AUSTIN, Texas — For any owner-operator looking for loads, uShip can help online whether it’s a truckload or less-than-truckload shipment.
There are at any given time $8 million to $10 million worth of transport jobs available in its marketplace.
According to the uShip.com website the company was born in the back of a rented moving van.
As CEO and Founder Matt Chasen was moving from Seattle to Texas, his mother had been struggling to move a dresser from Ohio to Texas. When Matt arrived to pick up the 9-foot van he ordered, it was sold out, leaving him with a 20-foot truck.
As he drove the virtually empty truck to Texas, he wondered if there may be someone in a similar situation in Ohio with enough room to bring home his mother’s dresser.
Matt continued to tinker with the idea over the coming year, and when he arrived at the University of Texas, he eventually joined with fellow business school students Jay Manickam and Mickey Millsap.
The three further developed the business plan to take advantage of all these empty trucks listed on uShip.
The company gives shipping and moving companies free and immediate access to transport jobs — carriers pay a transaction fee on completed jobs. With thousands of shipments listed every day, owner-operators and large freight carriers alike have an equal opportunity to bid on jobs.
A carrier’s reputation may be built online so that someone who is looking to hire a driver to haul their load may pick a person using comments that show he is good at getting the job done.
Dean Jutilla, director of marketing and communications at uShip, said loads can be followed online to let the customer know where the truck is without having to text or call the carrier.
“Being able to tell where you are is fun, but when it’s applied to trucking it’s a much better use case,” said Jutilla.
The website was launched with Sprint, Jutilla said, and has expanded to AT&T and Tmobile.
It’s free to join. The only time you pay is when the job is completed and the fee is 9 percent to 10 percent of the load.
According to Jutilla, it’s not a load board or broker; uShip is not legally involved in the transaction, but simply provides the means to The website offers tools to look for jobs, track loads, get feedback scores and comments on drivers.ould still be better than deadhead miles.
know where their loads are at any time, but even better for the owner-operator is that they can be alerted by their GPS position about loads in their area.
“It pushes business to them,” Jutilla said.
UShip Tracking allows the carrier to control who sees updates so that drivers don’t have to worry about people calling them to ask why they are taking a particular route.
The Trucker talked to Mike Garrett, who has been using uShip for about 3.5 years. He’s been an owner-operator for 23 years.
“It’s a great website for finding loads,” Garrett said. “I move household. I do very well with it.” He hauls about 85 percent loads he gets from uShip and the rest from referrals.
“The feedback is something I love about it,” Garrett said. “You can show people the profile and good comments, whereas with the Better Business Bureau, they only show the negative.
“Also people can track me. It’s a win-win for me. There’s peace of mind to know where your stuff is. My business has been growing for the last four years. I found uShip and I believe things happen for a reason and I found uShip for a reason.” Garrett said he collects half of the shipping fee up front and the rest when he delivers the load and usually gets paid in cash.
“I booked almost $50,000 in the last two months and that was all uShip,” he said. He’s booked into September.
To get started with uShip all that is necessary is to post status updates to your profile like you’d do on Facebook. You can add your location by turning on the option. For automated GPS tracking you need to use Sprint, AT&T or T-mobile.
There are all kinds of loads on uShip from small to large including heavy equipment. On the day The Trucker looked there were 940 heavy equipment loads listed.
