Freightvine

This week’s guest is Rob Kelly SVP of Business Development for Forum Mobility. Forum Mobility provides accessible zero-emission trucking solutions for drayage in California. Their services range from building and operating charging infrastructure to offering class 8 zero-emission electric trucks. They are currently developing a network of charging depots around the Oakland and Los Angeles/Long Beach ports, and along common trucking routes to warehouse destinations. Rob joined Forum Mobility about 2 years ago and he has a long career in the clean energy space - including 10 years with SolarCity and then Tesla when they acquired it in 2016.  In our conversation, we discuss the current regulatory situation in California, the challenges and opportunities to electrifying truck fleets, and what the industry might look like 5 - 10 years in the future. This is an important discussion for anyone who has freight coming in from California ports - which is pretty much everyone!  What is happening in California usually finds its way to other states and sometimes federally - so it is important to keep your eyes on it. 

This week’s guest is Dr. Erez Agmoni, Global Head of Innovation at Maersk. Erez has been in the global freight industry for over 30 years and at Maersk for over a decade. In the newly created role of Global Head of Innovation he is charged with changing the status quo rather than providing incremental improvements to the movement of freight. In our conversation, we discuss the challenges associated with introducing change, the need for pilots and proofs of concept in real situations, why having a team with a diversity of experience and cultures matters, and a dozen topics in between. 

This week’s guests are my two DAT iQ colleagues: Ken Adamo, Chief of Analytics, and Dean Croke, Principal Analyst. This is our annual end-of-the-year podcast where we revisit our predictions from last year, discuss the major issues of the current year, and take our best guesses as to what will happen next year. Our conversation ranged widely - from changes in ocean shipping patterns to the challenge of EVs and ETs and the ability (or lack thereof) of the US electrical grid to meet this rising demand to the roller coaster ride of fuel prices.

This week’s guest is Bill Driegert, EVP and head of North America for Flexport. Bill has over 20 years in the industry with key roles at Coyote Logistics, Amazon, UberFreight, and now Flexport. With the recent acquisition of Convoy’s technology stack, Bill is back in the familiar position of starting up brokerage operations from scratch - something he did at UberFreight and before that at Convoy. We talk about how technology has changed the way brokers operate, the opportunities for Flexport with the acquisition of the Convoy tech, and how he sees the market evolving in 2024. 

This week’s guests are John Stauffer and Brian Cristol, co-founders of Isometric Technologies. ISO is a performance management solution that centralizes service data between business partners and connects costs from chargebacks and service-level failures to the responsible parties. Anyone in the industry knows how hard it is to reconcile the root cause of service failures, that is the problem that Iso addresses. John and Brian have extensive experience in the industry and were both at Uber for several years as well as at Turvo before starting up Isometric. We had a great conversation about the challenges of working with data from multiple sources, harmonizing the definition of what ‘on-time’ means, as well as the industry as a whole.    

This week’s guest is Dr. Zac Rogers, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at Colorado State University.  In addition to his academic duties at CSU, Zac also co-developed and currently leads the publishing of the Logistics Manager Index or LMI.  Fashioned in the same way as the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) which has been around for over 50 years, the LMI is a diffusion metric that captures whether an activity is expanding or contracting. The LMI captures the monthly change in inventory levels and costs as well as the capacity, utilization, and pricing changes for both warehousing and transportation.  In the discussion, Zac talks about the recently published October 2023 numbers that indicate an expansion of the logistics market as well as the market impact of the Yellow and Convoy bankruptcies and the recently resolved UAW strikes.

This week’s guest is  Jim Filter, EVP, Group President Transportation & Logistics. The conversation centers on Schneider’s adoption of electric vehicles within their California drayage operations. This is a highly relevant topic for all shippers and carriers as we see the electrification of transportation - both freight and passenger - continue to be promoted and subsidized by the government at the local, state, and federal levels. 

This week’s guest is Dean Croke, Principal Analyst and all-around trucking expert here at DAT Freight & Analytics. Dean has over 20 years of experience in the long-haul trucking industry - from (and still) being a driver to insurance to software and analytics.  In this episode, Dean discusses the state of the TL market - specifically the capacity side - to include the current level of spot rates and their relationship to carrier breakeven costs, the importance of tracking the spot market even though it is much smaller than the contract side, and highlights from the most recent DATCON event. 

This week’s guest is Steve Raetz, Dir. Research and Market Intelligence at CH Robinson. Steve is a perfect person to discuss strategic use of the spot market as he not only brings 30+ years of experience in a variety of roles at CHR, but he currently leads CHR’s research efforts working with universities and others. The topic of spot as a strategy has been a research focus for the last few years and is gaining acceptance in the market.

This week’s guest is Kelly Abney, Chief Logistics Officer and EVP for the United States Postal Service. Kelly has over 30 years of experience in retail and third-party logistics prior to joining the USPS. He previously held senior roles in transportation at Walmart, New Breed Logistics, XPO Logistics, and most recently, the US Postal Service. During the conversation, Kelly shares how the postal service is being transformed based on the Delivering for America plan that the USPS adopted in 2021. There are a lot of lessons to be learned for any supply chain professional.