To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
How the Trucking Industry Could Be Vastly More Efficient
Meet Transfix, a start-up that fashions itself "Uber for trucks."
Take a look at the map below. It shows 25 trucks in New
Jersey traveling to pick up 25 loads of goods over the course of a
single day using a traditional industry approach: one that manually
pairs drivers and freight. A few matches are short and efficient, but
many require drivers to go well out of their way. The result is 1,752
"wasted" miles that create unnecessary traffic congestion and perhaps
even lead to making those goods a little bit more expensive down the
line.
Courtesy Transfix
Now the next map is the same day as managed by a start-up called Transfix,
which pairs drivers and loads using an automated matching system. Those
1,752 empty miles have been cut to 274. A driver in Port Jervis, toward
the top, travels to nearby Sussex rather than trekking across the state
to Wilmington. He's less tired, the shipper can move onto a new load,
commuters in the area face less traffic, and consumers across the region
are happier.
Courtesy Transfix
Expand
that efficiency to the two million or so commercial trucks traveling
through cities and along interstates across the country every day, and
you'll begin to understand just how big this could be.
Transfix is a digital freight marketplace that CEO and co-founder
Drew McElroy hopefully but not naively calls the "Uber for trucks." Last
week the company won the Six Minute Pitch contest for transportation start-ups held at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board. The previous winner, TransitScreen,
has since gone on to big things, and with nearly $2 million raised to
date and Barnes & Noble an early adopter, Transfix is already
charting its own course for success.
At its core, Transfix is a logistics company. The traditional style
of matching drivers here and loads there through a series of phone calls
takes a freight broker several hours, says McElroy. Even after all that
effort trucks end up with the types of inefficient matches shown above;
using a rather generous assumption of 8 percent empty miles, McElroy
calculates that U.S. commercial trucks drive 19 billion needless miles
each year, clogging roads, wearing down infrastructure, and burning
fuel.
Transfix automates the entire process. If Barnes & Noble, for
instance, needs to ship a load of books from Indianapolis to New Jersey,
it enters the shipment into the Transfix system, which then scans the
pick-up vicinity for available drivers. The system then scores each
driver based on empty mileage from their position to the load, waiting
time until load availability, and past performance. The best match gets
pinged for the job.
From there everything is handled by smartphone. The Transfix app
registers a digital shipment contract, supplies dynamic navigation to
the destination (taking into account severe weather and traffic), and
tracks driver progress in real-time. By comparing expected travel time
to a delivery appointment, the system knows when a truck falls behind
schedule and takes corrective action—from simply texting the driver to
sending a breakdown alert. Upon arrival a driver uploads a photo of the
proof-of-delivery, triggering payment and starting the cycle anew.
"We're able to manage all these things proactively," says McElroy.
Here's a look at the interface from the user's perspective, using a
trial trip that Transfix made from Long Beach, California, to Miami,
Florida (McElroy notes the cell phone dead zones along U.S.
interstates): Courtesy Transfix
Freight logistics aside, metro areas also stand to benefit greatly from such a system. Goods movement can be a forgotten problem in urban transportation:
not only does it contribute to congestion and pollution, but it
produces massive mobility complications at key hubs such as Los Angeles
and Chicago. Former Chicago (and D.C.) DOT chief Gabe Klein, a judge for
the Six Minute Pitch contest, called Transfix a "fascinating" concept
whose impact could extend beyond intercity trucking to urban street
networks.
"This is an exploding market," said Klein, who voted for Transfix
(along with both other judges), during the contest. "And in this case
not only do I think it's a huge market that's antiquated and old school
that needs to be updated, but I also think there are other use cases in
terms of local delivery service."
McElroy is quick to point out there are plenty of benefits at the
personal level, too, especially with regard to truckers. Transfix
currently has a roster of more than a thousand drivers, he says, all
vetted through a three-tier process. The automated system reduces the
time they spend hunting for loads, a costly practice under new federal
rules that cap daily driving, and it pays drivers within 24 hours rather
than several weeks, which is often how long it takes to return a
physical proof-of-delivery document to home base.
"Truck drivers are a unique bunch, but by and large they are
genuinely wonderful, down-to-earth, friendly people," says McElroy.
"Anything we can do to make their lives easier and make this a better
process is something we embrace."
In some sense, McElroy has been part of the industry since he was in
the womb, when his father started a trucking company named Andrew's
Express for his son-to-be. After years working alongside his parents for
a subsequent business, he broke off to focus on Transfix (with
co-founder Jonathan Salama) in August of 2013. McElroy says he got a
call from a logistics manager at Barnes & Noble within 15 minutes of
updating his LinkedIn profile, and had freight loads to manage before
hanging up.
After raising seed money in August of 2014, Transfix moved into a New
York office and began building the team. (They've raised nearly $2
million to date, he says.) They're already doing several hundred
thousand a month in revenue—taking a cut of that, a la Uber. McElroy
says the next step is a push for Series A funding sometime this year.
"We're trying to do something pretty serious here," he says. Cities should be just as serious in paying attention.