The pod may have been a little off-schedule over the last month but that’s for good reason because I’m trying out a new editorial approach to the show and its taken  more legwork to get to a point where I feel comfortable hitting publish. 

In May, I scheduled interviews with 8 different companies building AI solutions in logistics. The plan is upload each of those ~30 minute conversations that focus specifically on their product, who it’s for and what to expect. Basically an approach of “here’s everything I would ask if I was trying to understand and eventually/maybe purchase this software.” We also had some written submissions that I included in a written guide along with companies making moves but I personally didn’t interview them for this topic .

Because I want CargoRex to be a brand that is successful independent of me being the “voice” of it, I still, and likely will always  want to give my opinion and that home is naturally here. However I think the process needs to be refined where interviews go on one channel and editorial evolves in more narrative/topic based shows that include those interviews where it makes the most sense. I’ll still share those interviews here but I think it’s important that I drop an episode like this ahead of that to set the tone of how I’m thinking about X topic in logistics. 

During this new interview process and after learning the real work going into these different AI solutions, I put together a working theory on how the humanoids are already here. 

How?

My theory is most of the public is waiting for the big ~societal crash into AI agents taking over everything~ that’s turned into fear mongering. Companies simply over-hired, were run inefficiently, and the free money dried up. Businesses had to grow up, cut costs, and get lean. They blame “AI” but in reality, these companies just had bad processes and failed attempts to adopt AI solutions gave them a chance to blame a boogeyman.

When you move past the noise and dig a little deeper you can see logistics is doing what it always does: improving that source to porch journey second by second. These solutions aren’t promising the world on a silver platter, but they are committed to creating solutions for specific use cases that requires a human’s expertise that is powered by information + insight to be creative with their problem solving. 

You can listen to the full interviews over on the CargoRex YouTube channel (links below) along with our in-depth Cargorex.io guide with all the companies interviewed, quoted, and featured.

I’m really proud to hit publish on this new editorial direction and I hope you’ll find value in it. 

In this episode:

• How autonomous trucks are filling routes drivers don’t want, not replacing drivers
• The 3-hour report that now takes 15 seconds, and what analysts do with that time
• Why AI is the new boogeyman when bad data and worse processes are the real problem
• The trust layer: audit logs, human-in-the-loop phases with defined endpoints, and why demos aren’t deployments
• What nobody talks about: AI burnout, and what happens when every minute of your day becomes the hard stuff
• Build vs. buy: $1.2 million in savings came from solving the right problems, not building everything from scratch
• Token management as an operational cost, and the Uber cautionary tale

Watch this episode on YouTube

Find the full AI Use Cases in Logistics Guide over on the CargoRex website

——————————————————

Full Interviews available on the new CargoRex YouTube Channel: 

1. Sarit Tamir — Founder & CEO, Seeteria "What Happens on Your Floor Between the Scans" 

• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IiHVk8eOw0w
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarittamir/ 
• Site: https://seeteria.com

2. Michelle McBride — Head of Product, Envoy AI "The Orchestration Layer Brokerages Have Been Missing" 

• Watch: https://youtu.be/YGe5EZLoDYE
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleposadas/ 
• Site: https://tryenvoy.ai

3. Tapan Chaudhari — Founder & CEO, Hey Bubba "Voice AI That Books Freight for Truckers 24/7" 

• Watch: https://youtu.be/XeBVteEJDlw
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ctapan/ 
• Site: https://bubba.ai

4. Shawn McCarrick — CEO, Sifted "Why Big Savings Mean You Already Spent the Money" 

• Watch: https://youtu.be/ZH6-40Bxstg
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-mccarrick-04719765/ 
• Site: https://sifted.com

5. Jett Chitanand — President, EPG Americas "AI That Cuts 13 Minutes Off Every Warehouse Delivery" 

• Watch: https://youtu.be/_Q8aM16gn24
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jett-chitanand/ 
• Site: https://epg.com

6. Tom Curee — President, Qued "The One Thing You Actually Control on a Shipment" 

• Watch: https://youtu.be/ymtR9BRvxek
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomcuree/ 
• Site: https://qued.com

7. Tete Xiao — VP of Engineering and AI, Bot Auto "Driverless Trucks Are Already Hauling Freight in Texas" 

• Watch: https://youtu.be/yWXQq_Fa9c0
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tete-xiao-ba2103120/ 
• Site: https://bot.auto

8. Nick Boston — VP of Sales, GoodShip "The Report That Took 3 Hours Now Takes 15 Seconds" 

• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/grzIjsDC1rs
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickboston/ 
• Site: https://goodship.io

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

LLM search is only about 1% of the total search market. Google still controls roughly 88%. So why do so many marketer's content strategy sound like it was written by someone in a panic about AI overviews? 

This week we're resurfacing a conversation with Grace Sharkey of Orderful to reset what SEO actually looks like for logistics in 2026, with a new intro reacting to Google's recent guidance on what does and does not matter.

Included in this conversation is a fresh take on what Google just clarified, including what they're saying about llms.txt files, FAQ pages, and schema. Then we roll into the conversation where Grace asks the questions and Blythe walks through Google Search Console, long-tail keywords, the FAQ-page rebuild, and why your recorded sales calls are the most underused content gold mine in your stack.

In this episode:

• Why Google Search Console beats Ahrefs and SEMrush for figuring out what to fix first
• How to sort your queries for the fastest click-through-rate wins
• The long-tail paragraph queries LLMs are actually answering
• Why the FAQ page is the easiest piece of SEO work you can ship this quarter
• What Google just said about llms.txt files (spoiler: you do not need one)
• How to turn recorded sales and onboarding calls into a content engine
• Why YouTube case studies beat gated PDF whitepapers for shippers
• The "how did you hear about us" form field every high-intent page should have

Watch this episode on YouTube

Links and resources:

• Grace Sharkey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-sharkey-31940765/
• Orderful: https://www.orderful.com
• Google Search Console: https://search.google.com/search-console
• Adam Robinson's Air Cover newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/air-cover-7450924377958912000/ 
• SEO expert Gaetanao DiNardi: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7368964829673390084/

More logistics marketing and sales content over on Everything is Logistics

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

Most conversations about nearshoring assume you're moving away from Chinese manufacturing. Kerim Kfuri, president and CEO of The Atlas Network, has a harder truth: a lot of "nearshoring" is just Chinese foreign direct investment building factories in Vietnam and Mexico. The geography changes. The supply chain dependencies don't necessarily change with it.

In this episode, recorded live on the expo floor at the Logistics World Summit in Mexico City, Kerim breaks down what 20 years of building end-to-end supply chains for small and mid-sized businesses has taught him — and what most operators still get wrong.

In this episode:

• How The Atlas Network manages the full supply chain lifecycle for SMBs, from product idea to inventory management, across a network of 2,000 vetted factories
• Why "nearshoring" in Vietnam and Mexico often means Chinese-owned factories with Chinese standardization — and why that matters for your tariff and sourcing strategy
• The US manufacturing reality: why technology (not policy) is the actual leveler, and why we can't snap our fingers and rebuild a workforce we stopped training decades ago
• Kerim's keynote framework from Logistics World: people, process, and innovation — and why "people" is the most undervalued of the three
• What Kerim (MIT degree in AI and Strategy) says you actually give up when you hand too much to AI: creativity, human factor, and the interpersonal relationships that drive real business
• The signal-versus-noise framework for entrepreneurs: how to identify the three things that must get done today and stop letting everything else win
• Why the most common thing Atlas Network hears from new clients is: "I wish we knew about you sooner"
• A bonus live interview with the founder of Logistics World Summit, who walked up mid-recording on the expo floor

Watch this episode on Youtube

Links & Resources:

• The Atlas Network
• Kerim's book and speaking website
• Blythe's Logistics World + Mexico City Recap

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

Robert Kowton left a decade at Coca-Cola, walked into freight brokering in 2008 with zero customers, and built a reputation around two things most brokers avoid: LTL and US-Canada cross-border freight. In this conversation, he breaks down exactly why those shipments trip people up and what it takes to get them right.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why LTL freight pricing works like a la carte dining, where every carrier action from inside delivery to lift gates is a separate fee
• The cross-border documentation mistakes that route your freight to a bonded warehouse in 2026
• How Robert's "quote to execute" method means he never quotes a load without a carrier plan already in place
• Why he went broad on commodities instead of niching down, and how that protected him through every market downturn
• The cold calling approach that still works: research the commodity, trace the supply chain, follow up on the day you said you would
• Real advice for people thinking about becoming a freight agent with no experience

Watch this episode on YouTube

Links and Resources:

• Robert Kowton on LinkedIn
• CDN Freight Broker on YouTube
• SPI Logistics Freight Agent Program: https://success.spi3pl.com/
• SPI Logistics Freight Agent Podcast Series: https://digitaldispatch.io/freight-agent-guide/
• Robert's fav business tools:
  • Nozbe: https://nozbe.com/
  • File Center: https://www.filecenter.com/
  • Evernote: https://evernote.com/
  • RingCentral: https://www.ringcentral.com/

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

CMPC moves pulp, lumber, plywood, and industrial and consumer packaging from 16 manufacturing sites across South America into North America. Roughly 10,000 TEUs and 300,000 tons of breakbulk annually, touching every Incoterm. Charlie sat down to break down what it actually feels like to run that supply chain through live tariff uncertainty, legacy system inertia, and a Manifest conference floor full of vendors asking for 25 minutes to understand how he procures freight.

This conversation was originally recorded on March 11th 2026

Connect with Charlie and CMPC

• Charlie's LinkedIn
• CMPC Website
• CMPC LinkedIn

Watch this episode on YouTube

Other episodes mentioned: 

• Charlie's visibility panel at Manifest, which Blythe moderated
• EiL's Shipper POV series 
• Happy Robot Series B Raise and their founder Pablo Falafox on EiL

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

Most US logistics pros in the US talk about Mexico from a very surface-level approach. But most have never been on the ground to take in and appreciate the nuance that exists with our number one trading partner.

I just got back from 8 days in Mexico City: four doing some hosting on the main stage at The Logistics World Summit and Expo, four wandering the Roma Norte neighborhood with my husband Badr. What I saw on the conference floor and in the streets gave me a different read on this industry's relationship with Mexico than any analyst report has and this episode talks about it all.

Inside:

• The 26,583-person conference and 650+ booths most US freight pros have never heard of
• Why the driver shortage myth is spreading south of the border, and the pay arbitrage making it worse
• Cargo crime realities: a transport vehicle is stolen every 38 minutes, 86% involving violence
• The USMCA July 1, 2026 deadline and why the rules of origin fight matters
• How the National Museum of Anthropology was built in 19 months with a 168-ton monolith moved 29 miles
• Supply chain anthropology, cacao as currency, and what ancient Mesoamerica still teaches modern freight

Watch this episode on YouTube

Resources:

• Everything is Logistics: https://everythingislogistics.com
• CargoRex: https://cargorex.io
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/blythebrum

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

A 3PL moving 5,000 containers a year can bleed about $120,000 in avoidable detention and demurrage. Tyler Hughes says the fix is not another pretty dashboard. It is cleaner data, better reconciliation, and fewer blind spots when the container hits drayage.

In this episode

• Why ocean visibility still breaks even when everyone says they have data
• How Vizion cleans carrier, vessel, terminal, rail, and truck events into something usable
• Why standards matter less than the ugly backend work of mapping bad source data
• The real cost of dirty ETA data, including avoidable detention and demurrage
• What Tyler sees in the 2026 container trade outlook, from China to Southeast Asia
• Why drayage is still the biggest black box in end-to-end visibility
• How predictive ETA helps teams move from reactive updates to proactive planning

Watch the episode on YouTube

Links

• Learn more about Vizion: https://www.vizionapi.com/
• Follow Tyler Hughes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerlh/

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

Most warehouse operators have no idea what's actually happening on their floor right now. Not a rough estimate. No idea. The WMS says one thing. Ground truth is something else entirely. And the workers running the operation walk 12 to 15 miles a day on concrete trying to close that gap.

In this episode, Blythe talks with Sankalp Arora, CEO and Co-Founder of Gather AI, live at Manifest 2026. Gather AI uses drones and cameras on forklifts to give warehouse operators real-time inventory visibility with no power drops, no new infrastructure, and a facility map completed in one to two weeks. Average customer payback: 4.5 months.

In this episode:

• How drones and forklift cameras work together to turn a warehouse into real-time inventory intelligence -- no power drops ($15,000 each to install), no Wi-Fi constraints
• Why half of every warehouse's total cost is people and equipment traveling, and what that means for where automation investment actually pays off
• The "Amazon Go store" analogy: what a fully instrumented warehouse looks like in practice
• Why the average warehouse worker walks 12 to 15 miles a day on concrete -- and why fixing that is as much a retention play as a productivity one
• What the software stack looks like on a day-to-day basis and why workers end up living in Gather AI's dashboard instead of the legacy WMS
• The 3-step buying framework for operators who've been burned by big capex automation projects before
• What Gather AI's $40M Series B is funding and what end-to-end warehouse orchestration looks like in practice

Watch this episode on YouTube

Links and resources:
• Gather AI website: gather.ai
• Email Sankalp directly: [email protected]
• Gather AI on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/gather-space-ai
• Everything is Logistics: everythingislogistics.com
• Freight tech vendor research: cargorex.io

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

Most people see a Ryder truck on the highway and think "trucking company." That's not wrong — but it's missing 100 million square feet of warehouse space and 2,000 autonomous robots.

Gary Allen is the VP of Supply Chain Excellence at Ryder, and he stopped by the Everything is Logistics podcast booth at Manifest to talk tech selection, the build vs. buy debate, and what it actually takes to navigate a market with thousands of freight tech vendors when you're operating at this scale.

Spoiler: it takes a team of 90 data engineers, a VC fund, and a willingness to evaluate 400+ companies before you commit to anything.

——————————————
IN THIS EPISODE
——————————————

□ Why asset ownership doesn't change the fundamental tech questions you need to answer first
□ How Ryder evaluated 400+ warehouse automation companies in 3 years (and what makes the cut)
□ Why Ryder runs ~30 different WMS systems across its network — and why that's a problem they're actively solving
□ The Baton acquisition, Ryder Ventures VC fund, and why they decided to build what the market couldn't provide
□ The "product mindset vs. project mindset" shift that changes everything about how you deploy tech
□ Agentic AI real talk: what's actually working (call centers, document extraction, labor planning) vs. what's still early
□ The warehouse automation ladder: AMRs → autonomous forklifts → storage/retrieval systems → humanoids
□ What the timeline on lights-out warehouses might actually look like

Watch this episode on YouTube

——————————————
LINKS & RESOURCES
——————————————

□ Connect with Gary Allen on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grallen1/
□ Learn more about Ryder: ryder.com
□ Ryder Ventures: https://www.ryder.com/en-us/ryderventures

Previous Ryder episodes: 

□ VP of Supply Chain Ops Kristy Killingbeck

□ Baton's Nate Robert

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers. 

Supply chain storytelling isn't a nice-to-have skill. It's the reason deals fall apart before the demo starts.

Sofia Rivas Herrera has spent years building one of the most recognizable personal brands in freight, from a full-time role in supply chain at HP, with her sister running the creative side. We recorded this conversation live at Manifest 2026.

In this episode:

▪ Why your freight tech pitch fails before it even starts (your sales team probably can't explain your own product)

▪ The avocado supply chain from Mexico: why it's called "the green gold," how organized crime is embedded in it, and why Super Bowl season triggers a demand spike in December and January

▪ Career minimalism: the Gen Z trend quietly reshaping who stays in logistics and who walks out

▪ How to pass the "gardening neighbor test" for any supply chain message

▪ Why blue is the most overused color in logistics branding, and what that means for companies willing to try something different

▪ How Sofia and her sister built a brand from scratch after her sister told her "your branding sucks"

Links & resources:

• Follow Sofia Rivas Herrera: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofia-rivas-herrera/
• Watch this episode on YouTube

-----------------------------------------

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch maximizes and manages your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers.