Who wants to cargopool?

Airhunters is a young company from Velp, Gelderland, that does exactly what the company name says: hunt for air. Air in trailers that is, because the 85 percent load factor of trucks is an eyesore for entrepreneurs Erik Roelevink and Hans van Wieringen. “Cargopoolen offers solution and benefit for shipper and carrier, but also for the environment.”

When we have been sitting at the table for an hour, Erik Roelevink leans forward. “Do you know where the name airhunters actually comes from? From Ikea. There, a special department is working to make transport as efficient as possible. That’s why all those boxes are so flat and the mattresses are packed together on a roll!”

no feeling

Erik Roelevink and companion Hans van Wieringen both have a rich past in the transportation business. They eventually met at Wim Bosman in ‘s-Heerenberg. Why start a new company between the two of them when you work at one of the largest transport companies in the Netherlands? “You say that well,” Roelevink responds adroitly, “big transporter. The transportation industry is getting bigger and bigger through acquisitions. Mega companies are emerging where management has long since lost touch with the customer, with the shipper. They are constantly meeting, meeting targets, meeting KPIs. The larger transport companies today are production machines: there is no creativity and no personal attention for the customer. I wasn’t having fun with that myself anymore.” Van Wieringen complements him: “At one of my previous employers, I was 80 percent occupied with rot: damages, violations, sick leave. I was only 20 percent occupied with the customer. So I felt I got way too far away from the core of my work.”

awesome

Late last year, airhunters was born. The company is grafted onto a fact with which basically everyone in the transportation industry is familiar: the load factor of a truck or trailer is almost never one hundred percent. “On average, every single trailer or truck is missing at least 15 percent of cargo,” Van Wieringen outlines. “That’s crazy, of course. Our experience is that transport companies take that as a given; they don’t actively go out to get that trailer full. That’s where we jumped in: after all, there are plenty of shippers with small shipments. Those small shipments fit perfectly into the cargo space still available.” But there are already numerous freight databases, such as Teleroute or Timocom, right? “That’s right,” Roelevink replies, “but as a shipper you are not or not always welcome there.”

At Bekker Transport, plastic tubes are loaded on top of pallets.

sell no

To offer shippers transportation space, it is necessary to have as extensive a network as possible. That is something Roelevink and Van Wieringen have amply built up in their careers. “We have a network of some 50 carriers, who themselves have many connections. That’s important, because I don’t like selling no. I just don’t do that,” says Van Wieringen. “How exactly does an order work? OK, I’ll give an example. Recently a Spanish client called us, who wanted to have a shipment transported from Poland to La Coruna in northern Spain. We dived into our network, thought, maybe consulted for a moment, and then we ended up with a transport company that is a Portugal specialist. They were excellent at delivering the shipment on the road to Portugal. Shipper happy, transporter happy. It’s really quite simple.” Airhunters says it works with an all-in price, but is careful to mention rates. Roelevink: “That also varies per transport, of course. The thing is, we can take care of an ad hoc shipment, but we can also rearrange a fixed route and make it more efficient. By the way, we look at various modalities, including rail or air freight, if that offers a possibility. But so it’s not so much about rates, about making money, but about providing a solution for our customers. That’s easier than you think. The transport company has to drive anyway, it is happy with some extra income and the shipper is happy with his fast transport solution. We also get our margin. The bottom line is efficient transport. Moreover, not only does the load factor of the transport go up, but the CO2 emissions go down significantly if there is less traffic for the same transport of goods!”

demand-driven

The network of airhunters seems to benefit from the widest possible reach. Can transport companies, perhaps readers of TTM.co.uk, sign up with airhunters? Roelevink and Van Wieringen look doubtful. “We work from the demand side and then work toward a solution. So far, that’s been working extremely well. We also prefer to work with smaller transport companies with fleets of twenty to fifty cars, because personal contact is super important in arranging the right ride and the right deal. That means quick and direct contact with planners and possibly drivers. This work is often ad hoc, so cell phones are used almost exclusively. It really doesn’t make sense to call a transport company’s landline number in the evening, or as happened the other day on Whit Monday. It’s important to be close, personal contact works best.”

on top of

For that reason, Roelevink and Van Wieringen have also already made several “business trips” to transport companies at home and abroad. Van Wieringen: “One of our customers wanted to transport pipes to Germany on a regular basis. Not too thick, plastic pipes. Through our network, we came into contact with Bekker Transport in Emmerich. They drove to the same places where our customer also had his deliveries, so we were able to hitch a ride by placing the pipes on top of his pallets. Those plastic tubes from our customer were still fine on top of that.”

greater return

However you look at it, the concept of airhunters is simple: find the space in the trailer and use it to its full potential. Why didn’t such a concept get off the ground sooner? Roelevink: “The reason lies in the attitude of many transport companies. They focus purely on their most important task: transport. Really be a logistics service provider, with the emphasis on service. Once again: there is so much incredible potential in this load factor. Go figure: suppose you don’t even get that fully, but you do get it up 10 percent. That means an efficiency and also profitability improvement of 10 percent! That would be an unprecedented development for the Dutch transportation sector!” Airhunters wants to generate sympathy for making trans- port more efficient. Roelevink: “That’s really the goal. Not our own gain. Really not. There are two of us working now, but we shouldn’t get much bigger. Small scale, with personal contact, direct communication with all parties, no difficult contracts or SLAs, only then can we do this work successfully. I also challenge other parties to pick this up and do the same as us. If someone wants to start airhunters in Amsterdam tomorrow, he already has our blessing! Cargopoolen has so much to offer the Dutch transport sector, it should be used widely for maximum effect.”

Text: Arjan Velthoven

TTM, professional transport magazine July 2014