Every conference has a different personality.
Some are vendor showcases. Some chase whatever headline dominated the trade press that week. The Agriculture Transportation Coalition Annual Meeting is neither — and that’s exactly why it’s one of my favorites to attend.
AgTC is about real problems. It’s set up less as a press event and more as a place to talk through grievances: What are the actual challenges exporters are facing? That format makes it one of the best information-gathering events on our calendar. Held annually in Tacoma, it was great to see a lot of people we know from across the Midwest.
An Opportunity to Listen — and Calibrate
One of the most valuable things a conference like AgTC offers is the chance to ask an honest question: Are we focused on the right things for our customers?
Every day, we’re working with shippers, their logistics partners, and the carriers who move that cargo to buyers around the world. Across Mark-It, we see challenges develop in real time. But it’s easy to get close to a problem and lose sight of the full picture, typical forest for the trees stuff. AgTC gives us a chance to step back, listen broadly, and confirm what we believe our customers’ pain points actually are.
In a lot of ways, that’s what I go for: to calibrate what we think customers need against what the hot points really are. And on the drayage side, this year told me we’re pretty well on the mark.
The Details That Drive the Bottom Line
Agricultural logistics doesn’t make national headlines, but the operational details are the ones that can imperil a shipper’s margins. Agricultural products are by and large commodities. They’re fungible with what other countries grow and sell worldwide, which means they carry all the pricing pressure that global competition creates.
Across three days of panels and one-to-one conversations, a number of themes kept coming up:
- Return dates and equipment availability
- Container flip costs
- Port storage charges
- Export documentation challenges
- Drayage and intermodal coordination
- Terminal operating procedures that change without warning
None of these issues are new. But the way they compound, especially for export-focused shippers working on thin margins, is where the real pain lives.
A Seat on the Panel
This year, I had the opportunity to sit on a panel titled “Exporting From Where Ag is Produced.” Much of our conversation revolved around inland drayage and the unique challenges it presents. Thanks to Peter Friedmann and AgTC for the invitation.
It was a strong group, with real operational depth rather than just theory. The panel included a representative of Dairy Farmers of America, along with Hapag-Lloyd and TRAC— so we heard the challenges facing the BCO, carrier, and chassis provider all at once.
When you add the drayage piece, you also add another stakeholder: the rail. That introduces its own challenges, and it compounds existing problems like changing earliest return dates (ERDs) for exporters. A big part of the conversation was how we can best help our export friends manage those additional variables.
I want to be clear about how I approached it: I looked at it as an opportunity to speak on behalf of all of the competent midwest drayage providers. The best way we can counteract these challenges is to be educators for our shipper friends and the other stakeholders in the supply chain, not just to inform them, but to equip them to make better decisions and to hold the other stakeholders accountable for their movements.
The feedback was positive, from other drayage providers and BCOs alike. And it reinforced something I already believe: exporters are well served by partners who understand how the work actually gets done.
Focused on Solutions, Not Grievances
What I appreciate most about AgTC is the mindset of the people in the room. They’re not there to complain — they’re there to solve. The conversations are grounded. People talk about real costs, real bottlenecks, and real opportunities to improve.
That environment does something important: it keeps us honest. It’s one thing to think you know what your customers are dealing with. It’s another to sit in a room and hear it directly. This year confirmed we’re focused on the right things and it surfaced a few challenges further down the supply chain that were genuinely eye-opening.
From a drayage seat, we deal with variability every day; it’s just part of the job. But hearing how that variability lands on a BCO’s final landed cost and how a flipped earliest return date can turn into port storage charges and other downstream costs sharpened the picture for us. That clarity lets us take a more surgical approach to making things better for the customer.
One Surprise I Didn’t Expect
Given the recent Supreme Court ruling on broker liability, I expected it to come up. It barely did.
There were plenty of NVOs and BCOs in the room who haven’t skipped a beat on what they’re doing. My read is that a lot of them aren’t yet certain how the ruling will affect them.
We (Mark-It) live the broker-carrier dynamic from a carrier standpoint, so it’s front of mind for us. But for many shippers, the longer-term ramifications may simply not have hit home yet.
Maybe that changes. We’ll keep watching.
Why This Conference Matters to Mark-It
AgTC keeps us connected to the agricultural exporters and supply chain professionals we serve — particularly the Midwest-focused networks at the core of our work. Getting to represent our group and have that platform to talk drayage helps bolster our position in the region.
More than that, it’s a reminder that the most important thing any of us can do is listen to one another and keep the lines of communication open. Not just to confirm what we already believe, but to keep sharpening our understanding of what our customers are actually facing.
That’s how we serve them better. And it’s why we’re already looking forward to next year — and to another chance to nerd out about drayage and the part of the supply chain we know best.