Logistics Industry 2025: Anti-Exhaustion, Survival and a New Era of Prosperity
What does 50 cents mean in a business society?
Not long ago, Dong Yuhui traced the source of kiwifruit farmers in Mei County, Shaanxi Province. The income of farmers per jin increased by 50 cents, and the entire kiwifruit farmers in Mei County increased their income by several hundred million yuan.
For the agriculture in Mei County, 50 cents is a new situation and a promising harvest prospect for fruit farmers. But for Chengdu Zehao Supply Chain Management Company, 50 cents is the line between life and death.
Previously, this company chose to use an organized fleet of electric heavy trucks to transport sand and gravel aggregates and carefully built its own energy supplement network to compete with the cheapest second-hand fuel vehicles and individual drivers with the lowest bids. With a cost advantage of 50 cents per kilometer, the new equipment and new system have found new vitality in the logistics market where prices have already dropped to the bottom.
In an industry or field with oversupply, a mere 50 cents is the distance that determines profit and loss, joy and sorrow. It is the cost or profit space obtained by connecting new channels, adopting new equipment, and building new systems.
According to the data released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, the total social logistics volume for this year is expected to be around 360 trillion yuan, only slightly increasing by 2.16% compared to 352.4 trillion yuan in 2023. At the same time, the national road freight index in 2024 decreased by 2.0% compared to 2023. In the national vehicle freight rate index, it decreased by 14.6% in 2024 compared to 2023.
In the logistics industry where there are more vehicles than goods and the internal competition continues to intensify, countless freight operators are struggling to find a "50-cent survival space".
On the other hand, low freight rates are increasing the systemic risks of the industrial chain. When the decline in freight rates is passed on layer by layer to each vehicle and each driver, the cargo owner enterprises have to face potential safety hazards in the supply chain and make changes accordingly.
Just as Zhai Xuehun (Lao Zhai), the CEO of G7 Yiliu, said, "When the involution reaches a certain level, the anti-involution is a natural force".
The difficulties and explorations of countless individuals in the logistics industry are converging into a force for the industry to break through: Logistics enterprises that are unwilling to give up have started to look for differentiated breakthrough paths such as equipment upgrading, management optimization, and channel innovation; Large cargo owner enterprises have begun to increase the weight of safety and supply chain stability in addition to price; Vehicle manufacturers are focusing on new energy and scenario-based vehicle manufacturing; The role of logistics technology platforms is becoming increasingly prominent, becoming the connector and evolution accelerator in the entire logistics ecosystem... A structural change that sweeps the entire industrial chain is on the verge of emerging.
Surviving Against the Involution, New Energy Commercial Vehicles Become the Key
Like Chengdu Zehao Supply Chain Management Company, new energy commercial vehicles are becoming the breakthrough key for many logistics companies.
According to the data from G7 Yiliu, there are currently 338,379 active new energy vehicles on its platform, with a year-on-year growth of 194.0% compared to 2023.
The slight increase in freight volume and the doubling of new energy vehicles is primarily due to the structural cost advantage brought by equipment upgrading.
Take Harbin Bintu Logistics as an example. It started the project of transporting coal from Xinjiang at the end of 2022. After the first-year dividend period, the freight rate has been declining all the way, from 460 yuan/ton to more than 200 yuan/ton in two years. In the transportation cost, fuel accounts for 1/3. If the energy cost cannot be compressed, losses are inevitable.
At a critical moment, Bintu Logistics switched to Geely Remote New Energy Commercial Vehicles that use methanol as fuel. Compared to traditional fuel, liquid methanol is easy to store, transport, and refill, has a high cruising range, and most importantly, has a sufficient supply and controllable cost. According to the vehicle purchase agreement signed between Bintu Logistics and Geely Remote, when the methanol price is higher than 1.6 yuan/liter, Geely Remote will bear the additional cost. Therefore, Bintu Logistics can replace traditional energy with a price of less than 1.6 yuan per liter to improve the cost structure.
According to Hou Changqing, the deputy general manager of Geely Remote Commercial Vehicle Marketing Company, the longest main line for transporting coal from Xinjiang is 2,200 kilometers, and the maximum cruising range of Geely Remote Commercial Vehicles has already reached 1,500 kilometers. Currently, there are more than 3,000 methanol vehicles running on this main line, and it will reach 4,000 - 5,000 by the end of 2024.
Unlike traditional fuel vehicles, new energy commercial vehicles have the gene of adapting to scenarios from the beginning of their birth, and make design choices and technological breakthroughs based on the differentiated needs in segmented scenarios to serve the scenario organization service ecosystem.
In addition to Geely Remote that is suitable for the scenario of transporting coal from Xinjiang, Super Leopard has made a breakthrough in thermal management technology, making electric vehicles able to climb slopes and save energy in extremely cold weather, suitable for bulk scenarios with a general transportation mileage of within 100 kilometers and low to medium speed driving; Gecko Automobile has successfully applied the skateboard chassis to new energy urban distribution vehicles to increase the loading space above and better serve the urban distribution logistics scenario; The redesigned refrigeration system of Ditie can meet the transportation standards of the highest-level vaccines and other products; Yutong's energy recovery technology accumulated over many years is now being applied to the intercity transportation light truck scenario...
Scenario-based vehicle manufacturing can even break the limitations of the impossible triangle of cost, quality, and technology of traditional vehicle manufacturers when matching segmented scenarios, combine with the needs of cargo owners, and seek customized solutions.
Lao Zhai believes that the keyword for logistics productivity in 2024 is: Vehicles defined by scenarios. He predicts, "In the next five years, China's logistics industry is likely to be at the forefront of the global truck renewal and bring about a major change in logistics productivity that has not been seen in thirty years."
The Changing Times and the Evolution of a Vehicle
New energy commercial vehicles that adapt to scenarios have reduced the operating costs of logistics enterprises and improved transportation efficiency at the equipment and energy levels. However, the reason why it can bring about a "major change in logistics productivity that has not been seen in thirty years" is not limited to this.
First, in the era of traditional fuel engines, the main engine factories hardly master data. However, new energy vehicles not only can generate a large amount of data during operation but also can be more conveniently connected to external devices to achieve data transmission and sharing, becoming a "data hub", providing more possibilities for the digital application of vehicles, and also providing a strong hardware foundation for complex intelligent functions.
Digital creation of connections brings about efficiency improvement and risk reduction. The data on the G7 Yiliu platform shows that the vehicles that achieve data links between the upstream and downstream account for 13%, and the daily operating mileage efficiency of these vehicles is 30% higher, and the accident rate of vehicles accessing safety scores is 50% lower.
In Lao Zhai's view, the essence of bad money driving out good money is insufficient information, and data connection can precisely solve the problem of insufficient information. It can be imagined that if the real-time and accurate data continuously generated by new energy commercial vehicles are precipitated and analyzed, it can not only support logistics enterprises to operate more efficiently, establish a closer connection with the upstream and downstream of the industry, and provide transparent information for "anti-involution" cargo owners who are more concerned about supply chain safety and quality, but also create value for vehicle manufacturers, insurance companies and other ecological related parties.
Second, new energy commercial vehicles can be equipped with more advanced intelligent driving assistance systems. In the era of artificial intelligence 2.0, the combination of algorithms and vehicles is trying to liberate drivers from high-intensity and long-time work.
Yingche Technology started to layout the autonomous driving technology in the long-distance trunk highway scenario as early as five years ago. Currently, there are nearly 2,000 vehicles equipped with Yingche Technology's vehicle algorithms running on highways. Drivers only need to play the role of a "safety officer" 95% of the time, and the algorithm drives the vehicle.
Although the arrival of highly autonomous driving still needs time, the strong software update and upgrade ability of new energy vehicles enables them to obtain the latest functions and performance optimizations in a timely manner, always maintaining the optimal level of intelligence. In the next few years, as algorithms make breakthroughs in more scenarios, human-machine co-driving will also optimize the proportion of the labor force factor in the cost structure, improve the driving experience of drivers, and provide more safety guarantees.
More importantly, when the decline in computing power costs enhances the ability of scenario computing and opens up the application space of the integrated end-cloud, new energy commercial vehicles, with their advanced architecture and rich intelligent interconnection interfaces, have changed the way of human-vehicle collaboration and promoted the evolution of scene intelligence in the logistics industry.
Nowadays, the working mode of the logistics industry is changing from the traditional communication between people and then uploading to the system to the direct interaction between people and the system. Through the screen and voice assistant on the vehicle, the cloud, drivers, and vehicles are connected, and the human, vehicle, cargo, and field are efficiently coordinated. The long-term in-depth collaboration of cargo owners, vehicle manufacturers, logistics companies, and logistics technology platforms will further optimize the scene intelligence solution and open up the space for doubling the efficiency of people, vehicles, and energy.
In this major change in logistics productivity that has not been seen in thirty years, the coupling of the iteration of vehicle manufacturing and new energy technology, the breakthrough of algorithms, and the change of collaborative operation mode is bringing about an era leap in supply chain efficiency.
The Next "Prosperous New Era"
Dong Zhonglang, a partner of Yinshan Capital, believes that the next ten years will be a "prosperous new era" for the logistics industry. Digitalization + New Energy + AI will fundamentally change and reshape the entire industry.
From a micro perspective, this is a process in which freight operators upgrade their equipment to adapt to differentiated scenarios, integrate with digital operation management, find differentiated competitive advantages, and thereby bring about cost savings and efficiency improvements, and resilient survival.
From a meso perspective, this is a process in which the logistics industry uses new quality tools to create new quality productivity, and is a process of eliminating backward production capacity and achieving industrial upgrading.
From a macro perspective, this is a process of reducing the social logistics costs of the entire society, implementing the energy strategy, and achieving the goal of green and low-carbon development through energy renewal, digital transformation, and technological innovation. According to the "Action Plan for Effectively Reducing the Social Logistics Costs" issued by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council on November 27, by 2027, the ratio of total social logistics costs to the gross domestic product should be reduced from the current 14.4% to about 13.5%.
However, changes at any level are not achieved overnight.
Over the past decade or so, G7 Yiliu has built an Internet of Things infrastructure in the industry. More than 8 million + IoT devices are spread across various logistics scenarios such as people, vehicles, goods, warehouses, stores, and containers, with an average daily data upload of more than 12T. It has empowered more than 80% of large cargo owners and large logistics enterprises in the industry, as well as 35,000 + freight operators with digitalization, lighting up the originally dark freight network map.
Vertically, G7 Yiliu has developed system tools to connect the upstream and downstream, helping freight operators change their perspectives, advancing from the digitalization of a single link to the full-process digital management, and leapfrogging to improve management efficiency and resource connection capabilities.
A year ago, G7 Yiliu proposed three major technological variables: connection, AGI, and new energy. Now, G7 Yiliu is trying to lead the entire logistics industry, seize the opportunity of upgrading production tools and energy models, use large models and new AI technologies, and collaborate with various ecological entities to create and design new scene solutions, establishing a new ecological closed loop.
But this change will not be smooth sailing.
In the first half of this year, new energy urban distribution vehicles encountered insurance problems. Due to the soaring accident rate and compensation rate, even if the premium increased threefold from 6,000 yuan per vehicle to 18,000 yuan per vehicle, it is still difficult to underwrite.
Looking back around 2018, the accident rate of some fuel vehicle fleets in the long-distance trunk field was also high. G7 Yiliu, together with its partners, built an active safety operation system that integrates software and hardware and end-cloud collaboration, and also jointly built the "Taihao Bao" platform with insurance companies, successfully reducing the accident rate of customer fleets by 70 - 80%, solving the insurance problem of long-distance operating vehicles.
The logistics industry, which is spiraling upward, has now reached the same node. This time, G7 Yiliu has summarized dozens of risk indicators into six categories, established a comprehensive driver safety evaluation system, and effectively identified "high-risk drivers" using the "safety score" method. Then, by connecting with the existing management processes of logistics enterprises, various methods can be used to track, intervene, and improve driver driving behavior.
"After nearly a year of evaluation, intervention, and operation management, the proportion of red-light drivers (drivers with a safety score of less than 70 points) in our early customers has decreased from 20% to 4%. This 16-percentage-point decrease has ultimately led to a 40% improvement in the accident rate," said Tan Yue, an algorithm expert at G7 Yiliu.
In addition, G7 Yiliu has also jointly built the "New Energy Digital Security Co-construction Alliance" with ecological partners to improve the risk management level of the industry.
The "insurance difficulty" is a systemic problem. In addition to using technology and management means to improve driver driving behavior, reducing the compensation rate also requires vehicle manufacturers to make technical improvements and product optimizations according to the urban distribution scenario, and requires the construction of a maintenance service system for new energy vehicles. This also reveals from one aspect the problem-solving idea in the second half of the logistics industry: When the industry shifts from single-point competition to full-value-chain competition, the problems in any link may require the linkage of the upstream and downstream of the ecosystem to solve.
The cold winter tests resilience, crossing the cycle requires wisdom, and building a bridge for the next ten years requires strength and vision. Currently, G7 Yiliu is playing exactly such a role.
There is a line in the movie "The Grandmaster": "The word 'kung fu' consists of two characters, one horizontal and one vertical. Those who are wrong lie down, and only those who stand have the qualification to speak." When the tide ebbs, only by anticipating the direction and timing of the tide and making plans in advance can one stand firmly in the swirling vortex and welcome the next wave.