SPEAKER_02 0:00

People are are feeling upbeat about the industry again. They're feeling upbeat about the organization. So you can feel it at the conference. I wish there was a way to sort of measure the mood, you know, objectively, but it it really doesn't take a lot of measurement. You can feel it. And so, as my father would say, it's a lot more fun to play offense than defense. And we've been playing defense for an awfully long time. So this feels good.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

You're listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast with Ken Lucci of Driving Transactions and James Blaine of PAX Training. Learn how you can build a thriving transportation business with real profits, repeat clients, and enterprise value. And now for your hosts, Kennan James.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Hello everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. As always, I am James Blaine of PAX Training. Unfortunately, I don't have my partner in crime, Ken Lucci. He is no doubt doing a massive financial transaction, which we'll find out about later. But I gotta tell you, we have a big, big week coming up in the transportation industry. We have three shows all coming up on the exact same week. We're gonna have TTAs mobilized in Anaheim, we're gonna have CDNLA in Washington, D.C. We're also gonna have CBA up in Sonoma. Being a Ducks hockey fan, I'm a little partial to Anaheim myself. So that that might have influenced my decision a little bit as to why I'll be there. Obviously, I'll have my team other places as well. Um, but I'm really excited about our guest because our guest today, Bill Rouse, is actually the TTA president, in addition to what he does with LA Yellow Cab and having operations in San Diego, Orange County, and Denver. I am super excited to have you on. Welcome to the podcast, Bill. How are you today?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

I'm doing great. Thank you, James. Nice to be here. Excited to talk to you about TTA and whatever else you're gonna throw my way.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Well, if we're gonna start throwing it your way, I would say let's start with a little bit of your background because I know you've been in the industry for some time, and I know that this is actually your second term as TTA president, so I know there's gotta be some great stories there. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how you got into the industry? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Um, so I'm actually the fourth generation of my family in this business. Um, started in 1937 with my grandfather's uncle, passed to my grandfather in 1946. My grandfather passed away in uh 1977, and it passed to my father. We were a total of 23 taxi cabs at the time. Uh, and then my father, just being the entrepreneurial force that he is, within I think six years, we were at about almost 700 taxicabs, and then he found a super shuttle. I had worked at the taxi company, of course, as a kid, but then all through my undergraduate at UFC, we had an office sort of near the USC campus, and I was working almost full-time then. I left and went to law school. I stopped working at the cab company. I was in private practice for six years, and then came back to the taxi company with some litigation years under my belt and worked as in-house counsel and then took over as CEO in 2004. So that's 22 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Wow. And I gotta tell you, I can say it right now with lots of confidence, we don't have a lot of people at the helm in transportation that also have a law background to that extent. So it's got to give you a really unique perspective.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

So, yeah, I mean, uh, legal education is one of the best educations out there. It teaches you to be really analytical all the time. Having had litigation in my background, I understand procedure, I help strategize with the lawyers. So, yeah, it's a definite asset, even though I'm everyone's favorite kind of lawyer, a former lawyer.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

I thought being a lawyer was kind of like being a marine, right? Once a marine, always a marine, once a lawyer, always a lawyer. No, uh being a lawyer is like a chapter of a book. You move on. You move turn turn the page and move on. Well, but but I have to say though, I have to imagine when you're doing things like, you know, working on claims, or you're doing contracts, or you're doing agreements, or you're doing things like that, your perspective and the way you read that and the way you go through it is probably very different.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

I know some non-lawyers who are through years of experience extremely astute at analyzing things legally. Uh, you don't have to have a legal uh legal education to do so, but it absolutely gives you an advantage. There's no doubt it's a good skill to have.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

I guess my other question would be outside of that, you've been in this industry long enough. You mentioned earlier we were talking that you had served as TTA president in the past. Obviously, you're the current TTA president, and a lot has changed over the years. I think out of all of the segments of ground transportation, I think the one that has probably been disrupted the most, and I don't know that there would be any argument for any others, is really the taxi side of the industry. With the advent of TNCs and everything that's changed there, there's a lot. And I think it speaks a lot, especially because we saw a lot of companies that aren't around anymore to have that family legacy to still be there. What was that like for you, having grown up watching the business, seeing that? What were you seeing, and what did that look like from your perspective?

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Well, there's a lot of things you can touch on. One is the battle just over whether the California Public Utilities Commission was going to recognize this new category. And uh so, in that capacity, I was the TTA president, uh working side by side with our state, uh, our California uh trade association, which is called TPAC, Taxi Cab Paratransit Association of California, which we're also members of, of course. But that battle, and then later talking with people at the Public Utilities Commission and realizing that the question they framed was actually not the question that they were answering. They framed the question as whether to recognize the TNCs. We spent a lot of time briefing that question and arguing that question. There was never any doubt that they were going to assert jurisdiction over the over the TNCs, and it was a colossal waste of time and effort. And I heard that directly from the PC afterwards that they had already made that decision. So it was a little disingenuous. After that, particularly when Uber and Lyft went into a price war with each other, it was devastating for our industry. And uh we started to see declines in our vehicle counts. Just speaking to the LA operation alone, we maxed out at about 1,300 cabs, just under 1,300 cabs pre-Uber pre-Lyft. Uh and then by the time the pandemic came, we were around 975 vehicles. And then when the pandemic hit, we were down to 270 vehicles. But today we're back up to about 1,160, 1,170 vehicles in LA. We're growing again. And so, you know, things are good. But we had to, we had to step back and focus on our value proposition, uh, focus on developing sort of high-touch uh business. We have a talented team that works with us, you know, in in LA in terms of developing that kind of business, schools, healthcare, uh, government contracting and the like. And so uh we found our footing and and and things are on the upswing now. But it took a while.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

I think it's interesting that you bring that up because I think, at least for me, one of my favorite things to do, obviously having the podcast, is getting to talk to people and learn their story and learn what's going on. I remember we were in Myrtle Beach, and I remember sitting there with some of the older operators and talking about kind of how even mobilize the annual event that's done, how that's evolved and how that's changed and where the focus has gone and kind of what's changed there. I think one of the things that I've seen is that it is not so I think there's this misconception that you know an industry gets disrupted and then you know you have a changing of guard. I don't know that I've seen that as much as I've seen what happens with industries is they tend to transform and they tend to kind of ebb and flow and change. I heard those stories when I was sitting there talking to those operators about mobilize. I would love to get your thoughts. How did you see kind of that side of it with mobilize and with the event and what it is today and what we're gonna have going on in Anaheim as compared to what it would have been back in 2013 or even prior? What do you think that changes and how do you think it's affected and it's bettered that?

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Well, I mean, mobilize is is is a reflection of the industry. Just like we had a reduction in vehicles, you have a reduction in membership. Uh you have an overall mood that was prevailing for a few years there prior to the pandemic that was really sort of a downer. As people did not, you know, I think they lost confidence in the future of the industry. Now, TTA is not just taxi. TTA always had limo membership and then paratransit and contracting and some NEMT uh uh back then, but the impact of the TNCs and the decline in what we refer to as the retail business, sort of street hail, I'm going to the airport, out of hotels, and things like that. The decline of all that business was still, you know, the industry was still in decline. And so you had a heaviness there, which does not exist today. People are are feeling upbeat about the industry again, they're feeling upbeat about the organization. So you can feel it at the conference. I wish there was a way to sort of measure the mood uh, you know, objectively, but it it really doesn't take a lot of measurement. You can feel it, yeah. And today, I think you know, everyone is feeling like the mood is elevated and there's more energy and there's growth opportunities, and we're growing. And so, as my father would say, it's a lot more fun to play offense than defense. And we've been playing defense for an awfully long time. So this feels good.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

It's funny because you know, I'll I'll share that before we started recording, you and I were talking, obviously, being hockey fans of both of us. When you're talking about that vibe and you're talking about that mood, I always think of when you go to almost every sports game, they try to see how loud the crowd can get. And you can tell by how easily the crowd is able to get really loud, how amped up the crowd is feeling. And I will say, when we were in Vegas, you could feel it. And as I've been to more and more mobilized events, I really do agree with you that it's been kind of an upswing. I think it's really interesting to me because I mentioned sitting there talking to those operators, and they would talk about how back in the day it was predominantly taxi, right? It was predominantly kind of taxi, and they have evolved and they have changed, and kind of the TTA has evolved and changed and become that. And so I think now seeing that it's a very different environment. I also think, and I'd love to have you talk about this, I think the type of people that you're seeing at that event and kind of the way that that works, I think has also changed a little bit as well. Because I think when people talk to me about mobilize, and I do a lot of shows, it's a very unique show in the appeal. And it's a very unique show in that I think you get more of a mixture of operators than most other shows that I go to. And I really love it because it speaks to what I'm seeing a lot, and that's the idea of mixed fleet. We are seeing more and more that there is mixed fleet, and you still have a lot of other shows that are absolutely wonderful shows, but they're very targeted in their area. And I think mobilize has done a really good job of expanding and hitting the multiple markets. Can you tell us a little bit about kind of who you see it appealing to and kind of the different roles that you think make the most sense to have at the show, or if you're thinking of bringing someone or if you've never been before?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yeah, there's several answers to that question. So, number one, the fleet mix has always been part of the deal with TTA. You're 100% right. You have operators there that operate in Taxi Plus, Luxury Plus, paratransit and contracting. So the fleet mix part is definitely an advantage, but the things that I hear are at the TTA, you get a lot of very successful business people who are willing to share what's going on with their businesses. And so you get a chance to sort of interact and network with people who've gone through the same issues that you've gone through, who you know, who might have a different approach to particular issues that you want to talk about, uh, and things like that. But the idea of building a successful large business is is appealing to a lot of operators out there. And this is why today we've definitely turned our focus to NEMT. And I don't mind being perfectly candid with you about why we're looking at NEMT. In the taxi sector, you have two things going on. Number one, it's very difficult to start a taxi business from scratch in this environment. So you have you have you have taxi companies, myself, you know, ours included, that have been around a long time, that have their established business base, that are not going anywhere. They're successful, and that's fine. But starting one from scratch with zero trips and zero drivers and cars on day one is a major challenge in this environment. And so you're not seeing a lot of new companies come forward, and then you have industry consolidation. And so, what that means for a trade association is it means a net drop, even if the industry sort of stays static, it means a net drop in number of members just due to those factors. Yeah. And so, but on the NAMT side, of course, there's a lot of growth. And NTAC is their the business mix. We offer a lot to an NEMT operator just in terms of being around people in different different lines of work. And so what we did this year under my presidency was we adopted our first strategic plan since 2018. We had a revision in 2018, then of course, going into the pandemic, we had a scramble for the pandemic and focused on the things that were demanded, you know, in terms of survival. Now, coming out, it's a time to plan for the future. And so we have a new strategic plan. Specific on that strategic plan is a focus on membership development and NEMT. And we think we have a value prop for them and that we will be successful in that regard. And so, one more thing on that, in terms of getting back to mobilize, is we have a specific NEMT track at Mobilize, which is designed with programming, but we have a very specific NEMT track which is designed to appeal to the NEMT operator, and so you know that's part of the strategic plan is to represent that sector.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

I think there's a couple things that I can hit on there, and I really want to talk about the pre-conference event that I'm helping coordinate and that we're working together on because I think that's hugely important as well. So I'll tease that now. We'll come back to it in a little bit. I think for me, one of the big things that comes out is that I am seeing more and more operators, and it's interesting because really I've seen kind of two segments that used to think of themselves as sitting at different levels within the industry, are both now kind of moving towards and looking at NEMT. And that's the taxi side, as we've already mentioned. I'm seeing more and more taxi operators that are looking at NEMT. But interestingly enough, I've also seen limo operators and I've seen people that are in the chauffeur car space that are also looking at and moving towards NEMT. And I think it's very telling kind of what you said a moment ago, because the one place that I don't see a lot of entry point now is that taxi side of it. I don't see a lot of people that are looking to or wanting to start a taxi company. And I think part of that, we talked about disruptures and disruption. I think part of that is if you are looking at that space, they're now looking at that as, oh, I'm gonna start a TMC company. Because I can tell you right now, there seems to be no lack of different kinds of TNC models and way that they do that. But where I am seeing growth and where I am seeing people that are viewing it as an entry point is NEMT. You know, I've met lots of operators where it's, hey, you know, I have entered into NEMT, we got one or two vehicles, you know, we started out doing it. You know, it's one of the stories that's really stuck with me was somebody whose mother really needed to be able to have the ability to move around, right? They just they didn't had lost the ability to drive, needed that there, and then that kind of became their guiding light for their company was they would literally think about mama, right? And so that for me was huge. I think that is what I see as the growth segment. That part of it is where there's tons of growth. I don't have the stats at hand. This is one of those times that having my financial analyst partner in crime, Ken Luci, would be great because he'd know him off top of his head. But I can tell you right now, the segment that is going to need NEMT the most is the biggest growth segment. I don't know if you know those stats off top of your head, but everything that I've seen, everyone I've talked to has said that that is probably one of the biggest growth segments. We can talk about the other tracks, but I'd love for you to be able to kind of share what does that look like? And then for the other areas, you know, how are we supporting NEMT through mobilize? But then what are those other tracks as well?

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Okay, so let's go back to one thing you said because I wanted to touch on, and it was built on a point that I was making, which was that people aren't opening new taxi companies. If you want to open a business in the transportation sector and you look at the difference between taxi and TNC today, the the playing field is so unlevel. And so you would you would scratch your head and say, why do I want to be in this box versus that box? And in California, you can be a one-stop shop with light touch regulation of the PUC, where Uber and Lyft passed Prop 22, and so you have the easiest independent contractor standard in the entire country, and the list goes on and on and on. Or you can be locally regulated, which means this city and that city, and I personally like the way LA regulates taxicabs, uh, so I'm not complaining about it, but it is a much more involved process, vehicle inspections and all sorts of other entanglements, technology, data reporting, all this other business. Why would you choose that over over the ease of of a TNC? And so that unlevel playing field, which California tried to address in around 2016 with AB 1069, partially addressed in some very important ways. Am I complaining? No, but uh but it's still a very unlevel playing field to this day.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

And well, and that's the whole country. Yeah, yeah. So I mean I've seen taxi operators that have literally opted to shift from being taxi. Yeah, they literally they were scared. They said I became a TNC and I was waiting for the shoe to drop and nothing happened. My life just got easier.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

That's right. Well, well, now you're gonna convince me, but anyway. Um but all right, so so uh you're uh I'm not gonna remember all the sessions on the NEMT track. That's okay. We will drop it in.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Okay. We can drop in the list, and I think I think for a listener, the most important thing is really being able to know kind of that that track exists and what are, you know, when you guys are putting together those tracks, what the big takeaways are. Because one of the neat things about that is it's it's not always directly about the session, it's more about what is the bigger takeaways and what are you guys building for them.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Yeah. And so, so if I could just give you the structure of the breakout. So you have um a four-session track on TNCs. Uh, you have a four-session track on I think it's a three-session track on TNCs, a four-session uh regulator track, which is specifically focused on regulators and operators addressing regulatory issues that include insurance, autonomous vehicles, sort of regulatory responses to the unlevel playing field. And again, there's an oh um an international uh regulator panel. And then the uh the other sessions are focused on content that's generated by TTA's excellent committees. Committees, these are not governing committees, these are topical committees. Operations, we have uh uh safety and risk management, we have business development, and we have our autonomous vehicle artificial intelligent uh AVAI committee. And and each of these committees is already putting on a program every other month. Just yesterday we had they hit it out of the park again with the AVAI committee. And so I'm plugging this because I can't believe more people aren't signing up for these sessions because they are just excellent. Uh, and I'm enjoying them very much. But but those sessions are going to carry over into the conference as well. And so those that's the way the the the breakouts are organized, and then we have some great uh general session content too.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Well, I think we can kind of come back to it now. I know that one of the things I was most excited about because I'm personally helping put it together, is also also the pre-conference event. I know that it's been a long time since something like that has happened. I'd like for you to share, because obviously I was brought in to help, but I wasn't in the room for the initial conversation. And the whole idea there being safety, risk management, kind of that whole portion of it. I think it's important to state here and kind of remind people it's not just one segment that's going through an insurance crisis right now. It is the entire ground transportation industry. We're seeing plaintiff's attorneys be more aggressive than we ever have, we're seeing rates go higher than they ever have. So I think this is super timely. Can you tell us a little bit about where did that come from and what kind of birth that? And then I think you and I can both kind of uh present it together. But help us understand a little bit where that came from and what that is.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Absolutely. Um so it's not even just transportation, it's the entire property and casualty sector of insurance that is simply not generating profit for the insurance carriers, and therefore the pricing keeps getting adjusted upward. And and to me, there's room for differing opinions, but to me, insurance and claims has now supplanted independent contractor as the number one threat to uh transportation operators across the country. It is now number one. These rising costs of claims, particularly in certain urban areas, obviously, California is one of the states that's on the list. But California is not even the worst. But that's coupled with some opportunities. So that you have a threat and opportunity, we're doing SWOT analysis here. The opportunities that are out there are presented by new technologies that now exist that never did. And so what we're gonna try to do is affect driver behavior in a way that is safer. We hurt less people, which is an objective good, right? But we also do our best instead of just reducing claims, we're gonna try to prevent accidents altogether. My own company, I can tell you about our journey. We used to focus on at fault accidents. If we determined, uh, this is pre-cameras, based on the statements that were gathered at the scene, most of which were our own driver and then the physical evidence at the scene. If we determined that our driver was not at fault, we almost always just gave the driver a pass. You're we're done. We're we're not we're not looking at so we were focused on at-fault accidents, and then we transitioned and started to look at preventable accidents. Now I can tell you what we do is we have a camera system that is generating literally a couple dozen events per vehicle. We're at a thousand, you know, 1150 vehicles. We're generating 30 to 40,000 events. We are plugging that into big data and generating profiles of drivers in terms of their behaviors and then bringing in the drivers and saying, look, we're looking at these risk factors and your driving has to change. And we are seeing frequency rates that are really compared to the old days, we're seeing frequency rates of 50% of what they used to be. And so that's the opportunity that's out there is to avoid having the accident altogether. Because guess what? The plaintiff doesn't agree with your analysis that it wasn't your fault. That doesn't prevent a clank.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Yeah, not at all. And I think, you know, we we've mentioned sports a couple times, but I think this comes back to it because, you know, if you start looking at, and I've been in the industry long enough, I've kind of seen this evolve and the technology change. If you look at back in the day when you first started getting the cameras in the vehicles, it really was like, hey, this is basically accident review. This is not active coaching. Now we are at the point where we are able to act a lot more like sports coaches, and we're able to say, hey, we now have, especially with a lot of the new software out there, we have AI, we have tools that are identifying, we have events, we have heartbreaking, uh, following too closely, we have all these different things, and you can adapt it. I think one of the big things that we are seeing over and over and over is the companies that are using that to influence their training, to influence their coaching, to go back and use that to be preventative, are the ones that are getting the benefit, especially the companies that are taking that and analyzing it as a company, but using that to your advantage. If I know that I've got a problem throughout my entire fleet of following too closely, now I know I need to address that with everyone, regardless of if they've had an event or not, because I know that's the most prevalent thing. And if I want to get ahead of it, I need to start going through it. So I think we're coming into this kind of golden age of being able to effectively work with and know what's going on with those drivers, with the people behind the wheel, more so than we ever have. But I also think that we're also at a point where we're starting to now see that become more important because we're starting to see insurance companies that are wanting that data that are trying to use that to figure out rates. And I think the other piece of that is, you know, I you mentioned that there are places that are worse. I spend a lot of time in New York. I can tell you one of their biggest problems has been fraud. And they are so good at generating these claims that look real. They've kind of learned the game, and even beyond just accidents and incidents, you know, there are people out there that are actively looking at these things as a paycheck. And so I think it's really timely then that we're doing this pre-conference event because when we sat down and planned that and we put that agenda together, the plan was really how do we start where we're talking about right now? How do we start at prevention? How do we start at making sure that we figure out how to prevent these claims? Then looking at, okay, how do we address, you know, kind of insurance? And when do you not need to start planning for insurance? And what do you do? And what are the pieces there? And then what do you do when you have a claim? And really trying to look at that whole cycle. I mean, obviously the goal is to avoid claims, but I think we all know at this point there's gonna be times that you have them. When you guys were planning this pre-conference event, when you were going through it, was there any one thing that kind of let you guys know, hey, this is the time to do this? Obviously, it's uh for those that don't know, this is gonna be on the Monday before mobilize. It's a special event, you have to sign up separately. But when you guys were putting this together, what was kind of the catalyst that let you guys know, hey, it's time to do this. We want it to be something separate. We want to really target owners, we want to target the people that are involved with that. Was there something or or a conversation on the foundation side that triggered it? Or was it one of those things where this has been coming and it was just the right time?

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Again, multiple things going on here. Number one, we've got a foundation. You know, the foundation was kind of on pause during the pandemic, uh, as we focused on higher priority items during the pandemic, like survive. Right. Um, so gotta get through. So so now we you've got a you've got a foundation board that really wants to help put on quality programming. Way back in TTA's history, there was a transportation management institute that focused on not on CEO level uh education. Oftentimes the breakout sessions and general session items at the TTA conference are sort of focused at the CEO level and the TMI, the good kind of TMI, right? Transportation Management Institute was always focused on uh let's present something for the managerial level, mid-level management. And so when you look at what is relevant today for mid-level management, then it's easy to say, okay, let's first focus on risk management. And so this program is designed for everybody's mid-level managers, whether they're in the operations team or if you're big enough like me to have a separate risk management team, then you should be bringing your risk management people down or your operations people down and see what is going on. I was in my TTA hat a few weeks ago, I was at the Australian Taxi Industry Association, always worthwhile for the TTA president to go to that uh to that conference. And I did it back in 2013 as well. But one of the things that struck me is for all of their, you know, sophistication, commitment to quality, their commitment to quality is on par with any other national industry that I know of. They were not quite up to date on this camera technology and and the big data overlay onto the camera technology. And I'm having a discussion with a couple of their large fleets about this topic at uh as we speak. And so I want to go back to one thing though. I I talked to you about the the mistakes of my own fleet, right? Focusing on at fault accidents then, but we had another mistake in the process too, which was we sort of looked at everything as a top 10 list, right? And so we have top 10 following too close, top 10 distracted driving, top 10 this, top 10 that. Well, at 1,100 cars, top 10 doesn't scale. You're not you're not scratching the surface, and it is only with the big data that is analyzing all of the events out of the camera. That's the only way you can get where you need to go, is to have a data crunching piece of this system that you have. And so again, getting back to the programming, all of this is going to be discussed at the pre-conference seminar, the TMI programming that you're hosting. I'm very excited about this programming because I know it's going to be totally worthwhile for the people who attend and everybody should go.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

It's funny because I will tell you right now, when I personally speak, I am known to always be the guy that, you know, I'm very hard to get a slide deck from because I am honing and I am working, and up to when I'm ready to present, I am always looking at how do I improve, how do I make sure I'm giving the most up-to-date information, how am I doing the best thing. And now we're almost exactly one month away, right? So we're recording this a little ahead of time by the time you guys are listening to it. But the big thing for me with this is that I think it's really important that people understand how much time we are spending looking at all of these different portions. I just had a call where I spoke with several different brokers and we had our one-on-one conversations of hey, what are the important things when it comes to actually getting the insurance? How far ahead of time? What do we want to discuss when we go over on the technology piece? Same thing, same conversation. What does that look like? Because I think one of the things that you've just brought up that is key here is whether you're at one vehicle, 10 vehicles, or a thousand vehicles, a lot of this comes down to time management. And I can tell you right now, I've seen a lot of people that have the tools are not using them effectively, and they aren't getting the benefit. And I've seen smaller fleets that have figured out how to really leverage the tools. And then when the larger fleets adapt that, all of a sudden that game is multiplied out. And so I think you've brought up something really important because the time to address that is when you have smaller problems and you're not letting them grow. And so I think for me, when we were planning this and going through this, a lot of this is kind of that whole cycle. I think we always get stuck in kind of these silos of, hey, I've got my reactive side, or oh, on the reactive side, it's well, we had this incident or we had that issue, or hey, it's time to renew this, or it's time to do that. I think one of the things that we've both kind of been circling is this proactive view on it. And I can tell you one of the big things that have come up in almost every talk I've given this year, and you've brought it up, is all of the insurance segment is a mess right now. So everything they're pricing, everything they're doing is really not based on frequency anymore. I've seen so many companies that are like, hey, well, we're gonna get our accident rates down, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do better than last year. You know, it is they're really planning on severity, not the frequency. I've seen people that have had the exact same accident rate two years in a row and they're still getting a price height. So I think for me, this being a safety, being a training person, it's almost like this wake-up call. It's this thing we should have been doing all along, but now it's almost been ran through an amplifier. It's so much more important than it has been. Let me ask you, you know, you we've talked a little bit about who to send, what to do. What type of mindset, you know, it if you're sending someone or if you're an owner and you're going there, what frame of mind do you think they need to be in when they go to that event? Where do you want them to kind of be mentally as a starting point?

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Hopefully they're in a bit of a panic, like everybody should be, about this claims and open-minded to doing whatever it takes uh to get their claims under control. We're still in a situation where we're dealing with a supply shortage of drivers that uh leads managers to retain drivers that should not be retained. Not everybody out there in the world is qualified to transport passengers for hire, right? And so those are the tough decisions that you have to make, but you also have to commit to developing an entire system, whether it's your driver screening process, your ongoing uh watching your driving records and that process, the driver coaching, monitoring, etc. But then when you get to the accident, you have a system to investigate the accident. You have a TPA that you absolutely trust that you're on the same page with in terms of their approach to the claims. We've had TPAs in the past. What's a TPA, real quick, for those that are using Lingo, uh third-party administrator, the people who are adjusting your claims for you, are you on the same page with them, or do you feel like they're constantly giving away all your money for for and and so are you on the same page with them? And do you feel great about the way they adjust your claim so that you feel like your future is in good hands, right? And so every step that I just described, including your litigation counsel, is part of the mix. It's not just one thing, it's not just the cameras, right? It's everything.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

And one of the things that you've hit on that we've we've talked about a lot on the podcast is I think there's a lot of operators that underestimate how much they can do on the actual claim side. And I can tell you, I've worked with some companies where, you know, when there's a claim, it's bare minimum. And then I've worked with companies that are on the absolute opposite side of the spectrum, right? You know, if there's an issue with a crosswalk, they are literally out there and they are filming the crosswalk cycling and seeing whether or not it works. And they're looking at what cameras are available. And I think there's there's a lot of people that, you know, they don't realize when it comes to the insurance claim, your goal there is to try and piece together what happened, to try and work with the people involved, to try and figure that out, and then to try and have a say in it. Whereas I think what I see, and I've seen a lot of it, is I think people think they're just along for the ride. And I think that's kind of the wrong way to think about it. I also see people that kind of they think is insurance is the enemy or a necessary evil. And I think the problem with that line of thinking is it ultimately leads to kind of what we're talking about. You know, you have to really have your finger on the pulse, you have to understand what happened, you have to understand what's going on. And I think one of my favorite sayings is you have to make a friend before you need one. The time to find out what the process looks like for you is not when you're in panic mode because there's just been an incident. I'd love for you to talk about if you're sending someone that is more of a safety professional, what should their expectation be on what they're taking away? You know, obviously everything I've talked about is what we're covering and kind of getting that in there. But if you're looking at it as, hey, you know, I've got someone that's coming in to this conference, they may or may not normally come. I've got to justify the cost. How do you, as a business owner, someone that's been doing this for years, how should they be thinking about that? Is this something where it's, hey, I can't afford not to? Is this something where you think about paying for itself? As a business owner, how should they be thinking about that?

SPEAKER_02 42:44

So before I answer that question, kind of jump back to something that you said about absolutely feeling like it's you, you know, you're you it's all sort of happening to you and you have no say so and I I don't mind sharing my own my own companies and therefore the buck stops here, my mistakes. Uh up until 2015 or 16, we had so-called dollar one coverage. We had no deductible. There's a lot of demands on your time. There's a lot of demands on your time. When you are in a no-deductible situation and you have no skin in the game of any of your claims, it is very easy to focus on other things that are on your plate. And we disengaged with from our claims and we watched our claims go sky high. The insurance market wasn't as bad and we could kind of survive it. But it was a disaster waiting to happen. And our, I think our losses were nearing 10 million a year on 1300 vehicles, which is, you know, horrifying, right? Yeah. Now our losses are are around a third of that on nearly the same number of vehicles because we are engaged. You do have power in this environment. You can affect things in a positive way. And that's what people need to go to these um sessions, believing that you can affect change. You can't affect a behavior change from your drivers, because that's really what this is about. But it's a behavior change from the drivers, and it's all those other pieces that I talked about. You talked about whether somebody's going to get value. I'm always astonished. I'm considered to be a net giver at these conferences as opposed to a net taker. And there has never been a conference that I didn't come away with something that had tangible value to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to my businesses at these conferences. I don't know what it's going to be this year, but I know I'm going to take away something that has real value. And so that pre-conference session that you're talking about will, I guarantee you, people will come away saying this was worth the entire price of admission plus.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

I think you hit on something really, really important. You know, there's there's two things that my podcast hosting partner, Ken, really loves to say, right? The companies that are on an island, that don't go to conferences, that don't talk to others, that don't get involved, are always the most backward. And then my absolute favorite one that he loves to say is that the companies that invest in training and in safety and having that as just, hey, this is something we do. It's just part of what we do, they are the most profitable. And I think you hit on both of those. Plus, I think you've also touched on something I think is really important, and that's being a net giver, right? You know, if I'm thinking of this as, well, you know, I'm a smaller operator, or hey, you know, we've already got a decent safety apartment, hey, I'm there. Having access to someone that has the number of vehicles that you do, that has the vast experience you do, and knowing that you are at a point where you are at these conferences looking to give back, looking to share. I think that to me, just as someone who has learned a lot of business lessons the hard way, that to me is something that really says a lot because. That's the type of environment that you want to be in to grow. And I think the big thing that we've really worked on with this pre-conference event is we've really tried to build it in a way that they're getting the most value possible. And I think what you're talking about is really the icing on the cake because not only do you have this whole day that has been built for you around safety and risk management and claims and insurance costs and all of these super key pieces, but knowing that we have people like you, Bill, that have been there, that have done it, that are willing to share the mistakes. Look, I talk to a lot of owners that practically walk on water, right? They have had the smoothest career you've ever seen. There's never been a hiccup, there's never been a bump, right? I think to myself, good lord, I feel like my business, at least, I have been on an absolute roller coaster and had my brain shook out a couple times. But I like you, I'm one of those people that I think those are important steps in the road. And I think one of the biggest ways we get back is we tell people about those holes or those bumps in the road so they can try and avoid them. And so I think for me, that's one of the biggest things of what we're doing with this pre-conference. And I think mobilize in general is it's an opportunity to learn from each other on where the growth opportunities are, what's there. And I think you've absolutely nailed it on the value. And I go back in my mind, it goes back to what somebody said on another episode, right? I had an episode I was doing with uh Julie, and Julie was talking about how in her family, similar to yours, her great-grandpa had started the company back in the 1930s. Very similar story to you, Bill, only in her world they were motor coach, and her big thing was you can't afford not to. It's not how can I afford to do this? It's I can't afford not to do this, and I think you've really nailed it. Let me ask you, as we kind of close it out, what would you tell people that are, you know, hey, I'm I I'm thinking about going, or I'm not sure if this is right for me, or I don't know if I should send somebody. Who should they send to the pre-conference event? Who should be at Mobilize? And what would you say to someone that's never attended before or never brought someone before?

SPEAKER_02 48:30

So um if somebody's never been to mobilize, you gotta go to mobilize, you gotta just get in there into the trade association, the trade show floor, start to just talk to people. There's a culture of TTA that is very generous, especially the long-termers. They understand that this is about information exchange. People are generous with with their information. You have presenters. I never miss a presentation by Z Trip because Z Trip, you know, is the largest operator in the country, and they have such excellent, uh, they have such excellent programs that I'm always going to learn from them. And so that's the the environment that you get when you go to the conference. In terms of the pre-conference event or risk management, I would say anybody who is involved in the claims handling and driver coaching, driver monitoring, accident investigation, they should all be going to the pre-conference session. Again, it's my opinion, doesn't have to be yours. The claims are the biggest threat to our industry right now, they're going through the roof. And uh, so the only way you can really get out of a claim is to not have an accident in the first place. And right now, the tools that are available are are unprecedented in our history. We we never had access to this in the past, and so there's just so much there, and you're gonna have people who are willing to share all this, and so definitely sign up.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Yeah, I don't know that I could have said that better myself. I think you're absolutely right. It is an unprecedented point in our history. I think it's an incredible opportunity. I think anybody that doesn't go is missing out. I think with that, I want to thank everybody for listening. Bill, this has been an incredible, incredible episode. I love how open you are. We'll have to have you back on at some point. And I definitely can't wait to see it mobilized. With that, thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Bill, for being on as a guest. If you haven't already, normally I would ask you to like, subscribe, drop a comment. In this case, I would say just look into this event, see if it's a good fit for you, see if this is where you need to be. And if it is, we will see you in Anaheim. Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

Thank you for listening to the Ground Transportation Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX Training and to contact James, go to Paxstraining.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the Ground Transportation Podcast.