Any company involved in parcel shipping and delivery needs to be at the 2023 edition of Parcel Forum in Nashville, says Joel Dunkel, president of EventEvolution Management, which produces the trade show.

As the 2022 version of Parcel Forum wound down, Dunkel took a breather and assessed the first such event since the end of the pandemic. “It went great,” he said. “This was our third-largest event on record over a 20-year span. So, we're very pleased with what took place here.

So,what is the forum about? “If it's deemed a parcel-size package — usually, 70 pounds and under is industry standard — we're about everything that must take place for that small package supply chain to get it out to its final destination,” Dunkel says. “You're talking about warehousing operations, material handling, picking, packing and, obviously, the transportation of it all. Once an order's in-house, we take over from there, and we don't really care whether it's going to a business consumer or into your home or another business. We [the parcel-delivery industry] are about everything that's going to take place at that point.”

And whom will attendees rub shoulders with or hear from during the next Parcel Forum, scheduled for September 11-13, 2023 in Nashville? “We drive this event educationally, and there are a lot of heavy hitters that attend,” Dunkel says. “There are people shipping $100 million-plus worth of parcel business a year. There are around 100 of that type of company. And you're going to see what we call our ‘boutique shippers,’ which are shipping a million or less in a year. They're all together, and they're all networking. And our formula is [to encourage] dedicated non-compete time. Everybody over three days moves together. They eat together, attend networking events together, and get to know each other. It's really a community feel.”