Monday Newsletter #11

🎄it's still the holiday season

Author

Reed Loustalot
December 04, 2023

Monday, December 4, 2023

Yo, Welcome to the 11th edition of the LOST FR8 newsletter.

I’m hearing from carriers and brokers alike that the market has tightened slightly in the last week or so. So for this week’s poll I’m going to ask about this:

Has the freight market tightened?

It's the holiday season.. 🎄

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

For the sake of my carrier friends, I hope it’s tightening up. I know there’s a lot of folks struggling and it’d be nice to see the edge come off slightly around the holidays, imo.

Anywho, we’re gearing up for another fun week around here. Lets get into it.

🚨 What is LOST FR8???

LOST FR8 enables carriers of all sizes to effectively market their services to their current customers as well as our growing community of brokers and shippers.

Our goal is to make it easy to find quality carriers by giving them tools to market themselves.

🚚 LOST FR8 Carrier of the Week

Elite Commodity Express - Surprise, NE

  • Founded in 2014 by Ted Johnson

  • ECE specializes in 53’ reefer and flatbed between Nebraska and the northeast and southeastern US

  • From Ted: “My long life dream of farming with Grandpa Bob didn’t pan out after high-school, and higher education definitely wasn’t for me. My father drove trucks for the local coop, so I grew up around trucks and driving them on the farm. I got my first trucking job at age 19 hauling cattle feed 7 days a week for two years until I turned 21 and bought my first semi. Then Elite Commodity Express (ECE) was established in 2014 specializing in refrigeration freight. ECE services lanes to New York City, Maryland, Georgia, Flordia, Texas primarily. We are a company of 10 drivers and our wonderful secretary Amy. We are a unique company bringing more than 120 plus years of COMBINED experience. We also help with open deck freight and power only moves. Our drivers are the best as everyone has experience in the office and on the road providing solutions for our customers. Our team is the most high performance motor carrier in the trucking business, we get the job done right; LOCAL SMALL-TOWN USA PRIDE!”

  • From Reed: “Like Van last week, I met Ted through Twitter, if I’m not mistaken it was through Kevin Rutherford’s spaces as well. Anywho, he’s a great follow as he shares a lot about his business openly, which gives outsiders a unique perspective on the trucking business. He’s built ECE from the ground up over the last ten years “

Some Pictures

53’ reefers

Open deck

Having fun in the office!

Area of Operation

🐟 Freight Caviar Corner

  • Freight Caviar’s headline story: Samsara, a prominent ELD (Electronic Logging Device) provider for trucking companies, is experiencing an exceptional year, with its share price up 190% year-to-date. Click here to read more.

🏭 Broker & Shipper Stuff

Have opportunities you want to get in front of the LOST FR8 carrier base?

Send Reed an email to have it featured in our weekly “hot loads” mailer that goes to our customers.

🎶 Freight Gong

FreightX

  • For the uninitiated, FreightX is a section of X (formerly Twitter), where myself and many others congregate throughout the day. It’s been around a while, but recently has taken off. We’ve got some serious movers & shakers participating, too. You should join.

  • I’m going to start featuring a company who doing a good job on X. This week it’s Truck Parking Club.

  • I wrote a short post about the history of shipping containers.

🏟️ In the Arena