Aug 1, 2007
Private fleets for hire!!
Private fleets for hire – a great idea but does it work? Logistics Management reports on the efforts of private fleets to hire themselves out for the back haul – maybe even contribute to the logistics budget bottom line.
The only problem with this is that it is a great idea but execution is the problem. I speak from personal experience. In my previous job at Genco, I worked on precisely this sort of opportunity with a host of private shippers – some really big names in there as well. It was called Genco Shipper Alliance.
The Shipper Alliance started in July of 2005 with Unilever as its first customer. Since this time, GENCO has put a tremendous amount of work into building the program and maintaining good working relationships with all shippers and carriers involved. Shipper Alliance, to be successful, had a dependency on shared assets and collaborative participation by all of the Alliance members. This support has become increasingly difficult to maintain with our customers in the current economic situation and has substantially changed the value proposition of the Shipper Alliance going forward.
The work I did was create the algorithms that created the tours that collaborators in the shippers alliance would use – so its mathematically feasible and with a bit of ingenuity it can be made real time as well. However, the reason why the plug was pulled is illustrative – whose truck, what load, who gets the final say?
Meanwhile, getting back to the article…
Hello,
I thought this post was really interesting. I’m involved with a third party logistics company that is working on arranging backhauls with private fleets. I’d like to mention your article on my blog at http://www.privatefleets.com. I would agree that the scenario you described, the Genco Shipper Alliance, seems improbable–not mathematically, as you say, but because collaboration means something has got to give. Since you mention it, the National Private Truck Council recently came out with a “Member Match” program which I think is doomed to mediocrity. Just because two shippers have lanes they can share between their private fleet does not mean that they will bend their rules to accomodate eachother.