Dooner and The Dude check in with a truckers philanthropy, talk market strategy and more on this live episode of WTT?!?
Supplying freight visibility in the new year
Bob Farrell, chairman and CEO of GlobalTranz, joins the guys to provide some insight on the difficulties of 2020 and how it will change their business strategy for the new year.
Farrell says after a good 2019, this year brought highs and lows that mirrored the ebb and flow of the pandemic economy.
He believes looking forward, shippers are just as wary about what the market will look like come 2021 so GlobalTranz must work with companies to manage the changes and the new needs of their customers.
Farrell says that meeting customers’ expectations is all about “providing them with clear and real-time visibility at every step of their business.”
Helping truck drivers in need
2020’s limit on virtual events has put charities in a tough spot by taking away their in-person fundraising abilities, and St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund is feeling the squeeze for cash.
Shannon Curier is the director of philanthropy and development and joins WTT?!? to talk about how the nonprofit provides financial relief to truckers who have been incapacitated, lost their ability to drive and therefore have lost their income.
Curier says the goal for the program was to raise $1 million in 2020 but the pandemic sent them “into panic mode,” and the cancellation of in-person events only increased the worry.
As of now, the Relief Fund is only $72,000 away from its goal; you can help them meet it by donating here.
Adjusting market strategy in 2020
Frank Kenney, director of market strategy at Cleo, comes on to discuss the shift of market strategy to the cloud for 2020.
He says the movement of people to work-from-home setups caused companies of all sizes to make a shift into cloud-based information.
Kenney also says there has been a revelation regarding the importance of truckers to the economy and with that a new desire by companies to make truckers lives easier through technology.
The data never lies
Dooner and The Dude reflect on the forecast for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and discuss the results withTransfix co-founder and Chairman Drew McElroy.
McElroy says the returns from Cyber Week backed up the data: People spent more money and e-commerce reigned supreme.
Transfix focuses on first-mile and midmile logistics, but McElroy says last-mile logistics is just as important for his organization because if the shipment fails right before it hits the hands of a consumer, all the work beforehand was for nothing.
McElroy says 2020 showed people, “the true reality of what it was like to not be prepared,” and that real-time data utilization can be the key to successful preparation for any challenge that may come up.
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