
Uber Freight - hharnisch
https://freight.uber.com/
======
Animats
Well, at least they got their US Federal Motor Carrier broker registration and
insurance:

    
    
        Date: 09/14/2016
        USDOT Number: 2926893 
        Legal Name: UBER FREIGHT LLC
    

They're not trying to pull their usual "we're a special snowflake beyond
regulation" stunt.

Trucking is vulnerable to Uber. "More than 1 million smallish companies own 90
percent of all trucks, each owning about three trucks on average." That lets
Uber be the master and the truckers the slaves, as with their taxi service.

Cargomatic claims 1,811,000 miles traveled. They launched in 2014, so that's
under a million miles a year. That's nothing. The average delivery truck
travels 12,000 miles a year, so, from their own numbers, Cargomatic represents
about 80 trucks, total. They may be run over by Uber.

The biggest freight broker is C.H. Robinson Worldwide, net revenue about
$2.2bn. They also organize ocean freight and air freight, which Uber isn't
likely to get into because the players there are not small.

Freight brokerage is so fragmented that Uber could roll up the industry.

~~~
mahyarm
Big boat shipping is not going to go automated anytime soon. Boat staff are a
relative rounding error in costs from my estimates. There are only 39k of
those boats in the world, and they are not going to be electric any time soon
unless there is a revolution in battery tech that makes it economical.

Port automation on the other hand, is an opportunity I'm guessing.

~~~
cm2012
Probably 90% of port jobs are automated away compared to 50 years ago.

~~~
Animats
Yes. For an extreme example, here's Rotterdam's container port. Zero people in
the quay area.[1] This is sped up, but entirely real. Not only are the
vehicles driverless, so are the cranes. A few people in a control tower
oversee that operation.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo)

~~~
cm2012
Amazing

------
treyfitty
This may be an unpopular opinion on HN, but after going through all the
comments, and reflecting back on the general ethos of 2016, it's worth saying
anyway:

I received the Black Swan by Nassim Taleb for Christmas, and there is a lot of
"disruption leads to winner take all" talk in the book. I don't necessarily
disagree with Taleb, but it's amazing that our lives are dominated by only a
handful of companies (I'm willing to bet 90% of our daily time will be
attributed to using a product made by either Apple, Google, Microsoft,
Facebook). Now, the aforementioned companies generally do require scale, so my
assertion is a bit hyperbolic, but in Uber's case... does freight really NEED
scale? I've never needed to order freight, so I can't speak from experience
here, but it seems like the social cost to having Uber win all may be far
greater than the benefits in efficiency. I can imagine a future where we
arrive at a new Era of Barons and legislation is passed to break them up (ala
Rockefeller, Vanderbilt...etc.).

Last but not least, we seem to be push for "Universal Income" as a means to
assuage the pain caused by the Winner Take All economy, but I don't think
that's fair to a lot of America. I think we should solve the problem in it's
root before we talk about Universal Income- I don't mean to sound negative,
but it just seems like a convenient cop out to the problems at hand.

~~~
golergka
We don't live in a society where we get to design the future after considering
all positive and negative sides. It's been tried, and results were disastrous.

Instead, we live in a society which is shaped by comleting self-interests.
You're asking of freight NEEDS scale - for whose benefit? Ubers? Yes. His
small scale competitors? No. Customers? We'll have to wait and see their
verdict. All of us together? We don't have enough interests in common for this
virtual entity to have any real meaning.

~~~
al2o3cr
There's a long, long way between the free-market utopia people seem to believe
currently exists and Uber's "set prices at half of the cost of providing the
service & set VC money on fire until we have a monopoly" approach.

~~~
golergka
You're describing these two concepts as if they were different things. Why?

------
shade23
I do not live in the US. So would love some help understanding what could
possibly happen here:

-Do people own trucks or is it corporations/shipping-companies.

\- What happens to all the various forms of taxes (are there any?) which come
into picture during long distance transporation

\- Is there a concept of toll tax on the roads. Who would be providing those?

\- How do you ensure legality of contents and prevent illegal transportation
of goods here?

\- The USP of Uber is the being able to get the required service in a couple
of minutes.Will this be applicable here?

\- Uber has always been in grey areas when it comes to personal vehicles being
used commercially to drive single passengers. Transporting goods would cause
the same issues on a larger scale right?

On the website: It kind of sucks that you need to give an email id to get even
basic information on what this is about[1].

[https://www.uber.com/a/truckdriver](https://www.uber.com/a/truckdriver)

~~~
heymijo
Nearly everything in the U.S. is on a truck at some point in its transit. Most
companies that make those items don't own their own trucks.

Of the roughly 3 million trucks on the road, 10% are owner operators (a person
who owns his or her own truck and drives it).

Those owner operators mostly drive around the country like chickens with their
heads cut off trying to source loads to transport. The owner operators will
work with freight brokers (middle men) who either scour load boards or have
relationships with companies that need things shipped. Some of the owner
operators have a significant other at home who does the sourcing of loads for
them. Deadheading, driving to or from somewhere without a paid load, kills
these drivers. These drivers make on average $50+k per year.

The pre-Uber taxi scene looked a lot like this national truck load scene does
today. I imagine that's why Uber sees opportunity here. In the taxi scenario
you have the supply (taxis) and demand (passengers). In the freight scene
they'd have to link up the supply (owner operators) and demand (any company
that has truck loads of freight to ship).

Disclaimer: this is a simplification of logistics, ignores 'less than load'
freight, multi-modal, and fleet operations.

Source: I founded and ran a freight logistics startup in the 2000's. Developed
a web app to try and do what I said Uber could above. It was designed poorly
from an empathy standpoint of both parties and most importantly it was pre-
iPhone/apps. We were a successful brokerage/consultancy but failed as a
startup.

------
rckrd
Most likely related to their acquisition of Otto. Establish a trucking service
so that they are ready for autonomous trucking.

------
smagch
Amazon is also building an 'Uber for trucking' app according to
[http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-building-uber-for-
truc...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-building-uber-for-trucking-
app-2016-12)

------
drewvolpe
In China, "Uber for trucking" services have off over the last year or two. The
largest player, Huochebang, has registered more than 2 million drivers and is
doing ~100,000 orders per day. They don't charge anything for using the
platform and make money by selling other services to drivers.

~~~
Inthenameofmine
Might I ask what some of these services are? This sounds intriguing.

~~~
nols
"Unlike Uber, which takes a cut from every ride, Huochebang makes money
primarily from selling toll cards, taking a cut from the card top-ups, and
helping truckers with financing."

From this article

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-22/china-
s-u...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-22/china-s-uber-for-
trucks-huochebang-fetches-1-billion-valuation)

------
cocktailpeanuts
I wonder if truckers will actually sign up for this, especially when it's 100%
obvious that this will evolve into autonomous trucking shop.

Maybe the people who sign up will be similar to the type of people who sign up
as Uber drivers--not your typical truck drivers..

~~~
wcummings
You need a CDL to drive a truck, so the barrier is higher than driving for
Uber.

~~~
rafamvc
Technically you can go rent a uhaul without CDL. There is a hole in the
regulation that could allow people to drive smaller trucks without CDL. You
are mostly restricted from towing a certain gross amount weight, which may
make the mathematics not work.

------
blaincate
There is a fundamental problem with uber freight : availability of trucks. In
case of the uber taxi, most of US population owns the car and drivers working
for uber already had a license.

for uber frieght : trucks are owned by companies, who will not work with uber,
u need a special license to drive truck: these drivers will not work with
uber.

who will work for uber freight?

~~~
ssclafani
> The way most shipping works for most companies today is by going through a
> brokerage firm, which makes calls to trucking companies and arranges the
> best deals for its customers. The broker takes a commission of between 15
> and 20%. To start, the Uber Freight marketplace will eliminate that
> middleman and offer shippers real-time pricing of what it will cost to move
> their goods based on supply and demand.

Source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-to-launch-uberfreight-
fo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-to-launch-uberfreight-for-long-
haul-trucking-2016-10)

~~~
aqme28
By "eliminate that middleman" do they mean "become that middleman"?

~~~
ssclafani
Yes. Uber Freight is basically a freight brokerage that's being operated at
break-even levels:

> UberFreight, which would not control the trucks it relies upon to move
> customers' freight, is building in only a 5-percent average margin for its
> net revenue per transaction, according to another person familiar with the
> matter. On average, net revenue, defined as the revenue a broker generates
> after its cost of purchased transportation, is around three times that for
> established brokers. UberFreight's other costs would then be subtracted from
> its net revenue threshold, leaving the brokerage business either to operate
> at break-even levels or be a loss leader for the San Francisco-based parent.

Source: [http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20161212--uberfreight-
ste...](http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20161212--uberfreight-steps-up-
efforts-to-expand-into-brokerage-sector/)

~~~
shostack
So if I'm understanding it properly, they are offering drastically lower
prices by cutting out the broker and passing on the savings, but still need
the truckers and the truckers will be forced to use them because that's where
the jobs will be (not sure if they'll see any pay boost or if it will just be
customers seeing savings).

Once Uber gets autonomous trucks everywhere they cut out the drivers and add
that revenue to their margins while still under cutting everyone else.

Is that the gist of their strategy?

~~~
mahyarm
I think Uber realizes if someone else has autonomous tech first, that company
will cut out the drivers and they will all be out of jobs. So either way, it
doesn't really matter who does it first.

And it's also why Uber is probably running towards getting autonomous tech
developed, because ultimately its a fight for it's survival.

In the mean time, they will run transport markets that need people to run it
until that tech comes. And it could take 5 years to 20 years for all we know.

------
polskibus
Freight auctions connecting truck owners&drivers with shippers are quite
common in Europe. Surely USA has had this kind of thing before right? Who's
the incumbent?

~~~
brianwawok
Thousands of small players.

------
paulgrimes1
Interesting. How will they regulate shipping illegal goods? Moving people and
food is fine, but this adds a layer of grey to the already blurry line uber
are skirting.

~~~
LyndsySimon
This generally isn't an issue as a carrier unless it can be shown that the
carrier was aware (or should have been aware) of the cargo.

FWIW, I've dealt with firearms being accidentally shipped to Canada. They were
on a freight dock in Toronto before anyone realized. We (the carrier) were
levied a fine and we shipped them back to the US without further incident.
Being that it was self-reported, they didn't even send someone out.

------
ylhert
RIP all the "Uber for freight" and "Uber for trucking" startups

~~~
hayd
except Otto which Uber acquired and presumably will be rolled into this at
some point...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_\(company\))

------
CodeSheikh
Why not just go and acquire an Austin based startup called uShip?
[https://www.uship.com/](https://www.uship.com/)

Uber has a boatload of cash. Why reinvent a wheel? uShip has a funding of
$44.71M in several rounds according to crunchbase. Uber sure has a vast
collection fine-tuned maps, but freight routes are different from inner city
routes.

~~~
colejohnson66
Uber's in the negative. Have they ever turned a profit?

------
jayjay71
While I'm not sure how well this fits into Uber's business model (I feel like
freight and taxi services are very different industries), the idea of
automating trucking is great. It's a far easier technical problem, the
logistics are simpler, and it's a $700 billion industry just in the United
States. After acquiring Otto this year it's good to see them pursuing this
aggressively. Although I'm not a big fan of Uber as a whole, there is a huge
amount of money to be made in automated trucking and Uber has a good chance of
taking the lead there. I feel like this is where we'll see the real
competition for automated driving in the coming years.

~~~
edgyswingset
How is it a far easier technical problem with simpler logistics?

~~~
jayjay71
Driving on highways is far easier than driving in cities because it's a more
controlled environment. There aren't supposed to be pedestrians, bikers,
traffic lights, and it's generally a more constrained problem. Logistically,
you can just have truckers drive in cities, get out at certain waypoints, and
then have truckers take over again at waypoints (mostly located just outside
cities).

I'm not saying it's an easy problem, but it's a much easier problem. You also
don't have to be as concerned with public perception, as you aren't asking a
consumer to get inside of it.

~~~
disiplus
yes and no, it is easier to do it. but large trucks are a bigger hazard on the
road the a small car, they can break the middle barrier, can do a lot more
damage on the road. the fines for the drivers and the companies are allot
stricter.

they have to get it 100% all the time or they cannot put it on the road. One
glitch and you have a 25t missile on the highway. Imagine the chaos that can
cause, and imagine the liability of the company operating that truck.

while it is easier in ideal conditions, it is not easy in real world.

~~~
marcosdumay
Believe it or not, making sure the truck fails safe and keeping it under
control are far easier problems for a computer to solve than predicting if a
pedestrian will jump in front of a car.

But I'm not sure it makes any difference. You aren't "supposed" to find
pedestrians in a road, but you'll certainly find them, and the truck must be
able to deal with them.

~~~
thaeli
At interstate highway speeds, there is no dodging an unexpected pedestrian who
jumps out into the road. Swerving creates greater danger - an overturned truck
is likely to cause other severe accidents. Pretty much all a truck driver can
do is apply moderate braking, lay on the horn, and stay in their lane.

~~~
disiplus
[http://i.imgur.com/kU4KNX4.mp4](http://i.imgur.com/kU4KNX4.mp4)

there are other examples where trucks avoided certain deaths for car drivers
in that they served left or right. and escaped car or pedestrians.

------
markwaldron
Interested to see how Transfix will stand up to this:
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/transfix](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/transfix)

------
pinaceae
kind of related question:

why are trains, especially freight, not being automated?

seems like a far simpler problem than autonomous cars, no?

~~~
nradov
Trains are already highly automated. The largest trains have only a few
workers on board so eliminating them won't cut costs much. But the new
positive train control systems do lay the foundation for some level of further
automation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control)

~~~
pinaceae
seems like a lot of costly accidents all point to human error of the "driver".
falling asleep, speeding, etc.

just seems very odd that no one from the big ones - Siemens, Bombardier, etc
would go after that. Not even in Japan or China, both train heaven.

------
hardwaresofton
So I know of only one competitor in this space (I don't know very much about
startups that do freight hauling) -- UShip.

Wonder if this has even registered on their radar

------
nodesocket
I'd be curious to hear some use cases for Uber Freight. I am guessing it is
not targeted for individuals wanting alternatives for UPS or FedEx.

~~~
jbob2000
I have a friend who owns a restaurant equipment import business. He employs a
driver to deliver ovens, refrigerators, display cases, etc. to restaurants and
grocery stores around the country. He could fire his driver and hire an Uber
truck on demand instead, and if he got a blast of orders, he could hire a few
trucks instead of having to wait on one driver.

I have another friend who is a truck dispatcher. Her entire job is telling
truckers where to go and when to be there. Trucking companies don't need to
employ dispatchers any more, Uber's algorithms handle her entire job.

My uncle drove trucks delivering dairy to grocery stores. Since he was a
member of the dairy trucker's union, that was the only thing he was allowed to
deliver. If there was no dairy to deliver but lots of bread, sorry, that's for
the members of the bread trucker's union. The whole trucking industry is
carved into these niche unions which are really frustrating to deal with.

When I was a student, I worked for a construction company that had a decrepit
old truck they used to deliver some of their prefab pieces, like sets of
windows and doors. It broke down a lot and only one guy in the shop had the
license and knew how to drive it. Now they can get rid of the truck and just
hire Uber whenever they need some bigger stuff delivered.

~~~
nodesocket
Awesome. All makes total sense. I think the dispatcher example is spot on and
very common with haulers. Unfortunately for her, her job could indeed be eaten
by technology.

------
codecamper
Autonomous driving seems like a good OpenAI project.

Letting one company control the autonomous driving market seems pretty bad for
competition.

~~~
jayjay71
There's a lot of competition in the autonomous driving space: Uber, Delphi,
Cruise, Waymo, Ford, Volvo, Zoox, Varden Labs, Auro Robotics, Navya, Nuro.ai,
Baidu, Tesla, Faraday Future, Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota, Yutong, and there are
others (including some in stealth mode that would rather not be mentioned).

Udacity also has a course just for making a self-driving car, and you get to
use a real car.

[https://www.udacity.com/course/self-driving-car-engineer-
nan...](https://www.udacity.com/course/self-driving-car-engineer-nanodegree--
nd013)

------
tiatia
Old idea. I used www.uship.com many years ago (5?). Worked well. I was able to
ship two pallets from the west coast to the east coast, door to door. Costs:
close to nothing. I think it was something in the range 250 to 380 US dollar.

~~~
sumedh
Search engine was an old idea too until Google came along. If Uber can provide
a better service, customers would switch.

------
edpichler
I would like to read a book about how Uber is managed. They are extremelly
competent on creating good services in difficult business areas. They are
hungry for new markets and keeps innovating.

~~~
ceejayoz
> I would like to read a book about how Uber is managed.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003V8B5XO/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003V8B5XO/)

------
soulashell
I think they're doing factoring too, since the driver application says that
the payment to the driver is made right after delivery.

------
ThomPete
This to me have always been their endgame after they realized the value was in
the logistics data rather than the actual drives.

------
kingmanaz
A stepping stone to the unemployment of half the families in my small town.
Yet, so long as narcissist STEM technocrats have money for their coffee shops
the world will continue blindly "progressing".

------
KaiserPro
I look forward to the breathless praise from tech news, with lots of fluff
about automation and driver-less lorries.

I suspect that as they have to deal with real companies, with lawyers that do
due diligence things won't be so smooth.

Delivery is business critical to most companies, so Uber are going to have to
make a pretty strong pitch to get business.

I'm not sure who they are pitching at, companies that do lots of hauling will
have decent relationships with haulage broker/companies directly. They'll do
credit and guarantees.

The other thing is that I'm strongly suspicious of Uber business practice, as
they appear they'll do anything to make a quick buck. (drop drivers, jack up
prices, lie, cheat and generally break the law)

That's not something that I want when shipping business critical stuff. "oh
sorry, the surge price on the haulage has changed, conference season you
know..." or "we've dropped that subcontractor, we're sorry your pallet appear
to have been lost"

~~~
phil21
There are a number of small businesses who occasionally need LTL freight, a
few times a year perhaps. I do believe that market is poorly served and is
ripe for disruption. The number of "logistics 2.0" tech-focused startups
lately seems to confirm that others share my belief.

For those companies if your vendor doesn't have an existing relationship with
a freight broker familiar with things you're in for a huge waste of time and a
confusing mess where you feel you're likely being ripped off.

If you could instead spend 5 minutes typing some stuff into Uber and clicking
go it wins that market segment every time.

We were this company until we got a bit larger and now have a relationship
with a broker. But even now it's a little antiquated.

> That's not something that I want when shipping business critical stuff. "oh
> sorry, the surge price on the haulage has changed, conference season you
> know..."

This already happens, as anyone shipping throughout the year will attest to.
Rates are a lesser form of airline pricing.

> or "we've dropped that subcontractor, we're sorry your pallet appear to have
> been lost"

Trivial non-problem that again already exists in the market. This has
happened, and it's just as rare as you'd expect it to be.

> They'll do credit and guarantees

Why wouldn't Uber? Considering their performance here in the consumer space I
would expect them to be easier to work with here than current brokers who rely
on that $200 to feed their kids that week.

------
parthdesai
can somebody tell me the need to use react in such a simple website? I'm not
being snarky, just curious.

~~~
jaredlunde
It's doubtfully about need. Why did they use it? Probably because they have a
solid workflow already based on a React tool chain - so why not? In that case
you could similarly ask, why go out of their way to create a static page if
they use React for everything else and it's how their programmers are used to
thinking? You can use whatever you want as long as it gets the job done. It's
about comfort zones and preference.

~~~
ndirish1842
> Probably because they have a solid workflow already based on a React tool
> chain - so why not?

Can confirm, lot of Uber's web infrastructure is modeled around React

------
Scoundreller
503 Service Unavailable

~~~
nodesocket
Fine for me from California.

~~~
Scoundreller
And back up and running here. Hrmmm...

