As 2023 kicks off, I’d like to take a moment to share some emerging trends and innovations in FreighTech that I’m seeing and make some predictions about what we can expect in the coming year.

You can read my 2022 predictions here: What we can expect in FreighTech, LogisticsTech, and SupplyChain Tech for 2022 and a few of the companies coming for their piece of the prize, 2021 predictions here: Top Trends in Supply Chain Technology for 2021 and the companies leading the way, 2020 here: Top Trends in Logistics Technology going into 2020 — How companies are keeping up with Uber, and 2019 predictions here: Top 4 Areas of Interest in Logistics Tech going into 2019.

The end of 2022 has shown a swing in the opposite direction in terms of venture capital investments. During the height of the pandemic, when the supply chain was at its worst, supply chain technology was in high demand. Now that global trade is beginning to even out, investments are starting to cool.

Q2 began the descent in funding enthusiasm for supply chain startups with a 19% drop. In Q3, venture funding fell 56% year-over-year, down to $3.3 billion, according to Pitchbook.

Funding for supply chain tech start-ups was growing by a few billion dollars per year, pre-pandemic, for close to a decade. In 2021, investors surged and spiked growth by 80% year-over-year. 2022’s investment totals will likely fall somewhere in the middle of the spike and the measured growth of years past.

I believe there is going to be a reckoning of sorts in terms of what technology we see getting funded. For 2023, tech start-ups that reduce the number of people needed to keep the supply chain moving are going to be the big winners. The pandemic has shown us, more than once, that human labor is a major uncertainty in the supply chain, and uncertainty creates weak spots. Startups that can digitize documents and automate mundane tasks and help companies do more with fewer people will be in the spotlight.

Interestingly enough, companies are willing to pay more for software with that kind of capability. The crisis has highlighted both problems as well as opportunities in the supply chain which means we should be seeing a lot of legitimate innovations in technology going forward.

With that in mind, I’ve chosen the following categories that I predict will be big areas of growth in FreightTech in 2023: managed logistics networks, financial infrastructure, API aggregation, and port terminal/rail depot visibility.

Managed Logistics Networks

One of the biggest weaknesses revealed in recent years was how over-extended many supply chains were. As a result, many companies are in the process of restructuring and shortening their supply chain wherever possible. Managed logistics networks and technology services that help automate logistics and smooth out supply chains are going to be in high demand as restructuring continues. While much of the focus has traditionally been on final or last-mile delivery services, we will likely see more attention being paid to the middle miles in the coming years.

WARP

WARP provides a customizable transportation service that is centered on the middle mile, picking up loads from a customer’s distribution center and delivering them to stores or wholesale partners. In addition to offering different vehicle sizes, ranging from sprinter vans up to a full-length 53’ trailer, as well as reefer services, WARP shines by connecting customers to cross-docking facilities, which can help consolidate loads and cut down on fulfillment costs and delivery times, while adding a suite of automated and digital tools that focus on supply chain optimization.

A pioneer in supply chain start-ups founded WARP: Troy Lester, founder of Covet Shipping. Partnering with, Daniel Sokolovsky, who created Berkeley Delivers as well as AxleHireWARP has hit on middle mile technology.

“What we’ve done is we’ve built a software platform that connects cross-docking facilities, and different sizes of trucking companies and different sizes of trucks, to stitch together a digital LTL network. And so basically, what’s happening is we’re putting tools — back-office tools, front-office tools, logic and optimization, and things like that — into the hands of everyday operators,” Sokolovsky said.

ClearJet

ClearJet offers customers a zone-skipping network by utilizing airline capacity. The software reads the customer’s address and then secures the ideal flight path to that location on either freight or passenger planes. By eliminating the number of touches per package, overall transit time and cost are reduced, as is the need for multiple LTL shipments to distribution centers or warehouses. Additionally, package visibility is increased due to fewer moving parts, allowing for more accurate ETA predictions for customers.

While it’s not necessarily direct-to-customer, it makes a fair approximation and can be immensely helpful for companies with diverse customer locations or inconsistent product volumes. Because of the zone-skipping via airfreight, the overall length of the final mile is reduced. ClearJet has a “BYOC” (bring your own carrier) policy, meaning the system works with all final mile carriers and can be easily integrated into current logistics networks and operations.

ClearJet services also include sorting packages for the correct destination and customer and applies to both domestic and international shipments.

Grip

Perishable shipping networks have been gaining in popularity due to the rise of meal kit delivery services. Cold chain, in particular, can be notoriously difficult to execute profitably and is more prone to issues than typical supply chains and shipping. Grip brings something different to the table. Labeled a “smart logistics engine,” Grip automates much of the shipping process by connecting ecommerce stores to 3PLs and carriers. Grip has created a dynamic logistics solution that assigns various shipping values, such as carrier, shipping service, warehouse location, box sizes, etc., based on current network conditions.

One of the most interesting capabilities of Grip is that it will automatically adapt and adjust itself to customer feedback in real time, effectively closing the logistics feedback loop holistically. Users can monitor KPIs and track delivery, transit times, and failure rates which, when combined with customer feedback, can be used to create a root cause analysis and effectively adjust and improve overall service levels.

Additionally, the Grip dashboard provides adverse weather event tracking and can keep customers informed in the event of delayed shipments. Grip successfully raised $2 million, pre-seed, in early 2022.

BlueTruck

Blue Truck offers a different take on logistics and final mile deliveries, specializing in large, bulky items like furniture, offering furniture sellers the opportunity to “have the same ability their peers selling parcel-sized items have” without the concern of the logistics necessary to sell furniture online. As most e-commerce brands can rely on parcel carriers, a managed logistics network that specializes in furniture is a niche market that will be rife with opportunity.

With a background in Uber as well as other tech companies, founders Peter and Johnathon Hsu have created a logistics network that has a built-in differentiator. What sets Blue Truck apart from the competition is that they focus more on the customer experience as part of the delivery service. The White Glove Delivery provides customers with enhanced communication from the driver as to the exact delivery time in addition to assembly and set of the new furniture in the customers’ home.

FetchGoat

Founded and backed by some legendary folks from the final mile space, FetchGoat is building technology tools and applications to support small final mile delivery providers in an effort to aggregate the capacity so desperately needed by today’s brands and 3PLs. Following the successes of players like OneRail and Grand Junction, the team at FetchGoat aims to arm mom and pop couriers with the most modern tech stack available today so even the smallest players can compete with regional and national couriers like Veho, FrontDoor Collective, Ontrac and more.

While FetchGoat is starting with the tech tools needed to run a courier business, eventually it plans to aggregate the small and midsized players its supporting, and offering that capacity to larger, more established players that need flexible, reliable capacity.

Financial Infrastructure

FinTech is already a cornerstone of the modern supply chain. So much so, that everytime a shipment travels in one direction, money travels in the opposite direction. In many instances, the speed of the supply chain is dependent not on the speed of the cargo carrier but on the speed at which they get paid. Add that to just how quickly things can change; take spot rates for example, and it’s easy to see why automated payment systems are going to be in high demand. Financial infrastructure has several possible venues, from lowering operating costs to reducing the number of people necessary to handle payments and invoice processing, all of which will play a vital role in streamlining the supply chain.

OpenEnvoy

If you’ve followed my previous predictions, it should come as no surprise that OpenEnvoy has made the list for a third consecutive year. OpenEnvoy allows companies to audit invoices before they are paid and is one of the only solutions on the market today that eliminates wasted spend without the need for expensive consultation services. The system audits invoices in real-time before the payment is issued, eliminating overpayment due to audit mistakes which are quite common. As a traditional audit process can take anywhere from 30 days to six months before producing actionable findings, OpenEnvoy’s real-time solution has been revolutionary in the industry.

Moreover, OpenEnvoy provides transparency into spend issues through a user-friendly dashboard that can be used to track metrics and invoice disputes as well as track the billing performance of individual service providers. To this day, OpenEnvoy remains one of the few cost-effective means of audit processing through an out-of-the-box solution instead of relying on a consulting firm.

“We created OpenEnvoy to address the fact that there wasn’t a fixed-cost, tech-first freight audit provider which provided white-glove service. OpenEnvoy was built out of a personal need, with each of the founding team members having been directly responsible for auditing billions of dollars in spend. The global pandemic created an acute awareness that finance departments lack the tools required to scale their operations, and invoices are an immediate opportunity to increase cash flows,” said Matt Tillman, founder, and CEO of OpenEnvoy.

Loop

Originally known as Quali, Loop is a payment infrastructure for logistics companies that utilizes technology to digitize contracts and other transactional documents, such as inspection tickets and bills of lading. Loop is designed to prevent errors and exceptions from happening and does so by organizing users’ data through an application programming interface (API) that meshes with several third-party service providers. Using that data, shipping invoices can be matched to payment agreements, allowing for precision cash flow tracking and real-time invoice audits.

Under the hood, Loop uses both AI and machine learning, but rather than using optical character recognition; it works via a combination of computer vision and a natural language processing system. All of that to say, the Loop system can be adapted to work with any template, making it universally applicable, regardless of the document type.

Co-founded by Matt McKinney and Shaosu Liu, both of which helped create Uber Freight, Loop raised a total of $6 million through seed funding and approximately $24 million through a Series A round. In its first year, Loop has handled over $1 billion worth of transactions.

OnRamp

Fuel cards aren’t new to the trucking industry, but OnRamp goes beyond providing just a fuel card service. The OnRamp solution helps trucking companies maintain expenses through digital, tax-compliant expenses solutions, which can help keep track of driver expenses and control overall spend. The fuel cards provide real-time security features in the event the card is lost or stolen for added peace of mind.

OnRamp also offers payroll services that streamline driver payments while providing flexibility on a case-by-case situation, which was designed with driver retention in mind. The biggest draw for OnRamp is that it is focused on drivers specifically, which isn’t typically common among most FreightTech companies. The team is comprised of some amazing technical talent, well established executives from the trucking industry (specifically fuel cards) and the CEO is from the credit card processing/payment space, making this group very special and uniquely positioned to make a difference in 2023 and beyond.

BuzzPay

Founded by supply chain veterans Scott Deerwester, Andrew Jillings, and CEO Mark Baines — the team at Buzzpay knows well the cash flow challenges that can be created by changing supply chains. Originally focusing on building digital tools to automate global trade for freight forwarder, the team at Buzzpay recently pivoted to trade finance because it was the single most attractive element of the platform they were building.

“All the forwarders cared about was cashflow and getting paid so we asked ourselves, why would be build anything else?” Baines comes from a supply chain and finance background while Deerwester and Jillings have both held several executive roles in global transportation companies like Tigers, BAX Global an UTI. This team of high powered founders is among the best I’ve seen and is a testament to the horsepower entering the logistics tech space over the past several years.

API Aggregation:

API aggregation is becoming a necessity rather than a nicety. It tends to be fairly common throughout the industry that companies are operating with a number of disparate systems, especially those that are still operating on legacy systems and dated ERPs. There are some new FreighTech startups that are helping bring a little cohesion to these systems and creating tools that allow for higher levels of functionality.

Axle API

Axle API is an interesting premise that is still in early access. Designed for the trucking industry to integrate and onboard electronic logging devices (ELDs), the Axle API allows developers to integrate telematics data from several different sources. Once coded, Axle will transform all data into a singular, unified schema.

In addition to the sandbox approach for development, users will have more options in how they choose to manipulate or utilize their data. Using the Axle system, developers can essentially create their own applications and create custom programs tailored to their company.

Newtrul

The ‘Expedia’ for load board searches, Newtrul aggregates spot loads from different sources, simplifying the process of booking loads and saving time for shippers, brokers, and carriers. Shippers and brokers can easily post and update loads and can choose to work with their preferred carriers or select a vetted carrier from Newtrul’s network. Carriers, on the other hand, benefit from avoiding deadhead miles and have wider access to available loads.

Newtrul was something of a pioneer in the digital freight marketplace as they were among the first to integrate its API with transportation management service providers, which eliminates the need for brokers and shippers to leave their TMS portal. Newtrul also has an excellent track record in its choice of partnerships, like McLeod Software in 2020 and MercuryGate in 2021.

In 2022, the company received another $5.3 million in funding.

“We are going to be investing heavily in the software that carrier reps and truckers used to find each other, and that will be ancillary to our marketplace,” said Newtrul CEO and co-founder Ed Stockman. “The marketplace is where the transactions happen — there’s a lot of free software that we can provide to both sides to make their lives easier, make communications easier, and those are the tools that we’re going to double down on.”

BlueX Trade

The BlueX API essentially allows carriers and freight forwarders to expand their business through an integrated ecommerce platform. By utilizing the API, carriers can create a user-friendly digital booking platform, making it as easy to book freight as it is to book a flight with a specific airline.

For freight forwarders, BlueX can create branded portals that allow the forwarders’ clients to browse through their carriers, rates, and available dates through an automated and digital platform. This hands-off approach to booking can expand service hours and provide a higher level of service to customers. Built-in analytics can help both carriers, and freight forwarders get a better insight into their customers.

BlueX has also simplified the payment process — a pain point for shippers operating internationally. The digital wallet allows for payments to be made to service providers around the world in a matter of minutes. BlueX also allows shippers some flexibility when it comes to paying for freight transportation. With the “Pay-it-Later” option, shippers can choose to delay a payment for a period of time for better cash flow management.

Port Terminal & Rail Depot Visibility

Visibility has long been touted as a cure-all for the logistics industry. While it might not fix every issue, better visibility could have a profound impact on the way freight moves, especially at ports and rail depots. Through the course of the pandemic, ports were inundated with containers which effectively clogged supply chains moving inland. Despite the relief in congestion in our ports and rail depots in America, many think (myself included) that these critical pieces of infrastructure represent the “final frontier” in visibility for North American transportation.

OpenTrack

OpenTrack is a port and rail visibility system that was designed to be integrated into existing tech stacks. As an all-in-one platform, the system combines all available carrier, terminal, third-party, and proprietary data sources, providing a complete view of international freight shipments.

OpenTrack covers 97% of all global shipments and is integrated with all major carriers, terminals, and railroads. Exception notifications can be set for shipments that provide ample warnings in the event of delays or stops in movements which can be used to prevent detention and demurrage charges.

Where this system is especially viable for intermodal shipments as freight can be tracked from the port to the railyard as containers make the journey inland.

Gnosis Freight

Rather than focusing on general shipments and freight, Gnosis instead focuses on container lifecycle management by labeling, tracking, and prioritizing containers from the initial load to the return of the empty equipment. In particular, Gnosis breaks the container down into three macro-cycles; booking, tracking, and scheduling. The Gnosis Freight platform is likewise broken down, with each macro-cycle specifically laid out for a holistic view of freight movement from start to finish.

The main draw of Gnosis Freight is the end-to-end visibility created within the supply chain. Gnosis supports intermodal transportation and has the capability to track rail and air freight in addition to containerized ocean freight.

Additionally, Gnosis Freight provides a suite of “bolt-on” options that increase functionality and utility, offering a range of services, including (but not limited to) ISF filing, invoice auditing, and cost optimization software.

Shipzzer

Shipzzer is an all-in-one solution for rail depot management. Railyards can manage every aspect of their depot through a singular dashboard and can benefit from a wide array of automated processes.

Automated report generation is of particular interest from this company. With 600 pre-generated reports, many rail depot processes can be streamlined and simplified, including repair tracking and scheduling and container entry/exit.

Shipzzer is one of the only platforms on the market that has a pay-per-use option, as opposed to a fixed cost or CAPEX, providing a little more flexibility for users in terms of cash flow management.

In summary, investors and venture capitalists are still making deals, but they are looking for systems that specialize in automating or enhancing technology that is already out there. While many of the supply chain disruptions from the past two years are still lingering, the dust is beginning to settle, and we are seeing the global supply chain being restructured towards resiliency and efficiency. As such, we will continue to see growth in these areas and plenty of opportunities for innovation.

2023 Freight & Supply Chain Technology Predictions — and the Startups Changing the Game was originally published in Supply Chains on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What we can expect in FreighTech, LogisticsTech, and SupplyChain Tech for 2022 and a few of the companies coming for their piece of the prize

Heading into the new year, I like to reflect on the emerging trends and innovations in FreighTech in the last year and share my predictions — what you can expect to hear more of in 2022. Read my 2021 predictions here: Top Trends in Supply Chain Technology for 2021 and the companies leading the way. 2020 here: Top Trends in Logistics Technology going into 2020 — How companies are keeping up with Uber, and 2019 predictions here: Top 4 areas of interest for 2019 & companies that are making the biggest impact — Hint — It’s all about keeping up with Amazon.

2021 was a year of high demand from investors to get in on FreightTech.

As of Q3 2021 for the third straight quarter, supply chain technology VC investment has exceeded $7 billion, up over 100% year over year, according to a recent report by Pitchbook. For pre-pandemic comparison, 2019 saw roughly $7 billion from Q1 and Q2 combined. This year has been characterized by higher valuations and larger checks, with the highest YOY growth from rounds in the late stage. We’re seeing new capital going after fewer mature companies to invest in, driving up demand.

2021 also had a theme of mergers and acquisitions in transportation and logistics. With this year’s fuel of cash enabling growth, one common strategy was putting it toward advancing supply chain visibility.

Then we had the continuing port congestion in US ports, particularly California, which had a moment getting mainstream attention this year, arguably much more attention than the supply chain issues of 2020.

It’s within this context — with some aspects of freight getting a mainstream spotlight plus a few niche aspects of FreightTech having their own industry spotlight — that we’re starting 2022.

I’ve chosen the following categories that I predict will be big areas of growth in FreightTech in the next year: computer vision AI, payments, capacity aggregation, TMS and OS, and eCommerce enablement.

Computer Vision AI

Computer vision (CV) is an area of artificial intelligence the freight industry is only beginning to explore. It has been estimated that the CV market in the U.S. will expand from $9.03B in 2021 to $95.08B by 2027. Anywhere we can take measurements or make decisions based on the visual world, there’s the possibility of using CV for that analysis and interpretation — in spaces such as warehouses, containers, trailers, roads, and curbsides and for objects such as boxes, dunnage, pallets, and more.

Voxel

A voxel is a three-dimensional pixel — the word volume plus pixel — typically used in imaging applications like medical imaging. Voxel is a startup that uses computer vision to identify risk from security video footage. They are dedicated to reducing workplace injuries and improving efficiency in retail, manufacturing, oil and gas, distribution, warehousing, and transportation. Voxel was founded a year ago, and in Q4 2021, they raised a $3 million seed round.

This AI-powered solution connects to a facility’s existing security camera system, unlike other risk prevention solutions which require wearables and sensors on the person or equipment. With Voxel, companies use their camera footage that otherwise goes unmonitored. Voxel analyzes footage in real-time to detect problems and create an immediate alert. It can detect high-risk employee activity and unsafe work conditions — for example missing hardhats, vests, glasses, or footwear, operating forklifts incorrectly, blocked aisles, ergonomics such as poor lifting form, incorrect loading or unloading procedures, spills, and hazardous objects.

The goal of the solution is to reduce workers’ compensation, general liability, and insurance costs. Voxel does not track personally identifiable information or connect the detected behavior to the individual employee. It’s meant to alert someone on-site of a potential problem, correct behavior in real-time, and create a safer and more efficient work environment.

curbFlow

As eCommerce and the delivery economy increases the number of parcel and on-demand delivery vehicles on the road, cities have a growing need for a smart solution for curb space. Drivers circling for parking and double parking can congest traffic. These drivers contend with parking tickets, wasted time, and the greater chance of mistakes made while rushing to avoid a ticket. The problem is more complex than a parking spot management system; until now, curb space data has rarely been recorded, but it holds a wealth of information.

CurbFlow, headquartered in San Francisco, most recently raised $8 million in a seed round of funding in 2018. They have created their computer vision platform that turns video into data — counting vehicles or pedestrians, measuring wait times, and creating heatmaps according to usage. Delivery drivers can use the visualization tool curbMap to get a real-time reading of the availability of popular curb locations. With the positive results curbFlow has quickly seen — helping to reduce double parking in Washington DC by 64% (https://ddot.dc.gov/release/ddot-curbflow-research-project-finds-high-demand-pickup-dropoff-zones) — curb management is getting attention from other congested cities, (https://www.phillyvoice.com/philly-high-tech-solution-delivery-trucks-traffic-parking-streets/) and curbFlow will be making big impacts in the future.

Rabot

Rabot is using video to build smart tools for fulfillment warehouses’ pack-out processes, the final step before packages are ready to be sent out. CEO Channa Ranatunga is committed to avoiding the common problem that plagues engineers — being so far removed from the end-user that the solution is less than ideal or introduces new inefficiencies. To prevent this, he spent three months working at a handful of fulfillment centers to learn everything he could about the pack station and the issues that workers experience.

Rabot designs robotics and software to help standardize the pack station, with the goals of reducing inefficiencies and errors, minimizing waste, and enabling transparency in the process that is often missing. Their solutions can help reduce the number of touches on a package or use visuals to measure the empty volume of a box and automatically determine the right amount of dunnage to use. With video data, Rabot uses AI for visual recognition to identify areas for improvement. Rabot, founded in 2018, had a pre-seed round of funding this year and raised $100K, and the company’s innovative usage of CV technology gives them the potential for growth in 2022.

Payments

Payers and payees of all kinds are demanding faster and cheaper methods of sending and receiving money, and the flames have been fanned by cryptocurrency and blockchain technology rewriting the rules for what’s possible. Various aspects of payments in freight are now getting their overhauls, from shipper payments to short-pay disputes to factoring.

BasicBlock

BasicBlock was created to make freight factoring easier for trucking companies, inspired by Bitcoin and the ease of use for sending and receiving payments without a days-long delay. The goal is to solve the factoring problems of even the small carriers and brokers. Traditionally, the factoring process requires time and resources for manual invoicing, involves clunky interfaces, and lacks transparency on the payment histories of shippers and brokers. Smaller companies, those with a smaller cash flow as it is, find themselves with factoring limits and other barriers to getting paid quickly and seamlessly. BasicBlock is working to revolutionize the entire factoring process, making it simple and fast, without hefty fees. Their app is designed from start to finish for the convenience of the truck driver.

BasicBlock was founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 2018, when CEO and founder Taylor Monks learned about the cash flow difficulties that small carriers experience. New, contactless processes that came with the start of COVID have made it even more important for carriers to have streamlined, automated payments with document retrieval. BasicBlock raised $820K in its most recent round of funding in March 2021.

OpenEnvoy

Founded in 2020 and reporting an impressive 3568% growth in 2021, OpenEnvoy is changing the way companies approach the accounts payable process and wasted spend. Typically, companies address AP automation with pricey consulting services. OpenEnvoy’s solution makes real-time automation easy and accessible, allowing companies to audit invoices before any payment is made and preventing overpaying suppliers due to mistakes. They offer the first of this type of solution made for freight audit. Shippers can avoid a delayed process for identifying payment errors, which might require multiple rounds of audits taking 30 days to six months before getting actionable findings. OpenEnvoy, on the other hand, works in real-time.

OpenEnvoy is the only AP solution that specifically helps companies eliminate wasted spend. Spend Insights gives transparency to spend issues through an easy-to-deploy dashboard to track metrics and disputes and show the billing performance of individual providers. OpenEnvoy brings essential analytics for a better-informed process that enables finance teams to scale their operations. In April 2021, they raised $6.5 million in a seed round. (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/openenvoy-announces-6-5m-oversubscribed-seed-round-led-by-riot-ventures-to-capture-the-500b-financial-audit-market-opportunity-301267512.html)

Freightpay

Freightpay, headquartered in Los Angeles, is an early-stage startup that found its mission from the reported $140 billion that is disputed between shippers and BCOs and freight forwarders each year. The solution’s usability makes it likely to gain traction in 2022.

Freightpay’s solution handles accounts receivable and payable for forwarders and 3PLs by enabling automatic freight payments from shipping customers within their platform. The idea is to have an all-in-one place for transactions and payment data. Freight forwarders can request payments, either from the platform or simply by submitting an emailed form, and shippers can pay from the same solution with the link they receive. By simplifying this process, forwarders avoid chasing lost payments made with other payment processors. Users can create workflows to manage payments and reminders. Freightpay connects invoices to payments and manages the data analytics of those payments, including payment methods, payment intervals, and any short pay reasons from their customers. The solution helps forwarders and 3PLs save time, manage disputes, and gain access to data insights from these transactions.

Capacity Aggregation

Data analytics is driving a deeper understanding of inefficiencies and improvements that companies can make on their transportation spend. As a result, capacity aggregation is becoming increasingly an important strategy. It’s the reason for the surge in mergers and acquisitions this year. For the 12 months before November 15, 2021, there has been an 11% increase in the volume of M&As in transportation and logistics compared to the full-year 2020. (https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/transportation-logistics/deals-insights.html) These companies involved in M&A are responding by improving their reach, while the following three FreightTech companies are using technology to strategically pull capacity where it’s needed.

Newtrul

Newtrul is an aggregator of spot loads from different sources, essentially an “Expedia” for load board searches. They simplify the process of connecting shippers, brokers, and carriers while making it a better matching process that saves its users time. Shippers and brokers get a simple way to quickly post and update loads and can utilize their preferred carriers or expand to Newtrul’s network of vetted carriers. For carriers, the solution helps them avoid dead-ends that are common with load boards.

Newtrul, founded in 2018, was one of the first digital freight marketplaces to integrate their API with leading TMS providers, which eliminated the need for shippers and brokers to leave the TMS when trying to find capacity. Carriers get a free and easy-to-use search engine and booking tool. In 2020, Newtrul began working with McLeod Software, (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/newtrul-announces-integration-partnership-with-mcleod-software-a-leading-transportation-management-system-provider-301185263.html) and in 2021, Newtrul announced their partnership with MerguryGate TMS. It is key moves like these that prove the growth Newtrul is headed for in the near future. In early 2021, Newtrul raised $2.25 million in seed funding.

Colony Freight

Colony Freight has been around only a few months, since June 2021, but they already have the right strategy in action to bring reliable and quality service to their customers. They are an LTL freight partner out of New York City providing capacity in the surrounding states and Texas. More specifically, they are a network of carriers and cross docks designed to optimize capacity for LTL shipping, as powered by their platform. With this type of network, their customers get the benefits of competitive rates with a high quality of service from their carriers. Colony Freight also maintains transparency throughout the shipping process, providing real-time tracking and notifications.

On the other side of the freight transaction — carriers — Colony Freight stands out for their relationships with their carriers. They assist new entities with creating and growing a business as a carrier, taking care of paperwork and insurance through their own partnerships. They also offer a financing program for carriers to get running quickly with a new truck plus the opportunity for carriers to get consistent work. By helping new carriers get started, Colony Freight is creating a strong network for the benefit of their shipping customers. Much like Uber brought new car drivers to the taxi space, Colony is arming a new generation of over the road truck drivers with their focus on e-commerce rich, middle mile lanes. Colony has been able to find drivers operating in other areas (food and people delivery mostly) and entice those drivers towards box truck and sprinter van businesses, giving Colony first crack at engaging and hiring new truck drivers who are eager to grow their empires beyond a single vehicle. This strategy is unique and has already proven valuable for Colony who has attracted blue chip customers from the ecommerce and freight forwarding industries.

Pelicargo

Pelicargo is a digital booking platform for air cargo that launched in late 2021 with origins in the MIT MBA program. Pelicargo helps match shippers and brokers with cargo capacity on airplanes. The same idea is used in trucking but had not previously been applied toward air freight, a $130 billion market where wasted available space is a common occurrence on cargo planes. Air freight is already significantly less efficient compared to other methods of shipping, in terms of fuel and other resources. Having the solution to match loads with capacity can cut back on waste, which has proven to be even more important since the start of the pandemic. Many small and medium-sized companies have difficulty securing capacity that is reserved for the biggest logistics companies first. Pelicargo helps smaller companies access capacity and provides rate transparency in the process, bringing an end-to-end digital solution to replace the outdated and time-intensive booking processes for air freight.

Pelicargo is currently in the pre-seed stage of fundraising and has begun testing with pilot customers as of the fall of 2021.

TMS / OS

As FreightTech innovations grow, there is more of a demand to design systems and platforms that are native to these new developments, that were designed for the technology in its current context. There are new, deep-diving systems designed for advanced capabilities while valuing simplicity for its users, and there are also new systems tackling wide, overarching needs for supply chain technology.

EvenFlow

EvenFlow is a demand-driven communications platform that eliminates age-old friction points between shippers, carriers, and other supply chain partners — in procurement, accountability, risk management, and loyalty. For many organizations, it’s taken the pandemic for them to realize their archaic planning and purchasing processes haven’t been able to keep up with changing demands, and these companies are only now establishing digital customer portals. The growing problem is, with a different tech stack for every supply chain partner, who has the time to become an expert in everyone else’s technology? EvenFlow answers by providing interoperable performance and resilience, leveraging standard intelligence streams to the leading ERPs, TMSs, and SCMs. They have a round table of industry leaders in retail, manufacturing, and transportation building a solution to break down old barriers and accelerate collaboration.

EvenFlow is currently an early-stage startup led by Joe Hudicka, who brings experience in global supply chain and logistics, ranging from the U.S. Department of Defense and later supporting Oracle as eCommerce was just beginning, helping the first online toy retailer navigate global direct-to-consumer delivery. He brings ambitious plans for EvenFlow, making it a company to watch in 2022.

Leverage AI

Leverage AI was founded in 2018 and came out of stealth in 2021, positioning itself as the modernized supply chain control tower, delivering previously unattainable end-to-end purchase order visibility for companies.

Leverage eliminates the need to manually follow up with suppliers and freight forwarders to get purchase order status updates by automatically collecting those updates for every line item in real-time.

Leverage caters to companies that operate with a revenue-driven necessity for strategic supply chain management. Through AI-powered automation and white glove integrations with customers’ existing systems, the cloud-based platform covers an extensive number of workflows from purchase order lifecycle management, inventory visibility, shipment tracking, delivery status updates on bills of material and sales, supplier performance automation, and more.

Prior to using Leverage, supply chain and sourcing teams were spending an average of 50% of their time manually following up with suppliers and freight forwarders. With Leverage, they were able to eliminate repetitive manual tasks from their workload, spend their time far more strategically, and their companies reported an average of 7x ROI in the first year after implementing the platform.

Leverage is funded by a handful of well-known investors, including Mark Cuban Companies. The most recent funding was from a seed round in 2021, for a total of more than $4million in funding.

iON SupplyChain

iON was created in 2018 to increase supply chain visibility and help resolve blind spots for small and medium-sized businesses. Typically, a business can expect visibility and tracking to begin once their goods are shipped, not any earlier. iON is the first supply chain company addressing visibility within the factory. There are production-line level tools that provide this information, but these are rarely utilized due to their complexity to integrate with. iON takes care of these integrations and provides a tool for monitoring the details of production and shipping. The result is a resource for every piece of the business’ network, from suppliers to customers, which helps reduce the chance of unexpected delays and reduce costs.

iON was founded by industry leaders with over 50 years of combined experience managing multinational supply chains. Their cloud-based visibility platform provides digital order records for easy management, a transparency dashboard for real-time reports, and interactive checklists to eliminate inefficiencies and errors.

eCommerce Enablement

eCommerce is on everyone’s radar in 2022, as it has been since the start of the pandemic. According to Adobe, U.S. eCommerce spending in 2021 will land between $850 billion and $930 billion. In 2022, that number could exceed $1 trillion. For a recap on the eCommerce growth since 2020, that year saw 42% growth compared to 2019. For 2019 compared to 2018, it was a much more standard 14% increase. Retailers are looking to meet the eCommerce demand and the accompanying consumer expectations for shipping, and these FreightTech companies are looking to help them get there.

QuikReturn

Founded in January 2021, QuikReturn helps retailers manage reverse logistics for their local customers in the NYC Metropolitan area. They tackle what is typically a logistical nightmare, offering an end-to-end, streamlined return service. QuikReturn provides a courier service to pick up items for return on behalf of the customer. They aggregate these items to ship in bulk, which saves on shipping costs, reduces the number of trucks arriving at retailers’ warehouses, and allows retailers to more easily batch their returns processing. Retailers can see a decrease in shipping costs by over 30%, and this has the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions caused by inefficient freight usage.

Founder and CEO Ethan Susser created QuikReturn from his own frustrations with the traditional return process and out of a concern for environmental issues that wasteful returns contribute to. The QuikReturn solution integrates with eCommerce retailers’ websites, to provide a frictionless experience for the customer where they don’t have to contend with printing labels and remembering to drop off items for shipping. QuikReturn has raised $395K in funding so far, in a pre-seed round in July 2021.

FlavorCloud

Seattle-based startup FlavorCloud is a cross-border carrier network with worldwide shipping to over 220 countries. The traditional international shipping process has been riddled with complexities for global direct-to-consumer brands, where they have faced a high-cost and fragmented process to deal with any aspect of global trade, tariffs, customs, and their carrier network. Founders at FlavorCloud saw a need for streamlining this process from start to finish. They bring tracking and visibility, frictionless operations through automation and integrations, and optimization for every stage of transportation. When users need to estimate their landed costs, FlavorCloud helps calculate with 99.9% accuracy. As a result of the solution, the average user sees an international cart conversation rate of 11%, an increase of 80% on average, and a 140% year-over-year increase in sales.

FlavorCloud, founded in 2017, just announced they hired their first chief revenue officer, Mike Sanchez, and they plan to double their employee count by the end of 2022. Their recent growth looks promising, and they have the benefit of the explosion of eCommerce in the last year and a half working for them. Earlier this year, FlavorCloud raised $6.3 million Series A funding, for more than $10.1 million in total funding.

ShipHawk

ShipHawk was founded to solve shipping problems for ERP-connected, high-volume retail, wholesale, and eCommerce companies whose needs don’t fit basic shipping options. For many retailers, shipping is the second largest cost after the cost of goods, and yet ShipHawk cofounder and CEO Jeremy Bodenhamer realized many retailers, especially those shipping large items with unique requirements, had no way of knowing their shipping costs in advance. ShipHawk created an all-in-one platform for shipping parcel, LTL, truckload, and home delivery to help retailers by taking care of the manual processes involved in managing shipping. They reduce shipping costs, errors, and time by automatically finding the right carrier and service, including comparing rates. Their automation extends to optimizing packing decisions and eliminating manual warehouse processes.

ShipHawk has secured $37.5 million in funding over seven rounds since its start in 2012. They recently brought in supply chain technology veteran Ron Riggins as CTO, announced December 2021. A funding round earlier this year raised $17 million, to be used for further developments of the platform and ERP and carrier integrations to support customers’ eCommerce needs for greater throughput.

In summary, 2022 will bring with it some new challenges and opportunities but will be very similar to 2021 in that, consumer demand will remain strong, keeping capacity tight and shipping rates high. These factors, along with low-cost capital, signal another banner year for FreightTech, LogisticsTech, and SupplyChainTech companies. There has never been a better time to launch a business in these categories and the world has never needed solutions more than it does now.

Cheers to another year and another batch of top-tier founders making their mark on the world’s most interesting and opportunity-rich industry!

What we can expect in FreighTech, LogisticsTech, and SupplyChain Tech for 2022 and a few of the… was originally published in Supply Chains on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Transportation Visibility — Overview and Current State

Visibility is the application of real-time data connectivity and enablement throughout the supply chain lifecycle. The importance of visibility has grown from consumer demand, increasing need for just-in-time inventory, and access to measurable data. In a nutshell, modern visibility platforms have been brought about by the “Amazon Effect” which in logistics and supply chain refers to the forever changed consumer expectation that Amazon has brought about with its delightful customer experience and philosophy on removing obstacles between itself and its clients’ happiness. Visibility platforms have become the connective tissue that binds shippers, carriers, intermediaries, and all others involved in the value chain of logistics. Providing the technology layer that enables much-needed interoperability, a freight visibility platform becomes the single integration point for the various technology applications that are used to plan, dispatch, track and convey delivery and billing information for enterprise shippers. Through advanced visibility solutions, businesses are able to provide high-value insights and data to their stakeholders in the form of real-time tracking, seamless data integrations, and actionable insights through data. Creating transparency into the product life cycle ultimately enhances the customer experience, increases customer retention, and builds the platform for process improvement and process automation. Real-time visibility in the supply chain and logistics has become a required offering for new and established players in the market. Visibility adoption is driving a new wave of efficiency throughout the shipment lifecycle, serving as a launchpad for future growth and innovation among transportation capabilities.

In the future, the lifecycle of a product will be further automated — from planning and execution, through to settlement. Today, however, we are still in the early innings of the visibility platform game and I’m writing this essay to share some of my learnings I’ve gained on the space through intense research over the past 2–3 years. My goal in writing this essay is simply to share what I’ve learned and the information I’ve gathered in a structured and unbiased way. Full disclosure, I am an investor in early-stage logistics tech companies and some of the companies referenced in this essay are companies I have invested in or helped along their journey in some way. My views

Current Industry Competitors:

Company Overview: Macropoint

Subscription Revenue (2020): $18M

Growth Rate: 41%

Headcount: 44

Modes Covered Direct: TL (NA Only)

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: 78%

Churn + Upsell: 105%

Churn Rate: 5%

Capital Raised: Acquired by Descartes for $107M

Overview:

Macropoint was founded in 2011 by Bennett Adelson and acquired by Descartes in 2017. Their proprietary platform consolidates shipment tracking data from carriers into a single integrated platform to meet two growing challenges: real-time freight visibility and automated freight matching. Product features are heavily focused on over-the-road visibility and capacity matching. They mainly serve LSP’s and have some success with shippers, mostly Descartes customers. Macropoint’s customer base includes Covenant Transport Solutions, U.S. Express, Sunline, SteelCase, Shaker Group Inc., Scout Logistics, and DAT.

Strengths:

● Marketplace / load matching

● Large North American Carrier network with established brand recognition

● YMS / Appt scheduling as a differentiator

● Capacity matching capabilities

● Frictionless sign-up and onboarding for drivers

Weaknesses:

● Lower compliance figures with their Carrier network due to product based on App and GPS-based tracking

● Sole focus on TL, North America market, and tracking-only limits customer base potential

● Descartes historically has been hesitant to invest in product development and that appears to be the case at Macropoint currently

● Descartes’s additional offerings to Macropoint do not give them a competitive advantage to the market

● Macropoint is viewed as a supplementary asset, rather than a driving force in the Descartes portfolio

Company Overview: FourKites

Subscription Revenue (2020): $39M (E)

Growth Rate: 34%

Headcount (from LinkedIn): 509

Modes Covered Direct: TL and Parcel

Modes Covered with Partners: LTL(SMC3) and Ocean (Ocean Insights)

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: 51% (E)

Churn + Upsell: 107% (E)

Churn Rate: 10% (E)

Capital Raised: $100.5M

Overview:

FourKites was founded in 2014 by Matt Elenjickal. Headquartered in Chicago, IL, FourKites with an office in India as well and employs roughly 500 professionals. Fourkites has a first-mover advantage in the visibility market. FourKites primarily focuses its services on the Food & Beverage (F&B) and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) shippers. Their core service offering is in the FTL space, but they have tried to expand into the LTL market through a partnership with SMC3 as well. FourKites recently entered into Yard Management by acquiring a distressed asset, TrackX for just under 3 million dollars. FourKites expanded internationally with a lift and shift technology plan that hasn’t yet yielded the results its been looking for but it continues to find ways to answer customers' key visibility questions, if even through partnerships. The company’s primary customer base includes Kraft Heinz, AB InBev, 3M, Dow Chemical, Cargill, Nestle, Ecolab, PetSmart, Kimberly-Clarke, Dollar Tree and General Mills.

Strengths:

● Market leader for CPG and Food & Beverage

● First mover with shippers

● Large shipper customer base

● Slick UI with pre-built Analytics dashboards

● Provides visibility into Inventory and SKU-level data

Weaknesses:

● Not a platform, lock customers into their application through partnerships and collaborative solutions

● Small existing carrier network with a manual onboarding process has a negative impact on time to value and carrier compliance standards

● Shares CPG logos with competitors

● Analytics are low value due to data quality

● Encroaching on partner’s capabilities (TMS/YMS) with their application stack

● Lacking successful track record outside of US

● Level 1, 2, and 3 support with partners delivers a poor customer experience

● Partnering on modes inherently creates roadmap conflict for global customers

● Seamingly recurring negative press related to media articles involving lawsuits

Company Overview: project44

Subscription Revenue (2020): $35M (E)

Growth Rate: 75% (E)

Headcount (from LinkedIn): 267

Modes Covered Direct: TL, LTL, Rail, Ocean, Air, Parcel

Modes Covered with Partners: N/A

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: 74% (E)

Churn + Upsell: 118% (E)

Churn Rate: 2% (E)

Capital Raised: $241M

Overview:

Current CEO Jett McCandless founded project44 in 2014 and established the company’s headquarters in Chicago, IL. In 2017, project44 acquired Europe’s dominant visibility provider based in Denmark, Gatehouse Logistics to expand their geographic footprint into Europe. project44 is the world’s largest connectivity network of its kind. Far ahead of the competition, and widely viewed as the best-positioned platform for continued organic and inorganic growth, project44 has the most robust set of API’s and integration tools. These tools are what sets them apart from their competitors allowing them to offer more services, data capabilities and relatively easy integration for customer, carrier and LSP onboarding. project44 has taken a platform-based approach, allowing for multiple parties to connect via a unified platform. The platform hosts the industry’s most expansive and diverse set of shipper, LSP and carrier customers across geographies and modes. Another strength for project44 — they give carriers visibility tools for free helping them develop the deepest possible connections. Some of project44’s bluechip customers include Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, Dollar General, and Walgreens.

Strengths:

● Current market leader in data quality, API first approach, value to the overall ecosystem, and ability to monetize/grow into new markets, upstream and downstream workflow automation, global reach

● Connections with ELD providers creates both an economic and technical moat

● Global and multi-modal visibility (TL, LTL, Ocean, Air, Rail)

● Fast onboarding and time to value for carriers

● SLA for carrier compliance — 90% of carriers within 30 days

● Largest partner ecosystem (TMS, YMS, WMS, OMS, Carriers)

● Free visibility tools for carriers

● Highest rated data quality in the industry

Weaknesses:

● Average user interface relative to the industry

● Does not offer load or capacity matching capabilities

● Higher base cost structure for shippers and LSPs

Company Overview: Sixfold

Subscription Revenue (2020): Less than $1M (E)

Growth Rate: N/A

Headcount (from LinkedIn): 51

Modes Covered Direct: Groupage and TL (Europe Only)

Modes Covered with Partners: N/A

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: N/A

Churn + Upsell: N/A

Churn Rate: N/A

Capital Raised: Owned by Transporeon

Overview:

Sixfold was founded in 2017 by Wolfgang Woerner. Sixfold is owned by Transporeon, a leading transport management platform located in Germany. Transporeon cross-sells Sixfold into their carriers. They offer Sixfold for free and offer carriers slot booking and tendering with a markup to offset the Sixfold cost. Sixfold’s primary customer base includes Nestle, Kingspan, Rockwool, STI Freight, and Knauf. Sixfold helps shippers connect with their carriers and customers for accurate delivery estimates leveraging TMS, telematics, and mapping data along with predictive analytics. Sixfold is an exclusive partner with Transporean.

Strengths:

● Offered as a free product to Transporean customers

● Offers TMS and appointment booking tools in addition to visibility and tracking offering is advanced

● Strong visibility momentum due to “free trial” of Sixfold platform

● Introductory pricing model drives new customer acquisition

Weaknesses:

● High total cost of ownership with “free visibility”

● Lack of experience in onboarding customers at scale

● Small network of existing carriers makes scaling and customer acquisition difficult

● Lacking global footprint necessary to service global companies

● Weak relationships with carriers due to pricing and business practices, resulting in low carrier retention

Company Overview: Shippeo (information edited 03/2021 with the cooperation of company)

Subscription Revenue (2020 reported by company): $10M+

Growth Rate: 110%

Headcount (reported by company): 185

Modes Covered Direct: TL, Groupage, and Parcel. Combined maritime and road, first in Europe.

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin(reported by company): ±80+%

Churn + Upsell: 109% (E)

Churn Rate (reported by company): ±1%

Capital Raised: $71M

Overview:

Shippeo was founded in 2014 and currently employs 185+ professionals. The company is headquartered in Paris, France. Shippeo has historically focused its attention on French-based companies but has recently expanded into other European countries. Shippeo recently acquired oPhone ($3M of subscription revenue). Their visibility platform provides access to predictive and real-time information for all deliveries. Their primary customer base includes Gastorama, Auchan, Saint-Gobain, Viapost, Conforama, Leroy Merlin, FM logistic, Casino, Monoprix, and E. Leclerc.

Strengths:

● Strong brand awareness and recognition in UK and EMEA

● European market prefers working with European HQ’ed software providers over other, larger companies with more mature products, strategy, network, and capital

● Developed strategic partnership with software providers Alpega and SAP to grow their network

● Strong capabilities in Predictive ETA accuracy, data quality, and dedicated data science team

● Advanced mobile app with capabilities like document management and order level tracking

● 90% SLA for carrier onboarding in 90 days

● Well-positioned to continue to raise venture capital to enable expansion and growth

● Growing base of TMS and Telematics integrations supporting improvement in carrier relationships and connectivity

● API first strategy is enabling quick connectivity with other platforms

Weaknesses:

● Shippers have said their network lacks strength in modal coverage across the globe which removes large Shippers for sales profiles

● Have focused historically on European shippers with global enterprise footprints, choosing not to focus on US market (this may or may not prove to be a weakness, more or less just flagging as a difference for now)

● Customers have said the organization lacks a strong Professional Services team to accommodate custom integrations and complex projects for larger customers

● Outwardly, it does not appear the company has invested in strong carrier on-boarding processes and tools, continues to be a point of friction in their sales and onboarding speed — this may be solved by the growing number of TMS and Telematic integrations the company is seeing recently

Company Overview: TruckerTools

Subs. Revenue (2020): $5M (E)

Growth Rate: 90% (E)

Headcount (from LinkedIn): 43 (E)

Modes Covered Direct: TL (US only)

Modes Covered with Partners: N / A

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: 51% (E)

Churn + Upsell: 107% (E)

Churn Rate: 10% (E)

Capital Raised: $8.5M

Overview:

TruckerTools was founded in 2009 by CEO Prasad Gollapalli, a longtime DAT/GetLoaded engineer. The company is headquartered in Reston, VA. TruckerTools’ proprietary GPS-enabled mobile app and Smart Capacity relationship management platform provides high tracking compliance success to 3PLs and freight brokers. Originally known as the “Yelp for truck drivers” the TruckerTools team did a great job early in the smartphone revolution gaining valuable space on many truckers’ home screens. From there, TruckerTools has scaled to more than 1 million downloads giving them a unique position as an emerging visibility and smart capacity provider. They have a robust customer base amongst freight brokers in the US despite only operating in the TL market. Notable customers include Schneider, Kingsgate, EastCoast Transport LLC, Ryan Transportation, Kenco, Ari Logistics, Genpro, and Syfan Logistics.

Strengths:

● White label driver app designed for 3PLs to offer to their carrier network, a great value for smaller trucking companies and owner-operators working closely with a particular broker

● Brokers and 3PLs see start-to-finish tracking compliance success rates between 70%-90%

● Freight matching and load tracking capabilities

● Broker Advantage portal is first of its kind carrier relationship management platform for brokers

● Visibility solution to over 750,000 truckers and 130,000 unique carriers

Weaknesses:

● Single modal focus with TL, TruckerTools lacks LTL, Ocean, and Rail presence

● App-based tracking data can be frustrating for carriers to juggle — technology barrier

Newer Entrant Industry Competitors:

Company Overview: Vizion

Subs. Revenue (2020): $1M (less than)

Growth Rate: 552% per year

Headcount : 11

Modes Covered Direct: Ocean

Modes Covered with Partners: Drayage/Rail

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: N/A

Churn + Upsell: N/A

Churn Rate: N/A

Capital Raised: $1.5M

Overview:

Vizion was founded in 2018 by CEO Kyle Henderson and CTO Tyler Hughes and is based in the United States with employees distributed throughout the country. Vizion is a 100% digital platform of API services delivering door to door ocean freight visibility making it easy for logistics and e-commerce companies to integrate the most complete, universally standardized, and highest quality ocean visibility data into ERP, TMS, WMS, Control Tower, and in-house built software solutions. Vizion’s customers can address their own unique business challenges using accurate tracking information sourced from ocean carriers, port terminals, drayage providers, rail companies, and AIS vessel tracking. Vizion works with businesses of all types and sizes; from shippers moving more than 100k containers per year, to technology companies delivering AI solutions for logistics, or LSPs needing reliable visibility on a global scale.

Strengths:

● Modern, open, developer-friendly API tools (think EasyPost for Ocean)

● High quality, enriched data — 27+ carriers, port, rail, geocoding, and customs data in a single API

● Leveraging many data sets (public and private) — Vizion overlays multiple sources of data to synthesize and enrich standardized data sets used by many of its competitors

● Live data quality measurement and reporting

● Toolbox for DIY organizations choosing to build ocean visibility in-house

● Offers vessel, container, and return tracking milestones through singular API

Weaknesses:

● Single modal focus with ocean freight data, lacking market presence

● Limited rail and drayage visibility outside of US

● API-only user experience is difficult for some legacy players to manage and requires in-house technology expertise. This is also a barrier for smaller companies who lack in-house technical expertise

Company Overview: RPA Labs

Subs. Revenue (2020): $1M (less than)

Growth Rate: 595%

Headcount: 20

Modes Covered Direct: Ocean, Air, Ground

Modes Covered with Partners: N/A

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: N/A

Churn + Upsell: N/A

Churn Rate: N/A

Capital Raised: $1.2M

Overview:

RPA Labs automates the billions of daily conversations in the logistics industry that are buried in emails, texts, documents, and fuzzy data. With technical principles purpose-built for the sector, RPA Labs’ software can help companies scale faster with process automation that requires less deployment time than general approaches.

Strengths:

● Response Bots — Automated Inquiries for Track & Trace — 25% or more of customer emails consist of track and trace inquiries. This typically requires customer service representatives to manually search carrier websites and/or their TMS and re-key the data back to the customer. These manual response times can take anywhere from hours to days — their shipment might even arrive by the time customer service is able to respond. RPA Labs’ Email Response Bot is able to automate these inquiries by responding back to customers with the real-time status of their shipments in seconds. The benefits:

• Reduces email overload
• Employees reclaim hours to work on other high-level tasks
• Improves customer experience

● Detention & Demurrage Visibility — Employees are tasked to manually check carrier websites every day, multiple times per day in order to update the status of each container. On any given day, there may be thousands of containers that are in critical free-time range or already incurring penalties. With RPA Labs’ Detention & Demurrage Management Application, logistics teams can easily track container fees before they happen in one centralized application. Contract and tariff-free time is updated automatically and is integrated with all the major shipping lines.

• Container Track & Trace solutions delivering container status, detention, and demurrage fees
• Automated Data Entry from disparate data sources
• Enhanced cost Visibility
• Proactive Demurrage Management alerts to customers and operations when the last free day is approaching

Weaknesses:

● Less of a true visibility platform, more of a visibility swiss army knife, helping customers add visibility where is it missing currently

● API first solutions require in house technical development expertise for customers

● Best suited for operations centric enterprises looking for specific visibility or workflow automation solutions

Company Overview: OpenTrack

Subs. Revenue (2020): N/A

Growth Rate: 1,200% per year

Headcount: N/A

Modes Covered Direct: Ocean

Modes Covered with Partners: Rail

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: N/A

Churn + Upsell: N/A

Churn Rate: N/A

Capital Raised: N/A

Overview:

OpenTrack was founded by LogTech veterans Kevin Valsi and Martin Hendlemen who met while working at another freight-based startup, Cargomatic. The two spent 2+ years developing a fully-automated software platform for ocean visibility and landed 2 of the top 10 global ocean freight forwarders by volume as paying customers before doing any marketing. Valsi and Hendlemen believed in an industry where reputation is everything, they would only get one shot at delivering on a product that had to be 99%+ reliable. After finishing their core ocean visibility API, OpenTrack expanded its offerings to include a proprietary rolled cargo alert service, white-label customer portal for forwarders, and an integrated partner service providing intermodal/inland rail visibility using OpenTrack’s data aggregation platform.

Strengths:

● Fully-automated proprietary API that delivers the fastest, most accurate, and complete results for ocean visibility by aggregating and selecting the best data from dozens of sources for every container tracked

● Consistently ranked #1 in data reliability and data density when benchmarked against its competitors by large enterprise freight forwarders

Weaknesses:

● Currently limited to US ocean imports only

Company Overview: Terminal49

Subs. Revenue (2020): $1M (less than)

Growth Rate: 240% / year

Headcount: 3

Modes Covered Direct: Ocean and port

Modes Covered with Partners: N/A

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: 70%+

Churn + Upsell: 100%

Churn Rate: 0%

Capital Raised: $2.2M

Overview:

Terminal49’s mission is to simplify global trade. Terminal 49’s online platform gives logistics service providers, shippers, and logistics tech startups complete visibility into end-to-end trade operations and container movements. With over 600 million containers moving globally every year, much of the operations to move a container from A to B is still very much a manual process. Today, Terminal49 is building tools and API’s that provide real-time visibility to people who help move containers and make the entire process a lot more efficient.

Strengths:

● Deep domain expertise in drayage operations· Multi-party collaboration dashboard

● Integrations with all US and Canada terminals

● Free tools for smaller NVOCCs and FreightForwarders aimed at bringing tech to smaller providers enabling them to compete with the largest forwarders

Weaknesses:

● Ocean only

● Terminals and carriers can cut off access to data so Terminal49 is working to partner with operators going forward

● Slower growth in comparison to competition as a tradeoff to deliver and scale optimal service with a smaller team

Company Overview: ThroughPut

Subs. Revenue (2020): $1M (less than)

Growth Rate: N/A

Headcount: 8

Modes Covered Direct: N/A

Modes Covered with Partners: N/A

Key KPI’s

Gross Margin: 90%+

Churn + Upsell: 100%

Churn Rate: 10%

Capital Raised: $3.5M

Overview:

ThroughPut’s ELI software suite taps into existing time-stamped data tied to your sales, purchasing, distribution, and manufacturing activities and puts operational improvements on autopilot. ELI predicts demand, reorients production capacity, reassigns warehouse space, and reorders materials just-in-time, so you never miss out on customer demand again. On a single software, ELI improves material flow and free cash flow, across your end-to-end value chain.

Strengths:

● Deep domain expertise in operations

● Robust API first intelligence engine recognizes and accounts for SKU level data for all products, LSPs, customers, prospect, and internal stakeholders to provide 360 views of supply chain efficiencies or lack thereof

● Each dollar invested in ThroughPut is returning $3+ to its customers

Weaknesses:

● The global nature of their industrial customer base leads to longer sales cycles

● While mode agnostic, ThroughPut’s ELI software provides post-delivery visibility for transportation, not real-time or near-time

● The technical depth of product utility requires layers of stakeholder buy-in, further delaying sales cycles

● Digital revolution for global supply chains is still in early adopter phases limiting prospective target pool in the short term

Summary of the industry today:

Macropoint had the lead position when cell phone triangulation was the dominant technology method in freight visibility but that was back in 2016. With technology advancements and venture capital flowing into LogTech, the game has changed and it seems like MacroPoint stopped innovating after they were acquired. According to McKinsey, nearly 29 billion has been invested into LogTech since 2014 with the majority of the investment dollars coming in since 2016. This trend suggests the earliest leaders in visibility are likely not the best suited to dominate the space into the future, see 10–4 Systems and Macropoint as examples.

Of the newer entrants coming into the space Sixfold has an interesting proposition in my opinion. Offering several free tools for carriers and logistics service providers like its free Live Border Congestion Map for Europe are smart ways to create stickiness and utility for stakeholders while developing out a broader ecosystem. Although in tech, when you get something for free, typically you’ve become the product so time will tell how much carriers in particular value the Sixfold/Transpereon solution. Shippeo is another interesting company to keep an eye on and could be a formidable competitor in end-to-end visibility overtime. The key for both of these companies’ success or lack thereof may very well come down to their execution as they cross the pond and come into the United States market where project44 and FourKites rule.

When it comes to the leader in the United States and globally the numbers don’t lie. FourKites appears to be a bit of a mechanical Turk through their significantly higher headcount. The lack of a foundationally strong product has created the need to develop their organization around partnerships and services rather than a centralized and configurable platform. This shows in their higher employee churn, and significantly higher headcount than their two nearest competitors combined. Meanwhile, their customer churn rate is also significantly higher while losing grip on their dominance in their primary market of CPG as others come looking to serve that category. Fourkites appears to have lost its profitable edge with declining gross margins and non-scalable unit economics. Efforts of legal challenges like patent infringement allegations from one competitor and accusations their CEO created fake email addresses and sent notes to another competitor's board members have been distractions at the very least and at most represent failed hail mary efforts to minimize their competitor's advancement.

It’s still early stages for visibility, however. Most of the providers started around 2014 with another cohort of new entrants coming into the space over the past 24–48 months. All providers have been building their products and platforms frantically and trying to gain market share. project44 is probably the best positioned with their platform first approach to be a steady and scalable provider as customer needs evolve and new entrants come into the market. The biggest differentiator project44 has today in my view is the company started as a data service initially. They began by aggregating carriers first then built a visibility platform on top of the data, not the other way around. Most competitors in the space (not all) started with a visibility application and added capacity data from there. project44 started with the vision of creating connective pipes in the logistics industry, initially bundling trucking APIs for LSPs, and now provides visibility into Inventory, SKU and PO level detail. While there is still a lot of room for improvement and plenty of time left in this race, currently project44 is leading the way in global supply chain visibility and it will take some doing for anyone to overcome their advantages. This isn’t just my opinion, the FreightWaves FreightTech voters have named project44 the 2nd most innovative company in logistics technology three years in a row, placing directly behind Amazon each year. Additionally, many of the rest of the top 25 most innovative companies on the list were/are project44 customers further proving the innovative culture and vision within the company DNA. I’d say that that puts project44 at the head of the class.

Beyond that, the interesting opportunities exist in:

1. Tangential areas of the supply chain that remain opaque, specifically non-transportation based -and/or-
2. Singular aspects of the larger platforms in visibility that can be unbundled and provided to companies with more narrow visibility needs

If nothing else, it should be made clear that in my view visibility and shorter cycle times are here to stay and technology/software will be the cornerstones of these trends, not the relationship-based decisioning we’ve seen throughout history. As the once bold lines between logistics and supply chain continue to blur in a post-covid, e-commerce reliant, containergeddon world, we’re reminded yesterday’s fast is today’s normal. It wasn’t that long ago when overnight felt expensive and excessive. Now, food is delivered within minutes of ordering from an app. Today’s fast is now tomorrow's normal. We are never going back the other way and visibility platforms will serve as the OS for the more fluid and reliable supply chain networks of our future.

Yesterday was a big day for me. It was a day full of emotion, some reminiscing, and extreme excitement. Yesterday I said good-bye to my team at Mannings Truck Brokerage (Fitzmark).

In November of 2018, I packed my wife and three boys up into our minivan (pictured) and left our home in San Diego to move to our new home in Omaha, Nebraska. Many people thought we were crazy, and maybe my wife did too. But ultimately, I was setting out to build a business in Omaha. In February of 2019, I took over as CEO of Manning’s Truck Brokerage. This 50-year-old truck broker had one or two significant customers, some great people (staff and drivers), and a fantastic reputation around town as a trusted Cornbelt transport company. The day I walked into the business with my partner, Dan Tamkin, the reality of my decision set in. There was a lot of work to do. I needed to de-risk the business by eliminating the customer concentration issues, create a team culture, grow, fix things and the list went on and on.

Our thesis was we could leverage Dan’s brainpower and experience in building transportation technology and my passion for freight to digitize a brokerage and grow the valuation through organic growth, acquisitions, and technology development. The theory made sense on paper, and we were eager to roll up our sleeves. I immediately got to work ~ getting to know the team, building trust, and assessing our situation as a business. The walls were adorned with Taxidermy and truck pictures, and there was not one but two gun safes in the bullpen. Culture shock doesn’t adequately describe what I was feeling. But I was there to figure it out, and the team was welcoming, smart and passionate.

As time went by, it became clear the lean and mean Manning’s team had great potential but was being held back by a few bad apples and a lack of organizational structure. I started making changes to the team, swapping out administrative people with terrible attitudes for software applications like Hubtran and TruckerTools. We got off our old email group inbox, moved to FrontApp, and directed all internal communication to Slack. The office boomers didn’t even blink as we changed applications, workflows, and, most importantly, our mindset. Soon, winter gave way to spring, and the entire state of Nebraska flooded. Our team worked their asses off to keep carriers moving around the country while Nebraska dried up and our customers re-opened their businesses. I was thoroughly impressed with the dedication of our brokers, who worked insanely hard during that time to find loads for the carriers that relied on us. It was impressive and moving.

This company hadn’t had a salesperson in the business for more than 40 years since Ed Manning, the founder, sold the company. We installed a best-in-breed sales team and enabled them with a chicago-style brokerage model where account managers looked after customer relationships. Carrier reps made the loads go away. We were rolling, and then Covid hit. We quickly learned how to work from home, stay connected and stay safe. The months were long without seeing each other, but our numbers held, and our confidence grew. We continued to innovate and add technology into the business to drive growth and culture. When we re-opened the office, it felt like a family reunion. We couldn’t hug each other, but it didn’t matter because the love for being around one another was what we all missed dearly during our quarantine. Once we got back into the same room, the numbers soared. It was a great moment in my life I’ll never forget.

In October of 2020, my partners at Optimal Investment Group and Resurgent Capital Partners and I sold the business to Scott Fitzgerald of Fitzmark Inc. It was a strategic move to harvest profits in the company we’d created through increased value and because the team needed to be on a better technology platform, and we knew they would benefit from FitzMark’s additional resources, capital, and capabilities. I have enjoyed working alongside Scott over the past few months and getting to know all of the bright people inside of his company.

In the end, I chose to leave to pursue businesses and challenges I am more passionate about. Not because I’m not passionate about freight brokerage, my teammates (old and new), or any other element of FitzMark. Over the past few months, I’ve felt like there are fewer problems to solve, fewer tough conversations to have, and frankly, my team in Omaha didn’t need me anymore. As I searched my soul in November and December, I found myself spending fewer and fewer hours in the office, and my team hardly noticed. Each time I looked up at the board, the numbers grew higher and higher, and I had virtually nothing to do with it. The team was carrying the business, and they didn’t need my help. As strange as it felt, all I could feel was pride.

So, yesterday we said our goodbyes, and in true Manning’s style, they cooked me a Greater Omaha brisket, and we drank many beers. Hugs and high fives ruled the day as we reminisced on the challenges and joys we shared. Chad Ingersoll has become a phenomenal leader and likely always was, just no one could hear him at times over my loud cheers and challenges. I’ve never felt more proud, and I’ve never felt more alive. The challenges ahead are full of thought, relationships, and fun, and I’m thankful for all of the lessons learned and the people I met while leading this fantastic group of people. I’m staying on at FitzMark as an investor while I tackle the next problem, and I’m glad I will be able to stay connected to these great people who have become friends & family to me.

What to Expect, and Who the Winners Will Be

At the end of every year, I like to reflect on the trends in supply chain that are moving us forward as an industry and make some predictions on what will move the needle the following year. (Read my 2018 & 2019 thoughts here).

We’ve heard it countless times this year — 2020 was “unprecedented,” filled with “uncertain” times, “unexpected” challenges, and “new normals.” We never even knew how “essential” each of our roles was until Covid told us.

We certainly know this to be true. These words characterize the year, and we might soon find the history books using these buzz words to describe 2020. Together, we pulled off a fantastic year, and I’ve never been more proud of my team, our industry, and all of my freight friends around the world.

For many, it was a year of tough personal challenges. For the industry, it was a year of many adaptations. We saw changes in demand, changes in resources, and changes in the direction we’re taking our technology and innovation. While 2020 was the year of Covid, 2021 brings new hope for Logistics Technology firms who endured this year’s hardships.

Marketplaces boomed in 2020, sparked by the changes brought about by COVID, while Digital Freight Brokers opened their kimonos a bit by extending their platforms and service offerings outside of their walls. Ocean freight data and visibility companies took off, and freight FinTech became a thing — Here are four areas to watch for progress in supply chain tech in 2021.

Transportation Marketplaces — we’re never going back

Out of social distancing requirements, often leading to work-from-home arrangements, came new needs spread across the entire industry. Many companies had to quickly adapt at the start of the pandemic, building the necessary IT infrastructure and security, leaning on systems to replace in-person communication, and creating new processes. The resulting demand has helped advance innovation in some areas of logistics faster than where we might be without COVID-19. “We saw a massive uptick in both supply and demand through the pandemic. From the initial interest from BCOs during quarantine to new carriers and partners applying for access to our shipper’s freight during reopening and replenishment. Now, with this insane extended peak, we have been slammed. Shippers and carriers are interested in lower touch, higher ROI opportunities. Cargomatic’s marketplace has been able to deliver these things for our stakeholders,” said Michael Neller, EVP of Partnerships at Cargomatic.

The need for shippers to digitize as their teams spread out and worked from home meant the need for software to help manage transportation procurement took a front seat. There were a few key objectives that fueled the migration from email and spreadsheets to marketplace enabled software.

Contactless Operations

The initial priority was minimizing contact during shipping. Contactless pickup and delivery help reduce the health and safety risk to teams at these facilities. While drivers remain in their cabs, they can check-in and handle all communication surrounding loading and unloading, a process that easily lends itself to electronic BOLs and other documents. When the necessity of contactless operations is gone, we will still see the benefits of this type of process.

Cloud-Based Solutions

Distributed teams exposed the need for real-time sharing and collaboration tools. Cloud-based solutions for operations, collaboration, and communication equipped team members to work from anywhere while having all data secure and backed up and reducing the need for paper. We have a greater need for VoIP calls or video conferencing. Bringing this infrastructure to day-to-day operations has helped open up its usage for a more connected business network.

Visibility

Coming about from the digitization of operations is the logical next step of added value — visibility. It’s an area the supply chain industry has already been pursuing, and new systems and processes lend a hand. AI scanning of electronic documents makes for easy reporting and analysis, plus tracking and monitoring. With better visibility, companies can reduce risk and, in turn, costs by predicting disruptions and the effects. AI can even be used as a “control tower” to receive end-to-end data, make decisions, and learn to improve performance and efficiency.

Even once we’re past COVID-related accommodations, hopefully in 2021, these types of demands will continue to fuel the logistics industry. Innovation will continue, and we’ll develop better solutions to replace the ones adopted hurriedly in 2020. Either way, shippers and carriers who jumped into the marketplace space seem unlikely to go back to their old ways as Digital Freight Brokers are also extending themselves to shippers in new ways.

Overlap between Digital Freight Brokers and Digital Freight Marketplaces

Emerge

Emerge is a digital freight marketplace focused on using advanced technology for procuring loads. Dynamic RFP helps shippers connect with a broader range of carriers and adjust for market fluctuations in price. Their most recent development is the Book It Now features, allowing carriers to book a load without time-consuming negotiations, instantly accepting a preset rate. Emerge’s suite also offers Spot Freight Management and a Light TMS. Brokers and carriers are welcome to participate in spot bids for Emerge shippers in addition to the trusted network each shipper brings to the marketplace with them. This means shippers, carriers, and brokers are all finding new, complementary opportunities inside of Emerge’s marketplace. Unlike some of their competitors, Emerge maintains its brokerage authority, making them a “managed marketplace”. This ensures Emerge’s ability to deliver satisfactory services to its shippers without giving loads back, critical to maintaining marketplace confidence. Emerge’s early traction and brilliant founding team positioned it for an astounding 20 million dollar series A funding round this year led by New Road Capital Partners.

Newtrul

Newtrul calls themselves Expedia.com for trucking, connecting shippers, brokers, and carriers. On the brokers’ side, Newtrul announced in December their working with McLeod and integrating their solution into McLeod’s PowerBroker. Brokers save time posting and booking loads, as the McLeod user can manage this without leaving their platform. Newtrul provides carriers with a metasearch engine and promises to be always free for carriers, funded only by completed bookings. Newtrul was not alone in their pursuit of TMS integrations as several digital brokers announced TMS integrations to increase their shipper demand by presenting rates natively in TMS applications. Convoy, UberFreight, and Schneider Logistics all announced similar partnerships with BlueYonder and others. The native positioning of a broker’s pricing inside the TMS widens the broker’s net for loads to book while also increasing the broker or marketplace’s mindshare with carriers. Newtrul was among the first Digital Freight Marketplaces to make inroads with the behemoth TMS players but will likely not be the last startup to do so as the incumbent technology providers broaden their offerings through similar partnerships.

Cargobase

Cargobase specializes in automated spot freight procurement. This Singapore-based company has been around since 2013 but hasn’t, since their start, seen growth like that reported in Q3 2020: YOY 273%. They call automation the equalizer in logistics, as their report reveals the top freight forwarders are now winning significantly fewer bids. Cargobase covers a full suite of solutions, from freight procurement to management, track and trace, business intelligence, and analytics.

International Ocean Freight Data and Visibility

FourKites

Fourkites has been leaving its mark on supply chain visibility since its start in 2014. Now the largest platform in the industry for real-time visibility, predictive analytics, and dynamic management, FourKites reported significant growth in 2020, as the platform introduced over 100 value-adding features and enhancements for its shipping customers. From the demands of COVID, real-time visibility was brought to frontline workers, helping to improve safety and lower operating costs. In their ocean freight customer base by itself, Fourkites grew YOY 140% in 2020. Their International load volume growth of 200%, including a 400%+ increase in tracked loads in EMEA and 95%+ growth in LATAM. 2021 will almost surely be another massive year for Mathew Elenjickal and his team. The international development work in 2020 will most likely represent the majority of FourKites’ growth again in 2021.

Project44

Having received several notable awards in recent years, project44’s Advanced Visibility Platform (TM) continues to be a leader in global visibility, including ocean freight. Project44 provides the API integrations for real-time visibility within the supply chain. This year, they worked to improve carrier collaboration through a carrier-centric interface, facilitated better workflows pre-and post-shipment (such as digital document retrieval), and focused on leveraging multimodal data for predictive analytics. It’s been all about meeting the industry’s new demands for agility. In December of 2020, P44 announced a staggering $100M in Series D funding led by Insight Partners, 8VC, and other current investors. With this dry powder, expect Project44 to push further outside of the US into International visibility.

Vizion

Vizion specializes in creating APIs for the tracking of international ocean freight. Their developers can take a new idea to use tracking for an improved ocean freight process and build that solution. It started with container tracking, expanding to BOL tracking soon, and they are pushing forward by working on their “EasyPost for Ocean Freight” platform.

RPA Labs

2019 startup RPA Labs is making strides in bringing robotic process automation to logistics. RPA Lab’s software bots use AI to learn the workflow of users and create efficiency in previously-bottlenecked processes, such as email inquiries and data extraction from documents. Where an ocean freight quote inquiry could ordinarily take 48 hours to respond to, RPA Lab’s solution uses intelligence to derive a data-driven response within minutes.

OpenTrack

OpenTrack is a growing API solution for ocean data visibility. By automating track-and-trace processes with exceptional accuracy, they offer dependability and efficiency with the Container Availability Manager. OpenTrack is also the top solution for rolled cargo alerts, detecting these faster than any other technology provider in the world. Founders Kevin Valsi and Martin Hendleman met while building the digital freight marketplace, Cargomatic. Their vision to automate manual tasks began while building Cargomatic and is now taking shape. The company has several blue-chip freight forwarders as early customers and is in talks with many more. “We knew from our time at Cargomatic that operators in logistics had a tough job. There were so many systems; the ops team was usually swiveling between multiple systems and screens. We knew we needed to be API first to meet the customers where they are, and we needed to build in execution from the get-go,” Valsi said.

Freight FinTech

OpenEnvoy

OpenEnvoy, launched in late 2020, provides a simple solution to a common problem that’s either ignored or given an over-engineered, expensive solution: AP fraud. Their singular focus is invoice auditing, using their technology to audit every invoice cost-effectively, with an out-of-the-box solution rather than a financial product or consulting services. Any payment inaccuracies can be disputed by the payor, and the supplier can either justify or correct the mistake. Analytics and supplier management tools save OpenEnvoy’s customers money and time in the process. Founded by LogTech veteran Matt Tillman, OpenEnvoy was built out of necessity. “We created OpenEnvoy to address the fact that there wasn’t a fixed-cost, tech-first freight audit provider which provided white-glove service. OpenEnvoy was built out of a personal need, with each of the founding team members having been directly responsible for auditing billions of dollars in spend. The global pandemic created an acute awareness that finance departments lack the tools required to scale their operations, and invoices are an immediate opportunity to increase cash flows,” said Tillman.

BasicBlock

Founded in 2018, BasicBlock was created out of the explosion of blockchain technology, applied toward helping truckers get paid faster and more cheaply. The workflow automation capabilities lead seamlessly into their same-day factoring services. By combining their document retrieval services and automated payments in one API, BasicBlock delivers a uniquely-efficient solution for fast and transparent payments. Covid brought about substantial growth for the company as contactless document retrieval skyrocketed during the quarantine. The need for cash flow for small trucking companies increased proportionally to the 30–35% increases we saw in trucking rates. “It’s the perfect storm for our business. As soon as fleets understood the risks drivers were taking by being on the road, they reached out in droves. Then, as rates continued to skyrocket, our factoring product took off. We launched our factoring beta in November and quickly hit 1M per month and we’re nowhere near slowing down,” said Taylor Monks, Founder, and CEO of BasicBlock. BasicBlock closed a seed round of funding during the onset of the pandemic and has since grown its service offering from document scanning to no offering payments, fuel cards and will offer truck insurance very soon.

PayCargo

PayCargo is a commercial payment system with a growing customer base, as more vendors — in all modes of transportation — continue to join their payment network. They offer secure, automated payment processes with the same-day release, helping companies lower operating costs and increase their cash flow. Carrier payments can be completed within an hour without the cost or hassle of using checks or wires. In September, PayCargo received a $35 million series A investment led by Insight Partners to further its growth and expansion efforts.

While there was no way for any of us to predict the exact happenings in 2020, we can all agree that our world is ready for 2021 and the hope that a new year brings with it. My greatest hope for our industry this year is that we all learn from the adversity we were faced with in 2020, and we don’t give up on the positive momentum we have gained in the area of supply chain innovation.

Written by Charley Dehoney. Charley has been a successful executive and entrepreneur at multiple logistics and technology companies, most recently at Manning’s Truck Brokerage (sold to FitzMark). Charley has spent nearly two decades building businesses in supply chain.

Edited by Benjamin Gordon, Cambridge Capital CEO. Benjamin and Cambridge have invested in some of the top companies in logistics and supply chain technology.

Top Trends in Supply Chain Technology for 2021 and the companies leading the way was originally published in Supply Chains on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How companies are keeping up with Uber

Each year at this time I like to reflect on the previous year’s LogisticsTech goings-on and make some predictions on the key trends and companies that will shape the landscape for the upcoming year. Check out my 2019 predictions here.

2019 was another blockbuster year in LogisticsTech, with 317 early-stage companies have raised $11.7 billion in venture capital according to FreightWaves and Pitchbook. While the overall funding amount for 2019 may fall short of the $19.3 billion poured into FreightTech in 2018 (currently down 7% from the same time last year), late-stage valuations for LogisticsTech companies founded 4–5 years ago continue to rise. The biggest funding event of the year in LogisticsTech came in March when Uber IPO’d and cashed in on the frothy $80 Billion they had garnered as the darling of Silicon Valley for the past 7 years.

One fascinating byproduct of Uber’s IPO has been the opening of its financial kimono, and specifically the third quarter when Uber finally broke out the financials for its freight brokerage operations. Despite posting 105% YOY net revenue growth, UberFreight lost more than $80 in the third quarter alone while UberEats lost well over $300 million.

While Uber may be the first freight broker in history positioned to grow at all costs, other companies are innovating and managing to grow in the face of rapid change and disruption. Nearly all established supply-chain companies are wondering how they can be more like Uber in their businesses or are striving to find ways to work with Uber in the future. In years past, it’s been all about keeping up with Amazon but this year we are seeing companies paying close attention to the moves Uber is making.

Here is a look at the trends driving innovation and the companies bringing change to our industry.

Workflow Automation

RPA Labs

Co-founded by LogisticsTech veterans Matt Motsick and Suraj Menon, RPA Labs is automating common tasks of logistics work. Leveraging technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. According to Menon’s LinkedIn profile, RPA Labs is “…changing the way Logistics companies work. The software bots at RPA Labs will automate how documents are processed and also how customers receive their inquiries through Robotic Process Automation.”

In an article published on his LinkedIn page titled “How RPA can help Logistics Companies”, Motsick explains, “Instead of having a software developer create a list of actions to partially automate a worker-driven workflow process; RPA’s artificial intelligence develops the action list through machine learning — watching users conduct the workflow. Within a short period of time, RPA software “understands” your company’s processes, and can interact with your existing transportation technology and applications.”

Motsick goes on to say, “True RPA software will work with any legacy system, meaning you don’t have to spend heavily on new technology to achieve greater automation. As other emerging technologies like the Internet of Things and 5G play bigger roles in logistics, RPA bots can bridge the gap between older systems and newer forms of automation along the supply-chain. In short, RPA technology is easy to install, and could potentially automate everything from data collection to documentation, as well as emails and messages with shippers, vendors, and receivers.”

Motisick is no stranger to building a FreightTech company. One of his previous companies, Catapult, was sold to Mercator in 2015. RPA Labs finished the year on a positive note raising a Pre-Seed round of investment led by one of the top seed-stage investors in Supply-ChainTech, Schematic Ventures. “RPA Labs was a goldilocks opportunity: the right team, time and technology. Matt and Suraj are perfect for this company. Their platform leverages a mix of Robotic Process Automation and other methodologies to deliver real workflow automation with measurable margin improvement for Freight Forwarders”, said Julian Counihan, General Partner of Schematic Ventures. With this capital, RPA should be well-poised to advance their mission in 2020 and position themselves to lead this growing category.

driverDOC

Based in Omaha, Nebraska, driverDOC is the brainchild of former Union Pacific and Werner Enterprises employee, Josh Kolar. Having also spent time at UPS and KPMG, Kolar’s intimate understanding of asset utilization and driver operations gave him the idea to leverage technology to harness the digitization movement in supply-chain and take it right into the cab of the truck. “With ELDs and smartphone technology expanding as rapidly as it has in the past few years, it only makes sense to use that data to keep drivers engaged and reduce the manual workload for the driver as well as shippers, brokers and carriers alike.”

At its core, driverDOC is a collaborative platform that connects the incumbent technology of shippers, brokers, and carriers to automate once manual operational tasks. For its entry point, DriverDoc is deploying its mobile app to small fleets and mid-sized brokers to bridge the gaps in document retrieval, load tracking, and TMS status updates. According to the company’s website, “driverDOC was imagined to challenge the inefficiencies of the logistics supply-chain through the creation of a better driver experience and integrated data flow. We believe drivers are the greatest, yet most underutilized asset in simplifying the back-office tasks of supply-chain operations.”

With several successful betas underway, driverDOC is looking to grow upstream in 2020 and has partnership discussions in place with several top tier carriers and brokers.

KoiReader

With a deep background in supply-chain and technology, Ash Prasad left a comfortable job as Vice President at XPO to found KoiReader with Vivek Prasad. Focusing on converting unstructured data to actionable insights, KoiReader has bundled a full suite of Artificial Intelligence tools into APIs that integrate with a broad swath of TMS applications. With a goal of enabling Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) and factoring companies, KoiReader can read Bill of Ladings, Air Waybills, and a host of other logistics documents, turning the information into structured data that LSPs can use by inserting the information directly into TMSs and ERPs. This allows LSPs to spend less time and money reading and keying in shipment details and focus on client relationships and decision making. KoiReader can even “read” video data and inform its clients on what’s happening across their operation.

To date, KoiReader has raised $60K and has been showcased as one of the top emerging technology providers in supply-chain and logistics, demonstrating their application at Transparency19 in Atlanta and FreightWaves Live in Chicago. With multiple successful pilots under their belt, 2020 looks to be a breakout year for the KoiReader team.

Payments

BasicBlock

Hailing from Lincoln, Nebraska, BasicBlock was born in the Cornbelt and aims to solve the trucking industry’s number one problem, cash flow. “Where I’m from, we have two things, corn, and trucks. As a technologist and entrepreneur I’ve imagined some interesting solutions for blockchain in the agriscience supply-chain space but none as big as the cashflow problems the trucking industry is facing,” said Taylor Monks, CEO, and Co-Founder of BasicBlock. With carriers going out of business left and right, Taylor and team are working tirelessly to help truckers receive payment faster and cheaper. By bundling document retrieval and tagging with automated payments and factoring through a single API, BasicBlock is delivering a one of a kind solution for carriers and brokers, enabling a faster, more transparent payment solution.

Taylor says: “Traditional factoring is hard to stomach for smaller carriers and brokers. In an industry where companies work off of single-digit margins at times, it doesn’t make sense for companies to leverage factoring at the current rates found in the marketplace today. By leveraging modern technology stacks alongside realtime location data, we are paying carriers faster and safer than any of our competitors. That’s the bottom line.”

Likening traditional factoring solutions to “Payday Loans”, BasicBlock views its self as the Stripe for logistics. “In a perfect world, there would be no Trucking Bloodbath like what we’ve seen in 2019. We want to give every trucking company the financial opportunity to thrive in today’s economy and into the future,” Monks exclaimed passionately. BasicBlock successfully raised a Pre-Seed round of nearly $700K this year led by the legendary angel investor, Jason Calacanis who has backed companies like Uber, Wealthfront, Robin Hood, and Calm. With the focus on capital efficiency brought about by the carrier closures this year, BasicBlock is sure to see explosive growth in 2020 and beyond.

HubTran

Built inside of a brokerage and based in the US freight hub, Chicago, IL, HubTran is speeding up the pace by which 3PLs, factors, and brokers receive and process invoices. Leveraging OCR technology and artificial intelligence, HubTran is helping its customers address their most visible administrative cost, labor. Their solution is simple: have your carriers email invoices and shipping documents to a single email address. From there, HubTran will read the documents, sort them into the appropriate category (bill of lading, lumper receipt, invoice), and then tag all documents by type and order information received from the TMS.

This process saves hours per week for administrative employees while improving accuracy by a significant amount. When brokers can pay truckers faster, they can invoice shippers faster and ultimately make more money faster by reducing overhead and increasing the speed of invoicing. The HubTran website claims its brokers, 3PLs and carriers reduce their back-office staff needs by up to 80%.

The company was founded in 2015 and already has landed massive brokers as customers such as Nolan Transportation Group, FedEx supply-chain, CRST, NFI, and RR Donnelley. With the industry-wide focus on automation and margin expansion, HubTran should see massive growth in 2020 and beyond.

RoadSync

Originally called MyLumper, RoadSync has grown up to become “Square for the transportation industry”. With the goal of making the process of truckers paying lumper, washout or towing fees as easy as buying a hotdog or popsicle as a consumer, RoadSync is focusing on digitizing these traditionally cash-based fees. On the RoadSync platform, dockworkers and tow truck drivers can receive payment digitally via credit card or ACH, speeding up turn around and keeping trucks moving.

RoadSync has built an impressive team led by Robin Gregg, CEO and former Fleetcor executive. In addition to helping drivers and carriers, RoadSync has digitized solutions for brokers and factors alike. “We have facilities that used to take money orders, so the truck driver had to go get one. And we just make it easy for everyone,” said Gregg in an interview for FreightWaves TV. “We make it easier for warehouses to take credit cards and offer more options, and they want to do that. They want to be easy to work with,” Gregg went on to say. RoadSync has raised just under $3 million dollars to date and assuming their execution remains high, another venture round in 2020 is very likely and a bright future will be in store for the RoadSync team.

TriumphPay

A product of an operating subsidiary of Triumph Bancorp, Inc. (“TBK Bank”), TriumphPay has transcended its freight factoring roots and has evolved into a defacto payment platform automating the way shippers and brokers pay carriers. “TriumphPay’s on-site portal really gives the power back to the Broker’s carriers. It allows them to review any load(s) completed for one of our partnered Brokers and make the decision on how they want to be paid. It puts the control back in their hands and helps with their own internal money management because everything they need is on one portal. They don’t have to go to multiple broker sites to find their information,” said Kate Juliao, Vice President of Operations for TriumphPay in a recent conversation I had with her.

The flexibility that carriers get to exercise is something that sets TriumphPay apart from its competitors. “My favorite feature on the TriumphPay portal is that the carrier(s) gets to pick and choose what term they want to be elected on a per invoice basis or they can set a term for all pending invoices. This technology really has helped bridge the communication between Brokers and their carriers enhancing the overall relationship with hopes to drive carrier loyalty. Onboarding new carriers on a daily basis is a very tasking job, so its great when they can develop a strong relationship between Broker and Carrier,” Juliao said.

The carriers are not the only stakeholder who gets to exercise flexibility in the payment process. “Through multiple system integrations, it has helped Brokers streamline their back offices and focus that human capital into other areas of their business. The TriumphPay operations team is really just an extension of our Partnered brokers back office to help support them with load verifications, factor management, payment status updates, and support inquiries for their carriers and factoring companies,” Juliao told me excitedly. TriumphPay was recognized in 2019 as a FreightTech25 as one of the most innovative companies in FreightTech for the second year in a row and is sure to continue its innovation and growth in 2020.

Smart Capacity Platforms

Parade

Originally a digital broker focusing on drayage (Dray Now), the founding team at Parade decided two things very quickly; 1) freight brokerage is really hard, and 2) the team was way better at building tools for brokers than it was as a broker itself. Smartly, Anthony Sutardja, CEO of Parade, pivoted the company to focus on the development of its carrier engagement platform rather than being just another freight broker. Parade quickly and efficiently released one of the industry’s first Smart Capacity Platforms.

Leveraging AI and OCR, Parade’s software can read emails from carriers and shippers, parsing relevant data and suggesting potential matches on loads for brokers to offer their carriers and shippers alike. Brokers make money when they have a truck and can suggest a matching load to the carrier or when they have a load from a shipper and can find a matching truck willing to haul the load at or below the targeted price. With Parade, algorithms make these suggestions continuously by reading available load details from disparate sources such as TMS data, Email and historical transaction information, programmatically offering carriers available loads with a “book now” feature that will eventually 100% automate the transaction for a broker.

“As we built our brokerage, we couldn’t help but think we were really good at using technology to engage our carrier base but we were Silicon Valley engineers, not freight brokers. We suspected legacy brokers probably weren’t as good at making software as we were, so we decided to become a SaaS company rather than a broker and we shed the brokerage to focus on building solutions for other brokers and carriers,” Anthony Sudjarta told me the first time I met him in late 2018.

When I asked Anthony about the outlook for 2020 his response was “2020 will definitely be interesting as we see third party marketplaces proliferating, the customer challenges have expended to automate/digitize pricing, negotiation, and bookings across private and external networks.”

Parade has raised $2 million in seed funding according to sources I know and I have also heard will be raising a proper venture round in 2020. With AI becoming a mega focus of late, there’s no doubt the 2020s will make Parade a household name within the trucking and brokerage communities.

TruckerTools

Founded by former DAT/Getloaded engineers, Prasad Gollapalli and Murali Yellepeddy, Trucker Tools was originally built to occupy the most valuable real estate in business today, the home screen on every trucker’s smartphones. When TruckerTools launched its mobile app in 2013 it was focused on helping truck drivers find the locations and services they needed like truck stops, fuel, parking, and maintenance. Think Yelp! for truck drivers.

Leveraging the location data amassed from its more than 750,000 driver downloads, TruckerTools began building a smart capacity platform allowing brokers to access the capacity it aggregated. The beauty of the TruckerTools platform is its simplicity.

“We started with the driver because when we were building Getloaded, we knew the best way to integrate a network with technology was to put a computer in the cab of every truck so we would be able to have the precise location of each user. That would allow us to match the optimal load for each driver on our platform. Once smartphones hit critical mass, my team and I knew it was time to get working and we started building TruckerTools,” Prasad said. “Now, every driver has a computer in their pocket and we can help them get the best paying loads while allowing our broker partners to be able to not only better manage an existing network of providers but also access newfound capacity,” Gollapalli also told me.

According to Crunchbase, TruckerTools has raised nearly $9 million in 3 rounds of venture funding. Launching its “Book It Now” feature earlier this year, TruckerTools was able to land some marquee partnerships with the likes of Choptank Logistics and mega broker Schneider Logistics. With more features released in 2019 like detention alert and facility score carding, as well as Uber Freight’s continuous innovation and proliferation, TruckerTools will surely be part of every forward-thinking carrier and 3PLs plans to compete with the fast-growing digital brokers in the 20’s.

Truckstop

2019 was a banner year for Truckstop in nearly every way. In the second half of 2018, Truckstop added LoadPay services to its platform and integration offerings through its acquisition of D&S Factors. This came on the heels of their acquisition of SaferWatch, a compliance platform. In January of 2019 Truckstop publicly celebrated its successes of 2018 and promptly took a substantial investment from ICONIQ Capital Investment Group, the renowned private equity firm based in Silicon Valley, at a massive $1billion valuation. Just months after receiving its unicorn status, Truckstop announced its own “Book it Now” functionality and promptly inked a deal with Schneider Logistics following a successful pilot.

It really seemed like everything was going perfectly for Truckstop in 2019 and they were going to cruise into 2020 with a head of steam. That is until the malware attack that came just before Christmas. Truckstop’s entire platform was shut down for nearly a week after the attack and has yet to fully recover at the time of this writing (nearly 10 days post-attack). Despite this major setback, Truckstop’s reach and vision for becoming a “platform as a service” will catalyze another successful year for the firm in 2020 and will likely take them to another stratosphere during the coming decade.

Sharing Economy

SecurSpace

An unintended negative consequence of ELD proliferation has been the truck parking problem. Anyone who drives along a major highway in the past two years has seen trucks parked in the strangest places. According to the American Transportation Research Institute, parking ranks second among the worst problems for drivers and ninth among carriers. SecurSpace was founded in Charlotte, North Carolina by Lance Theobald and has quickly become one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in FreightTech history. SecurSpace focuses on existing, unused parking facilities and brings them to market through a proprietary platform.

“We like to work with the Mom and Pop trucking company or 3PL that has a secure yard that its not fully using. When we approach a company about a new revenue stream for their unused yard space, the first questions is usually ‘How do I sign up?’ We are literally creating new supply for the industry’s worst problem,” Lance said in late 2018 during a phone conversation.

In working with unused parking spaces, not only is SecurSpace helping companies monetize their real estate, but they are also helping create a new supply source for the overall truck parking market. This is very similar to what Uber and Airbnb have done for ride-sharing and rental properties respectively. SecurSpace closed a $1M round of Angel funding this year which brings its total amount raised to $1.6M. A very capital-efficient business, SecurSpace boasts monthly Gross Marketplace Values of more than $1M and profitable unit economics.

“We started SecurSpace to solve a big problem and create a profitable business. We’ve never been interested in the typical ‘growth at all cost’ approach that’s become commonplace in FreightTech. We spend a lot of time with our clients and continue to develop solutions for solving their problems. Our SaaS yard management product came as a result of our clients wanting to lease their parking spaces but they were using clipboards at the guard shack to sign drivers in. That seemed like a problem so we built a solution using an inexpensive camera and tablet that can read license plates and capture signatures in realtime,” Theobald said with his typical level of enthusiasm. “We are growing because we’re listening and grinding, its just that simple.”

SecurSpace is flush with cash but plans to entertain VC offers in 2020 to pour gas on an already hot burning fire. With no end in sight for the truck parking problem, SecurSpace will indeed play a major role in 2020 in this very fast-growing space.

TruckPark

Based in Chicago, IL and founded by Anthony Petitte and Joshua Walls, Truck Park was founded when the idea came to Petitte while helping his uncle manage a parking lot for trucks. “I founded TruckPark to eliminate the headaches that truck drivers experience out on the road, as well as to provide a safer alternative than having to stop on road shoulders and abandoned gas stations just to meet Hours of Service (HOS) requirements. When forced to make a stop, drivers may experience ticketing for illegally parking, not to mention the huge safety risks for motor carriers when driving at night,” said Pettite in an interview with Silicon Prairie News in 2019.

With the goal of replicating the successes of SpotHero and ParkWhiz, but for the trucking space, TruckPark has raised $500k in seed funding and is showing signs of growth. A problem as large as truck parking has plenty of room for many players in the space and the TruckPark team seems to be focused on being a part of the solution. Watch for more growth and possibly additional fundraising from this talented group in 2020.

Coop

In January of 2019 Ryder launched its COOP platform to connect asset owners with those in need of equipment like trucks and trailers. Bundling the equipment, insurance, and payment through a single platform, Ryder is recreating the successes of Airbnb and EquipmentShare inside the truck rental market, a brilliant move from one of the world’s largest truck leasing companies.

“With close to half a million registered commercial vehicles in Florida and a richly diverse mix of businesses that experience seasonality, the South Florida market represents great opportunities for lenders and borrowers of trucks to connect on COOP to generate revenue from idle vehicles and move business forward,” said Rich Mohr, General Manager for COOP by Ryder in a press release on ryder.com. “In Atlanta, we witnessed plenty of success in 2018 were more than 300 companies in the metro area reaped the benefits of COOP and we’re confident this innovative service will be a value to businesses in Ryder’s home state of Florida. I would encourage businesses and fleet owners to explore the marketplace to learn how they can profit from their idle vehicles.”

With Ryder’s standing as a Fortune 500 company and its well run leasing and supply-chain divisions, there’s no doubt that COOP will become a staple for many businesses with fluctuating asset needs in the 2020s.

This list by no means represents all of the innovative trends and companies that will shape the coming year and decade. It does, however, reflect a shift in culture and focus in supply-chain and logistics that is sure to accelerate as technology and consumer expectations evolve. I’ll see you next year and we can reflect again on these predictions and make some more for 2021!

Top trends in LogisticsTech going into 2020- How companies are keeping up with Uber was originally published in Supply Chains on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.