Editorial: Trucking’s Internet Future

The future is here, and it seems to get reinvented almost every week.

The Internet, the much-ballyhooed and much-feared bazaar of seemingly unlimited electronic bits whizzing around at the speed of light, is beginning to reshape many of the traditional methods of doing trucking.

This week’s edition of Transport Topics features stories on several “virtual” trucking businesses, which are really electronic brokerages that match boxes of freight with vacancies on other companies’ trucks.

These companies solicit reduced rates from truckers who want to fill their trailers, and pass some of that savings on to shippers that have a load matching the trucker’s route and service.

Another story this week focuses on changes occurring in the household goods moving industry as a result of the Internet. Much of this change is being forged by less-than-truckload companies that offer to provide empty trailers for customers to fill with their furniture and other possessions, which the carrier will pick up later and drop at the customer’s new home. The transactions take advantage of the Internet’s speed and availability.

Still another story focuses on a company with no trucks or other capital equipment that is competing directly with traditional truckers in the LTL market. The goal, the founders say, is to “transform the LTL industry into the e-commerce age” without having to invest in fleets, drivers and support personnel.

Other services being offered on the World Wide Web include forums where carriers are invited to bid on loads offered by shippers or customers seeking to move their household goods.

All in all, it’s gotten virtually impossible to ignore the changes being spurred by the Internet. Any trucking company that doesn’t heed the competitive threats — and opportunities — posed by today’s emerging electronic commerce does so at its own peril.

The changes are coming, just as those conference speakers have been warning us for the past few years. And they’re coming even faster than we were told to expect.

Technology-savvy companies like FedEx and United Parcel Service have led the way to this new age in the transportation business, and shown us that there is indeed light at the other end of the electronic tunnel.