
Launch HN: Terusama (YC W20) – We help warehouses schedule trucks - adenta
Hi HN, Andrew and Chris here. We’re building Terusama
(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.terusama.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.terusama.com</a>), a truck appointment system for logistics
teams at warehouses and distribution centers. We automate the
labor-intensive process of coordinating arrival times with a trucking
company, checking a truck in at a facility, and keeping track of
everything. Oh, and we have a theme song:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fyp4O4s5tk4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fyp4O4s5tk4</a><p>The status quo here is really antiquated software that is really hard
to use. Not only is the current way of doing things inefficient for
logistics folks, it has a big impact. The inefficiency created by poor
supply-chain coordination costs $30B a year in the U.S. and generates
billions of tons of C02, mostly from trucks idling in parking lots.
On top of that, it has a huge impact on the lives of truck drivers,
who are legally limited to 11 hours of driving time each day. Waiting
at warehouses often eats up 3-4 of those. Those wasted hours really
add up, making the job unsustainable for many and contributing to
another problem in the industry - driver turnover, which is over 90%.<p>Most of this inefficiency is caused by the high level of friction in
communication between the people who manage trucks, the drivers, and
the people who the drivers are delivering to. The freight industry has
made a ton of progress with software to help manage their fleets, but
warehouse logistics software hasn’t caught up.<p>Chris and I were students together at Indiana University. We became
really interested in this space at our later jobs. I was working
at Uber Freight (formerly Otto), and Chris was consulting for companies in
the industry. We were constantly amazed at how big and complex an
issue it was, and surprised that nobody was thinking about it in the
same way we were. We started talking to as many people in the industry
as possbile to figure a better way to manage logistics. The result was
the version of Terusama we launched with in the beginning of the year.
We have been since iterating on the product with a core group of
customers.<p>We streamline or automate most of the repetitive and administrative
processes needed to keep trucks flowing smoothly in and out of a
facility. We provide dispatchers at trucking companies and brokerages
a way to search through facilities, and schedule directly with
these facilities. When a truck driver arrives at a warehouse, we check them
in at a kiosk. Our customers get a dashboard where they can track and
manage loads coming to their facility. Logistics teams get visibility
into their incoming trucks, the ability to communicate with drivers
and carriers, and to track a load through its lifecycle (from staging
through completion). Everyone involved is kept in the loop with smart
notifications. In the future, an API will make it easy for anyone with
a brokerage or trucking company to get facility availability (to feed
into truck routing optimization), and schedule appointments. We’ll
also offer services to help carriers reduce the risk of missing truck
appointments.<p>One of the most important things we’ve learned in this time is how
important reliability is for a mission-critical app. It&#x27;s obvious in
retrospect, but it definitely changes your approach when building an
application - requiring heavier testing, redundancy, and support as a
form of redundancy.<p>These days you hear a lot about things like autonomy and AI in the
freight industry. We believe that to get the value promised by these
things, we first have to upgrade the outdated technology
infrastructure that currently runs the industry. Our goal is to build
that infrastructure, while solving today’s pressing problems.<p>We’re excited to see what HN thinks of our platform. We’re eager to
hear about HN users’ experiences, ideas, and know there is a ton of
expertise among the community to learn from. And if you’re in the
industry, we’d love to hear about your experiences with truck
scheduling!
======
hef19898
Absolutely agree on the AI vs. legacy systems part! Something most people tend
to underestimate when talking AI and logistics / Supply Chain Management.

back the day, I helped to roll out a similar, rather primitive system, at
Amazon across their german fulfillment centers. Just the added visibility of
that was mind blowing. Also increased pressure on operations, I don't consider
this a bad thing.

If you want to chat, more then welcome! also I'd love to hear about how you
approach that problem. Because it is huge one, also one most companies totally
ignore.

~~~
adenta
We would love to chat! I'll reach out to the email in your profile.

------
eth0up
One of the (several) reasons I left OTR was the absurd and erratic wait times
at shipping and receiving locations. Federal regulation of a driver's hours
compound the problem greatly, but little can be done about that directly. I
once waited six hours at a dock to then be told I'd be unloaded the next day.
I had two hours left and still awaited my daily grub and a reasonable place to
park for the night. I told them I'd had enough - they could have someone else
deliver it, I was going on my way. I was quite serious and prepared to do so,
and I really had hit a threshold. They unloaded me, quickly. I left relieved,
but thinking 'I need to get away from this shit'. I did, for other reasons
too.

I'll also mention a personal observation of the federal regulations of hours.
It caused me more grief than any other aspect of driving. I know when I can
drive safely or not, and can contend with a single nag. Having two, eg my
company <i>and</i> the regulations, forced me to drive in some pretty
difficult circumstances. The hours of service issue is a powerful potential
marketing point for your endeavor - one seriously neglected by shippers and
receivers, and carriers. Regulations are necessary, but they do introduce
complexities that are not insignificant.

I hope your efforts succeed in improving an industry that begs it.
Unfortunately my coding is shit and I can be of no service there, hence me
going OTR in the first place.

And if you do succeed, you'll be doing good not only for drivers, but the
industry and public safety too.

~~~
lhuser123
> forced me to drive in some pretty difficult circumstances

It’s unfortunate that this happens so much.

Many dispatchers simply do not care about public safety. After all, they are
not going to be responsible in case of an accident.

What many people don’t understand is how sometimes dispatchers are able to
manipulate unsuspecting drivers, especially new drivers without much
experience.

~~~
eth0up
At a good company, a dispatcher will immediately back off when a driver
expresses fatigue or illness. Of course, such can have consequences. What
bothers me more than a tyrannical dispatcher, is the bad side of regulations.
For example, if I start my day at, say 03:00 (with a 30min pre-trip
inspection) and arrive at loc at 06:00, but it takes 8 hours to load/unload,
during which I sleep, my 14 hours is still penalized, despite adequate rest. I
now have 3 hours to find food, or parking and progress to my next destination,
and I'll probably not sleep for a while after I stop. But dispatch wants me to
optimize off-duty time by resuming immediately after my available hours
refresh. So I sleep 4 hours and the federal government and dispatch are happy,
because the numbers look good and my schedule is tidy. I always said
bureaucracy and biology was a tough mix. A minor quibble, but it bothered me.

------
dhruvkar
Hi guys, kudos on the launch!

I help run a distribution company and I'm not clear who this is for? Is it for
my own trucks i.e. scheduling trucks between our locations and/or customers?
Is it for when we use a 3rd party logistics company i.e. scheduling time with
them to come pick up and deliver our goods? Or is the product FOR the 3rd
party logistics company that is handling our goods?

Is this usable without two (or more) of the parties using this software?

Would love to hear more. There are many issues in this space and love the fact
newer startups are getting into it.

~~~
adenta
> _I help run a distribution company and I 'm not clear who this is for?_

Hello! We sell to you, the person who runs a warehouse/distribution center. We
are trying to augment the functionalities of a receiving coordinator. Instead
of using the phone or email to schedule appointments at your distribution
center, you can use Terusama. What can we say to make this more clear in the
future?

> _Is this usable without two (or more) of the parties using this software?_

Could you clarify your question? We are not a TMS/WMS. We have one customer
who still scheduled appointments manually, but uses our kiosks to check truck
drivers in & out.

Glad you are as excited as we are!

------
bash-j
So suppliers can book a time with your facility, and they can enter details
about the delivery, e.g truck type, number of pallets, number of lifts? Does
the software limit them to particular docks that are compatible with their
truck, e.g side unload with a forklift vs rear unload with a pallet rider?
Does it take into account resource availability as well as dock availability,
e.g a double trailer still takes one dock but can take much longer to unload?
Also a warehouse might be limited to how much work per hour they can process
during certain times of the day, e.g morning vs afternoon and during lunch
breaks or shift changes.

~~~
adenta
> _So suppliers can book a time with your facility, and they can enter details
> about the delivery, e.g truck type, number of pallets, number of lifts?_

Correct!

> _Does the software limit them to particular docks that are compatible with
> their truck, e.g side unload with a forklift vs rear unload with a pallet
> rider?_

This would work. A 'dock' in Terusama has a type. Right now, everyone on our
platform fits nice and neatly into 'van', and 'flatbed'. When assigning docks,
we take into account what type of dock the appointment needs, and which docks
are available to service that appointment.

> _Does it take into account resource availability as well as dock
> availability, e.g a double trailer still takes one dock but can take much
> longer to unload?_

This problem is the worst, and I don't have quite a good solution in mind yet.
Right now we have the concept of, 'appointment types', and an appointment type
can have a slot count. So, you could have a, 'double-wide' appointment-type,
which would take up two slots on your schedule. So if your standard
appointment is an hour, double-wide appointments would take two hours.

This gets messy when the warehouse wants longer appointments based on who the
customer is, or who scheduled the load. I want to build some sort of rules
engine, but can't justify the complexity just yet.

> Also a warehouse might be limited to how much work per hour they can process
> during certain times of the day, e.g morning vs afternoon and during lunch
> breaks or shift changes.

We handle this! Will build it more out in the future, but I just allow you to
block off docks for certain times of the day. So a lunch break, would just be
blocking off every dock at a certain time of day, and setting that block to
repeat, daily.

~~~
bash-j
Sounds like you are off to a good start!

Another tricky problem I thought of would be a double trailer that can be side
loaded would take a single dock, but a double trailer that has to be rear
unloaded would take two docks. Also zoning docks so a refrigerated truck can't
dock at a dry goods dock, or customers may want to make sure certain suppliers
use the dock closest to where they need the goods. As in you wouldn't want to
unload the truck and then have to move the pallets hundreds of metres to the
storage location.

------
thebmax
I love the idea and vision but I think you are underestimating the benefits of
a good name. I can’t pronounce Terusama, couldn’t remember it, and it would be
hard to spell if heard. Also it doesn’t suggest what you do at all which is
important in a name. A combo of simple words that allude to what you do make
the best names IMO. Otherwise anything that can improved such a huge industry
sounds like a great market to tackle.

~~~
ldeangelis
When searching their name the whole results page is related to them. I don't
think this would be the case with a combo of simple words. Would love to hear
more on the origins of the name though. Congrats on the launch!

edit: the name is explained here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22552385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22552385)

------
imadethis
Congrats on the launch! I've been (casually) looking into this space lately
and it's seemed crazy to me how legacy everything is. Seems like there's a lot
of potential here.

Are there any plans to handle truck tracking before they reach the warehouse?
I know that's a huge lift, but I would imagine that could make a major
difference in scheduling.

Good luck!

~~~
adenta
> _Are there any plans to handle truck tracking before they reach the
> warehouse?_

Great question! Not at the moment. We feel there are quite a few people trying
to solve load availability(tracking trucks while between facilities), and it
is a gnarly problem. I don't believe there is any one, silver-bullet solution
to tracking. It will require a multi-pronged attack-plan, and at it's core
requires truck drivers to be incentivized into sharing this data.

------
lhuser123
I think, at some point, someone is going to figure out a way for easy
integration with the whole industry.

Don’t know if that’s possible but I think it would need to start by
integrating all loadboards. Imagine a unified loadboard where even small
brokers & carriers could easily do everything. With every load booked, all
logistics for shipping & receiving could be automatized.

~~~
adenta
I strongly believe the freight industry is just _too_ big. Like, it's just so
big, I don't know if a single system could integrate everything.

But I would love to be proven wrong.

------
inkeddeveloper
From the logistics industry, this problem is definitely harder than it sounds.
Scheduling is one thing but scheduling accurately is difficult. I spent two
years of my life working on developing a system to consume various inputs and
predict when a load would be delivered. This was anywhere from cross country
OTR loads to in-town deliveries. The main problem I ran into was the business
wasn't willing to limit the inputs to the system and threw everything plus the
kitchen sink into the algorithms. This, IMO, unnecessarily complicated the
problem. I would give anything to try this system over again.

~~~
adenta
Might I ask, was your facility using appointments, or was it first come, first
serve?

------
blitzo
Congrats guys. Any of the founder have any affiliation with Malaysia or
Indonesia? The company name sound like a portmanteau of 2 Malay words ('terus'
and 'sama').

~~~
adenta
When I was like, 7 or 8, my copy of Pokémon Crystal somehow got corrupted. I
ended up with some random item named, 'Teru-sama' in my inventory, that messed
up my game. Just a word that has stuck in my memory ever since.

And like, [https://terusama.com](https://terusama.com) was available.

[https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Teru-
sama](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Teru-sama)

~~~
Navarr
That was my immediate thought upon seeing the name. "Wait, is this a GSC
reference?"

You've obliterated Bulbagarden's ranking for the term

~~~
adenta
Haha, that's all thanks to my co-founders impressive SEO.

------
2J0
How is engine idle running a drivers home appliances and hvac statutory
tachtime?

(ymmv linguistically I suppose depending where you haul from/how much time you
spent in freeway lay-bys fixing your pickup/bandmobile/trabbi but there's a
lot of important social going on in these times and at least in the past Indy
drivers got themselves booked and did their paperwork meanwhile)

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legohorizons
Hi - I emailed andrew at denta dot co

We could use this. We have lots of carriers and this could make life much
easier.

