Technology’s Dominance in the Freight and Logistics Industry Continues to Evolve as Market Demands Fresh Innovation

Hey, everybody. Welcome to hammer down. I'm your host, Mike Bush, and today's guest is kind of royalty when it comes to freight and freight technology. He is the number one reporter in the space when it comes to institutional knowledge when it comes to been there, done that. And my favorite thing about reading his work is that he's got this great view of things that have happened in the past. And he's able to weave the narrative to say, this isn't new. We've been there. We've done that. He's gonna be on the stage at TPM coming up very soon. Please welcome to the show, Eric Johnson. Mike, thanks so much for having me. I I think you are describing me just being old at this point and being around for a while. So but I I appreciate it. I'll I'll characterize it as wisdom rather than. I I appreciate that. Be before we started recording, we were talking about the fact that, I know in two thousand six, I was pitching as a PR guy's stories to Eric Johnson, who was that, writing an American shipper. Eric, without without calling you old and and sticking to the wisdom theme here, man, you have been covering this space for a long time. What got you into it? So it just dawned on me. Last year, I was writing a a post sort of thinking about how long I've been in the space and it it's been twenty years actually that I've been reporting on logistics. I think, like, a ton of people in our industry if you weren't brought into this by a family member who you sort of got indoctrinated through blood into the industry. You you backed into it for the most part. There's not many people who, like, sort of set out on a purposeful path to do logistics or or be involved in the logistics industry. So that was very much my situation. I I was a rep I always wanted to be a reporter, so I went to school for journalism. Graduated in ninety eight. Worked for about four years at a local newspaper in Southern California, just doing kinda general reporting. And got a chance to rotate onto the business desk one day, for, like, three months and loved it. Had no idea I would love it. Never in a million years thought I was gonna be interested in business forwarding. But I also realized I had no background in it. So I went back to grad school to to get a business degree I went to Europe, actually, canceled two birds with one stone. I always wanted to study in Europe and live there for a year and and and I managed to get a degree while I was in between having a little bit too much fun over there. But when I came back, There was an opportunity in another newspaper in LA, a a paper called the Long Beach Press Telegram, covering the ports of LA in Long Beach. Had no idea, anything about ports, anything about shipping, anything about global logistics other than the little bit I learned in my This is cool. And, but throw it in the deep end and loved it straight away. Like, really gravitated toward it. And then two years later, I I, as you mentioned, I I got, hired by American shipper. So then that's like a different when you're in a trade publication, you're just, like, in it, living it. People are giving you people who actually know what they're talking about and do this job and understand it to like an ten degrees better than you ever can as a writer are giving you comments on it. It's very different than writing about it for like a general audience that may not know any more than you do. In fact, they probably know less. So once I got past that kind of hurdle, it was like, and people started saying, okay. He at least doesn't sound like a complete idiot, when he's writing. The things that I loved about and initially just took hold that much more. So, yeah, I mean, it was really like a issue, a thing of circumstance that there just happened to be an opening covering the Port civilian in Long Beach as opposed to, like, the chamber of commerce or, you know, some other part of the economy there. I I love it, man. And I think you're right. I I my my working estimation is that ninety percent of the people are either in because of legacy or they're in because they fell into it. Nobody wakes up and says I wanna go work in logistics. And that that's really the purpose of this podcast is, it's it's to try to change that and show cool Maybe it's maybe it's changed. Maybe I think now it's probably gotta be higher percentage than it was when we were getting into that. I'd like to think so. You know, you you hope so. So Alright. If I fast forward a little bit, you've been with journal of commerce for how long? Going on six years. It'll be years in April. So, to move fast. And you were the first reporter I really saw focused on the logistics technology space. It was a cool way to differentiate yourself. I imagine as a as a reporter, it must have been a nightmare because, you know, PR people like me would log into our database and see, Hey, there's a there's a there's a tech reporter. Let me go ping him with anything having to do with it. So we probably pitched you stuff about ad tech. We probably pitched you stuff about any number of completely irrelevant things. Hey, this IPo is happening with that. But what made you choose logistics technology as a differentiator? So, again, another example of, like, sort of falling backward into a, very fortuitous situation. So o eight zero nine. I'm an American shipper. I'm writing primarily about, container shipping. I was in Asia at the time. Living in Asia at the time writing remotely. So it's writing a little bit about three p l's and, like, on the ground stuff at Origin in Asia. O eight zero nine hits global financial crisis existential, like, way worse than COVID in terms for most businesses, like, existential stuff, like, are we gonna be able to keep people? Are we gonna be able to be a business going forward? One of the one of the manifestations of that was the container lines that sort of supported publications like American shipper with full page ads and physical news and figgle physical magazines, they cut marketing, they cut ad spend, like, overnight. Which was obviously very terrifying. But at the same time, there was this slow grassroots emergence of technology providers that we're starting to see the logistics industry as a very interesting place to build you know, bigger businesses and and and and they were sort of taking that free space that had been vacated by kind of the the normal companies that would sponsor or advertise in in trade publications. So you started to see ads from like SAP and or goal and a few, technology providers that came up during the dot com boom that had gotten some, you know, market entrenchment And they were they were very eager to be seen in front of that audience. So Publisher at the time was like, you know, we write about tech, but we write about it. Like, we have it on a our editorial calendar, or we write about it in a very ad way. Oh, I happen to have a conversation with this person. Let's write about some technologies that they offer. So we went from that and he and he said at the time, you know, I think we just need a full time person writing about tech, like, every month, every day. Basically. And he said, Eric, I think you'd be the best person to do this. And I was like, you got the wrong guy. Was, like, the we need the shaggy video. It wasn't me. And, because like, I'm personally terrible with tech. I'm I'm, I'm really bad at it. I can't fix anything. I'm I'm not I'm not an intuitive, like, tech person. So but he said, a, there was no one else to do it, and, b, he he's we we sort of we sort of landed on the this is this is actually an opportunity. And over time, it it actually was correct that the industry needed someone who could kind of like be the bridge between the the vendors that like to speak and aspirational jargon heavy kind of approaches to what they do to the reality of people who are struggling just like me to sort of like understand what a solution actually is for, how it works, how to get trained, what what adoption really means, So it ended up being, like, actually a pretty good fit. And that was probably twenty ten, I'm guessing. So, yeah, it's been it's been like, thirteen, fourteen years now just since I've been focusing on tech. And it's been just as great as when I first got into logistics. Awesome. Very cool. So I or, what, in a in a previous episode, Bart Demunk, who was a a Gartner and analyst came on. And one of my favorite things to ask Gart analysts and folks are, you know, what what are the predictions that you saw, and we're really proud of, or what are what are the the trends that you were able to predict and jump on and kind of be in front of and You know, I mean, your your body at work speaks for itself, self, of course. But what are the things that that you feel like you were really kind of on the on the cutting edge in terms of breaking the stories or sharing sharing something that that the industry hadn't seen yet. Okay. So I'm gonna kinda waffle a little bit on your question, actually. I typically I'm a little shy when it comes to making predictions and, like, saying what's next. I get asked not a lot, but a fair amount. And I also I always a feel like I don't know well enough to, like, actually make a good enough prediction. And, b, I also kinda feel like it's not really my role to predict what's next. I I actually see my role as helping people understand sort of the ball as it lies to use like a golf term. Right? Like, you're in a game how do you play the game that exists, not one that might exist in the future. Right? So I think what I've been if I look back on my career, what I'm probably most happy about or most proud of is if I was able to help people understand how to how to invest or not to invest in a technology that they were struggling with that decision. All the way from, like, do I even have a framework to make a decision all the way to I know exactly what we need now I know a little bit better what what course I should have taken because I think that the sort of underlying reality, especially over the last decade, I would say, is just is just confusion more than anything else, just so many different options on the market, which is good in its own way, but it's also really confusing. So I yeah. I I consciously try not to get involved in the, like, what's next, what's gonna be I mean, I I've written about it. I've done things like this. I get asked even internally, like, hey, what's you know, what what is gonna be the technology trained in twenty four? And I try to, like, waffle my way out of that answer because I really feel like There's so much work to be done to help people understand where things are now before I even go into, like, where the puck is gonna be in five years. That, I'd rather let people who are a lot smarter than me and a lot, like, more Well, I just mean, like, not that I'm not smart, but, like, they're smarter in a very in a very specific way that I'm not. Like, I'm by definition. I'm a bit more of a generalist because I'm covering a huge range of software categories, domestic international, bunch of different process, is for shippers, forwards, carriers, brokers. Right? Like, so it's I'm never gonna have the granular understanding of what's moving a a very specific thing, like someone who's only focused on that. Got it. Okay. So shifting gears slightly and due respect to folks that manifest due respect to the folks at freightwaves. There are a ton of events out there that deserve lots of credit. What it comes right down to it, TPM is sort of the granddaddy of call. And we're coming up on the TPM event here in LA Long Beach. What are the things you're most excited about for this year's TPM conference? Well, I mean, excited, nervous, anxious, about incorporating TPM tech into TPM this year for those who don't know. I've I've sort of led four different incarnations of of like standalone technology events put on by the journal of commerce. There were two in Las Vegas called LogTech. In twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, then we we're gonna start one in twenty twenty. Was incorporated in TPM, and, of course, we didn't get to do that. So then we had a year and a half, two years to try to rethink, like, what we were gonna do. So the last two years we did TPM tech is a standalone event right before TPM, which was successful in its own way, but it was also, like, exhausting for everybody involved. And so the dis we made the decision earlier this year to go. Let's let's try incorporating t p m tech within t p m. Positive are, you know, we get access to the full, like, roster of TPM attendees of which there's gonna be, you know, more than thirty five hundred and a ton of shippers. So we have the potential to draw those people. Some of whom may not have gone to a standalone tech event. We have the potential to draw them into the tech sort of, atmosphere because, you know, they don't have to pay for a separate ticket. They don't have to set aside three extra days. I'm really excited about that. I'm excited about kind of really focusing on process oriented sessions as opposed to just a lot. There's a lot of, like, abstract notions that are the basis for panels around technology and logistics. Like, you need to digitize and you need to go on a digital transformation journey, and you need to automate this and automate that. And it's like, you walk out of the session and you're like, I I I don't need to understand what what they were even trying to say. Like, it sounded interesting, but then did I even take anything from it? So I'm I'm super focused as I usually am, but I think especially this year on sessions around very specific processes that everybody has to engage in and, like, how technology impacts those process. So that's me personally. There's also a ton of cool sessions that I have nothing to do with that I'm super excited about. We're we have the We have the head of the US DOT flow initiative who's talking, and just kind of under helping shippers understand, like, where that that project is. It's actually totally worth exploring, because they're doing some very interesting work. We have Bob Gates talking about former defense secretary talking about what's going on geopolitically. We booked him in, like, summer of last year. So we could have never foreseen the Red Sea stuff, but We knew we knew geopolitics was gonna be a big thing. And then, obviously, we, you know, we have the normal cast of characters around you know, from container lines and big freight forwarders and, and you know what? Actually, one thing I'll call out We have an insane number of shippers on the program this year. We have something like somewhere between twenty five and thirty shippers It may even be more than that at this point on various panels. So, you know, to hear directly from the sort of customers perspective is invaluable, and we're really excited about how many shippers are kind of wanting to participate in the discussions this year rather than just sit in the audience and sort of absorb, they really wanna, like, be part of the discussion. So that's that's very encouraging. That's super cool. It used to be, you know, when you when you when you went to TPM, if you saw somebody with their name batch flipped over so you can only see the back you knew that was a shipper because they're Believe me. We get we get asked all sorts of things. Like, can I can we like blank? You need like a technology to like blank our name when people are approaching and then turn it back on when other people. There's all sorts of crazy ideas that we've had, but, you know, you understand. Right? Like, they get completely bombarded. I understand. With, with, requests understandably. Yep. So Eric, last year, if I were to put a theme on it, and I don't I don't know if this was the intention at felt a little bit at TPM, like shippers, not necessarily calling for revenge, but a lot of folks had some harsh feelings towards the the steamship community and towards some of the the capacity providers having been through two years of hardship and and seen rates go maybe a little higher than they should be. You know, if you had to put your finger on the the pulse here and say, here's my expectation for this year. What do you think is gonna be one of the the unannounced kind of interesting trends that people walk away feeling. So it's interesting you ask that because we have internally been sling with sort of like what the tenure of this event is gonna be. Generally speaking, like, I'm talking to you or what about three weeks out. Generally speaking, by this time, it is pretty, if not very clear. Who is going to have kind of the upper hand in contract negotiations going into TPM. And it's really about at that point, the the conference itself and, like, the the program we can do is really about kinda like fine tuning around the edges. Like, the the peripheral stuff that gets you from two thousand dollar container rate to eighteen hundred or twenty two hundred if you're on the carrier side. Right? Like, just tinkering around the edges. This year, it is not entirely clear who's going to be like, kind of the one with the leverage in in negotiations. And it could be very well that half of a carrier's negotiations, they have a bit more leverage and the other half, they have a a little bit less leverage just because there's so much kind of precarious stuff hanging around the outside. Like, the Red Sea stuff is going on, which in a vacuum wouldn't seem to have any impact on the TP, but nothing exists in a vacuum. The Panama Canal, very sort of unclear about, like, which way that breaks in terms of amount of transits that are allowed. Given the water levels there. ILA on the East Coast. We don't know how much that's gonna in in, you know, kind of compel shippers to move stuff back to the West Coast. So you could there could be a scenario. There's like ten different scenarios, right, all the way from all of these things settle way down by the time, you know, April hits, and it's totally a shippers market all the way to the flip, which is water levels are at a all time low in the on the Panama Canal Suez blows up even more, you know, aggravates into, like, a eastern hemisphere kind of war zone. ILA starts agitating, and the West Coast just gets completely crammed with with volume on the pure, like, kind of, east, Asia, US West Coast T. P. Kinda lanes. That seems very far fetched that all of that would break at the same time, but there's some as with everything, it's probably some some, permutation in the middle, which makes it, like, a very uncertain kind of situation. And so what we're hearing is, like, a lot of people are gonna go to TPM and they're gonna kinda play chicken with each other on both sides. And they're gonna wait to see the dynamic break in their favor that helps kinda get them over the line that they wanna get to from a from a rate perspective. So my answer is, like, I don't the theme is, like, everyone kinda, like, in limbo right now until we see which way some of these things break. Eric, you've been a flag bearer in the industry for, for quite a long time. What is the best way for a startup that's just getting started to, like, get in front of you and to approach you? Well, okay. So you you you alluded to this a little bit, but, like, the the challenge of being a technology reporter in this space, and the challenge of sort of getting attention in a very noisy crowded marketplace for for solutions. I think about that probably more than I should, probably an unhealthy amount. My wife would probably say a very unhealthy amount. As I'm, like, tweeting with people at eleven o'clock at night on, on DM, on in my phone, you know, in bed when I should be sleeping. But, The I I think there's a major challenge that just keeps growing by the day for companies to sort of get attention in a attention starved super noisy marketplace. So, I mean, you're one of the few people that I feel like I've had a long term sort of PR relationship with because you and and I know I'm not turning this into a celebration of you, but, like, you k. I love celebrations of me. Yeah. No. No. No. No. No. I let's point out things that you do well so that other people can maybe learn a bit is you definitely take the time to understand, like, where I come from coverage wise, what matters to my readers, what matters to our publication, my process, all that stuff. Like, you and I've had a million conversations. And, you know, that doesn't translate into you getting an unfair coverage advantage. In fact, you probably want more coverage from me than I've given. But you never hold it against me when something when I when I don't write something about a company you work for. And so, I mean, I do think people who are in the position of of wanting attention around something they're doing would be served and sort of like understanding how I work in understanding how other people who cover the logistics technology space work. Some some have are, like, way more prolific than I am at this point. Some are, less prolific than I am. Some have different reader sets than I do. And so they're gonna want to they're gonna be attracted to a different type of story or a different type of company than I will. So it it's really about, like, not just carpet bombing the media, but rather, like, really being very tactical and surgical with how you create relationships with individual people because that's gonna get you so much farther than just sending the same message to every single person. So, Eric, the final question I ask everybody that joins the show you know, if you were giving advice to a soon to be a recent, just happened college grad who's thinking about considering this industry, What advice would you give them? Well, so, like, I I'll first answer that by saying the the intersection between my two issues to journalism and logistics has been a godsend for me, like, for being able to focus on a particular industry, especially one as vibrant as logistics has been amazing and is basically allowed me to have a successful career where I might, you know, different choices might have not allowed that to happen. So I think there's a there's a lesson in there about that that that's not logistics specific that if you focus on a niche early as early as you can, as early as you feel comfortable. And you find that niche and just interesting, that can be a huge path to being, like, successful and stable in journalism where, like, virtually all other parts of journalism are not stable at all. So that's one. On the logistics side of things, I can't think of many industries that touch two areas that logistics is fantastic at, and then I truly appreciate, which is one is unless you're in sales, or unless you're in some sort of, like, partnership role in some other industry, it's pretty rare that you actually interact with people outside of your company. Right? Like most people go to work and they just end up talking to ten to fifteen to thirty people inside their own company, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but you get kind of like this homogeneous world where it's only about what your company is doing. Whereasistics, and it's not just me because I'm a reporter, but logistics is all about, like, reaching out to other organizations to get stuff from a long way off to where to, you know, where it's destined. Right? So that's to me super interesting because you get to see not just how your company works, but you get a little window into how other companies work. And sometimes that's like, oh, I would love to work for that other company, or sometimes it's like, Man, that place is a as show, I'm so glad we are not so dysfunctional internally. But it's still fun to, like, interact. Right? And the other aspect is just how international it is. Like, if you're someone who enjoys learning about other cultures and and not just, like, you know, like you get to do when you travel for pleasure, but, you know, learn how other business, how how business works in other regions. If you like, get to see get to, like, work on teams that sometimes have eight different nationalities. Right? Like, I mean, you had mentioned manifests earlier in the in the show. I was just there and I I did three sessions. And I think I counted I had I was on sessions with ten other people in nine of them or for from nine different countries. There was only one other American on any of my panels. Everybody else was from you know, nine different countries. Like, that's awesome. Like, if that's something that you find interesting, this is like a amazing industry to be involved in. Eric Johnson. Thank you so much for being guest on hammer down. Appreciate your brother. Oh, absolutely, Mike. Really enjoyed it.