Uber Freight Fuel Card Review: Features, Pros & Cons

The Uber Freight Carrier Card is a fuel card by Uber Freight, administered by fuel card administrator AtoB. The fuel card scheme is paired with the Uber Freight app, which specifically caters to haulers and shippers.

Uber Freight promises that the card comes with zero hidden fees, and while you can earn an up to 85¢ per gallon discount on fuel, it’s unlikely you’ll get fuel discounts as high as promised. Still, the Uber Freight Carrier Card offers a good fuel card deal to trucking businesses – and if you want to know why it’s one of our top fuel cards for truckers, simply keep reading.

If you’d rather skip the fluff and get help picking a fuel card, you can use our quote-finding tool. Here’s how it works: you tell us about your business, we match you with fuel card providers, and they reach out to you with custom quotes.

What Are the Perks of Using the Uber Freight Carrier Card?

Let’s take a look at some of the Uber Freight Carrier Card’s most attractive perks and features:

✔️Great fuel discounts

The Uber Freight Carrier Card promises up to 85¢ per gallon discounts on fuel. This is a big discount relative to competitors like WEX, which offer a 3¢ per gallon rebate on average (read more in our WEX review).

Discounts are available at partner station networks, which include TA and Petro gas stations. A quick scan of the TA-Petro website reveals more than 900 locations spread pretty nicely across the country, with the heaviest concentration of stations in the Northeast.

✔️ Modern station finder tool

Uber Freight’s Fuel Finder tool is also a great tool for finding cheap fuel. Most fuel card providers have a station finder app, but they’re often glitchy and slow to update.

Since Uber Freight is part of Uber, The Fuel Finder tool uses the same great map and tracking software, all contained within a dedicated app. It shows drivers nearby stops that are part of Uber Freight’s partner network, including real-time fuel pricing and available discounts. This makes it easy to plan a route and find the cheapest fuel.

✔️Minimal fees

The Uber Freight Carrier Card is free to use. It has no setup fees, card fees, software fees, annual fees or maintenance fees.

The reason Uber Freight can do this is because it offers other paid services for fleets, including fleet management software. Most businesses who sign up for the Carrier Card will already be using those services, and if they’re not, Uber Freight is banking on them switching, so they get an integrated platform for all their fleet management tools.

✔️Can be used for non-fuel purchases

Some fuel cards can only be used for purchasing fuel, but the Uber Freight Carrier can also be used to pay for related products or services, including repairs and maintenance (tires, paint jobs, cleaning etc.), tolls, roadside assistance, and parking.

The Uber Freight Carrier Card is primarily aimed at truckers, and these additional purchase permissions reflect that.

✔️Great expense management tools

The Uber Freight Carrier Card has some great expense management tools. Since the card is administered by AtoB, the Uber Freight platform uses some of AtoB’s finance management software.

Owner-operators are able to set spending limits for the Carrier Card, view fuel and tax reports, and view purchases by state, which can speed up IFTA reports.

Here’s a what the Uber Freight Carrier Card looks like. As you can see, it’s got Uber’s branding. Source: Uber Freight

What Are the Downsides to Using the Uber Freight Carrier Card?

Now that we’ve seen the positives, let’s take a look at some of the negatives of the Uber Freights Carrier Card:

❌Complicated discount structure

Uber Freight’s discount structure is quite complex, and you’re not always guaranteed discounts on fuel, depending on the type of discount.

There are two types of discounts you can opt for:

• “Retail Minus”: The safest option. It’s a fixed discount on the retail price that’s guaranteed, but it’ll likely be much less than the promised 85¢ per gallon.
• “Cost Plus”: The one with no discount guarantee. You get a fixed price at participating fuel stations, which is based on a daily calculation of the merchant’s wholesale price. There’s no predicting how large or small the discount will be, and it might be higher than the retail price. If that’s the case, the Cost Plus discount doesn’t apply, and you pay the full retail price.

If that explanation is making your head spin a little, you’re not alone. Most fuel card providers have a much simpler fixed discount structure based on the number of gallons you buy each month.

❌Limited security features

The Uber Freight Carrier Card’s security features are a little limited compared to rivals.

While it does have a free add-on that essentially prompts drivers to do a dual authentication before they use the card (they unlock the card for 30 minutes with an SMS notification), there’s no feature to block the card of a rogue driver, a feature that is offered by most other providers, like ARCO for example.

❌ No fraud protection

Uber Freight also has no money-back guarantee if you’re a victim of fraud. This isn’t necessarily the norm across the industry, but it is something competitor Fuelman offers.

This type of assurance shows that a card provider is confident that their security measures are tight enough that fraud will almost never be an issue.

Who Is The Uber Freight Fuel Card For?

The Uber Freight Carrier Card is best suited to trucking fleets or lone-contractors who want to, or already regularly use the Uber Freight app to pick up freight hauling jobs, since the Carrier Card requires you to sign up for an Uber Freight account in order to use it.

For this same reason, we don’t recommend it to non-trucking fleets, like taxi or parcel delivery services, or to trucking fleets that don’t need or want to use Uber Freight.

The Uber Freight fuel card is also probably slighter better for trucking fleets that operate in the Northeast, since that’s where a lot of Uber Freight’s discount-offering partner stations are located. But, since the card is a Visa card, it can technically be used anywhere that takes Visa, Uber Freight partner or not.

If you’d like more fuel card recommendations, check out our pick for the best fuel cards for trucking fleets.

Our Methodology: How Did We Do Our Research?

We carried out in-depth research into US fleet cards, using our in-house comparison framework, which included five areas of analysis. For each card we’ve asked these questions:

• How convenient is it to use?
• How helpful is it for managing fuel expenses?
• What can it do to ensure your company’s funds are secure?
• What extra benefits do you receive from using it?

We’ve also broken down each card by fee structure, fuel type, network coverage and more to offer you the easiest choice.