ARLINGTON, Texas — Uber Freight covered quite a lot of ground at its recent annual Carrier Summit in Arlington, Texas, hosting its carrier network that moves the corporate’s spot and dedicated freight.
“Uber Freight’s managed transportation business creates real value helping us connect with shippers,” said Harman Cheema, CEO of Cheema Freightlines.
A whole bunch of carrier representatives, coming from small to large enterprise operations, attended the event to learn more about Uber Freight’s technology, its future in autonomous operations, and ways to utilize the corporate’s growing managed transportation offering.
Along with educating its network of carriers on industry challenges and techniques to handle them, Uber Freight showcased its transportation solutions and announced Uber Freight Exchange, the combination of technology operations between its signature freight marketplace and the acquired managed transportation unit, Transplace.
Related: Latest Uber Freight launch combines marketplace and managed services networks
“Uber Freight’s carrier management team works closely with us to know our network and our strengths,” said Lars Ward, vp of sales and strategic partnerships at Cheema. “Their investment in creating a number one managed transportation platform is something we appreciate, and this summit was an amazing showcase for what’s to come back from the partnership.”
Listed here are three things I learned from attending the event and speaking with company stakeholders.
Uber Freight is in its managed transportation era
The corporate entered the FreightTech arena in 2017 as a digital freight marketplace for shippers and carriers to post and book loads. Through the years, it raised funds, acquired legacy managed transportation provider Transplace, and leveraged the industry knowledge and operations that got here with the acquisition to enhance Uber Freight’s existing solutions.
Today, in Uber Freight’s eyes, that well-executed strategy has earned the corporate a big place on the managed transportation provider table.
“[Uber Freight Exchange] allows shippers and carriers to be more precise about what they need out of our network,” Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron told the audience. “It allows us to give you more detailed information on opportunities and bundled loads available to you. … This offering is now its own independent technology. This permits us now to access a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of dollars of freight spend with hundreds of accessible lanes to increase beyond our current reach of $18 billion of freight under management.”
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Ron added that Uber Freight invested over $120 million prior to now 12 months to bring together each Uber Freight and Transplace technology teams to grow its offerings under one platform.
“We’ve invested rather a lot in the flexibility to take into consideration our network collectively so we will offer more continuous load opportunities and more savings opportunities for our shipper community,” he said.
Uber Freight is standing on the shoulders of information science giants
Parent company Uber revolutionized transportation by leveraging advanced data science and large data analytics to boost decision-making and the user experience for mobility and food delivery.
With over 8 million users across 450 cities in 66 countries, Uber employs technologies to process vast amounts of real-time data for key features equivalent to dynamic surge pricing, precise fare estimation, and efficient matching algorithms which are powered by machine learning and predictive analytics. Surge pricing algorithms dynamically adjust fares based on real-time demand and provide metrics, while predictive models use GPS and traffic data to accurately estimate journey times and costs.
Now, Uber Freight is harnessing its family expertise for billions of dollars of freight, representing 22,000 kinds of goods collectively hauled over 306 million miles.
“We’re very excited to have the opportunity to tap into the success Uber is having with [mobility]. … Because we stand on the shoulders of giants, we will tap into the amazing infrastructure and technology services,” said Ron.
While Uber Freight and competitors alike are coping with poor market conditions, Ron explained that Uber Freight gets to lean on its parent for financial support too.
“We can even stand of the shoulders of giants by way of our financial strength. Uber is near an inflection point by way of profitability and free money generation. … We will invest and that’s what we hope will come across today. Having the breadth and scale of Uber platforms allows us to speculate while the others play defense.”
In response to Ron, these investments might be seen in Uber Freight Exchange’s procurement and scheduling modules, recent financial platforms and payment processes, and recent AI tools for enterprise shippers.
Fighting fraud takes big networks and grassroots connections
Besides using Uber’s data science capabilities to enhance transportation and logistics operations, Uber Freight has the payment data of $67.8 billion Eats bookings and $68.9 billion in ridesharing bookings to fight freight fraud.
“It’s unbelievable to tap into certainly one of the biggest B2B global payment networks. … This secret ingredient has helped us bring fraud instances down 80% over the past 4 months,” Ron told the audience.
That said, Uber Freight’s compliance team closely collaborates with the FBI and other branches of law enforcement to set best practices for fraud prevention and develop relationships with carriers to implement strategies industrywide.
![](https://www.freightwaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/23/240516-Carrier-Summit-080-1200x800.jpg)
Uber Freight’s director of compliance, Chris McLoughlin, advised carriers on the summit on how you can operate compliance teams and to construct relationships with local governments in regions where they run loads.
“The very last thing you desire to do is call the [local FBI office] for the primary time the day you could have something stolen,” McLoughlin said. “That connection must be establish ahead of time with the people in your area. We have now found quite a lot of profit from starting those conversations in a single location after which constructing out the jurisdiction from there.”
McLoughlin, who often works with law enforcement to combat cargo crime, spoke on the rise in crime and the way it can take the leveraging of all of Uber’s unique resources to maintain up with its growth.
“Up to now, these were crimes of opportunity; they were a side job. We’ve seen these switch quickly from these moments of opportunity to large rings, skilled jobs, and that is their business, stealing cargo,” he said.
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