First the bad news: According to Gregg Troian, president and CEO of Quadrivius Inc., holding company for eflatbed.com, freight is off anywhere from 15 to 30 percent from last year on an individual shipper comparison.
The good news: eflatbed.com volume is growing nicely.
Explanation: Another Quadrivius company, Pittsburgh Logistics, is moving existing client traffic onto the web at eflatbed.com.
Pittsburgh Logistics is a decade-old third-party logistics company with deep roots in the U.S. metals industry and the flatbed trucking community. On May 5, 2000, Pittsburgh Logistics launched eflatbed.com, which Troian describes as the only web-based service dedicated exclusively to flatbed trucking.
The site functions in two ways, he explained. It offers a spot market for flatbed loads, most involving shipments of steel and other metal products. But eflatbed.com is also replacing Pittsburgh Logistics' legacy system for handling the buying and selling of transportation.
"Any carriers who have contracted with Pittsburgh Logistics, who have daily commitments, must pick their commitments from the site, schedule their trucks through the site and indicate that delivery has been made through the site," said Troian. "So all that activity is done over the site. No faxes. No phones."
At launch eflatbed.com handled about 500 loads a day. Troian said the total is now 2,000 loads on a slow day and as many as 4,000 on a busy day.
The web site has had an influence on the company at large. Troian said eflatbed.com has expanded the company's vision beyond the metals industry.
"We've opened doors in other commodities that utilize flatbed," he said.
But it isn't an easy sell. The once metal-oriented company must learn the concerns of unfamiliar industries.
"In the steel industry, we're pretty well accepted as the leader in third-party logistics. We have a way to go in lumber and building products," Troian said.
Nevertheless, traffic is growing. Truckers "come into the site, see a map of the U.S., click on a state where equipment is and start to do sorts to find loads," he said.
"There is about 20 to 25 percent of our activity going through the site right now, but in the next 60 days we expect to be at about 90 percent. I think that our volume will probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 loads a day," said Troian.
Troian, a former dispatcher, said the large volume of loads on eflatbed.com makes the site attractive to carriers. It can also save small carriers the cost of regional salesmen or agents, he said.
Troian said that eflatbed.com earns money a number of ways, one of which is transaction fees. But flatbed carriers can still use the site for free.
"I would say that at some point in time that will change, but now we're not charging carriers anything," said Troian.
What's in eflatbed.com's future?
"We're not a bunch of guys who created an Internet site, who have to go out and find loads to put on it, then find trucks to come to it. We already have those," said Troian. "That's why we're still here and we're going to be here."
