27 minute read
See LIGHTFOOT on
LIGHTFOOT from Page 1
Overall, between her inauguration in May 2019 and June 20, 2021, Lightfoot has granted slightly more one-on-one sit-downs to local outlets than national ones, 164 to 153. That’s different than the emphasis placed by prior mayors. And her numbers tilt to a national majority if you exclude the big batch of local interviews Lightfoot grants at limited specified times, like the week she unveils her proposed city budget.
Though the lack of access clearly has irritated portions of the Chicago media—Crain’s last interviewed Lightfoot on Oct. 15, 2020, and has had multiple interview requests turned down since then—observers say more than granular, inside baseball-style coverage and local media bragging rights are at stake.
“Local journalists should have more access than national reporters who drop in and don’t have the basis of knowledge to ask needed questions,” says David Greising, a former Tribune columnist who now contributes a monthly column to Crain’s and now heads the watchdog Better Government Association.
“Chicagoans have an interest in the mayor being available to reporters for in-depth interviews where nuances can be explored,” he says. “If national reporters are getting the lion’s share of those, Chicago residents are being short-changed.”
In part, the data on Lightfoot’s interviews reflects the reality that modern media is splintered, making it difficult for any mayor to reach a mass audience. National media interviews allow the mayor to shape perceptions of the city while appealing to her progressive base by hitting the outlets those people watch and read, says former Tribune editor Tim Franklin, now a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
But part of it is Lightfoot herself, he adds. “For whatever reason, she doesn’t seem to want to get into indepth interviews with individual outlets where she may get pushed really hard on some of these very challenging issues facing the city.”
PRESSURE
A City Hall insider seconds that view, noting that when the mayor feels she’s under pressure on crime rates, school strikes or other woes, she is inclined to seek a friendly venue to talk about it, and those sympathetic ears are likely to be found at outlets like MSNBC. The mayor understands that worsens her relationship with local media, the insider says, but “she doesn’t care.”
In a statement, a Lightfoot spokesperson says the mayor’s office has used a variety of media to “communicate with residents and advocate on behalf of Chicago,” including panel discussions, social media and public events. Since September 2019, they say, the mayor has held 180 press conferences—an average of two per week—“which offer reporters an opportunity to ask an array of questions.”
“We will continue to use a variety of opportunities to both advocate for our beloved city, and communicate with residents.”
MSNBC did not respond to a request for comment.
Lightfoot, of course, came into office with a compelling story: a selfmade attorney and nonpolitician who rose to become the first African American woman and openly gay person to be Chicago’s mayor.
Here’s what the record shows: While the mayor often spends a fraction of the scheduled time reflected in her records on the air, the total allotted minutes for MSNBC also exceeds that of local papers: MSNBC interviews accounted for more than 17 hours of the mayor’s scheduled time since May 2019, while together, the Sun-Times and Tribune got just over six hours. The mayor granted 25 interviews to CNN, involving nearly 10 hours of her time. That outpaces WGN-TV and radio, where she had 18 scheduled interviews, totaling 4.5 hours. There were 13 scheduled interviews, plus one photo shoot, with the New York Times and its magazine— as many as the hometown Tribune and more than the Sun-Times. The Washington Post received four scheduled interviews. Time magazine and the New Yorker were each scheduled for two. The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Rolling Stone, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour and Elle were each scheduled for one. On the local airwaves, public media outlets—WTTW, with 13, and WBEZ, with 10—ranked in the top 10 for one-on-ones with the mayor. But Lightfoot was an even more frequent guest on WVON-AM, the oldest Black-oriented radio station in Chicago, where she had 15 scheduled interviews. She also had eight scheduled with V-103, the R&B and throwback station, mostly with “Chicago Speaks” host Darryl Dennard. Smaller or independent local media, including ProPublica, the Triibe, the Windy City Times, and
ONE-ON-ONES
Overall, the mayor split her time roughly equally between local and national outlets, but MSNBC and CNN have been clear favorites for sit-downs.
Local vs. national appointments Minutes National local
153 164
3,768 3,918
Appointments by outlet
MSNBC CNN WGN WVON New york Times Chicago Tribune WTTW WBEZ ABC7 V103 Chicago
Sun-Times NPR
WlS-AM 890 Univision Crain’s Chicago Business
CBS (national)
18 15 14 14 13 10 10 8
8
7 6 6 25 40
1,033 585 270 258 325 475 420 205 200 135
315
100
180
130 N’Digo, were scheduled for one interview each, though some could have been part of smaller ethnic media roundtables the mayor has hosted. The Triibe was also granted an interview as part of the mayor’s two-year anniversary tour, which is blocked off on the mayor’s schedule for two hours on May 19, 2021. While on the presidential campaign trail, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama employed the same “go national” technique, avoiding local interviews that might touch on sensitive subjects like his relationship to power broker Tony Rezko in favor of chats with TV networks and the like, recalls former WLS-TV reporter and former BGA chief Andy Shaw. “You get much more of a pass from the national media.”
Still, Lightfoot’s style is different from those of earlier mayors. Richard M. Daley “frequently declined national interviews because Chicagoans didn’t much care about the mayor’s national profile,” says former Daley deputy press secretary Carolyn Grisko. Sources close to Rahm Emanuel say he routinely gave only about half a dozen national media interviews a year.
In national appearances, the mayor is “not going to get pressed on the specifics of all the shootings over the July Fourth weekend, how they happened and what she’s going to do. It’s more big-picture existential issues,” Northwestern’s Franklin says. “I think that’s probably why she’s doing it. And I would expect her not to stop doing it anytime soon.”
CRM-Powered Transportation Management
for Freight Brokers, Logistics Service Providers (3PL/4PL) and Shippers
www.revenova.com 312.319.5410
LET’S MOVE YOUR BUSINESS LET’S MOVE FORWARD TOGETHER YOUR BUSINESS
FORWARD TOGETHER
TRENDS IN LOGISTICS
NAVIGATING THE POST-COVID BOOM
Since the COVID pandemic began, the logistics industry has been tested repeatedly as consumers shopped online in record numbers—a trend that shows no sign of abating. Executives of three companies that frequently collaborate to serve the logistics industry shared their insights with Crain’s Content Studio.
HALEY EVANS is vice president – broker and third-party logistics services for TriumphPay, which is creating a fully integrated payments network for transportation. She works with freight brokers and logistics providers to understand industry pain points, and collaborates with product management and marketing to provide solutions. Previously, she worked in health care and reinsurance, designing programs to reduce institutional risk and improve safety.
MICHAEL HORVATH is cofounder, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Revenova, a cloud application provider of transportation management solutions (TMS) for shippers, brokers and third-party logistics companies. He has more than three decades of experience in the cloud computing/ software industry where he managed sales, marketing, customer service and product development. Previously, he co-founded Forseva, a credit and collection management application suite.
WES TILGNER is vice president – information systems for OpenRoad Transportation, a global supply chain and logistics provider. Since joining the company in 2006, he has worked in sales, operations, equipment, technology and corporate management—helping it grow from a small start-up to one of the fastestgrowing logistics companies. His passion is helping people succeed by providing an opportunity with the right technology tools.
What role does your organization play in the logistics industry?
Michael Horvath: Revenova provides customer relationship
What are some of the biggest challenges currently facing freight brokers and logistics service providers?
Evans: Two of the biggest challenges facing freight brokers today are maintaining carrier capacity and preserving efficiency while margins continue to be compressed. Because of the current rate environment, brokers need to find and keep carriers happy to continue serving their
customers. This can be difficult to do while keeping a healthy margin, so brokers must look for other ways to develop a growing carrier base. providing the best experience for both shippers and carriers takes extra care. Bringing together the diverse technology platforms of the different market segments we serve is also a challenge we’re working through every day.
Horvath: The logistics industry is experiencing very tight truck capacity, largely due to a driver shortage, emphasizing the need for freight brokers and logistics service providers to build and maintain a larger and more dedicated carrier network. Tight capacity also means tighter margins and volatile pricing, putting pressure on operations to maintain competitive customer pricing and profitability.
— HALEY EVANS, TRIUMPHPAY
management-powered transportation management solutions for logistics service providers, freight brokers and shippers. It runs on Salesforce.com, a cloud-based software that helps organizations effectively streamline their sales and marketing operations. Our customers enjoy the benefits of the features, security, reliability and scalability of the Salesforce.com platform with the transportation management features needed to manage the entire quote-to-cash process of shipping freight across the globe; in other words, customer relationship management-powered transportation management.
Haley Evans: TriumphPay is an integrated payments network that connects brokers, shippers, factors and carriers through forwardthinking solutions that help each party successfully process, settle and manage carrier payments and drive growth. We offer supply chain financing to brokers, allowing them to focus on the carrier experience, pay their carriers faster and drive carrier loyalty. We also provide the tools and services for factors to increase automation, mitigate fraud, create back-office efficiency and improve their client’s payment experience.
Wes Tilgner: OpenRoad Transportation provides both third-party and asset-based logistics management for domestic and international shipments of all kinds, as well as invoice factoring services. We excel where shippers and carriers prefer a personal connection with a logistics provider that can provide everything they need.
With carrier capacity so tight, how are you finding and keeping carriers in your network?
Tilgner: We’ve always relied heavily on our personal relationships with carriers. Our carriers appreciate our core values of proactive communication, personalized solutions and respect. We’re continually investing in technology that helps us communicate, track and pay carriers quickly and easily. Our logistics software, Revenova TMS, is built on a customer relationship management platform that helps us stay connected with our carriers. And HubTran, now a service of TriumphPay, has made processing shipment paperwork and carrier payments simpler for everyone.
Horvath: Carrier relationship management is arguably even more important than customer relationship management. If you have carrier capacity in your network, you’ll find freight to move. Unlike most transportation management applications that are solely focused on load management, ours empowers customers to effectively prospect, onboard and retain carriers by engaging them in a more personalized and targeted fashion based on detailed carrier preferences. Offering loads that meet their lane preferences and providing functionality for easy settlement and quick payment builds trust and loyalty. If you’re easy to do business with and personalize the experience, your carrier partners will stay with you.
Evans: While rates are certainly part of the equation, over the last few years we’ve seen brokers focus even more on the carrier experience. Carriers want to know, “Are you easy to do business with?” “Am I able to speak with a person when I call?” “Do you provide carriers with a portal where they can self-serve and see all of their information, loads, invoices and payments in one place?” In our everyday lives, we’re used to phone apps and seeing information in real time. Carriers have similar expectations; brokers either need to develop this technology or partner with someone who can provide it for their carriers.
— WES TILGNER, OPENROAD TRANSPORTATION
Given your organization’s experience with COVID-19, what business continuity plan recommendations would you offer customers ?
Tilgner: With a major disruption like we had last year, the shippers that thrived were those that partnered with logistics providers with the relationships and technology to adapt quickly. Critical to success is having those hard conversations up front with logistics providers regarding schedules, budgets and contingency plans. We’ve all had to be flexible, use new technologies and protect our company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Evans: As you think about how your work gets done, think about the location of your workforce. Due to COVID and many restrictions placed in countries overseas, companies had less control and contact with their offshore labor force. Because of this, we’re seeing companies start to bring their labor closer to home. Another aspect to consider is what technology can be used to mitigate risk and still enable you to scale without increasing headcount.
Horvath: The pandemic exposed the IT infrastructure and business application strategy of many companies that were simply unable to deploy an “at home” workforce that could fully function in a distributed environment. Many legacy applications operate on local networks that weren’t designed to scale to a fully remote workforce. Our recommendation has always been to deploy cloud-based solutions that can fully function wherever there’s an internet connection, offering scalability and accessibility on demand with little to no local application or IT infrastructure required. Cloud platforms have proven to be reliable and secure—often more secure than local infrastructure—and they enable company employees to work from anywhere.
How will artificial intelligence improve logistics operations?
Evans: The logistics industry was built on repeatable tasks, and many of these tasks are still completed manually today. We’ll always want people answering the phone and building relationships with customers and carriers, but we’re really starting to see technology take over the manual and repeatable tasks. Ultimately, this will help brokers with their margins, enabling them to deploy more employees to sales and customer service.
Horvath: Logistics is a documentheavy industry. AI is currently being used to process documents, and automate traditionally manual processes in both operations and accounting—reducing the cost and processing time. Other opportunities fall into the predictive analytics category. For example, AI could reliably calculate spot market prices, predict on-time pickup and delivery based on real-time traffic and weather analysis, and use the information to optimize routes to ensure ontime performance. Probably the most disruptive use of AI is in the autonomous vehicle projects we see across the industry; self-driving vehicles and drones are all dependent on AI technology.
Tilgner: While it’s difficult to predict where AI will take us, I can see it making improvements to most areas of our operations. We’ll be better at predicting carrier capacity in lanes, reducing the miles that trucks drive empty, processing paperwork and paying carriers more accurately without human involvement—and it will enable us to provide better, more targeted service to our partners. It isn’t all about replacing people with computers, but giving people what they need to be efficient.
What are some best practices to reduce backoffice time and carrier settlement payment expenses?
Horvath: Shipping typically involves dozens of documents. ere’s a growing trend toward digital engagement to reduce the physical handling of paperwork-electronically communicating and processing documents saves a lot of time. Of course, once a carrier has submitted the required proofs of delivery and supporting documents, they expect prompt payment. Electronic payments have been around for quite some time and the area for cost reduction is in auto-settlement—basically, where the system can auto-approve invoice amounts, con rm that the required supporting documents are present, and then present the payment options to the carrier within seconds a er the paperwork is submitted. is is an area we’ve focused on in partnership with TriumphPay and Hubtran, and are seeing very good results.
Tilgner: is is one area where we’ve seen great improvement with new technology. First, we make it easy for carriers to deal with paperwork electronically by integrating intelligent document processing, logistics so ware and accounting—all through cloud-based connections to create a seamless process. It’s important to have this integration in mind when selecting so ware partners. HubTran for document processing and Revenova TMS is an example of a great integration we rely on every day.
Evans: e rst thing you want to look at are those manual and repeatable processes. Consider whether you can use technology to automate those, or at least decrease the amount of time you have someone working on them. You can make manual processes e cient only to a certain extent. Once you reach that point, as you grow your business, you’ll continue to increase your headcount in back-o ce and nonrevenue- generating activities.
What are the most effective key performance indicators you’ve used to drive process improvement?
Tilgner: e foundation of all our processes is our people, so we look at our employee turnover ratio as an indicator of our culture. Hiring and retaining great people means we have the experience and expertise to execute our business well. We also look at the percentage of carrier settlements that need manual interaction because of missing paperwork or rate discrepancies.
Horvath: Our customers focus on service delivery and pro tability metrics, so it’s important to have a TMS that can track overall organizational performance as well as pro t margin and activity down to the transaction level. In addition, customers focus on operational metrics such as on-time delivery, quotes generated per salesperson, close ratios, average time to book a carrier and customer satisfaction ratings. ey also track digital engagement percentages, such as the percent of processes where automation—versus employees—does the work in areas like order entry, carrier matching and engagement, digital bookings and auto-settlement. By automating routine tasks, brokers and logistics service providers can deploy their human capital to much higher value-added functions. By automating routine tasks, brokers and logistics service providers can deploy their human capital to much higher value-added functions.
Evans: One of the main metrics we track is the percentage of payments that are reversed. A reversed payment means that we paid the wrong entity and had to stop a payment and reissue. For us, this is always well below one percent, and we build our processes to keep this number low. If this number increases, it doesn’t just cost us human capital to x the payments—it also impacts our customer and carrier experience. As a payments network, we want to ensure that the correct person gets paid on time every time.
How does your organization maximize customer satisfaction and retention?
Evans: Maximizing customer satisfaction and retention is the same in almost every industry—do what you say you’re going to do and do it really well. We continue to focus on creating on a great customer and carrier experience by hiring the right people to serve our stakeholders.
Tilgner: We’ve always treated customers as individuals with unique needs and requirements. We make the e ort to understand their businesses so we can be prepared for whatever they need from sales, operations, accounting or technology. Personal service through stable relationships has been successful for us.
Horvath: We developed our TMS on the world’s highest rated and most popular customer relationship management platform for this very reason. Our customers have options available to deploy world-class tools for customer engagement, load tracking, billing and claims management using web-based and live call center support services. Many issues can arise when shipping freight; having a service-oriented partner that provides real-time visibility to load status and a multi-channel support model builds loyalty and retention.
— MICHAEL HORVATH, REVENOVA
How about carrier satisfaction and retention?
engagement and personalize it for carrier partners. Customers create a pro le for each carrier’s preferences and use it in the carrier engagement process. e goal is to understand the types of freight they prefer to move in the areas where they prefer to work. In addition, our TMS makes it easy for carriers to engage, communicate and settle loads for payment with our customers.
Tilgner: Our carrier relationships are managed much the same way as our customers. We understand the needs of our carrier partners very clearly because we’re also an asset-based carrier. is gives us unique insight to the challenges and pain points for a carrier in today’s logistics industry. Our carrier teams match the carrier to the right load and clearly communicate throughout the trip. To nish it o , we pay carriers promptly and accurately with no e ort required on their part. We work to make it a seamless and frictionless process for each of our carriers, and, when there’s a problem, our approach is respectful and understanding. All decisions are made based on the premise that each carrier will be our partner for many years to come.
Evans: With a hyper-focus on customer satisfaction, we’re committed to providing a product that’s relevant and user-friendly for all stakeholders. For carriers in particular, we provide a free portal and mobile app where they can see their loads, invoices and payments
for all of their TriumphPay brokers. is transparency and visibility allows carriers to know where their payments are at all times.
What automation trends will likely improve logistics operations?
Horvath: We talk a lot about “digital freight brokering” where processes that used to be done by people can be done through automation. Certainly, the “happy path” transactions can be fully automated. For example, a customer enters a load on a portal and instantly receives pricing and approves the rate. e TMS automatically books the load and con rms the carrier. e TMS tracks the carrier from pickup to delivery providing real-time location updates while moving. Once delivered, the TMS requests documentation from the carrier and automatically processes it when received. Lastly, the TMS sends the customer a bill and pays the carrier. Of course, not all freight travels the “happy path” and that’s why there will always be a need for people to service customers and partners. Evans: We’ve seen a couple of trends develop over the last few years. One is the number of integrations that stakeholders— transportation management systems, brokers, carriers, factors, shippers and technology providers—are engaging in to work together, faster and more e ciently. We’ve built integrations with our TMS partners to help brokers manage their payables and create a great payment experience for their carriers. We’ll continue to build integrations with all industry stakeholders to automate the freight invoicing and payment process.
Tilgner: As more so ware platforms integrate with each other through application programming interfaces and other technologies, we’ll see more accuracy and accountability, greater visibility, shorter loading and unloading times, and smoother settlement processes.
How has real-time shipment status for consumer shipments, aka the Amazon effect, changed how freight is managed?
Tilgner: roughout the industry there’s a growing expectation that we know exactly where our customers’ shipments are located at all times. e trend is pushing logistics companies and technology providers toward further integrations of freight management systems. However, it hasn’t fundamentally changed how we manage freight. While we’ve always made sure that our customers know where their freight is, the technology available today has made it much easier for us to track shipments and provide more options for our customers to see that information.
Horvath: e visibility that Amazon provides consumers regarding shipment status and location has set expectations for movers of commercial freight to provide the same visibility. We see shippers demanding 15-minute updates on their shipment status along with pickup and delivery noti cations. e challenge for logistics service providers and freight brokers is connectivity. It’s not uncommon to have more than 10,000 carriers in a network that the TMS must communicate with in each carrier’s preferred method. en the incoming tracking data needs to be normalized for the shipper. So, if the customer’s freight is moving from a ship to a train to a truck for nal delivery, the customer is expecting a seamless tracking experience across all three carriers.
Evans: People’s expectations have changed. Our customers want immediacy, transparency and convenience. We recently acquired HubTran so that we can continue to deliver on these expectations and provide the industry with easier opportunities to execute payments and grow their businesses through automatic presentment, settlement and payment of invoices.
HALEY EVANS
VP – Broker & 3PL Services TriumphPay hevans@triumphpay.com 214-458-1129
MICHAEL HORVATH
EVP & CMO Revenova mhorvath@revenova.com 312-319-5422
WES TILGNER
VP - Information Systems OpenRoad Transportation west@openroadtrans.com 503-687-1370
CLASSIFIEDS
To place your listing, contact Claudia Hippel at 312-659-0076 or email claudia.hippel@crain.com .www.chicagobusiness.com/classi eds
BASEBALL TICKETS
CUBS SEASON TICKETS Ticket holder since 1980s seeks partner to split approx. 35 to 45 dates per season, plus some games this year. is pair of seats are in the Club Box Home Plate area where Chicago’s business elite entertain clients.Location is arguably the best in the park for viewing action at Wrigley: between dugout and home plate on the 1st base side on the aisle. Sec. 21, row 13, seats 11, 12. 2 seats; face value. Je jjbrown144@gmail.com
BUSINESS FOR SALE
BUSINESS FOR SALE Successful Full Service Restaurant Established in 1995 In Michigan City, IN CALL 219-873-7101
BUSINESS FOR SALE
SUCCESSFUL OPERATING CAR WASH,
detail shop & parking facility in Wilmette Illinois. Great location & customer base EMAIL: John at info@normscarwash.com
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
ELECTRICAL ENGINEER: Create maintain new schematics for advanced Microwave RF products. Create Printed Circuit Board Layouts for both new and existing products. Hillside, IL. Send resume to L&J Engineering, 5911 Butterfi eld Rd., Hillside, IL 60162, Attn: J. Jannotta.
REAL ESTATE
LOOKING FOR LAND? CALL JAMES 773-368-1977
AUCTIONS
advertising opportunities available
To advertise contact Claudia Hippel claudia.hippel@crain.com
TAX INCENTIVES
DON’T WAIT UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE!
Deduct the Full Cost of Fire Sprinkler Systems in Qualified Property
Install or Retrofit Fire Sprinklers Today!
708-710-1448 • FIREPROTECTIONCONTRACTORS.COM
OUR READERS ARE 125% MORE LIKELY TO INFLUENCE OFFICE SPACE DECISIONS Find yournext corporate tenant or leaser.
After more than doubling its global workforce since March 2020, Project44 is now looking for a downtown office as large as 120,000 square feet.
Landlords see demand from logistics firms
LOGISTICS from Page 3
hunting spree fueled by both headcount growth and the need for employees at such firms to collaborate more quickly than they can when working from home.
The activity is one of the few bright spots of the pandemic for downtown office landlords and belies the downsizing trend in the tech, banking, legal and other sectors that has pushed office vacancy in the central business district to its highest mark on record.
“The vast majority of my clients are implementing workplace flexibility and hinting at downsizing and giving back space. This is the one subset that universally says they need more and that in-office culture is paramount to their business,” says Dan Persa, a first vice president at CBRE who represented U.S. Xpress on its recent lease for 40,000 square feet at 306 W.Erie St.—five times the size of its current office.
Long a major freight hub, Chicago has burnished its reputation over the past decade as a transportation logistics capital with the growth of companies like Coyote Logistics and Echo Global Logistics, as well as tech-focused companies that help them and retailers ship and track things more efficiently like ShipBob, FourKites and Project44. That trio alone has collectively announced half a billion dollars in new venture-capital funding over the past four months.
COVID’s assault on supply chains has supercharged the growth of those companies as more businesses have sought their expertise and software, driving meteoric hiring runs. Such growth in other industries no longer means an automatic need for more office space now that remote work has become more prevalent, but the level of employee interaction for logistics companies calls for face-to-face work, says Project44 CEO Jett McCandless. One example: His firm processes around 60,000 messages transmitted between shippers and carriers each second, and information about each load is synthesized by customer support workers, account managers and software engineers, among other roles.
“They have to figure out what’s a noise and what’s a signal,” says McCandless, whose company has roughly tripled its annual recurring revenue since the start of the pandemic to more than $60 million. “If our system goes down . . . it could mean a plant shutdown for a major manufacturer. So it’s important to have those folks gathered where they can walk over and talk.”
MORE SPACE
After more than doubling its global workforce since March 2020 to about 600 people, Project44 is now looking for a downtown office as large as 120,000 square feet. That’s roughly twice the size of its current footprint at theMart, where it still has close to seven years left on a sublease from Motorola Mobility.
Helping drive the need for more workspace is that many roles at logistics software and freight brokerage companies are filled by younger, tech-savvy workers who prefer the office to working from home.
Freight tech firm Loadsmart, which is looking for as much as 40,000 square feet downtown as it relocates its headquarters to Chicago from New York, has a workforce that skews toward employees in their 20s with less than five years of work experience. Those employees can support each other with sales or address customer issues when they’ve built a rapport with each other in an office, says Loadsmart Chief People Officer Brad Wilkins.
“That was the biggest gap that people saw during COVID. It’s hard to build trust when someone is a two-dimensional, shoulder-up version of themselves,” he says.
Companies like Chicago-based Redwood Logistics that rely heavily on freight brokerage business—connecting shippers and carriers for a fee—can oversee more than two dozen steps in the life cycle of a load from a shipment order to delivery, says Redwood Chief Operations Officer Tim Zelasko, whose company recently added 15,000 square feet to its 35,000-square-foot office along the North Branch of the Chicago River. Technology is helping streamline that shipment process, “but it can’t just be done with technology alone because it is such a fragmented industry,” he says, noting there are “hundreds of thousands” of trucking companies. “Most of our customers don’t want to deal with the headaches that happen after a load goes onto the road. . . .That’s where a lot of the on-site collaboration is beneficial, as opposed to having to jump on five or six different phone calls. You can actually just walk up to a human and say, ‘Hey, here’s the issue I’m dealing with.’ ”
Also helping companies in transportation logistics expand
their workspace is that office landlords are more eager to have them in their buildings than before, when it was less certain that a freight brokerage tenant would make it, says Adam Pines, vice president at Chicago office leasing agency Madison Rose.
“Ten years ago a lot of these companies were still considered gambles for ownership groups to invest in,” he says. “But a lot of companies have stabilized to the point where they can be looked at in parallel with a more corporate user with a longer-standing credit history.”
