Logistics industry is the arterial system of national economy, which directly affects the economic growth of the whole country. The traditional logistics industry due to too many industrial links and management confusion and other problems, seriously restricting the development of the logistics industry. With the help of Internet technology and national policies, the logistics industry has successfully realized the digital transformation. The emergence of this innovative model of network freight transport for the traditional road logistics transportation has brought the development of intelligent and efficient, laying the foundation for the future development of the logistics industry and creating more possibilities.

However, since the development of network freight transportation since 2020, there are still many people who do not really understand these issues, what is network freight transportation? The origin of network freight? Network freight is suitable for which enterprises? What is the profit model of network freight? How to choose a quality network freight service providers?

First, what is network freight?

For network freight, the official documents given in the explanation refers to the operator relying on the Internet platform to integrate and configure the transportation resources, as a carrier to sign a transportation service contract with the shipper, entrusted to the actual carrier to complete the road transportation of goods, bear the responsibility of the carrier of the road transportation of goods business activities.

Two points of particular note are:

1, network freight has a dual identity, for the real shipper, it is the carrier. But for the actual carrier, it is the shipper.

2, the operation of network freight platform does not force the requirement must have a car, fewer vehicles, or not a truck, are legal.

In order to facilitate a better understanding of network freight, in layman's terms in fact, network freight is a drop (car cargo matching) + Taobao Mall (automotive aftermarket) + Ant Gold Service (logistics and finance) + Settlement (tax legal compliance) + safety regulation (Ministry of Transportation) and the composition of a large digital platform under the supervision of the state complex.

In the settlement business, when issuing VAT invoices on behalf of drivers, the platform shall meet the following conditions for obtaining the pilot qualification in accordance with Article 405:

1. Obtain the Road Transportation Operation License with "Network Freight Transportation" in the business scope.

2, with the relevant online service capabilities to carry out business, including information data interaction and processing capabilities, logistics information tracking, recording, storage, analysis capabilities, to achieve the transaction, transportation, settlement and other aspects of the whole process of transparent dynamic management, the actual carrier driver and vehicle transport track real-time display, and record real-time transport track data containing time and geographic location information.

3、Effective docking with the network freight transport information monitoring system established by the provincial transportation authorities, and completing data uploading according to the requirements.

4. Review the relevant qualifications of the members to ensure that the actual vehicles providing transportation services have legally valid operating certificates and the drivers have legally valid qualification certificates.

Second, then, how does network freight transportation appear?

In May 2019, the General Office of the State Council forwarded the Ministry of Transport and other departments on accelerating the transformation and upgrading of the road freight industry to promote high-quality development of the opinions of the notice, clearly put forward to "vigorously develop the new industry of road freight transport, such as non-vehicle carriers", "accelerate the development and introduction of network platform road freight transport operation and management methods". On September 6, 2019, the Ministry of Transport issued the Interim Measures for the Management of Network Platform Road Transportation Operations, renaming "car-free carrier" to "network platform road cargo transportation". "network platform road cargo transportation operation", referred to as "network freight platform". The promulgation of the Measures marks the official birth of network freight transportation.

Third, many enterprises are still hovering in the wait-and-see, not sure whether they need to transform the network freight, here we talk about the network freight is suitable for which enterprises?

The first category is a certain scale of contract logistics enterprises. Through the network freight qualification, you can solve the enterprise's own tax problems, but also help logistics enterprises to realize the digital upgrading, and at the same time in the integration of capacity, online scheduling, transport process transparency and abnormal management early warning, online payment and value-added services to play an important role.

The second category is party A cargo owner enterprises. Relying on the advantages of a large number of sources of goods, cargo owner enterprises can transform to network freight transport, build their own capacity pool, and at the same time, through the platform's direct procurement of capacity, value-added services, procurement and the whole chain of synergies and other means, so as to achieve the purpose of reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

The third category is commerce and e-commerce platform. The logistics cost of commerce and e-commerce platform is high, and the carriers are difficult to manage, while the risk of financial and tax regulation is high. Through the network freight platform to solve the problem of financial and tax regulations at the same time will be the overall platform revenue, prompting the centralization of resources and operational synergies to improve efficiency.

The fourth category is after-market service providers. Logistics companies are still considering whether to do network freight platform, many logistics-related after-market service providers (such as a number of host manufacturers) has been reverse thinking to cross-border station, and declared a few successful cases.

Fourth, I believe that most people are most concerned about the problem, is to do the network freight in the end is relying on what profit, what is its profit model?

1, capacity aggregation

Capacity aggregation is one of the most basic modes of network freight platform to achieve profitability, network freight platform through big data, AI technology, blockchain and other technologies to achieve the management of customer information, carriers and drivers information audit and management, online settlement of freight charges, transparency of the transportation process, real-time online monitoring, etc., to shorten the transaction process and links to reduce the cost of subcontracting layer by layer, and completely bid farewell to the past The embarrassing situation of "it is difficult for shippers to find cars and drivers to find goods" effectively improves the efficiency of logistics operations, thereby reducing transportation costs, which is of great significance to the development of the entire logistics industry.

2、Tax optimization

Individual carriers are one of the main components of the network freight platform, accounting for half of the transportation market in the country, but as a small-scale taxpayers, are not eligible to issue 3% VAT invoices, so that logistics enterprises are unable to comply with the input deduction vouchers, thus facing enormous tax pressure, seriously restricting the development and upgrading of enterprises. Especially as the freight industry, freight can easily be several million or even hundreds of millions of dollars, every year is a huge cost, now through the network freight business model can obtain policy support and preferential treatment around, the use of policy regulation to achieve the optimization of tax planning in the logistics industry.

3、Data assets

In this era of data is king, data will become the most important asset, network freight platform real storage covers the order information, vehicle track and a series of data, for the future direction of the development of enterprises to provide a number of options. When the network freight platform users reach a certain scale, you can also consider and local financial institutions to reach a service cooperation, while the platform can extend a series of value-added services, such as ETC, gas cards, tires, accessories and vehicle sales, etc., to make full use of data to achieve profitability. Through the network of freight transport business data, enterprises can adjust the means of operation in a timely manner, so as to occupy a favorable position in the market, to obtain the maximum benefit.

4、Government support

Network freight enterprises belong to the high-tech industry, the country issued a number of documents to encourage the development of the network freight industry, including tax reduction and burden reduction, provide policy project funding support. According to statistics, as of the end of 2021 there are more than 1900 network freight enterprises in the country, the future development of network freight must be flourishing, in order to ensure tax compliance, on the basis of business operations to achieve cost reduction and efficiency, and improve the overall market competitiveness.

Disclaimer: The views in this article are solely on behalf of the author himself, Sohu is an information dissemination platform, Sohu only provides information storage space services.