Monthly Archives: December 2014

The Uberization of Trucking

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December 6, 2014

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roseanneOur Guest post today comes from Roseanne Stanzione, who is CEO of LaneHoney, the Marketplace for Trucks On Demand

Uber’s taxi service is cool, right? Moving dots on a map tell you the location of the nearest taxi. Hop in and off you go, without handling cash.  And now venture investors have placed bets that the $60 billion truck brokerage industry of agents and phones can be disrupted with applications like Uber.

So what is the Uber magic anyway? Three things: 1) set up, 2) transact, 3) done. Uber is first and foremost a logistics application, one that eliminates transaction friction and makes better use of assets. The current truck shortage is the biggest real-time asset problem in America needing a smart, uncluttered answer. The current state of industry technology? Unfilterable bulletin boards, incomprehensible transportation management software that requires training to use, no price information and everyone drowning in paper.  It is no wonder 30% of backhauls go empty. Continue reading →

Alcoa Embraces Additive Manufacturing

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December 2, 2014

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Alcoa today can 3-D print the dies used to manufacture turbine parts

There’s a great deal of testing that goes into airplane parts to be sure they can handle the temperatures and stresses of aviation. Alcoa would know. The 125 year old metals producer makes parts for gas turbine engines used by Boeing and Airbus. The problem? All that testing takes time. Between tooling, development, and casting, it used to take Alcoa a year to manufacture one of the nickel-alloy parts that go into an engine, where it must withstand temperatures of up to 2,000˚F. Then, writes Fortune (Dec. 1, 2014), the company discovered additive manufacturing—better known as 3-D printing.

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