Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/805422
VOICES CHANNEL 19 10 | Overdrive | April 2017 Visit Senior Editor Todd Dills' CHANNEL 19 BLOG at OverdriveOnline.com/channel19 Write him at tdills@randallreilly.com. The individuals behind the BridgeHaul app arrived at their own spin on the long- sought goal of a shipper-direct freight marketplace after company founder and Chief Executive Offi cer Brandon Shap- iro's direct experience in the contract and spot freight environments. Shapiro was in charge of overall strate- gy for a growing food manufacturer before founding his Los Angeles-based tech start- up. Whenever the manufacturer acquired a company, it was challenging to integrate new transportation processes. Its contrac- tual negotiations often went sour after the carrier overpromised and "we ended up paying spot market rates higher than what we negotiated with them." Hence BridgeHaul, available for both iOS and Android devices. Shapiro designed it to source spot-type capacity (that's you) via a network of owner-oper- ators and small fl eets looking for shippers' loads via the app. Plans are to charge ship- pers transactional fees to use the platform rather than take a margin on the load like a traditional broker. Read more via the Jan. 19 post on the blog. Another stab at the holy grail It would be difficult to completely disintermedi- ate or 'uberize' trucking because of its transac- tional complexity. … That said, the current system of taking what the traffic will bear off the top, be it 10 or 30 percent (because who in their right mind is going to audit their broker?), has created an animus against the old system, which may portend its eventual undoing. I have wondered whether the old broker model could easily be replaced by a transparent flat-rate system the ship- pers oversaw, as it does them little good for a bro- ker to pocket an exorbitant percentage. Paul Marhoefer, via Facebook, in response to the March fea- ture on the so-called 'uberiza- tion' of trucking, or stream- lining brokerage with a tech- nological assist. If you missed it, search 'Dodging the middle- man' on OverdriveOnline.com. 28 | Overdrive | March 2017 L ate last year, Overdrive reader Kacie Sill wrote in after read- ing updates on the problems with No Broker Freight and MyRiteLoad. The shipper-exclusive load-matching services were having problems populating their systems with shippers' freight. It sounded similar to what she and her husband had expe- rienced, trying to suss out "legitimate freight options" among the Wild West of online boards and the new crop of tech- enabled brokerages, Sill wrote. "We are currently members of [DAT's] TruckersEdge and Truckstop. com, and are struggling with the rate offers," she added. Were there legit alternatives to those longtime load- board stalwarts? The answer is yes, but it's not a black-and-white revolution where mobile apps and smallness always produce better rates and increased efficiencies for owner-operators. When it comes to that new crop of broker- ages, pitching their on-demand freight options on the strength of their mobile technology, the "uberization of truck- ing" reality is proving more compli- cated than the hype, as predicted by Truckstop.com's Scott Moscrip and others in 2015. When we first reported on the grow- ing niche, some of those firms had spent much of their venture-capital cash on marketing, generating plenty of headlines. More recently, tech and logistics giants Uber and Amazon have signaled intentions of building Dodging the middleman On-demand load-matching services are seeing some success at circumventing traditional brokers, promising gains for owner-operators in rates, freight availability and productivity. While no one service will be 'Uber for all' in the fragmented brokerage market, technology used by services large and small is moving in the same direction. BY TODD DILLS Freight Uberization.indd 28 2/24/17 8:34 AM Saying no to first-come first-served abuse Eagle Express Inc. small fl eet owner Leander Richmond, who runs a specialized carrier with eight trucks and step-deck Conestoga trailers, recently put TQL on his do not use list of brokerages over the issue of de- tention at non-appointment facilities. Richmond says the contractual standard for the large broker at such fi rst-come fi rst-served facilities is no detention paid, and he learned this the hard way. The broker off ered an inadequate detention rate to Rich- mond — $30 an hour after two. They rejected his counter-off er: $75 an hour after two with no cap and a provision to separate deten- tion from layover. That's close to the $64-an-hour average I once comput- ed for an independent to compensate for lost income and fi xed costs. "Some brokers take loads [from shippers] agreeing to circumstances that no asset-based carrier would do," Richmond says. "Then they expect the carrier to accept those terms. Everything has its limits." Read more about Richmond's and others' issues with broker contracts via the Feb. 14 post on Channel 19.