The freight industry has always been cyclical in nature, with shifts in supply and demand giving negotiating dominance, sometimes to shippers and sometimes to logistics providers. Post-pandemic, with consumer demand faltering and new shipping capacity coming into play, is power swinging back into the hands of shippers? 

Yes, says Ravi Dosanjh, chief operating officer at logistics services provider Caliber Global. In the power shift, however, it’s important that supply chain professionals who achieved a starring role in their own organizations during the pandemic still have a seat in the boardroom, and stay in the position of recognition and influence they gained over the past three years.

“It’s one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ situations,” says Dosanjh, formerly head of supply chain enablement at Intel Corp. “We need to be sure that we’re continuing to up-level our skillset.” That means learning to speak the language of finance, technology and human resources as well as supply chain and logistics. 

Regarding the swing between shippers and logistics providers, Dosanjh notes that freight rates are down, and third-party logistics providers are making cuts. “Those things cannot continue,” says Dosanjh. “We cannot rely on that, as an industry, to support the important movement of goods throughout the world.” So rates will go up again. 

It would be great to change that attitude on both ends of the equation, Dosanjh says. “I think it’s really important for folks on both sides to think about partnership in the truest sense.” Buyers should be looking for long-term partnerships, and providers should be thinking about revenues over a longer period of time, and consider how they might contribute to the broader ecosystem that shippers inhabit. “Don’t hate the player,” he says. “Hate the game.”