A candid conversation with Jim Mullen: current President of TCA and former FMCSA Administrator who led the agency through the opening months of COVID

- from the first calls as the country shut down in March 2020, to what he learned by talking directly to drivers on the road. We dig into why English-language proficiency and FMCSA modernization need to be codified in statute, how to shut down CDL mills without choking the driver pipeline, and whether operating-authority vetting on the front end could remove unsafe capacity before it hits the highway.

Plus: what the Montgomery ruling and the Texas RICO case against TQL mean for broker liability and negligent-selection exposure, whether CORCA has any real teeth against cargo theft and freight fraud, the honest case for and against autonomy in truckload, and the pro-driver vs. pro-carrier framing that keeps derailing real policy. We close with TCA's near-term priorities for FMCSA modernization and enforcement — and where listeners can plug in.

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.

Tristan joins the show for a wide-ranging conversation about entrepreneurship, confidence, and the mindset behind sustained optimism. We dig into what the logistics industry gets wrong about relationships, take a skeptical look at the AI and innovation narratives dominating freight tech, and explore how Amazon reshaped customer expectations and market creation. Tristan shares hard-won lessons from building brokerage and trucking businesses, the thinking behind fr8topia's focus on natural CPG brands in Southern California, and his vision for evolving from a freight provider into an ecosystem builder for growing brands. We close on authenticity, becoming who you want to be, and who Tristan is hoping to connect with next.

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.

Shannon Breen didn't leave a stable executive seat at a public trucking company to build another commodity brokerage — he built FreightVana to invert the whole model: own the trailers, drop the commission, bet that alignment beats margin. That bet is being tested from three directions at once right now — a capacity crunch reshaping who's even legally allowed to hold a CDL, a Supreme Court ruling that just stripped brokers of the legal shield they've leaned on for decades, and a household of five kids while he runs a business that just took on an acquisition and a new Chairman to scale further. He didn't build this to survive one storm. He built it to survive all three.

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.

Michael Caney is the Chief Commercial Officer at Highway, the freight industry’s leading carrier identity and fraud prevention platform, where he leads marketing, sales, sales engineering, customer success, and partnerships. He is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee “Freight Alley” — and has spent more than 20 years as an operator in freight, starting with his first job out of college as a freight broker with two phones on his desk.

Freight fraud is no longer a back-office nuisance. It is organized crime. Identity theft, double brokering, and cargo theft as a criminal enterprise are costing the industry hundreds of millions annually — and most carriers have no idea their DOT number can be cloned and used against them before they ever know it happened. Michael Caney has spent three years building the identity infrastructure the industry should have had a decade ago.

Carriers are not just bystanders in the fraud conversation. Their identities are being stolen. Their reputations are being used by bad actors. And the brokers who are protecting themselves from fraud are increasingly requiring carrier identity verification before they book. The carrier that is not verified is becoming the carrier that does not get the call.

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.

Eric Williams has been loud and early on the rate cycle, capacity shifts, and why most brokers are still fighting last year’s war.

Proverbs 19:21 It is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. Not every voice carries truth. Not every signal cuts through the noise.

This is SIGNAL. Grounded in truth.

We talk to the movers, the shakers, and the people actually running freight — not the ones just talking about it.

Today we’re sitting down with a guy who’s lived both sides of the table: Chicago Mercantile Exchange trader, Target logistics (hundreds of millions in spend), brokerage leadership at places like XPO and US Foods, and now the founder of Beagl Technologies; the platform helping brokers stop drowning in RFPs and start winning more of them.

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.

Alex went from working as an assistant manager at Walgreens, to getting his CDL, to running as an owner-operator, to building one of the biggest and most trusted voices in trucking media. He’s got hundreds of thousands of truckers who tune in daily for unfiltered industry news, real talk, and practical insight. He’s also co-owner of Big Rig Tees and has spent years advocating for drivers, owner-operators, and the people who actually move freight across this country.

What I respect about Alex is that he doesn’t just report the story—he’s lived it. He tells it straight. And in an industry full of noise, spin, and people who never sat in the seat, that kind of grounded honesty matters.

Alex, it’s good to have you here, brother. Welcome to Signal.”

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.

Bart has spent over 30 years in the trenches of global supply chain and logistics — from PepsiCo to Penske, GE Capital to Elemica — before spending the better part of two decades as a Vice President and Analyst at Gartner, where he became one of the most trusted voices in transportation and logistics research anywhere in the world.

He's covered it all — transportation management systems, freight visibility, yard management, autonomous vehicles, drones, AI in freight — the technologies reshaping how the world moves goods.

In 2022, he stepped out of the analyst seat and into industry, joining project44 as Chief Industry Officer. Today, he runs his own advisory, Bart De Muynck LLC, and founded Better Supply Chains, a platform dedicated to making supply chains smarter, more efficient, and more human.

He chairs ASCM's CHAINge conference across Europe and North America, serves on the Forbes Technology Council, and sits in CSCMP's Executive Inner Circle — but ask anyone in this industry, and they'll tell you: when Bart talks supply chain, people listen.

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.

Freight has always run on relationships. The problem is that reputation was never verifiable — until CarrierSource. And the platform built for reviews accidentally became the platform sitting on top of real-time shipper purchase intent. What does that mean for small carriers and owner-operators who have never had access to this kind of intelligence?

146-media.com

The industry doesn't need another voice. It needs somewhere quiet enough to hear the ones already worth hearing.

Peace and Love.