This fireside chat recap is from Day 1 of FreightWaves’ The Future of Supply Chain live event being held in Rogers, Arkansas. For more information and content from the event, click here.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Data, brokers and freight transparency.
DETAILS: FreightWaves founder and CEO Craig Fuller welcomed Brent Hutto of Truckstop.com on the stage to discuss how the freight brokerage model has changed over the years, why participants are clamoring for data, and how companies like FreightWaves and Truckstop.com are helping collect, analyze and disseminate that data.
SPEAKER: Hutto is the chief relationship officer for Truckstop.com.
BIO: Hutto joined Truckstop.com nine years ago and currently serves as chief relationship officer, which includes ensuring the health of all of Truckstop.com’s external relationships with hundreds of transportation technology companies. In 23 years in the transportation and logistics industry, Hutto has held leadership positions in sales, marketing and communications.
KEY QUOTES FROM HUTTO
“You have to be able to take [brokerage] data and bank it against the market data and benchmark against how the marketplace is performing. You need multiple data sources because the better data, the better evaluation you can do. We do believe that aspect of the business is going to increase as well.”
“As I’ve learned over these last couple of years, especially during COVID, these marketplaces are all coming together – whether it is contract freight; whether it is spot market freight; whether it is dedicated freight. They are all connected together. Shipping. Rail. As I’ve heard more and more from customers, they’re just desperate for more and more knowledge on how the marketplace is going to react, and you can’t do it without great data.”
“Most owner-operators love trucking. They got into trucking because they love to drive a truck and they don’t necessarily look at their business structure and their data … and I mean simple data, like are you searching the right lane? Are you having prescriptive routes where you are banking loads together and using a system that you trust and data that you trust to do that [to] build profitable lanes that way? To me, that is the most important thing because most owner-operators just want to go wherever they want to go, and that is what makes this a little like the Wild West in the spot market. But if you look at the actual data you have in front of you, on our platform or other platforms, you can actually book out a route that is the most profitable for you and watch the data inside of it.”
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