Marcus Hoed: 0:03

We provide mid mile and and last mile solutions for retailers, e-commerce platforms. And and grocery deliveries. We do everything in a sustainable manner as well as the mid mile as well as the last mile. We are utilizing especially for our last mile, multiple different solutions which can be e-cargo bikes, which can be e-quads, which can be e-vans.

Tom Raftery: 0:28

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 11 of the sustainable supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and I'm excited to be here with you today showing the latest insights and trends in supply chain sustainability. Today, I'm talking to Marcus Hoed from Dutch X and in upcoming episodes. Next week, for example, I'll be talking to Brian Merkling from Thinaer about IOT. Then Madhu from Schneider Electric about Schneider Electric's supply chain improvements. And the week after it'll be talking to Eric Linxwiler from TradeBeyond. But in today's episode, as I said, Marcus Hoed from DutchX. Before we kick off today's show. I'd like to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going. And I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter. I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about sustainability and supply chains. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable, with adoptions starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in keeping the show going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode, or visit tiny url.com/s S C pod. Now without further ado. I'd like to introduce my special guest today, Marcus. Marcus welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Marcus Hoed: 2:11

yes. Hi Tom, how are you? I hope all is well. I'm Marcus Hoed, co-founder, co-owner of, Dutch X the, largest tech enabled sustainable delivery company in the United States.

Tom Raftery: 2:23

Okay, great. So Marcus, you're based in the United States. Obviously the company's name is DutchX. Your name is Marcus Hoed, and you do not have a New York accent. I'm guessing there's a story there somewhere.

Marcus Hoed: 2:38

Yeah, I originate. I'm born and raised in in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam. Moved to New York, but is it almost 20 years ago? So I don't know where I am. Somewhere maybe in the Atlantic. I'm still not New York and I'm not Dutch anymore. But but yes, I I'm originally from from the Netherlands, so I'm dutch

Tom Raftery: 2:55

And is that the reason for the company name?

Marcus Hoed: 2:59

That's the, the reason for the company name. I think it has multiple reasons. First of all, as I grew up in the, in the Netherlands I grew up with, of course, as we all know, with with bikes. I probably could ride a bike before I could even, could even walk. So that's one, one big big side of it. I think that the the logistic. The logistics in the Netherlands with the largest world port is is something that we grow up with, which we learn from a very young age, supply chain, and and logistics. It's even a subject in in high school if you want to choose it. It's kind of an ap. So yeah. So from those perspectives, we thought that Dutch X would be the right name.

Tom Raftery: 3:42

Nice. Nice. And I mean, you gave a very high level, high level summary there when you were doing the intro, but tell me a little bit more, what is it that DutchX does?

Marcus Hoed: 3:54

So we do we provide mid mile and and last mile solutions for retailers, e-commerce platforms. And and grocery deliveries. We do everything in a sustainable manner as well as the mid mile as well as the last mile. We are utilizing especially for our last mile, multiple different solutions which can be e-cargo bikes, which can be e-quads, which can be e-vans. And then from our mid mile perspective, it all depends on distance which kind and of course volume, which kind of a vehicle we would be using. We're not just, this logistics company, like everybody envisions it. As this is quite new and it's a very fast growing area. We are partnering very closely with our with our clients to to find the best solution. And of course at the end, the best cost solution for the client. Because at the end, yes, we want to be green, we want to think about the, the earth, sustainability, et cetera. But we also have to make sure that we can offer a a price competitive rate. And then on the other side we have our, our tech platform as we want to make sure that we are performing on the, on the highest level. We created our own proprietary technology, which is really based on honestly, the entire, the entire chain supply chain of an employee, which means from the moment we hire them or even before hiring them. All the way to something we hope never happened to to offboarding and measuring within there, their performance, their availability, their efficient scheduling but also the entire training program is all rolled out in our in our technology.

Tom Raftery: 5:46

Interesting. Okay, cool. Now, you talked about e-bikes, E cargo bikes, E vans, and e quads. Can you, I mean, e-bike, straightforward enough, E cargo bike. A little bit more. I mean, I know what an e cargo bike is. Some people listening might not. An e quad van is simple enough. What, what's an e quad? What's and what are the differences? When do, when do you decide to do a bike versus a cargo bike versus an e quad versus a van, an e van?

Marcus Hoed: 6:16

So I think it's there are a couple of of pieces in this. So the E-bike, of course, it's mostly very small parcels, very fast deliveries, which we're utilizing mostly in our on demand markets. Then we have the e-bike in combination, and we call this the cargo bike, the e-bike in combination with the bike trailer or the more traditional old school cargo bikes with with the box in the front or the box in the back. Those we are utilizing for for cargo and routing. But again, it all depends on the the size of the package, the volume, the weight the area, the density of those particular areas. And then the latest new thing is, which came on the market, I would say approximate, like a year, year and a half ago is the e-quad. The e-quad is it it's, it gives the same look and feel like a small, very small van. But it's bike operated. It has four wheels. It has a very large cargo and load capacity which can carry because of these also higher weight, which is in our industry, extremely important because the longer we can send our delivery associates out on a route the more products they can carry, the more efficient we get. And at the end, the lower cost per delivery there is.

Tom Raftery: 7:34

Sure.

Marcus Hoed: 7:34

And e-van, I don't think I have to explain exactly what that is.

Tom Raftery: 7:38

And what is the availability of these, like for you, not for your customers, but for you for getting supply of them, for example, because e-bikes sure have started to take off recently, but I can't imagine getting the likes of e vans, e quads, or even e cargo bikes in the US is straightforward.

Marcus Hoed: 8:00

Let's, so the e-bikes with, with cargo is, is quite easy to to get. There is quite a large amount of availability there. If you take e-quads, there are the moment a couple of manufacturers who are really trying to develop with the latest technology and the safest and the best solutions out there because safety at the end is, is key to run an efficient operation. And besides an efficient operation, also the safety of the, the employees for us key and very, very important. If you look at the availability, there is plenty available. And I think that we for currently don't, for don't see any challenges there. E-vans is, is also not so challenging. It's more on the e-trucking side where currently the the availability is more limited. And besides the, the limitations there, there's also still kind of a a distance challenge in there. I dunno if you're here in the background, but you can hear I'm really in New York City Yep. so I'm not just saying no, but to, from the e truck perspective, there is a little bit more challenges. The pricing is still extremely high. The mileage they can, ri drive is also more limited as we have many warehouses where we are operating, or 3PLs where we are operating without in in Pennsylvania. And even some of them are even more so, more south than Pennsylvania from New York. You can see that some of them can just not do the distance with one with one battery. But the the availability is currently not so much of a challenge.

Tom Raftery: 9:34

Okay, good. And I'm glad you mentioned safety because that was gonna be the next question. The cyclists that you have working for you and your team, is cycling in American cities safe? I know it is in the Netherlands. No problem. I'm based in Seville and I moved here in 2008. And when I was moving here at that time, they were building out the cycling infrastructure for the city and the bicycle lanes. The bike lanes here in Seville are all physically separated from the road. So if you are a if you're driving a car and you wanted to hit a cyclist for whatever malicious reason you would destroy your car trying to do, so, you know, it, the, the, the physical separation is such, so cycling here is very safe. What's it like in American cities?

Marcus Hoed: 10:29

Let's say I think that all the cities are at the moment having a huge focus on the on the safety aspect. Infrastructure is getting better and better and better. I remember when we started Dutch X, there was not so much infrastructure. I will give you a little bit of the history, and it's a very interesting history for where we are now and where we were where we are coming from. When we started the company, we imported Dutch traditional cargo bikes, which is called the bakfiets which was very hard. It was hardly available in the United States and relatively it was very costly. When we imported them, we started to realize that these cargo bikes were absolutely not holding it in in New York City traffic. There were no bike lanes at that time. Parts were also not available. So besides that, we had to import the parts also from the Netherlands. There were no mechanics who could maintain and repair those cargo bikes. Also, there we had some certain challenges, I think. You know, it was a great lesson, but we thought we, we should have started a little bit better through, but we didn't. But let's say like this. I think from there also we learned a lot. So we decided very rapidly to to, to stop that operation and switch from there into a biker model with in combination with with walkers and very limited amount of vehicles. These bikers were more like the cool bikers who everybody always sees in all these movies. These very fast couriers who are going from somewhere midtown Manhattan to downtown Manhattan in 12 minutes. And everybody's asking themselves, how do they do this? The word that I'm now trackers and everything else. So we were like, wow, this is really incredible. Till we started to realize that they were holding on on cars. They were they were not even having breaks, they were balancing at the traffic light to go everything as fast as possible, which is very fascinating, but not for us. Because again, safety is key. From there we slowly transitioned to to a more to a bigger and broader walker model and vehicle model. Because we had just no choice. But then back in 2018, 19, you started to see the new cargo bikes, and I think the DOT and the City of New York, and not only New York, Boston Miami San Francisco, Los Angeles, they all started to think about how can we as in from a city perspective, can make the infrastructure better. And I think there can still be many improvements, but if you compare for where it's coming from, it became much and much and much and much better. And from there we were also able to roll out different kind of bike e-bike solutions and do this in a, in a safety manner. I also want to touch on on the e-biker himself, the person who does the deliveries. It's something very different to be a commuter. To ride the bike from A to B, go from home to office or go from home to France or, or anything, than doing cargo bike deliveries. Cargo bike deliveries you are out on a route. These routes normally are around, and it fluctuates from two and a half to four hours one container. Which means that normally they're out going out twice to three times a day. So at the end, you're out on the road for about eight hours, which is a very different mindset than riding your bike as a commuter or even somebody who will do it to exercise. So for us, the key and the start of everything what we did was building this amazing training program. And it's not only just a training program, before you get get hired by DutchX or get a proposed hiring proposal. You go through a bike test. And to really ride a bike to see are you capable and able to to do this. And this has nothing to do with from a physical perspective because they have the support with with the e battery, but this is more from a safety perspective and a liability perspective. And from there,

Tom Raftery: 14:36

to clarify, Marcus, I I just wanted to clarify something there. You say the bikers you're using are employees, so it's not a gig economy kind of thing. You're actually employing these, these bikers full time.

Marcus Hoed: 14:50

Correct. We are fully employee based organization. We want to perform on the highest level. We want to control, our performance very, very, very tight. And to do this besides all the labor laws, by the way, because cargo is not the same as doing food delivery or restaurant deliveries we have to be in an W2 environment.

Tom Raftery: 15:13

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And so you've got these bikers that you're hiring, they're full-time employees, they're doing deliveries around the city. Uh, Which cities are you operating in currently and what are your plans for expansion?

Marcus Hoed: 15:30

So we're currently in in New York City. We are expanding to Boston in the, the goal was the end of Q1. It looks like it's going to roll out in in the beginning of Q2. Pennsylvania will be the end of Q2. And then we have for third quarter to fourth quarter of this year, we're now identifying strategic locations within Miami and the Washington DC area. For us, it's key to be in strategic areas because to utilize e-quads or e-bikes or e cargo bikes we have to be positioning us our ALCs, our access logistics centers extremely strategically. Because at the end they can only ride an approximate four mile radius around our four to five mile radius around our ALCs. Because we have of course battery limitations as well. I. well

Tom Raftery: 16:27

Sure, sure. And. Who are your typical customers and what is it that they're moving?

Marcus Hoed: 16:37

Our typical customers are very varying from, as I mentioned before, groceries but also we have a lot of fashion clients, e-commerce clients let's call them house goods. Home goods. What is it? House goods products who can be bought through or e-commerce or directly from from retailers.

Tom Raftery: 17:30

Okay, so I could be on a website if I was based in New York, order some kind of mixer from a a website from a a retailer and they choose your company to have it put on a bike to have it delivered to me. Is the idea that it gets there more quickly with DutchX or is it that they want to do it for sustainability purposes, or is it some other reason?

Marcus Hoed: 18:00

I think it is a mix of both. Sustainability is is key for a lot of our clients. This is really their goal for 2024, 25 and 26, but we're also extremely transparent in our supply chain. When you take some of our competition out there, the UPS and the FedEx of this world you will get hopefully, probably a notification. It's on its way and it'll come somewhere today. We give the transparency already on a much earlier stage of when you can anticipate to expect it with a real time with a real time ETA. We just feel that transparency for consumers is very, very, very important to see where is my package, when can I anticipate to receive it? Because it helps a lot. That also being said again, the sustainable piece by the emission savings that we create in in the cities and in the United States is huge. Take New York and now as an example I live myself in New York the last couple of years. I love four seasons, but that's me. There are many people who don't like it. We don't really experience this anymore, like the way it used to be back in the day. And this is something that we all, and I mean really all of us from on a governmental level all the way to consumer level have to work on, to to think about the environment.

Tom Raftery: 19:22

Yeah. Do your bikers have trouble going out in extreme weather conditions? How does that work?

Marcus Hoed: 19:32

So yes, we we operate 365 days a year. We follow the let's say like this weather indications, if like poor weather or bad weather is it is anticipated on, we can adjust the delivery speed of the of the delivery associate by adjusting their amount of anticipated deliveries per hour. So with this they can go more carefully and slower. Of course there are weather conditions that we can just not operate, but that's not only just us, this is the entire mid mile and last mile delivery system in the United States. That's also the moment that we would not operate. You see now some bike manufacturers who are coming out with with weather tires for poor weather, where there's snow conditions, et cetera. So. And again, yes, we are a W2 environment, but if a delivery associate or an employee will come to us and tell us, I don't feel comfortable, I don't feel safe we, our pool of delivery associates is so extremely large that we would not put him at risk or, or whatsoever in that way.

Tom Raftery: 20:39

Okay.

Marcus Hoed: 20:40

But till now, I think in the last three years, if I remember it well I don't think there was one day that we didn't operate.

Tom Raftery: 20:49

Oh, fantastic. Great. And if I am a DutchX customer and I am interested in what my carbon savings have been by utilizing your services versus a FedEx or a DHL or a another company, do you have a way of reporting that to me that I can then, you know, report out to organizations that are interested in my carbon footprint?

Marcus Hoed: 21:18

So we, we do this on two levels. We do this on the consumer, customer, consumer level, and a customer level. So we see the e-commerce site or the fashion platform, or whoever our direct customer is as our customer and then we see their clients as the consumer. So we can provide as well as the customer as well as the consumer, a week on a weekly base, on a monthly base. However, they would like it, their emission savings. The part to our customers is more based on a real number. Let's call it 1 million savings. While on a consumer level, we translate it to trees. Because what we have seen and heard in the markets is most consumers, you can give them numbers, but they don't know what does this number entails. Well, if you translate it to the amount of trees they will be saving. This is understandable. So, which ultimately means that you Tom if you will order to some of the platforms where we would provide the deliveries. You will get on a, and this is all discussed of course, with our customers on a monthly base. A report you ordered in this month from A, B, C, D. The last mile has been done by DutchX in this case, and you saved by this 200 trees. I don't know how much you order online, but I just I just give here give here a number and then through the customers themselves, so to the e-commerce platforms, to the fashion accounts, to the grocery infrastructure accounts. We we give them a real number with emission reports because it can be for them financial savings, and then it can entail much more.

Tom Raftery: 23:05

Sure. Sure, sure. And do you also do reverse logistics?

Marcus Hoed: 23:10

So yes, we do forward and reverse logistics. As we have so many delivery associates out on the, on the street every single day. We are able to route them a schedule within their routing system to pick up and deliver it back to one of our ALCs, and at the end, return it back to the to the customer.

Tom Raftery: 23:31

Okay. And in the prep call we had, you mentioned using waterways as a kind of a, a, a new arm to your business as it were. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and explain how that works?

Marcus Hoed: 23:45

Yes, of course. So we are trying as we can, everything we can to reduce the the emission, but also congestions in in New York City. So we are working very closely with all the governmental institutions here in New York to start bringing the, let's call it the last mid mile peace. So bringing the parcels to to New York City with with the waterways and, and utilizing their or existing or new building out infrastructure. And. We are waiting for the approval for the parcels we want to bring in, but we are ready, already with certain clients who are extremely interested and we're getting more and more customers who are reaching out to us for can we be part of this? Can we be part of this to start testing these these new models? We have billed them all out. We are ready to go. It's now waiting for the, the Coast Guard to to sign off on it.

Tom Raftery: 24:40

Okay, nice, nice. It occurs to me as well. And it's not something you mentioned, so maybe it's, it's not the case, but are any governmental agencies customers, because if I'm thinking that, I'm thinking they should want to be reducing your, their emissions and your platform would seem like a, an ideal way to do it, but maybe they have other solutions or maybe they're not aware or maybe they're not interested or, I don't know. Do, do you have governmental customers?

Marcus Hoed: 25:08

At the moment. No, I think it's a very interesting point you bring up, but no, we don't.

Tom Raftery: 25:12

Okay. Short answer.

Marcus Hoed: 25:16

Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting because I work myself very closely with all the governmental institutions and I I think that they are ready. They built everything out together with us and also, of course from their, from their, from their own perspective they started to utilize themself. For example, the, the DOT started to utilize some e-quads themself to to test them and to utilize them for their own infrastructure, but they are not utilizing companies like ours yet to to help them. We just give them the data, the information, et cetera, to to see how this is going to work in a much, much broader scale.

Tom Raftery: 25:56

Okay. Okay. And you mentioned you had created your own technology platform and that you're a tech enabled platform. Talk to me a little bit about the functionality that you've built into that platform. You know, how it helps your organization be more automated and keep, you know, be more efficient and how that works for your customers as well.

Marcus Hoed: 26:20

So first off, for the customers, the, the, the biggest perspective here is of course the full transparency of the the mid mile and the last mile. But from an employee perspective, I think it is really revolutionary because what we have been doing is building out this, this platform in a way where delivery associates, they became, especially during Covid, the gig worker was the new trend

Tom Raftery: 26:51

sure.

Marcus Hoed: 26:52

And everybody wanted to work when they wanted to work, and they didn't wanna rely on a schedule what was provided by an employer. They wanted to work when they could potentially be, when they wanted to be available. With our platform, we built this, this model in a way that it gives them the feeling and the look of being a gig worker, but they work in a W2 environment. What means that they can choose their own shifts?

Tom Raftery: 27:23

Okay.

Marcus Hoed: 27:23

We have influx, unexpected influx in volume. What means that because we have such a broad amount of employees within our database, they can pick up a shift last minute potentially, if of course the volume is there. They can. We as a, from an employer perspective, we built out in certain cases 24, 30 shifts structures per day. Why we want to be as efficient as possible because in a W2 environment, to have employees idling is extremely costly. By creating many different shift structures and start and end times during a day, you reduce let's call it our internal congestion by having employees waiting for their container or for their e-bike and e-quad to go out on to do their deliveries. And this is, of course, at the end, a cost savings to, as well as the consumer as well as the as well as our customers. Besides this, it's also measured their their performance. And then we're not, 'cause I don't like to be with employees in, in a competition, but it shows them where they stand, not just against the expectations of the company. I can expect from you, Tom, you're going do 20 deliveries per hour, 30 deliveries per hour. But is this realistic? I can expect as a company, whatever I want. But this platform also shows them where does Tom stent comparable to all his peers within the Dutch X organization, which shows them like, I'm a good employee, I'm a bad employee. Or I can do better or wherever it stands. It's the same like, products who arrive damaged, which who never reach the co the, the end customer who there are many within the last mile delivery. There are many measure points. We measure their performance and also what are the expectations of the customer itself. Because we have, with many of our customers, we have SLAs in place, which is on which level we need to perform. And by giving this information and data to our employees, you just see an increase of their performance because nobody wants to be on the bottom of that list. So, so this, and if you do something wrong, so let's say you are, as an employee, you have more damaged packages than, for example, your peers. You will think by yourself, how can I do this better? Or they will reach out to our ops team, or our ops team will reach out to them already directly and say, we have to work on something because this is not working this way. What are you doing wrong? And let's work on this together. And let's find a way that we don't have the amount of of damaged packages. But to make them aware of it. And see that we as a company are tracking and tracing this. We see some really big, big, big improvements of of our, of our performance. The other part is that we have as we have many different clients many different clients have many different kind of expectations. And because our entire learning process is also on this platform. If we open a new account tomorrow and they have certain expectations from all the mid mile driver, and this is especially more on the mid mile driver side, but let's say the mid mile driver or even within the last mile we can add this easily to our training program. Which can be reached out to all our employees. And we also track and trace who follow the training program, et cetera, which means that they are, I don't wanna call it certified 'cause that's a really heavy word, but that they are trained to run this particular operation and that they know what they what they need to do. So that's an another aspect. And then the last part is, is that we also have our entire payroll structure and tip structure also built within our platform. Transparency 'cause we have certain clients who give us tips. We also have a lot who don't, but we have many, many, many customers or consumers who do who do give tips. And by creating this transparency they get a better idea of how much tips they're making. It's an additional income. So they're not working for x dollar per hour? No. It's x dollar per hour plus tips. And by providing this transparency, you feel them also more committed and, and delivering on an on a higher level.

Tom Raftery: 32:01

Nice. Nice, nice. Where to next for DutchX? I know you've already mentioned some of the cities you're moving to, but you know, what are your plans for like five years time?

Marcus Hoed: 32:13

So five years time is to be to create an infrastructure who can cover the entire United States. Also the more less dense areas. Because in our trajectory for the coming two, three years are mostly, let's call it middle to higher dense cities. But to build it out in a, in a broader network to build out further our technology platform, and try to find as many solutions as we can to get as many trucks, vehicles possible from the, from the streets of of the United States.

Tom Raftery: 32:47

Great. Great. Good. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now Marcus, is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this, we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Marcus Hoed: 33:01

I think that's from, from everything. I don't think there's a particular question. I really, hopefully believe and, and, and, and strongly believe that every citizen in the United States should find and think about ways. And it can be very, very, very minimal to save and see how we can save the the environment. And it can start with separating your garbage to as far as you want to get it. We all know that some of the more sustainable products, we just started with using sustainable garbage bags, they're recycled garbage bags. They're more expensive than the traditional ones. So we understand very clear that we're not already there yet, but every little piece we can do to help the, the environment, to save the world, to do better for our kids, grandkids, et cetera. Think that fully through and, and, and do whatever you can.

Tom Raftery: 33:58

Yeah. Yeah, great point. If people would like to know more about yourself, Marcus, or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Marcus Hoed: 34:09

You can send them directly to, to me or to the, to the rest of the team, like Kim or or Chloe, please. Any questions? We, we would we also would love to hear feedback from the consumers and from the customers because it'll only get us better and, and keep us improving and, and grow through through a bigger network.

Tom Raftery: 34:29

And is that by a email? Do you have an email address that people should reach out on?

Marcus Hoed: 34:34

Yes, my my email address is mhoed, which is M-H-O-E-D, at dutch x.com.

Tom Raftery: 34:42

Fantastic. Marcus, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Marcus Hoed: 34:47

Thank you, Tom. Thank you.

Tom Raftery: 34:50

Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.