Why an Autonomous Truck Won’t Automate Your Yard

An autonomous truck does not create an autonomous yard. Without aligned decisions, reliable data and clear ownership, smart assets become expensive distractions.

I’m joined by Matt Yearling, CEO of YMX Logistics; Chad Fox, Manager and Delivery Lead at Miebach Consulting; and Kurt Neutgens, CEO and co-founder of Orange EV. Together, we examine why supply chain resilience still breaks down in the yard — a neglected part of logistics that can disrupt warehouse flow, transport performance and customer service.

You’ll hear how the biggest failures often sit in handoffs between inventory, warehouse, yard and transportation, where visibility exists but nobody owns the next decision. We break down why automation only works when the process is clear and dependable — and why an autonomous truck cannot coordinate the operation around it.

You might be surprised to learn that electrification may deliver the more immediate resilience gain. Kurt explains how moving from roughly 80% diesel uptime to 97–98% electric uptime can cut interruptions, remove fuelling downtime and improve fleet efficiency while reducing emissions.

The core question is simple: can your operation act on what it sees, or is the dashboard merely documenting the delay?

🎙️ Listen now for a practical look at supply chain visibility, sustainability, risk, data and the decisions required to turn technology into execution.

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Transcript

Matt Yearling: 0:00

And so where we're at from a autonomous yard truck today is that you cannot say Hey you have an autonomous yard truck. It automates the yard. It's like no there are so many activities associated with yard operations that that yard truck is not gonna be able to accomplish.

Tom Raftery: 0:24

So an autonomous truck does not create an autonomous yard. That gap between an intelligent asset and a coordinated operation is where visibility, electrification, and AI either improve execution or become expensive distractions. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening where wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 131 of Resilient Supply Chain Stories and Strategies that Keep Business moving. I'm your host, Tom Raftery. In this week's round table edition of the podcast in association with The Supply Chainer, I'm joined by Matt Yearling, CEO of YMX Logistics, Chad Fox of Miebach Consulting, and Kurt Neutgens, CEO of Orange EV. Together they bring the software, process, and equipment perspectives needed to see the whole system. And here's the interesting bit. Moving from 80% diesel uptime to 98% electric uptime can transform the operation before autonomy even enters the picture. This episode examines what must be reliable, connected, and clearly owned before a yard can genuinely become autonomous. Let's dive in. Matt, Chad, and Kurt, would you like to give a quick introduction, starting with maybe Matt?

Matt Yearling: 1:48

Yes absolutely So I'm Matt Yearling. I'm CEO of YMX Logistics. YMX logistics. whilst that's been approximately over old it's actually built on a 95-year-old platform. And we into the spotting and shuttling business in and around yard operations back in, in 82. My personal background, originally from the UK, but came over here 30 plus years ago, Enterprise software driving disruption in in general enterprise, technology. Most of my time has been in supply chain and more specifically in yard management. management. So myself and many of our team is very much technology oriented and we're looking at this specific area of the supply chain as this area of opportunity and very differentiated in looking at it very different different than traditional, logistics providers in this space.

Tom Raftery: 2:36

Great and Chad.

Chad Fox: 2:38

Absolutely. Thank you Tom. And thank you for having me on today. so I'm Chad Fox. I'm a manager and delivery lead with Miebach Consulting. Bigger picture Miebach offers end-to-end supply chain consulting and solution support. So we have a variety of, teams as far as strategy design, engineering, digital innovation. Specifically I represent our process and IT group. So I focus more on the technology side and systems side of things. I've 15 years in the industry. My background is, largely pretty heavy in WMS automation and implementation on that side of things. For the sake of today's topic as we talk through resiliency and visibility gaps, I'd like to speak to and approach things from, from my perspective of the execution lens and the visibility gap really being more of a real time decision and execution gap as we look through systems and how that affects operations.

Tom Raftery: 3:46

Okay. And just to clarify, Chad, it's Miebach. It's not Maybach, the fancy people who do up the Mercedes

Chad Fox: 3:52

That's correct, yes. It's Miebach. Yep.

Tom Raftery: 3:56

Miebach. Okay, great.

Chad Fox: 3:57

Yep.

Tom Raftery: 3:57

Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself?

Kurt Neutgens: 4:00

Sure. I'm Kurt Neutgens. I am the CEO of Orange EV, one of the co-founders here, and just recently became the CEO. My background is was with Ford and a little bit with GM in vehicles. So I left Ford after 17 years and I was the engineering manager of the F-150, and started doing electric vehicles back in 2005 and helped a couple different companies make electric vehicles and Wayne and I started Orange EV in 2012. We have, we believe about 28% of the overall terminal truck market now. We've been building trucks and chargers since and delivering those since 2015. That first truck we delivered was to DHL in 2015. It's still running 10 years later. It has 26,000 hours on it as an electric and had been dead on the side of the road as a diesel before we took it. And so it really has had two lives. We have trucks in operation that have over 36,000 hours on them as electric yard hustlers. And over 2000 vehicles now, we just announced 600 truck order that we're delivering this year. We have just announced Maersk has started buying from us another port trucks, so that's our second product. And we've also announced a new product, the Orange Juicer, which is a battery integrated charger to help people with the, the grid issues that they have. And so they can scale their fleet much quicker than they would be able to if they're waiting for the utility to show up. So that's a little bit about us. We think we're making a difference in the world and that's really why we're doing this. And we think we're improving operations along with the ESG improvements that we make.

Tom Raftery: 5:42

Brilliant. Okay, fantastic. Today I want to get beyond visibility as a slogan. The industry has spent years trying to see more, but the real question is, what happens next? Can the organisation coordinate labour assets, warehouse activity, yard movements, equipment systems and decisions fast enough to improve execution? Matt the industry has spent years, as I said, chasing visibility. Where did that help and where did companies mistake seeing the problem for solving it?

Matt Yearling: 6:17

I think visibility is kind is a big broad subject really for the most part. And and really when you look at the industry in the past 10 years when you talk about real time transportation visibility as a category that was defined with our friends Project44 and FourKites coming after that. At this point in time being commoditised so most of the use case is around transportation visibility and trying to determine on time arrival for the most part. From my perspective when you look at the you look at the yard has always been an interesting spot. When you look at operations across the thousands and thousands of manufacturing distribution sites inland, what you do find is those that are operating at scale always had visibility problems. So around you know like in the two thousands, and this is a company that I had in the past is our differentiation was visibility. Is that RTLS it's that real time localisation of specifically trailers in a facility in large facility. And looking at that very differently could actually drive, efficiencies, not hunting for assets et cetera et cetera So visibility today is still very immature. It still has a long way to go. We still rely rely on lack of technology And and more specifically again, my area focus is the yard yard primarily driven by the fact that that it is such a small part of the overall spend like relating to transportation less than 5% of the spend. And it doesn't get the strategic focus or time and attention but it has real ramifications in terms of warehouse and transportation that's not well understood. So visibility is becoming less of a major problem but more about hey what do you do with the yards in terms of driving value within the supply chain And so there has been and I don't have the time but there has been a lot of maturity in terms of the life from when was yard an issue? When did logistics company focus on it? When was technology relevant? When was visibility important? And now, what is it we're trying to do in terms of execution and driving more value to warehousing transportation in a different way because it's not well understood And so, that is the big thing and is the big reason why from a thesis perspective why YMX exists cause I spent a lot of years looking at, big operations for the largest companies in the world and saw issues regarding around their lack of sophistication around the yard. Visibility is one of those items. Execution, predictability, optimisation, throughput is kinda we're focused on as well.

Tom Raftery: 8:46

Sure. And Chad, when companies try and connect inventory, warehouse, yard transport, execution, where does the plan most often break down once it hits the real site?

Chad Fox: 8:59

Yes. And, and you're leading right into it there, Tom. It's where we see it is typically the handoffs. So it's not, one system or team in particular. It's the inventory to the warehouse, the warehouse to the yard, the yard to transportation. Those handoffs between teams and systems is where we typically see companies big and small have, it's those critical points where if it's not visibility to the data, it's the decision making and escalation where we see time and resources, really become a pain point there.

Tom Raftery: 9:39

Okay, and is, is the gap usually process, data, ownership, systems, behaviour, all of the above. Something else entirely?

Chad Fox: 9:48

It's a little bit of more, so all the above, but typically the driver that we would see is, is a lack of ownership and clear escalation paths, and that's where I fold back into the decision gap. The decision and execution gap is, WMS may know what's in the warehouse for example, YMS knows, hey, we've got these trailers in the yard. TMS knows what we have on the transportation side, but without clear visibility to how that information and data relates, and clear ownership of, we know the trailer's in the yard, but what are we prioritising next? Who's making that decision and how does it translate between the systems? That's where we typically see a lot of the operational challenge because of the blurry lines there.

Tom Raftery: 10:44

And Kurt, when new equipment enters an operation, especially electric equipment, like you're bringing on what has to be true operationally before the technology can actually deliver?

Kurt Neutgens: 10:58

Yeah, I think, the way we've done things, I think we actually bring a higher level of capability in the truck already. We obviously come in and we train the drivers and the, the team on the first day. And so that works really well. They're up and running very quickly. We gotta make sure that the chargers are in place before we show up. We try to get those early there. But we have telematics systems in our trucks that are really leading the industry in this, segment. And so we can see more than just where the truck is, but all kinds of information about the truck and how it's running and, if there are any issues. I think one of the biggest things we bring to this conversation is our uptime percentage. On the diesel trucks their uptime is maybe 80% and that's a good truck. And that's been the industry standard for a long time. And so when you have a 97, 98% uptime for your fleet, which we have now you have a lot less interruptions, a lot, fewer moments to have to deal with an interruption how things are changed. It's not as big in this world as we're talking about. You still know where the trailers are presumably, you still know what's in the trailers, but maybe they don't show up at the door when you thought they were gonna show up 'cause the truck broke down and you gotta go get a different one or those kinds of things. If we keep those up times good and we keep people focused on other things rather than fixing trucks or finding out what to do next with the truck, that's where we contribute mostly in this, in this discussion.

Tom Raftery: 12:32

Okay and Kurt, how do you deal with the we fear change aspect? When you're coming in and replacing diesel with electric, there's gonna be pushback from some people in the organisation, right?

Kurt Neutgens: 12:44

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. What's interesting is and Matt probably has this experience too when we come into a site go to a site and do the training that first day, and there was always one person who was pushing back pretty heavily. But it was always, you could see it was all from the great place. They cared about the company, they cared about doing a great job. And their, attitude was, why are we wasting our time with this? I've got work to do. You're wasting my and everyone else's time with this, this toy, right? And that was always my first driver. And so I was like, okay, you're first get out there and two minutes later they'd come back and they'd be like, why aren't we doing this everywhere? This is the best thing I've ever driven. For sure you have pushback but there's pushback throughout the organisation. Getting there that day is is the, that first, that first day with the drivers is pretty easy. It's, getting past the rest of the team and you're realising that the claims we're making for savings of a half a million dollars for a truck over 10 years versus a diesel just in fuel and maintenance is hard for people to believe at first. Matt believes it now 'cause he's got his own data, right? But I've, I've had many customers say, I, didn't pull the trigger'cause it was too good to be true. You're, you're, better at everything, right? It's, it's, it's better uptime, lasts longer, works better during the day, stops faster, fewer accidents. The drivers like it more. I'm saving a half a million dollars. Yeah, there's, there's some snake oil here somewhere. I don't know where it is, but there's some something somewhere, right? And that, that has been our, biggest pushback. And then of course, people don't know what electricity is. And so when someone's been buying diesels all their lives, and then you tell them to buy an electric truck, that can be really hard for them to they don't even know who their electrician is. Right? And how do I ask the question? Right? And so those things can be really tough. For Matt and his team, they're supporting other customers and so now they're asking that customer to put infrastructure in and that customer may not even own the building, right? They now have a support uh, or a, they'll lease it from somebody else. So it's a little bit of a tangled web, but once people get up and running, they like it. And that's where the momentum is building.

Tom Raftery: 14:58

And let's talk then a little bit about the execution gap Matt. Where do you see the most expensive handoff failures? Gate to yard? Yard to dock? Dock to warehouse? Or warehouse transport?

Matt Yearling: 15:13

All of the above And it depends on which industry you're talking about right right I mean look people don't realise, and going back to what Chad was saying, you know 100% correct. There's some basic stuff that's just not even there right Some of our customers have a WMS with a YMS module and it's like they don't really, They're not really using it. It's still antiquated And again I don't wanna be flippant but depending on the use case, people are using the yard in in ways that you they didn't even think they're using the yard. And in some cases an extension of the warehouse. In some cases they're manufacturing they're pulling product just in time to the door. And they said well we don't do it that way. Yes you do. When you look at how they're operating. When you're in e-commerce it's like do I have the availability of empties for outbound velocity? If I'm grocery I depend on getting that product into the warehouse and creating the waves of product to distribution direct to the store. So it depends. And I think think really on time in full is being one of the big things from a transportation perspective. So transportation because it monopolises the spend and the velocity and some of the of really the high level metrics from a customer perspective is are we getting the product where it needs to be on time? And what is some of those factors associated with it? It could be inbound not coming in fast enough. it my private fleet getting hung up behind other carriers because they're not getting into the gate fast enough? Do we have to have some fast passes? Is there some games going on in the warehouse associated with Hey I'm timing staging a product around breaks? All of these shenanigans go on. So I think, most of it is transportation but you can't ignore what's going on in manufacturing and the warehouse as well. So it's all of the above Tom

Tom Raftery: 16:50

Okay. Interesting. And Chad, what do the dashboards hide?

Chad Fox: 16:55

They can hide the real picture, Tom. If the data itself is not good or clean or accurate or properly exchanged between systems, it can convolute your view of what is actually going on. What is the, the true problem that we need to rectify. So it, it goes back to, similar to what Matt was saying, it's you may not be maximising the potentials of the systems are in place, but also without the clear ownership of what system owns what data and who is the leader that's consuming that data and making the decision downstream. That's where, again, you can lose time and efficiency by not having the appropriate dashboards or the processes in place to react to them.

Tom Raftery: 17:46

Okay, fair. And Kurt, if a facility changes the equipment but keeps the same dispatch, logic, charging assumptions, maintenance habits, shift patterns, what breaks first, typically?

Kurt Neutgens: 17:58

For us if they keep that same pattern that they've had, we've designed the system to work well with what they're doing. We can charge a hundred percent just on breaks and, handoffs. We can go 24 7, 365 without really affecting the operations at all. In fact, we improve the operations.'cause normally the diesels, they need to fill their fuel tank a couple times a day if they're in 24 7. And a lot of times they have to go off site to do that, depending on how big the site is. And so because of we've got the electricity right there, we actually improve the time on site significantly. And so that is another way to help improve the system. Again, it sounds like, I'm always saying we make it better, but we do. We've thought about these things pretty hard before we started. Again ask the, the people who've been using 'em, but it's pretty amazing when you don't have your drivers going offsite three times a day any longer. And, going to the gas station and chatting somebody up and having a cigarette and whatever else it is. Right

Tom Raftery: 19:05

All right. well let, let's talk a little bit about standardisation and, getting away from kind of fantasy. So Chad, what do you think should be standardised first in a multi-site execution programme? Would it be process, data, governance, training, system configuration? Again, all of the above? None of the above? Something else entirely?

Chad Fox: 19:27

So this is where all the above is not the right answer. From my perspective, it's process. Especially depending on the size of your network. If it's a smaller one site type of, network, it's much different than larger companies and corporations that have hundreds of dcs all across the world. Regardless of size, the priority needs to be aligning on your processes first and making sure that you have the governance in place so that the next steps in the process, whether it's configuring the system, is the processes have to be aligned on and agreed to before. Otherwise, as you scale, you are just making site by site exceptions that move you away from a golden template there.

Tom Raftery: 20:18

And Matt then what does good yard standardisation look like and where should companies to Chad's point allow local flexibility?

Matt Yearling: 20:27

So yes, there's always local flexibility but going back to what Chad was said he's absolutely correct. A 100%. And pretty much what is true is that they don't know how the yard is operating today there's so much urban legend. And it depending on who's operated that for the last year or so but versus, five years ago and where it's going. And so the opportunity is pretty big. The other thing is, there's a lot of arms dealers out there declaring that we can go and solve these problems without understanding what problems are. And so we have customers that are getting peppered with technology companies looking for a problem to solve that is not very well understood and articulated. And so when you look at and you lean in for us it's better to focus on the large operations for a big shipper and really solve those problems for them and just say what does standardisation mean to you? What are some of the big things that you're trying to accomplish And it is as you know, a big shipper is a Medusa right? There's many different decision makers with different interests But is it really driving the value? And what is it you're trying to do from a supply chain perspective across your network? You have to have that adaptability and flexibility but you also have to have a good understanding of standardisation. But you can't automate you can't optimise without understanding how you're executing today. What is the dynamics and what is the needs of the yard in the scheme of across the network? What it really boils down to is there's some specific metrics some specific KPIs that shippers are looking for. Depending on the industry that really has them govern how they look across the network. So if you latch onto that and you align to that and you really illuminate what's going on in that facility and just look at this holistically you can start driving value beyond just optimising inside the four fences And yes you've gotta start with understanding how they're operating and understanding from our perspective we've seen many different things we don't know everything but we've seen a lot of things across the industry And, guiding the customer on a journey of optimisation, upgrade the experience from day one day then a journey of optimisation looking at opportunities for creating value and then standardisation across the network. So yes you gotta be a little bit flexible and adaptable but guide them on a journey.

Chad Fox: 22:39

And to add, to add to that, Matt, I think that that's really good context. And because I think that further drives home, the point of why ironing out and truly nailing down process upfront is, critical. I think it's worth stressing that companies need to be honest with themselves and willing to change upfront.'cause like Matt was saying, just because they think they're doing things one way, we need to truly understand how are those processes actually being executed within a site or across the network. And then have an honest assessment of are these best practises? Is one site doing it one way that we would like to adopt at others? Or maybe both are less than ideal and we implement some new process going forward that is closer to industry standards. And sometimes you have to fight through the red tape, but it's the openness to being honest with what are those processes today and who owns the final governance of defining what the processes are in the future.

Tom Raftery: 23:48

Kurt, from an engineering and manufacturing perspective, how do you balance standardisation with real world site variation?

Kurt Neutgens: 24:36

We try to be quite flexible with how we set the trucks up and, and the, the different configurations we can do for the customers. I think there is some special sauce Matt mentioned the different industries, they all have a little bit different information and, and metrics, but there's also a special sauce for someone like Matt and what he does with the truck. We can do quite a bit of customisation. One of the things that Orange EV does that the rest of the industry doesn't do like in the same way I guess, is we have over a hundred engineers on our team. And so that's really outta line with the industry. A lot of analysts would say we have way too many, but that allows us to meet the needs of the customers in a way that others can't. And so with our direct to the customer service, to sales, manufacturing, we get to give the customer really what they're looking for in the truck and what they need. And so that allows them to maximise that in their operations. And that can be anywhere from power capability, to battery size, to charging capability to I have this light that I use to identify trailers at night, right? And so those things can all make a difference. And our telematics system, of course is, is pretty big deal. So.

Tom Raftery: 25:55

Chad, after twenty plus go lives, what separates a successful systems rollout from one that technically launches but never delivers the business result?

Chad Fox: 26:06

Yes. So you need to make sure that you have the golden template, but understand that there are gonna be exceptions site to site. And obviously minimise those as best as possible. But you need to go into it with an understanding that the standardisation and modernisation is not just a upgrade of the systems and the IT solutions that are in place. It's truly an operations enablement like decision that we're improving processes and the, and the supporting the systems there and having a centralised approach to your supply chain network.

Tom Raftery: 26:47

So, I think it's time now to talk a little bit about decision flow, automation and autonomy. Matt, people talk about autonomous operations. What has to be boringly reliable before autonomy is even a sensible goal?

Matt Yearling: 27:02

We're boringly reliable. Yeah So it's kind like what are those those repetitive tasks that you could provide to something that could, autonomously do it. We're, doing that in two different areas of this. One is from a digital perspective, when we engage with an operation we come in and we understand what's the throughput or the the footprint from a warehousing transportation. On the yard we model it out we ask the right questions we understand the throughput. We have a digital twin that's really kind looking at real time operations And so it's guiding some of these decisions that are being executed. So when we are looking at our differentiation it's under the umbrella of autonomous yard operating system. It transcends what a YMS is. It transcends what a telematics system is. It's how do you bring all these resources together and how is it effectively executing. Now coming back to another degree of autonomy and that's an autonomous truck. Well hey, I've done robots in the past. Many different use cases. When you look at a robot, it's executing something repetitively. And so where we're at from a autonomous yard truck today is that you cannot say Hey you have an autonomous yard truck. It automates the yard. It's like no there are so many activities associated with yard operations that that yard truck is not gonna be able to accomplish. The conversation around autonomy from an execution with an autonomous yard truck is what are the specific use cases and where are the opportunities in the shipper's network and facilities for that autonomy. And it could be as simple as shuttling between a manufacturing plant and a distribution centre over private infrastructure. That's a simple use case. That's happening today. Or it could be just Hey you know what, it's part of the operation and it's just doing specific moves between zones, specific dock doors and specific zones in the yard. So you have to understand what are the use cases what are the boring and mundane and reliable use cases that you could actually automate today with, autonomous yard trucks? that is today there's a lot of pilots going on but have we crossed the chasm of productivity? Kurt has done with the EVs. It's took a while. We are already there with EVs We're still proving it with human in the loop, we're still proving it with with autonomous trucks today.

Tom Raftery: 29:19

And we've gotten over 30 minutes into this conversation without yet mentioning AI. So Chad, now's your chance! As AI enters execution systems, who owns the decision? Is it the system, the site leader, the process owner, or the business?

Chad Fox: 29:36

You're right, AI is, it feels like everywhere nowadays. The short answer is a combination of, those options. There are circumstances where, you can lean on the system's abilities and some of the AI technologies to, automate some of the day-to-day activities that may be done manually by a person or team of people today in the operation. Things specifically like detection of exceptions, prioritising work, what orders out of the order pool, what needs to get released first. Those types of day to day or shift by shift, is where you can see trends of AI being able to, support those decisions and automate some of those decisions. But what we need to drive home there is that it can only do that if the data is there to support it. So it kind of goes back to our, we're only as good as the data that we have and how it's exchanged between systems. So, if you can feed reliable data and event level data into AI, yes, there's absolutely opportunities to automate and streamline some of those types of tasks and activities that we're seeing today. However, big picture, business level types of decisions, the maturity of the AI may not necessarily be there quite yet.

Tom Raftery: 31:05

And that's automation. Electrification, Kurt, where does electrification become an execution advantage rather than just an emissions story? You know what operational benefits tend to get underestimated?

Kurt Neutgens: 31:20

Yeah, I, I think you know, it, it's just uptime, right? When you go from 80% uptime to 98% uptime with the equipment, it is just a massive change. And that is a, a really big difference in how, you're managing your, your team, how many people, how many assets you have swapping things in and out. And then, we talked about the fueling. Right now we have no operational downtime for fueling on our trucks. Zero. And so that's different from, can be an hour a shift per asset, right? And so those types of things make a huge difference. When you talk about AI, for us it's really about communication. And so we're improving our understanding of the trucks, we're improving our response. I think one of the neat things about our model where we are direct to the customer service is things like AI can have a much bigger impact because it's all internal. And so we're not trying to go through dealers and, and multiple different different vectors to try and understand the data. Those are, tough ways to collect that data, right? I think Matt has told me many times, Hey, if I can work on not just the yard, but other parts of the company, I can do more because I'm, I'm bringing it all together in one system. Orange EV has that ability that others don't because we do all parts of that, doing the, the manufacturing here in the Kansas City and then the service ourselves, the engineering here, building our own battery packs. Those things, multiply and that, structure now you can work on the whole system rather than parts of it. And when you work on a system, you can be much, more effective than if you work on a part of the system.

Tom Raftery: 33:11

Time now for the lightning round. And this is where I ask you two questions each. You got one sentence answers. Matt, are you ready to go first?

Matt Yearling: 33:23

One sentence Are you sure? Yeah. No absolutely.

Tom Raftery: 33:27

Use lots of conjunctions.

Matt Yearling: 33:28

Yes Okay.

Tom Raftery: 33:31

So what is visibility still missing, Matt?

Matt Yearling: 33:36

There's still a technology gap. There is still technology gaps across There's still technology gaps there simple There's still technology gaps and process failures That's it That's really fundamentally it. Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 33:48

And what a yard problem gets ignored, longest.

Matt Yearling: 33:55

Over capacity just to put some clarity around that especially coming outta the pandemic. People throw even from a technology perspective people throw hardware at a problem from a compute perspective same thing in the supply chain For such a small part of the spend spend have got over capacity still And that's a means of providing risk mitigation in terms of execution when really they should be looking at it very differently in terms of what is it we're trying to do and optimise more than one sentence But you understand what I what why I had to clarify that.

Tom Raftery: 34:27

Sure, sure, Chad, what breaks go lives most often?

Chad Fox: 34:33

What breaks go lives most often? I'm gonna say a lack of preparation upfront. So especially with larger standardisation efforts where multiple sites, and it's up to years of a rollout plan involved, depending on the size of the network, there can be a lot of pressure to condense schedule. We need to get the first site live. We need to get the second site live. And that typically comes at the expense of a lack of effectiveness in those critical early phases where you're building the system, configuring the system, testing the system. If you cut corners there, by the time that you go live, you're already signing yourself up for a, a, a number of challenges and systematic issues that, come out of the lack of prioritisation on those early phases in the project to put yourself in a position to succeed.

Tom Raftery: 35:38

That was a very long sentence, Chad.

Chad Fox: 35:40

No, it's just fair enough. Yes.

Matt Yearling: 35:45

He is my brother from another mother Thank you, Chad.

Chad Fox: 35:47

Enough. Good point. I lost track of my one sentence. My apologies.

Tom Raftery: 35:54

No worries. Next one, next one. This one should be easy enough for you. Standardise or customise, which wins?

Chad Fox: 36:01

Standardisation is the short answer. There are circumstances where customisation is necessary, but standardisation wins.

Tom Raftery: 36:11

Great. Kurt, what kills equipment adoption fastest?

Kurt Neutgens: 36:15

I think unreliability, right? If, if you stay reliable and you keep that uptime, people start trusting equipment and then they start rolling it out other places, so they adopt it very quickly.

Tom Raftery: 36:28

And what matters more uptime or utilisation?

Kurt Neutgens: 36:33

Obviously utilisation, but from a manufacturing standpoint, that's harder to impact. There are so many other factors there besides the equipment. And so if we maximise uptime, that allows our customers to maximise utilisation.

Tom Raftery: 36:50

And now for all three of you, for listeners who want to close the execution gap in their own operations, where should they start next Monday morning, Matt. You go first.

Matt Yearling: 37:04

Engage a partner that understands that has some industry expertise and, strategic focus I think where supply chains are successful if they look at this from a best of breed solution and look at who are the experts in this specific area. It's same for a technology TMS WMS look at it from a services perspective. Engage a partner that's very deep domain expertise in this area and make sure that there's some trust and transparency and engage a company like ourselves in taking you on a journey. You probably didn't know you could actually go on. So we didn't really touch on it today but really it's how do you upgrade the experience from day one Take you on a journey of value creation that is beyond what you're actually paying for the service today. That's our that's our mission that's our objective.

Tom Raftery: 37:53

Chad?

Chad Fox: 37:54

To me it's aligning not only the, systems, but the labour and the assets and the physical operations through the lens of everyone needs to have the same operating picture. And once you have that foundation and are, are approaching all of those key aspects through that perspective, it's, a matter of making sure that you have clear owners and action paths in place for, implementing that approach.

Tom Raftery: 38:24

Kurt?

Kurt Neutgens: 38:26

Obviously I'm gonna go to the truck. Right? But it's true. I mean, it's not just self-serving. When, you want to maximise that capability you need equipment that's the most reliable. And, we're at a point right now, we're, we've been delivering trucks for 11 years and this isn't, new science. This isn't a new adoption curve. If you aren't using electric yard hostlers, you're behind. Orange EV's data, our customer's data. We've got 370 different customers using Orange EV electric yard hostlers in every industry there is. And that adoption is what drives that uptime to allow us to do, or Matt and Chad to do what they want to do. Because you don't have these disruptions that stop you midstream and, and you can't accomplish what you had planned to do. You have to have great equipment. And so that's where we come in and I think that's kind of a, a formational discussion.

Tom Raftery: 39:25

Super. And again, for all three of you, over the next three to five years, what changes most? The yard? The warehouse? The truck? Kurt, or the decision layer connecting them? Matt?

Matt Yearling: 39:40

I think it's the decision layer? Connecting all of them. And really making sure that you've got organisations like ourself that are deep in a specific area of the domain aligning to the strategic objectives for that shipper and translating into execution within those facilities. yes that's what I think.

Tom Raftery: 39:57

Chad?

Chad Fox: 39:58

I wholeheartedly agree. It's the, decision layer. What trends that we're seeing on the, system side. it's very similar to your, your phone If you're, you're an iPhone user like me, it's not just your phone, it's your calendar. It's your wallet, it's your camera. We're seeing similarities on the solution side. The offerings aren't just a standalone WMS anymore. They're a WMS that can do some of what a traditional WCS or WES typically owns and orchestrates throughout the building. So it's, the blurring of lines between what in the past may have looked like an IT landscape of many pieces to the puzzle of systems that are interacting now, becoming one system that has more responsibility and ownership for those types of decision layer, happenings.

Tom Raftery: 40:58

All right, Kurt.

Kurt Neutgens: 40:59

Yeah, I think, a lot of the industry still has to convert down to say, 70% industry still converting to electric. So I, I think that's a pretty big step for those individuals. But I would agree it's, having systems talk to each other all the way from the ERP inside the building, to the warehouse, to the rest of it. I mean, having one system that's talking and working through is, is key. And, it's not just that they're talking, but you're optimising the overall picture. And that's, that's really key. You just need so many parts. The technology gap that Matt mentioned earlier. Without those foundational inputs, you can't do the maximisation as well as you'd like to. I think that's really the key there. But each, each, portion is important.

Tom Raftery: 41:49

Alright, great. We're wrapping up now folks. So, Matt, Chad, and Kurt. Last thing to the three of you. If people would like to know more about yourselves or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Matt Yearling: 42:05

Yeah so very simply just go to our website YMX logistics.com that's tells you everything you need to know about who we are and and all the contact information is right there.

Tom Raftery: 42:16

Fantastic Chad?

Chad Fox: 42:18

Very similarly, our website, Miebach.com. And you will also find us on LinkedIn as well as my profile. I'm Chad Fox, 32 on LinkedIn.

Tom Raftery: 42:29

Fantastic and Kurt?

Kurt Neutgens: 42:30

Yep. And you'll find us again at our website, orange ev dot com. Tells you a little history about ourselves, but also the contact information. We do sell, lease, or rent trucks, so lots of different options there for the, customers.

Tom Raftery: 42:46

Alright, gents, that's been fantastic. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Chad Fox: 42:50

Yep.

Matt Yearling: 42:50

Thank you so much, Tom.

Chad Fox: 42:51

Thank you tom.

Kurt Neutgens: 42:52

Thank you.

Matt Yearling: 42:52

Thank you.