This Philly-area startup aims to be ‘Uber for truck drivers’

They say how you finish matters more than how you start. In freight management technology, there’s no success on one end without the other.

Conshohocken-based DrayNow uses tech to move shipping containers on the first and last mile of their shipping journeys with a namesake app that Michael Dugas, director of business enablement for DrayNow describes as “Uber for truck drivers.” Independent container truck drivers with their own vehicles use the DrayNow app to find jobs transporting freight.

After eight years in business, the company is still logging firsts, including recently expanding into the international shipping market.

“We’ve been able to steadily grow over the last two years by focusing on service and alignment with our customers,” said Dugas.

Drayage for the 21st Century

DrayNow gets its name from the logistics term drayage, a word that is a throwback to the days when goods were transported to and from the railroad by draft horses. Today, of course, that kind of transport is done by container trucks, though they still often pick up and deliver freight to and from freight trains, as well as from ports. The shipping containers are intermodal, meaning they can move seamlessly from ship to rail to truck. 

Intermodal freight takes the best of both worlds of trains, which are cost effective and comparatively environmentally sustainable and trucks, which have the advantage of being able to go directly to the destination’s door. The jobs independent truckers find on the DrayNow app aren’t long-haul jobs, but rather picking up shipping containers from manufacturers on the first leg of their journey or dropping off freight to a warehouse or other end destination.

Dugas joined the team in 2021 to grow the company’s app usership, just a few years after it transported its first load in 2017 after its founding by current CEO Mike Albert and two partners. Albert, says Dugas, saw an opportunity to help drive efficiencies in the space with technology: “He set forth with that vision, and we’re really seeing it through now.” 

What app users gain when they sign up with DrayNow is access to its intermodal routes that are normally only available to full-scale logistics companies. That, Dugas says, is how it’s shaking up the industry, by providing opportunities for people to start and grow their own trucking companies.

‘A bit of a unicorn in our staying power’

As the company closes in on a decade in business with over 20 markets across the country, Dugas credits its slow-and-steady approach during uncertain times.

“If you look at tech startups in the logistics space, we’re a bit of a unicorn in our staying power,” Dugas said. “A lot of the companies in the space burnt out really fast. They got a bunch of funding and spent it all too fast. We were a little more slow, a little more deliberate.”

DrayNow’s careful strategy helped it to ride out the ebb and flow of the COVID pandemic, which included a rate surge with a huge surplus, then a collapse. “Most people are still feeling that collapse,” he said. “We’ve been able to steadily grow over the last two years by focusing on service and alignment with our customers.”

Expanding technology across the industry

One of the company’s more recent projects is an application called ModalView, part of a joint venture with freight railway company Norfolk Southern. Similar to DrayNow’s app, ModalView will expand access to the technology to other drayage companies so they can work through one technology system for tracking and document management.

“We’re basically taking the technology that DrayNow has been able to differentiate its service with and are now creating a product that’s a neutral drayage execution platform where people can bring in their own fleets or drainage companies.”

While the company is dipping its toes into international drayage shipping, it continues to focus on its primary wheelhouse, domestic shipping. It’s no accident that it took years before making a move beyond domestic. 

“We wanted to master it,” Dugas said. “To feel like our team was able to scale at any rate we needed to. What we’ve realized is we can better serve our customers by being a one-stop shop provider. That, I think, is the end goal.”