The freight had places to be. So, eventually, did Mark McLochlin. In October 2024, the founder of Clearwater Logistics sold the company he had started in 2005. By the following January, he was talking about a different sort of movement: traveling to see children and grandchildren scattered around the country. A career spent attending to other people’s destinations had reached a point where his own itinerary deserved some attention.
That decision gives his business story an unusually human ending. There is a company, an industry association, a software advisory board, and recognition from Landstar. There is also a family living in several places. Put those things on the same page and the question becomes rather more interesting than how many loads a business can move. What should all that work make possible?
For McLochlin, the answer eventually included having more time to go somewhere himself. The route to that choice ran through a particular corner of transportation, where a shipment’s schedule is central to the service being sold.
A business built around the clock
McLochlin founded Clearwater Logistics in 2005. He brought executive experience with him: before starting Clearwater, he had been president of an expedited transportation business held by Towne Air Freight and a private equity group. Ownership followed experience inside someone else’s organization.
Clearwater combined a private fleet with work as an independent Landstar agency. Its services included expedited transportation, conventional truckload freight, and rail. That combination matters to understanding his role. McLochlin led his own business while participating in a larger transportation network. His title at Clearwater did not make him the chief executive of Landstar.
In the company’s 2015 description, round-the-clock attention sat alongside access to a wider pool of transportation capacity. The promise involved both availability and coordination. Freight customers were buying help getting something to its destination, with the schedule and the means of transport considered together.
His work also brought him into conversations beyond Clearwater. Running a company and participating in an industry are related activities, but they create different responsibilities. The first concerns a particular business. The second requires listening to people whose businesses have needs and problems of their own.
The other operators in the room
From 2009 to 2011, McLochlin served as president of TEANA, the Expedite Association of North America. The association provides a forum for expeditors to exchange information and services, and opportunities to meet fellow members, vendors, purchasers, and government representatives.
That is a useful setting for a business built on coordination. An association gives operators somewhere to discuss the conditions surrounding individual transactions: how the industry works, what its members need, and which questions deserve collective attention. McLochlin’s presidency placed him inside that conversation while he was building Clearwater.
The association’s succession places his term between Jeff Robinson of Air America Logistics and John Elliott of Load 1 Transportation. Elliott later appeared on the conference panels McLochlin was assigned to moderate. The overlap links two documented parts of his career: association leadership and discussion of the expedite market. It is a small, concrete example of the professional network around Clearwater’s founder.
His name remained in the association’s working structure afterward. The Spring 2012 Expedite Journal listed him as past president and as a member of its legislative committee. The distinction is modest but specific. His involvement extended beyond the period when he held the presidency.
The records connect him with other freight operators through defined roles. They show shared committee work and conference assignments. Those professional connections help explain how a company owner’s experience can enter a discussion larger than the company itself.
Before the software was finished
In August 2015, Full Circle TMS announced its first advisory board. McLochlin was one of six members. The group brought together experience in carrier operations, transportation, insurance, and law. His own listing credited him with 17 years in transportation.
He welcomed the developers asking operators for their views early in the process. The detail is revealing about the assignment itself: practical experience was being invited into a product that people would eventually have to use. The advisory role connected decisions at a software company with work inside a freight business.
A transportation management system has a grand enough name to sound self-sufficient. Its usefulness still depends on whether the people handling shipments can get their work done. McLochlin’s contribution began with that user’s perspective. He was being asked about the functioning of a system, with an operating business providing the context.
Where is it? One place to look.
By June 2017, he was describing a concrete use of integration at Clearwater. The business used MacroPoint to track shipments dispatched to its own vehicles and those brokered to other carriers. Truck positions and trip-event updates were integrated into Full Circle TMS.
The benefit he identified was information available to both dispatchers and customers, “without having to look at multiple systems.” He also described productivity benefits for dispatchers and immediate shipment status for customers.
It is a wonderfully untheatrical measure of useful technology. Someone needs an answer; the answer is easier to locate. No elaborate vocabulary is required to understand the appeal. His account connected the software to two distinct audiences, each following the same freight from a different position.
There is a practical continuity between the advisory appointment and that description. In one, an operator was invited to discuss how software should work. In the other, an operator explained what an integration did for the business using it. The connection is visible in the work, without needing to turn him into a software inventor.
What happens when service becomes a price?
The conference circuit supplied another setting for McLochlin’s industry work. In 2019, the Full Circle TMS users conference in Romulus, Michigan, named him as moderator of a panel about market forces affecting expedited transportation. John Elliott, Mike Pettrey, and David Harrison were the panelists.
The agenda framed a specific concern: specialized, attentive service was facing pressure toward a market driven by price. That is a substantial business question. If the buying decision narrows to a number, how does a company explain the value of the work around the movement?
The sixth annual conference program in 2022 again listed him as moderator for that discussion with the same named panelists. His assignment was to help conduct a conversation among operators about conditions in their market. The program makes the subject concrete without supplying a verdict on how the discussion ended.
For a profile of a freight executive, the moderator’s seat is a useful detail. It places him among peers, addressing a shared operating concern. A stage can serve several purposes. Sometimes its most useful occupant is the person keeping the questions moving.
- 2005Founded Clearwater Logistics
- 2009–11TEANA presidency
- 2015Full Circle TMS advisory appointment
- 2024Sold Clearwater in October
The recognition, and the short answer
Landstar’s Winter 2018 Link placed McLochlin, identified with agency code SBN, in its 14-year agent anniversary group. It is a compact record of a sustained relationship: a name, a code, and a length of service.
A later milestone came with his inclusion in Landstar’s Chief Executive Circle class of 2020. The program’s published entry criteria combined at least $40 million in Landstar revenue with ten or more consecutive years. The figure describes the recognition threshold, rather than his personal wealth or an annual revenue figure for Clearwater.
Asked for the key to his success, McLochlin gave a six-word answer. It was brief enough to fit comfortably beside the much longer career behind it.
“Integrity, transparency, commitment and follow-through.”
Mark McLochlin · Landstar’s CEC class of 2020
A destination outside the business
Then came the sale. The January 2025 account described Clearwater as stable and profitable when McLochlin decided to sell. It also recorded his concern about the legal liability facing trucking companies. The buyer was an individual who already owned a trucking business in Kansas City.
His personal explanation brought the story back to a calendar. Children and grandchildren lived around the country. He wanted more time to travel and see them. “I didn’t want to work until I was unable to enjoy life on a personal basis,” he said.
There is a satisfying specificity to that ambition. Family visits have destinations, too. After founding Clearwater, leading an association, advising a software business, and taking part in years of industry conversations, McLochlin had chosen to change the way his own time was allocated.
The sale gives those earlier milestones a different setting. They belong to a business career that occupied nearly two decades of ownership. His explanation for moving on gives the reader something equally concrete: people he wanted to see, and the time to make the journey.