66% of logistics pros say talent quality — not cost — is the #1 factor in choosing a nearshore partner. Rapido's integration model explains why that's the right question to be asking.
Plus, a carrier pleading guilty to mob money laundering while still FMCSA-active, Iran's first post-ceasefire attack and what it means for diesel surcharges, FedEx Freight's first earnings as a standalone company, and more in today's newsletter.
Freight brokers are measuring their inboxes wrong. Most inbound email is monitoring, not work. And the longtail categories that look like noise are costing real margin. Here's how to audit what's actually in your inbox, and why it matters in 2026's margin-first market.
In this episode, Dhruv Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Drumkit, shares insights on AI, brokerage evolution, and startup experiences.
In this week’s episode, we sat down with Dhruv Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Drumkit, (formerly known as Axle Technologies), an integration tool that automates tasks. Dhruv reflects on his experiences at Harvard, provides insightful perspectives on what differentiates brokerages, and discusses their future.
Dhruv’s story begins at Harvard, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Government in 2020. As a child, he was fascinated with everything related to transportation, logistics, and shipping, which eventually led him to open his first startup right after college. “Not a great time to be doing bike, scooter, and last mile sharing optimization,” he reflects. Dhruv left the company not long after. However, as the saying goes, energy and persistence conquer all. About a year later, he teamed up with his co-founder and research advisor, Dr. Jinyan Zang, to start Drumkit.
He shared the ethos behind the company: “We want you to make decisions and build relationships without having to take actions. So we sit in your inbox as an AI email assistant. But at the end of the day, we're actually just an integration tool that automates certain tasks for you- things like data entry, load building, and quoting into your TMS. Reading those responses from carriers, realizing, ‘Oh, there's something going wrong,’ and then escalating that up to you so that you can make a decision on that behavior.”
Dhruv also provided insights into what he believes sets brokerages apart. In his opinion, the difference between a billion-dollar brokerage and a million-dollar one lies in scale. “Obviously, everybody has different processes, but the core fundamentals aren’t very different across brokerages. And so for us, we want to provide you an opinionated way of doing that that's flexible enough to plug into all your different tools."
Dhruv discussed the evolution of AI throughout the years and how Drumkit leverages it to make technology more accessible and tailored to individual needs. “It integrates with all of your tools out of the box. You don't need an engineering team to manage that. You don't need an engineering team to customize and figure out your own TMS and all of those things. We already have that.”
He also shared his thoughts on the future of brokerages and how companies, such as Drumkit, make building a brokerage easier. “I think we're going to see what's happening now- there's a short life cycle for some small brokerages, and there's a ceiling. It's hard to get to $10 million in revenue, and then when you do get there, it's easy to plateau. Below that, there's a lot of brokerages that live for a couple of years and get acquired quickly, or they die, and then they're reborn. I think it's going to get easier with new technologies like ours to have a brokerage in a box and just get up and go build your company.”
“When I say you’re going to require high levels of authenticity and authentication at the point of entry... that is no longer going to be enough to prevent access. You’re going to need multiple points that all need to match in order to unlock access- that’s where we’re going."
“Hold on, we've got something here where these guys are hungry to grow. We're hungry to grow." So, if we work together, we can help them grow their business."
Thomas Mella breaks down his thoughts on this week's FreightCaviar Podcast.
"We’ve gotten feedback that it saves them days of manual work, and they walk in prepared and being a good partner.”
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