As the new head of technology at Uber's (NASDAQ: UBER) logistics division Uber Freight, Val Marchevsky is tasked with leading a team of engineers at the company's growing Chicago headquarters — at a time when tech solutions in the logistics industry have never been more critical.
The country is in a supply chain crisis, due in part to the continued strain caused by Covid-19, worker shortages, and soaring demand for goods. Along with a backlog at America's ports, the U.S. is also dealing with a trucker shortage, a problem that was playing out even before the pandemic that's been further elevated by the coronavirus. The American Trucking Association says there's currently a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers, which is an all-time high. The ATA estimates that the industry will need 1 million new drivers over the next nine years to replace retiring truckers.
Those confluence of factors have resulted in supply chain disruptions that have caused record shortages for many products, with Moody’s Analytics warning that the problems "will likely get worse before they get better."
"You turn on the news, you see problems. Containers stacked up in ports. Not enough shipping capacity. Not enough trucking capacity. Not enough loading capacity. People are freaking out about their Christmas presents," Marchevsky told me. "There's a lot of nervousness."
There's no one fix to America's shipping challenges. But Uber Freight, which creates an app that matches shippers who need loads hauled with available truck drivers, believes its tech can help alleviate some supply chain strain.
"I would argue that we are in the best position to help," said Marchevsky, a veteran Chicago technologist with previous stops at Motorola, Google and Verifone. "We have some of the best machine learning engines to understand where the trucks are, the patterns of loads, how to deal with certain situations and scenarios. It does present an opportunity for us."
The Uber Freight app lets drivers book jobs that fit their schedule, and run more efficient routes that eliminate downtime and waiting around for loads to arrive. It also recently launched a wallet product that lets drivers get paid faster, in as little as two hours. All those things likely come as welcome news to a trucking workforce in flux, though homesickness, stress and low wages have continued to keep drivers off the road.
The company says it has more than 1 million truck drivers on its network, and Uber Freight head Lior Ron said in a recent interview it's starting to see a steady increase in demand.
Last week Uber Freight officially cut the ribbon on its new Chicago headquarters in the Old Post Office. It'll have more than 2,000 employees across the Freight, Eats and Rides divisions once employees return in early 2022, with the majority of those employees working on Uber Freight. Uber said it plans to hire for "hundreds more" at the Chicago outpost.
The office in some ways puts Chicago at the center of logistics innovation, a position the city knows well.
"[Chicago has] this gigantic logistics industry that has high technology challenges," Marchevsky said. "The sky's the limit here."
