Would you ride in a driverless taxi?
My wife and I took one this week during our stay in Phoenix, where Waymo is testing them out. My wife was hesitant at first, but I wanted to do it, so she came with me. It was an interesting experience. The service works just like Uber — there’s an app, you put in your destination and request a car, and it picks you up at your location. Your initials are displayed at the top of the car so you know it’s the one you requested, and you use the app to unlock the door. Once inside and buckle up, you click “Start Ride” either on the app or the monitor in the car and off you go! (You can also use the monitor to select a variety of music options to listen to during the ride).
We took it for a 3 mile ride to a restaurant, but it was an interesting (and cool) experience. To be honest, I felt safer in this car than I sometimes do in an Uber with a speeding and erratic driver!
As I’ve said before, a lot more work is required on the technology front for driverless cars and trucks to become ubiquitous (more work is also required on the regulatory and legal fronts too), but the future is already here!
Moving on, while last week was relatively quiet on the supply chain and logistics news front, this week was a busy one. Here’s the news that caught my attention:
- DSV to create global logistics giant with $15.9 billion Schenker takeover (Reuters)
- Strike Concerns at U.S. Ports Looms Large Over Shipping (gCaptain)
- Chinese Cargo Cranes at U.S. Ports Pose Espionage Risk, Probe Finds (WSJ – sub. req’d)
- Uber Freight Advances End-to-End Logistics with Platform Enhancements, Generative AI-Powered Tech and Expanded Final Mile Offerings
- Loadsmart Introduces FreightIntel AI: Unlocking Insights, Driving Efficiency
- House Lawmakers Implore President Biden to Close the De Minimis Loophole (Sourcing Journal)
- California’s Legislature Pushes Forward with Climate Accountability Bills (Foley & Lardner LLP)
- Jury Issues $462 Million Verdict Against Wabash After Crash (Transport Topics)
- USPS ending delivery unit discounts for shipping partners (Supply Chain Dive)
- Amazon Boosts Pay for Its Drivers Following Threats to Unionize (WSJ – sub. req’d)
- Drought Shrivels the Mississippi River and Threatens to Disrupt US Food Exports (Bloomberg)
- FedEx Announces Expansion of FedEx Fulfillment With Nimble Alliance
- Online Returns Fraud Finds a Home on Telegram, Costing Retailers Billions (WSJ – sub. req’d)
- Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd will add more vessels to alliance if Red Sea disruption continues (Reuters)
I could spend days commenting on all the news this week, but since I’m on borrowed time this morning, I’ll just focus on two AI-related announcements.
Beyond BI Dashboards: AI at Uber Freight and Loadsmart
Yes, there is a lot of hype surrounding AI in supply chain and logistics, but there are also real innovations happening too. The latest examples were announced by Uber Freight and Loadsmart this week (both are Talking Logistics sponsors).
At its Deliver conference this week, Uber Freight announced enhancements to its end-to-end enterprise logistics platform, “which span a strategic integration with Uber Direct, modular TMS functionality, advanced Insights AI features, and flexible procurement software.” You can read the press release for all the details, but here’s an excerpt about Insights AI:
Uber Freight is infusing new advanced features into Insights AI, the company’s generative AI-powered insights tool designed to revolutionize how shippers manage their networks, including enhanced chat functionality for more complex queries and a new KPI dashboard that delivers real-time, actionable insights.
Since announcing Insights AI in September 2023, the tool has been fine-tuned through thousands of queries representative of $1 billion+ FUM (Freight Under Management), gaining even greater precision and depth in its analysis. Looking ahead, Insights AI will leverage cutting-edge AI models to offer proactive recommendations, transforming how shippers make decisions and navigate logistics challenges.
In somewhat related news, Loadsmart introduced FreightIntel AI (FI.AI), “an advanced freight analytics and intelligence solution that reveals transportation insights: easy-to-understand cost savings and optimization opportunities from your raw transportation data.” Here’s more info from the press release:
FreightIntel AI behaves like a senior analyst who has already been trained to understand transportation nuances and can craft insights without direction and without delay. Shippers can simply plug in their data and get valuable insights immediately. It works by leveraging shippers’ own logistics data, and Loadsmart’s extensive dataset of trusted benchmarking data, together with the latest artificial intelligence technology to generate observations and insights tailored to individual company needs.
To really see how this solution works, I encourage you to watch the demo at the website.
Simply put, AI is transforming the way transportation professionals extract value from their data. We’ve gone from printed reports and Excel spreadsheets, to Business Intelligence and Analytics dashboards, to now AI-powered solutions that don’t just provide deeper insights quickly, but also provide recommended actions to take. I haven’t seen the Uber Freight solution in action yet, but what I particularly like about the Loadsmart solution is that it provides transparency and details to its recommendations for cost savings and service improvements, which is very important to gain the trust of users. The next step is to provide users the ability to quickly and easily take action on these recommendations by triggering workflows (automatically, in some cases) in a transportation management system (TMS).
Yes, I know, many of you remain skeptical about AI because of other technologies that failed to live up to their hype (see RFID and blockchain, for example). But as I have written before, and Mike Mulqueen from JBF Consulting commented in a recent post, AI is different, so don’t ignore what’s happening in the market. To quote Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
And with that, have a meaningful weekend!
Song of the Week: “It’s Just Another Day” by Oingo Boingo
