Online firms hire transportation heavy hitters

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 6/1/2000

Some of the best-known names in the business are lending their cachet to online service companies.

In April, Yellow Corp., parent of Yellow Freight System, announced that former Secretary of Transportation Samuel K. Skinner had joined the company's online transportation marketplace, Transportation.com, as chairman of the board of directors. Transportation.com will offer business-to-business services over the Internet for shippers, carriers, and private-fleet operators.

Another high-profile catch is Max Hopper, creator of AMR Corp.'s SABRE airline reservation system. Hopper, now head of his own technology-development company, joined the board of directors of Tradiant, an online marketplace for ocean transportation. According to Tradiant, Hopper has been recognized by several industry publications as being among the century's most influential figures in information technology.

Also in April, Vastera, a provider of Web-based solutions for managing global trade, announced that former U.S. Customs Commissioner George Weise had joined the company as vice president of global trade strategy. Weise led the U.S. Customs Service from 1993 to 1997, overseeing the agency's reorganization and development of the Customs Modernization Act.

These "celebrity" endorsements are important because they reassure potential customers and investors of the . Their visionary status also lends credibility and creates confidence in the service providers that hire them and indeed, in the online transportation business asservices' viability a whole.