For truckload carriers, Nistevo must seem like a good country club. It's probably a great place to network, but you can't get in without an invitation.

Shippers can join Nistevo; carriers can only join if a shipper brings them in.
A shipper joins Nistevo for the logistics magic the Minneapolis startup claims to perform. A carrier must be on a member shipper's preferred list of contracted carriers.
What's the big draw?
Nistevo Corp. brings an intriguing twist to the familiar claims of efficiency and savings through web-based logistics.
Yes, Nistevo will offer online communities of shippers and contracted carriers, electronic transactions, full EDI integration for corporate users and a simple web browser interface for the less sophisticated participants. Yes, they'll reduce phone and fax expense, but they'll do something no one else out there is doing: They'll optimize traffic lanes collectively, across corporate lines.
That means members provide pertinent traffic lane information. Nistevo analyzes the combined data from all participating companies and recommends areas of collaboration that can keep carrier trucks full, increase efficiency and cut costs.
In the simplest example, Nistevo can find one-way moves that complement each other. One company's traffic from Illinois to Southern California may correspond to another's from Wisconsin to a different point in Southern California. Combining the two greatly reduces carrier exposure to empty miles and lowers costs. In more complex scenarios, circular moves suggest themselves as patterns appear across various corporate landscapes.
All collaboration is restricted to specific shipper communities within Nistevo. Members get to say with whom they will and will not collaborate, though it is entirely possible for store-shelf competitors to cooperate in the logistics arena.
According to Rick Parker, Nistevo's executive vice president for marketing, Nistevo takes care to assure that logistics collaboration does not approach the realm of anti-trust collusion. He also said no one else offers this level of inter-corporate logistics cooperation.
Parker said there are currently two customers live on Nistevo, rivals General Mills and Pillsbury. Seventeen other customers are in the enrollment planning stages. They include corporate giants Coca Cola, Nabisco and Nestle as well as Agilent, a technology spin-off of Hewlett-Packard.
While individual carriers cannot join on their own, Nistevo hopes they urge their current shippers to join.
Nistevo charges contracted carriers who come aboard $1,000 a year, but in most cases the fee will be paid by the relevant shipper.
The broader Nistevo network is expected to go live about mid-year.