MercuryGate adds Uber Freight’s capacity and pricing to TMS

In other words, the problem was not so much mobile app downloads and stickiness – downloads can grow virally and stickiness can be tweaked with incentives as needed. The problem was a lack of freight. It’s still an expensive and painstaking process to acquire new shipper customers, and the kinds of companies initially targeted by most DFBs were large enterprise customers, who already have relationships with asset-based carriers and non-asset third-party logistics providers (3PLs). 

This play allows Uber Freight to piggyback on MercuryGate’s network of shippers, and, more importantly, decouple freight volume growth from manual human effort (i.e., salespeople). By giving MercuryGate users access to on-demand capacity and real-time rates, Uber Freight is dramatically reducing the friction involved in joining its network. 

TMS integrations like the Uber Freight-MercuryGate and Loadsmart-Oracle deals will likely be necessary for digital freight brokers to grow their freight volumes as quickly as their carrier capacity and maintain a balanced, liquid network. Shippers will benefit from better price discovery and arbitrage opportunities, especially if they can efficiently compare rates from multiple transportation providers.

“As part of this collaboration, shippers can depend on load coverage any hour of the day, seven days a week,” said head of operations at Uber Freight, Bill Driegert, in a statement. “Users can price and tender immediately, spending less time looking for prices and capacity and more time and energy delivering value to their customers and improving their bottom line.”

MercuryGate was founded in 2000. A year ago, the technology company was acquired by private equity group Summit Partners for an undisclosed sum, though the Wall Street whisper number was $390 million.

Uber Freight was founded in 2016 as part of Jason Droege’s Uber Everything strategy with team members from Otto, the self-driving truck company Uber acquired in 2016. Based on Uber Technologies’ (NYSE: UBER) latest financial reporting, FreightWaves estimates that Uber Freight is on a $500 million revenue run rate.