• Online Freight Brokerage Open Mile Raises $6 Million

    Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

    Alexia Tsotsis is the co-editor of TechCrunch. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles in... → Learn More

    A freight brokerage is a service that brings together someone who wants to to transport goods (like oranges, or iPods) with the trucking company that wants to transport them. Open Mile, which is today announcing a $6 million round of Series B funding, is the first such service that attempts to bring these relatively unglamorous transactions online, tapping into a $60 billion industry which is heavily phone and fax based. Read: It’s disruptive.

    The financing was led by Globespan Capital Parters and rounded out by existing investor Charles River Ventures.

    “The team has tapped into a real need in a market fraught with outdated manual approaches,” says Globespan’s Andy Goldfarb on the motivation behind the significant (for the relatively slow-moving industry) investment.

    What makes the Open Mile platform different from other freight brokerages is that it uses mobile devices to connect thousands of truckers with thousands of shippers, managing the entire process from booking through delivery. And its emphasis on employing innovative technologies allows it to operate at a lower cost than traditional brokers.

    Right now Open Mile works with over 5,000 trucking companies as partners, connecting them to a wide range of shipping organizations from small to large. Open Mile plans on using the funding to further expand on its engineering and core product efforts, as well as hire into its marketing and sales teams.

    Company: Open Mile
    Website: openmile.com
    Launch Date: February 23, 2011
    Funding: $9M

    Open Mile believes that the domestic truckload market should be smarter, pricing should be transparent, and information should be easily accessible for all. Open Mile’s business utilizes the best aspects of web and mobile technology to empower shippers and carriers to interact, collect market intelligence and match demand with capacity all in real-time. The company has created tools that power a smarter freight industry, automating much of the process, creating lower cost and better service for shippers while creating new...

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