BOSTON -

Even as recently as a year or two ago, being able to transport a car to a customer in seven to 10 days was an ideal target.

These days, however, that goal is more likely to fall in the three- to five-day range, depending on the distance the car is traveling, says Ready Auto Transport’s Jerry Tassone.

Tassone, president at Ready Auto Transport, talked with Auto Remarketing at this year’s National Auto Auction Association Convention in Boston, and shared his unique perspective on the transportation and logistics business.

Meeting the compressed days-to-deliver needs “really requires a heavy dependence on technology,” Tassone said, “and simplifying the process and communication with your accounts, so you know where the vehicles are.”

Not to mention, Tassone said, the transportation business is “heavily fragmented.” Small, independent carriers comprise approximately 70 percent of the business, he said, with the remaining 30 percent being larger carrier groups (the majority being asset-based).

Typically, many asset-based carriers focus on the new-car segment, but they’re beginning to shift their focus to pre-owned, Tassone said.

“Everybody wants to get into the used-car market,” he said.

Ready Auto is not asset-based, so the company tends to rely on a base of 6,500 qualified carriers. That being the case, Ready Auto Transport aims for a high-touch relationship with its carrier partners and creating tools that can benefit these partners in their operations.

“This past year and going into next year, we will invest millions of dollars in technology … to create a better and more efficient experience for our customers and our carriers as well,” Tassone said.

This underscores the importance for Ready Auto Transport of building tools that its carriers find useful in improving efficiencies, as the company also works with its parent Manheim as well as independent auctions.

As Tassone put it, the business is “just not a simple game” or about just moving a car from point A to point B.

In explaining his earlier point about a shift towards the pre-owned side, Tassone goes back to the car-sales crash of 2008 and emphasized how it impacted the transportation business, as well.

“A lot of auto carriers either disappeared, went out of business or switched over to freight,” he said. “It wasn’t until a year or so ago that there started to be a rebound in the used-car market.”

However, the smaller, independent carriers don’t have the same kind of access to things like new equipment or financing that an asset-based company might. Thus, the carrier-based segment has not grown at the same rate as the volume coming from the various accounts, Tassone explained.

Interestingly enough, this also highlights a challenge for the asset-based group. While they may be better positioned to get the equipment, they’re challenge is finding drivers, Tassone said.

He pointed to statistics from the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor indicating there were 39,000 open jobs (at the time of the interview) in the trucking space. However, just 1,900 were filled in August.

“So, it is requiring owner-operators and larger carrier groups to consider paying higher annual salary and benefits to hire and retain good drivers, so that’s creating challenges within the transportation industry to keep the trucks rolling, so to speak,” Tassone said.

“One of the things we have to be thinking about — and our customers are thinking about it, for sure — is having the capacity to move the volume that they anticipate over the next few years,” he added. “When you’re relying on a carrier network, it’s important to see that grow.”

For Ready Auto Transport, it’s about being “integrated” into the process “to monitor carrier utilization and help our carriers understand what volume we can bring to them, so they don’t have to market for themselves,” Tassone said.

For instance, he said, it’s not uncommon to see this at an auction: carriers standing around the lane trying to drum up business.

But Ready Auto Transport aims to turn that into an opportunity for greater efficiency.

For example, carriers, in the very near future, can use the Ready Auto Transport’s online or mobile app tools to see which lanes the company has inventory in that matches the lanes they will be traveling.

“So, creating that kind of efficiency gets the independent operators from focusing on trying to find inventory and then move it, to just moving it,” he said. “And those are the tools we’re focusing on today.”

Editor's Note: This story is part of the Dec. 1 print and digital editions of Auto Remarketing, our Inside Logistics & Transportation Trends issue. We turned to some of the top providers in the industry for an inside look at the state of the transportation business and to hear how they are bringing value to their customers. To read all the stories in this section, be sure to check out the special section in the Dec. 1 AR.