• September 30 - October 2, 2024
  • Inland Distribution
  • September 29 - October 1, 2025 | The Westin Chicago River North

Eric Johnson

Journal of Commerce by S&P Global

Senior Editor, Technology

Eric Johnson is the JOC's Senior Editor, Technology, where he leads coverage and analysis of technology’s impact on global logistics and trade. Johnson regularly reports on how shippers, carriers across all modes, and logistics companies use software, as well as new concepts impacting core freight transportation processes like procurement, execution, visibility, and payment. Johnson is a regular presenter and moderator at industry events and webinars. Prior to joining the JOC in May 2018, Johnson spent 13 years with American Shipper in a variety of roles, most recently covering logistics technology and leading the production of a series of benchmark studies on the logistics industry. Johnson has a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in international business from the University of Leeds, UK. He has lived and worked in Southern California, the UK, and India, and now resides in the Washington, D.C., area.

Sessions With Eric Johnson

Monday, 30 September

Tuesday, 1 October

  • 08:15am - 08:30am (CST) / 01/oct/2024 01:15 pm - 01/oct/2024 01:30 pm

    Welcome Remarks
  • 09:30am - 10:00am (CST) / 01/oct/2024 02:30 pm - 01/oct/2024 03:00 pm

    One-on-One: A Conversation with DAT Freight & Analytics' Ken Adamo

     A flood of data on the truckload market presents an interesting conundrum for shippers and brokers. While more is better than less, too much can also be a bad thing. In other words, sorting through all the noise to find the signal that matter for an individual business can be a herculean task, one that is sometimes beyond the scope of a transportation department. And yet, each shipper and broker in the market needs to understand these signals to make critical pricing and service decisions. In this session, Ken Adamo, DAT Freight & Analytics' chief of analytics and vice president of strategy, will help attendees drill down to the data points that matter when dissecting the current and future states of the truckload market. The session will touch on: specific metrics that are important to track when it comes to truckload rates, service, and capacity; how to formulate a diversified but manageable data strategy; and determining whether data science capability should be handled in-house or outsourced.

  • 10:30am - 11:30am (CST) / 01/oct/2024 03:30 pm - 01/oct/2024 04:30 pm

    View From the Top: A Conversation with Industry Leaders
    This high-level roundtable discussion will gauge the mindset and outlook of industry stakeholders across the transportation and logistics landscape as 2024 winds down and 2025 approaches. What do industry leaders expect in international trade, domestic transportation volumes and pricing, warehousing and trucking capacity, inventories and labor relations? How are global events impacting North American business? How will elections affect transportation and logistics? What problems demand our immediate attention and how can we better collaborate on comprehensive solutions?   
  • 04:25pm - 05:10pm (CST) / 01/oct/2024 09:25 pm - 01/oct/2024 10:10 pm

    Shippers' Perspective: Service, Cost & Collaboration

    Shippers have enjoyed sustained pricing power this year and recovered from the disruption of 2020-2022, but there are plenty of problems on their plates, from clouded supply chain visibility and service issues to exacting customer delivery demands and penalties. Add to that the unpredictable economic environment and an upcoming national election. This is a time for shippers to take stock and plan for what could be a recovery in freight demand in 2025. This panel of logistics executives will explore the way forward for US shippers.

Wednesday, 2 October

  • 08:30am - 08:35am (CST) / 02/oct/2024 01:30 pm - 02/oct/2024 01:35 pm

    Welcome Remarks
  • 10:50am - 11:30am (CST) / 02/oct/2024 03:50 pm - 02/oct/2024 04:30 pm

    InlandTech V: The Latest Data Revolution — Understanding Truckload Pricing and Performance Metrics
    From no data to “big data” to “too much data,” participants in the North American truckload industry have been on a rocky ride over the years. There is, put simply, no shortage of data sources around which to base planning, procurement, and partnership decisions. The questions now revolve around: which data sources to use; how to manage them; and how to use them. With a trio of the industry’s most forward-thinking software CEOs, this session will dive specifically into how brokers and shippers can use rate and carrier performance data to shape their planning, freight buying, and carrier choices. 
  • 11:35am - 12:05pm (CST) / 02/oct/2024 04:35 pm - 02/oct/2024 05:05 pm

    One-on-One: Resurrecting Convoy and the Future of Truckload Procurement Tech: A Conversation with Bill Driegert

    More than a year after being lured from Uber Freight, where he was a key figure in building and scaling the freight broker, Bill Driegert now has a new challenge: taking the technology that powered Convoy and turning it into a differentiator for Flexport, the forwarder that hired him in May 2023. The challenge is multifaceted, from resurrecting the connections with Convoy’s carrier base to figuring out how a standalone domestic brokerage technology fits with Flexport’s suite of services and tech for its import and export customers. More broadly, there’s hardly anyone better equipped to understand the challenges and opportunities of technology’s impact on truckload procurement. In this one-on-one Driegert will help attendees better understand the role technology plays in empowering truckload carriers, brokers, and shippers.

  • 01:15pm - 01:45pm (CST) / 02/oct/2024 06:15 pm - 02/oct/2024 06:45 pm

    One-on-One: Understanding the Mexico Business Climate Amid Spiraling Cross-Border Growth

    Hardly a day goes by in the business press without a mention of the exploding trade between Mexico and the US. The potential is there for all to see in Mexico, either as an origin point for goods or as a way point for goods moving from Asia to the US. Mexico is now the US’s largest trading partner, supplanting China, and it feels as though the potential for growth of the trade can only be constrained by operational and political factors.

    Many logistics professionals are having to account for Mexico as a new sourcing hub for their companies. That means establishing trusted carrier and intermediary partners as well as having an internal team that understands the market. But while it’s important to understand the transportation ramifications of cross-border trade growth – both in truckload and intermodal – there’s more to consider.

    Doing business in Mexico is not like doing business in China or the US. It has its own distinct business environment, and freight transportation exists within that reality. While there are a handful of sessions at Inland24 dedicated to the rise of cross-border trade and its freight implications, perhaps the most important session is one in which S&P Global’s José Enrique Sevilla-Macip will map out the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Mexico at a broader level. Sevilla-Macip is a senior research analyst within S&P Global’s Economics and Country Risk unit covering Latin America and Caribbbean.

  • 01:50pm - 02:30pm (CST) / 02/oct/2024 06:50 pm - 02/oct/2024 07:30 pm

    One-on-One: Why “Uber for Freight” Never Clicked: A Conversation with Robert Nathan
    Seven years ago, Robert Nathan, then CEO of a broker called LoadDelivered, wrote a column for CIO Review titled “The 5 Lies the Ubers of Trucking May Tell You.” The article came just as a slew of startup technology providers, mostly tech-focused intermediaries and marketplaces, came on the truckload scene promising to upend the business as we knew it. Many fell into an “uber for trucking” bucket, at least insofar as it mattered to investors looking for something for which these startups could be compared. Then Uber Freight itself emerged. Nathan’s piece attempted to lay bare some facts about what would and wouldn’t work in freight brokerage, including why he believed open marketplaces don’t benefit small shippers and carriers, why relationships aren’t secondary to tech, and why asset sharing wasn’t necessarily “disruptive.” Now a supply chain-focused investor after having sold LoadDelivered in 2018, Nathan joins #Inland24 to revisit that piece, diving into what has and hasn’t worked for the Uber for Trucking model, and where it goes from here.  
  • 03:15pm - 03:20pm (CST) / 02/oct/2024 08:15 pm - 02/oct/2024 08:20 pm

    Closing Remarks
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