As a new broker, you’re going to do some cold calling. The tried and true method of connecting with potential customers hasn’t gone out of style, but you can’t go into it without the proper prep work. Let’s talk about what all needs to happen before you hop on the phone. Pick your spot Prospecting…
Read our free ebook, “Finding Shippers,” and grow your business Strong carrier networks are the bread and butter of any freight brokerage. Without them, you’ve got nothing. No way to move goods, no way to make money. Brand new brokers face obstacles in building a network at the beginning. Typically, it takes a new brokerage…
What do you do once you’ve secured consistent shippers as your customer base? Now that you’re operating on solid ground, built on long-term partnerships and organizational efficiency, this is a good time to step out and tackle new areas of business. The stability you worked so hard to create fuels your expansion now. Expansion can…
A late start to the spring construction season as weather conditions improve and wildfires in critical lumber-producing regions in Canada, including Alberta and Nova Scotia, could impact lumber volumes for flatbed carriers. Focusing on the freight-intensive single-family home building segment, higher interest rates, and construction costs have slowed development significantly. According to the National Association…
Hunt’s Point Produce Market (HPMM), the largest produce market in the U.S., has outgrown the facilities’ storage, using diesel-powered reefer trailers as extra storage. Around 1,000 of them, to be precise. Old reefers being used as storage at produce markets across the county is not new, but at this scale, it starts to cause significant…
Depending on who you talk to, the economy is headed for a recession or, more recently, a “soft landing,” as outlined by the National Retail Federations (NRF) June edition of the Monthly Economic Review. In the last year, we’ve heard economic pundits describe the state of the economy using terms such as the U.S. is…
It may be a relatively small part of California, but the tract of land known as the Salinas Valley grows almost half of the nation’s lettuce (including head, leaf, and romaine) and a third of its spinach, hence the title “America’s Salad Bowl.” Known for producing around a third of the nation’s strawberries, it also…
Since last October, the truckload sector has seen more carriers leave the industry than join. Since 2014 DAT Freight & Analytics has been tracking the spread between carriers obtaining new authorities or reactivating existing ones (green bars in the chart below) and those exiting the industry (red bars). The spread or difference between the two…
Flatbed carriers are moving around 37,000 fewer truckloads of steel compared to the start of June last year, based on data from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). Excluding 2020, when global demand crashed, year-to-date steel production tonnage is the lowest since 2018. The AISI reports steel output in the U.S. in the week…
In the last 30 days, watermelons have dominated national truckload tonnage as the number one commodity shipped, a spot usually held by potatoes. In May, almost 765 million pounds, or nearly 18,000 truckloads of seedless watermelons, were shipped, followed by potatoes (596 million pounds) and apples (445 million pounds). According to the USDA, 55% of…