Moving freight from one point to another can be a complicated process involving shippers, logistics providers and carriers. What’s more, the process has been largely manual, involving phone calls and email blasts.
As a result of these inefficiencies, carriers’ trucks drive empty 20% to 33% of the time, according to industry estimates.
“Primarily, it’s an issue of data,” FleetOps CEO Chris Atkinson told PYMNTS when sharing those estimates. “There are no truck drivers that have access to information on where all of the potential shipment options are, and there is no one moving shipments that has information on where all the potential trucks are that could move that shipment. Because of that data asymmetry, it’s extremely difficult to create any meaningful optimizations in the industry.”
Meeting the Challenge of Finding Freight
Beyond that, different regions will have different ratios for inflows and outflows for shipments, with some having more shipments coming in than leaving, and others having the opposite. This depends on whether a region tends to make more or buy more.
The inflows and outflows also fluctuate depending on produce season, the number of shipments coming into a port and the economic climate.
“That has a huge impact on whether or not a driver can find freight once they deliver it,” Atkinson said.
FleetOps helps the industry meet these challenges by offering an on-demand freight marketplace that matches freight from brokers to carriers…
