EXO closes Chattanooga office to focus on managed transportation tech

This story has been updated to reflect better how many employees were let go from EXO Freight’s individual offices.

Opened-deck transportation marketplace EXO Freight closed its Chattanooga, Tennessee, office Tuesday, laying off 19 employees across its locations, co-founder and CEO Kurtis Tryber told FreightWaves.

The company’s Tennessee location, a small start-up office saw 3 employees let go, with two now working remotely and reporting to EXO Freight’s headquarters in Royal Oak, Michigan. The Michigan location lost 16 employees during the layoff, with 43 remaining, the majority of whom work remotely.

Tryber said it was an intentional move by the company to pivot from covering unprofitable spot market freight through its brokerage to utilizing its specialized marketplace and fintech solutions for managed transportation business needs.

The Royal Oak office will stay open to focus on managed transportation.

“We remain focused on delivering a technology-enabled transportation service offering to open-deck shippers and carriers,” Tryber said. “The news today is very unfortunate, and we empathize with the affected employees. However, our traditional spot brokerage business was taking away focus from our core customer group.”

The company was founded in 2021 by twin brothers Kurtis and Kris Tryber to help enterprise shippers better manage their open-deck capacity networks with their specialized freight marketplace.

Since then the company has raised $16.5 million from investors including Left Lane Capital, Detroit Venture Partners, 1984 Ventures, 12BF Global Investments, Lancaster Investments and Y Combinator.

“We’re excited to work towards the new launch of our managed transportation TMS, Pulse, which is already in use by our core managed customers. This will be our primary focus as we continue growth into 2024 and beyond,” Tryber explained.