Episode 023: Tim Boyle From Whip Around

Welcome to the Fleet Success Show, a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show. Hey, hey, hey, welcome to the Fleet Success Show, the place where you learn how fleets can succeed. I'm Jeff Jenkins. I'm your host today. I'm actually going solo. And if you're lucky enough, you'll be able to see the video of me so you can just stare at me the whole time, which is a treat for everybody, right? I know me especially because I can look at myself. But today we've got a really special guest. I'm really excited about this conversation, right? So this is a company that's based in New Zealand, and my guest, Mr. Tim Boyle, he has the coolest accent that we've had on this show and that we will probably ever have on this show. So welcome, Tim. Glad to have you.

Absolute pleasure to be here. And now you've made me hugely self-conscious about my accent, putting on that, that half American sort of accent that I put on as soon as I jump off a plane in the US.

Right. Well, I tell you what, you know, when we grow up as kids in America, especially like on the West Coast where we don't really have a huge accent, there's always those countries where you're like, man, I wish I had an accent from there and there. And New Zealand, Australia, it's always number one out of everybody I've ever talked to. So I wouldn't feel self-conscious at all. You just rock that.

Yeah, it is a bit of a complex that I've developed spending so much time in the US over the last couple of years, and there's certain pieces of vocabulary that I need to sort of switch as soon as I get off the plane as well. I still get looks from our team up in the US when I say things, and they have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. So bear with me if I'm using some words that don't make a lot of sense, and feel free to pull me up on them.

Well, I don't think we'll have that problem, but I do have a question. Just so everyone knows, what is the one term or word that you use in New Zealand that means something totally different here in the US that people get confused by?

Well, one, this definitely happens at the airport when I get off the plane. We call a trunk a boot.

Okay.

And it's quite an English term. You might have heard of it. But as soon as I walk out to the taxi stand at an airport, I say to the driver, can I put my suitcase in your boot? And he looks at me with a very, very odd look until I correct myself and say, I mean your trunk. So that's something that has definitely, definitely tripped me up a little bit over the years.

Yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all. If you asked me if you put something in my boot, I'd look at you a little odd too. So, all right, well, your company Whiparound, can you kind of like give us just an overview of Whiparound? So just explain what it does, but we also are interested in why you, why you started this company and, you know, why you thought there was a need in the marketplace for your product.

Absolutely. Well, Whiparound in essence is a fleet inspection and maintenance management platform, but I guess where we really focus the core of our product is around inspections. And where we started life was obviously down here in New Zealand and Australia, in this part of the world. We noticed the increasing amount of compliance that trucking companies in particular were having to keep up with in the face of ever-changing regulations. There was a big wave in both New Zealand and Australia around workplace safety and legislation around that. And in the dealings that we were having with trucking companies, you know, this high-volume, low-margin environment, the compliance side of things was, was really starting to slow them down. And Where we knew technology could step in, I guess, led us to the American market. And with DVIR regulations and everything that the FMCSA is sort of, you know, governing in terms of carriers, we knew that the problem that we were setting out to solve down here in this part of the world was far more obvious for the industry up in the US. And that's really where we started focusing our software and our product to cater for that that problem right from DVIR and that inspection piece right through to how defects and issues and reporting and audits and all of that sort of thing for compliance was managed.

Okay, so the regulations obviously are different for the different countries. The US is probably a lot more stringent when it comes to driver's hours, obviously with the ELDs, the electronic logging mandates that have come through. So how do you, when you have your product, right, how do you go ahead and how do you fine-tune it for the different regulations based on the country or even the state or provinces that you operate in?

Well, I guess one of the key elements of Whiparound is that we're a fully customizable platform and, you know, 97% of our customers are in North America, so we're sort of very much focused on what what the rules and regulations for North America are. And there is, you know, workflows and sort of intelligence built into our platform that speaks specifically to that. But the custom nature of, for example, our form builder allows for not only the inspection process for drivers or equipment operators to be tailored to that particular asset or a particular process. We have a lot of customers in the construction industry, for example, who are using the opportunity they have with their drivers having to whip around that to also start layering in some customized processes around job site safety audits and more OSHA-related processes that aren't necessarily linked directly to an asset. So our team is, is, is really clever in the way that we can sort of leverage the customized nature of our form builder and our workflows in our platform to speak to different points in drivers' days or different configurations for businesses depending on whether it's for a a binary DVIR process, which we sort of predominantly start our conversation with our customers with, or whether it's something a little bit more bespoke for oil services or pipelines or something that's a little bit out of the box when it comes to safety or compliance.

Yeah, so you said construction is one of like the major industries that you're in, and I'm sure that you are in a lot of different industries just with the nature of what you have as far as your product is concerned and the DVIRs. So I'm curious, like, what kind of feedback do you get when it comes to that? So let me tell you where I'm coming from, because in trucking, right, we obviously have the same mandate that you've got to have with the, with the DVIRs. And I bet you less than 80% of any— every truck driver actually does a walk around when it comes to doing their daily inspection. It just doesn't happen. Well, I mean, we would get on guys all the time. I mean, they get pulled over for a roadside inspection. And, you know, their, their tires are showing wires on one of them or their brakes are down or whatever they should have caught on their, their daily walk around. They didn't because they don't do it right. So kind of how do you, how do you talk to these people you're selling to about how you get your, your drivers, whether it be in a pickup truck, a big rig, whatever it may be, how do you get them to do that daily inspection and what's really the motivation behind that?

I think that's a great point, and it's sort of at the heart of how Whipround sets itself apart from, you know, certainly a lot of the DVIR compliance add-ons for the ELD market, which are really sort of tap and accept vehicle condition. With that customised nature of what we do and where we really find a home in what is a really saturated market in the sense of transport technology is becoming an absolute specialist in what we do, and that kind of niche player in inspections, and really championing that above all else, I think is how we manage to have really productive conversations and show value to our customers. One of the things that we have focused on over the years in the way that we build our product for this exact reason is little features within our form builder that give our fleet managers or other users within the platform the ability to customize forms that force things like photos. So a real life example of that, a lot of our customers would use our form builder to force a photo of one side of a vehicle, the rear of the vehicle, the other side of it, potentially the windscreen, tyres, and the operator when they're using our app can't skip past those or just flag them, they're actually forced to take a photo. And what we've found is that having the sort of forced nature of that component of the inspection means that drivers, if they are that way inclined, aren't able to sort of sit in the cab and pencil whip even a digital inspection because they're having to get out and take pictures of things that can't be faked. And that really starts once you get the drivers out of the cab and you've incentivised them to go and inspect a vehicle or a piece of machinery, and they're going to have that kind of digital accountability about where they did it, when they did it, the photos to prove that they were at certain sort of points in the inspection, not only is the fleet manager or the mechanical or the stakeholder who wants that information going to get much richer detail, but you're actually getting the hardest hurdle of that driver out of the cab, and they're more likely to conduct a thorough inspection along the lines of what's been requested than if they're given the opportunity to just sit in the cab and pencil whip things away. So by us really focusing on where we champion that inspection as the start of a safe process for vehicle maintenance. But over and above even the vehicle maintenance, just of driver wellbeing, of driver safety, we have a huge amount of customers using us to add on additional assets and equipment and processes even around that vehicle that includes things like marketing collateral or promotional banners if it's landscaping companies that are going out to do yard work. Payment terminals in cab, different tools and equipment. So we really believe that the inspection component of a driver's day is a huge opportunity to not only just meet your vehicle compliance needs under the eyes of the law, but really build a safety culture within your workplace and sort of set your employees up for a much better productive day ahead. Eliminating a lot of those errors that can happen certainly via paper-based processes if you have them in place at all.

Yeah. So what's interesting is, you know, these drivers that neglect to do these DVRs every day, they'll get out on the road and they'll break down and they, you know, they'll waste 4 or 5, 6 hours waiting for a roadside service to come across or they're put out of service by the DOT or whatever the case may be. And they don't recognize that that 15 minutes they could have spent walking around and recognizing those problems was going to save them all this hassle down the road, which is amazing to me because of how often it's neglected. Now, one of the things that you said was about incentivizing drivers to go ahead and to do their DVIR every single day. I'm curious, like, have you heard of things that your clients are doing to incentivize? Is there like something specific that, you know, anybody that's listening that is like, okay, well, I think it's a good idea. We should incentivize people to go ahead and make sure they're doing this. What are some of those things that maybe you've heard?

We've heard some really creative ways that our customers have done this, and our software provides leaderboards within the dashboard that are a very quick and easy way for management to ascertain who's done their inspections, who hasn't. We obviously have sort of exception reporting functionality in there that really points to compliance risk, but it is a good tool to be able to reflect back very quickly and easily at which drivers or operators have or haven't done the required inspections. And I guess that gives the ability to management to incentivise them in any way that they see fit. It's the old carrot or the whip kind of analogy, and we see both ends of that scale where businesses put compliance and their safety posture really at the forefront of their work culture, and they're incentivising through bonuses, whether that's sort of, you know, weekly, monthly kind of spiff bonuses for top performers or or purely just meeting compliance requirements. We've seen other companies, usually larger, larger companies, where their actual annual bonuses are tied to year-long compliance with processes like DVIR. And where WorkBrown's been able to come in and help them with that, where the majority of our customers have really transitioned from, from paper sheets and paper-based processes, is that they have that information readily available to be able to very quickly and easily pull up a list, stick it in the lunchroom and say, hey, Jimmy, you're at the top of the list, well done, here's a Dunkin' Donuts voucher or your annual bonus. And then, you know, Pete might be sitting at the bottom there and he hasn't done half his inspections for the month. And I think when you bring that into a forum that's really public, it starts incentivising better behaviour because No doubt, getting— in some industries it's better or worse, but getting drivers to buy into new technology is a really significant process in the long-term success of a business like ours. We need to be able to show value to different stakeholders, but unless the drivers are using our platform, they're submitting inspections, they're thoroughly doing inspections and using it as it was designed to, the downstream effects of that, you know, don't have as greater impact. So we're absolutely obsessed with how we can incentivize drivers by building really simple software, by making the feedback loop of that information and issues that they identify as part of vehicle maintenance and safety are actually getting addressed. And I think that's something that's really important to drivers is it's not just about being told to do something. They buy into our product because it gives them a forum to be able to identify issues that are happening without it getting lost in a stack of paper at the back office, without that communication loop coming back to them, without them getting back in a vehicle the next day and having really clear visibility about whether that's safe to drive, whether they're going to be caught up in an incident or violations. That's really where technology can not only provide value to the business owner, to the fleet manager, safety directors, and those sort of stakeholders, but really adds value to the drivers as well. And I think that is a self sort of incentivizing process that, that once drivers buy into that, then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that they're getting more out of the platform as well, over and above a voucher or a bonus or whatever it might be.

Right. No, I'd agree with you. I am curious though, you mentioned Dunkin' Donuts. What's your go-to donut from Dunkin'? I just gotta ask.

Well, I actually probably couldn't tell you because I I'm not— I generally try and stay as healthy as I possibly can when I get to the US, which never happens because the food's just so sensational that, you know, if I had to go a cheeseburger or a chicken sandwich, then I'd probably go that over a Dunkin' Donuts. So I don't know if I've got a go-to, to be honest. All right.

Well, you mentioned Dunkin' Donuts. My favorite donut ever is the chocolate cake donut from Dunkin' Donuts, a little glaze on the top of it. Fantastic. So totally off point, but you got me thinking about donuts.

Yeah, fantastic. We do see, and Dunkin' Donuts did sort of turn a light bulb on in my head, because there are platforms out there, and it's certainly something that we're considering in due course. There's a whole sort of emerging scene of rewards as a service, or RaaS as they're calling it, and it is this integration to incentivize, not just unique to the transport industry, but any user-driven kind of technology where you're trying to reward behavior or whatever it might be, you can plug in these platforms that enable you to reward good behavior or usage or whatever it might be. And it is the likes of Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts and things where $5, $10 vouchers are kind of quickly distributed amongst people that have. So it's a— I think it's a great concept, and hence why I sort of brought up Dunkin' Donuts, because I've seen it used very effectively before.

So is that something you guys are thinking about doing?

Yeah, look, I believe it is. It's certainly on our roadmap. There's always a million things on our roadmap. We talk to as many customers as we can every day and every week to sort of find out where we can add more value and eliminate problems in their day-to-day beyond what we currently do. And so we balance that with where we think we should be going, what our customers are telling us, what the industry is telling us, what the data is telling us. But that, that kind of driver incentivizer or user incentivized strategy to try and build engagement on our platform is always really close to the top of that list, if not at the top of that list. And so things like rewarding users for engagement on our platform is always going to be something that we're considering to help our, our absolute champion, who's generally the fleet manager or safety director or business owner, get the absolute most value out of what we do, which is delivering them a seamless way to connect inspection data, defects, right through to management, and then even further when we integrate with the likes of RTA to be able to take what we do sort of at that collection port point and middle management where the defect sits into something that's, that's deeper and more deliberate and complex, such as what RTA do. And integrations are a big part of where we want to hit as well.

Yeah, that's, I mean, it's a great idea. So I'm going to, I'm going to flip the script a little bit. So we You know, this is the Fleet Success Podcast and we've gone through our, our second through our fifth episodes were about the pillars that we say are about fleet success. So I want to address each one of those individual pillars and I want to ask you how you feel a DVIR fits in with that pillar. Right. So it may surprise you if you don't know what the pillars are, which most likely you don't. Right. So this is going to get you off the cuff. So I guess we're going to get some raw answers here. But the first one is stakeholder satisfaction, right? And so we classify stakeholders as pretty much anybody that's affected, right, by that fleet management system— the driver, the mechanics, the motoring public, right? So how, how is a DVIR going to benefit really, you know, and create that stakeholder satisfaction, which you actually mentioned stakeholders, I think, 3 times in your previous comments?

Well, we look at it a couple of different ways, and DVIR is a core component of of what we do, but we really, a lot of our customers, the way we talk about it, we talk about whiparounds, and our customers came up with that, not us, and they say, well, I've had my drivers do their whiparound today, or these guys are doing their whiparounds, where they started using that terminology, and where that's really come from is that the way we view the world when it comes to DVIR is slightly broader. The output certainly is a DVIR, and you can have that reporting, you have record retention when it comes to compliance or audits or whatever it might be. The DVIR process is there, and we, we have that nailed and compliant, and, and the review, the signatures and all of that. But when it comes to stakeholder value, where we offer something over and above just DVIR is when we start incorporating other elements into our inspection flow, our whip-around flow, that are relevant to people just beyond the fleet department or fleet management or safety. And we have different components within our forms that relate to driver wellbeing, to HR. We have really fringe use cases around people submitting leave requests and things using our form. During COVID we had a set of questions that could be dropped into different, into different inspection flows that asked the driver how they were feeling, whether they had symptoms, that would then alert the HR personnel in a business that there were some early indicators that someone may not need to come to the workspace or may, may have COVID or may be feeling unwell. We have different components around processes I touched on with OSHA. We have different items in our cards that relate to things completely unrelated to vehicles, for example. And so all of these different things can be connected to different stakeholders within the business and We know that we can build on that concept even further, and the DVIR, as it's affectionately known and written into the law, to us is actually a broader opportunity to capture a lot of information and to prepare the driver or the operator for their shift if they're doing a reviewing inspection, a pre-trip in the morning, or whether it's that end of shift DVIR that sets that vehicle and that process up for the following day. So We think stakeholder value is pretty wide-ranging, and, and the way that we configure forms for people is beyond just DVIR. The DVIR is really the, the moment that's written into the law that these inspections should take place. What happens and what is collected in that process is sort of up to the carrier and their needs, and then whoever within their organisation needs visibility on the outcome of those questions or those photos or or that data, we can give them the value of that really quickly and instantaneously through our digital platform.

Okay, well good. I was actually going to ask you at the end of our conversation how the name Whiparound came out to be, but you like just answered it right there. So I've never heard that term, that the driver's doing a quick whip around of their vehicle. So that's a very—

and I've got to give my co-founder James the credit for that one, probably. I'm not going to lie, there was probably 99 other names that were being thrashed around when we were conceptualizing what we were going to do with the software. And I can still see him now standing in a car park in a moment of frustration, circling his arms around going, you know, what is this that we're asking people to do? What is it? They're just whipping around this vehicle, they're doing an inspection. And we just looked at each other, and whether it was a moment of exhaustion, we couldn't be bothered thinking anymore, or whether the penny had dropped, but Whiparound really has stuck. And the fact our customers are referring to their inspection process now as Whiparounds— I'm not going to lie, it is a kind of unusual name, and I think that helps us in some cases because people don't forget it, or they question it, or they think about it for a couple of seconds, which may make us a little bit more memorable. But we're stuck with it now anyway, and I have to say we do love it.

Yeah, it's fantastic. I agree. So our second pillar is intentional culture. So intentional culture is a clear, defined culture, right? It's not something that's accidental. It's something you live up to. So when it comes to a DVIR, right, how is that relatable when we talk about these fleets and the culture that they're setting for their people?

We love intentional culture. We have it internally here at Whippooround. If you can probably see on the wall behind me the values that we have. And so we have a very intentional culture framework here at Whippooram that we sort of live and die by. And we think that the values that we have have a real resonance, not just for us internally as a team, but they also have a really significant kind of impact on our customers. And so we do try and carry that thinking across into the way that we deal with our customers and the way that our technology helps them. And At the bottom sort of layer of that is we absolutely believe that to be able to iterate and measure and monitor and put in place a framework to drive intentional culture, you need to be able to track it and measure it. And so having a digital framework to be able to do that, like Wipround, where you can customize the processes and the way that you want things to happen when it comes to safety And in transport, safety is a huge component of culture. There are other layers of that over and above, obviously, which are important to service and to customer experience and things, but safety has to sit at a foundational level for transport to be successful. And to be able to put processes in place and have the ability for drivers to follow them how you intend for that to happen in a particular order, to be able to have confidence that things have been done at a particular time, at a particular location, in a particular way, that the outcome of that process is then with the correct people, whether it's dispatch or the people that make decisions on whether vehicles need to be out of service or the timeliness of repairs. And then to be able to go back and reflect on all of those things at moments in time. We do a lot of work with our transport consultants on the safety management cycle and where our software can help carriers sort of deploy, monitor, measure, and reflect on their safety management cycle, which is quite a holistic kind of view of how many businesses should map out their safety culture. And one of the key pillars of that is being able to go back and reflect. If you have that high standard of performance and of safety and of compliance, then when something does inevitably go wrong, and often these things happen for reasons that are sort of unforeseen, you can go back and eventually see the chain of responsibility as to how that happened, who was responsible, did you have the right process in place, how are you going to rectify that in a way that it will diminish the chances of it happening again. And that's where I think the intentional culture piece is very outward in using a platform like Whiparound, because having an inspection process in a defined way that is accountable and measurable is the only way I think you're going to be able to keep iterating changes to it to improve it, to stick things up in the lunchroom to say we are paying attention to this, this is important to us, and everyone kind of buys into it from there, whether it's again back into that incentivisation kind of strategy where you're giving people a bit of a carrot to play by the rules, or just making it continuous, and repetition is a huge part of intentional culture as well. And by forcing a piece in every day that, a) is certainly prescribed by the law when it comes to DVIR, but using that opportunity to then layer in a couple of other things that can point to culture. We have a lot of limousine companies and passenger companies that use Whip Around, and some of them are not bound by DVIR regulations. They are you know, depending on the threshold and size and distance and things bound by other, other FMCSA rules and regs. But we have some of them using that pre-trip inspection or end of trip inspection to get their drivers to take a selfie of whether they're looking presentable, whether their tie's clean, taking pictures of their shoes, because to them it's less the compliance side of things that's really important, it's the customer experience. They want the repeat business. They know that their customers want clean cars smart-looking drivers, and all of those things can add up and you can lose customers very quickly if you're not doing it. So that's sort of where intentional culture comes in, is leveraging a technology to make it, make it constant, make it repeatable and measurable, I guess.

Yeah. So I mean, that's, that's actually fantastic, right? Is that it is used to help enhance those companies' culture. Making sure that that compliance is actually setting root. So I love that. I love that additional little nugget, I guess, that your software provides those companies. So the next— our next pillar is resource efficiency. And basically what we say on resource efficiency, right, is there's two things that you have that are pretty finite. And one is time. Obviously, you're never going to get time back. And then the other one is, you know, money or capital. So we've got those two things. So I'm curious, when it comes to, you know, the DVIRs, like, are there good success stories that you have when you talk about, you know, those resources? So money specifically, like, is there a good ROI, you know, when you implement a system like this, um, you know, for these companies that, that may be having issues with, you know, just their vehicles in general?

Absolutely. On the money front, it's, it's always been an interesting one for us to quantify, and we ask the question a lot. We just get so many different answers from it that, you know, I don't have a one-sentence answer to say we have a promise we're going to save you X or make you Y, because we see so many different use cases for Whiparound in and around the inspection piece that everyone sees and has observations that kind of differ from one another. And I guess the, the undercurrent of that is something that we have to go out and educate people with every day, in the sense that Paper Processes, who is largely our, our chief competitor out in the marketplace, is we want to take people on a journey from paper and disparate systems and spreadsheets into a consolidated platform where they can really benefit from all of the obvious things that that brings. But The hidden cost of paper is something that a lot of businesses don't actually understand to the full extent, and it's something that we go out and preach. We've just launched a fantastic new campaign that one of our absolute superstars in our business, Trent, has put these videos out, and we're now taking a paper shredder to the trade shows. You know, we're at CVSA, we're at TMC, and we're taking bags of fake money, movie money, but it looks pretty real. And we're just shredding it. We're asking people to come up and tell us how many assets they have in their fleet and how much— do they know how much paper processes are costing them? And it's, it's kind of multifaceted. It's not just, hey, the cost of my books, you know, $4.60 a month, and I might save, you know, a few minutes here and there. There's everything from the ability to have that real-time decision-making and and transparency around avoiding violations, you know, not getting pulled over in weigh stations and getting pinged for stuff that could have been prevented at the start of the day through a thorough inspection or at the end of the day in that DVIR. It's about paper handling and we certainly don't go out and champion that people should save a lot of time using a solution like Whiparounds in their pre-trip. We understand the importance of doing a thorough pre-trip and, and being able to make sure that vehicle's safe. Where we come in and really start saving money and resource and efficiency is when that piece of paper's got to go back to the front desk and someone's got to scan it into a computer and put it in a file or email it to a supplier or a mechanic, and they've got to pick up a phone and schedule a time for, for, for maintenance. That whole connectivity that paper kind of breaks down lines of communication The good outcome of that is things may still get fixed, potentially, but a lot of the time things don't get fixed and we end up in this kind of vicious cycle where compliance scores and things get a bit out of control. You're starting to get pinged a bit more, you end up on the slippery slope. And so different carriers appreciate that at different levels. And once they start using, you know, digital software, preferably Whipround, they start noticing these incremental things building up and time saving. Violations sort of being eliminated or mitigated at the front end as vehicles become better maintained. Safety culture improves again, so you start getting more proactive drivers actually focusing on different vehicle maintenance issues within the fleet. And so you sort of have this snowball effect of improvement that, that, you know, comes across a business from all facets, and it's really just about clarity and visibility and real-time information You know, it's not rocket science. We do build some intelligence into the platform and workflows and automation that helps our champions, but really we just want to champion the fact that the old way of doing things is no longer relevant and valid in this day and age. We use email, we use communication tools like Slack. Most of our customers are using some form of tracking or telematics or or maintenance software like yours. And so in a lot of ways, you know, the paper inspection process and what wraps around that is almost the last sort of remaining battleground where we need to go out and help people see the value in what we can do by connecting whole teams, internal, external stakeholders around issues. And I think that just intrinsically creates massive savings on resource.

Yeah, I would agree. And, you know, the, the final pillar that we have is, is risk management. And you've talked a lot, just as you've gone through and talked in these other three pillars, a lot of things that happen to fall under that bucket of risk management. And one of the things that we've talked about before on this podcast is when it comes to risk management, you don't know what you're preventing, right? So you don't know what kind of, of money you saved or accidents you've prevented or lives that you've saved based on the fact that you are doing those inspections, walking around and seeing problem areas that may come from certain vehicles. Is there anything else that you want to add when it comes to just risk management?

I guess it's just a personal interpretation of how I've sort of learnt the rules and regulations and my perception of safety over certainly the last few years in whip around. And it really, no matter where you are, whether it's, it's in Asia Pacific or, or in the US, it's really just about demonstrating that you do have a process and you've thought about it. And you are sort of enforcing a way of doing things to mitigate as much risk as possible. I don't think the law ever says you will never have an accident, or you will never have a violation happen. It sort of has a fairness in it that if you can say, well, yeah, this went wrong, but look, here is this clear documented plan that I have for the maintenance and management of this vehicle. Here is the process that my drivers go through every day. Here is the auditable trail of how we have repaired these different issues in the past. This is a bit of a one-off. I'm sorry, I think the law and enforcement should really take that and understand that the framework is really, really important. It's when people don't have that framework that risk management sort of falls apart and you start seeing repeated things. And that's where I guess, you know, the SMS system and things kind of reflects repeat offenders and puts them under the spotlight for a little bit more heat. So risk management, I think, is about planning, it's about reflection. And personally, having not not ever had to manage a fleet on paper before, I just don't know how companies can still do that effectively in the age of digital connectivity. And even now the FMCSA is obviously predominantly conducting off-site audits, and that just relies on someone not being there. Paper has to be digitized, and COVID's really accelerated that. So how Having that information already in a digital format and already available now should you end up in that place, you know, you're already ahead of the game than trying to go through filing cabinets and spend your weekend scanning DVIRs and maintenance records in before you email them off.

Well, I mean, from a liability stand, how easy is it to pencil with paper, right, and falsify documents versus if you've got that, you you know, that app, that digital copy, you've got it right when it happened. You've got the pictures to prove, you know, that everything was okay or wasn't okay or whatever the case may be. So I mean, you do, you know, you do cover your own ass when you do have that digital capability to be able to have that documented. And like you said, you're not wasting time going through a filing cabinet because a lot of times, uh, at least in trucking, when someone would come in and ask to do a DOT audit, I mean, you're looking back 7, 8 months through paperwork and filing cabinets trying to find the right paperwork. Drivers didn't turn it in or it got lost or something happened. So I mean, it's definitely a lot more organized to go digital, obviously, than to do paper.

Absolutely. And most of our customers, I have to say, use our solution beyond what the law requires them to do. And the most obvious sense of that, I guess, is DVIR requires an end of day or end of shift inspection. Inspection to identify those issues, and that provides a, in a lot of cases, an overnight period of time before that vehicle might be on the road again to effect those repairs and have them signed off for the next driver. But we start seeing a lot more customers also asking their drivers to conduct a proper pre-trip, not just in the eyes of DVIR, which is viewing any defects from the previous inspection and signing off that those repairs have been affected or the vehicle is in safe working order, they're actually using that pre-trip in a slightly different way. Yes, to inspect the vehicle, but also to actually go through and not just review that last inspection, look at all those elements again, ask the driver questions. Have you reviewed your route for the day? Are you prepared? Is the weather going to provide you any sort of challenges? And that information isn't necessarily popping up on a dashboard, but it's It's the pre-trip inspection that's getting the drivers mentally in the zone for the day, and it's using that opportunity not just at the end of the day to conduct the vehicle inspection, it's developing that great safety posture where you're weaving that sort of compliance view and safe view of the world throughout the day, looking at cargo securement and all sorts of things like that, that We just make it really easy and usable for them to do it, but it's far in excess of what necessarily the law asks them to do when it comes to just EVIR.

Right. Well, I mean, that's awesome. Like, I mean, you've given us a lot as far as when it comes to the EVIR on why it's important, how your solution works, and why it can be effective in different fleets. Do you have any— I mean, I've enjoyed the conversation. Do you have any closing remarks or comments that you want to make for our listeners?

Nothing. I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and I really appreciate the opportunity to, you know, to sit and talk. Love the podcast and have really enjoyed our relationship with RTA over the years. I had the privilege of being in Vegas at the conference beginning of last year. Could have been the last time I was setting foot in the US actually, but, you know, we really believe in an integrated ecosystem of technology. When we started Whiparound, we were a siloed product and we thought the value that we provided our customers would stand on its own. Where we've evolved over the last few years is really this trend towards so many different systems coming together to provide paired value and aligning and connecting of information, and it's something that we're going to champion at Whiparound. And, you know, we're talking to a lot of people at the moment, some big names that we're integrating with and sharing information with that, that kind of pairs our periphery kind of data collection from Whiparound with, you know, maybe OEM data or tracking data or whatever it might be from telematics. And so, you know, we hope to keep chatting about where we are and new partners and things like that. And obviously, anyone out there who has listened to the pains of paper or sees it in their day-to-day lives, Whiparound would certainly love to have a conversation and Show you what we can do. It's what we do every day. We live and breathe it and we're focused on it.

Awesome. Well, it's been, it's been a pleasure, Tim. Thanks for joining us. For our listeners, if you've got any questions, comments or anything, go ahead and give us an email podcast@rtafleet.com. We're also on social media. Hit us up on LinkedIn, hit us up on Facebook, Instagram. You tell your friends, tell your coworkers. You know, we really enjoy doing this and we hope that you're taking this information that you're able to apply it into your daily jobs to help make your fleets more successful. So thank you. And, you know, stay tuned for our episode next week and whip around on Tuesday with us. We appreciate you. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you liked our show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us anywhere on social media @fleet_success. See you next time.