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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:

❓ I’ve got an important question for you.

📦 Shooting The Ship

🚚 MATS Events

🧠 Some Thoughts About LOAD BOARDS

DAT went down yesterday which of course leads to everyone posting about it online.

It got me thinking about load boards in general and I’d like your feedback. So reply to this if you feel so inclined.

I’ve talked to tons of brokers and carriers about load boards.

More often than not the conversation revolves around how dissatisfied they are with the #1 load board (you know who).

Fraud (obviously) comes up as a top reason for that dissatisfaction. But I’m curious if there are other common issues that I’m missing (see poll below, reply to this email if I’m missing one).

The thing is, building a load board isn’t the hard part. The hard part is building the network. The incumbent load boards are very difficult to disrupt for that reason.

When push comes to shove, is there even enough will amongst brokers/carriers to switch to a new load board, even if the issues were solved? Let me know

🏟️ Community Section

The LOST FR8 Discord is a digital freight community.

It’s comprised of 1365 freight professionals ranging from drivers, brokers, fleet owners, freight forwarders, tech bros, journalists, and more.

Events This Week

• Tuesday: Tech Bro Tuesday 9pm EST (Discord)

  • I was gone last week, but Aetius Rossa filled in for me and I heard it went well. Shoutout Aetius.

• Wednesday: Shooting The Ship 9pm EST (Discord)

• Thursday: FR8 Therapy 9pm EST (X)

Shooting The Ship

This Wednesday at 9pm EST, we’re testing a new event out I’m calling Shooting The Ship.

Tony Darnell, a shipping manager at Lippert Components and I will be discussing shipper/broker relations and freight in general in an Arena-style forum.

The Arena

I’ve hosted a number of long, recorded conversations in the Discord with some big wigs in freight. Check out those recordings here.

Conferences: MATS

Aight so MATS is about a week away.

There are 2 events that I’m hosting.

Thursday 7-? (March 21)

Friday 3-6pm (March 22)

🐟 Freight Caviar Corner

This week at Freight Caviar: Freight Market Has Bottomed Out. Echo's CEO offers an optimistic outlook on the freight market recovery, a Virginia freight company files for bankruptcy, and why 2024 may be the year of drone delivery.

Freight Gong Friday

Every Friday at 9a EST, myself and the Freight Caviar guys livestream and discuss the goings on from the week. You can tune in on most social channels.

If you’d like to be a guest, reply to this email and lmk!

🐦 What’s Up On FreightX?

Looks like there’s another Freight Bandit magazine in the works. Sick. Buy the first edition if you haven’t yet.

👨‍💼 What’s going on on Linkedin?

If you haven’t checked out my buddy Michael Lombard’s podcast, then you’re messing up. Lombard is a one of a kind dude. Check out his latest episode with Trey Griggs.

🚚 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

• Ship Sunk By Houthis Threatens Red Sea Environment (gCaptain)

• Container Shipping Through Red Sea Falls Again (Transport Topics)

• Norfolk Southern Alone Should Pay for Cleanup, Judge Says

  Train Derailment in 2023 Spilled Chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio (Transport Topics)