Uber has transformed the way people view transportation. Since its inception in 2010, it has expanded into over 53 countries worldwide. Its success has many entrepreneurs wondering whether the Uber model could ever work for the trucking industry.
What Is the Uber Model?
Uber is a smartphone app that allows users to request transportation from a group of crowd-sourced taxi drivers. What excites business experts about the Uber business model is its ability to divide up tasks into individual steps and to use supply and demand to help set the wages for those tasks.
How Can Uberification Change the Trucking Industry?
One of the biggest challenges in the trucking industry is inefficiency, so many startups are seeing the potential that the Uber business model could have for streamlining the trucking industry. Cargomatic, which launched in 2014, promises to connect shippers with available and vetted drivers. They claim that they’ll be able to help drivers make more money and get shippers better turn-around times. New York based startup Transfix was started by the son of a team of husband and wife freight brokers who saw the need for change in the trucking industry, stating, “My family’s little business was not going to be the platform for taking over the world.” Transfix boasts that they’ve been able to cut deadhead runs in half for the companies they have tested with, which include Barnes & Noble and Samsung.
In the face of higher operating costs and driver shortages, these startups are praying that the trucking industry’s answers are a smartphone app away.
What do you think? Can the Uber model work for the trucking industry, or are these companies doomed to fail?
Sources:
Recode
JOC.com
TechCrunch
New York Times