Exclusive: Cargado raises $12M to boost cross-border trucking marketplace

In September, Silver and Hawkins finally unveiled the platform, a first-of-its-kind, invite-only load board for freight moving between Mexico and the U.S.

Customers are able to use Cargado to book freight faster and more transparently, according to company officials, because the entire negotiation takes place on the platform.

Cargado’s platform has more than 200 customers, including brokers, 3PLs and freight forwarders, that post cross-border freight to get bids from more than 650 cross-border trucking companies.

Related: Cargado launches first-ever load board for Mexico freight 

Silver said the Series A funding will help Cargado provide more services.

“As brokers and carriers get more and more used to using a new, more modern load board or marketplace, they get more excited about it,” he said. “They ask for more things. They ask for better views of data. They want to be able to see and do more with the product. We’re excited to be able to support that. It already works in multiple languages and multiple currencies. Being able to support the scale piece of it is really just about investing in our product and engineering team, investing in our tech and every other part of our business.”

Cargado has 42 employees, including staff in key border cities such as Laredo and El Paso, Texas, and San Diego.

“By the end of this year, we’re going to be known as more than just a load board,” Silver said. “The future of Cargado is it’s a collaboration platform for cross-border freight. Freight brokers and trucking companies will be able to do a lot more than just posting, bidding, negotiating on freight. This becomes more than a load board at that point, and we become ideally known as more than just a load board and more of a tool that people continue to enjoy, but that they can do well beyond just just booking freight the traditional way.”

In addition to LGVP, participants in the Series A round include new investors Conversion Capital, Assembly Ventures, and Friends & Family Capital, as well as existing investors Primary Venture Partners, Ironspring Ventures, Zenda Capital and Proeza Ventures.

“When the company’s customers start asking if they can invest alongside you, it’s time to pull the trigger,” Itai Tsiddon, partner at LGVP, said in a news release. “We were greatly impressed by Cargado’s vision and look forward to partnering with Matt and the team to build it to its maximum potential.”

John Sutton, director of corporate strategy at 3PL Sunset Transportation, said the Cargado platform allows the company to find carriers that have been vetted.

“Cargado allows us to unlock trusted, vetted capacity at our fingertips,” Sutton said in a statement.

Silver said President Donald Trump’s import tariffs on Mexico, Canada and other nations are causing some confusion and concern in the freight market.

“Everybody’s nervous about the tariffs. The carriers and brokers are nervous about it,” he said. “What I can tell you that I heard very uniquely from a few different carriers recently when I talked to them directly, is that they’re not going to just jump and change their business model. They’re not about to just pull out of Mexico. … These carriers basically said, “Hey, we’re going to keep level-headed, and we’re going to wait and see what happens before we actually react.”