The talent files: How to break into trucking tech
Olivia Dorgan grew up in Michigan, not far from the motor city. Her path to the world of trucking technology, though, wound all the way from Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic to Chicago before she landed in Silicon Valley.
Now an account executive at San Francisco-based connected logistics startup LoadDocs, Dorgan was recently honored as the Women In Trucking Association’s member of the month. (For those into radio, you might have also recently heard her here.)
Though she was always focused on finding a practical career path as the first member of her family to finish college, 28-year-old Dorgan didn’t set out to conquer trucking. It was the fast pace, lively relationships with carriers and rapidly-evolving technology that sold her on sticking around.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Dorgan talks untapped logistics talent, charting a career path in trucking and why blockchain might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Q: How did you get into transportation?
Olivia Dorgan: I did not know anything about the trucking or logistics industry when I was in college or graduating. I started in biology because my dad wanted me to be a doctor, and hated that, so I switched to political science and ended on international business and Spanish.
Q: That’s an interesting path.
Dorgan: Yeah. I love to travel. I love speaking different languages and lived in Costa Rica for four months. But once I was graduating, I had no clue what I wanted to do. I started out at a chemical manufacturer doing international sales.
I had a cousin who had interned over at C.H. Robinson, and they’re a huge third-party logistics broker. She loved it. So I interviewed with them over in Chicago. How they kind of frame it is, we’ll bring you in, train you in a classroom setting for three weeks, and then we’ll have you sit with both the customer sales reps and the carrier sales reps and see which one fits better.
Q: How did you chart your path from there?
Dorgan: I think I sat with one customer rep. I knew I wanted to be dealing with the carriers. It’s a lot more fast-paced, you’re negotiating on the fly and problem-solving all the time. That was something I thought was really exciting.
Six months in, I was a commissioned rep and full-fledged trying to create a niche for myself, which in Chicago ended up being Spanish-speaking customers.
Q: You eventually transferred to the San Francisco Bay Area, but were you interested in technology at the time?
Dorgan: I knew it existed. I was a little intimidated by it because I didn’t have that tech background. It felt the same as it did going into the trucking and logistics industry.
What was interesting was that I was already dealing with what LoadDocs was trying to solve on a daily basis. It was my job not just to book the freight and make sure it picked up and delivered, but also with how we get the paperwork and I get my carriers paid as quickly as possible.
Q: Where do you see the trucking industry going in terms of new tech tools?
Dorgan: I think everyone is looking for this all-in-one solution. All the fleets we talk to want to try and consolidate technology as much as possible, and it’s really hard to do, because everyone is so specialized. You end up having this tech stack, where you could have 10–15 different technologies.
I think that we have a really unique ability to be able to connect to their existing systems where we’re specializing. But it’s tough, because you have the ELD solutions, TMS, any sort of document scanning. It’s a lot, and that’s where I think blockchain comes in too.
Q: Blockchain is everywhere right now. How do you see that type of digital recordkeeping applying to logistics?
Dorgan: I think people are skeptical that blockchain can work in this industry because there are so many outliers. It’s great that people are exploring it.
Same thing with the driverless trucks. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a fully driverless truck. I think there’s always going to have to be someone there operating it. If anything, I think it’s going to make the truck driver’s day-to-day life easier.
Q: When it comes to more hands-on technology, like mobile apps on the road, what does tech adoption in trucking look like today?
Dorgan: The younger drivers are obviously more adept to the technology. A lot of the drivers that we work with, they don’t have a cell phone, or they only have used a flip phone, or they’re on a very old Android device.
There is a little bit of a learning curve, but I think they realize that once they get over the initial ‘this is change’ — which, no one loves change initially — they see that it is helping them number one, get paid faster. It’s also alleviating a lot of their time spent at truck stops having to fax those documents. Some people still mail their documents, and they spend around $10 a mailer.
Q: What’s next for trucking going digital?
Dorgan: Auto-doc typing is something we’re looking at, especially for shippers or anyone who has their own standard documentation. It’s just trying to eliminate one more step for them — that the drivers aren’t having to fill in the doc type or a reference number.
The other thing a lot of fleets are looking for, and it goes back to the idea of an all-in-one-solution — is a dispatch workflow. We’re working with a lot of the TMSs out there to be able to provide that. The thing is, we’re seeing a lot of those fleets having to upgrade their existing TMS to be able to get that dispatch information through their ELD. We’re trying to come in and make that possible, especially for the smaller fleets.
Q: One of the other big conversations in trucking right now is around talent and a shortage of drivers. Do you think there’s a possible connection to tech there.
Dorgan: One of our fleets is using LoadDocs to help in their recruiting process. They put it in their job description. If you are going to get those younger drivers, they know what the technology is that’s available to them. They want to work for a fleet that has the newer trucks, has the newer technology and, again, makes their jobs easier.
Q: What’s one wild card in the industry you’re most intrigued by?
Dorgan: I think the in-cab videos are really interesting. You see a lot of the bigger fleets incorporating those into their safety programs right now. It’s being able to tell a part of the story they couldn’t tell before as to what happened a few seconds before and a few seconds after an event occured?
Q: As a millennial yourself, how do you see the logistics workforce evolving?
Dorgan: We have a mixture in office of people who have transportation backgrounds and those who don’t. If you spend the time to get to know the industry, it’s very intriguing. And there’s so many different facets of it.
I came from brokerage and went over to tech, but you see a lot of people who have started at the trucking fleets and worked their way up or started their own companies. You’ll see a lot of kids and grandkids from the family-owned companies.
Lots of opportunities. Lots of fast-paced change. If you’re a problem solver and you want to help an industry that hasn’t historically been as open to new technology, it’s a cool industry to be in.
