What would you attribute, like, as you navigate these turbulent waters, what is setting Ease apart from other brokers in the space today? I

mean, historically, our service, we provide incredible, I would argue...

And this is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but when I came in, I joined the week before Road Check Week.

I would say our service was too good.

Road Check Week, I was like, why aren't you just turning these loads back? I mean, that's what everyone else is doing.

It's like, well, we don't do that here.

And of course, we had to turn some back.

So as we look to next year, What are you keeping your eye on? What is the stuff that's going to keep you interested and engaged? What changes, regulation, or technology are you looking forward to?

Ken, any thoughts on, on that, uh, in, in terms of your perspective on capacity?

I mean, I think, I said this the last time I was on, I think 2027 will be one of the best years for brokers in recent memory.

And that's because I think I'm maybe a little bit l- longer in the front half of the cycle than Jason.

I think probably somewhere after the fourth next year, mid-year next year, heading into peak, we'll see rates kind of start to tip and lose their year-over-year steam.

Um, but I don't know.

Like, we say that it's not-

Do you think contract actually starts to trough and then dr- drop from comps?

No, no, no.

But do you really think capacity is entering the market? I just can't wrap my head around new entrants coming in and being sustainable with all of the new liability and regulation that we're seeing? And who is tendering freight to these new carriers that don't have MC numbers or safety ratings yet?

That last part, I don't have a good... answer for.

It's just not my area of expertise.

I think there's ways that capacity comes in.

If you come on as a driver, let's say you were swinging a hammer over the summer and you come on to drive for a fleet that has a five-year-old authority, you're just going to add capacity to an already existing carrier.

I'm just not as bearish or bullish, I'm sorry, about I think when you look at just the timing of midterms and this administration's ability to kind of have stick-with-ness through things, I think purging capacity out of the market is only one side of the equation.

It's the extent to which you're going to prevent that capacity that you purged from coming back.

Having, you know, having talked to bars and having talked close to the DOT, I don't see the case that they're going to ease up.

They're not trying to look at it from a different viewpoint that uncovers those lost opportunities.

Yeah, I'll be going back to your first point.

I'd be lying if I said I fully understood the differentiation and the scope of the AI call box.

I would tell you that We struggle with it.

I don't think it's a great user experience.

It's probably the number one, like when you Google E, it's probably one of the only complaints about every freight broker.

But I think like one of the things that you see is like, we probably went a little heavy handed with that and have dialed it back.

It has been more equal now than ever because everybody's essentially got the same rates everybody's essentially got the same access to capacity like that's not exactly a uh a value add anymore because if you if you have a dat account you got essentially what you're going to pay or you should need to quote on the majority of the freight and it's the same across the board so it's like i look at it now where what is going to be that next leg up out there and i think it's going to be internal uh internal technology development where it's like focusing in on the operations side to do more with more with less

But do you really think capacity is entering the market? I just can't wrap my head around new entrants coming in and being sustainable with all of the new liability and regulation that we're seeing? And who is tendering freight to these new carriers that don't have MC numbers or safety ratings yet?

That last part, I don't have a good... answer for.

It's just not my area of expertise.

I think there's ways that capacity comes in.

If you come on as a driver, let's say you were swinging a hammer over the summer and you come on to drive for a fleet that has a five-year-old authority, you're just going to add capacity to an already existing carrier.

I'm just not as bearish or bullish, I'm sorry, about I think when you look at just the timing of midterms and this administration's ability to kind of have stick-with-ness through things, I think purging capacity out of the market is only one side of the equation.

It's the extent to which you're going to prevent that capacity that you purged from coming back.

Having, you know, having talked to bars and having talked close to the DOT, I don't see the case that they're going to ease up.

My question is: how do you kinda square the two given your background? You're never going to leave tech alone, but also brokerage is in your DNA.

Yeah.

I am a critic of AI in, like, the abstract executive leader who doesn't think it's worth their time to write a personalized email to the company, so everything's littered with em dashes.

Or like someone who's, all of their sales collateral is AI, or they think that, like, AI bots talking to AI bots is the way of the future.

I'm, like, very pessimistic or bearish on that.

Like, the approach-- What, what attracted me to Ease was our CEO, Peter, uh, he's out of the office today and probably won't see this, so I, I, I don't think his head will grow three sizes larger by giving this compliment.

He's probably one of the best operators I've ever worked around, specific to auto freight.

Is it still operating the same way?

How much has it grown as you've seen it over the last decade or so?

so?I mean, what? It's a $200 billion segment of the industry now, I mean, when you add up all brokerage and brokerage-related services.

So it's not small.

I think it's very, very top weighted.

There's something like 22,000 active broker authorities at the moment.

Um, something like 90% of the freight's moved by the top 500.

80%'s moved by the top 200, 250.

What do you think the world looks like, uh, for motor carriers in two years?

So I guess a question I have is like, given kind of the unique vantage point that DAT has over the entire spot market, like what, what did you see from that seat that maybe most people not in the business wouldn't understand or wouldn't see? Does that make sense?

Yeah.

I mean, I think, like the thing that took me the longest to grow personally and professionally is like 95% of like the chatter on social media or in like shared text groups doesn't represent the other... [chuckles] Like, that's probably 5% of what's actually ha- Like, your average DAT customer that's getting value is a floor broker or an agent broker that doesn't-- Like, the average tenure in this industry is really short, and they just need a starting point of negotiation.

I think also people don't-- They fail to understand the ubiquity.

Like, there have been other rating startups that have tried to do what DAT does, and they fail miserably.

Um, and a big part of that is they don't have 100, 200, 300,000 carrier users a day logging in and seeing the ubiquity of those rates across the entire network.

And so I think when people don't use DAT well, it's because they're trying to use it as like this canonical source as opposed to like a starting point.

in some, like, crazy convicted way that you should have re-rebid all your freight 'cause of a couple bad years prior.

Do we see volumes coming back anytime soon, or is it really just this capacity kind of slowly meandering its way in and out, and this thing just staying flat? Is it just stalled out?

I would compare it to the users on the Sonar platform versus the DAT, whereas their volume is probably way down.

Ours has remained steady.

I do think that volume is tough because the economy stinks.

I don't care if you watch Fox News or CNN or MSNBC or whatever.

It stinks.

The economy stinks, especially the consumer economy.

What are you seeing as another... challenge or innovation, Ken, coming down from the automation perspective?