Episode Highlights

Repowr

Caroline: [00:00:00] Welcome to this Weekend Trucking. My name is Caroline. Not too long ago, we had a guest on Robert or Pedro Peterson, and he was talking about the value of small carriers being able to be flexible, like being able to do reefer one week and then flatbed the next. That got me thinking about. How power only carriers work and how other carriers might be able to adopt that kind of practice, even if they’re not power only from the beginning.

Caroline: So that’s why I’m really excited to dig into what Repower is doing in this space with Patrick and Matt because this idea of trailer sharing could really open up options for owner operators and small fleets. Thanks for being with us today.

Patrick: Thank you for having us, Caroline. We’re excited to be here.

Caroline: So tell me first, what got you into the trucking space and in logistics? What kind of problems did you see there?

Patrick: Yeah, so I guess I’ll start too by just [00:01:00] explaining what Repower is and I’ll dive into a little bit of how I got here. And my background, and Matt can touch on his as well, but repower is essentially a trailer sharing network for trucking companies and freight brokers. We connect you to a nationwide pool of trailers that you can reserve on demand without the cost of ownership or commitment to a long-term lease. And really it’s. The key phrases that we always say are, it’s on demand, trailer access, nationwide trailer pool and you can move more freight and be more flexible in an extremely volatile market. But I guess to hop into kind of my background, I started off working for a large asset-based trucking company. I did some time on the brokerage side of the business and, when I was on the asset based side, I just saw. How the shippers were constantly wanting trailers used for drop trailers, preloading trailers, and just saw the need for trailers becoming more and more. Influence throughout the industry.

Patrick: It this is a time where ELDs were coming out and so driver’s time [00:02:00] was extremely important. So keeping them on the road, keeping them busy and it was beneficial for shippers to have drop trailers, but not everybody in the industry has a capital to go out and just buy more equipment and just lay around at shipper facilities. But it was something that was coming about. And then power only started taking off. And then I got on the brokerage side and I’m working with carriers. They’re limited to the opportunities and the freight that I can give them because they might not have the trailer capacity. And I just, coming across those, I saw how important trailers played in the ecosystem and I saw the future of what trailers could be, and that’s how. Repower was formed taking those early things that were identified and sharing them with, other trucking companies, talking to truck drivers and eventually just came up with Repower. Now I’m lucky enough to get to work with people like Matt and people that are a lot smarter than me that can make that idea actually become a reality.

Patrick: And now we’re working with carriers and really we’re building products around. What do they need to be more flexible to get [00:03:00] these opportunities to stay on the road, reduce deadhead the empty miles and just be able to run a solid operations in a very volatile industry. So that’s what repowers in a nutshell, and a little bit about my background, Matt, if you wanna share some of yours, you can.

Matt: Yeah, for sure. I am, I’m coming at it from the marketplace side of things. I’m started as an ops person on the phones. We at a moving company, like a nationwide moving company have and have been a marketplace merchant since then. Anybody that’s sharing assets or sharing services, the internet of things.

Matt: So I was at Lyft. Was it a couple different moving startups that, were doing Final Mile and things like that? Before joining the Repower team, I’ve known Pat and Spencer and done some, help alongside of them for a few years now and jumped on the pirate ship to go solve this problem.

Matt: I’m obsessed with the idea of most things are not utilized nearly to their full potential. And that’s why this problem gets me so excited is the idea that a trailer, such a large percentage of the majority of [00:04:00] trailers are just sitting there collecting pollen and dust, and then you have another side of the marketplace that needs ’em.

Matt: And how can we connect those two people?

Caroline: You said that power only has taken off recent. More recently. How much of the industry is power only now and how much, how popular is it to share and rent different trailers for different work?

Patrick: The thing, I guess when it comes to sharing trailers to answer that question, it sounds like it’s not happening and it’s something that’s, you’re, we’re creating like an Airbnb, an Uber type field to the industry. But the thing is that a lot of people don’t realize is people are sharing trailers every single day.

Patrick: Trailer interchanges happen. Of times per day as freight is being moved across the country and it happens, but it’s happening from. Hey, here’s my trailer. Move my freight. What Repower is able to offer is, Hey, go work with whoever you want, pull whoever’s freight you want, and we’ll just provide the trailer.

Patrick: And we give them the visibility and access to trailers. [00:05:00] And it’s a pay per day, pay as you need it for a load. If you get a drop project with a broker if you’re working with a broker and they take you out to Washington State. On a power only load, you drop the loaded trailer off, now you’re stuck.

Patrick: And the only thing you can do is a power Only. If there’s no power only then you can pop on Repower, grab yourself a trailer, find a live load, and get back home to your family before the weekend. And that’s where we fit in. And to answer your question around, what percent, when we were doing early studies, I would say, brokers, they were only able to, about 5% of the freight that they were moving was on power only. And people like Convoy and freight Vana, and you just see brokers taking on like this. Trailers as a service and they are seeing, like having these trailers are opening up more opportunities for them with their shippers. ’cause shippers are really wanting them now. And so that percentage I feel like has gone from five to 15, 10 to 15.

Patrick: But we see that growing even more and I think [00:06:00] that repower can be a big help for that.

Caroline: You talked about the volatility of the market. What is your reading of the freight market in recent months? Recent years, and what kind of challenges does that pose to a carrier that has one, two, maybe up to 10 trucks?

Patrick: Yeah. For the freight market, I don’t know when the last time I saw it normal was it’s been a while, but it’s super tight right now. Volatility’s high. Fuel car. Fuel costs are unpredictable. Rates are still recovering. It’s very seasonal when it comes to equipment type. So being able to hop from a dry van to a reefer during reefer sea season and produce season, like that’s the flexibility that we can offer.

Patrick: Flatbed seasons coming up with summer. So we’re gearing up our trailer suppliers to make sure we have flatbeds available for the network. But for like small carriers, especially power only, it can be hard to plan more than a few days ahead. And that’s where the flexibility and access becomes key. And if you’re not [00:07:00] locked in to, like a setup like Repower can offer, you’ll have more chances to. Fail in a market like this. And this is where you can put our, put repower in your tool belt and be able to be, flexible and adaptable to all the volatile swings. But it’s definitely tight for sure.

Caroline: What do you think most small fleets or owner operators get wrong about trying to survive in a market like this?

Matt: Yeah, I think it’s flexibility like in, it’s not the same as it was five years or so ago, where it was like, I’m gonna get a truck, get a trailer, find a broker to help me find stuff, and. And I’ll stay busy. And I don’t think we really feel like the volatility’s going away anytime soon.

Matt: And so I think people get stuck in how they saw it being done or what had been done in the past, which was, I’m gonna grow my tractors at the same rate as I grow my trailers and keep rolling. And, you’re exactly right that it’s, you’ve gotta stay flexible not just in the type of trailer you [00:08:00] use, but where it is, the types of loads you can do, how long you’re, willing to go for.

Matt: And it’s unfortunate in a lot of ways, but the ones that are winning are the carriers and the small fleets that are staying really flexible and on their toes.

Caroline: Do. Do you think that poses challenges though, or problems for carriers when they have, just a couple of drivers. Hauling a flatbed, hauling a reefer, hauling a drive van, those are different jobs, really, right? Like you need skills and you need to know what you’re doing with each equipment type.

Patrick: Yeah. We’ve come across obstacles like that in the past. We try to make sure that we, and Matt’s done a really good job of this, of onboarding, understanding what equipment they’ve done in the past. Look, we have integrations where we can see the picture of an org. They might not have shown that they’ve done reefer before, but now they’re interested in that because the rates have gone. A lot of our supply that is available. You know where with reefers there’s, there could be reefer breakdown, there could be something that happens with that is not typical with a drive-in. And a lot [00:09:00] of our equipment comes with maintenance while you’re, while it’s being used. Not all of it, but a majority of it does. And so you’re able to get a few extra, kind of things that you can tap on. It’s not just the trailer, but you have access to the maintenance, you have access to, you’re able to communicate with the owner and they have a lot of times, multiple facilities, you can swap trailers. And so there’s different things that you can do and we can provide for those types of carriers on the platform.

Caroline: Talk to me about liability because I know that there’s different insurance that you might need for different types of equipment. Trailer interchange insurance is that, that can also, I think, be a barrier, maybe not just in cost. Although cost is significant, could be significant. But also just knowing, okay, what is the insurance that I need?

Caroline: And if you make a mistake in and you don’t know what kind of insurance you need, and then all of a sudden you need it, oops. That can be a huge issue. So talk to me about how you navigate that or how you help carriers navigate.

Patrick: Yeah, absolutely. Our owners, they [00:10:00] set the. What the insurance they’re gonna require. I would say 98% of the trailers that are on repower are, you need 40, at least $40,000 of trailer interchange. And it’s both liability, physical damage but trailer interchange coverage, 40,000. We also offer. Our own usage base insurance. So if you reserve a trailer for 30 days, you can purchase our insurance and it’s around six, $7 a day. And then as soon as that trailer’s dropped off, you’re done. And so you can buy that just by the click of a button on our platform to help ease that process.

Matt: And then where the technology comes in is to what you said, Caroline, like what if they don’t. Know what they have. So as you’re uploading those documents a we’re going over it with you in onboarding, but we’re actually using our technology to check, to make sure you match all of the boxes before you even submit your requests.

Matt: And it goes to the supplier and the supplier’s checking that on their end too, the owners of the trailers. So we try to do as much as possible to protect [00:11:00] against someone getting through with that’s not protected themselves. And thus, the whole platform’s not protected.

Caroline: All right. I’m gonna throw you a curve ball.

Matt: Let’s do it.

Caroline: Can you show me what it looks like to up and what your platform looks like and how to rent one of these and how to see all the information on it?

Matt: Yes,

Patrick: let’s walk Caroline and the viewers through it.

Caroline: Cool.

Caroline: All right.

Patrick: So what we’re gonna show you is, Matt, you just saved Caroline. You just dropped off a load in Detroit and your next load picks up in Grand Rapids or vice versa. You’d go into the marketplace search. You could say, my load delivers in. Texas, and then you put in the drop off location, Texas. So you can use that trailer just for that load. Or if you typically operate in the southeast and this trailer drops off, you know you can pair those things and literally search like that.

Patrick: And then after you drop it off internally, our team is working on getting a trailer nearby after your drop off. So we want to keep you in a trailer, give you that option every time.

Caroline: Yeah, so the idea is that I can. If I think flatbed rates are [00:12:00] awesome this month and they’re gonna be awesome this month, I can sign up and get a trailer for this week and just run that type of freight

Patrick: That’s

Patrick: it.

Caroline: or I could say, Hey, I just saw this one load that I really wanna do, and I could just do it for one load.

Patrick: Yes,

Matt: exactly right. All right. You’re on the platform, right? And most people are looking in a specific area. We’ll say Lakeland, Florida. I’m going on vacation down to Florida next week, so I’ve got it on the brain. And you can see in Lakeland, we’ve got quite a few trailers here in, in central Florida.

Matt: But let’s say you, you really want to focus on a certain type. So you know, you could search Reef first, flatbed storage. Let’s stick with dry van and let’s say I don’t want to go more than 150 miles to get this. So here we’ve got Drive Vans for $18 a day. Six miles, 6.8 miles away, eight miles away.

Matt: There’s only two left of this drive van. It’s 11 miles. But I can click into this and I can [00:13:00] see what kind of trailer it is. Who’s the owner, how old it is. Food grade, swing doors, spring ride. The length, and then I can pick where I want to drop it off. So it’s one really interesting thing about the Repower platform is in most cases, you’re not gonna be dropping it off in the same place that you picked it up.

Matt: And that’s a way that we’re able to, make this work at these great prices is that you’re actually moving the. The assets to where the supplier or the owner needs them. So here, this one’s got a ton of drop off locations and I can look and say, okay, I want to end up, I actually wanna head back up north.

Matt: So I want to go up to Romeoville and I want to keep it for 30 days. I’m gonna pick it up tomorrow. And as long as I’ve got six months authority, I have 40,000 in trailer interchange and at least a million in auto liability. Then I can continue on and get ready to, pay for that trailer.

Matt: And the reservation process is just uploading their insurance. We help you through that. You assign a driver, you sign the [00:14:00] agreement, and then you get pick up instructions on where exactly to pick it up, gate code, all that good stuff. And you can see here you can buy our coverage if you don’t have, want to use your, your actual COI, if you want to just buy it through us, you can do that usage based insurance pat mentioned

Patrick: Yeah. And Caroline also I would also add that.

Patrick: About 80% of our reservations that are happening throughout a month are happening same day. So people are booking these trailers to go grab their next load. So it’s not something that, Hey, I need a trailer, and you have to sign this long credit application, like with a rental lease company. We do all that on the front end. You sign up with your DOT email address, we already have integration, so pull all that over. And so you sign up, you find a trailer. 80% of the people who are booking trailers are booking it for the same day, or some are the other 20% are booking it for tomorrow. ’cause they know they’re dropping off a load there tomorrow. But it’s very quick and I think it takes what, Matt, on average about 20, 30 minutes to get [00:15:00] accepted and start heading to your trailer. Is that

Patrick: a good average?

Matt: Oh yeah. Most sessions, most people find their trailer in five minutes and then it’s under an hour before they get accepted and then they’re on their way there.

Caroline: So how does that, how does the cost compare to getting your own trailer? Let’s say I’m looking at drive-in, I saw it was about. $650 to, to rent that for 30 days. How does that compare to the average cost of what it would cost you to buy one and have a payment or just rent one from another company?

Patrick: Well to, to buy one, a new one, anywhere between 50 to $75,000, right? To lease one. You might sign a long-term lease for a year, five years, like that’s what you’re gonna have to go do, and then you might get a lower price. For 450, 500, maybe even lower than that. On some cases in a market like today, however, they’re gonna charge you mileage.

Patrick: So the more you’re using it, you’re being charged mileage so that four 50 actually turns into [00:16:00] six 50, even though it doesn’t feel like that. When you see six 50 on the example that Matt showed you, or 600, whatever it was, that’s all in, that is all you’re gonna pay no matter what. You’re not gonna be nicked and dimed anything else. And it’s all based on market. And so we have an algorithm behind the scenes that is looking at supply and demand, and it’s making the, just like freight rates are, where it’s making those rates for a trailer. If you go to Portland, Oregon, the rates for a trailer might be, we’ve had ’em at $5 a day. As low as $5 a day, $10, 12. So it all depends on where you are in the country, and those opportunities are out there to get those low price.

Caroline: Yeah, and just thinking about that, sure, maybe I can get a lower price by leasing something. And if you have a really solid business plan for the next year, and you know you’re absolutely gonna do. Every day, 25 of your 30 days a month for a year, then yeah, maybe it makes sense to do a lease or even purchase one.

Caroline: But if you’re not a [00:17:00] hundred percent sure and you, or you want to diversify, you don’t wanna be in a drive-in all the time. If you lease one, you have to pay that every month regardless of whether or not you actually have a load to deliver in it.

Patrick: Exactly, and even for like carriers that are, a lot of our single truck owner operators are three truck companies that we’re working with, five, whatever it may be. They use us as a growth engine. As they’re bringing on more drivers, they’re able to accept more freight. But as they’re bringing on more drivers, they’re able to make them revenue generating right off the bat, get ’em into a trailer that they might not know if the driver will work out.

Patrick: So they’re gonna put ’em in a repower

Patrick: trailer and they’re able to start working with them, giving them freight. Keeping them flexible and see if they’re gonna work out. But a lot of our fleets have really scaled their business just by giving them access to trailers, and that’s been something really cool to see and a lot of success stories behind that.

Caroline: Tell me about a success story. Tell me about a, a. Customer why did they use repower?

Matt: I’ve been doing some of the welcome calls and onboarding [00:18:00] calls with different carriers and it’s. amazing to hear the stories. Like it’s, so many of them sound the same. It’s, I was a company driver and I was getting raked over the coals and so I decided to go out on my own and I’ve got a lease for my truck, but I don’t have a trailer, so I’m doing power only and it’s a tough row out there.

Matt: I was just on a call the other day with a company, bongo Logistics. KFI was telling me about he’s been driving forever. He knows the market, he knows exactly how to do it, it’s just getting the assets right. And now, his plan is to bring, start pulling over other people right into his org.

Matt: We see that a lot. We have tons of carriers from, that we could name Drop that have really built their business a around us and with us. And now at any given moment. NATA or Lunds or any of these other trucking companies may have 25, 30 reservations going on at once, and they’ve got trailers they own too, right?

Matt: But they’re using us as their growth mechanism or wind trailers [00:19:00] in the shop, or when they can go win a project bid or whatever the case may be.

Caroline: Awesome. Tell me about the most common types of trailers that you rent out and what kind of price they’re at on, on a daily.

Patrick: The most common trailers are probably 85% of our trailers are drive-ins, 53 foot swing doors 10 years and newer. And then you have. The rest are flatbeds and reefers. And then we’ve got some step decks. And I guess one thing I’ll say too, like whenever somebody goes to the website, this is sometimes where we have to make sure they understand how repower works. Just because if we don’t have a trailer there today, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a trailer there in the next 30 minutes. In the next hour tomorrow. Our trailers are constantly being. Uploaded, taken down, reserved, like all over the place and they’re constantly moving. And and so we always have the ability, if like you go to the marketplace and you’re in a location where we don’t, you don’t see a trailer that we have, you can fill out an equipment [00:20:00] request form, it goes out to all the owners, and somebody can fill that and get you a trailer very quickly.

Patrick: It happens every day. Continue to come back, fill out those equipment requests, and our job is to make sure we get you in a trailer. And then I didn’t answer your question about the price. For drive in, on average, it’s about $20. For a reefer, I would say it’s about $35 a day. And for a flatbed, it’s around 35, 38 a day.

Caroline: What’s the origin of these trailers? Why are they empty? Who owns them? Is there a way let’s say I have a dry van and I wanna run reefer for a couple weeks, could I put my dry van on the Repower platform and make money doing that?

Patrick: 100% that that’s exactly what we do. We fill the gap of, I have a drive in, I’m not using it. The freight market’s better with reefers. I’m gonna list my drive in on Repower, go grab myself for reefer, make money, and then when I’m ready to come back. Then I can come back to my drive-in. But that stuff happens all the time. Or if a power only carrier is [00:21:00] taking a load in a trailer out to a facility, they drop it off, the trailer’s left there, the driver leaves. Once that trailer becomes unloaded, it has to go to its next home spot. And that’s where Repower fits in for the trailer owners of, Hey, I actually now need this trailer at this customer. And we help them rebalance their trailer pools. And then you have other people who are. They’re looking for drivers. They have trailers sitting against a fence. They use us as a revenue generating tool.

Patrick: And then a lot of the suppliers are large trucking fleets mid-size fleets. Honestly, some smaller carriers, but the majority are the larger fleets. And then leasing companies.

Caroline: Awesome. Tell me something that people always misunderstand about repower. Like what are some of the questions that you get where you have to double back and reexamine and re-explain?

Matt: Pat I’ll go first here. ’cause I feel like I’ve got a bunch of these where we’re talking to a carrier or a supplier and everybody just wants it to work in kind of the buckets that they know. So it’s okay, so you guys lease trailers? No. They’re not. It’s not a long-term [00:22:00] lease.

Matt: Oh, got it. So you sell ’em, wait, can you help me sell my trailers? And it’s can I buy a trailer? And it really speaks to like the uniqueness of it, that while it has been happening for so long, it’s been between private parties and now it’s being opened up to a much larger group that are still vetted and, managed and ensured that their quality and all that good stuff.

Matt: But it’s. It’s, I equate it to trying to explain Airbnb 15 years ago. It’s so is it a hotel? Not quite, oh, okay. Is it a rental home? Not quite. Because it’s so new.

Patrick: Yeah. And I guess when people come to Repower, especially in the early days, they’re used to the everyday world of, Hey, I need a trailer. I wanna rent or lease a trailer. I want it for long term. And the truth is like sometimes that long-term trailer makes sense. And we do have trailers available for long term, but the majority of them are like 30, 60, 90 days. And then a market like we’re in today and that we’ve seen over the past couple years. Locking yourself into that long-term [00:23:00] contract can honestly be detrimental if you’re, if it’s not done correctly and you have the right contract in place. And so again, we’ve talked about flexibility a lot, and that is what Repower really is solving the access to trailers that are extremely flexible to help you run a more sustainable business and be adaptive.

Patrick: So that’s what I would say mine is.

Caroline: What are people the most hesitant about when you talk to them about repower? Like I can imagine running a trucking business. Let’s say I wanna test out reefer, but. I don’t know this trailer, I’ve never used this trailer before. What if it breaks down on the way there or with the product in it even worse.

Caroline: And the ice cream melts and it’s a mess, right? It’s a disaster. How do you reassure people that it’s gonna work?

Patrick: I think overall that stuff happens no matter if you get your trailer from Repower or the company next door it can happen in this trucking and it will happen unfortunately. However, I think to where we sometimes have seen people hesitant is. It’s [00:24:00] so easy to reserve a trailer and go get a trailer on Repower that, and you’re putting in a card to pay for it, a credit card, debit card, a CH, whatever, that it almost seems too easy.

Patrick: So you back out and then you have to call them and say, Hey, notice you

Patrick: backed

Caroline: real?

Patrick: Yeah. Is this real, essentially? And so I think it’s very easy. There’s still things that Matt and his team are doing that make it even more simple and easier to use, but I think that the normal route of going to get a trailer has just made people think that’s the only way, and we’re creating the new way and making that easy as possible.

Matt: Yeah I would say the carriers always do ask that question, Caroline what’s the, and.

Caroline: What’s the catch?

Matt: What’s the catch? And is the trailer good? And I think one of the great parts about the marketplace is you get on and you start looking at some of the owners and it’s names you recognize.

Matt: It’s really reputable companies. It’s not John’s trailer that was sitting outside and is half rusted through, right? They’re good quality. And on the supplier side, [00:25:00] it’s how do we make sure that, these are the right folks to be? To have our equipment.

Matt: And that’s where we’ve really, stepped up our vetting process and made it fair and friendly and easy to get through, but also ensured that we’re doing our part in protecting against fraud and those things as well. I think the end goal is, to make sure no ice cream melts.

Matt: I think that’s a bad day for everybody if there’s ice cream.

Caroline: Awesome. Is there anything that you all would like to share that you haven’t gotten a chance to yet?

Matt: I appreciate you guys doing this. I think that, there’s in every other industry there’s a thousand different people trying to coach and help and sell products, and I think it’s really cool that you guys have set up something to. Really just be educational and bring people into the conversation that you think might help your listener base.

Matt: And so from my side, I think we’re just, we’re lucky to be asked to be on, and then we’re grateful for the time.

Patrick: Thank you very much Caroline, and for any listeners out there if anything you’re doing involves a trailer. come check out Repower. Hopefully Matt and I will blow it away for you and you’ll be a lifetime [00:26:00] user on the platform and we wanna help you grow and connect with more people and just run your business as efficient as possible. And Caroline also have a discount code for anybody that is wanting

Patrick: to come on. But if anybody listening, it’s it’s gonna be Bob Tail 10, I think is what I’ve got.

Caroline: Awesome. We will put that in the description below. Thank you guys so much for being on. This was awesome. And hey, y’all, check out Repower cool company, doing cool stuff and even better you get a discount listening to the podcast. So thanks everybody for joining and derive safe.