Why now is a good time to start a freight brokerage

Andrew Lockwood - Senior Director, Managed Logistics, Suddath Global Logistics - Orlando, FL

This may fly in the face of some of the conventional news stories we've seen out there where capacity needs to fall back down to meet demand, but if you take the market sentiment "buy low, sell high", now actually maybe a really good time to start your own freight brokerage business as the startup buy-in is relatively low (< $10k). What's interesting is that the growth rate for brokerage businesses is less than trucking businesses (2.4% vs. 4.5%) and once you have your licenses, software, etc. setup, your as profitable as you customer service/hustle dictates.

I think we'll see the freight world shift more to private load boards and "trusted networks" in the future - which are very dependent upon relationships and connections. My theory is - you start now and establish your business in a supposed 'down market', then you have incredible upside as the overall economy gets better.

We can also hit on the trucking business side of it - which I'm definitely not as high on. Until equipment prices come down, there's a huge deterrent to people getting into business there...but I think for most folks driving a truck feels a lot more doable than brokering 5+ loads a day to earn a living. There's certainly pros/cons and upside in both a pure brokerage business vs. trucking business which we could dive into as well.

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