Working On Making Trucking Industry Better. Need Your Help - Looking For Answers And Opinions.

I don't put a whole lot into Yelp. I think it's a false analogy to use Yelp, a place to visit for a meal, and your product, apparently a tool to use for a driver to base a decision on whether or not to take a load (if they even have that option w/ their company) in order to make some money. To me, the ability to choose whether or not to take a load, is definitely something that could make your idea "nonsense," as you put it.

Maybe you can sell your idea to O/O. Best of luck.

Thank you

Sorry Anton, you caught me on a day when I'm feeling a bit ornery and argumentative. I honestly don't see the business magic in your idea, at least in how you first presented it and then argued for it, but what does that matter? It's your idea.

Sorry Anton, you caught me on a day when I'm feeling a bit ornery and argumentative. I honestly don't see the business magic in your idea, at least in how you first presented it and then argued for it, but what does that matter? It's your idea.

I appreciate your thoughts, 6 string rhythm. I am here to present idea and listen to any feedback I can get. By arguing I am trying to explain idea from other angle and see if it makes sense to you.

Sorry Anton, you caught me on a day when I'm feeling a bit ornery and argumentative. I honestly don't see the business magic in your idea, at least in how you first presented it and then argued for it, but what does that matter? It's your idea.

I appreciate your thoughts, 6 string rhythm. I am here to present idea and listen to any feedback I can get. By arguing I am trying to explain idea from other angle and see if it makes sense to you.

Perhaps I wasn't understanding your idea as you intended to portray it.

I don't put a whole lot into Yelp. I think it's a false analogy to use Yelp, a place to visit for a meal, and your product, apparently a tool to use for a driver to base a decision on whether or not to take a load (if they even have that option w/ their company) in order to make some money. To me, the ability to choose whether or not to take a load, is definitely something that could make your idea "nonsense," as you put it.

Maybe you can sell your idea to O/O. Best of luck.

I would think that if you knew that a certain shipper/receiver had a reputation of delays, it would help in because you could factor the delay in your pre-plans, and since you expected it then you wouldn't be so impatient/frustrated. Just a thought!!!

I don't put a whole lot into Yelp. I think it's a false analogy to use Yelp, a place to visit for a meal, and your product, apparently a tool to use for a driver to base a decision on whether or not to take a load (if they even have that option w/ their company) in order to make some money. To me, the ability to choose whether or not to take a load, is definitely something that could make your idea "nonsense," as you put it.

Maybe you can sell your idea to O/O. Best of luck.

I would think that if you knew that a certain shipper/receiver had a reputation of delays, it would help in because you could factor the delay in your pre-plans, and since you expected it then you wouldn't be so impatient/frustrated. Just a thought!!!

Yes, thank you Serah, great thought! Less unknown, less stress, better planning.

Hey Anton, I am starting to get a better picture of where you are going with this. I am intrigued. I still wonder about OPSEC (OPerational SECurity though. Maybe I`m over thinking it.

I don't care if you make a million dollars off this info or use to to wall paper the white house. Either way it's no big deal. Your going to be dealing with truck driver opinions. And you might get some facts but they will be colored by the opinions of the person you are talking to.

One of the number one complaints of all or almost all refer drivers is any and all Walmart dc's is wait time. Now you ask someone that actually knows how Walmart dc's work and I will tell you it's not that bad. Sure the wait times can be long but most trucks come in with 2k to 3k of different products and Walmart wants to make sure it's all there and the got what they paid for. Can't blame them. Hence the long times. So no I don't thing it's that bad.

You have millions of businesses trucks delivery to everyday. And yes I said millions. Even if you could get around the issues of people giving you opinion versus fact how would you go about even getting a quarter of them?

Here is another issue. We have all been to the same places time and time again. Or we know other people that have. We talk to each other about places and share what we know. Whether you do a book or website or whatever form of media you will use how will you make your products so much better than actually talking to our peers about this info?

How would you market it to make people want to spend money on it verses turning on the cab radio and getting that info for free?

We already have apps on our phones that do this sort of thing you are speaking about. We have truck stop apps to rate truck stops. Yelp is a awesome app to read how other people rated a place. There are tons of rating and opinion giving website that are with in reach of our fingers on our smart phones.

I know this is not what you wanted coming here but I felt you needed to know what your up against.

We say here on this website all to offer that one person's experience is theirs alone and it will not be the same for anyone else. A prefect example. I drive for Werner. Hardly anyone has anything good to say about them but I happen to think they are an awesome company to drive for. I get more than enough miles and some I can't do which is a good problem to have. Excellent insurance. Great equipment. Great support staff. But then again that is my opinion based only on my personal experience.

Now if your going to base your research off of truck drivers opinions and views..... Well good luck cause there are about 3.5 million drivers and you will never hear the same view on a subject more than once.

Well however you plan to market it I wish you good luck and perhaps we shall see this project of yours in a few years.

I had thought of this same idea myself a while back but I haven't tried to execute on it. I figured I could use crowdsourcing (drivers entering information) to get directions, hours of operation, and comments on things like which entry to pull into, whether or not they have overnight parking, are they appointment only or first come first serve, and things like that.

The main challenges I thought of were:

1) The scale - this would be a massive amount of information to collect. Even with a rather large army of drivers it would take a considerable amount of time before you had enough information for the app to be helpful. It could take years.

2) Unmoderated user feedback from the general population is complete junk. You would have to verify every piece of information that came in because inaccuracies would make it useless. So this would require heavy moderation.

3) The major trucking companies already have this. They have directions to their customers, comments, hours of operations, and all sorts of information in their systems already. But there are still plenty of drivers on the road without this at their company.

4) Drivers have access to so much already for free on the Web with Google Maps, business directories, existing apps, and the like.

The scale is the main problem. I just don't know how you'd get enough shippers and receivers into the system with quality information that people find helpful and can't find easily anywhere else. It's certainly not an impossible task, but from a business standpoint I don't see how you'd make money from it. You can't consider selling the app until the app has a great reputation and it won't have a great reputation until it's filled with useful information. So how do you get the information in there in the first place? You'd have to hire an army of drivers to take your blank slate and start filling it in. That will either take years to pull off or a really large up front investment to pay everyone. Sure, you can fill in the basics from business directories to get the ball rolling but that isn't helpful, unique information. So all it would be is a Phone Book in the beginning. You couldn't even release that publicly because it would get slammed by low ratings.

I don't know man.....this would be a tough one from a business standpoint. It would likely take years to build it into something really effective and it would take a huge pile of time and money. If done really well it would be incredibly helpful. But getting it built up to that point would be challenging.

It would be an interesting resource. But one other problem I thought of. People love to share the bad about companies, but aren't as quick to share the good.

One shipper I've been to several times isn't a bad place to go. But recently they started reworking their shipping and receiving operations. During that time, they shut down half of their docks. So when you came in to get loaded, you'd have to wait 6-8 hours to get loaded. As of Monday, all the docks are open again. But during the time the docks were closed, they would have been slammed with bad ratings from drivers. It would take a long time before the feedback accurately reflected the company.