This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ 3PL Summit on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: How maintaining broker/carrier relationships is essential in a down market
DETAILS: Anne Reinke, the president and CEO of the Transportation Intermediaries Association, talks about the natural tension between brokers and carriers and how it can be overcome.
KEY QUOTES FROM ANNE REINKE:
“There’s always a level of distrust. So how you combat that in a down market is particularly interesting because brokers are suffering and carriers are suffering.”
“I think that there are those in the owner-operator space who are willing to talk and want to have a conversation about it, and then there are those who are just committed to the distrust. Right now, gross margins for brokers are about 12% to 14%, and many brokerages that I know of are much less than that. And yet you have people who don’t believe it. That’s a tough place to be.”
“Some brokers are concerned about the carrier’s bottom line. They are concerned about giving them regular business, that they trust each other and that they work well together. So it’s incredibly valuable for a broker to have those kinds of relationships.”
Discussing combating fraud: “The last piece of this is sort of the hardest, which is the enforcement piece of getting state and federal actors really to start prosecuting.”