We concluded our Stage 1 review last week and agreed to move this one forward to Stage 2!

Hey Team! Sorry I missed the last meeting there was a conflict in timing with a presentation I was making for my current work. I am still very interested in helping out and Kudos to you Gage on making an exchange happen. @Jeremy Burton &@Tim Connors I got feedback from Alex about highlights of the meeting including you all going back to do research to see when would be best to release this technology. I am open to help out with any research necessary with your team. Also I think a great way this technology can start being used is for companies like Jb Hunt, Xtra trailer lease etc that usually have empty trailers that need to be moved around, we could look into finding more companies that always need trailers moved around and our platform could help any one with a semi truck that needs to use a trailer from third party companies that let people utilize their trailer for a bit, and we could match them to routes that let them use the trailer deliver a load and they can hand it off to another person that is going a route that the trailer needs to be dropped off, while the current driver can pick a trailer from the other party as long as it is going on a route the driver needs to go. I can explain it better if you are open to another meeting. Thanks Team also applied for the Founder In Residence If needed for this project.

@Jeremy Burton In a stroke of random circumstance, we're actually doing a trailer exchange today. It's not how we envisioned it, and may not prove exactly the efficiency gain in the way we wanted to, but here are the circumstances:

1. We have a container load that needs to be delivered from SAV port to Rockford, TN today (hot load)
2. Driver (A)originally dispatched on the load doesn't have enough hours (HOS) to make it there in one day to deliver
3. He'll pull the box out of the port and meet at a location between Charleston and SAV on I-95
4. A driver (B) coming from Charleston will bring an empty chassis that needs to be returned to SAV that they will exchange
5. Driver A will return empty chassis to port to reload for delivery to same TN location tomorrow.

I can discuss today the challenges I've seen in our original model and what elements need to be in-place to execute.

I think the biggest questions to solve for is: what is the profile of company, driver, customer with which the original model works best, what specific problems are we solving for - how acute are those problems (WTP for solution), and what are the best incentives to motivate participation...aside from solving the problem for the paying customer.

The practical exchanges of the trailers themselves do not seem to be as big of a hurdle.

@Jeremy Burton unfortunately, our customer reached out that they would not be running the route (that we planned to split) as planned this week because of a supply issue. they expect it to start back sometime next week but they're not sure when. we'll see if we can cobble together another lane in the meantime, but wanted to keep everyone abreast of the status of the test.

@Gage Lewis should we schedule another call for next week to share results?

@Gage Lewis - are you feeling good about the first test?

Good call today. Pushing ahead with first test by end of next week (Sep 9)!

Transposing some thoughts from a previous email exchange:

Visualizing a radius (maximum range) centered on a driver's domicile and then seeing where there is overlap (guess that's a venn diagram) will be important to understand the relationship/ proximity between drivers, trailer exchange points, and freight orig/dest locations.

Drivers and freight are the chicken/ egg problem to solve. You may be able to cheat a bit and find freight, like Alexander has done, in locations where there is the largest recurring volume, so recruiting a driver in those locations (orig/dest) will be the safest bet to start. Reliability of the freight (contract would be much better than spot) will provide "dedicated" lanes, which is usually ideal for a driver because of the reliability of income, familiarity with route and customer (requirements, load times, etc).

I still think there is a problem to solve around how freight is acquired. There are 3 options I can see at the moment:

1. Be a brokerage - acquire customers directly and post loads onto the platform to broker to carriers & owner operators

2. Be a carrier - pull freight down from brokerages (on load boards) and haul with your own drivers (1099 or W-2) you've matched to the freight. You can also be an agency of a larger carrier (like I am), thereby reducing liability and overhead for a 10-15% gross rev fee.

3. Be a pure platform/ marketplace - acquire carrier & owner operators to be on one side of the marketplace and acquire customers (shippers, 3PL's etc) to be on the other side posting loads

#3 is the most scalable but the most complex and probably the most expensive to achieve - typical of many marketplaces. Or, you become an integrative tool within an existing marketplace(s) (DAT, Truckstop, etc) that optimizes the function of splitting routes and matching drivers.

@Gage Lewis - wondering if you managed to get any info on the insurance aspects?

Great conversation just now with @Gage Lewis - a lot of learnings from his experience with DriveMatch to help leapfrog some challenges. He'll be on next week's call too!

UF’s hub strategy for AV https://finance-yahoo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/autonomous-trucking-future-is-almost-upon-us-uber-freight-head-says-193747353.html

Looking forward to seeing how we can do an initial validation of the concept in a semi-automated way.

I'd like to validate that:

• we can bid on a route and divide it into 2 legs
• we can get 2 drivers to pick up each leg
• the drivers can successfully handover between legs

Ideally, we'd also validate that the time taken is shorter and the drivers are happier.

If we can do this 10 times successfully, I think we'll feel great about making the investment to build a fuller solution.

fun chat with @Alex Smith yesterday on this! progress!

Hi @Tim Connors I am the Founder and CEO of a 6 figure generating Digital Freight Brokerage still early stage and seeing some great traction. Building an AI powered Logistics Management solution that will distrupt the Trucking industry called Loadzpro and would love to learn how I could work with Platform studio on this project. My beta testing bootstrapping with my website on Jetstarlogisticz.com is doing well and we are seeing customer growth month over month. Look forward to connecting and hearing from you.

Hi Tim, I love this idea. I know JB Hunt does this now but I'm not sure if only company drivers can access or Owner Operators, its called JB Hunt Load Board.

I'm also answering Saurabh comments below in red:

• Is the handover idea to decouple the "tractor unit" and hitch a new one instead of unload truck 1 -> load truck 2? I am assuming this is where a lot of the downtime for said drivers would also come in. A lot of drivers like to spend their time at stops like flying J to take a shower, eat even get their truck cleaned. So this would be a great place for this handoff.
• Related: one critique of this would be that since you're asking for a lot more handoffs, in the worst case, a nice middle-ground solution would need to be found for a driver between "travelling super long hauls" (very little benefit from using this) and "trivially short trips" (too many handoffs, eats into actual time on the road the cargo experiences). I understand this is the kind of problem one would try to solve way past the writeup stage. them. Owner Operators would be a great fit for this type of business. You also have to think about whom ever books the load and is responsible for its safe delivery would have to be okay/approve the trucker who is now hauling it bc they would essentially be working for the original booker and assume their DOT #.

There is a large trucking company doing this now for their company drivers and approved Owner Operators, its called Load Board, and for the shipper side its called Carrier 360.

Ran into these guys at Techcrunch Mobility:

https://soloavt.com/

https://freightsafe.co/

Might be of interest to you.

Convoy is working part of this. Outgo (https://www.outgo.co/) (PSL Fund company) is working on another, but it's a very big industry so likely many more solutions will emerge.

writeup here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13fdxoi8x1UaH-iTdzFbGtEcY4kKE5a_tFuuUVmgtAQo/edit?usp=sharing