On the Radar is a new content series highlighting Radar's amazing customers and partners and their geolocation use cases, hosted by Radar Co-Founder and CEO Nick Patrick.
In today's episode, Nick chatted with Billy Sarracino, the CEO of Turvo, a modern TMS solution providing end-to-end communication and analytics solutions for freight brokers, 3PLs, shippers, and carriers.
Read the full conversation below:
Nick Patrick
All right, welcome everyone to On the Radar. My name's Nick Patrick and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Radar, the leading geolocation platform. On the Radar is a content series highlighting Radar's amazing customers and their geolocation use cases. And today I'm lucky to be joined by Billy Sarracino the CEO of Turvo, a modern TMS solution providing end-to-end communication and analytics solutions for freight brokers, 3PLs, shippers and carriers. And Billy, thanks so much for joining me.
Billy Sarracino
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Nick Patrick
Awesome. Well, Billy, maybe to start, can you tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and your company?
Billy Sarracino
Absolutely. Billy Sarracino, CEO of Turvo. Been with the company since 2019. I was a career investment banker for many years in the consumer and retail space with Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan, and I found my way into the logistics space. I've been here now for over six years and it's been quite a thrilling industry to be in just given everything that's going on in the supply chain. At Turvo, our vision is to unify the global supply chain and we do that through our unique collaboration platform as well as a TMS to help our customers plan, execute and settle shipments across the platform.
Nick Patrick
Awesome. Billy, maybe you can tell us a little bit about why geolocation matters to Turvo and also why geolocation matters for the logistics industry in general.
Billy Sarracino
Yeah, so I mean for Turvo we're planning and executing and settling shipments on the platform and part of that is you want to know where your truck is and that's where geolocation comes in. We're a platform where we want our users to manage by exception. So as long as the truck is on time, there's good ETL levels, you know where your goods are at one point. Geolocation doesn't play a big part in that, but when a truck is running late, you don't know where the driver is. You eliminate some of the human interaction. You don't necessarily need to make that phone call or send an email or text to know exactly where the driver is at any one point during the life cycle of the shipment.
Nick Patrick
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So important to increasing visibility, increasing efficiency, automation.
Billy Sarracino
In terms of the industry, it's important for all the constituents in the supply chain to know where their goods are, where their truck drivers are, their carriers at any one point in the shipment's life cycle. It improves their efficiency, capacity levels. They're able to do backhaul. So it just increases the communication between each of the constituents in the supply chain.
Nick Patrick
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Maybe shifting gears a little bit, would love to hear about Turvo's top priorities for 2025 and what you guys are focused on geolocation wise or more generally.
Billy Sarracino
For 2025, it's simple. I've told the team this many times. Number one about our customer, number two product and number three, is a byproduct of one and two is profitability. Our number one priority has always been our current customers, not necessarily new customers, but serving our existing customers in the best possible way we can, and that's delivering value to them and providing them a great customer experience.
In terms of product, we're a product-led company. We value our product, we invest behind our product, and without our product — it's really the lifeblood of our organization and we want to lead with our product and be known as a product company. And number three, like I said, profitability — if you do number one and number two in the right way, number three will happen and we've seen that in the last almost a year in our business becoming a profitable organization.
Billy Sarracino
Yeah, we're using Radar today as our geolocation tool. Prior to using Radar, we had another vendor. And part of the reason why we love Radar is the flexibility you guys provide, the customer service, and obviously the one-on-one interaction we've been able to have with you personally, Nick, as a CEO. And we still use Google Maps. And part of that is for satellite imaging which I know Radar is moving into and then we use Radar for the truck routing. And the importance of truck routing in supply chain I think is obvious, but you have to know exactly where trucks can go, what underpasses they can pass through, what bridges they can go over — so that's critical for our customers to understand. ETA times and travel time and where the shipments are, and ultimately the best route for them to take in completing and executing that shipment.
Nick Patrick
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's been great to support you guys on the routing side and the geocoding side. And we're thinking a lot about this year, particularly as we invest more in logistics, how we can improve our map software and add things like satellite maps and live traffic, because obviously that's mission critical here. And I know you guys do a fair bit today, homegrown around location tracking and geofencing as well. No, very, very cool. Maybe talk a little bit about what you hope to do with Radar, what you hope to do with geolocation more generally in the future.
Billy Sarracino
Well, we want to continue to embed ourselves with Radar. You continue to develop the platform and provide satellite imaging. I think that's going to be a huge differentiator for us. And as opposed to diversifying the vendors we're using from a geolocation — and we do a lot of our own geofencing work — to have the partnership with you to provide an all-in-one type of solution that's real-time, where you can drill down into where the truck is, see it from a satellite image, will create a lot of value. Because the users — our customers — still like that satellite image. They like to see exactly where the truck is and how far away they are from the ultimate end point. So we would love to continue to embed ourselves with Radar as you continue to develop your product and we improve our product on our side. We value the relationship very deeply.
Nick Patrick
Maybe sort of independent of Radar, just generally speaking, what do you hope to see from geolocation technology in your industry five years from now? In the past, I think we've talked about level of accuracy here, level of visibility you can create with really accurate geolocation data or maps, but talk a little bit about trends and where you see this going over the next few years.
Billy Sarracino
With our customers, it's all about leveraging the existing headcount that they have and not having to add people. Whether that's through folks like Radar or using different AI and automation tools to do that. When I think about the future of where geolocation is going, it's going to become real-time and a lot of the technology exists today. But being able to drill down and see the physical truck from a satellite image move across the map and you know exactly where they are, how fast they're going, the exact ETA time, any traffic that might be creating any delays in that shipment — it's going to create just 100% visibility around where a shipment or where a carrier is at any one time.
Much like you see with Uber today, it's going to increase the efficiency in not only what we do, but increase the efficiency in whoever is shipping those goods, whoever is carrying the goods. Being able to use and leverage the capacity in a much more productive way when you think about backhauls and less than truckload type shipments. We're really excited about where the industry is going — not just from a geolocation standpoint, but from an AI automation standpoint as well. So there's so much opportunity here. It's such a complex industry as you know as well, Nick. So we're excited about the future and we're here to service our customers in the best possible way and are excited to do so.
Nick Patrick
Yeah, that's great. I think particularly for mission-critical use cases, accuracy and reliability is so paramount. If you have an incorrect ETA or a delayed location update or you've got a truck in the wrong place or they get routed to an inaccurate address or something like that — there's a lot of pain associated with that. So I think accuracy is paramount and something that we think a lot about at Radar. And I think to your point about AI and automation, geolocation data is so powerful as sort of a direct thing to observe and have visibility into, but also as an input into automation and alerts and intelligence. So I think that's spot on.
Billy Sarracino
And 99 out of 100 times, the shipment is going to go smooth. The ETA time is going to be relatively accurate. It’s those one or two times that something doesn't arrive on time or there's a delay in shipment — depending on what's physically in the truck, the value of those goods, whether they’re time-sensitive goods in pharma or need to be temperature controlled — there's high value. And when you've got the exact location, you have visibility and you can see into what exactly is happening with that shipment, that's when it provides a lot of value to our customers. And it allows the physical resources to actually manage by exception and they can manage those shipments by exception without having to touch every single shipment that they may be moving for the day. So that's where a lot of the value comes in and allows our customers to continue to leverage the people they have to be more efficient and productive in what they do.
Nick Patrick
Well, Billy, thanks so much for coming on and doing this. We love working with you guys. We are really excited about the possibilities in the logistics space in general and just continue to invest in routing and maps and geofencing capabilities for 2025 and beyond. So yeah, Billy, thanks again. It's been a pleasure.
Billy Sarracino
Thanks, Nick. We're super excited about the partnership and let's keep going. Thank you.
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