Technology-driven trucking company aifleet announced it has closed on a $14 million enterprise round to proceed scaling its fleet and proprietary solutions that enhance driver utilization.
The round was led by Ibex Investors with participation from Obvious Ventures, Gerdau Next, Compound, Cooley and individual investor Tom Williams. The corporate has raised $35 million since 2021.
“Trucking is one the biggest and most important industries within the US. It is usually notoriously inefficient. Aifleet’s game-changing technology boosts efficiency via the utilization of existing assets, greatly reducing the time drivers spend lugging around empty trailers and waiting for his or her next job. This implies extra money within the hands of our drivers. It also means significantly less emissions within the mobility sector, which we imagine will probably be one among the last [sectors] to decarbonize,” said Jeff Peters, partner at Ibex Investors, in Wednesday’s announcement.
Funding details | aifleet |
---|---|
Funding amount | $14 million |
Funding round | Enterprise round (second raise) |
Lead investor | Ibex Investors |
Secondary investors | Obvious Ventures, Gerdau Next, Compound, Cooley and Tom Williams |
Business goals for the round | Scale fleet and add product, engineering and operations teams |
Total funding | $35 million |
Driving utilization
Aifleet co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Marc El Khoury told FreightWaves that the corporate’s mission has all the time been focused on utilizing drivers and assets to the fullest while working to get drivers home every week.
“Can we show that technology solves a driver utilization problem? Could we show that 1,500 loaded miles every week just isn’t what a driver can achieve but as a substitute, what a trucking company has traditionally only been capable of assign? … Now we’re at the purpose where now we have solved that problem for our 150 drivers and we’re confident that our technology can get us 35% higher utilization while ensuring that we send the driving force home each week,” he said.
With a purpose to capitalize on the driving force’s time, aifleet has built the flexibility to see a big pool of freight after which let its solution determine the route.
“We put all of this freight into our solution and ask it to attract routes that not only connect lane to lane after which back home but connect based on drivers’ schedules for delivery and the time for the subsequent pickup. … There is no such thing as a good lane or bad lane or good deadhead or bad deadhead. There is simply a deal with what’s a great route for the driving force to maximise their profitability,” El Khoury said.
With technology being the soul of what aifleet is bringing to the table, one would query why the corporate wouldn’t remain a pure-play technology firm. Why own and manage the assets as well?
“We must master safety, insurance and compliance with a purpose to achieve success. It’s just really easy to construct technology and say trucking corporations just don’t know what they’re doing. And so people construct technology that way and no person knows tips on how to put it to use. Who’s that helping? We’d like to know tips on how to operate higher than anybody else. … People ask, ‘Is that this strategy one of the best thing to do since it is so hard?’ And our response is, ‘If you desire to make a change you could have to go knee-deep,’ and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.
The approach is working as aifleet says it has grown its revenue by 4x since its 2021 raise, even with soft market conditions for carriers across the board.
![](https://www.freightwaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/12/Retouch_Image-from-iOS-8-1-600x450.jpg)
Related: Aifleet finding higher pay for drivers by lowering dwell times
With its latest capital, aifleet is trying to grow its product, engineering and operations teams to double its 150 truck fleet and to proceed improving on what the longer term of trucking could seem like.
“Imagine a world where just about every driver goes home each day, not because they’ve develop into an area driver but because technology allows them. The more we grow, the more we discover synergies in our network for getting them home, including potentially swapping trailers. Plus, it’s already extremely hard today to optimize diesel trucks. Well, just imagine how hard it will be to optimize electric trucks which have different ranges, different weather patterns and different routes. … Those problems are what get us really excited,” said El Khoury.
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