This week’s guest is Matt Menner, Head of Transportation Management Sales at Uber Freight. In our conversation, we discuss how the managed transportation sector has evolved, notably regarding the adoption of technology like AI and the increased use of spot or dynamic markets. Matt also talks about the acquisition and integration of Transplace into Uber Freight, highlighting investments in technology and the blending of the cultures and businesses. Finally, we touch upon the current market volati...
Jul 10, 2025•48 min•Ep. 152
This week’s guest is Professor Michael Hicks, George & Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ball State University. Mike brings an economist’s perspective on the recent introduction of tariffs as well their sudden modification or removal in many cases. Being located in Indiana, Mike is keen on the impact that different policies have on manufacturing and agricultural firms and communities. In our conversation we discuss the idea and objectives of tariffs in general as well as t...
Jun 26, 2025•45 min•Ep. 151
This week’s guest is Kristian ‘KO’ O’Meara, SVP Strategic Initiatives for Jaggaer. KO has been with Jaggaer for just shy of 25 years filling a number of senior roles. Currently, he works with the larger enterprise customers for the procurement of direct and indirect materials and services. In our conversation, we zoom in primarily to freight transportation procurement - mainly TL. We discuss the challenges of TL transportation procurement to include the breadth, scope, and complexities involved ...
Jun 12, 2025•52 min•Ep. 150
This week’s guest is Jason Haith, Vice President Commercial Forwarding US & Mexico, for DP World. With 20+ years experience in Import/Export operations, Jason is the perfect person to discuss global trade in general and trade with Mexico in particular. In our conversation, we discuss how trade between the US and Mexico has changed over the years, the impact of recent tariffs being enacted and then almost immediately modified or removed, and how Near or Friend shoring might evolve.
May 29, 2025•42 min•Ep. 149
This week’s guest is Dr. Jason Miller, Professor and Head of the Supply Chain Management Department at Michigan State University's Eli Broad College of Business. This is Jason’s 4th time on the Freightvine podcast - we last had him on the podcast about two years ago when we were one year into what is now called the rate trough. Jason discusses this and how the market was expected to have rebounded by now, but the spate of tariffs has definitely had an impact. In our conversation we discuss tarif...
May 15, 2025•34 min•Ep. 148
This week’s guest is Ben Steffes, Vice President, Solutions & Strategy, Managed Transportation, at RXO. Ben was last on the Freightvine 3 years ago when he had just published a white paper on Logistics KPIs for Coyote. RXO acquired Coyote in the fall of 2024, so this time we talk about the RXO white paper on Logistics KPIs that Ben recently authored as a follow-up to and expansion of the 2022 study. In our conversation, we discuss changes in how logistics performance was measured during the ...
May 01, 2025•50 min•Ep. 147
This week’s guest is Dr. Josue Velazquez Martinez. Josue is a Research Scientist at MIT’s Center for Transportation & Logistics and is also the Director of MIT's Sustainable Supply Chain Lab. In our conversation, we discuss his lab's focus on environmental and social sustainability within supply chains. Josue describes the lab's work on the sustainability of freight transportation, emphasizing the need for diverse decarbonization strategies and better measurement of scope three emissions. Al...
Apr 17, 2025•48 min•Ep. 146
This week’s guest is Kary Jablonski, VP & GM, Broker Growth & Trucker Tools at DAT Freight & Analytics. As her title implies, Kary previously led Trucker Tools before its acquisition by DAT at the end of 2024. Our conversation centers on her path to the freight industry, her experiences transforming Trucker Tools into a leading visibility and tracking solution for freight brokerages, and the company's subsequent acquisition by DAT. Kary shares insights on the evolution of Trucker Too...
Apr 03, 2025•41 min•Ep. 145
This week’s guest is Mike Roeth, Executive Director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency or NACFE. NACFE has been around for over 15 years - originating from a workshop run by the Rocky Mountain Institute in 2009. Their objective is to drive the development and adoption of efficiency enhancing, environmentally beneficial, and cost-effective technologies, services, and operational practices in the movement of goods across North America. Mike has been leading NACFE in these efforts...
Mar 20, 2025•47 min•Ep. 144
This week’s guest is Bobby Holland, Vice President and Director, Freight Business Analytics, at US Bank. US Bank has been around since 1863 and is currently the 5th largest bank in the United States. They also process over $40B in freight payments each year. In our conversation, Bobby explains his unexpected entry into the trucking industry and the incredible reliance everyone has on it. He also discusses how US Bank’s Freight Payment Index provides data-driven insights into freight trends at th...
Mar 06, 2025•48 min•Ep. 143
This week’s guest is Jerrod Mounce, Vice President of Energy & Sustainability at JB Hunt. Our conversation focuses on JB Hunt’s sustainability initiatives and the broader landscape of alternative fuels in trucking. Jerrod discusses his 26-year career at JB Hunt, detailing his shift from operations to a focus on fuel efficiency and sustainability. He highlights the complexities of fuel surcharge programs and JB Hunt's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 32% by 2034. T...
Feb 20, 2025•47 min•Ep. 142
This week’s guest is Matt McLelland, VP of Sustainability and Innovation at Covenant Logistics Group. In our conversation today we discuss the connection between sustainability and innovation, the potential impact of emerging technologies, and the paroles of overly prescriptive regulations. We also talk about the pros and cons for alternative fuels. Matt makes a strong case for having regulations that encourage innovation in a variety of different energy platforms, rather than dictating a single...
Feb 06, 2025•48 min•Ep. 141
This week’s guest is Ian Jefferies, President and CEO, Association of American Railroads. Ian has been with the AAR for over 10 years taking over as President in 2019. Ian was last on the Freightvine in February 2023 and obviously a lot has happened since then. In the conversation, Ian talks about the long term effect of the 2022 Railroad Labor Dispute, how the rail industry is currently evolving, and where it is heading over the long-term. He discusses the challenges of adopting new technologie...
Jan 27, 2025•43 min•Ep. 140
This week’s guest is Andrew Petrisin, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multimodal Freight in the U.S. Department of Transportation and the creator of the USDOT’s Freight Logistics Optimization Works or FLOW. FLOW is a public private partnership whereby different players in the global supply chain share previously unshared commercial data to better understand changes in international freight flows. These data are securely anonymized and harmonized within the platform and the results are available f...
Jan 09, 2025•50 min•Ep. 139
This week’s guests are my two DAT iQ colleagues: Ken Adamo, Chief of Analytics, and Dean Croke, Principal Analyst. This is our annual end of the year podcast where we revisit our predictions from last year, discuss the major issues of the current year, and take our best guesses as to what will happen next year. As always our conversation ranged wide - to include the continued soft market of 2024, challenges of current air travel, predictions of a rising market in 2025, the impact of the election...
Dec 19, 2024•50 min•Ep. 138
This week’s guest is Rob Haddock the recently retired Group Director of Planning & Logistics at Coca-Cola North America. In his retirement, Rob has started a new firm (Albedo Logistics), begun consulting projects on the side, and written a book! I asked Rob to join me on the Freightvine to discuss his book, titled, Transportation Adventures of a Food Shipper: A Shipper’s Guide to Truckload Transportation - The Sapient Shipper Adventures. Rob has distilled his almost 40 years of experience in...
Dec 12, 2024•50 min•Ep. 137
This week’s guest is Kevin Zweier, Vice President of Transportation Practice at NTT, formerly Chainalytics. Long term listeners might recall that Kevin has actually been on the Freightvine 3 times: pre-pandemic in 2019, during the pandemic in 2021, and in the post pandemic in 2022. Now that we are apparently ending the pandemic induced TL market cycle, it is time to bring him back again to talk about how shippers’ TL Procurement strategies are, or should be, changing. During our conversation, we...
Nov 28, 2024•53 min•Ep. 136
This week’s guest is Tim Denoyer, VP and Senior Analyst at ACT Research. Tim has been a financial analyst covering the transportation space for pretty much his entire career. At ACT Research, he is the lead analyst in their transportation research effort and is the primary author of the ACT Freight Forecast, U.S. Rate and Volume Outlook. In our conversation, we talked about the current state of the TL market, the rise of private fleets, and why he views it as “revolutionary change at an evolutio...
Nov 14, 2024•41 min•Ep. 135
This week’s guests are Chad Kennedy, Senior Product Manager at DAT, and Samuel Parker, Associate Director Shipper Segment at DAT. Chad and Samuel hosted and ran the most recent Shipper Summit in Kansas City, which had close to 100 shipper customers. As the kick-off event of DATCON each year, the Shipper Summit is an invitation-only, shipper-only event that features expert panels on procurement and transportation management as well as a forum for peer-to-peer discussion on a variety of pertinent ...
Oct 31, 2024•38 min•Ep. 134
This week’s guest is Dr. Erika Voss, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at DAT. Erika joined DAT earlier in 2024 as our first CISO coming from a long career in security and risk at companies such as MicroSoft, Salesforce, Oracle, and CapitalOne. In her role, she is really changing the game in cybersecurity for the entire trucking transportation industry. Erika explains that the types of fraud and theft that occur in our industry are all essentially cybersecurity issues. Interestingly, the...
Oct 17, 2024•55 min•Ep. 133
This week’s guest is Bill Cassidy, Senior Editor for Trucking and Domestic Transportation at the Journal of Commerce. Bill has been covering transportation for over 30 years writing and editing at Fleet Owner, Transport Topics, Traffic World, and now for the last 10+ years at the JOC. He has a great perspective on all things freight. In our conversation we discuss the potential impact on the transportation industry of different events to include the Federal Reserve recently voting to lower inter...
Oct 03, 2024•51 min•Ep. 132
This week’s guest is Felipe Capella, CEO and co-founder of LoadSmart. After 10 years as a lawyer, Felipe decided to start a company to build something along with his co-founder, Ricardo Salgado. They chose freight transportation since it has a huge total available market, is highly fragmented, and was ripe for technological improvement. They initially started out as a brokerage but over the last ten years they have grown LoadSmart into being a platform that provides, among other things, TMS soft...
Sep 19, 2024•55 min•Ep. 131
This week’s guest is Dr. Alex Scott, Associate Professor of SCM at UTK and co-founder of Sustainable Logistics. There is growing pressure on companies - both regulatory and socially - to reduce the emissions that they generate. One of the largest sources of CO2 emissions is freight transportation. Unfortunately, most companies outsource their transportation to carriers - so they do not have direct control over the asset being used. These types of emissions - where the company is responsible for ...
Sep 05, 2024•44 min•Ep. 130
This week’s guest is Josh Brogan, Partner at Kearney. Josh is one of the lead authors of the recently released CSCMP’s Annual State of Logistics Report titled “Waiting for the tide to turn”. As most listeners probably know, the report is authored by the management consulting firm Kearney and presented by Penske Logistics. The conversation, while focusing mainly on the report itself, meandered through other topics including reshoring trends, potential consolidation of the 3PL or Lead Logistics Pr...
Aug 22, 2024•45 min•Ep. 129
This week’s guest is Alex Leslie, Senior Research Analyst at the American Transportation Research Institute. Alex is the lead author of ATRI’s latest research publication “Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2024 Update”. I had Alex on just about a year ago for the 2023 report. Using detailed polling and data analysis, Alex can reveal not only the current average per-mile costs, but also changes in the individual cost components, the impact of carrier size on costs, and underlying tre...
Aug 08, 2024•52 min•Ep. 128
This week’s guest is Terry Donohoe, Senior Vice President of Freight Forwarding, U.S & Mexico for DP World. As most of us know, DP World is a leading global logistics company headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. They operate a large network of marine and inland terminals across more than 40 countries, handling approximately 10% of global container traffic. In our conversation, Terry provides an overview of DP World as well as the global freight forwarding industry. We discuss the im...
Jul 25, 2024•35 min•Ep. 127
This week’s guest is Gonzalo Cordova, Director of Decision Science and Automation at The Home Depot. Gonzalo has a long history of solving business and supply chain problems using sophisticated analytical methods. After finishing his MS at GaTech in 2005, he worked for companies as varied as GE Energy, Lafarge, Coca-Cola, and The Home Depot. His current role is leading the team that is applying AI, and other analytical methods they have in their tool belt, to solve various challenges within the ...
Jul 12, 2024•52 min•Ep. 126
This week’s guest is Chad Kennedy, Group Product Manager of the Rate Benchmark platform at DAT Freight & Analytics. Chad has been in the trucking and transportation space for over two decades now as both a carrier and a shipper. While originally trained in finance, he joined a small family-owned trucking company in the early 2000s. He moved on to CHEP (the blue pallet people) where he rose to be Director of Transportation. Finally, he joined Chainalytics in 2018 and was part of the acquisiti...
Jun 27, 2024•47 min•Ep. 125
This week’s guest is Keith Brandis, Vice President of Partnerships and System Solutions at Volvo Trucks. Keith is a 40-plus-year veteran of the trucking industry with a diverse background in truck manufacturing, engineering, sales, and marketing for the Volvo Group. He began his career with Volvo Trucks at its New River Valley manufacturing operations in Dublin, Virginia, where all of the brands’ Class 8 trucks for the North American market are assembled. Today, he works in the Project and Produ...
Jun 13, 2024•47 min•Ep. 124
This week’s guest is David Landau, currently Advisor at Moguntia Capital in Atlanta. David has 25 years of experience in the Supply chain software space - mainly focused on the creation and delivery of product strategies and M&A. He spent almost 20 years at Manhattan Associates - culminating in being VP of Product Management, and has also served in leadership roles at E2Open, Cloud Logistics, BluJay, and Transporeon. In our conversation, we talk about how the SC software industry has evolved...
May 30, 2024•51 min•Ep. 123
