Behind the incident of pulling goods, the war of freight transportation in the same city came quietly.

Since 20 14 Internet companies entered this market, freight transportation in the same city has quietly launched a protracted war on the edge of the Internet.

Before 20 14 internet companies entered the market, the freight market in the same city was in a state of disorder for a long time.

On the one hand, due to low frequency and natural irregularities, the price system in this market is extremely opaque, and the phenomenon of arbitrary charges and cheating customers is very common. Some customers who don't understand business are often slaughtered by black-hearted drivers, and they can only suffer from dumb losses when defending their rights; On the other hand, drivers have long relied on geographical gathering, acquaintance introduction, small advertisements and other ways to take orders, and the information matching efficiency is very low. In order to attract customers, some new drivers often take the initiative to cut prices, which eventually leads to a price war between drivers, and both lose.

Around 20 13 years ago, there was an "O2O wave" in China. After seeing the rapid rise of Didi in the online car passenger transport market, some entrepreneurs also set their eyes on the big cake of the freight market.

So in 20 14, more than 300 companies, such as Cargo Lala, 58 Express, No.1 Truck, 1 Cargo Lala, Express Easy and Blue Rhino, were born one after another, and the application of vehicle-cargo matching went online, and the Hundred Regiments War of "Internet plus Freight" officially started.

However, four years later, in 20 18, with the coming of capital winter, the upsurge of online to offline gradually receded, and there were almost only two big players left in the same city freight market on the Internet, namely the freight girl who occupied half of the country and the fast dog who occupied 20% to 30% of the share.

Cargo Lala was originally a Hong Kong company founded by Zhou. She graduated from the Economics Department of Stanford University and worked as a professional gambler for eight years, specializing in Texas Hold 'em. Rumor has it that her initial venture capital was won back from the poker table. EasyVan was founded in Hong Kong on October 20 13, and then its business expanded to Southeast Asia. On October 20 14, it entered the mainland and changed its name to Lalamove.

After entering the mainland, Lala mainly focused on the C-end market and quickly gained a foothold in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in South China. When the original model was not recognized by the driver, the product director with a strong sense of Jianghu personally left the scene to have a good relationship with the truck driver, and the food stalls in Guangzhou and Shenzhen often saw them drinking and chatting.

The rapid development of cargo Lala was quickly favored by capital and expanded rapidly with the blessing of capital. In 20 15, after obtaining two rounds of financing of $0/0 million, Lala expanded her business to several core cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Foshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Zhongshan and Nanjing, and the number of orders in 20 17 exceeded 10 million.

Up to today, Lala has obtained eight rounds of financing, the latest two rounds occurred in 65438+ last February and 65438+ this year 10, with a total financing of more than 2 billion US dollars. The business scope covers 352 cities in Chinese mainland, with 480,000 monthly drivers and more than 7.2 million monthly users.

Another player's predecessor, Fast Dog Taxi, is 58 Express under 58 City. In 20 14, 58 Express, which was also born in the O2O freight wave, quickly cut into the C-end market and provided short-distance freight transportation services such as moving and pulling goods, relying on the resources and experience of 58 cities. In 20 18, it was renamed "Fast Dog Taxi", and now its business has covered over 20 million users in 346 cities in 6 countries and regions, with more than 3.5 million registered drivers on the platform.

According to the report on carpooling trend of freight network in the same city in China in the first half of 20 19 released by Fastdata, during the period of 20 191-April, the market share of freight pulling reached 53.6%, and the second fastest dog took a taxi of 24.6%, and the pattern of "one super and one strong" in internet freight transportation in the same city has been formed.

20 18, the wave of O2O receded, and the market was in a state of sorrow, leaving only cargo cheerleaders and fast dogs taking taxis. However, the victory of the two companies in the "first half" was only temporary. In the "second half", the addition of some new variables made the future of this market uncertain.

The first is the threat brought by the expansion of the border by trunk giants. There are two kinds of road freight, one is intercity freight mainly based on trunk line transportation, and the other is freight pulling, fast dog taxi and other freight in the same city. Different from the coexistence of bulls in the same city freight market, in the internet intercity freight market, Manbang Group, which was formed by the merger of 20 17 years old and truck gangs, is the only one, with a market share of over 90%.

Manbang Group, which won a great victory in the inter-city freight market, quickly focused on intra-city freight, which is not only the necessity of business expansion, but also the continuation of its advantages. In 2020, Manbang first acquired the provincial turn-back car to make up for its short-board freight in the same city, and then raised1700 million US dollars, announcing the comprehensive iterative upgrade of the "Manbang" brand and fully entering the freight market in the same city.

Man Gang, rich in funds and rich in experience, is an opponent that neither a cargo lesbian nor a fast dog dare to despise. But if he can come, so can I. While buying the provincial return bus, Cargo Lala also launched "Cargo Lala Logistics" to provide cross-city freight services of more than 50KG for individuals and enterprises. The situation that the cargo girl and the Manchu gang were originally outside the river was broken, and both of them tried to grab a large piece of meat on each other's territory.

Then Didi entered the game at the same time. In April 2020, Didi formally established a freight company, and in June, Didi Freight was officially launched. After more than three months, the daily order volume exceeded 65438+ 10,000. The addition of Didi is largely to explore new profit points. After all, its core business, network car service, was in a state of loss for a long time, until CEO Liu Qingcai 20 19 announced that the network car service realized a small profit.

Didi, with sufficient ammunition, sacrificed its best subsidy tactics as soon as it entered the game, exempting new drivers from the service fee for joining the platform, and offering rewards according to the number of orders received by drivers. The more they receive, the more prizes they win. In addition, online subsidies are provided for core markets. Drivers can get rewards even if they don't take orders as long as they park in a specific area.

Although it is "injuring the enemy by 10,000 and damaging the enemy by 8,000", the subsidy tactics are indeed effective. Only one month after the opening of the city, the daily order volume of Didi Freight in Shanghai exceeded 25,000. By mid-September, the order volume of the first batch of eight pilot cities exceeded 6,543.8+10,000.

Once the subsidy war starts, other players can only follow up. On February 3rd, the "20021New Year Festival Data Report" released by Cargo Lala showed that from June 5438+1October 1 1 to February 2nd, Cargo Lala attracted more than 500,000 drivers and 6.5 million ordering users through subsidies of 654.38 billion yuan.

In addition, SF Express, a well-prepared express delivery giant, coveted the freight market in the same city for a long time, also got the Network Freight Road Transportation Business License two months ago. For a time, new and old players gathered at the Internet freight track in the same city, and a fierce war was on the verge.

However, even if new and old players and giants are gathered, the current Internet freight in the same city is still a blue ocean market to be excavated and transformed.

According to the data of Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, the freight volume in the same city in China has continuously increased from 20 14 to 20 19, and from15.5 billion tons to 2.05 billion tons. At the same time, in 20 19, the scale of China LTL freight market will be 1. 1 trillion, and it will reach 1.45 trillion in 2020.

The TOP 10 enterprises in this industry add up, and the market share is less than 5%, which means that this same-city freight transportation is still an industry with a low degree of transformation by the Internet, and more than 90% of the market is still waiting for transformation and excavation.

Behind the blue ocean is not necessarily an opportunity, but also a big pit. At present, there are too many difficulties in this industry that have not been solved.

The first is the standardization of non-standard industries. Whether it is passenger transport or freight transport, its purpose and ideal state are to complete and only complete the location migration of objects in physical space. The seemingly simple process is actually very difficult to implement: in terms of passenger transport, there is society where there are people, and it is easier to breed some dark sides in closed spaces. Before this, Didi was planted at this point, and finally had to invest a lot of resources for supervision.

The standardization of freight transportation is more difficult than passenger transportation, because there are more details and more miscellaneous. The weight of goods is different, and the requirements for vehicles are different. How to formulate a charging standard that both users and drivers can be satisfied with? Can users follow the car, and if so, should monitoring be installed on the car? How to deal with the damage and loss of goods in transit? Is it driver compensation or platform compensation? What standard should compensation be based on? All these questions require enterprises to give a clear and recognized answer.

However, what is more difficult than "setting standards" is how to implement standards.

What many users don't know is that although some platforms force drivers to post their own body advertisements on trucks, the relationship between truck drivers and platforms such as truck drivers and fast dog taxis is closer to the relationship between online car drivers and online car companies, that is, the platform plays an intermediary role in integrating resources and facilitating transactions, and drivers are not directly affiliated with the platform, so the platform's ability to manage drivers is actually very limited, and it is often in an embarrassing situation beyond reach. This is also the core reason why even after the Internet companies entered, they still failed to change the chaos in this industry, such as arbitrary charges and sitting on the ground.

Secondly, the core business model of the industry is still being explored. Cargo Lala adopts membership system. Members are divided into junior, senior and svip, and the price ranges from 299 to 899. When the driver does not join the membership, the number of orders received per day is limited, and the platform will draw a certain amount from it; After joining the membership, the platform will no longer be drawn, and the number of orders will gradually increase with the membership level.

Both the fast dog taxi and the drip freight adopt the billing system, and the platform will charge a certain percentage of information fees in each transaction. Among them, after 20 19, the membership system and the extraction system will be gradually piloted in parallel. However, some drivers are very angry because they still can't get the order after joining the membership. Although Didi Freight regards "low price" as a publicity stunt, some drivers have calculated that the proportion of Didi is actually higher.

Regardless of the membership system or the lottery system, drivers complain that the problems of difficulty in taking orders and low income have not been properly solved, and the platform has been difficult to make profits, so that some people begin to question the rationality of the same-city freight in "internet plus": Does this industry really need Internet companies? Does the Internet platform integrate resources to improve efficiency or increase transaction steps and costs?

Then there is the issue of supervision and safety. The goods jumping incident directly made the public and regulators pay attention to this originally low-key development market. The problem of passengers following the car in the car jump incident is only part of it. The core lies in that most of the online car-related freight is running in the gray area of laws and regulations, because Article 49 of China's Road Traffic Safety Law clearly stipulates that "passenger vehicles are not allowed to carry goods in violation of regulations". In order to save costs, a large number of truck drivers have removed the seats of passenger vans and converted them into trucks to pull goods.

At present, the platform "turns a blind eye" to such violations, because if it is thoroughly investigated, first, the cost is too high, and second, it will directly affect the supply of drivers.

The impact of this trip may be far-reaching. It makes the previously neglected freight safety problems surface, and also warns the new and old players in this industry: don't concentrate on grabbing the market by subsidies and expanding crazily, but think about how to really solve the long-standing problems in the industry, how to truly provide value to users and drivers and improve service quality. This is the real persistence.

The title map comes from Unsplash and is based on CC0 protocol.