Flock Freight, a “hubless” freight logistics company, today announced a $50 million Series B funding round led by SignalFire and GLP Capital Partners.
With the latest funding round, the Solana Beach, California startup will continue to build out its core technology – assembling “algorithmically created carpools” of less-than-truckload (LTL) freight shipments so they can be shipped via full truckload, increasing affordability for shippers and revenue potential for carriers.
“We’re taking LTL and repackaging it as FTL,” Oren Zaslansky, chief executive officer and founder of Flock Freight, told FreightWaves. “Our value creation is in repackaging the freight.”
A serial entrepreneur who founded – and still owns – companies in the truckload and brokerage spaces, Zaslansky said he zeroed in on LTL for his next venture because “it is high price and low quality.”
He’s not taking a shot at the LTL providers, he explained, but at the “hub and spoke model,” which typically requires trucks to transport less-than-truckload freight to a processing facility, where it is distributed via another truck.
“That [hub and spoke] mousetrap is a 100-year old innovation,” Zaslansky said, providing more opportunities for delays and damaged delivery. “It’s time to change.”
Bundling parcels and other freight shipments to improve efficiencies is not exactly a new idea. Shippers and carriers have done just that “since the dawn of time,” Zaslansky acknowledged. What distinguishes Flock Freight is its automated product offering that brings an ad hoc system into the 21st century.
“Never before has a customer had the opportunity to run a quote and order something, and have it guaranteed to be pooled or hubless,” he said.
Ticking off a list of benefits, Zaslansky said the service never moves freight from the truck until it reaches its final destination, eliminating the potential for damaged shipments. It offers a guaranteed delivery date, ensuring that companies won’t run up the hefty fees associated with late deliveries.
Flock Freight is also redefining the pricing structure associated with the traditional LTL model – expanding partnerships with truckload carrier networks and tapping their excess capacity to ensure trucks are filled.
“We’re taking on the risk and the mathematical work that it takes to build multi-stop carpools,” Zaslansky said.
Zaslansky described Flock Freight, founded in 2015, as a technology company and brokerage. He said the company isn’t particularly interested in load matching – the purview of many digital brokerages – but as it scales does want to become more efficient.
“Every time you double your volume, you see an 8x degradation of time, which is a nightmare,” Zaslansky said. “So we’re investing constantly, hiring more Ph.Ds, more data scientists to build better and better technology.”
The team will also use the latest funding round to invest in a “major digital integration,” via electronic logging devices or a transportation management system.
Michael Evans
This is a great article. There are trials and tribulations in the LTL shipping industry. Thankfully their are shipping companies out there that are trying different ways to keep their businesses profitable….and their employees paid
CM Evans
The inefficiencies in this industry are the ELD’s/regulations placed on motor carriers. We are stuck in the middle of the old ways many are outdated and the future that refuses to develop current solutions.
Lawrence Mustaller, CEO
Interesting comment, “LTL direct to destination without transfer”. I’d like to visably follow a consignment. First “invitation, sign me up coach.
Michael Engel
If doing multiple pickups and drop offs from one side of the country to the other without reworking the load, you will leave it up to customers to move other people’s freight out of the way that will inevitably be in front of yours, so you can’t get to your freight to unload it.
Is that supposed to reduce damages? What about risk?
Do you really think that you can organize the order of pickups to be in order for drop offs?
Also, people load the freight, not the company. Who is to say they will load it the way the plan is set? And you’re going to use some truckers outside your network and count on them to instruct the warehouses on how to load it and in what order? A lot of truckers don’t even get out of their cab. They just back up to the dock.
What a waste.
DB
Flock Freight aka Auptix. Haven’t come across a cheaper broker yet. “NJ to IL.. 1 pick, 7 drops for $700. Can you do it??”
PG
I might be wrong but this sounds an awful lot like the JEVIC Business Model. It’s amazing what ideas are considered revolutionary but are just reworks with computers and a lot of money behind them.
Computers don’t move freight……. Trucks do!
Art
Jevic 2.0 (New Century)… also out of business.
I have hauled multi pick loads for many brokers for a few decades already…. CH Robinson, Coyote, Arrive.
I really don’t understand what this revolutionary of another start up broker who “specializes” in LTL.
A poor investment in my opinion due to low volume
“Irrational exuberance” is the phrase used by the then-Federal Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan, about 1990’s dot-com bubble AND the “DIGITAL” FREIGHT bubble of the 2020s.
Dave
Good god….this just shows that these idiot VC’s will invest in anybody. This is simply a multi-pick / multi-drop freight model which has been done for decades by everyone. The large brokers do it the best as they have the most volume but EVERYONE does it. This is nothing new. THere are a million reasons it is not efficient and thus not popular but I just don’t have the time to teach these morons. But let me ask a simple question – do you not think UPS or FedEx would have done this already if it works????? It doesn’t!!!!!!
No wonder these VC money people get fooled so often and lose their investors money. They have no idea how this industry works. Sheesh.
VICTOR
They used old but proven concept “there’s sucker born every minute”. I’m waiting till someone gets a billion dollars from investors to start a snake oil company.
joseph j comella
You hit it right on the head. These IT gurus think they can change this industry by algorithms and all this IT mumbo jumbo. Give me a break
Art
So start up Flock Freight is revolutionary versus CH Robinson consolidation which has much more volume?
Another pipe dream sold to venture capital.
I can start a “digital” brokerage today! With just a smartphone and load board subscription.
I will solve all the industry’s problems with “technology” (AKA not a fax and rolodex).