How to Turn Freight Data into Audit-Ready Scope 3 Reporting with Michael Rentz

Joe Lynch: [00:00:00] Hello, friends. Welcome to Logistics of Logistics podcast. My name is Joe Lynch. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today’s topic is how to turn freight data into audit ready scope three reporting with my friend Michael Rentz. How’s it going, Michael?

Michael Rentz: It’s going very well. Thank you, Joe. Glad to be here. Appreciate the opportunity

Joe Lynch: Oh, thank you. So Michael, please introduce yourself and your company and where you’re calling from today

Michael Rentz: So I’m Michael Rentz. I’m the chief revenue [00:00:30] officer of Gnosis Freight. We are the AI global freight operating system. Uh, we touch a lot of parts of the entire ecosystem, and abstractly, I always say we solve organizations’ most difficult supply chain and logistics problems through a combination of data science, tooling, service, and always focus on outcomes. Um, again, I know it’s abstract and we can dive in, and I’m calling in from Charleston, South Carolina where our company’s headquartered.

Joe Lynch: So I remember way back when I first met you guys, you used to talk a [00:01:00] lot about container life cycle management, and and I think you guys had, have had explosive growth, and I remember initially a lot of it was from that COVID morass we had at the ports, and the changes to the f- the Federal Maritime Commission made.

I forget what those were. I forgot what… What was that?

Michael Rentz: The Ocean Shipping Reform Act

Joe Lynch: Yeah

Michael Rentz: effectively legislation. But most importantly, I think from a legal perspective, it [00:01:30] flipped the burden from the shipper, the BCO, to the carrier to prove charges like demurrage and detention. And there’s plenty of line items that you could comb through, but I think that was the most impactful change

Joe Lynch: Yeah, and I think OSRA 2022 was it? And I seem to remember y- Knosis got a big boost from that because in a lot of ways people couldn’t do that reporting from that. And all of a sudden they’re like, “Hey, Knosis can help us.” But that, that was [00:02:00] a f- crazy time in our industry, and again, I think a lot of that was d- detention and demurrage.

People were getting charged detention and demurrage for containers that they couldn’t move. So th- so you say, “Hey, I’m charging you this much per day for your container to be here.” You’re like could you give it to me?” “No. It’s under 20 other containers, sorry.” Anyway, so when you think of Knosis, I know you solve more than one problem, but talk about the problems you solve and who do you solve those problems for?

Michael Rentz: Yeah. Quickly [00:02:30] on the OSRA thing, I think it’s important to sequence that is demerge– And for the first time ever, CFOs were, in the height of the pandemic, were asking: “What the hell is demerge and detention?” And there was a variety of reasons why customers were incurring those bills. OSRA came out of that as a, an administrative solution to try to resolve some of those issues, which in some ways made it more difficult.

But that’s how it was sequenced on the OSRA piece, and it’s still not fully adopted and still relevant [00:03:00] today, four years later. But that was the sequence. But on the problem we solve we made a name for ourselves at the height of the pandemic for that same problem, which was primarily demerge and detention, which is, an asset-based late fee. What we found is the folks in charge of fixing that problem, like an inbound logistics manager or analyst at a BCO, was spending 99% of their time looking for the exceptions and 1% of the time managing it. And the standard operating procedure for even the largest organizations in [00:03:30] the world in logistics was just emailing Excel spreadsheets back and forth between all the different parties, aggregating Excel reports into one file, running a VLOOKUP or a pivot table, and then cross-checking dozens of carrier websites, port terminal websites, things like that.

So that was fundamentally the problem we set out to solve, and the outcome for that was our demerge and detention alarms that were aligned 100% to the customer’s unique negotiated commercial contracts with the carriers. And at the time, that was a gigantic [00:04:00] problem, but that was somewhat of our strategic wedge into the operations of inbound logistics for us. And it solved it. So we inverted that problem, where now we identify the exceptions. We have direct connections to all those primary sources, the carriers, ports terminals, rail carriers, AIS satellite, CBP customs, and we pull that information and surface it in real time, identifying the exceptions and give the customer back their most precious [00:04:30] resource which is their c- their employees’ time to think critically on behalf of the business.

So that was fundamentally the problem we solved, and I would say that’s still relevant because that’s the same approach we take to any problem, um, wherever it may be, including carbon emissions today, which we’ll talk

Joe Lynch: Yep. Yeah, we will, that’ll be the main topic today, but I think it’s important people understand what Gnosis does. And I seem to remember, I think I talked to Jake your CTO, and he I think he told me that you guys were actually going to Washington to [00:05:00] talk to regulators about how to develop this OSIRAN, how to actually meet the requirements because it was…

sometimes we end up with rules and we want them, those are the guardrails, but if you don’t have a solution to actually get it done, and I think in a lot of ways somebody said, “Great, there’s this new rules that we’re supposed to live with. How?” Gn- Gnosis was the how.

Michael Rentz: Yeah, and I think the FMC was very clear and [00:05:30] very encouraging to us that they can create the rules or the regulations, but they very much prefer a private solution to come from the private side. And so we just took the rules and the different parties involved and built a solution that would provide value for everyone.

And I think the best manifestation of that is our container payment portal solution in partnership with PayCargo, where where with a lot of the carriers now 100% of demurrage inbound into the US is now paid through [00:06:00] Gnosis with PayCargo, and we became the originator of the availability date and the subsequent last free day. and and that was a big problem, but basically made it OSRA compliant and made it easy to identify exactly what the source of truth was, um, to where the carriers, the terminals, the cargo owners themselves could facilitate the flow of money to facilitate the flow of goods

Joe Lynch: Yep. So at a high level, what problems do you solve and [00:06:30] who are your customers?

Michael Rentz: We solve a lot of problems. I think most importantly is we never build a solution and then look for a problem and try to tell people they have problems. I think w- we’re the opposite. We try to get deeply embedded with our customers, identify their problems, and build elegant solutions for them. At this point, we service everybody in the ecosystem. If you touch a container or goods cross-border or domestically or adjacently we service them. Our primary customer, our [00:07:00] North Star, are the BCOs, where we build a lot of solutions for them. We’re just in a market where if you build something of value for the ultimate end user, who is the BCO, you inherently will provide something of value to the service providers in the market who are also in service to the BCO.

So we sell primarily to the BCOs, but to the drayage carriers, freight forwarders, NVOs, ocean carriers themselves, technology providers, competitors. Like we, we provide something to everyone.

Joe Lynch: Yeah. And [00:07:30] by the way, I’m sure there’s people listening saying, “Oh, great, we have more f- more federal oversight.” This is an area, and again, I think the you touched on it, Michael, and I totally agree with you. They put some guardrails up, that’s all. And what happened during COVID when we had those big jam ups at the port that’s something that limits our competitiveness here.

W- we want to be able to do trade. We wanna be able to say we can move freight in and out of our country, and all of a sudden we [00:08:00] had a stumble. Not horrible. Nobody starved during the pandemic here. We did d- we did good. It wasn’t easy, but I think we’ve learned a lot from the COVID thing.

We’re gonna come back and talk more about what what you guys do for basically sh- the largest shippers in the world, and also all the logistics providers. We’ll come back to that. Michael, tell us a little bit about you. Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? Some career highlights before you joined the mothership Gnosis, and why did you join the mothership [00:08:30] Gnosis?

I looked at your LinkedIn profile today. You had lots of options. You could’ve gone a lot of directions, but you chose Gnosis

Michael Rentz: I grew up in outside of Columbia, South Carolina. West Columbia, South Carolina, to be specific. Born and raised there. To undergraduate at the University of South Carolina, and then came to Charleston for graduate school right after that. Did a JD/MBA here in Charleston, studied engineering in undergrad, and then my mentor in business school here in Charleston was Jim Newsome, who at the time was [00:09:00] the president and CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority, and he introduced me to the shipping industry and encouraged me to go apply to be part of the Maersk Line Graduate Program at Maersk. And I did. I took the bar, passed the bar, and then went and got accepted into the Maersk Line Graduate Program. And so got an incredible education at Maersk and a really good opportunity to work with really cool and interesting people, and fell in love with the industry, fell in love with the people [00:09:30] I moved up to North Jersey, traveled all over the world for them, but was always entrepreneurial in spirit and started working on some things on the side. Ended up leaving Maersk in July of 2018, moved back down to South Carolina and was asked to be the managing director for Techstars Supply Chain and Logistics themed accelerator. They’re in a big accelerator program, and was doing that. I had to raise money to do it. I got two-thirds of the way there, and then the pandemic hit.

It was a corporate-backed accelerator, and the big [00:10:00] enterprises that would invest in startups kinda locked down the balance sheet and left me out stranded. And I fortuitously met Austin McCombs, our CEO, like two weeks after that. And at the time, I really just needed a job and money. And I thought “Oh, great. Here’s another redneck in Mount Pleasa- in Mount Pleasant with another trucking startup.” And I jumped on the first call ’cause it was on Zoom at the time, even though we lived in the same city because of the pandemic, [00:10:30] and he showed me a demo of the platform that he and Jake, our CTO, had built, and he had solved something I thought was impossible, which at the time, which was a single pane of glass for the entire, what we would call lifecycle of the container now.

And I just knew that journey was so fragmented across so many different departments and so many different orgs. I was like, “That’s good enough for me.” So we jumped in and hit the ground running, and that was about six years ago now and went after our first customer. And I think [00:11:00] the most interesting part about that, that was 2020, and in the tech environment, it was zero interest rates.

We were at the peak of growth at all costs. Everybody was raising gigantic VC funding rounds. We didn’t. Uh, we didn’t. We had to be different, and we were more traditional in the sense of we thought business was about making more money than what you spent, and we just tried to get as close as possible, land a customer, figure out what’s next.

And then after the SaaS crash in [00:11:30] 2022, everybody somewhat adapt- adopted our model, which is now called cash effic- cash efficient growth where it’s a bit more traditional in the sense. So very prescient and really good foresight for Austin, who’s a visionary himself. So that put us in a really good position to keep doing what we’ve been doing across two different eras of how software and technology is built and deployed

Joe Lynch: Yep. I’ve been watching your growth. I interviewed Jake years ago the first time. I think I’ve interviewed guys t- two times [00:12:00] already. And when I look at how many employees you have over at now, grown like a weed. But to your point not one of those take a ton of money and grow a t- a huge team, and then eventually implode and let most everybody go.

It’s been growth, but this is a solution. I… This is a solution that we absolutely, positively needed and didn’t have. There was not a company, I don’t believe there was any company like [00:12:30] Gnosis. I don’t even know if there is now. But it was wild to see what happened during the pandemic at the ports, and then shortly thereafter talking to someone who says, “Yeah, that’s what we solve.”

You go, “Oh, okay. That’s…” And that was a crazy time. I don’t think I’m the only one who got these wild calls. I remember one of the largest logistics companies in the world, I won’t mention their name A friend of a friend said, “Hey, this guy really wants to talk to you.” I was like I’ll talk to him.”

Talked on the phone, and he said, “Hey Joe, I- [00:13:00] I’ve been looking at your LinkedIn. I seen you’ve been around. I’m wondering if you could help us out.” I was like… I’m thinking, “Wow, one of the biggest logistics company in the world wants help from little old me. Yeah, sure. What can I do for you?” “We’re looking for a warehouse to put these mattresses in at, in LA, Long Beach, or anywhere within 100 miles.”

I was like, “Wait, the biggest logistics company calling me and saying, do I know someone who have warehouse space within 100 miles of LA and [00:13:30] Long Beach?” It, I, it was almost like a gag. But that’s how desperate the industry f- got. There was just tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of challenges.

Where do we p- where do we put this stuff? How do we get it off the boats? How do we move it to the people who desperately need certain things? Most of the stuff that we needed, we got obviously, but wow, what a crazy time. I’m glad you guys popped up, and you, and again, you’ve grown like a weed, so the [00:14:00] need that you guys thought was there definitely is there

Michael Rentz: Thank you. Yeah, I think the evolution o-of the business and how we’ve positioned ourself is important. When we set out in 2020, we didn’t wanna be just visibility. Our assumption was people don’t wanna see data, they wanna use data. And if you’re looking at data, something probably went wrong. And the current visibility providers were really just executive level BI [00:14:30] tools that were backwards looking. And so we set out to be more operational grade for the folks in the weeds that were having to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, and that’s why my LinkedIn says we give logistics folks their lives back, because that’s truly what we did in the pandemic.

I had people cry on calls after they got access to our software for doing that. And we continue to do that. So we wanted to create a category. We knew that would be more difficult, but that’s where we came up with container lifecycle management, which is just paying attention to [00:15:00] how people do their jobs and what we were building. And I would say, container lifecycle management was a combi-combination of visibility, but plus and more importantly, execution anything an inbound logistics manager would do in their day-to-day, they could do from within our platform. That eventually evolved into our operating system, and you could think of our product roadmap as two vectors and where they intersect, which is everything that an inbound logistics manager would do in their day-to-day, and anybody that tries to buy our data, [00:15:30] because we’re fundamentally a data science company.

That’s a huge differentiator for us. And that’s what’s extended everything from tracking the container, tying into the inventory, helping those customers manage their external partners and owning that data on their behalf, and then helping them manage internal partners with things like our FinOps suite, invoice auditing, carbon emissions tracking, things like that.

Just paying attention to where those folks go in their day-to-day

Joe Lynch: Yep. And Michael, I wanna reinforce something you [00:16:00] said ’cause I think it’s so important. You said we don’t wanna just give just visibility. So we definitely had fragmented visibility in the past b- before we got tools like Knosis. So I have… If you wanna understand where your stuff is, just log into 15 different systems and go look.

That fragmented visibility is a problem all by itself that you guys solved. Fantastic. But as soon as you have that single pane of glass where I can say, “There, now I [00:16:30] can see the slow motion train crash,” now you wanna stop the slow motion train crash. So it’s not just visibility. And by the way, that’s, I believe, what most visibility solutions have brought to us, is I don’t wanna just watch it.

And you said also, “I don’t wanna look in my rear view mirror and go, ‘Wow, last week was a mess.'” I got all this data. I have data that’s perfect for last week, yet I couldn’t… The data is not [00:17:00] helpful getting it late.

Michael Rentz: That’s exactly right

Joe Lynch: So today I wanna talk to you about, and I’m not even so sure I fully understand this, so hopefully you can educate all of us together.

I wanna talk about audit-ready scope three reporting. S- for, so what is scope three, and why do I have to report on it?

Michael Rentz: Scope three is just a majority of the carbon foot- footprint for an enterprise. And then specifically scope three category four is like upstream [00:17:30] transportation, logistics, distribution. And that’s all governed by certain regulatory environments. Most notably in the United States is California where they have a much more rigid regulatory environment in Europe. And so basically, people have been talking about this for a long time coming, and it’s all coming to life, I think, in 2027, where if you do over a billion dollars in revenue and you participate in California’s economy, you’re gonna be required to disclose [00:18:00] your carbon emissions. And specifically, the biggest contributor of that for an enterprise is the scope three category four, which is logistics. So it’s a huge regulatory shift and a gigantic burden, and as with everything, it’s gonna fall into the logistics team to not only track and manage the containers and the exceptions and ensure on-time delivery and convert the inventory to cash, but now they gotta provide reporting on their carbon footprint

Joe Lynch: Yeah. Now, is this reporting ever also… I kn- y- [00:18:30] I know you said California, totally agree. Is this also a federal thing or is this just California and Europe at this point?

Michael Rentz: Right now it looks like just California. That could always be subject to change

Joe Lynch: Yes. A lot of times California rules become our rules, but there’s some things I don’t think we’re the whole country will adopt because m- they don’t feel it’s necessary. If you go to Long Beach or LA, and I’ve been there at the conferences, and you go, and what you learn is they do have more smog in LA [00:19:00] than we do, say, where I’m at in Michigan.

And that smog has contributed to asthma and other issues for their their population, especially with the kids. So I understand why they will have that. I don’t think we’re gonna see it across the country, but the supply chains that we’re talking about today, they virtually all have something that comes in from Long Beach or LA.

So when you say just California, it’s not just California, and there’s a ton of stuff. Even [00:19:30] even as we start looking at other ports, obviously Savannah’s a fast-growing port, so is Houston, but LA and Long Beach are still the big dogs, and so we’re getting stuff from them. And a lot of com- global supply chains work in Europe, so you’re gonna have to answer the same thing in Europe.

So when you say this reporting, what does that reporting look like? What am I, how am I reporting? So I have, let’s just say I have trucks that are driving in California. I picked up stuff. What, how do I [00:20:00] capture those emissions and how do I report on them?

Michael Rentz: So the most widely adopted framework is what’s called the GLEC, G-L-E-C framework, which is the Global Logistics Emission Council. And there’s competing frameworks, and it’s somewhat academic. It’s basically just an equation on top of miles traveled, weight, engine type, things like that. Most people just estimate it. They really don’t have the granular data, [00:20:30] um, and they leave some parts of it out. Like it’s probably easier to estimate the ocean haulage, but once you get into the intermodal piece and drayage and rail it becomes much more difficult to gather that information. And it’s fundamentally the same problem as tracking a container. And so once we understood this, we just applied the GLEC framework on top of our underlying data, and it made it extremely easy for us to give very granular reporting, a disclosure of [00:21:00] the transit and the carbon emissions, what it, it is what it says it is

Joe Lynch: S- so that is Global Logistics. What does the, what’s the E stand for?

Michael Rentz: emissions council

Joe Lynch: Ah, okay. So if you’re talking about, as I mentioned, containers, a lot of them are going through Los Angeles or Long Beach ports. If you’re getting a lot of containers, at least some of them are probably going through there for the biggest supply chains, ’cause a lot of, a lot…

That’s the stuff that’s coming from Asia. So virtually everybody who is getting stuff from there wants to be part of this GLEC, [00:21:30] which is the Global Logistics Emissions Council. Who d- who is on that council, and where is that… Is th- is that a private public organization?

Michael Rentz: I, I honestly don’t really know. That’s why I said it’s rather academic. It’s not like in stone. There’s competing frameworks, but that seems to be the most like widely adopted framework that everybody’s anchoring to. And you can Google it, white paper in the academic. But you’re right, LA Long Beach’s response is 40% of all inbound goods into the US go through [00:22:00] that gateway

Joe Lynch: Yeah, and I say this all the time is that I’m an automotive guy originally, and I spent a lot of time in engineering product development, and we used to always say early on in any process or product development, there’s directionally correct which is a, I don’t have… We’re not– this isn’t a mature process yet.

This isn’t a mature product yet. Let’s go, let’s get directionally correct, and we’ll learn more, and we’ll adjust. Anyway, [00:22:30] I say this all the time. I don’t care what the federal government says. I don’t care what the state governments say. Most people who are selling to the largest brands in the world want to have some sort of emissions, some sort of environmental impact part of their sales pitch.

And you can’t just put a slide and say, “Hey, we value the environment. Here, it says on our mission statement.” You have to be able to show year-over-year improvement. And I think this [00:23:00] GLEC, along with our friends over at Gnosis, gives you the ability to start down that path in saying, “Hey, over the last five years, here’s what our numbers say.”

Michael Rentz: Totally. And it’s very easy. And again, like I think on behalf of our customers who are those inbound logistics managers and international logistics teams, and very protective of them and their time, and they would be the ones responsible for trying to compile this information, which would take away from what they signed up to do in the first place in their job. [00:23:30] And it’s very easy because even standalone third-party carbon emissions tracking companies, which there are, who have the GLEC framework, need to buy the data from us in order to

provide the product they claim to sell, which is, a lot of what Gnosis does in the first place is like everything require, re- requires the underlying data.

We have it natively, and so it was very easy to just make it a, the flip of a switch for a customer that needs to track this, and it would be better than anything that’s [00:24:00] out there because it’s, there’s nothing more granular than what we have

Joe Lynch: Yeah. So walk me through this. L- if I’m, let’s just for the sake of argument, let’s just say I have a whole bunch of containers originating somewhere in Europe, which is obviously in the jurisdiction of the GLEC. And so I’m getting a whole bunch of sh- shipping containers from Europe, and that they go on a, I’m assuming somebody takes them via dr- dredge to a port, they get on a [00:24:30] ship that goes across the ocean.

I pick them up in Long Beach or LA, which are again under the GLEC banner, and then I haul those somewhere to an a warehouse, let’s just say in the Inland Empire, still in California. Walk me through that emissions footprint and how you measure it.

Michael Rentz: Yeah. So just on to level set, like GLEC is like a standalone academic framework. The– What’s governing [00:25:00] what needs to be reported, how granularly is typically by jurisdiction. So in California, you have the SB 253 Scope 3 legislation. In Europe, they have their owns, and it’s probably a bit more daunting in Europe because from my understanding, you have to update your technology.

So certain carriers, like ocean carriers need… won’t be able to use some of the older vessels and call ports in Europe because of the regulatory environment that’s being [00:25:30] implemented for carbon emissions. So like it can be ratcheted up a lot, which is gonna dramatically change like the macroeconomic environment of our industry. For the specific example you laid out, it’s you have to track each leg of the journey for the Scope 3 Category 4, which is upstream transportation and distribution. So the dray move, you would have to have a figure for that on the carbon emissions. The [00:26:00] port-to-port ocean haulage, you have to have that. If it makes an intermodal rail move, you would have to have that, and then the drayage on the back end.

So anything that falls into that category, you’re responsible to disclose that. And it’s pretty simple. It’s a calculation basically of like distance, speed, weight, and then fuel engine type, things like that, which again, that’s provided by the GLEC framework. Like they give you the coefficients and the equation to calculate that. What people don’t have is like the actual transit time, [00:26:30] the actual speed, the way, where it

went

Joe Lynch: have that single pane of glass either. They’re seeing, “Oh, I got the drayage move over here in Europe, and I’ve got I don’t know what’s going on the ocean, and I don’t know what’s going on in the US.” Or they’re the other way around, which is I give the US perspective, which I can see my own trucks.

You guys are still that single pane of glass

Michael Rentz: I don’t think there’s penalties yet, but if you don’t think they’re gonna turn it into a mechanism to generate revenue, like you’re probably not [00:27:00] paying attention. So like the more granular you can be, and if you’re relying just on an assumption for something as critical as that when there’s an easy solution. But also different carriers or service providers use a minimal carbon foot- footprint to charge a premium. And it’s okay, like transit time and service aren’t just the only factors we compete on. It’s like we have this lane that has a smaller carbon footprint. The cargo [00:27:30] owners have no way of proving if that’s true or not. But with this, they do have the ability to prove like what you sold and what I bargained for wasn’t as true as you said, and just gives them more leverage to, to own this part of which is like an emerging part of the economy, which is carbon emissions tracking and the regulatory environment. And it’s gonna be different everywhere

Joe Lynch: Yep. And I say this all the time on my podcast, the biggest brands know that their consumers want [00:28:00] cleaner and greener supply chains. So they’re not going to always resist. So ev- g- generally speaking, companies don’t want more regulation. They don’t want more reporting, but they are interested in what their customers want.

And what their customers are saying is, “We will pay extra for s- for companies and brands that pay attention to the environment.” We’ve seen that. It’s been, it started really in the last dec- decade or two, but it’s wealthy people for sure are always paying, and younger people. And so [00:28:30] it’s just a matter of time before it’s the entire population.

And so every once in a while somebody say yeah, with the new administration, we don’t care about the environment.” Forget Washington. Forget Washington for a minute. The biggest brands all have a sustainability goal, and so I don’t think they’re all gonna resist Scope 3, even if it’s not forced upon them.

They’re gonna still say, “Okay, if we can comply and show improvement, let’s do that.” And I think there’s a lot of companies [00:29:00] also say, “How am I supposed to know what the drayage was in Europe? I’m in Idaho,” right? “I’m in Iowa. How do I know with that?” So I need someone like Gnosis who says, “Yeah, we have this, we have a platform that allows you to get that information.”

Michael Rentz: And I think the tougher pill to swallow for an enterprise would be, do I need– do I actually need a new software vendor that only does carbon emissions?

Then there’s a lo– a lot of the commentary that we see in talking to these large enterprises is they’ve moved away from point [00:29:30] solutions, and a lot of the questions I have to answer is in one way or another are, is what you do today gonna be relevant in a year or two or three or five years from now? They just– and the way that technology changed and people sold point solutions that’s really the validation metric is, like, how can I ensure that what you work on is gonna be relevant for me five years from now? Is probably the most common time series that a leadership team at an enterprise would evaluate something. [00:30:00] And we have a whole story of that, where it’s like we’re not– we ca- we can be a point solution in certain– we’re modular but, we have a long-term vision, and abstractly a lot of it is getting that inbound logistics team off their back foot into a more offensive posture to think more critically on behalf of the business, get them out of Excel spreadsheets, thinking critically, and then it becomes like a growth engine, not a cost engine for an enterprise.

And I would say carbon emissions is gonna– [00:30:30] if you’re already buried in that same environment, the carbon emissions tracking is only gonna compound that. And it’s not necessary. It’s not necessary, and it’s gonna take away from what you’re paying these folks to do, which is move and manage the containers and the inventory in transit and facilitate the conversion of that to cash, which is the lifeblood of the business.

So-

Joe Lynch: And Michael, we talked earlier, Gnosis never says, “Here’s a cool solution that we techies came up with in Charleston, South Carolina, [00:31:00] and now we’re gonna go visit people and tell them why they need to buy it.” You guys started this because you had customers who said, “We, we now all of a sudden have to report on this stuff, and we don’t know how.

Do we have to go find a consultant? Do we have to go buy another software? Do we have to stand up another team in our organization that just tracks this?” And you guys said, “Nope, we already have your stuff in our single pane of glass. We will go ahead and d- overlay the GLEC in our environment so you [00:31:30] don’t have to go do that.”

And that is just one more thing off my back if I’m a big shipper, because these big shippers, they you said they typically are on their back foot. And I think as soon as we got visibility solutions, and not just for ocean and what you guys are, what you guys are from order to cash, but as soon as we got visibility solutions, let’s say five, seven years ago, everything became about, now how do I act on it?

How do I [00:32:00] take action? I don’t wanna watch the slow motion cr- train crash. I want to prevent it. And that, that’s what we all want. And I think ev- everybody regardless of what Washington’s up to, we are going to get more and more pressure to reduce, especially trucking emissions. I think we’re pushing our whole industry to get cleaner and greener.

If we don’t do it, the feds will. That’s just how it is. And then, and [00:32:30] they, even places like California that just say, I was at Long Beach, and they s- just talked about the smog there. It’s a huge issue. And you know what? We typically use older vehicles for drayage, which makes it even worse, ’cause you got idling old vehicles in their neighborhood.

And it’s, maybe if it was in your neighborhood and you had that smog, you’d think more about it.

Michael Rentz: That’s right. Yeah, There’s a more insidious competitive analysis to it too, which is like the top [00:33:00] 10 carrier service provider, whoever, can afford the CapEx necessary to upfit their assets to meet the regulatory environment, and they know that a lot of the other players can’t afford that, which will force either consolidation or for them to use their assets to facilitate the same thing they’ve been doing

Joe Lynch: Michael, you’re dead on. And this happens in every industry. I’m all for, I’m all for capitalism, but what tends to happen is we have [00:33:30] lobbyists, and lobbyists go, I think in the best-case scenario, “Hey, just we wanna be in Washington to let them know what our concerns are.” I’m all for it. IANA does that for us when it comes to all the cargo theft and all the other issues we’re dealing with.

We have TIA, Transportation Intermediary Associ- We’re all for them. Those are our lobbyists. Just tell Washington not to burden us. Unfortunately, other companies, big companies sometimes, have lobbyists who say, “I don’t mind competing [00:34:00] against these guys, but A, B, and C, I- they’re my size. I can’t kill them off.

But the guys at the bottom, we can kill them off with fed regs.” And we saw it with banking. You burden a small community bank with the regulation that JP Morgan has to meet,

Michael Rentz: That’s right

Joe Lynch: and it’s un- it’s unfortunate, but we have that happen over and over again, which is wa- we s- tend to see industries get, like we’re seeing consolidation in a lot of logistics companies, [00:34:30] and I think it’s the tech stack got very expensive, cargo theft and cybersecurity became a cost, and liability became an issue with the Montgomery ruling on the over-the-road, and suddenly there is consolidation on hyperspeed m- I wrote down a point here ESG.

It’s still… we hear the term, but people don’t know what to do with it. They know that it… They [00:35:00] know they’re gonna… It’s either gonna help them or hurt them. So forget f- fr- so f- forget doing the right thing for the planet. You wanna do the right thing for getting more business. You’re a CRO, Michael.

I’m sure you would love to say, and you probably already do say, “Nosis is good for the environment. We’re good for the people who live on this environment.” Talk about the importance of ESG and how you need to report on it regardless of GLEC

Michael Rentz: Yeah, for ESG, it means a lot of things. Like the E is [00:35:30] environmental, the S is social, the G is governance. So it touches like pretty much any and everything as any good three-letter acronym needs, has to do. For me, like I, I think about the logistics teams, and like that might be the wrong thing to say, but like my heart is in it for them, and I don’t think they should be burdened with doing things they didn’t sign up to do in their job. And there’s a variety of things that are important at the [00:36:00] enterprise level, whether it’s having a more green footprint so that they can have more sales, negotiate better rates, whatever it is. But ultimately, it’s gonna get thrown onto the backs of the folks on the logistics teams. And so that’s what we always do, and I think that’s true to gnosis is like we, we think from their perspective first, and we listen to their problems first, and we try to help them see around corners on what’s gonna be a big problem for them and try to build solutions for them. So the environmental impact [00:36:30] obviously is important and it makes it easier to do it. But I would say we’d be lying to you if we said we weren’t thinking about the folks that are gonna be burdened with providing this reporting first.

Joe Lynch: Yep. A- and again, the biggest brands, you talk to the biggest biggest companies, they’re gonna ask you, if you’re a logistics provider, they’re gonna ask you, “Tell us about your ESG. Tell us about your approach to reducing carbon.” They’re gonna ask you, [00:37:00] and it’s not just gonna be a slide in your PowerPoint deck that says, “We value the environment.”

They’re gonna s- say, “Show me improvement.” And this never surprises me, but I’ve talked to people on the phone all the time, and w- there was a customer… not a customer, just somebody called me and they were talking about ESG, and they said, “We’re not doing anything.” I said you should just…”

They’re an over the road. I said, “You should just starting now say, ‘We want more SmartWay carriers.'” And SmartWay is just [00:37:30] a government, the government program that you can get… I think it’s private public. And they, I said, “How, what percentage of your carriers are part of SmartWay?” And they go, “I don’t know.” I go figure that out.

If it’s 50%, say, ‘What does it take to get 100% by the end of the year?'” It’s not rocket science, and it’s a step in the right direction. And you know who, who’s the most en- most enthusiastic about that? Sales and marketing. [00:38:00] So the operations team are like I’ve got so much going on, I don’t have, I don’t have more people to deal with this.”

Sales and marketing’s “That’s an edge. That’s an edge. So our competition’s not doing it. We’re gonna be all SmartWay.” And by the way, the biggest companies are the biggest supporters of these things. SmartWay’s, that’s just one way, but again the environmental piece you have to get right and you have to be able to measure it to, so you can say, “We’re [00:38:30] improving it.”

If you can’t measure, if you can’t work, say, “Today we’re, this is our carbon footprint,” how do you say it’s got better? How are you gonna make it better if you don’t know what it is today?

Michael Rentz: Yeah, it– again, like you could make the argument that we’ve been doing this since the beginning. Like we’re all about making the supply chain as cost-effective and as efficient as possible, limiting dry runs, fully optimized end-to-end, which is inherently gonna make– reduce whatever it is you’re trying to measure. Um, [00:39:00] and I think the best solutions come from those that are closest to the problem. And with all due respect to government and regulators, I don’t think they’re anywhere near the actual problem. And so I’m not a fan of like overly burdensome regulation. I think that is overly burdensome.

Joe Lynch: None of us are.

Michael Rentz: Yeah, so

Joe Lynch: And Michael, I say this on my podcast all the time, probably getting s- people get sick of hearing. When I was managing a logistics company, I really liked KPIs, and I always [00:39:30] say, “Only the smartest, best metrics grow up to be KPIs.” I don’t wanna look at 38 lines on a, of my metrics. I wanna see four or five that tell me everything.

And so most companies say on-time performance. Of course, we have to measure that. Next there’s gonna be some sort of cost, right? Whatever that cost is. Damage, that matters too, so we measure that. Me, myself, I hate incorrect or inaccurate bills, so I always measure bills, which you guys help [00:40:00] us with that too.

A- and I would say if I was managing a logistics company today, I would add one more. I would add some environmental. And the challenge is, how do you get that information? It’s not easy. And I think I think the GLEC gives us a framework, not, but they don’t give us the tools to do it. Gnosis does

Michael Rentz: 100%. Among other things. It’s like, it’s

Joe Lynch: This is a little bit the challenge. I always say the same thing. I mentioned directionally correct initially. [00:40:30] If I was a company and I was just doing over the road right now, I’d say, “I don’t know how to get there right now,” but we’re gonna add that column, and I’m gonna say, can we understand the truck type that we’re using?

And then use weight and what- Come up with an estimate, even if it’s 60% or 80%, and then next year I want you to have that be 90%,” right? Before we run out of time, Michael, I wanna talk about a few other things. The main… where you guys started was this you touched [00:41:00] about point systems. In the beginning I’ll go I’ll…

So this is my own background, supply chains are all about flow, and then they come to the logistics piece, and we’re like, “Hey, we got a whole bunch of silos for you.” There’s the over the road guys who don’t know what’s going on the ocean. The ocean guys don’t know what’s going on in the warehouse.

We gave them a whole bunch of silos, or as you called them, point systems. And when you’re trying to figure out, how long does it take to move something from my [00:41:30] factory in Rotterdam to my distribution center in Illinois, I don’t want to look in 16 systems. So I want one system, and I want it to give me accurate information from all my other systems.

That’s where you guys started, and that’s taking that, all that data out of those black holes, out of those point systems, and giving me something that is from order to cash, and consistently there. So I know [00:42:00] that’s not the only thing you guys… Talk about a little more about what you guys do beyond the environmental

Michael Rentz: It was a journey. I think, we had to start where folks were most in the weeds, which at the time of the pandemic, like we talked about, was, moving containers in and out of high density spots and avoiding asset-based late fees like demurrage and detention. Once we solved that they get their time back, you can start to think a bit more offensively about, what else are you doing?

And you work your way up the organization to effectively, like the strategic level of “Whoa, I didn’t realize this was [00:42:30] possible. I can manage multiple different supply chain strategies simultaneously with the same team.” And in a macroeconomic environment like today, where if you’re a discount goods retailer, a lot of the growth that you may need to pivot to is probably coming from the lux side or the accessories market, and that’s a different supply chain strategy in general.

So enabling folks to think creatively on behalf of the business, turn logistics from a call center into a growth center, I would say is the North Star. And then [00:43:00] we looked at where all the risks was sitting and I always say it’s like, when’s the last time you heard of a domestic trucking dispute shutting down the world’s economy or having a material impact on global GDP? You just never hear that. It’s always something a bit more prosaic, like congestion at a port or a labor dispute at a port or something like that, which really throws off planning. So we felt like there were six or seven different verticals that were being stitched together between different partners or [00:43:30] technology carriers, service providers in the international space, and it just wasn’t efficient.

So we set out to unify that primarily, and that was container lifecycle management. But then when you solve those problems, you get access to new problems and have moved further upstream and more into domestic for like truly an end-to-end, um, solution that is operational grade, which I think is like a key distinction for us, where it’s… That if you talk about the data, there’s a very high bar [00:44:00] for data to be considered operational grade in any enterprise, in any part of the business. If data’s 80% complete or accurate, it’s 0% because the folks that are gonna be relying upon that information just aren’t gonna use it. They’re gonna go back to their old standard operating procedure of cross-checking websites and running their own reports.

So it was a very high bar that I think we were very influential in changing that. And that’s what we maintain

Joe Lynch: [00:44:30] Yeah. And I know as soon as you guys– another problem you guys got alerted to was the financial discrepancies and the overpayments, which I think is a little bit tied to OSRA 2022, but not just that. So payments is a huge issue i-i- because I don’t know what the right un- amount to pay is. And ocean freight billing is ridiculously complex compared to over the road.

I have a friend who owns a freight forwarding company, and he said– he also does a lot of [00:45:00] domestic, and he said, “Joe,” he said, “you have to compete very hard in the over the road.” And he goes “When you get to ocean, not really.” He goes, “Because if you do it right, people just stay with you, and they don’t particularly quibble about the price.”

And I was like, wow. But if you ever look at the billing, there’s 12, 13 categories. I don’t know if there may be more. I haven’t looked at one lately. But talk about what you guys do with that, how you first i-identify the [00:45:30] financial discrepancies and overpayments.

Michael Rentz: It’s the same as for everything we do. So we have an invoice auditing suite. Can, we can audit anything but in the logistics space, ocean freight, DND, demerge, per diem, chassis, it doesn’t matter. But what we found out is 85% of all invoice discrepancies in our space are due to the underlying error in the logistics milestone or the logistics milestones.

So a third-party standalone invoice auditing company knows it’s supposed to be $200 a [00:46:00] day, but they don’t know when the container was made avail-available, when the last three days… We have, again, we have that information natively in our system, and so the tech, whether it’s carbon emissions or auditing, we overlay that and provide 100% accuracy on what you bargained for to make sure that… And so it’s the same. And I think we’ve always said that what’s made it more relevant is the emergence of AI, which is we’ve coined the [00:46:30] term sovereign data, which is true for us. Like we have operational grade data, and we have sovereign data, and by sovereign I mean we originate and own the data as much of it as we can.

We don’t rely on only public source data or any third-party data aggregator. We grab as much data as we can. We organize it, normalize it, put our own intelligence on it, originate it, like at the terminals now with the availability date. And the reason that’s become relevant is because it’s easy for anyone to understand.

You don’t need to understand AI. But if you [00:47:00] overlay an AI solution that’s using data that’s being given to it from your systems or public systems, it’s all gonna converge to the mean. It’s not gonna differentiate your business. You have to have AI that’s trained on sovereign data, whether it’s our sovereign logistics data, your sovereign inventory and data, or most importantly, and it’s a good way to sum all this up, we fundamentally believe that from a BCO’s perspective, the data [00:47:30] that you outsource across your network of partners, carriers, service providers, whatever it is you decide to outsource, the BCO owns that.

That’s their data. And we manage that on their behalf, and we use it to surface things like demerge and detention alarms. We can surface it for a variety of reasons and give them visibility to a terrain that is somewhat opaque in logistics and transportation data. So whether it’s AI, carbon emissions, invoice auditing, like the importance [00:48:00] is who owns the data, who manages them on your behalf, and who can make it usable for you

Joe Lynch: Yep. When I talked to Jake years ago, I remember having this conversation is, you have a kind of this f- foundational s- problem you wanted to deal with, which was, this container life cycle management. And then s- shortly thereafter, you kinda layer on OSRA compliance. I have– Obviously, I have to do that.

And then [00:48:30] payments and catching discrepancies and overpayments, and now emissions. It just seems like the foundation was built, and now it just seems that there’s layers and layers of layers that are g- being put on. I– Michael, if I talk to you next year, and I hope I, that I do I’m assuming we’ll be talking about something else, and it’ll probably be something related to AI compliance rules or whatever.

And it’s every year, there’s another challenge that [00:49:00] we have to deal with in supply chains. But I think what we all need, you know you can speak to this as an engineer, and I spent a lot of my career in engineering. First thing engineers, first thing finance people want, the first thing business people want when they have a problem is data, and good data, not just, “I cut, copy, pasted it from 15 systems this morning.

Oh, did it update it? Okay, now I’ll go back in and do it all over again.” I have– If I’m working with doses, I [00:49:30] have a unified, and again, I’m a lean guy, order to cash. That’s what I want, order to cash life cycle. Give it to me. So

Michael Rentz: By the time you open an Excel spreadsheet, that information’s old

Joe Lynch: Oh it’s such a wonderful tool, but so limiting at the same time. That’s the challenge. Anyway I wrote down, I definitely wanted to talk to you about something. I, like probably a million other people, was following the Gnosis team on their [00:50:00] RV road trip. Talk about your RV road trip.

Oh, I think you should first say it all starts in Charleston. That’s where the vast majority of your team is. Very… There’s not a whole bunch of super high tech companies based in the South until now, and that’s all changing really in the last decade. It’d be inconceivable t- a generation ago.

Now it’s like that’s a hub, and I think you guys are probably the big dog down in Charleston when it comes to tech. But anyway, talk about [00:50:30] that road trip from Charleston.

Michael Rentz: Thank you. Yeah, no, we are headquartered in Charleston. We’re in the office Monday through Friday. We’re very traditional for a tech company. But I think people– again, Austin was a visionary on that, and then you’ve slowly seen other tech companies go back to the basics, which is in person and things like that.

So there’s been a couple RV trips. The first one was a few years ago, and w- me, Nick McGrath, our VP of sales engineering in Austin, were at RELA in Dallas. That ended on a [00:51:00] Wednesday. TPM started on a Sunday. We didn’t want to fly back to Charleston and then fly back to Southern California, and I had rented an RV in college.

I knew it was possible. Austin was crazy enough to give me enough rope to let me figure it out, but kept his distance enough in case it became a catastrophe. But I rented an RV, and Nick and I drove it from Dallas to LA and stopped along the way and did crazy stuff, and every morning I’d wake up and post about it, and people liked it.

And it went somewhat viral, and it gave us something to talk [00:51:30] about by the time we got to TPM, and as a s-smaller company, any competitive edge you can get, I was interested in it. And it was cheaper than flying and staying in hotels, so we got finance approval. We did a transaction with Vista Equity Partners, private equity company, after that, and they liked the RV, but they said I wasn’t allowed to drive the next year, so I went looking for a private driver. I drove the whole way, and it was pretty much seamless. There was a couple hiccups, [00:52:00] but we made it. So I went looking for a private driver and then found Goss RV, who does high-end tour bus rentals, convinced them that we should do it. We hired a documentary crew, and we went from Charleston to LA and s- for 12 nights and stopped and interviewed our customers and shot a documentary. And then we parked it outside the convention center in in Long Beach for TPM and had a lot of our meetings there and threw a couple tailgates. We’re all from the South, so we know how to tailgate. And it just got attached. [00:52:30] People started to associate the RV with us. Then, and then the next year, the JOC finally invited us to be up on the promenade, so we brought the RV back and parked it on the promenade and had events there and our meetings there.

So now people always ask me “When– Why didn’t you bring the RV here?” We don’t currently own the RV. We rent it every time. I would love to own it and drive it around to meet with people. But it’s been a clever marketing thing for us.

Joe Lynch: Yeah, I know it’s a clever marketing thing for you, [00:53:00] but I think the reason it went viral the reason … I can tell you, I watch YouTube probably more than I watch any other channels. So I watch you guys on YouTube, which I know you guys saw. I was, … It was fun to watch, and it, y- you said you had a documentary film crew.

It comes off very authentic. It’s the vibe of the company came through. Seeing you guys with your customers and, I’m sure, I’m sh- I’m sure you wanna catch the customers saying wonderful things, but it felt [00:53:30] real. Again I don’t think it comes off as contrived. I I know sometimes you see big companies try and put on the costume of a small company, and we’re just a whole bunch a, we’re just a whole bunch of small business people trying to do the right thing.

And sometimes that comes off creepy. Nah, you guys did a great job. And that the, it wouldn’t go viral if it came off as too corporate or contrived. So nicely done. Nicely done. And again, I think that’s the culture that you guys have built [00:54:00] down in Charleston, and I know how resistant you guys have always been.

I know you’ll eventually grow across the world as you open other offices across the country, but, across the world, but nicely done. That is … by the way, if you can, give me those video clips, and we’ll make sure we put a link in the show notes. I’m assuming they’re on your website, right?

Michael Rentz: They are, yeah. We can get them to you though. But thank you, that’s the most important compliment, very wonderful compliment. And shout out to Mia and Eric from Meerkat Media. [00:54:30] They were the ones that did the documentary, and they did a magnificent job of conveying our culture. So

Joe Lynch: It’s also I’ve worked in logistics for a while, and very seldom do you see your customers. You can work with somebody, and you guys are in Charleston, they might be in Portland, Oregon, and you say, “Yeah, we talked to them on the phone, but we never get up there.” We never get… if you get up there once a year, it’s just not the nature of our business.

People at conferences, but it’s really nice to see [00:55:00] where you guys are saying, “Hey, we’re making a road trip.” And, it’s not ch- those RVs aren’t cheap. So to make that trip, I hope it was worth your while

Michael Rentz: It almost killed us, but we– 12 days in an RV across the country

Joe Lynch: Yeah, the that will, y- I hope the film crew didn’t get the fighting or the f- the fighting between them. Maybe that’s the outtakes. H- Here’s us screaming bloody murder at each other

Michael Rentz: No, it was never that. We actually got along great. I think we all got super sick afterwards, like just being in like a

Joe Lynch: Too [00:55:30] much fast food.

Michael Rentz: Yeah, everything. There’s not much to do when you’re making like eight-hour days in a RV except drink beer and have nicotine

patches, so

Joe Lynch: You guys are like rock stars going across the country. Anyway, Michael, I’m gonna summarize what we talked about today, then I wanna get your final thoughts. Boy, we covered… I kinda went in a whole bunch of different directions with you, and I thank you for d- dealing with me. So how to turn freight data into audit-ready Scope 3 reporting with Michael Renz.

[00:56:00] Regardless of what business you’re in, if you have c- shipping containers, you are going to have to report on Scope 3 emissions. And there is a framework, and we talked a little bit about it, which is the Global Logistics Emissions Council, which is GLEC. They give you a framework for doing that, but they don’t give you the tools.

Gnosis gives you the tools to do that. And I’ve, I mentioned this foundation that you guys built, b- five, seven years ago, of the data, which is from the life cycle [00:56:30] of the container or l- or container life cycle management. You have that data, and all you’re doing now is overlaying. So when we had problems with detention demurrage, you guys had an overlay for compliance to OSRA 2022.

OSRA 2022 didn’t tell us how to do it. They told us we had to do it. Gnosis brought the solution. They brought the tech. And y- since you have all this technology, [00:57:00] doing the compliance for the Scope 3 emissions is just another layer. And I do believe you guys just keep layering on, and your data gets better every year, and the next layer gets added.

And if a company came in and said, “Hey, we want to do this for you. We’re an outside company or an outside technology,” you would have to get Gnosis’ help anyway because they know when the container actually was received and how many free days you [00:57:30] had. It’s a… Once you have that foundational data and it’s, gets cleaner and gr- cleaner every year you have everything.

You can just start layering, and it’s amazing. I if you’re an engineer, if you’re a business person, if you’re a finance person, you want data, and you want it to be good data. We now know our AI models are only as good as the data we can feed it

Michael Rentz: One thing on the data I think is critical, it’s not static. And a lot of what we do when I say we’re fundamentally a data science company is what I would say is like [00:58:00] data excavation and data acquisition. And a lot of the most important data, the tribal knowledge sits in those team members’ heads.

They’ve been doing it decades, and they communicate that via email Excel spreadsheets. But a lot of what we do is provide solutions or tooling to replace that process, but we also expand the data aperture to where we can capture that data that’s being transmitted to further enrich our model to increase like the data moat from like a data sovereignty perspective.

So it’s an ever– Like [00:58:30] you alluded to it, it’s an ever-growing pool of data. We’re getting more and more access to data, the more embedded we get with the big players across the industry.

Joe Lynch: And I think, we talked a little bit about the silos and the point systems. If you have these problems, you need to talk to Gnosis. So you have that fragmented visibility, the point systems. If you have the data dark holes, black holes, whatever you wanna call them if you have d- a lot of dimension and demurrage issues, you need Gnosis.

If you have [00:59:00] untrustworthy ETAs and you’re trying to figure that out, Gnosis, again, is the solution. PO stuff that is al- also siloed, that, that’s bring Gnosis in to help you there. And any of the financial discrepancies and overpayments that are so common in ocean shipping. I don’t think anyone’s trying to rip you off, I just think it’s a very complex business.

That’s where you need Gnosis. Those are traditionally what I’ve talked to you guys about, but now it’s just one more thing, which is this Scope3 audit and [00:59:30] GLC I don’t wanna say compliance ’cause that’s just the framework, but you guys bring the tools to actually make those things work.

Michael Rentz: 100%.

Joe Lynch: Anyway, I’ll make sure I put a link to your LinkedIn profile, a link to your website, any of the links you and your go-to-market team, along with those cool RV tour. I’ll put those in the show notes. Final thoughts on the topic, Michael. Put a big old bow on this one

Michael Rentz: We, we would love to talk to any and everyone. I think at this point, like you mentioned, if you touch a container or inventory in [01:00:00] transit, goods, whatever it may be, and something’s a pain in the butt or annoying you, or you’re tired of doing the same thing over and over again and can’t figure out how to get away from it, we’re very good question askers and very good at listening, and we’d love to see if we can help in any way. And a lot of the times we do that where it doesn’t cost you anything, where it’s, we’re

Joe Lynch: So who’s your ideal customer, Michael?

Michael Rentz: BCOs, anybody moving a few hundred containers or more per year are, like, really well within our sweet spot from the top [01:00:30] five importers in the world to 500 or more. And then any service provider, like we have data available, operational data to enhance what you’re doing.

We also have software for freight forwarders, drayage carriers. So that’s a huge part of what we do as well. But at this point, like we can do– We’ve built solutions for rail carriers, for ocean carriers, the container payment portal. So again, that’s why I say we solve your most difficult supply chain and logistics problems

Joe Lynch: Yeah. [01:01:00] I think it, we didn’t say it necessarily here, but I think if you’re listening and you have a problem that we didn’t discuss but it’s related to containers, call NOS because they’re… ‘Cause if, most likely they already heard of it and they’re working on it. But I talk to you guys every year, every other year, there’s always a new layer.

And so I think each layer is basically a number of customers saying, “Hey, I got this problem. Can you help me?”

Michael Rentz: That’s right. That’s exactly right

Joe Lynch: Becomes the next [01:01:30] service offering.

Michael Rentz: That’s right. That is our business model. Y- and to come full circle, we’ve never built a solution and looked for a problem. We didn’t have the resources to do that, and we had to listen and build and deliver

Joe Lynch: It I know you’re of a technical background. You- the engineering and a law degree, but technology people, and I’ll put myself in that category. I spent a lot of time in automotive and a little bit in IT. [01:02:00] Sometimes we get very excited about what we’re working on, and we start saying, “Look I created this fantastic product.

Here you go. This is what you’ve been dreaming of.” And they’re like I, I didn’t ask for that,” right? And so much better if they say, “You know what’s driving me crazy about my car?” And the best solutions are always from somebody saying, “I have a problem that I can’t possibly imagine a solution.”

And you go, “Yeah, I think we can help you with that.”

Michael Rentz: [01:02:30] That’s right

Joe Lynch: Problem first. Michael, thank you so much for taking the time

Michael Rentz: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. Looking forward to the next one

Joe Lynch: Excellent. Excellent and thank all of you for listening to my podcast. Your support’s very much appreciated. Until next time, onward and upward