Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihkel05
I don't know your motives. But delivering goods is EXACTLY what logistics is.
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.