The encyclopedia · Software & IT · Strategic decision · 1978–1989
DAT's Dial-A-Truck put open loads on a screen so empty trucks found freight
In 1978 a truck stop put open loads on a screen and sold drivers the shipper's number, creating the freight marketplace that filled empty backhauls.
DAT Freight & Analytics (Dial-A-Truck)
the move
For decades a truck returning from a delivery was a liability: it often had to drive empty back toward a region with new freight. That deadhead mile was pure cost, and with loads and trucks fragmented across thousands of small operators, neither side could find the other.
The answer came where truckers already gathered. Monroe 'Moe' Jubitz ran fuel, food and repairs at his Portland truck stop; after deregulation, drivers hung around hoping for a load and shippers posted handwritten cards on a bulletin board. Jubitz began posting loads on a monitor and charging the driver a small fee for the broker's contact.
His son Albin Jubitz formalised it in 1978 as Dial-A-Truck, a subsidiary of the Jubitz Corporation. By the 1980s monitors sat in hundreds of truck stops and thousands of freight brokers and carriers subscribed, and the service grew into DAT with real-time freight matching and rate benchmarks.
The market now matches hundreds of millions of loads and trucks a year. The transferable insight is to create one visible, trusted exchange and let two fragmented sides find each other, turning deadhead miles from a cost into a product you can sell.
why it works
- Empty (deadhead) miles are pure cost; a matching market turns them into revenue.
- Deregulation fragmented freight into many small independent carriers who had no way to find each other's loads.
- A single exchange both sides trust removes the search cost that kept trucks empty.
- Pricing access cheaply per contact lets the market grow on volume rather than margin.
what transfers
When a market fragments into many small buyers and sellers, the cheapest fix is one visible exchange both sides trust; aggregate demand and supply in a single place.
what came after
Dial-A-Truck became DAT Services in 1989, joined TransCore and then Roper Technologies, and today hosts hundreds of millions of freight loads and trucks a year, with live lane-rate benchmarks used across the US trucking market.
references
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