Using A.I. to Book Loads & Empower Trucking Entrepreneurs with Guillermo Garcia
Future of Supply Chain Podcast, Episode 26
In a recent episode of The Future of Supply Chain, Guillermo and Santosh walked through the various challenges that today’s truckers in the United States face when on the road for three to four weeks every month. Guillermo shared that there are approximately 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States, and the trucking industry is pretty large at over $700 billion.
SmartHop is a technology company and an autonomous dispatcher for truckers in the US to help them plan, search, and book their loads. SmartHop has built a decision support system that deeply understands the trucking market and allows better decisions, which ultimately sets truck drivers up as entrepreneurs.
Guillermo came to the United States as an immigrant after leaving Venezuela, and his goal was to start a local trucking company in Miami, Florida. The company grew steadily into an FTL (full truckload) over-the-road operation with more than 40 trucks in total. As the leader of a small carrier service, he had noticed the disadvantages that owner-operators were facing and that there was an overall lack of trust in the industry. And so he made it his mission to change that for truck drivers going forward.
SmartHop, founded in 2016, was designed to bring technology to the industry so that human skills could be enhanced and better decisions could be made. Guillermo indicated that Hispanic drivers were at an exceptional disadvantage in the market due to language barriers. Thus, SmartHop strives to empower both drivers and brokers to make the brokering process smoother. Essentially, the brokers struggled to understand their drivers. But now, brokers and drivers can communicate more clearly and drivers have more choice in the opportunities that they accept. This means less time wasted for both parties.
In the episode, Guillermo shares that the freight and trucking industry is quite fragmented, which leaves everyone working in silos. This creates many manual processes and inefficiencies that are hard to deal with when on the road. Not only that, but owner-operators can’t be making calls when they are out on the road driving, and if they aren’t out on the road driving, they aren’t making money. Thus, with the right blend of market information that is embedded in the right technology, such as SmartHop, both sides can come together to make excellent decisions. Guillermo indicated that it is all about integrating everybody into the same platform for better decision making.
When owner-operators leverage the SmartHop technology, they increase their top-line revenue, and many of these folks have seen increases in revenue of 30–40% already. And those revenue increases don’t fully quantify the cost-savings that are gained through more efficient operations.
You can hear the full episode here to learn more about how SmartHop has built trust in the trucking industry through autonomous dispatch services, which keeps drivers on the road with the right loads, and provides the ease of operations so that they can be more profitable.
To learn more about SmartHop, visit their website.
The Future of Supply Chain is a Dynamo podcast that brings entrepreneurs, investors, and industry veterans together to discuss their stories, views on the industry, and how we can collectively build the future of supply chain.
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