Carrier costing has evolved well beyond a purely accounting function to become a strategic driver of pricing, operations, and sustainability. As margins tighten and demand for better data grows, carriers are reexamining how costing informs daily decision-making across bids, yield management, and emissions reporting. In this Jump Start 2026 Q&A, SMC³’s Justin Springer discusses how costing is becoming a source of real-time intelligence that shapes how carriers compete and collaborate.

As TA Services expanded its managed transportation and consolidated freight offerings, the team encountered a familiar scaling problem: The LTL operations that worked at one size began to strain at the next. Rating and routing had grown increasingly complex. Visibility gaps crept in. Interlining risk became harder to manage. And the shipper experience was getting harder to keep consistent.

As the conference concluded, speakers returned to three interlocking concerns: Trust has become harder to earn and easier to lose as risk and fraud remain constant pressures; AI and automation are reshaping how decisions are made, even as accountability stays firmly human; and readiness—across data, systems, and people—now determines whether new tools strengthen operations or expose their weaknesses.

Day 2 of SMC3’s Jump Start 2026 built on the energy of day 1’s opening keynote, turning from mindset to mechanics. AI dominated the agenda, but not as a buzzword. Speakers discussed invoice automation, resolving exceptions at 3 a.m., freight moving without drivers behind the wheel and beyond.

At first, it seemed like a massive winter storm might derail SMC3’s Jump Start 2026. But, undeterred, hundreds of attendees, navigating flight delays and cancellations, arrived January 26 at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly hotel, ready to talk LTL. 

In the second session of SMC³’s LTL 204 Hybrid Series, “Navigating Change in LTL,” industry analyst Adrian Gonzalez (president of Adelante SCM and founder and host of Talking Logistics) joined moderator Joe Tillman and co-moderator Dr. Karl Manrodt to explore how uncertainty, risk and rapid change are reshaping LTL.