58 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK TRANSFIX GREAT SOLUTIONS FOR SHIPPERS TEL 646-844-2210 EMAIL support@transfix.io WEB www.transfix.io TRANSFIX - BRINGING NEW EFFICIENCIES TO THE TRUCKING INDUSTRY by Laurence Claus Conducting business today can be challenging. The typical fastener distributor regularly finds himself squeezed by the pressures of today’s business climate to find better and new ways to reduce costs and increase services. In short, fastener distributors are being asked to increase their value proposition so they can service the customer better than the competition and still earn a reasonable profit margin. Unfortunately, most of the low hanging fruit has been picked, so that the distributors who wish to remain competitive must be proactive and seek out novel and better ways of doing things. Although there are many areas in a distribution business that could probably warrant investigation and improvement, one of the areas ripe for such improvement is the logistics or shipping of the product, and for the purposes of this discussion, specifically with interstate trucking. In the United States there are over 300,000 trucking companies. Most of these companies operate fewer than 10 trucks, are small familyowned entities, and do a pretty good job servicing a defined region. The problem that emerges is that these trucking companies often end up at locales outside or at the edge of their regional comfort zone with no return load. This can result in one of several outcomes. First, they must return to their home base empty. Naturally, this is a costly proposition to the trucking company, but also to society at large because it adds to wasteful consumption of fossil fuels and added pollution. Secondly, they must make a partially empty move to the site of their next load. This is not as untenable as the previous option but still could account for significant time lost to the driver since this cuts into their federally regulated daily road time allotment and adds unrecoverable costs related to fuel and wear-and-tear on their equipment. Figure 1 illustrates examples of the distances that trucking companies must ride empty using the traditional methods of procuring the next load while Figure 2 shows the savings when employing Transfix’s technology. Lastly, the trucking company or driver engages the services of a broker to pair them with their next load. Although this will normally ultimately prove successful, it can be very time and resource consuming, and usually doesn’t result in a perfect match, so that the driver still has a less than optimal “empty” drive to the next load. This system is also, all too often, characterized with bait-and-switch tactics, where the driver is promised a certain set of conditions only to find a different reality when he arrives at the pick-up site. By this time the sunk costs may be perceived as too great for him to decline the job. FIGURE 1: RED LINES SHOWING EMPTY DISTANCE DRIVEN TO THE NEXT LOAD BY DRIVERS WITHOUT TRANSFIX BUSINESS FOCUS ARTICLE CONTINUED ON PAGE 166
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