Iron Sheepdog Solves the Trucking Problem at the Start
BY AsphaltPro Staff
In the 30 years Mike VanSickel has worked in civil construction, he was amazed by the evolution of trucking—or lack thereof. “It was paper tickets and invoicing when I started and when I left,” he said.
When VanSickel left his job as an executive in a large civil contracting company running 150 trucks a day between its asphalt plants, grading operations and laydown crews, new solutions to the trucking problem were beginning to emerge. But, they were also beginning to create new problems.
To operate more efficiently, VanSickel’s employer knew they needed information from their brokers and owner-operators that they’d never be able to get without new technology. “We were signing these contracts with software providers promising to solve our trucking problems, but they weren’t focused on providing a solution for the broker and owner-operator network so there was no value to them,” he said. “Ultimately, we were adding overhead to our business to solve the problems of someone else’s business.”
VanSickel was determined to solve the trucking problem from the bottom up. “And the root of the problem isn’t that paving contractors want transparency and reliability from their trucking,” he said. “The problem is the adoption of technology by sub-haulers.” That’s why VanSickel created Iron Sheepdog.
Built for Brokers
Iron Sheepdog is a trucking software built for brokers. “The brokers are our customers,” VanSickel said. “Their sub-haulers then use the platform, and the contractors are granted access to the data at no cost to them.”
Although each stakeholder benefits from the platform, the benefits begin with the brokers, like James Norris of Predestined Hauling LLC, Hampton, Virginia. Previously, the company ran its business “the old school way,” Norris said. “It was all paper tickets turned in to us by Saturday. My partner would sort the tickets on Sunday, and on Monday I would enter them into a spreadsheet and invoice.”
Norris knew he needed a better solution, but was hesitant to deploy Iron Sheepdog. He was nervous the platform would eventually try to cut out brokers like him. “It was hard to let [Iron Sheepdog] all the way into my multi-million dollar business,” he said. But, he’s glad he did. Not only did the platform eliminate his administrative burdens, but it also helped the business grow.
Since implementing Iron Sheepdog, Norris’s gross income has doubled while significantly reducing his overhead costs. The platform also enabled the company to expand operations across Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Maryland.
Buy-In from Drivers
Although brokers are the first step in Iron Sheepdog’s solution to the trucking problem, the next step is getting drivers on board. “A lot of platforms sell to the contractor instead of the guy driving the truck, but if the contractor can’t get the truck to sign on to the platform, the platform means nothing,” Norris said. With Iron Sheepdog, the burden of getting the drivers to adopt the contractors platform falls on the broker.
“[Most drivers] have tried other platforms that require them to do all kinds of nonsense,” Norris said. “They were tired of change that only made their jobs harder. But, Iron Sheepdog is so easy to use that all my drivers were sold on it after one or two weeks. Now, they won’t run without it.”
Although ease of use is key, VanSickel also wanted drivers to have a reason to buy into the platform. “For truckers, Iron Sheepdog’s key benefit is that it gives them access to their money and control over the cash flow for the business they’re running,” VanSickel said. Haulers working through the app are able to accept jobs, check in and out of job sites, view their earnings and cash out from within the app.
Norris said the ability to get paid in as little as 24 hours was unheard of in trucking. “If a driver had a flat tire, they might not be able to run that truck for a week while they waited to get the money they were owed in order to fix that tire,” Norris said. “With the ability to pull their money in 24 hours, they can do what they need to do to keep their truck moving.”
Benefits to Contractors
The contractors with whom Norris works have also benefited from Iron Sheepdog. “Coming up with the right amount of trucks for a job is one of the hardest things they have to do,” Norris said. “With Iron Sheepdog, they can see what they’re spending on trucking each day, so they know if they need to make any changes.”
This was a familiar problem for VanSickel. “Back when I was on the contractor side, I’d get mad at my haulers about cycle times when [delays] might have been because I didn’t order the right number of trucks,” he said. However, he didn’t have the data he needed to make a more informed trucking decision.
With Iron Sheepdog, the broker grants paving contractors or asphalt producers access to the platform at no cost to them. “They can see their digital tickets, view trucks in real time, communicate important safety information directly with the trucks and perform load cycle analysis,” VanSickel said.
VanSickel said the first step for contractors interested in Iron Sheepdog is to ask their brokers if they currently use the platform. “The president of one of the largest paving contractors in the southeast recently called me up because they needed a new trucking solution,” he said. “He was surprised to learn two of our brokers already worked with him. All we had to do was have those brokers give him access to the data.”
This approach not only reduces costs to the contractor because they don’t have to implement a technology of their own or staff dispatch and ticketing employees, but it also means they don’t have to shut down operations to deploy new software of their own. Nor do they have to attempt to mandate that the owner-operators and brokers they work with implement new technology. “The sub-haulers have adopted it because the brokers adopted it,” VanSickel said. “If all your trucks run Iron Sheepdog, all the contractor has to do is ask their broker to set them up to see the data.”
Ultimate Efficiency with AI
Iron Sheepdog is currently deployed on more than 4000 trucks across nine states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Ohio). But, VanSickel said this is only the beginning.
Not only do they plan to expand nationwide, but the company also hopes to make trucking even more efficient through the use of AI. “In the future, I don’t think contractors will order trucks by the number, I think they’ll tell the broker the load cycle times they want to see,” VanSickel said, adding that solutions like Iron Sheepdog will make this a reality.
He also sees the platform being able to improve trucking by increasing utilization rates. “Right now, we’re running our trucks empty half the time,” he said. “But when you order UberEats, the driver doesn’t leave his house, get the food and drive back empty handed. He goes to the next closest delivery.”
That’s what VanSickel hopes for the future of the platform, providing an example of a recent job where the platform was able to help a broker increase utilization by routing 20 trucks on a dirt job to pick up 57 stone and drop it off at a nearby job on the way to the dirt job. “In the future, we might have three different jobs being managed by the same trucks, and utilization rates closer to 80% than 50%, which would lower everyone’s trucking costs.”
Although that’s VanSickel’s ultimate goal, Iron Sheepdog has gone with a “crawl, walk, run approach.”
“Everyone wants to pull a solution to this problem off the shelf, plug it in, and hope the trucking problems go away,” VanSickel said. “But, you can’t go from paper tickets to using AI to manage trucking in one step, even though that is the ultimate goal for our solution.”