Month: August 2021

Walmart announced Tuesday plans to scale a program it calls GoLocal to make final-mile deliveries for businesses of all sizes.Walmart had previously restricted its last-mile service to the delivery of its own products. The program, called Walmart GoLocal, opens new revenue streams for the company by expanding its access to inventory and increasing delivery density, the golden goose of logistics business models.

Walmart said it has been piloting the service over the past several months and is now expanding to more than 500 markets just ahead of the holiday rush and amid the backdrop of rising freight costs and shortages of carrier capacity.

At the heart of this project, Walmart is aiming to create another revenue stream by using its technology and people. Walmart will not use third-party drivers but instead, rely on its Spark delivery network and other modes of proprietary transportation.

Walmart’s existing last-mile ambitions saw it building out capacity for same-day delivery, the latest frontier of the shipping wars as competitors try to catch up to Amazon’s Prime service. In three years, Walmart developed same-day delivery for more than 160,000 items from more than 3,000 stores that can cover 70 percent of the U.S. population.

Walmart GoLocal already has agreements with national retail clients, the company said in a news release, though it declined to name them. Ward told reporters that Walmart envisions a service that could deliver cupcakes from local bakeries as easily as it could car parts from national retailers.

Growth + Change = Opportunity!

The trucking industry has entered a historically strong business environment, but trucking companies continue to face some persistent headwinds: Recruit enough professional truck drivers and infrastructure.

With the shortage increasing driver pay, it can have a significant impact on supplier costs and therefore consumer pricing. It can also increase shipping delays and shortage at stores

Trucking companies will need to find ways to entice more workers to become professional truck drivers

The majority of truckers say that they get held up by poor road conditions every day or a few times a week which increases maintenance costs resulting in declining margins for owner-operators. Local and city roads that need pothole repair, resurfacing and leveling are costing truckers a lot of extra money in additional vehicle operating costs such as fuel consumption, tire wear, and deterioration.

Much of the infrastructure of the United States—including its roadways—is long overdue for overhaul and upgrading.

For truckers, who spend most of their working lives on the road, the issue is especially critical.

Infrastructure-related delays such as congestion, road closures, and deferred road maintenance present unique challenges that often require team drivers to ensure on-time delivery, this increases the cost to move the load itself and is ultimately passed on to the consumer and taxpayer at the point of sale.

Growth + Change = Opportunity!

Innovative start-ups are capitalizing on the high number of transactions and large amounts of data being handled and generated by logistics players to develop an expanding range of technology-driven solutions

Digital freight startups use technology to streamline the process of connecting truckers with shippers looking to move cargo. Such ventures drew more than $2 billion in investor backing between 2011 and 2020,
The growing sector of technology-focused upstarts has prompted traditional freight brokers to invest billions in technology to automate their operations.
Two of the most prominent digital load-matching startups say they are sticking with their plans to use their technology to grow organically, even as rival Uber Freight shifts gears with a big acquisition to speed up its path to profits.

The freight unit of Uber Technologies Inc. announced last month it is buying logistics service provider Transplace in a $2.25 billion deal. The acquisition comes as digital freight startups are looking to expand their market share and add services beyond transactional load-matching tools, while big transport companies are weighing acquisitions and hustling to scale up their own technology.

Established logistics providers have a window right now to capitalize on the energy and agility of digital startups.

Growth + Change = Opportunity! 

Amazon has spent years building one of the world’s most efficient and optimised supply chains.  It means that on top of its approximately 40 per cent market share of US ecommerce, Amazon stands to gain an even greater understanding of the shopping habits of global consumers.

The e-commerce giant is focused “squarely on adding capacity to meet the current high customer demand,” Director of Investor Relations Dave Fildes.

Amazon doubled down on its commitment to expand its logistics and fulfillment network on its latest earnings call. 

Amazon’s effort to develop an insourced supply chain extends back years with efforts to build out its fleet, develop air infrastructure, hiring employees to staff its fulfillment network and get closer to consumers.

As Amazon adds sort centers and delivery stations, it gets closer to more of the U.S. population. In 2018, 51% of the U.S. population was within a 60-minute drive of an Amazon delivery station, which grew to 77% of the U.S. population by 2021, according to the analysis by UBS.

Even with the  investments, Amazon’s one-day delivery service has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels in the United States, Amazon is also playing catchup to Walmart and Target, which have store networks that can reach 99% and 94% of the U.S. within 60 minutes, respectively.

Growth + Change = Opportunity!