FreightWaves Radio launched its second national show on Saturday, March 2 on SiriusXM’s Road Dog Channel 146. Unlike other industry-specific radio shows that often have particular messaging or lobbying aims, FreightWaves Radio is an independent, data-driven look at what’s really going on in the freight world, and the first episode proved just that. Hosts Chad Prevost and John Kingston kicked things off from both the SiriusXM studios in Rockefeller Center in downtown Manhattan, and from Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Freight Alley studio.
They led off with David Hall, partner of the Steve Case Group and the Rise of the Rest venture capital group.
Quotable from David Hall:
“One of the things about venture capitalists is that we are consumers as much as we are investors, and we are all accustomed to the experience of clicking the button and two days later that package showing up at our front door. And I think understanding as investors–double-clicking on that–looking at all the hops goods and services have to make to be delivered to our front door in a way that makes sense. You’ve got to start looking at that ecosystem, the supply chain, the logistics chain of how those packages get from, say, the crate at the Port of Los Angeles to my front door here in Washington, D.C. And there’s some really interesting new technologies that are coming along to take advantage of that. The second big thing is that we are just a major confluence of major trends. First, you’re just seeing this powerful consumer demand for goods just to fall on people’s doorsteps. You’re also seeing a lot of pressure on some of the traditional methods. These new emergent technologies like autonomous transportation, and some of these onboard devices that are transforming the industry to being data driven. You see all of these factors and all of these companies try to come in and work with the existing incumbents in the space and drive for new optimization around logistics, around efficiencies, around costs, around service levels, that I think are going to be really interesting.”
Quotable from Zach Strickland:
“You sometimes hear the comparison of how the market is like a balloon, and if you pump enough into it the more likely it is to explode or burst. That’s true to an extent, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that volume is a one-to-one relationship with capacity in the market. We are looking at some of those very discrepancies in the market right now.”
Quotable from Chris Visser:
“The used truck market saw the same demand that the new truck market saw. The market is simply absorbing all the used trucks.”
Quotable from Andy Alden:
“The I-81 plan is pretty much dead. Something is possible, but it is unlikely. The plan itself was ‘What do they need to do’ and the other part was ‘What do they do to make improvements.’ I thought a lot of the proposals for what they said they needed to do made a lot of sense. The problems really came in in how they were going to pay for it. It was either taxation or tolls, and neither of those went forward.”
Quotable from John Paul Hampstead:
“Elon Musk is doing a lot of cool stuff. It’s amazing. I think he said he wanted to die on Mars, and not of old age.”
“The thing about Tesla is they usually miss production targets, but the specs of their production are usually on point. There is skepticism that the Semi will have the range and the payload that Tesla says it will, but there certainly have been a lot of orders, and they’re doing some prototyping. Still, the truck isn’t promised to be delivered until 2020, and because of some adjustments the company has made, I think it will be hard for them to reach their target.”
The FreightWaves Radio show will keep on coming live to you each and every week from 3:00-5:00 p.m. EST on SiriusXM’s Road Dog Channel 146. If you can’t tune in then, the show is also replayed on Saturday from 9:00-11:00 p.m. and then again on Sunday from 7:00-9:00 p.m. Also, the show is available for two weeks via SiriusXM’s on-demand feature. Join the discussion on all things freight and see how so much connects to transport and the movement of goods.