Amari Ruff – founder of Sudu – Uber for Trucking – believes that carriers can benefit from the service

Small carriers and owner-operators have capacity to offer, but those that need it most – larger, Fortune 1000 shippers, do not have access to that capacity. That is because the time and effort required to bring onboard a carrier with fewer than 6 trucks for a shipper with thousands of truckloads a year is not cost-efficient.

Enter technology, and enter Sudu.

Sudu is similar to some of the recent startup freight matching services, but founder and CEO Amari Ruff says the company is really a “two-sided marketplace.”

“We use technology to connect large shippers to [truckers],” he tells FreightWaves. “But our focus has been minority-, women- and veteran-owned carriers, but we work with all carriers.”

Ruff says there are 270,000 carrier companies listed in Sudu’s network. The reason the company focuses so heavily on smaller carriers, particularly minority, women and veteran-owned carriers, is 2-fold, he explains.

“Ninety percent of carriers have 6 trucks or less,” he explains. “To work with larger shippers, you have to have capacity. But these large shippers have limited access to 90 percent of the market.”

Secondly, he adds, many large shippers have diversity requirements. By consolidating minority, women and veteran-owned carriers, Sudu is helping shippers meet those goals and providing opportunities for the smaller carriers.

Sudu uses technology and algorithms to match available freight with available trucks. What is different from many of the other freight-matching services, though, is that Sudu does not require drivers to download an app.

“We are more of a marketplace,” Ruff notes. “The ‘Uber for Truckings’ require you to download an app. At Sudu, we don’t require you to download an app to work with us. The other thing that is different is we have focused on minority truckers and we are focused on large, Fortune 1000 shippers.”

Shippers work only with Sudu, so it is a single billing process. Loads are posted in Sudu’s system and carriers can choose the loads. “We can connect with [shippers] the same way a national carrier would,” Ruff says.

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