When Gary Cornelius, Vice President of Business Development at TCW, and Jordan Strawn, Senior Vice President of Brokerage at Werner Enterprises, talked about what strong transportation partnerships look like, the conversation quickly moved beyond rates and capacity.
One story captured it particularly well.
A customer was dealing with an unexpected manufacturing disruption and needed additional transportation support. Rather than simply handing the problem to its carrier, the customer worked through what could change on its side to make the solution work for both companies. By adjusting operational constraints, the carrier gained more flexibility to support the new need without creating unnecessary disruption elsewhere in its network.
That kind of collaboration became the throughline of the session.
During “From Capacity to Collaboration” at the Jarrett Supply Chain Summit on August 6 in Cleveland, Cornelius and Strawn discussed a truckload market facing higher barriers to entry, driver shortages, rising costs and increasing regulatory pressures. Their message wasn’t that companies should simply brace for tighter capacity. It was that the relationships built now, as well as the willingness to understand how each side operates, will matter when the market tightens.
A Different Kind of Capacity Challenge
The backdrop to that conversation is a freight market that both speakers said looks different from previous cycles.
Transportation has always experienced periods of expansion and contraction. When rates and demand improve, capacity has historically found its way back into the market.
That path is becoming harder.
Higher insurance costs, increased safety requirements, tighter carrier vetting, driver availability, and other regulatory pressures are creating greater barriers for both new and existing carriers. At the same time, larger carriers have become more cautious about adding equipment after navigating several volatile freight cycles.
The result is a market where capacity may not respond as quickly when demand returns.
Understanding those dynamics matters well beyond operations. Sales and marketing professionals talking with customers need to understand why the market is behaving differently, and why some of the assumptions that held in previous freight cycles may no longer apply.
Collaboration Goes Beyond the Rate
Against that backdrop, Cornelius and Strawn spent much of the session talking about what shippers and transportation providers can actually control.
A lot of it comes down to efficiency.
Can receiving hours be extended so a driver has more flexibility? Can dwell time be reduced? Are trailers being used where they're actually needed rather than sitting empty? Can lanes or schedules be structured in a way that better fits both the shipper's needs and the carrier's network?
Those may sound like operational details, but together they can have a meaningful impact on available capacity.
The speakers also challenged the industry's reliance on traditional annual RFPs. When a pricing process stretches across several months, the conditions that made a lane attractive to a carrier at the beginning of the process may have changed by the time business is awarded.
Ongoing conversation helps both sides understand what is working, what has changed and where adjustments could create a better outcome.
That was the larger point behind the customer story: strong partnerships aren't built around one side getting everything it wants. They're built by understanding what each organization needs to be successful and finding the areas where those needs can align.
Helping Customers Understand What's Changing
Cornelius also raised another challenge: many customers don't fully understand everything currently affecting the transportation market.
With regulatory changes, driver availability, insurance costs, fraud concerns and other pressures all happening at once, he encouraged transportation providers to help customers understand what those changes mean for their business.
For sales and marketing teams, that industry knowledge shapes everything from customer conversations to the way companies explain their value. A salesperson who understands why capacity is tightening can have a more credible conversation about service and pricing. A marketer who understands the same dynamics can create messaging and content that reflects what customers are actually dealing with instead of speaking only about the company’s own capabilities.
When customers understand not just what is changing, but why, conversations about rates, service and capacity can start from shared context rather than frustration.
Building the Relationship Before You Need It
There was no single solution offered for the challenges facing truckload transportation.
Instead, the session focused on the things companies can influence: communication, efficiency, education and how they work with the organizations around them.
As capacity changes, carriers will have decisions to make about where they place their trucks and which freight best fits their networks. Shippers will have decisions to make about how they structure their operations and transportation relationships.
The companies that start those conversations now won't eliminate the pressures of the next freight cycle. They'll enter it with a much better understanding of the partners they depend on, and what they can do together when the market gets harder.
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