The state of the freight economy, rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and accelerating levels of fraud across the trucking industry topped the agenda at SMC³ JumpStart26, an annual supply chain education event held in Atlanta earlier this week.

JumpStart brings together professionals from across the less-than-truckload (LTL) industry for three days of networking, presentations, and panel discussions on the issues affecting the industry. More than 500 people turned out for the event, which was held at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly, January 26-28.

The freight economy continues to be marked by uncertainty, despite some bright spots on the broader economic horizon, according to economist Keith Prather of Armada Corporate Intelligence, who gave an economic update on the first day of the conference. Prather cited consumer spending on services rather than goods, tariff volatility, and an unhealthy housing market as persistent drags on the freight economy. Bright spots include anticipated tax refunds that may boost consumer spending on goods later this year, a slowly improving residential construction market that could help spur freight movement, and strong GPD growth heading into 2026.

Touting AI

AI dominated much of the discussion over the three days, with LTL freight carriers, third-party logistics services (3PL) providers, and technology companies detailing how the technology can be used to improve operations within companies and across the industry. Speakers included Mark Albrecht, vice president of artificial intelligence and enterprise strategy at 3PL C.H. Robinson.

Albrecht’s talk coincided with the company’s launch of AI agents aimed at combatting missed LTL pickups. Two new AI agents are tracking down missed pickups and using advanced reasoning to determine how to keep freight moving, according to a January 26 company announcement. C.H. Robinson said it has automated 95% of checks on missed LTL pickups, saving more than 350 hours of manual work per day, helping shippers’ freight move up to a day faster, and reducing unnecessary return trips to pick up missed freight by 42%. The tools are part of a fleet of more than 30 AI agents C.H. Robinson has developed in house to streamline LTL processes.

Cracking down on fraud

The conference also featured an interview with Derek Barrs, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Barrs addressed the widespread fraud affecting the trucking industry, discussing how FMCSA is working with states and other federal agencies to combat safety problems arising from several issues, including the issuing of non-domiciled commercial drivers licenses (CDLs), English-language proficiency enforcement, and entry-level driver training programs.

Barrs said FMCSA is working with states to ensure the enforcement of existing English-language proficiency regulations and that “thousands and thousands” of drivers have been placed out of service as a result. FMCSA is also working with states to review their processes for issuing non-domiciled CDLs, which may be granted to non-citizens living in the United States. Much of the problem centers around states issuing licenses to non-citizens for periods of time that exceed their legal status to work in the country. Barrs said most states have stopped issuing non-domiciled CDLs while those processes are being reviewed but said much work remains to fix breakdowns in the system.

Barrs said FMCSA is focused on rooting out bad actors in driver training as well, noting that he agency has removed 6,800 listings from its training provider registry to date and that investigations of driver training schools continue.

Show organizers cited a strong turnout for the event despite being affected by winter storm Fern, which resulted in thousands of flight cancellations nationwide and widespread power outages in the Southeast. The crowd of more than 500 attendees was down from an expected group of more than 700 registrants.

SMC³ will hold its annual Connections event this coming June in Palm Beach, Fla.

Managing logistics operations in-house is often the easiest way to ensure that your supply chain feels like an extension of your brand. But that level of control and quality is hard to sustain as a company expands: More volume means more complexity, and many growing companies find themselves looking for alternative, cost-effective solutions to manage that growth.

That’s exactly the position leaders at Pacific Cheese found themselves in recently. By 2025, the family-owned natural cheese company had seen its footprint expand from California to an international network of suppliers and customers, including three domestic production facilities. The company supplies cheese products for major retail brands as well as some of the country’s largest fast-food chains.

Company leaders needed a better way to manage their supply chain as they scaled operations—so they turned to third-party logistics services provider (3PL) ITS Logistics for help.

“When you’re small, you can build it yourself. When you’re really large, you can buy a TMS [transportation management system], hire analysts, and pay for market intelligence,” Brandon Smith, vice president of operations at Pacific Cheese, said in a case study describing the companies’ partnership. “Pacific Cheese was caught in the middle of these two extremes. We’d grown too large and complex to self-manage in a cost-efficient way, but not large enough to justify the cost of all the people and tech to keep doing it in house. With ITS, we get all the benefits but only pay for what we use in technology, management, and thought leadership.”

Today, Pacific Cheese utilizes a fully managed logistics solution from ITS.

SOPHISTICATION AT SCALE

ITS crafted a solution that gives Pacific Cheese “enterprise-level sophistication at scale,” leaders from both companies explain. The program includes a dedicated managed transportation team, implementation of a customized transportation management system (TMS), and a fully managed RFP (request for proposal) process that expanded Pacific Cheese’s carrier network while optimizing network utilization and enhancing its fraud prevention capabilities.

“Mid-market shippers have to work much harder to be cost-efficient than enterprises do, especially when it comes to logistics,” Jameson Goforth, vice president of final mile and managed solutions at ITS Logistics, said in the case study. “Our goal for Pacific Cheese was to help it adopt a technical, strategic, and operational approach that ensures it’s ready to meet the challenges of rising costs and market uncertainty, changing the mindset from: How do we move this load today? to How can we increase the efficiency of our supply chain?”

RESULTS THAT MEASURE UP

Since partnering with ITS, Pacific Cheese has achieved measurable improvements across its supply chain operations, including:

• A 13% overall transportation cost reduction with month-over-month savings growth;
• 19% lane-specific savings achieved by redesigning routes for optimal utilization;
• A 20% reduction in LTL (less-than-truckload) spend through improved network efficiency and consolidation;
• The ability to pass cost savings along to customers—either directly or by way of finished-goods pricing;
• Increased visibility and communication via integrated TMS and real-time shipment tracking;
• An enhanced carrier procurement process and access to industry-leading carrier vetting technology from tech providers like GenLogs, DAT, and Highway.

“We embarked on a pretty ambitious path together—ITS integrating new elements of its service line and Pacific Cheese entrusting its logistics operations to a managed service provider after 50 years of managing them ourselves,” Smith said in the case study. “My team has a very high bar for compliments, and they continually highlight how responsive, action-oriented, and accountable ITS is. They’ve become an integral part of our team.”