Next Trucking — latest tech-enabled brokerage, freight-marketplace hybrid

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Next Trucking logoThe Next Trucking company, brainchild of iDC Logistics owner and Next co-founder Elton Chung, announced this week the availability of its Android smartphone app and on-demand freight marketplace. iDC will be matching truckers with its universe of approximately 18,000 loads per year, totaling up to $2 billion dollars of merchandise annually, Chung says.

The brokerage specializes in electronics and delivers to big-box retailers including Walmart, Target, Kmart, Sears, Costco, Best Buy, JCPenney, and Kohl’s.

Chung designed Next Trucking to connect shippers directly with vetted truckers who are willing and able to carry the freight.

Custom notifications via text alerts are available for customization within the Next Trucking Android app. Chung says plans are in place for the iOS version, likely to become available before the end of November.Custom notifications via text alerts are available for customization within the Next Trucking Android app. Chung says plans are in place for the iOS version, likely to become available before the end of November.

In a manner similar to that of some already existing apps such as Dispatcher, Next, Chung says, is trucker-focused, allows owner-operator preferences to drive the offers he/she receives via the app. “We designed the app to serve the trucker,” he says, “to connect with a shipper directly” by essentially posting a truck and preferred route.

Owner-operators will “post preferred routes and [rates per-mile] with an available date,” Chung adds. “The shipper will go on and search for the availability. Say they found [an owner-operator available on a Tuesday – [the shipper] will just buy that item like an online marketplace. The trucker would get exactly what they want” for 5 percent of the overall freight bill.

Next Trucking is the “first marketplace that focuses on the carrier’s route and rate requirements instead of the shipper’s,” the company says in a press release, and purports like most such apps to speed up the freight transaction process, adding a measure of convenience enabled by ever-more-sophisticated communications technology.

“We are a broker and have built this platform as a go-between,” says Chung, providing also a quick-pay option (for an additional 3 percent of the bill) that can deliver payment “the very day of the delivery” upon delivery “by the shipper of a POD through the application.”

Signature-capture functionality within the app, as well as real-time GPS tracking for prepping docks, is also enabled.

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“The old ways of shipping freight aren’t working,” Chung adds. “It doesn’t make sense to approach [truckers] with routes and rates they don’t want,” which he goes on to suggests is the current norm for brokerages and shippers.

Find more information about Next Trucking Inc. at the company’s website.