Mastering Middle Mile Delivery
Daniel Sokolovsky and Troy Lester on why the middle mile has the most potential.
Middle-mile shipping consists of transporting goods from a port, warehouse, or distribution center into a fulfillment center.
Warp created the tools to bring it all together.
Keeping freight moving throughout its journey is critical to reducing a shipper’s freight cost per mile. Using the right LTL (less than truckload) carrier for middle-mile shipping—that stage of the journey where goods travel between two facilities for temporary storage before final delivery—can reduce the amount of time shipments are en route.
In recent years, the middle mile has been lucrative for shippers and freight companies, which have been the beneficiaries of exponential e-commerce growth. According to the US Census Bureau, during Q2 2016, e-commerce was responsible for 7.5% of all retail sales, not seasonally adjusted, bringing in more than $91 billion. Fast forward to Q2 2021, that number is 12.5%, representing just over $211.7 billion. With numbers like this, shippers and transportation providers cannot afford to miss out on this lucrative opportunity.
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COMPANY PROFILE: WARP
Optimizing every shipment every time.
Warp is building a fully connected end to end, middle mile logistics platform. The company provides LTL (less than truckload) consolidation and optimization, crossdock hardware and software, and carrier tools and micro services to shippers, via the crossdock operators.
FOUNDERS:
→ Daniel Sokolovsky
→ Troy Lester
LAST FUNDING STAGE:
Seed
VECTOR:
Machine to Machine Learning
14
Team Members
6M
Funding to Date
FOUNDERS
Daniel Sokolovsky and Troy Lester
Enter Warp. Warp allows smaller companies to behave like much larger ones by connecting them to a digital pool of drivers and vehicles for their middle-mile LTL shipments. In doing so, Warp can enable same- and next-day deliveries for brands without them needing to invest in a permanent fleet of drivers or vehicles.
Currently, Warp’s platform is injecting directly into last-mile carriers like the Postal Service, handling inventory replenishment and transporting goods between facilities like fulfillment centers, distribution centers and production facilities in California, Texas, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
And in Sokolovsky’s mind, conditions couldn’t be better for Warp to expand its offering. GPS and sensor technology along with mobile apps and integrations have made a platform like Warp’s possible. But just as importantly, there’s an appetite for it.
Daniel Sokolovsky and Troy Lester have done this before.
Now shippers, regular e-commerce businesses, even non-e-commerce businesses, they’re thinking about things like speedy delivery, traceability, reliability of your service offering, transparent pricing, flat rate pricing, easy to interpret invoicing — all of those different things that we can offer as a new age tech/logistics company.
-Daniel
Looking ahead, Warp plans to use its $2.4 million seed funding to continue to build out its product and accelerate growth in initial markets, as well as to expand operations with existing customers.
“I think what comes next is a very, very aggressive and strategic takeover of the LTL industry,” Sokolovsky asserted. “I think right now we’re obviously being very selective about the customers that we’re onboarding. We’re trying to work with the right partners over the next couple of years to make sure that we have the best bang for our buck in terms of growth.
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,” he predicted. “And we think we can be a real threat.”
Originally appeared in FreightWaves AxleHire founder sets sights on LTL with new company, seed funding
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