Latest Uber Freight launch combines marketplace and managed services networks

New spot market platform brings transparency to load requirements and possible risk

Grace Sharkey

7 months ago

ARLINGTON, Texas — Managed transportation and freight technology provider Uber Freight on Wednesday launched a spot market solution under its premier offering Uber Freight Exchange.

Uber Freight Exchange was initially released in September as a contract procurement platform enabling shippers to run bids with both their own and Uber Freight’s carrier network. At the time, the product brought Uber Freight’s technology to the contract market while providing messaging tools, bid functions and performance reporting and mitigating lane coverage risks in a wide variety of market conditions.

The new spot function, unveiled at Uber Freight’s Carrier Summit, completes Exchange and combines Uber Freight’s brokerage and managed transportation solutions to offer an improved freight procurement experience through a tech-driven approach, according to the company.

“Uber Freight Exchange is an open, neutral marketplace where shippers and carriers can come to meet. It’s not tied to the brokerage or the managed transportation business,” Eric Berdinis, head of carrier product management, told FreightWaves. “Shippers who are using email or phone calls for their RFPs or for getting a spot rate now have one place to help them find the best carriers, get the best rates and create fairness in the market.”

Combining the technology of Uber Freight and its acquired company, Transplace, Exchange now allows carriers to procure both spot and contract loads on a single platform, accessing loads from thousands of shippers. It brings together Uber Freight’s capabilities in automated pricing and load recommendations developed over seven years with Transplace’s relationships with hundreds of shippers.

Uber Freight Exchange Spot board. (Photo: Uber Freight)

The platform also brings greater transparency to the spot load procurement process, according to Uber Freight. It provides carriers access to key load details upfront, like facility ratings, hazmat requirements and potential backhaul opportunities. The goal is to help carriers make more informed bidding decisions quickly without needing to seek out additional information from shippers.

Ran Sun, senior product manager of marketplace dynamics at Uber Freight, explained to FreightWaves how Exchange makes it easy for carriers to work between spot and dedicated markets in its updated solution.

“If [carriers] are continuously booking spot loads on a certain lane, we want them to know there is an opportunity to book continuous freight on that lane. The system will string together a bunch of spot loads in order to form a three-month contract. The carrier can bid now on that dedicated lane and have business lined up over the next couple of weeks rather than having to go book one-off loads every week,” Sun explained.

Berdinis elaborated on that scenario, pointing out that combining the spot and contract opportunities creates an advantageous network effect.

“A single unified carrier portal where we can show load opportunities and reloads and backhauls across our shipper network gives carriers the opportunity to form complete schedules. That should drive efficiency for them and then also drive prices down for the shippers who otherwise would be paying for empty miles. The more loads we have in one place, the more of those network effects you start to see that benefit both parties,” he said.

Sun told FreightWaves that this new Exchange experience has been rolled out to all of its 95,000 brokerage carriers, and that the company has slowly been integrating its managed shippers into the new platform, with 180 shippers already transitioned, including those shippers’ carrier networks.

“By the end of the summer, we are anticipating the entirety of our managed transportation business on this platform. The initial feedback has been very positive and those customers’ carriers also feel the platform is easy to use and very intuitive,” said Sun.