Hi, and welcome to Power the Network.
I'm your host, Tim Locker, vice President of Broadband here at CBM.
You know, this has been such a great journey for me and such an opportunity to learn so much about different things, and today is no different.
Today we have Dan Brewer with Wilson Logistics.
He's a long customer of ours that we've been working with in several different places over the years, and he's got a tremendous background in the world of it.
One of the smartest folks that I've ever met, and I'm so looking forward to learning from him today.
So please join us.
Dan, Welcome to the show.
We appreciate you joining us, you know, taking so much time out of your day to be with us.
It means a lot to us, so thank you.
It's always it's always fun for me to have a customer on the show and to kind of show people a little bit about what we do, but also get some perspective from you know, end user and howth things are working in their world.
So I know you've got a ton of expertise and you've been in the IT industry for a long time.
Once you start by telling us, you know your story, how did you get how did you end up at you know, Wilson Logistics And tell us some of your accomplishments over your career, okay, and thank you for having me.
I really started out as a contractor doing low voltage cabling and I was a contractor for a utility local in Springfield, Okay.
That company decided that they would start doing fiber broadband and quit buying circuits from AT and T Southwestern bell YEP.
And I was already there as a contractor.
They decided to hire me to start that.
So then we started spring Net, which was a metro ethernet provider in the southwest Missouri region.
That would have been back in ninety five.
When we did that.
That was project was kind of way ahead of its time.
It was we started.
We started in ninety five, and it was kind of funny.
People would you'd talk to them about native ethernet and it's like, we can give you one hundred meg across town and they would go was that two DS three's or and it' say no, it's just native ethernet and their eyes would kind of glaze over and you'd leave them alone, and the next day they would call back and They're like, well, if I could have native Ethernet, it this brought that I could do this, that I could centralize and it was a real exciting time, but it was something that nobody else was doing at the time.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And then and then in around what did that process take?
How long?
How long was were you involved in that project?
I was with Springnet for fifteen years.
Oh wow, and we actually ended my last five years there.
We did a underground data center at the Springfield Underground and it is sixty four thousand square feet of data center space.
That's eighty five feet underground in an old limestone mine.
Oh that's cool.
Yeah, And that one that was a really nice That was a nice project.
And then from there, the local one of the local healthcare systems, Cox Health, decided that they needed to redo their infrastructure and they hired me a way to do their director of technology position.
That is a six hospital system with about one hundred and sixteen facilities and about one hundred thousand square foot square miles.
Wow.
Took us.
We redid every closet, every network piece, everything in every floor of every building.
Took us about fourteen years to architect that and put it through.
And the thing of that was that was nice in healthcare at the time because they were still when I got there, they were behind the times doing a lot of paper charting nurses did.
I got to ride that curve to them to digitize everything in the public in the EHR health records, doing wireless networks for the infusion pumps, the ventilators, all the patients were on the network.
At that point when I left, we had about thirty three thousand ices on that network.
Oh wow, was the secret to managing that type of a network?
I mean, that's a lot of information.
That's a big You really have to have a big view, a big overall view.
You can get really wadded up in the details, and then you get lost with what you're trying to do.
The biggest thing with that is looking at the big picture and trying to be three steps ahead of the software folks that are trying to be on the cutting edge.
So you're kind of barely hanging off the edge when you're doing that kind of stuff.
Gotcha, Well, I mean you talk about that the technology changing so fast.
If it takes fourteen years to build that project, I mean, how many things changed in that time.
I had a gentleman that took care of about thirty five hundred wireless access points, and when we would upgrade, by the time he would upgrade everything, we would be ready to upgrade again.
And it was just a constant, a constant churn to get through all of that.
So that kind of explains why it kind of took so long to get done because it's always your kind of repeating it did.
Yeah, it really was, and it would change and then the technology would change, and so you're trying to update something and you would go back and update things again.
Yeah, and it's just a constant, constant flux.
Yeah.
What's what's one of your biggest accomplishments?
You think biggest accomplishment was probably spring Net With being a startup.
Even when we would talk to the manufacturers, the manufacturers would not understand what we were trying to do because what we were doing nobody else was at the time, and they would go, here's here's the product, and it's like, no, that's not what we wanted to do.
We wanted to do this, and it took a long time to find manufacturers that would help us with their product to make it do what we were trying to do and those were the ones that were more are cited to realize that this is a whole new market for them to tap into.
Yeah, so that vision or forethought, I guess if you will, where did that come from?
Have you always been minded like that to look deeper than people normally?
Can?
I love new things.
I love it because it as you wake up dumb every morning and you've got to learn more to be able to stay up with everything.
So it's really the challenge and that of trying to do new stuff is what I really enjoy.
What kind of challenges do you think currently?
What are some challenges that you're tackling.
So the trucking industry is about ten years behind the healthcare industry with digitizing everything.
So now we're writing that technology curve.
I'm getting to do it again in the logistics and trucking industry, and that's moving from paper logs to electronic logs, to monitoring the trucks, the cameras in the trucks, and here lately, the first what we've been working on is drivers have downtime.
Drivers used to get a product called epic View and it's a satellite tea direct TV essentially, so then when they're off duty, they can watch TV.
Now that the generations have changed, those guys don't watch TVs.
They're on their PlayStations.
Oh sure, yeah, And so now instead of satellite TV in the trucks, we were I believe, the second fleet in the country to start doing mobile data in the trucks.
So now the trucks have mobile data for the drivers, and the drivers get on their PlayStations and play games after hours.
So the trucks themselves are kind of like their own hotspot.
They are they're mobile, they're mobile data trucks, and we manage all of those.
Managed to sign a reseller agreement with a cellular provider with carrier, and so we're actually able to activate, deactivate, do everything, and we manage all of those, all of those things.
Rather than using a Verizon or an AT and t end user store, we do it all ourself and buy everything wholesale.
Well that's incredible, that's that's very forward thinking.
Like I said, there's not too many people doing that, But what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot of people doing that because just as you say, there's around what four hundred million trucks.
Four million trucks have been out on the road, and uh, every one of them is a is a new customer to be able to do the mobile data.
So if I'm seeing a trend here, it's uh, you appreciate a good challenge.
Yes, you dig your heels in, tackle the project, and uh then you like another one.
Yes.
Uh you know I kind of see that.
Like you know, a lot of people talk about goals, and you know, setting goals are great and it's a way to get to a certain point.
But uh, you know, in my experience, uh, sometimes you hit that goal and then there's almost a letdown, like right, like, what's next?
Okay, we did this?
Now what is that kind of a little get used when you get used to it?
That's how that's how it works.
Uh.
The last really cool thing that we were able to do, we moved to a new campus, built a new camp.
We're building a new campus.
It's a one hundred and twenty acres one hundred and twenty five acres and it will be a destination for drivers.
So we have an administrative building and then we're doing a motel, a restaurant.
We're doing paid parking for the trucks, and that'll be set up so that a driver can get on an app, he can pick a spot, get his spot, We'll send him a QR code.
He pulls up to the gate, shows his QR code to the reader, and then it lets him in to park in his spot.
Now is this so this is at your new headquarters in Stratford.
That's what we're building Stratford, Missouri.
Yes, yes, Now is that for your truckers or is that any that's for any for any truckers.
And we're going to do that at several other places also, but this is this is where we're starting that at Okay, trying to get everything lined up.
Building a campus.
We've got our administration building there, our training building there.
We run our own training school, so we we train our own drivers.
So we take students.
We're a independent CDL testing facility, so we bring them in, we put them up, we put them up in a motel, we teach them how to drive the way we want them to drive.
We get their CDL and put them in a truck.
So how big of a challenge is finding finding drivers?
It's really tough.
Drivers.
Driving is a is a unique thing.
It has a really high turnover rate, because if you're a CDL driver that's got a good record, you can get mad at something that we did.
You can leave us and the next day you're in somebody else's truck driving.
Yeah, and so that happens a lot.
So it's it's it's really difficult.
And that's one reason that's kept us doing well is we do train our own driver most of our own drivers, and so we're bringing in new people into the industry and we put them through school they agree to drive for us.
So is there a term with that, Like if Okay, I'm going to put you through school, then I've got to sign a contract for you do a certain time.
Okay, how do you keep that culture?
So you you talked about Okay, you know a driver could get mad and leave.
You know, what do you guys do within your culture to avoid that situation.
So it's it's a lot of the little things, and it is it is.
Some sometime back, I had a driver I was talking to outside and I was asking several things, and he found out who I was and what I did, and he goes, you know, he goes, it'd be really nice if we had faster internet out here in the parking lot for our trucks because we're downloading our games, downloading our stuff and it's really slow.
Oh, so like they're coming back to home base and they take that opportunity.
They're sitting in the terminal and that's before we started doing mobile data or anything like that, and so we upgraded the outside aps and the outside bandwidth so that they could have better bandwidth.
And I got more thank yous over that because they were like, oh, thank you for doing that.
And now they drive, some of them will drive out of their way to hit one of our terminals so they can update all of their stuff while they're there.
Oh, that's incredible.
It shows you care, shows you're listening.
Yes, and that means a lot to the to the people for sure.
Yeah.
And it's kind of interesting and trekking because we have two sets of customers.
We've got we've got our shippers that are our customers, and then we've got our drivers that are our customers and so and so it's a it's it's a little unique.
Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it.
I wanted to take a second and explain what is a manufacturer's rep.
You know, it's still funny to me.
Sometimes our role is is often misunderstood.
But in a nutshell, what a rep does is we are a subcontracted sales force for multiple manufacturers.
Are our lines are complementary to each other and not competitive.
And what this does is, you know, it often gives us the opportunity to to sell a full line solution.
So it really brings value to our customer when we can uh, you know, represent product from one end to the other.
We're not a distributor.
Uh.
You know, we work with distributors uh to get our product to market, but we're really an extension of those factories.
So just in a nutshell, if you're looking for a great manufacturer rep with years of experiencing great folks, look us up at cbmrep dot com.
Okay, so walk me through the how technology has changed in the trucking industry.
I understand, you know, you know, providing broadband to your drivers, uh, updating log books, you know, all of those things.
You've got a bunch of things to track.
But walk us through the progression of what it was like, you know, eight ten, fifteen years ago.
However, long walk us through the evolution of what technology has done from then to now for the trucking industry.
So truckers have to provide proof of delivery, different documents as they drop off loads, get loads.
They have a fleet manager that would call them and say have I got this load for you?
Go here.
They would go, take the load, get the paperwork.
At that point, they would stop at a truck stop or a place like that, take their paperwork and they would fax it in.
So everything ran off of phone calls and fax machines.
Okay, So if I'm a driver, I could have just finished a load somewhere dropped it off.
Now I call in and they're like, here, go get this somewhere.
Yes, So on the road, I'm dealing with paperwork and then fax me the paperwork so we can get it, build and get it proof of delivery and everything for the drivers.
Okay.
Then things evolve to transportation management software, which was a piece of software that would that would track all of those loads.
And then as in the drivers were also doing their paper log books.
Then as that was mandated to electronic logs, then we started putting telematics units in the trucks.
What's that telematics unit is a unit that messages back and forth from the driver to the to the fleet manager that's back at the office.
It will keep an eye on the trucks.
We monitor all the points, whether it's low on oil, whether it's got too much wear on a on a break.
You can this day and age.
You can monitor the treadware on the tires and you know that when the tires are going to need to be changed before long, and we can route them in through a maintenance center minimal downtime, change tires, put tires back on it.
Oh, that's huge.
We do.
We do telematics in the trailers so we know if the loads empty, you're full, because we charge if we leave a trailer at a company.
We're a truckload carrier, so we only deal in a full trailer.
We don't do bits and pieces.
We leave a trailer, they keep it for a long time, they've got it unloaded.
They never tell us they're done with it for us to pick it up, and it's called detention.
We can charge them for that.
So we know by those sensors if that load has been taken off that trailer, and we know we can start charging them.
The telematics in the trucks tells us if there's anything going on in the trucks to the maintenance department, reports mileage reports, any hard breaking, any shifts, if a driver swerves, it will send it will alert the fleet manager.
Fleet manager gets on the phone, calls the driver and goes, hey, notice you're kind of swerving around here.
You okay, something going on?
And so we keep an eye on everything.
We keep an eye on the RPMs, everything away.
That truck drives cameras to the front and we just recently started putting cameras inward facing towards the drivers.
Okay, so what does what does that do for you?
H If the driver is looking down at his phone because he's not allowed to, then it alerts us that he's looking at his phone, gotcha, And so it just it just do special kind of cameras that are smart enough to see where like they're literally boxes their head in and so it knows when they when they dip their head down or when they're when they're averted away, and it keeps an eye on everything.
Wow, so we're kind of the eye and the sky to the drivers.
How do how do the drivers feel?
And maybe it's just old hat now, but how do they feel about, you know, just being monitored so closely.
Is that tough for some Some drivers do not like it.
But we do, As I said, we do a training school, so the students start in it, they start with them that way, so they're they're they're just accustomed to it and and everybody forgets about it after a while.
That makes sense, and it's really about making the easier for them, Yeah, is what it's really about.
Or and we know where they're located, so if they're having trouble getting somewhere, we can re rout them.
If there's a high wind area, we can we can rerout them around the high wind and let them know that.
Are you able to track that information back to a safer fleet?
We're rated as one of the safest fleets in the country and all of that information, any type of an action or anything that happens goes to our safety department, and the safety department deals with that.
But yes, we're really stringent on the safety standards.
Well that's awesome.
At least you get you you're able to get that info and see with that wouldn't have any idea.
Yeah, oh that's great.
Yeah, No, it makes it makes all the difference in the world.
So what do you think for your company the biggest advantages of all this technology is the biggest thing.
The technology for us is keeping the trucks up and running, keeping the driver safe, and taking care of the drivers.
So AI's been kind of a buzzword lately, and I saw an article that you were quoted in that you've got I think over four hundred trucks you know, using AI now in the fleet.
Explain to me what that means.
What does AI mean to the trucking industry?
So automated technology and workflows are the electronic logs, the telematics in the trucks, everything within that.
We've actually been using that for a long time.
And AI means more than just chat GPT for it.
It is something that that is something that we have worked with automating processes for years.
So how would you define AI.
I would define AIS taking a manual process and automating the process digitally somehow with scripts with software where everything does it itself.
I will go back jump back just a second to the healthcare organization.
We set up AI then and used automation so that all of the information from the patient flowed into the patient's record, so the nurse wasn't charting the record, so she had time to take care of the patient and not worry about the charting.
Okay, that makes sense.
And trucking is the same way.
We've automated the safety.
Anything happens in the truck, the right person knows it, and we have a process to take care of it.
Enhancing the process, speeding things up, eliminating eliminating mistakes, making things safer, adding safety to things because something doesn't get missed or somebody doesn't forget about something, and generally making the whole thing run more homogeneous and less bits and pieces.
Okay, that's awesome.
What do you think one of the biggest myths regarding your position?
One of the biggest myths is that an IT guy is an IT guy, and non IT technical people will always think, well, you're an IT guy, so you can do this.
Here, I need you to do this, And it's like, with the advance of all this technology, you really have to be specialized and you have to tell them I don't know anything about that one.
I'll learn it, yeah, but I don't know that, So that that's probably the biggest myth that I fight Okay, so staying in your lane kind of yes, you will that it takes more than one person to make all this run.
Yeah, how big is your team?
There's three of us, three of you that'll still keep your on with all the gadgets you've got to deal with.
We stay pretty busy with construction and with adding the new technology.
It does keep us fairly busy.
Tell me a little bit more about your new facility.
Is that already built or still a work in progress?
Administrative building has already built.
That was a really fun project.
We had recently divested of some West Coast operations.
That company wanted our operations, but they so wanted our software in our IT so we sold them the data center, the software, the servers, and most of the IT team to them.
So then we're building a brand new building.
So we got to and this is one of the funnest things I've done.
I got to build an entire IT infrastructure from scratch.
And it's like a marble on a flat table.
We could go any direction, and we worked on you know, and we started with and this is another buzzword, is let's put everything in the cloudy and let's just don't have anything on prem and so we looked at all of that and then it was like, well, this can be in the cloud, but this can't.
We really need this on prem, and so we ended up we are eighty five eighty percent on prem and the rest of it's in the cloud.
So we ended up not being full cloud because it just did not work for us.
One of the nice things was that, and talking about my other guys that was with me, they're fairly younger IT professionals, so we sat down and went through this exercise together to try to mentor them and get them and transfer that knowledge base of how do I start from a blank sheet of paper and how do I do this?
And we did this all from the design, the procurement, the configuration, even managed all the low voltage technology and cabling in the new building and set everything up.
That's awesome.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
Actually it was a lot of fun.
My guys were like, we got to do this from scratch, and I go, you don't understand we get to do this from scratch.
Yeah, well, and you mentioned you know you're mentoring them because obviously they're going to be taken over at some point, right, Yes, did you have a mentor that got you started in this.
I did.
I had several mentors on my way on my way through my career, and I think that's really what I would have to attribute my success to is the people that took the time to show me the right way to do things and not just go do this.
You know, I don't want to do this the other thing you've got to do.
If you don't, that is the only way to learn all of this.
And if you're not training your folks and bringing people in that's going for your job, you're hiring the wrong people.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Well, and having the right person too.
It's one thing to go go do this whatever this is right, but it's another thing.
And I think where people really find the value is when they understand the why yes.
And I think I think a lot of times people forget to explain that why and then they understand and they retain it better when they understand why yeah, yeah, and they feel better about, you know, why they're doing it and what it means.
Yes, And it gives them a little bit more buy in or purpose, if you will, a lot more buy in.
I've actually, I've actually had people it, professionals that have worked for me more than once, just because they want to come back and work and do what I'm doing.
Yeah, well, and that says a lot about your leadership abilities as well.
So thank you.
So, how do you think you're doing things differently in your role than the person before you?
I think we touched on that just a minute ago.
That's really similar.
The person before me kept all the information to himself because he felt like if he's the one that knew it, they could never get rid of him, they could never do anything, and so he was more just an order giver.
And I've got a completely different belief in the fact that everyone needs to be involved in it and work as a team, and they've got to know the why, They've got to know, you know, what's going on with it.
That's probably the biggest thing that we do that I do differently than other folks.
That's awesome and that helps you know, obviously in the future for legacy planning if you will, or whoever's going to fill your role.
Correct.
Yeah, it gives me.
It gives a person to replace me.
And when I started with this company, the owner of the company asked three things to me.
He asked me to stay till I retire.
He asked me to leave them better than I found him, and he asked me to have a replacement when I leave.
That's a reasonable request and I you're honoring those buts you could not turn that down.
Now, that says a lot about you know, their culture and you know what's important to them.
The company.
The company's leadership is very forward thinking.
Just like the pitch on the mobile data for the trucks.
You know, that wasn't something that's pervasive in the industry.
Yet it's like, we can do this, we can make this work, and it's like, let's go for it.
That's great.
You know, it sounds to me like, you know, some of the things that we've talked about today and some of the some of the advancements that you're not only just making for your company, but it sounds like in the industry, you know, you should have people knocking down your door wanting to work for you.
We have a very low turnover rate.
That's awesome.
Good.
That says a lot.
That says a lot about any company.
So awesome.
Well, dan Uh, I can't thank you enough for coming in and visiting with us today.
I've really enjoyed our conversation.
I've learned a lot.
You know, it is something that's kind of a mystery to a lot of people.
It is.
I can clearly see that you love it and you've had a great career and super proud of what you've done.
And it's been a pleasure working with you.
So thank you, Thank you for having me.
I've really enjoyed it awesome.
Thanks thanks again for joining us today.
Thanks again to Dan.
He was great.
I learned so much today about it and you know what it means to not only the trucking industry, but also you know, hospitals and you know, further on, it's something that impacts our daily lives and it's just great to have an expert like him in front of us and be able to talk to him.
So thanks again to Dan.
You know, if you're looking for a expertise sales force, need issue, or need help with a project, you know, reach out to us here at CBM.
We're always here to help that CBM dot com and please comment, like, subscribe, give us some feedback on the show, and tell us what you'd like to hear from us next time.
As always, thank you for joining US and we'll see you next time on Power the Network
