Today, we are proud to announce our partnership with uShip, a global online marketplace for shipping services. This partnership will primarily benefit our customers who ship large parcels.
If you are shipping something very large, then the typical carriers – Fedex, UPS, USPS, DHL – may not be the best solution for you. Instead, you may need to look into an LTL (Less than truckload) carrier. If you are a small business who uses LTL shipping, then you are used to dealing with middlemen – third party brokers who connect you to the LTL carriers and help you find good shipping rates. uShip brings a marketplace solution for this problem.
uShip’s LTL (Less than truckload) marketplace shows the shipping rates across a number of carriers including the three top national LTL carriers – Con-way Freight, Old Dominion Freight Line and YRC Freight. Through this partnership, Ordoro’s customers can now lookup unlimited shipping quotes for their LTL parcels regardless of their shipping frequency, volume, or business size. And they no longer have to negotiate these LTL rates with middlemen. Instead the best rates are just one click away.
You may already be familiar with uShip because they are famously featured in the A&E TV show “Shipping Wars”. In that reality TV show, five independent truckers competitively bid to transport oversized, bulky loads found on uShip.com.
uShip is also our friendly neighbor. Their headquarters is just two blocks away from our office in downtown Austin, TX.
More than just neighbors
But our relationship with uShip goes deeper than that of friendly neighbors. We look up to them, and their success, and feel close to them because both Ordoro and uShip have similar roots. Both the companies were born out of the “New Venture Creation” class in the TexasMBA program. That class, taught by Rob Adams, is a core entrepreneurship class at the University of Texas MBA program. And students from that class usually compete in Texas Venture Labs (TVL) business plan competition (formerly known as Moot Corp).
uShip was a Moot Corp finalist in 2004. And Ordoro was a finalist in 2010. In fact, Matt Chasen, the CEO of uShip was one of the judges for our final presentation, and I distinctly remember him giving us a hard time asking all the tough questions :).
We admire the massive success uShip has had in the past ten years. And we feel like their younger sibling, 6 years younger, walking in their footsteps, and looking forward to all the excitement the future is about to bring us.
And since we are both born of the same fire, we also share similar outlooks on business growth. In a 2010 GigaOm article, Stacey Higginbotham outlined how Matt Chasen and his team have built a steadily growing company without falling for all the typical startup hype. Here are the four key points –
- Know Thy Revenue Streams – Focus on proving out how you will make money
- Avoid PPC Addiction – Don’t be overly reliant on paid search marketing
- Launch the Minimum Viable Product
- Stay Lean – Continually revisit your budgets, assumptions and strategy
That is identical to the core beliefs of the Ordoro founding team. Following those ideas have served us well, and we know they will continue to guide us as we grow into the number one shipping platform for small businesses.
uShip founders have also been very kind to us, guiding us and connecting us to the investment community when we were preparing to raise our very first VC investment.
So, this is not just another partnership for us. It is also an emotional milestone for us. And Ordoro is proud to be associated with the uShip brand and we look forward to helping each other grow.
