Director of Brokerage in North Charleston, South Carolina at Harbor Logistics, LLC
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Job Description
Harbor Logistics | Director of Brokerage
Location: North Charleston, SC (on-site) | Scope: Brokerage P&L, personal book, team, technology stack and carrier network
The Company
Harbor Logistics is a full-service transportation and logistics company built around the Port of Charleston, providing drayage, truck and rail transload, warehousing and freight brokerage to industrial and commercial customers. As one of the largest drayage and warehouse providers in Charleston, our brokerage has something most don't: freight we already touch.
Position Summary
The Director of Brokerage will grow and scale Harbor's brokerage business on a full cradle-to-grave model, where every broker owns their freight from first prospecting call to final invoice. We chose this model because it fits how we serve customers. Every customer has different freight, lanes and service needs, and handing a shipment from sales to pricing to dispatch to tracking loses that context at every step. On the Harbor desk, the customer works with one person who knows their business, quoted their freight, chose the carrier and is watching the load, and who answers for the result.
This is a player-coach and builder role. The Director will carry and grow a personal book while building and leading the desk, and will design and stand up the full end-to-end operation: the process, the technology stack, and the risk and compliance controls that let a cradle-to-grave desk scale. The person we hire will set the strategy, operating rhythm and hiring plan, and will be accountable for customer satisfaction and retention as well as brokerage revenue and gross profit. The individual must be highly self-motivated, with excellent communication skills within the team and with customers, carriers, and all internal and external partners of the brokerage division.
The Cradle-to-Grave Model
Prospect → Quote → Book → Cover → Track → Close
Every broker, including the Director, is the customer's single point of contact across the full lifecycle: understanding the customer's needs, pricing quotes we can deliver on, owning the relationship, matching each load to a qualified carrier, getting ahead of exceptions, and following up after delivery.
Key Responsibilities
- Customer service and success: Set the desk's service standard (response times, proactive communication, exception handling and escalation), make sure every customer has a clear owner, run regular account reviews, act on root causes of service failures and claims, and grow accounts across brokerage, warehousing, transload and drayage.
- Personal book: Manage your own customers cradle-to-grave, bring in new shippers, and hold your book to the same service, margin and growth standards you set for the desk. As the team grows, shift your time toward leading it.
- Build and scale the desk: Own the growth plan (revenue and gross profit targets, segmentation, desk structure and hiring). Recruit producing brokers and develop newer ones into full-desk producers, managed through weekly scorecards covering service, retention, load count, margin and book growth.
- Build the end-to-end platform: Own the strategy and buildout of the brokerage stack (TMS, CRM, rate tools, carrier onboarding and compliance, visibility, document management, and integrations to billing and finance). Design the quote-to-cash process with documented workflows and controls. Make build, buy and integrate decisions on technology and vendors.
- Risk and compliance: Build and own carrier vetting and qualification, ongoing monitoring, fraud and double-brokering prevention, insurance and authority verification, claims handling, credit and payment controls, and rate confirmation standards.
- Pricing and margin: Set and enforce minimum margin standards with an exception approval process, and coach brokers on accurate quoting, buy/sell spread and lane-level pricing.
- Harbor freight engine: Build a formal process for capturing outbound freight from Harbor's warehouses and for converting drayage customers and overflow freight into brokerage, working alongside asset operations.
- Carrier network: Build multiple qualified carriers on every recurring lane, and improve service reliability and purchased transportation efficiency.
- Pipeline and reporting: Run weekly pipeline and win/loss reviews. Define the KPIs and reporting the business runs on: service, retention, revenue, gross profit and margin by customer and lane, warehouse capture, drayage conversion, carrier depth and broker productivity.
- Partnership: Work with accounting, billing, operations and sales leadership so the customer experience is seamless from quote to invoice.
Required Background
- 7+ years in freight brokerage, including direct cradle-to-grave desk experience or direct experience on both the customer and carrier sides of a split-model brokerage, and a history of successful production within your book of business.
- Demonstrated aptitude to lead, coach and develop brokers, with the drive to build and grow a team.
- A record of profitable growth with strong retention, and a customer-first style shown by building service standards and turning around at-risk accounts.
- Experience and interest in building or rebuilding brokerage infrastructure: examples include implementing a TMS and supporting tools, designing quote-to-cash workflows, and standing up carrier vetting, fraud prevention and compliance programs.
- Deep carrier sourcing and procurement experience, plus ownership of a brokerage P&L or gross profit line managed at the customer and lane level.
- Working knowledge of brokerage TMS, load boards and rate tools, carrier compliance platforms and CRM (HubSpot a plus).
- Ability to work on-site in North Charleston and live in the Charleston area.
Preferred Background
- 3+ years leading a brokerage team while continuing to produce, including recruiting, developing and performance-managing full-desk brokers.
- Brokerage experience alongside an asset-based fleet and warehouse network; familiarity with the Charleston port market, drayage and Southeast freight; experience integrating brokerage systems with billing and finance platforms; bachelor's degree (equivalent experience considered).
What Harbor Provides
- Freight flow from Harbor's warehouse and drayage customers, HubSpot CRM and prospecting tools, and back-office support for billing, collections, carrier setup and compliance.
- Competitive base salary plus an incentive tied to brokerage growth and performance, including your personal book (details discussed during the interview process). Laptop, cell phone, health and dental insurance, and 401(k).