51–60 of 111 posts
A bit of tangent, But i am in the market for the Software that Convoy and CargoFone are building. We have our own FT, LTL and Final Mile Carrier network. We have negotiated custom rates with them. What i am looking for the Software service through which i send Orders and get updates from these Carriers. Is there a solution like that out there?
Yes, similar systems do exist. My team made one of them: https://cargofone.com/en/ In some ways, it's more challenging than building "an Uber", once you get into different cargo and body types, document management, insurance, etc. We launched in Russia first, and not being able to do electronic signatures added a set of challenges. In any event, glad these investments are happening. Trucking is badly broken, especial…
I'd like to see this supported, particularly the "especially" part, given the extraordinary scale of hauling going on in the US via trucking. The economic facts on the ground in the US overwhelmingly disagree with you.
If it's so broken, and the US economy relies so much on it, how is the US GDP per capita so high? Both can't be true. It's either functioning well, leading to the high reliability and predictable delivery times we see today, assisting the US in having the most powerful economy on earth, or it's badly broken (where is the supporting economic evidence?).
I'm wondering if "Convoy" could ever become a trademarked name, since it is so generic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Trucking is badly broken, especially in the US. why do you say that?
According to friends in the business: - hard to make money - people work too much and sleep too little - various abuse by trucking companies For a more methodical analysis - USA Today did a piece a month ago: https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forc...
That's not a supporting premise for something being badly broken. Amazon has found it hard to make money in retail, as have Walmart and Costco (2% to 3% razon-thin net income margins). Most retailers find it extremely difficult to make money. That's not necessarily because the business is badly broken. It means the margins are being competed away, which is tremendous for other parties (consumers for one). Lots of industries / segments have the same problem and always will.
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I was left asking, what is the real difference between Convoy and any other freight broker? The collect more data? I thought IBM was already in that business.
How's IBM in that business? IBM has a few initiatives in transportation + blockchain (Maersk, also trucking in Brazil). Anything else?
Possibly part of their "smart shipping containers" thing that has apparently evolved into the blockchain Maersk deal.
https://www.forbes.com/2006/08/06/smart-shipping-containers-...
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> 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 cou…
Coyote already does this. Got bought by UPS for 1.8 billion 2 years ago. Also Amazon, and Uber are working on competing products. So that 62m might not go so far.
This type of system already exists. Their are plenty of exchanges where truckers or trucking companies can get matched with a load or pickup work. I don't understand what makes this so transforming?
Deep pockets.
Not saying whether they'll succeed, but saying deep pockets will do it doesn't make sense, IMHO.
Yes, similar systems do exist. My team made one of them: https://cargofone.com/en/ In some ways, it's more challenging than building "an Uber", once you get into different cargo and body types, document management, insurance, etc. We launched in Russia first, and not being able to do electronic signatures added a set of challenges. In any event, glad these investments are happening. Trucking is badly broken, especial…
> Trucking is badly broken, especially in the US. I'd like to see this supported, particularly the "especially" part, given the extraordinary scale of hauling going on in the US via trucking. The economic facts on the ground in the US overwhelmingly disagree with you. If it's so broken, and the US economy relies so much on it, how is the US GDP per capita so high? Both can't be true. It's either functioning well, lea…
a) Say today, company X sells a thing for $100, of which $15 covers shipping cost, $15 is profit and $70 is what they paid their middleman for the thing. Suppose further that shipping cost could be reduced to $11 just by properly managing trucking, increasing the profit margin by 27%. These are of course made-up numbers, but just because a business is successful doesn't mean there are no inefficiencies left.
b) It is well known that certain jobs take a huge toll on the people doing these jobs, causing early burnout, physical and/or mental health problems up to and including suicide, etc. E.g. drone pilots, people working with social media illegal content filtering have been covered in the media recently. If trucking causes lots of health issues, it's not just "badly broken" in the human compasdion sense, it also leads directly to reduced national economic output (with a 2x multiplier, you're taking away a taxpayer and adding an additional user of Medicaid/whatever).