Ian Brown

Ian Brown, owner and CEO of LIVE Global Logistics in Dallas, Texas. Hazmat carrier and brokerage. 15 years running hazmat freight as an agent under a larger carrier's authority, with a team that started at two people and grew to six.

Experience

Started the hazmat side of the business in 2015. Recruited his own drivers, bought his own trailers when there was no drop-trailer program, did his own pricing and built his own Power BI reporting. The operation grew past 6,000 hazmat loads a year, hauling for chemical distributors, packaging manufacturers and Fortune 500 industrial shippers, with more than 1,000 shippers and brokers and 5,800 carriers in the records.

Why FlowLine exists

A major shipper account was lost to EDI tenders that reached the team too late, and nobody could explain why. Ian built FlowLine alone, outside his day job, so that no one else would have to go through that: every tender gets a person and a countdown, every quiet load gets flagged, no invoice goes out until the paperwork agrees.

The person

Ian is 40 and analytical to a fault: the four-rule memo that kept shippers for a decade, the Power BI reports he built himself and FlowLine's response clocks all come from the same instinct, to measure a thing before arguing about it. His father's career as a Defense Logistics Agency contracting officer is where the habit of reading every line of a contract comes from.

He reads strategy as seriously as he reads rate tables, and keeps a small circle of advisors he runs hard decisions past before he makes them. FlowLine's search and content strategy was shaped with tips from a friend who built one of Texas' best-known comparison sites.

What he is proud of

• Having the responsibility of 75 people, drivers included, and the lives that changed because the work was there.
• Growing a two-person hazmat desk into a 6,000-load-a-year operation without an outside investor.
• Building FlowLine alone, outside the day job, so a small carrier can have what only the big ones used to afford.
• Publishing the numbers. Most of this industry keeps rate data private; LIVE put 11 years of it on the open web.

Family

• Married to Elizabeth.
• Dogs are part of the family.
• His father was a contracting officer for the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).

Why he keeps going

"I was a young man in my thirties with grown men counting on me. Drivers with families, with truck notes, with kids who needed the next load to come through. That weight is what drove me to build something great, and it is still one of the greatest achievements of my life.

Now I want to give back. I want to help smaller companies, agents and drivers make the transition: learn what AI can actually do for a freight desk, bring new process into the day without losing the handshake, and get what only the big carriers used to afford.

The drivers are who taught me this business. Every lesson in FlowLine came off a phone call with one of them. So to every driver, dispatcher, carrier and shipper who was part of what we built: thank you. None of it would have been possible without you."

Where the numbers come from

Every rate on this site is from LIVE Global Logistics' own moved and billed truckload loads, 2015 to 2026. Rate per mile is total charges (linehaul, fuel surcharge, accessorials) divided by billed miles. Loads under 50 miles or outside $0.80 to $15.00 per mile are excluded. Lanes are published only with 10 or more loads. Medians are used, not averages. Hazard class comes from the DOT category on the commodity description. No shipper names are published.

The data is published under CC BY 4.0: lanes.json and rates.json. Cite LIVE Global Logistics and link back.

Corrections

If a number on this site is wrong, say so and it gets fixed. Reach LIVE Global Logistics through shipwithlive.com.

Read the founder story The Hazmat Freight Report