After an overnight flight from Boston, where I didn’t sleep much, I landed at 7:30 am in Amsterdam, hopped in an Uber, and after a quick pitstop at the hotel, arrived at Transportation Summit at The Beurs van Berlage with barely an hour to spare before I took the stage.
And so began my fourth Transporeon Summit, the biggest and most productive one yet!
There were almost 800 shippers, carriers, partners, and other attendees at the event, and the two-day agenda included a variety of “Main Stage” and breakout sessions. Obviously, it’s impossible for me to summarize every session at the event, especially since I wasn’t able to attend them all, but I will share some highlights and key takeaways from the sessions I found most interesting.
From Dot-Com Startup to Global Network
Transporeon was born 25 years ago during the dot-com boom (a year after I started as an industry analyst). Back then, dozens of online marketplaces promised to reinvent shipper–carrier collaboration. Most failed. The core mistake: they misunderstood transportation as a commodity (like buying paperclips) and fixated on reverse auctions that pitted carriers against each other to drive rates down, ignoring how the market actually works.
The startups that survived, like Transporeon, were more knowledgeable about the transportation market and they quickly shifted to becoming network-based providers of transportation management solutions.
Twenty-two years later, the network approach paid off, with Trimble acquiring Transporeon for $1.98 billion in December 2022.
Today, as Trimble CEO Rob Painter pointed out in his keynote presentation, “it’s a global network with 1,400 shippers and retailers, 150,000 carriers and LSPs, and over 110,000 transports and dock appointments executed every day. Together, that represents more than $55 billion in annual freight spend.”
Painter also talked about the power of the network, which was music to my ears since I was moderating a panel discussion the next day on that very topic:
“Even greater efficiency comes when carriers and shippers work together on one connected network, creating mutually beneficial outcomes. Time slot management, for example, improves warehouse planning for shippers and asset utilization for carriers.
“That’s the power of the network effect — each new connection fueling a flywheel of efficiency and opportunity. The value doesn’t just add up; it compounds exponentially.
“[And] this connected ecosystem fuels what’s coming next: AI.”
In short, Transporeon’s evolution from dot-com startup to strategic platform inside Trimble mirrors the broader transformation of the logistics industry itself — from fragmented systems to integrated, data-driven networks. It’s a reminder that success in this business has always come not from disruption, but from connection, collaboration, and trust.
When AI Becomes a Colleague, Not Just a Tool
Not surprising, AI was a hot topic of conversation throughout the conference, not just in the sessions, but in the hallways and networking breaks too. There were plenty of questions and concerns, but also a lot of excitement and optimism.
Jonah McIntire, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Trimble Transportation, got the AI conversation started with a keynote presentation titled, “AI Vision and the Next-Gen Platform.” He covered a lot of ground, but here are the points that caught my attention the most:
The first major theme Jonah shared was about embedding labor into the product. He gave several examples. In Transporeon’s Marketplace, AI now verifies member information and credentials at scale (more than 50,000 members per quarter), eliminating manual checks. When shippers upload contracts or rate tables, AI automatically reads and maps them into Transporeon’s rate management and procurement systems. Even something as routine as calling to schedule a dock appointment can now be handled by an AI agent. In short, Transporeon is taking the manual work required to operate software and building it into the software itself.
Jonah also discussed how the way users interact with software is changing. Historically, we have relied “on configuration options and professional services,” Jonah explained. “In the future, your software will [continuously] adapt to you.” Instead of pointing and clicking through screens, users (or AI agents) will simply ask, “Why is this going wrong?” and then instruct the system, “When this happens again, do X” and it will.
One of Jonah’s most interesting ideas was the emergence of “AI as colleagues” — that is, agents that participate in the company much like human teammates. This is the approach Transporeon is taking. Rather than treating AI as a tool, Jonah’s teams are adopting it as a colleague. “We have to be able to find AI agents in our directories, chat with them, and invite them to meetings,” he said. These AI colleagues now assist with product development, customer support, and professional services. In many cases, they’re not replacing jobs but handling tasks that “we never had the budget to hire for,” freeing employees to focus on higher-value work.
Finally, Jonah described their journey to building a next-generation Transport Management System designed for AI, a TMS that is modular, open, and outcome-based. Customers will be able to use individual components — like time-slot management, spot bidding, or freight audit — independently, without heavy configuration or professional services. It’s built for interoperability and simplicity. Just as important, the new TMS is designed for AI agents as users. “AI agents don’t care about UI differences or logins,” Jonah noted. “They can stitch best-of-breed capabilities across vendors.”
Transporeon’s pay-for-use model (“if it’s not working for you, you don’t use it and you don’t pay”) and its global network provide the foundation for this shift. The result: a connected ecosystem where humans and AI collaborate across workflows.
Is Transporeon fully there yet? No, there is still some distance they need to go on this journey, and we in the industry still don’t know what we don’t know about the future of AI and work. But as is often the case, the limiting factor won’t be the technology — it will be overcoming the inertia of “the way we’ve always done things,” which is well entrenched.
Addressing the Missing Piece: Transportation Planning
Speaking of TMS, Transporeon addressed a missing piece in its solution footprint by announcing its new Transport Planner tool at the conference. Here is how Boris Keylwerth, Manager Transport Assignment at Trimble, described the motivation and positioning of this new solution:
For most shippers, the motivation behind operational planning is clear: combining deliveries into full truckloads to get better rates. Sending single deliveries to market often leaves margin on the table.
Today, we see two extremes in how planning is done. On one end, it’s a manual process handled by one or two experienced planners who know the business inside out. But this is time-consuming and easily disrupted when deliveries, weights, or dates change.
On the other end, some companies rely on complex expert systems that require long implementations and high costs — often more than what’s needed for day-to-day operations.
We saw a gap in the middle: a lightweight, easy-to-implement planning tool that produces strong results quickly and at a fraction of the cost. It should be fast to set up, simple to use, and provide valuable insights without requiring data scientists or IT support.
That’s the idea behind Transporeon Transport Planner — an automated solution that helps you build optimal full truckloads at the click of a button.
The solution also enables Carrier-Managed Transports that gives carriers the ability to plan and execute shipments directly within the shipper’s Transporeon account.
The “gap in the middle” of the TMS market is certainly a big gap, which is why other solution providers are starting to focus on this segment too. Simply put, while it took a while for Transporeon to add transportation planning to its solution footprint, it did so just in time because the competitive landscape is intensifying and transportation planning is a big driver of ROI for TMS.
See You Next Year in ?
Every year at the end of the conference, Transporeon typically reveals the location and date for the next Summit. This year, however, the only announcement was that Transporeon Summit will become Trimble Insight Europe in 2026 — the date and location will be announced later.
The guessing game of where the event will be in 2026 immediately began.
A bold choice would be Poland or the Czech Republic, since Eastern Europe is playing a more important role in supply chains across the continent. Ulm, Germany — where Transporeon was born and is headquartered — would also be meaningful. Of course, I’m told that Paris in September is also nice.
Wherever it lands, based on my experience the past four years, it will likely be the biggest one yet — a “must-attend” event in Europe. So once the dates are announced, mark your calendars and I hope I’ll have the opportunity again to see you there!
