Uber Freight launches trucking service in Canada

TORONTO Truckers looking for freight to carry on cross-Canada journeys will now be able to find customers using Uber, which is vying to disrupt the country’s $68-billion trucking market with a new app.

Uber Technologies Inc. announced Wednesday it’s launching its trucking service, Uber Freight, across Canada. The service works much like the passenger app, but instead allows shippers to connect with carriers seeking freight.

The move to Canada comes after two years in the United States, where about 500,000 drivers from 50,000 carriers are signed up, and expansion to the Netherlands and Germany earlier this year.

Bill Driegert, head of operations for Uber Freight, said Uber’s system helps smaller carriers that can struggle to find shippers in unfamiliar markets. For instance, a single trucker who moves a load from Toronto to Vancouver used to have to check a load board, essentially a classified listing, to try to find shippers and negotiate a price to avoid driving an empty truck back to Ontario. “That process is high friction, it takes time, is labour intensive,” he said. “It can take multiple calls to find one load.”

Uber’s app also presents shippers and carriers with a fixed price, with the option to see how much it will cost depending on the date.

“Most carriers and brokers don’t want to haggle over every load,” he said.

Uber makes money by taking a cut of the price. Driegert would not disclose what percentage Uber takes or the financial details about the freight business.

While the app experience mimics Uber’s passenger business, there are key differences. Critically, not anyone can be a driver.

All drivers must have a commercial licence and registration and appropriate equipment. Most come from companies that already exist.

Nor do carriers and shippers publicly rate each other on the app. Carriers can evaluate shipping facilities, but they are not bound by the same star rating system as drivers in the passenger app.

Driegert said it will let go a carrier that receives complaints, but its goal is to keep carriers in the system. There is a driver shortage across North America.

It’s a tough job and workers are aging, he said, so the app strives to make their jobs more efficient.