Startups

A wide range of technological solutions for supply chains seeking efficiencies will be on display at MarketWaves near Dallas November 12-13.

While there are plenty of TMS systems out there, few to none have traction in the machine learning space.

Trucker Path’s acquihire to end 2017 saved FreightTech from a hangover that might have made funding for other trucking startups difficult

When you consider all the implications of the service, it may be one of the biggest deals happening in the industry that you haven’t heard about.

Conduit’s goal is to help shippers save time, uncover price anomalies, and manage operational data.

KeepTruckin, a tech firm that offers fleet management solutions, based in San Francisco, has expanded operations in the Music City.

Uber Inc. has introduced ‘Clean Air Plan’ – a strategy that helps reduce air pollution in London by replacing Uber cars that run on gas with all-electric variants by 2025.

The rapid growth in investment resembles the Fintech sector from 2006-10, but TransportTech is still an understudied and less well understood field for venture investment.

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, as stepped down from being chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, stating that the company needs a more “hands-on chair” to invest in its growth.

Since its launch, Convoy has been innovating with technological solutions aimed at reinventing the way freight moves across the country. To help fulfill that mission, the company is now expanding beyond its Seattle, WA, roots to a second office located in Atlanta.

Uber Freight introduces three new features to its app, making it more customizable and intuitive, and helping drivers and carriers better manage their loads and time schedules.

Incongruent payment cycles make it hard for low-credit businesses to fund their operations. BAM is a Fintech solution for the world’s oldest method of raising capital, factoring.

XPO Logistics was named to the Fortune Future 50 list of U.S. public companies while KeepTruckin and Transfix were both honored by Forbes as two companies likely to achieve unicorn status.

Trump government looks to phase out IMO2020 sulfur cap regulations; Shanghai Composite Index crashes by 3%; Amazon revisting cities for finalizing HQ2.

Uber Inc. has introduced Powerloop, an affiliate company to Uber Freight, which would rent out power-only trailers to carriers looking to grow their business and thereby ease the industry’s capacity crunch.

The FreightWaves Research Institute has announced the list of 55 voters who will be choosing the inaugural winners of the Freight.Tech 25 awards, and it’s who’s who of freight leaders.

Though blockchain is a technology with immense potential, there needs to be some commercial incentive for food supply chains to adopt it in its mainstream processes – the absence of which might let the technology remain constrained to pilot programs.

Also in today’s issue: a beating shows the dangers to truckers, even off the road; an Indian company looks to disrupt that company’s trucking sector.

VAYAVISION, an Israeli startup that works on providing raw data fusion and perception systems for autonomous vehicles has raised $8 million in seed financing, which it plans to invest in its productization process.

From on-demand trucking to blockchain, loadboards and freight matching, the list of companies bringing innovative technologies to the freight industry is growing by the day, which makes the 100 that have made the cut to be honored by the FreightWaves Research Institute as part of its inaugural Freight.Tech 100 all the more special.

35 companies are being spotlighted in Venture Atlanta 2018, double the number of last year. These companies are already successful and making strides in a variety of venture and tech-related firms. Here’s a brief look at 10 of these companies, each of whom had a mere 5 minutes to pitch.

It started with an open nomination period, and after culling through hundreds of submissions, the FreightWaves Research Institute has announced the inaugural Freight.Tech 100 companies.

Dave DeWalt has been a part of creating 17,000 jobs, $20 billion in shareholder value, $2 billion in revenue, and has 32 years in high tech.

As e-bike sharing startups flush cities with bikes for rent at dirt cheap prices, city administrations need to take a look in and understand the impact an unregulated e-biking scene could have on its roads.

Avancargo, a freight logistics startup from Argentina has on-boarded over 18,000 trucks on its platform and is helping them connect with shippers digitally.

The Indian trucking ecosystem suffers from a lack of visibility and transparency, which Vaahika is looking to address by digitizing logistics and creating a bridge between carriers and shippers.

Edge technology and infrastructure will play a key role in everything from autonomous, to final-mile delivery applications, to IoT solutions and smart cities as a whole.

Netradyne, a startup that uses computer vision to understand and improve driver behavior, has raised $21 million in its Series B funding, led by Microsoft’s venture arm, M12.

Loadsmart, a logistics technology company that uses data analytics to provide instant quotes and capacity, has raised its Series A financing led by Maersk Growth.

Shipwell, a freight shipping platform that makes shipping a seamless experience for SMEs, has raised $10 million in its Series A financing round, led by Fifth Wall VC.

Hyperloop is a technology that has been touted an exciting prospect in the transportation vertical. What is it about and how could it help improve the industry?

Venture capital-backed firm incorporates road, weather and hours-of-service data to providing real-time tracking.

GuardKnox, an Israeli vehicle cybersecurity startup is bringing in technology from the defense sector to make sure vehicles stay safe from data breach and cyberattacks.

What do you get when you combine a last-mile delivery solution company with a semi? You get an autonomous truck startup that’s skipped a few steps ahead of the competition.

Additional robotic deployment comes as XPO readies for seasonal rush.

Newly launched venture called Transmission aims to bring low-cost ELD product to drayage and intermodal motor carrier.

An annual review of the logistics business gets published; dueling intermodal views; and a startup gets a big chunk of funding.

How can something so small be such a big deal? For two very significant reasons.

Bernd Heid from McKinsey elaborated on the future of mobility, drawing instances of disruptions in the transportation industry and the need for adapting business models to market and regulatory requirements.

The Carrier Relationship Platform uses data to organize and automate a company’s processes with a unique approach: delivering targeting engagements to strengthen relationships.

We spoke to T Rowe Price VP Andrew Davis about how traditional investors’ view of the digital brokerage had changed over time.

Artificial intelligence is a buzzword that has created a lot of hype in the transportation industry. But understanding the technology’s commercial utility is the need of the day.

AirHelp was founded in 2013, and has helped more than seven million people worldwide to process airline compensation claims worth almost $930 million in total reimbursement.

Karma Delivers is looking to the future of social impact collaboration in the logistics space, where a natural market need exists for technology firms to empower NGO’s and nonprofits with software donation programs and access to education resources.

RTS is injecting technology into the archaic garbage industry processes, helping bring visibility and transparency into waste disposal and recycling.

Is there a way to protect consumers in the multi-billion dollar counterfeiting black market?

xChange is helping container lines reduce their dead miles, by providing them with one-way container moves or SOCs from 2500 locations across the world.

Technology firms aim to ease process of managing multiple carriers in regional markets.

LaneAxis is looking to drive efficiency in the trucking network by using blockchain to help shippers connect directly with carriers without brokers or 3PLs.

China has toyed with the concept of bike-sharing but met with disastrous results due to an unsustainable business model and excessive dumping of bikes on the streets. The U.S. bike-sharing startups could take a leaf out of their book and improvise accordingly.

This campaign seeks to increase transparency in programmatic ad buying and support the ways the company’s brands earn consumer attention.

A staid and technology-averse industry is in the process of changing thanks to new entrants.

Uber Freight continues to gain scale as the company doubles-down on the business

As real estate prices are over the roof, the number of people willing to enter the housing market is at a record high. The mismatch needs to be addressed – possibly by better zonal regulations and technology injection in construction methods.

Serve.io has developed technology protocols using blockchain, which it believes can inject transparency in supply chains and cut out middle-men and exorbitant platform fees within the system.

The starting left tackle for the Jets has invested in FreightWaves, part of a large technology-oriented portfolio.

Freight.Tech Waves InnovationLab is tailor made to provide early-stage startups a high impact and concentrated exposure about the knowledge, network, and funding source.

SwanLeap has shown an unprecedented 75,660.8% revenue growth over the past three years catapulting the software company to the number one spot.

The swiftness of last-mile delivery is what separates e-commerce brands from each other, and technology adoption would go a long way in optimizing their supply chains.

WiseTech CEO Richard White’s consolidation moves continue with intermodal specialist Trinium.

Uber Inc. has witnessed a largely satisfactory quarter this year, with it continuing its expansion across different markets and venturing into new territories like food-delivery and scooter-sharing.

Cargomatic aims to connect short-haul drivers to shippers seamlessly.

Fergus Caldicott, long-term DAT executive and VP of Technology has been appointed to the role of Chief Operating Officer at FreightWaves.

The city of Cupertino is looking towards hyperloop to reduce its woes with regard to transportation. Apple Inc., the biggest presence in the city might help.

Waymo is partnering with Valley Metro, a public transportation authority in Arizona, to shuttle people to and from public transportation stops via autonomous cars – thus planting its feet firmly in the race to put self-driving vehicles on the road.

A team of former Nokia Research engineers has built a hardware-agnostic video telematics platform that is already being white-labeled by some of the most important telematics service providers.

As the market for IA technology grows, Slync is expanding and investing in its people to solve customer problems and meet demand.

UPS today announced a collaboration with Thor Trucks to develop and test a fully-electric class 6 delivery truck in Los Angeles.

The former head of innovation for Bridgestone has been appointed as Managing Director of Freight.Tech, an engagement platform built for companies that want to navigate the waters of innovation and market disrpution.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) has inked a deal with the province of Guizhou for creating China’s first commercial hyperloop track.

Aside from providing track and trace solutions, Loginext uses machine learning to provide organized logistics and field service management solutions in the most cost-optimized way.

Tesla stocks fell by about 2.5% today after a Needham analyst raised concerns on the increased cancellations of Model 3 cars over different reasons like long waiting times, unavailability of base model and the expiration of the $7,500 credit.

“I am unaware of anyone using ELD to make these smart matches. We are excited about pioneering this approach that benefits drivers, carriers our economy and our ecology,” Russell Jones, Cargo Chief’s CEO, tells FreightWaves.

As parking spaces take up most of the available land in the central districts of cities, it is time to rethink the way people transit in the cities of the future.

Laboratory grown meat is coming to the market soon, and this could disrupt traditional food supply chains as the trucking industry might haul lesser livestock in the future.

Home delivery of items that require someone to be home to accept the package is one of the most frustrating parts of the online experience for many. Package.AI believes involving the consumer sooner in the process can improve that process.

VOLT Technology, a post-ICO startup using the power of blockchain to provide companies, individuals and couriers a decentralized platform that manages point-to-point (P2P) deliveries, has joined BiTA.

Arrive Logistics, one of the nation’s fastest growing brokerages with offices in both Austin, TX, and Chicago, has received a Series A round of funding led by Lead Edge Capital.

New bill introduced in the U.S. House asks for a slight reform in the HOS relaxation rules by extending the 150-mile exemption for ag and livestock haulers throughout the year.

At the Future of Transportation World Conference, Andreas Thellmann from Airbus explained the potential of air taxis being used in urban spaces to reduce congestion on the roads.

At the Future of Transportation World Conference, ZapGo described its carbon ion battery solution that has the potential to charge an electric vehicle to full capacity in five minutes, while a Lithium ion battery takes hours to do the same.

The founder of an industry startup with lots of buzz tells an industry conference how it happened.

Shippabo is a cloud-based supply chain management startup that is helping businesses connect with freight forwarders and carriers, while consolidating their data in one place.

Geotab, a global leader in IoT and connected transportation, today announced the acquisition of clean-tech solution provider, FleetCarma.

FreightWaves raises $13 million from venture capital investors from San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, and New York to continue scaling the freight market analytics platform.

Plug Power in association with Workhorse Group has developed a hydrogen-powered delivery van that is one of the first of its kind to be deployed on a standard delivery route for the FedEx facility.

Uber Freight has introduced a new tool called “fleet mode” that helps small fleet owners to manage all their drivers under a single account on the app.

Schneider National’s Shaleen Devgun joins San Francisco-based venture capital firm 8VC as an advisor. FreightWaves spoke to Devgun and 8VC co-founder and partner Jake Medwell by phone.

Given just 3 minutes to make their pitch and an additional 2 minutes to answer judges’ questions, 15 startup companies did their best to show judges at the Movin’ On conference why their solutions will change the market.

Shippo has launched a new workflow feature that help customers optimize their operations and thereby reduce time spent on deciding their shipping options.

Investors are flocking to the freight industry with million-dollar investments for startups, but what do those investors look for in companies before making an investment?

Demo day session 3 are digital companies providing real solutions in the logistics space.

Startups and incumbents at the demos today are building transparency into their products. Historically freight has been very opaque. The change is emerging here and now.

CoLoadX is a shipping marketplace that helps freight forwarders and NVOCCs in finding better quotes, routing options, and in executing transactions faster.

There’s nothing done at large scale today. That’s just not reality. There’s still more questions than answers. But what is being done, and how?

Shipa Freight, a spinoff from Agility, has created a platform that makes it easier for SMEs to book air and ocean freight online.

Learning Machine has developed an application for issuing and verifying official records using the blockchain as a secure encrypt of trust, which could help reduce driver identity fraud and loss of freight to theft.

Convoy revealed Monday morning that U2’s Bono and The Edge quietly invested in the company last year.

Brokerage firms struggle with finding carriers for loads and real visibility in the industry is still a concern. Trucker Tools is providing a solution to this predicament through its Smart Capacity feature.

Passenger and freight coming to a hub near you—sooner than you may think.