my name is Tiffany Mendez and I drive
trucks for a living
got into trucking into military it was
just one of those things way back in
1990 gosh I don't want to say the year
things I got thrown in a seat and I
never got out in 2018 about 3.5 million
people were employed as truck drivers in
the US but with the explosion of
e-commerce the demand for drivers has
been outpacing supply for instance in
2018 the US trucking industry was short
over 60,000 drivers if the trend holds
experts predict this number could be up
to 160,000 by 2028 one of the biggest
misconceptions that people have about
truck driving is that they believe that
it's easy
they think that we put the key in
ignition and we go but a lot falls down
to the whole plan of the trip and when I
start my day only have 14 hours to
complete up to 11 hours of driving you
know so I have to put in restrooms
showers washing eating all of that in
Prior life as a driver you know when I'm
waiting on a dispatcher to dispatch me
I'm waiting to four hours for them and
tell me hey you don't have it we don't
have a load for you until tomorrow you
know as to where I could have washed
clothes I could have went out and did
something you know with my life per se
and now I have control over that Mendez
says she now has more control over her
schedule thanks to ember freak it's an
online platform that matches truckers
with shippers looking to move cargo from
one place to another this is a huge
industry that is the backbone of the
economy but it's also highly highly
inefficient it is mostly still running
on fax phone and paper with a lot of
disconnects of how to actually match
shippers that are looking for truck
drivers to hold their Freight with truck
drivers that are looking for
opportunities to carry those shipments
on their trucks
uber getting into the trucking industry
could be a potential goldmine for a
company that's been struggling to turn a
profit if you look at the size of the
opportunity this is up to 15 percent of
the global economy so lots of potential
and we're still in the very early days
for us the trucking industry drew in
revenues of seven hundred and ninety six
billion dollars in 2018 with trucks
moving 71 percent of the nation's
Freight compare that to the global
ride-hailing market which in 2017 was
valued at just thirty six billion
dollars surging cargo volumes in 2018
gave trucking companies a lot more power
in terms of price that in turn drove up
costs for the shippers and manufacturers
and retailers leading to their margins
being squeezed and that can eventually
weigh on growth for them uber saw an
opportunity to come into the marketplace
digitize it and make it more efficient
by applying the same sort of business
model that it has applied to
ride-sharing
uber launched uber Freight in 2017 and
the program has since expanded to
forty-eight states as well as the
Netherlands in Germany uber says
thousands of shippers and almost half a
million truck drivers use the platform
typically shipping companies use freight
brokers as a middleman to match them
with available truckers taking a
commission in the process uber Freight
removes the need for a middleman by
allowing truckers to choose from a list
of available jobs and the routes that
they need to take to complete them
drivers also get information on what
they were hauling as well as how much
they'll be paid once they make their
delivery the trucker's can find their
next job right from the app earlier this
year
uber Freight also launched a desktop
portal for larger fleet operators one of
the benefits of having a platform like
this is giving people the flexibility to
drive when they want and having a lot of
certainty about you know when they're
driving where they're driving what
routes they feel most comfortable doing
gives them flexibility and how they get
there and when they work and like ubers
conventional app uber Freight allows
drivers to rate facilities out of five
stars
truckers can actually rate the
facilities of the shippers that they go
to of the manufacturers that they go to
so things like whether they have a
bathroom whether they have a place to
park your truck at night and get some
rest how long you have to wait these are
things that are really important to
trekkers and may determine whether or
not they want to take your cargo
shipment to improve efficiency
uber Freight also partnered with an
affiliate company called power loop that
allows carriers to share trailers so far
power loop is only available in Texas
the biggest issue for the small guys in
this industry is the fact that they only
have one trailer connected to the truck
which means they have to wait every time
the entire facility to be loaded and
unloaded for five six seven hours at a
time what we allow them to do is
actually tap into a trailer pool that we
manage for them so in the entire
facility they can drop their trailer
hook a trailer is already loaded and get
on the way not having to wait in
facility and constantly keep them
utilizing the truck and being paid more
for the driving time versus not being
paid waiting in those facilities because
if I can just pick up a loaded trailer
and drop off a loaded trailer and keep
moving and my wheels are turning and I'm
continuing to earn you know so that
again changes the industry totally and
the industry does need to change because
the driver shortage is only compounded
by the fact that many of today's truck
drivers will be aging out of the
workforce the Bureau of Labor Statistics
estimates that the average age of a
commercial truck driver in the u.s. is
55 years old one way / says it's
attracting drivers is by giving them
incentives that reduce their cost of
operation we actually have a loyalty
offering uber Freight class which is
giving them discounts on fuel on
maintenance on news trucks on health
insurance on their phone bills to really
level the playing field and allow those
truck drivers to operate with the scale
of a big fleet accessing all of those
discounts but does uber Freight make
financial sense
Uber's latest earnings report showed
that the companies all their bets
category
made up of uber freight and ubers
mobility services like bike sharing
brought in three hundred and forty
million dollars in revenue through the
first half of 2019 that's more than
three times the revenue from the same
time period last year but during this
time other bets losses have also been
increasing jumping from 48 million to
193 million overall uber reported losses
of over six billion dollars uber is
applying the uber strategy growth at all
costs to the freight industry it is
undercutting the competition in terms of
prices to gain more market share so what
you get is a very fast-growing revenue
stream but a lot of losses Morgan
Stanley in fact put out a report that
estimated that uber passes on 99 percent
of its revenue to the trucking companies
to give you an indication of what the
averages in the industry it's 80 to 85
percent so uber giving 99 percent of
revenue to the trucking companies is a
big deal and it really tells you that
profitability is likely a very long way
off an uber Freight is not alone in its
quest to digitize the trucking industry
trucking and freight technology
companies raised a record three point
six billion dollars in venture capital
funds last year one company that nabbed
some of this funding is keep trucking
the San francisco-based firm uses
hardware and software to help drivers
and fleet operators manage their
vehicles and cargo keep trucking says it
works with over 250,000 trucks and
55,000 trucking companies but the
company says it's not exactly the same
as uber free our hardware and software
is used by trucking companies to
actually manage their drivers to improve
safety to improve efficiency and through
that connectivity we've built with such
a significant base of capacity we are
now building an open freight marketplace
where any party that has loads and that
needs access to capacity can participate
and so while they're building a private
freight brokerage we're building an open
freight marketplace other players in the
market include companies like transfix
and convoy even Amazon launched an
online beta freight service of its own
in 2018 the service is currently only
available for shipment in five states
etiquette Maryland New Jersey New York
and Pennsylvania like uber free Amazon
created an app it calls relay to give
truck drivers additional freight
information including route tracking and
expediate akin procedures at warehouses
but the competition doesn't seem to
rattle over in fact the company
announced its investing 200 million
dollars per year in its new over freight
headquarters in Chicago we really the
only one that has the obelisk in the
uber know-how in terms of transportation
technologies the capital in the stamina
to actually invest in this market for
the long run so will over Freight be the
answer to requests for profitability we
were afraid is a much smaller piece of
the business right now even though it's
growing very very quickly in terms of
revenue it is much much smaller than its
ride-sharing and it's ubereats business
which investors tend to focus on that's
not to say that the trajectory of uber
Freight is very exciting and could make
up a larger portion of the business
going forward in fact some people even
say that it could represent the Amazon
Web Services of uber what that means is
that when Amazon Web Services started it
was a very small part of Amazon and it
grew into the profit engine so some
implied that perhaps if uber Freight
really takes off it could be the
moneymaker and it could even overshadow
some of its other businesses on the
surface uber Freight is a better
business than then uber the right
handling business it faces less of an
uphill battle to get to profitability
than the ride-hailing business does but
on the other side of the coin I think
the ride-hailing business has more
potential to be a blockbuster type
business if they can reach profitability
just because of the scale of the
business
you