Spotlight on Long Haul

Agenda, Attendee List, & Presentation files now available to Autotech Council members in the library.

Autotech Council's Spotlight Series meetings are open to the public, and follow the member meeting format of rapid-fire tech introductions. This month, up to 4 startups in the Long Haul segment will introduce the Autotech Council community to their ideas and technologies in our virtual meeting room hosted by Avanta Ventures.

  • Date: 10/25/2021 04:30 PM
  • Location Autotech Council's Virtual Meeting Room (Map)
  • More Info: "Remote Meeting Instructions" email sent to online attendees 24 hours before the meeting.

Description

FULL DETAILS  |   AGENDA  |  ATTENDEE LIST  |   PRESENTATION LIBRARY

Silicon Valley, California, October 26 2021/Meeting Recap/ 

In our final Spotlight Series meeting from the Autotech Council, hosted by Avanta Ventures, we discussed long-haul trucking, logistics, and heard from four fast-growing startups in the space. We learned a few key facts:

  • A big portion of the long-haul truck capacity (as much as 15%) goes empty
  • Many trucks ride a high portion of their miles completely empty (up to 30%), especially smaller trucking operations or independent owner operators
  • Truck driving is hard work, it’s hard to hire and keep drivers, and drivers would prefer a job that kept them close to home

Which is why some of the solutions we saw were so fascinating. Technology layers, provided as a Service can help supply meet demand, or enhance logistics, and also improve the situation for drivers. For example,

  • by relaying trucks across the country using different drivers, the drivers would never have to leave their region.
  • A sort of eBay for truck capacity would help the supply meet the demand, and could be used for large shipments, or ones much smaller than the classic trucking industry can normally handle.
  • Information and data aggregation can help smaller truckers get access to the same pricing knowledge and job requests as the larger trucking lines.
  • Semi-autonomous truck convoys with one driven truck, and one autonomous/follower truck can double a driver’s capacity, while still providing human-on-the-scene flexibility for routine maintenance

The solutions we heard today will help fill latent capacity, increased driver satisfaction AND efficiency, and will help grow the supply by enabling smaller trucking companies to compete. The timing is great, as drivers are few, and logistics and shipping bottlenecks are affecting multiple nations worldwide.

Thanks to Avanta for hosting this series of spotlight meetings and to Microsoft for joining Avanta on today's question panel. If you’d like to connect with any of the companies who presented their solutions on operations, aggregation, autonomous trucking and cargo marketplace you can find their presentations and contact details in the library (link below).

FULL DETAILS  |   AGENDA  |  ATTENDEE LIST  |   PRESENTATION LIBRARY