Making Waves (Part 3): Last Mile Delivery & Transportation Innovators

In this edition of Making Waves, we examine two companies that aid brick and mortar and omnichannel retailers and e-commerce businesses provide personalized last mile delivery and quality customer experiences.  We also take a look at a company that is helping smaller trucking companies and independent owner-operators to stay busy.  With the tremendous shortage of truck drivers today, it is more important than ever to optimize the use of every available truck.

Roadie

Roadie helps businesses gain a competitive advantage by providing a technology platform that facilitates same day delivery.  Roadie relies on a community-based last mile delivery network that utilizes unused capacity in passenger vehicles to connect consumers with goods that need to be shipped with drivers already heading in the needed direction.

Boxes and packaging are not required in order to transport goods.  For consumers using the service, this can provide significant savings.  For many, use of the Roadie service provides more personalized pick-up and door-to-door delivery without having to waste time filling out forms or standing in line at postal service locations.

Using Roadie enables businesses to eliminate daily or mileage minimums and upcharges for holiday or weekend delivery. Deliveries can all be managed on one dashboard and can be tracked in real time using any type of device.  Customers can be notified upon delivery.

Roadie provides additional peace of mind by providing up to $10,000 of coverage.  The Roadie service facilitates more challenging deliveries including that of fragile or oversized or oddly shaped items that are difficult or especially costly to ship.

In addition, Roadie facilitates the transportation and delivery of pets. The technology platform enables users to personally select their pet’s driver.  Only verified Roadie Pet Drivers are able to offer their services on Roadie’s Pet Gigs. Drivers are encouraged to stay in touch with the Sender so that they have peace of mind.  Just as with last mile delivery of goods, pets can be transported across a few short miles or across the country.  As an added service, Roadie provides 24/7 customer support for senders to respond to any pet delivery questions.

Roadie drivers can select the deliveries they want to handle based on their travel schedule as well as geographic, vehicle and other limitations.   Pick up and drop off locations are determined by the driver before providing the offer to drive.

Trucker Path

Did you know that there are approximately 350,000 drivers who are independent owner-operators?  Currently companies that have less than 10 trucks make up 90% of the industry.  These smaller operators often fail to get enough work, simply because they are less visible in the industry.

Developed to help truck independent owner-operators and companies with less than 10 trucks, Trucker Path has developed a mobile app that connects these smaller operators with available freight hauling opportunities in order to help keep their trucks full.  Voted the best load board app in 2016, Trucker Path provides carriers with free unlimited access to 150,000 loads daily.

Freight brokers can post loads online to get matched with carriers, search for trucks and track cargo in real time.  A fully featured set of easy-to-use location-based information is included in the application including weigh stations, rest areas, repair shops, truck wash, available parking, truck stops, fuel prices, navigation and more.  Trucker Path purports to be “America’s fastest growing platform for the trucking industry”, with over 100,000 carriers and 800 freight brokers.

Bringg

These days many retailers still find last mile logistics to be challenging, and on demand delivery is even more problematic.  Billed as “customer-centric logistics”, Bringg provides a technology platform for enterprise businesses to manage both last mile delivery and on demand delivery services.

By using this platform, companies are better positioned to compete more effectively with Amazon, Uber and other strong contenders for consumer business.  Providing customers with a personalized, satisfying delivery experience is an essential element of the sales process for goods and services.  Customers typically judge brands based on their delivery experience and decide the likelihood of future purchases with that brand based on that one factor alone.

Bringg provides a logistics technology platform that includes solutions for each aspect of the delivery process.  This includes but is not limited to dispatch, warehouse operations, driver information and process through to providing tools to facilitate an optimal customer experience.

Bringg’s technology platform includes real time visibility and was designed to match top competitors in terms of operational efficiency and customer experience.  Developed from the ground up, Bringg creates the “perfect frictionless delivery experience” of customer-facing activities and still manages to improve visibility and efficiency.

An open, modular platform, Bringg can be branded and is designed to fully address customer requirements in terms of management and operations.  Bringg was built on enterprise-grade architecture and was developed to be a robust, scalable SaaS system, capable of handling a huge volume of data concurrently.  Bringg can be readily integrated into any existing enterprise system including inventory, order, supply chain, e-commerce and more.  A variety of SDKs and APIs are available to facilitate the development of add-ons.  Bringg also utilizes Big Data analysis as well as robust data security and privacy protections.

Currently Bringg has clients in 50 countries across the world in a variety of industries including retail, e-commerce, food and beverage, CPG, and restaurants.