Digital freight broker Uber Freight recently announced it would open up a new platform it calls Broker Access, allowing fellow brokers to post loads and have its freight-matching technology work its magic in connecting them to carriers onboarded into Uber's system.
Two carriers queried for this story, both of whom have moved loads for Uber Freight, weren't exactly thrilled to have yet another business insert themselves between the carrier and the shipper who pays for a given load, but there wasn't a huge reaction.
In the frothy waters of freight broker-heavy LinkedIn, though, an all-out feeding frenzy erupted.
"So, shipper tenders load to Broker 1. Broker 1 gives load to Uber platform. Uber gives load to underlying carrier," wrote Andrew Silver, host of "The Freight Pod" podcast and past founder of MoLo Solutions, a 3PL headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. "There's a term for this process, and it is not transformational or evolutionary. The term is double brokering."
More than 1,100 likes, 180 comments, and 20 reposts followed. Silver followed up with another hot-topic post to his 21,000 LinkedIn followers and a podcast episode on the topic.
Among the comments, lots of brokers chimed in with their opinions on double brokering and Uber Freight, mostly taking Silver's side that brokers, generally, shouldn't trust Uber Freight, a fellow broker, with their customer data, and that the Broker Access project blurred the lines around double brokering and "co-brokering."
But also among the commenters was Brooks McMahon, VP of emerging products and business development at Uber Freight, working to dispel the crowd of the double brokering notion, even co-brokering, where two brokers are contracted to handle a load and all parties are aware of it.
"Broker Access is not a brokerage, so it can’t be double brokering or co-brokering," McMahon eventually wrote in his own LinkedIn post. "It’s a new and separate business that connects a broker's loads with a network of digitally connected carriers. Once a carrier engages with a load, the carrier goes through an onboarding process with each such broker. The broker is the sole broker on the load. This is made clear to all parties involved, both technically and contractually."
One carrier Overdrive spoke to had a simple question: If a broker "posts a load on Uber's board, who am I moving the load for? Who is paying me?"
We asked Uber Freight and the company said that, "once loads are delivered, Uber Freight transmits the payment to the carrier on the broker’s behalf." That's after Uber Freight takes a fee from the broker.
The fee, however, doesn't vary based on the load, according to Uber Freight. Uber Freight's Broker Access program charges broker customers a per-load transaction fee for booked loads. There are no setup or subscription fees, according to the company.
In a certain way, Uber Freight's Broker Access tool might look a little more like nothing more than a digital load board, less like co-brokering.
Convoy, the digital freight brokerage that spectacularly failed, stiffed carriers, and then came back to life under Flexport to solicit some of those carriers to haul freight booked on the new platform (in some cases without paying for loads moved on the old one), has a similar program today, but the Convoy Platform itself isn't a broker any longer. (Before the brokerage failed last year, though, Convoy helmed an effort quite similar in nature to Uber Freight's Broker Access initiative called "Convoy for Brokers," which led to Convoy legal battles with load board stalwart DAT, ultimately settled, in the aftermath of its introduction.)
[Related: DAT, Convoy reach 'amicable settlement' of lawsuits]
Under Silver's post, brokers simply weren't buying Uber Freight's promises of neutrality, and they also thought it was a bad look for brokers to simply bring their load to another platform to have Uber Freight source the capacity instead of them. What would the shipper think?
Imagine a caterer lands a big job and, instead of preparing the food, just orders from another restaurant.
Uber Freight allows the original broker using Broker Access to maintain pricing control -- brokers can either put their own rate on a given load or use a dynamic pricing tool Broker Access provides to settle the transaction. When the load transaction actually executes, Broker Access puts the carrier in touch with the original broker.
Why should or would a broker use the platform? An Uber Freight rep indicated that some brokers and carriers might not have strong language skills or prefer the "digital only" aspect of its platform. By conducting load negotiations online, maybe these brokers can avoid some of the hacks that have occurred around other big load boards, where load negotiations typically happen off-platform.
[Related: 'Iluminati' hack hits DAT boards with thousands of $20/mile postings]
"I don't think it's technically double brokering," Surinder Gill said of Broker Access. Gill is owner of California-based Gill Freightlines, one of the carriers stiffed by Convoy. At once, "I don’t think they should be doing that, but who is going to stop them?" he added. "Me as a carrier, if I have a brokerage license under my same name and address, a lot of brokers when I call won’t give me loads anymore. They say it's a red flag. It’s the same thing as Uber Freight; how can you be a load board and brokerage on the side."
Are brokers posting on Uber Freight "dumb enough to realize Uber Freight will try to backdoor you," Gill added. "You’re giving them your customer information, giving them a pickup number and how much volume a lane has."
Many brokers commenting on Silver's post agreed with Gill.
"Any broker entering all their customer information into another broker's (competitor's) system is brave (stupid?) to say the least," wrote one commenter. "Any broker paying another broker -- a competitor -- MONEY to find a truck for them is (a) lazy, (b) hates profit, (c) doesn’t know what a brokerage business is."
Uber Freight's Brooks McMahon addressed these backdooring concerns directly in his LinkedIn post. "Broker Access is a program developed by a completely separate team within Uber Freight, designed specifically for brokers," he wrote. That team "operates independently, with clear technical and operational boundaries in place to ensure this separation."
Still, even McMahon said he understood "skepticism is natural in a competitive industry like ours."
[Related: When ELD data sharing provides too much insight]
Silver felt that Uber Freight had made a bad impression among brokers by "buying marketshare" with "unsustainable business practices," as he put it. For example, Silver contended Uber Freight's early-on policy of free quick pay (within 7 days) was an effort to onboard lots of carriers and build the business. Later, Uber Freight changed to a more realistic, in Silver's view, 2% on factoring for payment within two days for all but its "Top Carrier" users and those using its Uber Freight Carrier Card; Silver called it a "bait and switch" tactic.
Silver credited Uber Freight for some of its innovations, like its facility rating tool, a way for carriers to grade shippers and receivers that was fairly novel in 2019 at the time of its launch, though not the first such tool of its kind. He's also a fan of the Powerloop trailer pool program.
Yet Silver pointed to the company's Head of Brokerage Todd Souder, who noted digital brokerages like Uber Freight had a "bad name" when he came over from being COO at Coyote Logistics, as proof that the tech giant had burned bridges early on in freight.
According to the wider Uber company's most recent quarterly earnings report, Uber Freight lost $19 million dollars in Q3 this year before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. By that metric, called EBITDA, Uber Freight hasn't been in the black since Q3 of 2022, when it made $1 million. The Uber company as a whole was not profitable until 2023 after going public in 2019.
The Uber Freight network has been a victim, too, of the the bad actors online load platforms have struggled mightily with these last years, including the case outlined in the story linked below -- a real carrier sought payment for his load, originally tendered by Uber Freight to an apparent double-brokering carrier, then was refused payment for months.
[Related: FMCSA forces broker transparency from Uber Freight after double brokering scam]
Even small fleet owner Gill, who said he liked Uber Freight's digital-only platform and its tech tools, which he called "better than Macropoint," felt burned by the tech giant -- he says Uber Freight blacklisted him without explanation after he spoke up about his experience with Convoy. Overdrive asked Uber Freight about Gill's inability to access freight on the platform, and has not heard back.
Ultimately, Gill and a mid-size carrier consulted for this story didn't seem to care much about the intra-broker bickering, but lamented their position on the bottom of the totem pole. With another fee charged to brokers utilizing the service, "that's theoretically money out of the carrier's pocket," the mid-sized carrier said of Broker Access.
The entire episode brought to my mind impassioned remarks delivered by Anchor Reliable Transport's Brian Woodring at the recent Broker-Carrier Summit conference, which aired in a recent Overdrive Radio podcast. To the brokers in the audience, Woodring expressed how he and many other carriers feel: "Everyone has their hand out" collecting money being thrown down from on high at freight. "The coins that are left over on the floor are mine," he said. "Everybody has their hand out to the truck driver, making money off of us."
Woodring wasn't talking about just brokers, of course. "I’m talking about the shippers are making money, the brokers are making money, the truck stops are making money," he said. "It cost me $20 a night to park my truck at a truck stop. It's $18 to take as shower. I need something to eat? Guess what, I got to go in the truck stop because I can’t put a 53-foot trailer in the McDonald's drive-through, so I have to buy McDonald's in the truck stop, so they upcharge me."
Woodring wanted transparency in pricing information, in hopes it might help carriers get up off the floor scrambling for those leftover coins. Woodring may soon get a measure of that. The recent notice of proposed rulemaking from FMCSA would make it a "regulatory obligation" for brokers to disclose their rates to shippers and carriers when requested, including payments made on both sides, and any incidental charges or claims.
Brokers are arguing about that, too. Read more about that debate here.
