Global Trade This Week – February 2nd, 2023
What’s going on in Global Trade this Week? Today Doug Draper of Inland Star Distribution and Trade Geek Pete Mento of Mento LLC cover:
1:50 -Is Doug Wrong About Drones?
8:58 -Trade Enforcement is Hard - Especially Understaffed
14:38 -Halftime
25:25 -Final Delivery Distruption
32:04 -Cyber Attack Lawsuits
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching Global Trade This Week with Pete Mento and Doug Draper.
Pete Mento 0:10
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Global Trade this week. I Pete mento. And with me, as almost always is, well, is the how should I put this indefatigable I've said before, you're replaceable, certainly, for any of you who ever watched Keenan have to sit in the beach chair, or the chair as it is, Mr. Doug Draper. Doug. How are you, buddy?
Doug Draper 0:38
I'm good. I'm doing Wow, the some of the listeners out there may or viewers may realize that Troy, my right hand man other than yourself is no longer with us. He's still so I'm working in a co working space. So co working mean, there's a lot of activity and they have these soundproof booths, which I guess is kind of a cool thing and co working spaces. So I'm looking down, I'm probably in a three by three foot box that I am now doing my show. And I think Troy would be just a little too close. For comfort over my shoulder. So we'll have to sink is something else to throw back there. But anyway, I'm in a three by three foot booth
Pete Mento 1:20
to get a picture of Troy and then you can sort of pin him behind you with a thumbtack. There we go on any Troy that's not a bad idea to have a mini Troy because I I do feel like you're a little color behind you out.
Doug Draper 1:33
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, my dark sweaters against a gray, whatever this is here. So what we'll figure it out now, we'll figure it out. I
Pete Mento 1:41
guess we will, we'll talk I kick the show off. And that means that it's, it's your chance to go ahead and start us off, right first first topic, though.
Doug Draper 1:51
Okay. Seems like I've kind of gotten into air freight mode in the last couple of weeks. And this one caught my attention. So it kind of goes along with the autonomous nature of drones and things of that nature. So I guess I'm gonna say, am I wrong about the autonomy and the whole drones and the viability of hauling freight and moving things? And the answer, as I thought about it is no, I'm still spot on about that. And here's, here's, here's the deal. So there's this company in San Diego that just popped up. It's called American flight. And they've just sold a couple I shouldn't say couple like 2020 pilotless cargo jets from Nautilus. So America flight is actually a division to UPS I'm sorry. And Nautilus is the company that's in San Diego that's providing these so they are pilotless cargo jets, designed for short haul type of line. So example here in Denver and Colorado, need to take a little puddle jumper from Denver over to like Gunnison Aspen area where you can't really navigate the roads pretty safely. So anyway, like UPS and and Amira flight partnership, they have about 150 of these type of flights daily. So they're gonna throw them up there, which, you know, I just don't? I don't know, I can't understand the viability of that. You know, they say that the short haul, it hits hard to access areas, which I get, I understand that for sure. Living in Colorado, those are two examples I just gave pilot shortage and how that's impacting the airline industry. Yep, I think I kind of get that. To some degree. They can also carry more cargo. If you get to humans out of an airplane, I guess that's an extra couple 100 pounds. And it says they can grow their routes based on that. So I just don't know the practicality of it. I like the forward leans on this Pete as I like that they keep on trucking along with new technology. But here's the deal. And I think with all autonomous natures is that the jazz hands that pop up and talk about the potential is like 10 years, the actuality the promise and the commitment and the and the implementation and what we see that is a very wide number of years, to the point of where it may be decade or decades in order to make that happen. And I think we're seeing that with with drones, long haul electric vehicles and trucks is that it sounds good. It makes for a good headline. But the practicality of everything is that it is still a very very long way away and I just don't see. You know, is the juice worth the squeeze on these pilotless airplanes, cargo jets? Other than something fun to throw out and market against so um Anyway, here's my example P, I'm gonna end with this one because I'm rambling a little bit. But here's some numbers, right 18,000, layoffs and Amazon. So 18,000. And a significant portion of that is their drone delivery unit. Their Oregon lab, I think, is cutting about 50%. So, an adult finally stepped in the room and realize that drone delivery needs to be sidebar and are continually delayed and focus on a core competency. Bezos first talked about this in 2013, he could have that same exact press release today. And we would be as far along as we are with drone deliveries as we worked 10 years ago. So anyway, it's just I don't get I don't understand it. I don't think it's viable. I don't think it's necessary. There's my drone take for February of 2023.
Pete Mento 5:53
What's it gonna take, Doug, like, there's all these companies that are making cargo drone aircraft, like, you just made a great example, when you don't have people on a cargo drone, on a cargo aircraft, you have to pressurize it, which means you don't have to make it into a tube, you can make it all kinds of really cool shapes, which hold more cargo using the same amount of fuel. And it makes it more sustainable. It makes it more efficient. But I'm telling you right now, if I ever get to go to work for a company that buys one of these drones, drone number one is going to be called a cold you're so done. That's what it's gonna be called. Or it's gonna be called the Draper Express. I swear on all the Totally. What's it gonna take
Doug Draper 6:42
proof of concept beyond a couple of guys floating around in West Texas and making one or two deliveries in a two mile radius dropping off three pound packages? I don't
Pete Mento 6:54
I don't know how long ago it was that the that the Wright brothers were in North Carolina at Kitty Hawk. But it wasn't that long ago. And then I don't know what the leap was from the Wright brothers and Kitty Hawk to World War One, but it wasn't that far. And then from World War One with like, you know, Doug's up front, flying the plane, or maybe it was the back, I don't know, like Doug's in the back, flying the plane. And then pizza up front, like literally with a box of bombs going we like dropping them on people in France to the next war, which is a couple decades later, you know, guys are going around and be seven teams, like, you know, and then people were playing with jet technology. A decade later in Korea, guys are flying jets and shooting each other, to a couple decades later, you got MiGs. And, you know, we're starting to really fly around with jets to a couple of decades later. You got the Gulf War, I mean, the the movements that we have with with with aeronautical technology, man, you just Yeah. I get it. Your,
Doug Draper 8:00
your questions. I'm gonna answer your question, because you said what's it going to take? And you just answered it by saying the word time it's going to take time. And I guess my biggest beef is that everybody thinks it's going to happen next week. So is this possible? Yeah, I guess it is. But I'm talking to here. And now in my, in my career and my tenure in this industry. Time. We'll see if this shakes out. Because that's exactly what you just described in your chronological, I
Pete Mento 8:23
know what it's gonna take. Here's what's going to take, it's gonna take dog book and like 1000 kilos on the drone is what it's going to take. It's going to take like you book in space on a drone flight for one of your customers is what's gonna take and then be like, Yeah, okay, I guess it works. Yeah, and then we're gonna hear about it on the show. And then you're gonna be like, I buy into it now. Now, I guess. Until then you realize it's not going to work. Get off my lawn. So it was all a ruse. Yeah,
Doug Draper 8:50
we can wait, that's the one a month, one time a month. A sofa soapbox on that one. So we're gonna fit in? What's your first one today?
Pete Mento 9:00
So my first one today is similar in my cantankerous nature. And that is, you know, this is something that people don't really think about. And that is, when you have a bunch of laws. Those are easy to pass. So, like Congress, or your local school board, or your local city council, everyone sits around and they say, Hey, here's something that's a problem, like, sounds like a problem. Okay, well, how should we deal with that? Well, we should create a lot to either address it or create a lot to try to get people to not do it. No. Well, or maybe we'll quit allottee to get people to maybe act differently so that we try to get them to do more so that it makes it better compels them to act in different ways. Like yeah, okay, so let's create a new law, and then they all vote on it. And we're like, okay, yeah, the eyes have it. Someone takes a hammer and they snap something and before you know it, new legislation. Great. Well, Then we have to enforce it. And for those of us that live in the US, we have all kinds of law enforcement, we have city, county, state, and federal. If you're ever driving anywhere near me, you have a pretty good understanding of my attitude towards the local police and state police when it comes to traffic violations, I tend to drive a wee bit over the speed limit, as it were. And then, of course, you have the federal law enforcement, which is really what I'm getting that now, customs just has to enforce like everything, right? They have to enforce all these laws on anything crosses a border. And then on top of that, you've got export law, where customs gets engaged in a lot. But then there's some other areas of enforcement, like the director of defense trade controls, a Bureau of Industry and Security, where people hear that office foreign asset control, and immediately your blood puckers will be well, what you should immediately get scared. Anytime I say OFAC, your heart should skip a beat because they are a terrifying group of people. The same thing with the director of defense trade controls. Here's the deal. Doug, if you threw a dinner party like spur the moment, you could get more people to come to your house tonight. Then there are enforcement people for all of the ddtc Like there are the Consumer Product Safety Commission. There are more people in my immediate family than there are that do trade enforcement for CPSC. Like there's barely anybody that's engaged in enforcement, but we continually create new laws and enforcement. There was that great meme that had I think it was Death Valley, you know, where Tennessee plays. And it said, This place holds 87,000 people or whatever. And that's as many IRS agencies they're about to hire to enforce, you know, audit. Think about that, right? We don't have even I think that like 1000 customs agents that are currently engaged in dealing with border enforcement, for trade enforcement, like there's barely anybody dealing with trade enforcement, but we're constantly adding to border enforcement. So now, the President and Congress are talking about re engaging with China to try to get some sort of new trade deal, right to try to re engage with phase one of the China US trade deal. We engage with phase two, how are we going to do that? How are we going to do that we have absolutely no methodology for making sure that enforcement actually happens, other than waiting a year checking statistics and see if we did it is this the honor system, I don't think either one of us is going to be actually very good with the honor system, because China's share hasn't been super good with it in the past. And I think you've left our own advices, we wouldn't be very good at devices, we will be so hot as well. So Doug, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that trade policy is only so good as the enforcement that goes along with it. And as a country, we have been not been doing a very good job of making sure that trade enforcement is keeping up with trade policy. And it's about time we put our money where our mouth is with regards to enforcement.
Doug Draper 13:17
So my take on that is just outsource it. Right. And I think of that is the CT, Pat, and all the things that happened after 911 and the amount of consultants that came into that field to help buoy companies to make sure they were compliant. I don't know what, but let's develop some companies and maybe there'll be folks that come in and, and act as a third party, which means there's another layer of people you have to pay another layer of, you know, financial burden, if you will, so, I don't know maybe it's just outsourcing the thing and and, and creating a whole new consultancy arm or enhanced consultancy arm, it's already out there.
Pete Mento 14:04
You come up with a way where there's also a benefit to enforcement, right? Where if you do the right thing, there's a benefit. Or if you don't do the right thing, there's a benefit to someone who catches you. They used to be something where if you got caught, you know, with anti dumping or countervailing duty if someone caught you there was a financial benefit to the person who who busted you. So you could always talk about that. Again, I don't know how I feel about that ethically, but it's something that could be there as well. So carrot and stick buddy, carrot and stick. It's never as easy as it looks. That leads us to halftime, brought to you by our dear friends at CAP logistics that bring us the show. Give us this platform to drone on and on about what we think is going to happen with global trade. Learn more about them, check them out at CAP logistics. And with that, Doug, what do you got for us for our first topic this week?
Doug Draper 14:58
Yeah, I like it. So mine's pretty short and sweet. And some folks may have may have seen this, we just pull these halftimes from the headlines, right? So there's this cat out there named Brian Johnson, he's a cent a millionaire, I'd never heard of that term before. But that means if you have hundreds of millions of dollars instead of 10s of millions, I mean, who doesn't want to be a cent a millionaire, right? So, guys, 45. And he's really trying to find the fountain of youth. So he's got kind of some discretionary income, he's got some side hustles with his with his business, but he's making news not for that. He's making news with spending close to $2 million a year, with 30 medical professionals monitoring every bodily function in hopes of reversing aging. So what he's doing is not cosmetic. It's all a lot of it's focused on organs. Right? And how do you reverse the time and make a liver 10 years younger? Pete, I know, you can talk about how to make a liver 10 years older, but this guy's focused on 10 years younger. And he's getting poked and prodded. And, you know, the, the doctors are saying it's working. You know, he's got the heart of a six year old, and so on and so forth. But the bottom line is, this guy's got the discretionary mind to do it. And he is a human guinea pig. And I love it, not because of him, personally. But there will be a lot learned with this gentleman now, are they going to find the cure to cancer? Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. But the fact that all of these treatments are happening to him as an individual that he allows, I think there's going to be some good things that come of it. Not so much. You know, eliminating the lines in your face are doing Botox type of stuff, but real things, and technology and processes that can help control the control aging. So I like like, Bring it on, keep doing it invest your money, to help us figure out what some of the right remedies are. So anyway, that's my, that's my two cents. Rock on Brian Johnson keep going.
Pete Mento 17:11
So this is one of those topics that when I'm maybe had a couple bottles of wine too many, or when I've probably had a couple of glasses of whiskey too many I do ponder a little too much, Doug. And this is. So this is one of the there's a number of ethical fundamental pathways or philosophy that people will ponder. One of them is immortality. So the concept of what point is a life is a life too long, too long. You know, they call it the Van Van Van pirate philosophy. So if you could live forever, if you could have this sort of soulless existence where you were able to live forever? Would you want to pursue it? And to what end? What so you know, Does, does having a finite life make it richer? Knowing that eventually it will end? And does it make you? Does it make that life more precious? And, you know, there's a cynical nature to us as human beings, it's like hell no, right? Like, if I knew I was indestructible, and I could live forever, it would make me even more, more cognizant of what's around me, I would take more risks, I would do even more with what I have. And I would probably have a richer life. And there's a part of us that says that the fact that my life is fragile, and then eventually I will die, I will do more beautiful things with it. So that's a whole other conversation. But from the scientific part of me, I think it's incredible, you know, just a cursory, a cursory look into what's going on with stem cells as an example of what we're able to do to regenerate parts of the human body, almost almost with immediate effect, to give people longer, more, more robust lives by giving them new joints by being able to regenerate parts of their bodies. That's incredible. The things that we're able to do through chemicals, through genetic engineering through gene therapies, it it is incredible. But at the same time, I also, I also think that there's something to be said for, for accepting the fact that this that this bag of meat will eventually decay and be gone. And not spending too much, too much of your time, being concerned with the fact that that it will, that you should stop it from aging. You know, there's something to be said for accepting the fact that you'll eventually be dust and doing what you can with what you have and gracefully going through that. This is a topic that Mrs. Trump the guy spent a lot of time disagreeing on. I think no matter how old she is, she'll be beautiful and wonderful and, and that there's something to be said for accepting aging. So yeah, Doug, I think it's great that someone is spending so much time and so much money, learning to control it, and I hope that we do learn a lot from it from science. But I also think that you shouldn't become obsessed with it. Nice. Yeah. Good.
Doug Draper 20:05
Good perspective. So now, I love your halftime so you just let her rip.
Pete Mento 20:12
So, today as we're recording this, Tom Brady had a new video saying, This time, I'm not kidding, I really am retiring everybody. And it was heartfelt. It was short, it was brief. And he said that you only get to have one emotional retirement video in a career. And I use mine up last year, which was funny. And this time I really am retiring. And so what I sent to Doug today was, could you imagine if in this industry, we had retirement videos, like if you if you went up on LinkedIn, and there was a picture of, you know, Bob from from the warehouse like, Hey, everybody, I just want to, you know, I want to go out there and have a meaningful moment to let everybody know that I'm mindfully leaving the warehouse industry after 35 years. You know, all the hundreds of people who've been part of my life want to thank all but it's been a hell of a run. Or if like, you know, somebody who'd been a salesman, like you know, Doug, and I'd spent all this time working with clients. You had this tearful moment where we say goodbye the industry or more likely if it was me and I like it gave everyone that double bird I've always said that my final day in the industry I'll probably go to Logan Airport completely naked and are more likely like I'll go dressed in a clown outfit from head to toe and not speak any not speak at all like you know big shoes the whole bit with a with a big with a big rainbow Afro and the makeup on and everything and not speak at all, and just go through security and when the like have you know have like nails on my pocket or something so that they have to everything and then when the TSA guy comes in, messaged me like I'll squirt him in the face for my flower and the whole bit like I'm I'm going down when I go through it but yeah my my video on my last day it I would I probably have some things to say to some people that it would not be this gracious. I want to take every one and then he has like a video of all these highlights from his career. Now I think I think I'd have some things to say to some government officials on my way out the door for for my video and some it's a former employers as well. As I said my goodbyes.
Doug Draper 22:24
Yeah, well, I could see when when I when you shut that over to me this morning. There's two visions one is I can't remember the exact sketch but Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live does some pretty funny. skits. One of them alien ones. The alien one? Yes, yeah, yeah, it's either gonna be you know, something like that where the guy has just seen it. All right, and you think it's all rosy, I'm gonna give you my perspective. And he's the guy or the gal is going to be worn down and weathered smoking cigarettes, just slowly just punching down in their seat, just getting burned out, but funny and comical the whole way. So that's one of them. The other one is the guy that just, I probably put you maybe myself in this category. It's like they're in a black Camaro sitting out there with their box after box in there. And all of a sudden, he gets in there. And he just cranks up like Van Halen, AC DC, so you can't even hear he's having his last conversation with somebody. They can't even hear what he's saying. And that's by design. And he takes a big pole on a cigarette and he flips it out the window, while his window slowly raises and the car is completely black. And in the end, yeah, the windows are tinted. And he just rips it out of there. Like like he's a 19. You know, like Starsky and Hutch is ripping it out and takes off. So it's either one of those two, you could put put people in one of those two categories.
Pete Mento 23:53
Yeah, he'll be great for brokers in like, you've got you've got your tariff, like that big, that big tariff book of all the classifications. And it's just sitting in the middle of the parking lot. And you got to bottle it every clear like 151. And you just pour it on the on the tariff, and light it on fire and you take a big swing of the 151. And you walk away in slow motion like an action hero and throw it over your shoulder and it hits the tariff and explodes your Huawei like look at all cool. Yeah, that's a broker, a broker would miss because we're just not athletes, like it would totally miss. It would be five feet away because we don't have you hand eye coordination. That's how that would end. We let ourselves on fire because we have no athletic prowess, but it's nice to have those fantasies but in actuality, what will happen Doug is on my last day, I'll probably go to like Applebee's with the people I work with and have five or six beers and then go home and take a nap. Yeah, clever. I'll never I'll never stop I'll never stop working. You and I will both be at doing the show because we just can't stop talking about this crap. Yeah,
Doug Draper 24:57
they think we ramble on now. Just waiting. You Wait,
Pete Mento 25:01
I remember when there weren't drones and Bitcoin wasn't the only currency. Yeah, that's what the show is gonna be like
Doug Draper 25:07
what I mean? Yeah, that's awesome. Well, if any of our listeners out there have made it this far in our show and want to give us your take on, on your thoughts with retirement from our industry, please, please let us know. All right, so we're on the four on the back half of this bad boy. So let me jump in. My second one's pretty. Pretty quick, right? So it's really about the concept of final mile delivery. Right? That's the big one. We talked about how is it the final frontier? Who's going to do it? How are we going to work and collaborate, and my whole thing on this thing is that there needs to be a major epiphany, and a disrupter. I hate using the term disrupter. But I think it's, it needs to happen. Because Pete literally this weekend, I'm not this is not a story I made up for the show. I saw on my blog in one afternoon, that x ups, Amazon, and some, some couriers, you know, that are on the site for different companies delivering on my same blocks, you know, just like like Uber was a disruptor in the whole taxi, and the ride sharing type of thing at that turn didn't even exist. ride sharing a while back is that optimization and collaboration, that's another term that's overused, but I think it's very valid. And I think what's gonna happen is, there's going to be some, some younger generation you and I've spoken about this, and then I'll kind of wrap this one up. Number one, our generation, the older generation, for sure, and probably we're on the on the middle ground is that if you share data, or I talk to you about my customers, or the secret sauce that I use, to make sure my customer is satisfied, I do not want to share that with you, because I will lose a competitive advantage. Sharing is not good. This new generation that's coming up, all about sharing and collaboration and sharing data is good. A rising tide raises all ships, and the concept of I am exposed or I lose my competitive advantage by sharing the mentality is not quite there with the younger generation is with ours and older, so that that mentality is going to enable some disrupting technology to come out there. I don't know what it's going to be. But it's going to happen in the next 10 years, in my opinion, not next week. And it really needs to have a collaboration of all delivery companies that are technically competitors to work together. So there's not four trucks on your block every single day. There's one, and it may be FedEx today, it may be ups tomorrow, but they're delivering each other's packages. And they're reducing our carbon footprint. And they're making things more efficient. And there is a true collaboration. So our generation and older, elaborating in some instances is bad, you lose your your competitive advantage. But this new generation is going to figure it out. Because you can only have so many autonomous trucks, you can only have so many electric vehicles, the simple fact that there's four delivery vans on my street in about a four hour window on a Sunday afternoon, that is not sustainable. And that is not going to solve the final mile problem. It will come with some young entrepreneurial spirits, and there will be real collaboration, thinking outside of the box. So that's my two cents on the on the final mile.
Pete Mento 28:29
So I was going to put something on LinkedIn about this at some point, maybe it'll be this week, but the day I became a stand up comedian, Doug's. I was in my sophomore English class in high school. And my my English teacher was a lady named Miss Churchill, who was also my debate coach, very nice lady. And I owe her a lot. I don't even know I don't even know if she's alive anymore. actually feel kind of guilty about that. But I was I was a I was a cut up, and I was a bit of a snot, you know, I was always it should come as no surprise dog. I didn't get enough attention as a child. But my mom and dad went to the open house a few weeks into my sophomore year, and they came home with a list of what all my teachers had said. And in every instance, the word was used that I was disruptive in class. And you just mentioned right? disruptors, right? So when I was a young man, the term being a disruption was a bad thing. And Mrs. Churchill said, I won't have you be disruptive in my class. But there's something to be said for being disruptive. So she said to me, it's okay to be a spectacle. As long as you're doing something with it. When it's okay to be disruptive, when you do something that's that's actually, that's actually positive with it. Right? What are you doing when you have everyone's attention? So today is Tuesday. When you come back on Friday, I will give you five minutes on my class. So do something positive with it. Nice. And I remember sitting down and being absolutely just, I mean weak in the knees and terrified that I had to do something with five minutes of class on Friday. But then I went back, I did something with five minutes of class on Friday, and I actually made people laugh, not for the five minutes for a portion of the five minutes for like, I mostly ate shit for the five minutes, but for five minutes, I did make people laugh. And it opened up something in me that made me want to make people laugh forever. And I owed that moment of disruption. When you talk about these kids, right, they're not afraid to collaborate with one another. Because they know that it's not the data in the collaboration that scares them, they're gonna find something to do with it. So all that data being shared with one another, they're gonna find something to do with the collaborative data and make money with that. Where as to us owning the data in our industry, and having that information and holding it tight and not sharing it with anyone else. That's how we've made the money for the past 100 years. Whereas to them, they're saying, we're going to make the money by sharing it with everyone. So to them their disruptive moment, what they're going to do with it, the amazing thing they're going to do with it is they're going to take that moment, and they're going to take that information. And the beautiful thing they're going to do with it is they're going to find a way to make money with that data now. That's their moment. And that moment, I think is passed me by I don't know if it's passed you by you're a little more progressive than I am. But I think that you're going to see in the next 4050 years, that's how they're going to make incredible amounts of money is by saying I'm open, you open. Cool, you're open and you're open. Now let's all get rich by finding ways to make money with the open data. That's all.
Doug Draper 31:54
Yeah, yeah. That's a paradigm mind shift for sure. Awesome. All right. Bring us. Yeah.
Pete Mento 32:02
So you know, my my last piece here. It's a little bit different. And I, I keep seeing this in the news man, like, customer Sue and freight forwarders. Nothing new. Right? We used to get sued over stuff like damaging cargo. You know, things like that. But, boy, are they coming up with creative reasons to take us to court. So cyber attacks. You had a cyber attack, and I couldn't get my stuff delivered, get a cyber attack and my stuff got delivered late, you had a cyber attack in my information got without you gave me some bad advice. I asked you for information and you gave me some advice. And that advice got me into trouble. You know, all these creative ways take us to court, it might my first as a Davis worked for some pretty litigious freight forwarders in and of themselves. My first response is did you read the contract? Did you Did you read the terms and conditions of the contract that we had you sign that your legal team put me through the wringer before you sign because I've been on those incredibly long calls, where my attorney and your attorney rip each other's hair out for two or three hours. And I was pretty sure that we weren't going to get this business. And then someone put pen to paper, or E doc to E doc. And now we're doing business and everything was hunky dory. But now after the fact, the down economy, all of a sudden, something went a little haywire. And although we're still doing business with each other, you've decided you're gonna sue me over something that was literally unlikely to happen in the first place. It may be outside the scope of our contract. That this doesn't seem right. But I'm telling you, Doug, I think this is going to happen a lot. With I really do. I'm looking at, you know, the the new stories we're seeing about people getting sued over cyber attacks, people getting sued over stuff that happened during the COVID years. And I think that now that the COVID stuff's behind us, there's a lot of attorneys who are knocking on doors saying, Hey, you might have a lawsuit, and people are listening to it. I think we're gonna see a lot more of this stuff. So freight forwarders, but I start warming up, pal. I think it's going to be this way for a while.
Doug Draper 34:18
Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe the only saving grace to that, I guess from a service provider side would be you know, I don't want to I don't even know this is if this is a thing, but like the COVID rule, right? There's so many things that came into play that you know, an act of God or errors and admissions and things of that nature. So I could see a class action suit being filed by Dewey Cheatham and Howe law firm. And, you know, try to go after that kind of thing. I think you nailed it with the contract. There's going to be clauses in there that people have already figured out through COVID on how to word it appropriately. And the insurance for errors and omissions and the You know, the liability aspect of it. I think it'll be interesting. I think it'll get a little pitch and then it'll taper off because the wolves will realize there's nothing there to bite on anymore. But maybe the law firm I just mentioned, would put together a class action and make a lot of noise and stuff. But it's interesting topic for sure.
Pete Mento 35:18
It's just madness. You know, it's these lawyers. I think they're just trying to get someone to settle. And it just parasites, man, it's death by 1000 cuts.
Doug Draper 35:27
Yeah, for sure. All right. I think that that's gonna do it. I think it was a good show today. What do you think good show?
Pete Mento 35:34
Oh, I agree. Always a good show. Happy to have you back from Cincinnati, Powell.
Doug Draper 35:39
Thank you. That's awesome. And I want to thank all of our listeners, for tuning in. We'd like to think we bring something to the table in this industry with our experience and give it a little levity during halftime. So thank you all for listening. And thanks for CAP logistics for putting this whole thing on. We wouldn't be here pontificating and expressing our opinions without them. So thank you very much. And that's it. I think that's called a wrap Pete and we'll see everybody later, including you. We'll catch you next week.
Pete Mento 36:07
Thanks, Doug. See you next week. Thanks. Alright. Take care everybody.