What are the responsibilities and job description for the Vice President, Freight Forwarding Operations position at Forward?
Position: Vice President, Freight Forwarding Operations
Job Description:
Forward Air is seeking a dynamic and highly motivated leader to join our team as the Vice President, Freight Forwarding Operations. In this pivotal role, you will be responsible for overseeing and driving the success of our domestic freight forwarding operations, managing a team of 250 employees across the US. Your leadership will play a crucial role in ensuring operational excellence, compliance, employee development, and collaborative problem-solving.
Core Responsibilities & Duties:
- Lead and inspire a team of employees across multiple locations and a work from home environment
- Actively coach, motivate, hire, train, and manage performance of the teams towards high accountability, performance and engaged workforce
- Develop and implement key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and improve operational efficiency
- Regularly monitor and analyze performance metrics, implementing corrective actions as needed
- Ensure all operations comply with state, federal, and international regulations, and governing bodies
- Collaborate with the quality team to establish and maintain efficient and documented processes
- Analyze data to identify trends and draw conclusions to develop collaborative solutions to freight forwarding challenges
- Proactively address operational issues and implement continuous improvement initiatives
- Work closely with the sales team to understand customer needs and ensure the delivery of top-notch services
- Foster a collaborative relationship between operations and sales for seamless customer experience
- Clearly communicate the organizational strategy and direction to your teams
- Collaborate with executive leadership to align operational strategies with overall business objectives
- Establish budgets and manage Profit and Loss (P&L) to meet or exceed budgeted targets
- Make strategic decisions to optimize resources and achieve financial objectives
- Other duties as assigned
Qualifications:
- Proven leadership experience of 5 years in managing large-scale domestic freight forwarding operations
- 2 years of leadership experience in being a leader of leaders
- In-depth knowledge of freight forwarding processes, regulations, and industry best practices
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a data-driven approach
- Demonstrated success in budget management and achieving financial targets
- Experience managing P&Ls and business financials
- Experience working directly with customers in domestic and international freight forwarding
- Previous experience working with LTL, truckload, expedite, cartage, and middle mile vendors and transportation services
- Experience in refining and building strategy for the organization, interfacing with various functions and teams across all areas of the company
- Transferable Freight Forwarding network is a plus
- Previous experience working with carriers & vendors
- Previous experience scaling / growing an organization, with proven track record of developing process and change management
Forward Air is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
