Avito: demand for freight transportation services increased by a third

Demand for commercial freight services increased by a third compared to the first quarter of 2022, the study says “Avito Services” provided to Vedomosti. At the same time, only for March – immediately by 53% year-on-year. Most of all, since 2022, the demand for commercial transportation on the platform has increased in Moscow (+124%), Khabarovsk (+118%), Novosibirsk (+101%), St. Petersburg (+90%) and Krasnodar (+87%) .

The number of offers from businesses providing services in this area is also growing: in March, ads from private carriers and transport companies almost doubled (+88%) compared to the same period last year. In March 2022, the growth in demand for commercial transportation compared to March 2021 amounted to only +19%. Now the platform has about 400,000 offers from private carriers and transport companies across the country, a service representative told Vedomosti.

The growing demand for transport services is associated, first of all, with the active development of e-commerce and the market for the delivery of goods from online stores, says Evgenia Lazareva, head of the Transport Services category at Avito Services. In addition, transport services are in demand among sellers and manufacturers who work with marketplaces. Entrepreneurs often involve carriers to transport goods to warehouses and points of issue.

Demand for fulfillment services increased three times compared to last year, Lazareva notes. “Fulfillment operators pack goods, prepare them for shipment to the marketplace, then pick them up from the supplier and ship them immediately to the buyer or to the warehouse. The demand for such services is growing, as they greatly simplify the operational activities of entrepreneurs who work with marketplaces,” she told Vedomosti.

Another segment of the cargo transportation market is transportation for private customers. Here, one of the most frequent requests is assistance with moving both within the city (for example, to a new apartment), and in out-of-town moving to the country house, as well as in transporting personal belongings. In March 2023, compared to the same period in 2022, the demand for the services of moving assistants in Russia increased by 27%, and for the services of loaders – by 45%. The residents of Nizhny Novgorod (+104%), Krasnodar (+90%) and St. Petersburg (+76%) used the services most actively. In Moscow, demand increased by 25%.

These data can be explained by the growth in the number of intermediaries and the tightening of competition in a shrinking market, says Mikhail Belousov, General Director of the Marshal Group of Companies, founder of the Academy of Logistics. “In fact, the volume of services offered has not grown – it’s just that there are more intermediaries for one“ live ”carrier,” he told Vedomosti.

Most of the ads, in his opinion, are placed by forwarders who work throughout Russia. When calling the indicated numbers, they accept applications, place the goods on the freight exchanges (for example, ATI) and wait for offers from the actual carriers. A “live” carrier, which can offer transport in a certain locality at the moment, can appear in about every twentieth ad, the expert suggests.

In some regions, for example, Moscow, Novorossiysk and the Far East, growth can be observed due to the “reformatting of the economy” and changes in logistics flows, but there is no need to talk about an increase in supply, Belousov notes. This is partly due to the withdrawal of foreign companies from Russia and the suspension of their production, the expert says.

The demand for private carriers offering one-time transportation of cargo on vehicles of various tonnages, ranging from passenger cars to five-ton cars, has always existed, says Andrey Myakin, CDEK Sales Director. “Success”Avito“The fact that they managed to transfer to their platform carriers offering such services at specialized sites, such as ATI and others. But in general, there is no big growth,” he told Vedomosti. On the contrary, among major federal players “ there is a drop in demand for transportation”.

Mikhail Burmistrov, General Director of Infoline Analytics, notes that Avito is not a competitor to transport companies, but a tool for finding partners. “The platform will help to “straighten” large companies and private traders,” the expert says. He explains the increased demand for services by the fact that through Avito, as a large platform, it is convenient to look for private carriers with a fleet of two or three cars.