Bringg, Onfleet, FarEye, Veho, AxleHire and a sea of other delivery management platforms are shaking up the last mile.
But FreightTech startup Warp, which emerged from stealth in February 2022 and is led by two AxleHire veterans, wants to ensure supply chains don’t cut out the middleman.
The Los Angeles-based middle-mile firm on Tuesday rolled out DirectFresh, a new platform offering aimed at perishable shippers. Now live in all major U.S. and Canadian metros and select areas in Mexico, the service will make it easier to ship fresh freight — including cold storage products like ice cream and frozen meat — directly to stores within hours.
DirectFresh’s capabilities make it ideal for firms in the food industry, such as restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores and ice cream shops, as well as specialty retailers like florists or pharmacies.
To enable perishable shipments, Warp leverages a network of carrier partners and temperature-controlled crossdocks. Its fleet, which handles mostly less-than-truckload shipments, comprises a mix of cargo vans, box trucks and 53-footers, plenty of which are designed to move sensitive goods.
Warp in October launched its Fresh Freight division, naming Misfits Market veteran Jake McPaul as lead, to add more temperature-controlled vehicles to its arsenal.
“A majority of freight providers don’t have the right technology to provide quality service to the sensitive temperature-controlled freight market,” said McPaul. “The sensitivities associated with perishable shipping also almost always leave perishable shippers little to no consolidation solutions, making it challenging to manage costs.”
Watch: A solution for the middle-mile
With DirectFresh, the startup is now using those assets to transfer fresh freight between manufacturers and cold storage facilities. And it’s enabling next-day, and even same-day, delivery directly to store shelves.
As part of the offering, Warp is also working with freight visibility platform ShipRec. The partnership will give shippers real-time temperature information on all of their fresh freight, and they will receive notifications if a product ever leaves its designated temperature range.
“ShipRec’s tracker signal is strong enough to go through cardboard, metal and even concrete, making it applicable to fresh shipments and everything in between,” said Paul Vineulas, ShipRec co-founder and CEO.
By doing what AxleHire did for the last mile — implementing solutions like route optimization and flexible capacity — for the middle-mile LTL industry, Warp is steadily carving out a niche among delivery management platforms.
Its software, while less proven than AxleHire’s, accomplishes the same objectives: managing and verifying orders, sharing data between disparate systems and dispatching, among others. But AxleHire and most other last-mile platforms have not addressed perishable shipping, lacking either the tools or desire to fulfill orders from cold storage.
“Five to 10 years down the line, we should be in a very, very good position, being competitive with companies like Old Dominion, Saia or FedEx Freight,” Warp CEO Daniel Sokolovsky, who previously founded AxleHire and served as its chief executive, told FreightWaves when the firm emerged from stealth. “And we think we can be a real threat.”
Click for more FreightWaves articles by Jack Daleo.
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