We started Haul to rethink the employment model of 3.5 million commercial truck drivers in the United States. Our mission is to design and develop an employment platform for the modern truck driver. By building technology directly for drivers, we look to solve trucking’s largest pain point around driver shortage and churn.
Building for those who move our country
Haul began in late 2019 with the belief that the backbone of trucking, the drivers, were being overlooked. We witnessed billions of investment dollars poured into the trucking industry to improve operational efficiencies and increase productivity.
We helped build the Uber Freight, a marketplace to help shippers connect with carriers to move spot freight. By reducing the need to search for loads, carriers could focus on providing excellent service to their customers. While improving business processes and fleet utilization, we noticed that drivers continually churned and fleets struggled to keep their trucks running.
Why?
1. A Technology Imbalance
The proliferation of the smartphone and the electronic logging device mandate essentially converted every truck into a connected device. With the access of new data, startups and incumbents have rushed to leverage connected fleets to meet consumer demands on tracking, and automate internal processes.
While many of these new innovations were intended to improve the safety and wellbeing of a driver, the immediate impact was an increase in tools for monitoring and tracking. Trucks are now installed with driver facing cameras, ELDs to monitor driving habits, and smartphones to provide real time check-ins. In this digital gold rush, drivers are being asked to do more with increased supervision while uncertainty around job security and earning potential loom overhead.
Haul takes these data points and builds them into robust career profiles so drivers can benefit from their on trip performance. Our simple belief is that great drivers should be compensated based on performance and have access to their reports.
2. A Fractional Workforce
With all this investment and technology the trucking industry still suffers from high turnover. Trucking fleets spend upwards of $10,000 to $15,000 to recruit, qualify and onboard a new CDL driver. These costs are the result of a transient workforce that changes employers on average 10–15 times in their career. Trucking fleets hire full time recruiting and fleet managers to balance their driver pool with the demands of their businesses.
These recruitment campaigns are targeted at the same qualified driver pool so fleets end up competing and spending for a limited driver pool. Why? Because transferring available freight capacity across industries is expensive and time-consuming. Haul is built to fluidly move drivers between industries depending on demand without the high costs that typically come with it. So instead of spending money on recruitment, those budgets can be repurposed into training, purchasing new equipment or passing to the driver in wages.
3. Erosion of the Driver Trade
It’s estimated that 27% of commercial drivers could retire in the next ten years. Many in the industry are scrambling to label this as the onset of a large driver shortage. The rush has spawned ideas of applying “gig economy” practices to the trucking industry. Drivers want flexibility, but that doesn’t mean “gig”. They want stable income that matches their performance and skills.
After talking to countless drivers, we understand that “flexibility” does not mean that drivers are looking for “gig” work. Drivers want the autonomy to set a preferred schedule, but long to work at places with predictable income. We believe a better model should exist. At Haul, we aim to hire our drivers as W-2 employees first so they can have predictable income and access to healthcare and benefits.
The future of the CDL driver
CDL drivers continue to have a tremendous place in the future of trucking, especially in a world of increased automation. We believe churn is not going away; drivers are no longer loyal to a particular fleet but are more invested in their earning potential.
In order for fleets to work with this agile workforce, they need an updated platform to source, qualify, onboard and dispatch a driver in a time of demand and release them when their services are no longer needed.
Haul is a digital employment platform for CDL drivers that allows them to connect with flexible job opportunities in the United States. Haul sources drivers through a proprietary data-centric process, onboards them as hourly W-2 employees with competitive pay and access to health benefits. Haul certified drivers are matched to assignments from fleets in their geographical area who are experiencing growth, seasonality or unexpected turnover that match their schedule, location and pay preferences.
