Logistics Management, a TMSA Affiliate member and Media Friend, recently announced the winners of the 35^thAnnual Quest for Quality Awards. The Quest for Quality Awards are the gold standard for customer satisfaction and performance excellence for carriers, ports and logistics providers worldwide. These companies, including several TMSA members, have reached the pinnacle of service-excellence over the past year no matter how many economic, regulatory or operational pressures they continue to face. Congratulations to these TMSA member companies who earned Quest for Quality gold. 

National LTL Carriers
J.B. Hunt Transport Services

There were many sessions at the TMSA conference in June that made an impression on me, but the one on Unlearning Supply Chain Management by Adrian Gonzalez of TalkingLogistics.com, did that and more.

It was a bit of a mind bender. Did you ever see the episode of West Wing entitled “Cartographers for Social Equality” where the group of cartographers (i.e. map-makers) remove the “European bias” of the world map and propose a more “correct” depiction of earth?  

By Mark Derks, Partner and Chief Marketing Officer for Words At Work, a full-service integrated marketing communications agency. Derks also is former Director of Global Marketing for C.H. Robinson, and currently serves on the TMSA Board of Directors as Director of Finance & Strategy.

Reflections from facilitating an interactive roundtable discussion at the 2018 TMSA annual conference.

In ancient mythologies from around the world, it’s common to find gods and monsters bearing multiple heads, and such beings are depicted as formidable and difficult to defeat. It turns out the ancient people were not just creative; they had good business sense too.

Inbound Logistics, a TMSA Affiliate member and Media Friend, recently announced its annual G75 for 2018 — a carefully curated list of 75 companies that go above and beyond to ensure their global supply chains are sustainable, and their operations are socially and environmentally friendly. These companies, several that are TMSA members, have spent years developing and implementing best practices to ensure the footprint they leave on the world is a positive one. Congratulations to these TMSA member companies for their accomplishments that allowed them to make the list in 2018:

Averitt Express, since 2004 has lowered CO2 emissions by about 27 percent, reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 50 percent, and cut particulate emissions by 52 percent.

Imagine this. One of your top sales managers has asked to meet with you. You settle into your morning coffee, take a seat at your desk, and invite the sales manager into your office. Right away, you notice something off in his tone.  And then it happens … he delivers his two-weeks’ notice.

TMSA offers a great deal of value to marketers and sales professionals. Here is my personal experience:

“I was new to transportation when I joined TMSA. I saw value in learning from other well-respected companies about their marketing programs. I learned a lot in those early days and now am able to share what our program looks like at Bison. Additionally, the greatest value I have gained is having friends that I trust and respect, that I can ask for or provide help to, brainstorm with, and talk through common challenges”. #IamTMSA

By John Golob, President and Founder of Lanetix, a CRM software company exclusively focussed on the transportation and logistics market. John has worked in CRM software since 1994.

I enjoy seeing the Marketing Director and her colleague at the TMSA Conference in Fort Myers; they’ve worked together for years and last June, they were brimming with excitement over their CRM project, green-lighted by the trucking company's CEO.

I’m always amazed by the truth. Like most people, I’m a champion at trying to read people’s minds and interpret people’s actions. And like most people, I’m often wrong. That’s why the shippers panel at this year’s TMSA Logistics Marketing & Sales Conference was such a powerful experience.  

By Jacque Casoni

By Jennifer Karpus-Romain, Director of Marketing Services and Industry Outreach for Faye Business Systems Group, an innovative software company with extensive expertise in CRM and ERP software. 

Looking for a unique promotional item that can be given to customers, prospects, employees or even your drivers? 

TMSA is pleased to provide a special promotion to all TMSA Members on a significantly discounted quality baseball cap. Now you can purchase an order of branded caps with your company logo (3D embroidery and back flat embroidery) for as little as U.S. $3.99 each!

By Ricardo Roman of Caliper. Caliper is a human capital analytics company leveraging decades of data and validated assessment results to predict and select high-quality candidates and is a TMSA Affiliate member.

Why was I so surprised to feel connected when I attended the TMSA conference in Fort Meyers earlier this month?

After all, transportation and logistics today is all about connecting—data, experiences, services, geographies, equipment—you name it. And the better you can connect, the more successful you become.  

Let’s get this out of the way first:  Millennials have been such a frequent topic in hiring discussions recently that managers are admitting to being positively fatigued by the word.  If you’re in that camp, it may come as good news that soon it won’t even be the right word when we’re talking about younger, less-experienced workers. Some Millennials have been in the workforce for well over ten years, and—are you ready for this—you’ll be receiving job applications from Generation Z pretty soon. You may even have one or two as interns!

By Erika DeBlasi, Marketing Coach at TranStrategy Partners, the premier partner for freight brokerage firms looking to maximize their business and accelerate their performance. TranStrategy Partners is a TMSA Affiliate member. 

By Simon Bois, Executive Director Sales for Canadian-based Turbo Images, a company that has been designing, printing and installing superior quality fleet graphics and wraps for its customers since 1993. Turbo Images is a TMSA Affiliate member. 

Did You Know? 

By Jeff Davis, Sales & Marketing Alignment Expert at jd2 Consulting Group and Opening Keynote at the 2018 TMSA Logistics Marketing & Sales Conference. With rich experiences in both Sales and Marketing, Davis takes an extremely unique approach to business development that focuses on aligning both functions to create a sense of "Togetherness" and a focus on revenue generation.

During the 2018 TMSA Logistics Marketing & Sales Conference, attendees had their choice of 20 topics that involved peer-to-peer discussion on opportunities, challenges and best practices involving those topics. One topic was on Talent Recruiting and Retention. Rachel Hayden and Denise Crockett of Confidential Career Solutions facilitated discussions on this topic and shares a summary of what their peer group discussed: