A Chance to Learn from Transportation Industry Experts

A recap of Matthew Brosious’ experience at SMC3’s 2016 Jumpstart conference

Who are you and what is your role at FreightCenter?

My name is Matthew Brosious. I am the CEO and President of FreightCenter. I give directives to the company every day to make sure everyone is in line with our goals and give clear direction on growth.

Why did you choose to go to SMC3’s Jumpstart conference?

There was a lot of merit to it. I didn’t see the value of it at first, but of all the conferences I’ve been to this was one that got past all of the smoke and mirrors the most and just got to the point. Freight is a relationship based industry. If I didn’t believe it before it was definitely reinforced when I went there. SMC3 is a great way to meet the industry’s decision makers - get into their inner circle. Everybody who makes the decisions in the freight industry is at that conference.  At some of the other conferences like NASSTRAC you’ll get to see the presidents and their VPs, but they’re more along the lines of that of public relations – you know they’re there to smile and shake hands. But, at SMC3’s Jumpstart you’re getting the VP of Operations, the person who heads up pricing, the people  who decide if you’re going to work with this company or not. So it’s hands down the best conference to attend.

What was the focus of the SMC3’s Jumpstart Conference?

From SMC3’s perspective: they want to talk about the changing industry and the upcoming trends to prove that the industry is going forward. There’s always a level of intense motivation there, like a ‘hey, this is going to happen so you’re going to want to get together and understand these rules,’ kind of thing.

Can you explain what SMC3 does?

SMC3 is a third-party company and industry association.  Carriers submit their rates, transit times, service days and such to SMC3 and then the shippers and 3PLs, like us, can utilize that information so that we can better run our businesses. Without the ability to get that information it’s virtually impossible to work with carriers. Yes the carriers do have APIs that would allow us to go directly to the carrier for rates, so theoretically we could cut out SMC3. The problem is the APIs are not reliable.

So attending the conference helped you come to that realization then?

Yes, after talking to our carriers and competitors at the conference it’s obvious APIs are nowhere near advanced as they need to be and  it doesn’t look like they will get to where they need to be for at least a minimum of five years. I wanted to think that we could work directly with our carriers using APIs; however, for rating purposes it seems like working with a middle-man like SMC3 is the better option.

Can you explain how rating through an API differs from rating with a third-party like SMC3?

An API is a point-of-time rating. So, it’s like a real-time rate quote that changes as rates fluctuate. But, when you use SMC3 you build a contract to which a rate base gets get applied. That rate base is good for a determined amount of years and it’s all tracked. So, I could go back and compare and analyze how our freight prices are going up or down. With an API there’s no tracking of price changes and there’s no way to verify any discrepancies. More than anything SMC3 keeps everyone more honest.

We were all about the APIs. We were pushing for 100 percent API rating integration. After learning what I did at the conference I think for now we’ll just use the API for transit, tracking and images.

Were there any other realizations or things you learned from the conference?

I asked a competitor how he handled their customer complaints regarding billing adjustments and he was taken aback. His company almost never dealt with billing adjustments! That was because (1) they didn’t leave room for their customers to make those kinds of mistakes when booking the shipment and (2) any additional charges were communicated to the customer ahead of time.  Last year we acquired 171,000 new registered users but our repeatable shipments every month didn’t go up. This means that every time we brought on a repeatable customer, we lost a repeatable customer. It nets the same. Clearly, it came down to the procedure of how we’re handling the overall customer experience. Communication is the key.

Why do you think it’s important for business owners in the transportation industry to attend conferences like SMC3’s Jumpstart?

Foremost, without a doubt: knowledge is power. You need to plan ahead. And, how can you have a plan if you’re not caught up to speed on the industry?  Not only that, but you can’t separate yourself from your competitors if you have no idea what direction the industry is going in.