Sandra Theres Dony
Food wastage is a matter of major concern in the US. According to the estimates, about 72 million pounds of food is wasted on a yearly basis. This startup by Ex-Walmart employee, Syed Aman is working towards achieving the objective of reducing food wastage by adding artificial intelligence to supply chain logistics.
While Syed Aman was working with Walmart and helping them build their online shopping platform, he realized that the confusion and hassle that takes place while transporting the product to the market can result in the massive wastage of truckloads of fresh produce just because of the inefficiencies in logistics.
This was what paved way for the startup, Hwy Haul. The startup aims to reduce wastage of produce by automating the freight trucking process by leveraging artificial intelligence.
According to Aman,
“I did not want to lose even a single day on the missed opportunity because it was very sad to see what’s happening to the fresh produce. That’s ridiculous. It cannot happen. The world needs more food, and the population is growing.”
Tackling Food Wastage
Every year, over 400 pounds of food per person is wasted in the U.S. The wastage of food also implies the wastage of energy and resources, like water and carbon emissions from transportation. The Food Industry is responsible for about a quarter of global carbon emissions. This means that food waste is not an isolated problem, rather it is a problem that affects all points of the supply chain. As per the estimates, about 16% of wastage takes place even before the product reaches retail.
The confusion that happens during harvest, storing, and transportation is the main reason for this. The manual techniques used for scheduling and routing and the lack of proper monitoring all contribute to this issue, reducing transparency and efficiency of the processes.
According to Aman, Hwy Haul will be like a “managed marketplace.” It will act as a digital broker which will facilitate the combining of the fragmented industry thereby automating transparency and reliability. The platform is cloud-based and helps the growers and truckers to instantly connect with each other.
The platform also makes it convenient to get a quote, schedule a driver, in addition to monitoring progress, temperature, and levels of humidity en route. In case of any delays or problems, it sends instant alerts to the drivers so that necessary steps can be taken thereby avoiding wastage.
Hwy Haul is a brilliant example of how artificial intelligence can be used in a way that benefits society and a proof of the levels of efficiency that can be attained by blending artificial intelligence and human efforts.