Martinez emphasized a collaborative approach to regulation and said that removing non-preventable accidents from CSA scorecards is next on the agency’s agenda.

Panelists discussed current market data and how the TCA educates its members to operationalize data in their businesses.

The audience brought up ‘the trolley problem’ and the productivity gains of Level 4 autonomous trucks.

High-growth business models make sourcing talent even more difficult for freight brokerages.

The seller was Swedish private equity group EQT Partners, which may be trying to clean up its balance sheet ahead of an IPO.

Valuations will stay high and capital is readily accessible, bringing both sellers and buyers to market.

KoBold Metals’ algos analyze geological data to find untapped sources of cobalt ore.

If UPS sticks to its capex and buyback plans—which exceed projections for free cash flow—the parcel carrier may have to issue more debt.

We checked in with executives from Edge Logistics, Avenger Logistics, and Convoy to see how brokers are handling YOY volume growth.

Trucking-as-a-service is poised to break out into 5x growth over the next five years, says Frost & Sullivan.

Transportation-as-a-service will have a huge 2019, and Lyft is kicking it off.

CHRW fills out geographical white space and adds density to its Transatlantic forwarding business after turning the corner on the Milgram & Co. integration.

In partnership with Slync… Markdowns cost retailers $300 billion a year, and inventory mismanagement is largely to blame.

A healthy month-end volume uptick hasn’t tightened capacity, allowing brokers to stay in their happy place.

Crawford’s mission is to secure large enterprise customers, grow the company aggressively, and prepare for the next stage in the venture capital cycle.

Small brokerages are confident they can grow quickly in a softening freight environment and trend-line GDP growth.

North America On-Highway and Defense softened sequentially, and management thinks the company will make much less money in 2019.

The SEC says that Elon Musk violated his settlement agreement by issuing material, forward-looking statements about Tesla without having them pre-approved by an internal process.

Expeditors should do well in a softening ocean freight market and a Panalpina deal wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

Inside YRC’s fight with IPS Worldwide.

In partnership with Slync… sustainable supply chain initiatives depend on shared data, realtime collaboration, and advanced analytics.

Digital upstarts have scored a lot of downloads, but their apps still aren’t as sticky as the incumbents.

The boundary between spot and contract pricing is always shifting, especially when freight markets are volatile.

The audience in Atlanta was one of the most engaged and informed to date.

The largest Canadian freight brokerage purchased a 3PL concentrated in the Southeastern United States.

project44’s Jett McCandless, KeepTruckin’s Ori Franco, Transfix’s Drew McElroy, and Freightos’ Philip von Mecklenburg-Blumenthal were all panelists.

ODFL spends money on aggressive capex building out its network of service centers and maintaining a low tractor-to-trailer ratio, as well as, increasingly, share buybacks.

The Houston-based startup is run by executives with decades of experience in global logistics, and plans to tackle the oil and gas vertical first.

Convoy CEO Dan Lewis said that digital brokerage margins would expand until most participants adopted low-cost structure, then start compressing.

Private equity has become the major player in financing the growth of transportation and logistics companies, and venture capital inflows have also accelerated dramatically.

Stifel’s head of equity strategy thinks the stock market will be weak for the next decade and that the federal government will default on debt unless it can force access into Chinese markets.

Pronto built a high-performing Level 2 solution for commercial vehicles with dynamic throttling, braking, and steering.

Bergevin, Cristol, and Stauffer want to attack fundamental problems affecting the whole supply chain beyond truckload arbitrage.

USX shifted its fleet away from over-the-road toward dedicated and lowered its adjusted operating ratio to 92.5%.

Today’s selloff on soft revenue growth guidance went too far, according to Stifel’s Bruce Chan and Susquehanna’s Bascome Majors.

ECHO pivoted away from the spot market and also leaned into LTL.

FreightWaves, DAT, Nodal Exchange, and K-Ratio pitched trucking freight futures to a diverse group of financial institutions and media and tech companies on Wall Street on Wednesday.

Access to data has improved market transparency, and recent spikes in volatility make the case that transportation costs must be hedged and de-risked.

The macroeconomy is slowing down to trend-line growth, but drivers of freight movement look worse.

After a day of choppy trading, a consensus seemed to emerge that CHRW was well-positioned to grow net revenues even in a re-balancing freight market.

CHRW grew earnings per share by 24%, top line revenue by 4.5%; and net revenues by 13%.

In partnership with Arrive… high-tech freight brokerages are necessary links in the supply chain, but the key to their growth is how they select and coach their people.

Investors may be starting to come around to the idea that truckload carriers have another year of strong margins ahead of them.

Profitability will lag in high growth markets like Brazil and India, but aftersales services in NAFTA and the EU will drive profitability growth.

CEO Frank McGuigan and CTO Jim French discussed customer-oriented technology, trends in digital brokerage, M&A, and the future of managed transportation.

Spot-heavy 3PLs are looking for freight while brokers with good contract relationships are getting rewarded.

Lower WTI prices mean slower pipeline construction and more pressure on crude-by-truck.

Missing USDA data on wheat stockpiles has traders reacting cautiously.

The combined brokerage expects to do $200 million in revenue this year.

Capacity is as loose as ever, but some freight brokerages told us they don’t trust the market to stay cool.

$2 billion in capex over the next ten years will nearly double Savannah’s container traffic to 8 million TEUs annually.

In partnership with Slync… There are numerous reasons to be worried about the health of global trade and the goods economy, even though, in our view, a full-on macro-economic recession in the United States is still unlikely.

Chicago to Atlanta is holding up around $2/mile net of fuel, while lanes like Los Angeles to Dallas have crashed 40% off their November high.

Shippers aren’t shy about moving contract rates down in RFP negotiations, and even brokers are surprised at how cheap capacity has become.

Eric Kirchner, the former CEO of UTi Worldwide, will offer strategic advice as GlobalTranz expands into new geographies and types of transactions.

Asset-based carriers think contract rates are going up; brokers think they’re going down.

The U.S. – China trade war continues to disrupt freight movements into the new year.

The mobility and freight business community of Chattanooga is starting to think strategically about growing the industry.

Spot flatbed lanes in the oil field are more volatile and priced at a premium to national averages. They’re closely correlated to fracking activity in the Permian Basin, which is why we keep a close eye on oil prices and production.

TAC Index Managing Director Peyton Burnett demonstrates his platform, explains how the data is processed, and outlines the potential for the derivatives market based on reliable air cargo price discovery.

We spoke to brokers from Avenger, Axle, LYNC, Redwood, MoLo, and K & L about their hopes and fears for January freight.

Morgan Stanley likes asset-based carriers while Stifel is bullish on 3PLs, and the banks don’t agree on what the business risks to C.H. Robinson are.

SUKU wants to decentralize the supply chain and make it run more efficiently and cheaply through its blockchain-based, open-source platform.

Slync’s next generation supply chain management platform sits on top of legacy systems, pulling siloed data together, analyzing it, and initiating AI-powered workflows, and notifying human operators when they’re needed.

In partnership with Slync… improving on-time rates and a continually evolving reverse logistics season have increased the pressure on supply chain partners to manage exceptions collaboratively and proactively.

Forager is building a digital freight marketplace to automate elements of cross-border logistics.

Aterian Investment Partners Principal Michael Fieldstone said that his firm supported XGS CEO Darrel Harris and his management team and would provide capital to complete improvements to the business.

Andrew Silver, CEO of MoLo Solutions, looked back at 2018 and talked about the challenges and joys of running a high-growth brokerage, December freight markets, and and MoLo’s plan for 2019.

The rapidly growing connected sensor and software company doubled its valuation and positioned for future progress ahead of what could be 2019’s “winter for venture capital.”

The regulatory body granted Stoneridge a five year exemption to install its MirrorEye camera monitoring system on trucks in lieu of two rear-view mirrors.

The beleaguered carpet hauler was over-leveraged and running out of cash.

We spoke to GlobalTranz’s outgoing CEO Bob Farrell and new CEO Renee Krug about the transition in leadership and the marketplace for mergers and acquisitions in the 3PL space going forward into 2019.

We spoke to executives at Arrive Logistics and LYNC Logistics about the challenges in covering their customers’ exceptions and service failures in the lead-up to Christmas.

Crude oil crashes; FedEx slashes profit forecasts; Musk unveils Boring Company’s first tunnel; container and petroleum exporters fight at Port of Houston; Fed expected to make a ‘dovish hike’ today.

Keynotes will include Gary Vaynerchuk, David Rowan, Andrew Clarke, Shelley Simpson, and Brad Jacobs.

We spoke to executives from Trident, Avenger, Redwood, and Echo about the challenges and opportunities of the Memphis freight market, long dominated by asset-based carriers.

If driver wages are eliminated, total cost of ownership will fall. But capacity will saturate the market and rates will crash. In the end, trucking will still be a capital-intensive and low-margin industry.

In partnership with Slync… Slync CEO Chris Kirchner was in Tokyo this week to meet press, speak with startups and participate in customer discussions at the SAP.iO Foundry—Tokyo ecosystem engagement event.

Executives from Axle Logistics, Network Transport, Transfix, and Convoy weigh in on peak season 2018: higher volumes and less volatility than 2017 means that most brokers are sitting pretty.

In partnership with Blume Global… In our view, increased digitization can make drayage markets more transparent and improve asset utilization, making carrier offerings more attractive on both a cost and service basis.

Cowen expects softening trucking prices in 2019 to be a headwind for truckload carrier earnings, but should widen gross margins for freight brokerages.

We talked to freight brokers at LYNC Logistics, Arrive Logistics, and MoLo Solutions about whether recent softness in flatbed demand signaled a return to normal seasonality, and where unexpected opportunities might be hiding.

Brokers at Arrive, Trident, and Avenger told us that capacity is flowing into Southeast markets, pushing down rates in that region, while the PNW and Midwest have tightened up significantly.

Dry bulk carriers outperformed the S&P 500 by a significant margin today, with Star Bulk Carriers, the largest publicly traded fleet in the segment, gaining 5.1% on the day.

We spoke to Uber Freight Product Manager Stefan Sohlstrom and Convoy’s Chief Product Officer, Ziad Ismail, about last week’s releases and what increased transparency means for the brokerage industry.

A severe earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale struck southern Alaska on Friday morning at 8:29 AM AST, disrupting transportation and energy infrastructure.

Investment bank Stifel Nicolaus (NYSE: SF) thinks that publicly-traded truckload stocks are now an attractive buy, with higher earnings available at reasonable valuations. That’s just one takeaway from a raft of research released this week by Stifel and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) as the banks look forward to what next year holds for transportation. 

The November Market Update, presented in partnership with Convoy, featured FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller and Chief Economist Ibrahiim Bayaan, who discussed macroeconomic data and trends in freight markets.

On Tuesday afternoon, Arrive Logistics popped champagne as the freight brokerage officially opened its downtown Chattanooga office on Market Street. We spoke to Arrive executives about the company’s culture, growth story, and plans for Chattanooga.

We interview project44’s new CFO, CTO and CMO as the visibility solution provider, fresh off a capital raise, prepares to scale rapidly.

This morning Fleet Complete, a global leader in connected vehicle technology and software, announced that it had been acquired by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, a large fund with $193.9B in assets.

At MarketWaves18, FreightWaves announced the Freight.Tech 25, the industry’s list of the most innovative and disruptive companies in transportation and logistics: Uber Freight took the sixth position.

The second FreightWaves book, Freight Revolution: the supply chain will never be the same, sponsored by Uber Freight, is now available for download.

Just three years after its founding in Seattle by two former Amazon executives, the leading digital freight brokerage Convoy reached a unicorn valuation and took the #4 spot in the Freight.Tech 25.

The Panama spread (FBX.PANA) widened last night when Freightos released new container rates for this week: rates from China to the American East Coast (FBX.CNAE) climbed to $3,683, while rates to the West Coast (FBX.CNAW) fell slightly to $2,527.

Executives from MoLo, Steam, and Arrive gave insight into the complexity of West Coast freight market volatility, which goes beyond tariffs, and talked about how brokerages and shippers are responding.

On Wednesday at the Texan Gaylord Resort and Convention Center, following MarketWaves18, members of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) met to receive updates on the organization’s progress toward data standards, hear announcements, share feedback, and learn about the work being done by BiTA’s think thanks.

This morning at MarketWaves18 in Grapevine, Texas, FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller announced that freight futures will begin trading on March 29, 2018.

In the last round of live technology demonstrations at MarketWaves 18, companies showed off products that automated document imaging and processing, matching loads to trucks, financing the supply chain, and creating price discovery for air cargo.

The first round of nine live technologies demonstrations at MarketWaves included blockchain-based logistics platforms, software that integrated directly into devices onboard a truck, and artificial intelligence solutions that automate repetitive manual tasks.