How Hwy Haul is chasing the elimination of food waste

Mitch Kowalewski, vice president of sales and marketing for Hwy Haul, Santa Clara, Calif., (left) and Syed Aman, co-founder and CEO, at the Viva Fresh Expo in Grapevine Texas in April.
Mitch Kowalewski, vice president of sales and marketing for Hwy Haul, Santa Clara, Calif., (left) and Syed Aman, co-founder and CEO, at the Viva Fresh Expo in Grapevine Texas in April.
(Tom Karst)

The technology solutions platform Hwy Haul seeks to eliminate friction in produce trucking.

Syed Aman, co-founder and CEO of Hwy Haul, Santa Clara, Calif., and Mitch Kowalewski, vice president of sales and marketing, talked with The Packer's Tom Karst at Viva Fresh Expo about the company's founding in 2018 and its subsequent growth. 

Aman said the Hwy Haul makes the industry more efficient.

“Eliminating food waste during transportation is the North Star that we as a company are chasing. But to get there, you need to get the basics correct,” he said. “You should not be making multiple phone calls to negotiate on a price and find a truck. That is like table stakes consider that done with Hwy Haul. Let’s get to the next step when the freight gets picked up on time, it gets delivered on time in full, and you have full visibility during the transit with proactive communication. You will see not 8% to 14% of loads will get rejected, which is what it is today; it will be minuscule, less than 1%,” he said. 
 
PACKER: Tell me a little bit about the insight you had when you formed your business. 

AMAN: I was one of the first founding engineers of Walmart Labs, which was in 2011. At that time, Walmart said, ‘Let's digitize ourselves.” We built a new order management system, new inventory management, new warehouse management, new grocery delivery systems, and last-mile transportation. The trigger for the innovation was ordering groceries online and delivering in the next hour. When we were doing that, we realized there was a lot of produce waste, and there was a lot of work needed to reduce waste. Fifty percent of the life of produce is spent on trucks. One out of 10 loads is getting rejected and going to the dumpster. When we did the market research, it turned out to be a huge opportunity, with $15 billion of wasted food and produce every year on trucks. That's why we made it our mission to eliminate food wastage during transportation

PACKER: So how does your company seek to reduce food waste?

AMAN: The first grand step towards our North Star is to eliminate food wastage during transportation, and build the next generation digital freight platform for fresh produce. That's where we are building our technology. It is technology first; our app connects the shippers directly with reliable carriers and refrigerated truckers. We are the specialists who are only focused on handling long haul fresh produce transportation in full truckloads. 

What the platform does is digitize a 25-step, highly manual process. 
It includes how shippers (growers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers) today create their load, price, track, and monitor the temperature of their load. All those steps, we are digitizing and making the experience extremely touchless, instant and real-time. 

When was the last time you had to book your taxi using brokers? When was the last time you had to go to a bank to do a wire transfer? Similarly, we are taking all these offline experiences in the fresh produce industry online.

PACKER: How much participation are you getting from the industry so far?

AMAN: Many [Viva Fresh exhibitors] are already our customers. Some of the well-known branded growers, producers, and distributors are already our customers. And we encourage others to join us on this mission of digitalization and sustainability.

PACKER: From the transportation and trucking side of the industry, are you also getting their participation?

AMAN: We believe we have access to almost 10% market share of the reefer driver capacity of the entire country. Our platform is consolidating all the owner-operators and small mom-and-pop and midsize carrier companies on our platform. When we go to a shipper, we ask them,  ‘How many carriers do you have six, seven or eight or 10? — we have access to hundreds of thousands of drivers. As soon as (a shipper) creates a load in our system within milliseconds all these drivers nearby can view on the app. They click a button to book the load, and the rates are guaranteed.

PACKER: How are the truck rates created on the app?

AMAN: That is from a multi-channel sourcing engine that we have built, what we call the dynamic pricing engine. It's very algorithmic and incorporates machine learning. It takes into consideration the current market conditions, the load-to-truck ratio, the spot market, and other factors. Then we also apply our machine learnings in the truck lanes that we have been moving [produce]. On a Friday, the rate is different than on a Monday morning, so all those levers we are testing.

PACKER: The shipper can look at the price and confirm? Is that how that works?

AMAN: We give instant online prices to the shipper. They have access to our portal and our app. We give a guaranteed price; you book your load at this price, and we will find the truck for you. The price is coming from our pricing algorithm and the market research. They book a load at, let's say $3,000. We will try to find the truck for less than $3,000. The shipper sees the pricing and books at that price. Immediately the carriers and the drivers can see the pricing. 

PACKER: How do you know for sure you'll get a carrier to take that price?

AMAN: If a trucker doesn’t like the price, the trucker can quote their price online. Don't call us and say, ‘Can I get $4,800 instead of $4,700?’ Just mention it on an app. It's a bidding platform as well. 

PACKER: The use of this app is growing fast?

AMAN: We are growing rapidly every year, and we want to continue to be on this hyper growth trajectory over the next few years both in terms of revenues and in terms of employees as well. We are headquartered in Silicon Valley, which is the world's best place to run a technology startup. We are growing employees in Texas and some other regions as well.

KOWALEWSKI: There are logistics needs for every one of these growers. They all have products that need to be distributed to retailers, restaurants, hotels, et cetera. There are plenty of other logistics companies that are attending this show that provide capacity and trucks and rates. The current system is outdated, it is too manual and takes too long. That's why Hwy Haul was created. We feel like there's a smarter, easier way and more efficient way to move produce. 

We're trying to disrupt the traditional logistic process, which we think is very manual and very high touch, and automate it to a digital process for today. We started this company at the end of 2018. We have about eight to 10% market share of the total reefer capacity in the United States today. And we just started. 

PACKER: What has been a challenge to your vision so far? 

AMAN: In a way, COVID has helped spread the word to adopt digital. We all have a role to play to digitize this whole ecosystem. 

KOWALEWSKI: A common question that I get asked is if COVID hurt or helped your business. COVID put 200,000 plus drivers with COVID-19 positive cases off the road at any given time every single month. During the entire pandemic, 200,000 trucks parked on the side of the road and were not operable because of sickness and illness. This caused the growers to feel pressure, and growers needed fresh options. Hwy Haul provided that capacity.

AMAN: When the load to truck ratio was 30 to one, Hwy Haul covered all the loads for all of our customers in a blink of an eye, 100%. We have never said ‘No, we cannot find the truck.’ That is the beauty of the platform that we have built.

Our strategy is to think like the trucker, respect the trucker and treat the trucker like family.

What are the small pain points in the small business trucker - high fuel prices, maintenance issues, all those? How can we build a trucking community to complement these growers here and come together in a like-minded community?

For a berry company, we want truckers that only speak berries, a broccoli shipper, we want a trucker that understands how to haul broccoli. We reduce that risk with the shipper by providing a more seamless experience.

PACKER: What about when there are choke points, such as when a trucker can't be unloaded as quick as he would like? What happens to make sure that that's minimized?

KOWALEWSKI: We align with partners that take care of partners. We partner with like-minded growers who want to be responsible growers, and who want the capacity to return. They want the same trucking companies that understand the risk and do those things. In essence, they want to be preferred shippers.

AMAN: The two most important things that make this happen are to make the lives easy for the driver. Visibility and communications through actions, not reactions, If we cannot make the time at 4 p.m., we are not calling at 5 p.m. We proactively communicate with the customers.

PACKER: You can see where the trucks are at?

AMAN: All of our drivers are using the driver app that we have. We are the ones who have built the driver apps for Walmart. We know how to build apps that will work, even if there is no signal. That's the beauty of the architecture that we use. We can track it. We are watching a movie in our command center, which is fully staffed with people, Operation savvy people who are watching the show, and we are on top of the train.

PACKER: In trucking, there is always the dynamic of trucks coming in or out of the market, with rates going up or down. What do you see for the next year or two for the trucking/ transportation industry? And does that how does that affect your plans in terms of how you will be a solutions provider? 

AMAN: Right now, there is a manual value chain, end to end today, between the shipper and the broker and the carrier and the driver. It is a 25-step process from how you price the load, how you find the truck, how you track it, how you create the load and send it to somebody's system via email or fax.

That is like dinosaur times, right? It  is all manual, and we are making all of these experiences extremely real-time. That’s where Hwy Haul takes a step from manual to automatic.

There are certain global triggers that will keep disrupting the supply chain. A few recent examples are, the Ukraine war, COVID, and the disruption at the Pharr Bridge in Texas. Tomorrow will be something else. What is this telling us? Make your supply chain resilient, and then you can roll with the punches.

In Hwy Haul, we have tier one carriers on our platform, and we are constantly scoring them. Every carrier in my database has a score based on-time pickup, on-time delivery, app use, and other factors. Based on that, we will know how good of a partner you are.

PACKER: How can shippers know if they will save money with your system?

AMAN: You can expect to reduce your operations cost on an annual basis for a shipper, maybe in the range of 30% to 40%. Don’t judge us by giving us one load per month; you will probably see minor savings. The way you will save money is that you will save time, you will save anxiety, and you will save the number of phone calls for the touches that you do daily on every load. Those touches are going to go down. Because if you do not have that technology today, you are deploying people who are doing that job. 

KOWALEWSKI: There are two different buckets, what we do for them, there's a traditional logistics process, which is the industry standard today to the tune of just under 18,000 different competitors (doing) what we're doing. There's a smaller space, which we measure ourselves. It's an automation and digitalization process. That's the story we want. We don't cover trucks. We digitalize the experience.

AMAN: We are not a broker; we are your digital partner. As a grower, you focus on what you do best grow the freshest strawberries, leave the transportation and the truck arrangement to your technology partner; consider us to be a digital arm of the company.

 

 

Latest News

How new research could prevent frost damage in orchards
How new research could prevent frost damage in orchards

In this podcast episode, Advanced Agriscience's Collin Juurakko shares interesting discoveries he's made about how frost crystals form and how that lead to a potential solution for tree-fruit growers across the globe.

Cool Creations previews new products at AWG show
Cool Creations previews new products at AWG show

North Kansas City, Mo.-based Cool Creations LLC had two new products to show off at the Associated Wholesale Grocers' seventh annual Innovation Showcase, March 25-26.

Dole, Fresh Express nix sale of fresh vegetables division
Dole, Fresh Express nix sale of fresh vegetables division

Following Department of Justice concerns about competition in the packaged salad market, the companies have abandoned the proposed $308 million deal.

Fresh Del Monte named to most trusted companies list
Fresh Del Monte named to most trusted companies list

Fresh Del Monte is among the honorees on the Most Trustworthy Companies in America 2024 list, recognized for a commitment to quality, sustainability and innovation in fresh produce.

Improved conditions for West Mexico produce may arrive with spring
Improved conditions for West Mexico produce may arrive with spring

West Mexico growers faced a tough fall/winter season, but distributors believe things are looking up for spring with increased supplies and more reasonable prices.

What’s next for retail foodservice: Retailers dish up insights in free webinar
What’s next for retail foodservice: Retailers dish up insights in free webinar

"Impact Retail Foodservice 2024" will gather industry experts to discuss opportunities and challenges, as well as share insights for driving growth in the year ahead in one of the hottest departments in grocery.