Global Trade This Week – February 6th, 2023
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching Global Trade This Week with Pete Mento and Doug Draper.
Doug Draper 0:10
Welcome to another edition of global trade this week. My name is Doug Draper. I'm one half of the team that brings you some good fodder, and hopefully some educational material on our wonderful supply chain and logistics industry. But I'm only half. The other half of the tag team is my good friend, Mr. Pete mento, who has been falling out from some wicked cold up in the Northeast. So Pete, how you doing?
Pete Mento 0:39
Well, I'm warmer now. But that was awful bug was awful. And I left Minnesota for a reason, man. And he's the last couple of days. They they were they were bracing. That is for sure. It makes me reconsider living in Florida.
Doug Draper 0:57
Yeah. When we were talking before the show about Mount Washington up, it was like, it was so cold, like another atmospheric pressure came down or something nuts like that. It's made pretty good national news. So cold.
Pete Mento 1:12
Yeah, it was one of those science moments where I had to get someone to send me a YouTube video to explain it to me. So yet again, the internet teaches me something. Thanks, internet. Yeah, I learned something from the internet this week on how the stratosphere apparently came down from the winds. And above it, it was it was absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, how cold it was. With the Wind chill at one point was 40 below. And then again, the fact that yesterday, it was nearly 50 degrees means that at one point, it was almost 70 degrees warmer yesterday than it was the day before. It's to be 70 degrees. It's like that it's a pleasant, but that to me is the optimal temperature. So it was almost the optimal temperature warmer than it was the day before. I think that's just preposterous.
Doug Draper 2:09
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what, it's the extremes. The warmer, it's hotter and hotter in the summer and colder and colder and murdered. So that, but you know, what this show is not about the atmosphere, or whether the show is about global trade, supply chain logistics and how it impacts our listeners. So I think that's the best one I got, man.
Pete Mento 2:30
Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 2:31
know that.
Pete Mento 2:33
God bless you, man, you you sent us. You, you were kind enough to send us your, your, your topics first, we kind of have one word of tag team this week. And that's the m two alliances breaking apart. All good things must come to an end, good. Being in the eye of the beholder. Over the course, the past couple of years. Those of us that had to purchase capacity from this alliance. It was like, you know, trying to buy fresh bread in the Soviet Union, you waited in line, you're hopeful. And you really hope by the time that you got to the front of the line, there was still bread buy in luckily, you know, if you had a relationship that helped a lot, too. It was a brutal couple of years. And that alliance worked out well. But now we're seeing that breakdown. And from my perspective, I have been saying for quite a while, Doug, that it was only a matter of time, before parts of the, you know, the party of these carriers began to fall apart. And the, you know, the chumminess of all these carriers kind of getting along, turned into them just in the street throwing each other into traffic and, you know, something out of a spy novel or a mob, a mob movie from the 1930s I'm expecting this to get really ugly, just turning into a knife fight and two in a closet, you know, dudes ice picking each other Metaphorically speaking, of course, because the market is going to get bad, really bad. And they're going to start fighting over customers and customers are going to start really screaming to the ground. Because as much as I've been sitting here saying, we should have some degree of grace with these ocean carriers. There are a lot of people who remember very well, what it was like over the course of last couple of years, when they were dealing with ocean carriers who did anything but show them even a modicum of mercy. And what was one of the worst years couple of years that we've ever seen. So these breakdowns of this alliance, I think you're gonna see more complicated breakups of other alliances. And then you're going to start seeing that snapping of relationships and then the, the rates go even farther, as they're unable to begin. To control capacity, Doug, so stay tuned. It's about to get weird.
Doug Draper 5:05
Yeah. You know, the two things. And that's a good point, the one thing that you just brought up that I have not thought about is, is, you know, the impact and the fighting, right? And maybe that's a strong word, but who gets what customer at what level? Right? Because we've co opted our services. So when we feel empowered, who, who gets what? So, a couple of things that popped out at me number one, this was initially a 10 year agreement, right was signed in 2015. So the point was to to, I'm not that familiar with the 2015 aspect of it, Pete, but it's 10 years, there's lots of things that can change business models have changed. So you know, it's not like it's this immediate cut off you said a knife fight metaphorically. And maybe it'll turn into that, but the way I read it as hey, it's a good run time to move in our separate directions. But the key thing here I was like, Well, what's what, what's the direction each one is going? So it sounds like from research I've done is MSC has grown in size. And they're kind of doubling down on their fleet and assets. Really big enough to go it alone, where Maersk is talking more about growing as an integrated logistics provider. And we've talked and seen that whenever they've looked into investing in aircraft and expanding things beyond just just ocean freight. So, you know, I don't think one is either right or wrong. It's just two different directions. It's a good opportunity after eight years to break it, but there's still two years left in the Alliance so there there's there lies the rub, Pete, is it it's all fine and dandy till you get into the court and and you're going through the divorce and everybody gets pissed at each other and things start getting wonky.
Pete Mento 6:55
My head goes, right, it's like, it's like whenever you see celebrity couples, they're going to gracefully decouple, you know, we're gonna have, we're gonna have a loving decoupling, and it's like that software from the 70s You know, there ain't no good guy. There ain't no bad guy. It's just me and we just disagree. And like, you know, they're
Unknown Speaker 7:14
gonna want to have that one loving embrace and, and maybe we'll go to parties together, it'll be cool.
Pete Mento 7:20
I know. They're gonna be fighting over who gets ant Rundas pheasant that they got to the wedding day. And they're gonna be arguing over who gets what weekend with a golden retriever they just got last Christmas, it's gonna get bad. It's just a question of when dude, it's just a question of when these are publicly traded companies that have shareholders who want their money, money, money, money, money, and you're going to end up going out each other. And it's going to be birds when released the house at some point, and I'm here for it. Dude, I got the warm popcorn. I got the same water on ice. And I'm gonna be blocking off time in my viewing calendar to catch every single second of the season of Game of containers. I am here for dude, I cannot wait. Cannot wait.
Doug Draper 8:08
Yeah, I think you're right after the two. They still got two years to shake it all out. There's a lot of lines that will be drawn in the sand as far as hey, this sounded good. And it will happen. But like you said, there's gonna
Pete Mento 8:21
be old duck duck just wait if one of these parties starts seeing other people Oh, I can't wait. The best kind of reality show. Best cat reality show.
Doug Draper 8:34
Yeah, that's true. Man. This checks all the boxes on that. So it will be it'll be interesting. I had heard that. That Maersk wasn't really interested in Yeah, there's some smaller alliances that they have. But as far as trying to develop something to the scope of them to with their integrated logistics play efforts, the tension or kind of migrating and not focused on a alliances but making themselves more engaging with their customer base. Yeah,
Pete Mento 9:03
I mentioned this in LinkedIn. I'm fascinated in what Maersk is doing from the from the aspect of the total logistics business entity. You know, from, from the point of picking up your box, stuffing it in a container, putting it on a ship, clearing it through customs and everything in between being able to do that and having the wherewithal to be able to deliver it. That is such a big lift. And they're they're putting all the pieces in place to do it. And I have a lot of friends that work at Maersk, so I'm rooting for it. I just think it's it's a lot man. They have the money and they've got the time. And it appears they had the leadership to put the patient's into it to develop the engine developed to do it. So there's no rush. I mean, there's a rush, but they'll they're gonna put the time and the effort into it and be patient collect this thing Cook, and hopefully come up with a, you know, with a great solution that does all these things. So we'll see man, I'm looking forward to seeing how that how that plays out
Doug Draper 10:09
with them. Yeah, it's interesting. The one thing on the MSC site and I've always been a fan of this in my career is providing services to the service provider can be very beneficial, right. And that's kind of the angle that I think and this these go into is that, hey, well, we'll fill our boats with other people's freight and move that and they're providing services to the service provider, meaning, you know, the three PL 's of the world, I know there's direct direct contracts out there, but I kind of see that as an angle, it could be beneficial for MSC. So there's the flip side, you spoke about marriage. That's my take on the MSC
Pete Mento 10:49
we talk a lot about supply chain resiliency, and having a stable supply chain. And I question how comfortable I would be with handing over too much of my supply chain to one company and saying, Hey, Big Blue, from purchaser through payment, I'm trusting you with a significant portion of the movement of my goods. I don't care how financially stable one company is I'm giving them way too much capture of my supply chain, I'm giving them too much control of the decisions that move my goods in my supply chain from one place to another. And that's just a bit unsettling to me. As opposed to when you talk about an MSc of CMA hapag Lloyd, who sell services to a service provider that allows me to have a bigger market basket of providers, and to be able to, you know, push that liability amongst another a bunch of different groups. And when you have these, these alliances, it at least makes me feel like I've got other business partners who are pushing them to make decisions that are at least in unison, and they're making decisions that are for them one against the other. And I can use three different carriers. And I can I can push my my, you know, my my credits and liabilities across those two. I don't like having all my eggs in one basket.
Doug Draper 12:07
Yeah. It'll be interesting, especially the next two years that we both agree on for sure.
Pete Mento 12:12
Like, Yeah, buddy. Yeah. And that brings us to halftime, brought to us by our good friends at CAP logistics to learn more about CAP logistics, please do visit them at cap logistics.com. Doug, what do you have for us this week?
Doug Draper 12:29
Yeah, yeah, thank you. So I saw something this weekend that caught my attention, and really made me quite quite nervous is that there's something coming down. And in 2038, it's been referred to as the 2038 problem. Why 2038 or y2k 38. And it's essentially, there's going to be a time formatting bug in computer systems, with representing time after, oh, 350 and seven seconds of the Coordinated Universal Time. So Pete, this is crazy here. Here's what's going to happen. The problem exists in a system which measures Unix time, the number of seconds elapsed since the Unix epoch, which started on January 1 1970, it stores it stores that in a signal 32 bit integer. And the date time is only capable of representing integers between negative 2.3 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I could read another three paragraphs on all this. Basically, they say, you know, who cares? It'll be fixed. Right? That's 15 years away. I think y2k everybody was like, Holy shit, five years before. And that's gonna be 38 years earlier. So I don't really understand integers or Unix time, I barely even understand what the Coordinated Universal Time is. So you know, all this kind of stuff. It just, it's not going to get any attention. It'll be a quick little blurb in the media will fix the problem. I'm not that worried about it. And people aren't going to really care about it. 1159 on 1999 The world's gonna implode? That is sexy. That's a good story that hypes people up very definitive people gonna ban that, you know, I don't understand what to do the 31st energy or means, and I don't really care. So it's an interesting story. But the bottom line is, we'll fix it. 15 years out. Chet GPT will fix it. Just ask just ask the computer, they'll take care of it.
Pete Mento 14:37
I started thinking about baking like 20 seconds in here.
Unknown Speaker 14:41
It was just getting so complicated. That's,
Pete Mento 14:44
I mean, yeah. I'm a I'm a big believer in, in software designers. And if there's a if there's like a big huge system wide problem, there's probably going to be one person who's in a team of a lot of people who is very well compensated to come up with a way to extrapolate a way to fix all of it with like, five keystrokes in Excel spreadsheet. And like 25 You know, and just like press a button. Yeah, because I spent way too much time in Wayfair with these engineers who really just wanted to finish their project and go watch, you know, Star Trek Voyager and not have to deal with this problem. Or like, go play disc golf, and smoke a gang a weed and not have to deal with this issue. So I trust in, in their ability to fix this problem. They're just so much smarter than the problem. They will complete the oldest so
Doug Draper 15:47
okay, my friend, what do you got for your halftime? Yeah.
Pete Mento 15:52
Boy, Keenan song for you. From soul coughing. It's called black helicopters, I believe on the Songs in the Key of X songs inspired by The X Files. Excellent. Excellent record. Excellent, excellent record. So you have this great song by Foo Fighters on there that I believe has not been released anywhere else. But a great album. There's the last three verses are it was a weather below. And it's been stuck in my head for days. And as someone who generally believes that if it's not my country who's listening, and dissecting every single thing that I do digitally, it's probably someone else's. This weekend for me was just hysterical. It was hysterical, Doug. So there was for those of you who have who were, I guess, living in Amish country over the past four or five days, and did not have access to some kind of digital news source. There was a very large balloon that had been floating above the United States using apparently, the jet stream and some degrees of its own inability to control its own destiny, and was gathering data and information. Who knows what kind, if you listen to our friends in the Chinese Communist Party, is weather data. If you listen to our friends at the NSA, it's very, very bad information, useful information. And it was spying on us. Now, at the same time, that this is all happening, all the talking heads in the news, were saying either to shoot it down, shoot it down, the Chinese are going to learn whether or not I wear a hairpiece when no one's looking. Or it was just leave it be. You don't want to provoke the Chinese into a war over their birthday balloons. And then we learned that there was another one that has that was floated down in South America, a very good leader learned that there were a number of them that had been floating long before President Biden had been in office. All speculation was ramping dug. They were gathering information about missile fields. They were learning the passwords of all these teenagers. Lord knows what that balloon was doing. Maybe it was learning if it could drop nuclear missiles or bombs from the balloon. Heavens. And then, you know, as was expected, at some point was yesterday, right? They sent a couple of F 22 is up and shot a missile at it. And we'd spent like, I don't know three quarters of a million dollars to pop their balloon. beastie boy song by the way? Yeah, it's on Keenan, you should definitely check out. And we went and recovered it, or pieces of it. Allegedly. Yes, we could put it back together again and send it to our friends in China. Now, I of course thought this was hysterical duck because if the Chinese want to spy on this, the they just have to turn on their servers in Beijing and watch everything from tick tock the amount of data that they are pulling. For those of you who have not read the user agreement for tick tock, here's some highlights. If you have tick tock on your phone, they are able to pull all the information from your emails, all of the photos that you put on there. Whether you have given the photo or the video to tick tock or not they have access to it if they want it. All the keystrokes that you put on your phone for all the other applications you have on your phone. You've literally opened up all of your digital, all of your digital communications to Tik Tok. then this isn't me like tinfoil hat that this is like literally. You also give it access to other computers that you're using outside of your there's a reason why we're not leaving it on government funds. Also, the Chinese are always as are the Russians as our, like our allied countries that we work with, aimlessly gathering information about us, not just through cyber, but hey, I don't know if you knew this, guys. But above that weather balloon are satellites that are constantly orbiting the Earth. That can probably tell you like what year, your license plate like the sticker on it, what year it expires. The level of detail that these things have on those cameras is absurd. And you're worried about the weather below. And so I just I thought it was hysterical, Doug like this, this weather balloon was going to be the end of democracy when we are endlessly under surveillance. I mean, I had to ask Alexa, how many weather balloons China had? And fortunately, she's always listening. So she could tell me.
Doug Draper 21:12
Yeah, it's yeah, you know what? It's because it's tangible. Right? The other thing like tick tock and seeing the keystrokes that's intangible to me. So it's hard to comprehend the surveillance aspect of that satellites. I can't see him. I don't really know what they're doing. Maybe they're doing what you said, maybe they're not but a balloon that's silhouetted against them against the moon. Get it out what a great, great shot. That was whatever photo journalist took that picture is going to win up an MC or whatever, something with photojournalism. But the funny thing is, I love the fact that Biden saying I told him to shoot it down on Wednesday, and the military was like, man, that'd be quiet. We're gonna do it our way. I don't know, my two thoughts is, hey, it's brilliant that you let it fly over the country. So we can collect information on what they were looking at. And part of me is like, seems pretty stupid that you let it fly across the country before you shut it down. And the whole thing about they didn't want to hurt anybody when it comes down. That's a bunch of hooey in my opinion. So I don't know. But the bottom is the bottom line on this one. Pete is your right here, look over here. very tangible. It's a balloon, where the reality is, the data and the gathering of information about us about what we're doing on a daily basis is so much more prevalent than Ebola.
Pete Mento 22:43
I can make it even easier for your dad that there apparently was an argument between the Air Force and Space Force about who was supposed to be shooting it down. stitching it was. And if you want to really, really, really good laugh, Doug. Just go to the space review.com And then search for the number of Chinese spy satellites currently in orbit. They'll tell you exactly how many exactly how accurate they are. Which ones have infrared, which ones do ultraviolet, how like, which ones can show people in their houses like walking around in real time, what the operating costs are per second per minute, how far they can be taken off orbits into new orbits, how often that's actually done. It will make you so uncomfortable, and then look up the American ones, because burgers better. It's absolutely incredible the amount of unending surveillance and these other ones by the way, they're just published. These are the ones that are unpublished that, you know, SpaceX puts up every once in a while for extra money that are unknown payloads. So I just I couldn't get enough. I could not laugh enough about this, in reality that export controls have so much to do with espionage and the amount of stuff I will be shocked, I will be shocked if they don't pull up American technology out of the ocean. I will be absolutely I wouldn't be shocked. But I will. I will. I will see I will. I'll eat like part of one of my tennis shoes. I guess if they don't pull out like something that came from an American company that was that was mistakenly exported to China that ended up on that bet then balloon duck.
Doug Draper 24:28
I'll be shocked. Yeah. Well, we always talk about not going into politics, but we've pretty much done that. And you know what? They can tell us whatever they want, when they pull that out. If they want to say that it was Mickey Mouse. What are we gonna say? No. I mean, they can basically spin whatever they recover from the ocean. And how I really was.
Pete Mento 24:48
I love that meme of them saying that we're going to set the underdog balloon from bases over there for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We're going to send the underdog balloon over there and teach them a lesson. Right where I was halftime which went well into one this week, brought to you by our friends at halftime logistics my fault as always, because I can't help myself. To learn more about CAP logistics, please visit them at cap logistics.com. I will do my second one because Doug kicked us off today. My second one has to do with earnings calls last week, and there were a number of them. expediters reported some fantastic earnings as a CH Robinson, which I guess shouldn't be surprised, but because of the news of the dismissal of their CEO, Bob Easter feel that a lot of the swirly rumors around how they were doing. Economically, it catches me by surprise, there was the fantastic results from CSV that came out on Friday, I believe as well. But all three of them. All three of those also came with some warnings stuck. So from ch Robinson, there was an affirmation that they were very pleasantly surprised and happy about how their international division had done. But but they said that they've been paying close attention to how it did over the course of the next couple of earnings periods. Expeditors also was was, you know, hopefully closer testing, they're expecting there to be some changes based on changes the global economic, global economic, downward pressure DSV. Like it typical Danish style just came right out and said, this was a great quarter, but we're getting ready for there to be a change. So you should be getting ready for there to be a change over what's going to be happening over the next couple of quarters. There is on a roll buddy. The global economic winds that have been forcing downward pressure on rates, downward pressure on volumes, downward pressure on consumption. It's hitting our business. We have we've all been seeing Robinson mentioned this as well they're expecting cuts the cost to deal with profitability. That's going to mean layoffs. It's going to hit our industry, it's going to mean more people being asked to take pay cuts to be more people being asked to leave. And there being more layoffs. And it's not a surprise. It's just painful. Because it's going to hit people we know and love, then it's going to mean more reshuffling. Throughout our industry, Doug, so 2023. And the next few months, it's going to be the spring of artists content. And let's just hope that we bounce back as quickly as we can.
Doug Draper 27:30
Yeah. Yeah, the one thing on that one piece that struck me is that it what's to come is going to be not quite as good as what was already reported in in q4. So you're right, we're seeing it in the news. Now we'll see it on paper and In the financials, I think, in the next quarter. So I love DSV. I mean, they kind of crushed it a little bit, and they're just flat out. They didn't spin it at all they're like here, you know, we did a hell of a job. Kudos and look out boys, it's going to be a little bit different. In the new year,
Pete Mento 28:05
it was very, it was very honest. Right? It was like this, and we had a great quarter. But we're not, we're not going to sit here and say that we're not facing some difficult times ahead. So we'll do what we need to do to take care of our people and our clients. So just, you know, be aware where we're gonna sell hard, we're gonna do the right things. This is people always talked about how being in logistics was, you've probably heard the phrase recession proof business. I remember always hearing that, like I work in recession proof business. And nobody works in a recession proof business. And what we're particularly feeling now is so many of us that work in a business where was faced buddy, we over hired, we had to, we had to hire a lot of people to deal with just this the crushing weight of the logistics infrastructure that couldn't keep up with demand. And now that demand is slowing down. We have great technology that's come into play, we have better processes, and just volumes gone down. So you know, we're, we're dealing with that, but we'll deal with it. And we'll we'll do okay. So it's just part of how we grow and evolve as an industry. Unfortunately, you know, I got laid off a couple of months ago, and I'm working again. So we'll just for those of you that happens to it's going to get better and you know, blue skies are ahead. You know,
Doug Draper 29:29
I love the positivity. Gotta be Yeah, I actually have shoes on today. I don't know if you ever heard named Gary Vee, right?
Pete Mento 29:38
Yeah, remember that guy? He's like a positivity guy. Yeah,
Doug Draper 29:42
yeah. Well, I have shoes on. If I was flexible enough, I'd stick them up here on the camera. There Gary Vee shoes and one shoe says positivity. And the other one says, I can't even see it here. It's something positivity and
Unknown Speaker 29:58
positive sequitur,
Doug Draper 29:59
positive. tivity I don't know, but I have, I'm walking on the concept of positivity literally on my feet. So it's, I love your whole reason I brought that up because I love your optimism. So, so I'm going to end it, we're going back to old school here, they're gonna talk about some trucks. Right? So a gentleman that I have the utmost respect for, and I had a chance to meet him when he came out to speak at a logistics conference a couple of years ago, is the ATA president and CEO, Chris Speier. He spoke last week to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which met for the first time this session. And he was basically he was there along with the other folks representing rail and ocean and others, but I wanted to focus on on Chris's take on that. And he talked about the biggest challenges facing the trucking industry. So I'm just re retelling the things that he spoke about, and we can comment on on a few of them are none of them, but I think it's important for our audience to hear them again. First one, congestion, right. And I think one of the takeaways is that, you know, there's a lot of money that the trucking industry puts into the Highway Trust Fund, and which pays for for roads and infrastructure. And his take was use it wisely. And don't invest all of it just on fixing the existing infrastructure, but we need to expand it because the roads, the bridges, the three ways are just not big enough. secure enough to to handle the growth. There's all kinds of statistics you could look at that talks about the number of the amount of gallons of fuel that idling, trucks idling. So congestion, that's real use the money that the trucking industry generates for the Highway Trust Fund, use it wisely. The next one, most people wouldn't have thought about this. But if you look every day when you're out driving around truck parking, people think it's really not that big of a deal. But I guarantee you we'll see trucks parked in a variety of different ways across across our nation on literally on the highways are off ramps are parked in Walmart, parking lots are, are off to the side. So they need to find safe, secure and well lit areas. Driver shortage. Another big one there was talking about making it interesting and attractive for the younger generation to get behind a truck and, and move forward. The one that he spoke about that I think is the most impactful is the AV five. And that's defining independent contractors and who they work for out in California. The thing that was underscored is it's a choice. They're not being forced, independent contractors are not being forced, forced to do anything or work outside of their will. That is their choice. And we've talked about, you know, the last cowboys out there, the independent truck driver. So I think that one's most important because it's going to set precedent. California is gonna set precedent across the across the entire country. And I think the one thing that could pop up is is unionization, if if things progressed too far, and how that would impact. And then the last one, electrification you got to talk about that, but the overall theme was, hey, come in, but let it progress in its own time. And the way it needs to progress don't try to force it to happen or mandate sooner than the technology is out there to support it. So anyway, I thought it was important for our audience to rehash my interpretation of those five. I think Chris is an amazing individual and he represents the ATA very well, and I wanted to throw those out. So I don't know P anything jumped out at you any any comments,
Pete Mento 33:51
or a lot of them do. This will be a this will end up being a another one of these things where three years from now, we'll say remember when the whole supply chain was gummed up. Remember when it was on every single nightly news conversation and remember when it was all over LinkedIn, all over Twitter when the American supply chain was gummed up. And people that were moving cargo were heroes, and we were never gonna forget. We seem to have forgotten everything. And remember when Chris came out, people came out for the ETA remember when Peter Churchwell the first year back after when things got normal a TPM which is happening very soon, got up on stage and said it's time for us to remember the lessons of the past and do something. No, I'm gonna go no, I kind of forgot about that. Like, Yeah, no kidding. Because look at where we are. We had this opportunity to do something. And rather than do that we all just slip back into our old stupid habits. Because it was easier to do that than to change their man. Like here's one great you're talking about congestion I was doing some quick math here. So 80,000 people a day drive down to Boston from New Hampshire. And when you annualize that, it's it's somewhere in the neighborhood. I think I finished it up here it was, you know, it came out to 40 million trips a year, for 40 million people, trips a year over what's essentially two significant highways twice a day, and the congestion is awful. absolutely awful. You know, we don't have in Hampshire, a commuter rail. And it's mostly held up by people who just want to keep people in cars because they sell gas and keep people going to buy snacks and coffee. And if you could get people off the roads, you'd have less congestion for cargo to move. We don't have sufficient infrastructure for the bridges here so that the intermodal works well enough and rail companies have been asking for, for all the cement, the asphalt and everything else that we move from here to Maine and Canada, because we need infrastructure change, not going to happen, right? Training for young drivers, to get better training for them to encourage people to want to do it. It is a absolutely miserable industry to get people to go into because we don't make it a better industry for them to stand. You know, we don't give them the amenities and the respect that they deserve while they're on the job. And then when things are great, we pay them great. And when things are bad, we forget they exist. We have to change the way that we pay drivers. And it can be through unions, that's fine. But why can't we pay them a fair annualized wage instead of paying them by the trip? Someone's got to step up and start treating them that way. So yeah, I get pretty passionate about this, because nothing drives me crazy. You're done. Then just constantly making the same mistakes over and over again as an industry and then acting surprised when we fall on her face again, but
Doug Draper 36:59
yeah, yeah. So all right, that's all I have on that topic. I think we're wrapping it up.
Pete Mento 37:06
Sir. We are so thanks, dog as always for you know, being a maverick to my goose I guess. And thanks everyone here for Halloween I die. Which think of a better one Iceman a maverick. Maybe? I don't know. Thanks. Well, then I would get like throat cancer and I would be crapping the soup. Well, I'm going to work on this. Thanks, everybody, for joining us for another great edition of algomatrad this week. Thanks for tuning in the booth for you know, not getting chocolate sauce and, and setting the light all over his control board. helps get your homework done, even. And thanks to all of you for always coming back and listening and telling your friends we really do appreciate it. And we'll see you again next week for another great edition of trade this week.
Doug Draper 37:52
Take care bye