Moving with the times

摘要

Florida 595 is unappealing, even by truck-stop standards. Odour from a landfill next door permeates the humid air. Planes from a nearby airport buzz overhead. The average American trucker spends two-thirds of working time either in places like this or loadless on the road. So the wheelmen propping up the bar at 595 are giddy about a new breed of smartphone app. For a few years startups like Cargo-matic and Convoy have been helping drivers maximise their gainful time behind the wheel by digitising the matching of shipments with lorries. Convoy called itself "Uber for freight"—until 2017, when Uber launched exactly that.