Across the Weighbridge
Summary
I yelled, “He’s pulling onto the weighbridge!” Most people probably wouldn’t be quite so excited by a ritual that occurs a million times a day at mines, smelters, warehouses and factories around the world. For me, the journey to this gatehouse had begun two years ago when my soon-to-be-cofounder Scott Evans asked me a seemingly simple question: “Why can I track shoes I ordered for my daughter every step of their journey to my house, but when I ship a truck of of copper worth $200,000 from New Orleans to Indiana, I have no idea if it’s arrived — or even if it’s shipped?” Over the past two years Scott, Andrea, Sweeney, and I, along with a growing team of extraordinary colleagues, have been working to answer that question. Does it mean tracking the specific lot of copper that was mined or aluminum that was cast, associating all of the origin and chemical composition data from the assay, through the metal’s journey on water, rail, and road to the furnace? This is physical commodities: the incredibly complicated supply chain that transforms ore in a mine in Arizona into the very fabric of everything electronic on the planet from our homes to our phones to our cars. Our way of life depends on our ability to buy, sell, finance and ultimately consume raw materials more efficiently, resiliently, and sustainably — and that’s our mission at Waybridge.