The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel; Fuller vs Miller freight debate; risk mgmt | WHAT THE TRUCK?!?

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you are listening to what the truck are you ready to truck it it's time for your nunar with duner and my special guest special guest co-host today Matt mcland local over here local yeah hey you were hanging out with the wicked smat kids earlier you were at MIT last week weren't you why were I was uh I was up I got invited up with a bunch of other carriers and shippers to talk about about renewable fuels and electrification and just sort of a lot of that conversation that's going on in that space right now any

takeaway like anything uh where we at we are shippers want it reluctant to pay anything significantly more for it same old story we've heard that before um we are really looking forward to sort of innovation and sustainabil I mean Innovation and disruption and some of the things that are coming out of some of the folks that you have on the show so uh yeah let's look forward to you know when I went down to Long Beach to do my documentary with Talon and PTO Long Beach and uh Long Beach Container Terminal that was such a

big thing was the cost parity with diesel Talon's a fleet that's transitioned about 20% of their Fleet to fcevs battery electric and Fuel Cell electric but like the big issue they're finding is that 9,000 PB weight difference uh trailers finding lighter trailers is becoming a big issue they're doing well with it but getting shippers put skin in the game has been tough now speaking of getting it in the game for 2 and a half years we have been in a devast ating Freight recession that has bankrupted a ton of carriers and a ton of Brokers

now if you caught this show on Friday you know that our CEO and founder Craig Fuller was throwing money in the air and said there is an end to the great Freight recession but since it's over now what here's a clip from Craig but I do think you can feel incredibly bullish about going into 25 and I would say shippers if you're thinking about those routing guyses and you're think about those bids be very cautious to just lock in the cheapest carrier because those routing guides may be may may fail and you may be stuck

paying very high spot rates to get your Freight covered I would also use data and this is not just a a commercial for sonar but I think any data that you can use to confirm uh what's happened in the market is going to make you a better formed buyer of Transportation Services we would argue that highfrequency data is the most important types of data because it gives you a real-time reflection on what's Happening and the volatility of the market the direction change is so massive that it's not going to show up in lagging uh data

and particularly government data is almost useless in this kind of period because what government data tells you is what happened six months ago it's not very P it's not very useful for forward-looking uh sentiment Wall Street agrees with what we've been saying yeah is that the trucking Market in particularly and the railroads are about to have a fantastic 2025 because of all of these developments so either trust Wall Street or you don't the end of the day the smart money is betting on a recovery and I'm with them where are you Matt you're with them

where's your smart money well I'm definitely with them I have a lot of reasons to uh to you working for a carrier coming at Logistics here in Chattanooga yeah yeah we always want to be bullish about that but but you know we feel good so far early customer sentiment is good the upcoming Christmas season is feeling good excitement around the election and kind of what that might untap sort of feels good so begin of the election Trump is going to need a new cabinet he's already naming a number of appointments if you caught this show

last Wednesday you know that C Fuller threw his hat in the ring for DOT secretary he wants to jump in Secretary Pete's grave over there you know what I think he's going to make America Freight again so in honor of that we put some T-shirts up in the what the Truck Gear Shop go get your own wtt gear.com get your make America Freight again shirts get the red hat the black hat this will be my fit at F3 my man I'm gonna wear one you got to give me one now a a foil in Craig

side for the past couple years especially during the freight recession was Freight recession denier University of Michigan's Jason Miller now in 2022 he was gas cting people non-stop that there was no Freight recession happening Freight waves didn't know what it was talking about rates weren't falling off a cliff and it was regular seasonality well now he's upset with Craig about Craig's stance on tariffs and how Craig thinks that next year will be in a situation of recovery he said he wants to go into a debate with Craig so Craig sent him this reply Dr Jason

Miller a university professor at Michigan state has challenged me to a debate about the merits of tariffs I have argued that these versions of tariffs Donald Trump's tariffs are actually quite different than what we've seen in the past and we bring positive economic impacts into the United States uh Dr Miller seems to disagree he has publicly said that he would like to debate the merits and I say bring it on um but I would ask one thing I would say that we do this in front of a live studio audience and rather than having prepared

questions we let folks in the studio ask the questions the folks that are most impacted by tariffs that have seen our American manufacturing a road and our national security uh be completely be lost uh as we've outsourced our manufacturing all over the world I I believe that the arguments of bringing manufacturing home are far superior to the arguments of letting China continue to rip off American businesses and American jobs so Dr Miller if you're up for it I say bring it on we'll bring a live studio audience together we'll let them ask the questions and

uh we'll see where this can go so that's my uh offer look forward to seeing you in the debate I think it'll be a great time and we'll bring in a neutral host that can really ask the questions in a way that I I think we'll both agreed to so cool let's drop this drop this so as you said Greg they're they're looking for a venue now they're looking for a host unfortunately I think I might not qualify I might be I think you may be a little J I'll have to do like the game

day desk so I won't be able to be up there as like the host of debate we'll have to do like a special out the truck covering it we'll do a weighin we'll do interviews Jason Miller looks like he's maybe about a buck 35 soak and wet you know his mustache adds another 5 pounds to his head weight I think uh forward to it who would be who would be a great moderator for that who would be a great moderator uh maybe Andrew silver Andrew silver would be that would be interesting yeah why not he's

kind of respected on both sides and I don't think people are going to see him as biased and they also kind of see him as like he's a good disposition he talk you know he's and he's got Fu money so he doesn't have to like take a side yep yeah I I like by the way you're a bit of a tech dork so Ryan Peterson flexport's founder and CEO he brought his starlink inflight he was sick of paying for the inflight Wi-Fi and he brought an actual starlink and he set it up on his seat

and he tried to get signal mid-flight and it did not work and now he says people online are ridiculing him it's is inside of a tin can so there could be a lot of other things going on as well actually I heard why so there's a big debate under this if it if it's a airplane was a faraday cage or not and because people go well you can use your cell phone in there so it can't be a faraday cage but I guess the 4G 5G bandwidth can actually passed through Windows while the starlink satellite

I think is 11 GHz bandwidth is too big doesn't go through the windows I don't think they covered this in that inflight sort of uh I don't think I don't think Delta's ready for it I don't think Delta's ready for it well are you guys ready for it it's episode 782 of what the truck and on the show my co-host here Matt McCullen we have it on we're super excited Matt helped set this show up because he had just finished the book the mysterious death of Rudolph Diesel and he said duner you know what I

know the author let's have Mon and uh I started reading into the background of this Matt I you know I know about Malcolm McLean right I know about uh uh about Alexander Winton and the semi- TR but I hadn't known a ton about Rudolph diesel great mystery here we'll get into the book with uh Douglas brunt we've also got load Shores Johnny McCord he's talking about the under Insurance crisis in Supply chains and we have Optimus Technologies Colin Huer who's talking about alternative diesel fuels I know you're a customer super excited about that one even

more interestingly if you read the Rudolph diesel book you'll know that initially his engine ran on peanut oil and vegetable oil it would pretty much run on anything it would run on anything it didn't have to be Sy diesel all right let's tip the band and we'll get into it is your Freight brokerage drowning in manual task paperwork and emails Tai TMS as a solution with AI powered automation Thai streamlines your workflow from quoting to carrier sourcing letting you achieve more without adding headcount book a demo with Ty TMS visit Tai software.com but right now

we're going to visit with Johnny McCord CEO and founder over at load Shore Johnny thanks for coming by thank you for having us or me it's uh great to be on the show and uh look forward to being over in Chattanooga next week as well yeah you ever meet Matt before over at covenant I haven't but it's a pleasure to meet you and maybe we can meet face to face next week too look be here all week yeah well look he's with the giant Fleet Covenant they know a little bit about insurance he's not on

the front of that so he's going to learn just like we are going to learn a little bit for you but let's talk about it there is an underinsurance crisis in supply chain what is happening there yeah it's something that we talk about a lot it's it's our mission that we're we're on um in the fact that uh you know traditional insurance is is designed for for Enterprise it's it's become very slow to evolve uh and address the needs of the the supply chain and and the stakeholders within it and you know it's still become

focused purely on Enterprise risks and we know how important the smbs are within the supply chain the freight industry and their needs are you know very very different and you I've worked in a 300 eurs in institution of commercial insurance for for a long time and things needed to change because of this underserving this under Insurance crisis because of the lack of dynamic Insurance Solutions that were not able to be processed through that traditional face-to-face Market to meet the the just a need uh Supply chain uh requirements and big Fleet a big Fleet like Matt's

right he's going to probably be insured they're insured well they have Brokers coming at them all the time they you can't go to a conference without someone trying to hit you up but it's interesting you me you mentioned these smaller siiz companies the small and mediumsized businesses how do they go about protecting themselves today yeah it's you know it's it's It's tricky today you know obviously you know we as as a supply chain need to work collaborative ly to focus our efforts on Advanced risk managements and that needs to be more proactive rather than reactive

you know we've obviously got to work better as a industry and there's lots of fantastic Solutions coming to Market to enable smbs in particular and Enterprises as well but you know making sure that we are adopting you know best practice really addressing our exposures to risk and understanding what our appetite is and that's through you know thorough risk assessments and regular risk assessments really understanding those suppliers and vetting them thoroughly but also maximizing our visibility within the supply chain operations and there's so much technology out there selecting the right technology is key as well to

ensure that we are are managing uh our exposures and protecting oneself in the supply chain but also you know we're here to support the insurance Community to support the freight community so we want to make sure that you know our communities are you know working closely together you know speak with your insurance brokers ensure that you are using or purchasing the right insurances to address your exposures you know every yeah entity has different risk factors and a different risk profile and that's why datadriven Insurance really needs to be customized to the supply chain but Johnny

let's talk about the future a little bit because I was looking at Atri list of biggest issues for carriers and the rapidly rising cost of insurance was one of them so yes you want to protect yourself from risk but one of the risks right now is very expensive Insurance what does the future look like does it get uh easier to operate in next year at all yeah absolutely and that's that's what we're here to do we're here to drive down the cost of insurance and make sure insurance is more Community focused and that's what holistic

Freight protection is all about and you know I don't a bit of a spoiler alert what we're you know launching next week but you know holistic Freight protection is all about addressing this under Insurance crisis so there's more Dynamic costeffective insurance that is customized to everyone's needs using technology using data to ensure that every policy that sold is uniquely priced to the customer and the assured to ensure that you know we can continue to support uh reduce uh the cost of Insurance within that Community but also enable you know the most important thing is to

enable the freight Community to manage their Expos exposures uh more proactively with actionable Insight so we are you know not just bringing the insurance product the piece of paper that responds in the event of a claim with a worldclass claim service which you know we're very proud to say can settle claims in you know near real time I think our record is under 20 seconds but to brings that predictive and preventative data to help the freight Community understand their their risks take that deeper dive whether it's carrier performance commodity risks risk associated with pafic Journeys

static locations around warehouses truck stops Etc and help mitigate and predict and prevent that loss from occurring so that will support the drive towards reducing the cost within the associated Insurance programs that have been pushed around the market it's all led by we hear you Johnny people are gonna you're you're going to be here in chat Nuka next week right absolutely yeah very much looking forward to it so people can carry this conversation on with you there but if they want to connect with you in the meantime where do I send them to yeah please

send them to lo.net and as as you say uh will'll be in Chattanooga we have a booth it's T12 and look forward to engaging and supporting the freight Community with holistic Freight protection very cool go say hi to Johnny at F3 take care Johnny thanks very much by the way if you didn't lose your job during this you didn't lose your company you didn't go bankrupt then you survived the great Freight recession Matt so you need the T-shirt you survived the great fre session all I got was just lousy t-shirt go to wtt gear.com scan

the QR code we got a I survive the freight recession on the front we got a big Tombstone on the back what the truck logo on the arm it's going to be a good time how much texture for the signatured one the duner autograph hey man if you're at F3 I'll sign it I'll just sign it for you in in person let's do it speaking of signed I need an autograph copy of this book it's author Douglas brunt he wrote the book The Mysterious case of Rudolph diesel genius power and deception on the eve of

World War I which you can get right now on amazon.com and your local bookstore and your local bookstore yeah support your local bookstore support your local bookstore in fact I was at when I was at in har um MIT Harvard last week um Doug I sent you a picture about him in the Harvard harvard.com bookstore and there's his book right there I think I sent a picture of it to you you did always makes an off I happy to see their book out there in the wild thanks for sing the photo how does that feel

how does that like when you when you first saw your book in like a Barnes & Nobles or something where you're like hell I like I remember when I first saw my podcast on like apple podcast I got excited we got to remember this isn't his first book I know yeah there there are a couple great moment one when you get the the book in the mail from the publisher is a nice moment but the best is the airport for some reason I love seeing it in an airport book shop because you know feels kind

by the way when we wrap up I'm definitely logging back in to get one of those make America Freight again shirts that is awesome I love it you need it you need it you're going to look fantastic and I think it's awesome now this is a mystery right this is a mystery that stemmed from the evening of the 29th of September all the way back into 1913 and I know for a fact a lot of us in supply chain have never heard this story before despite how much we use Diesel and it's the story of

how the inventor of diesel vanished from a ship one night tell us a little set the table here tell us a little bit about what this book is all about that I that's how I came into it was through the mystery I actually was a recent diesel owner IID bought some diesels for a new boat that I got and I was looking around online for ideas for a new book idea written fiction in the past and there was this list of mysterious disappearances at Sea so as you say September 29 1913 right before World War

I Rudolph diesel is traveling from Belgium to Great Britain on an overnight passenger Ferry and in the night he disappears they hold the ship at C in the morning they do a search of the ship they can't find him all they find is his hat and his coat neatly folded at the stern of the ship by the rail seeming to show where he had gone overboard and at the time you know I had never heard of diesel before I didn't even really know much about the diesel engine I thought it was just sort of a

different fuel option at The Filling Station but he was a huge celebrity at that time so when he disappeared it was the front page of the New York Times the front page of papers in London all through Western Europe out to Russia about The Disappearance of the great inventor be like Elon Musk disappearing today and two theories of possible murder also emerged in the newspaper headlines at that time one was it was Kaiser Wilhelm II the Emperor of Germany might have done it or John Rockefeller and they each had a motive to do it and

the book gets into exploring what those motives were and that's sort of how it that whole period of time that pre-war period comes to life on the page as you get into it and I'll just very briefly give the the overall summmer of why they each had a mo motive for Kaiser wil don't give it away make people read the book sure yeah well I'll just tell why they why they got in the headlines but I won't I won't spoil anything I promise yeah because it the whole back 20% 30% of the book unfolds like

an Agatha Christie murder mystery yeah yeah just why the reason why they thought Wilhelm might have done it was by 1913 the diesel engine had emerged as the only way to power a submarine or a ubot you couldn't do it with kerosene or gasoline engines there the submarine was like like a play toy at that time it was useless but with diesel it became this terrifying offensive weapon and it of course played a huge role in World War I the reason diesel was crossing the North Sea on that night was to he was co-founder of

a new diesel engine manufacturing company whose mandate it was to build submarine diesels for the Royal Navy so he's helping Churchill develop the the British royal Navy submarine Fleet the reason Rockefeller had a motive we we already mentioned in 1900 Rudolph diesel won the Paris World's Fair with a diesel engine running nut oil and he was advocating flexibility with regard to fuel you know as we know mainly runs on petrol diesel you know a derivative of crude oil today but even today and then it didn't need to it could run on colar nut oil vegetable

oil anything and Rudolph diesel was saying I can break the fuel monopolies with this Engine with this technology you don't need the Sherman Antitrust Act or some other thing to do it you can do it with this engine if you have Farmers you have fuel you're fuel independent so I'm gonna back up I'm sorry go ahead and finish your thought no that was it so that that was rockefeller's motive and why they why they both became suspects in a possible murder plot but of course Diesel's Legacy went down as suicide that's you know if you

looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica over the last hundred years it would say suicide okay so you teed up my question and and I'll take a step back for a second because Doug I in fact our NE your next guest ironically um is the one that introduced me to the book um he said you should read this I'm a big audio book person by the way great you know Scott Brick reading the book it makes it even better I don't know if you have a choice in that but I I do a lot of

running and trail running and mountain biking so I've been listening to it while I've been doing outdoor stuff but you te up my next question which was this is one of the most disruptive things of the Industrial Revolution yet nobody really seems to know about I'll be honest with you Doug before reading this book I'm not sure I understood just what a pivotal role it played and and you brought it up you know he was the Elon Musk of his day ironically it was also one of the sustainable sort of forms of energy production back

in the day because you know it you know prevented I guess Europe was cutting down forests left and right they were burning coal left and right and this product actually burned so much cleaner than anything else but why do you think people like duner and I who are in this industry every day you know we have about 2 200 powered assets diesel assets you know our entire industry runs on diesel bunker Fuel and ships I mean our you know trans the world would shut down without diesel why is reading your book the first time I've

heard of this it almost seems like it's some big kapal to to sort of cover it up that that does get a little bit to the heart of the mystery of it and and his disappearance as you know the conclusion that I offer at the end of the book part of it I think is suicide is damaging to someone's Legacy you know you sort of move on from that but it does feel like he was deliberately scrubbed from history yeah and that goes to what I think happened which I don't really want want to give

away because it's kind of a stunning conclusion in the book but you're totally right I went to I finally got to Paris because I a lot of the research I did for the book was during Co and you couldn't go anywhere which was frustrating but I did eventually get to Paris to find his childhood home and if you see it so he he was Bavarian his parents immigrated from Germany to France he was born in Paris in 1858 and he lived his first 12 years there so you can see this childood home and all there

is is this little plaque above eye level that says basically Rudolph dieso was born here and uh you know mentions a line or two about it but the whole wall is covered with graffiti and these stickers it's like this disgraceful thing for this guy who as you say has developed the most important power source over the last hundred years there's this example I can give to demonstrate that but you guys know this well but just to demonstrate it briefly if you imagine a piece of fruit grown in a tropical region every piece of heavy machinery

and farm equipment used to grow that piece of fruit is powered by diesel it then gets loaded onto a truck 100 % of trucks anything bigger than a passenger car diesel goes down to the port where a crane diesel powered loads it onto a cargo ship 100% of cargo ships to this day more than a 100 years later diesel powered across the oceans into another Port where it's all floated onto a truck onto a train throughout the 20th century most trains diesel electric goes to a warehouse where a nearby power plant could be powered by

diesel nothing in the global economy moves without diesel It's True to this day the engine has been improved remarkably over the centuries but the core concept the core fundamental piece of technology of the compression engine no spark required like a gasoline engine is still the same as what diesel developed back in you know the patent was 1893 he first introduced it to the world in 1898 still the same what makes it interesting too is this this mystery has uh all the ingredients that you need it's got powerful World governments it's got someone missing in the

middle of the night it's got powerful family like the rockefellas involved in it and you know when you go in like Wikipedia and I was doing some research on this Matt's read the book I haven't read the full book but they try to sort of make the case that it was suicide they're saying as autobiographers said it was suicide um without giving anything away is there anything that you uncovered that led heavier Credence to some of the other theories that it wasn't in fact suicide definitely and there's a lot of that outlined in the book

I put together a whole sort of case analysis of this and before publication I had worked with a number of retired British Intel and and former CIA operatives they came back and NYPD as well they all came back and said 100% this is what happened they actually helped me develop the research further and outline it in the in the case that's presented in the book and then after publication a number of UK former Intel officers came back and said this is stunning and exactly right so it is in there and to your other comment on

the cast of characters in the book it's incredible it's a who's who of that period Thomas Edison plays a part in it another person who plays a big part here in North America is Adolphus Bush the founder of anheiser bush yep the the way that the license worked at that time when Rudolph diesel introduced the engine you would license the exclusive rights to manufacture and Market the engine by national territory and so the people who took it by for different national territory in Russia it was the Nobel family in America it was ad doph as

Bush so he was the diesel Pioneer in America he used it initially to pump water and power his breweries for anheiser Bush but he also had a side business developing submarine diesels for the US Navy and he tried to hire Chester Nimitz who had gone over to visit off diesel earlier in 1913 just before diesel disappeared and if you see any like there's a wax figure of Chester Nimitz in the victory in the Pacific exhibit and you'll see that he's missing the ring finger on his left hand he lost that finger in 1913 in Germany

while visiting diesel inspecting diesel engines over there in Germany and Nimitz became a huge submarine guy we somewhat forget about his submarine background but he's mainly a submarine guy and a diesel expert and we have an aircraft carrier named after him I mean diesel like he almost died multiple times making this right like he was making an ammonia engine that exploded he was making another engine that exploded he had a he had some sickness too that had him like bedridden for almost a year like we almost didn't have dies yeah you know I was gonna

ask you this you know because I watched a couple interviews that you had done you know prior to this and you know you talked about you know dragging your wife you know Megan and your kids sort of around Europe sort of doing some of the research I'd be in a better studio right now except that she's using the other home studio we have doing it on SiriusXM as we speak oh well yeah by the way whistles so uh his wife has a very popular podcast as well but so does Doug dedicated in fact readers you

should what's the name of your wife's podcast uh it's the Megan Kelly show there we go see lead there but Doug arguably you know he's I've been listening to some of the the authors that he's been interviewing like Jack Carr man I'd love to have a a drink with you sometime and talk about Jack Carr and and how cool Jack awesome and I become good friends and I I've done his show danger close which is a lot of fun I watched that but but you drag your family around right and you're doing this research how

like how this was 130 years ago how in the world like how hard is it to write you you know to develop a mystery which by the way this book which is non-fiction reads like a novel it reads like a a mystery but how hard was it cold case like this yeah I mean how do you open a Cold Case how do you find all this data I think you said he's got the little tiny plaque there's not you know it's not like there's a big calish sort of effort to hide you know what he

did but was it hard to do the research for this it was certain things were a easier than it would have been even in you know 1930 because so much if you look at the the newspaper reporting so much of that has been digitized you can almost take a trip around the world just from your seat in your office and SK and look at the newspaper reporting contemporaneous with his disappearance you know the weeks following I can see what was reported in Berlin and Munich and London and Paris and New York so that part is

almost easier now and more get scanned every day and then I was able to make relationships with people in archives in Germany who really helped me again this was during covid so I wasn't even in there only the archists were in there but they would send me troves of material and then I called up an old buddy of mine from high school who was uh running The English Department in my high school and I was like who who speaks German and French over there now and he oh he puts me in touch with Gard Reich

who's the teacher and so Gart and I met and he translated hundreds and hundreds of pages of Diaries and letters and you know business letters and business documents as well so I was able to go through a lot of primary sources with diesel uh that was very helpful to the research and and helping you to get to know the person as well as sort of the development history of the engine yeah you did a beautiful job Ching too but I I I did work with a lot of um you know intelligence professionals as well that

we're talking we're talking about alternative Fields we're talking to Optimist in just a couple of minutes here so that got me curious why did they pivot off so it originally ran on peanut oil why did they pivot off why did we go to petroleum that's one of the fascinating things about this period and Science and Innovation and the the various different people who have a hand in the things that we come to use and take for granted it was not a given that gasoline was going to be our primary fuel for the 20th century and

in fact there are a number of footnotes in the book that are really exciting I'm not sure if all the footnotes are in the audio by the way just as a as a heads up Scott Brick who I love and is amazing and has become a friend the uh the footnotes are not always in that I I have heard but as one example in 1905 New York City had a fleet of taxi cabs they were all electric and there was a power char charging station on Broadway in Time Square so we talk about Elon Musk

and these electric cars as this new fangled thing but it wasn't it was going on more than 100 years ago and Edison was working with Ford on the electric car and the battery they just couldn't work it out but Rockefeller that's why he played such a big role in this book because he really worked behind the scenes to make sure that the world craved gasoline that our combustion engines became addicted to gasoline as opposed to vegetable oil he had the whole refining infrastructure for that he could sort of you know we talk about dumping as

a as an economic practice to sort of flood a market with cheap uh Goods to sort of price out the competition that's exactly what he did he made sure there was never a business case to develop a refining infrastructure for vegetable oils and you know it's it's not easy to do that either you know a lot of land a lot of Agriculture you got to grow a lot of vegetables then you got to refine it into fuel he's like I got this petroleum into gasoline right here and it's cheaply priced and so that became available

and Rockefeller was able to influence you know with his massive supply side he was able to influence decisions on the demand side well I'm glad you wrote the book I feel like somebody's trying to wipe diesel out of the you know out of History because I just read so I I've just seen so little about him prior to this book I've done a lot of research on it since I've read it um I probably have a thousand other questions that we don't have time to go into unfortunately we don't and we don't want to give

the entire it's a mystery so we don't want to give the entire thing away you can go on Amazon it's the mysterious case of Rudolph diesel now you can get get it on a book you can also get on Audible for your truckers and your drivers out there you listen on sirusxm if you have an audible membership it could be your free book for the month but if you but you don't even have to waste on it spend a buck because it's on sale for a buck this month if you're you're audible so then you

got are you reading the book who narrates this one Scott Brick Scott Bri Scott Brick he does all the Clive kussler books and leech Child books and he's done some Nelson de Mill he's just got this great theatrical voice he's really he's like the Godfather of audiobook narration because I was going to ask you like how do you keep your I imagine your throat must get so dry reading like 382 pages of of a book it seems like it could be like it had to be such a labor of love but Doug thank you so

much for your time today every we're going to go talk to Optimus now so it's a nice kind of dovetail for what you did but drivers out there people in supply chain if you're just curious about great books great Mysteries go out there and get this one thank you hang around online and listen to this uh listen to this next interview Doug it's gonna be really good I will do Tim and Matt thank you thank you so much and I'll send you that link for the shirt by the way I got to ask you so

he's not a freight guy so I didn't want to ask him I didn't want to put him on the spot for Freight Rush more but I will so I'm going to give you mine right now I got Alexander Winton for the semi- I got Malcolm McLean for the Intermodal container I now have Rudolph diesel for diesel powering this industry we need a fourth that's the hardest one because it could be Bezos right it could be JB Hunt it could be Craig Fuller it could be a lot of different people for that fourth what what is

your fourth KY cumins would be a good one right I mean he you know was kind of in the the you know just followed right along behind uh Rudolph diesel who else who's somebody might I mean Elon Musk might in in over time he I got it Jet mcandless Jet mcandless project 44 you know he's got that look he's got the pedigree his hair in Granite how are you going to get his perfect hair I know J I don't know how we're going to get your hair in Granite J J we'll have to talk to

you about this later yeah you know we have an awesome guest hold I gotta tip the band really quick Gotta Give a Little shout out to Tai software before we bring our next guest up and I'm only salling for time because I can't find my read but somewhere right on the sheet here it is ready to optimize your operation let tight TMS do the heavy lifting designed for freight brokers Tai boost efficiency and saves you valuable time so you can focus on growing your business and maximizing margins book a demo today at Tai software.com but

yeah we'll skip the video let's bring them up because we don't have that much time Colin uh Huer CEO Optimus Technologies good friend of Matt over here and apparently just in the Good Fortune the butterfly effect of this all you ended up on the same episode of a guest you suggested to this man yeah timing uh timing worked out great book was great and Covenant is going to be um doing proof of concept with um with with Optimus technology we got three trucks completely outfitted just waiting for the fuel I don't want to get the

cart before the horse but no let me hold on let's ask you first let's get little social proof here because Covenant is a user of optimist technology so what you give me the elevator pitch on them what do they do for Covenant they are going to decarbonize the diesel side of our business running on I'll let Colin talk about it but when you're running on on 100% or 99% biodiesel is essentially a carbon free event and so for our sustainability-minded customers what Colin and his team have put together is a way for you to do

it that's incredibly affordable scalable and also um doesn't require you to make a huge investment in equipment that you don't understand Colin is it a is it a device is it an app how are we how are we achieving this what are you putting on these Covenant trucks yeah so our our technology is a fuel system upgrade so it goes onto you know as as Doug talked about right the introduction of the diesel engine it's it's evolved incredibly over the past hundred years but um one of the things that that has happened in that evolution

is the optimization for multi fuels has has kind of faded away so what our technology does it's a a fuel system upgrade so it's hardware and software It Bolts onto existing engines they can be trucks that are already into the field or built new on on truck that are being manufactured um and it allows those engines to run on 100% biodiesel which is a vegetable oil or animal fat based replacement diesel fuel um at the same time we're never inhibiting those engines from running traditional diesel so from a business perspective it provides resiliency because you

can deploy uh on on biodiesel or uh never inhibited from operating on diesel which make sure you know those loads are are continuing to be delivered no Matt you're responsible for bringing this over to Covenant what what made you decide to give this a shot so it's interesting in in the world that I live in I put a lot of faith in what my competitors and my peers are doing and so um col I'll sort of talk around this because we all have indas involved but there's a large private fleet that is running quite a

large more than 200 trucks at the moment on his solution and I called you know our mutual friend and said this doesn't make sense do you understand that when the temperature drops below 50 degrees that biodiesel starts to coagulate and become you know you're a hater at first I did not understand it it didn't make any sense I can see sort of Doug over here in our other window who's still with us you know he's like diesel diesel fuel it doesn't live well at cold temperatures but I was able to be convinced that it worked

well um Colin and his team have figured out how to maintain it I don't think we'll be driving it through Idaho in the middle of winter but apparently it'll still work I mean what do you have to say to that Colin yeah we uh we just did some some testing for a customer where we' got our first units that we shipped up to Edmonton um Alberta and so the uh those trucks are going to be operating Edmonton to Fort McMurray uh which is you know consistently negative 35g 40 degrees and so before we launched that

project we actually took one of those trucks we sent it to a cold chamber and we were able to test and validate down to down to that ne40 degree temperature that um no no impact no operational challenges using biodiesel and that's in part how we approach the the upgrade uh we use waste heat that the diesel engine generates to condition the biodiesel so doesn't doesn't matter whether it's you know 80 degrees outside or or ne40 um biodiesel is still able to be to be utilized in in the engine our software is optimizing for the parameters

and um it can switch back and forth between Diesel and biodiesel depending on depending on the operating conditions big that's big news because Matt I have you on this show frequently right and I go around conferences and I see people trying to pitch clean tech to you all the time clean trucks and you're usually shooting them down because the covenant's demands of being this over the road Fleet so it's really promising to hear that you've been able to expand and work in this because usually you have to shoot down most of these things yeah it's

it is the only solution I've seen so far that has the maximum amount of carbon reduction for the minimum investment I mean you can use R renewable diesel right now which is called a drop in fuel that's great but that only gets you 60% you know Carbon emission Colin the question I want you to make sure that you um you answer for the audience because I think this is really important but talk for just a minute about the percentage uh first of all talk about why running 99% biodiesel is essentially an emission-free event and talk

a little bit about the reporting because ultimately our customers are worried about what's our scope one but their scope three tell us a little bit more about how you solve both of those problems yeah so talking talking about the first one um biodiesel is made from things like animal fats and and vegetable oils and so the the fuel itself is a is a liquid carbon molecule U but that source of energy comes essentially from solar energy right you've got photosynthesis that that um that's translating the the solar energy into into the plant material um the

plants get harvested refined into into biodiesel and so you have a closed loop cycle of the carbon that's in the atmosphere gets sequestered into the plant it then gets emitted when you're when you're utilizing it in the truck and then it's a it's a closed loop cycle so with traditional diesel fuels you have um you know fossil fuels that are extracted when they when they're utilized they're combust they release carbon into the atmosphere so you've got a one-way you know extraction and emission of of carbon emissions with biodiesel uh it's a closed loop cycle so

you've got a Net Zero uh total total impact and so you know people don't think about it in that way but it's basically just another mechanism of of solar energy getting into um you know getting into the vehicle and because it's a liquid fuel you don't have the complexity that you have with traditional electric vehicles where you've got you know photovoltaics turning into electricity then you've got batteries then you've got charging infrastructure and range and you know trillions of dollars at the end of the day that need to be invested for a technology that um

as as Doug writes about in his book you know there's a quote when I was reading it that that was mind-blowing because you you read it and it could be you know it could have been taken from today but it was you know taken from the early 1900s and it was talking about the difficulties with Battery Technology the diff difficulties with range you know the weight um you know of of electric vehicles and I think that becomes really challenging for a fleet operator to to integrate those in a way that that makes for a successful

business case and so our our approach is to you know build a successful business case allow customers to decarbonize um without impacting their their bottom line operations con let me ask you something though so uh as we learned from Doug's Book World government's politics play a big role in the energy that will fuel our future Donald Trump just won the presidency he's president-elect he will take over on 120 next year how do the election results are we bullish or bearish on the biodiesel industry now yeah I think uh overall I think overall we're going to

see a lot of movement in the the trucking world in the transportation world and particular the energy World um for for us our foundation has been uh built so that fleets can deploy um in a cost-effective manner so so generally speaking our customers aren't getting uh large subsidies or uh government incentives to deploy our technology because it's cost effective that you can make a business case for it um for you know your your shipper or if you're a private fleet within you know the the confines of what your sustainability goals are and so I think

the the biggest most dramatic thing that we're we're going to see is kind of an unwinding of a lot of these major policies and major incentives that have propped up the electrification and and and hydrogen World in a in a way that um is going to deemphasize those and and I don't think that de-emphasis of ification is going to change you know Matt's customers need or demand for reducing carbon emissions and so I I think overall you know we'll see a net benefit for um other decarbonization Solutions than uh electrification and I think that that

bodess very well for for Optimus I'll just add one more thing to that is that there's a place for diesel there's still a place for electric there's a place for Optimus and the B100 solution we need a lot the carriers of the future are going to be The Fleets that understand how to use all now the good news is there's a demo trio program going on right now so you don't have to just take Matt or colins's word for it you can scan this QR code on your screen or where can they go to to

also sign up for the audio listeners who may be on podcast or radio right now yeah head to our website at Optimus Opus te tec.com it's got uh additional information on the demo truck program it's up to a 30-day trial of uh today we've got a Volvo vnr that's that's in operation uh we've got a a freight liner Cascadia coming soon and also an an international that'll be live uh in q1 of next year killer Colin before we let you go did Freight rout Mount Rushmore who are you putting on yours uh I I I

kind of like uh Matt's suggestion of uh classy cumins all right we're throwing cumins on there took an easy one one on Matt's side I appreciate hey are we GNA are we going to see you in Chattanooga next week are you out way uh unfortunately I I won't be in Chatanooga next week I'll be in DC okay well enjoy DC people connect with you if you scan that QR code or go to optimist.com and book yourself a little demo with this team thank you so much for your time today Colin I appreciate it appreciate it

thank you yeah thanks for the book suggestion too that you know it's like that butterfly effect Matt oh yeah you know I think I hope Doug's seen a pop in his book sales I've been telling everybody I can think of about it just because it's been so great well he's going to sell one I'm going to get that 99 cent audible copy I got road trip I got so every year my family we drive up to Boston and back so it's about a 16 hour trip 2 days there you go perfect perfect book for the

listen to dog's podcast and listen to the book yeah my wife listen to show honey you into it you want to listen to that book on the ride there or back yeah we're cool with it all right follow me on Twitter aty tun find Matt Mand at covenant on LinkedIn wherever you like to go find this show at uh noon eastern time live streaming on freight waves series SE Ro dog Trucking 511 podcast players anywhere just look up what the truck take care don't be a stranger mat don't be stranger