Securing the Unseen: Overhaul’s Mission in In-Transit Risk Management

The ability to adapt and change course when unexpected challenges arise is a crucial skill in many professions, but particularly in supply chain security operations where leaders are managing a multimodal environment with layers of partnerships and vendors. Their core responsibility is to ensure that products are moving safely from one place to another, placing complete trust in the hands of truck drivers and other logistics professionals to certify that compliance standards are maintained. In a world where one freight exposure at a rest stop could cost a manufacturer millions of dollars, having visibility into the various stages of the supply chain allows companies to stay ahead of threats and steer clear of crime.

Overhaul is dedicated to providing that visibility in ‘one pane of glass’ and helps customers make sense of the chaos within their intricate network of vendors. Barry Conlon is the CEO and founder of Overhaul, the global leader in in-transit risk management and visibility solutions. Prior to founding Overhaul, Conlon was the founder and CEO of FreightWatch, where he played a key role in shaping the industry. His extensive background in security operations is rooted in his eleven-year tenure with the Irish Defense Forces, Irish Special Operations Unit, and Army Ranger Wing.

Key topics of Conlon’s discussion with host Fred Burton include

• How his time in the Irish Defense Forces influenced him to always be ready for the next curveball and adapt and change accordingly.
• What Overhaul is doing to help change the way manufacturers manage in-transit risk.
• Unique challenges faced by supply chain security operations and how most freight exposures occur.
• Trends and behavioral changes in supply chain security industry over the past few years and what is on the horizon.

Key takeaways:

06:34: Barry Conlon: What you’re really being asked to do as a supply chain professional is effectively manage chaos. You know there’s so much to monitor and you can imagine in the multimodal environment where you’re going from road to air and back to road again. There are so many different modes of transportation. There are a lot of stop starts and freight at rest is freight at risk. What we do at Overhaul is provide that connected visibility world to our customers where literally we connect all available technologies that already exist out there and we take the information that’s freely available and mesh all that together into one pane of glass. 

13:10: Fred: You really have your finger on the pulse when it comes to trends and what are you seeing when it comes to trends in the security space for supply chains. You know what are the threats that you’re seeing currently and perhaps what are some of the threats that you’re looking at that are over the horizon that people aren’t thinking about.

13:53: Barry Conlon: Fred I’ve never seen it as busy as it is now because supply chains are heavily impacted by COVID. Everybody’s attitude to buying online shifted. Now even ingestible pharmaceuticals are purchased online, which you would never buy there unless you got them from a validated pharmacy and now people are regularly ordering these and criminals are quick to respond. 

14:48: Barry Conlon: You can walk into a truck stop. There might be 20 or 30 trucks parked there. You know I’d be shocked if less than 10 percent are less than 100,000 in value. A lot of them are multiple millions in value and they’ve got literally no protection. The trucks are running because drivers like to keep their cabs cool or warm depending on where they are and the time of year and it costs them money to turn off that tractor trader. I have never seen a truck alarm in my 30 years of experience in this industry – particularly in my last twenty three years in North America, and you’re blessed if a truck driver actually locks the door.