Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihkel05
Few questions:
1) Why do you think route density is immaterial to logistics? Taxis serve as the de facto last mile logistic companies in many areas. DHL failed in the US due to a lack of this infrastructure. Examples abound.
2) Uber has two pure logistic products. So the comment about it being a taxi company alone is both idiotic and false indicative of someone talking about something without any clue what the underlying business actually is.
3) Why did they rebrand to a tagline that explicitly references logistics instead of sticking with "Everyone's private driver"?
You probably just agree with him out of specific ignorance rather than being ill suited to understand the technical and infrastructure advantages they're gearing up for.
I very well may be ignorant to the specifics but I have the exact background you described. The only 'logistics' program I was familiar with was the Christmas tree thing and I don't really think that qualifies in my mind because the niche application of that doesn't really seem relevant to the larger logistics market (and isn't worth much money).
The logistics markets and agents I'm familiar with universally operate around good freight, meaning customers that have reasons to need care, quality, expediency and/or problem solving with their loads. Getting a load of mulch from A to B is basically irrelevant because the customer will use the cheapest solution he can come up with regardless of the market, logistics operators as a whole will never make money from this type of freight, it simply takes the slack capacity or one notch above that at best from the worst/broke/desperate operators.
The money comes from freight like cleverly and efficiently packaging up LTL loads, sensitive produce, oversized loads, legally complex freight, high value, just in time manufacturing, fickle third parties, time sensitivity, etc..
Bottom line is, the skills required to overcome these varying issues (which all the billion dollar+ operators live in) don't really relate to Uber at all. I could very well be missing something but I need someone to explain to me what type of freight Uber is going to get in volume or quality that ties into any advantages they have.
I'm not exactly sure what you meant by route density but if you're referring to Uber somehow understanding logistics volume areas better than say UPS (who stopped making left turns in 2006) I would like to see some elaboration as to why you think they have an advantage.
Last edited by cwar; 10-02-2015 at 04:23 PM.