The Founder Shaping The Future Of The Trucking Industry
Meet the Rising Star leading solutions in the freight futures market
The world is full of fearless innovators. Meet the Rising Stars making a difference in their communities and industries.
Who is Kyle Lintner?
Kyle Lintner is the cofounder, Principal, and Director of Markets at K-Ratio. He has also been a member of the Chicago Board of Trade since 2006. With over seventeen years experience as a trader, he is now pioneering solutions for the newly formed freight futures market.
What are Freight Futures?
On March 22, 2019 Nodal Exchange, FreightWaves, and DAT Solutions jointly announced the introduction of the freight futures market. In short, freight futures are contractual agreements to buy the trading prices of trucks from origin to destination. Because outside factors like severe weather may affect transportation, freight futures allow investors to reduce the amount of risk involved when trading.
K-Ratio is helping provide solutions to shippers, carriers, and third-party logistics in a market that has never been seen before. They do so by offering market guidance, price consultations, and data management on customers’ behalf. Only eight months after their launch, K-Ratio was named one of the top 100 tech companies in the freight industry by FreightWaves, the largest trucking trade publisher in the world.
Running the Risks with K-Ratio
Kyle grew up in the Edison Park, Chicago neighborhood with parents who encouraged his curiosity. Internal by nature, Kyle likes to carefully analyze situations before offering input — a trait that serves him well as an entrepreneur today. He got his start in the trade market right out of high school as a runner for the Chicago Board of Trade. Working his way up, eventually he landed a position as a private trader both on and off the trading floor.
When his friend, Patrick Draut, attended a conference that outlined the plans for freight futures, he convinced Kyle they should take a chance on the emerging market. Kyle and Patrick approached Russell Gallemore, founder of K&L Freight Management, with the idea and the three of them cofounded K-Ratio. When freight futures were first introduced, many companies were hesitant to jump in and start trading. As such, Kyle and K-Ratio dedicated generous time educating large carriers to get them involved in the market.
According to K-Ratio’s website, the trucking industry is one of the largest in the U.S., valued at $726B. Whenever a product is shipped in the U.S., 70% of the time it is shipped by truck. While there are many factors that can disrupt the flow of the freight trucking industry, the trade dispute between China is one that may hit the hardest. Kyle is helping shape the future of the industry with his experience as a market analyst and risk advisor.
Freight Intelligence 2.0
While on the road meeting with prospective clients, Kyle noticed there were a lot of internal risks within companies that needed to be addressed before they could get involved in freight futures. Instead of dismissing these clients, Kyle decided to work with a development team to find a solution. They created a new software that allows companies to identify internal risks by benchmarking against external factors and offering ways to fix them. They debuted their Freight Intelligence software in November 2019 and beat out over fifty companies for Best in Show at FreightWaves Live.
Kyle and the development team are currently working on Freight Intelligence 2.0 to make it available to customers everywhere in May 2020. Thanks to Kyle’s many efforts, their software is already picking up steam and K-Ratio has been accepted as the industry leader for freight futures. His advice for new startup founders is to “Sleep when you can. Running a business is more work than you think. The long hours. The extensive travel. It takes you out of your family life and your personal life. There’s definitely a human side to it.”
What Keeps Him Up at Night?
“Trying to steer the company in the right direction. Trying to navigate between the risks you can see and the ones you can’t. When you are a startup, what we lack in a manpower standpoint and a funding standpoint forces us to be nimble and creative.”
What is Kyle’s GREY Style?
This article originally published on GREY Journal.
This article originally published on GREY Journal: https://discovergrey.com/greygang/rising-stars/the-founder-shaping-the-future-of-the-trucking-industry/
