Carl from Chicago

I have been considering “disruption”, including what is hype and what is real.  Here is one on the cab industry where it occurred and in the electric and gas utility industry which has proven resilient in its current business model.

While “retail” is a nebulous category, it is one that touches virtually everyone in the USA. Let’s start with the definition of retail:

the sale of goods to the public in relatively small quantities for use or consumption rather than for resale.

My experience with retail has been that of a consumer, although I live in an area near Michigan Avenue which features a huge variety of stores of all types, from mass market to high end “showcase” stores. I also have a long history with e-commerce, having been involved in a variety of businesses helping them to go “online” and “digital” from the earliest days of the web. Since the primary threat to modern retail today is from e-commerce, this experience is relevant.

This chart above is from a recent Business Insider article on retail. The graph clearly shows how shopping is moving from the physical retailer to the online retailer, and it is being accelerated by the adoption of mobile technologies (which enable you to shop and research while on the move, not just when you are in front of your computer at a desk).

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I started a trend of posting on disruption with the taxicab industry being walloped by Uber. While disruption is everywhere in the press, the question is – when is disruption truly real and where is it a distraction? Let’s move on to the electric and gas utility industry.

The electric and gas utility industry is the “exact opposite” of the classic “disruption” thesis… although disruption and revolution have been promised many times over the years, they have failed to materialize. Let’s look at the characteristics of this industry and find the salient facts that either “enable” or “defeat” disruption.

I worked in the electric and gas utility industry throughout all of the 90’s. I traveled to over 100 public, private and municipally owned utilities (there aren’t that many left today because there have been many mergers in the industry space). Since then I have followed them through business publications and public sources of information.

The electric utility industry has 4 main components:
1. Generation – the generation of power through nuclear fuel, coal, natural gas, hydro or solar / renewable
2. Transmission – moving power via high voltage lines from where it is generated (remote) to the cities where people live
3. Distribution – the local city with overhead and underground wires and substations and physical trucks
4. Customer Service – who you call and how they dispatch crews and respond to incidents

The electric utility industry also is characterized by “real time” surges and the fact that power can’t be stored (yet) on a large scale; thus peaks occur on the hottest days or the coldest days and power is needed exactly at that moment at your particular location. These peaks can results in demand far higher than during a “typical” day.

The natural gas utility industry is conceptually similar to the electric energy industry with two main differences. Generation isn’t handled by them (exploration companies find natural gas and get it to their system through their own processes and methods) and natural gas is much less “peak sensitive” and can be stored near the point of demand and injected into the system.

Broadly speaking, there have been many attempts to “de-regulate” the electric and gas utility markets over the last THREE decades. Let’s start with natural gas.

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The term “disruption” is everywhere in the popular press. You should “disrupt yourself” and new internet unicorns are going to “disrupt” all kinds of industries. Let’s think a bit about what really is disruptive and what isn’t. This post is going to start with the taxi industry. Later I will turn to other industries, where disruption was predicted but didn’t occur, and we can try to determine why.

I am very familiar with taxis, having traveled all around the country for business over decades and using taxis all the time in Chicago. Downtown Chicago is one of the few places where you could hail a street taxi at almost any hour of the day or night and assume that one could be found in a relatively short period of time (within 10-15 minutes at worst).

What were the elements of the traditional taxicab industry? They were as follows:
– Limited numbers of licenses were offered, and they were generally bought up and consolidated into a few taxicab companies
– The taxis operated mostly where they offered the highest returns; downtown, in wealthy areas, or near clubs and nightlife. While they theoretically served the entire city, in practical terms they ignored the poorer areas not only for the inherent danger but also due to the fact that it was hard to get a “return” trip once you dropped someone off, necessitating a drive back to a wealthier area and lost time with no earnings
– If you talked with a taxi driver, they typically worked very long hours and did not earn much money. Since driving a car an “entry level” skill, there were in practical terms an infinite number of possible drivers (a large supply) so the earnings of the drivers were as low as the market would bear (very low). The medallion owner then kept all the remaining profits
– The taxicab experience as a rider generally was lousy and perceived to be unsafe to single women. You didn’t have any information about the driver and they could be anyone; the low wages of being a taxicab driver also tended to attract drivers on the margins economically
– The taxicab used a consistent rate based on time or mileage plus a charge to start the meter and often specific additional charges such as tolls or airport fees. The costs could be high; for instance in Chicago if you left the city limits after the first city you were charged “meter and a half” – thus to travel out to a far suburb the fare could easily exceed $100. This was explained as the fact that the cab can’t get a local fare (they are licensed to pick up in Chicago, not the remote city such as Naperville) so they had to drive all the way back to the city to start working again. And on a big night like New Years’ Eve, it was a crapshoot to find a taxi since supplies were limited and not everyone was out driving
– The main role of the taxi associations was to limit new medallions (which increased competition) and manage the local regulators, who generally defined rates and other business conditions. After a while most cities had “regulatory capture” and didn’t issue new medallions and mainly kept the status quo
– If you were out of a major city, generally no one used cabs except maybe to go or be picked up at the airport. When I lived in Texas in the late 90’s I tried to get a cab and I was laughed at; cabs were terrible and no one took them. The alternative was drinking and driving or finding a designated driver

By now everyone knows what has happened to the taxicab industry. They have been disrupted practically out of existence by Uber (and to a lesser extent ride sharing apps like Lyft).

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