Haversack Is Betting That the Future of Logistics Still Needs People

The founder and CEO of Haversack, Christopher Nadeau, believes technology has an increasingly important role to play in logistics. His company has built its own transportation management system and is developing its own AI capabilities. But Nadeau is equally convinced that adopting technology should not mean removing the people, relationships and human intuition that businesses depend on.

"Speed is what AI gives us," says Chris Comer, Haversack's VP of Solutions. "We're not dependent upon AI to do our jobs. We're dependent upon AI to make us better at our jobs."

Putting the shipper back in control

Haversack's approach began long before the current AI boom.

Nadeau retired from the US Army in 2011 after twenty-six years of active service before moving into trucking and logistics. After being laid off amid organisational changes at a large national carrier in 2016, he began consulting with manufacturers and distributors and saw what he believed was a fundamental imbalance in the industry.

Large carriers had scale, information and negotiating power. Individual shippers often did not-and still do not. Nadeau founded Haversack around the idea that businesses should retain greater control over their freight rather than simply handing the entire operation to someone else.

"Haversack is not an outsource solution," he says. "We're an insource solution."

Haversack describes its model as an engineered in-source logistics solution. Instead of taking control away from a shipper, the company aims to give businesses the technology, visibility and strategic support to manage logistics from a stronger position.

The distinction is important to Nadeau. He does not argue that conventional outsourced logistics models are inherently bad. Rather, he believes businesses should understand what they may relinquish when they outsource and know that another approach is available.

"You're the one that's going to advocate for your company the most," he says.

Technology without losing the human relationship

Across logistics and the wider technology industry, AI has become almost impossible to avoid. For Haversack, however, keeping pace with technological change does not mean adopting every new tool simply because it exists.

"You can be up to date on the newest AI trend, but that doesn't mean you have to adopt it or implement it," says Willow Groskreutz, Haversack's corporate communications manager. Instead, the company wants to identify where AI genuinely improves the service it provides. "It's how do you implement it as a team," says Jason Fleming, Haversack's VP of Technology. Nadeau adds: "And we take what works for us and discard the rest."

That can mean analysing information more quickly, improving internal processes or helping teams reach an answer faster. What it should not mean, according to Nadeau, is replacing every interaction between a client and the people responsible for their freight.

He points to something remarkably ordinary as evidence: clients still want to call, email, text and speak to people.

For a technology company, that creates an apparent contradiction. Haversack is investing in increasingly sophisticated technology while simultaneously preserving some of the simplest forms of communication. Nadeau does not see the two ideas as incompatible.

"State-of-the-art technology available for the future if you want it, or if you just want to do an email, that's fine too," Groskreutz says.

That flexibility has become part of what Haversack means when it talks about engineering a solution. The objective is not to make every customer behave in the same way. It is to understand how that particular business operates and build around it.

Meeting clients where they are

Angela Short, Haversack's operations manager, points to the client services team's role in helping clients understand and use the transportation management system. "There's human interaction, there's patience, there's education in what we do, and I think that's what builds our credibility too," she says.

The approach can be especially important in the middle market, where businesses may not have large logistics departments or teams dedicated to implementing new systems.

For Haversack, that means understanding the people using the system before deciding what the solution should look like.

If a client wants a transportation management system, Haversack can provide one. If they want to pull their own quotes, the technology can support that. If their preferred workflow is still an email or telephone call, the company can work within that too. "Our solution is your solution," Comer says.

It is an approach that runs against a common assumption in technology: that innovation requires customers to abandon the way they currently work.

Haversack instead tries to enter the client's existing operation, build credibility and introduce technology where it actually makes the process better. That human layer remains particularly important when something goes wrong.

Weather, shortages, delays and unexpected disruptions mean freight does not always follow a predictable path. Technology can surface information faster, but Haversack believes someone still needs to take ownership of what happens next.

The company's client services team therefore remains central to the model. Clients can reach people who understand their business rather than being directed exclusively through automated systems.

Building a different kind of AI model

Haversack's position should not be mistaken for resistance to artificial intelligence.

The company is developing AI within its own technology environment, with a particular focus on how client data is handled and how models produce their answers.

Nadeau wants Haversack's AI capabilities to work from controlled data relevant to the business rather than simply introducing technology without understanding where its information comes from. The principle is that the client's logistics data remains protected and under their control.

Within Haversack's system, the ambition is to use that data to support analysis and decision-making while allowing clients to understand what the technology is doing and why.

"Our answer is, we're not gonna corrupt, sell and give your data away," Nadeau says. "It's pure, it's yours."

The company ultimately wants AI to sit behind the people making decisions: processing information, identifying patterns and helping teams respond more quickly without becoming a substitute for judgment or client knowledge. That creates a different definition of automation. The goal is not necessarily fewer people. It is better-equipped people.

Finding the blind spots

Nadeau often returns to the idea of blind spots. A solution that works today may fail tomorrow. Transformative technology can create unforeseen problems, while systems built on assumptions can miss how customers actually operate.

That is why Haversack keeps challenging its own thinking. "There's never a day two," Nadeau says.

The phrase captures the startup mentality the company is carrying into its second decade: no solution is ever permanently finished. Clients change. Technology advances. Haversack adapts.

Rather than imitate the industry's largest technology providers, the company sees agility as its advantage-the ability to move quickly without abandoning the relationships that built the business.

AI will become more capable. Logistics platforms will grow more sophisticated. Automation will accelerate.

But Haversack is betting that businesses will still value something timeless: knowing who is responsible when something goes wrong, being able to reach that person and trusting them to solve it.

The technology can change.

The relationship does not have to.