SMC3

Educational supply chain conferences provide attendees with focused panels and keynote speeches that are relevant not only to the everyday work functions but can also help further supply chain careers.

SMC³ recently sat down with Christopher DeMillo, information systems manager at Leonard’s Express, to discuss how they use SMC³’s cost intelligence system software to increase profitability and how he sees the current domestic transportation landscape.

In this short, three-question interview, Brian Thompson, SMC³’s chief commercial officer, sums up how a cost intelligence system solution assists carriers throughout North America, allowing for increased carrier profitability and operational productivity.

At SMC³ Connections 2019, the consensus among the panelists, Bob Biesterfeld, CEO, C.H. Robinson, Rob Estes, president and CEO, Estes Express Lines, Darren Hawkins, president and CEO, YRC Worldwide, and Dan Van Alstine, president and COO, Ruan, was that things are not nearly as rosy as compared to a year ago.

A whole host of issues impacting freight transportation and logistics, including tariffs, capacity, market conditions and others, were front and center at the SMC3 Connections CEO panel yesterday in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

For optimistic folks still holding on to the hope of a long-term federal transportation authorization coming to fruition before the next Presidential election, it is likely time to label those hopes as wishful thinking. That’s the word from James H. Burnley, a partner at Washington D.C.-based law firm Vebnable LLP and former Secretary of Transportation under the late President Ronald Reagan.

Tom Madine, CEO of Worldwide Express, a leading small package, truckload, and less-than-truckload shipping solutions company, discusses how his company is coping with the significant changes and challenges in the supply chain and logistics industry.

Bidding on transportation rates is a two-way street, shippers and 3PLs have to find the right partner to transport their goods, and carriers need to make sure the freight fits with their business model.

Drivers are scarce, costs are way up and rate increases will largely fall on those shippers that don’t unclog their supply chains in this “good, not great” less-than-truckload market.

“Collaborative contracts start with collaborative behavior in negotiations - and these negotiations start with full disclosure.”

Whatever your role in the supply chain, lasting, symbiotic business relationships among carriers, shippers, and 3PLs will lead to sustained transportation savings that eliminate inefficiencies and saves valuable resource time.

“Collaborative contracts start with collaborative behavior in negotiations—and these negotiations start with full disclosure.”

Daylight Transport, an expedited, domestic less-than-truckload carrier servicing the long-haul industry, discusses how it is investing in transportation technologies to provide unique and valuable services for its customers.

During his 34 years at SMC³, Danny Slaton was lucky enough to experience seismic shifts in the logistics and supply chain industry – first on the front lines of the computerization of the supply chain and then as an executive making sense of a post-deregulation transportation world.

This paper details how SMC3 designed Bid$ense for complete procurement transparency, and how you’ll move ahead with ease and confidence toward best-choice carrier qualification and truly strategic LTL procurement.