Syed Aman: 0:03

Today this overall freight brokerage is a 90 billion industry and only five to 8% of that is digital. Fast forward few years down the road I think by 2028, it is being predicted that this freight brokerage will be 180 billion industry, double the size

Tom Raftery: 0:22

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast. The number one podcast, focusing on the digitization of supply chain. And I'm your host global vice-president at SAP Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I have my special guest Syed. Syed Welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Syed Aman: 0:51

Tom. Good morning. Yeah. This Syed Aman I'm the CEO and founder of HWY Haul. We are building the next generation digital freight platform for fresh produce. And before starting HWY haul, little over three and a half years back, I was the director of supply chain technology at Walmart where I helped build out WalMart's grocery tech and helped scale it from ha ha a few million to a multi billion business and and lot of good stuff along the way so looking forward to the conversation today Tom.

Tom Raftery: 1:20

Okay, fantastic. And what was the reasoning behind you leaving Walmart as their director of supply chain and deciding to go out on your own and set up HWY Haul?

Syed Aman: 1:34

Yeah, it was pretty much my newfound love and passion for the fresh produce because when we are building the operations processes and the technology to deliver groceries to the household of the average American, right. I realized that it's a, extremely hard problem to tackle. It is not about one solution fits all. And then we, when I did more market research realized that, hey, the long haul produce transportation is extremely broken. It's so manual traditional, old fashioned, and so many of the loads that used to get delivered to Walmart cost, et cetera, and gets rejected. You add up all these rejections, it's adding up to almost like a 15 billion dollars of food wasted during transit on the trucks. So we step out, make it our mission to literally eliminate food waste during transit. So let's see how successful we are.

Tom Raftery: 2:26

Okay. And why, why all those rejections.

Syed Aman: 2:30

Well, the top three reasons being the number one, being the highly manual supply chain, that to book a truck, you have to pick up your phone, work with several brokers who will pick up their phone, call their carriers and the truck drivers, the way you track. Then your freight pick up the phone call throughout the day, the way you track the condition of the load temperature, humidity levels, right? It's all very old fashioned. So we are bringing that very offline experience to online through technology and that's what the world needs. So that's one reason, manual ways of doing things, lack of visibility, transparency, and communication, and lack of cold chain adherence and monitoring if you are not maintaining the proper temperature and humidity levels for strawberries, for onions, for avocados separately, it'll, be rejected because it'll not be fresh in and fresh out inventory.

Tom Raftery: 3:24

Okay, so that, that's the question I was getting to why, why were shops rejecting$15 billion worth of stuff? is it because it's spoiled or low quality when it gets there?

Syed Aman: 3:36

That is correct. Exactly. So assuming that the warehouses or the farms maintain the right condition of the commodity as it was harvested, right? Let's assume that when it gets loaded on the truck, it's on a two day, three day, four day, five day trip from end to end, cause us is a large country and produce travels long distances as we imagine So for the reasons that I mentioned, if those conditions are not impeccably met, not plus minus three degrees of fluctuations no. For example, at Highway Haul, we have an Amber alert sent to somebody in the ecosystem. As soon as there's a slightly one degree off temperature. We absolutely get on it hey buddy, did you maintain the temperature what's happened? Did you shut it down, etcetera? We are seeing a glitch over here. Can you make sure that we are maintaining a constant cycle of ex degrees temperature and things like that? So, yeah it's pretty much the temperature and the visibility overall and the fact that you need to know through data ,Hey, strawberries moved in the months of June, July, August in certain lanes at certain humidity levels have been proven to have higher acceptance rates versus higher rejection rate. So that is the intelligence that we have built into the platform that we can provide to make sure that this rejections do not happen.

Tom Raftery: 4:55

Okay. And your platform the Highway Haul platform. Is it software? Is it hardware? Is it a combination? Is it trucks or do you contract trucks with certain hardware in them? Or how does all that work?

Syed Aman: 5:10

Yeah. So Highway hall is a software only platform. However, behind the scene, as you kind of alluded too, we are integrating with several styles of hardware companies and sensors. Via APIs. So as long as your data is available on the cloud to be scraped by APIs, we are connected with the trucks ELDs if you want to we are already connected with the IOT based temperature sensors, very with the companies, they are all of our partners. So that to my shippers, to my carriers, we provide a unified software experience on a dashboard behind the scene we may be connected to 10 other systems. You don't know you don't care. But to an end user, we are providing a very connected user experience.

Tom Raftery: 5:55

And who are your customers? Typically.

Syed Aman: 5:58

Mostly our customers are the growers, the farmers, or the produce distributors, wholesalers, or even the, retailers, the grocers.

Tom Raftery: 6:09

Okay. And so if I am a grower and I say I'm Irish based in Idaho and I'm consequently I'm growing potatoes just to be very stereotypical. How do I contract you and what do you provide for me?

Syed Aman: 6:24

Right. We provide for you year round, reliable refrigerated trucks, trailers, capacity, which can be procured with a few clicks, not by calling n number of brokers. And when you engage Highway Haul, we don't say no after we have said yes. Which is another big problem of the industry that, Hey, the brokers, traditional brokers may say, Hey, yeah, we got, you covered buddy. But two hours before the pickup, sorry, the truck driver is gone. We lost the truck or something happens. Right. And typically they're working with very finite number of carrier companies, but at Highway Haul we have consolidated tens of thousands of these mom and pop style carrier companies on our platform. So therefore we don't work with six, seven or 10. We always have a pool of tens of thousands of drivers at our disposal. So that's why find the reliable capacity B we'll provide you with full visibility end to end who the driver is, where the driver is. What is the ETA? Have we checked into the warehouse, checked out, the temperature is 33 degrees for the strawberries, etcetera, et cetera. So this is all Intel that we provide on our software platform backed by a human staff, 24 by seven produce savvy, proper notes who are monitoring your freight 24 by seven.

Tom Raftery: 7:44

Okay. And I mean, you mentioned that your customers could be the growers, the distributors, the retailers. Is there any one particular, one of those stakeholders that you're more aimed towards or is it equally to all of them?

Syed Aman: 8:01

Well, I would say almost 50% off of our customers today are the growers. Right. And rest of them is a combination of the distributors, wholesalers, retailers, et cetera. And just so you know, Tom produce takes multiple hops before it lands your plate my plate to start from the farm, of course, which is where it is grown and harvested. Then it may go from farms to the distributors who are buying to distribute in their network, from the distributor may go to the wholesalers, from the farms it can go to the wholesalers, who are selling it to the end retailer or the grocer. So all of these combinations are possible. And every time any of these actor, whether you are a grower or a distributor or a wholesaler or a retailer, they're looking for a empty truck to move their produce from point A to point B in their own network. So anyone of them are naturally our consumer because, Hey, you need a truck. We got you covered.

Tom Raftery: 8:56

Okay, and the whole point of this is that you're digitizing the system and introducing visibility for people. Right? Who are the ones who you think benefit most from this visibility into the supply chain?

Syed Aman: 9:11

So that's the beauty of our connected ecosystem that we believe that we have built that we are building. Every actor who is subscribed to our platform, whether it is a shipper. And when I say shipper, it is the umbrella that covers that includes the grower, the distributor wholesaler and all those things. So whether you are a shipper or a carrier, which is a trucking company, or you are the driver, or you are the Highway Haul team itself, everyone is on the same page in real time throughout the journey of the load. Right? So you need to know the driver location. If they log in, if I log in, if the driver logs in carrier logs in everyone is gonna say the same location, same driver information. You wanna see the temperature. Anyone can log in with the tools that we have provided for everyone. They will see the same information. So that's what happens when you, because all of our drivers are using the mobile app, which is location tracking, enabled, available in both IOS and Android. So where, whosoever is watching them, we get the same information.

Tom Raftery: 10:12

Okay. And are you optimizing for reducing empty trucks? So making sure that you're not shipping air so that, you know, we're trying to, cut down on dead miles or is that something that you're trying to optimize for as well?

Syed Aman: 10:30

We are born to do that pretty much exactly because 35% of the miles driven in this industry Tom are empty miles. And that is huge. That is not good. I mean, we can do so much to optimize those empty miles to make sure the truck is always utilized, always running and we have eyes and ears and that's where all data driven approach applies, right? That we are studying the data in real time. We know which truck is getting empty where. Can we be proactive and assign the next load in the vicinity to that truck so that, Hey, you drop this load. And within the next 20 miles, 50 miles, whatever you pick up your next load and you, we bring you back to your base location. We call it the back haul trips, right? So we are working on trip number one, we don't only send the drivers from point A to point B. We try to get them back from B to A or B to C to A that kind of a thing so that it maximizes their earnings, minimizes the empty miles and optimizes their family time that they spent with the families.

Tom Raftery: 11:31

Very nice. And do you have any idea how much, I guess this is probably a, ridiculous question, but any idea how much food spoilage, you are avoiding by using Highway Haul?

Syed Aman: 11:45

Right. So if we do, I mean, data wise, right? Let's say if we have hauled whatever the freight we have hauled with the Highway Haul booked trucks, let's just say we have kind of almost reduced the rejections by two thirds give or take almost 60, 70%. And we are just getting started. We have a lot of tech and the ops and so many things that we are building as far as our roadmap is concerned. And as I said, the Northstar that the company is chasing is to literally eliminate this wastage during transit. So we are talking at the end game should be almost minuscule. I mean, single, or, you know, less than 1% or maybe as less as we can go.

Tom Raftery: 12:29

Sure. Sure. Of course, of course. And how can you improve on that 60 to 70% to get it up to that 90, 95, 99%.

Syed Aman: 12:39

Exactly. Continue to integrate and provide more visibility. When I say integrate with these IOT based temperature sensor, because it's a fragmented industry, there are several players somebody's using. I don't want name, but solution A and solution B and solution C a platform like Highway Haul is integrating with not just one solution. So ultimately as we onboard more of these sensor companies onto our platform, our pitch to the shipper will be Hey doesn't matter if you or your network is using solution A or B or XYZ does not matter because we come plugged in with all of these. So you'll get a you know, real time information when you are. So you inspect, you respect what you inspect, right? So as, whenever you start monitoring those temperatures and humidity sensors in real time, you will know. And you'll know when to act to avoid the, spoilage as soon as there's a fluctuation of a couple of degrees.

Tom Raftery: 13:32

Okay, cool. And where to next for Highway Haul? What I mean, I know the ultimate aim is global domination, but where, where do you want to go in the next five, 10 years?

Syed Aman: 13:43

Right. Of course. I mean, sky is the limit and we know that the world needs, more food than what it is producing. And by 2050 we'll be 9 billion plus population and we will be 60% short of the food requirements by that time. So yes, we want to make it a global mission, obviously, because this is not a very local problem to US only it is, you know, so we are already thinking of capturing as much of north America as possible, and then eventually go to the rest of the world too. But we are, again at the same time being very laser focused as well that we know that which lanes and which regions and which territories to go first, build our playbook. So that then when we are expanding, we can literally rinse and repeat.

Tom Raftery: 14:24

Okay, fantastic. We are coming towards the end of the podcast, now Syed. Is there any question I haven't asked you that you wish I had, or is there any aspect of this we've not touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Syed Aman: 14:39

Well you touched upon some of the very good angles pretty much. I would want to see what is in store for us in future for the digital transformation. Have we arrived or we are nowhere close. So I think probably you may have missed that. So I would want to take up on that what the future has in store for us.

Tom Raftery: 14:58

Go on. Go for it.

Syed Aman: 14:59

Right. And so, unfortunately we are still nowhere close to the digital transformation that is needed, right? While this will be an ever evolving innovation cycle, like most other industries. I'm hopeful to see some very significant advances in ensuring certain permanent changes will be in place over the next decade. Autonomous trucks they're coming right. Once adopted commercially at scale, that will massively change the way transportation is done. Cause they'll always be driving. They do not have to stop for the driver hours of service, hos rules and things like that. And then the smarter forecasting planning, execution delivery, returns management, all of these things need to be rethought about and people need to, and the companies need to invest on that because the data says some of the analyst reports I was reading Tom today this overall freight brokerage is a 90 billion industry and only five to 8% of that is digital. Fast forward few years down the road. I think by 2028, it is being predicted that this freight brokerage will be 180 billion industry, double the size. At what point in time it would it save it'll be actually 50% digitally done. So that is the upside. So digital transformation is happening. It's happening fast.

Tom Raftery: 16:20

Okay. Fantastic. Syed that's been really interesting. if people want to know more about yourself or about Highway Haul or any of the topics we discussed today, where would you have me direct them?

Syed Aman: 16:32

To our website, pretty much H W Y haul.com. And we'll take it from there.

Tom Raftery: 16:39

Perfect superb. Syed that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Syed Aman: 16:44

Thanks so much, Tom and great talking to you. Have a good one

Tom Raftery: 16:48

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sap.com/digital supply chain, or, or simply drop me an email to Tom dot Raftery @sap.com. If you like the show, please, don't forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application at choice to get new episodes, as soon as they are published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks, catch you all next time.