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May 29, 2017

"UBER for trucks" * China

* Guizhou - To begin freight train trucking services

--- Truck Alliance, a Chinese company providing a Uber-type service for trucks, partnered with a leading railway logistics firm on Thursday to enable freight train trucking operations... Truck Alliance's partner, Shenhua Railway Freight Corporation, is a subsidiary of top coal producer Shenhua Group. It owns 2,155 kilometers of railway, 40 ships, and three ports handling 270 million tonnes of freight... The first route to pilot freight train trucking will begin in a logistics park in Erdos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and run 1,000 kilometers eastward to end at the port of Huanghua in Hebei Province. Operations will begin this year... 
(Photo: Employees work at a Truck Alliance Inc. office in Chengdu, China)   --   Guiyang, Guizhou. China - Xinhua, by Mengjie - 25 May 2017

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UBER AUTONOMOUS TRUCKS * USA: Under Government inquiry

* California - Uber's driverless truck unit is under Government investigation following unapproved tests

--- California regulators are preparing to conduct a site inspection of the San Francisco headquarters of Uber’s autonomous truck unit, formerly known as Otto, to determine whether the company broke state law when it tested driverless trucks on public highways without permission... The unscheduled visit, which officials from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles are coordinating with the California Highway Patrol, is to “see the capabilities of Otto’s trucks in person,” a DMV spokeswoman said. The inspection comes months after the publication of an internal Otto document from 2016 detailing the company’s testing procedures for its self-driving semi-trucks... The document, which describes how “Otto trucks drive the highways surrounding San Francisco on a daily basis,” appears to contradict what Otto told state regulators about its program at a Feb. 24 meeting... 
 (Photo: Two "Ottomotto" driverless trucks are parked outside Uber ATG's San Francisco office on May 25. The trucks are tested in and around San Francisco on a regular basis)  --  San Francisco, CAL, USA - Forbes, by Matt Drange/Alan Ohnsman - MAY 26, 2017

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May 19, 2017

KEEPTRUCKIN * USA: Digitize the long-haul trucking industry

* California - KeepTruckin raises $18 mln as Silicon Valley eyes trucking industry
--- Venture capitalists have poured $18 million into a startup that is helping to digitize the long-haul trucking industry, the latest sign that Silicon Valley is eager to take a piece of a $700 billion-a-year sector that has long relied on pencil and paper... San Francisco-based startup KeepTruckin said on Thursday it raised $18 million in a funding round led by Scale Venture Partners, alongside previous investors Index Ventures and GV, the venture arm of Alphabet Inc... KeepTruckin joins a crowded and competitive field of young companies all vying for a place in the trucking industry. Startups including Convoy and Transfix, and ride-services behemoth Uber Technology Inc, are all aiming to unseat traditional freight brokers...
(Photo: ELD ratings)   --  San Francisco, CAL, USA - Reuters/NASDAQ, by Heather Somerville - May 18, 2017

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May 17, 2017

DRIVERLESS DOCUMENTS STOLEN * USA: By UBER

* California - Uber ordered to return documents in self-driving fight with Waymo

--- A federal judge ordered Uber Technologies Inc. to return 14,000 driverless-car documents allegedly stolen from Google parent Alphabet Inc. and barred a key executive for the ride-hailing firm from working on certain autonomous vehicle technology... The latest blow to Uber comes as a U.S. District Court judge unsealed a preliminary injunction against the San Francisco startup, after it denied Uber's request for arbitration and sent the case to trial... Uber is facing a possible criminal probe after the judge last week referred the case to Justice Department officials for review... Uber has denied it has done anything wrong and plans to contest the allegations in court. "We are pleased with the court's ruling that Uber can continue building and utilizing all of its self-driving technology," Uber said in a statement... 
(Photo: Otto/Uber autonomous truck cabin) -- San Francisco, CAL, USA - The Morning Star, by Greg Bensinger and Jack Nicas - 15 May 17

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Mar 27, 2017

"BLACKBUCK" * India: Digitizing logistics and freighting in

* Bangalore - BlackBuck closes $70M to digitize freight and logistics across India


--- BlackBuck, a startup that is digitizing logistics and cross-country freighting in India, has closed out a $70 million Series C round... Bangalore-based BlackBuck, which was founded in April 2015, takes two routes to digitizing the logistics space. It operates a marketplace that connects organizations needing to move goods across India with truckers seeking work, or to maximize their loads with additional capacity... Right now, BlackBuck claims to work with more than 100,000 trucks across 300 locations, while its client roster includes some big names like Asian Paints, Unilever, Coke and Britannia... Citing research from Novonous, BlackBuck estimates that road-based options account for 63 percent of all freight in India, with a current spend of around $140 billion per year. Yet, still the process remains disjointed as “nothing much has changed” in decades, Yabaji said...
 (Photo: Trucks with freight for Bangalore)  --  Bangalore, Karnakata, India - TechCrunch, by Jon Russell - Mar 21, 2017

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Feb 13, 2017

Uberizing big trucks * USA: Opinion & Prognosis for the trucking industry

* DC - 18 Wheels have never been so cool or important

--- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rates autonomy―that is, the level of human or alternatively computer operation of a vehicle―at five graduated tiers... At Level Zero, the human driver controls everything from steering to throttling. Levels Four and Five, though, are the moonshot: drivers are not required in either instance, and at its zenith neither are conventional human controls... Otto’s beer run, which relegated the driver to the sleeper bunk, clocked in at Level Four, the first in the nation... The freight industry entered 2016 with a deficit of 48,000 truckers, according to industry figures, and the American Trucking Association estimates that this deficit may swell to 175,000 within the space of eight years... Increase in shipping growth coupled with a diminished labor force requires longer routes, especially for owner-operators, and these more rigorous hauls create a whole host of safety concerns for the driving public... According to federal statistics, in excess of 400,000 trucks crashed in 2014 (the most recent year for which that data is available). Human error―failing to recognize a dangerous situation or to respond properly―was to blame in almost every instance... For the commute-weary driver, autonomous technology represents a sexy splurge, an investment in safety and sanity, but for fleet operations, Levels Four and Five autonomy represent the singular business imperative of the 21st century... 
(Photo: World premiere Freightliner Inspiration Truck)  -- Washington, DC, USA  - Huffington Post, by Eric Tanenblatt - 10 Feb 2017

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Jan 19, 2017

UBER FREIGHT * USA: FREIGHT BROKERAGE AT RISK

* California -  It's not just truck drivers whose jobs are at risk


--- At the end of December Uber debuted Uber Freight, into the lucrative world of logistics. Many saw Uber’s entry into freight as a death knell for trucking companies, as Uber is looking to build a fleet of driverless trucks... And while the threat to trucking is real, Uber Freight poses a more immediate threat to the thousands of mid-level, white-collar support staff jobs in the industry, also known as freight brokerage... This process seems wildly inefficient, it is! A 3PL is the definition of a middleman, and employs hundreds, if not thousands, of operations employees to input this data and brokers these deals every day... Uber is uniquely positioned to streamline the industry, though. Much like the company’s ride-hailing app cuts out the taxi dispatcher and allows people to hail rides directly from drivers, Uber Freight can create a platform where shippers and truckers broker shipping orders directly with one another, effectively rendering obsolete thousands of 3PL workers. It replaces people with software, and configures a labor-intensive industry into a SaaS (Software as a service) business... Many people have pointed out that automation, not China or Mexico, is the real threat to blue-collar American jobs. Overlooked, however, are all the non-executive white-collar administrative jobs that will be rendered obsolete, too ... Famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is fond of the phrase “software is eating the world,” meaning that it’s replacing many of the post-industrial, pre-internet jobs once thought to be essential. Problem is, one man’s efficiency is another’s unemployment...
San Francisco, CAL, USA - Linkedin/MEL magazine, by John McDermott - 18 JAN 2017

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Jan 18, 2017

UBER * France: A marketplace for cargo

* París - THE NEW:  Uber Freight in road transport

--- On December 27, 2016, the American company Uber launched the Uber Freight service in the United States, a digital freight exchange open to shippers and carriers. With a commercial strike force that, for now, has been put on hold... Despite the deemed discreet launch the day after Christmas, various newspapers across the Atlantic and France highlighted this digital implementation, new intermediation service for the long haul transport, with prices varying according to supply and demand... In this context, the commission ("freight brokers"), numbering more than 10,000 in the US, are the first affected. Before Uber Freight they saw implant and develop apps Lyft , Hailo, Traansmission (New York), Cargomatic (Los Angeles), Keychain Logistics (in San Francisco), which use the same principle of a scholarship freight backed mapping and geolocation freight vehicles, operating in real time... These services are remunerated through commissions on each transaction and / or subscriptions. This type of "marketplace" for freight is in vogue in the United States because of the weight that weighs the road transport... According to the American Trucking Association (ATA), road transport handles 80% of annual volumes, amounting to $ 700 billion. In this flow, the empty routes are the economic scourge that the logisticians want to limit. They would generate a cost of around 16 billion just for the only container transport, says the ATA...
París, France - The Official Carrier, by BENOÎT BARBEDETTE - 4 JAN 2017

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Dec 1, 2016

UBER'S * Europe - ‘Not a Taxi Company’

* Luxembourg - Uber’s defense on trial in EU. Company fights being regulated as a transportation provider


--- Uber Technologies Inc. has long tried to fight local transportation laws by saying it isn’t a new transportation company. Judges in Luxembourg heard oral arguments Tuesday in a court case that could decide whether that defense will work in Europe... The stakes in the case are high for Uber on one side, and taxi companies and local regulators in Europe on the other. They have been locked in battles across some of the European Union’s biggest countries... Many regulators and taxi companies argue that Uber is a scofflaw that has raised more than $11 billion in capital to steamroll into countries, ignoring rules aimed at protecting passengers and drivers—while crushing local competition... Uber argues that national transportation regulations in Europe are outdated. It is arguing at the EU’s Court of Justice that those rule don’t apply to Uber because it is an online-service provider, rather than a transportation provider—a designation that it says should give it protection under existing EU laws...
(PHOTO: REUTERS - London taxi drivers protest against Uber in on Feb. 10. The company is no stranger to battles in Europe and elsewhere) -- London, EN, UK - The WSJ, by SAM SCHECHNER - Nov. 29, 2016

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Nov 19, 2016

UBER's DILEMMA * USA: Trying to close suits, with billions at stake

* Uber close to settling drivers’ suit


--- Uber Technologies Inc. is trying to finalize a settlement with California drivers to resolve potentially billions of dollars in claims stemming from the company’s refusal to give them the protections and benefits of employees... The case centers on allegations that the company failed to pay minimum wage and overtime to hundreds of thousands of drivers... Lawyers didn’t disclose terms of the deal in court filings or during a hearing Wednesday in Los Angeles state court. But they told a judge that the agreement will address penalties sought against Uber under California’s so-called bounty hunter law. The Private Attorneys General Act, or PAGA, gives employees the right to step into the shoes of the state labor secretary to bring enforcement actions... The case is separate from a widely watched class action in San Francisco that also challenges Uber’s business model, which classifies drivers as independent contractors. The drivers in that complaint are seeking reimbursement for expenses and tips as well as PAGA penalties... U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco in August rejected Uber’s proposed $100 million settlement in his court in large part because he said said the deal undervalued potential PAGA claims... 
(Photo: Trucker Cesar Lopez. Uber of trucks' hauls big business in Los Angeles)  --  Los Angeles, CAL, UDA - Bloomberg, by Joel Rosenblatt/Edvard Pettersson - November 16, 2016

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Oct 31, 2016

UBER's DRIVERS * UK: WITH WORKERS' RIGHTS

* England - Uber drivers entitled to workers’ rights, U.K. Tribunal rules

--- Drivers for Uber Technologies Inc. are entitled to workers’ rights including paid holidays and the minimum wage, the Central London Employment Tribunal ruled Friday. This it's a potential setback for the ride-hailing service that could further jeopardize its highflying business model... The ruling could affect around 30,000 Uber drivers in London and significantly raise the company’s costs there. Uber, which argues it is a technology platform that matches riders with drivers, has relied on a contractor workforce of motorists who take on their own expenses like insurance, fuel and car upkeep... Uber is waging similar fights in the U.S. It offered $100 million to settle a class-action suit by drivers in California and Massachusetts who sought to be treated like regular employees, but the settlement was rejected by a judge in August... The battles over employment status add to Uber’s regulatory headaches around the world, as lawmakers from Austin, Texas, to Buenos Aires to New Delhi question whether ride-hailing apps threaten passenger safety and should be regulated like taxi companies... Contractor status is crucial for Uber and other so-called on-demand companies that rely on a pool of freelance workers to drive taxis, clean houses, fetch food or perform other menial tasks. Those firms say they would likely have to raise prices and couldn’t depend on workers who may be willing to work just a few hours a week... Uber, which was valued this year at $68 billion by its investors, has maintained it is a technology company, not a taxi company, and its drivers are self-employed workers who are free to work as little or as often as they like. Consequently, it has said its drivers aren’t entitled to the most basic of workers’ rights... Law firm Leigh Day, acting on behalf of the drivers, argued that the drivers were deserving of worker status as the company had “considerable control” over their drivers’ activities... 
(PHOTO: REUTERS - The ruling could affect around 30,000 Uber drivers in London and significantly raise the company’s costs there)  --  London, EN, UK - The WSJ, by WILLIAM LOUCH and GREG BENSINGER - Oct. 28, 2016

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Oct 29, 2016

UBER FREIGHT * USA: A new player in the trucking industry

* California - Uber has quietly launched its own 'Uber for trucking' marketplace called Uber Freight

--- Uber now it's getting into the long-haul business with a new division called Uber Freight. The plan builds on Uber's acquisition of Otto, a self-driving trucking company that Uber bought in July for $65 million... Otto's main focus was to build self-driving truck kits that equipment manufacturers or freight networks could buy and install on their own, but it also secretly harbored a desire to build its own "Uber for trucking" marketplace... Eric Berdinis, the product lead on Uber Freight, is betting that Uber's intellectual property and worldwide operations team will make Uber Freight the winner in the "Uber for trucking" space... After the acquisition, a cross-section of logistics and operations experts moved into Otto headquarters for the joint product. Job listings for Otto show that the company is actively hiring to fill operations manager roles for Uber Freight in both San Francisco and Chicago, the epicenter of freight brokerage... 
(Photo by Otto: Otto's beer run with Anheuser-Busch wasn't booked through Uber Freight, but it's an example of what the platform could do in the future) -- San Francisco, CAL, USA - Business Inside, by Biz Carson - Oct. 26, 2016

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Sep 29, 2016

NEW STARTUP for the TRUCKING INDUSTRY * USA - To avoid inefficiencies from

* California - San Francisco-based startup arranges international freight shipments for small- and midsize companies

--- Flexport Inc., a San Francisco-based startup that arranges international freight shipments for small- and midsize companies... Flexport is one of a handful of technology startups that have emerged in recent years trying to use software to scrub inefficiencies from the logistics industry. Several of these are mobile apps that help shippers hire truckers to haul their products, a model that has come to be known as “Uber for trucking”... Others, including Israel’s Freightos and Flexport, offer software that helps shippers move goods by ship and plane, offering customs clearance and other services needed to move shipments across international borders, typically known as freight forwarding... Flexport has offices in San Francisco, New York, Hong Kong and Amsterdam and is opening a new location in Shenzhen, China. Ryan Petersen, the startup’s founder and chief executive, said he plans to use some of the new money to develop a way of efficiently rerouting shipments while they are in transit, which he described as a nut that the logistics industry has yet to crack... 
(Photo: The Lewinston Bridge)   --  San Francisco, CAL, USA - The WSJ, by ROBBIE WHELAN - Sept. 26, 2016

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Aug 6, 2016

TRUCKING "UBER" * USA: May not be accurate

* Wiscosin - "Uber for trucking" this description may in fact be a misnomer
--- With the ostensible proliferation of new players on the trucking scene that say they are essentially an Uber for trucking, it turns out that this description may in fact be a misnomer, according to a recent report issued by supply chain consultancy Armstrong & Associates... In its report, which is comprised of feedback from 27 companies providing Uber for Trucking services, Armstrong explained that “Digital Freight Matching” (DFM) reflects these types of services far more accurately... Armstrong said that the reason for this, outlined in the report entitled “Digital Freight Matching-Capturing Technology-Based Efficiencies in the Trucking Industry" is that “DFM companies" use digital platforms to match a Shipper’s freight with available Carrier capacity. The goal is to better utilize motor carrier capacity by offering a convenient digital app to connect shippers and carriers” ... What’s more, Armstrong makes a strong case for this thesis with strong supporting data in that: global investment in on-demand digital technologies hit a record $18 billion in 2015 and estimates of empty miles between 10-23 percent as e-commerce fulfillment costs continue to head up... “Shippers, in our view, are simply not going to turn over a $250,000 load to a company that has technology, but little knowledge or experience in the highly nuanced world of freight transportation,” he noted. “Instead, the larger, better capitalized brokers will incrementally move us in the direction of more automated brokerage by rolling out automated modules that will gradually make brokerage less people intensive. Shippers will undoubtedly experience less heartburn with this approach” ... 
 West Allis, WIS, USALogistic Management, by Jeff Berman - August 2, 2016

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Jul 21, 2016

UBER FOR TRUCKS * France: "Convargo"

* Paris - "Convargo" wants to connect shippers with truckers

--- A new startup is de-cloaking today. Convargo, launching in France, is the latest attempt to bring Uber-like convenience to the shipping industry, by connecting shippers with truckers... what exactly the startup does. Operating a model that sounds similar to U.S.-based Trucker Path and Cargomatic, Convargo’s platform connects shippers with local carriers, including facilitating the booking process... It claims to let you get a quote and book a shipment in just 3 clicks, while giving you access to thousands of local carriers. Through the app you can track the position of your goods in real time, and receive immediate proof of delivery upon arrival... For the carriers themselves, the startup promises to send them more business and reduce overheads as it’s effectively a cheaper middle person, with lower overheads itself. The usual online marketplace play, you might surmise. Interestingly, I’m told that 90 per cent of carriers in Europe have fewer than six trucks, so it’s a highly fragmented industry... 
(Photo: Uber for Truckers_France. Launching in France, Convargo)   --  Paris, Ile de France, France - TechnoCrunch, by Steve O'Hear - Jun 19, 2016

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UBER FOR TRUCKS * Brazil: "CargoX" described as

* Sao Paulo - Goldman Sachs leads $10M investment in Brazilian trucking startup CargoX


--- CargoX, a Brazilian startup that has been described as “Uber for trucks,” is announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding... The analogy is kind of irresistible, since Uber co-founder Oscar Salazary is one of CargoX’s investors — he’s certainly seen his share of “Uber for X” pitches, but he told me he sees a big opportunity here due to the fragmentation in the Brazilian trucking market... CEO Federico Vega said that Airbnb is probably a better analogy than Uber, but either way, the company works to connect businesses that need to ship freight with truckers who have excess capacity. Brazil reportedly has an excess of between 300,000 and 350,000 vehicles, with trucks running empty 40 percent of the time, so the goal here is to reduce the number of empty trucks on the highway, increasing revenue for truckers and reducing costs for freight owners... He added that CargoX has a network of 150,000 trucks. In some cases, truckers only contact the company if, say, they’ve made a delivery and are looking for freight to take on their return trip. Other truckers get all their freight from the company — “in an ideal world,” he said, CargoX would work with more and more truckers in that exclusive capacity... 
(Photo: CargoX CEO Federico Vega, with his director of logistics Alan Rubio)  --  São Paulo, SP, Brazil - TechCrunch, by Anthony Ha - 20 July 2016

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