For the third year in a row, project44 — a Chicago-based supply chain visibility platform — came in second after Amazon in the FreightTech 25. This pandemic-struck year proved, more than ever, the industry’s need for increased visibility, agility and digital unification, a goal that project44 has been actively pursuing since 2014.
Narrowed down from the FreightTech 100, 2021’s list of 25 industry disruptors was ranked by 80 members of the logistics community, ranging from venture capitalists to company founders. To ensure fair voting, accounting firm Katz, Sapper & Miller (KSM) audited the process.
“The goal of the FreightTech 25 is to see how the market perceives the most innovative and disruptive companies in the space,” FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller said. “Unlike a lot of awards in logistics, this is an award where we bring in the community. We bring in folks that have a perception and a perspective on who the most innovative companies are.”
project44’s extensive multimodal network reaches 120 countries. Its 300-plus customers — global shippers and logistics service providers — gain the most complete view of their supply chains through project44’s platform from its real-time insights. In a year of unprecedented capacity constraints and unforeseen inefficiencies, project44 didn’t drop the ball.
Earlier in December, it announced a partnership with OneRail, a delivery-based orchestration and fulfillment platform, which would combine with project44’s Advanced Visibility Platform to comprehensively unify inbound and outbound logistics.
“Our partnership with OneRail provides our mutual customers a single source of truth and the ability to make fast, effective decisions to exceed their consumers’ expectations,” said Vernon O’Donnell, chief product and services officer of project44. “With project44’s high-fidelity data, multimodal visibility and OneRail’s centralized view of the disparate final mile, we will deliver an unprecedented level of visibility across the supply chain.”
In the spring, project44 added air freight, groupage and expanded global ocean visibility to its platform, which already included visibility coverage for over-the-road, rail, parcel and ocean. Using data from over 3 million past shipments, project44 also added a predictive estimated time of arrival (ETA) model for shipments that’s currently 91% accurate.