Collaborative logistics and fierce competition

Empty running and half-empty trailers have been a headache for logisticsservice providers for years. It is costly and time consuming as well as a cause of unnecessary emissions, congestion and air pollution.Despite numerous attempts involving new technology, company mergers and ad-hoc collaboration between competitors, empty running still presents a major challenge for the business as well as for the environment.In 2016, a group of researchers and industry professionals gathered to develop a system that automates the ad-hoc collaboration by matching available goods and excess capacity - we call it the DiRECTLY system. However, doing this in practice was far from straightforward.This book is about the DiRECTLY project - a project that ended up not only being about collaborative logistics, but also about how to advance the roadfreight industry through new technology.