TSA-Certified Drivers: Expanding Expedite All’s Airfreight Capability

Time-critical air freight does not end at the airport. Before cargo reaches a flight — and after it lands — shippers, brokers, and freight forwarders still need reliable ground capacity that can move quickly, meet facility requirements, and protect tight schedules.

For Expedite All, expanding its TSA-certified driver pool has become a strategic extension of the Small Truckload model. Mike Ernst, President, and Kristin Ruder, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, explain how that capability helps customers simplify airport-related freight moves, reduce gaps between ground and air transportation, and manage urgent shipments through a single transportation partner.

Building Capacity Around Customer Demand

Expedite All’s TSA initiative grew directly from conversations with customers, particularly freight forwarders managing airport-related shipments.

Mike explains that the company already had airport capabilities, but customers increasingly needed more qualified capacity for deliveries into airport facilities:

“We listen to our customers and they’ve told us we need more. So currently we have 800+ TSA-qualified drivers. We have a TSA-certified division that handles all of the paperwork, the dispatching, so that we remain compliant.”

Rather than treating TSA-qualified capacity as a separate service, Expedite All is integrating it into its broader Small Truckload strategy. The goal is to give customers access to the same dedicated, right-sized transportation model while supporting freight that also carries additional airport-access requirements.

Kristin connects that need to the operational realities of modern air freight:

“When you make deliveries into an airport facility, the rules and regulations are much more stringent. And so a piece of that is you have to have TSA certification to make that delivery into the airport.”

That distinction becomes especially important when shipment timelines are built around airline departure schedules, receiving windows, and other deadlines that leave little room for error.

One Partner Across Both Sides of the Airport

One of the biggest advantages of combining Small Truckload capacity with TSA-certified drivers is continuity.

Customers may need one vehicle to move freight into an airport before departure and another to recover it after arrival and complete the final delivery. Instead of coordinating multiple transportation providers, Expedite All can support both sides of the movement through one relationship.

Mike describes it as single-source continuity:

“You can go to one provider and cover both ends of that shipment.”

That model simplifies communication while reducing the number of separate providers involved in a time-sensitive move.

Kristin describes the same concept as covering the complete shipment lifecycle:

“If we could make the pickup, make the delivery into the airport, and then conversely make the pickup, make the delivery to the end customer, we’re already established with them through a system they’re used to using on a daily basis.”

For brokers and freight forwarders, the value is straightforward: fewer handoffs between transportation partners and a more consistent process from origin through final destination.

Why Airport Freight Raises the Stakes

Air freight is often chosen because the shipment already carries urgency. When companies are paying to move freight by air, missed ground connections can undermine the speed they are paying for.

Mike points to the difficulty customers can face when they must contact several providers simply to locate immediate capacity:

“They don’t want to have to call three, four, five, 10 different people to see if you have a vehicle available at this moment that can pick up in 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, hit this departure time, get it in gate timely enough so that it can hit that flight schedule.”

This is where a broad Small Truckload network becomes especially valuable. Expedite All can combine airport-qualified capacity with its larger nationwide network of more than 12,000 small trucks, helping customers cover both specialized airport requirements and the surrounding ground transportation.

The freight itself also tends to carry higher consequences when delays occur.

Kristin identifies aerospace, automotive, life sciences, and pharmaceutical freight as examples of industries where airport-related transportation can become especially critical:

“It is a situation where if it doesn’t get there, it’s costing thousands, potentially millions of dollars if that commodity doesn’t get to its end destination by the anticipated time.”

In these situations, available capacity alone is not enough. The transportation provider also needs to understand the timing, access, visibility, and reliability requirements surrounding the shipment.

Expanding What Small Truckload Can Solve

The broader opportunity is not simply adding another certification to the network. It is expanding the range of problems Small Truckload can solve.

For Expedite All, TSA-certified capacity strengthens the same core STL proposition: dedicated vehicles, direct transportation, right-sized equipment, and fewer unnecessary handoffs.

As Mike explains, the initiative is part of a larger effort to become a more complete solution for customers moving smaller, urgent shipments:

“We want to be able to go back to our customers and not only do standard type STL, but how can we again solve problems that they don’t have a solution for now as a one-stop shop?”

Kristin sees that same value in the ability to support customers across multiple stages of urgent transportation:

“It kind of comes into play with that one-stop shop like we were talking about earlier, right? That cradle-to-grave type of scenario that we can create solutions for across a span of those challenges that our customers face today in the TSA space.”

For brokers and freight forwarders, the result is a broader Small Truckload solution that can support both standard expedited freight and airport-related movements without forcing customers to build a new transportation process for every shipment.

A More Connected Approach to Time-Critical Freight

As Expedite All continues expanding its TSA-certified driver network, airport-ready capacity becomes another way Small Truckload can support complex, time-sensitive freight.

The combination of dedicated vehicles, nationwide small-truck capacity, airport-qualified drivers, and one transportation relationship gives brokers and freight forwarders greater continuity across shipments that move between ground and air.

For customers managing urgent freight, that means fewer gaps between each stage of the shipment — and more control over the journey from pickup through final delivery.