At a two-day conference in which rapid technology development and what’s to come was the focus of so many presentations, Eric Fuller of U.S. Xpress provided a reality check which is valid across the logistics industry.
On a panel earlier this week at Marketwaves18 near Dallas entitled “Enterprise Truckload Carriers Speak Out,” Fuller, the CEO of USX, said his company and other large carriers had adopted great amounts of new technology. But they aren’t the whole industry. A lot of other carriers, and project forwarders and other breakbulk industry players “are operating on a 1980’s platform.”
It is a reminder that while there were a lot of companies, not attending such gatherings, which are operating in the same way they did many years ago.
But even for those companies, the next 5 to 10 years, that is not going to be an option.
The integrated technology that is being developed, doesn’t just have a carrier piece and an equipment piece. Rather it will be a unified system that “takes all the friction out of the process.” And when those systems are working together, it reduces friction and makes the job that much easier. We can see this on many fronts and a good example is XELLZ, a company that has been created to be friction-less in the project logistics with their “in-house” developed IT technology. The concept is being noticed in the industry and many other project logistics providers are looking to go the same direction.
Technology adoption has been limited over the past years. Looking at the numbers that are sweeping in their enormity: with over 60% of the “project freight and logistics industry” not being ready for today’s market and these will not be ready for the next 5 to 10 years unless very large investments are made.
Information needs to be brought to the platform, which can digest it in real time, and then push the intelligence and notifications to the right player in the project. That “player” could be a customer, sub-contractor, ocean carrier, transport company, or any other player that is acting in the project execution and who need to know to make the right next step and decision within the project logistics chain.
Platforms will ultimately need to be equipped with machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide the best information, predictions, and scenario’s to those “players, The demand that is out there for the technology is there but somebody needs to play cupid to put that demand with the shippers (cargo owners).
