I write about the stuff that I find interesting. Sometimes, that's a deep dive on the trucking industry, other times, it's about turning 25 and figuring out careers.
Awesome. Supply chain security is one of the most important pieces of modern security efforts. Tracking active vulnerabilities to cut through the noise is a super solid approach
Intermodal is actually a relatively small subset of trucking - probably behind generic dry van, reefer, and flatbed.
That being said, solar panels are great but what happens when they break down or get damaged. I don't think the savings are worth the hassle right now.
This is another piece that I never got to talk about in my post. There's a LOT of software in trucking, the problem is that most of the software was built in a different era.
Platform Science looks pretty cool - seems like a TMS with specific improvements against legacy systems. Building a TMS is a pretty good business - massive fixed cost but once you've built the system, it's fairly hard for competitors to dislodge you.
1 - Oh man, this was one of the questions that was asked by almost every investor. The truth is that no one really knows. My best guess is that we're a decade or more away from true self-driving. Augmented driving might be sooner but trucking is one of the biggest employers in 35 states. Truck drivers are not going to let self/augmented driving eat into their paychecks.
2 - Unfortunately, the margins are too thin for owner operators to have a vested interest in climate. I do think that an interesting distribution strategy for cleaner trucks is to sell heavily into private fleets (e.g. walmart trucking) because there's an ESG angle that the companies can buy into. As for dedicated trucking carriers, it's going to be hard to convince them unless there's some realistic return on investment.
3 - This is interesting, I haven't looked into insurance too much personally and I know the barrier to entry there is extremely high. That being said, I think the liability aspect reduces the viability of offering low-cost insurance. Most trucks are essentially houses on wheels in terms of cost and a single accident can run in the millions.
I'd imagine that if you really wanted to build an insurance company for trucking, you'd need to focus exclusively on mega-fleets (25+ truck carriers) and somehow offer them better rates than legacy insurance companies. While owner operators pay a lot in terms of insurance, the market simply isn't big enough to build a cohesive risk engine and underprice existing insurance without taking on unaccounted risk.
I'm not an expert here on water transportation but I think water is very similar to rail. Both are much more cost and energy efficient. But they require large freight volumes and sacrifice a lot of the flexibility that trucking has. Unless we change our supply chain philosophy, trucking will likely reign above all other forms of transportation.
I write about the stuff that I find interesting. Sometimes, that's a deep dive on the trucking industry, other times, it's about turning 25 and figuring out careers.