EP 602: Final Mile Delivery Savings and Flexibility with Tusk Logistics
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And now, here's Kevin. Hey, it's Kevin with the New Warehouse Podcast, bringing you a new episode today. And on today's episode, I am going to be joined by Ben Emerson.

Emrick, and he is the CEO and founder at Tusk Logistics. And we're going to talk about Tusk Logistics. We're going to talk about where the idea came from, a little bit of Ben's background and how he came to found the company. And we're also going to talk a little bit about what's going on in the small parcel world right now and how they're addressing some of the challenges that people may be seeing out there. So first of all, Ben, welcome to the show. How are you, sir? Thanks, Kevin. I'm excited to be here, man. Light up.

Long time listener, first time attendee, so I'm excited to be here. Definitely, definitely. Happy to get you on. I think we've been floating around in some of the same circles for quite some time, and we're finally intersecting, right? We're bringing the Venn diagram together, in a sense. But listen, let's actually talk about that. Sure, let's do it.

The best thing about this industry is that it's small. The fact that two guys like us could be adjacent to each other and know of each other, and then when we actually connect, we kind of know each other already. I love that about our space.

And it's not just that, like, hey, you know people and they're your buddies. It's actually like if you screw somebody over, everybody knows. Everybody knows. And I love that. I love that about our space. It's really a fun opportunity in our space to build trust with others quickly. And also when you screw up, like, burn that trust quickly, too. Right? Yeah.

anyway i i'm excited to be here i'm excited that we were pre-buddies and now we're real buddies because we're doing the podcast so pre-buddies yeah i like that definitely so i mean it's great to get you on for for sure and and you know i think that is like i mean it's such a great point about the industry because you think even even now like more so than ever like it is like smaller in a sense because we have like

you know, the LinkedIn and, you know, all these things going on where it's like, you know, you go and like, I remember I was at an event, like, I think it was like two weeks ago, uh, this like, like networking event. And I came in there and I was like six, there's like six people, I think at least that I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I recognize them from their, their headshot, like on LinkedIn or I, like, I kind of know them already, you know? Yeah. It's like, no, I think it's good, man.

Yeah. I think it's good. I think it's good. At the end of the day, it's kind of like you can sniff out pretty easily like who's in the business for the right reasons that at least I feel that way. And like, it's one of the reasons I like what we do. Yeah. I like this warehousing, e-comm, shipping and logistics. I love it, man. I've been in a long time. I'm not going to leave anytime soon. Yeah. Yeah. So, so tell us a little bit about that. Tell us about your, your background and how you kind of came to be the founder of Tusk Logistics.

Yeah, happy to. So I've spent the majority of my career at the overlap of e-commerce, shipping and logistics. I spent out of college, I joined Google. So I spent 10 years at Google. The majority of that time I was on the Google shopping team and I was managing big retailers. And then my boss at the time recognized that I could

navigate bureaucratic partners. And so he compelled me to take responsibility for FedEx and UPS and the postal service. And so that's how I got into small parcel. So it was at Google when I first started negotiating rate cards and learning the ins and outs of the orgs and what was important to the carriers and how they thought about their business and their P&L. This is like

2014 2015 like e-commerce was very much you know on the upswing of

But it was still kind of like an older school world. You know, think of like Shopify had just kind of like entered the US meaningfully. 3PLs were still very, very traditional. Like the vast majority of 3PLs used like on-prem WMS and TMSs, right? But yeah, I was at Google for 10 years. I was recruited to join Shippo. So I was the first BD person that was dedicated to carrier partnerships.

Now later took a lot of responsibility within the Shippo BD team for things like platform partnerships and merchant deals and shipper deals and things like that. So I spent four years at Shippo on the BD team and then left Shippo in 2021 to start what became Tusk.

And so at our core, what we are is infrastructure for shippers to access a national network of alternative parcel carriers. So we function as the technical connection, the commercial connection, and most importantly, the operational connection day to day. So my team, you should think about us as tech and ops like we are.

facilitating the integration for the shippers. So Tusk lives as a carrier option in their TMS or WMS. And then on a day-to-day basis, we do all the messy ops work. So we coordinate pickup from dock doors. We watch every parcel in real time. We step in proactively when we know that there's a delivery issue. When a parcel is lost or damaged by a Tusk carrier, which happens very infrequently, but when it does happen, we step in to proactively file claims.

And throughout all of this, the shipper has full visibility, full control. So we give them an operations platform that they can take action on parcels in real time, change addresses, give gate codes, file claims, stuff like that. So think about it like basically what we've done is we've built infrastructure that allows shippers to access this whole class of carrier capacity,

that before tusk was incredibly opaque incredibly difficult to unlock like we've we've built the infrastructure that gives them access to essentially increase their margins interesting yeah and i think that you know certainly there's been a ton of discussion around you know how to leverage some of these alternative like parcel carriers right versus the

the big guys like you mentioned earlier on right and and so tell us you know prior to tusk right i mean what were you seeing in the market that was saying that there was a a need for something like this like what what kind of like spurred it in your mind that was like you know what we need to come and we need to fix this i mean not to oversimplify it but like

shippers just get the living shit kicked out of them, man. Like they, they are pushed into a corner. Like think about it, dude. Like take a VP director of ops, right? Like, you know, this person has been running their operation for three, four or five, 10 years. Every year they are expected. They get promoted by showing progress on cost per unit, right? Cost per unit on shipping,

SG&A for their building, like rent, electricity, cost per unit on labor, cost per unit on delivery, on final mile. And of all their contributors to cost per unit, final mile is often the biggest contributor. Like on average for a shipper's cost, final mile is probably between 20 to 25% of their cost line. And so for them, they're constantly under pressure to show progress on cost per unit. Meanwhile,

Customer expectations continue to increase. Meanwhile, FedEx and UPS and Postal, every year in late January, they get like a 6, 7, 8% GRI, right? Like the goalposts are constantly changing for these operators. They also just like, it's a death by a thousand cuts.

Because in the small parcel space, it's not as easy as saying, okay, every January, Kevin, you get a GRI, right? No, no, no. Every January you get a GRI, but then haphazardly throughout the year, FedEx or UPS or postal is like,

changing what zip codes qualify as extended DAS zip codes versus just DAS zip codes. The fuel surcharges change, the holiday surcharges change. You know, the nature of like all of this on the border surcharges and fees are constantly like adjusting and changing. It's so impossible for the average operator, the average person who has P&L responsibility for the whole operation, much less the final mile costs. It's so difficult for them.

And what we have done is basically created the infrastructure for them to have easy access to this capacity that is much, much less expensive and often at a higher quality. So like alternative carriers have always had an incredible service. They're fully tracked. They have insurance on every parcel, visual proof of delivery. The challenge is they're hard to integrate, right? Because you have to know who they are. You have to know which ones are good.

And then even when you know who each one is and which one is good, you have to then negotiate. And then you have to do that for every region, every market. You have to know who's the good guy in Indy, who's the good guy in the Southeast, who's the good person in the Northeast. The complexity will just absolutely kill most operators. And as a result, until platform like Tusk, they would just throw up their hands and be like, you know what? The complexity is too much. I'm just going to try to negotiate with FedEx or UPS.

And I'm going to try to climb my tiers, right? Like they had to default to the simplicity of one or two carriers being alive in their building. And at the end of the day, the reason that we built Tusk is to like empower the shipper, drive value to the shipper, put the shipper first. And we see it as key. Like not only are they increasing margins with us, but more importantly, they have a huge leverage advantage.

like stick that they could use in their next negotiation with FedEx UPS. Right. Cause they can say like, Hey, listen, Tusk is live. Unless you give me X, Y, and Z concession, FedEx, UPS, postal, I'm just going to shift volume to this alternative ecosystem. That's killing it for me. Yeah. Interesting. So that's why we, that's why we built it. I felt that shippers were not treated with respect quite honestly. And we built Tusk to, to drive value to the shipper.

interesting yeah yeah and i i think that you know it is like you said i mean it reaches a point you know the complexity becomes like too much right because it's you know i mean the shippers i mean they're not just worrying about this right they're worrying about everything else they have to worry about too like they're worrying about their oh my god labor their turnover rates their you know all these other metrics honestly yeah kevin that's why it's so hard like you know

A central challenge of my business, selfishly, is operators are just incredibly busy. Yeah. Like they have a lot of demands. Not to mention that like they may be super interested in driving down their final mile cost that they truly are interested in. Yeah.

It's like a priority for them. But then like two of their pickers call in sick and they gotta be, they gotta pick orders. They just operate within the context of like the fires are fires for today, for this shift, for this hour that I have to put out. For me to like

To have like the analyst resources to properly map regional carrier zones to my UPS ground zones and compare rates apples to apples and then decide like, dude, it's just so hard. It's so hard. And the vast majority of them don't have the bandwidth to thoughtfully consider going to alternative carriers on their own. They need an infrastructure to enable it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, you hit such a great point there. It's like, it's constantly like a moving target almost, right? In a sense, like you're, you know, I remember, you know, when I was running an operation and

You know, we come in the morning like, all right, this is the plan for the day and, you know, give it an hour. And that's like out the window, right? Something else is going on. Like you said, like, you know, oh, two pickers called out. So we need to deal with that. Like, how are we going to cover that? Like, who's going to move where? And then not to mention that, like, OK, Kevin, you're you're the operator, right? And yeah, yeah.

Whatever happens in the four walls of your building, pickers call out sick or a system goes down or for some reason the wrong printer head is on one Zebra printer so the labels aren't rendering correctly. Whatever it is, you're having to take care of it. Oh, and then your sales guy comes to you and says, hey, I have a monster lead. Tell me what you can do the picks for. And then you give him or her a number and then they're like, well, what can you really do it for? So then you're spending like 30 minutes

Helping your salesperson close a lead and then you're like and that's just how a day goes right? They don't have the thoughtful bandwidth the the quiet time to like sit down and consider a single alternative much less a network of them. Yeah, I

It's just not there for them. It's just not there. It's like, that's why they need people like Toss. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, cause the varying scales of, of businesses and their, and their size, I mean, those, those resources are, are, are hard to come by. Right. I mean, you look at somebody like, uh,

you know a walmart or something i mean they have the resources to look at that right but then you look at somebody that's like a mid-market 3pl i mean they're they're not gonna have this army of analysts to to like that's their only job like just just look at this and crunch the numbers and figure out like what does this look like right it's typically like you know the the ops manager or something is like trying to figure that out while also trying to figure out like

you know, why this picker is not happy with this other picker and they don't want to work next to each other, right? I mean, it's like you're trying to deal with, like, all this stuff at once, and it's a lot to handle. Certainly, like, if you can figure it out and have that, you see the rewards, right? But it's hard to just get to that point and sit down and figure it out. So it's great that you've recognized that and you're able to bring this tool to there. So I'm curious, I mean, who would you say is, like, your –

your target market in a sense. We'll be back after a quick break.

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Safer workers, faster turnaround, and better efficiency. Better for your people, better for your bottom line. Lift smarter. Visit Tawi.com today. That's T-A-W-I dot com. Yeah, so our target market is shippers, and we use that word very intentionally. So for us, shippers can be either a brand or a 3PL. Shippers with more than a million dollars of domestic shipping spend per year.

Our average shipper does between 25 and $50 million of spent per year. And on average with Tusk on a per parcel basis, they're unlocking between 30 and 40% parcel savings on each parcel that Tusk serves. So think about that, like, you know, 30% savings on a given parcel. If you're a brand that 30% drops directly to your bottom line, if you're a 3PL, the 3PL usually keeps 30%.

10 to 15 of that 30% for themselves as net new revenue. And then they, then they pass the remainder to their client as savings. So brands and three PLS with the minimum of a million in domestic spend. And like I said, the average is closer to, you know, call it that 35, $40 million in spent per year. Interesting. Okay, cool, cool. And, um, I, I'm curious too. I mean, where, where does the name come from? Tusk? Where'd you come up with that? Well,

When investors ask, I say like, well, you know, mastodons were herd animals, we're stronger together. It's the network effect, right? But the truth is, it's from the Fleetwood Mac song, Tusk. Like,

Do you know the song? It's an incredible song. It's basically like, it's just like a drum line for like the first four minutes of the song. And it just is a slow, slow build. And it builds up until the whole band, Fleetwood Mac, just yells, Tusk! And my kids love it. We listen to it a lot in the car. And so Tusk it is. There you go.

Yeah, I was curious about that because, I mean, the logo, right, is like a Mastodon or a woolly mammoth or something. Mastodon. Right? They're Mastodon, right? So very interesting there, yeah. But now I think, you know, it's interesting that you recognize this need in the market and certainly, like, the challenges that people face trying to navigate on their own.

But, you know, as we look at the market right now, I mean, there's been certainly, you know, in the last year, I mean, even the last, you know, couple weeks here, I mean, there's been a lot of different things that are shifting and changing. So, you know, tell us about kind of what are you seeing in the small parcel category right now? And how is how are things changing, shifting? What challenges are out there?

I think like your question is a good one and there will always be like something happening that drives behavior, right? Today it's things like tariffs, you know, like, oh my gosh, my costs just went up 145% literally. First of all, like, will I survive? The answer unfortunately is often no, which is scary.

But even assuming that the answer is, oh, we'll survive. I mean, these people are taking such a cost hit that the level of urgency for them to find value in the rest of their P&L is so much higher, Kevin. Like to be blunt for us, for Tusk, tariffs are a tailwind. They are good for Tusk because the level of urgency for shippers to find more savings is

is just accelerating like crazy. Not to mention like the level of urgency is increasing, but what they find really quickly when they stick their head up at the landscape, they're like, oh my God, how am I going to do this? Like, again, who do I talk to? Which ones are full of shit? When I negotiate, how do I have the analyst bandwidth to comp them against each other and against my FedEx tiers?

even when I decide who I want to go with and negotiate with them, how do I integrate them into my TMS and WMS? Even when I integrate them, then like, how do I coordinate like multiple doc sweeps? How do I track? How do I prep my CS teams? Like at each stage shippers just fall off. Right. And I would say the tariffs clearly are the biggest kind of like near term driver of behavior within our industry, but also do just to like

take a step back, like shippers always want value. They always want to drive their costs down. They always want to drive their costs down while exceeding their customers expectations. And, and like we're a really meaningful lever for them to pull that does that for them. And that'll be the case during this tariff tumble. That'll be the case after it. Like the, the rising tide of higher prices with FedEx and UPS is not going to, to slow down. Like they're going to get more and more expensive. Yeah.

And over time, like that's really the driving factor is like shippers always want value. It's harder and harder to find the value. Alternative carriers are an easy lever for them to pull and we're the pathway for them to pull it. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I like the way you put that in. I think it is very interesting because a lot of people are, you know, they're scrambling in a sense, right, to figure out.

You know, how do we deal with this additional cost, like you said, and how do we find savings somewhere else? Like, I mean, it's, you know, it's a constant pursuit, as you mentioned, right? But now there's like a bigger magnifying glass to do it like a lot faster, right? And figure that out. And also, Kevin, sorry to interrupt you. Think about this.

Even the 3PLs, right, who are not directly, directly in the line of tariff fire. Yeah. They're indirectly in the line of fire, right? Because like all their clients are affected. Yeah. And so the sense of urgency exists for the brand owners for sure, but also for the 3PLs. Because the 3PLs know that they're going to get a call in a week or two.

When that container hits the port of Long Beach and their brand client gets the first big tariff bill, that 3PL knows they're going to get a call and say, "Hey, Bob. Hey, Sally. What can we do? I need to find savings." And so the 3PLs are also starting to like, their urgency is high because they know that their clients are going to be under pressure. They know that they're only going to be able to keep their clients alive, much less growing, if they find value.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's like such a great point because the 3PL in a sense, like you said, is not, not directly like involved, right. But, but,

Yeah, they're not the importer of record. They're not the importer of record in most cases, you know? Yeah, yeah. But, you know, but it's, but they can, like you said, drive so much value because I think there's going to be, you know, a lot of cases too and maybe already happening, right? That, you know, brands are going to say like, well, oh, we got to get our fulfillment costs down further, right? And, you know, the 3PL is like, oh, well, we can't go any further.

lower than that brand's going to be potentially looking elsewhere. Right. So it's like, how do you, you know, create proactively set yourself up to, to create additional value and try and be as, you know, get that cost down as, as low as possible with, you know, not out and not making yourself go out of business as a 3PL, which is, is tough, but yeah. Or, or, or, or like not, not adding so much complexity to your app that you break. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

And so, yeah. So tell us too, like, cause you know, there's been a lot of talk and, you know, a lot of different, like kind of these alternative carriers, regional carriers that have kind of popped up some that are, you know, just traditional, like regional carriers have been around for a while. Some that have popped up as like tech forward and things like that. Some that have,

not made it right over the last couple of years here. I mean, how are you seeing like that market kind of progressing? I mean, is it, does it still, you know, hold weight? I mean, obviously you guys are using them and it sounds like they are, but I mean, how do they kind of compare to, you know, the FedEx's, UPS's and, you know, are they, are they taking significant market share there? We'll be back after a quick break.

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So just to kind of put it in context for the overall domestic market, roughly traditionally less than 5% of volume went with carriers that were not postal FedEx or UPS big caveat here. I'm kind of putting Amazon to the side. Okay. So like all Amazon volume, we're just kind of like putting it to the side for now, which is changing as they do more and more like Amazon delivery for not Amazon orders, but just for the sake of simplicity, less than 5% went with alternatives.

Even today, Kevin, that number from a share perspective hasn't drastically changed. Like it was 3%, it then went up to 4%, it's been flat at about 4%, and it's starting to increase again. But it's still low to mid single digits. So we use the word alternative carrier to describe our infrastructure. So we give access for shippers to alternative carriers nationwide.

Alternative is a term that we use that encompasses both traditional regionals as well as emerging carriers. So an emerging carrier, a great example of that would be UniUni or Jitsu or DoorDash, SpeedX. These are carriers that are often very tech forward carriers.

Their footprint is often, it looks like a Dalmatian spot. It's very metro based and it's all over the U.S., right? So they'll be in L.A., in SF, in Seattle, in Salt Lake, in Denver, in Dallas, in Atlanta, in Miami, in New York, in Chicago, you know, in Philly. But it'll be really spotty. Whereas a regional covers by their name a region, right? A single city, a single state or a group of states. They're very much like the traditional region.

many decades tenured regional carrier. So we offer access to both. Now it's really hard to know which carriers are good at what type of parcel, right? Like the emerging carriers. Oh, here's another great example of an emerging carrier. VHO an incredible partner, an incredible partner for things like apparel. It just fits their gig model really well.

But you have to know that Veho doesn't operate on the West Coast. People assume Veho is national, but they're not yet live on the West Coast. They'll get there for sure. But they aren't there yet. Jitsu, another emerging carrier, another really good carrier. It's gig based. They do really well at the traditional econ, call it three to four pounds per piece.

Like they weren't live in Chicago and they're just about to launch in Chicago. Right. Like, so you have to know the footprint because you have to configure your TMS with the right zip codes. The traditional regionals that you have to know, okay, CDL, a great regional in New York city, been around for decades. These guys are solid, but they, they have sortation equipment that does not easily fit parcels that are over 26 inches in length.

So you have to know, you have to know that like if you give them a 27 inch piece, their VP of operations, a guy named Mike Salerno is going to call you and he is going to yell at you and he's going to hit you with an oversized charge. Like it's just this nuance, dude. It's like so hard to navigate. Like we built Tusk to not only like navigate that nuance, but actually like take advantage of that nuance because in that nuance is like so much opportunity.

It's when you layer a great regional carrier who does incredible work at like three pounds and above with an emerging carrier that just wants to eat that lightweight volume. It gives you ounce based pricing that'll just blow post a lot of the water. Like, boom, chocolate and peanut butter, man. Like that's where you just can knock it out of the park. But to get there, it's a lot of pain.

The good thing is Tusk has already built. We've already experienced that pain for our shippers, right? Like we've built the infrastructure. We have the ops team. We know the people like we have their respect, their credibility, their trust. So they, the shippers, the carriers know when they receive a parcel from Tusk, they know that we've already done all the config work with the, with the shippers so that CDL is not going to receive a 27 inch piece, right? They really enjoy that. They, they, they value that highly.

They also know that when we, Tusk, bring the carrier an issue, it's an issue that we know only the carrier can address. If we would have fixed it, if we could have fixed it, we would have fixed it. But the carrier knows, okay, when Tusk sends me an issue, it's something that I screwed up or I need to fix. It's just a lower cost of operation for a carrier when Tusk supports the volume. We handle a lot of the headache for the carriers and for the shippers. I think over time, back to your original question, Kevin,

My strong sense is that the alternative carrier ecosystem will continue to earn share on its merits because these guys are just doing a great fucking job. They can do just a good job for a low, fair price. Now, how fast can Rovers like big brown and big purple and big red, white, and blue? It wouldn't surprise me to see the share of alternative carriers in like low double digits, call it, you know, 15, 18, 20%. Over time,

over a 10 year horizon, like quite honestly, I think it's probably third to 40%, 45% goes non UPS, non FedEx, non postal. And I think what that reflects is kind of like FedEx and UPS intentionally retreating to areas with higher margin enterprise customers that specialize in things like pharma and healthcare.

Retail customers, small volume, high margin, connected to their UPS store, FedEx office locations. You're already seeing this retreat from the postal service to a large degree. Will it be 50% with alternatives over the long term? Probably not.

But will it be like, you know, significant double digits? Yeah. My strong sense is yes. I built this business to do it. So if my hypothesis is wrong, that means that Tusk probably isn't doing well. Like we built Tusk to unlock access to these alternatives and they win. They win when they get a crack at the volume. They win it on their merits, man.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting to, to hear your, your perspective on that. Cause obviously you've, you've dealt with them, them all. Right. And, you know, seeing the potential for that, that growth, I think is, is interesting too, as well. And it's great to hear that you've created the tool to, to simplify that for operations to, and it sounds like,

you know, not only simplify for like the shippers themselves, but also these, these alternative or emerging carriers as well to, to get connected to these shippers a little, a little more easily and, and navigate that and hopefully prevent anybody from getting called up by this guy, Mark and getting yelled at for having a 27 inch package. Mike Salerno. So, so I think it's interesting. And I'm curious there, I mean, the, you know, the postal, the,

service right i mean there's a lot of discussion around potential changes around them too as well like you know there's some ideas out there being floated about like privatizing them i mean how does that impact like the shipper world like i mean obviously it'll have maybe some impact on like you know the individual consumer wants to send mail and letters and things like that but i mean from a shipper perspective like what potential impact is is there for that well i don't

It's not a potential impact, Kevin. It's an impact that they're feeling right now, which is like their costs just went up. To be blunt, their costs went up significantly. And by the way, it doesn't matter if they had a direct NSA, a direct agreement with the Postal Service, their costs went up. Or if they used a consolidator, DHL Ecom, OSM, ACI, Pitney Bowes, who unfortunately is out of business, but like Pitney Bowes did a lot of this postal injection work. Like

Those contracts all changed. Those prices increased. The time in transit got longer. Like the Postal Service has made decisions in their operation. They want to keep more volume with them. They want that volume to enter their network upstream because they want every truck to be more utilized when it runs between the main sortation, which they call DCSFs.

to the DDUs, to the post office, right? They want that truck to be more and more full. So they want more volume injected higher up in their network. That's a fair want, you know, to like sweat their assets better, to like utilize their facilities, to like squeeze more out of their P&L. The challenge is they took it from their partner ecosystem because they had partners that were dropping volume into the DDUs and they said, hey, thanks, but no thanks. Like that margin's mine now. Like they just took it. So what's the effect? Well, cost went up, speed went down.

and as a result it like it's another factor like tariffs that is pushing shippers to consider alternative carriers right like if you were an apparel retailer that sent 85 percent of your parcels through dhl econ for 10 years that was an awesome decision you got ounce based rates got like call it four to five day service on average nationwide

Every year you could squeeze a couple basis points out of your DHL Ecom rep as your volumes were growing. It was good. We're great. With all this change, you're fucked and you got to figure something out. And that operator is now considering like, "I heard Uni Uni has ounce based rates. How do I get access to those? Oh, I heard the carrier that covers the Southeast is really strong.

My facility's in Atlanta. Would it make sense for me to drop into Career Express? Like, okay. Like, how do I do it? Right? Like, that's what these people are facing. You know, they're facing this ambiguity, this uncertainty, and they don't really know the path forward. They don't know how. They need partners like Tusk to unlock it for them.

Interesting. Yeah, interesting there. And I think it'd be interesting to see how this kind of continuously evolves here and what it looks like in the long term. You mentioned some of your predictions there. Can I give you some predictions? Yeah.

Postmaster General, ex-Postmaster General DeJoy is now out of the building. He announced his retirement, or not retirement, he announced his resignation and then he resigned a month or so ago. That means that the Postal Service is without a PMG. They have an acting PMG. So the Board of Governors is going to vote this week or next on a new PMG. My strong sense is

that they're going to bring in a person who knows the industry incredibly well, who worked at the Post Service for a long time. That new PMG is very likely to not reverse, but go after the volume that the previous regime let go of.

So the postal service might like kind of like switch in some, some interesting ways. They might try to capture that volume. They might give those partners like DHL Ecom access to the DDUs again. So think if you're an operator on one hand, that's good, right? Like, oh, okay. Well, things kind of go back to the way they were great. But Kevin, like in the back of every operator's mind, they're going to realize like, oh my God, if postal did it once, they could do it again. So even if things go back to the way they were, I have to have a safety net in place.

Because what's going to happen when the next PMG comes in and like rips the contract again? By the way, it's exactly the same situation with tariffs. Like think if you're a trading partner to the United States, it's like, okay, well the tariff may go away.

But it's in the back of their mind that like, hey, if they screwed me once, they can screw me again. Yeah. So like I got to diversify. I got to find new markets for my products. Right. Like it's the same thing in a small parcel ecosystem. Like if Postal or if UPS or FedEx screwed me once, they could screw me again. I have to empower myself. I have to have operational flexibility. I have to increase my optionality. Even if I only use the alternatives for a slice, it helps me.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause I, I mean, even if you have them into the, in your fold, I mean, in the sense, right. I mean, there you can, I imagine you can kind of like, you know, scale up with them, scale down as, as you need to and flex, flex that a little bit if you run into those issues that you mentioned. So yeah.

Really, really interesting and really, really appreciate you joining me here today and sharing some of your perspectives and some of your predictions here too as well. So we'll see if those come true and we have it on record now. So if it does come true, like you can... Hey man, I'm putting the chips down. I'm making the bets. You can put it all over the place. You hold my feet to the fire.

Definitely. So really appreciate you coming on, Ben. If people want to learn more about Tusk Logistics and figure out how to get on board with Tusk, what's the best way to do that? Two ways. Follow me on LinkedIn. That's the place where I pontificate the most. So if they can handle a bit of like Ben Emmerich pontification on small parcel, that's the place. And then they can always reach out to me by email. So it's just Ben at TuskLogistics.com.

All right. Awesome. And we'll definitely put all that information at thenewwarehouse.com as well as in the show notes so people can find that very easily. So, Ben, thank you once again for your time on the show today. You've been listening to The New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

Enjoyed this episode? Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and for more content from The New Warehouse, find us on LinkedIn and YouTube. Links to subscribe can be found in the show notes and for everything The New Warehouse, head to thenewwarehouse.com.