TruKKer is an “Uber for trucks,” as Biswas put it, but that belies complexity. Unlike ride-hailing, moving cargo calls for a wide variety of vehicles: flatbeds for the heaviest loads, refrigerated units for food and medicine, tankers for chemicals. Under normal circumstances, the company runs predictive algorithms to estimate demand. The conflict has rendered such predictions useless.

A container truck that once made short trips from Jebel Ali to elsewhere in Dubai is now on a two-day journey to haul goods, leaving trucks tied up for longer with each shipment and tightening the supply of transport, according to Biswas. The cost of diesel also jumped 72% overnight in the UAE at the start of April, and contracts locked in for the quarter — or in some cases the year — could no longer be honored at agreed rates, Biswas said. Desperate customers were calling multiple brokers at once, creating the illusion of demand spikes that sent truck owners scrambling to raise prices, Biswas said.

TruKKer responded by fixing rates in an attempt to bring transparency to the market and prompt truck owners to bring down prices. TruKKer was established ten years ago and is backed by Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, Saudi Arabia’s STV, and Bahrain-based Investcorp.

Biswas said he was surprised to see that the supply of construction materials hasn’t declined. Disruptions in other industries are more pronounced. Aluminum producers can’t import alumina and petrochemicals are piling up in Gulf ports with nowhere to go, he said.