While many industries are reducing their carbon emissions, pollution from Australia’s transport sector is only getting worse.
And it’s not going to be a simple fix.
While government bears much of the responsibility for driving positive environmental change, the private sector also has a part to play. That’s where young entrepreneurs like Tom Bizzell come in.
Tom is a UQ Bachelor of Commerce / Bachelor of Laws (Honours) student. He’s also our Chief Student Entrepreneur – a role that has further developed his passion for solving problems and helping others do the same.
So, what’s the big idea?
Working with his close friend Jack Anderson, a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) student, and Chris Malau, a Bachelor of Engineering / Bachelor of Computer Science student, Tom co-founded WakeShare, an IT platform designed to help freight trucks with platooning.
So, why aren’t trucks already doing this? Well, it’s partly because trucks need to be semi-autonomous to platoon safely at close proximities.
But that’s not the only obstacle that Tom and Jack identified.
“Without the ability for truck companies to platoon with their competitors, its occurrence would be very rare,” says Tom.
“We recognised that the main hurdles to platooning between competitors would be the coordination of it, and the unwillingness of trucks to give their competitors a benefit.”
Jack, Tom and Chris developed their startup to address these exact barriers, providing a platform that combines the schedules of trucking companies and helps them to:
- find and coordinate platooning opportunities
- seamlessly provide appropriate payment to the lead truck of a platoon.
“Wakeshare is now a software tool which takes the schedules for multiple trucks, models their location over time and identifies route segments in which there are opportunities for platooning.”
