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SEASON TWO

SEASON TWO: EPISODE TWO

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR ELDS?

Have you thought about technology as a gateway to… more technology? Take the oft-considered Electronic Logging Device (ELD) technology, for example. What was a technology meant to track hours of service may now be a gateway into new forms of fleet management. In fact, several new ELD vendors (at least the successful ones) are expanding their products to deliver new fleet management features beyond core compliance. In this episode of RoadSigns, Host Seth Clevenger goes on the hunt for examples of new uses of the tech formerly-known-as-just-hours-of-service-tracking and asks, “Can it really do that too?”

FEATURED GUESTS

Norm Ellis is a 40-year industry veteran that spent the first 20-years in operations, sales, and marketing for trucking companies Mason and Dixon Lines, Overnite Transportation, and Service Transport and the current 20 years leading telematics companies. He joined QUALCOMM in 1998 and became instrumental in the growth of its Omnitracs division. He later went on to become Chief Operating Officer of I.D. Systems, Inc., a provider of wireless asset management systems for the transportation sector and now serves as President of EROAD, a global technology provider of compliance, operational and road use and fuel tax management solutions for the transportation industry.

Jai leads product vision and development for KeepTruckin's fleet management solutions. Prior to joining KeepTruckin, Jai worked at Uber where he served as Senior Director of Product and Data Science, managing machine learning & AI, data, marketing systems and operations tooling. Prior to joining Uber, Jai served as Senior Director of Product Management at Cloudera. He earned his BS and BA in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin and completed his MS in Computer Science at Stanford University.

Norm Ellis

Jai Ranganathan

EP. 2

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Episode Transcript

Roadsigns S2E2.mp3

Transport Topics in Washington, D.C. This is RoadSigns. Here is your host, Seth Clevenger.

Seth Clevenger: Thank you for listening to RoadSigns, the podcast series from Transport Topics that explores the trends and technologies that are shaping the future of trucking. In this episode we're going to consider what the future holds for electronic logging devices. The Federal ELD mandate has been in place for more than a year now. While the goal of that regulation was to improve compliance with driver hours-of-service limits, it also means that there's now a technology platform in the cab of almost every longhaul truck on the road. So where do ELDs go from here? What does the future hold for this onboard technology? Those are the questions we'll set out to answer in this episode. We've already seen ELD providers introduce many add-on applications that aren't required by the ELD mandate but use that same technology platform to help carriers run their businesses more efficiently. Apart from electronic logs ELD suppliers are offering applications that automate vehicle inspection reports. And the fuel tax reporting apps, the track vehicle location, and monitor fuel economy, driver performance, vehicle health and much more. And many drivers are now accessing those features right on their mobile devices. Perhaps most significantly companies will be able to utilize all the data collected by ELD to enhance planning and freight visibility across the entire industry. To unpack all this we're going to speak with a pair of guests who are helping to build this future. A bit later we're going to bring in Jai Ranganathan, head of product data science and design at KeepTruckin, one of the more successful new technology vendors that entered the industry ahead of the ELD mandate with a mobile app-based ELD system.

But first I'm thrilled to welcome Norm Ellis a veteran of the trucking technology business who's now president of EROAD and other supplier buildings. Thanks for joining us, Norm.

Norm Ellis: Thank you, glad to be here.

Seth: So EROAD is still a relatively new player in North America but you're an industry veteran having spent many years at Qualcomm and elsewhere in the industry. So we've really seen the trucking technology sector grow and evolve over the years. So I'd really like to just start by getting your take on how much technology has transformed the trucking industry over the past few decades, including just recently with the impact of the ELD mandate.

Norm: You know I think if you go back a little bit and how far we've come to the mandate for sure. It's also very critical right now. But back in the days when technology in cab and communications and cabs started in the ’80s, right, there were a lot of studies done on the impact. Then you got into the ’90s and you know I recall this from my experience that they thought that the advent of wireless communications in trucking specifically would have an impact of you know, 3 to 5 percent on the growth GDP that was, you know, 20 years ago. They thought that. Now again I don't know that anybody ever proved it. But there was a testimony before Congress at the time that invention of light area communications in transportation specifically would have a profound impact on GDP i.e., just-in-time inventories, and all the things that you can support when you know where the vehicle is, when it's going to arrive. Right, what's on the vehicle all those kind of things and of course that's been being done for several decades now. And now I think what's happened with ELD is that you've expanded it now, not just the medium and large carriers but to all carriers potentially will now have the advantage to participate in the productivity increases that are gained by having that kind of communication capability.

Seth: Yeah, it really is a remarkable here in 2019 to think back to a day when trucks weren't wirelessly connected and when we didn't have these communications capabilities and it was all and we're all really just kind of operating in the dark and hoping everything is where we thought it would be. So we've certainly come a long way. And you know just kind of looking now at where we are with the ELD mandate, which of course just went into effect over a year ago, that only requires carriers to electronically record drivers’ hours of service and all the other capabilities beyond that are optional. But this is an onboard technology platform that carriers of all sizes can now use to support a lot of other capabilities to improve their businesses. So, Norm, do you see that ELD rollout really paving the way for further technology adoption, especially for some of those smaller carriers that probably purchased onboard technology for the first time really just to comply with the mandate.

Norm: Yes. I most definitely do, and you know I can speak from personal experience here at EROAD that you know when we sold through the 2017 premandate of December you know people were taking the ELD-only package because it was less expensive than the ones that had other capability in it.

Norm: But every day we get calls from existing customers that say, hey, I know you can do safety management, I know you can do, you know, other things, geofencing to understand where my vehicles are, when they arrive, when they depart for detention purposes we get calls every day in our customer success team where people want to upgrade because they recognize … hey, I've got this platform in there and for the extra 3, 4 or 5 dollars, 10 dollars, whatever it may cost to add additional capability it's well worth the return on investment. So it's happening every day and out in the market with newer prospects that the memory is adopted now, so obviously we're taking business away from competition when we can. The discussions are all more than just the ELD. We've transgressed past that already and we talked about ELD because they want to know that they get it and that it works and not only is it self-certify, which everybody did, but that it actually does work and passes the muster of inspections at DOT weigh stations, etc. which we're fortunate that we do. And I want to talk about what else can you do? Right. Can you do geofencing? Can you do tax reporting? Can you do hard braking? And over speed and all the things that you know some of the larger carriers and medium-sized carriers have been enjoying for a decade or more. The smaller guys now, and we tend to go out to some of the smaller guys, as you know probably, and they're one to take advantage of that. So yeah we're seeing it very much so in the marketplace.

Seth: Sure. You spoke earlier to some of the additional capabilities and services that EROAD offers to your customer base, you know, beyond that just basic ELD compliance, you know, the table stakes. So let's go into what other ELD vendors offer, you know, various features beyond electronic logs and fleet management capabilities, mobile communications, driver vehicle inspection reports, fuel tax reporting and on and on, what types of add-on services are really gaining a lot of momentum at EROAD? What are you seeing some of the new adopters of ELDs adding first beyond ELD?

Norm: Tax, comes to mind almost immediately you know if you have, you know, three, four or five trucks perhaps found in your taxes is, you know, fairly straightforward because you only have a few vehicles but when you get to 10, 20, 30 and larger that becomes a bit more onerous on the fleet to keep up with that. And of course, ours and other competitors, of course, have that capability. And I think once they recognize that you can get that for a small additional fee per month the cost they save in the back office and the fact that they know if they ever get audited it's going to be accurate and to go back and pull a bunch of records out. We keep all the records forms digitized and that in the cloud they can get to it anytime they need them. So I think tax would be No. 1 one and I think right after that is safety.

Norm: They really want to make sure that their drivers aren't speeding, that they're not doing hard braking, things like that because not only that that does not lead to potential accidents or it also impacts fuel.

Norm: Right. So fuel management's important in the bigger fleets, who have very sophisticated fuel management algorithms that they use. But the smaller guys, just by managing the way the driver behaves in the vehicle not only does it improve safety but it really has a profound effect on fuel and the mpg that they get. And that's a big part, going right to the bottom line when you start going up from 5 mph or 6 to 7, 8 or 9 and allow that can be done just on how the driver is working with the vehicle.

Seth: All the new adopters of technology, all the carriers out there of all sizes especially in the smaller side of the business that didn't have onboard technology certainly had a lot of options in the marketplace. Leading up to the mandate it was certainly a huge flood of new technology companies entering the trucking industry with all kinds of different products to help carriers comply with the ELD rule. And EROAD has been one of the successful stories from that. Not all these companies are going to last, of course, but what does it take to stand out in such a big field? I mean, what do you think were the lessons learned from the rollout and what carriers were really looking for at that point?

Norm: Good, great questions, Seth. You know I think usability is absolutely essential, particularly for smaller fleets that have not used technology in the past. If you're a bigger fleet and you had it for a while with one of the other competitors and it's not that big of a transition for some of your drivers.

Norm: But if you're a smaller guy and you were doing paper like many of the more, of course, the ease of use of the product has been really critical. And we're very fortunate at EROAD, the way it was designed really makes it we can train a driver who never used technology before in as little as five or 10 minutes and once they start using it they go back to their dispatch and driver managers and say, “hey, this is really great, I don't know what I was missing… This is really great” because at the end of the day I come in I can sign off and my records are complete and I don’t have to go back and fill anything in. And now when I get pulled over at a weigh station, if they do get inspected, it goes very smoothly, they’re in and out in minutes, versus on a long drawn out inspection. So that usability has been really important, I think.

Norm: And the second thing is reliability and we have, you know, we have 99.9% uptime and I think that is why we're one of the leaders in the industry in that area. And the fact that it works every day and they kind of take it for granted because you know you and I both use technology a lot in our roles and it's pretty reliable, right. But in the mobile environment it always hasn't been as reliable.

And I think there are still situations out there today where people are having challenges with Bluetooth connecting and other things in this B2B environment. And in our case we're hardwired to the ECM so when the truck powers on, our device comes on. Right. And it works every day. And so I think the usability be a No. 1 because that's the interface to the driver and then to reliability that it works every day are two really critical things that have been helpful and I think our customers really tend to appreciate.

Seth: OK. And you know, of course, everybody who is required to have an ELD, hopefully is using the ELD now. And I think that the adoption was pretty much across the industry and for the most part everybody was required to have an ELD, is using one now. So of course, from a technology vendor perspective you're now looking at maybe competing with other vendors but also you know a big part of the business it becomes just providing service and support for all those systems that are out in the field. Do you see that as a big part of your business moving forward? Just supporting those existing units that are out there?

Norm: Yeah, I mean the fact that we have that level of reliability that I mentioned earlier helps that you know the system is up and working very low RMA rates on the hardware as well.

Now we're a bit unique perhaps that we have a tethered device that tethers into the truck and a lot of our competitors are BYOD, so they bring their own device. And, of course, there are advantages that when you have that you can do signature capture and other things outside of the vehicle but you also have that the connectivity thing that plays in the … does it connect every time, appropriately, etc. In our case it does because it's hardwired to the vehicle.

Norm: So yeah I think, you know, support and customer satisfaction is critically important. It's certainly important at EROAD. I know it's important to our competitors but who's really good at it and your ability to diagnose things over the air if you do have an issue and you know with ECMs, you know you can get false positives sometimes from the engine. Right. So it's not our technology or even a competitor's technology per se, the engine may send you a signal you're not used to seeing. Right. So you gotta be able to diagnose that so people that have those kind of capabilities to do over they are diagnostics and to do over there software updates where most people do. So that's good. I think that helps that customer experience really improve and you're able to rectify something that's going adversely out in the vehicle and do it in near-real time which keeps that vehicle productive. And not having to come back in to be swapped out with another piece of hardware. If you had one nearby that you could use, so that connectivity and the reliability and consistency of it is critically important I think to a carrier’s ability to be productive and a vendor's ability to be a good support partner.

Seth: Great. I want to go back to one of your earlier comments about the level of technology that some of the larger fleets, some of the larger trucking fleets have had really for many years, even decades now. You know, of course, electronic logs but also just telematics fleet tracking all kinds of increasingly sophisticated forms of fleet management more and more data more and more information that's been out there like you said, you know one of the big fleets have been doing that for quite a while now. But now that we have an industrywide ELD rollout, we have pretty much the complete ubiquity of smart devices, apps, and a lot of these same types of features are becoming more and more accessible to smaller carriers too. So Norm, I want to get your thought on how you think that might change the competitive landscape in the trucking business or at least help the small guy remain competitive in this business.

Norm: Yeah. So I think I think it does give the small, smaller carrier the opportunity to compete when they can share data with different third-party providers let's say in the industry whether there are brokers or their transportation logistics providers that are, you know… managing third-party loads or even their own loads for that matter, having the ability to connect back into that and give them the same visibility that only the medium and larger carriers could give them, you know, five years ago or three years ago or even before that. I think it is really important and I think it does level out the playing field from that regard where you know a guy with 100 trucks, 50 trucks, 10 trucks, can now look as big as a guy with a thousand, relative to their ability to be to share data and to effectively participate in the supply chain with other large carriers and, you know, we've built specific programs that allow for that … we have an EROAD share program, where it allows our customers to share data … it's their data and let them manage it. But, you know, we have built tools that allow them to connect into third parties that they authorize to share that data specifically so they can participate. So yeah, I think it has a profound effect and will continue to. And I think it's healthy for the industry. From a safety standpoint, certainly, and also for productivity. I think you know productivity will continue to increase, then others and a lot of discussions that you know they can't drive as many miles and things like that and I think that it's way overweight with the benefits they get when they are really optimized and participating. Like I mentioned earlier, so yeah, I think it's pretty exciting and the future is really bright.

Seth: And on that note, Norm, of course you've really been at the forefront of technology adoption in this industry for quite a long time now. So I just want to get your final thoughts on how you see technology continuing to shape the trucking industry in the years and decades ahead.

Norm: Yeah, I think you'll see as IoT becomes even more prevalent than it is now you'll see additional capability to be tracking things inside the trailer, not just the trailer, that's been available for a while … as you know but I think the ability to see what's inside there what material is in the vehicle and that will improve productivity some more at the manufacturing level and at the distribution level. I think safety technologies, like you've already seen, Seth, you know with cameras and other things that I've started to can be very popular and I think it has helped shape the industry some more so I think you'll see that converge and I think you'll see the analytics side come to life even more. Some of the big carriers have been doing some pretty advanced analytics for a while.

Norm: I think you'll see analytics become more popular in the mainstream of the transportation area as a result of the data that's being collected and as you analyze that data there's unfolded, you know, benefit from that, right for studying many things … freight flows, congestion on down the line and I think it's going to have a profound impact on the future of our country and our ability to be competitive worldwide.

Seth: Well, it will certainly be fun to watch. Never a dull moment in this industry these days so thanks again for sharing your insights and your experience. A lot of really interesting perspective. Thanks again.

Norm: No worries. Thank you for the opportunity. Take care and have a great day.

Seth: Next on RoadSigns we're thrilled to welcome Jai Ranganathan, the head of product data science and design at KeepTruckin, the ELD supplier. Thanks for joining the program, Jai.

Jai Ranganathan: Thank you for having me.

Seth: So the ELD mandate has been in place for more than a year now and most longhaul trucks now have some kind of technology platform in their cabs. So what's next for ELD and cap technology? Do you believe that the small and midsized carriers who adopt an ELD because they had to in order to comply with the regulation, will now go further and add more services to improve and automate other aspects of their businesses?

Jai: Great question. First of all, while the ELD mandate has been around for a year there's still a substantial number of vehicles that are going to be adding ELDs to their systems over the coming year. This is driven by a few factors at the end of the AOBRD extension as well as intrastate mandates kicking in. And finally, I think you all know that Canada has been talking about implementing its own mandate and that's going to affect fleets that operate across the United States and Canada for sure. So there's still more work to be done in the ELD side alone. And we have to make sure to handle all the needs of customers in those areas. But you're absolutely right, ELDs are really in many ways a gateway. What you get for the ELD is a pretty good set of sensors that can help you optimize various aspects of your business. This telematics data has generally been used by larger carriers traditionally but the ELD actually made the … modern technology such as cellphones has made it possible to have the same kinds of rich telematics access to smaller fleets. This allows you to do everything from optimizing things like fuel usage to utilization rates and making downtime. And one of the big things that you do get out of all of this data is benchmarks, population benchmarks across multiple fleets. You can start understanding how you're doing ultimately appears and start optimizing the areas of your business where you are either ahead or behind and in terms of the opportunities.

Seth: Absolutely, certainly. Like you said it is a gateway to a lot more capabilities, analytics, new features and applications you can go. You can add beyond the core electronic logging requirement. So on that topic I'm curious to see to learn more about what you've seen to KeepTruckin. How many of your customers today are ELD-only? And how many of them are utilizing other features and applications to improve others or their business?

Jai: We started off clearly focused on the ELD market. We are so rapidly expanded to provide more capabilities. This includes everything from asset management, basic navigation capabilities, communication and messaging as well as utilization reports. But along with the course of things that we provide, we also invested heavily in our partnership ecosystem.

Jai: So we have an app marketplace that allows our fleet to connect to other applications of interest to them and as a representative example. Right now, we have more than 100,000 trucks today that are using at least one integration outside of our core business with a partner within three months, we got folks doing this so it's very clear that while the ELD mandate is what drove out adoption, people immediately realized the value they can get by integrating with our partners using other capabilities. Things of that nature. It's been a rocket ship in terms of how much people leverage our app marketplace ecosystem right now.

Seth: Well that’s fascinating and I have to ask you, what types of applications do you find are most popular beyond the core ELD? Among your customers what is the second and third applications that are most popular for them right now?

Jai: So there are applications within the context of our fleet management solution. This includes asset tracking, dispatch, document management, things of that nature. But in the marketplace side they've also seen a lot of uptake for navigation apps, of fuel management apps as well as maintenance apps. Of course TMS is a prevalent and TMS integrations are becoming digital for us, we have been with many teams, spend years to make sure that they're fully integrated systems as well. But these are the class of apps to be seen most often being used in conjunction with our work.

Seth: Many of the features that some of the large carriers in the trucking industry have been using for a long time but increasingly a lot of this, you know, these capabilities are more available to the small players.

Jai: That's exactly right. And in fact I think many of the things I'm talking about are not new to large enterprise carriers but in the small to midsize fleet segment are somewhat new to their operations and clearly jumping on it a bit further now that it's easy to access these capabilities.

Seth: Sure and you know another capability that's really gotten a lot of momentum lately in the trucking industry is onboard video and KeepTruckin, of course, recently introduced a dash cam that connects with the ELD. Yeah. So you know you hear about liability protection you hear about driver safety, driver coaching, and some of the reasons for the adoption of onboard video. So why did KeepTruckin decide to get into that aspect of the business and do you see it becoming more and more common in the years ahead?

Jai: Yes. So if you think about the ELD mandate itself its primary purpose was to improve safety. We tend to think of ELDs as something to do with compliance. But if you get to the root of the matter it's all about safety. And we saw this, the camera, as a natural extension on what we were doing before. In fact, recently I think the AAA published a report which suggested that when dash cams are deployed they decreased incident rates by nearly 26%, which is a huge amount of accident reduction. So we see this is as a great opportunity to make an impact on safety. And, by the way, safety is super important because it makes our highway safer. It also has a direct financial impact of fleets. More and more insurance companies are thinking about how to leverage this kind of data to these insurance rates. That comes into their two ways, one is from a PR … when an incident happens … how do you handle that most effectively, how do you understand what happened, how do you make sure it's handled quickly and safely. But also just when you come into prevention there's so much you can do and you start understanding patterns of behavior and being able to give very specific guided feedback in potentially very quickly after an incident happens like, for example, you have a hard brake because you follow too closely to the car in front of you. If we have the camera capability we understand the context in which a vehicle is operating. We can give drivers immediate feedback saying … hey, this is what happened and this is why you should keep a certain distance from your truck or car in front of you, or what have you. So that combination of being able to handle incidents would happen cleanly and being able to give much more guided and targeted education, we really believe is going to be a dramatic improvement in safety but it does keep drivers happier, reducing insurance costs. So for us it's just a natural extension of what we do and we do expect this to be growing quite dramatically across trucking in the United States.

Seth: Next I want to talk a little bit about the ELD market and just the number, the sheer number of players that entered this space, you're really in the years and months leading up to the mandate. There is just an influx of new companies that jumped into this industry ahead of that. You know the last time I looked there were more than 400 different ELDs or product variants listed on FMCSA online ELD registry and of course not all of those products caught on. It's just way too many. But KeepTruckin is one of the suppliers that really did get a lot of traction as the industry went through this process. So how do you differentiate or differentiate yourself as an ELD supplier really in such a crowded market?

Jai: Well, we think of this in three ways. First of all, we want to make sure that the services we provide go beyond pure compliance management. And so we try to make sure that once we have this ELD and set of capabilities you're unlocking significant data than just managing your mandate requirements. That's one aspect, which is pretty appealing to our customers. Additionally, let's be honest, like, things like the mandate are all points of friction for a trucker who is trying to do his or her job. They're not stuck there. They're not kind of spend their time like learning a complex application and figuring out how to use it. They want it to be minimally invasive in their life. They want it to be really easy to use so that they can get along, get on with doing what they are there to do which is move the truck from one place to another.

Jai: And so we spent a lot of time and energy trying to make sure that the experience is very simple, easy to use and get out of the way as quickly as possible. But then it doesn't need to be interfering with their operations but it's available very easily when they do need us. But this goes beyond just the product experiences, also goes into things like the support experience, if you ever have an issue. You made it super easy in the app to identify and press a button to call us so that a support agent is available 24/7. Of course, trucking doesn't operate in like 9-5 stretches it operates all day long. And so we want to make sure that that's really good support. If there's a problem we're always on hand to answer it. This is how we think about it, really high-quality customer experience both in the product and in support and set of capabilities that makes us more valuable than just meeting the compliance requirements. I think that's really the things you did that distinguishes us in the market and allows us to succeed.

Seth: OK. And with all these different companies that have offered and introduced ELD products do you think we'll see more consolidation in the market? You know just given the high number of suppliers out there?

Jai: I'm not going to try to be Nostradamus here but I do find it hard to believe that if we're going to have 440 ELD options next year, as an instance we've already started to see some of this. There's been a few companies that have decided to get out of this space and I expect that to continue to accelerate over the coming years and months. But I certainly don't want to procrastinate too much about my habit to break the future. I definitely don't think that I'd be at 440 next year, let's put it that way.

Seth: Well we'll see how it all shakes out as there's a market that does need to sort itself out a little bit and I think it'll be a large part by what happens in the field and what the fleet's experience is.

Jai: I would say that I think being purely focused on the ELD side of the house and providing no other sophisticated functionality will be a limiting factor for many of these companies’ growth. I think if you're going to make the investment in ELD, the expectation of having a mature set of functionality in your toolbox will just be given for most a fee to choose to buy these associations.

Seth: Sure. And what we've seen really with the implementation of the mandate and how the ELD market has changed it's really changed, at least what some of the vendors are doing with the way that they deliver the technology. So traditionally many of the large fleets that have been using onboard computers or electronic logging systems in some cases for even decades they've typically used hardwired in-cab terminals and there's still a lot of large fleets that are doing that. They still prefer that, but really with the mandate we've seen a lot of the smaller carriers gravitate more toward using phones and tablets as the in-cab display that the driver’s using and that's the case with that is the case with KeepTruckin and many of the other vendors that are out there, the newer ones that have entered the industry. So in your perspective, Jai, just how much has the use of mobile devices opened up the yield market especially for those independent drivers and small fleets?

Jai: I actually think this is completely game changing. It's not something that people tend to spend a lot of time thinking about, but of course mobile devices even compete in the worldwide economy. They're not that old and … you know, Apple's iPhone came out in 2007 or something, 2006 or 2007. And so it's not like some historical dinosaur but you just suddenly started noticing. But there's been some profound reasons why the cellphone is going to be a game changer here. First of all, it lowers the cost of the barrier to entry dramatically. Now the pricing we can manage with mobile devices being pervasive is much lower than what you'd have to do some of the station solutions. But it's not just a pricing thing. It's also the flexibility that a mobile device provides. It has an interconnection at all times. It's a platform you can have many different apps where traditionally one of those hardware systems required you to have every app come from the developer of the hardware systems and updating that was something that you'd only do very rarely. Mobile devices get replenished every couple of years so you're getting the latest generation of capabilities all the time in your fingertips. Additionally you want the best-of-breed mapping solution, you can put that in your app next to your ELD app, you want the best-of-breed fluid management solution you can put that in your app you get to pick and choose the best components, which is honestly something which is not very easy to do in the past. And additionally the mobile device is flexible, you can take it out of your truck if you want to take photos or make an inspection, you couldn't really take the legacy devices out of the truck and do that you can just take your phone out and fixed the snapping photos outside. So that's just a sea change in the flexibility that the mobile device platform provides with its continuous internet connectivity ability and so any app that you like and being able to move it as you see fit, it's just lots of opportunity for anybody here in the space.

Seth: Sure. One final question for you, Jai. So now that we have ELDs really permeating across the trucking industry and really lots of additional technology and applications as we've discussed on top of that, the industry as a result is beginning to capture even more data on freight operations. So I want to get your thoughts on where that's heading. How will companies like KeepTruckin and your carrier customers use this information in the years ahead? Now what we're capturing all this additional information?

Jai: Yeah. So you're absolutely right. The data from ELDs do create a game-changing opportunity. I believe we're actually on the cusp of a small revolution in trucking, in terms of the ability to optimize your operations. And this comes down to roughly the way we think about the three major pieces here. How do you identify operational issues in your fleets or predict them before they happen? How do you address them? And then how do you monitor progress against these issues?

Jai: This spans the gamut from your fleet vehicle maintenance and fuel usage, to how you understand when to move your assets from one location to another to safety and even navigation and routing are going to change dramatically when you have the incumbent flexibility of saying ‘Hey I can see my based on my HOS clock and time I need to get to this delivery point and the traffic's building up and the weather patterns I can dynamically keep up are getting my route and my ETAs.’ So I know exactly how far out I'm going to be when I wanted to make up time but when I'm going to be late when I can but I need to call the shipper.

Jai: There's so much power you get when you have this like super continuous days team that allows you to do a much better job identifying problems, a much better job addressing them and a much better job monitoring progress against these things. I really think this is going to put me at every aspect of fleet operations over time.

Seth: Certainly a lot of opportunity to do more and more with the information that we're capturing and it will certainly be fun to watch. Thank you so much for taking your time. Always appreciate your insights and taking some time out to chat with us.

Jai: Again, thank you for having me.