‘Can general cargo still be fun for a medium-sized company these days?’ asked Lutz Lauenroth at the 10th DVZ Symposium on General Cargo. The answer from OSL Managing Director Petra Welling: definitely yes! She represented the view of medium-sized general cargo service providers in the panel discussion with Aigul Zhalgassova from Siemens Digital Industries, who represented the shippers’ side, as well as Alexander Tonn from Dachser and Helmut Schweighofer from DSV Road.
A unique selling point of medium-sized general cargo forwarders is that they are exactly that – medium-sized companies. This means they are a good fit for customers who are also medium-sized businesses. These customers appreciate the proximity, direct contact without a ticket system or call centre, individual support, long-term solutions and dedicated contact persons.
Of course, enjoying the general cargo business also depends on the respective network. ‘With the right system that a company can use effectively for itself and its customers, general cargo can also be enjoyable for medium-sized businesses,’ said Petra Welling. At ONLINE Systemlogistik, the international orientation with Europe-wide general cargo transport contributes to this, among other things; OSL has the best network in Europe. In addition, the HUB & Spoke system is the right choice in any economic situation.
Furthermore, smaller medium-sized companies in particular do not have the capacity to deal intensively with issues such as sustainability, digitalisation or succession. ‘We support our partners in these areas, for example through knowledge exchange, workshops and specific service offerings for everyone. One of these is the sustainability management platform from pacemaker.ai, which our partners can use to record and evaluate their GHG emissions, and our own new IT platform, which we use to map all processes within the network,’ said Petra Welling. She does not currently consider the use of AI to be useful in the general cargo network itself: ‘We work with fixed loading quotas and a consistent number of trucks, which makes advance calculations unnecessary. For our partners, on the other hand, AI can be a good option, for example for automatic local transport dispatching. AI can be particularly helpful here in terms of the shortage of skilled workers and the attractiveness of the job.’
We would like to thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to participate in the DVZ General Cargo Symposium – thank you for the interesting presentations, the discussion and the exchange of ideas!