Reflecting on 10 Years of GLCS with Founder Nate Johnson

Ten years ago, GLCS didn't exist anywhere except in my head and a few pages of notes. We've had the month of June to celebrate our 10 year anniversary.

The idea was stubbornly simple. I'd spent enough time in this industry, in management, operations, around dispatch, inside the software that's supposed to move freight, to see the same gap over and over.

Trucking and logistics companies were asked to run on technology, but the people selling it had never sat in the seat. They'd never felt the floor drop out from under a load, never watched a system go down on the busiest day of the quarter, never had to explain to a driver why the thing meant to help was making his day harder.

So in 2016, GLCS started small. A handful of people who believed this industry deserved technology partners who'd actually lived it. Not consultants who'd read about trucking. People who'd driven the truck, worked the load boards, ran the operation, and then gone and learned the systems too.

I'll be honest about the last ten years. The milestone deserves the truth, not just the highlight reel.

They were hard years to be in freight.

We came up alongside the ELD mandate, when the industry got dragged into the digital age. A boom. A pandemic that broke every assumption about how goods move. Another boom. Then a freight recession that didn't lasted years longer than we expected. We watched good companies, names everyone knew, run out of road. We watched a wave of fraud and cargo theft hit this industry unlike anything in its history.

GLCS didn't watch any of that from the sidelines. We were in the cab. On the phone at the worst moments, in the systems when they failed, in the rooms where our clients fought to survive a market punishing them for showing up.

And here's the part I'm proudest of, through all of it, we grew. From one desk to a team of amazing professionals. From a single idea into managed IT, software development, technology strategy, and helping clients defend against the fraud threatening us all.

We didn't grow because the market was easy. We grew because, when the market is that hard, who you have in the seat next to you matters more than ever.

Everyone's talking about AI now. The next ten years will be defined by data and automation in ways that would've sounded like science fiction. We intend to lead our clients straight into it.

But the secret everyone forgets: the goal has never changed. Get more done, in less time, at less cost. Make my people's day better. The tools keep changing. The point never will.

The point is, and always has been, people.

That's the bet GLCS was founded on, and it's the one I'm doubling down on for the next decade.

To our team, our clients, and my family who lived every high and low of this with me, thank you. You are the reason any of this is real.

Ten years ago this was an idea on a few pages of notes. Today it's a company that helps keep freight moving across this country.

I can't wait to see where the next ten take us.

Nate Johnson, CEO & Founder, GLCS