Politely it's you that has no idea what you are talking about or to whom. Stop posting in this thread before I discover the appeal of rhetorically beating you like a rented rug.

Go ahead. I'm interested in your view on how Uber's superior route density and low marginal cost will not dovetail beautifully into last mile logistics.

Or why they actively changed their branding to focus specifically on logistics from ride sharing.

Or why you posted in another thread that only a few logistics companies have centralized algorithms for routing, but somehow that the industry is super efficient.

etc etc etc

Frankly, you are the person who is a poseur who has small knowledge in one area and doesn't understand the subject we're discussing. You don't even understand what Uber is doing or what they're trying to do.

Right, but do you 2 need to drag it on this long?, and i did not give any opinion about uber will or will not do or whatever they going to do, and time will tell if/and in what sections uber is going to succeed[but l know it is not going to come out of the discussion between you 2] and if the founders of uber are in it for the long haul or going to cash in the next years to come.

And in my 25+ years of owning a import/export[sequ buying/selling] business i had plenty to do with logistics, i just don't want to get in a discussion with any of you 2, because you both don't read/listening too each other and just bla.bla.bla to get your!! point across, so it is fairly useless to have a discussion with you 2.

And your last part of your post is really to ridiculous to react too, and proves you are just one of those people that likes to hear/sees himself talk/write, and i could say how sad that is but you are not worth it seeing you have already showed how you react to criticism or more your lack of it, so i going to leave it at that.

petjax,

There is nothing to discuss about my view. I'm stating actual facts. I have no idea whether they will succeed in taking large market shares in ridesharing/last mile logistics/city to city. But it is obvious that is their plan. I feel like this thread is full of people who are totally insane and pretending that food delivery isn't logistics or the delivery of parcels isn't logistics, or anything that Uber enters which are clearly logistics... magically stop being logistics.

Also, why would you say you aren't going to say something when you clearly say it? That is pathetic equivocation.z

ETA: It is also clear that Uber is in it for the long haul. They have little to no acquisition/merger possibilities. Being valued at 50b basically defines this. Comments like this are what I find baffling, when the answer is clearly known due to obvious factors, but people decide not to accept reality for what it is and pretend that it is as debatable as climate change or GMO safety.

Actually you've already shown me why TS is having so much fun beating on you. Your assertion that Cargo makes up 25% of Delta's bottom line makes absolutely no sense. In 2014 they produced 934M in revenue for the company. This is compared to ~35B in revenue generated by moving people.

There are two scenarios you could work from here: 1) this cargo being carried has almost no costs associated with it, in which case it would be significantly more than 25% of Delta's 1.5B in pre-tax profits... Or 2) it has a cost structure comparable to transporting passengers and their luggage in which case it is <5% of total revenue.

Nearly every argument you have made in this thread is impossible to substantiate because they have no substance, which is why I haven't bothered to say anything of substance besides my earlier assertion that your view of the 'logistics' sector was hilariously shallow.

Uber is a good company that is good at what it does. It has a very strong chance of capturing and retaining significant market share in local passenger transportation. That doesn't mean that it's going to become a dominant force in the Auto parts from Nuevo Laredo to Detroit ever. Some Uber-like company WILL have a transformative impact on how the spot market for truckload freight operates. It 100% will NOT be Uber.

I rest my case i have made in my previous post, damn it must be a pain in the ass to be around you and hear you talk.

Because you come over as a arrogant wise ass know it all, and no one likes a person like that, i know i don't.

To get that, you have to say cargo revenue is almost pure profit.

The main reason cargo looks so profitable is its considered a peripheral (purely marginal to fill space) business and the costs are not fully allocated.

Delta did try to develop a pure cargo service. They gave up.

Adding cargo to passenger planes is identical to putting a warmer bag with pizzas into a cab and dropping off pizzas. Do you not see the similarity between what they are doing?

Also, the costs are fully allocated. Brush up on business logic. Dividing something into something else doesn't make any sense.

So you've glossed over anything substantial to state that Uber won't be moving truck parts intercity with total certainty. Wow.

Glad you could contribute that tidbit into this thread. Too bad you couldn't address any of the questions I posed after a lot of big talk.

Also, learn to read a financial statement or how accounting works wrt Delta. Pretty sad.

NB: Tho in a far ranging SDC situation, a play into that market seems possible. However that is significantly far removed from what they are doing today and in the near future that I don't really wanna quibble about it.

That is fine. I'm glad you stopped equivocating. It is genuinely pathetic to not even insult someone without being wishy washy.

You are stating things as if they were facts. Not quite the same thing.

I have to say you are scoring pretty well on the troll meter, though. With TS biting regularly, this could go on for a while. Well done.

Can you shed any light on how things currently work in China regarding Uber and Didi Kuaidi? I've read a lot of conflicting information. Does the DK app solely or primarily hook riders up with licensed taxi drivers? Or do they also hire private, unlicensed drivers who use their own cars like Uber? Is Uber cheaper for the rider than DK?

New proposed regulations:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/11/chi.../#.swsznt:7lzx

No it's not. The delivery fee itself would overwhelm the cost of pizza. You lower the cost of delivery by paying someone less than minimum wage and have him deliver 4 or 5 orders per trip.

That's a totally different business than delivering "a" pizza or "a" passenger on demand.

The people (pizza delivery service for example, or UPS/FedEx) with enough volume to "stuff" the routes with enough cargo to make delivery worthwhile just end up building their own "logistics" (UPS trucks/delivery guy on a bike).

Other than that, you're basically talking about courier services.

There have been a lot of stupid posts in this thread, but this probably the stupidest post. You have posted this misunderstanding of how logistics dovetails into moving people along with your complete misunderstanding of cost accounting before.

What is your next trick?

Why are some people here are talking about how exactly to name what uber does[and here logistics seems to be important] and HOW MUCH!!! everybody knows about how to define what logistics is and means.

The topic starter has left this topic it appears, because he wanted[i assume] a discussion over all that uber does and if they can succeed and/or stopped by the competition already there.

But here they are a bunch of egos accusing eachother of being , ignorant, dumb and what not and looking more like a bunch of children then adults, completely loosing sight of what this topic is about or started, and frankly is 99% more interesting.

So why don't you agree to disagree and start talking/writing about uber chances of succeeding or changing the way people and goods are being transported[whatever you want or it is called] and how and if they are going to overcome the many legal objections in different country's, so like the topic starter asked can uber be stopped?

Because for instance here in holland the imo only cheaper and interesting uber pop is going to fail and banned/forbidden in his current form and the other concepts are not really cheaper or in the long run financially very interesting for the drivers [except for a short period, like agency work].

And for transporting goods and/or packets/mail and delivery[like pizza] there is not much to win for them here since the size of the country, and the european open borders, the dutch truck-drivers are being replaced by much cheaper east-european drivers so i doubt they can be competitive in a financial way.

Mihkel05 is going to find the next disruptive business by having people order a pizza from a nearby place, then hitching a ride with the delivery driver as the next trend in logistics.

LOL, great but i wish he kept his opinion on this matter to himself and/or write it somewhere else, but i am afraid it is wishful thinking

Welp. Looks like UberRUSH is a thing.

Weird living in reality.

I don't think anyone denied Uber would try this.

Call me when they're doing it profitably, because Kozmo couldn't do it 15 years ago and Postmates hasn't proven able to either despite working in this space for the last 5 years.

It's fascinating to watch Uber's expansion unfold. I didn't pay much attention to Amazon in their early days but there seems to be a parallel: massive disruption, criticism/controversy over jeopardizing other jobs/companies in the industry, global expansion, unprofitability, regulatory roadblocks, employee gripes, etc.

Amazon eventually started branching out beyond their core business. Uber seems to be in hyperspeed mode in this regard, setting up infrastructure and moving in many directions at once. Even if they end up needing to pay their drivers more to compete, they'll still be getting their cut of each ride which seems quite lucrative, because unlike Amazon they don't have to pour money into building warehouses and distribution centers and staffing them.

Whether things like UberEats and UberRush gain any traction will be interesting to see. I've used Postmates before and it was about $60 to take a large envelope across town; I could see where UberRush could significantly lower that cost to the customer and snag some of the market.

The intended meaning behind the thread title "Can Uber be stopped?" was really "Will Uber be stopped?" as it's clear that they can and have been stopped by cities/states/countries putting up regulatory obstacles if not outright banning them. But in terms of their becoming an Amazonian-type global behemoth, I'd say the answer is no.

I see the two as worlds apart. Amazon entered and won a highly competitive widely spread space by having a completely different philosophy and building out a global supply and distribution chain of amazing proportions.

Uber on the other hand is merely a simple app maker, entering a space filled with cartels and regulation, which they can exploit for now by flouting the law.

Uber has far more in common with Enron than Amazon, if you think about it:

- Taking advantage of a newly deregulated space becoming available
- No physical presence; utilizing and managing and exploiting the resources of others
- Outsourcing of everything except management of the business
- Aggressive and questionable tactics including going after critics
- No real assets or planned buildout of assets
- Questionable legality or outright illegality

They've executed well so far, but there's nothing like the global presence of Amazon which dovetailed into a huge moat and diversified operations. Uber make an app, do back end routing, and certify driver credentials, and until autonomous cars come along, that's all they really do. At present they're really nothing but a multinational taxi app company, profiting purely by ignoring local regulations, and doing a better job for some customers than traditional taxi companies.

The hype in this thread is a tad bizarre, frankly. Yes there's going to be a huge business some time in the future taxiing humans around in autonomous cars, but until then, people are getting ahead of themselves I think.

Good points TS. To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that Uber has anything close to the revenue upside of Amazon, just that their global expansion in just a few years is an impressive feat and that further expansion as well as growth in existing markets seems likely.

IIRC, Amazon also entered relatively uncharted territory in the early days of internet shopping. They were criticized for unfairly competing by not charging sales tax in some states, and took advantage of the lack of regulation. Like Amazon, Uber seems bent on aggressively pursuing market share at the expense of profitabilty. Unlike Amazon, I don't think Uber has been blamed for the actual demise of other businesses in the space, though they've certainly generated backlash for hurting the taxi industry.

Uber "only" being an app, without a physical presence or real assets, seems akin to an eBay or Paypal model. The moat seems to derive not from massive barriers to entry, but by popularity driven by being the first household name in their markets. Amazon is obviously a bad comparison in this respect.

Characterizing Uber as an "app" or app maker is sort of ludicrous. The little mobile client for customers and drivers could be recreated by a college student in a few days. That isn't the business. To borrow from the poster above, it's like saying Paypal is just an app.

Yeah their CTO was targeting 1,000 engineering new-hires in 2015. It would be interesting to estimate:

1. How many companies currently have the IT capacity needed to build the Uber "app"?
2. How many companies have IT departments growing as fast as Uber's?

But I'm not really sure how to estimate either.

My point exactly. There is a massive complex infrastructure behind the "app" which actually does the work. This comment was naive, to put it politely:

The cab companies wrote one over a long weekend. And another one, and another one.

They (and Lyft etc.) are different because they use independent contractors. The entirety of the value proposition is that they push off nearly all of the cost of doing business on their contractors. Specifically financially illiterate contractors.

Enron had 20,000 staff too. Fortune named it "the most innovative company in America" for six years in a row.

Don't buy into the bull****, guys. Yes Uber are going all out with VC money in every way they can to own every single space they can (including trying to do their own autonomous cars, which is ridiculous), but they're just a global taxi company, and 5% of the work gets 95% of the outcome, as Brian alludes to above. The rest of the work is that extra mile to have that last bit of edge, which unlike Internet search or the efficiencies of a global distribution chain like Amazon, doesn't matter as much as you think. This is what matters:

Call taxi. Taxi picks up in <3 minutes. Fare collected. Have reasonable occupancy via good-enough routing. This is their entire viable business model; the rest is nonsense. And taxi companies can do a similar thing with a little innovation and regulation off their necks. What Uber have depends on brand recognition and driver loyalty and little else.
Exactly. There is no evidence they can move away from a business model which involves pushing the cost and risk onto drivers who'll work for bad pay, while their competitors are hamstrung by labor laws and regulated taxi laws and costs.