[ExI] Disruptive AI

[Kelly Anderson]

So I've been thinking a lot for a few years now about disruptive
business models. You know, things like FedEx, that just change the
rules that came before. I've thought about what areas of business seem
more ripe than others. And what I would do to be part of the
disruption, were I younger... and one of the best ones I've come up
with is the less than load (LTL) trucking business. Where you have a
truck that isn't all the way full that you want to top off for all or
part of a trip, making the trip more profitable for the driver and
truck company, as well as potentially less expensive for the shipping
customer. The processes used in these businesses currently are
abysmal. I had a load caught in a local "loading dock" for three days
because they couldn't get a fork lift to bring the stuff to their
front gate where I would have gladly met them. Bill of Lading sounds
like something that you would find in an 1840s dock in Liverpool, and
it's about that abysmal. I don't think this is a task where AI would
be spectacularly useful, but damn it, there have to be better
algorithms for efficiently getting all of THIS to WHERE it needs to
be. Someone IS going to fix this gordian knot, and in the process they
are going to knock out Yellow and some of the other big shippers.
There's too much money for the invisible hand not to get involved at
some point. The whole industry is absolutely full of low hanging
fruit. I guess it's not a sexy enough problem for young programmers to
want to solve. Too "yesterday" for the folks in Silicon Valley. But I
feel such a NEED for more efficient use of a smaller and smaller
number of drivers. And yes, autonomous trucks are just around the
corner, but that's not the problem as I see it. It's how to connect
shippers to trucks going in the right direction efficiently. A vast
number of trucks go driving around half empty. It's a horrible waste.

-Kelly