SUPPLY CHAIN SPOTLIGHT TOPIC: What will the ‘new normal’ look like for 3PLs?
DETAILS: The past 12 to 15 months turned the freight transportation and logistics world upside down as stakeholders grappled with the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the supply chain. How did 3PLs adapt and what lessons will the industry take into the future?
SPEAKER: Geoff Kelley, president, Nolan Transportation Group
BIO: As president of Nolan Transportation Group (NTG), one of the largest and fastest-growing non-asset truckload freight brokerages and providers of third-party logistics services in North America, Kelley manages all aspects of the business, from setting the strategy to ensuring its execution. He previously served as chief operating officer of Coyote Logistics, a subsidiary of UPS. He also held various leadership positions at UPS, including roles in global freight forwarding, M&A and treasury.
KEY QUOTES FROM KELLEY
“How do we want to enable our internal people to do their jobs better, leveraging the technology so that they’re efficient and quick, and leveraging the data to help them make better decisions? But ultimately, all that speed and intelligence has to better serve our shippers and carriers, taking the technology from the perspective of what does this technology do to make stickiness and efficiency for our shippers?”
“We want to make sure our tech also has a people influence. We want to make sure that … a pricing algorithm, where people are monitoring [the algorithm] through operational processes to make sure our intelligence [is] leveraging that data, is keeping up with how the market is going. And also thinking longer term, whether you’re trying to cover a load for the day or for the next week, that you’re thinking about that intelligently. So, harmonizing the intelligence of the people operating as well as the intelligence of the system but not relying on one versus the other necessarily. I think that collaborative approach between tech and people is critical.”
“We want to build a network, from a carrier perspective, that we can present to our shippers to better match trucks with their freight. And in reverse, we want to make sure we can build a network of freight that we can present to our carriers and better match that freight with their trucks to keep them running full all the time.”