This story was delivered to Business Insider Intelligence Transportation & Logistics Briefing subscribers hours before it appeared on Business Insider. To be the first to know, please click here. At the end of 2017, we outlined five predictions for the transportation and logistics industries for the year ahead. We’re now revisiting those predictions to see how they stood the test of time. Business Insider Intelligence Here’s what we got right about 2018: Look for the trucking tech space, buoyed last year by big funding rounds such as those raised by Peloton, Convoy, and Transfix, to see even bigger investments in 2018. In 2017, startups offering digital freight platforms and autonomous technologies raked in hundreds of millions of dollars. We predicted 2018 would see even greater investment than 2017, fueled by the introduction of semi-autonomous truck systems and the proliferation of digital freight platforms. Our prediction has largely held true — semi-autonomous truck technologies continued their gradual proliferation, and digital freight startups nabbed billions in investment. Convoy — which connects shippers with truckers with available space via an Uber-like app — raised $185 million in new funding at a valuation north of $1 billion. Fellow digital freight startups Freightos and The Full Truck Alliance (FTA) raised $44 million and a whopping $1.9 billion, respectively. Digital logistics startups garnered hundreds of millions of dollars in 2018 and are likely to have even more in store for the years ahead. Uber will continue to grow its US business — and lose market share. Uber’s highly tumultuous 2017 helped rival Lyft eat significantly into its market share. Between March and September 2017, Lyft grew its market share from 15% to 22%, while Uber’s share declined from 83% to 74%. However, the US ride-hailing market still has a ton of room for growth — only about one-quarter (26%) of US consumers have tried a ride-hailing service — which means Uber can continue to grow while still ceding market share. Uber’s market share declined to 69% in 2018, while Lyft’s rose to 29%. At the same time, Uber’s gross bookings — what it earns before it pays drivers — surged this year, rising nearly 24% from Q3 2017 to reach $12.7 billion in Q3 2018. For Uber, its bookings increase is also due to its growing business segments outside ride-hailing. Uber Freight — the company’s digital freight marketplace — saw its revenue double over a six-month period and hit a half a billion dollar revenue run rate in August. Uber Eats, meanwhile, is the fastest-growing food delivery service in the US. Logistics, tech, and finance companies will come together on blockchain tests.This did happen, but only once — in October, Samsung, the Port of Rotterdam, and a Dutch bank partnered to test blockchain-based payments at the port. The exchange of money on a blockchain — the type of use case that’d bring together finance, tech, and logistics companies like at the Rotterdam port — isn’t seen as the top logistics industry application of blockchain. Four in five (80%) of supply chain professionals surveyed by Chain Business Insights said tracking products as they moved through the supply chain was a likely use case for blockchain, the most popular response. As such, the bulk of publicly available blockchains for logistics are designed to help track products, not exchange money. For instance, IBM and Maersk’s TradeLens blockchain platform is designed to establish complete supply chain visibility by enabling parties to digitally submit and validate documents across organizations as products move from place to place.
