Episode 9 - Trucking, Video Games, and Entrepreneurship
Technology continues to influence the trucking industry and this episode features voices of 3 different CEO's and their perspective on how it's impacting the industry today.
The "video gamification" of trucks is a subject that came up quite often during our conversations with industry professionals at GATS, so the episode starts off with a discussion about their possible role in driver recruitment.
The second half of the episode features Marcus Cooksey, CEO of LUI Transport and Founder of Duke.ai, a technology that allows Owner Operators to simply and securely stay up to date with their Profit/Loss details and Tax Liability.
Also featured in this episode:
Ellen Voie, Women in Trucking & Justin Clarke, CEO of F Staff.
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Michael Clements :
For millennials that are getting into trucking, what advice do you have for them?
Speaker 1:
Go to work for that company over there that you can sit at a desk and play a video game and it'll self-drive.
Michael Clements :
So, I mean that's funny. But we are going to have to have real truck drivers in the next 20 years.
Speaker 2:
Exactly.
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:
Trucking for Millennials podcast once again.
Michael Clements :
Coming to you live from White Oak, Texas.
Aaron Dunn:
Well, post-produced.
Michael Clements :
To share.
Aaron Dunn:
But we are alive here. Keeping it fresh all the time. So, this podcast is about trucking and millennials. This particular episode is about technology and how it is influencing trucking or vice versa. Trucking, influencing tech. So, I wanted to get your take on this because this episode I'm excited about because it's got... You'll hear a lot of different voices from across the industry. We have Ellen Voie from Women In Trucking.
Ellen Voie:
So, my name's Ellen Voie. I'm the President and CEO of the Women In Trucking Association. So, we're a nonprofit organization and our mission is to increase the numbers of women working in the industry and whether that means the women who designed the trucks, build the trucks, sell the trucks, fix the trucks, drive the trucks, own the trucks. We represent all women in the industry, but almost 20% of our members are men because they believe in our mission. So, I like to tell people we're not necessarily for women. We're about women.
Aaron Dunn:
You spoke with her at GATS, Justin from F Staff.
Justin Clarke:
Justin Clarke. Sure. Okay. So, since I was 19 years old, just out of high school and with a year of college, we started this little company called Contracted Driver Services where we were going to help a few truck drivers find their way to good quality jobs. And then since then we've just continued to help thousands of drivers find their way to good quality employers. We keep doing a good job at it, so it helps us keep our business alive and we just have learned so much about the industry so that now we actually are just focused on continuing to solve the problem of drivers needing good quality work but doing it through technology. So, it really empowers a truck driver to be able to work when they want, how they want to work, for who they want to work and get paid as soon as they want to even get paid. So, we're really working on kind of just solving that future gig economy for the truck drivers seat.
Aaron Dunn:
You'll hear their voices throughout this episode, but I wanted to just kick off this episode with a conversation with Michael. With you about just tech in general to give a good summary of the episode and what people are going to hear. So, you've been able to see this evolution. So,, just in general, across the landscape, what do you think about tech and trucking at this time in the industry?
Michael Clements :
Well, they really go hand in hand and to know where trucking has been before, even before I got into it, and talking to people that were in it in the eighties, the nineties, early two thousands, technology's making a very valuable impact on the industry right now. The industry's always been open to technology and it's always looked for ways to get more efficient. I think that's why you have a lot of people that started off as truck drivers and then moved into now software companies and businesses that are promoting different ways to handle the problems of the trucking industry, whether it's efficiency, whether it's driver shortage, whether it's safety, whether it's a document control. All those things, right now, technology's playing a big, it's playing a big part in and really I think the efficiency, the industry has increased substantially just since we got in it in 2013.
Aaron Dunn:
Well said. Exactly. At GATS, when we were talking with people, we ask people about millennials and what they thought about younger generations. We also talked and asked people about how we could get younger people into the industry that were, outside the industry and over and over, we heard a lot of people say video games.
Ellen Voie:
Maybe a trucking game that's not killing people. You know what I mean? It's a positive trucking though... Hey, figure it out. You know, which route you want to take and which... Whatever. I mean, we just need to make it more in their face,
Justin Clarke:
The millennial generation is not going to re-enter these trucks until these trucks feel a lot more like video games in my opinion. And they're starting to, so if you'll notice some tech... Slight small changes to mirror technologies. Now, they're coming in where they're actually, they're not mirrors at all. The camera technology, they look like mirrors, but all it's showing you is a video camera of this, giving you better visibility, sharper images.
Aaron Dunn:
What do you think about some kind of truck driving simulator being that thing that could attract young talent into the industry?
Michael Clements :
Well, I'll tell you this man, I would be an NFL quarterback right now if I could have had all hours I logged on Madden growing up.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah.
Michael Clements :
If that would have translated to me being an NFL football player, but I had no... All jokes aside though, I think trucking simulators in those things are definitely a positive for the industry and as the industry starts to be more accepting to simulators and the idea of a video game being used to promote safe driving, safer practices and a good over the road, just get over the road etiquette. If they can teach that through a video game, I think that's definitely positive. In the aerospace area, they've been using simulators for years and the United States of America produces some of the best pilots in the world year on, year in and year out. So, I think simulators are definitely a great direction to go for the trucking industry, and I think you're even going to see more of it. These simulators are good and they're not just your run of the mill, like well, it's not like doing the real thing. And I think you actually have some stories that are going to prove that.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, because that's the next question. It kind of comes up. It's like, well really is it a viable investment for a trucking business to make or the industry to make to encourage that type of technology to come into the workplace. So, I was doing some Googling to figure out... I had a phone call. That's Michael's ringtone. Anyway, so I did some Googling to figure out what trucking simulators were out there, and there's European Truck Simulator and American Truck Simulator and they're made by the same company. It's a SCS Software and I think they're in Sweden or something there... It's originated in Europe, and I sent out a tweet at PDQ America from our Twitter account. I sent out a tweet asking them if there were any players... They've got a huge community, they got millions of players across the world... Whether or not some players have actually transitioned into the real driver's seat.
Aaron Dunn:
They retweeted it, thankfully, and there was some good responses from their community that said yes. One particular story, it's a couple of years old, but it's a great example of how this, how video games can translate into job creation. This guy named Dustin Kotara. Dustin Kotara is a certified truck driver. He sent this email, which has made us immensely proud. This is SCS Software talking and this is the email that Dustin sent.
Aaron Dunn:
"I currently have 197 hours logged into American Truck Simulator. Loving every minute of it. Your trucking simulators have been a huge inspiration in my career choice. I graduated truck driving school with a GPA of 3.6 A grade. I am now employed at Reddaway, a local truck driving company on the West coast of United States. I probably would not have known that this was my dream job had I not first played your truck driving simulators, but here I am. And it's funny though, all my instructors I drove with said I was the best driver they had seen in a while and the best of my class. I was able to nail the backing portion of my test in one to two shots and was able to do the 90 degree backing in one shot on multiple occasions, even though I have never even been inside a tractor before in my life. And in my mind, I know your team's creations have helped me."
Aaron Dunn:
So, it's one story but still I think that it did inspire this kid and he's a grown adult now and with the job to at least try it out and I think that's pretty awesome.
Michael Clements :
Yeah. I mean video games, especially for our generation have been a part of our lives since... I mean I can recall even whether you had video games at your house or not, I mean we were playing games like Oregon Trail and SimCity and those things in second and third grade and I think those things definitely helped us in our growing up and understanding of the world. I mean I hear all the time about how they don't have a class that teaches real life. Well, I mean SimCity taught us some things that you know you've got to budget, you got to make sure a tornado doesn't come through and blow down your whole town, but really though, these games, I think that they do help.
Michael Clements :
And if you look at them from a point of view or a perspective that says, how do we get better in the trucking industry? How do we get better drivers? Safer drivers? Ones that start to bridge that gap a little bit from being someone who knows nothing about trucking but wants to be a driver. How can we do that? Reduce the risk, reduce the amount of time that it takes, and also reduce the amount of investment that the company has to make in each individual. I think that simulators definitely can play a positive role in the industry going forward.
Aaron Dunn:
Excellent. Well, keep on listening. That's the gist of Michael and I's conversation. That's the end of our piece, but there's another conversation that I was fortunate to have with Marcus Cooksey of Duke.AI. He owns a small trucking company out of, I believe McKinney, the Dallas area, look up in the innovations, LUI Transport. And he is a double threat because he owns a small trucking business, but he has a computer science background. So, he got into trucking while he was at a... He was an engineer at a computer science company. You'll hear his background a little bit, and then he has now developed an automation tool to help drivers take care of their bookkeeping. So, he's not only an advocate for technology, he's currently also developing technology within the trucking industry.
Aaron Dunn:
We had a good conversation about how smaller companies can adopt these technologies to benefit their business and we talked about how his approach of getting drivers and recruiting drivers and getting people involved in the industry. So, if you're a technologist, if you're an engineer, if you're an aspiring truck driver, if you're a trucking company owner or an owner operator, follow Marcus on LinkedIn, he's very active on there. And keep on listening to this episode, there's a lot of value coming up.
Aaron Dunn:
Marcus, tell our audience... Just introduce yourself and tell me about what you do.
Marcus Cooksey:
Sure Aaron, and first of all, thank you for inviting me to talk about a subject I've become very passionate about. My background is in computer science engineering, but I started my own trucking company while I was working for... Full time as an engineer. I went into trucking because I had several family members who were somewhat floundering a bit. They had been in the industry for a while, but they were not independent owner operators. And so I thought with my business background that I can help them to develop some of the techniques and methodologies to help them to be successful. So, my first driver was my cousin.
Aaron Dunn:
Okay.
Marcus Cooksey:
And that's how I kind of got started.
Aaron Dunn:
All right. So, you started a trucking business and now you work for Duke.AI.
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah, and so Duke was inspired from me operating my trucking company. So, we had mastered some of the... How do we do our booking loads? How do we work with carriers? Find drivers? But one of the things that was problematic was our bookkeeping. There's just an array of paperwork that you have to do for before being a trucker.
Aaron Dunn:
Right.
Marcus Cooksey:
And it's a business. So, that means you've got to keep up with your finance and operations in order to qualify for funding. And there were times when we wanted funding and we didn't have all of our paperwork, all of our profit and loss statements, balance sheets, none of that was together, and we started using QuickBooks and a few other softwares out there. But it was just tedious in the amount of manual entry that you have to do. And I was thinking to myself, the average trucker is not going to be able to do this on the road. And I started looking for software that could actually automate, where you can just take a picture. I thought there's got to be a way for you can take a picture and it's all done for you. And it wasn't. And that's when I started Duke.AI.
Aaron Dunn:
With your company now, how many trucks do you have?
Marcus Cooksey:
We have five trucks.
Aaron Dunn:
Okay. So, you have five trucks. You've expanded. Your cousin's not the only one now.
Marcus Cooksey:
Right.
Aaron Dunn:
So, how do you find drivers? We're really interested on this podcast and the subject to conversation and there's millennials and the newer generation of drivers. So, are there any younger drivers on your team at this point?
Marcus Cooksey:
So, this is how we find drivers. We started our company with experienced drivers. Okay? But what we've learned is there's something that happens with experienced drivers and we used to see this in engineering. There's a... I'm not saying anything wrong, but there's kind of this, I'm setting my ways, and it's difficult for them to adapt, not all of them, to some of the new technologies.
Marcus Cooksey:
Right? Whereas the millennial is more trainable. Right. And we saw that, again, that's not true across all the cases. And so we've partnered... We're starting to partner with training institutions. In fact, that was the one company that was here today. I'm going to go out and what I do is, I don't go out and talk about, "Hey, we need drivers come work for us," it's an information session. So, next week, I'm going to go out there, talk to some of their young drivers, talk about trucking in general. Right now, they're getting started. They just want to get their CDL and find a job. But I want them to be looking five years from here and being business owners. So, the subject matter is going to be about that. And we think that naturally creates us, allows us to have an authentic pipeline where people want to come work for us.
Aaron Dunn:
Got it, got it. So, what year did you start Duke.AI?
Marcus Cooksey:
Duke.AI started as a conversation. It was a conversation that I had with a friend, with a former colleague of mine in 2017 and from there, it just blossomed into a product. So, you're looking at now two years, two and a half years, in the making of a product that went from just concept and just a few lines of code to see if we can do optical character recognition and then do some contextualization and interpret that to a full scale app.
Marcus Cooksey:
And I have a team of engineers. They are passionate about trucking. No, seriously. I told one of my engineers, he's a data scientist and I told him about one of the issues about dispatching and route planning and so forth. Now, that's not our niche, but he was curious to know if there was a way for you to optimize that. And he started doing a bunch of research and looking into it, he was like, "Wow, this is an amazing challenge." This is because engineers, they like challenges and they want to solve it. So, they are truckers and so they're here today. This is their first time being around trucks and they're overwhelmed. This is because they're big, the people, the personalities of the truckers are just... They're no quiet people. And some of my engineers are, how can you say, they're introverts or whatever. So, the truckers, you've got to be able to talk. You got to have outgoing personality.
Aaron Dunn:
Right, right. Yeah. That's one thing that we're learning for sure. We're asking... We've got a mic and we're engaging with people and it's been fun.
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah.
Aaron Dunn:
So, and engineers, it's a relatively... It's relatively fertile ground for engineers and truck drivers to start shaking hands and learning about each other. So, what are some of those conversations like that you've been having over the past couple of days?
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah, very insightful of you to see that there is a revolution that can occur in the trucking industry. For me, I'm focusing on a lot of the software elements of it, but what I've noticed is there's a fragmentation of software, but there's a limited amount of, how can you say, real estate and time that a truck driver has to learn all this stuff. What I mean by that is you've got truck parking problem, you've got ELD problem, you've got, if you've got bookkeeping and I'm missing something. There's a... And there's all these different solutions that are out there and none of them are integrated. And just imagine if you had a word document or you were working from Word, but you typed on one platform and then you went and to bold it out, that would be [inaudible 00:18:32] but that's what the trucking industry is like. And so, I think there's some integration that's happening. So, we've been talking with companies that said, "Hey, let's work together and create a uniform solution to provide a better product at a lower cost for the truckers."
Aaron Dunn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. So, really making those... You're seeing the connections between all these suite of services that everybody's just trying to contribute and then put it all into one big platform. So, it's just better at the end of the day for everybody. Yeah. Interesting. So, that sounds like something you're pretty passionate about and really what you're on the forefront of your mind. Let me ask you this. You're an entrepreneur and I think there's probably a lot of freight tech recruiters who would really love to have you on their team. So, when it comes to those types of things, how do you think about that? Are you somebody that... I mean you're an entrepreneur so you own your own businesses, but would you ever join up with another company?
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah!
Aaron Dunn:
How do you think about that?
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah. Well, so one of the things in the tech space, we used to have open-source all right. And it was a way for standard is that we standardized like-
Aaron Dunn:
Scientific.
Marcus Cooksey:
Scientific. Yeah, we have open-source and even though everyone is using it, your competitors are using it, there's a common base and common framework because we understand that when we're connected and we share together, things get better. Right? But a lot of industries I'm learning are not like that. It's kind of like, this is my protected information. So, I would love to be part of an open-source, kind of say, community of the trucking industry where this could be standardization. Why does every trucking company have a different BOL format? Right? Why can't J.B. Hunt and Landstar, whoever it is, have a unified way of being able to store trailers, right? Where we can pick these up and cash it. And so, I would love to sit on boards like that and discussions to have a standardization around the trucking industry so that everybody's doing better.
Aaron Dunn:
So, did you ever think that you were going to use your computer science degree in logistics like this?
Marcus Cooksey:
I did. I did. One of our core values at Look Up Innovations... Yeah, it was all of the typical things, quality customer service or whatever, but there was a part of our pillars that says we will leverage technology to improve. So, having that technology background, I knew that we would actually implement or adapt certain technologies to help us be an efficient trucking company. Now, I didn't think I would be developing Duke. I didn't know some of the pathways, but I knew by being an engineer, there's always problems and technology or science or whatever it is, is the oftentimes remedy for that and I figured trucking was no different and here I am.
Aaron Dunn:
It's really valuable because you're somebody who touches both ends. You've got the trucking knowledge and the computer science knowledge to where you can help bridge those gaps.
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah, it is. And I'll tell you, I've developed an affinity for the trucker. I mean, I love truck drivers. I mean the employees I have, just the relationships with them. And so, my desire now is just say, how do we make their lives better?
Aaron Dunn:
You mentioned that you like talking to younger professionals and stuff like that, is there anything else that you would like to get out there about trucking or to maybe the younger professional who might be considering, might be listening today-
Marcus Cooksey:
Right.
Aaron Dunn:
...about logistics or computer science. You know, maybe the younger you that's in school right now. Is there anything that you really want to get out there and popularize?
Marcus Cooksey:
I sure will. It's almost... I'm going to address this from two points right. One from new truckers. New people coming into the trucking industry. There's always going to be change. And you have to adapt to it. So, one of the biggest, most controversial things that I say... This is because before I started working Duke full time, I was part of our Advanced Driver Assist program at another company and we sold processes that taught cars how to drive by themselves.
Aaron Dunn:
Wow.
Marcus Cooksey:
Right? And one of the things that I do know is that autonomous vehicles... I have a car that actually drives on its own. Autonomous vehicles will come, but I don't think it's going to eradicate a job. If anything, it's going to be like a copilot on a plane. It will just permit your ability to be on the road or for that asset to continue running. So, now if I have a truck that can go over the road at night, when there aren't very many cars on the road, and that I can put it in an autopilot mode, I can sleep. Then, I can now wake up and then drive it during heavy traffic areas. Now you've got to... It's going to shorten your time being on the road.
Marcus Cooksey:
And you're going to make more... You're going to keep the wheels turning. So, I wouldn't let some of the [inaudible 00:23:41]. And then on the other front, on the computer science, I always tell young people to stay entrepreneur, and even if you work at a company, because what happens is everybody sees the latest big thing and they want to be part of it, and that's fun and cool if you just want to make money. But you look at what we've done in the trucking industry... There are other industries out there, construction, some of your long term existing industries are just right. Right for innovation to take place. Try to get... Be part of those things. I think you'll find that being very rewarding in some kind of ways. You're just not a commodity type of Facebook developer, Google developer. Right. Not to speak anything bad about those companies, but-
Aaron Dunn:
Right.
Marcus Cooksey:
So, I think that's what I would kind of recommend too.
Aaron Dunn:
I think that's a great point, because you know, for a long time, all this innovation was happening with those type of social apps, those internet friendly apps.
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah.
Aaron Dunn:
Meanwhile, trucking industry, $600 billion, $700 billion and you'd get a very small percentage of that number and it's a big number.
Marcus Cooksey:
It's a big number.
Aaron Dunn:
So, that's a great... That is something that it's a doomsday type of headline that a lot of people are saying. And outside the industry, a lot of people are saying, "Oh well, that's going to go away." You know, when we started the Trucking for Millennials podcast saying fresh perspective on an industry and trucking as an industry is great for younger professionals. Some of the feedback that we got was, isn't that, aren't they automating that away forever? You know? So, a lot of people don't understand that, how the self driving technology's going to compliment the driver not replace. So, you don't have any fear of that at all-
Marcus Cooksey:
No.
Aaron Dunn:
...as somebody in computer science?
Marcus Cooksey:
No. A truck is more difficult to maneuver. Okay. It's just a bit too much to maneuver. The liability is too great. Face it, there will be an accident. Okay. I hate to say it. Now, there will be few, there may be fewer accidents with autonomous trucks just because, let's say it's more precise, but there will be an accident, because this is just how it works. The first time there's an accident with an autonomous truck, it will be different from the.. From it being from a liability standpoint versus one [inaudible 00:26:00] of that. And we saw that with one of the recent ride-hailing companies-
Aaron Dunn:
Right.
Marcus Cooksey:
...where a lady was [inaudible 00:26:10]... Change their whole strategy. Right. And I think that whoever wants to be the first one to go out and do it, good luck to you, because there's a lot going to come after that. So, that's why I say you can feel safe. Will it... Will there be certain zones that will permit you to do it? Yeah, it's going to come, but for it to just not have a human being in it, we're a long way from that.
Aaron Dunn:
Excellent. Well, great conversation, Marcus. It's great to know you.
Marcus Cooksey:
Yeah.
Aaron Dunn:
Have a great rest of your show and we'll see you around.
Marcus Cooksey:
Thanks for having me.
Aaron Dunn:
Yeah, not a problem.
Marcus Cooksey:
Appreciate it.
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.