In late December 2016 an Uber Freight Product Designer and Product Manager were on a ride-along with Frank from South Carolina to Atlanta when, because of inefficiencies in the trucking industry, Frank missed seeing his son who was home from college for Christmas. The next morning Frank was justifiably sad and he told them, “if you can do one thing for me with this whole app, just get me home to my family more.” 9 months later we returned to Atlanta and revealed to Frank that we had built him the exact feature he asked for. For the first time in the history of the trucking industry, Take Me Home allows truck drivers to go home with a paying load with the tap of a button. We captured the surprise by making sure that Frank didn’t miss his birthday for the first time in 5 years.

We built a new product we called Take Me Home that would allow truckers to automatically get matched with a load that would take them back to their home base. This meant that for the first time ever they’d have more control over where they went, when they went there, and how they’d make money with a full load along the way. To tell the story we travelled to Atlanta to show Frank the tool we’d built him. Nine months after he missed Christmas, we made sure he didn’t miss his birthday. We created a campaign across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter highlighting the new Take Me Home feature. Within the Uber Freight app, we’d automatically recommend loads that would get drivers back to their home base.

We launched the campaign at the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas, Texas. The show is an annual gathering of tens of thousands of truck drivers and their families. We debuted Frank’s story to a crowd of hundreds of drivers and their spouses and kids. People recognized themselves in his story and there was plenty of grateful tears that things were going to improve on the homefront. But most of all they were just thankful that this product would allow them to spend more time with their moms and dads, husbands and wives. To extend the reach we also ran the story in truck-centric trade outlets and across our Uber Freight social channels as well as as pre-roll on YouTube targeting popular trucker vlogs.