What are the operating models of online freight platforms?

The operation models of online freight platforms are divided into three categories: 1. Cargo control type, which is characterized by the platform itself being the owner or supplier of goods and controlling the distribution rights of logistics orders. 2. Open type. This type of platform is neither a cargo owner nor a transportation capacity supplier. Instead, it focuses on the effective matching between cargo owners and transportation capacity. It is a pure third-party enterprise that is open to the overall market and accepts natural competition. 3. Service-oriented, characterized by multiple business lines running in parallel. In addition to vehicle-cargo matching, the profit model mainly comes from providing customers with SaaS support, application qualifications, tax compliance, finance, fuel cards, ETC and other logistics services.

The operating environment of this tutorial: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

Simply put, online freight is to efficiently integrate a large number of cargo owners, drivers and other logistics resources through the Internet platform, and formulate and plan according to the needs of cargo owners based on digital technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence. Produce scientific and reasonable logistics solutions to solve problems such as capacity scheduling, order tracking, vehicle management, in-transit supervision, transaction certificates, freight settlement, credit evaluation and other issues in the transportation process. For online freight platforms, operations are the core. Through "operations", they can improve customer stickiness, provide value to customers in exchange for value, and establish market positioning.

The operation model of the online freight platform is mainly divided into three categories: cargo control type, open type and service type

1. Cargo-controlled online freight platform

The characteristic of the cargo-controlled platform is that the platform itself is the owner or supplier of goods, and controls the distribution of logistics orders. Under cost pressure, cargo owners need to look for transportation resources in society to expand the transportation pool and reduce the procurement cost of transportation capacity. Typical ones are contract logistics, bulk platforms, and e-commerce platforms.

1) Contract logistics companies: Sinotrans, Ande, Yizhan.com, Shensi, Xinjie, Datian, Daen

Internet freight services for contract logistics Platforms are mostly subsidiaries incubated by contract logistics companies themselves. Typical representative companies such as Sinotrans, Ande, Yizhan.com, Shensi, Xinjie, Datian, Dayen, Rongqing, etc. are all early pilot companies for car-free carriers. The original intention of establishing this type of platform is to solve the logistics problems of the company's own business.

Each contract logistics company has its own transport capacity pool, which is generally composed of three categories: self-owned vehicles, affiliated vehicles and long-term cooperation with transport capacity suppliers. The scale is quite limited, and the good and bad are mixed, making it difficult to meet the various needs of the enterprise. Capacity requirements. The significance of building a platform is to expand the boundaries of the capacity pool. By using the public capacity pool (social capacity), we can continuously add better and cheaper capacity into our own capacity pool to form stable and long-term capacity for our own use and reduce the cost of transportation. .

As shown in the figure above, it represents the capacity resource pool. The yellow area represents several costs of a closed environment, and the blue area represents all social resources. It can be clearly seen from the figure that socialized resource costs are lower.

The problem is that when management resources change from a closed environment to an open environment, the enterprise's sourcing costs and management costs will increase significantly. Therefore, with the support of the Internet and technology, by building an online freight platform, it is possible to reduce management costs to the difference between the optimal solutions of closed and open, and greatly enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.

2) Bulk/hazardous chemicals: Huoda, Shide Modern, Anda, Yunyou, Yuanmai, Jingbo, Qingdao Port

Most bulk companies The platforms invested and established have all participated in the car-free carrier pilot. Representative companies include: Huoda Logistics and Shide Modern in the coal industry; Anda Logistics and Yunyou Logistics in the steel industry; Yeyuanmai Logistics in the power industry; and Hazardous Chemicals industry. Jingbo Logistics; port enterprise Qingdao Port Logistics, etc.

There is a big difference between the transportation of bulk and hazardous chemicals and the transportation of general cargo. The source of goods transported in bulk is mainly "black goods", that is, coal, steel, ore, grain, petroleum, etc., while the transportation of hazardous chemicals is mostly flammable, explosive, and highly corrosive chemicals, and requires dedicated personnel and vehicles to transport them. .

In terms of logistics management, most of the bulk transportation industry is relatively primitive. Take the coal market in Yulin, Shanxi, as an example. Yulin has a total of 100,000 coal trucks responsible for transporting 60% of the city's coal, of which more than 80% are individual drivers. Nearly 10,000 coal trucks are exported every day; and distribution mainly relies on There are more than 500 private "information departments", the transportation capacity organization is very inefficient, and it is difficult to issue invoices.

To build an online freight platform, firstly, it can manage and integrate transportation capacity and realize the supervision of individual drivers; secondly, it can realize digitization and break up the information barriers between cargo owners, traders, drivers, and cargo and freight rates; The third is to solve tax problems, help drivers issue invoices, and achieve localized settlement.

3) E-commerce: Jingyi Trucks (JD Logistics), Suning Logistics

In 2019, domestic online retail sales of physical goods reached 8.5 trillion yuan, accounting for 8.6% of GDP. Nowadays, e-commerce platforms have become one of the important channels for business flow and handle a large number of logistics orders. Among them, the logistics costs of large cargo owners such as JD.com and Suning include not only the express delivery fees to reach end consumers, but also the trunk and branch lines and warehouses between multiple nodes such as front-end manufacturer warehouses, dealer warehouses, e-commerce warehouses, and stores. Internal logistics costs. Logically, capacity integration also applies to e-commerce platforms.

In 2020, Jingyi Online Freight Platform (Jingyi Trucks for short), a subsidiary of JD Logistics, officially debuted. In fact, as early as September 2019, Jingyi APP was launched in a low-key manner and currently has more than 30,000 registered drivers. Similar to contract logistics companies, e-commerce platforms hope to integrate existing transport capacity suppliers and other scattered social transport resources through platform means to optimize their own transport capacity pool. In addition, Jingyi Trucks will also get involved in the after-sales service industry and create products and services around the living and production environment of truck drivers.

But at present, this type of enterprise is still in the early stages of development, and the profit model is not yet mature.

2. Open network freight platform

The open platform is neither a cargo owner nor a capacity provider, but focuses on the relationship between cargo owners and The effective matching of transportation capacity is a pure third-party enterprise that is open to the overall market and accepts natural competition. It can be divided into three types: matching type, carrier type, and professional type.

Among them, the matching type mainly focuses on temporary vehicle orders and tends to do information matching. The platform itself does not participate in the logistics process; the value is to reduce the transaction costs of cargo owners and drivers. The carrier type mainly focuses on planned vehicle orders and tends to be the carrier itself; the value is to reduce transportation costs through management. The professional type focuses on special markets, such as energy refining, port distribution, or local and regional transportation capacity integration.

1) Representative company of the matching type: Manbang

Currently, the matching vehicle platform has come to an end, and the representative company is Manbang Group. Guiyang Wagonbang Technology Co., Ltd. and Jiangsu Manyun Software Technology Co., Ltd. were both pilot companies for vehicle-free carriers earlier. After the merger of the two, Manbang became the largest vehicle platform at present, with a total number of users (drivers and cargo owners) of nearly 10 million. The annual turnover is 800 billion yuan, and the market valuation is nearly 10 billion US dollars.

The birth of the matching platform solved the problem of matching vehicle and cargo information, improved logistics efficiency, and accelerated the development of informatization and digitalization in the logistics industry.

2) Representative enterprise of carrier type: Fuyou Truck

The carrier platform focuses on the carrier itself, with representative enterprises such as Fuyou Truck. The business is mainly based on planned complete vehicles, such as express delivery and express trunk line outsourcing business. The business cycle is long, but the transportation time and routes are relatively fixed, and the requirements for transportation quality are relatively high.

In 2019, Fuyou made some adjustments to its overall strategy. The "Information Department" was removed from the operating model, and Fuyou directly managed the vehicles. This move refines the granularity of management to the level of individual drivers, further strengthening the transportation capacity. But for Fuyou, management pressure has also increased.

3) Professional representative enterprises: Kuaicheng, Lahuobao, Didi Consolidation, Qiatu, Wuyuntong

The characteristic of professional platforms is to make differences Transform competition and focus on certain regions or special industries. Among them, representative companies include: Lahuobao, which serves the energy and hazardous chemicals industry, is backed by Shandong Refining and Chemical Energy Group, and is mainly engaged in bulk dangerous goods transportation in Shandong region; Didi Container Line, which serves the container transportation industry, is mainly engaged in Tianjin Container logistics business in and around the port; Shanxi Kuaicheng mainly deals with the circulation of bulk commodities, such as coal, new energy, etc.; Qiatu and Wuyuntong serve local dedicated lines and outlets and integrate transportation capacity within the region.

3. Service-oriented online freight platform

# The service-oriented online freight platform is characterized by multiple business lines running in parallel, and the profit model is in addition to transportation and matching. In addition to business, it mainly provides customers with a variety of services such as online freight SaaS systems, qualification declarations, tax compliance, logistics finance, fuel cards, and ETC.

1) Park type: Chuanhua, Kaxingtianxia, ​​Tiandihui, Black Panther

The entry point of the park type platform is to have its own logistics park, representing the enterprise Such as Chuanhua, Kaxingtianxia, ​​Black Panther, Tiandihui, etc. This type of platform uses its own resource advantages to directly serve dedicated line enterprises in the park.

Take Chuanhua as an example. It has a very good offline foundation and has established Chuanhua in Shenyang, Harbin, Jinan, Hangzhou, Changsha, Zunyi, Chengdu, Chongqing, Fujian, Guiyang and other places across the country. Highway port. After the platform is established, it can quickly convert dedicated line companies in the park into customers, provide them with transportation capacity services, and solve tax compliance issues.

2) Technology type: CCCC Xinglu, G7 ”, it is a typical technological platform that uses vehicle-mounted sensors, GPS, SaaS support, big data, Internet of Vehicles and other logistics technology products to empower logistics companies with technology.

In terms of business, they are equipment suppliers to major logistics companies. They also have a large amount of underlying transportation capacity data, which can help customers build data interfaces and systems. In addition, they can also use big data advantages and risk control capabilities to break into logistics finance. , insurance, etc.

3) Comprehensive type: Luge, Symbiosis, Wurun Shipping Alliance

Representative companies of the comprehensive platform include Luge, Symbiosis, Wurun Shipping Alliance, etc. The main business of this type of enterprise is not only to solve the logistics needs of large and small cargo owners, logistics companies, and truck drivers, but also to provide customers with comprehensive services such as tax compliance, financial insurance, after-car services, and assistance in applying for qualifications for online freight platforms.

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