According to public data, in 2020, the national heavy truck sales reached 1.62 million units, a new high. A large number of groups have flooded into the market, ushering in explosive growth in capacity.

The background environment for this high growth is that in the past when the Internet economy reshaped traditional industries, Internet platforms such as online freight platforms have changed the inefficient offline transactions and opaque information communication models in the past through digital methods. Let the logistics industry bid farewell to the "small blackboard" era.

During this process, the platform has changed the logistics industry in at least three dimensions:

1) Lower barriers to entry

Under the cover of the platform, flexible employment becomes possible and financial leasing has a grasp. Catalyzed by these factors, the entry threshold for individual drivers has been lowered to a certain extent, allowing individual practitioners like Xiaobai to have more opportunities when doing business. Many choices.

2) Information is more transparent

The Internet platform enables shippers to find drivers directly through an online and transparent approach.

"In the beginning, we didn't form trust with the platform. Until 2020, I bought some steel from Tianjin. The freight for shunting cars from outside is relatively expensive. After trying to use the online freight platform, I found that I can communicate directly with the driver without middlemen. The price reduction can not only give the driver a satisfactory price, but also save transportation costs. For more than 30 trucks of steel, the transportation cost savings are very considerable." Some shippers reported.

3) Promote industry digitization

The platform is transforming from a business tool to a management tool.

Many shippers have an annual transportation cost of millions of yuan. The efficient performance of the transportation link is related to the process and cost management of their main business. This means that shunting is the basic requirement for their choice of platform. Management issues involving coordination with the main business such as in-transit visibility, exception handling, settlement and invoicing, etc. are the key.

And this also explains why the digital freight platform has achieved the same goal by different routes in recent years. In the past, platforms serving large customers also began to enter the small and medium-sized customer market, and platforms that took small and medium-sized temporary car demand as the entry point also began to slowly penetrate the planned car demand of large customers.