The CarriersEdge Podcast | Episode #86
Jane: Hey, it's the eighty sixth episode of The CarriersEdge Podcast, and I'm Jane Jazrawy, the a co-founder of CarriersEdge, and with me as always.
Mark: Mark Murrell, other co-founder of CarriersEdge.
Jane: Look what I did.
Mark: Look what I did.
Jane: Look what I did. I changed it.
Mark: You did it? Yes.
Jane: I did.
Mark: Okay.
Jane: Okay. So now we can just start.
Mark: Oh, that wasn't the start.
Jane: Mhmm. No. This is the start.
Mark: You didn't even say, like, welcome to the podcast?
Jane: Well, welcome. That's kind of an that's that's assumed. You are welcome to this podcast because otherwise, it would have just been doing this in our basement for nothing.
Mark: Yes. Not for much longer though.
Jane: No. Not this basement. We might go to a different basement. On a different coast of the country.
Mark: Yes.
Jane: Which is very cool.
Mark: More details to follow.
Jane: Wow. We just bought a house in Victoria, B. C. Which is a long way away from here.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Where we are in beautiful downtown Newmarket, Ontario.
Mark: So we'll have, what, three more episodes, I guess, before we head out there.
Jane: Yeah. Maybe we should do one from the road. My god. How are we getting out there? I don't even know.
Are we driving?
Mark: Yeah. We have to drive.
Jane: With an electric car. Yeah. Okay. That will be That will be a journey. That would be a story.
Mark: No. There's charging stops all the long way now.
Jane: PetroCan?
Mark: No Tesla has superchargers all
Jane: all the way.
Mark: All across the Trans Canada Highway. Okay.
Jane: And if we go, we're gonna go probably June.
Mark: End of May. Yeah.
Jane: Or end of May. And so it won't be cold.
Mark: No. It's a beautiful time to go across country.
Jane: Electric car heating it will use up all your batteries. So you'll only get. Well, we I think we get about, what, five hundred kilometers
Mark: Under normal circumstances, yes, outside of winter.
Jane: Yeah. So we should get about four hundred and something.
Mark: You lose up to a third if it's really cold.
Jane: Yeah. Or really hot.
Mark: Yeah. You lose some with a AC.
Jane: But just so everybody who's like, yeah, I'm never getting an electric car because, you know, use up all your battery. Same with your gas. Mhmm. No different.
Mark: I couldn't go back to a gas car.
Jane: It's weird when we drive a rental.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: We asked our with the last time we were out in Victoria, we asked for a, like, the smallest car you can possibly get. And I think we got one of the largest vehicles you could possibly get.
Mark: Oh, yeah. It had three rows of seats in it. It was insane.
Jane: We always want a subcompact because we never, like, There's absolutely nothing that we're doing except driving ourselves around. And we just need to get two suitcases in it. It's not that hard. So we get a subcompact because it's cheapest and we don't care. And all so we got this yeah.
We had three rows of seats. Yeah. It was ridiculous.
Mark: Yeah. For a car that spent most of his time sitting in a parking lot.
Jane: We're looking we're going through walking through the rental lot, and that's all there is. Or these gigantic vehicles. I don't know what, maybe there was a sub compact rally somewhere.
Mark: Maybe somebody who hadn't booked them all.
Jane: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody just wanted to get those little cars. Yeah. We didn't even get a medium car.
It's only huge cars.
Mark: And all trucks too. There was no cars available.
Jane: Oh, did we get a oh, I guess.
Mark: Yeah. We got an SUV.
Jane: Oh, an SUV. Yeah. Not a truck.
Mark: Well, there's pickup trucks. SUVs. Yeah. I don't think there was even minivans available.
Jane: No. There were minivans.
Mark: Okay.
Jane: I think there were I think I saw one. Anyway, it's weird for Victoria because it's not a
Mark: Yeah. It's it's hippie central. Yeah. Maybe that's why they're all available to rent.
Jane: Because all the hippies had gotten all the little cars.
Mark: Yeah. The hybrids and the Leafs and things like that.
Jane: Yeah. And when we were out there, we were out there in February, and people were riding their bikes a lot. Yep. Which is one of the nice things about being out there is that it's probably the warmest place in Canada.
Mark: Yes.
Jane: Which is nice. They don't get real winter. And you're losing your snowblower, which is a, I think it's bittersweet.
Mark: No. Sweet.
Jane: No. You like that snowblower though.
Mark: I liked it the first year I got it. Yeah. Yeah. And every time we get a dumping of snow, I'm very happy that I have it, but I won't miss it. You know, I won't miss clearing snow.
I don't think there's many people that miss clearing snow.
Jane: Yeah. Who think, wow, I haven't I haven't cleared some snow in a long time. I need to clear snow
Mark: I'm looking forward to winter so I can do some shoveling.
Jane: Shovel some wet snow.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Because that's the best.
Mark: Yeah. So we will have adventures. And we will update the audience on our adventures as the spring proceeds. But
Jane: And we'll see what nasty things a pin in Victoria that no one talks about.
Mark: But we have lots more exciting things that are more current than that.
Jane: That's true.
Mark: Having just returned from the Truckload Carriers Association Convention in Sunny and Very Warm Orlando, which was definitely warmer than it usually is this time of year. Normally, it's sort of mid twenties Celsius while we were there, but it was it was thirty each day. So the one day that I went outside, it was actually quite hot.
Jane: Yeah. It was it was very hot. Although when you're when you're here and you go there, you don't really think about how hot it is. It's just it's not cold. Yeah.
And you're not wearing a jacket and you're Yeah.
Mark: Yeah. So it was good. It was my fifteenth time going to the convention. It was, I I think, your eleventh, actually.
Jane: Okay.
Mark: And my sixth time staying at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando. So there's not much really as surprising to me about the convention or about the the hotel now, you know, I know there's a giant atrium there and all of most of the rooms look onto the atrium. I know that there are alligators swimming around in the pond.
Jane: Any alligators? Intentionally. Yeah. They're not they're my mistake.
Mark: They haven't just wondered in from the swamps. No. They are they are they are on purpose. And that that is kinda cool to walk down the path and see alligators sitting there.
Jane: And we unveiled our overall winners. Yes. The top twenty overall winners. Yes, we can say it out loud. And apparently, nobody really knew, which is good.
Until the very last minute because Corrine saw the teleprompter and kind of figured it was her or it was them. So, CAT was the overall large carrier and chief carriers was the overall small. Mhmm. Winter, which is really exciting.
Mark: Yeah. And you made a sort of a passing comment about nobody new, which is good. We are always afraid that somebody has figured it out or we've sort of left some clue or some, like, somewhere where we have it marked down that they saw. I'm afraid of that all the time because even though it's a secret, there's lots of people who know. Like, the people who produce the trophies know
Jane: Mhmm.
Mark: TCA knows. We're writing a press release anybody working on the press release knows about it. We have to prep our website so that it can just go live at the time. Like, so there end up being, at any given time, there's probably twenty or thirty people who know Yeah. Who the winners are.
And most of them are not gonna say anything, but you never know when you're talking to these people, sometimes it's easy to kind of forget, you know, are you somebody who knows already or somebody who doesn't? And I'm always afraid that I'm going to mess up. You know, I'm gonna get confused and talk to the wrong person.
Jane: It's funny. People always ask you know, should I should I be preparing a speech and it's in the hope that I'm gonna somehow leak it? And my answer is everybody should prepare speech. No. No.
You should not be without a speech because most of the time when you haven't got a speech, you're not gonna win or you are gonna win.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: So you definitely the more unprepared you are, I think the better.
Mark: So does that mean that if you're more prepared, you're less likely to win?
Jane: I don't know. It actually doesn't make any difference whatsoever. You win. You win. You don't you don't.
It's it's like you may have a speech. It's it's not like the color socks that you wear make any difference at all. It's all about your points that you've already you know, you may as well wear your lucky socks back in the interview stage because that's when it actually matters.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.
Jane: We, you know, for two months, Is it two months or it's months?
Mark: It is. It's nearly two months because we finished the scoring and figured out the winners. I think it was January twelfth or something like that. And March six.
Jane: Yeah. So the last podcast we knew.
Mark: Oh, yeah.
Jane: And that's the that's the problem is we know, and then there's like a little mini celebration. It's like, whoo hoo. This is so cool. These these, you know, or well, now I can say it. I'm so used to, like, preventing myself from saying it.
CIT is a winner and chief expert or not chief express chief carriers is the winner. Mhmm. And now it's kind of a
Mark: Now other people can share in that celebration.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: So what was also different this year is or one thing that was quite different this year was that our best fleets reception happened on a Sunday night. Normally, we do the awards on a Monday morning, and we have our reception on a Monday afternoon, at which time everybody can kinda relax because the awards done. All the pictures are done. It's just time to chill out. But this time, the reception happened on a Sunday night before the awards had been given out, so nobody knew who the overall winners were.
So what we had is a bunch of people that are like, hey, got any hints, hey, should I have a speech Mhmm. Pretending to bribe me and hey, if I'm nice to you, will it help me tomorrow?
Jane: Yeah. But that's the conversation. Right?
Mark: Yeah. And it's all it's all joking because, yeah, you can Be nice or be crappy to me at this point. It doesn't matter. You're the name's on the trophy already.
Jane: We have no control.
Mark: Yeah. At that point, it's not changing anything.
Jane: But it was a bit chaotic this year because we had we had two new people who were helping us. TCA had a whole bunch of new people. And so this little and this stage was huge, huge.
Mark: That's not the same stage that it always is.
Jane: You know what? I think last time they created I think maybe they had a different stage because it was No.
Mark: I know it was different. Last time it was, last time it was in Orlando, it was a different stage.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: But what was also different is the staging stage decoration that they had this time was very minimal and all pushed to the back. So they've had a lot of stage decoration in the past where they have a lot of props or photos. I don't know what they are. The cutout foam pieces that show up and make the stage look nice in the photos. They had those moving towards the front so that it's sort of a three d effect with them and more of them around this year it was very minimal.
It was just one like trapezoid painted like a road.
Jane: That was the only that was it.
Mark: That was about it. They had a couple of lights on the floor. Pointing up, but they don't have as much as they normally do. So there was more space available on the stage and there also wasn't any furniture out there.
Jane: That's right. We do it in front of the chairs.
Mark: Yeah. There's a panel discussion or something afterwards, so they have furniture on the stage at that point. But because this was an awards luncheon and there was nothing but awards. It was chairman spoke a little bit and then it was just people couple people doing speeches and then a few awards, so there was nothing on the stage. So, yeah, we had a lot more space to work with.
Jane: Well, that's good because I had to roll thing. I had to roll something on.
Mark: Yeah. That was quite funny.
Jane: Was it what did it look like from the just look like something e rolling something on?
Mark: It kinda looked like a stage hand rolling. Yeah. It was a road case on wheels, and we had all of the gems for the hall of fame trophies. Sitting on top of it, and so Trish kinda rolled it out as a, you know, like, a a rowdy rolling the thing out on stage. And then Lance came out and grabbed each
Jane: Yeah. Lance came up to me. Well, the hall of fame trophies have these separate gems that go on to the trophy. And instead of having people wander out with these trophies, we Lance goes and puts the Lance from Epic View goes and puts the rupees on the well, they weren't rupees, the gems because the what the returning hall of favors were blue sapphire
Mark: Okay.
Jane: Because they had a sapphire. So they had that And Lance was like, I can't bend down. I can't be bending down and getting them off the floor. And I was like, oh, you know what? Yeah.
So what can we use? And I have to say that the backstage people, the people who are working, I can't remember their name, like, the production group, was really, really good because one of the things that happened was John Elliott is pretty tall, so I have the eternal problem of they wanna set the mic and the paddles that you use for the teleprompter at a certain level and they want me to me to deal with it. And if there's a real big size discrepancy, then I have an issue. So I'm like, do you have a stool? And a very helpful technician said, I have this case So it was really good actually.
Mark: Hard to tell my case.
Jane: Is that what it was? Yeah. So John was supposed to bring it out for me, but he didn't. So I brought it out for myself as he butchered my name. And he could not pronounce my name at all.
But he was he was gun hold, keep trying, and it was like, okay, stop now. Mhmm.
Mark: If
Jane: it's not happening, if you don't know how to do it, you're not doing it. So I brought out the case and he was like, oh, I forgot. I was supposed to do that. And I'm like, just get out of my way so I can go. And put together so I can go and do this thing.
But it was good. Apparently, I had I it looked like I was very happy with it and that I liked getting up and down off of it.
Mark: Every short person in the audience was with you on that a hundred percent.
Jane: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Mark: Oh, yeah. Made good to entertaining. Good to entertaining show that you put on there. You know, twenty five minutes sitcom basically with awards for and to date.
Jane: It's not a sick I have to I have to use something that I'm sure is fun. Okay.
Mark: Most sitcoms aren't very much aren't really comedic anyway.
Jane: Just relatively be fun. So, yeah, that was so that was that. And then Lance is like, what am I doing with these? And thank god that Lance shows up. For the rehearsal because it's really important that everybody shows up for the rehearsal and figures out how it's gonna go.
Because I sometimes am making it up as I go.
Mark: Oh, often.
Jane: Yeah. I I'm looking at the stage going okay. Like, where the best fleets like, they had to be on stage. It was such a large stage the open area was so open that they had to be almost right on stage, which is very unusual. Usually, they're kind of out in the hall.
Not this time. They were they were right there. So and even then so Garth was the Garth from Bison Girth Pixel. He he has to had to go from to get it's like about five steps to get from where he was. To right at the edge of the curtain, of the first curtain.
Mark: Right. And then
Jane: he has to get all the way across. And I think That's like a good three or four second walk, which is
Mark: Yeah. It's yeah. It's about a three to four second walk. You're right? Which doesn't not like a lot, but in the context of his show, ten people that are doing it, I mean, it gets shorter from there.
He had the longest walk. But then Lance's to walk over and put the gem on the top. Yeah. It can it can drag down the pace of your show, which is something that you don't think about until your putting on one of these award presentation things and thinking about how do we keep the thing moving? If you have too much sort of dead space, audience will start clapping because they don't know what else is going on or they don't know if they're supposed to be clapping there.
So they start or they lose interest. They start talking at the table or something. So Yeah. You have to keep it moving and have to keep the whole thing going.
Jane: And, of course, there's, like, almost no time to rehearse. You get one run through. And that's it.
Mark: Yeah. We had we had a longer rehearsal time this year than we've ever had actually.
Jane: Well, there's thirty people.
Mark: Well, the thing started at noon and we went in at eleven. And started setting up the plaques and figuring out the trophies and all of that kind of stuff. So we had the first batch of actual attendees it came for their rehearsal at eleven fifteen. So we had fifteen minutes to kinda get the start figuring out what we're doing with trophies and things, and then fifteen minutes for each of the groups. It went off pretty smoothly.
Jane: Was there a big gap? Like, did it did they because I was telling everybody you gotta you gotta move?
Mark: No. It was fine. The pacing was good.
Jane: Okay. That's good.
Mark: It wasn't too fast. That's the other thing. You can't have it too fast because then it feels like it's rushed and you're trying to sort of bump them off stage quick. So you gotta give them their do but you can't have it drag.
Jane: Yeah. It's a
Mark: very tricky balance to maintain.
Jane: Absolutely. But it went off. Everybody got there. I don't think anything got smashed. Although the safety awards, it was kind of funny that the safety awards did get smashed.
So, Emery, who won the overall oh, sorry. Who won yeah. Who won the overall
Mark: Grand prize.
Jane: Grand prize. The Grand prize for small fleets and the safety awards got a, like, some sort of bowl that they found at the hotel. So I guess they're shipping her in the new.
Mark: Yeah. Replacement trophy. Yeah. Her and Garth got their giant candy bowls.
Jane: It's not that it's actually not that big. It's kind of a medium sized candy bowl. Candy bowl actually.
Mark: Well, I don't know if that's medium. What is a large then? Because it's gotta be ten inches diameter.
Jane: No. It wasn't that much. It was about eight. Maybe ten. I didn't think it was all that big, but then again, it was late.
Mark: There was a lot happening.
Jane: A lot of things were happening. Yeah. So I didn't like, I actually went up with Emery because she was a bit nervous and she's one of the best fleets, FTC transportation. And I didn't take expect that she was gonna win. So I was just kind of recording the, you know, people on the stage.
And so I thought, okay. Well, I'll keep recording just in case she wins and, like, they bring out feels like twelve thousand people.
Mark: There's nine.
Jane: Those are nine.
Mark: Well, because there's top three finishers in each of three categories. So there's nine people max on the stage. Okay. I think one of the categories somebody wasn't there, but in general, yeah, it's nine people And the small three smallest divisions come out, and then they announced their grand prize winner in the the small fleets. And then the next, they do the same thing for the other three categories and then have that for the large fleet.
Jane: Well, I was kind of sort of sitting there, waiting, and then she got then Mhmm. Her name was announced and it was very nice.
Mark: Well, I was sort of struck by the large fleet safety grand prize. Bison won it for like I don't know, fiftieth year in a row or something like that. And so it's at the point where it's basically called the Bison award because they win it every year. And I don't know how many other people even compete for it. So because of the nine that are the sort of winners, the top three in each of their categories, they're invited to go to the next step to submit for the safety ward.
They don't have to. And I I don't know how many of them do. I know a bunch of them don't bother. Certainly in the large category because they figure Bison's gonna win it again. But I was struck by the fact that when Garth wanted, he was really choked up.
Like, given that presentation and, like, the number of times that he's gone up there, been on that stage, been the overall winner. Like, I don't see how it's really surprising for him. I don't see how he is shocked. By it, but yet he was able to really come off. I don't wanna sound like he's faking it.
Jane: No. He really believes in it.
Mark: Yeah. He definitely really believes in it. And that really sort of stuck me stuck with me like, man, good on you for sort of not taking it for granted and recognizing that it's an accomplishment and really feeling some genuine feelings about it rather than okay, well, thanks know, this is great. I wanna thank our drivers, thank our management blah blah blah and then leaving. So, yeah, he was really yeah.
He's choked up about it, which is really good.
Jane: I think he gets like that just generally talking about safety and bringing people home.
Mark: Yeah. That's what it is.
Jane: You know?
Mark: Because he's thinking about any of the times where somebody didn't make it home. Which is always what he's on about is, like, we've gotta get our people home safely. And anytime somebody doesn't make it home, he's really broken up about it. And I think each time he takes it, takes that award. That's what he's thinking about.
Jane: Yeah. And he's a very I don't know. He's just a very genuine guy.
Mark: Mhmm. Absolutely.
Jane: So he's he's very
Mark: He's very honest.
Jane: Yeah. Like, he's not he's not putting it on. You you really think, you know, this guy actually does believe this. And when you We do I mean, he's been doing this for how many years. There's like eleven years in the program.
He was a ten consecutive year winning in best fleets, but they were in it. They lost they they didn't get on the top twenty once, and Gorse was unhappy about that.
Mark: Thirteen times they've made it into the top twenty. There's only two times that they didn't.
Jane: Okay. And they and so he had his tenth consecutive year plaque. And, you know, you talked to him for ten years. For a couple hours about his company and what they're doing and stuff like that. You get to know them and you get to know them about whether they're, you know, how how invested they are.
Mhmm. And most of the most of the hall of fame are invested.
Mark: Oh, yeah. It's hard to get into that hall of fame if you're not pretty invested.
Jane: Yeah. You have to believe and want to improve and be forceful about it. And he definitely is. Yeah. So I think if he's approaching the safety award and he probably is approaching it even more like that than he is best fleets, then I'm not surprised that they win it over and over again.
What we would have done is change the rules.
Mark: Which we did?
Jane: Yes. We did. We had we Well, we don't want the same people winning it overnight. We don't want the same people being honored. Although, you want the same people being like, if they earn it, you want to honor them, which is why the hell of fame showed up because it was like, well, we wanna honor them.
How do we do that? And still, you know, get new blood in there. And It's been really nice the last couple of years where there's been a complete surprise Mhmm. On who is in the overall.
Mark: Oh, yeah. We
Jane: just we just never know. Well, it's gone back to, like, before. We'd be like, oh, yeah. Newspage getting it again. Oh, yeah.
Grand Island's get oh, yeah. But because they're all three of them were three time winners. So they've hogs like nine of the fifteen years that the program is. Oh, and FCC got a three times. Mhmm.
Mark: The boil won it a couple of times. Yeah. There are many multiple winners there. Yeah. So, yeah, it does start to get to the point where you're thinking, alright, you know, it's gonna be one of the regulars within the overall.
Mhmm. So moving them into the hall of fame was really nice because it does shake it up. And there's a lot of other people that are doing really good things, and now we have an opportunity to recognize them and talk about them.
Jane: But if okay. So Andy Winkler was a or was it Grand Allen Express when they won the won it three times.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: And now he's won the overall once. For a chief express.
Mark: Chief carrier.
Jane: Chief carrier, what am I what is wrong with me? Chief carriers.
Mark: It's a good thing you gotta write on stage.
Jane: I don't know why I'm saying this right now. I think I'm just tired.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: But so they've been in the program three years? Four years. Is this for number four a year or number three year?
Mark: I think it might be Amber. I don't know. It's one of those.
Jane: So he can have four more years in the program. And possibly get the overall award
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: A couple more times.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's been on the list. They've been on the top twenty twice now, I think. Three times.
So even if it's three times on the top twenty, it's got to be another four more and then he'll go into the hall of fame. Yeah. Well, you get your work cut out for you, Andy. You get to it.
Jane: Make sure that you're, you know, figuring it out.
Mark: Yeah. Take two companies into the hall of fame.
Jane: I know, but I don't want them to win over and over and over again. Although, I'm sure they wanna win over and over and over again.
Mark: But it's very competitive and the people that are on the top twenty are really working on it.
Jane: Yeah. This is true.
Mark: And if you look at who else is there on that in that small fleet category, there's people that are really working
Jane: Oh, everybody everybody in the top twenty is really working.
Mark: Oh, yeah.
Jane: Well, now I think the the sort of the lower end of the top twenty where you're in the eighteen to twenty position. That can change.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: That is well, it's always been like that. The bottom four positions And we don't really tell anyone what the actual ranking is, but there is a ranking because it's based on score. So that bottom four are likely to like if they don't push it, then they're likely to get bumped.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Somebody will come in and beat them.
Jane: Mhmm.
Mark: And even now, with all of fame and the expanded number of fleets that we can recognize. The differences between the people who make it and the people who don't are half a percent in total score. Yeah. You know, it's very tight.
Jane: Well, that always was. It always was. Like, the scores could
Mark: Scores were always very tight. Yes. Absolutely.
Jane: Especially at the like, I remember looking at I think when Newsbaum wanted, like, the second or third time we were looking at it, it was, like, zero point or five percent or something like that.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: It was crazy. It was crazy. Yeah. Close.
Mark: Yeah. So, yeah, always nice when we can finally unwind and talk about all of it. Yeah. Talk about chief carriers.
Jane: Not chief express, chief carriers. Sorry, chief express.
Mark: Talk about CIT is the overall winners, and that's another one that really, I mean, really floored us. I mean I
Jane: think, didn't I talk I talk about them, like, right after the interview on this podcast. I did yeah. Because I was, like, wow. They did really, really good job this year. And then they made the top twenty and we couldn't say anything.
Mhmm. And then they were the overall winner. I couldn't say
Mark: A company did very well.
Jane: Yes. There was a company in the company competition who did well.
Mark: Yeah. First Quebec based winner. Mhmm. Fantastic.
Jane: Oh, yeah. And, well, this is the other thing. I'm like, oh my god, I have to do a French overall logo now.
Mark: Well, you don't, but somebody didn't know.
Jane: Well, I did.
Mark: Oh, yeah.
Jane: Yeah. I had to design it. Like, I had to figure it out. I had to figure out what the words were gonna be and one of the nice things was that we had a translator on staff who left us for a government job because apparently government translation jobs are pretty lucrative and we cannot compete. So she was she was really good and she was, like, running out of things and she was just translating everything, you know.
She's, like, I'll translate what's onto your shirt. So I said, oh, maybe we should do the best leads logos in French. So she so she worked on that. So we had these best leads logos in French for, like, a year and a half and nobody did anything with it because there wasn't a top twenty that was on that had French. And then so when CAT looked like they were gonna be on the top twenty, it was like, Oh, okay.
We should probably dig those French logos out. And then they friggin one. Yeah. So I'm but so then I'm thinking, okay. That best place to drive for a logo is pretty compact.
Mark: Yes.
Jane: How on Earth am I gonna get? The twenty percent more words that French always has.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And, like, have it in there. And I manage I'm not sure it's a great translation, but it's the translation we have. To look La Flotte.
Mark: The lemaire flood. I
Jane: can't remember.
Mark: Which one we went to? Because there was a few options that we had and none of them really fit nicely.
Jane: Yeah. But we we did manage to get one so that if, you know, if a well, actually, herb asked for one because they operate in Quebec. And then there was somebody else who operates in Québec who won and won, but I knew that CAT was gonna need one.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: And they were gonna need the overall so that they can to have it I think it's kinda cool to have the English and the French one. Yeah. And it's cool that a Quebec company won, and it's cool that I remembered how to pronounce Kareen Goiatt's name.
Mark: Hey. Good job. Yes. This is one of those things that people don't see is backstage when we are prepping for the thing. Jane is in the background going, go to jail.
Coto Black. Coto Black. Over and over again because you gotta say the name of the city where the the fleet is based, but you can't ask them.
Jane: Oh, actually, I did because In the in the script, it's the top twenty. I say it. I don't say it for the overall winner. I just say it for, you know,
Mark: Top twenty. So you can go and ask them, but you can't ask somebody how to pronounce name because you're not saying their name until they're the overall winner.
Jane: Yes.
Mark: So you can't go to them and say, hey, Corinne, how do I pronounce your last name?
Jane: Well, the other thing was is I assumed it gonna be Michael or Mark Mhmm. Who is going to because those are the two people I talked to. And then all of a sudden, at the thank God, we had the we had the I would have been freaking out at the rehearsal if if this had happened, but I had met her the night before on the Sunday at the at the reception. And, you know, they're there and they're like, hey, how are you? Blah, blah, blah, blah, and they were talking about how soon I expected.
And I thought I thought they were I was just gonna give them a fleet to watch. Which is Jekko. There's another one that I was like, I was gonna give you a fleet to watch, but, oh, yeah, just kinda surprised that. And then we're like, oh, here's you know, let me introduce you to the vice president or the
Mark: Co president.
Jane: It was a co president. Corinne Goyat, and I didn't hear the name because I was at a bar, plus it was French and I was like, oh, no. Oh, no. Not oh, no. She's here or that she's gonna be on stage.
Is that I don't know your name? Because I have to I don't have it on a script. I have to know your name and that's one of the things drives me up the wall or makes me eat well. And that doesn't drive me up the wall. It actually freaks me out because every so often things just escape my brain and I have to memorize the names and I'm always like, wait a minute.
Which one is it? Who are these people? Are you big? Are you small? Who's the big winner?
Who's the small winner? Do I know their name? Oh my god.
Mark: And you have to look across the row of them on the stage to see.
Jane: I had that thought at the awards just like the most recent ones where I was like, am I on big or small? What are what are we doing? Yeah. Like, you you just sometimes when you're on stage, you're just, like, all of a sudden, it kinda you're it's like in a movie, you know, when like, all the background starts spinning or it goes and you're like and then the person is right in focus and something has happened. That's what it feels like in my brain sometimes.
It's like all of a sudden I come to and go, holy crap. What am I doing? What am where am I? And I'm reading the paddles, thinking okay. I'm okay.
I'm okay.
Mark: That happens to every performer on stage.
Jane: Really?
Mark: Yeah. There's a moment where you tune out and you sort of come to and, like, wait, what just happened? Yeah. I've had that on stage many times when I'm doing a speech when I'm playing.
Jane: What is that?
Mark: That's just how the brain works.
Jane: Oh, okay. Well, I did like, that's why you rehearse. Yeah. So that you can do it.
Mark: You rehearse it to the point where you can do it on autopilot. And then when you inevitably go on autopilot, and it feels to you like you've been gone for minutes. But it's maybe a second or two.
Jane: Or you come to and you're like, oh my god. What? What's happening? Yeah. Where am I?
Yeah. It's it's really it's a little bit freaky when it happens, but, I mean, if you if you were doing it, you've probably been performing for a long time anyway, so it's not like it's gonna be a I don't think it happens to people who who just go on stage and just kind of roll with it. Yeah. You do it when you're concentrating and you're planning and you're you're invested in it. I don't know.
Mark: Every performer I've ever talked to has had it happen.
Jane: Really? Yeah. We've never talked about this. That's so weird that you and I have never talked about it because we, you know, one of the things we liked about each other was that we're both performers.
Mark: Yeah. We do talk a lot and we've done a lot of podcast, but yeah. There's probably times in this podcast where you've zoned out and not realized it.
Jane: Oh, absolutely.
Mark: Yeah. Usually when I'm talking.
Jane: When I'm zooming out, not because not because I'm, you know, in that what is that called even?
Mark: Performance head.
Jane: Yeah. It's more about, you know, I know what you're saying already, and you're just informing the audience. And I'm waiting for it to be done.
Mark: I've done it periodically. It's happened.
Jane: It happens on sometimes in webinars or interviews and what I do now when I'm doing an interview or I'm on the radio. I write stuff down. I write the questions down, and I write down what I'm gonna say. So I've I've got like a
Mark: That's a good idea.
Jane: I've got my remarkable my little electronic notepad. And I start writing it down because inevitably I'm starting I'm launching into something and then halfway through them like Dave Nemo, I do not know what your question was.
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: Because I don't remember it, but now that happens a lot less because I've written it down and I look at it and go, yeah. That's what I'm supposed to be. That's the point I'm trying to get to. But it's hard. When you when you're talking basically talking for a living,
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Radio people must do it all the time. Well, I I kinda think they do because sometimes they will go into something where they're asking somebody a question. But the question is so long.
By the time they get to the end of it, you kind of forgot what they started talking about because they give sort of a background and a story and an explanation and then end up at a question. And then, yeah, you have such a long question that you've as a listener, you've sort of forgotten what they started talking about in the beginning, and I'm sure they're zoning out partway through that. They're taking a bit of a mental break in the middle of that two minute long question.
Jane: I think that's key. It's a mental break. So much your brain is involved in any kind of performance. So even radio like, even an interview, that's a performance. Right?
You go on the radio or you go on TV and people are asking questions. It's a performance because you're trying to say the right things. You're trying to, you know, make sure that you look your best Like, there's a lot of stuff going on. And for me, when I'm on stage with the best fleets, I'm also worried about them. Like, I'm also making sure.
How do they come out? Do I hear footsteps behind me?
Mark: Are they standing in the right spot? Do they have their plaque the right way?
Jane: Are they going to the right spot? I remember a couple of years ago, Jim Pernie. Mhmm. I moved him.
Mark: Mhmm.
Jane: I moved him from the wrong spot no, from the right spot to the wrong spot because, I don't know, in my head, I rehearsed it that way, but then he did it, and then I moved him, oh my god. It was
Mark: That was fun.
Jane: It was fun, but I was and then I remember thinking, oh my god. He was right. I'm doing it wrong. They're all walking behind each other. They don't get to come out.
They don't get to come out and have their, you know, their own little spot. So I learned that. Don't do that. Always line them up far away first. But the the other thing that was a little crazy this time was that, Trish, she's our new Best Fleets program manager, was taking care of a lot of things.
That I usually take care of, and I was very confused as to like, I was getting stuff wrong because I didn't know the actual information. And I would like to have, like, all the information on a card
Mark: Okay.
Jane: That everybody gets including me.
Mark: Yeah. That's where it falls down. Is everybody else had it? Didn't occur to us to give to you. This is the same thing that we used to have with the reception as we'd have this master list.
Of people that are invited and have RSVP and then the other uninvited people that are allowed to come or invited separately, and we don't give it to the bouncers. So they don't let in the media, they don't let in the sponsors because they're not on the list. It's the same thing for you. We had all of this information that we prepared fish put together a whole agenda for all of the fleets of where they had to be at different times and handed it to all of them. There's a PDF that was mailed out.
They got hard copies. In some cases, yeah, didn't occur to us to give to you. Oops. Sorry.
Jane: Yeah. I felt a little bit like I don't know what's going on because I didn't know.
Mark: Yeah. You don't know which group is rehearsing at what time because we didn't tell you that.
Jane: Yeah. And it would have been good to have a printout, I think.
Mark: Yeah. That would my fail. We'll fix that.
Jane: Not necessarily.
Mark: It never occurred to me until this moment that, oh, yeah, you should've had a copy of that.
Jane: I didn't ask for one.
Mark: Wait. You may not have known that it was even being built.
Jane: I did not know that it was being built. I think I may have had some inkling at one point and then I forgot. Yeah. But having it printed out for everybody, I think, would have been a good.
Mark: Yeah. A little card that everybody gets. Yeah. Which they used to do They used to have the little cards that were in your delegate package. It showed you the times you had to be for rehearsal and you're appearing on stage.
They'll come to rehearsal at this time, then you get another card that is you're invited to this particular reception, you're invited to the Best Suites party, whatever. And when they stop doing those physical packages, people get confused.
Jane: And also, they changed all the times. So nothing was the same. So that was very confusing because a lot of people well, not a lot. But there were a few people who were like, I couldn't make your reception because We're basing our scheduling on last year. No one told us any different.
We have fifty meetings.
Mark: Yeah. They don't they don't look assume it's gonna be the same as it's always been.
Jane: And we never said it's not the same.
Mark: We did. We did.
Jane: We did.
Mark: We sent probably four messages where we were updating on status of different things and inviting them to the reception and saying, hey, it's on a different day this year.
Jane: Yeah. Okay. Well, not on this then.
Mark: Oh, no. Four was not enough. You have to say, hey, times have changed. It's not the same as it was.
Jane: You have to send them an individual message saying, hey, are you coming?
Mark: Yeah. But, you
Jane: know, they don't have to come to the reception. It's not that big a deal. It's nice to see them. And it's not like they haven't come to receptions that they just didn't go to this one.
Mark: Think we probably had fifty people there. It was pretty full.
Jane: Yeah. It
Mark: was lovely. Not as many previous winners. That's the thing that always bumps me out out. It always is mostly the current year's crop and I feel like anybody anybody who's ever been on the top twenty is eligible to come to that reception. I would like to see more of the earlier year winners.
And there was a few that had RSVP that they were gonna come and then just didn't. So I think they had fifty other vendor dinners. So that was a downside of the way it was the the reception was booked.
Jane: One point.
Mark: Yeah. The vendors were jumping all over stuff.
Jane: And there was also like way more vendors than the ratio the ratio of vendors carriers at the event was quite
Mark: Yeah. So there was a lot of stuff competing for time there. So I I don't blame them for not coming to this. It was only an hour. And if they had other things that they were doing sure makes sense.
But overall, it was great reception. It was good to to catch up with people. Nice to see them.
Jane: Mhmm.
Mark: Good to meet some people in person. That we've only seen sort of virtually. That's always nice.
Jane: It was weird because I did radio with the first day I had two radio spots and both well, normally, it's just the overall winners, but we had two one on the Monday and one on the Tuesday because on the Monday, it was before the overall winners were announced. So we had Jeff topping from Challenger and Ken Johnson from Leonard's Express. And it was weird because I met Ken on the Sunday, and I felt like I knew him.
Mark: While you're talking
Jane: about it. I felt like I had met him. It was so weird. Like, I started forgetting who I've met and who I haven't because of Zoom. Mhmm.
And I talked to them in such detail and and I think I've done a couple of things with Ken. So he's been on the radar. He's been a marvelous with we've done a podcast together. We've done the best leads interview. Actually, no.
He wasn't on the interview. I don't think he would I don't think I interviewed them, but there's been so many times that he has been virtually with me that I forgot that I hadn't met him. He's like, yeah. No. We haven't met before.
Oh, okay.
Mark: Yeah. People come up and say that and it's like, oh, I thought we had.
Jane: Oh, it's the same thing with the guys from CAT. I felt like I had met them. Maybe I have because, I mean, Ontario's not.
Mark: They're not in Ontario.
Jane: I think I said Michael was.
Mark: Yeah. Michael was. I met him in person in January. Which was brutal, I gotta say, I went and did a speech, like, two days after we figured out who the winners were and he was there. And he was like sitting in front of me and I'm chatting with him the whole time.
I couldn't say anything. We hadn't even announced the top twenty at that point, but I'm looking at him and I'm like, I know you're the overall winner. And I am just hoping that I do not spill the beans.
Jane: Why was that event?
Mark: That was the Toronto Transportation Association luncheon.
Jane: Right.
Mark: That I went and spoke at.
Jane: Right. Yeah. Because our insurance broker.
Mark: Yeah. Our benefits insurance broker who does some transport work invited me to speak there, and it was good.
Jane: That's really weird connection.
Mark: It was one of those weird small world things.
Jane: It was our it our personal insurance?
Mark: No. Our our corporate benefits. Okay. So yeah. That was good.
So what else we got coming up? I have a webinar next week that I'm very much looking forward to interviewing Travis Bush from Funko and Associates.
Jane: Nice.
Mark: We're gonna be talking about sort of the insurance reviews and what they see when they go in and evaluate fleets, sort of the most common problems, what's missing, you know, what they like fleet to do, and you gave me a good idea for one of the sort of subjects of that, which is ways that fleets undermine their own safety programs. Mhmm. No. I've got lots lots to ask them about. We're gonna have a good conversation.
Jane: She's led with that. We're gonna talk about how fleets undermine their own safety programs.
Mark: Yes. How they shoot themselves in the foot before the thing even starts.
Jane: Yeah.
Mark: Yeah. Actually, that's gonna be a good story that comes out of it. We do an article from each of these, and that's gonna be really good one, I think. So
Jane: And when can we talk about one of the things that we were talking about that led me to give you the title? No. Okay. You have to come to the webinar now.
Mark: Or read the article we write as well.
Jane: Or read the article, yes.
Mark: Yeah. And what about you? You're busy in graphics world finishing up the pieces of the the website, which, damn it, this thing's going live before the end of March.
Jane: I'm not even really creating it. I'm just kind of I don't know. I feel like the master puppeteer.
Mark: You're just making some tweaks, what Berenice is doing.
Jane: Yes. Berenice all the way. With some help from Alex and Cat, but, yeah, I think you think you think you, Bernice, oh my god.
Mark: He's killing it.
Jane: It is very helpful to have you. It is a lot and I'm not good at it. I mean, I'm just not I can do it. It's not my it's not my wheelhouse. I don't really like it.
It.
Mark: I think the challenge is that you never really have time to devote to it. Because of the websites that we've done, you've kind of been sort of scrambling on your lunch break or after hours squeezing in fifteen minutes here or there. So the fact that they looked as good as they did is a miracle. But Berenice is able to take a full day and think about it and, okay, how do I want these design elements to work together and how to suggest this section versus that section?
Jane: Yeah. She did a really good job with that is that all the different colors for all the different sections, I guess, is the best thing to to call it. And then, like, all of her different bits of line art and and that kind of thing and just the treatment of things. Mhmm. So we had we've had multiple kind of, I don't know, graphic brainstorming sessions where we just kind of throw ideas together.
Mark: Yep. And you were working on finishing up the footer yesterday, so that design looks like it's done. Yeah. Yeah. These things that you think are sort of small bits, but they still take a lot of work to put together.
Jane: Yeah. And I'm waiting for you to give me some information so that I can
Mark: Oh, yeah. I'll do that.
Jane: Although I could send it to Alan and get him to do it,
Mark: I'll have it ready for you this morning.
Jane: Okay. So And then I'll do that, which is really weird because, you know, now that Tiffany is the head of content, I'm, like, not really. Doing that. Although, what I'm doing right now is kind of getting we have our new TDG course ready to go, but we want to have someone do it once over on it. And so I'm kind of connecting Tiffany with people, our customers, And that's kind of so I'm kind of, like, higher level.
I'm I'm just basically saying, you do this. You do this. You do this. And it's very hands off, which is really weird for me because for so many years, I was in the trenches doing it. Like you said, I was doing website design on my lunch hour and I would write courses and then I would write articles and I would write, you know, whatever needed to be written.
And I'm kind of not doing that anymore.
Mark: Yeah. And then the difference is so noticeable. We were doing this, getting ready for this webinar, and you're kinda hanging around, waiting for me. Usually, I have to pull you out and you're griping about how you're being pulled out and you've got so many storyboards to review or whatever and No. It was like, okay.
Well, I'm kinda ready when you are.
Jane: I do have stuff to do. I'm just not doing it. I think because I'm really
Mark: Yeah.
Jane: I'm really big. I'm tired. I'm tired from Monday.
Mark: Yeah. It takes so much out of you.
Jane: I was asleep by what? Nine thirty?
Mark: It was a little bit after nine o'clock when we crashed on a day night after going to dinner. We had an early dinner with our sort of team and reviewed everything and talked about how it went and all of that kind of stuff. We went and crashed around nine o'clock that they went over to Disney World and hung around at the the parts of Disney that are open till like eleven o'clock at night, and then we're back and we're at the show before us on Tuesday.
Jane: I know.
Mark: Is wrong with these people? Where do they get this energy?
Jane: It's called the use.
Mark: I guess.
Jane: It's like
Mark: I guess.
Jane: They're not old and overworked like we are.
Mark: Well, Speaking of being old and overworked, we should get back to that work to finish it. So we can wrap this up. So for the next episode, we will have new things to talk about. We will have new content. We will definitely have a website live if it kills me, and we will be getting ready for mid America.
So there's your teaser for the next episode. In the meantime, thanks for listening, everybody.
Jane: Have a great day.