Occasionally a company that Y Combinator funded catches my eye, in the past it has mostly been food-related with the occasional SaaS company, but this time it is a trucking company - TrueNorth

TrueNorth Transportation — TrueNorth: Profits to truckers

First, let me preface this by saying I have 15 and a half years of experience in international freight. I clear international freight through Customs and any other applicable agencies. My specific facet of the industry relies on airplanes and what we move via air is just a drop in the bucket of what gets moved by semis. A lot of that stuff you see coming in on cargo ships, yeah, at some point in the delivery chain that ends up being driven by a semi-driver. Break 1-9 for a radio check, something like 72.5% of the nation’s freight by weight is moved by truck.

I think this company is awesome. The trucking industry is full of predatory practices that are all about maximizing profits for companies and not for the backbone of America, CDL truck drivers. You see, the trucking industry is a 700 billion dollar industry in the United States and is only growing. So, what exactly does TrueNorth do? Well, in their owns simple words they help increase “profits to truckers”.

Wait, what do you mean Ryan? Basically, they make the life of drivers easier. building a new operating system for trucking carriers, they've started by building a trucking carrier themselves that consists of roughly 200 owner-operators under their MC. In Nathan Lowell’s science fiction series Trader’s Tales crews of space-based freighters can book loads via a single software platform (maybe someday Ishmael and his peers will use TrueNorth to book freight for their fleets as they work the trade routes in the deep dark!), lining up their loads and handling the bulk of the paperwork from their ship tablets - TrueNorth is doing something analogous to this - TrueNorth's software allows drivers to find and book their next load, plan an efficient route, manage customers they are serving, and most importantly get paid and get paid promptly instead of needing to hound companies to pay their invoices.

Instead of going “there isn’t a problem, let’s make software just to complicate things while we try and make bank off of subscrptions” they’ve gone and realized that the truck driving industry still relies heavily on phone calls and physical paperwork to get things done and they’ve begun building a platform that allows this industry to come from the mid 20th century, screaming past the late 20th century, and into the 21st century. They simplify the work truckers have to do, they get better insurance rates through group buying saving drivers money, they get drivers paid quicker and easier, and who knows what the future will bring from their platform. TrueNorth Transportation is doing something that should have been done ages ago.

This week TrueNorth Transportation hit it out of the park with their Series B bringing in a cool $50 million in funding to grow their operations. They’re operating in a fraction of the country and, from external reporting, appear to already have a very healthy revenue so this is probably going to let them scale as fast as they comfortably can and can start saving more and more drivers from predatory practices and companies that have the lion’s share of the industry.

There is a truck driver shortage right now, and it’s mostly because of compensation. TrueNorth exists to make drivers more profit and to make their work-life just a little bit easier. That’s awesome. Not only is it awesome but it’s refreshingly different in a traditionally predatory industry. Bravo Zulu Jin Stedge and Sanjaya Wijeratne, you are good people.

Find TrueNorth at https://www.truenorthfleet.com/

Update February 4th, 2022

Just wanted to give full disclosure. I liked what I saw so much with TrueNorth that I have accepted a job offer with them as a Data Structure & Quality Specialist!

Update March 11th, 2022

TrueNorth now has a podcast called Let It Ride with TrueNorth! The first episode is a pretty great discussion with two of TrueNorth’s earliest owner-operator drivers Jasen and Lee.