It’s not nice being clamped and towed, here’s the way out of it!

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLC1Iy1UkE]

During May 2010, the haulage industry had its highest number of driver jobs available since 2007, with 13,299 positions advertised, compared with 11,060 in May 2007.

Compared to the same period in 2009, the number of jobs available has increased by 180%, from 4,695 in May 2009. The number of van driver vacancies also increased significantly from 3,187 in May 2009 to 5,378 in May 2010.

More demand for drivers brings optimism to the haulage industry

Mick Jackson, Chief Executive of Skills for Logistics, the company which carried out the report said: “Clearly, 2009 was a relatively bad year for the economy, but the current demand for drivers suggested reasons for optimism, at least in the short term. More demand for drivers results from the need for increased movements, suggesting the start of an economic revival.”

This is clearly goods news for everyone in the haulage industry, especially given haulage companies are having to cope with increased fuel prices and higher tax amongst others.

People will do anything to make sure their beer is delivered on time.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnMloXnGC7U]

Two trucks are about to make a 8,000 mile road trip from Italy to China without anyone at the wheel
This will be the longest ever distance test of driverless vehicles which will use laser scanners and cameras to detect and avoid obstacles.
During the three month trip arriving in Shanghai, the trucks will brave Siberia and the Gobi desert. Even though there are no drivers, they will still carry technicians to fix glitches or take the wheel in an emergency.

Project leader Alberto Broggi said: “We’ll need some human help. It’s not possible to be 100 per cent driverless.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdEygVOHE3E]

Apple is quite right in saying “There’s an app for everything”. Now you can easily track your parcel delivery status with an app called “Parcel” which can be downloaded free from App Store.

With this useful iPhone app, you can keep track of major parcel delivery companies including Royal Mail, DHL, Fedex, TNT, UPS and USPS.

Each option is customised specifically to each company so you don’t make any mistakes when entering the tracking number (e.g. Royal Mail tracking number always contains 13 characters).

The free version allows you to track up to 3 parcel deliveries at a time whilst purchasing the extended version enables you to track more than 3 deliveries as well as push notifications.

Pretty neat.

Crane delivery services can be a popular choice to deliver items to tall buildings, but sometimes it can end up being very expensive such as in this case!

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/90674740001?isVid=1&isUI=1&publisherID=32439484001

Shiply is pleased to announce further European expansions with the launch of Shiply France, Italy, Spain and Holland into native language formats.

As you may know, Shiply Germany has been operating since 2009 and is already gaining lots of shipments, transport companies and media attention (including Bild, which is most similar to the Daily Mail over here).

You can easily access these new areas of the web site via the drop down at the top right hand side of the page.

What does this mean for UK Transport Providers on Shiply?


Although you have been able to bid on courier and haulage work on Shiply across Europe since launch back in 2008, with our more localised pages and language formats, you can expect far more work on the continent in the coming weeks and months.  We hope this will result both in higher yield work for yourselves and ensuring that those extra long runs can be as efficient and full as possible.

These European shipments will, by default be displayed in search, under the “Everywhere” tab.  If you are interested only in work within a certain country, you can simply use the “Country Search” tab.

There has been a lot of hard work behind the scenes at Shiply in getting these localised versions of the web site up and running, so I’d like to thank everyone involved and issue a warm welcome to all of our new transport providers and users joining us on the continent.

Best,
Robert

Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer today launched its home grocery delivery service to challenge supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

There are a number of grocery brands being sold including Pampers, Ariel, Uncle Ben’s, Dolmio, Kraft, Schwartz, Kenco, Walkers etc.

A large selection of items are available, from organic, kosher, gluten free, sugar free and vegan and customers have the option of bulk-buying items such as nappies, washing powders, rice, pasta and spices.

Amazon’s customers can select from a number of delivery options or pay £49 per year for unlimited one-day deliveries.

Amazon’s grocery director James Leeson said: “Amazon.co.uk’s aim is to be the place where customers can find and discover any product they want to buy online.”

The move is an interesting one after Ocado’s recent indication they want to float on the stock market, looking for a £1bn valuation given they have yet to turn a profit in 10 years of trading!  On that kind of crazy logic, that makes Shiply worth £100bn easy right, any takers?

Yes, you read the title right!  Swiss health officials began a new program last Thursday offering Geneva, Bern and Zurich citizens the chance to order condoms by phone as part of a campaign to fight AIDS.

“Young people should always carry condoms with them”, they said in a news release. But now within an hour or less, bike couriers can “come to aid of those who have forgotten.”

For about 8 Swiss francs (£5), people can get three condoms delivered to their doors.

The project, a part of Switzerland’s “LOVE LIFE STOP AIDS” campaign, will last until the end of July.

Campaign manager Norina Schwendener said: “The couriers are simply the perfect people to remind people in a pleasant way of our message that one should always have condoms available.”

After a disappointing Copenhagen summit, decline in public interest and fuel efficiency, the haulage industry needs a lot more attention and action to be able to achieve its target of CO2 reduction.

In the third Freight Transport Association (FTA) Logistics Carbon Reduction Conference in London last week, Professor Alan McKinnon of Heriot-Watt Univeristy said that the ice is still melting and transport emissions are the fastest growing source of CO2, accounting for around 25 percent of the national total, with freight activities constituting a quarter of that.

He also said signification action is required by haulage companies to meet the target of reducing 80% emissions by 2050.

Currently, duel-fuel and electric vehicles are promising, however they are both expensive to deploy and there are limits to their scalability.

At Shiply we believe that whilst duel-fuel and electric vehicles can and will help reduce CO2 emitted from individual vehicles, a larger part of the problem remains empty-running vehicles on the road.

Backloading is a simple, cost effective and environment-friendly solution to this issue and needs to be utilised a lot more in the haulage industry and promoted widely to the public.