Cori joins Chris Jolly on Freight Coach, Episode 1543, to talk heavy haul, oversized freight, and doing the right thing.

Cori Eckley-Ritchards, now NATCO Transport’s VP, had originally planned to leave the family business. She was finishing grad school, working for her dad in the meantime, and looking for a job elsewhere. Then her father died unexpectedly, and she stayed to help her mom, who owned an asset-based truck line.

“Fast forward 23 years, I’m still here,” she told host Chris Jolly on his recent Freight Coach podcast. “So, I didn’t go very far.” She calls that detour “a blessing in disguise.”

“If It Fits in a Box, I Don’t Know What to Do With It”
Cori is fourth-generation transportation, raised on the flatbed and heavy haul mentality. It shows. “There’s a running joke in my office,” she says. “If it fits in a box or it fits in a dry van, I don’t know what to do with it.”

Hand her something wide, tall, or strange, though, and she lights up. “If you give me something 14-foot wide, obscure, tall, all the constraints and challenges, I’m on it. I love it.”

Shippers Are Asking Harder Questions
Cori and Chris spend much of the conversation on the pressure facing brokers, from court cases like Montgomery (see how we covered it in The Middle of the Road Just Got Narrower) to fly-by-night operators who make honest ones look bad. Both are TIA members, and they talk about why that logo matters to shippers.

Customers have noticed the risk, and they are vetting. “In my 23 years, I’ve never been asked that question until recently,” Cori says. Trucking has become dinnertime conversation.

She sees an opening for smaller, more hands-on shops. Shippers may stop choosing a broker because it has “2,000 people working for them,” and Cori hopes they do. “I hope that mentality goes out the door.”

How NATCO Answers
Her answer starts with technology, then leans on repeat carriers and drivers who know the work. “We’re familiar with them, so we’re not questioning what kind of service we’re going to get.” Some carriers call before NATCO has posted the details: “Hey, do you have any information yet? Where do I need to be?”

Transparency is the other half. “See something, hear something, say something is our rule of thumb.” You can see how that plays out on our trucking network page.

The Truth Beats the Fast Truck
Cori would rather deliver an honest update than a hopeful one. “I would rather tell a customer that we’re still working on an order that’s complicated, oversized, whatever the constraints are, versus saying I have a truck and be crossing my fingers.”

She sells the way she likes to be sold, aiming for “more of a consultant type relationship versus quickest, fastest truck, cheapest truck.”

One story sums it up. Years into her business, Cori spotted a customer’s name on a stranger’s shirt at dinner. She introduced herself as a vendor, and the man looked at her and said, “Oh my gosh, you’re Natco.” Her name and her company’s had become one and the same.

Watch the Full Conversation
Catch the entire Freight Coach episode:

• On Apple Podcasts
• On Spotify

The post Fourth-Generation Freight, and a Broker Who Won’t Cross Her Fingers appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Every shelf in this aisle got stocked by a truck. Some of them more than once a week.

Open the refrigerator. Almost every item inside — the milk, the produce, the packaged goods — made its way to the store on a truck. Before that, the ingredients that became those products also moved by truck, often several times over, from farm to processor to distributor to shelf. Take trucking out of the picture and the shelves empty out within days. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s how tightly the food supply chain depends on trucking.

An industry that measures itself in billions of tons
The scale is hard to overstate. In 2024, commercial trucks generated an estimated $906 billion in gross freight revenue and hauled 11.27 billion tons of freight, roughly 72.7% of everything shipped domestically by weight, according to the American Trucking Associations. Nearly 15 million trucks are registered to do that work, and the fleet logs almost 330 billion miles a year getting it done.

Trucking doesn’t stop at the border, either. It carried 67% of the value of U.S.-Canada surface trade and 85% of U.S.-Mexico trade in 2024, tying North American supply chains together, one load at a time.

Millions of jobs, most of them at small companies
The freight itself is only part of the story. Trucking employs 8.4 million people across the economy, including 3.58 million drivers, and that’s before counting the mechanics, dispatchers, warehouse staff, and freight brokers whose jobs exist because trucks need to move. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks these employment trends across the broader transportation and warehousing sector, and trucking consistently accounts for a large share of it.

Contrary to the image of a handful of national mega-carriers, most of this employment sits with small operators. Almost 580,000 motor carriers are registered with the FMCSA, and 91.5% of them run 10 trucks or fewer. Trucking is, in large part, a small business industry, one where a single owner-operator’s paycheck depends on the same load-by-load economics as a major carrier’s.

As Drivewyze’s introductory guide to the industry describes it, that’s also how carriers get classified in the first place: by whether they haul their own goods or someone else’s, by the size of the load, and by the type of truck involved. Truckload, less-than-truckload, private fleet, for-hire: the distinctions sound technical, but they describe real differences in how a shipment gets from a farm or factory to a store shelf.

Essential, and exposed
None of this happens in a vacuum. As Investopedia puts it, the transportation sector is “central to the economy,” though its stability rises and falls with fuel prices, labor costs, regulatory shifts, and events far outside any one company’s control. A spike in diesel prices, a driver shortage, or a new emissions rule can ripple through freight rates and, eventually, through the price of groceries.

Drivers feel that exposure directly. Turnover at large fleets topped 50% in 2022, insurance premiums have climbed sharply, and carriers are under real pressure to invest in safety and efficiency just to stay competitive. The industry that keeps the country fed and stocked runs on thin margins and a workforce that’s harder to hold onto every year.

Why it matters at the kitchen table
Strip away the tonnage figures and freight bills, and the point is simple. Someone drove a truck so the bread, the produce, the medicine, and the everyday goods a household depends on would be there when needed. Trucking isn’t background infrastructure, it’s the reason “putting food on the table” is still possible at the scale a modern economy requires. Understanding the industry, its size, its fragility, and the people who keep it running, is a start toward appreciating just how much rides on every load.

The post Somewhere on the Road, a Truck is Bringing You Dinner appeared first on NATCO Transport.

The Transport Intermediaries Association (TIA) Policy Forum is important to me as a transportation brokerage owner for several reasons. The event gives me a platform to work alongside other like-minded business owners, an opportunity to meet and educate lawmakers about issues directly affecting my business, and a way to build awareness for how our industry actually operates.

TIA Policy Forum: Advocacy and Perspective

Over the years, while attending the TIA Annual Conference, I heard about the Policy Forum from other members. I knew it was focused on advocating for the transportation brokerage industry, but I was unsure how I’d be able to contribute to this type of event.

The term “Policy Forum” was intimidating to me, since it involved government and elected officials. Several of my mentors encouraged me to attend, as it was a chance to educate members of congress about the 3PL industry. My first Policy Forum in 2016 was an eye-opening experience as a business owner. Approximately 40 people attended that year. The TIA staff and seasoned members were extremely helpful while I learned to navigate the event. The Government Affairs staff scheduled 60+ appointments with congressional offices. Everything was well organized, and we were given key speaking points ahead of time. Information packets compiled by the Government Affairs team helped us walk in prepared. This gave me the confidence to speak with lawmakers and their staff about the needs of our industry.

I’ve continued attending the Policy Forum for the past 10 years now. It’s one of my favorite industry events each year. With help from TIA staff and prior attendees, the group keeps growing. Last year we had one of our largest turnouts yet. My business is based in Arlington, Texas, and I’m a proud member of “Team Texas.” Many owners and executives travel in from Texas each year, so we always have a strong contingent representing TIA. We spend time comparing notes on our businesses, working through how government regulations shape our day-to-day operations.

I look forward to working with other Texas members because this event gives us a real chance to network. I consider everyone I’ve met and worked with at Policy Forum both mentors and friends. We know each other on a professional level, but a personal one too. A key takeaway from my experience with TIA events: people are genuinely helpful and willing to assist. The one-on-one conversations I’ve had with other members have helped me over the years in ways I didn’t expect.

Advocating for your business and the industry as a whole matters. Given the constantly shifting regulatory landscape, business owners carry a high level of risk and liability. The Policy Forum is an active way to advocate on your own behalf. When we meet with congressional offices, they already know the TIA name, credit to the ongoing work of the Government Affairs team. In several of my meetings last year, the representative or staff member knew the Government Affairs contact by name. Participating in the Forum lets us reiterate the challenges our industry faces, with real-life examples and data behind them. We leave an information packet with each office, laying out the size and scope of the workforce within the transportation brokerage industry. TIA also encourages members to host a Policy Forum style meeting at their own business, inviting their local representative to see operations firsthand. Advocacy isn’t a once-a-year exercise, it’s an ongoing effort.

The Policy Forum is a rewarding, impactful event, and I encourage every TIA member to take part. I highly recommend attending this year to represent your business. Now more than ever, we need to work together to raise awareness for this industry.

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Every year, ATRI telegraphs what it believes are the major research issues. For 2025, ATRI is intent on studying:

Rising Insurance Costs and Self Insurance Motivations. Building on prior years of study, this will look at current commercial auto insurance trends and investigate the growing role of insurance captives and self-insurance retentions.

Efficacy of Entry-Level Driver Training on Safety Outcomes. Prior research examined driver training programs and safety outcomes. This year’s research will use that safety data and statistical models to determine the safety impacts of the mandated Entry-Level Driver Training approach.

Safety Impacts of In-Cab Monitoring. This year’s research will examine the technology data to determine any statistics that connect in-cab monitoring with improved safety outcomes, along with particular strategies that serve to improve those safety outcomes.

Capitalizing on Telematics Data. Not all carriers have a full slate of telematics data designed to improve their operations. Research this year aims to collect essential data tools and applications for the spectrum of carrier operations toward improving performance.

Understanding the Prevalence and Impact of Cabotage Violations. “Cabotage violations occur when non-domiciled carriers engage in multiple point-to-point deliveries within the U.S. These cabotage violations can result in unfair competition by undercutting pricing and taking jobs away from U.S.-based trucking companies. This research will seek to quantify the frequency, scale and impact of these cabotage violations.”

The one element linking those 2025 research topics? Safety. The insurance. The training. The monitoring. The metrics. Even the cabotage protections are designed to secure the safety of domestic operations.

We’re encouraged by and appreciate the focus.

The post Trucking and Research and Safety appeared first on NATCO Transport.

JFK is the busiest international commercial airport in North America and the sixth busiest airport in the nation. Combine that with the Tri-State area, which has the world’s largest metropolitan economy, the largest metropolitan urban landmass (4,669 square miles), and a population of some 20 million people.

Those numbers also reflect the traffic. The human movement, the vehicle movement. And the cargo. From edible nuts to mechanical bolts, from produce to wood pulp, from garments to electronics, from most anything to everything: the cargo scenario at JFK is enormous. And growing.

JFK’s Air Cargo Center has a number of entities operating within this ecosystem, including:

• 70,000 square feet of cargo warehouse space for Air France-KLM.

• The ARK at JFK, an animal handling facility includes veterinary services, a kennel, and handling of equine, bovine, swine, birds and exotic & zoo animals.

• A 260,000 square-foot cargo building for Worldwide Flights Services.

• 175,000 square feet for American Airlines cargo terminal

• 225,000 square feet facility for Prologis Cargo Center, which includes operations for U.S. Customs & Border Protection.

• 90,000 square-foot building for DHL Global Forwarding.

• 81,000 square feet for China Airlines Cargo.

• 220,000 square-foot cargo facility for Korean Air.

Add to that now a new consolidated cargo handling center. At 350,000 square feet, it will contribute to the support of 93,000 jobs and $11 billion in annual economic activity to JFK’s air cargo universe, which processed more than 1.6 million tons of cargo last year and is, among many other things, the country’s busiest eCommerce center.

The Tri-State region gives commercial trucking easy access to the I-95 corridor, Maine to Florida. Cargo arriving here, departing from here, and passing through here is best served by efficiency (yeah, and price). And a state-of-the-art cargo center helps to best serve that.

The post Central Intelligence (Cargo Version) appeared first on NATCO Transport.

3PLs: Above the Fog

Thomas, an industrial sourcing platform, has produced a small eBook they’ve titled “Selling Resilience: Attracting Manufacturing Buyers.” While the wording is relatively brief, with a couple of focus areas geared to draw in Thomas business (no harm, no foul), we’re especially impressed with a particular section.

“How to Showcase Your Resilience” is the first of the eBook’s two main areas. Resilience to what? Well, everything. The post-pandemic landscape, which has been influenced by supply chain disruption. The tenuous nature of actual and possible tariffs on pricing and availability. It’s always something, and American industries have had experience with such things for only some 249 years now.

Thomas describes three approaches to showcasing resilience:

Reliability. They write: “Start by showcasing a solid track record. When talking to potential customers, highlight your reputation for on-time delivery and explain how domestic sourcing can expedite shipping time and reduce lead time variability.” This also includes transparency. “Be honest,” they write, “and upfront about lead times, pricing, and potential challenges.” They results? Reinforcing partnerships and building “confidence in your ability to deliver.”

Team NATCO has embraced this approach since we began operations more than three decades ago. Here’s the foundation of The NATCO Way:

• Experienced Logistics Planning
• Prompt Communication
• Thorough Determination of Your Needs
• Quick Turnaround on Estimates
• Reliable, Competitive Pricing
• Professional…with a Human Touch

Flexibility. The Thomas take: “Providing clients with real-time visibility into the supply chain and utilizing advanced analytics and agile processes promotes operational and supply flexibility.”

Well, yes. Adaptability is essential to the transportation industry, especially as we’re facing ever-uncertain situations. If you take disruption as a given, it helps minimize the surprise. That disruption happens all the time, from the domino effect of a simple traffic jam on I-95 to a bridge closure that requires alternate routes to get the disaster recovery shipment to its destination.

Value. Thomas writes: “What’s the No. 1 thing buyers want in a supplier? A long-term partnership.”

You might be surprised that price doesn’t top that list of things. While we’re highly competitive on rates, we wholeheartedly agree that establishing and maintaining trust is the dominant factor when companies consider different 3PLs.

90% of our customers are repeat business. We know that exceptional customer service and proactive strategy bring you back to us, time & again.

The post 3PL Foundations appeared first on NATCO Transport.

We’re Glad They’re Nationwide

24/7/365

We’re grateful to our truck drivers. Whether they network with NATCO or they’ve never heard of us, we appreciate the work they do.

Quite simply: our nation’s truck drivers drive the nation’s economy.

We’re happy to share all that. And it’s entirely fitting to have a National Truck Driving Appreciation Week, which has been celebrating our carriers this past week.

Social media is filled with shout-outs ⏤ individual appreciations and collective hurrahs alike ⏤ for this extraordinary workforce, especially this week.

As American Trucking Associations puts it:

“Nearly every aspect of daily life is made possible because a truck driver delivered the goods and resources people need.

“NTDAW is an important time for America to thank all the professional truck drivers for their hard work and commitment in undertaking one of our economy’s most demanding and important jobs. These 3.5 million professional men and women not only deliver our goods safely, securely, and on time, but they also keep our highways safe.”

G’head, check out #NTDAW24 on your favorite social media platform.

Some stats to back up the impact drivers have:

• American truckers driver more than 330 billion miles each yar

• Truck drivers deliver about 11 billion tons of freight each year.

• Trucks deliver some 70% of all freight moved in the United States.

• More than 80% of communities depend solely on trucks to receive their goods.

• There are some 8.5 million jobs directly related to the trucking industry.

They’re there in good times and bad. They’re the firefighters of the road: when bad things like natural disasters happen, truck drivers drive toward the danger.

Or, as Yogi Berra said, “When you see a fork in the road, take it.”

The post In Appreciation: Truck Driver Edition appeared first on NATCO Transport.

NATCO on Countering Cargo Theft

As we near the end of our “Swiped Stuff” series, including retail theft and cargo theft, keep in mind (and it boggles the mind) that up to $30 billion in cargo is stolen each year.

The goal would seem to develop a cohesive and comprehensive approach to dealing with it: countering and combatting and minimizing product loss.

Easier said than done. There’s no real national standard for fighting theft. (Even the insurance companies have various categories of theft.)

Truck security is different; for example, reefers are not like flatbeds. Key and lock systems ⏤ from key to fob to phone app ⏤ vary among brands and companies. CCTV monitoring is in place at key hot points, or it’s not.

One way to reduce such loss is to get a good idea of what exactly is being stolen, in what quantities, and in what arenas (i.e., parking lot, truck stop, warehouse, impersonator).

The American Transportation Research Institute just put out a call for “motor carriers and brokers to participate in a new data collection initiative.”

It’s a survey that provides a way for the target groups to share their information anonymously.

The anonymous angle is key.

First, it protects identities. Who wants to publicly fess up that they’re getting robbed of so much stuff, and so often? Will potential and existing customers have second thoughts about doing business if any given company has what might be perceived as reputation management issues?

Second, it protects the details of any weaknesses, perceived and actual, of companies. If the XYZ company says, “Yes, we know there is a security lapse at the bay doors,” we can be confident the bad guys are going to target those bay doors at their earliest convenience.

You can find the survey for motor carriers and brokers HERE.

The post The Swiped Stuff, Part IV appeared first on NATCO Transport.

See More Cargo, Hear More Cargo…

We’ve been exploring retail theft and cargo theft. The bad guys are all-too clever, which has caused retail outlets ⏤ from mom-and-pop shops to big box stores ⏤ to put swaths of merchandise under lock and key.

Theft from warehouses and commercial vehicles seems at first a very different scenario. Bay doors of the warehouse are necessarily porous: the cargo’s gotta get in and get out. Because there are people waiting: receivers, refiners, other carriers, outlets, end users.

Travelers, the insurance company, lists five types of cargo theft:

1. Straight Cargo Theft. Thieves target areas such as truck stops and parking lots.

2. Strategic Cargo Theft. A more sophisticated approach, where the bad guys produce bogus paperwork, identity theft, fictitious pick-ups, or combinations of these to create confusion and get away with the goods.

3. Technology. Thieves use “sniffers” that find covert GPS signals, then jam the signals to make for a cleaner theft that’s much less likely to be tracked.

4. Cyber. That seemingly innocent, safe email with a link that you click? There’s a trojan horse in there, malware that lets the bad guys into your company’s database for their manipulation of loads.

5. Pilferage. Maybe the most curious entry in the list, this is the seemingly small thefts along, say, a route with multiple stops. Those small swipes add up.

With each of these categories, Travelers recommends awareness of actual and virtual surroundings. That might seem simple, and maybe even simplistic. Yet, it’s often the simple things that allow for greater protection and greater chance of a non-eventful delivery of freight from Point A to Point B.

Double-checking the lock on the back of the truck. Double-checking that you locked the cab. Confirming the GPS locator is active and pinging the right dispatch coordinator. Doing your best to confirm your contact person as legitimate.

Sometimes it’s out of our control. Sometimes it’s preventable. So much of theft prevention relies on communication and trust.

The post The Swiped Stuff, Part III appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Keep on Truck Stealin’?

Theft of our consumer goods has skyrocketed. From baby formula and electronics to crayons and instant coffee, retail stores are putting high-demand merchandise and everyday items alike under lock and key in the store aisles.

And before that merchandise even reaches the aisles…well, sometimes they don’t even reach the store.

That’s because the level of cargo theft is high. From our friends at Transport Topics:

“CargoNet” ⏤ an organization focused on theft prevention and recovery ⏤ “reported that criminal activities impacting the logistics and transportation industry increased 46% year-over-year to 925 incidents and 10% from the fourth quarter of 2023. The report estimates that $154.6 million worth of goods was stolen during that period.”

Sometimes it’s outright theft: from a dock, from the back of the truck. Warehouses can be notoriously busy environments; it’s easy to literally get lost in the shuffle. Now there’s a new wrinkle to things: document forgery.

Picture the bad guy posing as a commercial truck driver. He picks up a load and drives it to the destination. He begins unloading. So far, so good. It’s just like any legitimate load, yes? No: he’s unloaded only a bit of the inventory. He’s altered, fudged, and otherwise forged the bill of lading. For all appearances, everybody assumes everything is good. But it’s too late. The thief is gone.

It’s a nightmarish version of the snarky comment: “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you still have their shoes.”

States with the largest spikes in these thefts: California, Illinois, and Texas.

Most swiped inventory: small appliances, booze, energy drinks, and copper.

What does this mean for the industry? Think insurance rates, security expenses, trust, communication. More on that next time.

The post The Swiped Stuff, Part II appeared first on NATCO Transport.