Sales in Salem, Massachusetts with Dana Rogers, the owner and founder of Pre-Owned Auto Logistics. And Powell at that time, he had just purchased one truck to ship some of his wholesale vehicles back and forth from his store to auction. I think it was maybe a gig for a brother-in-law

Just to kind of keep him busy, maybe save some money on transportation. What we didn't know at the time is we had tapped into a completely underserved market in our part of the world in the northeast of Massachusetts. We had folks from the dealership world asking if we could ship their vehicles, and we had private parties. We had folks saying, Hey, you get this big truck in front of the dealership, can you ship my car to Florida? It was like, yeah, we can figure that out. So kind of we stumbled upon this thing, but over the years we really built up the fleet to about 30 trucks at our max. We now do everything with our care network. We started brokerage about 20 years ago as well, which is now the sole source and mode of US shipping vehicles. We invested heavily in technology during that time and kind of just built this thing from the ground up brick by brick.

You may or may not know this, but there is no auto shipping for Dummies playbook. It was kind of like you had to figure it all out yourself, which was really just a super fun adventure for me. I think. I like to do lots of different things and scratch different itches in my skillset. And so this project, which ends up being the major project of my adult life, has been very rewarding and brought me to a lot of different areas. It lets me do things like hang out and talk to folks like you. So right now we're working with some of the largest dealer groups in the country, some of the largest fleet management companies. We ship thousands of private parties around the country in addition to rental cars, some OEM work lenders, you name it. Really anyone who values quality service. So we boast as being a very trusted name in this space. So that's the story and who we serve these days and what we've been up to.

Angela Simoes:

So what has been maybe the biggest advancement or a technological leap or something that's happened that you're really proud of in the last few years?

Jeremy Louisos:

So recently, and this will go right into Jamie's wheelhouse with all the AI stuff.

Angela Simoes:

Oh, okay.

Jeremy Louisos:

I just want to plug real quick. You did such a great job with your presentation yesterday. Everyone's coming up to me saying, how do I get involved with ai? It's like I'm going to introduce you to the best person you've ever met.

Angela Simoes:

That's awesome.

Jeremy Louisos:

Thank you. Yeah, so we'll rock and roll that as well. Okay, thank you. But for us at Powell in the world of ai, I was kind of skeptical at first. I think it was about three years ago, my head developer came up to me and said, Hey, we've been trying to solve this problem. We have this pretty complicated algorithm that's going to predict what it's going to cost to ship a vehicle. That's obviously pretty important to sort of know on the spot. I think that if you're trying to quote every single vehicle one at a time, that's going to be a pretty big bottleneck. We were experiencing that at the time, so we have to figure out a way to create instant rates that we can guarantee that we can back and that we sort of live or die by the success of understanding what it costs to ship. So it was a pretty big challenge for us at the time. I think our algorithm with its 20 plus different variables and factors was probably 70% accurate. And we thought that was amazing. We thought that was pretty, we was good as you, we

Speaker 4:

Get,

Jeremy Louisos:

But my head of dev was saying, we can do much better. There's technology out there that can really supercharge this effort. I'm like, man, we got real stuff to do. Don't talking about ai. That's the future. That's not what we're doing right now. But he wore me down and I'm very glad he did. And Greenlighted sort of a little side project, all right, see if you can create this tool to make those predictions. And we were feeding it. I'm learning all about how to train models. I still only have a limited understanding, but we need to wait,

Jamye Carpenter:

Got to be training is key. Training is

Jeremy Louisos:

Key over and over again and sort of maybe weight different criteria and looking at the results and our, there's some good stats words in there to describe our values or whatever. It's how successful we were at getting some of the stuff back and all of a sudden we had this model that was 95% accurate. It was smoking the tools that we had and it was taking a fraction of the resources. It was much more reliable and rugged,

Angela Simoes:

Probably faster.

Jeremy Louisos:

Faster the whole bit. It's better in every way. And I'm like, okay, my mind is open now to,

Angela Simoes:

You gave that guy a bonus that were you down?

Jeremy Louisos:

He's a happy guy. He's still with us, still a friend of the program. But yeah, I really learned a lot through that experience and saw firsthand what those capabilities are and it instantly changed our business and expanded some of the places that we could be. I mean, we're now able to be anywhere if it's a retail purchase

And you need to know that, hang your hat on reliable penny, perfect number to go into maybe financing a deal. It's got to not change and you got to get it right away and it's got to be consistent. The person over here looking at it and the person at the dealership looking at it has to all sort of line up and we're able to do that easily. Now we argue. And so not only are we doing that, we have to provide or get to provide an ETA or when's your car going to arrive? And that was sort of based on some pretty primitive table based on mileage. Now that's all powered by AI as well. So we're able to provide an instant guaranteed quote, ETA to any digital experience on demand in a single instance. Or maybe you have a thumbnail page, we're scrolling down number of vehicles. We can do that thousands at a time in some cases, and it's just allowed us to play in a bigger space. And we've really enjoyed that tailwind from that technology boost. So yeah, that's probably my best AI technology story to

Angela Simoes:

Date. What about tracking and status of the vehicle? So something that we talk about, it writes all a lot, is the ability when you order from Amazon, you see exactly where it's at. Did it ship? Is it out for delivery? Is it, so can you, have you applied AI for the status of where things are in transit?

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah, so we're looking at the best way to do that. If I can jump in. There's a few pieces where technology sort of touches that and some of it, it just ends up being sort of old fashioned, but I think we're seeing some innovation in that space. So clearly we need to know the trains run on time. We have to make sure that, especially as a company that relies on our carriers, we're only as good as knowing what our carriers doing and supporting their efforts and making sure they're empowered to do a great job and deliver and free them from obstacles throughout their day. In the past that's looked like calling folks every single day. That's a little bit better now. We now have a solid carrier app. We have a great partnership with the folks over at Super Dispatch. We had our own carrier app at a time in our past.

It turns out that carriers very much wanted another app on their phone. They did not. And so when we were getting sort of mixed messages on adoption, we kind of pooled our carrier base and said, all right, so what app would you like? Can we meet you where you're at? And they said mostly they're using super, there's, there's a bunch of other fine apps and we're working on some integrations there as well. But we found that that's where the majority of our carriers were at the time. And what that does for us, having that integration allows us to be very consistent with our condition reports and very consistent with our bools imaging, all that sort of stuff. It all, it's going to look pretty much the same to all of our clients. And even as we bring in other partners, I think we enjoy that consistency.

We're going to make sure that we replicate that. But these bools for all these top providers, I think all of equality that people are used to looking at ai, I think AI is not a place in that ecosystem. We've sort of tapped, we have had the advantage of the integration that is technology but not ai. I think what we're looking at now is maybe are there other ways of reaching out to folks? I mean, it's great that we can communicate through the app, but maybe is there some AI text? Can we maybe do some chat stuff? So maybe we're asking that carrier, Hey, are you on time? But maybe there's another question. Yeah, I am, but I'm going to be in Washington state in two days and might be looking for something to bring back. It'd be really cool if maybe some sort of chat bot could jump into that experience and help them, or at least connect the dots to the right people in our organization. So it's probably a little ways away, but quicker than I think if I'm to learn anything from the past.

Jamye Carpenter:

And even though it's not AI driven, you can track the vehicle through the app. So there is a tracking feature. It's just not AI driven.

Jeremy Louisos:

Oh, okay. But Tech Empowered and GPS is another powerful technology. I think. So right now with the app, it's an option if the driver wants to be tracked via GPS and I think as an industry. So we formed a bit of a council with some of the top brokers in our space and we're trying to make the argument, make the push in our industry to make that the standard that everyone just turns that on. We don't care where you're going to dinner that night, don't care where you're going on the weekends, but when you have that cargo, if you turn this on, we will not have to bother you with a call. We can just watch

Speaker 4:

That

Jeremy Louisos:

Vehicle travel. So I think it will be a win once we sort of get when the carrier is fully adopted. Right now we're sort of just working through some comfort in privacy, which I think is very reasonable for carriers to question.

Speaker 4:

Sure.

Jeremy Louisos:

But I think we're going to get through that. I'm hoping that we're going to see some inroads this year and push forward. I think that's just going to make everyone's lives better. The one little disclaimer or caveat I would throw on that is that we've actually found if we share the exact location of a vehicle with somebody, it might not always help them know when it's going to arrive. In some cases it makes people

Jamye Carpenter:

A little nervous

Jeremy Louisos:

Or a little crazy,

Jamye Carpenter:

A little nervy.

Jeremy Louisos:

So they say, all right, I know where this city is. I can drive to the city in an hour. My car's going to be here in an hour. And then they watch the truck go past that city in a different direction.

Angela Simoes:

Interesting.

Jeremy Louisos:

Because they are maybe on the top rack of this car care. There's five other cars that are going to be dropped two hours that way. So we feel that we want to be thoughtful with how we share that data. We want to contextualize it. We don't want to mislead people and no, they're going the wrong way. My car's moving away from me. I mean, that's a scary experience for folks. So I think what we're going to look at is how to thoughtfully incorporate that GPS data into something that's kind of linear. Alright, they hit a midpoint, they're X amount of hours away. I think those ets are a pretty important part of this. And we're looking at some of the industry standard, not industry standards, but sort of I think consumer standards. Looking at what Amazon does, it's a little different there. But like FedEx, UPS all have that sort of tracking feature, which doesn't always show you exactly where it is, but kind of shows you these way.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah, milestones. Yeah, milestones.

Jeremy Louisos:

So we're looking at that. I think that's going to be another thing that we're going to come up with this year

Angela Simoes:

Or could AI kind help figure out in what order to load the vehicles onto the truck so that you could, if you are going to go past that town, that car is the next one available. I don't know if they're picking up cars along the way, so that's not always possible. But that could also be something,

Jeremy Louisos:

I'm going to be careful how I respond there, but I think if folks are looking to do load building with ai, there's probably some advantages there. I think that could be a cool tech for some folks.

Angela Simoes:

Very cool. So huge leap there. You've experienced some significant gains and business growth I think as a result.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

So what's next? I mean, you got to be working on some cool stuff. Once you see what's possible, then your brain just sort of goes, and then we can do this, then we can do that. So what's on the roadmap? Whatever you can share. We certainly don't want you to give away your secret sauce, but what can you share?

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah, of course. That's all that possibility kind of is the challenge because oh, we could do this or that. You have to really sort and prioritize. And one of the things that same developer that pushed me into AI is also constantly warning me. AI still, I mean in a few years maybe, but AI still is not a magical wand. You can wave over your organization and just see all these

Angela Simoes:

Things and it just fix everything.

Jeremy Louisos:

It's not there. And anyone who's selling that, and there are lots of people that are trying to sell that,

That's not what we're doing. But what we are doing is finding specific use cases like quoting where AI can be powerful. I think that you kind of keyed in on one space advantage with load building. I think that there are, I want to be careful sort of how I approach this one, but I think that there are a lot of big data sets that we can gain insight from. And the better we understand maybe our carrier base, the better we understand their preferences, the better we can maybe assign, select, sort of put the right loads in front of 'em. I think there's a lot of power to that. And I think that on the other side of ai, some of those chat features are pretty interesting. I think that there are probably a bunch of calls that we're doing that are pretty close or maybe right now there is a capability with the right trained model to have those conversations at least sort of help get the first few questions answered.

Speaker 4:

And

Jeremy Louisos:

Then if it goes past that, then sort of pass it up to an expert or whatever. But I think we're interested in some of those and I think that's kind of a boring one, but I think a lot of people are looking at that. But just seeing, I guess our spin on it would be, yes, it's conversational, it's been trained and it can talk to people and understand, but giving it access to our FAQs and our response trees and all that sort of stuff and of training it through those conversations is something that we're definitely excited about pursuing.

Jamye Carpenter:

So Jeremy and I both are chairs under the industry advancement committee. And so with that, my focus is ai and the next focus that we will have after the arbitrations will be transportation and then customer service. So we are looking at some of those same things, but Jeremy, he co-chairs the ev, what is the real title?

Jeremy Louisos:

So I throw around ev. Readiness.

Jamye Carpenter:

Readiness, there we go. And so when we were talking before this, I was like, I'd love to know what you guys are working on and what you've seen within our industry and how EVs are impacting our lives or not impacting them, whatever you think.

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah, and so my focus, so I'll be very forthcoming here, I'm not an EV expert by any means. I think that it's my job to help facilitate experts to talk to our CONSIGNER members. And that's kind of my role here is we have these Consigner folks that have some real questions about how EVs are going to impact their lives and their business. And it's up to me to understand what those challenges are up to our committee to understand what those challenges are and try to put the right content experts in front of them. And so this year we kind of do this exercise every year. What's important, something that's been very consistent is markets, people understanding valuations. And there are so many influences and things that are going to be impacting markets or that are impacting markets now. That's a space that we're watching closely.

So we've connected with folks like Scott Case from Recurrent and others that really are giving us good powerful insights into those markets. The other thing that emerged recently, there's two other things that are very much in my cross service right now. One is I think the way the consignors put, it's understanding their customer's customer. So they want to connect with the dealerships. Ultimately as they put EVs into this market, dealers are going to be buying these things. And I think understanding what's important for dealers when they buy those things is going to better help them position those cars to sell. And I think working with organizations like NADA and just kind of hearing where the success stories are, where are there dealerships that have adopted wholesaling, EVs,

And then what are those barriers for those that have not really jumped in there yet? So we're very focused on that partnership and just kind of understanding how to communicate better and how to find some champions in that space to facilitate those sales. I think the other part to that is, I think at first there was an idea that we might sort of we're looking for some certifications. Do we certify cars? What do we certify? What's the EV certification? And it turns out maybe the most important certification is for the auction. Is this a good seller of EVs? Do they understand the product? If they have custody of that vehicle, do they know how to keep it charged? Do they know if it gets locked out, how to handle that when it comes to reconditioning? Do they have the resources and the network to get that car ready for sale day? And there are folks that are very good at that, some of which are in my committee, and they have some of the largest EV auctions in the country right now. So I think that's an area of interest. I don't want to go too far down that road yet, but I think over the course of this year, we may end up in a place where we're going to be certifying auctions saying, yeah, this is a gold star

EV seller, and if you have lots of EVs, you may consider connecting with them and interacting with their markets.

Angela Simoes:

I can imagine the ones that are going to get Gold Star certified would be very happy. I would. And then there could be some not so happy ones.

Jeremy Louisos:

I mean, I think some auctions, it's just not their thing maybe. And I think that's fine. And maybe they don't want to be. Yeah,

Jamye Carpenter:

I really think that that's it. They don't feel like they have the infrastructure and they don't want to have to deal with it right now. But you do have, right in my backyard, AutoNation Atlanta has one of the largest Tesla sales because Tesla consigns all their vehicles through their auction. So they definitely would be gold star material. So I think that's actually a great idea because there are certain auctions that are just set up for that and there are certain auctions that just, that's not their thing. And to be able to identify that, that's pretty powerful.

Jeremy Louisos:

Jamie, if you think it's a good idea, let's do it. I think you just sealed the deal. Let's make it happen.

Angela Simoes:

Let's do

Jeremy Louisos:

It. Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

When we first mentioned EVs in this conversation, honestly one of the first things I thought of from a transportation standpoint was because of the weight of EVs, does it mean that you're taking fewer cars in a trip and even if it's one fewer, you multiply that over however many trips you're doing and it could be a significant impact,

Jeremy Louisos:

That load factor impact. So absolutely right. The heavier these are, so we have 80,000 pounds on the largest car carriers that exist and these things way more. I mean, if you look at Rivian or the Electric Hummer or some of those really crazy things, you're not going to fit a ton anyway just because they're big,

Angela Simoes:

They're bigger.

Jeremy Louisos:

But yeah, if you have a truckload of ice vehicles, sedans and then size, the weights can be very different for those EVs and it will, even if it's just one that impacts capacity. So that is something that we're watching quite a bit. There are people that are shipping lots of EVs at a time, but we're usually still able to get mixes here. But yeah, that's something we've been watching for a few years now. The weight impacts some other things that I wouldn't have thought of intuitively, but kind of makes sense. We're worried about things like liability.

If more of these trucks are going to be handling heavier cargo, you hope that there's never an incident, but if there is an accident, there's more inertia, momentum, whatever the physics word is there and more damage that's going to happen. And so people are looking at those sort of risks. It's more wear and tear on the equipment, maybe the equipment itself, even if it's not the weight, maybe it's the load distribution and how these vehicles are sort of weighted. And so do we have to sort of upfit and then charging infrastructure, what's our responsibility to, first of all, we need to make sure that we can get it onto the truck and off the truck, but then do we have some sort of responsibility in the chain of custody there? If it's really bad for a battery to sit on with no charge for an extended period of time, we're driving cross country, is that on us? So we've been exploring those questions. I think the good news on that last one is we had some experts in Jeff Trek from Call to Recycle on,

Jamye Carpenter:

Oh gosh, that was amazing.

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah, we 'em a few times

Jamye Carpenter:

Standing room only. Good.

Jeremy Louisos:

That was a cool presentation. And he actually does not think that the duration of time that we have the vehicle will

Angela Simoes:

Impact the battery.

Jeremy Louisos:

We can't degrade a battery shipping it, even if it takes a few weeks. And I think most auctions are sort of in that safety zone, but when you start getting into the months of time that you're in custody, that's when it's more than just like is it convenient to have it charged? Is it dangerous or bad for the battery to not have it charged? So those are important factors as well.

Jamye Carpenter:

One of the ar, I think it was, I can't remember, it could have been car, but one of the conferences that we went to, I think Michelle Prag was part of the session and they were talking about the weight and the low distribution and one of the things that came up was some of the legal requirements, but does that lean itself to new trucks that would be designed to be able to carry that weight so that you're not having to be one loss of a vehicle, but you could still load it so it doesn't affect the driver's bottom line. Right. So have you heard any advancement in that? Is that something that is coming or?

Jeremy Louisos:

So I think that's a great question. It's definitely a space we've been watching. I've not, so I've heard that question come up, but I've not really heard the answer. Are folks actually buying new equipment? Our manufacturers one of the largest trailer equipment providers. Are they redesigning stuff? I have not heard the answer to that question. So let me circle back to you on that one, because actually I'm curious too. I want to know if anyone, I've heard the chatter, but has it actually happened yet? Are there material changes? I do not know, but I am curious as well.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah, thoughts on autonomous trucking and using that, even if it's for, I forget the term, not last mile or first mile, but

Jeremy Louisos:

Final mile.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah.

Jeremy Louisos:

So to me that's sort of a, I don't want to say mind blowing space, but

Angela Simoes:

It's still very experimental, right? Yeah.

Jeremy Louisos:

But just like with the AI technology, I'm sure it's going to be at my doorstep a lot faster than I assume. And I started feeling those questions five years ago. So when the cars just get to where they need to go on their own, are you going to have a business model? I was like, I dunno, you just have to pay attention to that. But I mean certainly some we're watching, I mean right now there's still very much a need to transport vehicles and if vehicles have to go a long distance, it's probably better to consolidate than put them onto a larger carrier and send them. It's also going to be more efficient with fuel resource, whatever it

Speaker 4:

Is.

Jeremy Louisos:

But yeah, I actually hear that more on the repo space. Is there going to be a world where these vehicles kind of just repo themselves? Can they just get,

Angela Simoes:

You think I've seen that in a movie once or the car just up and left, right?

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah. Does Elon hit a button and

Angela Simoes:

Then the

Jeremy Louisos:

Car just gets to the nearest repo yard? I dunno. I know that people are watching that. I don't know how soon that technology's coming to pass, but definitely a space to watch.

Angela Simoes:

I want to get back to the chat box and asking the driver questions and things because one thing that comes up on this podcast a lot is driver safety and you don't want to be chatting with them while they're driving. But then there's the introduction of having AI integrated with the vehicle to do voice commands, right? So do you ask the question audibly checking in, that sort of thing, has that become, or is that something that you're watching as well or considering

Jeremy Louisos:

And specific to maybe tracking or communicating with that driver while they have the truck? So first of all, I just want to say thank you for spotlighting safety. I mean, nothing else matters unless we get safety. So I appreciate that prioritization there. We want to make sure that our carriers are safe, the cargo's safe, the folks around them on the road are safe. Absolutely. Yeah. We have to be thoughtful with how we communicate to our carriers. We want to make sure that we're not doing something that would cause them to introduce extra risk to their day. I think that they're all pretty comfortable with their modes of communication. These folks are, I really hope they're not texting while they're driving

That the idea of a text is you have this message and the next juncture that makes sense for you to respond is when you respond. Bluetooth allows us to talk to those folks. That's why calls end up being pretty effective because a lot of these people are in transit. But that is very interesting, and I've heard this come up a few times. Are there maybe more sophisticated ways to communicate maybe using AI chatbot? I think that you've probably put a little more thought into this than I have. I will have to go back, do my homework. And I appreciate the insight there because that might be something we should really think about.

Angela Simoes:

Well, just from watching the industry and how sensors have evolved for in cabin and that you can monitor a driver's behavior without identifying specifically who they are and giving away data privacy. But the sensor can tell are they drowsy? Are they sick? Are they looking at their phone? All those kinds of things. So a lot of technology advancements in that area where not only a verbal cue, where are you or what's your status, but I noticed you seem to be tired. Should you take a break? All those kinds of things as well. Or I noticed your heart rate is high or do we want to pull over? So being able to monitor biometric information with drivers too. So again, your brain just sort of goes, oh, and what about this? And then we could monitor this and then we could ask them this question. And so there's all these things that are possible, but all taking safety into consideration and what's the least distracting way to do that. So I was just curious about asking the question.

Jeremy Louisos:

I love the thought there. One on the safety side. So there's a lot of electronic logging right now, the e-logs, and so this is actually run with some onboard equipment, maybe can that equipment do more to sort of help keep drivers safe? I think that's a great and thoughtful question to ask. I'd go back, you highlighted that privacy bit. So what type of data are folks going to be comfortable

Speaker 4:

Sharing

Jeremy Louisos:

Right now? We're trying to get them to just turn their GS access on, so it feels like maybe we just kind of one step at a time. Let's get GPS going and then see what else they're willing to sort of adopt. Because at the end of the day, we have to make sure that our carriers are on board. They're comfortable with this technology, that it actually will be useful. I think we can dream up some really good stuff at the end of the day if they are looking to skirt it or not use it or think it actually causes some other issues, I'd love for them to be at the table. But what you suggested makes a lot of sense to me. I think that if we can sort of help keep folks safer and be less distracted while driving, that sounds like a safer highway system, byway system, whatever to me. So I like that.

Jamye Carpenter:

So I have a question about that. So who's responsible though? If you are getting carriers, you don't own the truck, but you are going out to get the carrier with the company that they work for or their own insurance, if they're individual owned truck, who would be responsible? Is that Powell or would that be the company that they work for?

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah, the two responsible parties will be the driver. The driver is responsible for what they're doing on one hand. On the other hand, it's going to be the owner of the asset. In this case, Powell does not step in with compliance when we own trucks. That was a big part of our day is monitoring logs and being very involved with compliance stuff. We've not a part of it that we get involved in now, but we certainly want to make sure that we're supporting safety.

Jamye Carpenter:

Absolutely.

Jeremy Louisos:

And helping do what we can to support that

Jamye Carpenter:

Mission. I was just thinking maybe that's why it's not in the forefront, right, is because you don't own the trucks anymore. So it just came in my mind,

Jeremy Louisos:

And hopefully it's not too much of a blind spot, but definitely when it comes to safety, it's something that we're paying very close attention. Do we want to make sure that our drivers are having a great experience working for Powell, but they're keeping themselves safe, the folks around the safe, the cargo, safe, all that. Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

So a bit of a fun question.

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

Did you ever, and I don't even know if it's still on, but there was that show, transport Wars or something like that. Did you ever watch it? And if you did, I mean, you got to be thinking it's amazing. No way is that possible? They're insane or anything like that. It's just, I dunno, have you watched it?

Jeremy Louisos:

I think you got me.

Angela Simoes:

Repo Wars. Is it Repo Wars?

Jeremy Louisos:

Okay. I've seen a little bit of repo wars. Yeah. And we're one stage removed. We know a lot of those very brave, adventurous folks in the repo space that are doing repos. We're doing the post repo side. Once it's safely in a storage yard, we're bringing it to maybe auction or wherever it needs to go. But while I am probably not super familiar with the show, and please send me any links or clips you want to share. I'm interested for sure.

I do know some folks in the space. I'll do a call out to Repo Ryan. I dunno if he's someone that I introduced you to, Jamie, but our friend in Chicago, it's just a different kind of industry, a different modality. Some of the most interesting people, but I want to give them a shout. Very thoughtful people. They care quite a bit. I think it's easy to say, oh, these are some wild folks doing wild things, and that is a part of it, but they're just as much a partner in this space and I love that they're getting a lot of attention right now.

Jamye Carpenter:

Yeah. Yeah. My neighbor, he owns his own trucking company and they also do repos and some of the stories that you, I can imagine, hear

Jeremy Louisos:

Every day.

Jamye Carpenter:

I think Repo Wars is real.

Jeremy Louisos:

Yeah,

Jamye Carpenter:

For sure. Yes.

Jeremy Louisos:

We were at a year or two ago, we were in Chicago. It was, I think both n AAA and some round table were there, and I was trying to meet up with my, I hope Rebel or Ryan, if you're listening, I hope I don't embarrass you here, but we want to go to dinner that night. And he's heading to meet us. He's like, Hey man, I got to bail. Unfortunately, someone just drove their car through my wall into my office and I have to deal with that and clean it up like, oh my God. He's like, dude, are you okay? He's like, oh yeah, this happens all the time. Oh

Angela Simoes:

Wow. It's like the third time I've replaced the wall. That's fine. But I think there's also another show where people bid to pick up something and transport it. Right.

Jeremy Louisos:

That's a little more my speed maybe

Angela Simoes:

Whether it's like a bed or a piece of furniture or something really giant, like a piece of art. And it was just crazy because then you'd have people that were then trying to steal the item and then it was really insane.

Jamye Carpenter:

It's kind of like a bid the load kind of

Angela Simoes:

Thing.

Jamye Carpenter:

Yes. I remember that one too. It wasn't as fun though, as

Angela Simoes:

War. I do. I think I just remember the people on that show being particularly insane. But I could imagine,

Jeremy Louisos:

I'm embarrassed to admit, I have not seen the show. It seems like

Angela Simoes:

Its right or not. Embarrassed in it might not be.

Jeremy Louisos:

This seems like a bullseye for me. People are bidding and then shipping stuff. So yeah, please, if you have anything to share, I'd be excited

Angela Simoes:

To check. I'll, I will. Well, this has been a great conversation. Super fun. Lots of potential, really exciting space to be in right now. And so every time I see a cargo load of cars on the road, I'm going to think of you. But thank you so much for joining us. This is really great.

Jeremy Louisos:

It was a pleasure. I appreciate the time and the interest in these topics. Yeah, I can't wait to listen back and support the program.

Angela Simoes:

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.