Earlier this year Los Angeles-based Cargomatic, announced it had raised $8 million to expand its platform. Why was this interesting? Well, Cargomatic hopes to become an ‘Uber for truckers’, by connecting shippers and truckers who are available to help move their cargo.
Truckers would get to make more money, but, in addition, the shipping would be routed more efficiently towards the truckers available. Companies enter the details of the cargo they need to ship, and truckers use a mobile app to accept jobs and track their routes.
Given that the US-market alone is worth $70 billion, this is a huge opportunity.
Now a competitor, Trucker Path, an existing app for truckers, has raised substantially more. It’s announced a $20M Series A funding led by Wicklow Capital of Chicago and involving a follow-on partner, Chinese social media giant Renren.
It’s also launched the beta test of its shipping marketplace called Trucker Path Truckloads. This puts together truckers, freight brokers and logistics companies, as well as serving B2B companies and the commercial freight transportation industry. On the truck driver’s side, the marketplace is supposed to give the trucker one place to conduct all their business. The company says its solution is more sophisticated than merely being an ‘Uber for truckers’.
Admittedly, its competitor is more Internet Truckstop as Cargomatic is focused on local transportation by small trucks and vans. Trucker Path is more focused on regional and long-haul via big rigs.
Trucker Path claims it has nearly 300,000 active users already, which would give it 20% of all class 8 truckers in the U.S. and is claiming 20% growth per month over the past six months. In theory this new Truckloads feature could boost that substantially.
The question is, this is not a million miles away from where Uber itself wants to head so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out in this more Enterprise / B2B space.