Uber-style apps to reshape trucking

We've all heard of how personal transportation firm Uber is using clever GPS- and smartphone-based technology to carve its way into the taxi sector. Based in San Francisco, the company's services have rapidly spread to over 300 cities around the world.

Uber has caused an uproar among traditional cab companies and has even incited violence, as increasing numbers of customers drop traditional taxis and embrace the benefits of Uber's technology.

Now companies with similar app-based systems are appearing in road freight, and they promise to create no less a degree of disruption for traditional road freight firms.

In America, one such firm intent on revolutionising the highly fragmented local road freight industry is Cargomatic. Launched in June 2014 by co-founders Jonathan Kessler and Brett Parker, the Los Angeles-based firm currently operates in southern California and New York, and provides an Uber-style platform that connects customers and truck drivers in real time.

According to the firm's website, Cargomatic was "born of our passion to solve the inefficiency and fragmentation of the local trucking industry. Simply, we connect shippers with qualified carriers who have un-utilized capacity on their trucks."

With the business generated by local freight in and around US metro centres said to run to tens of billions of dollars, it's a lucrative opportunity for a savvy company with a clever platform.

A web portal for customers allows them to enter their shipment details – weight, size, pick-up address and delivery address – and view all the Cargomatic-listed trucks near the pick-up location on an online map. Once the request goes out, the drivers of those trucks then have the option to accept the job – first in, best dressed.

For customers the app makes it easy to obtain quotes and track the delivery of their goods – they also receive an alert 10 minutes before pick-up that their truck is approaching – while truck drivers using the system can boost productivity by minimising time without a load.

Once delivered, the driver collects a proof-of-delivery signature through their smartphone and all the paperwork is uploaded to the network.

Cargomatic also moves the money, and says it pays the truck companies within 10 days – far faster than is usually the case. Initially it paid the truck companies immediately, but it now makes a cumulative weekly payment to simply the accounting.

Take a look at the video below for brief explanation of the Cargomatic platform.

It's free to sign up and use Cargomatic, which in some cases has even provided drivers with a smartphone if they don't have their own. The company says it takes around a 20 per cent cut of the business it generates.

As of mid-2015 Cargomatic reportedly had over 700 drivers and 400 businesses on its books, and the growing company says it plans to expand throughout the US.

While its focus is currently on local trucking, Cargomatic CEO and co-founder Jonathan Kessler has said it shouldn't prove too difficult to address the long-haul market once its network of local, metro-based markets has spread.

The company has already received $US10.6 million ($A14.4 million) in funding from a variety of sources, including one firm whose name has no shortage of currency in the global freight industry: Volvo Group Venture Capital.

It's early days and Cargomatic is presently only operating in the US, but the technology on which it's based has the potential to change the face of road freight as we know it.