Renee Krugg, Bill Vitti ready to lead Transflo to significant growth
We’re excited to announce that Renee Krug has joined Transflo as our new CEO and Bill Vitti has been hired as president and chief revenue officer.
“Renee and Bill are uniquely qualified to lead us to rapid growth both organically and through strategic acquisitions,” said Frank Adelman, who will become Transflo’s chairman of the board. “Both have worked on the carrier, shipper and broker side, as well as in 3PL and freight software, giving them 360 degrees of visibility into the marketplace.”
Renee most recently was CEO of GlobalTranz and previously she held leadership roles at Swift Transportation and Honeywell. Bill served as chief commercial officer at Truckstop.com and was president at Swift Logistics and head of marketing and strategy for Swift Transportation.
Renee and Bill know what it takes to grow a business while meeting the increasingly complex needs of carriers, shippers and brokers. We can’t wait to show you where they’ll lead us.
Freight recession?
Spot truckload rates continue to dive and shippers are enjoying lower tender rejection rates, but let’s not declare a “freight recession” yet, said Ari Ashe of the Journal of Commerce. Reporting in his latest Substack newsletter asserts that declining load-post volumes and spot pricing are the consequence of factors not related to consumer spending.
Indeed, quarterly earnings reports and truck tonnage surveys have done little to dampen the mood. Nor have import volumes, which keep setting records.
App fatigue: A wakeup call
The explosive growth of digital brokerages and other freight tech companies is has an unintended consequence for the truckers they serve: app fatigue. Carriers are overwhelmed by the number of online platforms they need to run their operations, Business Insider reports. Many are scaling back to the essentials, including Excel spreadsheets.
In our experience, truckers want one platform with one point of access that provides a complete view of everything they need to get the job done, including navigation, hours of service, track and trace, document scanning, fueling options, weigh station bypass and more. And when they need help, they want expert-level customer service. App fatigue is real, but nothing wears you down like a developer that disappears or knows nothing about trucking.
Back on the rails
Shippers see rail intermodal as a relief valve when supply chains are under pressure of high fuel surcharges or tight truckload capacity. But the buildup of containers has created a dilemma: trade low cost for highly unpredictable service levels.
Railroads are trying to clear the backlogs. Norfolk Southern changed its free time and storage policies to encourage shippers to pick up containers faster, especially on weekends. Starting April 25, Sunday will count as a business day with storage fees on domestic and international intermodal loads. On June 1, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus and Jacksonville will become Tier 1 terminals for international containers, which will cut the free time for containers from 48 hours to 24 hours.
Union Pacific announced that it will limit traffic if customers don’t voluntarily reduce their container inventory. “We have already identified and notified those customers who can help us manage the current congestion,” the railroad said.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is pressing Class I railroads to clear the backlog of rail containers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. There were 16,000 rail containers waiting to be loaded onto trains at the Port of Los Angeles, twice the number that was on the terminals last fall when BNSF and Union Pacific railroads drastically reduced intermodal rail service to the West Coast to clear logjams at their ramps in the Midwest.