As a first-time attendee at SMC3 Jump Start 2025 in Atlanta last week, I learned a ton — and enjoyed meeting and reconnecting with trucking and logistics leaders even more.

The three-day LTL industry trade show presented plenty of chances for networking, as well as educational sessions on mergers and acquisitions, the economy in 2025 and looming freight classification changes.

A concert by Face 2 Face, a Billy Joel and Elton John cover band had several attendees singing and dancing along to “Piano Man,” “Tiny Dancer” and other hits Tuesday evening.

For those who stuck around through Wednesday morning, I conducted a one-on-one interview with Total Quality Logistics VP of LTL Grant Crawford, a former FedEx Freight leader, about how he sees the broker-carrier relationship, now that he’s on the third-party logistics side.

We’ve rounded up out Trucking Dive’s coverage from the conference below, in case you missed it. Thanks for reading!