Uber Freight plans to expand internationally

Uber Freight has hired two new executives and has said it will double the size of its team in the next year, as well as hoping to expand internationally.

Bar Ifrach, formerly of Airbnb, has joined as Uber Freight’s new head of marketplace, while Andrew Smith, formerly of Box, has joined as head of sales.

Roughly analogous to the regular Uber taxi service and its food delivery offshoot Uber Eats, Uber Freight matches carriers and truck drivers with retailers and other shippers based on their required loads or capacity. It uses a gig economy model of a kind that’s increasingly common in the shipping industry.

Since last month, truck drivers have been able to rate shippers they work with, helping to discourage “detention time”—when drivers are stuck waiting for warehouses to prepare their loads, which can be time-consuming and costly.

“Uber is a global company, as our freight aspirations,” the company said in a press release. “We have a dedicated team looking into viable international markets for Uber Freight and where we go beyond the U.S. in the future.”

Source: Business Insider