Uber Freight enters last mile through Better Trucks partnership

Uber Freight is officially stepping into the last-mile delivery market through a strategic investment and partnership with last mile technology delivery platform Better Trucks.

The investment expands Uber Freight’s coverage to 68% of the U.S. population, a figure expected to rise to 85% by the end of 2026.

Uber Freight’s Hany Elkordy — who previously built Amazon Logistics — told FreightWaves their goal has always been to “optimize for speed, cost and reliability.”

Uber Freight began working with Better Trucks about a year ago and quickly became impressed with the company’s technology and operational capacity.

“The inception of the relationship was really a supplier relationship before we ever thought of investing in them,” Elkordy, Uber Freight’s head of logistics and last mile, said.

“Better Trucks did a phenomenal job and as we started to work with them much closer to understand how they do certain things, we uncovered, really to our delight, a lot more capabilities than what we had really thought of when we started working with them, which included, a lot of tech capabilities, a lot of operational capabilities.”

Better Trucks was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Chicago. The last-mile delivery platform orchestrates the delivery of tens of millions of packages a year for leading retail and e-commerce brands, according to a news release.

“This partnership and investment bring new scale and opportunity to what we have always done: serve shippers from the distribution center to the doorstep,” Andy Whiting, co-founder and CEO of Better Trucks, said in a statement. “Our shared vision for a more intelligent and efficient logistics network is at the heart of this collaboration. We continue to bring our agile and flexible delivery solutions to our clients and now an even broader customer base.”

San Francisco-based Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) operates three platforms: Uber (ride-hailing), Uber Freight (logistics), and Uber Eats (food and goods delivery). The partnership with Better Trucks also boosts Uber’s broader last-mile strategy, which spans Uber Eats and Uber Direct, to offer a global delivery ecosystem to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.

The partnership combines Better Trucks’ address-validation, sortation and routing tools with Uber’s national freight network for faster and more efficient deliveries amid the growing demands of the e-commerce landscape.

Elkordy said while Uber Freight now reaches about 68% of the U.S. population, they cover 100% of the U.S. population in terms of population density for the middle mile.

“We actually cover 100% of the country in terms of coverage from a middle-mile perspective. That’s not our issue — and that’s why the Better Trucks investment matters,” Elkordy said.

“To go from zero to 68% in just over a year is a staggering coverage number. The reason we’ve been able to do it is that we’re exploiting underutilized networks already out there rather than rebuilding them ourselves.”

While Uber Freight’s model remains asset-light, Elkordy said the company may evolve toward what he calls an “asset-right” approach as volume grows.

“There’s a place where it makes sense to invest in some assets,” he said. “For now, the focus is on strategic partnerships that let us scale fast and learn. Over time, we’ll reassess whether owning certain capabilities — like sortation or delivery stations — creates more value for our shippers.”

Elkordy added that the integration comes at a time of intense pressure on delivery providers to cut costs and boost flexibility amid economic uncertainty.

“A small percentage of a big town is still a big number,” he said. “We think this partnership allows Uber Freight to bring something highly disruptive and very unique to the industry.”

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