This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ Enterprise Fleet Summit on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Emerging tech in fleet management
DETAILS: Marc El Khoury, co-founder and CEO of aifleet, a tech-driven trucking company with about 200 employee drivers, and FreightWaves’ Brielle Jaekel discuss the so-called driver shortage and ways El Khoury’s company uses proprietary AI technology to increase driver utilization.
KEY QUOTES FROM EL KHOURY:
On retaining drivers: “The purpose of the company is to optimize our assets, optimize our drivers, create a good livelihood for our drivers and automate as much as possible for our operations so we can serve our customers in the most efficient way possible.”
On the so-called driver shortage: “The question of is there a driver shortage or not, large fleets are hiring tens of thousands of drivers a year, and the fact that they are left with about 5,000 drivers, etc., is not really a driver shortage problem, it’s a retention problem.”
On predictions about the trucking industry over the next few years: “I think we all have hope in the industry that supply and demand has to balance itself a little bit so that at least you start seeing some sort of recovery, or trucking companies are able to recoup at least their costs, so that are able to continue to survive and hopefully thrive. I think the more general prediction moving forward is we’re probably at this inflection point in trucking where technology can finally have an impact. I think there’s just been a lot of investment in the industry overall.”
