Dive Brief:
- Ryder's foray into the sharing economy took another step Thursday as the company announced it would expand COOP by Ryder, its truck- and trailer-sharing platform, to Florida.
- "COOP allows fleet owners to safely generate revenue by sharing idle trucks and trailers while providing a new source of rental vehicles from a network of trusted peers," Ryder said in a press release.
- The company launched the platform for the Atlanta metropolitan region in March 2018. In the year that has passed, Ryder claims 300 companies used COOP, generating an average $7,000 since joining the platform.
Dive Insight:
Ryder's decision to expand COOP from a metropolitan-area service to a state-wide one signals two things:
- The pilot in Atlanta was considered a success.
- Conditions in Florida are ripe for further experiments before a potentially nationwide expansion.
In its press release, the company explained Florida is Ryder's home state, it's home to one of the nation's top 10 ports in Miami, and it's suffering "capacity constraints" in trucking. Such pressure creates a market for spare equipment during peak seasons, particularly in states reliant on seasonal markets like tourism and agriculture.
It's an approach similar to Uber Freight, which is also exploring ways to popularize the sharing economy within the trucking industry. In October, Uber Freight launched "Powerloop" — a trailer rental service at designated sites with a shared equipment pool — in Texas, before rolling it out nationwide.
Ryder has not expressed plans to roll COOP out nationwide. It is also a different service from Powerloop. Uber Freight owns the trailer pool that other businesses can rent and share, while Ryder provides the software platform for companies to rent out their own equipment. COOP is closer to AirBnB, in that sense.
Being the service provider behind a new source of revenue for small business owners (in this case, fleet owners) has proven profitable both within the supply chain, and outside it. Convoy, a load-board startup, has raised $265 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Uber, Lyft and Airbnb, meanwhile, are preparing to go public and are reportedly courting multibillion-dollar valuations.
As for Ryder, providing COOP as a service will not only generate an additional source of income for Ryder, but also a potential new stream of users, Rich Mohr, general manager for COOP, told Supply Chain Dive via email.
"Ryder makes a commission off of each transaction on COOP," he said. "It also presents an avenue for non-Ryder customers to explore other Ryder services such as vehicle coverage and maintenance services."
