Old-School Drivers

I've been told by so many people lately that eventually all freight matching will be done over the internet, or even "mobile apps".
You can call me old-school I guess, but that just sounds difficult.

Can any drivers on here offer some insight about these load board sites like uShip and getloaded, etc.? I have heard good and bad things about various sites. I've checked them out a bit, but would like to know more before I try any load boards.

Now a new start-up one has been trying to contact me recently about joining as a beta user. Theyre called FreightConnections and they are claiming to be the "evolution of shipping". Apparently they only allow shippers and carriers, no brokers or 3PLs. If they actually don't have markups, as they claim, I'd obviously be interested. I doubt it though. Their webpage looks way different than the other ones I have seen at least.

Regardless of which site, I'll take as much help as I can on any load boards from you guys.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

 

Thanks guys, I had heard of that shipping war show but never watched it. Ive heard that uShip has a lot of residential "shippers" using the site. Obviously I'm not looking to haul some random crap from some person's house.

kahl7- I looked into Internet Truckstop a little bit before. Does that have a bunch of residential shipping going on, or is it more commercial? Also, what channel is this shipping wars show on?

Gizmo- lol about that last remark. In the past I have been going through an agent. Also, that auction thing you mentioned is actually also used on freightconnections. The person I talked to from there said that carriers get to bid on loads and the shipper can either choose the lowest bid, or a low bid from a "trusted" carrier. They said it will give more competitive balance between huge carriers (i.e. Yellow) and the little guys (i.e. yours truly). If nothing else they at least got my attention.

 

Thanks for the input sourdiesel. Not sure I want to pay a fee to use a load board for now though. Still holding out hope that FreightConnections follows through on what they claim to offer, and that should be available in a few weeks. If that is not the case I will probably be looking into using getloaded, as I have heard some good things from a few other drivers as well.

By the way, I watched an episode of Shipping Wars finally, a woman on there had to carry 20 peacocks across the country. It was actually pretty entertaining, but also irrelevant to the average driver trying to conduct a business. Definitely didn't make me want to use uShip.

 

I agree FLATBED, uship offers some good laughs every once in a while. I can see how they stay alive, but hard to imagine they are helping too many drivers with their every-day business.

 

Well then they must be a helpful freight transportation board...