Fura CEO Jeff Dangelo details how their AI agent, Donna, already handles 40% of bookings, with plans to hit 90%. Learn about Fura’s growth strategy, including eight acquisitions (the latest adding $30M in revenue) and their aggressive M&A pipeline. Dangelo also shares insights on navigating tight capacity, rising costs, and margin compression in the current freight market. This is how technology is driving a new era in logistics.
Fura Freight’s AI agent, Donna, now handles more than 40% of the company’s load bookings — and CEO Jeff Dangelo expects that figure to reach 90% by the end of next year. The milestone reflects a broader automation push that Dangelo says is allowing the Cincinnati-based brokerage to absorb acquisitions rapidly and compress selling, general and administrative costs while freight margins tighten across the industry.
Donna is integrated with Fura’s pricing algorithm, its transportation management system, and Highway for carrier compliance. The agent makes and receives phone calls, negotiates rates, and handles bookings from start to finish, handing off only the final negotiation confirmation to a team lead. Dangelo said a true 100% autonomous booking rate remains a longer-term goal because new acquisitions continuously add lanes and carrier relationships that take time to fold into the system.
“Donna is doing all of that work from compliance to negotiating to booking. We do have her handing off the finished sort of negotiation to a team lead, but for the most part, I see this even by the end of the year getting closer and closer to 90%,” said Dangelo.
The automation build-up runs alongside an aggressive M&A strategy. Fura’s eighth acquisition — Road Dog Logistics of Cincinnati, its largest deal to date at just over $30 million in revenue — added shipper relationships and deepened the company’s food and beverage vertical. D’Angelo said Fura plans to complete between 6 and 12 acquisitions next year, with a three-year target of reaching $1 billion in revenue. The company has grown from a $10 million revenue run rate to more than $100 million in two years, with half of that growth organic.
Dangelo said Fura can onboard acquisitions in roughly two weeks because all integration planning happens before closing, and in-house AI tools immediately begin processing data and handling carrier-side work. That speed stands in contrast to large-scale M&A: Dangelo noted that major acquirers can take up to two years to integrate a single deal. By stacking 10 to 15 smaller transactions, he said, Fura can add $300 million in revenue while keeping onboarding timelines under a year. The company currently generates $2.5 million in revenue per employee, a figure D’Angelo said will continue to improve as AI reduces SG&A costs further.
On market conditions, Dangelo cited data showing dry van spot cost per mile up 31%, reefer up 32%, and flatbed up 28%, pointing to tightening capacity heading into the holiday season. He said Fura is expanding its carrier sales and carrier success teams over the next three to six months to manage the capacity squeeze, while relying on Donna’s reach to contact more carriers than a human team could.
The Montgomery ruling — in which the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that freight brokers can be sued under state law for hiring unsafe carriers — is accelerating Fura’s acquisition pipeline, Dangelo said. Small brokers facing surging insurance costs and new liability exposure are increasingly looking to exit, widening the pool of potential targets. “It changed the math risk overnight,” Dangelo said of the ruling, adding that margin compression from rising insurance costs is a key reason Fura has invested heavily in AI to drive down its own operating costs.
- Fura’s AI agent Donna already books more than 40% of loads and is targeted to reach 90% autonomous bookings by end of next year.
- Road Dog Logistics acquisition, at just over $30 million in revenue, is Fura’s largest to date and expands its food and beverage vertical.
- Fura plans 6 to 12 acquisitions next year and targets $1 billion in revenue within three years, up from more than $100 million today.
This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.
