Andrew Silver on LinkedIn: New episode of The Freight Pod is live with our first asset-based guest… (2024)

En route to Nashville to moderate a brokerage panel at Reliance Partners’ conference with Matt Pyatt, Cameron Ramsdell, Shannon Breen, Jason Provonsha, and Patrick Bobo.I planned on coming up with the topics for them during my flight this morning.The Transfix news definitely gives us something to talk about.My take:All the original “digital brokers” have been forced to pivot away from brokerage, or are currently considering doing so. They’ll try to sell the load board technology to brokers on a per transaction basis to cover loads more easily. DAT will see a big rise in competition as a result, may even be in trouble if the Convoy/Flexport, Transfix, Ubers can come up with a model that works for brokers to find capacity and execute loads effectively through them. This pivot might work for these companies. It’s definitely better than trying to broker freight and sell investors that brokerage revenue should be considered SAAS. I’ve heard good things about the underlying technology used for the platforms/load boards. No idea if it becomes worth the hundreds of millions spent to build, but maybe the winners end up being the Flexports who get to buy the tech for pennies on the dollar.This market is not making it easy for anyone. There are more bankruptcies coming and more bottom dollar acquisitions to avoid going belly up. I imagine we see a Flock of them before year’s end.The good operators, the disciplined ones that have been taking care of their customers and avoiding short-sighted mishaps will be fine. This is still a market brokers can grow in, albeit not easy to do so. Fun times!

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Latest episode of The Freight Pod is now live, as we are joined by Scott Pruneau, CEO of ITS Logistics, a $1B revenue multi-faceted logistics organization based in Reno.I enjoyed this conversation start to finish. Scott's 30 year career began on the produce side of the business at C.H. Robinson, where he cut his teeth buying and selling apples. He walks us through the evolution at CH to becoming a freight broker. Moving freight was very different in the pre-cell phone era. One common theme throughout the conversation was the rise of the hybrid transportation provider. It's becoming rare for a company to represent a single solution. You used to either be a trucking company or a freight brokerage. Today, the lines are blurred. Many trucking companies have a brokerage arm. And brokerages have started buying or leasing equipment, be it trailers, or tractors, too. This blurring of lines, or hybrid approach, is driving a greater need for transparency, especially with respect to insurance and legal ramifications. We spend some time breaking down the challenges posed in signing transportation contracts now in this hybrid environment.ITS Logistics is one of the best examples of a hybrid solution, today. With 2,000 trailers of their own, a power-only brokerage solution, 50 trucks for strategic routing, warehousing, drayage/intermodal, and more, Scott walks us through the benefits and challenges of having an integrated organization. He emphasizes the power of culture as a way to align people who may come from different backgrounds. The last thing I'll touch on from the episode is leadership. As someone whose experience was building a business from the ground up, I was very curious to learn how to be an influential leader when you come in to a pre-existing large business that already has a set culture. Scott has experience coming into the C-suite at 4 large businesses. I appreciate how he broke down his approach, and shared numerous valuable lessons on leadership. He even opened up about some of his personal challenges, which made for a compelling conversation on micromanagement, trust, humility, and ego.The episode is filled with great nuggets about our industry and I hope you enjoy it!***Episode brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services.***

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Walking down the street last night and I see a guy wearing a MoLo t-shirt. I said to him, I like your shirt. He replied, thanks. That was it. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me, or that I have the logo on his shirt tattooed on my ass cheek.Guess that’s where we’re at. Such is life.

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I’ve been on my honeymoon the last two weeks, so I’m a bit late to the C.H. Robinson AI party. Here are my thoughts.So Robinson announced they’ve developed an AI tool to respond to email spot quotes without human intervention. Its handling 2,000 emails per day right now. This tool has potential to improve internal efficiencies and the customer experience with faster response times to quotes.One of the first responses I saw to this announcement emphasized how this was another step away from “relationships” and that customers don’t want to be emailing back and forth with a bot. Ultimately, this would be a big loser move on CH’s part and cost them customers.I disagree, wholeheartedly. It’s not that simple. The tech shouldn’t be the reason this is a winner or loser for them; how they use the tech will determine that.For one, the notion that a customer will only be happy if their rep is the one manually sending in the quote is foolish. Imagine you’re a C.H. Rep meeting with a Transportation Manager out on the golf course. They have an urgent spot quote. They send it out. While you get ready to shank your tee shot, “you”, or the AI tool responding on your behalf, sends back a quote in 2 minutes. By the time you take your penalty drop, they’ve awarded you the load.If the following is true, then this process can be a home run:-the rate is competitive enough to be tendered-they can stand behind the rate-they can execute the load to the customer’s expectationsThe big question is how Robinson will behave with the tool. Customers don’t care who sends in the quote; they care what the quote represents. If Robinson can execute the orders they quote with this tool, then it’s a winner for them. That is what matters.This advancement is an extension of dynamic/instant API pricing that has become more popular in recent years, led by the “digital” players. The reality behind that movement though is it has been slow to make meaningful positive impact for customers. Many brokers using this type of tool historically quote higher (than they would manually) to mitigate risk. Over time, I expect that to change but our industry is slow to fall in love with these types of changes.Within a year or two, I imagine every broker will be able to leverage a tool like this, as other vendors will offer it. Robinson has several advantages, as they clearly have the resources to build it themselves and iterate to improve it, and they have more data than any competitor. The data is most important for driving rate accuracy, which is one part of determining if they keep their customers happy. The other piece is execution, and for that, they will have to continue to count on people to get the job done.

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Ever heard the term “basem*nt broker”? Typically has a negative connotation symbolizing a small shop with a lack of resources.Not in the case of James Steger and the origin story of Integrity Express Logistics.Jim’s story begins with military service in the Air Force, where he got his first taste of logistics while working as a maintenance officer on the Global Hawk drone program.He then used up his military savings to open IEL with his uncle, where they first operated out of his basem*nt.That was 2007. Today, IEL is a nearly $1 billion revenue brokerage with 17 offices throughout North America.On this week’s episode of The Freight Pod, Jim joins me to share his journey. I love hearing success stories like this one, built on teamwork, grit, and as you might expect from the name, integrity.We hit on a bunch of relevant topics in today’s environment. We talk TMS, and building versus buying, we talk about the current down cycle and how his teams are navigating it, opening new offices, challenges and opportunities of making acquisitions, and much more. Hope you enjoy!Audio version is available now on all platforms. Video will be on YouTube late this afternoon (traveling last 24 hours and didn’t have stable enough internet to upload the video yet).**Episode brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services.***

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I got a call yesterday from my friend in the picture below, Calvin. He's an owner operator. He's looking for some help, so if you have freight in the Southeast, keep reading.I met Calvin when I was maybe an 18-year-old intern carrier rep at Coyote. We started working together and became fast friends. I probably booked him on 10-15 loads per month, we got to a place where he wanted to run every load with us. He was great to work with, always on time, no BS, honest, and a fun guy to do business with (we spent more time ball busting than we talked about real work). I haven't booked Calvin on a load in over 10 years. He calls me every 6 months just to check in, catch up, and then ask me to help him get some freight. I always try to introduce him to someone, hoping they'll be a match, but nothing has stuck over the years. I think a good broker-carrier relationship is a bit like dating. Not everyone is a match for one another. The personalities have to work together.Yesterday, when he asked me for help, I told him about my situation and that I personally couldn't get him any freight, but I could post his information on LinkedIn. He had no idea what LinkedIn was. I told him there's a chance he gets 2 calls today, there's a chance he gets 50. Hopefully one of them is from someone who has the right freight mix to keep him busy, and willing to do the work to build a relationship with a great driver.Calvin's based in Lake City, FL and he runs a 53 ft reefer. He generally likes to stay in the Southeast (FL, GA, SC, NC, TN, AL), but will occasionally go further into the Northeast if the money makes sense. He has a family so he likes to be home on the weekends (he jokes that I'm his daughter, Summer's, godfather). I used to roundtrip him FL to GA/TN/SC/NC and back pretty often. He's willing to run dry freight as well. His phone number is 407-453-7490.I just want to reiterate that he does a really great job. We've stayed in touch for 15 years despite not doing business together, he's just a good guy and anyone who has the right freight will be lucky to work with him.The pic is from 2018 when he came and met us at Blujay's SOAR conference.

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This week's episode of The Freight Pod features Kendra Tucker, CEO at Truckstop. Similar to freight brokers, load boards can get a "bad rap". Truckstop maybe at a time was just a load board, but today is so much more. We talk about how Truckstop has evolved over the years to play a pivotal role in the freight ecosystem, supporting it's customers in meaningful ways beyond connecting loads to trucks. Through a series of acquisitions, Truckstop has transformed itself to support customers with factoring, carrier identity/validity with RMIS, and overall productivity through FreightFriend. And it wouldn't be a conversation about load boards if we didn't talk about fraud. The Truckstop team weeds out ~10,000 bad actors annually, but a lot of that work is done behind the scenes. Rather than purely focus on the defensive aspect of prevention, Truckstop's foundational focus is building trust throughout it's ecosystem. Kendra's strategic focus with her team has been to emphasize that trust, building it through empathy and relatability to the customer. It was apparent to me throughout the conversation how focused Kendra and her team are on the customer. Many have made the mistake of building useless technology for an industry that is slow and resistant to technological change. It's clear Kendra's sales background shines through in her intentionality with putting the customer at the forefront of decisions in this evolving technology company. Hope you all enjoy this week's episode, now available on all streaming platforms as well as video on demand on Youtube. Don't forget to follow The Freight Pod, like, subscribe, and review the show please.**Episode brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services.***

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Felipe Capella joins The Freight Pod this week for what was one of my favorite conversations thus far. Per Felipe, Loadsmart was the first company in the industry to create instant API pricing for spot freight. We spend a half hour talking about the development of that tool, challenges of being first to market with it, and how it's usage has evolved. Felipe believes that in the next few years, most Fortune 100 shippers will only leverage API instant pricing for their spot freight. This, along with other technological solutions, may lead to further consolidation in the industry, or simply stronger barriers to entry for new players. Loadsmart is a company that many bucketed in the "digital broker" camp, which comes with supporters and naysayers. What I enjoyed most about this conversation was the depth and detail Felipe provided, which helped me understand how their company can't be simply seen as a "digital broker". Felipe shares how the company has pivoted in the last few years, enhancing it's service offerings with the acquisition of Opendock, a scheduling platform, and the development of both it's managed transportation solution and ShipperGuide TMS for small and mid-sized shippers. I appreciate how Felipe recognized some of the early mistakes their team made, and the intentional pivot to transform their business to better support potential customers.For someone I had only briefly met before, this was a really fun and easy conversation to have that I think most in our industry will appreciate.Give it a listen, it's available on all streaming platforms, or you can watch it in full on Youtube. **Episode brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services.***

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After a year of getting beat on the golf course by Matt Vogrich, we decided it was time to get back to work.We've both joined the Mastery Logistics Systems team.This is an opportunity for us to get back into building something with great people. The current list of Mastery partners is such a strong foundation, we're excited to work with these folks to help them manage their business better. With our experience purely in brokerage, we now get an opportunity to learn from some of the best brands in the industry, including large asset players, private fleets, shippers and other brokers.We'll be spending the next few months meeting with willing participants to learn about their businesses and see how we can help. It's good to be back in the industry that we know and love.

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