FreightCasts Weekly Recap: (9/28-10/4)

WHAT THE TRUCK?!?

• Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy on going public
  • Dooner and The Dude talk to Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy about his company officially hitting the stock exchange, and we look into carrier finances, enter the world of trucking game streamers, and find out how one donkey has captured the hearts and minds of trucking Twitter.
  • Plus, Bad News/Good News concerning Nikola and Uber Freight.
  • This episode features Healy; Scott Burglechner, SVP Product Management, U.S. Bank; Attack Dog Gaming; Randy Hudson, The Freight Broker Coach; and Nate and Earl.
• Trucking’s next billionaire
  • Dooner and The Dude are talking all about Hyliion going public and making Thomas Healy America’s youngest billionaire, digital freight brokers vs. traditional freight brokers, EVs vs. oil/gas, fighting back against idle time in trucking, driver safety risks, and bears loose in Chattanooga.
  • Plus, news on the CMA CGM cyberattack; FreightWaves’ next virtual event, The Future of Logistics Real Estate; and a huge day for women in the NFL.
  • This episode features Eric Masotti, vice president of logistics, Trailer Bridge; Brendan Dawson, founder and CEO, AccidentPlan; Collin McLelland, co-founder, Digital Wildcatters; Niko Brown, regional sales manager, SkyBitz; and Emily Szink, EVP of content, FreightWaves.

Midday Market Update

• Markets becoming increasingly unbalanced
  • Kevin Hill and Michael Vincent talk about the SONAR-powered data, issues and news that move you.
  • This episode features Kevin Williamson, CEO, RJW Logistics; Eric Kulisch, air cargo editor, FreightWaves; and FreightWaves Market Wxperts Anthony Smith, Zach Strickland and Andrew Cox.

Put That Coffee Down

• Converting content marketing leads into sales
  • Kevin Hill is joined by guest co-host Joe Lynch, founder of The Logistics of Logistics, and special guest Adam Robinson, VP of marketing for SONAR.
  • It’s all about converting content marketing leads into real sales. All of the hard work, time and effort it takes to create content marketing has to turn into sales at the end of the day. We’ll talk about how the sales process is different for inbound and outbound leads.
  • It’s all about the trust level.

Freightonomics

• Many mini-bids
  • Zach and Anthony discuss the mini-bid trend and the economic uncertainty going into 2021. Presented by Amazon Freight.

Fuller Speed Ahead

• Pandemic solidifies need for contactless driver check-in
  • In-person check-ins are not only time-consuming but also a risk to health as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect supply chains.
• Digital Wildcatters pounces on multimedia, highlighting petroleum-tech innovations
  • Digital Wildcatters co-founder Collin McLelland explains why it’s smarter for clean-tech to bring about petrochemical efficiencies instead of focusing on the elimination of fossil fuels altogether.

Drilling Deep

• Buying and selling logistics companies in a pandemic and a great freight market
  • With a freight market this good, why would anybody want to sell a logistics business?
  • But there are people who do and people or companies that want to buy. On this week’s Drilling Deep, Peter Stefanovich of Left Lane Associates talks to host John Kingston about how strong the market for properties is these days and whether the pandemic has made any changes in what’s getting moved.
  • Also on this week’s show, diesel prices had a weak September and host Kingston will talk about why.

On The Spot

• Uber Freight raises $500M from Greenbriar Equity Group
  • JP Hampstead and Michael Vincent talk about what’s been happening with freight volumes and rates over the past week.

FreightWaves LIVE

• A transportation outlook: 2020 and beyond – The Future of Logistics Real Estate
  • Changes in technology, labor regulations and emissions, as well as a potential driver shortage and rising insurance costs, are just some of the challenges facing the surface transportation industry, according to Dave Belter, vice president and general manager of transportation management with Ryder System. Belter told FreightWaves Chief Strategy Officer JT Engstrom during a virtual fireside chat at The Future of Logistics Real Estate summit that there are “a lot of uncertainties and a lot of changes in the industry as a whole” for carriers trying to serve their customers and grow their businesses. 
• Prologis executive takes virtual reality approach to logistics training – Future of Logistics Real Estate
  • As e-commerce sales are projected to hit $709.78 billion in the U.S. in 2020, logistics companies are turning to the virtual world to hire, onboard and train employees. Prologis Inc., the world’s largest developer, owner and operator of logistics warehouses, is partnering with tech startup Strivr, which has developed a virtual reality-based platform, to provide hands-on learning and realistic decision-making practice to help workers maximize efficiency and reduce safety incidents. Steven Hussain, director of community workforce programs for Prologis, and Derek Belch, founder and CEO of Strivr, discussed using virtual learning to train the industrial workforce of tomorrow during FreightWaves’ virtual Future of Logistics Real Estate Summit.
• Boosting efficiency on both sides of the warehouse door – The Future of Logistics Real Estate
  • Robotics startups Third Wave Automation and Outrider are taking on forklifts and yard trucks in a way that is advancing automation and zero-emission technology on both sides of the warehouse wall. Participating in a fireside chat during FreightWaves’ Future of Logistics Real Estate Summit on Tuesday, Third Wave Automation CEO and co-founder Arshan Poursohi and Outrider founder and CEO Andrew Smith spoke of their common goal of automating freight and cargo movement inside and outside the warehouse without ignoring the importance of human interaction.
• Emerging trends in warehouse automation – The Future of Logistics Real Estate
  • Had Amazon not purchased Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012 and stopped selling its robots, Locus Robotics might not have become a spinoff of 3PL Quiet Logistics. “The management team at the time had a choice of whether to not use robots, buy a robot or build their own,” Locus Robotics CEO Rick Faulk said during a fireside chat with Tony Palchek, managing director of Zebra Technologies, during the FreightWaves Future of Logistics Real Estate Summit. “I think they made a really smart decision.”
• Working with robots – The Future of Logistics Real Estate
  • Dooner and The Dude talk with Matthew Cherewka, director of business development at Vecna Robotics.
• Keynote: A look forward warehousing and supply chains in 2021 and beyond – The Future of Logistics Real Estate
  • The logistics warehouse of the future will be heavily automated, purpose-built for e-commerce and ready for tenants to “plug in” and go live almost immediately, a top executive for distribution giant Ingram Micro said Tuesday. Keynoting FreightWaves’ daylong webinar on the future of logistics warehousing, Ken Beyer, executive vice president and president of commerce and life cycle services for the Irvine, California-based company, said developers must focus on building design and construction to fully support the e-commerce requirements of small to midsize businesses that will enter the segment in droves in the years ahead. Speaking with Prologis Inc. COO Gary Anderson, Beyer said developers would be well-served to follow the “data-center” model in which businesses outsource their information management needs to companies with massive data centers and have their data reside in the cloud for easy, secure access. Gone — or fast going — are the days when companies kept servers in large data rooms and maintained them at huge financial and manpower costs, he said.
• COVID-19’s opportunity for global supply chains – Global Trade Tech 2020
  • Roughly a decade ago, in anticipation of changes in the supply chain and logistics sector, investment firm Saybrook Management started buying companies in that space — not so much because they were great opportunities, which they were, but because the firm wanted to understand how the various pieces of the supply chain worked. Then came COVID-19. “There’s nothing that compares to this from a logistics perspective,” Saybrook CEO Jonathan Rosenthal told FreightWaves technology reporter Vishnu Rajamanickam during a fireside chat Thursday at American Shipper’s Global Trade Tech summit.
• How automation can transform the logistics of shipping perishable goods – Global Trade Tech 2020
  • Transship founder and CEO Amit Hasak’s vision for the future of transporting perishable goods across the world involves fewer phone calls and emails and a lot more automation. The result: potentially knowing that a malfunctioning reefer unit spoiled that shipment of frozen pork long before someone opens that container at a Chinese port. “We provide that information in real time,” Hasak said during a virtual fireside chat at American Shipper’s Global Trade Tech summit on Thursday. He spoke with Brian Laung Aoaeh, a co-founder of REFASHIOND Ventures, a New York-based venture capital fund.
• COVID will have lasting effects on employment litigation – Global Trade Tech 2020
  • Labor and employment attorney Gerald Maatman Jr. is tasked with advising clients on avoiding potential legal pitfalls that may arise in the workplace because of the coronavirus.However, he admits that nothing in his 40-plus years specializing in labor law has prepared him for the challenges employers face because of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 6 million people in the U.S. and killed more than 196,000 people since January.“I thought I had seen everything and then COVID-19 occurred,” said Maatman, senior partner of Chicago-based Seyfarth Shaw LLP, on Thursday at the virtual American Shipper Global Trade Tech summit to FreightWaves; John Kingston. “I’ve worked harder and longer hours to assist employers with all of the challenges and the changing playing field that they find themselves on today. It’s been extraordinary times.”

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