While governments around the world are pushing regulations and legislation in an attempt to make companies focus on what they are doing to the world around them, some companies are taking it a step above and beyond the call. They are taking it amongst themselves to go green and even more importantly make it easier for other companies to do the same. Undoubtedly, there’s a lot of ways of going about the process of reducing carbon emissions and making companies turn wasting into profit and become more environmentally friendly, especially within the freight industry.
TrucksOnTheMap is doing just that. The newly founded clean-tech startup is making it easier for shippers, manufacturers and freight forwarders to get the job done, quickly, easily, and most importantly, cleanly.
Before we go into details of the company and its award-winning platform, let’s take a moment understand more about the event and what the competition was all about.
The Clean-Tech Competition
Slush, the student-driven, non-profit organization that hosted the event, is dedicated to helping bring new companies into the limelight. In particular those with ideas that will make a difference for the future. “The philosophy behind Slush has remained the same: to help the next generation of great, world-conquering companies forward.”
Slush has a huge following and one that is growing every year. Last December’s event hosted an array of industry notables as guest speakers including environmentalist Al Gore; Young Sohn the President and CSO of Samsung; Jaan Tallinn the founding engineer for both Skype and Kazaa; and many more.
Out of an initial starting group of about 1000 European clean-tech projects, 30 have made it to the final for EIT’s Climate Impact Battle in Helsinki. Contestants, including companies that specialize in solar energy and waste reduction, it was TrucksOnTheMap that came out on top. When you consider the fact that it was a logistics program that won this prestigious award, over 29 other companies touting renewable energy sources, it’s easy to notice what an unlikely outcome it was. — A “future-visibility” and freight matching platform sounds pretty amazing, right? Well, Climate-KIC seemed to think so as well. TrucksOnTheMap was awarded the €50,000 top prize for clean-tech startup in the 2017 Climate Impact Battle.
While TrucksOnTheMap isn’t in the game for the money, the award certainly came as a welcome surprise. Founder Tamás Domonkos was more than surprised when he was called up on stage as the winner of the Climate-KIC competition.
How to Reduce Empty Runnings by Trucks
TrucksOnTheMap has a very simple and straightforward goal in mind – reduce the number of empty kilometers driven by freight trucks. Empty kilometers waste time and resources while adding to the ever-growing problem of carbon emissions.
Where are these empty kilometers are coming from, what the possible solution could be? At the time of arranging shipments, transport planners have no information on what trucks and when will be available near the planned loading location. The present-day’s workflows, transportation management systems will not provide data and information about the future status of trucking capacity. Not knowing better, the responsible transport planner will allocate the shipment, based on highly subjective information, the transport planner’s past experience at best. Consequently, the planner might book a truck that’s 50km away from the loading point, maybe 100 or 150. No one knows until it’s too late, the products have been purchased, loading date has been set, and the truck has been ordered.
To tackle this future visibility issue, TrucksOnTheMap has created a digital tool for shippers and freight forwarders to connect shipments with trucks “in the future,” anywhere in the world.
Users can visualize anticipated empty trucks on the map. This future visibility map provides users with the tool and all the relevant information necessary to book the truck which will be closest to their pick-up location at any given time and get the load moving. – The whole process should take no more than 3 seconds.
Shippers and the environment cannot afford the growing costs of empty running, and carriers benefit from more jobs.
From a business point of view, TrucksOnTheMap takes it even a step further. The application lets users build their own trusted network of carriers, partners, and associates, creating a friendly and safe working and trading environment. Carefully selected partners and trucks will pick up and deliver freight on time in expected conditions.
“We have created a time machine. Logistics professionals can find future empty trucks, at any time, and anywhere on the map. We call it trucksonthemap. – Tamas Domonkos CEO of TrucksOnTheMap“
While empty runnings might not seem like a big deal, every now and then, when you add up the sheer amount of wasted kilometers that number becomes staggering, and quickly. In Germany alone, there are 6 billion kilometers that are being wasted each year! and the number is increasing. If you combine the figures of the European Union and the U.S. that number jumps to 120 billion kilometers every year. To put it in a different frame of reference, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is only 149.6 million kilometers. If it’s a one to one ratio: kilometers to euros, that’s an astounding amount of money being wasted every year by the industry. Not to mention the unnecessary pollution caused by trucks, running empty.
Read more: To The Sun and Back by Truck!
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