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Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

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Re: Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

#11

Post by 2_listerine_pls »

josephv wrote: post #9

So much hate when Billy G's name is invoked. Freight forwarding is about as low-tech as it gets. Small commodity merchants, which can range from 1 person to "huge" commodity shops of 150 people, manually dial numbers of truckers to pick this up and haul it there, all the while making sure their peanuts or cotton or soybeans are in reasonable conditions as food an agricultural products are fairly heavily regulated. It…

> So much hate when Billy G's name is invoked.

No comment has even mentioned Bill Gates yet.

> It's a hugely complex problem with Djikstra's shortest path being approximated in a distributed system of humans interfacing with phones interfacing with other humans.

huh? what are you talking about?

Re: Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

#12

Post by [deleted] »

jobu wrote: post #8
spcelzrd wrote: post #3

That doesn't seem like a lot of money, especially for a capital intensive industry with notoriously low margins.

Shipping is only capital intensive if you intend to own the trucks, trains, or ships. Convoy appears to be more of a middleman between owner-operator truckers and shippers or manufacturers. The problem is that many (most?) of the truckers that own their own rig are middle-aged and older, and getting them to use technology like this may be an uphill battle: “I think they’re relying too much on computers,” said Brian L…

[deleted]

Re: Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

#14

Post by jbeales »

jobu wrote: post #8
spcelzrd wrote: post #3

That doesn't seem like a lot of money, especially for a capital intensive industry with notoriously low margins.

Shipping is only capital intensive if you intend to own the trucks, trains, or ships. Convoy appears to be more of a middleman between owner-operator truckers and shippers or manufacturers. The problem is that many (most?) of the truckers that own their own rig are middle-aged and older, and getting them to use technology like this may be an uphill battle: “I think they’re relying too much on computers,” said Brian L…

Yes on both. I work in tech that services the trucking industry. Getting drivers, (and dispatchers, actually), to truly trust a computer is difficult. They use a lot of apps, but trucking's got a strong culture of self-reliance, and people working in trucking probably care more about single points-of-failure than DevOps do, relying on Convoy would be a pretty big single point of failure, so they'll have to prove themselves worthy of the trust.

However, 82 million should get them there. That's a ton of money to build a business with no capital costs. The big risk for them is the incumbents deciding to move quickly - most of them have the cash, so if they realize their business model is threatened by Convoy, they'll move quickly, and be supported by their existing cash flow.

Re: Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

#15

Post by remarkableboard »

I've been fortunate to learn about Convoy and speak with employees involved recently. Convoy is the real deal and making this Uber for Trucking idea work. They're backed by Bezos, Reidman, and many other high profile investors. If any company were to crack the 800Bn trucking market, Convoy is looking like the one.

Re: Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

#16

Post by josephv »

2_listerine_pls wrote: post #11
josephv wrote: post #9

So much hate when Billy G's name is invoked. Freight forwarding is about as low-tech as it gets. Small commodity merchants, which can range from 1 person to "huge" commodity shops of 150 people, manually dial numbers of truckers to pick this up and haul it there, all the while making sure their peanuts or cotton or soybeans are in reasonable conditions as food an agricultural products are fairly heavily regulated. It…

> So much hate when Billy G's name is invoked. No comment has even mentioned Bill Gates yet. > It's a hugely complex problem with Djikstra's shortest path being approximated in a distributed system of humans interfacing with phones interfacing with other humans. huh? what are you talking about?

The first few comments were about the futility of the funding.

Weighted shortest path algorithms are regularly used in the freight forwarding space in order to calculate the rates paid for routes. Knowing it off the top of my head is how I got a job at a medium-sized commodity trader. Seeing those rooms full of people securing transport for goods we either owned or were moving for others is what makes me think it could be a reasonable idea.

Re: Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

#17

Post by aresant »

Walmart just lightly threatened carriers & owner operators that if they work for Amazon they can expect lower priority from Walmart in the future (1)

Walmart presently represents ~14% of the total capacity of one of America's largest carriers - Swift transport - and likely similarly important elsewhere. (2)

Obvious outcome down the road is that one of these behemoths snaps up a convoy / other plays in the space to secure capacity.

But would they rather buy an "asset light" business like Convoy, that has no actual trucks / drivers / or control, or will they be more interested in an "asset heavy" carrier that has technology / driver / and trucks?

(1) http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20170627-wal-mart-warns-m...

(2) http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-28/it-begins-walmart-w...

Re: Convoy raises $62M from Bill Gates and other luminaries to transform trucking

#20

Post by mkoryak »

I used to work for startup called OpenMile in 2012. We were trying to do pretty much the exact same thing. We might have been too early, but it was hard. We had the tech, but the trucker and other brokers were not very tech savvy. The margins were low and there was too much hand holding.

Best of luck to them.

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