What Digital Freight Matching Means For Your Business

What Digital Freight Matching Means For Your Business

Uber just got into logistics, but most small businesses have heard some variation of the phrase ‘Uberlike 3pl’ for a couple of years. Everyone has wondered what effect this will have on their business. Whether you call it ‘uber for trucking’ or ‘digital freight matching’, and whichever provider you go with, there are not storm clouds on the horizon. In fact, the overall outlook for local businesses that need goods delivered and shipped is pretty sunny.

The two biggest boons we should expect are access to a greater number of Over-The-Road trucks and the ability to get instant price matches for those trucks. Whether you are a local lumber mill looking to load a truck with available flatbed loads, or a printshop that needs only a small amount of LTL truck space on a dry van, digital freight matching technology and the related tech of logistics search engines promises trucks as fast as if you googled them. This should relieve a lot of headaches, especially since the ability to get instant pricing means you no longer have to spend time (or even have a dedicated employee) working on cutting deals to get your goods shipped.

Perhaps just as importantly, this process will allow you to get closer to drivers. No longer needing a brokerage (or two or three) to negotiate rates, you will be in direct contact with the driver. This kind of interaction can lead to long-term relationships meaning you always have a carrier who you can depend on to run dedicated lanes for you. And when you say bye bye to your broker, you say bye bye to those costly brokerage fees.

Then again, some business owners swear by brokers. Digital freight matching is an interesting take on the Uberlike 3pl concept, since it is much more inclusive and allows for free choice by both shippers and drivers. Of course, as you may know, most drivers would rather be on friendly terms with a shipper than with the broker go-between.

For those small businesses with no need of OTR drivers, logistics search engines do provide real-time access to local cartage companies. The search engine’s database will aggregate all available sprinter and cargo vans. You can search by location, narrowing down to the specific city or suburbs that you need to move your goods around in.

Digital Freight Matching: A Cornucopia of Benefits

So for the logistics and supply chain side of our small business dynamics, things are looking pretty good. We can expect to move our goods not just more quickly, but cheaper, and with less phone calls and headaches. No longer will we need to play different brokerages or carriers against each other for the cheapest rate; we can google it and decide from instant matches whose offer is best.