Solutions, Stability & Shared Expertise: My Take on the 2023 Coyote Logistics Roadshow
It was recently my pleasure to join several other Coyote leaders to host 26 customers from 21 organizations at a Roadshow event held in our Chicago headquarters.
This event combines the two aspects of working at Coyote I’ve found most meaningful over the last 14+ years: the lasting strength of the relationships we build with our customers and our ability to share our insights with them and collaboratively strategize for the future.
I want to share with you some highlights of this event to showcase how our commitment to serving our customers is stronger than ever, plus some exciting ways we’re continuing to innovate to meet your needs.
Crunching the Numbers: How We — and You — Can Use the Coyote Curve to Create Financial Stability
Every quarter, we publish an updated truckload market guide featuring the most recent edition of our proprietary Coyote Curve® spot rate index.
While we often debut the latest update in a live webinar setting, the roadshow’s opening session was our first opportunity to go behind the data live with shippers in the room to see what really makes this volatile market move — and the steps we take to stay ahead of it.
Before presenting the Q4 forecast, VP of Pricing Corey Klujsza and VP of MM Operations Kait Parker went over the market cycle fundamentals that shape the Curve plus the detailed verification we do to give us confidence in our model before we publish it for you. They concluded by taking the next step — engaging in a dialogue with shippers about how to best put data in action for your own supply chain.
In this live setting, attendees could really see the level of analysis that goes into each quarterly Curve report and put a human face on the experienced pros who bring it all together. It’s just one of many ways Coyote leaders like Kait and Corey put our customers first.
Customization to Meet Any Need: Drop Trailer Solutions, Supply Chain Consulting & More
In our second session, VP of Managed Services Ben Steffes was joined by two customers who shared their experiences utilizing our capabilities beyond our core brokerage.
Lauren Terhune, Sr. Mgr. of Transportation, U.S. for Molson Coors Beverage Company and Ivan Zambrano, Director of Supply Chain for American Freight detailed the very different business challenges they brought to our experts and the ways we planned and executed custom solutions to address them.
But whether we’re talking about the network optimization project our supply chain engineering team delivered for American Freight or the tech-enabled drop trailer solution we’ve implemented to serve Molson-Coors’ East Coast breweries, the message is the same — we commit focused attention and resources to your specific needs and follow through on our plans to help you meet them.
Committed to Keeping Your Trust: Where Coyote Is Headed Next Year and Beyond
Following some provocative round-table discussions, I had the privilege of leading our final session of the day, laying the groundwork for the next chapter in our Coyote story.
I was excited to talk about the future of Coyote in the context of where we’ve come from, going all the way back to our beginnings more than 17 years ago. As the freight market has become more complex, more volatile over those years, one thing has remained consistent in our vision — building and maintaining trust with everyone we work with.
Today, that trust takes the form of smart, sustainable growth in our offerings and capabilities for the shippers who trust us with their business.
It means creating an easy-to-use digital experience for the 100,000+ carriers in our network and backing it up with experienced professionals just a phone call away.
And it means building an internal company culture founded on positivity, transparency and supported professional development.
Whether you’re an enterprise-scale shippers or a small business growing your supply chain for the first time, a large national carrier with a fleet in the thousands or an independent operator, or one of the hundreds of Coyotes in offices and working remotely across the globe who keep it all moving, our commitment to this promise is as strong as ever.
Shippers Agree: Taking Time to Connect Matters
The sessions themselves are only part of the draw for an event like this. The opportunity to connect with your providers, customers and peers is just as important ¬— sometimes even more so.
Both between sessions and after the event, customers I chatted with told me how much they valued the experience of talking and listening to their peers, to see some of the challenges they faced and learn from the solutions we built together.
The feedback that makes me proudest when I get together with our customers is when they tell me they’re excited to explore some new ideas based on what they saw and heard. It means they trust in our knowledge, our spirit of innovation and our ability to follow through on our commitments, and I can’t wait to deliver for them.