Editorial director Lou Smyrlis was the keynote speaker at the 3rd annual GPSNet Technologies User Group conference in Las Vegas last month.

Smyrlis spoke on industry trends that are switching the balance of power in the shipper-carrier relationship but are also raising the stakes for both sides.

“Change has shifted the balance of power in the shipper-carrier relationship in your favour. The challenge is to not get carried away with that power – even though it’s fair to say some shippers have in the past when they held all the cards. The challenge is keeping your growing sophistication about getting proper value for your services in balance with shippers’ continuing need to watch costs,” Smyrlis told conference attendees, which included many members of The Expedite Alliance of North America.

Smyrlis will next be speaking at the Cold Chain Management and Temperature Control Summit on shipment trends in the pharmaceutical industry. He will be referencing the results from our second annual Transportation Buying Trends Survey as they relate to the pharmaceutical industry.

The Canadian Institute of Traffic and Transportation (CITT) and the Canadian Industrial Transportation Association have announced they will once again partner with our sister publication Canadian Transportation & Logistics to carry out the 5th Annual Shipper’s Choice Awards Survey. The survey set benchmarks for carrier performance by asking more than 1,000 shippers across Canada to rate their top carriers on seven key performance indicators.