Are Bots Booking Freight Yet? Manifest Trend Check with Grace Sharkey

Blythe and Grace Sharkey (Orderful; formerly FreightWaves) break down what everyone’s been talking about coming out of Manifest: agentic AI moving into real workflows, drones/computer vision becoming more practical, freight fraud getting more coordinated, and why “end-to-end visibility” still isn’t end-to-end (spoiler: carrier adoption and execution still run the show).

The gist (what we cover):

• Agentic AI: not just demos—people are pushing it into rate negotiation and booking workflows
• The uncomfortable question: what happens to brokerage models when humans aren’t the bottleneck?
• Drones + computer vision: still early, but moving from “cool tech” to real use cases
• Freight fraud: it’s coordinated—and most companies still fail at the basics
• Visibility: we keep selling the dream, but execution (and carrier adoption) keeps punching it in the face
• Quick time-capsule: what 2016 taught us, what 2026 is repeating, and why insurance keeps winning

Timestamps / chapters (approx):

• 00:00 – Intro + Grace joins
• 04:35 – Agentic AI: what’s real vs what’s marketing
• 10:10 – What this changes for brokers and carriers
• 15:25 – Drones + computer vision
• 17:30 – Fraud: why basic controls still matter
• 25:40 – Visibility + ocean integrity
• 31:40 – 2016 vs 2026: the industry memory test
• 39:50 – Wrap-up + Manifest Europe note

Watch this episode on YouTube

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