In this episode of TRAXERO On-The-Go, How Technology Keeps Your Towing Business Rolling, we welcome Kyle McClellan, CTO at Marietta Wrecker, and Mike Meyer, Software Engineer at TRAXERO, who talk about their history of working together at Omadi and the importance of employing technology experts at your towing business to ensure you have solutions in place when it comes to problem solving. Click play for more. 

Transcription:

Shelli Hawkins:

Welcome everybody to episode four of the TRAXERO On-The-Go podcast. My name is Shelli Hawkins. I am the co-host of the podcast along with my amazing other co-host, miss Laura Dolan. Are you there, Laura?

Laura Dolan:

Oh, you’re too kind. I am here, Shelli, how are you?

Shelli Hawkins:

You are amazing. You’ve taught me so many things in short amounts of time that I’ve known you, very appreciative of that.

Laura Dolan:

You’ve taught me more things, all the towing things.

Shelli Hawkins:

Absolutely not. You may me have a respect for the… I can’t even think of it now. The Oxford comma, yes.

Laura Dolan:

Ah, we’re back to that.

Shelli Hawkins:

And all the commas. Yes. In fact, when I saw you a couple weeks ago at the Florida show, I brought you your very own T-shirt that said Team Oxford comma with the crest. That has a great big comma in the middle because Laura has converted me along with my sister to believing in the Oxford comma. We talked a little bit about this at our last podcast. I think so, yeah. Thank you, Laura.

Laura Dolan:

Yes, we did. Oh, no, thank you. Thank you for my shirt. I love it. It is number one in my collection now, and I put that baby right on Facebook. So if you follow me, you’ll be able to see it in all its glory.

Shelli Hawkins:

Outstanding. I did teach you the difference between a Vulcan, a Century, tandem-

Laura Dolan:

That’s right.

Shelli Hawkins:

… Twin steer. We saw a tri steer this year at Florida on the M100. That was fantastic by our friends Modzelewski’s, so they’re actually one of our clients too, so that was fantastic to see that innovation. I had never seen a tri steer ever before.

Laura Dolan:

Also, the difference between a heavy and a lift, is that the differentiation?

Shelli Hawkins:

A heavy.

Laura Dolan:

A heavy.

Shelli Hawkins:

Nope. A heavy and a rotator?

Laura Dolan:

Thank you. Sorry. I will edit that.

Shelli Hawkins:

No, it’s fantastic. You are not going to edit that out. You’re going to not edit any of this out. That’s the best part of a podcast cause-

Laura Dolan:

Okay. All right. We’re keeping all of it.

Shelli Hawkins:

… You are in the learning process, so-

Laura Dolan:

Yes, I am.

Shelli Hawkins:

… We all are learning. But there was an interesting rotator at Florida that Miller has put back into production, the 600R, and it’s I believe, a 16 ton rotator. If it’s not 16 ton rotator, I’m sure that I will get called out on social media about this, but I’ve seen so many people over the year take advantage over the years, take advantage of this 16 ton rotator and just do amazing things with it. Things that you would never think about doing. So it was great to see it back in production.

I talked to Todd Harless down there at Florida and he said, “we had such a demand from our customers to put this thing back into production. It was so popular.” So I said, “Yay. We love it.”

But yeah, welcome, welcome you guys. Thank you guys for joining us. It’s super exciting to be here and to just follow the journey of all these folks in the towing industry. And there is not one story that is the same, and so we are just so excited to learn from these folks that have different roles in the industry, whether they’re an owner, a manager, a dispatcher, whether you’re managing tow trucks and all the maintenance on the tow trucks or the people and the employee benefits and everything that goes behind the scenes and all that.

So today we are super excited to invite two individuals on our podcast that are pretty good friends, coworkers from another company. And without further ado, I’m going to bring on first of all, Mr. Mike Meyer. He is a part of our TRAXERO family. He does such a great amount of work for us. And then secondly, I’m going to bring on Kyle McClellan and he is the Chief Technology Officer over at Marietta Wrecker. Welcome gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on the TRAXERO On-The-Go podcast.

Kyle McClellan:

Thanks for having us.

Mike Meyer:

Thanks.

Shelli Hawkins:

You bet. Mike, I am going to kick it over to you for the first question. Tell us a little bit about how you started in the industry from the very, very beginning, how you got involved with the former company and what you’re doing today for us at TRAXERO. So a three-prong question, I’ll keep us on track.

Mike Meyer:

Yeah. I started out towing as a really, it was a second job for me. It was just a night, night job for a second income, which then became my primary job. It made good money, it was intriguing. There was a lot of fun stuff to learn about it. And even to this day, 12 years later, I’m still learning the tow industry. So I know I started out as trespass towing was my main thing, all the way to accident towing and then into some heavies. Currently, now my role at Omadi is software engineer. I started at Omadi in I think 2015.

And before I started Almaty, I was actually a customer of Omadi, which I was, I probably on a third or a fourth customer to start using Omadi, got offered a position for Omadi for QA back in the day when I was using the software for towing. I just found lots of issues with the app and product and came on board, make it better. And from there I went from QA, I helped in support implementation, and then lots of mobile and web automation for testing. And then from there, now I have transitioned into software engineer. So now I’m doing sort of the development side of mobile and our TMS platform.

Shelli Hawkins:

That is fantastic. So for our listeners out there, a lot of us live in the world of acronyms. So I’m going to have Mike unpack a couple of those that he mentioned that you may not be familiar with. So Mike, when you said that you QA something, what do you mean exactly?

Mike Meyer:

So QA is just quality assurance, making sure that before we release something to other towers to utilize in the field, we want to test on our end to make sure that it works and there’s no issues with it prior to going out.

Shelli Hawkins:

Perfect. So testing, testing, testing. And then the other one that you said was TMS, what is TMS?

Mike Meyer:

From my perspective it’s just the towing management solution is what I-

Shelli Hawkins:

Great. Yep.

Mike Meyer:

… always utilize it as.

Shelli Hawkins:

That’s right. And that’s kind of like the entire TMS is describing the entire ecosystem of those three aspects that we talk about. The dispatching, completing the call. The impound life cycle of the vehicle and the lein process, and then the auction process and then also payments. Just the entire ecosphere of everything is the TMS platform. Thank you so much.

I feel like knowing what I know about you, Mike, that towing part of what you started out learning in the tow truck and even today, it is something that is so incredibly rewarding to be able to do. And it’s also like to be a problem solver, I feel like is something that you really thrive in doing because you’re doing that not only here at TRAXERO on the Omadi team, but also in the tow truck. Would you say that’s pretty accurate?

Mike Meyer:

Yes.

Shelli Hawkins:

Well just by your T-shirt it says problem solver, Michael Meyer. He is the doctor you guys, everyone knows Mike Meyer as Dr. Omadi here at TRAXERO.

Laura Dolan:

That’s how I was first introduced to him. I saw it on Slack. I was like, that has got to mean something and I can’t wait to hear that story.

Shelli Hawkins:

Outstanding. Mike, how did you meet Kyle McClellan?

Mike Meyer:

So I met Kyle. I actually, when I took the job for Omadi, I moved to Utah, I want to say our first month wasn’t off to the best because we in the back room, in the quiet dark room, liked to joke around and play around a little too much with Nerf guns. And so we did shoot lots of people with Nerf guns and unfortunately Kyle just didn’t like it at the time.

Shelli Hawkins:

Kyle.

Mike Meyer:

Yeah, he would take all of our bullets and would hide them all from us. So Kyle back then was in implementation, I believe when I started he was in implementing customers and doing support… And yeah, we came off to, I don’t want to say it was a rough start, but it was always a war with the Nerf guns. And then I think once we all went remote, it was a little bit more easy because he wasn’t getting shot with Nerf guns anymore. But I mean, we probably had 300 bullets because every time we’d shoot them out into support, we would lose them to Kyle and we would all have to go buy new ones or bring more from home.

Kyle McClellan:

Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Kyle McClellan, you want to defend your honor here buddy, about the Nerf guns?

Kyle McClellan:

No. I’ll take full responsibility for that. When you’re on the phone with the client and you’re already swamped and backed up with implementations and you’re trying to get things… Getting hit in the side of the head with a Nerf bullet is not really the thing that you want happening right there. But Mike, I mean, it was not a rough start at all. We had a lot of fun with that.

Shelli Hawkins:

Fantastic.

Kyle McClellan:

Throwing them back was also fun.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it. Today you work for our friends at Marietta Wrecker in, I’m going to assume Marietta, Georgia, correct?

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah, that’s correct.

Shelli Hawkins:

On the north side of Atlanta, if I remember correctly?

Kyle McClellan:

From Northwest side. Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Perfect. And you went from Omadi to being Chief Technology Officer for Marietta. Talk about a little bit about your role there today and your responsibilities.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah, so my role here today is really anything technology, so anything software or technology related falls under me. That ranges from all of the office hardware, computers, printers, networking, all of that stuff. It’s all me. Security cameras, whether they’re in the trucks or cameras around the office, all the way down to Omadi. I still… I handle all of our internal support through Omadi and then obviously utilize Mike and the team there if there’s stuff that I can’t get to right then or if it’s stuff that I’m just not familiar with as I am as I used to be. Like I said, Mike is Dr. Omadi, and even though right back in the day I probably knew just as much if not a little more than him, it’s been… I’m rusty. So Mike’s a huge, huge help. But yeah, anything technology related, I handle here. So it’s kind of expanded away just from Omadi and what Mike’s talking about, like TMS, but still handle quite a bit of that.

Shelli Hawkins:

When you were in high school, did you have aspirations to do what you’re doing today? What were your visions for the future? What did you see yourself doing?

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah, actually in high school I was one of those techy kids that you saw running around with the clipboard to teachers computers and fixing and stuff. And so I always had envisions that that’s what I liked. I liked hardware, building computers, messing with technology and all that kind of stuff. And it’s been a journey to come all the way back here. I obviously, at Omadi, my last big role was product owner, so I really enjoyed being in product and working directly with the developers and things, but to me, nothing really beats locking myself in a network closet and cable managing for three hours. Like that-

Shelli Hawkins:

Oh.

Kyle McClellan:

… That’s just me. I like the hands on stuff and making things work. So that’s how it’s turned out. We could be here all day talking about how I got here, but-

Shelli Hawkins:

So Laura, I am seeing a theme here that we’ve got some problem solvers on our hands.

Laura Dolan:

Definitely.

Shelli Hawkins:

Both of them. Just in different worlds, but in the same worlds also with paths that have crossed over and over and over again. For sure. I was just thinking about, you guys are on the north side of Atlanta in Marietta and I actually graduated from high school in Macon, Georgia. Kyle, do you know where Macon, Georgia is? Mike, you probably know where Macon, Georgia is.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah, that’s South Atlanta, right?

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah. Very cool.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah, I know where it is.

Shelli Hawkins:

I’m going to tell the story that is what I call the best story that I know. When my family moved from the mountains of Virginia when I was in high school and I got my very first job making real cash money working at the McDonald’s off of I-75 on the north side of Macon, Georgia. Very first job. And the chicken fajita had just come out on the menu and everyone was going [wild] for the chicken fajita, just ordering tons of it and so here I am, a little sophomore in high school with my brown McDonald’s visor, “Welcome to McDonald’s, can I please take your order?” In a true southern fashion form, this woman says to me, and she’s looking at the menu and she’s wrinkling her nose and she’s trying to decide what she wants, and she goes, “I’m going to take four of them chicken fajita.” And I looked at her and I said, “Fajita?” And she goes, “Oh no baby, I’ll be taking it to go.”

Laura Dolan:

Oh my God.

Shelli Hawkins:

True, true story. And that took place a little bit south of Marietta in the town of Macon, Georgia where I had my very first job with a payroll check. “Fajita?” “No. I’ll be taking it to go.”

Laura Dolan:

That’s one of those things that just sticks with you for life.

Kyle McClellan:

Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Absolutely.

Kyle McClellan:

Almost too good to be true.

Laura Dolan:

Yeah.

Kyle McClellan:

But I believe it.

Shelli Hawkins:

Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Laura Dolan:

You need to write a standup routine about your experience at McDonald’s, Shelli.

Shelli Hawkins:

Oh, I think so. For sure.

Laura Dolan:

That would be golden.

Shelli Hawkins:

It was quite the learning experience of everything. Kyle, I want to learn a little bit more about Marietta Wrecker and the history there. Are you familiar with the history of the company there and how they got started and all that?

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep.

So they started way back in 1976. It was Chris and Steve Welchel, who are the owners now. It was their dad that started it up and it actually started out as not really a standalone business. They had a little gas station, body shop, auto shop there that they had, and they had a tow truck as necessity. So they would use it as just to get the cars to the shop. But their dad really found that he really, really enjoyed that. And so that’s where it started. They had one tow truck and then they just grew it from there.

What’s really interesting is the main thing as they were going through building the businesses is their dad really was obsessed with professionalism.

Shelli Hawkins:

Love it.

Kyle McClellan:

Which was really interesting in this industry, especially back in the ’70s and ’80s, is there was not a lot of regulation around towing. A lot of the shops around there was no dedicated towers. There were a lot of body shops and stuff that would do towing on the side. Right? As a necessity. But there were no standalone really towing companies in the space. And so he had a thing where his uniform was a white shirt, black pants. If he got his white shirt dirty throughout the day, he would change it. He had two or three spare shirts in the truck. Before they got bigger and needed to really buckle down on time on a job… But before he got to a job, he’d wash the truck. So the truck was always clean. Their presentation for the company was always clean. We’re talking about rotators on heavy duty calls, he was known for, if he had to get underneath a truck to drop a drive shaft or do something underneath, he would actually lift the truck up high enough where he could walk under it.

Laura Dolan:

Wow.

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow.

Kyle McClellan:

And then he could do the work underneath so that he didn’t get his uniform dirty.

Laura Dolan:

That’s dedication to looking for professional right there.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah. It was-

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah.

Kyle McClellan:

… it was funny stuff.

Throughout the years they grew it. Their mom and dad eventually ended up drifting apart mid ’90s and their mom ended up buying out their dad for the company. Which back in the ’90s was not really common either. Wasn’t a lot of female owners in the space. So that was a big unique thing. But they took it over from there, grew the company, then it had a survival mode for about a decade or so, but then really started to hit their stride when they got back into the heavy duty and police space there in the ’90s and 2000s and then, and grew.

Back in 2021, we made our first acquisition and acquired a big company called New Image Towing down in South Atlanta near Forest Park area. So right by the airport. So we actually… Technically now I don’t work for Marietta Wrecker, I work for Welchel Enterprise, which is basically our parent company. So we have Marietta Wrecker and New Image Towing that we operate as separate entities. We keep the brand names in the areas, that kind of stuff. But it’s been a lot of fun. So we now have kind of that northwest metro Atlanta area, and then we have the Southeast as well.

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah.

Laura Dolan:

Very cool.

Shelli Hawkins:

That’s an incredible story. How many trucks are in the fleet currently?

Kyle McClellan:

100, 110-

Shelli Hawkins:

Okay.

Kyle McClellan:

… Somewhere around there. That’s light and heavy duty and road service.

Shelli Hawkins:

Okay. And then just the work that you folks are doing, is it a mix or-

Kyle McClellan:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we do police, impounds is probably our biggest impound. We do PPI on the side, but Georgia is interesting. You can’t patrol for PPIs.

Shelli Hawkins:

Oh. Okay.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah. For the private property impounds in Georgia. So it’s all call-in, so we don’t do that mainly. Most of our impounds are going to be police, so we do a lot of police impounds, a lot of exclusive contracts. Cobb County, Marietta, Clayton County, Atlanta Police, Georgia State Patrol, a lot of that stuff. So big wrecks, anywhere in metro Atlanta, you’re probably going to see Marietta or New Image trucks there.

We do a lot of commercial towing as well, so heavy duty commercial towing. And then our transport division has really taken off last couple years, so we do a lot of heavy haul, long haul stuff. We actually have a customer in Canada that we do a lot of hauling back and forth for, so-

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow, all the way in Canada?

Kyle McClellan:

… Yeah, well, they’ll buy, we have… Kubota is a big manufacturer of heavy duty equipment here, so we have a contract with them and we will deliver stuff all over. So we have trucks all over the country now, which is pretty cool. You could drive down the interstate in Oklahoma or Montana or somewhere and see a Marietta Wrecker truck pulling something. So pretty fun.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it. I’m going to open up this next question to Mike and Kyle both.

Kyle, you talked about your journey to build new product in Omadi. Being a product manager, I’ve got three years of experience under my belt for that, so that was fantastic. And I know that Mike certainly has a part in, as he’s now a software engineer for us on the Omadi side too.

When you were with Omadi and also Mike comment about it today, but how does new product get built and what does that mean when we say product? I’m familiar with a product in the grocery store, but when we talk about technology, define what product means and the process of building a new product. Is it an inquiry from a customer that wants something or is it an idea that we come up with internally? Talk a little bit about product.

Mike Meyer:

I mean, product is more of what technologies can we offer internally. So I mean, as a company, we go in and we look at what does the space that our software offer and how can we better give different tools to the users out there? And then we also get requests from companies, including Kyle at Welchel himself, with wants and needs. And so we do try to handle wants and needs from… If 10 companies want something that’s the same, then that tries… It gets pushed more towards the top. If it’s one company who just has this random wants, we record it and then as either more needs, wants it or it’s needed more in the field, then it gets brought higher up in priority. So we do prioritize things based on where it fits in the space of the software and for the needs of each of the companies that are actually using our software.

Shelli Hawkins:

That makes sense. Kyle, what’s your perspective on all this?

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah, I would say it’s looking at a missing piece in the industry and building technology or software around filling that void. So Omadi, I don’t know if you’re very familiar with it, but it very started out as a private property impound software in Utah that a buddy, the founder had a friend who owned a tow company there in Salt Lake area and was like, “Hey, we don’t really have a mobile paperless solution that’s really useful.” And that’s how it started. You find a need in an industry and you fill that space with technology and software and solutions to help facilitate that need.

Shelli Hawkins:

That’s fantastic. I remember going to the trade shows and seeing Omadi for the first time. My first trade show I went to, I think was like 2010 possibly. And I can remember the folks from the Omadi team and I’m sure if I said some names that I remember… Because I remember people’s names and cities and states just like a… I remember them really well. I was going to say a Rolodex.

Laura Dolan:

I was going to say-

Shelli Hawkins:

I was going to say a Rolodex.

Laura Dolan:

… Yeah. I was going to human Rolodex. That was-

Shelli Hawkins:

Who knows? No.

Laura Dolan:

… the name that came to mind.

Shelli Hawkins:

If you’re 30 years old or younger, you have no idea what a Rolodex is. Kyle, do you know what a Rolodex is?

Kyle McClellan:

I know what a Rolodex is.

Shelli Hawkins:

Thank you. Okay. I didn’t feel that old anymore, but-

Mike Meyer:

Our first trade show was 2015 and it was Orlando.

Shelli Hawkins:

Okay. The one that stands out in my mind is Mr. Charles Lukens.

Kyle McClellan:

Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Is he the founder? What did he do for you?

Kyle McClellan:

No, he was, he was a CEO that we brought in a few years after.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah. I don’t know why he stands out to me if he had just a great big personality or what the case may be, but I remember him specifically. Also I recently flew in and out of Daytona for the Daytona 500 a couple months back and for the race there, and I was getting escorted on a golf cart over to the area where the tow trucks were and who do you think I saw filming and taking photos, but Mr. Ethan Galloway and I see him and we’re like hands in the air, what are you doing here Ethan Galloway?

So you guys have managed to stay in the industry in some capacity or another, and it goes to show you how when you get in this industry, you knit your heart to it and it absolutely doesn’t let you go and you don’t want to leave it. Laura Dolan, any comments on that? Laura, you started with TRAXERO, when? How many days ago?

Laura Dolan:

January 30th.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah.

Laura Dolan:

So just over three months. I can add.

Yes. And yeah, it’s a lot to take in, but it’s a really interesting industry to learn about. And like I said, I know everything that I know from Shelli, and I did get to go down to the Florida Tow Show this year, my first Tow Show, and Shelli and I made an arrangement to meet in the truck yard at 7:00 AM. So we got to watch the sunrise and check out all the beautiful trucks before the day got too hot and the place started to get flooded with people. So it was a great experience just getting up close and personal with these trucks, taking some beautiful footage and pictures of them and just learning again, the difference between a Century and a Vulcan and a heavy and a rotator. So all the things.

Shelli Hawkins:

Love it. There’s got to be frustrating things that come your way. Mike and Kyle, talk to us a little bit about how you maneuver through those frustrations. How you look at it, take it head on, map it out, and overcome just different daily tasks that can be frustrating. What are your secrets that you want to share with us?

Kyle McClellan:

I think the biggest part is a four or five step process for me is one, you got to identify what the problem is. So you’re all familiar with very… I mean we have, I like to call it short temper members of the industry.

Shelli Hawkins:

Oh yeah.

Kyle McClellan:

That are very quick. We’re a very high paced industry, so if any hiccups or any fault in the routine, whether that’s a vendor trying to deliver a product, if you are trying to get a truck just from A to B, transport reasons, equipment, that kind of stuff. If there’s any hiccup in that routine or that flow of service, it can get frustrating. And so one is just to identify the problem. Identify what’s going on, and that’s where my customer service experience comes into play. When the team out there and dispatch has a problem and there’s something software related where the customer’s not getting an email or if a driver’s having a problem with the app, that’s where I could come in and diffuse the situation. Try to get to the bottom of, well, what’s the original problem? What is frustrating about this situation? The next is owning it. I say, “Okay. Yeah. I’m going to solve this problem. I know what the problem is. I know what the consequences of this problem are.” I think it’s a big, huge piece of understanding what a problem and a solution for a problem is needed, is understanding what problems that this issue is causing. Right?

Then the next would be to find out who needs to be involved in changes and then plan a solution out. And then finally is implementing that solution. So I know a lot over my years, a lot… You can sit down in a meeting and come up with good ideas all day, and I’ve been in rooms with very, very smart people in the industry, and if you don’t implement the solution and follow it through, what good is a solution? Right?

So those are the big points. Identify the problem, own the problem, identify the consequences of the problem, and then find a solution, implement the solution.

Shelli Hawkins:

I wrote all those down because that’s absolutely fantastic. I love it. And it really is about… I mean, every single part is so crucial, but like you said, at the very end, you can plan all you want, you can identify all you want, but unless someone is implementing it and then enforcing or holding people accountable, it’s not going to get done and change is not going to happen. Any comments on that, Mike Meyer?

Mike Meyer:

I mean, my only comment is, I guess a little bit of my experience. I’m the opposite from Kyle. Right? So I started out in the industry, Kyle started out at the software level. So I have the knowledge from running the tow company to running the shop, selling cars at the tow company to being out there towing myself. Right?

So I had all that knowledge prior to coming to the software. And then on the software side of things when I have an issue, it’s more like, well, I know the industry so well that I come up with different scenarios really based on the industry needs. At least from what I needed at the time in the field and all the other customer inputs that I’ve got over the last six, seven years now.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it. That’s fantastic. Reiterating what Kyle said too, thank you so much, both of you guys for what you guys have done has been so incredibly crucial for the industry and to make us advanced more digitally and just do things more efficiently. Kyle, are you responsible on a daily basis for running reports at all out of Omadi, or do you ever see daily reports?

Kyle McClellan:

I see daily reports. I’m not responsible for running the reports, but I am responsible for building them if they are needed. So that’s a big piece. I’m very, very familiar with the reporting and I do, I get a glimpse of them fairly often. Yeah.

Shelli Hawkins:

What types of reports are you looking at or building out, I guess, to show efficiencies in the companies? What is important to you guys?

Kyle McClellan:

Revenue is a big piece. So we look at revenue. We also try and look at call volume on a per hour basis. So we have some external tools we’ll export from Omadi out and then dump them into hourly buckets so we can help with scheduling and that kind of stuff. There’s just so much data that we collect with software.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes.

Kyle McClellan:

The possibilities are really endless, but revenue, revenue’s a big one. Obviously we do a lot of batch out reports, so running the credit card and cash collections on a daily basis. We do that kind of stuff.

Some cool ones are the impounded, so we do an impound report. We’re required the state of Georgia to submit to the police departments every night on the vehicles that were impounded from them that day. So that’s the daily things we run those kind of reports.

Well, I’m trying to think on the top of my head what are some other cool ones that we do? But because there’s just so many. We do so many. Mike can probably reiterate. There’s just endless amount of reports that we can do.

Shelli Hawkins:

Hundreds for sure.

Mike Meyer:

Yeah. I would say my best report that I’ve made really was to help the police departments, right? Because I don’t know about Marietta, but at least here where I’m at, you’re supposed to respond within 20 minutes is about the average. Right? To get to a police accident or scene. In some of the reports, as long as the software’s utilized the way it’s intended, you can give those numbers to your police departments when they come and audit you like were you actually on time to our jobs? Things like that.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good one. Another cool one, Shelli, if you don’t mind, that we had years and years ago I was working with a client in the Maryland, kind of DC area, and they did 100% strictly Geico calls. And I remember building him a report that he could see basically in real time a truck’s profitability. So we could take into account what revenue that truck was bringing in and what the costs were on that vehicle, whether it was maintenance, fuel, driver pay, all that stuff. And he ended up on a dashboard on a screen, and just every day he would look at those and he would use that to know when to sell and buy new trucks. So he would basically be able to run cost versus income of a specific vehicle, and when it hit a certain threshold, he’d sell the vehicle and buy a new truck.

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow.

Kyle McClellan:

So that’s a lot of different data points that you can pull and you can really build anything.

Shelli Hawkins:

It’s like you said, there’s so much data collection in all of these platforms, and it’s crucial that the folks that are in it use it. I take a look at the TMS, towing management software that we have, and the highest transaction is going to be on the dispatching side. The calls come in, they’re sent to the driver to do, they’re marked as completed on scene and all the different dispositions that you do. And there’s also that impound life cycle that we talked about. And then the backend reporting.

And this reporting to me is really what we’re just focusing on a lot, towing revenue optimization. And that is exactly why you’re pulling those reports. Number one is the revenue, number two is this, this, and you list it all off. And that really is showing, am I profitable? I’m doing all this work, but am I profitable? Am I going to be in business next year, the following year and the years to come? And we want to work with our clients so much, not just today, but in the future to make sure. Mike is certainly in the ground level about, I mean, he’s built out a ton of reports. We’re still building reports for all the things, but thank you so much for giving us example.

What is the future? What’s the future for you, Mr. McClellan? What do you see?

Kyle McClellan:

Well, we’ll be here in Georgia indefinitely. We have no plans to leave anytime soon. We’ve got a really good… I love the people that we have here are really great. I work for really, really good people, and the industry is really tight-knit, which is another thing I really enjoy. We interact with a lot of our competitor, I say competitors because that’s the industry standard, but they’re our friends. Other tow companies in the area that we work together with to solve problems and cooperate with each other. So I meet with a lot of people around. Boy… Future, I think I’ll… Yeah, I’ll still be here probably.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah. I love it.

Kyle McClellan:

Haven’t thought of anything else.

Shelli Hawkins:

When you can find where your natural talent intersects with your career, tell me I’m wrong when I say you’ll never work another day.

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah. I don’t know about that but it definitely is when you find that niche, I really, I did… I landed a pretty awesome gig here. It took my skills in the industry and the software side of towing and coupled it with my natural desire to just be buried in cables. I don’t know, I have it blurred, but I don’t know if you can see my office. It’s just chock-full of old printers and monitors and boxes of cables. And-

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes.

Kyle McClellan:

… My wife always teased me that I was happiest when I finally had my box of random cables that didn’t have a home.

Shelli Hawkins:

That’s fantastic.

Kyle McClellan:

It is, it’s fun.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah. Mike Meyer, you are, I think we said it earlier, but you’re in the beautiful, sunny state of Florida. I think you mentioned you’re in Jacksonville today, we’re all a little jealous because you’ve got some warmer weather for us. But we are so appreciative of everything that you bring to the table for us here at TRAXERO, a part of the Omadi team. What are some things that you’re working on today and what do you see in the future for how we’re going to make this platform even better?

Mike Meyer:

So we’re continuously working on our mobile app, that that’s one of our big strong things right now is we’re working on our app. We are working on some shared services platform, which is really just to share our impound and private property sector with the other companies within TRAXERO so not just Omadi can utilize our impounds, but anybody on any of the other towing management solutions can utilize impounds more or less.

As far as myself, I do continue to keep going further into technology and more into software engineering. As I said, I’m in the industry. I still tow to this day, every other week at night when I want to just to keep my skills up. I still attend classes and it’s ironic that I have a lot of companies that I’ve worked with at Omadi that actually send me to classes just because. So I think I’ve been to one in Texas for the companies out there, I’ve been in one in California, been one to in Atlanta, and one in the Northeast. So I do have a strong relationship with lots of different tow companies in the industry. Yeah. So I don’t think I could go anywhere in the tow industry. So it’ll still be with support in the towing industry.

Shelli Hawkins:

Awesome.

Laura Dolan:

What kind of classes do you go to, Mike?

Mike Meyer:

So I’ve done a lot of WreckMaster’s. I’ve done some business development in the towing industry, and then I’ve gone to a few with Western out there in California more for they have some committees out there that I’ve gone to. So just a little bit of everything.

Laura Dolan:

Awesome. Trying to stay well-rounded in the industry. I love it.

Mike Meyer:

Job security.

Laura Dolan:

Definitely. You can’t have enough credentials, right?

Shelli Hawkins:

Well, guys, what in the world have we forgot to talk about? I feel like we’ve solved the world’s problems today, possibly.

Kyle McClellan:

I hope so.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah. Any advice, I guess for towing companies out there? I’ll be quite honest with you, Kyle, and tell you, you’re the very first chief technology officer I’ve ever heard of at a towing company. And Marietta Wrecker certainly is the size where they’re going to need someone managing all of the cables and all the other things that you’ve managed every single day, lifecycle of all of the assets and everything in the reporting, in the Omadi, everything that you spoke of.

But for those out there that have not even considered having a role like the chief technology officer, what are your words of wisdom for these owners out there listening?

Kyle McClellan:

Yeah, I would think, my position really spawned as we start to grow. It got to a point where the third-party IT company that we were using, and we still use them for a bunch of things, but at one point you just get too big for someone on the outside to facilitate support for you. And I talk about support, I’m talking about the tiny little issue. You have a user that forgets their password and needs to log in, you have a printer that doesn’t work, or someone’s plugs in their laptop when their monitor’s not coming on. Simple stuff that we take for granted every day, but that could be a problem. And if you don’t have someone techy. Right? I use that term because that that’s thrown out a lot. But someone on site that knows technology and can help you troubleshoot those things, it could be a real problem.

For smaller companies, they can usually, if they’re outsourcing IT, they can wait 12 hours or something like that if it’s not a big deal. When you as a company get to a certain point, you need more immediate response. And having someone in house to be able to handle those help desk tickets is just, it dwarfs any cost of hiring someone or making a position like that. I can’t tell you… I mean, when you have dispatchers on the floor, we talked about having frustrated customers.

We’re in the towing industry are familiar with call volume could just all of a sudden increase exponentially for no apparent reason. And the worst possible thing that could happen is have a computer or a system or something stop working and having someone there in-house or someone they can call directly that knows your industry, that’s very specific. Third-party IT are great, but they’re not going to understand that you’re a 24/7 operation, for example, or that you are a high paced, high stressed position. And so having that… I guess my advice would be like if you’re pushing 100 employees, definitely start looking at it.

Shelli Hawkins:

Good advice.

Kyle McClellan:

There are plenty of guys out there that… I mean, there’s no shortage of IT people or people that can come in and help you not only run your towing software. It’s been really… I mean, Marietta probably really lucked out with me.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it.

Kyle McClellan:

Got to toot my own horn a little bit because I have a lot of experience in the industry and with Omadi in general, but software could be learned. So it’s yeah, just back to that, if you’re really pushing that 90 to 100 employees, really, really start looking at bringing someone in house.

Shelli Hawkins:

Appreciate that. True words of wisdom from Kyle McClellan and Michael Meyer today here from TRAXERO. I did write down these things about problem solving, identify the problem, own it, find the stakeholders that are a part of the potentially the solution, build out the solution, and then implementation. That’s something that I really gleaned from our chat today and I appreciate that for sure.

Thank you guys for coming on. Laura, did you have anything else for them?

Laura Dolan:

No, I think that about sums it up. Just thank you both so much for your sage advice and your golden wisdom. I think that’ll just be super valuable to our listeners.

Shelli Hawkins:

Now, everyone wants to go and get some chicken fajitas. Let’s be honest.

Laura Dolan:

Yeah. Right? You planted the seed.

Kyle McClellan:

I wasn’t going to say it.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it. Thanks again, you guys. I hope you have a great rest of your week.

And for all of our listeners out there, thank you so much for joining us for episode four of the TRAXERO On-The-Go podcast. Everyone be safe out there.

Laura Dolan:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the TRAXERO On-The-Go podcast. For more episodes, go to traxero.com/podcast and to find out more about how we can hook your towing business up with our towing management software and impound yard solutions, please visit traxero.com or go to the contact page linked at the bottom of this podcast blog.

Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay