Trucks are running across the country empty 30 to 40 percent of the time, Dan Lewis, CEO of digital freight matching company Convoy, told CNBC on Thursday
He hopes to change all that by utilizing that free space.
"We think the next big thing in trucking is to actually automate the process of matching those hundreds of thousands, millions of trucks with all of the freight that needs to be moved every day," he told Wilfred Frost.
In fact, he believes inefficiency is the bigger problem than the driver shortage facing the trucking industry.
"Trucks are running down the highway empty, they're sitting for hours at facilities," he said. "You can generate 20, 30 percent more capacity just by running the whole system more efficiently."
Convoy uses software to create what it calls smarter routes that will batch shipments for truck drivers. According to its website, for every 1 percent improvement in truck routes and utilization, nearly 400 million gallons of fuel can be saved, as well as 100 million hours from being wasted and 3 billion miles from being driven each year.
Convoy counts Jeff Bezos among its investors.