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McGuigan, who led sale of Transplace to Uber Freight, stepping down 

President and COO will depart on Jan. 31 but remain on Uber Freight’s board of directors

Frank McGuigan, who led Transplace into its acquisition by Uber Freight, is leaving the digital brokerage. (Photo: Uber Freight, Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Frank McGuigan, the president and COO of Uber Freight who came to the company in its acquisition of Transplace, is stepping down.

In an email sent to numerous Uber Freight employees Thursday, Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron said the news was “bittersweet” that McGuigan would be leaving his position as of Jan. 31. However, McGuigan will remain on the Uber Freight board of directors, Ron said in the email, and “will continue supporting and advising our organization’s ongoing and future success.”

McGuigan came to Uber Freight in the 2021 acquisition of Transplace, where McGuigan served as president and CEO. The transaction was seen as a marriage of the downstream capabilities of Uber Freight and its massive network of carriers using its digital brokerage capabilities with the managed transportation services that Transplace provided to shippers. 

The deal was announced in summer 2021 and completed in November. Late last year, in an interview with FreightWaves, Ron and McGuigan said they had completed the consolidation of various operating systems for the two companies while still retaining a wall of confidentiality to keep private data from managed transportation and digital brokerage separate where needed and where customers would demand it.


“As CEO of Transplace, Frank’s leadership was instrumental to the success, unprecedented growth and subsequent sale to Uber Freight,” Ron said in the email to employees. 

A prepared statement released by a spokesman for Uber Freight generally echoed the email.

“As CEO of Transplace, Frank was instrumental in the transformation of global logistics, drastically improving how goods move for shippers and carriers alike,” the statement said. “He will continue to support, advise and advocate for Uber Freight’s ongoing and future success as a member of our board of directors, and we wish Frank the best in his next endeavors.”

According to McGuigan’s LinkedIn profile, he worked as CEO at Transplace between January 2018 and October 2022, and was president and CEO with the company from January 2016 to December 2017.


Ron said during his tenure that McGuigan grew the company’s freight under management to $15 billion from $3 billion. He was also credited with expanding into Europe.

“I have learned so much from Frank over the last two years, and I thank him for building a world-class organization,” Ron said in the email. 

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One Comment

  1. Curious Cat

    How can Transplace continue to feed Uber from the brokerage spot boards. This seems a lot like insider trading? We work on the spot boards daily placing low market bids that should win the load. Only to see that UBER/Transplace has the load posted out a few days later with more money than your bid from the spot board. Is this legal?

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.