TRUCK APPS PROLIFERATE

Truck apps have come to increase the efficiency and earning-ability of truckers with the help of IoT and AI.

- Bhushan Mhapralkar

To shift a fowler bed from Mira Road on the outskirts of Mumbai to Bhakti Park in the heart of Mumbai, Vinay hired a Maxximo mini-truck on the Porter app. He paid Rs.1500 for the task. It was approximately 50 per cent less than the Rs.2500 quoted by a Tata Ace operator that operates from his vicinity. For the operator, which ferried the bed, the engagement with Porter app platform for business has turned out to be beneficial. His income has gone up. He now has work coming to him rather than him facing an amount of downtime until a local trader or businessmen would engage his service. Like the Maxximo operator in Mumbai, Rishad Shaikh is happy to have engaged with a trucking app. in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. With a family of four to feed, he has seen his monthly income in the region of Rs.15,000 to Rs.19,000 jump to Rs.35,000 to Rs.40,000 a month. It has nearly doubled for Shaikh.

Looking at what is happening with Shaikh at Lucknow, or the Maxximo operator in Mumbai, a big disruption is being led by the trucking apps. If the income levels of Shaikh have witnessed a dramatic change after being introduced by his fellow operator friend to a voice-assisted multilingual trucking app, a clear disruption is playing out in the CV space; in the small CV space especially. It is more pronounced in the last mile connectivity segment. Apart from Porter, an app called BlackBuck is finding many takers. It is offered by a Bengaluru-based logistics firm, BlackBuck, and aimed squarely at the drivers. It is designed and engineered to improve the earnings of thousands of truckers by capturing and analysing data. Tapping a host of technologies, including telematics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT), the app. is enabling truck drivers an opportunity to improve their uptime.