Targeting a market worth $80 billion, Doft - which stands for “do freight transportation” - has set its sights on being the first Uber-like service for trucks
by Staff
March 2, 2017
Image courtesy of DOFT
2 min to read
Doft, a new solution aimed at helping America’s 400,000 or so freelance and owner-operator truckers find work, announced its official nationwide launch. Targeting a market worth $80 billion, Doft - which stands for “do freight transportation” - has set its sights on being the first Uber-like service for trucks.
Similar to ridesharing apps such as Uber and Lyft, Doft connects trucks and shippers within two minutes. Although available across the U.S., many of Doft’s current drivers are based in California. The platform removes freight brokers and dispatchers and instead takes a transparent transport service fee of 4.99% from each side. This solves the dual problems of inefficiency and opaqueness which plague the industry and makes work better and more fulfilling for truck drivers who want to get out on the road.
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“We are going to become a huge, twenty-first-century transportation company that will disrupt the whole logistics industry to make it more efficient,” says founder and CEO Dmitri Fedorchenko. “And, we won’t be staying on the ground, either. We want to save people and companies money and time, as well as helping the environment.”
Check out this video on the new solution:
Image courtesy of DOFT
In the United States, there were 3.6 million ‘big rig’ trucks in operation, transporting more than 10 billion tons of freight (2015), representing 70.1 percent of total domestic tonnage shipped. Doft is looking out for freelance and owner-operator truck drivers, who account for some 400,000 of America’s truckers. These dedicated drivers generate some $80 billion each year. All too often they are ignored in favor of larger haulage companies.
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The major problem that Doft solves is that, between 15-25% of the time, trucks are driving with no cargo. Not only is this bad for the environment - this causes needless emissions - but it also means truckers are missing out on up to a quarter of their potential salary. Using Big Data resources, Doft aims to make it so truckers can remain loaded with freight both heading to and from any given destination.
On the other end, Doft helps small shippers, who often don’t know they need shipping until the last minute, find haulage in short time frames. Shipment is usually necessary as soon as something is sold and SMEs need to unload their warehouse immediately and get back to their initial business instead of engaging in time-consuming truck searches. With Doft’s service, SMEs can solve their last-minute shipment problems even when orders come in late.
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