Fearing The Squeeze?

The Transportation Business As We Will Know It

Seems every day there’s another story in the transport media about one of two stories, the Uber ‘threat’ and driverless vehicles. With promised hordes of poorly qualified (and paid) part-time drivers on one side and mega-corporations talking about investing in fleets of autonomous vehicles on the other, it’s hardly surprising transport companies of all types are getting stuck in the middle. However, the same technologies that seem so advanced, expensive and threatening can actually be used by companies large and small to help grow and ‘future-proof’ their transport businesses. Let’s have a look at some of these technologies and the services that use them.

At its core the transport industry is all about location – the origin of freight, its destination and the distance to the next pick-up. With these 3 simple points:

1. 1. 1. Planners have been running their fleets for years. Nowadays, location services extend all the way to real-time tracking of every vehicle and movement.
   2. 2. Services like Uber and vehicle automation systems are based on this and the intelligent management of the resources it brings.
   3. 3. Transport companies of all sizes, whether using telematics-based tracking or smartphone based apps, can similarly take advantage of sophisticated location-based services.

S.C.A.L.E.

Technologies like S.C.A.L.E. (Smart Context and Location Engine), which powers the Transport Exchange Group’s ‘Courier Exchange’, ‘Haulage Exchange’ and new ‘CXEuro’ services, enable organizations and owner drivers alike to advertise, find and manage vehicle capacity and movements… whatever the location systems being used by all parties.

Collaboration is Key

This brings us to the next key technology area, collaboration. The same technologies that the ‘Ubers’ and ‘Amazons’ of the corporate world are using to offer large fleets of drivers or vehicles can be used to help independent and professional transport companies work together safely, simply and profitably. By combining location systems, communication tools, accreditation checking and robust feedback systems a company with 10 vehicles in South Wales can benefit from a national fleet of 34,000 vehicles, and be the ‘right vehicle in the right place at the right time’ for over 4,000 other companies. More importantly, with services like Courier Exchange and Haulage Exchange, there’s no one taking their ‘cut’ of every invoice or load. Businesses can develop and service their own customers and rely on professionals to get the job done on their behalf when they choose not to carry themselves, secure in the knowledge that they’re dealing with a fellow transport company with their own reputation to protect.

Results of Our Freight Tracking Software Collaboration

In 2016, working together, members of Courier Exchange and Haulage Exchange used their shared capacity to carry over $112 million of work for each other. In the process, they reduced their empty mileage by over 20%. Rather than being scared of the ‘squeeze’, transport companies are increasingly using those same threatening technologies to safeguard and grow their businesses. They’re showing that with like-minded partners and the tools to support them their skills, professionalism and the value of their reputations are what customers still need the most.

For more details contact Dawn at CX North America.

E: [email protected]
P: 1-312-448-6028