What if your sales motion created real partnerships instead of fragile price wins? That’s the thread we pull with Hans, CEO of Odyssey Logistics, as he maps a journey from Danish directness and early Maersk rotations to leading a global multimodal platform through a roll-up-to-one-brand transformation. The conversation is practical, candid, and loaded with moves you can copy tomorrow—whether you’re running a desk or running a P&L.

We start with the foundation: a value proposition built on facts, not slogans. Hans explains how probing, silence, and quarterly KPI reviews expose true customer pain, unlock share of wallet, and make relationships stick at multiple levels, including the C-suite. He shares why he spends heavy time in the field, what onsite town halls surface that email never will, and how a consistent cadence—global Q&A, divisional sessions, defined values—turns culture from posters into behavior.

Then we dig into Odyssey’s shift from 16+ legacy brands to One Odyssey. Hans breaks down the integration playbook: centralizing shared services, standardizing procurement, and rebranding fast without crushing entrepreneurial spirit. He’s frank about PE carve-outs, IT risk, and why overcommunication beats overpromising during ownership changes. On growth, we get specific: three levers—share of wallet, new logos, and cross-sell—powered by a cross-trained sales force and subject matter experts. Multimodal strategy is the differentiator, with intermodal often beating truckload on cost and CO2 when planned well.

Technology underpins the whole plan. A data lake fuels route optimization, predictive analytics, and automated bidding, while better systems lift both customer outcomes and employee satisfaction. Odyssey’s rebranded brokerage in Atlanta becomes the easy entry point—truckload and LTL open the door to deeper multimodal solutions. Hans closes with career advice that never expires: choose training over titles, learn every job, stay humble, and remember the team is smarter than any one of us.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague who sells on price, and leave a quick review so more people can find conversations that move logistics forward.

Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.

Thanks to our sponsors:

Stuut Technologies: Your AI coworker that collects your cash automatically.

https://www.stuut.ai/

Cloneops.ai: Not just AI. Industry-born AI.

https://www.cloneops.ai/

Rapido Solutions Group: Nearshore solutions for logistics companies.

https://www.gorapido.com/

GenLogs: Freight Intelligence on every carrier, shipper, and asset via a nationwide sensor network

https://www.genlogs.io/

Cash flow is oxygen, and too many teams are holding their breath waiting on portals, proofs, and “who handles this?” handoffs. We sit down with Tarek, a former TQL broker turned founder, to unpack the culture of persistence he learned on the brokerage floor and how that same grit now powers an AI platform that doesn’t just assist accounts receivable—it does the work.

We start with the reality of freight sales: real-time chaos, creative problem solving, and an all-out push to win accounts. Then we widen the lens to founder-led growth, the kind of leadership that gets teams to feel the mission and deliver through tough cycles. From there, we go deep on AR. Why does a missing lumper fee stall a giant remittance? How do portals, short-pays, and missing documents consume weeks? Tarek breaks down a task-based system that sits on your ERP, automates the repeatable steps, and routes exceptions to the right humans in sales and CS. Think instant W‑9s, dispute drafts with proof attached, and AI-powered calls that surface the exact invoice history mid-conversation.

This isn’t AI as a buzzword. It’s time-to-value measured in days, not months, with reductions in overdue invoices and DSO you can feel in your working capital. We talk hiring A-level engineers who talk to customers and ship fast, the difference between commodity selling and value selling, and how a platform partner like A16Z adds real leverage in talent, BD, and brand. We also draw a firm line on ethics: automation belongs in B2B workflows where it creates clarity and speed, not in consumer collections that cross the line.

If you want practical tactics to close your cash gap, align finance with sales, and keep customers happy while the money moves, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a teammate who’s drowning in AR follow-ups, and leave a review with the next bottleneck you want us to break down.

Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.

Thanks to our sponsors:

Stuut Technologies: Your AI coworker that collects your cash automatically.

https://www.stuut.ai/

Cloneops.ai: Not just AI. Industry-born AI.

https://www.cloneops.ai/

Rapido Solutions Group: Nearshore solutions for logistics companies.

https://www.gorapido.com/

GenLogs: Freight Intelligence on every carrier, shipper, and asset via a nationwide sensor network

https://www.genlogs.io/

What if your operations team started each day with every check call completed and only the real exceptions waiting? We sat down with Happy Robot co-founder Pablo Palafox to unpack how an AI workforce is changing the cadence of work in freight—beyond chatbots and into end-to-end execution.

Pablo’s path runs from deep learning research and a Meta internship to YC, a hard pivot, and a clear problem: late deliveries, fines, and interns glued to phones. That pain created an opening for agents that don’t just “assist,” but actually do the work—track and trace, carrier sourcing by phone and email, POD collection, and data updates—while writing everything back into your systems. We dig into the three-layer model his team uses to scale results: execution (agents that act), data (records that get richer with each action), and intelligence (an observability layer where leaders can ask the business direct questions and get grounded answers).

We go inside the enterprise stack: why orchestration and developer-grade tooling matter, how forward-deployed engineers capture tribal knowledge and SOP nuance, and what “manage by exception” looks like for a rep when agents handle the repetitive flow. From reviving dormant LTL accounts to surfacing carriers for real loads, we talk about what to automate, what to avoid for compliance, and where human creativity stays central—especially in customer sales. Pablo shares real outcomes, including dramatic reductions in manual workload and teams redeployed to higher-leverage roles without heavy headcount cuts.

Call it minute one of a much bigger game. As operations interconnect—maintenance signaling brokerage, intelligence spotting margin leaks—agents become the connective tissue and humans become the strategists. If you’re serious about scaling service, protecting scorecards, and growing without linear hiring, this is a blueprint for turning AI from buzzword to advantage.

If this convo sparked ideas for your team, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and drop a review with the one workflow you’d hand to an agent first.

Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.

Thanks to our sponsors:

Stuut Technologies: Your AI coworker that collects your cash automatically.

https://www.stuut.ai/

Cloneops.ai: Not just AI. Industry-born AI.

https://www.cloneops.ai/

Rapido Solutions Group: Nearshore solutions for logistics companies.

https://www.gorapido.com/

GenLogs: Freight Intelligence on every carrier, shipper, and asset via a nationwide sensor network

https://www.genlogs.io/