Everyone Wants a Villain. Complexity Doesn't Care.

Complex systems do not become simpler by removing a participant. They merely transfer complexity to someone else.

Let's do it. No, seriously.

Let's eliminate freight brokers. Every one of them. Thirty days. Lock the doors. Turn off the phones. Grab a beach chair and disappear. 

If brokerage is really the problem, the supply chain should become noticeably better almost immediately. Right? That certainly seems to be where parts of the conversation are heading.

Cargo theft? Brokers.

Negligent selection? Brokers.

Insurance premiums? Brokers.

Nuclear verdicts? Brokers.

Now we're hearing brokers should disclose their margins. Fine. Let's stop debating. Let's finally run the experiment. Monday morning. No brokers. No dispatch. No recoveries. No after-hours emergencies. No one making the twenty seventh phone call after twenty six carriers have already said no.

No one quietly absorbing the uncertainty that never shows up on a spreadsheet. By Tuesday, we'll know whether we solved the problem...

...or simply discovered we misunderstood it.

The first day probably looks surprisingly normal. Large shippers call the large carriers they already know. Large carriers continue serving the customers they already have.

LinkedIn celebrates, maybe. The freight tabloids declare victory, well, until they will find something else to write about for the clicks but maybe they can ride this wave a few weeks. Who knows? And who cares because everyone congratulates themselves for finally eliminating the middleman.

Then Tuesday arrives. A manufacturing plant loses its primary carrier. A hurricane shuts down Houston. A bridge closes unexpectedly. A warehouse catches fire. A receiver rejects fifteen loads. A customer suddenly needs eighty additional trucks before Thursday morning.

Now who answers the phone?

Perhaps procurement. That's certainly an option. But procurement doesn't inherit a phone call. It inherits carrier sourcing. Carrier qualification. Insurance verification. Compliance monitoring. Claims. Recoveries. Appointment changes. Detention disputes. After-hours emergencies.

And somewhere around the twenty seventh phone call, after twenty six carriers have already declined the load...

...procurement discovers something interesting.

It didn't eliminate brokerage.

It inherited coordination.

Maybe the answer is simply to call one of the nation's largest asset carriers. Fair enough. Let's follow that thought.

The carrier says yes. Wonderful.Where did those trucks come from?

......hmm. 

Were they sitting empty, waiting for this exact phone call? Or were they pulled off another customer's freight?

If they were...

Whose freight? The regional manufacturer? The food distributor? The building supplier? Who gets the phone call that begins with,

"I'm sorry..."

Because fleets are finite. Capacity doesn't magically multiply because someone wishes a business model away. It moves. Somebody always inherits the shortage.

Eliminating a function does not eliminate the work.

It simply transfers the work to someone else.

Of course...

I've completely overlooked the obvious solution. Artificial Intelligence.

Naturally.

AI will source the carrier. AI will negotiate the rate. AI will recover the rejected shipment. AI will calm the production manager whose line just shut down. 

AI will convince Driver #27 to deadhead 180 miles into a market he already rejected six times because he's trying to make his daughter's softball game and his fuel card stopped working outside Amarillo.

Absolutely.

Someone please get me a large buttered popcorn and a Coke. I don't want to miss that conversation.

Technology is changing this industry. It should. It will continue to. But technology has never eliminated uncertainty.

It has never replaced judgment. It has never replaced trust. And it has certainly never replaced accountability. 

Then there's the newest proposal.

Broker margins.

Apparently, that's the next problem we need to solve. Fine. But explain something to me.

1. How does disclosing a broker's margin prevent cargo theft?
2. How does it reduce negligent selection?
3. How does it improve carrier qualification?
4. How does it strengthen compliance?
5. How does it create one additional truck?
6. How does it make the supply chain more resilient?

It doesn't.

It simply gives critics another way to place brokerage at the center of a problem brokerage did not create and brokerage removal would not solve. And if compelled margin disclosure is truly the answer...

Why stop with brokers? Let's publish everyone's margins.

The carriers. The shippers. The manufacturers. The warehouses. The insurance companies. The factoring companies. Matter of fact, let's all exchange tax returns while we're at it.

If someone else's profit has become my business, consistency demands we inspect everyone's books.

Funny...That starts sounding awfully Mamdani-ish.

Because one of the defining characteristics of a free market is that private businesses negotiate prices, assume risk, create value, manage expenses, and earn a profit without first seeking approval from everyone else involved in the transaction.

Markets have never required universal financial confession.They ask a much simpler question.

Did you create value?

If the answer is yes, the market decides whether you deserve to be paid. If the answer is no, competitors solve that problem remarkably fast. Competition has always been a far better auditor than public outrage.

Markets don't fail because someone earned a profit.

They fail when value quietly disappears—and no one notices where it went.

But here's the part I find most interesting. This article isn't really about brokers. They're simply today's villain.

Ten years ago it was something else. Five years from now it'll probably be AI. Or autonomous trucks. Or procurement. Or private fleets. Or whatever new idea promises to eliminate the hard work.

The pattern never changes. When an industry encounters a genuinely difficult problem, it rarely attacks the difficult problem.

It invents a different one.

Usually a simpler one. Usually one with a villain. Because villains are easier to remove than complexity. And how many times has freight done exactly that?

Digitization. Digital freight matching. Instant pricing. Visibility platforms. Now AI.

Every generation promises the hard part is finally behind us. Every generation eventually discovers the hard part was never the software. The hard part has always been people.

Trust. Communication. Judgment. Relationships. Accountability. Coordinating human beings operating under uncertainty. Good ol fashioned coffee meetings, face to face, an agenda, some key take aways and follow ups, and continued collaboration. 

Technology can amplify those things. It cannot replace them.

The most dangerous work inside any complex system is the work no one notices until it's gone.

Every functioning society depends on invisible coordination. The lineman after the storm. The air traffic controller after the near miss. The water treatment operator after contamination. The dispatcher after the highway closure. The coordinator after everything goes sideways.

Not because they're more important than everyone else.

Because someone has to absorb the uncertainty.

That's the job. The title has never mattered. The function always has. Because complexity has one remarkable characteristic.

It never disappears. It simply waits for someone else to volunteer.

Complexity never disappears.

It simply sends someone else the invoice.

Maybe that's the conversation the freight industry should be having. Not whether one participant deserves all the blame. But whether we've become so busy searching for villains that we've stopped asking the harder question:

Who inherits the work after the villain is gone?

Because history has a funny way of reminding us that solving the wrong problem still leaves the right one waiting.