Driving Solutions with Jim Fitzpatrick, powered by CBT News

Solving Dealer Transport Delays with Royce Neubauer

• CBT News • Season 1 • Episode 21

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Royce Neubauer, founder of Auto Hauler Exchange, joins Driving Solutions to discuss how vehicle logistics is becoming a competitive differentiator for dealers and OEMs. Drawing on more than two decades of experience in automotive transport, Neubauer explains why traditional hauling processes often create delays, limit visibility, and tie up dealer capital—especially as customer expectations around delivery continue to rise.

The conversation explores how Auto Hauler Exchange was designed to remove brokers from the transport process, allowing dealers and carriers to work directly through a transparent, real-time marketplace. Neubauer outlines how improved communication, documentation standards, and driver accountability can reduce risk, accelerate delivery timelines, and protect dealer profitability. As logistics increasingly becomes part of the retail promise, he shares why dealerships must rethink transport as a core operational function rather than a back-end necessity.

Key discussion points:

  • Why vehicle transport delays strain dealer cash flow and inventory turns
  • Connecting shippers and carriers directly without brokers
  • Improving shipment visibility and accountability through real-time updates
  • Reducing risk with stricter pickup verification and documentation
  • Evaluating driver-level performance to improve service quality
  • How logistics is evolving into part of the customer experience

Driving Solutions is the go-to podcast for dealership professionals who want to stay sharp, informed, and ahead of the curve. Hosted by Jim Fitzpatrick and powered by CBT News, each episode brings you real strategies, smart tools, and expert insights to help you run a more profitable operation.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and visit CBTNews.com for more.

SPEAKER_01:

This is Driving Solutions exclusively on CBTnews.com.

SPEAKER_03:

Hey everyone, Jim Fitzpatrick. Welcome into another edition of Driving Solutions right here at CBTnews.com. Today we're taking a closer look at the issues dealers face with transporting vehicles and how solutions like Auto Hauler Exchange aim to fix them. Joining us now is Royce Newbauer, who's the founder and CEO of Auto Hauler Exchange. Royce, thank you so much for joining us in the show or in the studio, I should say. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Sure. So you guys, the reason that we wanted to get you in the studio is you've been making some huge waves out there. And in in an area that as a former dealer myself, I will tell you when somebody said we need a transport, you're like, ah, is the car going to make it? Is it going to be safe? How much damage is going to be on the car? Is it ever going to even appear at the other end, right? 100%. And you guys have really come in with a phenomenal solution. For those people that are out there that may have been living under a rock and haven't heard of your company, which uh you're doing some great things out there. Kind of give us the elevator pitch, if you will, or tell us what you, you know, how how you got started and what it's all about.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, uh logistics, you know, I've been in the space for about 26 years now, and it's it's always been interesting because I think we're looked at as kind of a necessary evil in almost any economy or any any form of uh supply chain management. Yeah. Um, so I'm my my roots are from the brokerage space. So I grew up in that world for for many years. I still own a brokerage, and my brokerage was shipping cars. We launched a division in about 2020, brought over a team that was very known in that space, and they launched that uh division within our corporation. And it took me about six months of kind of matriculating through what was I called the wild, wild west, which was finished vehicle logistics. Right. Um, because the world I came from was very different, yeah. You know, and in you know, consumable goods and and produce and food, you know, everything is highly regulated, everything is very specific when it comes to transportation on-time pickups, on-time deliveries. Yeah, sure. You know, if you're minutes late for a delivery of certain certain retailers, you're waiting for days. So it's all about the car business. Well, that's what I learned. Right. That's it. It wasn't the car business. So we spun up our brokerage division, and we were, I think we got up to about 20 million in revenue within within the first year, but it was about six to nine months within that first year. I was sitting down with uh the gentleman uh that that spun that division up, and I looked at him and I said, Listen, we got to get out of the way. Yeah. He's like, What do you mean? I said, brokers are the problem in finished vehicle logistics. They're they're they're creating too much chaos, they're creating too much price challenges. Sure. And they're slowing down the pace at which these cars are getting delivered. Right. And we kind of whiteboarded the the concept of building a B2B marketplace which eliminates the middleman and connects the shipper directly with the carriage. It's a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah, it really is. So they don't have as much finger pointing going on, right? To go, I don't know why that truck didn't get there.

SPEAKER_02:

He said, she said, and everybody's kind of going back. But you know, it's like anything else. You know, you relay a message to one person who relays it to a second, who may relay it to a third or fourth. And before you know it, the message is is a little fine. The telephone game is right. It's the telephone game, right? Yeah. So we looked at it and said, listen, 90% of this can be digitized. There is a certain level of service that everybody expects, and if there are problems, somebody needs to pick up the phone. So we do have an operations staff that will handle those 1% outliers. Yeah. But 99% of the process is digitized. So it's allowing you know full collaboration between shipper and receiver, or shipper and and and carrier. So they're all connected in the same ecosystem. So if there's ever a question if the driver arrived on time or had the right documentation, everything's digital. Okay. Everybody has access to that shipment via their cell phone or their computer so they can communicate with in one closed silo.

SPEAKER_03:

Sure, sure. Um, you know, now with Amazon, there's Amazon boxes, especially here in December at every single door. What you know, in the auto industry, we're always slow to the market on these kinds of things, right? When it's like we're talking about a$20,000 to a$200,000 to a$2 million car. Why can't we master this, right? So the problem until auto hauler exchange came along existed in a very, very big way. It truly did.

SPEAKER_02:

It truly did. And that that's a great you know loop in the Amazon effect. Right. Right. You know, I just turned 50. Yeah. Right. So I I've kind of seen both sides of this. You know, when I bought my first car, my my dad came with me and we took the tires. Of course. You know, we took it for a test drive. My last four cars were delivered to my house. That's simple, yeah. You know, right? So that's what the expectation is. That's right. One of them took 38 days to get there. Oh my God. I saw it sitting at port. Where the hell is it? I kept calling. Where's the car? Where's the car? The dealer had no answers. Oh, dealer's calling the manufacturer. Why can't we get the car out of port? Right. They had no answers. Well, it was handed to a broker, I found out. Oh my god. That broker sat there and sat there and sat there until they could make a profit on that transaction. So when we built the auto hauler exchange, it was with that feeling that I have this is just I almost canceled the car. Yeah, of course. It was my wife's car and she was getting frustrated. Sure, sure. And she should have been, right? And you know, so when we were looking at it, we basically said, this is about speed. Speed is money, time is money. Of course, of course. And this is, you know, revenue that's tied up for the dealership, the revenue, the sale that could have been canceled on the dealership just because of one little cog in the supply chain that was wrong.

SPEAKER_03:

That's right. A dealer can do um great things for that customer, okay, getting them the vehicle and negotiating the deal and just smothering them with great customer service. And then it can be ruined and the CSI can go right down the drain in that last mile. Right. 100, that final mile concept, right?

SPEAKER_02:

And that that's where that level of customer service can actually be elevated. Yeah. You know, and a lot of people look at logistics, to your point, you're like, oh man, I got to deal with this. That's right. Well, yeah, let's deal with it the right way. And it can add to your service model, it can add to the value you're giving your back end customer at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Because CSI means so much. You've we've just kind of touched on all of them, but uh, from your perspective, what are the top issues that that that dealers deal with um when trying to move cars?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the biggest thing when we first started conceiving the idea around the product was we had to get customer feedback. We had to sit down with our dealer partners, we had to sit down with the carriers. What are the issues you're dealing with in the market, in the space? And the biggest thing with our dealers was was two things speed and transparency. Okay. They were waiting seven, 10, 14 days to get a unit that they bought from auction and to get units from their OEM partners. Yeah. And sometimes those units are already sold. Yeah, especially to new cars. Oh, yeah, for sure. And now you're waiting for a customer. Now, how are you going to satisfy a customer if the car's not on the lot? I just had a situation myself, right? On used car inventory, you're running up against arbitration windows, you're running up against depreciation values of the vehicle. That's right.

SPEAKER_03:

And you have all that tied up revenue just sitting out there for days upon days upon days. It takes 14 days and then a few days in recon. You got now, if you're on a 30-day turn or you want to be on the 30-day turn.

SPEAKER_02:

You're going to have 10 days to sell that unit. That's exactly right. I've been there. It's terrible. So we looked at it and I look came from the food world primarily, right? Where speed, speed, speed is everything. And I said, that's the level of service we're going to bring to this industry. We're just going to digitize it. Yeah. So we took that seven to 14 day window that a lot of our dealers were dealing with and built a product that's allowing for a one to four day delivery window, depending on the mileage of the shipment. That's on average. You know, roughly 50,000 shipments that have gone through the product. Wow. Right. So that's real data that's telling you the shipments are moving faster. Yeah. The transparency side was twofold. Number one, they never knew who was picking up their units. Right. A broker had booked that truck. Yep. Broker was keeping that information to themselves. They didn't want that relationship happening between the carrier and the ship. That's right. It's like an Uber driver giving you his personal card. No, no, no, no. That's exactly what it is. Right. So, you know, the broker is kind of blocking that chain of communication. And that's where the transparency kind of gets very crowded. So when we said, you know, we're going to build an ecosystem where you guys are connected. I don't care if you go direct with each other. I kind of hope you do. I want you to build that relationship. Yeah. But at the same time, the carrier is going to keep coming back because they're going to need backhauls to that same market, or they're going to need, you know, extra units to fulfill their entire truckload. So the transparency of understanding who the trucks were that were coming into their bays and coming into their lots to pick up the cars. And then finally the price. Yeah. If you're paying a broker a select amount to move units for you, you don't know what's actually going to the truck. The broker makes a cut. That's how all brokers work in every industry. They're in, they're out, they're done. They're the middleman, they make a piece of the pie. So one reason the speed had gone to seven, 14, 20 days to ship a unit is because that broker is shopping out as many trucks as they can get to get the cheapest rate. Right. You know, within our product, we give data back to our shippers to say, hey, this is this adjusted market rate where you're wanting to move this specific type of car. This is what you can expect to pay. Right. You decide if you want to buy the car and ship it at a rate near the so the shippers dictate what they're paying the trucks. Okay. Every shipment that goes onto our product, the carrier knows that's shipper direct pricing, and they can trust that it's a real unit coming from an actual carrier that or shipper that owns that unit. Right. And now the transparency that the shipper has, they know exactly what they're paying to ship their units, they know exactly who's moving that unit for them. It's a beautiful thing. And they can trust that that carrier was vetted. This is another big part theft and fraud.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Not a lot of people were talking about it two, three years ago when we when we started the launch. It's alive and well now. It's alive and well now. Right. Especially with AI coming to the forefront. AI is bringing a lot of value to our product and a lot of value to technologies around the world, but it's also bringing a lot of value to the frosters.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. No question.

SPEAKER_02:

They are moving at the speed of light as well.

SPEAKER_03:

We've reported on it here at CBT News many times. Yes, you know, and we've spoken to dealers that have said, just got burned, you know. It happens.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And our product, you know, we reject roughly 33% of the trucking companies that try to enter. Yeah. Because of our betting system. We have a partnership with probably the most sophisticated vetting system in the industry, but then we have our own criteria in-house that we've built over a 26 industry that I have. Yeah. And then others within our corporation that have come from the space. That's good to know. So we actually reject more than our product partner rejects. Really? Because of the strict criteria that we put in place. Very nice. Yeah. Thank you. As a broker, I don't think they're doing that.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, they don't have to do that. Some of them are not. Yeah. They're all not.

SPEAKER_02:

But I know there are some very large brokers in this industry that are not doing that, not doing it the right way. Um, then there are others that are they are. They're trying, right? They're trying to get ahead of it. Yeah. But you know, it's all about, you know, really protecting the product. At the end of the day, you got to protect that unit. You got to protect the relationship with the shipper. And if we're sending in carriers that are are truly trying to be fraudulent, you're going to run into some issues. But it also goes back to the dealerships as well. Yeah. There are certain checks and balances they need to have in place to protect those units as well. They need to be taking pictures of the truck that shows up. Yeah. They need to get the driver's license from the driver. That's right. Take a picture of the plates, take a picture of the vent of the actual tractor.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, our system is going to track a lot of that for them through the ELD and matching that up with the VIN of the tractor and a lot of the back-end sophistication of the products that we've built. But it's still up to the dealer. You have to, you know, they're on the front lines. Yeah, they really are. There's got to be some responsibility. And there has to be some responsibility. And we've had some dealers where we'll run a test and say, hey, send in the truck, see if they do what they're supposed to do. Right. If it's a carrier we know. Yeah. They won't, they're not checking the driver's license. They're not taking a picture of the shit. They're just handing the keys over.

SPEAKER_03:

They're just thinking, if that guy's pulling up and I'm supposed to deliver put this car on the case. And we've obviously had to make calls saying, hey guys, please, yeah. We're doing this to protect you. We need to you need to help as well. And it might be that it's it's uh nothing against lot attendance, but you know what I'm saying, right? With the sales manager says, hey man, this car is going to get pulled, you know, picked up and it's the car that pulls in. That's exactly what they're handling. Oh, that's the guy that's, you know, and you're and you got somebody that's making 10 bucks an hour that's going, yeah, here are the keys, there's the car, you know, what what do you need from me? And then they're off, right?

SPEAKER_02:

And it it's exactly what happens. We've had some dealers that have come to us and and onboarded within the product because they were managing it themselves, pushing units through load board. Yeah, and they just figure the carrier that was on that board was already vetted, of course. They figured it was. Well, maybe or maybe not. Depends on what your product you're using. That's right. And then the units just disappeared. And that's why they're migrating to our product because now they know they can trust that we the trucking companies within the product are secured, which they are, but at the same time, we educate our dealers just as much as we educate our drivers. So be responsible for your actions.

SPEAKER_03:

There's got to be some right, right. Some due diligence to just go, well, I got the light, the driver's license. Even if the driver's license isn't real, at least you got something, right? Yeah, but then that helps the authorities.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. Because if there is a theft issue, yeah. You got the guy's picture anyway. You got a picture of somebody, and you at least got a you know, a picture of the truck that's got something, something to document and move forward with insurance or move forward with authorities. Yeah, for sure, for sure. What types of dealerships are using uh your your company, Auto Holler Exchange today?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, um, we were talking before you know we started, we're up to roughly a thousand dealerships within the product uh today. Um and that's a that is a that's fast growth. I mean, that's clearly it's gotta be. I mean, obviously I've seen you guys out there in the marketing and what have you. Marketing is is excellent, but marketing doesn't do that. This is word of mouth. This is a dealer going, hey, or a dealer group. You know, you got one dealership in a 50 uh store chain that goes, oh, guess what? I got a hauler, you know, a company that that I can bank on. The other 49 stores follow suit, right? 100%.

SPEAKER_02:

That's that's really how our growth has occurred over the past two and a half years. Sure. It's been it's been primarily organic. Right. Um especially within our dealership circles. A lot of our dealer, I'd say 60% of the dealers that are in the product today haven't come to us through word of mouth. That's great. Whether 20 groups talking about about us in a in a presentation, sure, or to your point, dealer networks. We start with one or two stores within that network, and before you know it, we have the entire network under in the product.

SPEAKER_03:

I would I would think that the publics out there, you know, that that are that are experiencing these kinds of things happening. We just talked about the fraud situations and and being laid and what have you, and it costing those dealers and those groups CSI scores and what have you, um, you know, would be all over this.

SPEAKER_02:

100%. We're we've seen a big growth, especially the last six months, yeah, within our larger dealer network, especially the publics. Yeah. You asked earlier what types of dealers and we have independence. Okay. We have large public you know groups. Yeah. You know, so it's it is a pretty wide variety variety of dealerships within the product. Um, I I think those that are out there that are you know moving a lot of used cars and moving a lot of units from auction have really migrated to the product, as well as those that are shipping direct to consumer. Right. So it's that it's that you know, white club service at the end of the day, or the consumer can trust that the unit's gonna get their crying on time. Sure is a big deal for the dealerships. But to your point about the the the larger dealership groups that have you know a little bit more reputation to protect, especially if they're publicly traded, right? You know, they're they're worried about that stock at the end of the day. I know. So they have to have great partners, right? And great partnerships within the product uh that they're delivering to their customer base. And we feel that we're an extension of that. Yeah. You know, anytime that there's volume being marketed through the auto hauler exchange from our dealer networks, we want to make sure that that end customer experience is a wow factor. Right, right. And whether that be the consumer or the dealership that we're delivering through, that's that's the end customer for us. And you know, I think the deliverable kind of speaks for itself. You know, that one to four-day delivery window from the time a unit is posted is 10x what the market used to be in the finished vehicle logistics space.

SPEAKER_03:

So do you even do you have an influence in the drivers that drop off that vehicle, that expensive vehicle, to a consumer, right, at their office or their home or what have you? Because that is that plays into it as well, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

It definitely plays into it in you know, our we're building within the product now a grading system for our drivers, just the tracking company.

SPEAKER_03:

Kind of like Uber.

SPEAKER_02:

Kind of like Uber, right? Right. We want to reward those drivers that are delivering at a higher level and do delivering at an extra layer of uh service. Which means they go up on your photo and you know, maybe they earn more revenue, maybe, maybe they you know generate more capital because dealers want to work with that higher tier of carrier, right? Especially if it's one directed consumer, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, but the biggest thing is when we remove the broker from just the entire line of command, sure, right? The carrier now is working directly for that shipper. Whether it's an OEM, a port, a rail, or a dealer, right? That's who they're working for. They're taking pride in that. They haven't had that opportunity in the past. They'd always worked for multiple brokers and kind of told them what to do. Now these carriers within our product are allowed to pick which shippers they're working for, which units they're moving, and why. And as we're seeing carriers build relationships with certain dealerships, they know who's loading the truck that day. They know who's you know made the coffee that morning. You know, they're having conversations, building that relationship, and they're we're seeing a higher level of service because they take pride working directly for those customers.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I bet. I bet it puts a it puts a real face rather than just some some you know ambiguous kind of talking about. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Um, how do you see vehicle transport evolving, especially as dealers demand more transparency? We talked a little bit about that and control. And it sounds like that's that's where you're headed, right?

SPEAKER_02:

That's exactly where we're headed. And and I think a lot of our dealer partners, you know, in the beginning, they kind of just felt like they were stuck. Yeah. You know, what they didn't know, they didn't know, and this is just the world they live in. Exactly. You know, it just takes 14 days to get my car from auction. You know, that's just the way it should be, I guess. And then we got remote and said, no, you should have that car tomorrow. Right, right. I still remember our one of our first big customer, big dealer groups, they they do about you know, I'd say 150 to 200 you know units a month. Yeah. We they we had been calling on them, calling on them. They were the large broker at the time, and finally that broker made another mistake. Of course. They got frustrated and said, All right, we're giving auto hauler a chance. And they marketed, I think it was like 20 units on on the product. The cars picked up and delivered the next day. The recon center called our guys that had bought the units and said, What are these cars doing here? We had why are they we weren't expecting these for two weeks. They weren't prepared for it. Because they're actually jammed up so into two weeks. Right. And so the sales guys were like, Oh my god, what's going on? Yeah, and before we knew it, we had a hundred units at their lot within the first seven days. Oh my god. And the recon center had they had to re-figure out that was going to build a recon center because the units were coming in so much faster than they had ever dealt with in the past. Right. That to me was a feather in the cap of the product. Like this product works. And this thing is the driving force. And it's all about, and we said it earlier, the Amazon effect. I know it's kind of a cliche term that a lot of people use, but that's the expectation. I know. And in you know, the younger generation, that's all they've ever experienced. That's great. So you can't go back. So it's got to be about automation, it's got to be about transparency, and it's got to be about trust. You got to trust that that product's gonna get to you when you want it.

SPEAKER_03:

That's right. And yeah, as we know, Carvana kind of skews to a younger audience and a younger demographic because they're familiar with buying that way. Yes. You know, they pick up their cell phone, they go on their laptop, and I'm buying a car right now. And you know, 24 hours later, the flatbed pulls up and and and every dealer in the country goes, Why can't we do that again? How did we lose that that that you know, that last mile that? There. And as you know, any of those vehicles can be purchased at a dealer, a franchise dealer's used car department, probably for less money than Carvana. But it's not about the car, it's about the way it was delivered. It's about the deliverance. It's about that customer experience.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. And I think you know, a lot of people, you're looking at the sale of the car. Yeah. That's the customer experience. It's it goes much further than that. Does it really do it? It goes much further than that, especially when you have an entire generation of people that are used to having things brought to them and given, you know, of course. That's the expectation. Yeah, of course. So if the dealership is not expecting to do that on a regular basis, and I'm not just talking about delivering the final vehicle. Sure. You know, I I've got a dealership friend in in Metro Detroit. My daughter's car actually broke down at her school yesterday. Yeah. He had a tow truck out there in 30 minutes. It's at his lot today. I got it. The water pump went out. We're getting it fixed. For sure. We'll take it back to the school when it's fixed. Yeah. That's the expectation. That's right.

SPEAKER_03:

I will buy cars for him for the rest of my life because of that level of service. No question about it. And uh, and then of course, um, I'm from Florida and we have a home down there, and uh, and every time you know we need vehicles dropped off and sent down there, you know, these the you know, exactly the snowbirds. It's like this migration of cars. You know, you see them on the highway. You know, if you're driving down there, you'll see these car haulers, all these different vehicles, and they all got plates on them. So they're not used cars. These are consumers' cars. 100%. And uh, and that that's got to be that's part of your business as well.

SPEAKER_02:

It's part of our business as well. We actually just two weeks ago launched uh our our consumer product called AHX Direct. Um, it's self-serve. You go in, you get a quote, you get guaranteed pickup windows, guaranteed delivery windows, which a lot of products don't offer. Um, and then you decide if that's you know the way you want to ship your car, and then you're in direct connection with that that auto hauler from then on. Sure. Now you can communicate with our ops team if if there's any issues or any questions, but it you know, we're from Michigan, so snowbird season is full effect. We've had a lot of early snow, so people are leaving earlier than normal. Um, and you'll see a flood of cars headed to the south. So we're we're seeing you know elevated prices coming out of Michigan today. So that's something that we offer to our dealer partners. And hey, we're in snowbird season, so upstate New York, you know, yeah, for sure. Ohio, northern Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. If you're buying from auctions in those markets and you live and you're bringing them to the south, your rates are gonna be higher because we're offering data to our dealers to show them that, hey, this might be a time to stay away from those markets, or at least this is what your shipping rate's gonna be.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So now you know if you can make a profit on that unit, sure if we can get it to you once we get it to you in two or three days.

SPEAKER_03:

Conversely, is it less expensive for empty trucks going from Orlando back to Detroit?

SPEAKER_02:

It is okay, that's interesting. So the converged side of that is you're gonna get better rates for the south, especially if you have carriers going to the deep south, you know, southern Florida, yeah, they're gonna start heading north empty because there's just not enough volume coming out. Right, right. And then they'll take the first opportunity to say, of course. And that's something our product provides to the carriers within the product, is it'll ping them in route. If they give us the route optimization, we're leveraging AI to show them that, hey, there are units that just entered the marketplace that are on your route back to Atlanta or on your route back to Atlanta. Oh, wow, that's cool. Detroit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So if you get off, if you get off of the next exit, if you have space, you're gonna pay, you're gonna pick up 700 bucks. You can make more money on your way back. That's nice. Yes, that's really cool. That sounds just like Uber for haulers.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, that is very similar, right? And and it's all about driving those efficiencies and creating a better cost perspective and price perspective on both sides of the market, right? So, from a cost perspective, as a dealership, if you're shipping out of, say, Orlando and there's 75 dealerships in Metro Orlando that are on the product, sure, you're not the only shipper that that carrier is looking at. So you're pricing your unit as you might think you're shipping it as a single, yeah, but you're not paying a single price because there's 10 dealerships near you that are moving singles too. So that builds out a full truckload for the carrier. So the dealers are going to get a better price point. Okay. And now the carrier can maximize the capacity on his trailer and he can make more money. Gotcha. Which drives to a more successful, sexful supply chain. Right, right. Because now if the drivers are making more revenue, they get better tractors, they take care of their equipment better, they have good insurance. Yep. It all trickles out right, and it allows for a stronger trucking industry within this country, which we need.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, yeah, no, no question about it. Um, as you know, it's a very crowded field, you know, vehicle logistics. What's the biggest misconception people have about platforms like yours?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it was interesting because obviously with my broker background, you know, when we launch, people are like, oh, this is a glorified brokerage product. I'm like, yeah, I get why you're saying that. I understand it completely. Um, but it's not. And you know, so a lot of people felt that we were a broker with a marketplace concept. Sure. But what they don't realize is my brokerage stopped shipping cars, you know, two years ago year and a half ago. Okay. We just removed that entire market from our brokerage. We shut it down. I took a$20 million business unit and said, we're not doing this anymore. That's how much I believed in the auto hauler exchange, and it was the right fit for the industry.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Now we have a couple shippers that we worked with in the past that are kind of like, ah, we're not sure about this new concept yet. But about 90% of our shippers came over. Okay. And they've seen the value in the product, and that's OEMs and dealerships. Um, so the biggest misconception was that we were a brokerage. Okay. Um, and and part of that's the industry. Yeah. You have a lot of brokers out there that have technology, and now they're they love the idea of a marketplace, so now they're calling themselves marketplaces. Right. Okay. So one thing I would say if if you feel that you're working with a broker that is considered a marketplace, the one question I would ask is, are you marketing units on central dispatch? If you are, then you're a broker, you're not a marketplace. And the reason for that is we were removed from central dispatch because they looked at us as a direct competitor because we're a marketplace. Sure, sure. I don't necessarily think we are because they're they're a load board that's building out marketplace concepts. Interesting. But they also have brokers on their product. We have no brokers on our product. Okay. And this is the reason for that is not against the brokerage community, it's because we feel that the brokers need to get out of the way. Right. We feel there should be a direct line of communication and and relationship building between the shipper and the carrier with without the middle man.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. It's it really is uh fascinating because this is one of the it's like kind of the last frontier. You know, dealers have got, as you know, in their four walls or their entire lot, they've got control over everything. Yes, you know what I mean? As soon as that vehicle leaves or it needs a lot. You feel like you lose control. You do, you do, and then and then you might even lose the car if it's not done right.

SPEAKER_02:

If you're not doing it right, you're not having the the caravetting done properly. Yeah. Yeah, you could lose that car. And and I understand, you know, when I first started brokering, I was, you know, I was a young kid, and you know, my one of my first shippers was out of Bronx, New York. And I remember him telling me, like, these strawberries are mine, not yours. Get them here. I'm like, yes, sir. That's a good point. You know, and same, same thing as with the cars. Everything we shipped, it wasn't mine. We've got to get it there. It's the cons it's the customers and it's the consumers. And yeah, so we you have to look at logistics, you have to really love taking care of people and love being in a relationship-type business and industry. And even though we're building a technology and a product, we still want to deliver that high level of service through the tech. And it's all about giving that extra level of satisfaction and comfort and trust to the dealership that hey, you're not losing control because you know and you can trust that the carrier is vetted and that and it's it's a good legal, legit carrier that's on the product. Right. But you also have full transparency. You know what you're paying them. You have their phone numbers, you have their address, you have their DOT numbers. Yeah, you have visualization of where they're at in transit because they're being tracked through their ALD. You have the pictures of the unit and the pre-inspection, preloading inspection, you got the post inspection, everything's digitized. So you have full access to that equipment. That's great. And you can call the driver at any point in time if you so choose. Um, so it's giving them that control back as well as giving them access to data and understanding of what their overall spend is on logistics each and every year. Sure. You know, what's their average post to pick up and delivery, and they can place that against what maybe interest they paid on used cars that year or depreciation values to really show the total cost savings or recapturing of revenue that they they enjoyed from leveraging the auto hauler.

SPEAKER_03:

Sure, sure. There's nothing worse than as a dealer, you sell a vehicle, maybe it came from auction, maybe it's at another location, maybe it's at another dealership you own, and that's in another state or whatever the case might be, and you're sitting with a six-pound deal. You know what I'm talking about? And guess what? You know what I'm talking about, dealers. Where you know, and the guy's like, if the car's not here on Friday, I don't want it. Yeah, right. And this is Monday, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

That's real.

SPEAKER_03:

And that's real, right? And you're and you're like, oh no, that we got no problem doing that Friday now. Yeah, five days, sure. You know, give me, give me the money, let's do the deal. And it don't show up on Friday. Right, exactly. And you're sweating the whole the whole deal. And I've been there before, I say six pounder, but some in some of these, you know, luxury cars, it could be a hell of a lot more than that. Yes, you know, a hundred percent. Yeah, you gotta, you're like shaking calling that, you know, calling that hauler.

SPEAKER_02:

And we've had a lot of you know, partners, you know, this we had a dealership group that was delivering a car to a publicly traded company, it was somebody very high up, and like, hey, this car's gotta get there. It's got 24 hours. They're on the phones, right? Guys, it's gonna get there's a VIP. Yeah, and they paid it X by a rate and close, everything, right? Guy was four hours early waiting for the guy to come pick up his unit. That's what we want to get. That's the level of service you're looking for. Right. Concept cars going to share OEMs to trade shows. Usually trade shows, yeah. That's huge. But we're seeing them getting pumped into the auto hauler product because they're trusting the deliverable. Right. And one thing that the dealers are able to do is they can set criteria on pickup and delivery must. Like, yeah, you can't miss these windows. Right. This is it. Yeah. And the price will be adjusted based off those that criteria and the time of year. And we have the AI and algorithms to build out the right pricing metrics, but it's telling the dealer, like, hey, if this is your expectation, this is the cost you you're gonna expect. Yeah, yeah. If you got a little bit more leeway, then you know that price may come down. Sure. It's entirely up to you to decide what your you know deliverables need.

SPEAKER_03:

Exactly. Exactly. Um, it would seem to me that company, you know, we're we're headed, we're in Atlanta right now, or as many of you know, CBT is headquartered. Um, and uh so is Mercedes Benz. It would seem to me that OEMs like Mercedes-Benz, also Porsche is here in in Atlanta too. Maybe that's what you're doing here. Maybe you're actually gonna be good. But those, it would seem to me that OEMs have a stake in this as well, to where, because those vehicles are often, you know, somebody's got a G-Wagon over here and they want it down in Florida or whatever the case might be, it's vitally important, you know, that that OEM's reputation is on the line too. Is it not? It is to where because they blame the whole group. They blame the dealer, they blame the OEM. They're like, I bought a Mercedes, and I know it didn't get there when I was told, and we're leaving on a trip, and we thought 100%, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's it would it would seem to me that that OEMs can help grow your business.

SPEAKER_02:

OEMs are helping grow our business. We have uh we're in negotiations with our second OEM contract right now. We just launched our first one. Great about a month and a half ago. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, we made it very far down the line with another one a couple of months ago. So, you know, the biggest challenge with the OEM is change management.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, it's a lot of them have been doing something a similar way for a very, very long time. And the next person gets plugged into that seat, they're afraid to really ruffle the feathers or shake.

SPEAKER_03:

Some VP someplace might lose their job.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. They're afraid they if they make that mistake, they're gonna lose their position. But we keep telling them like, guys, we're averaging across the network, yeah, where we're you know, that tens of thousands of shipments, right? An average of 17% savings per unit prior to you know launching the product. Yeah, our first OEM launch, we saved our OEM over a million dollars out of one railhead outside of Chicago in a 90-day window. Jesus. That was a lift percentage rate they were paying the truck. Wow. And it eliminated their bay allocation overages that they had experienced for an entire year out of that particular railhead. Yeah, it was roughly$898,000 in 90 days. Oh my gosh. Right. And that's incredible. When you're able to create that type of change for an OEM, you know, the sky's the limit, of course. But it's a matter of getting past some of that the change management. Yeah, I've done it this way forever. Why would I change? Sure. Well, because the way you've done it isn't necessarily working. That's right. I could have kept taking taxi cabs forever, but I like an Uber or what's right.

SPEAKER_03:

A little bit more efficient. No, you guys are definitely disruptors in the space. In fact, I'm sitting here while you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, it's 2025. This it would seem to me, right, as a layperson or maybe as a former dealer, how come this hasn't been already thought of? I mean, did you feel that way when you get when you dealt when you delved into this to go, wait a minute, how could we how could we have put this together? So you know what I mean? I I agree with you 100%.

SPEAKER_02:

I think two reasons it it was delayed is number one, you in a dealership, especially, it's all about sales.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

It's that's it's all about marketing, it's all about customer attention.

SPEAKER_03:

It's the God. It's the God, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Where logistics, necessary, well, I don't really want to waste time on it. Right. But it's such a big spend center. For some dealership, it's a huge spend center. Of course. And the way we look at it, I've always looked at it. It's a puzzle that we can put together, and I can save you tens of thousands of dollars, if not millions, depending on your spend, right. With the proper technology and proper efficiencies and transparency built in. So I think when people look at spend centers, you definitely see technology going to those areas slower than revenue generators.

SPEAKER_03:

You don't look at it as a generator. That's a good point. Um you know what also might have helped in this situation was, and I hate to say this, but you guys know what I'm talking about in the dealer community. Maybe a fresh set of eyes from the food industry, right? Came in and went, uh you guys are doing it all wrong. You know, it it is your strawberries, and we need to get it to the it might, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02:

I could I agree with you 100%. I remember coming into finished vehicle logistics, and it was just like that was a sponge. Let me soak this up, let me learn it. It was exciting. Um, I get excited about logistics, and it was a new mark market and vertical for me. Um, and I was just like, wow, this is wrong. You know what I mean? Now and it was maybe a carnival have the blind zones on, I hadn't lived in that space. That's what I'm saying, and it was all new. Sure. And I'm looking at like, we can fix that, we can fix that, we can fix this. That's right. Let's start talking to care. And we started, you know, building out those interviews with OEM partners, with large dealership groups. Um, everybody was having the same problem. Yeah, carriers couldn't find enough volume. That's something and shippers couldn't find enough trucks. Right. I'm like, guys, how is that possible? You you can't find trucks and you can't find cars to ship. Well, why is this so hard? Yeah, it's the broker controlling the transaction, yeah, controlling the the sway of information, sure, and they decide and dictate what's being shipped, when it's being shipped, and what it's gonna cost.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow. Yeah. And and so you come in with a fresh set of eyes and go, wait a second, we we we we can put together a solution on this thing and and really bring this industry into the 21st century, right? We're trying, definitely. Definitely. That that is fantastic. Let me ask you this for dealers that are watching us have this conversation or or listening to us uh on on you know on podcasts or what have you, how do they, if they want to say, hey, you know, that totally hear what you're saying, Royce, we get it. What would be a next step for them?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think the easiest thing is just to go to our website, okay, uh, autohallerexchange.com. And show it all on the screen here. And we're out on social media. We're at every pretty much every event that's in finished vehicle logistics. Will you be at NEDA this year? We'll be at NADA this year. Uh we're actually gonna have a booth at NDA this year. Um we'll have you know probably eight to ten representatives of the company there. Um so most trade shows we're at. We're also doing dealer road shows. We're we're actually sending our sales team out in the market. Um, right now, our group's in Kansas City. We have great uh you know following in Kansas City, good group of dealerships down there. We'll be headed to Dallas soon. Okay. Uh we've been to uh putting Atlanta on the map early next year as well. Uh but you know, hit hit us up on the website, any any social media channel, LinkedIn, Facebook, um, Instagram. Um, but I think the easiest way is our website. Click in the top right hand corner to sign up. It's that easy. Okay. I was just at uh an event, uh, you know, partner of ours, and you know, speaking, and and a customer came up to me after and said, I love your product, I've been on it for a year and a half. Oh, wow. I'm like, oh wow, and I'm looking at my sales guy. I'm like, hey, who's he who's he signing up? He's like, I'm not signing up with anybody. I've never talked to you guys. Wow. I'm like, hold on. Yeah, what happened? It's like, no, I logged it up, signed up. That easy. It's you know, that easy. Yeah, yeah. I've been moving units through. We have three stores on your product. We're gonna sign up our fourth now. Hey, that's great. And I'm like, this is what we're talking about. This is what we're trying to do. This is the type of efficiency that we're trying to build. Um all the dealers are that self-served, yeah, yeah, but but all the way through the system.

SPEAKER_03:

That that's how easy it is. The system, that's how easy it is. That's fantastic. Yeah. For dealers that are listening to us have this conversation and uh that have been struggling with this issue, as as if you're in the car business, you're struggling with this issue. I'm I've been around long enough, ran dealerships, as you know, for 25 years. And you you this is one of those issues that you go, there's gotta be a better way. Uh, that's why we love to have Royce in here because his company has found that better way to do just that. And uh yell it to yourself, you it to your dealership, yell it to your staff, you it to your customers and your bottom line to try these guys out. You know, in fact, I would love it if you did that and then got back to me and let me know how it went. Something tells me you're gonna love the experience. We want to be bringing these solutions uh to you and uh here at CBT News. So, Royce Neubauer, founder and CEO of Auto Hauler Exchange. We've got all the information on the screen right here for you to follow up with them. And uh, thank you so much for coming in. This has been great, man. I know I know that this is gonna help a lot of dealers. There's a lot of people going, we I knew there was a better way out there. I hope so. I hope so. Well, thanks so much. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for watching Driving Solutions exclusively on cbtnews.com.