Founder and CEO of tech start-up EmptyTrips; Africa’s first smart transport marketplace says she is aware that the introduction of her new transport concept could possibly disrupt the logistics industry as we know it.
Benji Coetzee’s “Filling spaces to places” is a similar concept to that of Uber and Airbnb. It’s based on convenience and inexpensive transport services that pick up goods and take them to a clients destination faster, and cheaper than conventional logistics and road freight services.
“The EmptyTrips concept is based on smart algorithms that match empty trips on trucks, trains and planes, to the demand. This opens up access to cross-border runners using vetted transporters for your transport needs,” Coetzee said.
Logistic often account for a large portion of product and service costs, with transporters often battling with the reality of empty return legs. EmptyTrips has opened up a platform for users to offer their empty trips, find an empty trip from current postings, and request an empty trip as a customer. It aims to bridge the gap for competitive rates, and fill these empty return legs allowing the transporter to recover fees on otherwise empty trips while the customer pays less for transport.
“For too long we have focused on hard infrastructure, when we could be using technology to reduce congestion, delays and assist in our goals of high regional trade.
The on-demand transport service is likely to help with these problems and provide an ease to transporting goods from one place to another.
Transporters and senders of goods can sign-up to www.emptytrips.com. The transporters can bid for cargo needing to be moved and shippers can get competitive open bids. Source: TransportWorldAfrica.com
What Happened to the Portcullis? 
Hi Mike,
We are spending more time in the UK now ⦠we have a home in Hampshire into which we finally moved about 8 weeks ago. We sold our home in Benoni but retained our holiday appt in Ballito as a ZA base. Hope all is well with you ⦠I presume you are still with SARS â¦are you surviving the interminable politics? Regards to all there.
Your mail reminded me that âman-with-a-vanâ services are popular here. I brought over some furniture that my daughter was going to take over. She rang a MWAV service, the goods get picked up by a sub-contractor trawling this area and are taken to a hub. Another MWAV serving my daughterâs area collects all goods from the hub for her area and drops them off, picking up new loads on the way. Kind of an upscaled postal service. Works efficiently and cheaply. New technology-enabled ways of doing business keep on emerging.
Keep well
Peter
Peter Lake
Land line: +44 2393 115601; Mobile +44 7419 989999
Hullo Peter, Thanks for the update. I wish you well in Hampshire. Nice insight into MWAV service. take care. Mike