OSINT RIFF

World Events | Supply Chain | Technology. Just getting started! Trying to simplify OSINT work 🤠 if you want to feed my caffeine addiction:

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

Increased air activity over western Iraq. This could be early signs of an operation from Israel striking Iran. This would be a lot sooner than I expected if that is the case. Also, Polymarket odds are not going up after this news. (Initial spike was dependents being evacuated)

[Dan Shipper 📧 @danshipper]

capitalism stays winning!

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@jun_song Unless the AI labs can create an ecosystem which locks someone in, cost pressure from China will never allow this in a long-term and AI will be a commodity.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

I feel the same way. I hate when organizations buy or use “AI” then it turns into something that actually slows them down and creates errors. The biggest way to get out of that is to create repeatability with python scripts and avoid AI giving its opinion. It should just create the script

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

Agreed to all those points. I think a lot of the magic right now is having these things happen and not saying AI in anything that you tell the shippers or brokers or carriers and just calling it a product because it seems people have gotten so used to AI being overplayed that their naturally avoiding it now.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@John__Ferguson @datfreightteam @MattSilver You can leverage technology to be much more efficient with email outreach and then also scale it up as well. Those two things together are extremely powerful.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@John__Ferguson @datfreightteam @MattSilver The AI models which are making this possible have only been around since February this year, the millions and billions spent by large brokerages in years past was in a entirely different world

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@John__Ferguson @datfreightteam @MattSilver Most freight brokerages are in their infancy of understanding, not only marketing campaigns, but also how their data will be used in the future.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@John__Ferguson @datfreightteam @MattSilver It’s just a numbers game with enough outreach. Even if your hit rate is only 1% if you scale up your outreach with a smart warmed email campaign, you can scale it up to book as many loads as you need to. I do it every day. All responses I get are closed with people.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@FreightAlley Love this!

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

Inspired by @John__Ferguson!

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

8am update: outbound load postings this Friday morning are running about 15% below Friday 6/26. Vans took the biggest hit at -20%, reefers -18%, flatbeds held up best at -9%. Same day of week, two weeks apart, and the board is noticeably lighter.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

Where it softened most: the Southeast. Outbound vans there are down roughly 50% vs 6/26, and flatbeds out of the SE and TX/OK/LA are off about 15%. (7/2 isn’t a fair baseline, that was the pre July 4 lull.) Expect thinner load board postings out of the Southeast next week.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

Yes I did. It’s a range of API connections and custom MCP’s I use to connect! I would be curious about your “data and where you get truck prices from and if you guys have any machine learning component to that. Unfortunately, we don’t go to Mexico at all. Just US and Canada. I was looking at your site this morning. 👍

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

We have an in house made TMS (not by me), but I connect to it with an MCP I made. The funny part is I run all of it through my Claude code set up on my laptop, with carrier vetting through highway, pricing from a combination of DAT and triumph, triumph for missing paperwork. All emails are sent from my outlook, and I CC people from my company to close the deal. I identify the best targets, and learn over time what has the best hit rates then I adjust the process. The ground level reps don’t realize what’s going on and think I’m manually emailing everyone lol. I identified my impact by the increase of loads with a carrier from a baseline amount before I started running the process. I called this process human in the loop automation, but I can’t remember if I saw that somewhere else or if I just started calling it that but I feel like it summarizes the approach pretty well.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

I this build for people! Custom connections don’t work well to package into a unified system yet, so it needs to be done at the individual company level. It feels like the future every time I use it. Many use cases, including solving contract rate upload and analysis for large companies

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@MattSilver @TMSuccessful Exactly my set up. Custom MCP’s for every site. I’m brokering freight with a 1.7 million margin ARR. automated flows for missing paperwork, carrier sourcing, custom sites for customers. The forward deployed engineer push will hit logistics next (like the 4PL bid management did)

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@MattSilver @TMSuccessful Exactly my set up. Custom MCP’s for every site. I’m brokering freight with a 1.7 million margin ARR. automated flows for missing paperwork, carrier sourcing, custom sites for customers. The forward deployed engineer push will hit logistics next (like the 4PL bid management did)

[Will @athcanft]

nothing hurts more than seeing your friend take 3 months to develop a mobile app

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@BenMcCulley Lmao I’m not a bot. I have plenty of freight memes but I feel like that would be just confirming what you’re saying.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

Read from 4 weeks of DAT outbound load postings: the board loads up early in the week and thins by Friday. Flatbed volume peaks Tuesday; van and reefer peak Monday. All three run 45-55% lighter Friday than at their Mon/Tue high. Source your capacity early in the week.

[OSINT RIFF @osintriff]

@ThomasWasson Agreed! I also saw that flatbed tends to be mainly same-day load postings while dry van and reefer tend to have much greater next day coverage opportunities.