Tapping Freight Trends

NATCO Keeps Eyes on the Future.

One of the major parts of NATCO’s operations is tapping freight trends—studying where the industry is, where it’s going, and how those changes may affect the transport business.

We’ve all heard about disruptors. A lot of people tend to think these are the better-cheaper-faster variety of products and services that companies introduce into the market (most often to see if they’ll gain traction).

Sometimes, though, they’re not better, or cheaper, or faster. They’re simply designed to address an untapped market.

So, in our industry, we still don’t know if something like autonomous trucking (driverless, computer operated) will take hold. A lot of variables—especially safety issues—remain unproven. Plus: the cost factor and the efficiency factor…and a gaggle of other factors.

Yes, we remain skeptical of value of autonomous trucking. We’ve addressed issues such as automation and automated rate quotes in previous blogs.

Still, we watch the trend lines closely because we have obligations to our customer base (and, frankly, freight transport logistics are our business).

By tapping the pulse of freight trends we are better able to evaluate the progress and value of our industry’s real and potential disruptors.

As Paris Cole, Truckstop.com’s CEO said recently, “Some people might see opportunity, others might see adversity, others might call it disruption. But whatever you call it, it’s change—significant change—for our industry in the next 15 years.”

Truckstop.com has introduced Truckstop Mobile, an app for iOS and for Android that gives brokers real-time information on a given load’s position, including pickup and delivery benchmarks.

Disruptive? Maybe. Beneficial? Maybe so.

NATCO keeps eyes on the present and the possible future.