Getting Started – Connections 2025 day one recap
Authored by SMC³ on July 8, 2025
Every year, SMC3 Connections provides an opportunity for LTL and logistics professionals to gather, connect, and share insights that will, inevitably, define the future of the industry. This year is shaping up to be no different.
The first day of this year’s conference featured an address from our keynote speaker, Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton, who inspired the crowd with his personal story and passion for humanitarian work. As attendees dispersed into different sessions, the insights started piling up fast. Read on for a closer look at some highlights.
Customers place a premium on flexibility
The centerpiece of the day was a Leadership Series discussion with Lior Ron, Founder and CEO of Uber Freight. With a customer base that includes 40% of Fortune 500 companies, Uber Freight manages $20 billion in freight annually. As Ron points out, a deeper dive into those numbers reveals an overwhelming customer desire for one thing: flexibility.
“One challenge with existing solutions is that they just don’t offer flexibility,” Ron said of the competition. “[Large companies] want flexibility. They want to outsource their freight, audit, and pay, but may not want to outsource their load execution. They want to have a different solution for Europe and the U.S.”
That call for flexibility is obviously key for Uber Freight’s growth strategy, but it also holds a lot of wisdom for carriers and third-party logistics providers across the industry.
Ron summed it up: “It’s really about creating more and more value for our customer base. We want to offer our customers full flexibility to meet us at any part of their journey so we can drive better logistics outcomes from everyone from the Fortune 50 all the way to mid-market and smaller customers.”
Using disruptive tech to manage disruptive conditions
After a short networking break, attendees jumped into a series of general sessions tackling everything from tariffs to artificial intelligence to the future of the LTL industry as a whole.
The topic of disruption was common among these sessions. How can logistics leaders effectively manage the uncertainty that pervades the industry? And how can new technologies support this strategic goal of building resilience?
In “Revolutionizing the Work Environment with AI Agents,” panelists weighed the merits of automatic certain workflows and debated which parts of the AI boom are genuinely revolutionary vs. which parts are mostly hype.
One panelist cautioned against the “AI first” approach that has gripped so many business leaders, urging a more measured approach. “‘AI first’ isn’t very strategic. I prefer to say, AI best.’ Figure out what the right use cases are and get your people working on the right things, but it shouldn’t be ‘AI for everything.’”
Another general session tackled a high-profile disruption on everyone’s mind: tariffs. But while the appetite for concrete answers is high, answers are few and far between. Within an atmosphere of uncertainty, companies that prioritize adaptability and agility are the most likely to weather the storm.
“The biggest concern among our members is, ‘What do we do?’” said Josh Brown, COO of the Utah Manufacturers Association. “As we’re all sitting here discussing this, we don’t quite know the answer. There’s no crystal ball.”
A closer look at the industry’s outlook
While there may be a few unanswered questions floating around the industry, it remains important to control what you can and move forward with confidence. To that effect, several general sessions centered on the industry outlook––what to expect, what to prepare for, and how to succeed.
In his in-depth analysis of industry conditions, Bruce Chan, Managing Director of Global Transportation and Logistics at STIFEL, emphasized the importance of 3PL relationships.
“Shippers want to make sure they have access to multiple carriers as they think about changing sources of procurement. I think 3PLs offer a lot of flexibility in that regard.”
In another session, Keith Prather, Managing Director at Armada Corporate Intelligence, returned to a common bellwether metric he’s referenced over years of SMC3 events: the inventory to sales ratio.
“About 40% of the market is understocked currently,” he noted. “But when you really dive into the different subsectors that affect LTL demand, we’re only sitting about 7% heavier than we were prior to the pandemic. That tells me that the market is still somewhat in cycle, that we don’t have an inventory overstock problem at the moment.”
The fun is just getting started
Day one was a tidal wave of fresh insights and new connections, but it was also only the beginning. Stay tuned for further recaps of Connections 2025 events and secure your piece of the action.