How Logistics Digitization may Impact the Trucking industry?

In the past few decades, industries all across the globe have undergone a sea change on how they perform their functions, mainly owing to a single factor that has colluded to re-calibrate the depth of effectiveness and efficiency within an organization. And it’s this main factor which will give rise to the fourth and probably the last Industrial revolution i.e. Industry 4.0.

As we head into the 2nd quarter of the 21st century, digitization has engulfed nearly all forms of enterprise, effectively transforming the way things are done and means are achieved. But true digitization in its most utopian form is still a long shot away from us and it will only occur when products get transformed into services and start fitting and responding better in the scheme of things.

And in the midst of this seemingly futuristic economic revolution is the global logistics industry which is the backbone of every national economy in the world. Without a functioning logistics industry, nothing that ever gets produced is going to reach the customer at all.

But logistics has come far from its initially defined function, i.e. to just transport goods to consumers and aid commercial activity. Logistics has become digitized.

The ever more powerful data architecture that traverses the length and breadth of the country, has allowed the logistics industry to empower itself to a point where it can vouch to eliminate all inefficiencies and purge wastage of resources from its system.

This dream will be realized through various forms of disruptive services like automated freight matching and predictive demand analysis. However, all of this change will only be possible if the trucking industry also undergoes a phenomenal makeover that hinges on these exact same principles of digitization at their core.

Trucks carry more than 70% of the nation’s freight, but in today’s highly connected world where a consumer using his/her smartphone and aided by giant e commerce enterprises like Amazon, can literally buy anything from a watch to a 3D printer, simply by doing some swipes and taps, they will be required to bring something more to the table in order to remain relevant.

This is because the cycle is wholly inconclusive if the delivery times do not move forward to match the ease at which this transaction takes place.

In a recent, 2017 industry report by MHI, nearly 80% of top level corporate executives said that the global supply chain would be increasingly digitized within the next five years, dominating the logistics realm. The trucking industry, however, is still in its initial stages as far as digitization is concerned, where the only onboard “connected” instruments being the engine and tire prognostics systems and newly introduced Electronic logging devices or ELDs.

The truck still remains around 95% “not connected”, making it unable to respond efficiently to changes demanded of it by the digital supply chain.

Recent advances in the fields of drone technology, cloud computing and even artificial intelligence, has allowed the logistic industry to not just start developing better, more efficient and highly responsive delivery mechanisms, but to break down the walls that separated the main stakeholders in the whole supply chain, easing communication and allowing for better demand and supply anticipation models to be built.

To keep up the pace, the trucking industry would have to rapidly respond and transform its conventional methods and go from a product to a service. Many in the economy have touted trucking as a service or (TAAS) to be the next area where the immense opportunity would lie.

And the developments up till now have been increasingly becoming more and more promising in this regard.

Uber, the quintessential car-sharing company, has dabbled into making its disruptive services, available in the trucking industry as well, allowing for space and loads to be matched more efficiently and for interlocutors to be eliminated, but its efforts haven’t stopped there.

Its driver-less truck, developed by its subsidiary firm Otto, made its maiden journey on the nation’s interstate highway, signifying how much the industry can benefit from exactly this type of technological prowess through eliminating costs and increasing efficiency of operations.

Even Tesla, another car manufacturing firm specializing in autonomous driving systems and electric powered vehicles revealed its own Semi-Truck that is capable of covering around 200–300 miles on a single charge, effectively allowing it to become incredibly suitable to suit the pursuits of bludgeoning e-commerce firms to make same-day delivery within urban cities and agglomerations highly efficient through customized-purpose developed trucks.

But what’s more important to note is that Tesla plans to provide the electricity required to power these trucks and vehicles, free of charge initially and then charge nominal amounts, well below those required to operate on fossilized fuel forms like diesel and oil. These sweeping reforms and disruptions could end up changing the way trucking are done in today’s world.

And that’s not all, other technologies are being tested out as well, most notable platooning and connecting the truck effectively to the Internet of things. These technologies could help substantiate the trucking industry profits to record heights by eliminating unnecessary add-ons.

However, the rate of change, if its to achieve optimal profitability, needs to be rapid and must take into account the growing needs of associated industries, whether they are old partners like commercial businesses or new entrees like the e-commerce industry. This means trying to inculcate the demands and rendering them possible with customized services with incredible ease.

And the incentive to pursue all these ends is too high to let go of. The biggest gain out of the impact of digitization on this sector would be seen by the new entrants as it will now become easier for them to expand their businesses as costs of goods transportation go down and the efficiencies shoot up. In the very near future, business plan consultants in UK, USA, China, India and other consumption-oriented countries with large populations will be required to build business plans that would need to factor in for the newfound advantages that could be utilized to scale small business prospects at the initial levels.

Industry 4.0 aims to revolutionize the global economy by increasing profits and helping environments to form drastically, better, flexible and friendlier supply chains, and trucking is definitely poised in the midst of this huge change as its foremost agent.

It would be an understatement to say the digitization of logistics will impact the trucking industry. Rather the trucking industry will itself stand inevitably digitized onto itself, thereby integrating with the logistics industry to form a streamlined global supply chain structure that is able to spur the global economy on its final, yet most incredible and exhilarating growth stage since it all began.