Digital freight brokerage Uber Freight (NYSE:UBER) on Tuesday launched its self-service platform for shippers within Canada. The company began doing business in Canada in 2019 and has been manually facilitating domestic and cross-border shipments originating from Ontario and Quebec.
With the launch of Uber Freight’s Shipper Platform, Canadian shippers will be able to directly plug into the company’s marketplace for real-time pricing and available capacity.
In an interview with FreightWaves, Drew McLachlan, general manager at Uber Freight, was excited to bring this type of transparency to the Canadian freight market.
“The continued growth of our Shipper Platform is a key area for Uber Freight,” he said. “We have had fantastic success with our U.S. shippers using this platform and we are excited to bring the same level of transparency to Canada, a market that historically has had less of this technology in [the logistics] space.”
McLachlan explained when the company launched in Canada in 2019, it focused on building a robust carrier network that shippers could rely on before offering up that network to shippers directly.
“We were able to establish relationships with carriers that range from owner-operators to some of the largest fleets in North America,” he said. “These networks will allow Canadian shippers to tender a load in seconds.”
Uber Freight has included a number of important operating technologies within the platform, including automated tracking notifications and document management tools that have been requested by a number of the company’s Canadian customers.
“We already have over 1,000 different shippers that have expressed interest in using a shipper-specific platform from Uber Freight,” McLachlan explained. “We feel like the technologies we have been able to provide is a good market fit for both small to medium-sized shippers all the way up to the national retailers.”
The company will be investing more in the Canadian freight market in the future, including adding more roles for planning and operations in its Toronto office.
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