Column What worms worms #41
Plaster on a gaping heart wound (LT-manager 1/18)
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and it won't be long before someone comes up with Happy Sunday - bargains at prayer between 10am and 12pm. The greed for consumption is boundless and shows how digitalization meets reality. The wonderful world of online ordering is landing on the streets and giving goods transportation something long thought lost: a seller's market. There is a gold-rush atmosphere and an end to the boom is not in sight for the time being.
The news hits like a bombshell: only 1.5 million truck drivers are still supplying the country, 45,000 too few. Germany's supply is at risk, the economy must prepare for bottlenecks, says the DSLV and calls for a social rethink. "Chassis with drive is enough," said a Daimler technician at the Future Logistics Congress in Dortmund. 24/7 availability, no driver, no cab, no driver shortage, full productivity. It will take a few more generations of drivers before such autonomous daydreams become reality. Mediocre pay, catastrophic parking spaces, recreation rooms and sleeping facilities that you wouldn't expect your dog to have, the lack of minimal manners at many an unloading point are not really an advertisement.
While you ask yourself why the industry tolerates such conditions, images of collapsing just-in-time chains come to mind, Prime could fail, the post could arrive even later, refrigerated shelves could be empty for the festive season. Exaggeration or just the beginning? In any case, the IFH is forecasting a doubling of online retail sales by 2021 and global trade is running at full speed. Continuing like this with more drivers, a little more money and the hope that society will learn to love trucks is like sticking plaster on a gaping heart wound. A lack of harmonization and quality standards, illegal cabotage, national solo efforts - the transport market has long been out of joint.
However, driver shortages and the online boom could also become part of the solution. Logistics is no longer just a cheap vicarious agent of the shipping industry, but a key sector of e-commerce. The industry is currently being presented with a historic opportunity to work on an innovative freight mobility of the future on an equal footing. You just have to do it.
Anita Würmser is a business and logistics journalist, former editor-in-chief of "Verkehrs-Rundschau", "Logistik Heute" and "Logistik inside" and currently initiator of the Logistics Hall of Fame and the IFOY Awards, among other things. In LT-manager, "Mutti", as she respectfully calls the industry, hasn't minced her words exclusively since issue one.
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