FULL TRANSCRIPT – Data is More Important than Delivery with Jason Burns
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Natasha Cary: Welcome to Over the Threshold Podcast, produced by Certification of Delivery Excellence, also known as CODE. I’m your host, Natasha Cary, owner and president of CODE, where we offer online education for last mile delivery personnel. To learn more about CODE certifications, visit our website: codetrained.com. The purpose of this podcast is to deliver the journey of individuals in the Final Mile/Last Mile white glove industry. As CODE is an educational company, we hope through these stories you can learn something new. Maybe we teach you something about an individual you know, or we introduce you to someone you’ve always wanted to learn more about. Above all, we hope we can leave you inspired. Let’s get started.
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Natasha: I’m chatting today with Jason Burns, president and second-generation owner of QCS Logistics, based in Louisiana. QCS Logistics has evolved over the past 30 years to become an Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Company and one of the largest customized logistics and delivery businesses in Louisiana. Welcome, Jason.
Jason Burns: Thanks Natasha, for having me. Good morning.
Natasha: Yes, good, good. How are you?
Jason: I’m doing well. It’s a rainy day here in New Orleans, a little flooding going on, but that’s par for the course here.
Natasha: Thanks so much for being with me today. I’m excited to dive into your history and talk about some exciting projects you are working on. After graduating from Vanderbilt, you started working in the parking industry with SP+ Parking, who’s the largest parking operator nationwide. How did you decide to get into that industry?
Jason: That’s a long story! The short version? I’ve picked some interesting industries. The initial company that I worked for was called Central Parking. It got merged with SP+, that’s the name today, but I was in school at Vanderbilt in Nashville, and Central Parking was headquartered there. And my father, we have another family business in the parking industry, he was partnering with Central Parking on several projects around the country. So being an athlete in college, oftentimes I was still in Nashville in the summertime and needed to find a way to make some extra money. So I started to intern at Central Parking and worked in many different aspects of the industry: from a valet attendant to running parking meters, as a cashier and running a shuttlebus contract at a university medical center. I just cut my teeth in parking. That was my entryway into my professional career once I finished undergrad.
Natasha: Nice. What led you to get into the family business? I understand that you currently still help out with the parking business, and QCS has been a family business. Both your parents are involved so…
Jason: Right.
Natasha: …how is that?
Jason: It’s interesting. We could certainly have a reality TV show I believe, if you filmed it.
[laughter] So, after working in parking for about two years, I decided that I wanted to come back home. This was a few years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. There were a lot of things happening in the city, and the city was really reborn and reshaped, and being a native son, I wanted to come back home and put my hand and imprint on how the city would look for the next generation. So that started with me having some conversations with my parents about the possibility of moving back home and what that would look like. Ultimately, we landed on joining the transportation business, which was at the time Quick Courier Services, and I actually went to visit another, much larger company in Philadelphia to get some ideas before I left. That company’s called Diamond Transportation, founded by a former CLDA board member, Claudia Post. So I visited that company, got a bunch of ideas, and came back home and caused a lot of confusion for my parents. [laughter]
Natasha: I’m sure. Coming into a family business and it being your parent’s…you’re coming in with new ideas, and I understand that under your leadership, you’ve expanded your services. So talk to me about what services you currently offer, and when you went into offering warehousing and fulfillment and getting in new technology platforms, how you decided to shift the business in that direction.
Jason: I’ve always been a very inquisitive person; I’ve always questioned things. It’s kind of like the Meatloaf syndrome story. When I first came back, and obviously, as I said, I had the benefit of looking at a large company that I got some experience with before I left Philadelphia, I questioned everything. I questioned our technology platform, I questioned the vertical we were in, or really, we were not in. Why didn’t we have a warehouse? Why was the company cost [including] a courier and not incorporate logistics into it? I give my parents credit; they gave me a long leash to go and explore and see what I wanted to do. Probably in that first year, I spent most of my time learning about the industry, learning how we did things at QCS, starting to get involved with the CLDA, but really throwing a lot of different things against a wall and seeing what would stick. The first thing we did was we revamped the technology platform. We changed to a more up-to-date industry leader, which gave us the opportunity to compete and give the drivers, as well as our dispatch and customer service representatives, a better tool to communicate.
Then the next thing we looked at was the warehousing side. This is really when e-commerce was just starting to get going, and I was hearing about companies that were warehousing and storing different types of equipment or electronics or mattresses, and someone told me, I can’t remember who it was…they said, “Hey, look. If you get into the warehousing and fill the space, you have three chances of making a dollar: you could store it, you could handle it, you could certainly deliver it.” I thought that was a pretty good idea. So I was trying to convince my parents to get a 10,000ft2 facility, and I had not perfected my negotiating skills at that moment. [laughter] So we ended up having TVs and all kinds of stuff lined up in the hallways of our office space, we’d set up in our office space, and I guess once I proved to them that I could do it, running TVs down an elevator and out the backdoor, we ended up getting into the warehouse space. The warehouse was where the business started properly in late 2009, early 2010. And then we subsequently got involved in the foodservice sector, which was really an offshoot of what we were doing on the medical side. We had already been doing a lot of medical deliveries, managing different types of specimens, and using different techniques and procedures to maintain the integrity of the specimens in transport. Well, a lot of those same procedures and concepts relate to the foodservice sector, so we ended up pursuing some accounts in that arena and landed a couple. Now we’re doing refrigerated trucking services throughout Louisiana and the gulf coast of Mississippi. That’s opened up some additional opportunities in the cold chain space, which is a really nice little niche for us to be in in this market. There’s a lot of seafood opportunities, and food is such a big thing here and in southern Louisiana. So we’re able to track some clients that most times are not on the radars of some of our competitors.
Natasha: And right now, with everything happening with COVID and hopefully there’s some reprieve, how has that affected your business? Has it affected your business? Right now, everybody’s getting everything delivered to their house.
Jason: Mhm.
Natasha: In some instances, I’m hearing business is up. So how has that affected your business?
Jason: I’m going to answer that in two ways. From a business operations perspective, we’ve been fortunate. Initially, like most people, our sales began to decline; I think within the first couple of weeks, we were trending down about 15%. And we’re out here in New Orleans, which certainly is one of the cities that got impacted significantly by the virus.
Natasha: Mhm.
Jason: But we put all the protocols in place, immediately went remote and started operating from a telework standpoint, but then we went on the offense. I had about a few days of a ‘woe is me’ moment…
Natasha: Right.
Jason: …all doom and gloom and the sky was falling, and then I thought about some lessons I’d learned from my father and basically had to stay on the offense. There are three kinds of people in this world: you’re either going to watch things happen, wonder what’s going to happen, or you’re going to make something happen. So we decided we had to go on the offense and make something happen. We started to get aggressive in terms of targeting new prospects who we thought would need to incorporate a new delivery model into their companies during the pandemic. Fortunately, we were able to land a contract with a commercial kitchen that was contracted with [parent system] in the state of Louisiana to deliver meals to school children who were at home from school and couldn’t get their normal four meals a day that they’d get at school: breakfast, lunch, snack and supper. So really, over the last ten weeks or so we’ve delivered about 150,000 meals…
Natasha: Wow.
Jason: …and then about 20,000 a week all across southern Louisiana, and it’s really been a very timely project, but it’s allowed us to expand our footprint. We’re working with about three or four other companies in the state here as QCS, which would normally be competitors, but we’re all banding together to put a network together to service these 20,000 plus meals a week to get to the homes of these kids who need it right now. On the other hand, when I think about the social impact of how we’ve responded to it, I’m very proud of how we’ve handled the transition, but we’ve certainly been impacted. We’ve had a couple of drivers that tested positive. Fortunately, they were fine, and they were able to get back on track after quarantine, but then we also had one of our dispatchers lose his mother to the virus.
Natasha: Oh, really?
Jason: So we sort of had to deal with it from a human standpoint, and we’ve tried to continue to make that a focus in our decisions and make sure that we take care of our staff, make sure our drivers have the resources and PPE equipment they need to perform and be safe. It’s been a litle bittersweet, but we’re certainly very happy and excited to be busy during this time. The good thing is that we think a lot of these opportunities will continue to go on post-pandemic.
Natasha: Yeah. In this pandemic, there’s lots of great stories that have come from it and of course, lots of loss. It’ll be interesting to see how it affects business overall. I’ve also heard a lot of people have been operating businesses remotely, and they expect some change to come in how they operate. Normally you have challenges running a business, and then you throw in a pandemic, but what has been a hard lesson for you to learn?
Jason: The biggest thing I’ve probably learned is how important leadership is in these moments. I think as leaders of our organizations, because of our human nature, we all get caught up in our routines. We go about our days; we put our schedules together, we go through the motions to a certain extent. Generally speaking, one of the challenges as a leader or a lesson I learned, was how to avoid being complacent, especially during times of success. I think most people’s human nature tends to fight back if something’s fighting against you. Well, how do you fight when everything seems to be going well? I’ve learned the hard way about trying to be conscious about making sure I exhibit or continue to have tangible actions to push forward, and certainly during this pandemic, that’s true. I’ve had a lot of our staff come to me and say, “Hey, we appreciate you acting quick and decisive.” We really went remote in about four days. We shut the whole building down, and everyone was remote within 4 to 5 days. During that moment in time, I was just reacting and trying to make sure we had a plan in place to keep operating and to protect our folks. But I also learned that people are watching, people are always looking at the leadership, especially during these difficult times, and they will follow your suit, whether that’s a positive or negative. So I think you always have to be conscious that someone’s watching you…
Natasha: Right.
Jason: …and be as decisive as you possibly can and sometimes that’s not always the popular decision, but decisions have to be made.
Natasha: Right. How has morale been among your staff and drivers? And I’m sure some people have been scared to come to work and to get tested. Have you seen a shift, and is it mending itself at this point?
Jason: I think it is. I think it’s definitely on an uptick. Certainly, in the first few weeks, they were very troublesome. We started putting out bi-weekly videos to all of our staff as well as our contractors, just giving them updates as new information was coming in, ask them what was happening… You had employees who were worried about losing their jobs, you had drivers who were concerned about still operating and servicing clients in public. So you’re juggling all this stuff, and at that time, the only thing we could do was to communicate as rapidly and as consistently as we possibly could. We dealt with drivers who, whether they wanted to try to get hazard pay versus what they were concerned about, delivered to a store and found out that one of the associates in the store tested positive, and so they were concerned about going back into the store.
Natasha: Mhm.
Jason: How do we do two-man deliveries with two people next to each other in the vehicle?
Natasha: Right.
Jason: You know, all of these challenges were popping up. Literally, it felt like every hour there was a new challenge popping up, and so we worked through it. Credit to my team and the other leaders at QCS for coming up with some pretty creative solutions amidst all this. But most of the credit goes to the drivers who stuck with us and continued to work. At this point, I think we’re in our 10th week of the pandemic, and things are not totally normal, but probably as normal as I think they will be until we get a vaccine in place.
Natasha: Right. I’m just hoping that the kids can go back to school in August because home-schooling my kid is not something I’m great at, I will say.
Jason: Well, I just recently heard, because we’re so involved in these school projects now and my wife’s also an educator, what I’m hearing, at least in Louisiana, is that it’s going to be a hybrid model…
Natasha: Oh.
Jason: …or some version of […] and schooling. So that’s certainly going to be interesting, seeing how it plays out and how it affects businesses. Parents have to go to work…
Natasha: Yeah, it’s going to be interesting.
Jason: Yeah, so. If I didn’t have enough problems, I lost a new company in the middle of this whole thing. [laughter]
Natasha: So tell me more about that, and what problem is InPacity trying to solve?
Jason: InPacity has really been something I’ve been working on for the better part of about three plus years now. It originated from an experience I had with QCS where I had a client who we were doing multiple routes for, and they were trying to save some money, and they gave me a week to figure out how I could save them money. Ultimately, I was able to find another partner who understood Louisiana and allowed me to cut off about 40% of my costs from the one route leg I was doing that was very efficient. So a lightbulb went off and said, “Hey, what if I knew of all that other routes that were happening around me?” If I could see them, the order time, destination time, the timeframe that flows from point A to B, I could literally search for that route and transact space on that route. And so years later this idea has become InPacity.
So InPacity is really a digital freight marketplace. We are a licensed broker, but essentially, we take a different look on how to maximize the indelible capacity that’s within the final mile industry. Our industry has certainly crawled up over the last 30-40 years to operating larger equipment: box trucks, some folks are doing tractor-trailers, and we operate freight fragmented, but we pretty much cover the entire US. We’re particularly focused on the LTL portion of the supply chain. Those LTL shippers really have no knowledge of most of the final mile characters that operate, and those LTL shippers also want to find more competitive pricing and rates to move their freight.
So the concept of InPacity is to focus on the carrier. We’d be on-board carriers and give them an opportunity to put in their route network anonymously so they can put in routes, time frames, and zip codes that these routes cover. We’d take that inventory of their route network, put into our platform, and then we have the API where we connect to TMS systems, and these TMS systems are used by shippers, 3PL’s, even other brokers who are looking for space. And so we’d get hundreds of orders a day that hit our platform going from point A to point B, and the algorithm that we have in our system looks at all the routes and inventory and literally within seconds can identify a route match. We also send over the price that the carrier has sent to our system to their buyer through the TMS, and then if they want to transact the space, they can buy the space, and then we send an alert to the carrier. And lo and behold, we have a shipment that fits perfectly within a given route they already run, and as we call it here in Louisiana, it adds a little […], a little extra to the bottom line. So we’re excited to have that business going. We lost it in the middle of the pandemic, which is probably not what they teach you in Business 101. But we’re excited, we’ve got a lot of good opportunity, a lot of good carriers that we’re working with right now. There’s a tremendous need out there in the supply chain to find a more competitive space for these LTL shipments.
Natasha: Do you have a lot of competitors in this space?
Jason: That’s an interesting question. I would say there are a number of competitors, but there’s not a lot that’s focussed on leveraging the assets and the capacity of the final mile. So there are a handful of other competitors out there that are focused on the same carrier base that we’re focused on. None from my knowledge yet have really built the platform, what we call the platform of carrier access our carrier terminal, where they can really come in…and I would need value proposition and because of my background as a final mile operator and my experience within the industry, we want to be more than just a platform that gives a carrier a job. So we’d give them about four or five tools that will allow them to understand how the market is pricing jobs. We give them a single, consolidated route map view so they can see the spiderweb of all their routes in one consolidated view. We give them a dashboard that lets them track and look at different data analytics. We want them to really embrace being a part of the overall supply chain because the more they understand about the LTL industry, the better they can price their space and the more jobs they can win, and overall, it allows the final mile industry to become more respected and ingrained into the overall supply chains of these shippers and 3PL’s.
Natasha: That’s exciting. I can’t wait to follow InPacity. I wish you all the success! It’ll be very interesting to see how you grow that and what affect you’ll have on the industry as a whole.
Jason: Thank you. It’s got a big opportunity for us and what I’m most excited about is really, as I said, for our carrier base to be able to take advantage of an $80 billion sector that was scheduled to grow to $100 billion in the next five years and I suspect that number’s going to be fast tracked given the new environment, new outbreak with the pandemic and more people being at home.
Natasha: Mhm.
Jason: So e-commerce is not going away anytime soon.
Natasha: Yeah, absolutely. I know InPacity would be what you would say is next in the final mile industry. But if there’s anything else, where do you think the industry is going? What shift do you find is coming in the industry?
Jason: I think there’s going to continue to be a lot of consolidation, you know. Let those figures be seen, some of the smaller companies get purchased and become a part of a larger group of companies or become a larger, regional, maybe national network. I think you’re going to continue to see that, and I think the companies that will survive will have a few things in place.
For one, technology and really understanding that. I was at a conference probably, it must be eight years ago or so, and someone made the comment that the data is more important than the delivery. And people laughed at him at this conference. I remember it vividly. That guy could not have spoken more truth. I mean, truly understanding the data being able to analyze it, and almost get to predict the analytics I think is going to separate companies going forward.
I think traditional companies that have operated in industries that are more niche-related will continue to find success there. I’m talking about medical, even food services to a certain degree. Anything that is really, truly more localized, and more direct, I think they will still be around and have success. But certainly, anything dealing with e-commerce or coming from a retailer, I think those opportunities are going to be pushed more and more upstream to a lot of companies. I think owners of companies today need to be really focused on understanding their services, which ones are their most profitable […], which ones are not so profitable, and really doubling down on the ones that you’re good at. I think overall, going forward it’s going to be better to be more narrow and deep, than wide and shallow.
Natasha: That’s some good, sound advice. I like that. Get really good at one thing and do it well, right?
Jason: Exactly.
Natasha: Yeah. Well I’ve enjoyed our conversation, and I’d love to wrap it up with a fun fact. Do you have something to share with us that nobody really knows about you, or maybe a few people know about you?
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Jason: Well, what’s a fun fact… let’s see. Most people probably look at me and don’t realize that I played football in the SSC at Vanderbilt. I’m not the biggest guy in the world. Actually, not the fastest guy either, so it’s a bad combination. [laughter] But I played football at Vanderbilt from 2002 to 2006, so I had a lot of experience getting my butt whipped at the SSC. But I had many great stories, and the last game we ever played, we beat the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. It was the first time Vanderbilt had beaten Tennessee in 24 years. We went out with a bang! My last game ever was a big upset victory against our interstate rival. So that’s my fun fact.
Natasha: Oh wow. So if you were to have become a football player for an NFL team, what team would you be on?
Jason: You know what? The easiest thing is to say the Saints because obviously, that’s my hometown team. But truthfully, I was never a Saints fan growing up because before Drew Brees got here, they were the ‘Ain’ts’. They couldn’t win a game. So I wasn’t really a big fan. I always liked the 49ers. That was my team growing up. Joe Montana was always my favorite quarterback. Roger Craig on lock, Jerry Rice…those are my guys, so I would’ve love to have played for the 49ers in the Bay Area.
Natasha: 49ers. There you go, that’s your team. [laughter]
Jason: That’s it.
Natasha: Well thank you again, so much. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know a little bit more about your past, and I’m really excited to hear more about InPacity and where you’re able to take that. Thank you for being here today.
Jason: Thanks Natasha, I appreciate the time and best of luck to you and what you’re doing. Thank you so much for helping the industry promote itself.
Natasha: Thanks, Jason.
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Natasha: Thank you so much for listening to the Over the Threshold Podcast. If you liked what you heard on this episode, I’d love it if you’d subscribe, leave a review or share with a friend you know who would like to hear it, too. To learn more about CODE certifications, visit our website codetrained.com