Digital marketplaces are rewriting industry rulebooks, building new B2B relationships and modernizing historical processes.
This is paradoxically most true, and most impactful, in those industries most resistant to change. So says Royce Neubauer, founder and CEO of Auto Hauler Exchange, whose company’s online marketplace platform is making vehicle hauling faster, easier and more profitable for both shippers and carriers.
“We’ve been in vehicle logistics for a few years now, and throughout that time I’ve seen a lot of fragmentation and inefficiencies on how shippers and carriers are sourcing each other — it’s almost like one hand doesn’t know the other hand exists at times,” he told PYMNTS in a recent conversation.
The first digital marketplace of its kind in the vehicle logistics industry, Auto Hauler Exchange automates the complex workflows of the vehicle logistics ecosystem by connecting large and small vehicle haulers directly with vehicle shippers, eliminating the middleman and breaking down historical industry silos that commonly led to carriers driving so-called “empty miles” with empty space on their trucks.
“I just never could understand why that trailer wasn’t full,” Neubauer said. “But a lot of shippers work with a small pod of large carriers, and the problem is there are too many opportunities for a lot of these carriers to actually handle — while at the same time, you have tens of thousands of carriers out there desperately looking for these opportunities.”
A Needed Update
Auto Hauler Exchange is focused on digitizing the carrier and shipper experience to allow business on both sides of the engagement to operate using what Neubauer called, “the most efficient and optimized system in the vehicle logistics space.”
“Vehicle logistics processes are very dated and fragmented,” he said, “so we did our research, we discovered what issues shippers were dealing with, what issues auto haulers were dealing with. And the feedback was interesting because they were both dealing with the same issues. Things were fragmented, things were disjointed, the businesses couldn’t connect together.”
PYMNTS has previously covered how aging systems can turn key B2B interactions into major headaches, and how next generation software tools and other technological advances are increasingly being leaned on for seamless vendor engagements across industries.
“At the end of the day, we’re taking a lot of the administrative tasks out of the [B2B] process and eliminating some wasteful human touches that we can digitize,” Neubauer said. “You know, we’re going to procure the carriers digitally, we’re going to pay the carriers digitally, and people are going to get one bill at the end of the week because we’re allowing them to just deal with one vendor partner.”
Auto Hauler Exchange pays businesses using the platform on their own terms, enabling them to receive payments in as little as 48 hours after all documents have been uploaded into the system.
Digitized operations that require less manpower are all built into the exchange’s platform, helping streamline operations with automation capabilities that allow shippers to instantly track their deliveries in real time through the integrated Transportation Management System (TMS). For their part, carriers can pick and choose which opportunities fit their routing on a day-by-day basis to maximize capacity and eliminate empty miles, while simultaneously allowing them to plan their backhauls in advance.
“We enable shippers to market their opportunities directly to carriers, and we also enable carriers to embrace opportunities directly from large-scale shippers that they would not normally see,” the CEO said. “Shipping fees are lower with no middleman markup, and carriers see higher profitability with shipper direct pricing for both single and full truck loads.”
Auto Hauler Exchange is not trying to eliminate any existing partnerships, Neubauer emphasized. Instead, he sees the new digital marketplace as a value-add for those shippers that have additional opportunities.
By the Industry, for the Industry
“Our biggest mission in this is allowing the carrier more opportunities to maximize their capacity, to create route optimization, and to try to attract more drivers back to an industry that I think is the most specialized in all of supply chain,” Neubauer said. “You know, this space is going to be one of the last to go autonomous, and we’re going to need more drivers down the line than we have today. So we’re trying to build an ecosystem that attracts and supports that.”
He adds that the industry overall is a space that’s ripe for technology growth.
“You’re hearing more and more conversation about building efficiencies through technology, building transparency through technology, creating ecosystems that allow carrier and shipper to operate much more collaboratively. The Auto Hauler Exchange hopes to be at the forefront of that growth,” Neubauer said.
As for his biggest challenge so far in launching the marketplace?
“Technology is hard to build,” Neubauer told PYMNTS. “Truly creating a digitized, efficient product where we bring together multiple partners, multiple layers of technology, it has been a learning curve — but it’s also been one of the coolest parts of this journey, seeing that collaborative process come together to build something that we feel is going to be an industry changer and socializing the ‘why’ behind it, to great feedback. It’s all been very rewarding.”