Alpega Group, a leading European SaaS software company for the transportation industry, announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Road Heroes, Truck Driver Platform from Pinetco. Road Heroes is a specialized job site that links truck drivers with prospective employers.
With the current global supply chain strain, shortages of drivers is increasingly creating the bottleneck that will not go away once production ramps to otherwise open supply chains back up. While Alpega provides shippers the opportunity to contract carriers long term, to spot bid through its TMS solutions and manages some of the largest freight exchanges in Europe, the problem of driver shortage is still a blocking point in the chain.
It is estimated that Europe has a shortage of 400,000 truck drivers today. The reasons for this are well documented ranging from a generational retirement of older drivers, lack of work/life balance sought by younger drivers, difficulties of work environment due to road congestion and even lack of parking for trucks in major cities. Many younger people who might be interested in driving have just said ‘no thanks’.
Road Heroes by Alpega provides a European-wide platform for hiring companies and prospective drivers to showcase ‘why us’ and ‘why me’, in an effort to give both parties a competitive edge to fulfil the market needs. The platform comes with a lot of intelligence under the hood, which allows a specific matching between job offers and truck drivers to maximize the relevance.
Efficiency of supply chains, specifically the transportation leg of the supply chain, is increasingly becoming a focus as demand for goods grows, congestion on the motorways skyrockets and inflation hits every pocketbook in the world. Add to this, the environmental impact of empty trucks on the road and the unnecessary carbon emissions those trucks produce.
Being able to have the right trucks at the right place at the right time with full loads, loaded and unloaded as efficiently as possible and then allowing those trucks to take the next load to the next location without downtime or ‘empty backhauls’ helps ease the supply chain strain.
”At Alpega we view our responsibility to the transportation industry as a holistic one involving people, processes and the software tools to move goods as efficiently as possible. Connecting our driver community with our carrier, freight forwarder and shipper communities is a role we are willing and able to play and a natural fit for us. Road Heroes is a next step in our effort to build the largest digital logistics platform in Europe” said Fabrice Douteaud, General Manager, Alpega Freight Exchanges.
The Road Heroes transaction is expected to close in June with availability of Road Heroes by Alpega targeted for July.
