Amazon's Threat to Traditional Transportation Providers

For transportation providers in the e-commerce era, the choice is clear: disrupt, or be disrupted. The motivating force is, of course, Amazon.com, which has shown distinct signs in recent years of desiring to take over multiple transportation and logistics functions in support of its dominant e-commerce business. Existing transportation providers will either have to respond, or get out of the way. Like it or not, disruption is in their future. On this episode, we speak with Timothy Leonard, executive vice president of operations and technology with TMW Systems, about how transportation and logistics providers can wake up and respond to the Amazon challenge. It's not just small carriers that are threatened. They need to take an innovative approach to accessing and managing data, and band together into communities that will protect their business from absorption by the Amazon behemoth. The age of sedate, contract-driven transportation is dead. Time for a new strategy that aims, not just at survival, but dominance.