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Shipping is only capital intensive if you intend to own the trucks, trains, or ships. Convoy appears to be more of a middleman between owner-operator truckers a
by jobu 9y ago
Shipping is only capital intensive if you intend to own the trucks, trains, or ships. Convoy appears to be more of a middleman between owner-operator truckers and shippers or manufacturers.
The problem is that many (most?) of the truckers that own their own rig are middle-aged and older, and getting them to use technology like this may be an uphill battle:
“I think they’re relying too much on computers,” said Brian Larocque, a new driver based out of Connecticut.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jbeales 9y agoYes on both. I work in tech that services the trucking industry. Getting drivers, (and dispatchers, actually), to truly trust a computer is difficult. They use a lot of apps, but trucking's got a strong culture of self-reliance, and people working in trucking probably care more about single points-of-failure than DevOps do, relying on Convoy would be a pretty big single point of failure, so they'll have to prove themselves worthy of the trust. However, 82 million should get them there. That's a ton of money to build a business with no capital costs. The big risk for them is the incumbents deciding to move quickly - most of them have the cash, so if they realize their business model is threatened by Convoy, they'll move quickly, and be supported by their existing cash flow.