Is ‘Uberised’ road freight transport on the horizon?

Here’s a riddle: what is popular in North America, still in its infancy in Europe and only just being introduced in Hungary? The answer is electronic freight transport for trucks, where customers and carriers find each other using an app, much like in passenger transport. The problem is that freight transport is more complicated than taxi services.

Jared, a Canadian who prefers to be called by his first name, started transporting goods with his truck two decades ago. According to a BBC report on the ambivalent relationship between individual carriers and modern, digital freight management, he recently drove 8,000 kilometres in a month and a half, but says he has been forced to take many breaks this year.

During his long journeys on the highways of Canada and the United States, Jared keeps an eye on several screens at once. He follows developments in the digital space on a laptop, a tablet and two smartphones. Specifically, he looks at the orders being placed by freight forwarders to see if there is a suitable next job for him.

Not everything was better in the past. Jared is old enough to remember when he used to communicate with potential customers via public phones, supplemented at most by a pager. This change is known as the ‘uberisation’ of transportation because it enables customers to ‘hail’ and order individual drivers to their door, much like the Uber taxi app.

From the driver’s perspective, the downside of transparency is stronger competition

While Jared acknowledges that this type of freight transport is much smoother than the old way, in the digital space every player is visible, regardless of their HQ location in North America. This makes price competition fiercer. His personal wages have decreased. During the pandemic, he was paid an average of $3 per mile for trips with his own truck, whereas in 2025, a trip between Toronto and Los Angeles brought in only $1.1 per mile. Meanwhile, fuel prices have risen. While the average income for long-haul journeys is lower anyway, it is still more profitable for carriers to travel long distances than to wait for the next job after several short journeys, bearing the cost of empty runs. But the difference here is extraordinary.

In Canada, eight major platforms have been created to digitise freight management. They are capitalising on the fragmented market by opening up a wide range of customers to smaller carriers. According to a 2023 survey, eight out of ten trucking companies in Canada have fewer than five employees.

Christopher Monette, spokesperson for the Teamsters Canada union, says they represent 130,000 people concerned about the ‘Uberisation’ of road transport. Wages in this sector in Canada have essentially stagnated over the past 25 years.

Meanwhile, carriers are still struggling to survive in the market. Larger companies face the biggest problems, as their employees tend to join trade unions and expect investment in safety, training and fair working conditions.

The situation is further complicated by platforms such as Freightera, which do not provide freight rates but instead allow carriers to bid against each other for shipments. This creates a struggle for survival.

North America is easier, as you only have to deal with the administration of two federal states

However, if we compare North America with Europe, we can conclude that carriers have to work in a much more cumbersome and complex regulatory environment on the old continent. This certainly explains why digital freight management is still in its infancy here, whereas it has clearly become well established in North America in recent years.

According to an article on the G7 news portal, companies involved in the international transport of large quantities of goods have to deal with a number of issues.

  • They need a fuel procurement solution because the timing, location and price of diesel fuel purchases are important factors, as is the amount of discount obtained.
  • They also need a VAT refund table because diesel fuel taxes vary across European countries and refunds need to be administered.
  • They need a toll management system because there are many different toll systems in European countries.
  • They need a tachograph data manager, because trucks have fixed driving and rest times; they cannot drive day and night, and complying with rest periods is often quite complicated.
  • A telematics system may be needed to monitor vehicle and goods condition, for example by continuously recording the temperature of perishable goods in a refrigerated truck.
  • Last but not least a freight management application is needed to minimise the number of trips a truck makes without a load. This must be coordinated with the aforementioned systems.

Large transport companies handle all of this in-house with their own fuel managers, freight forwarders and organisers. Smaller companies have always struggled to outsource these tasks, but digital freight organisation can solve this problem.

Uber Freight plans to grow significantly in Europe over the next three years

According to a report by the Transport Topics news portal, Uber Freight, a major player in the North American digital freight market, has established a foothold in Europe with its headquarters in the Netherlands. The company’s transportation management service has generated €200 million in revenue, and it is aiming to increase this figure tenfold to €2 billion by 2028. The company can leverage Uber’s existing European infrastructure. This includes technology and brand recognition. In addition, American multinationals operating in the global market outside North America can also consider Uber Freight a familiar partner, said Lior Ron, founder and CEO of Uber Freight.

The company’s management refers to its service as 4PL (fourth-party logistics), whereby it can take over the management of a company’s entire supply chain. Before the pandemic, they started their “conquest of Europe” as a basic transport broker in the Netherlands,  Germany and Poland. They sold this business to Berlin-based Sennder Technologies during the pandemic and returned to the European market in 2021 as a freight broker. Unlike traditional brokers, they follow the North American model, offering software that enables their clients to connect with each other. Florian Neuhaus, a logistics expert at McKinsey & Company, believes there is an opportunity to create a standardised digital platform for the European logistics sector that goes beyond fragmented corporate solutions.

Could this be an end to freight brokers?

According to one expert, road freight companies in Eastern Europe typically have seven vehicles on average. Currently, each transport assignment involves more than thirty administrative tasks. Could transporters’ work be simplified if they could contact shippers directly using information technology?

Clearly, it is in the economic interest of carriers to recoup the significant sums they have spent on purchasing their vehicles as quickly as possible — i.e. to earn back the money they spent on purchasing them and generate a decent profit in the process. As a vehicle can only be in one place at a given time, the need for an IT solution that allows shippers to easily select the most suitable vehicle for transporting goods at a given time and place is clear. Currently, freight forwarders usually conclude transport contracts with carriers on behalf of their clients. If IT takes care of ‘matching’ the carrier and the freight forwarder, freight forwarders’ roles could disappear entirely. Like ordering a taxi, the owner of the goods can order the nearest available truck to unload at their warehouse via the internet and conclude the transport contract with the carrier themselves. Online price competition automatically keeps freight rates low, as shippers will obviously choose the cheapest available option. They have access to all the tools of information technology, including artificial intelligence.

Of course, the devil is always in the detail. If a freight forwarder carries out this work, they are subject to a different legal environment, responsibilities and professional standards to those of carriers. Today, freight forwarders are fully responsible for selecting a suitable carrier. If they have not done their job carefully and have agreed with a carrier that is unable to perform the task properly or acts with gross negligence, the freight forwarder must compensate the customer for any damage incurred. But why should a platform where the carrier is selected by an app be liable? What kind of insurance can an IT intermediary service using artificial intelligence offer? Who represents the interests of the shipper if an obstacle arises? Can information technology fully satisfy clients’ needs in relation to transport? Would it be worthwhile for the carrier and the shipper if the system only proposed a cheapest solution?

In Europe, the market is only just beginning to explore these issues, and real answers and practical experience are lacking. While freight forwarders are increasingly using IT solutions, including artificial intelligence, to make their work more efficient, carriers — primarily shipping companies in maritime transport — are trying to filter freight forwarders out of their transactions.

In any case, our company’s customers insist on working with freight forwarding partners who understand the transport market, support their business processes with experienced and trained professionals, and represent their interests, thereby relieving them of the burden of dealing with carriers. As the old saying goes, ‘What is a burden to you is just a load for us.’

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