This session recap is from Day 1 of FreightWaves’ F3: Future of Freight Festival live event in Chattanooga, Tennessee. For more information on the event, click here.
DETAILS: On this special episode of Freightonomics recorded live from FreightWaves’ F3: Future of Freight festival in Chattanooga, Smith and Strickland break down supply side inflation, key recessionary indicators, dynamic pricing and the Fed’s role in all of it with Ayeh Bandeh-Ahmadi of Transfix. Then, your hosts are joined by Onshore Outsourcing’s Daniel Nixon to talk strategies for attracting and retaining drivers with better customer service. Finally, the discussion turns to the problem of last-mile economics — and how to solve it.
SPEAKERS: Ayeh Bandeh-Ahmadi, principal economist, Transfix, and Daniel Nixon, chief operating officer, Onshore Outsourcing.
BIOS: Bandeh-Ahmadi is an economist with expertise in innovation and the organization of data, ideas, people, firms and industries. Her work combines economic modeling with network theory, statistics, natural language processing and machine learning methods to design effective pricing mechanisms, contracts, and markets. Prior to joining Transfix, Bandeh-Ahmadi spent more than seven years with the U.S. Treasury Department as a debt manager and senior economist.
Nixon discovered Onshore in 2011 and, wanting to explore his programming hobby professionally, attended and graduated from the Onshore program. In his current role, he oversees operations at Onshore including services, workforce development and engagement management. His passion is the sustainability and the impact of the system and the team that drives Onshore’s vision for revitalizing rural America. The company provides outsourced IT services for drivers using a 100% U.S.-based network of call centers.
KEY QUOTES FROM BANDEH-AHMADI AND NIXON:
“I think that we’re in a situation where we’re seeing the Fed hike rates because it’s trying to bring inflation under control. I think what I would say is that I expect that process to continue, and … I think the Fed has an incentive to overcorrect rather than undercorrect. It’s really existential for them.” — Bandeh-Ahmadi
“The longer that we see a strong jobs market, the longer that we can expect the Fed to stay the course. That means that rates will go up higher. … The higher that rates have to go, if I had to guess, I would expect the recessionary pressure when it hits to be larger. But the timing of when that tipping point is going to happen is something that’s up in the air.” — Bandeh-Ahmadi
“Looking specifically at our logistics clients, the driver shortages have been a big driver for us, because they see us as an alternative to other outsourced call centers, maybe in the Philippines or wherever it is. They see us as an alternative — it’s onshore, it’s relatable to their drivers, it provides a much higher level of driver experience. And that’s really where we’ve gotten our foot into that market.” — Nixon
“It’s really common in the industry to not have things like customer satisfaction surveys — they almost don’t want to know what the drivers think of the support because they’re afraid of what they’re going to hear. We bring our own process for that, and we make sure that we’re building that feedback loop.” — Nixon