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Q&A: TransRisk’s Craig Fuller on Creating a Trucking Futures Exchange
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Craig Fuller Photo: TransRisk
">Craig Fuller Photo: TransRisk
">Craig Fuller is the CEO and managing director of startup firm TransRisk. The Chattanooga-based tech firm aims to create the first regulated futures exchange based on trucking capacity. The startup venture was founded by Craig Fuller along with a group of transportation, financial technology, and trading exchange executives and it is backed by Hunt Technology Ventures LP.
Fuller is no stranger to trucking or entrepreneurialism. He previously launched two successful businesses that served long-haul operations. Xpress Direct, the surge capacity/on-demand provider of US Xpress, based pricing completely on a proprietary spot market business model. Transfund$/TransCard was a fleet card provider that offered fuel card payment services, combining GPS location and fraud analytics to prevent fuel-fraud; this business was sold to US Bank.
HDT: Can you tell us about the thinking behind setting up TransRisk to develop and launch a trucking futures exchange?
Fuller: Our idea is that a trucking-capacity futures exchange can address rate volatility, which is one of the most significant challenges in freight transportation today. Our exchange will list and trade contracts based on trucking linehaul rates. Shippers, carriers and brokers have no effective way to protect their market exposure on the volatility of spot market pricing. But by leveraging advanced technology to create an exchange to help mitigate the pricing risks, we'll be able to enhance the way participants currently buy and sell trucking capacity.
HDT: Can you back up a bit and explain how a futures exchange, in general, operates?
Fuller: A futures exchange is a place to buy and sell contracts on some kind of commodity. What it amounts to is you are buying or selling a contract to take delivery of something in the future at a set price. The only difference [with TransRisk] is you do not take delivery of the ...Read the rest of this story
Trailer Production up through June
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Photo: Tom Berg
">Photo: Tom Berg
">Total trailer production was more than 27,000 units in June, and it has increased month over month and year over year, according to an ACT Research report.
Eight out of ten trailer categories posted higher production compared to May's numbers with flatbeds seeing the largest increase. Trailer production was up 6% compared to the previous month and 5% over June 2016.
A jump in build rates and a decrease in backlogs resulted in June closing with a 4.6-month build-to-backlog ration for the entire industry.
“Dry vans have the longest commitment at just over five months, pushing their orderboard horizon to early December,” said Frank Maly, director of commercial vehicle transportation analysis and research at ACT. “We would expect total industry BL/BU to continue to ease through September, before accelerating in response to the upcoming fall order season.”
Related: Trailer Orders Jump 12% In June
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