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Key topics discussed include:
- Why the gap between well-capitalized carriers and smaller operators is getting wider
- What the best supply chains do differently with carrier relationships, and why switching on price tends to backfire
- Girteka's operating model: control, discipline, and scale, and why scale alone isn't a competitive advantage
- Why culture is harder to fake in logistics than almost any other industry
- Brian's theory on what AI should actually change about shipment management, and whether Pavel agrees
- What Pavel says he's most afraid of (it's not making mistakes)
Pavel Kveten is CEO of Girteka Logistics, a major European asset-based trucking and logistics company, with operations across the continent. He joined Girteka in 2011 and spent his entire logistics career there, moving through roles including COO and Chief Commercial Officer before becoming CEO in 2025. His focus today is on combining operational discipline with emerging technology to drive performance at scale.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Brian Glick: Welcome to Supply Chain Connections. I'm Brian Glick, founder and CEO at Chain.io. Today we're gonna take a dip into the asset-based side of the world. We're gonna have the pleasure of talking to Pavel Kveten, who is the CEO at Girteka, which is a Lithuanian logistics company which is the largest asset-based provider of trucking in Europe, and they have a wonderful culture, and we're gonna talk a great deal about culture.
[00:00:33] Pavel's been a one-company man for his 15 years in the company and has worked as a coordinator, a team leader, department manager, COO, chief commercial officer, and now CEO of the company. And so we're gonna talk about learning culture from the inside, and we're gonna talk about the combination of technology and culture and how all these things fit together.
[00:00:57] Just a wonderful conversation, and I hope you enjoy the show.
[00:01:05] Pavel, welcome to the show.
[00:01:07] Pavel Kveten: Hi, Brian.
[00:01:08] Brian Glick: Tell us how you got into the industry and why you decided to stay.
[00:01:12] Pavel Kveten: Actually, it was a coincidence. I just tried, you know, to understand how this business looks, and I will explain to you later why. So I joined the company 15 years ago. I have a joke that I was born in Girteka, and I started my career as a, you know, as an assistant for the planner.
[00:01:29] And, you know, I had learned the business on the ground, and all my understanding is based on my experience. Because at that time, I remember there were not many carriers across Europe whom you could learn from or ask for advice or something like that. And actually, I never planned my career in trucking, but today I'm so happy that I joined this industry and that I stayed here.
[00:01:53] And there are a few reasons why. First of all, I perfectly understand, and this is actually attracting me mostly, that transport is sitting in the center of the economy. So every product we use, every factory, every retailer depends on the logistic work. And the second reason why I still find the transport industry super attractive for myself is the complexity.
[00:02:18] It could sound strange, but it is like that. Even after many years, you know, there are no two days which look similar, and the transport from my point of view is changing over the last 20 years faster than other industries. And you constantly are balancing, you know, between the customers, drivers, regulations, technology, weather, geopolitical situation, and operational execution of course as well.
[00:02:45] So everything is evolving. And there is a thing which also, you know, motivates me, it's probably the feeling that every year good decision or bad decision, I hope that many of good say, so you see immediate impact of those. If you improve some process, you know, then immediately there's some, you know, the consequence of it comes into the place.
[00:03:08] And probably, you know, the most attractive thing is that when I see that my colleagues, you know, and our customers, they succeed together, helping each other to transform, let's call in this way, very traditional industry through the data, technology, and of course the better partnerships. So just let me give you, you know, briefly the context one more time about Girteka.
[00:03:30] So close to 7,000 trucks, close to 8,000 trailers. We have more than 11,000 drivers. But what is very interesting KPI in fact, that we deliver more than 800,000 loads annually, 800,000 loads FTLs per year, which basically means that it is like 100 loads per hour. After we started our conversation with you, so already at least 20 loads were loaded into our trucks.
[00:03:59] This is super interesting, you know, it's amazing.
[00:04:02] Brian Glick: So you've been at one company your whole career, which is not that common nowadays.
[00:04:07] Pavel Kveten: Yeah.
[00:04:08] Brian Glick: What do you think you've learned or what advantage do you have because you were born into the company, essentially?
[00:04:14] Pavel Kveten: You know, on one hand, yes, you are totally right. So I spend almost all my, you know, logistic life within one company.
[00:04:21] But on the other hand, I feel like I was changing many companies because I was responsible for many different projects within the company. And also, I have changed my position at least fifteen times - something like that, which basically means that, you know, I had an ability to understand the business, you know, from the operational point of view, from the customers as well, from the sales perspective, and even from the finance and other supported functions.
[00:04:49] Which actually, probably this is the main competitive advantage because I understand this business from the ground.
[00:04:54] Brian Glick: You know, I agree. I say I got very lucky earlier in my career where I had customer-facing responsibility and sales responsibility, but I came up through IT, and I think we were talking about this right before we turned the mic on.
[00:05:06] But there's a real thing in this business when you can see the same shipment from a number of different angles, right? How it affects the customer, how it affects the finances, how it affects the technology. That's the thing that I think some people who, you know, if you get too specialized, you don't understand all of...
[00:05:23] Like, sometimes why it looks like your boss is making a bad decision, but he's just making a good decision for a different reason.
[00:05:30] Pavel Kveten: Oh, definitely. Many things stays behind the scene. Yeah. You are totally right. And even, you know, when we talk about our customers, you know, they don't remember the dashboards - but they definitely remember if something happens. And unfortunately, sometimes it happens, you know, at night. So definitely they remember it, if you support them, if you answer the call, if you fix the issue and how you move forward.
[00:05:53] Brian Glick: I was talking yesterday with a private equity firm in the US who just acquired a freight forwarder and, you know, I was arguing a little bit that in, say, forget the top three or four freight forwarders, that ultimately everyone else has access to very similar technology, and whether you're a carrier or a forwarder, it doesn't matter.
[00:06:15] Everyone has the technology. Everyone has, you know, the same roads that we drive on, the same airspace, and it really ends up being that you have to sell on service. And so there's a technology investment that everyone's making right now that can either improve your service or make your service worse.
[00:06:35] I know you had some thoughts about this the last time we talked, but curious kind of where you think this connection between keeping that relationship strong and adding technology to the business, like, are they working against each other, for each other? What are you thinking?
[00:06:49] Pavel Kveten: Oh, it depends. First of all, you know, I strongly believe that right now the gap between professional, you know, well-capitalized operators and the small carriers who still treat the investment into technology as a waste is going up.
[00:07:04] And which is good, at least for Girteka, definitely it is good. From my point of view, you know, when we talk about the partnership, when we talk about the good relationships, and when we talk about the customer service and the technology part as well, it goes together, and I will explain to you why.
[00:07:21] Because everything is about the, you know, the supply chain. And what I observed during the last many years is what the best supply chains do differently. So first of all, I see the, you know, the three, probably the main things which are changing. First of all, when we talk about the logistics business and the transport business, they start buying transport as a commodity.
[00:07:42] Some customers, yes, they treat the transport as interchangeable. No Tender, rate, replace, not happy, repeat again. Tender, rate, replace. But the reality is actually it's diff- every time you switch the partner or the carrier, you introduce instability into your network. And the small savings, even per load, you know, they create much bigger problems on the execution.
[00:08:05] And the best companies, they actually do differently. They identify the core carriers, and then, you know, the core carriers, the core flows, and then they start to protect those relationships because they perfectly understand that this is the way, you know, how to bring stability into your performance as an organization.
[00:08:23] Secondly, there is a commitment, commitment on the real volumes, not just like, you know, having the forecast, which are usually very optimistic because the carriers price that uncertainty into how they operate. And the best supply chains, actually, are different. As I said, they identify the core volumes, and then, you know, they have an agreement, and in return, of course, they get priority, reliability, better execution, and others.
[00:08:49] And the third thing is that, and this is by the way, it's very related with the technology background, is that they integrate operationally, not just contractually. Sending the tenders or working through the intermediaries is not integration. The best companies, they act on a daily basis, and they work with the key carriers on the planning, on exceptions, on some networks, some performance and others.
[00:09:12] So they have daily interactions instead of, you know, just quarterly reviews. And this is the way how and where technology is super important. But as I said, only if you perfectly understand how to use it and where to use it. Because from my point of view, technology, you know, definitely is incredibly important, and it helps to build better relationships, but only in the way if you combine the strong technology with the strong people.
[00:09:41] The reason is very simple. You know, the technology probably provides transparency, speed, data, faster decision-making and other things. But the people, they provide the trust, they provide the judgment, and of course, they provide the problem-solving. So super important is to have this combination.
[00:09:59] Brian Glick: So how do you build strong people?
[00:10:01] Pavel Kveten: First of all, from my point of view, everything starts from the company's culture. And on top goes definitely leadership, because leadership is something which describes the real company values. So when we talk about the values, from my point of view, there are probably three main things. First of all, this is about clarity.
[00:10:24] People, they really need to understand what are you expecting from them, you know, what are you looking for as an organization and what means their good performance. Secondly, of course, expertise and accountability. And accountability, this is something, you know, which is for me, probably it's crucial because also I believe that people, they should understand that commitments matter, and commitments from both sides, not only from the people side, but from the organization side as well.
[00:10:55] And of course, the trust. Trust, you know, trust within the team because teamwork performs best only when the people feel that they are empowered, they can make a decision, and they could solve the problems, and so on. And this is something which you could not hide because, you know, logistics and transport works 24/7.
[00:11:15] So your poor culture will not last for long, you know, if you try somehow to move it somewhere. So this is because of the transportation industry. And technology, this is something which should strengthen the culture, not replace it. But good technology creates transparency, accountability, and the fast decision maker, but the culture determines how the people use that technology.
[00:11:39] And just let's take, you know, one example. Let's assume we have some software or some digital solution in place, and we give it to both companies. And you know, I believe that one becomes effective and collaborative, and another one becomes bureaucratic. So what is the difference? And the difference is actually the culture.
[00:12:01] So because we see the technology as an enabler, but the people, values, and the leadership, this is something which remains as a foundation. And now the question is how we get those people. Of course, you know, it starts from the company's approach and understanding that the people are the real value inside the organization.
[00:12:19] How you train them, how you support them on a daily basis, how you communicate to your people. This is not easy exercise. But actually, if we look at the...if we ask some companies to show the training program for the organization, you know, for the people, for your employees, if they have it or if they do not.
[00:12:36] All your steps, they actual- this describes your approach as an organizational, and of course, you know, the ability to attract the right people into your organization.
[00:12:45] Brian Glick: I'm in IT, so things go wrong all the time, right? Even more so than logistics, right? And sometimes they go wrong big. One of the things that I've seen that's interesting in cultures between companies is kind of what their approach is when something goes wrong, right?
[00:13:00] Whether that's a missed delivery or whether that's, you know, you've lost a whole customer or whether it's a technology investment that you have to throw away. I'm sure you've seen a few over the last 15 years, everyone has. What framework or what do you use in order to maintain the culture when things are hard or when things have gone bad?
[00:13:20] Pavel Kveten: You know, Brian, so I already mentioned that in Girteka, you know, we experience our customer supply chain not on dashboards - but we experience them, you know, at 2:00 in the morning if something goes wrong, when, I don't know, temperature deviation happens, production line is waiting, then, you know, delivery should simply happen no matter what.
[00:13:42] And over time, you know what? I realized that I start to feel the pattern, not in what works, but in what doesn't. Because too often in that business, we optimize against each other instead of succeeding together. And of course, you know, we are a big company with many employees, many different functions, so I mentioned the drivers, you know, part only, which is close to 11,000 drivers, but close to 2,000 colleagues we have in our administration.
[00:14:10] And when I mention those values, it was not a coincidence, so you should live with that. And I mentioned also, you know, the trust, and I mentioned that you should empower your people. But also it means that you allow them to make a mistake and allow them, of course, to solve this problem. It's not easy. You could, you know, write nice statements on the wall everywhere across all the offices, all the locations around Europe, but you should live with that.
[00:14:38] You should behave like that. That's not easy. So that's why I constantly highlight the leadership part as well, because everything starts from the leadership, from the right leadership.
[00:14:49] Brian Glick: I'll tell you that one of the hardest lessons I had to learn in my career as someone who did most of the jobs was when to not get involved and when to let the team do the thing that might take a little bit longer because they haven't seen what I've seen.
[00:15:07] Yeah, being able to pull back and be a leader who lets the team build is not easy sometimes when the customer's upset, right? So...
[00:15:16] Pavel Kveten: Definitely. Look, personally, no, probably if I would start to look at my mistakes which I made, I would find a lot. But personally, myself, I'm not afraid of mistakes. You know, I'm probably afraid of not making some decisions.
[00:15:31] That's probably the biggest risk of mine. And if you ask myself, you know, what is probably my biggest risk or what I'm afraid of, is probably thinking that - tomorrow will look like yesterday.
[00:15:46] Brian Glick: Well, then you're in the right business, sir, because as you said before, tomorrow never looks like yesterday in this business.
[00:15:53] That's what makes it so much fun. I wanna go back to something you said because it actually triggered a thought in my head. I don't-- not sure if there's a question to this. We'll find out together. But, you know, you mentioned how you can't fake the culture in this industry. And one of the things that I found really interesting over the years is, you know, if you're Coca-Cola or you're, you know, Audi, your customer interacts with your product, but .00001% of your customers have ever entered one of your facilities or, you know, spoken to an employee outside of a service center.
[00:16:31] But in logistics, our customers see the inside of our operations all day, every day, right? And so there is no difference between, like, you can't have branding and culture as separate topics. You can't be like, "This is my brand. We're a family company," and then run a sweatshop because your customers are on the phone all day with your employees in the office, or the drivers are in their buildings, right?
[00:17:00] So again, I don't know if there's a question, but I'm just like, do you think of it the same way that, like, the culture is the brand and the brand is the culture, or is there a way around that, or should there be even? I don't know.
[00:17:12] Pavel Kveten: This is probably not the question.
[00:17:14] Brian Glick: Yeah. This is an idea and-
[00:17:16] Pavel Kveten: - to talk about it because I really support this idea.
[00:17:19] And as I said, yes, you cannot hide the culture. So the transport industry is super dynamic. I mean that daily interactions, as I mentioned before, are constantly on the phone, so they are visiting, customers are visiting their providers to understand how it is going. At the end of the day, still this is the, you know, the personal relationships between the employee and the customer.
[00:17:41] And also, you know, on top of that, we focus on high care deliveries. High care deliveries means that this is more difficult logistics. So we focus on pharmaceutical deliveries, on high-value deliveries and temperature sensitive or time sensitive deliveries. This is our strategic direction as a Girteka direction.
[00:18:02] Which means that this part becomes even more important and sensitive because the product by itself, yes, you could describe your product, what you want to sell, and then, and so on. You also put it on the wall, to send the nice presentations for your customers. But at the end of the day, the product is the service which they get after.
[00:18:24] They get it from the people who need to be, you know, with the right approach, with the right mindset, with the right understanding of it, and then coming back to the my, you know, previous statement that it's very related, first of all, with the organizational approach, with the, you know, leadership approach and understanding of this importance.
[00:18:41] So I'm fully with it. I mean that these two things are very close to each other.
[00:18:46] Brian Glick: So tell me something you're excited about for the next couple years. What's got you really kind of enthusiastic right now? I know we're not on video, but you just had a big smile. So I'm excited to hear this answer.
[00:18:59] Pavel Kveten: You know, Brian, I think that we are entering one of the most interesting periods in logistics history, and I'm excited seeing, you know, working closer to the customers because, definitely market participants, they understood the importance, you know, of it, and I'm happy to see how it is evolving.
[00:19:19] As I mentioned to you previously, we control the high care deliveries, which basically means that Girteka's operating model is built on three things: control, discipline, and scale. And control, it's a very simple reason why. So we control, you know, all the processes during the execution because we own our trucks, so we manage the drivers because, you know, trucks by themselves don't create the capacity.
[00:19:42] Drivers do. So the second point is, of course, discipline. So we execute in a standard way across all of Europe, even also by delivering goods from China to Europe and back to Asia countries. So we hire the drivers, you know, from twenty-four countries, including Brazil, and they know that discipline should be everywhere in place because only, you know, consistency is something which creates reliability with them.
[00:20:07] And the third is scale, but scale by, on its own, is not any competitive advantage. But if you have control and you have it in a disciplined way, then yes, it is. It is a big competitive advantage. So here, you know, AI is coming, and which is super interesting for personally for myself and for the whole industry.
[00:20:25] And I have seen, you know, a few waves of it. So the first wave was many years ago that everyone decided that AI will help, you know, to save the world. And by the way, you know, it's true because the pressure in the market on the costs is growing. I mean, that pressure from the customer side, you know, on the cost is growing.
[00:20:47] Of course, the pressure on the profitability level from the transport companies, from the logistics providers also is going up. And the funny thing is that, you know, there is no big space in the room left.
[00:21:01] And for me, what is probably is most exciting and most interesting part is how right now to combine AI with the, you know, strong people and ensure the operational excellence. Because with AI, this is something which empowers you, but only if you understand the reason why you need to have it, and you understand how to use it, and the people helps here.
[00:21:26] This is not the replacement of our employees, this is empowerment of them, faster decision-making. And this is something which excites me mostly. So probably the two things which I would like to highlight one more time. First of all, I'm really happy to see how the relationships with our partners are evolving because they also understand the importance of it, but I already mentioned that.
[00:21:48] And secondly, of course, the strong participants in the market will combine technology, strong technology background with the strong people inside, which potentially could create, you know, a very stable platform for further development. Because for the future, you know, this is not the question if we should move in that way or we should not.
[00:22:09] We should, definitely, but with the right combination and balance of it.
[00:22:14] Brian Glick: So I have a theory that I wanna test with you, see how you react to my theory, because I've been playing with this theory for more than a year now, and we've used it to inform some of our product development. But the theory is that many years ago, we all invented this idea of exception management and the dashboard that you said that nobody ever looks at, and we're gonna build this model, and we're gonna say, you know, "This delivery is supposed to take, you know, fourteen hours, and we're at hour fifteen, and that's an exception," right?
[00:22:45] And we're only gonna look at the exceptions because there's so much volume in the network that we really just need people to be able to get a red/green and only look at the red ones. But in that, you actually lose opportunity because the green one maybe is green, but not great. Or it's green by the exception management, but not by the email that somebody got fifteen minutes ago that says, "Oh, we had a fire at the loading dock, and I need you to reroute things away for the next two days," right?
[00:23:16] That shipment's still green on the dashboard because the dashboard is based on rules, and rules are static, and it doesn't change with the world around it. My theory is that the companies that apply AI well in this industry, what they're going to do is actually break the exception management theory out of their heads completely and say, the power with AI is that it never gets tired, and you can treat each shipment as if it is the only shipment in the world and manage it the way that the world's smallest carrier would manage one truck with one customer that I get to move on one day, and then I can earn the next day's shipment by how well I operate this one shipment.
[00:24:02] And so that all the companies that are just saying, "This is all about cost savings, and this is all about labor questions." Like, yes, if the market rates go down, you have to match the market rates. But ultimately, so many people were born into this industry after exception management was a thing that they don't understand that it even exists because they never lived before it, because in the '70s or '80s, you managed every shipment.
[00:24:27] And that actually what we're gonna get back to is AI helping us treat every shipment like it is the most important shipment in the world. Does that make sense to you? Is that a path, or am I just an IT person who's crazy?
[00:24:42] Pavel Kveten: You are not. Definitely. At the end of the day, everything is about balance. Where, you know, to use AI and where to use the competence of our employees, of the people.
[00:24:53] This is not, you know, going one way, this is balancing between it. And I believe that, you know, in the future, the companies that will win are not the ones who have, you know, the best software or digital solution, or they are super advanced in AI usage. There will be the companies which combine technology with, you know, competence and disciplined execution, operational excellence and scale.
[00:25:18] That's the most important part. You cannot rely on one. You need to merge it and use it together. And as I said previously, maybe I did not highlight it, but actually no, we had different kinds of experiences also. Many years ago, we probably went too much into this technology part, and right now we are coming back and we try to balance it because we understand that, you know, at the end of the day, the competence is super of the people because they have a feeling suite.
[00:25:43] They understand actually, you know, what is more important, what is less important. Of course, in the perfect world it would be great to serve each delivery, each load, each customer as the best one in their life. But something happens sometimes, as I mentioned, those, you know, at two o'clock in the night, it happens.
[00:26:01] So the question, how you act, how you react to that, and I'm not sure if, you know, if AI is able to provide you, you know, some possible solutions, but based on, you know, the algorithms and the previous experience, sometimes you need to think out of the box. And by the way, thinking out of the box in the future, this is probably, you know, the challenge for the businesses in general.
[00:26:22] Brian Glick: So I'll tell you one of the things I'm actually most excited about with AI, and it's so boring. When we run some of our new AI over shipments that have problems, the quality of the email that it writes explaining to the customer what went wrong and what is not something that a human couldn't do, but the thing that a human at two in the morning is too tired and too busy to do, which is, you know, "Dear customer, this shipment with this shipment number that was scheduled to arrive at this time from this location to this location," all in the bullet points.
[00:27:03] "And then here is the action we've decided to take on it. Here's the contact information. We made this decision based on page twenty-six of your SOP where you asked us to do this." Like that email, that's couple paragraphs is so good compared to what any of us would write because at two in the morning you're sitting there on your phone, you know, trying to not wake your kids while you're, you know, just pecking out.
[00:27:28] We're gonna deal with it. We're sorry, which is the email we normally send. I think that that frees up humans to think because they don't have to think about writing that good email, and you just repeat that, that that's actually where this stuff has a lot of value, is in getting that noise out of our heads.
[00:27:52] So then we can actually think about the relationship and not think about, "Oh, I have to go look up if that I used the right delivery zip code when I explained to them where we're rerouting the freight to." So-
[00:28:02] Pavel Kveten: Yes, and you are actually, you supported my previous statement as well about thinking out of the box.
[00:28:07] So that's why I'm, Brian, I'm fully with you. I mean that when I say that, you know, people are important, I'm not saying that technology's not important. It's evolving. It's needed, definitely, because of many, many things, and the cost pressure, and actually it works, you know, and shows that much better results at the end of the day.
[00:28:24] So my idea is that it should be combined together, allowing our people to focus on the most important questions. But the problem is that, yes, this is something which is freezing us as well from the thinking out of the box. So the question is how to proceed with that and how to empower it as the main question.
[00:28:45] Because I'm fully with you, you know, that this email and statement, it's brilliant. I mean that, of course it's nothing to compare. But my idea was slightly different. It's not, you know, about, you know, technology will not replace this process or this exercise. It will, but at the same time, it allows our people to think more about more important cases.
[00:29:05] Brian Glick: Awesome. Well, I think that is a really good place for us to wrap up. I think we have the same enthusiasm. I'm sure you and I could do this for another couple of hours if we were allowed to, but we both have jobs. We both have companies to run. So again, thank you so much for coming on. I really, really enjoyed the chat.
[00:29:23] Pavel Kveten: Thank you, Brian. It was a pleasure to meet you as well.
[00:29:29] Brian Glick: Well, thanks so much to Pavel for a great conversation. As so often happens on this show, we ended up talking another fifteen, twenty minutes even after we stopped the recording. It is always interesting to me to hear the same perspective that comes out in so many different ways about how important relationships are in this industry, as well as, if you didn't catch it in the beginning of the episode, this idea that so many of us are motivated by the fact that there's a different adventure and a different excitement every day in this business.
[00:30:04] So great to always talk to someone else who has that same view and that same enthusiasm for our industry. As we talked about towards the end of the show, I've been doing a lot of work and thinking here in Chain about how to make every shipment be the most important shipment for your customers. So a lot of new releases coming out around our Checks product, which does exactly that, brings multiple SOPs together and helps guide your employees with AI and really empower your team to treat your customers better by sorting out all the differences between global operating procedures and local operating procedures and customer operating procedures, and bringing that into a dynamic set of rules so that you really can have a custom-crafted experience for your customer on every single shipment that they move with you.
[00:30:57] So whether you're a shipper who wants to push that out across your forwarder community or a forwarder who wants to win more business, we're very motivated, very excited. So check out checks.chain.io to learn more about that, and we'll have some webinars coming up to talk through it even more. And as always, I'm Brian Glick, and thank you for listening.