Uber Freight announced Thursday it has expanded into less-than-truckload freight.
“Our vision is to become a one-stop shop for freight,” Michael Bailey, product manager for Uber Freight (NYSE:UBER), told FreightWaves. “Shippers can come to us for any type of goods, in any form, at any time with instant pricing and full transparency.”
Related article: Uber Freight launches Shipper Platform in Canada
Working with one of the largest logistics providers in the industry, Uber Freight will leverage the aptitude and technological foundation of BlueGrace Logistics to enable its customers to receive real-time pricing from various LTL carriers, track shipments and manage billing through a single platform.
“We believe in order to have the best-in-class LTL experience, you have to have a really great carrier network with competitive rates,” Bailey said. “With BlueGrace’s network we will be able to offer really competitive rates to our shippers. That was super important when we decided to come into the LTL market and be very competitive. We also think we can use their back-end technology to help us speed up the process of optimizing customers’ freight.”
Olivier Causse, general manager of Uber Freight, said this relationship will offer customers an LTL portal immediately. The company plans to use customer feedback and machine learning to optimize its customers’ shipping operations over time.
“We will learn how our customers use the product, learn their pain points and inject those solutions into the product as we go, really changing the user experience,” he explained. “We want to make the experience errorless and seamless since booking an LTL shipment can be much more complex.”
Related article: Uber Freight’s Market Access solution helps shippers manage supply chain risks
The team will focus on many of the issues that generally cause customers re-bills or missed pickups and deliveries, including overlength, density and destination-based charges.
“We’ve brought tremendous innovation to full truckload and we think the LTL market is ripe for this kind of innovation as well. We are very excited about that,” Bailey said.
A few of Uber Freight’s customers have been testing the new offering and have appreciated the seamless experience of using one platform for their entire book of business.
“There are many instances where our business doesn’t need to fill an entire trailer,” said David Qiu, shipping manager of H&M USA Inc., a New York-based ingredients distributor.
“The ability to now book LTL directly within the Uber Freight shipper platform means that we can rely on one solution for all of our shipping needs. Be it FTL or LTL, Uber Freight removes anxiety from the tendering process,” Qiu said.
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Freight Zippy
Yet another non asset entity attempting to bring down rates/wages in the LTL industry
Neither of these companies have great reputations, any LTL carriers that bring them in house are signing their own death certificate.
No one need another 3Pl in this environment. Especially with these reputations.