This fireside chat is from FreightWaves’ North American Logistics Tech Summit on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: How small and medium-size brokerages can use technology to compete with bigger players
DETAILS: With carriers facing a wealth of choices in freight brokerages — including tech-forward firms like Uber Freight — smaller firms have their work cut out for them to attract customers. Mustafa Azizi, co-founder and CEO of ZUUM Transportation, talks to Ryan Schreiber of CarrierDirect about how small and medium-size freight brokerages can stay competitive.
SPEAKER: Mustafa Azizi, co-founder and CEO of ZUUM Transportation
BIO: Azizi spent 12 years working in the transportation and logistics industry in roles including chief operating officer at VMG Transportation Group and transportation manager at J.B. Hunt Transportation services before launching ZUUM. Azizi is a graduate of UC Berkeley.
Key quotes from Azizi
“If you want to be competing with the big guys or even feel as though you’re competing with the big guys, you want to focus on your interactions with carriers and make sure that they want to use your company over and over again — and pay better than the other guys.”
“Since we’re a tech company, I could say, ‘You know what, focus only on technology and digitizing and catching up with the big guys.’ But ultimately, I think the most important part is to come up with a really trusted base of carriers that you can rely on when you get that right customer to scale your brokerage.”
“We’re unique because we have a digital freight brokerage but we’re also the first company to give our software to other brokers. So that resonates really deep with us because we’re always focused on … bringing a lower cost of doing that transaction for ourselves but also leveraging that for our partners that want to use our software.”