The CarriersEdge Podcast | Episode #106
Jane Jazrawy: Hi, and welcome to the CarriersEdge Podcast. I am your host or one of your hosts Jane Jazrawy. I am one of the co-founders of CarriersEdge, and with me as always.
Mark Murrell: Mark Murrell, other co-founder of CarriersEdge.
Jane: And this is the first episode of our new season, and I don't know what episode number it is.
Mark: I just told you.
Jane: I know and I forgot.
Mark: Okay. 106.
Jane: Thank you. It's episode 106.
Mark: Yes.
Jane: I know you just told me and I was trying to get you to tell me again and then you weren't listening.
Mark: I didn't hear what you were saying.
Jane: Oh, sorry.
Mark: I was listening to the opening music. I was distracted by that, but that's fine. We are here for a new season. Yes, we've got some new segments that we are going to start including in this podcast so that we've got some different stuff to talk about, and we've got a few things today to go through?
Jane: Well, first, before you go into that, one of the things that I need to do is say, remember to follow our podcast so that you reminded every time we drop a new one. And also, to share it a little bit with your with your friends if you find that it is informative.
Mark: Ah, yes.
Jane: And Useful.
Mark: I feel like we're YouTubers on that.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: Hit the bell and like and subscribe-
Jane: Yes. Exactly.
Mark: Hit the bell to get notifications of every episode. Yes. So there we go.
We've done our promotional bit.
Jane: We've done our marketing promotional part.
Mark: Yes. So, also, we've now had the summer off. We've had I guess it's been two and a half months since we did our last episode. And lots of things have happened throughout the industry. Seems that, well, maybe they've- the bottom has been reached and we are starting to slowly climb out of the bottom. Economically, things are starting to very slowly give the suggestion that they might be better.
Jane: Mark is doing a lot of hand waving gestures that-.
Mark: Yeah, you don't really know.
Jane: that- yeah.
Mark: I don't really wanna commit. Nobody wants to say it out loud, but it does seem like people are thinking that it is starting to get better.
Jane: I think people just don't wanna talk about it because it seems to be- make it worse when you talk about it.
Mark: Don't curse it. Yes.
Jane: Yeah
Mark: Don't don't jinx it by talking about it too much.
Jane: But it does seem like things are- they're not going down
Mark:No.
Jane: Anymore. They seem to be just kinda beige.
Mark: The economy is just beige.
Jane: The economy is beige right now.
Mark: Yes.
Jane: It's not red and it's not, you know, what's the- green. We're we're in a beige.
Mark: Beige. Yes.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: It's a gray scale version-
Jane: Taupe. We're in Taupe.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: We feel Taupe.
Mark: Yes. So we had some adventures over the summer, some West Coast adventures taking the- we took the ferry over to Seattle and had lovely time talking to the Washington Trucking Association. Their safety group there, that was a nice experience. And on the way back, on the ferry ride, on the way back, we saw a humpback whale. So
Jane: Yes.
Mark: Hard to argue with that.
Jane: We also were insanely tech nerds and went to Microsoft-
Mark: Oh yes.
Jane: Microsoft's head office and nerded out a little bit.
Mark: Yeah, that was like a bit of a pilgrimage for old school tech nerds to go to Microsoft.
Jane: Yeah, except I was very disappointed that they didn't have any sweatshirts or t-shirts or anything that had anything about Microsoft Word, which is my favourite Microsoft every- anything. And there's nothing for Word fans. It was all about Minecraft and Xbox.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: But, you know, they really should give a nod to all of these old ladies who loved Word.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Myself included.
Mark: Paid to get those fifty or so buildings actually built. And they're not exaggerating. They have, like, fifty buildings on their campus.
Jane: It's a it's a small it's a small, I wouldn't say town, like, maybe a small city?
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: It is so big. It's so huge. I can't imagine being in charge of that.
Mark: Yes.
Jane: That's crazy. But it was it was quite interesting to see. Even though, you know, we've spent a lot of time cursing Microsoft for, you know, one reason or another, and and often they're big, bad, Microsoft who controls the universe.
This this all started when Internet Explorer, back in the day, this is going back a long time.
Internet Explorer- you were forced to use Internet Explorer. You couldn't uninstall it off your PC, you had to- Internet Explorer was there, and it was basically, you know, you were- not forced to, but if you didn't wanna use it, if you wanted to use something else, it was very difficult. So they got in trouble for that. And they took that away, they took Clippy away, which is also good. That was a Word- that was an Office, I hate to say the word feature, but it was a stupid annoying cartoon paper clip that helped you write a letter.
Mark: Yeah. Helped you with things that you already knew how to do and mostly just got in your way.
Jane: You know, I think it is kind of the precursor to AI.
Mark: Oh, absolutely. And it was as stupid as most AI is now.
Yes, and irritating and annoying.
Jane: Yeah, so we we hung around Microsoft for a couple hours.
Mark: Yeah. We had a good tour there and then came back. And what else did we do over the summer? Well, we did some kayaking. We went and saw all the wildlife: seals and sea lions and otters and things
Jane: The things that you do in Victoria, Yeah.
Mark: And, we climbed a mountain a couple weeks ago and saw a turkey vulture which I'd never seen in the wild.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: Very cool.
Jane: Yeah, we- will we climbed a really big hill that was not quite a mountain, and then we climbed an actual mountain.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And that was that. And when we say climbing a mountain, we went on trails-
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: to the top of a mountain, which is so-
Mark: Yeah, we're not having to put any spikes in the side of the rock.
Jane: Yeah, we're not we're not using spikes.
Mark: We're using the trails.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: But still, it was a grind.
Jane: It was.
Mark: It was definitely a grind.
Jane: It was. And this is not gonna be the last mountain that we climb. We are going to be making up for lost time.
Mark: Yeah. We came back and started looking at other mountains on the island that we can be climbing. So it's been good. And now on the work front, we have have been busy with a a bunch of things as well. Top of the list at this time of year, of course,
Best Fleets to Drive For is open for nominations again. We launched last week, not quite a week ago as we record this. And the seventeenth year we've got running now, so I am taking a lead on doing the validations for the nominated fleets this year, which I haven't done for ages and ages. And it's been kind of fun and looking at it and seeing who's getting nominated and what new companies are coming in.
Jane: And if you-
Mark: Today, I had my first company where it wasn't a driver, where it was somebody who works in the office and freely admitted that. Like, rule number one: gotta be nominated by a driver.
Jane: Yeah. They're not reading things.
Mark: We actually have an acknowledgment, before you can submit the form, you have to check the box that says, "I swear I am a driver", or something like that.
Jane: Well, they could be not reading things and they just think that that's, you know, "I am not a robot", or something like that. I would say if you want to so the rule is you must be a driver or an owner-operator driving- working for a fleet.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And I think I think even driver trainers are kinda- no, driver trainers are- if they're drivers
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: if they drive. that is, like, the one rule that you have to follow
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: and always every year. But it is- you go to bestfleetstodrivefor.com and the nomination form is on the home page. And so if you are a fleet and you want to be nominated, you don't you can you can, you know, request that a driver, you could get a driver who you know likes you. And and sort of suggest that maybe you could be nominated.
So it doesn't have to be-
Mark: Yeah well that's part of why I get so frustrated with it because it's a low bar.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: There's gotta be some driver who likes the company well enough to nominate them. And, yeah, you can ask people to do it or put it out there and say, hey, we would love it if somebody would nominate us for this.
Jane: Yeah, put it on social media or, you know, in a driver chat room or, you know, however you wanna do it, just ask a driver to- you know, if you can't get a driver to nominate you as a best fleet, you might not be. You may wanna ask the question, "but why doesn't anybody wanna nominate us?" So just keep that in the back of your mind.
Mark: All of a sudden, I had a- just a vibe of Jeff Foxworthy there. You might be
Jane: You might be.
Mark: you might not be a best fleet, yes. But yeah, so they're starting to come in. The the usual suspects are going through their nominations and they're getting some new blood as well, which is nice to see.
Always love to see fleets getting nominated for the first time and hearing the things that drivers have to say. So that's that's been an addition to my week over the the past eight days or so and I've been enjoying it.
Jane: And just to remind everybody, to be eligible, you have to be a for-hire fleet, operating in the US or Canada, and operating ten tractor trailers, well, that's the ten tractor trailers, you have to have at least that, and you also have to be operating under your own authority. So If you have ten ten trucks
Mark: At least ten
Jane: At least ten trucks.
Mark: Not exactly ten. Like, you can have eleven and still be eligible.
Jane: You just get nominations, only ten.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: But those are the rules. Yeah. So and we're you know, if you are driving for a what's classed as a "private fleet", but if you are a fleet that is operating under its own authority, then you're fine too.
Mark: Yep. Yeah. If it's something that looks like a private fleet, but is separately incorporated with for-hire authority, that still is fine.
Jane: Yep.
Mark: However, if you're a "driver inc" fleet, don't bother.
Jane: Yeah. Because then it gets really hard to answer the questions.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah, you're crook and you should go away.
Jane: Well...
Mark: You're probably not a best fleet.
Jane: You're probably not a best fleet. Yeah. I think that that is the the general consensus is that "driver inc" fleets tend to not be the best.
Mark: Or in the US, 1099s
Jane: 1099s
Mark: Yeah, and what do they call them? Company company contractor? Or some creative names.
Jane: There was one fleet that was calling it company contractor. Like, it was a "company dash contractor". And that didn't even make sense. So when I was reading it, it it was like, "what? What is this?" And then I realized it's they were basically basically, if you are a driver, And you are a- you're calling yourself a contractor, but you don't have a truck, then you're not operating.
Mark: You may not be a contractor.
Jane: You may not be a contractor if- so that might be happening and you might be knowing that it's against the law. And that's fine or you may not, but it is not, you know, we're not gonna go through the process with your company if that's how the company is operating because it is technically against the law.
Mark: Yep. So we've got those nominations open till Halloween now
Jane: Mhmm.
Mark: And we will see see what this year's crop of participants tells us about what's going on? What's new? Where the trends are? All of that stuff.
Jane: And we changed the we changed up the questionnaire quite a bit. We have some very big we have some very big letters at the beginning of the questionnaire now, with all the things that you need to know. I decided to put them in larger font.
Mark: Oh, yeah.
Jane: Yeah I- hey, it's the first page, no, you know, you don't need to do very much on the first page. So you may as well read a bit.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And, yeah, we've made some questions easier, there's one question about benefits that is gonna be way easier for us to deal with, which is basically, you know, "how much do you how much do you contribute to your benefits?"
Mark: The old "percent of payroll" questions.
Jane: Yes. Which gives us a really good snapshot of what's happening as opposed to the variety of plans and percentages and spousal and family and who's on this and what's on that and blah blah blah blah. It's way too complex, in the US it's very complex, but it can be complex in in Canada as well.
Mark: Mhmm. Yeah. So we're looking forward to getting some good information there, and we'll certainly be talking more about it as we get through the nomination period and get into interviews. The one thing that we already know is going to be slamming us this year is that just the way the dates fall. New Year's Day falls a little bit later in the week, which crushes our time available to do the scoring at the end. And the announcement date on the last Tuesday of January ends up being like the twenty ninth of January or something like that.
So we have a shorter period for getting all of that prepped. So I know it's going to be a little bit of a- it's gonna be a bit of a circus getting all of that done. And just because of the way things have fallen, our conference date is early March. This year, we're going to be- March third and fourth, and we'll have more announcements on that coming up and more details as we get through the fall and winter on that. But that's gonna be exciting, but it's also gonna be a very crammed busy time for us.
Jane: Yeah. I'm gonna be in a bad mood.
Mark: Oh, yeah. It's going to be a little bit loopy on some of these podcast episodes I think as we get into it. So
Jane: Yep.
Mark: That's what's happened on the Best Fleets side of things, but on the non-Best Fleets side, the CarriersEdge side of the house, lots have been happening there as well. We got some new courses out over the summer that are nice to see.
Can you talk a little bit about some of those?
Jane: We- Road Rage and Leadership Skills, I think.
Mark: Yeah. The Leadership Styles and
Jane: Right.
Mark: Yeah, and road rage.
Jane: So, yeah, the ones that we just released, Road Rage and Leadership Skills, and we are coming out with an owner-operator business skills course that is nearly- the audio is nearly finished for that, so it's in the QA stages right now. So it's an update, we had one years ago that was in severe need of an update, so it's been updated.
Mark: Well, I don't think it's updated. You went right back to the drawing board and started fresh.
Jane: Yeah, it's been recreated, basically. It's not it's not updated. It's just recreated. Well, we've written a new one. I think the last one was
Mark: That was 2008.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: That we did that one.
Jane: I I don't think we even looked at it. Oh, no. I think we looked at it, but it was like, "okay, well, that that was nice. Let's do something new." So that one has been, oh, a whole new look. It looks really nice.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And it also has good information in it. So I just have been doing the graphics on it lately, so I I know it looks really nice. And I think that, you know, now our our graphic designers are starting to get with the swing of it. So they're starting to come up with some really really nice looking kind of themes and colours for the for the courses that- like we've always had a bit of a bit more artistic nature to our courses, but I think we're starting to experiment with things. And so the visual look of it is is quite appealing.
But Leadership Skills, we wrote as a- it was a bit of a partnership because we wrote it at the request of one of our customers, and, but we thought it would be something good to have in our library so that everybody can take advantage of it. We have done one on emotional intelligence and leadership skills is a little bit based on that. It's based on- is it based on being a leader using emotional intelligence.
Mark: It's about different styles, from what I recall.
Jane: Yeah. It's different styles, but each one of- the way that you- the idea is that you don't choose a leadership style and do it. You know, that's I am I am this type of leader and this is how I'm gonna act for the entire time. You have to move
Mark: Right.
Jane: between leader- so sometimes you're in a more coaching leadership style,
sometimes you're in a more commanding leadership style depending on what is happening within whatever you're leading. So it could be a department, it could be an entire company, it could be- so, you know, you're a leader. Leaders aren't necessarily people who are just presidents or anything, you can be a leader anywhere, and sometimes, if there's an emergency, you have to be a certain type of leader that you don't want to be all the time. And emotional intelligence is important because you need to know when to shift. You need to know when to assume this kind of leadership or that kind of leadership, and they all have benefits and disadvantages.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And so that's what the course is about. It's trying to figure out- trying to navigate "okay. In what situation am I going to do this? Why is it good to do this? Why wouldn't I do this" and goes through I think it's six or seven different styles.
Mark: What I found really interesting about it a couple of things. So, yeah, the different styles and when to use each one and and how to apply it, what it looks like, when it's appropriate, all of that stuff was really good. And my first thought for this was "this will be great for people that are in a a new management position". So the the driver or who is moving into a safety management position or somebody who's been a compliance analyst or something or compliance assistant who's moving into safety management the first time, or the small business owner who is starting to hire people and is realizing that they have to manage those people in particular ways.
Like, I find that a couple of scenarios that really jumped out for me when I was looking through it. But also what really separated it from me was that there's tons of leadership courses out there, there's libraries that are they're full of these things. But what was cool about this is all of the scenarios are very specific to trucking.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: So this is not a leadership course for somebody who works in a bank.
It would be terrible for those kind of people. Somebody who's running, you know, a software company, it would be terrible leadership course. All the scenarios are about trucking and logistics and load planning and dealing with emergencies and all of that kind of stuff, very specific to trucking. So it really gives you good examples and realistic examples of the kind of things that come up and the best ways of handling it and what you can hope to achieve as an outcome doing that.
Jane: Absolutely. That's- well, we always try to make our courses relevant to trucking because what's the point otherwise?
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: But, yeah, we were looking at specific scenarios, specific characters. I would think even driver trainers
Mark: Yep.
Jane: would benefit from it because even if you're leading one person, you're- you know, when you have someone in your cab, and you are the person who's directing, like anybody who's a trainer needs to be a leader of some sort because you need to control either a classroom or a person- like, not control a person, but it sounds weird. But you have to make sure that when there is an issue that they're doing what they're told.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: You know, they're that you can guide them. And if they aren't- they're not responsive to that, then you have to figure out how to change your behaviour in order to to be safe or to, you know, show them how to do the right thing. So, when are you patient? When are you, you know, you know, when are you trying to be a like, can you, when you're driving, then there's an emergency on the road, you can't coach.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: You have to act.
Mark: Or you don't wanna be a collaborative leader at that point.
Jane: Yeah. Exactly. That's not, you know, that's not when you start using Democratic leadership and kind of calling for suggestions.
Mark: Yeah. You have to have a commanding style for sure
Jane: Yeah. Exactly.
Mark: So, yeah, it's good. It's a nice looking course. I got some really good information on it and in both English and French now. So, all of our Canadian customers that have operations in Quebec can roll that out safely to all of their terminals there without any problems. So that was good.
Jane: And the other well, the other course that we just rolled out is Road Rage.
Mark: Yeah. Now that was kind of a- it was a request that came in and it was a pretty quick turnaround because I mean, didn't just start this, like, in the spring. Like, the request came in and we said, yeah, we should do that and then put it together.
Jane: I don't remember when it came in.
Mark: That one came together fairly quickly.
Jane: Well, it's not that it's not that much content. So it's also not that difficult to
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: to build, it's pretty it's pretty easy.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And road rage is pretty finite, it's pretty linear. Like, it there's not much there's not a lot of nuance to road rage.
Mark: Well, there's the two elements to it, which is making sure that you're not the one who's enraged. And making sure you handle the situation properly when you're faced with somebody else who is.
Jane: You're right. So that's basically what the course is about is trying to figure out your own emotions and figuring out how to have different methods of dealing with your own emotions of of, like, preventing road rage before it happens o, if you do have an incident of road rage road rage, what types of things can you do? What's in your arsenal? Like, how can you how can you sort of stop yourself from acting out? And what are the things that are considered acting out?
Because sometimes people don't realize, and I'm I'm totally guilty of this. I've had my own little, you know, road rage things where you get really annoyed
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: with people. And you start behaving in a way that could be considered aggressive. And you don't necessarily think you're being aggressive, but from the outside, you can be.
So if you try to evaluate how you behaved in a certain situation, then you can sort of see where road rage would start to happen. But you have to kinda put yourself outside and look at what you're doing, what your behavior is. And the course kind of gives you some tools to do that, and then it tells you, you know, the kinds of things that you can do to calm down. And and then it talks about what to do with other people. And the kinds of- like don't react to their road rage. Like, don't don't provoke it, no eye contact or that kind of thing, stay away from them, you know, if you see someone, you know, just make sure that you basically put some space between you and them as quickly as possible, that kind of thing. So even though it's probably self explanatory, it's probably pretty pretty straightforward as to- there's nothing magical about the course it is, but it does remind you of what it looks like, what it feels like, and what you can do about it.
Mark: Yeah. And it's also another one that is a nice looking course that has some different approaches to some interactivity that it's kind of kind of nice and mixes it up a little bit, so it'll be good for drivers. And something else sort of related to these courses, we've had a lot of, I don't know, foundational changes as well where all of the courses have now been moved to the latest version of our template, which has some technical improvements. And some definitely some usability enhancements and they're all consistent that way. And, having things like being able to change the playback speed when you're listening to the audio, getting a better sense of the duration of lessons and things like that.
And I've also changed the way we do the technical QA process at the end, the platform side of it and make sure the course runs properly everywhere that it needs to run. And made that sort of part of the the QA for the new courses is also now worked into the R&D (research and development) that we are doing on the mobile side because we're in the process of completely rebuilding our mobile experience kind of starting from the ground up and saying "how can we take all of this content in these courses and really have a great mobile experience without fundamentally changing what you've built in those pages". And there's a lot of technical problems that came with that. So we are starting to get to the point where we have a clear sense of what needs to happen and how it needs to be kind of translated into this new mobile experience. But every time there's a new course like this, it gives us another opportunity to revisit that and see what new things you're coming up with that we have to figure out on the platform side.
Jane: I am so excited by this new mobile app development. I can't wait to- you're supposed to be having some sort of prototypes in. Right?
Mark: We will soon be ready for that. Yes.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: Ismail's been redirected for a couple of weeks because we had some technical things with some of the libraries that we had to update and some security enhancements that we wanted to do. Some of those things that have been a little bit trickier than we expected them to be, but he should be back to it I think next week, and we'll be ready to do a demo, I think, soon after.
Jane: Yay. I'm very excited about this. I- it is just the ability to increase the audio speed and decrease the audio speed. I think it's great because I am better listening to it at a faster speed.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: I just like that- I've started listening to things at a faster speed just in general because I- my brain just doesn't follow it when, like, I get distracted and, you know, when you're easily distracted, listening to things without looking at them is- can be difficult. So, I also like the fact that you can slow it down so that people who have slower- have harder time with audio processing can can follow it as well. So I really like that speed change, but I'm also really interested in how we're going to have a native app for our courses and how that's going to look. I'm really excited about that.
Mark: Yeah. But yet, it still needs to look like our courses. So look totally different, but still look like our courses. That's what we're working on.
Jane: I know. So what you come up with is gonna be cool.
Mark: Yeah. So we've been working on that a fair bit. And on the platform side, we've also been working on completely redesigning the way we handle selections for selecting modules for assignments and assigning them to people and figuring out what courses you should be assigning to different people or different groups of people. So we had a very rudimentary selector that worked okay when we had a fairly small library or when we only had sixty courses or whatever. But now we have a library that's got hundreds of titles in it and we need better ways to see what's what and make sure that people understand what they're assigning. So that is nearing the point where it is going to be entering testing soon. It is actually scheduled for our October release, and I think we're on track for that. So there are huge performance improvements that listing modules and listing programs will be dramatically faster. So things that may take two minutes now to load will be like ten seconds. So that's making a huge difference.
But also, it'll be easier to see all of the details of the modules. So be able to search for courses based on region and trailer type or audience, all of these kind of things. And we will summarize how much total content you're assigning when you do it. So you know when you're creating a program that you're assigning people forty minutes of content or ninety minutes or whatever it may be. And also, the thing that I've been waiting- I've been wanting to do for a long time, is to have a more direct linking of the longer courses and the shorter refreshers. Because I know that people sometimes assign both and
Jane: Mhmm.
Mark: you have a driver that's assigned to the same content. Two different modules like and I hate that. But people don't know. They don't know that this content that's in a refresher is pulled from this larger course, and now we're gonna start telling you that, "okay, no, you've already assigned this content through this other course, you don't need to assign it again". And that will make the experience a whole lot better.
Jane: And we're also gonna have the- right now on the website, those course cards are coming in as well. Right?
Mark: Yep.
Jane: So there's gonna be a graphical representation of the course. On the website right now, you can see the course listing in the course catalog under the Product area. And so you can see the graphics that we've created for each course. And those are going to be- so the- whatever's on the website is going to be in the system. Correct?
Mark: Mhmm. Yes.
Jane: Because you were-
Mark: It'll be the same thing in both places.
Jane: Yeah. So one of the things that- because we've been around for so long, we didn't have this we didn't have the connection, and we've had to build it. And now when we update the internal course library. We don't have to update the website and things that people probably don't care about. But
Mark: No.
Jane: for us, it's a big deal.
Mark: But eventually, they start eating up a lot of time.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: Like, in the beginning, it wasn't a big deal, there's maybe one course every quarter. Okay, it's not that big of a deal to update a website manually.
But when you get all kinds of new courses coming out on a regular basis and different variations and you've got different versions of the website. Right? We have separate US and Canadian versions of the website in the course catalog. Now we actually have a fully French website with a French version of the course catalog. It starts to complicate that process and you need to streamline that because people end up wasting a lot of time just doing updates.
Jane: One of the things that we we didn't talk about was the French website
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Which was a huge undertaking over the last three months, I think.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And that has come out really nicely. And we've had all the problems of translation
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And-
Mark: Well, the problems being
Jane: all the "gotchas".
Mark: that you never get to the end of it. Every time you translate something, you think, "okay, now we've got all of the stuff translated, oh, crap. That thing is still in English. Alright."
Jane: Now in the courses, I have it I had it down to a science in the course courses because I would made sure that in the storyboard that we use, the storyboard template that we use, that's just a a word document, every bit of word that is put in every image on every button is accounted for.
Mark: Yep.
Jane: And that system didn't- wasn't in place for the website.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And so there was all kinds of graphics that had words in them that we would miss, and then we'd have to go back and redo, and there's forms. And so I think going forward, what we wanna do is have more of that, what is the complete- "what are the words on this page, on this website?" so that we don't miss any of them again.
Mark: Well, the thing that's been tricky for us in that regard is it is not just the website because the website also has a sign up for the newsletter. Which, that sign up form is in English. So we contemplated, "should we translate that? Well, ideally, we should, but the newsletter itself isn't in French. Okay, should we do a French newsletter? Well, most of that is compiling content that we find elsewhere, and that's all in English. So doesn't really make sense." You know, you end up with this kind of chain reaction of translation questions that you have to deal with. And same thing for people signing up for trial accounts, "okay, they can sign up- have a trial sign up form that's in French. But okay, then when they get their message, they're- all of their details to get their trial sign up, and they've got their new trial account, and then we have a few automated things that go out to check on them and make sure that trial is going okay, all of those need to be in French. And then there's like little tidbits and testimonial quotes and things and all those need to be translated as well."
So it ends up being just as long string of things that you have to keep doing. And I think we are finally there.
Jane: Well, it's different when you when you first decide, okay, we're gonna do a bilingual website. And if you plan it properly, then you can do all of these things. But we've had a website for?
Mark: -ever.
Jane: twenty, twenty five years?
Mark: No, we haven't been around that long. We're not that old yet.
Jane: Twenty years? Are we twenty years old yet?
Mark: No. Eighteen. We are, at the end of this month, it will be the nineteenth anniversary.
Jane: Okay. So we're coming up on twenty next year.
So we've been- we, you know, first started our website twenty years ago or maybe eighteen or seventeen years ago, and there's a lot of sludge that is sitting in that website that, you know, you don't even think about anymore. When you create when you create something that is always intended to be in French and English, pay more attention. But when you have something that is, you know, a decade or more old
Mark: I think we did purge all the old stuff or a lot of the old stuff when we did the big rebuild a couple years ago. But yeah, there is some stuff that's always been there. And some things that have been kind of built into it because our website is very tightly integrated with our learning management system through the logins and, like, remember me and things like that that will automatically bypass the website and take people straight into the system. They they do work together quite a bit. So there is stuff that's been in there for a long time and does create complications when you try to do that second language.
Jane: Yeah. You kind of have to clean out your closet.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Every time. And and it's funny, you know, when you move out of a house and you still find things that you don't even remember when you got. They've just always been there and you don't know why they- well, it's the same with the website, it's the same with anything that you create digitally or or in real life, you have to basically do a purge and sometimes things are just there.
Mark: Well, I'm just smiling and snickering to myself because it is like when you move out of a house and you think you've redirected all your mail to the new house. But yet over a year later, the new owners are still texting you and saying, "hey, we're getting mail for you". Like, how are you still getting mail for us?
Jane: Why? From the bank.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Who knows we moved.
Mark: Yeah. And CVSA who
Jane: CVSA says "please"
Mark: really want that address.
Jane: I really- I did, I changed the address.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: I don't know why they they keep sending things there. Like, sometimes I wonder, like, is it a different system?
Mark: Must be. It must be a different system.
Jane: Yeah, or they- yeah, I don't know.
Mark: So, yes, we have had a busy summer and a lot of stuff has been accomplished. And a lot of things are not quite ready but getting close. So it's going to be an interesting fall in terms of new announcements and things that we've got coming out.
Jane: Well, we are also, I don't know if you are going to talk about this. What were you- what was on your list next to talk about?
Mark: My list next to talk about, I think, was probably going to be the wonderful subject of microlearning.
Jane: Ooooooo
Mark: That has come up recently and I usually it sets me off because people misuse the term. They don't really understand what it is when they say, "hey, are you guys doing microlearning? You should be doing micro learning."
Jane: I think-
Mark: Or "I like this product because it has micro learning."
Jane: I think that I think that people get the idea that somehow micro learning is just, like, little bubbles that, you know, you can just pop and then they'll give you a little fact or something. But microlearning-
Mark: Like Dippin' Dots for training.
Jane: Yeah, Dippin'- yes. That is kinda- it's kind of what I think people think it is. And that if you if you just have a couple of the dots, then you're gonna get lots of good information. And the more dots you have, the more information you you somehow ingest without any clear overlap of what it all means or context or anything like that. You just got these little individual dots, you know you know, "here where your seat belt? Here. Here's how you-" I don't know. "Here's how you inspect the front left tire."
Mark: Three points of contact.
Jane: Yeah. And those are there- are certain things that-. So let me go back, microlearning is a- it's part of a larger educational program. And one of the things I think that people don't understand is that microlearning itself, which is very small bits of- bites of information. So you have a cour- not a course, but it like this sort of bit of learning that could be five to ten minutes. That's gonna tell you something very specific. And it gives you- might consist of like a little activity and then a a quiz or or should it be like some content and maybe a quiz at the end or or something like that? It could be pretty much anything, it could be a little video, it could be- it could be all kinds of things. But it's it's short, it's micro. That's what it is, it's a little bit. And what people don't understand is that you can't just do that by itself. Like, that's not- yes, it's short. But it's short, so you're not telling anybody anything really. And so I don't know what you would use it for if you don't have a broader approach to your training program.
Mark: It's more like useful as a quick reminder of something that you already know.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: So if you've gone through a more thorough program to teach people, for instance, hours of service, you have to go in-depth and take the time to learn all of the ins and outs of those regulations and how to apply them out in the world. But you might have micro learning that is just for the emergency-
Jane: Sleeper berth.
Mark: well, I was gonna say Emergency Conditions Exemption or, where you can do the extra two hours or the, you know, the adverse conditions thing where "you can do an extra two hours today and make up for tomorrow". That's a very small thing, very specific situation.
Sleeper berth, I wonder if you would do it because it's got a a whole pile of its own issues.
Jane: I would say that if you wanted to do sleeper berth as as a micro learning module, then I would take one bit of it.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: It's something that you have to focus in on and it has to, you know, you don't have to explain anything else. You don't have to say, you don't have to give an introduction, you don't have to you know, say why it's important that you're learning it, it's basically, here's this piece of information. Do you do you understand? Good.
Mark: Or here's how log personal conveyance.
Jane: Yes. That's a good one.
Mark: Right. Very specific, very situational, but also not useful unless you've done the larger piece.
Jane: Right.
Mark: And you understand all of the nuances in the context, when you might use it, where you might apply it, and what you need to do after applying it all of those kinds of things, then the microlearning as a reminder of something that you don't do very often might be useful.
Jane: And what it isn't useful as is just by itself.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: You can't- well, I mean, you can do this if you want, you can string a whole bunch of micro learning bits together, but it's gonna be very disjointed.
Mark: Yeah. You don't get that holistic understanding of the subject.
Jane: You'd have to have a microlearning segment that was the introduction, and then you'd have to have- I don't know how you would do it
Mark: You don't have any of the big picture.
Jane: No. There's no big picture.
Mark: So it is only the granular bits. And I think one of the challenges in trucking is that we can't start with a base assumption that drivers do have a holistic understanding of the big picture of the subject. Because so many of them came through bad schools or learned on their own just by putting the pieces together over time or learned the basics of something decades ago when the situation was very different. We can't assume that everybody really does have that foundational understanding and you just need to remind them of something that they haven't done for a while. And so you really do have to start by saying, "okay, Let's go back and make sure we are filling in all of the holes so you do have that thorough understanding of what's happening in this particular subject. Then down the road, we can do some micro learning to just refresh on bits that you don't use very often."
Jane: Exactly. You still need that big picture. And yes, it takes some time. Learning takes some time, and I think that that something that people would like it to go faster.
For whatever reason, drivers are bored, they want to go faster. Safety managers want it to be shorter so that they can get more compliance with it. But they're not, but again, they're not looking at the big picture. So micro learning, yeah, great.
You can have little bits of learning, but you're not really getting any understanding.
Mark: Yeah. Well, I think it's kind of like-
Jane: Or a buy in.
Mark: It's like these these really short subject I don't know they are like videos, or little educational snippets that I've seen people using that are always done as remedial. So you get a seatbelt infraction and we put you into this two minute thing on seatbelts or you trip and fall on something.
Jane: On a hose.
Mark: Yeah. So we put you in and do a very short thing about how not to trip on the hose. But they're not really solving the big problem. They're not stepping back and looking at what was the actual root cause of the issue and solving that. So you end up with this whack-a-mole where you're constantly having to do these little tiny interventions at every, kind of, every turn with a driver because they're- you're not solving the real problem. And you have this perception that "we're very busy and we're doing a ton of training". But no, you're really not. You're actually not even solving the real problem and you end up in kind of deeper trouble later because eventually that real underlying problem is gonna come back to bite you in a bigger way.
Jane: Yeah, there's not much point in telling people to you know, in- for hoses that, you know, that's part of- it's kind of a part of a bigger slip, trips, and slip and fall type of training, but If you are if you're a tanker and you leave your hoses just sort of on the ground, they're tripping health hazards. So if somebody trips on them, who are you training? And what are you training about? Are you training the driver who left the hoses on the ground and went and had lunch? Are you training the person who who tripped on it because they weren't used to having them there? You know, what what problem are you training for? And it seems like you know, there might be and like you said, you wanna go back and look at the big picture and say, "okay, do we have bad policy on this? Like, are people not being trained? And what bits are they not being trained? Or is it behaviour?" And I- one of the things that I'm constantly I feel like I'm fighting the industry against is that they want to use training as a solution for bad behaviour.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And training will never solve bad behaviour. Because training is just- training is just knowledge. And when people are behaving badly, they're not doing things they are supposed to do, they miss things that they should be doing. That's- often, they're choosing it, if you're using your cell phone as you drive, that's a choice.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Like, it's not a mystery.
Mark: No way you don't know that's a bad idea.
Jane: Exactly. And if you don't bother to put your hoses away, for whatever reason, that's a choice.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: So don't treat the choice or don't treat that- the bad decision on, like, don't assume that training is going to solve it. It's just not going to, and, you know, if you have a lot of people doing this, then maybe you have a culture problem. It's not a training problem, it's a culture problem.
Mark: Well, that is going to bring me around to one of our new segments for this year: "Is it a good use of technology?" A new periodic segment-
Jane: Is this a good use of tech?
Mark: Yes. A new periodic segment where we will discuss a use of tech and whether or not we think it is a good or a bad one. And certainly, that's not so much tech, but training, that's not a great use of of training what you were just describing there.
Jane: It is not a good use of training.
Mark: But there's another one that I saw that I wanted to talk about because actually, as it happens, it was in this week's Transport Topics.
Jane: Oh.
Mark: And it was another-
Jane: Timely.
Mark: -a story that you were a part of. And it was the using AI to talk to drivers or take the sentiment of drivers, communicate with them. And so the story came out today and they do these periodically and sort of a round up story and they'll throw these questions out to a whole bunch of different people and then collect the answers and turn them into a story. And it's kind of interesting because sometimes the subjects of the questions I kind of look at and go, "well, I would never would have imagined that". And, you know, sometimes it's kinda creative and sometimes it's like, "oh my god, you should never do this".
And this week's story kind of falls into that latter category because there is, in the the published version, there's a whole bunch of people talking about how to do it and how to engage with drivers and how AI can help and help people get to the drivers and, you know, help you with this figuring out what your drivers think about things. And then at the end, the the cold water being poured on the whole idea comes from you and your quotes that are basically, like, "this is not a good way to do things". You have to be very careful because I remember when we had the discussion about these questions. And it was, well, you gotta be very careful. And one of the things that we've seen over the past three or so years in Best Fleets is drivers clamouring for more personal connection.
Jane: Yep.
Mark: More and more personal connection. COVID really disconnected them and made them feel cut off and they really want that personal connection. So dropping an AI in the middle of that personal connection is not going to help. There may be places where it can kind of help with some efficiency, but in general, you are just putting a wedge between managers and employees at the time that the employees want that personal connection.
Jane: Yeah, I I just don't see how that's gonna be a good thing for keeping drivers. I mean, almost unanimously, drivers wanna feel a connection. They wanna feel a connection to another person, they don't wanna they don't wanna talk to a machine. They don't wanna talk to, like, some sort of artificial intelligence.
Mark: A bot on the website.
Jane: No. They don't wanna I mean, they will, but they don't want to. They would much rather talk to an actual person than a bot on the website.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: But the bot on the website is going to get them an answer quickly and they basically save the more pressing issues for a conversation. There's no- I don't think there's anybody who's actually going to, you know, get to orientation without having a conversation with a real life person. And if you do, you may not keep that driver for very long.
Mark: Yeah, because you've built no relationship.
Jane: What I'd be very interested in is seeing what kind of recruiting experience people have and how long they stay. Because I think and you know, from the information that we've seen over the last fifteen years, fifteen plus years is that the the less- how do I say this? If the recruiting experience doesn't match, what is gonna happen at the fleet, then drivers don't like it.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Like they want that recruiting experience to be seamless. They want to know that what they experience with the recruiter or whatever that happens to be is how they're going to be treated later. And that is really really important to them. And if you're using AI, God knows what AI is going to say, I think or do or what information it's going to be giving them because as we know AI is not infallible and lies and doesn't underst- or, you know, has the wrong information and also just makes stuff up.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: So if you are going to rely on AI to interface with your drivers, then you'd best be making sure that it's telling drivers the right thing. I I just don't see like, right now, I would not be doing it.
Mark: I don't think I would imagine a scenario where that would be beneficial. In a service industry that succeeds or fails on the strength of the people delivering the service, you need to do everything you can to build a strong, productive, connected team. That is working together to solve problems and get the service delivered effectively. Throwing a stupid AI in there, in the middle of it, to try and triage questions or provide FAQ type stuff for drivers removes an opportunity to build that relationship.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: It's a terrible idea.
Jane: It is a terrible idea. And I think it- I think people are going to try it and they're they're gonna dump it because drivers are gonna say they don't like it.
Mark: I think you alluded to something that's gonna be really interesting to watch and that is how long do these drivers of these fleets stick around? You know, we've seen that the more people invest in building a strong relationship with drivers early on in the orientation, early on in the recruiting, early on in that whole onboarding process, the better they do in terms of the success and long term stability of drivers at the company. So if you're trying to fast track it, short circuit things, cut corners, try and find a way around building that relationship, It's gotta have a negative consequence down the road.
Jane: Oh, I I cannot see how this how this works out. And I think the people who are saying that "it's great, it's great". Are looking at cost cutting.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: They're looking at, "I don't need a person or I don't need to train a person to deal with drivers much, anyway, you know, I can just have AI do it". And, "oh, you know, people don't wanna be telling drivers the same thing over and over and over again". I'm thinking there's a simpler way to fix that problem.
Mark: Yes. A better way to do that.
Jane: Yeah. Like, have some management skills people.
Mark: Yes. So I think the verdict is: bad, bad use of tech.
Jane: It's a bad use of tech.
Mark: This is not a good use of tech.
Jane: And I will say that I may stand corrected in two years when I hear- actually, I'd like to put that in the driver survey.
Mark: "Does your company use AI to communicate with you and do you like it?"
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: Yeah, well, we still have the driver survey to update for this year so maybe we will.
Jane: Actually, I think we should. I think we should because I would like to get some actual data from drivers on that because I imagine that nobody in that Transport Topics article that was quoted was a driver.
Mark: I don't think so.
Jane: And that's-
Mark: I only scanned it to see if that was the one that we were in and where we were and-
Jane: Well I didn't even realize-
Mark: -we were just at the end. You're just at the end being a naysayer.
Jane: Well, I mean, I think, yeah.
Mark: Which does seem to be the niche that you have claimed in those stories. You're often the one who is the voice of reason or voice of caution or be careful because of these other things.
Jane: I would say that most of the tech in trucking has been- like, a lot of it is fine. You know?
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: Like dispatch systems and, you know, ELDs are fine. It's these it's these extra things that people put on top of it that are supposed to make it so you don't have to do things. And it just seems to me to be bells and whistles that are garbage.
And they are just the the sugar or the glucose syrup that has replaced, you know, actual food now. It's just, you know, "oh, you gotta have this because you gotta have this and you gotta have this and you gotta have AI and you've gotta have this thing and you gotta-" and it's just like people selling stuff for no reason.
Mark: There you go, so many of these products are just corn syrup.
Jane: Yeah. And I think AI- I don't- and don't get me wrong, I think AI is very useful, in certain ways. But really, what's ended up happening is people are taking it and putting a layer of it on everything and trying to make it like it's good.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: It's not, it's a tool like anything else, and if you use it badly, it will be bad. And if you're gonna use it as a replacement for actual staff who interact with drivers, who are your other staff, then it's a bad human resources decision. I cannot imagine us doing that.
Mark: No.
Jane: You know, sort of like "I don't need to talk to my graphic designers. You can just talk to this AI and they'll tell you all the things you need to know."
Mark: Yeah. Brutal. Well, there we go.
Jane: I shake my head.
Mark: Yes. We shake our heads. And that will, I think, bring us to the end of this episode.
Jane: Alright. Well, thank you for listening to me, rant, for there for a bit.
Mark: Yes. Well, we we gotta get warmed up again, we gotta new season going. We're all energized.
Jane: Yeah. Let the ranting begin.
Mark: Yes. Let the ranting begin on another new season. So thanks everybody for listening, and have a good day.
Jane: Bye.