Vlad Skots: the Man Behind Rebalancing the Freight Economy in Favor of Small Carriers

In an industry as vast and indispensable as trucking, responsible for over 70% of all U.S. freight movement and valued at over $1 trillion annually (American Trucking Associations, 2024), the prevailing infrastructure remains deeply skewed in favor of a small number of dominant players. While over 95% of motor carriers operate maximum 10 trucks (Geotab, 2025), access to digital tools and cost-optimized services - read “operational efficiency” - remains disproportionately limited.

Vlad Skots, CEO of USKO Inc., is neither a theorist nor a legacy executive. He is a former truck driver who has converted operational pain points into systemic insights, and those insights into code. His answer to the industry's digital asymmetry is Motion TMS, a full-stack transportation management system originally engineered for independent survival.

A System Built for Pressure, Not Presentation

Motion TMS did not originate in a tech lab or through venture funding rounds. It was structured through firsthand exposure to dispatch chaos, compliance strain, fluctuating load rates, and unreliable settlement timelines. USKO’s owner-operator fleet of 3,000+ vehicles became the development field, where design priorities were dictated by the daily needs of owner-operators and dispatchers.

“We didn’t build Motion to pitch it,” Vlad Skots stated. “We built it because nobody else would.”

The platform integrates core functions such as dispatch planning, digital compliance, document management, insurance, and payment processing within a single interface accessible to fleet operators and individual drivers alike. Its mobile layer allows real-time load updates, inspection documentation, and instant driver payments, which directly address key margin and trust bottlenecks in small-carrier operations.

Tech Inequality as a Market Design Problem

According to the American Transportation Research Institute, small carriers continue to face higher per-mile costs due to under-optimized planning, fragmented insurance access, and inefficient fuel use. For fleets with limited volume leverage, the gap between cost and revenue is increasingly unsustainable.

Motion TMS is Vlad Skots’ attempt to recalibrate this equation not by subsidizing it, but by digitizing the structural inefficiencies that advantage scale over service.

“Digital access should not be a privilege of size,” underpinned Vlad Skots. “A system that punishes you for being small is evidently broken.”

His framing is not rhetorical. Vlad Skots views Motion as a prototype for digital equity in logistics (a form of “tech justice,” as he puts it) designed to realign operations and bargaining power. Core to this model is the idea that when small carriers operate with the same speed, clarity, and data control as national fleets, pricing dynamics, vendor access, and compliance relationships begin to shift.

The Strategic Value of Infrastructure Ownership

At present, less than 20% of small fleets use enterprise-grade transportation software. The remainder depend on spreadsheets, siloed tools, or third-party platforms they have no control over. Vlad Skots believes that ownership of infrastructure, not just use of software, will determine which carriers remain viable over the next decade.

“People underestimate how much operational resilience depends on informational fluency,” Vlad Skots remarked. “We need professionals who can navigate systems rather than drivers who can do nothing more than deliver freight.”

Implications for the Freight Economy

Even as freight volumes continue to rise, smaller carriers are leaving the market. A 3.7% drop in active motor carrier registrations points to attrition caused by regulatory burden and technology gaps. USKO’s model, centered around owned infrastructure, high-velocity financial tools, and accessible digital education, proposes a viable alternative to this trend.

It is not a venture-funded disruption model but a recovery architecture built by someone who remembers what breakdowns look like in winter, and who explicitly understands that logistics software cannot afford to be aspirational when the loads are real.

Looking Ahead

Vlad Skots is absolutely clear about his ambition, but his tone remains grounded: “We are not trying to build the biggest system. We are trying to build the one that works under pressure, for the people who don’t have a safety net.”

If the freight economy is to retain diversity, capacity, and distributed value, tools like Motion, and the leadership approach behind it, may provide the necessary durability template.