We’ve just come through a slower than expected first quarter with a great deal of uncertainty about what the next quarter will bring. Lingering downward pressure on rates continues to affect carrier revenues just as it’s time to replace trucks that have gone considerably beyond previous life cycles and are becoming a drain on maintenance budgets. The country’s fleet managers and executives are clearly earning every penny of their paycheques these days trying to dodge multiple obstacles to business growth.

And it looks like they will have to keep on dodging. Economic experts are calling 2010 – 2020 the Low Growth Decade. It’s a time that calls for the most innovative of business strategies to get ahead.

We are hoping to be of some help in that regard with our next Surface Transportation Summit, which we put on in partnership with Dan Goodwill & Associates. The all-day event, scheduled for October 16th at our new venue The Mississauga Convention Centre, will bring together carrier, shipper and industry supplier executives to discuss the industry’s most pressing issues and share insights on how to solve them.

We start off the Summit with an economic forecast provided by one of Canada’s leading economists and look at the implications for shippers and transportation providers as they prepare their 2014 business plans.

Our most popular session from last year’s Summit, The View from the Top, is back featuring CEO perspectives on major transportation trends. For this track we assembled a blue chip group of transportation company executives from the LTL, truckload, rail and insurance industries as well as arranged for insights from a leading global management consultancy.
We round out an information-packed morning with expert panels examining the growth potential of dedicated transportation and intermodal services.

The afternoon will include several concurrent tracks, including insights on Best Practices to Cross Border Transportation; Leading an Effective Transportation Sales operation; Carrier Scorecards and Compliance Management, and the current environment for Mergers and Acquisition Strategies.

We close out the day with one of the hottest topics in transportation today: An in-depth look, from both the shipper and carrier perspective, on running a successful Freight RFP.

But that’s not all. The Summit is designed to be of practical use to both shippers and carriers alike and last year attracted more than 200 transportation and supply chain executives. So it’s sure to present delegates with the ideal business networking opportunity.

To register, go to http://www.surfacetransportationsummit.com. Looking forward to seeing you there.