There are many videos on the fast food chains and many family restaurants that are closing locations. Some will be closing fully. Some of these chains people believed would never be affected. These videos show that NO company is isolated from this down market. Many have already closed 25% or more of their locations since 2021 and getting worse in 2023 & 2024. People with high cost of borrowing are not able to support these businesses. This also means transport companies servicing these accounts are losing freight and money. Bing Videos

What TMS system is everyone using? What other tech systems do you use? What were the features you liked that sold you on the system? What are some features you wish you had with your system?

I've found these sites are helpful in determining European Fuel, checking for a carrier's SCAC, checking time zones, and looking up D&B numbers: European Commission Weekly Oil (Fuel) Bulletin: energy.ec.europa.eu/data-and-analysis/weekly-oil-bulletin_en Standard Carrier Alpha Code (SCAC) Lookup: https://scaccodelookup.com/scac-name-lookup/ Quick Time Zone Reference: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ DUNS Number Lookup: https://www.dnb.com/de-de/upik-en.html

I support a Transportation Manager software, and occasionally, I'll need to reference what the U.S. Department of Energy has entered as the NAFP for the week. Again, for reference, that website is: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/ You can calculate exactly what your FSC is going to be for any given road shipment (in North America, that is).

Some time ago, my 19 year-old son, Oscar, asked what a particular matrix was I had on my screen. It was the Freight Classes list, and he seemed to think it was sort of funny and arbitrary: table saws and framed artwork are Class 110, model boats and wood cabinets are Class 300, ping-pong balls and bags of gold dust are Class 500, etc. I tried to explain to him that the freight classes were standards of density and value. The higher the freight class number, the lower the density and/or the higher the value—the lower the freight class number, the higher the density and/or the lower the value. He thought it would be fun to add a couple of specific items to my list: Class 50-grass clippings (I needed to mention to him that in Class 50, the grass clippings would need to be extremely fresh or wet), and for Class 400, which is normally deer antlers, he thought it would be fun to add "lungs." He laughed and laughed at that. He's a weird kid. Here's the list of Freight Classes, again, I found these online, and they're readily available out there, but they have been useful over time for checking against any errant LTL shipments. By the way, this list is only needed for LTL shipping, as FTL and Parcel don't really use it (to my knowledge). If you have need to calculate the correct freight class for a particular LTL shipment, I've found this freight class calculator from TranzAct Technologies works well: tranzact.com/resources/freight_class_calculator