Amazon Relay
Empowering carriers to find and book work on the go in real-time
What is the Relay Load Board?
The Relay Load Board (RLB) is the most-used tool within Amazon Relay. It was launched in 2018 to help carriers and owner operators grow their business through a wide selection of work opportunities, all within Amazon's freight network.
RLB's primary function is to help carriers find and book desirable work in real-time.
To give you a sense of Relay's coverage, here is a heatmap of driver activity over a one hour period:
Small Carriers, 4-10 Tractors (US, 2022)
Loads Booked on Relay (US, 2022)
47k+ (82% of all Relay Carrier user base)
120k+ (63% booked through mobile web)
Load Board Searches on Relay (US, 2022)
Savings Opportunity with Load Board Native App
200k+
$37M, annually
About the Project
The Relay Load Board (RLB) user base is primarily composed of owner operators (1-3 tractors) and small carriers (4-10 tractors), representing 82% of Relay's carriers. In 2021, we noticed over 68% of load bookings on RLB were performed from mobile devices resulting in 9% lower cost per loaded hour (CpLH) versus loads booked on desktop.
Our hypothesis: small carriers do not have robust booking capabilities (i.e. a team of dispatchers) and often search for work "on the go". If we were to provide them with RLB capabilities within a native mobile app, we could offer small carriers an optimal mobile-first discovery and booking experience, re-engage them in real-time with new opportunities, and drive cost-saving improvements for the business.
A small product team consisting of a Principal-level Product Manager, 3 Software Engineers, a UX Designer, and a Technical Program Manager formed in February 2022 to lead this initiative.
Our goal was to launch an MLP experience to all US-based carriers by October 2022 – 8 months later.
Early Concepts
I created initial wireframes using Freehand. These were used to align our core team around potential layout, functionality, and initial scope.
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Note: I lost access to my Freehand documents after being laid off by Amazon in April 2023. The best I have is a low-fi screenshot of what was explored.
Designs
I built over 7 iterations, 400 artboards, 3 prototypes, conducted 3 rounds of user testing, and presented 3 times to L10+ product leadership.
Initial Explorations
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Note: Similar to above, with access to my work cut off, I have limited visuals to share of my earliest iterations.
User Testing
I conducted several rounds of user testing with carriers, both remote and in-person. I streamed the sessions for my virtual team members to observe. The findings from these sessions guided our path to beta launch in October 2022.
High-level findings:
- Overall, carriers reacted positively to the new load board experience on mobile.
- All carriers tested preferred the layout and search experience of the proposed designs over the existing mobile web experience.
- Discoverability of filters and load recommendations was moderate-to-low. Opportunity to revise.
Launch Experience
Here is a collection of some of the screens included within a complete load board search and booking experience.
Prototype
Future explorations
After our initial release of RLB on mobile, we had a vision to include all carrier functionality that exists within the Relay web platform within the native mobile app. This would include functionality like Post A Truck, Relay Contracts, Trips, and Payments.
Future navigation
To explore concepts for scaling how carriers find work beyond RLB, I built a "Find Work" concept to enable quick switching between booking tools.
Pinning searches
I also explored ways to highlight saved searches to help carriers get to the results they care about and use most.
Outcome
The Relay mobile app for carriers launched in October 2022, with a full dial-up to all US carriers completed by November 2022.
Customer quotes:
"Load board functionality in the app is very, very good. [It is] actually better than the website right now. I like that I can leave the app open with my favorite load board search, and with one swipe down, refresh. It takes many more steps to do the same thing on the website."
"I'm really liking the look and feel of the load board app. This is awesome! This is like Christmas in November."
"I LOVE how my filters stay put so I just open the app and refresh anytime. On the website, after 10 minutes or so I have to re-enter in my filters. App is very nice and I love it."
5 weeks post launch, we had 8.4K unique carriers visit RLB on the mobile app, 4.2K unique carriers booked over 19K loads.
Share of Loads Booked on Mobile App
Avg. Cost Savings Compared to Web
9.2% (19K loads)
3% lower CpLH
