Yep, if there was a way of shorting medallions you could do very well (better than long Uber, if you could invest in it).

Well here is an article in the dutch press that is certainly not in the favor of uber{is translated from dutch} 14 APRIL 2015 TO 13:03

"Taxi app Uber, (partly) from Google, has started a petition to get his service Uberpop legalized. Uberpop with anyone who wants to present himself as a taxi driver. Nice for those who require a taxi, but as a driver you better apply for a taxi license.

A driver who works for Uberpop, according to the company itself so earn € 20 per hour (although there is doubt, and it also depends very much on the crowds). € 20 which is similar to what earns an average taxi driver, says research from 2012. The UberPop driver must cede 20% of his earnings. At € 20 per hour is € 4 per hour in committee. At eight hours is 32 euros per day, five days a week working € 160 per week.

Then the ordinary taxi driver cost much less. It should first remove these qualifications, but then takes a license € 1465 per five years. Who wants to own a taxi company in Amsterdam, must make on the town € 11,880 for a permit for three years.

Those who do, it is still cheaper. If we assume that a taxi driver sometimes has a holiday, and operates over a year on average four days a week, which is € 11 880/3/52/4 lost, which equals € 19 per day. Less than € 13 per day less than driving at UberPop. So who really aspires to drive a taxi, better go get those diplomas."

So the driver is not better off in money, except they don't have too get those licences, but it does not help them with the dutch government that is almost certain to ban uber like it is now.

And yes i know they use the uber-app because they don't aspire to be a taxi-driver, and most of them do it too make some [extra] money.

But wow 20% and then you officially you have too pay taxes too, it is almost paying more doing a paper route.

So yes i think uber is going too get stopped in the netherlands, and beside uber being [much] cheaper for the customer, it is not paying off too make a career out of driving for uber, so here in the netherlands[not a big loss for uber i imagine, in money that is] it is not going to happen the way it is now.

And seeing the problems there where in the past with the rules and obligations for taxi-company's/drivers i don't see the government changing the rules again for uber, no way, so if uber does not have a magic rabbit they can pull out of the hat it is over for them here, as it stands now.

Uber new style??? or hole in the system??? LOL

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6686...chauffeur.html

no

And yet they won't answer their phone.

Looks like UberEATS is expanding. Weird. It is almost as if this is a pure logistics expansion based on route density.

Maybe in the future we could have people have a basic understanding of an underlying business before commenting on that business in BFI. But then we wouldn't have steelhouse/Truth Sayer to entertain us.

The drivers carrying some lunches around with them and hoping someone nearby is peckish and ping them is a pure logistics thing?

Probably should learn what logistics means before embarrassing yourself in public. Or maybe you wanna join the Truth Sayer/Steelhouse contingent?

I don't know your motives. But delivering goods is EXACTLY what logistics is.

No motives. Can't go long or short Uber.

Logistics is managing the entire flow between producer and consumer. Putting a perishable product in a vehicle and having it head off in the direction of its choosing and hoping that someone nearby might order it is hardly logistics.

Your curious hard on about this word "logistics" is quite amusing. Your brain seems to go like this:

Moving stuff around (humans, long haul cargo, short haul cargo, wholesale delivery runs, expedited packages, normal packages, groceries, non-grocery home delivery, food delivery) is all "logistics"! Logistics is worth $9 trillion*! Who does logistics best? Uber! They are so far ahead on logistics. Logistics + uber = big money. You're what Joel Spolsky calls an architecture astronaut - a special and particularly offense kind of dumbass.

Your focus on "logistics" is silly on several levels, rising to the level of being offensively silly. The greatest silliness of which being that "logistics" isn't a single thing, nor is it useful to use the abstraction at all. Logistics consists of a number of vastly different categories that it makes zero sense to lump in together. So let me break them apart:

1. Moving humans around locally. Worth maybe a trillion or two a year in revenue. A huge area; there are 1.1 billion human transport trips/day in the US alone. Highly inefficient and expensive due to historical issues with ride sharing, and people's personal preferences. Ripe for disruption and efficiency improvements. A huge opportunity worth potentially $100 billion/year in profit. All of Uber's potential is here. At present, Uber's business model is in skirting regulations to offer a lower cost and faster service human transport than other providers. It has yet to show utility or profit potential outside of that.

2. Long haul goods. Worth maybe a couple of hundred billion worldwide. Uber has zero inroads here.

3. Short haul goods (bulk city to city or across city, 100 miles type range). Worth maybe 1-2 trillion worldwide? This is a highly efficient and complex space and not ripe for disruption for lots of reasons, particularly by an Internet ride sharing company. It's just absurd that you think Uber can make inroads here, but I'm open to hearing an argument. 3PLs manage this space so efficiently and reliably and competitively and with so much value-added and know how it's just ****ing ridiculous to think that Uber has inroads into this space by routing trucks around better from their app making offices in San Francisco. I can't tell how absurd this is.

4. Wholesale to shop delivery. Half a trillion worldwide? 1 trillion? Not sure. This is again a highly efficient space and best serviced by knowledgable drivers emanating from the wholesaler. There is zero chance to skim meaningful profit or revenue from this; it's best and most efficiently serviced by drivers on routes with know-how about their individual routes and delivery. This is a world apart from picking up a human and dropping them off.

5. Package delivery. Small volume and meaningless compared to the rest so I won't bother talking about it.

6. Take away delivery. In the tens of billions. Small volume and meaningless so I won't talk about.

7. Grocery delivery. In the tens of billions, could go to hundreds. Already heavily serviced and most cheaply serviced by drivers emanating from the store; requires a shopper; small volume and meaningless. Perhaps there is a small possibility for fast deliveries that could grow; but it's dwarfed by human transport.

8. Non grocery shop to consumer delivery. Potentially in the hundreds of billions. There's some possibility here of Uber picking up some of this market.

It's completely absurd that you talk about "logistics" relating to Uber when all of the money (and all of the easy money, and all of the profit, and all of the current inefficiency just begging for a solution, and all of the rapid growth and potential moat) is found in human transport. I don't know whether you're stupid or just oblivious. If Uber doesn't capture much of the human transport market (a very very low hanging and profitable fruit), they're not going to win the far more difficult "logistics" category. And if they do capture a substantial portion of the human transport market, other logistics is utterly irrelevant given the scale and profit of human transport vs other logistics.

You're being really silly, man. The end.

* a hilarious number - I tried to hint at that but it went over your head. Logistics isn't such a large percentage of global GDP. It's closer to $4 trillion.

And in case you're completely lost in some abstract "logistics" world that even the above doesn't get through to you, let me speak your language.

Human transport (in the US alone) involves 1.1 billion massively distributed and highly inefficient point to point single cargo trips a day, currently with highly inefficient and expensive use of capital, space and routing. That is ripe for disruption and improvements in routing, and profit taking.

Goods transport consists of a far lower number of massively multi use (already aggregated cargo), source to multi-point trips on well known and analyzed, established, near maximally efficient routes of a repetitive nature, consisting of already efficient and well-analyzed use of space and capital.

Are there are incremental improvements possible here? Yes, especially on things like backhaul. But there's no major disruption possible due to existing efficiency and the nature of the space. Are Uber's as-yet-non-existent routing algorithms relevant? lolwtfbbq no. You've got to be joking. Even if they had the perfect solution for this space and 100% utilization by all companies, they'd struggle to pull enough money out of this to justify even their current valuation.

Hopefully even someone with their head in the abstract clouds can appreciate why everything that matters about Uber is about human transportation, and why if they don't make it big in this area, then all else is irrelevant. And why this logistics nonsense you keep babbling about is laughable, as people that know more than you in both tech and logistics are trying to tell you.

I'll bet you're a busboy.

I've tried to clarify some of mistakes on technical topics, but it appears he's too ignorant to even know the questions to ask to learn. He is the other side of the steelhouse coin. I just gloss over his posts now. He doesn't understand the fundamental value proposition that Uber offers, what their entire business model is based on, or any of the 18 other things that show Uber moving into last mile logistics (or the clear play into intercity logistics based on route density).

There is honestly no point to engage some of these folks since they just have no clue what they're talking about.

Yah clearly.
Honestly, you have said nothing substantive in this entire thread. You talk no numbers except "9 trillion" for logistics, which is nonsense. EVERYONE in this thread disagrees with you - from logistics to tech experts. And when they had the hide to disagree with you, you attacked them.

You're basically an idiot, and every non-substantive post you continue to make just proves it.

Unlike you I bet serious money on this space, and it'd be useful if we had substantive discussion rather than zero content comments from someone lost in abstract words as you appear to be.

I'll try this one more time:

1. What is the potential size of the human transport market vs the non human transport market?

2. If Uber gets 10% of the human transport market, how will the (non-human) logistics market matter to their bottom line?

3. If Uber doesn't get 10% of the human transport market, why are they likely to succeed in the (much, much harder, far lower profit, already much more efficient and well serviced) logistics market?

Do you want to talk substantively, or slag off to cover the fact that you're have no clue what you're talking about, and got called on it?

ITT Truth Sayer claims to be an LP at a major investor in transportation networks.

I mean, that about settles it.

Truthsayer,

Why does every major airline support a major logistics business? Why did DHL fail at logistics in America when that is allegedly their business?

Maybe some basic understanding of the business would make your comments appear less like your comments on AI and robotic vision. You still seem to struggle with the concept of route density and how it works. But whatever. You don't invest in this space. You're just an internet troll who is not very smart but wants people to listen to you ramble.

Please post the quote where I claim this?
Because they can leverage off their spare/empty capacity (partly a sunk cost) and beat the rates of dedicated cargo like FedEx? Because there's a finite supply of airplane cargo holds vs a larger demand for fast shipping, meaning they obtain a premium?

Why are you asking such a dumbass question?
Because FedEx and UPS have this space well covered and are highly efficient and competitive. Also because they ran into the global financial crisis; an already struggling business suddenly had immense uncertainty. Some manufacturing companies closed down too in 2008; some sales companies pulled out of various new markets. Are you going to claim that that is because Uber wasn't there to service the last mile of logistics?

You're a very poor thinker and really need to start listening to other people.

And you do understand that DHL's failure in this space (you assume because of logistic difficulties where they couldn't compete with Fedex) just proves how difficult this nut is to crack? Uber can't make money unless their are major inefficiencies to overcome and exploit. DHL could find none despite their expertise. Yet Uber is going to come up with what exactly that can do what DHL can't? It's not like there are major cost advantages to be had over a Fedex/UPS model (completely unlike taxis or private cars). Meanwhile, an Internet app maker with no money has managed to disrupt well funded long standing taxi businesses. Do you see the difference in possibilities?

You seem to believe this "last mile" business is everything in logistics and that anyone who cracks it is going to get fabulously rich. It's just nonsense. There's a tiny market for packages to begin with. The global revenue of Fedex + UPS + USPS (this includes letters and other sales) is a mere $120 billion between them. For the entire world!!!

Why the **** are we even talking about this? I repeat:

UPS and Fedex deliver 20 million packages a day.
There are 1100 million human trips a day up for grabs in the US.

The human transport business is potentially 50x larger and more profitable than the premium package business. It currently has enormous levels of inefficiency and needless costs, and there are no viable competitors. You're completely ignoring this to talk about heavily-competed logistics with nowhere the size, possibility for disruption, or profit, a place in which people in both tech and logistics in this thread have told you Uber doesn't have much chance.

In short, you are flat out nuts, man.
I'm not struggling with anything. I'm asking you questions which you are utterly, clownishly incapable of answering. Here they are again:

I answered your questions. Your turn.

Perhaps you bought 5 shares of Google and consider that serious money. But unless you are an LP at VC that has made a play in Uber/Lyft/Blabla/etc you're full of ****.

Again, my thesis is that a company who advertises its slogan as "Where lifestyle meets logistics" and has released its last 3 products specifically toward the transport of goods or the associated businesses around moving goods is not focusing on ride sharing. This is the thesis Kalanick and all the investors are backing. This is reality.

You can continue to lie and misunderstand the concept of route density and its affect on marginal cost and how that affects logistics (it is the core driver of many billion dollar business models), but in reality you are just not smart enough to get it and are forced to lie (as if your bizarre view of investing a few dollars has any bearing on truth) to try to get people to believe your viewpoint.

But whatever, you keep on steelhouse'ing.

I got another question can Mihkel05 and ToothSayer be stopped? please

Because they are irritating the .... out of me with their "who's is bigger" bs, and i say bs because they are talking in circles and end up saying nothing that could/should be off any interest too well me for one, and i guess not many other people are following their "discussion"/d.ck mesuering contest with any interest,

And i am sure that the whole logistics is pretty well figured out by now, and i am sure neither of this two is going to bring anything useful/new to the table, and time will tell if uber is, if!! they go in to any sort of logistics, outside people transport[if that is part of logistics that is, don't know don't care, so please do not! explain]

So i for one vote for these 2 to stop their whatever it is, or continue with pm so they don't bother me/us with there whatever it is a: discussion?,d.ck mesuering contest?, boring people?, useles info?, just stop please, enough is enough already.

Jesus TS... You posted good content in this thread, but at any point did you start to feel like a bully from an 80's movie ****ing with some poor ******ed kid?

petjax,

My entire point is that we already know that Uber is moving stuff. They have entered courier services, van rentals, and food delivery. I don't know why this thread is full of people denying reality and the obvious strategy of Uber that has been known for years and is part of their branding.

If you honestly think Uber is going to continue as a ride sharing business without massive expansion into logistics based on their own comments, new products, and rebranding of their slogan, that is just totally insane.

Bored,

You don't even understand the value proposition Uber has. You simply don't know enough about the subject beyond your small cog in the machine role to grasp their business.

Logistics support/cargo is tiny tiny part of passenger airlines' businesses.

The logistics of shipping humans and cargo are very different.

For example, my Amazon package doesn't need food or leg room. Rerouting passengers is also way more difficult than rerouting a package. (Airline: can you take this flight that takes 13 hours instead of 8?)

Cargo is 25% of Delta's bottom line. So no, that is very very wrong.

Haven't had the chance to read the whole thread, but Guangzhou and Chengdu Uber offices were raided earlier this year. The offices are closed now but the app still works here.