1,000 Calls: Outside the Bubble
Silicon Valley is a new kind of destination for trucking
Editor’s note: At Vector we spend our days talking to trucking companies steering through a fast-changing industry. This story is part of a series, ‘1,000 Calls,’ where our team breaks down lessons learned along the way. This week: a reflection on our company’s geolocation.
Ask a truck driver how he or she likes the San Francisco Bay Area, and you’re not likely to get a middle-of-the-road response. Driving in Bay Area traffic can be a nightmare on par with Manhattan, Los Angeles, or Honolulu — with the bonus of 35-grade hills and heavy fog.
So when the safety director for a trucking company asks, “Where y’all based?” this reputation can seem like something of a roadblock to starting a business conversation about trucking tech.
Yes, Vector is a trucking technology company, and yes, we are based in San Francisco — with good reason. We’re here in the Bay Area in large part because of immediate access to one of the deepest pools of ˜engineering talent in the world.
Less-than-ideal driving conditions aside, being located in Silicon Valley comes with major upside at a time when a range of industries are being directly impacted by digital technology. We are in the midst of significant changes to the industry, and business owners, investors, engineers and drivers are beginning to more fully appreciate that the problems in trucking are highly technical.
Smartphones are a prime example of a technology that has become ubiquitous amongs drivers, offering opportunities to complete a growing range of tasks. Beyond front-line technologies like in-cab document scanning are many other supply chain tech tools that revolve around trucking.
Indeed, in tech hubs around the world, trucking technology startups are emerging to tackle the brokerage, dispatch, routing, communication, and document scanning problems our industry faces. Some of the fastest growing startups are headquartered in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Boston, and Seattle. The way goods are being shipped is changing on a large scale, and it’s not just about self-driving trucks and blockchain technology.
As Vector enters its fifth year, the core of our company is still comprised of engineers, many of whom have backgrounds in the industry. Our goals are ambitious, but our customers keep us grounded on a daily basis. To many, San Francisco is known as a hotbed of talent, creativity, and yes, thick fog and steep hills. All true.
But to trucking companies? The people I talk with every day are not impressed by our mere geography; they appreciate our software on its own merit. And we like it that way.
