Entrepreneurs Are Working to Uber-fy the Trucking Industry. Venice, Calif.-based Cargomatic, an app that connects local shippers with local truckers, just raised $8 million in VC funding.
By Catherine Clifford •
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There's the Uber of self-storage, the Uber of dining, the Uber of grocery shopping and the Uber of just about everything these days.
And now there's (more than one) Uber of trucking. While not as sexy as say, the Uber of hot man-dudes, trucking is a big business. The industry does hundreds of billions of dollars worth of business each year.
Related: 'We're the Uber of X!'
Today, Venice, Calif.-based Cargomatic, a mobile app that connects local shippers with local truckers, announced that it has raised $8 million in venture capital. The Series A round was led by Canaan Partners and included funding from Morado Venture Partners, SV Angel, Sherpa Ventures, Structure Capital, and Volvo Group Venture, among others.
Cargomatic is focused on maximizing utilization and efficiency in the local shipping industry. The platform is designed to ensure that no truck drives anywhere empty and that a business that needs a load delivered can piggyback on a load already in transit, thereby getting its goods delivered more cheaply than hiring a truck to make a separate run. (Check out the handy little animated video embedded at the bottom of this post for a visual.)
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"Trucking has long been an essential part of how business gets done, and the Cargomatic platform provides a win-win scenario for businesses who need to ship goods locally, and for truckers who have available capacity," says Hrach Simonian of the lead investing house Canaan Partners, according to a statement announcing the funding raise released today. Simonian will join the Cargomatic board.
Cargomatic is not the first startup to have the idea to Uber-fy the trucking industry. Another tech company, New York-based Transfix, is helping shippers and truckers automatically locate each other, minimizing waste and ideally, preventing truckers from driving with half-empty cargos.
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