The speaker, Stefan Pieters of Jan de Rijk, was speaking of the relation between road hauliers and airport stakeholders. I believe most hauliers at ports, warehouses, inland terminals, and any cargo transfer points would be saying the same thing. And so far there has been little effort on this score.
Truckers are the low person on the pole, and are not connected to the facilities they must rely on for service. They have no leverage. So their problems go ignored.
There is a lot of money to be made by coordinating this aspect of the trucking business, if anyone will step up and do it.
And as the interview claims, data takes you only so far. There has to be a willingness to act and change procedures, rather than just send data. Facilities don’t want to recognize that; it requires workers with the power to make decisions on behalf of the cargo owner, and that would erode ‘profits’, meaning costs. You’d have to pay workers more for the ability to make decisions.
It makes a stronger case for end-to-end coordination by the same vendor, such as Amazon or Wal-Mart. But truckers would still often be left out.
By Alex Lennane 13/07/2020
‘Data sharing is nice, but cooperation is key’ to ending congestion, says Jan de Rijk – The Loadstar
