Newsletter #21

Howdy,

This is the LOST FR8 Community Newsletter. Your weekly sprinkling of a little bit of what’s going on in the online freight world, our Discord community, and with lostfr8.com.

Alright anyway, here is what’s going on this week:

• First Manifest, now MATS 🚚

• Freight Caviar asks if brokers are con artists? 🧑‍🎨

• Truck Parking Club road trip 🛣️

Reed

P.S. At the end of the newsletter there’s a referral section. If you refer subscribers, I’ll be sending you a reward. Should be pretty cool, too.

Manifest ➡️ MATs

Manifest last week was great. I saw a lot of familiar faces.

It’s a very well-produced show and it definitely drew a top notch crowd. I’m happy to have attended and will see you all out there next year.

Next up on the conference circuit for me is the Mid America Truck Show.

I went to this last year and had a great time. This is the first event I really started to meet other folks from Twitter/Linkedin.

I think this year is going to be 100000x better.

I’m planning an event in the evening on Thursday, March 21. I’ll likely have an invite link for that next week, so stay tuned.

🔥 Hot Lanes

Calling All Brokers & Shippers!

Do you have regular lanes or special opportunities that you’d like to put in front of the LOST FR8 carrier base?

Reply to this email with:

• Origin/Destination City, State

• Frequency

• Equipment Type

• Any special information

Every Friday, I send this list to the LOST FR8 carrier base.

🏟️ Community Section

The LOST FR8 Discord is a digital freight community.

It’s comprised of 1292 freight professionals ranging from drivers, brokers, fleet owners, freight forwarders, tech bros, journalists, and more.

Events

In The Arena

The Arena is the crucible of the Discord.

In it, movers & shakers share their stories in front of a live audience. It’s recorded.

I’ll have some new guests to announce in the next week or so. Stay tuned.

Tech Bro Tuesday

Tuesdays at 9pm EST (Discord)

Last week’s episode was pushed to this week, as we were mostly at Manifest.

Freight Therapy

Thursdays 9pm EST (Twitter Spaces)

👷Community Jobs

If you’d like to list a job opportunity here, reply to this email and let me know.

• Trucker Tools is hiring for multiple account management and tech roles!

🐟 Freight Caviar Corner

This week, Freight Caviar is looking into allegations surrounding a con artist who is going after freight brokerages. Plus, Arrive Insights adjusts its 2024 rates forecast, U.S. ports post impressive gains, and Shipwell's strategic shift with CloudTrucks.

🐦 What’s Up On FreightX?

My friend Indietrucker (Chris Thomas) headed out from Vegas with Evan Shelley, CEO of Truck Parking Club, for a little ridealong. They’re shooting excellent content along the way and are well worth following.

👨‍💼 What’s going on on Linkedin?

I’ve been loving Linkedin lately. Folks are super willing to engage which is always fun. I figure I’ll add a Linkedin section here too.

I needed a tagline to promote this week’s newsletter, so I wrote that I will ‘unpack the secret to immense wealth and giveaway the location of the fountain of youth’.

To which Jon Pampalon responded:

I enjoyed that. Thanks Jon.

🚚 LOST FR8

LOSTFR8.COM is a tool for carriers to market themselves.

As a carrier rep, I ALWAYS sought out carriers who made it easy for me to know where they had available capacity, what lanes they ran, etc. Carriers who made that easy were the ones I wanted to work with.

We built a tool that enables carriers to be easy to work with.

Carriers build public profiles that contain all the information brokers/shippers are looking for:

• Capacity

• Equipment profile

• Preferred Lanes

• Contact

This information is then shareable via a public profile and a truck list email tool.

🔗 Some Links

• Mexico surpasses Canada and China as largest US trading partner for the year (Freightwaves)

• CDL 1000 acquires NEXT Trucking (WSJ)