It´s a fact that many, many miles are needless miles, driven because of inefficiency in route planning.
Let´s do this in another way and save a lot of miles.

In this article ”25 trucks in New Jersey traveling to pick up 25 loads of goods over the course of a single day using a traditional industry approach: one that manually pairs drivers and freight. A few matches are short and efficient, but many require drivers to go well out of their way. The result is 1,752 ”wasted” miles that create unnecessary traffic congestion and perhaps even lead to making those goods a little bit more expensive down the line.”

The start-up company Transfix solves this by a system that ”pairs drivers and loads using an automated matching system. Those 1,752 empty miles have been cut to 274.” The trucking industry would be vastly more efficient by using something like this.

CEO McElroy calculates that U.S. commercial trucks drive 19 billion needless miles each year! Think about the enormous reduction of emmissions and traffic congestions, on a global level, if we could all use an efficient system like that.

It´s also good for the drivers: ”Truck drivers are a unique bunch, but by and large they are genuinely wonderful, down-to-earth, friendly people,” says McElroy. ”Anything we can do to make their lives easier and make this a better process is something we embrace.”

(Thank you Mr Jeremiah Owyang founder of Crowd Companies for charing this info on Twitter! Is how I found it.)