Pros to Know: ALOM's Brandon Hulse Talks Hazmat Compliance Programs

Brandon Hulse leads the ALOM logistics organization, responsible for business development and carrier contracting, including rate negotiation, strategic planning, tactical management, operational management, risk mitigation, and logistics planning and operation. His career leading transportation and logistics organizations began in 2008 with Nippon Express and later with Ingram Micro in 2014. Hulse joined ALOM in 2022, where he selects and negotiates contracted rates and service levels with a range of carriers operating domestically, regionally, and internationally. His primary focus is to achieve service, cost, and quality objectives with respect to all modes of international and domestic transportation (small parcel, heavy weight air, ocean, LTL, TL) for inbound, outbound, and reverse logistics. To do so, he meets with service providers (carriers, forwarders) on weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis to proactively manage KPIs resulting in increased on-time performance, fewer claims, high value loss, minimal invoicing exceptions, avoidance of IT incidents, and improved account management relationship. He also expands and refines transportation service offerings by recognizing opportunity, negotiating service and cost with carrier, IT integration, and operations implementation. He ensures compliance with international and domestic standards, government regulations, hazmat/ dangerous goods, safety, and internal requirements, and conducts in-house staff training and certification program for safe handling and movement of materials categorized as hazardous.

Over the past 12 months, Hulse's strategic leadership and impact to operational efficiency and fiscal stewardship both internally and on behalf of ALOM customers has proposed and implemented new initiatives. For instance, in 2024, he implemented the Hazmat Certification and Compliance Program and led and taught a mandatory hazmat handling training certification program for ALOM operational and account management staff, resulting in 100% of ALOM staff to be trained and certified. In addition, working with ALOM technology developers and supply chain planners, Hulse implemented a new transportation analytics system to capture and report a range of performance metric data on freight carrier performance. Based on this data, ALOM can hold carriers accountable for meeting contracted KPIs. As a result, in the second half of 2024, ALOM reduced domestic miles traveled for equal levels of freight shipments by nearly 26%. And, in August 2024, ALOM opened a new production and fulfillment location in Sacramento, Calif., where Hulse negotiated and secured carrier agreements for transportation services shipping to and from this facility and between ALOM’s headquarters in Fremont, Calif.

What’s next for Hulse in 2025 is improved visibility through enhanced carrier system integration and the utilization of AI and business intelligence modeling to help identify and prepare response plans for potential sources of global and domestic freight disruption due to labor, weather, raw material, or geopolitical events. Hulse aims to work closely with ALOM's supply base organization to expand the implementation of the company's nearsourcing supplier strategy.

We talked exclusively with Hulse about the importance of negotiated contracts, what it takes to implement a Hazmat certification and compliance program and why gathering freight data is crucial to the future of supply chains.

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