Jack Hixson

🚨 Struggling Freight Brokers: M&A Might Be the Smartest Move You Can Make in 2025 The logistics industry is changing fast — tighter margins, higher tech costs, new FMCSA bond rules, and aggressive competition are pushing many small and mid-size 3PLs to the breaking point. But here’s the good news: Mergers and acquisitions are no longer a last-resort strategy… they’re a viable path to survival and growth. 🔹 1. The Industry Is Consolidating — Fast Larger, financially strong companies with better tech, stronger networks, and more diverse services are acquiring smaller brokers to expand their footprint. If you’re a smaller brokerage, that’s not a threat — it’s an opportunity. 🔹 2. Strong Brokers Are Getting Premium Valuations If your company has: ✔ Solid operational processes ✔ Scalable TMS / technology ✔ A niche focus or customer specialty …you may be worth far more than you think. Investors are still paying strong multiples for stable, well-run brokerages. 🔹 3. Merging Means Access to Resources You Can’t Build Alone Joining forces with a larger entity can give you: Capital Better technology A broader customer base Access to new markets Operational support Compliance stability For many brokers, this is what allows the business to finally grow — instead of just survive. 🔹 4. Distressed Sales Are Coming Highly leveraged digital platforms and brokers with weak cash flow may be forced into distressed sales. This creates opportunities for owners who act before they reach that point. 💬 If you're a 3PL owner struggling with margins, bond requirements, or scaling — now is the time to explore M&A. At Biscayne Logistics Consultant, we are actively working with brokers who want: A clean exit A strategic merger A valuation A roadmap to becoming acquisition-ready And we currently have active buyers looking for freight brokerages right now. ➡️ Comment “M&A” or send me a private message for a free, confidential consultation.

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LTL was designed for a loading dock, not a living room. Most LTL networks are excellent at moving freight between two commercial docks. The last 50 feet of a residential delivery is a different job. Different accessorials. Different claims. Different customer. And most of the industry still treats it like the same lane with a different zip code. That is why so many ecommerce brands feel the pain on big and bulky. The order looks clean in Shopify. The linehaul looks fine. Then the piece ends up at the curb, the homeowner is not home, and your support queue fills up with “where is my order” and “it was left in the rain.” I do not think that is a carrier problem first. I think it is a design problem. We built tools, rates, and SLAs for B2B LTL, then asked those same systems to deliver a sofa, a squat rack, or a pergola to someone’s house on a Tuesday afternoon. At Rocket we have been living in that gap: pickup, linehaul, a window the customer can plan around, and the option to actually carry the item in/assemble it. Claims, reconsignments, reverse logistics, and tracking sit in the same workflow because that is where the shipment actually breaks. Keep Customers Forever still matters more than any feature list. If delivery day is the only day the customer remembers, it has to be designed on purpose. If you ship oversized DTC, I am curious what you measure on delivery day. On-time to the city, or actually inside the home without a support ticket? Would love to hear what you are seeing. #letstalklogistics #homedelivery

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Looking at last week's Association of American Railroads intermodal data, it appears that for the first time since the pandemic, intermodal activity is following what used to be a normal seasonal pattern. If this continues to hold true, we'll see slowly declining volume through the end of the year, with interruptions for Thanksgiving and the X-mas/New Year's holiday week. That will not compare well with last year's very late peak. Last week, N.A. intermodal originations were down 4.6% y/y, with the U.S. Big Four down 6.1% y/y collectively. Q4 is in the red versus prior year by 2% thus far, and I expect that shortfall to widen as we go through the balance of the quarter.

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We keep seeing supply chain teams invest in visibility… and still get blindsided. This FedEx report hits the point: the gap isn’t data anymore, it’s turning insight into action. A few thoughts: -Dashboards don’t move freight. Decisions do. If alerts don’t trigger a clear action, they’re just noise. -The real advantage is shortening the loop: signal → decision → execution (re-route, re-promise, expedite, reallocate inventory). -AI helps, but only if it’s embedded into workflows people actually use, not living in a separate “analytics layer.” I think the question is simple: Where does visibility stop, and where does action start? Link in the comments #SupplyChain #Logistics #AI #Visibility #Operations #Resilience #DigitalTransformation

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🚛 **Can your AI tell the difference between a plausible freight answer and a mathematically correct one?** That distinction is central to **Ridgeline Freight Systems (ENT-5YR-009)** — our five-year connected synthetic LTL freight enterprise. Take something as fundamental as **freight classification**. Ridgeline models **18 freight classes based on density**. Each rated shipment derives its class from its own weight and cube. The validation gates then independently recompute those classifications. Even the **864 tariff rates are independently derived and checked in two different ways**. Why is this important for AI? Because enterprise AI cannot simply produce answers that *sound right*. It increasingly needs to produce answers that can be: **Derived → Traced → Recomputed → Reconciled → Verified** That philosophy runs throughout Ridgeline. The corpus delivers **98 CSV files across 12 folders, 1.20 million rows, 12 Python generators and 12 validators performing 885 checks**. It also includes eight worked traces where identifiers can be followed across the supplied enterprise layers. This makes Ridgeline particularly relevant for **AI model training, agent evaluation, enterprise reasoning, cross-table analysis, provenance testing and benchmarking systems that must arrive at a verifiable answer rather than a merely plausible one.** ### **Licensing Fee: $1MM** For **AI labs, foundation-model companies, AI agent developers, logistics technology companies and enterprise AI teams** looking for a connected transportation environment with checkable ground truth. **Don’t just test whether your AI can answer. Test whether it can prove the answer.** 📩 **DM me or write to [pradeep@xpertsystems.ai](mailto:pradeep@xpertsystems.ai) for samples, brochure and licensing details.** **Xpert Systems — The Synthetic World Company** #EnterpriseAI #SyntheticData #AITraining #AIAgents #Freight #Logistics #Transportation #SupplyChain #ReasoningAI #LLM #AIEvaluation #XpertSystems

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Today, CMT officially launched Freight Safety Intelligence. The current vetting process often leaves freight brokers relying on safety information that can be incomplete or months or even years out of date. Freight Safety Intelligence gives brokers a current safety signal based on real-world driving data, helping them improve carrier selection and increase capacity with confidence that they’re choosing safer carriers and keeping unsafe ones off the road. I'm so proud of the team behind this launch and excited about what it means for safer roads and a safer freight industry. #CMT #MobilityAI #Freight #B4Logistics

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Every logistics team budgets for truckload data. Ocean benchmarks. Air freight. Almost none budget for drayage pricing. Not because it’s optional. Because it didn’t exist. Until we built it. drayrates is the first drayage pricing intelligence platform: real-time market data for a mode priced by gut feel for decades. Every quote without data is lost margin or hidden risk. The teams that understand that are already allocating budget and seeing the ROI.

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December’s seasonally adjusted release of the trucking ton-mile index showed overall trucking demand in Q4 weakened from the middle part of the year. One chart below. Thoughts: •December 2025’s seasonally adjusted ton-mile index came in 0.5% below December 2024’s levels (with the caveat that December 2025's seasonal adjustment factor was especially harsh with the month starting on a Monday). Furthermore, demand is down since the third quarter. Looking at specific sectors, demand in Q4 was down in sectors like Paving, Roofing, and Other Petroleum and Coal Products (e.g., roofing shingles) (https://lnkd.in/gMzGb24X), wood products (https://lnkd.in/gQWjfyVk), paper (https://lnkd.in/gv7tRNmn), motor vehicle parts (https://lnkd.in/ge3XP3Sm), household appliances (https://lnkd.in/g2jzbwa9), and furniture (https://lnkd.in/gegYN8Yb)  . One common theme here is single-family housing weakness is showing up in these data. •This does not mean there aren’t pockets of strength. Industries tied to data center construction are doing well like construction equipment (https://lnkd.in/ghj-bvDJ; https://lnkd.in/gBjxMyhy) and construction steel (https://lnkd.in/g4Gxybbt). Likewise, aerospace production is doing very well (https://lnkd.in/gw6wVwmc).  •In comparison, truck transportation (NAICS 484) payrolls were down 1.9% as of December 2025. General freight trucking, long-distance, truckload (NAICS 484121) had seen a 3.5% decline in payrolls over the same period. Implication: Combined with the Cass Shipments index, the trucking ton-mile index continues to suggest trucking demand is not that strong on aggregate once you get outside of certain industry verticals, especially those tied to the physical ecosystem for AI computing. Keep a close watch on many of the links I’ve shared to sectors tied to single-family housing and consumer spending. If those were to improve, then a much stronger case can be made that 2026 will be a great year for truckload carriers. #supplychain #freight #trucking #truckload #logistics #transportation

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Are you paying attention to the right lanes, the right technology, and the right relationships in this freight market? In this episode, I break down why the Atlanta–Dallas lane remains one of the most stable in the country, holding between $1,350 and $1,450 with predictable seasonal spikes, and what that means for freight brokers managing tight margins! We also dig into how AI in freight brokerage is becoming a profitability driver, with companies like C.H. Robinson automating up to 90% of manual tasks to scale efficiently in a down market, how regulatory enforcement and falling carrier profits could trigger capacity exits and support higher rates, why fleets are slowing expansion, and how disciplined brokers can win. Don’t miss out on learning why mentorship from proven freight professionals is critical to avoiding costly mistakes and staying competitive over the next 12 to 24 months! Thank you SPI Logistics for your support! Drop them a follow here on social media and check them out! Do me a favor and let them know that The Freight Coach sent you!

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