We are not the Uber of Trucking

It is no secret that you can hardly go online or watch the news today without hearing “the Uber of this” or “the Uber of that”. One particularly super-Uberized area is freight technology. Every “freight technology” company other than Go By Truck to surface since 2014 has called themselves “the Uber of Freight” at one point in time or another. Most in transportation find themselves asking what that actually means and in most cases chuckling at the fact that anyone who has been in logistics for more than 5 minutes would believe that opening up your mobile app and clicking a few buttons would satisfy any freight move.

We here at Go By Truck mostly mind our own business when it comes to media buzz about this or that new freight platform. We are highly mission driven, focus heavily on delivering our promise to our shippers and carriers and perfect our technology to the most minuscule degree. Catchy, latest and greatest tag lines could not be further from our minds. We are not the Uber of trucking.

I can’t tell you how many people approach us and say, “So you’re the Uber of trucking”. We promptly correct them and offer a bit of education on why Uberizing trucking isn’t a game changing technology for the industry. As mentioned above, transportation isn’t accomplished with a click of a few buttons. Sure some shipments can be classified as this simplistic however most have an extensive amount of variables to consider. I’ll assume that mostly those in the logistics industry are reading this so I don’t believe I need to elaborate.

My co-founder and I come from the side of the freight industry that actually had goods to move and trucks that we needed filled for backhauls. Our practical knowledge not only helped us build the Go By Truck Network but also helps us relate to our customer’s daily trials. We have literally felt their pain.

Uber is a 100% automation model. To truly offer game changing technology in the logistics industry, you have to know it inside and out: every pitfall, every process, and every potential variable. While transportation is not currently able to be 100% automated, we have achieved the closest degree possible here at Go By Truck and are confident that we have automated as much of the freight process as is humanly possible with today’s technology; still, we are not the Uber of trucking.

Superior technology is a must in our space but most forget the why. Whatever your position on Uber may be, they didn’t turn their company name into a verb by following someone else’s model. I’m baffled as to why those in transportation are competing to tie themselves to the name Uber as if though they’ll by osmosis inherit the technology’s same fortune. If transportation’s innovators are all looking at the industry through the same lens in trying to be the next Uber of Trucking, each new piece of technology will be just as the last. We need innovators in trucking that aren’t afraid to focus on their own why and develop uniquely based on what they believe will help the industry.

Every technology in our world today was built upon another, created by another innovator at another point in time. It’s a critical evolvement in our society to build upon others innovations. There’s certainly nothing wrong with learning from the Uber model and applying it to how people want to interact in today’s digital world however where is our originality? I refuse to believe that there’s only one approach to solving the problems in logistics and that Uberizing provides all of our answers.

Great innovations come from blazing your own path, understanding an industry’s pain first hand and solving those pains in the unique way that only a true innovator can. We are not the Uber of trucking and we don’t aspire to be. We are the Go By Truck of trucking and we couldn’t be any more proud of the unique product that we have created.