Episode 17 - Senior Transportation Reporter Rachel Premack Part 1: Millennial Stuff
We had the opportunity to meet Business Insider Senior Transportation Reporter Rachel Premack at FreightWaves LIVE, and she was kind enough to be our guest!
Rachel is a senior transportation reporter at Business Insider. She focuses on logistics — particularly trucking and how deliveries are changing with the rise of e-commerce — and speaks regularly on national radio, industry panels, and podcasts.
For part 1 of this 2 part conversation, Michael, Aaron, and Rachel start with a few "millennial" topics:
The viral "Ok Boomer" retort: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/style/ok-boomer.html
The newly announced Tesla Cybertruck:
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/elon-musk-explains-tesla-cybertruck-window-fail
We start shifting into "trucking stuff" when we discuss this article Rachel wrote about Andrew Yang, a Democratic presidential nominee. He's growing in popularity with young people and has found a passionate following with the group "Truckers for Yang".
Andrew's lead campaign policy is the "Freedom Dividend", a $1,000 / month payment from the federal government that he says will help offset unemployment as jobs are automated away.
https://www.businessinsider.com/truck-drivers-andrew-yang-self-driving-2019-9
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Michael Clements:
Do you find it being more people that are outside the industry that are more interested in autonomous trucks than people that are actually in it?
Rachel Premack:
By far, it's so funny. If I didn't talk to people outside of the industry, I would never talk about this, but...
Michael Clements:
Welcome to Trucking for Millennials, where we engage with the future of freight happening now. My name is Michael Clements.
Aaron Dunn:
And I'm Aaron Dunn, and we're here to help trucking and logistics professionals stay up to date and ahead of the curve as our industry evolves.
Michael Clements:
We're connecting with every step of the supply chain as part of our mission to increase transparency and provide world class freight solutions.
Aaron Dunn:
Hey, how's it going? This is Aaron Dunn with PDQ America. Thanks for tuning in to this episode. Here's a little preamble. This episode is a two parter. Another two parter, but it's going to be within the same week. Isn't that exciting?
Aaron Dunn:
What you're about to listen to is a conversation Michael and I had with Rachel Premack. Rachel is the senior transportation reporter over at Business Insider and has broke stories and wrote numerous, wonderful articles about transportation industry, the trucking industry, and the changes that are always happening within our line of work. And we cover a variety of subjects with her and that's why we're dividing it into two, around 30-minute parts.
Aaron Dunn:
And in classic trucking for millennials fashion, we're going to get into millennial stuff and trucking stuff. And for the first half, we're going to do millennial stuff. So for the first half of the conversation where talking millennial stuff with a hint of trucking stuff.
Aaron Dunn:
So we kick off the conversation with OK Boomer, the phrase that has polarized the internet for the past couple of weeks. We're outside of the peak happening of the phrase, of the peak usage. It's had his viral moment and it is kind of fading into the background and least until a boomer does something OK Boomer-ish.
Aaron Dunn:
But we've talk about that phenomenon, how it caught virality and how she grew her Twitter following because of it. And then after that we chat about the Tesla Cybertruck. You're going to learn whether or not Rachel has pre-ordered it.
Aaron Dunn:
And then we segue into Truckers for Yang, Andrew Yang, 2020 democratic candidate. Rachel had a conversation with him about the supposed threat of automation and what his opinions are on that and what Yang supporters, the Yang gang, as they are affectionately called, believe about the future of trucking and whether or not that makes any kind of difference on the industry itself and what actual industry professionals believe about automation.
Aaron Dunn:
So some millennial stuff and also some trucking stuff in this first half. And then we get deep into the trucking stuff in the second half that we'll be releasing later this week.
Aaron Dunn:
So hope you listen to both. Hope you enjoy both, but I hope you enjoy this first conversation, Michael and I had with Rachel Premack. Let's go.
Aaron Dunn:
Okay. Welcome to this episode of trucking for millennials. Thank you for listening. My name is Aaron Dunn, digital media director for PDQ America and I'm joined by Michael Clements, junior principal of PDQ America, a cohost of Trucking for Millennials. You know him, but I'm really just excited to introduce Rachel Premack of Business Insider. So I don't butcher your job title, Rachel, what is your formal job title?
Rachel Premack:
My former job title, [inaudible 00:04:22] promotion is now senior transportation reporter and thanks for having me on.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, it's great to have you and congratulations. How new is that?
Rachel Premack:
That's a good question. I think it was official as of November 1st. So yeah, still new, I'm getting used to being a senior reporter so it's pretty fun so far though.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, I imagine so. We got connected at FreightWaves Live. If you're a regular listener of this show, then you know that Michael and I spent a couple of days in Chicago, the Windy City, braving the cold and learning all things freight tech and Rachel had a great conversation with CEO of FreightWaves, Craig Fuller, and I just wanted to have her on because she is, as far as I know, a millennial in trucking.
Rachel Premack:
I'm getting close to the Gen Z cutoff, but I'm still very solidly in the millennial category and very proud of it.
Aaron Dunn:
Awesome. For you, what is it like being a senior transportation correspondent? Did I get that right? And a young person in the industry that is so, I mean to a lot of people, old?
Rachel Premack:
Yeah. I mean it is interesting because... It's funny because most of the questions I get around my status in the industry is more like, "So you're a woman in this very male dominated industry", which I think obviously color a lot of my perception or a lot of the way that others perceive me.
Rachel Premack:
But I think it is definitely also a pretty big differentiator that I'm in my mid twenties and also reporting in the industry. I think it is kind of fun because you get this perspective as a younger person or as a reporter based in New York that's very tech obsessed in some ways and sometimes, that's a little too tech focused.
Rachel Premack:
It is kind of interesting trying to bring together the focus of newfangled things, revolutionizing the industry and new ways that the industry could run along with this whole perception that "Okay, this is how things have been for however many decades. So if things have been running that way for so long, maybe that's the way it should be. Or maybe there are certain things that could be up for negotiation."
Rachel Premack:
It's definitely interesting being a younger person in the industry. Some of it's good, some of it's bad, but I'm a fan overall.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah.
Michael Clements:
Hi, Rachel. With your experience and so forth in the industry, how do you feel being younger, being a millennial in the industry, but also never being a truck driver, never actually driving or freight brokering, or being in any of these jobs in the industry? How do you think, though, that gives you a leg up on some of us that are inundated in the day to day of this industry?
Rachel Premack:
Yeah. That's an interesting point. It's kind of funny to think about because being in New York, I'm basically never around people who are in logistics. It's very uncommon for me to find someone who I can actually talk to and get nerdy about this stuff with.
Rachel Premack:
Otherwise, I keep it very surface level. People don't know the difference between being a long haul truck driver versus being a last mile driver, saying last mile freaks people out.
Rachel Premack:
I think it's good because I can get a little more distance from the work and be able to still explain these things to my readers. Quite a bit of my readers are in the trucking industry, but a lot of them aren't. So it is interesting.
Rachel Premack:
I think it is beneficial that I don't get too inundated by it or too in the weeds with it because it lets me get a little distance and be like, "Okay, these are the things that really matter. These are the big trends. I should focus on this instead of getting super bogged down on really specific trends that ultimately aren't really interesting."
Rachel Premack:
Because what we always talk about BI is what you write about should be a Venn diagram between what you care about and then what your readers care about should be an overlap between those two things. And sometimes they try to think about really intensive, like freight, like trends that I try to explain to my editors, my friends or my coworkers and they're like, "This is so boring. This doesn't matter."
Rachel Premack:
I think it is really good that there are tons of industry publications that go really in depth in those topics. But I think I like being in this position where I can explain this industry to people who otherwise would not know a single thing about it. But I do think that having more experience as a freight broker, a truck driver definitely gives me more hands on knowledge of everything. But I don't know, maybe next year, maybe in 2020, I become a freight broker.
Aaron Dunn:
Sold. Got to have goals. Yeah, that's an interesting thing and it's cool. It's great because you do have a certain level of balance there, too. You can have some distance but also a degree of proximity that helps you stay objective, I assume so.
Aaron Dunn:
So I want to jump into the articles and some of the talking points today. It's going to be a fun show. It's like a round table discussion of some things that are happening. One recurring segment that we have on Trucking for Millennials is pretty self explanatory. It's millennial stuff and trucking stuff. We didn't think too [crosstalk 00:10:33].
Michael Clements:
We're really creative.
Aaron Dunn:
We didn't think too deep into it. That's the hats that we're pulling out of. And we're going to start with millennial stuff and then move deeper into the trucking weeds you like to do as we go on.
Aaron Dunn:
So the first thing is in millennial stuff is the OK Boomer phenomenon that is sweeping the internet or has swept the internet for the last couple of weeks. We're late reporting on this, so to say, on our own episode, but I'm glad that we have someone who is in New York who could perhaps help us understand what's going on with the Gen Zs and the generational war, if you can. So OK Boomer is a retort that the younger generations are hoisting upon the older generations these days.
Rachel Premack:
[inaudible 00:11:31]
Aaron Dunn:
I just want to hear your take. Are you for the OK Boomer? What do you think about all this mess?
Rachel Premack:
Okay, so this is funny because I am not sure if you saw, but I had a tweet where literally all I did was screenshot a PR email I got saying someone wanted me to basically interview their client about how OK Boomer could be used, could be a just remark that gets you sued, or fired or something along those lines. And this tweet, I just screenshot the email of this PR message, which journalists do this all the time. Journalists, for some reason, are always making fun of the PR people and I thought it was a ridiculous PR pitch. So I just screenshot it, post it on Twitter didn't add any context whatever. I was actually in Texas when I posted this tweet, just shout out to Texas.
Rachel Premack:
And the next day my friend texted me saying I'm going viral on Twitter. I opened Twitter. I have a thousand retweets and then a few days later, I have more than 10000 retweets on this post, which is so bizarre to me because... Or it's actually really upsetting in some ways because I basically doubled my Twitter follower account. So basically, that means that everything I was reporting on before didn't matter. But this one, OK Boomer, seem to matter.
Rachel Premack:
So I think it's just really funny that this is such a thing that people are getting really upset and really worked up about. And for me it's interesting because I remember when I was in high school, people were talking about how millennials are ruining the country. They're entitled, blah, blah, blah. And now, fast forward 10 plus years, people are talking about like, "Oh, millennials are actually screwed because boomers ruined them and we're all in college that we're all supporting our parents and so on and so forth."
Rachel Premack:
In some ways it almost seems too little too late because my understanding is that while millennials, most millennials are in their mid twenties to even [inaudible 00:13:55] their forties. So a lot of these economic issues that millennials have been facing, they've been facing them for 10 years or something along those lines.
Rachel Premack:
I don't know. I do think that people should recognize a little bit more about the burden of college debt and all these different aspects, but maybe we shouldn't be too mean to boomers or, I don't know. It's up for debate for me, but yeah. If boomers want to be a little nicer to the millennials, maybe we can return those favor, but we'll have to see how the boomers started acting.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah. It's boomers' move. It's what it sounds like you're saying.
Rachel Premack:
What do you guys think of it?
Michael Clements:
I don't know. It sounds funny when I'm talking with a bunch of them, with a group of millennials or friends or whatnot. But, to me, it just seems simple, some kind of bullying going on. I'm just being honest. I don't really like it that much from my perspective, which I have to deal with a lot of people that are older and I'll have to work with those people and I find those people to be really knowledgeable.
Michael Clements:
I do think our generation could do a better job of listening to the older generation. And I don't think we improve that line of communication by just putting our hand up and saying, OK Boomer.
Michael Clements:
Talking with some older family members and things about this subject, I think boomers agree they don't like it, they don't care for it. But at the end of the day, I think it's like everything else, it'll probably run its course, at least in the mainstream. It'll kind of run its course. It may still be something that someone says to a parent or an aunt or uncle at Thanksgiving or something.
Michael Clements:
Overall [crosstalk 00:15:49] though, I'm not real big on the whole getting after people just because of their age or whoever they are. I mean we don't get to pick those things. They just happen to us. And so whether it's language, whether it's who we are or anything about us, if we're attacking that, it just seems like bullying.
Rachel Premack:
Yeah. That makes sense. I got my dad, he's in his early sixties. I was telling him about this tweet going viral and all that. And his thoughts on OK Boomer was like "Well, my parents and my grandparents could buy a house for X amount of money. They never had to take out mortgage and they could pay off their college tuition by just working over the summer."
Rachel Premack:
So every generation has had it a little easier as well as a little more difficult than the previous generation. It was just interesting to get his perspective on the issue. But I did get one email that was along the lines of don't say OK Boomer to boomers because we're jealous of you because we have so much less life to live than you guys, though. So it's hard feelings when you say OK Boomer. I was like, okay, that's a pretty good defense, but it was just really depressing in some ways, but it was kind of an interesting... I was like, "Oh okay."
Michael Clements:
I think that's probably the fact that was shared with you was probably a good thing because I think that's really how a lot of boomers feel about that comment is just like, "Hey, why you got to be an ass to me?"
Michael Clements:
"Listen, that was that other guy on the news yelling about millennials, that wasn't me. Now you're being ugly to me. I'm on your side"
Rachel Premack:
Yeah. We'll see when we're in our fifties and sixties because whoever comes after Gen Zs are going to be making fun of us for some reason, so.
Aaron Dunn:
We will see. We will see. Yeah. I don't think history will play too kind to the OK Boomer movement.
Aaron Dunn:
All right. Moving right along., I think we could really dive deep into, even deeper, but I want to know, did you pre order the Tesla Cybertruck?
Rachel Premack:
No, I did not. Obviously in New York, no cars, but I would never own a car. But that story and all the other stories, I haven't written about it, but that's been on the top of BI site for almost a week. People can't get enough about this story. People can't get enough about like Tesla and the Cybertruck. People can't stop talking about it. I don't know what it's like where you guys are living, but it's-
Aaron Dunn:
Well we live in in the truck capital of the nation. But I think it really is similar to a lot of other people are. It is a very divisive design. So I hear a lot of hate and a lot of love.
Michael Clements:
I just love all the video game references that the car's getting. It's been in every 1990s video game there ever was. So it's getting so many references.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, yeah.
Rachel Premack:
It's like a [inaudible 00:19:05] model or something. That's what it was described to me before. It looks weird just because it's supposed to be one unified truck body or is that what it is?
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, it's all one piece. It's manufactured to be all one piece of this really, really hard and steel. So as far as I understand, they don't really assemble the back of the truck and the front of the truck. It's all one thing. So that's what makes it that way [crosstalk 00:19:35].
Michael Clements:
[inaudible 00:19:36] Rolls Royce, right?
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, exactly.
Rachel Premack:
I'm in the other truck capital of the world right now. I'm in Detroit and I would be curious to see. I mean in general in Detroit you don't really see a lot of Teslas for obvious reasons. I would be curious to see how well that does here as well. I'd be curious to see how well it does in Michigan.
Aaron Dunn:
It would be interesting to see a Tesla truck going down New York.
Rachel Premack:
Apparently the reserve price for the Tesla truck is $100. Do you guys think that would boost reservations? Or what do you [inaudible 00:20:27] for that?
Michael Clements:
I don't think you are cool on Facebook, [inaudible 00:20:31] or Saturday, if you are putting a screenshot that you'd reserved your truck. If you aren't putting that screenshot on Facebook, you are cool this past weekend. I did not deserve my Tesla truck this weekend. There was a lot of people in the area who did.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah. And a part of it though, the sneaky part of it, it's all marketing, I think, because it's $100 refundable deposit. So it's not like anybody's wed to the thing. It's really just a moment. And they get to hold onto some cash for a little while, but.
Rachel Premack:
Yeah.
Aaron Dunn:
We'll see. We'll see what the Cybertruck does. They're going to war with the F-150 here pretty soon. So this is definitely not the last time we're going to hear from them. We've got a while to wait until it's actually in production too.
Aaron Dunn:
Let's get into some trucking stuff. Let's get into some trucking stuff. So it's also millennial stuff, too. This is where the two subjects collide with Andrew Yang and Truckers for Yang.
Aaron Dunn:
This is something that I've been watching come to a head on the internet because Andrew Yang, democratic candidate for president, his entire movement, it seems to exist solely online. He has a huge base of support from younger people because of what he does on the internet. And his token campaign slogan, his token campaign promise is to give every single American $1000 a month forever. So universal basic income, he calls the freedom dividend.
Aaron Dunn:
But the reason we're bringing it up here is because... And you wrote the article that we'll reference in the show notes about the Truckers for Yang movement because Andrew Yang has been really saying that the freedom dividend, it's $10000 a month stipend from the government that he wants to introduce was motivated by automation and the threat of automation to industries like trucking. So just to give that as an intro, but you wrote this article, so I just wanted to hear from you your experience and did you talk to Andrew about this? How was that?
Rachel Premack:
Yeah, I talked to him. I actually had two phone interviews with him because my service, for some reason, doesn't work in the office very well. Luckily he was able to talk to me a second time once I actually had service.
Rachel Premack:
I talked to him. I was honestly impressed by how much he knew about the trucking industry because you do see a lot of people, a lot of politicians or people in the tech industry jump in and start talking about trucking to seem hip. But he was very well informed on the ins and outs of how the job is. He's talked to quite a few truck drivers. I was definitely impressed with his base of knowledge on the trucking industry.
Rachel Premack:
But besides that, it is interesting because... So for a lot of the articles, especially articles that I write about trucking layoffs, a lot of the comments I actually get or if I see it on Reddit or on Twitter or whatever, a lot of those articles are shared by Yang gang people or Yang supporters who are saying this is just the beginning, the revolution is coming... Okay, I won't say the revolution is coming.
Rachel Premack:
They'll say clearly the signs are showing all this kinds of stuff. They're a little misinformed because these layoffs aren't happening because of automation. They're happening because of actually an overcapacity of trucks and the economy in general having a downturn in part due to the trade war we've been seeing.
Rachel Premack:
So it is kind of funny how gang supporters are approaching the trucking industry. A lot of them want to use the trucking industry as an example of why we need UBI in these sorts of things. And it is kind of funny because when I did ask truck drivers what they thought about UBI, none of them are really in support of it. But truck drivers, as you know, tend to lean a little bit more conservative or they don't even support unions in many cases. So supporting the UBI was probably a little too extreme if they're not even supporting unions or other sort of labor protections.
Rachel Premack:
But yeah, I would be curious to see how it continues to play out because I don't really see, there are a few truck drivers were very vocally supporting Yang but you don't really see a lot of people in the industry, at least from my perspective, who are really into Yang or really into his policy. That's definitely still, general Democrat or leaning towards Trump or something along those lines.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, it seems to be a very vocal minority that is kind of backing his movement, especially within trucking. And it's been interesting because I'm new to the trucking industry and as I got into the industry, Mr Yang started to get more popular. So I've been able to see how.. Well I can listen from what he's saying as a talking point. And I'm also actually just listening to truckers every day or people that have deep industry knowledge and it doesn't always line up.
Aaron Dunn:
But in the article, you quoted him and he says, "I'm actually not that concerned with trying to convince truckers that automation is going to be a problem. I want to actually solve the problem. If a trucker is just happily doing his job thinking that everything is going to be hunky-dory, that's probably a good thing."
Aaron Dunn:
So he doesn't even care how much trucking support he gets. He's just going to be like, "I'm going to ride this thing and see what happens." It's interesting how, there's a lot of interesting points about not having the tribal knowledge can influence other people into buying into a campaign and really disregard what the actual industry experts think about what's coming around the corner.
Michael Clements:
So is that his big thing though is that he's wanting to fight automation for the truck drivers? Is that basically, in a nutshell, what he's wanting to do?
Rachel Premack:
I think the truck drivers are probably one of the bigger sects that he's talking about. I don't think it's the only one, but that's definitely one of the biggest one he's arguing about or talking about.
Rachel Premack:
But yeah, that quote from him was really interesting because most of the truck drivers I talked to, or the vast majority of the truck drivers I talked to don't care about automation or don't believe that self-driving is something that's going to threaten their jobs in the coming years. But they are worried about more day to day things or more urgent things like ELDs or detention time or these other sort of problems.
Rachel Premack:
And when I asked him about what do you think about the fact that truck drivers don't really care about this? He basically said that quote, which I thought it was pretty interesting. He definitely doesn't talk like most politicians. He definitely talks like a normal person [inaudible 00:28:35]. Politicians, the way they talk and like okay, you sound like a robot.
Rachel Premack:
I can see why he has such a big following because he just sounds different. He sounds just like your smart friend basically, instead of like some weird like [inaudible 00:28:55] getting robots.
Rachel Premack:
So I see why he has such a strong online base, but I would encourage his followers who see my articles and think that it's a sign that automation is taking over truck driving to actually read the article and see that that's not the case in situations. Most trucking CEOs who I've talked to, I have even tried to ask people from Walmart or other sorts of companies about this.
Rachel Premack:
And I mean most of them don't want to talk about because they don't want to piss off their employees because then then say like, "We're going to take over and get rid of all you guys and replace you with robots." That's not something that any of them really see as feasible the coming years.
Rachel Premack:
So yeah, it's something that I think we all should take with a grain of salt. It's something I have to explain once a week in New York. I told someone I report on truck driving that's like their first comment and I'm like, "Okay, here we go again." I know I have to explain this for the 30th time this month. But anyways.
Michael Clements:
Do you find it being more people that are outside the industry that are more interested in autonomous trucks than people that are actually in it?
Rachel Premack:
By far, it's so funny. If I didn't talk to people outside of the industry, I would never talk about this, but half the time I tell it. So yeah.
Rachel Premack:
Literally, I never talk about this usually except... Like at FreightWaves last week, I had very few conversations about this issue. But any other time I'm in New York or in some sort of conversation with non industry people I talk about. I do think it's something that's going to happen and there are a lot of promising startups in the field, but it's not something that's like, "Oh we got to watch out for this tomorrow." You know? Yeah.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah.
Rachel Premack:
Interesting. For sure.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, so what really kind of put a pin in that whole idea for me was talking to, we went to Great American Trucking Show back in the summer and we talked with Marcus Cooksey and we did a podcast with him and he has a computer engineering background. He owns a trucking company and then he owns a automation tool to help truck drivers automate their billing processing and things like that. And he's worked on the systems that help teach cars how to drive themselves. So when he told me that he wasn't too worried about it, but it is kind of coming, but it's going to be a long time away. I was like, "Okay, I think this guy knows what he's talking about. [inaudible 00:31:43] "
Katie:
Hello, this is Katie from PDQ America. I wanted to invite you to join our newsletter, the Transmitter. If you'd like to receive the latest trucking news, industry insights and other valuable information every week, visit go.pdqamerica.com/podcast.