ASG announced Tuesday that it has acquired digital freight management platform Trucker Tools. The business sold for $65 million according to Pitchbook data compiled from the SEC.
ASG buys, builds and operates vertical software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies as a portfolio company of Alpine Investors. Trucker Tools is ASG’s 35th acquisition and will join a number of logistics companies under its wings, including e-Courier, a final-mile visibility software; Record360, an equipment rental inspection software; and EcoInteractive, a SaaS solution for government transportation and environmental organizations.
As part of the deal, Jesse Buckingham, the CEO of e-Courier and Record360 and an operating executive of ASG, will join Trucker Tools as chief revenue officer.
Buckingham told FreightWaves three reasons why ASG was interested in Trucker Tools.
“One is the team. They show an incredible level of care and attention to the customer experience in the products they are building, which is hard to replicate,” he said. “Second is their relationship with the industry. Much of Trucker Tools’ success comes from the deep relationships they have built with truckers, carriers and brokers.
“Finally, the product, especially on the driver side. They have built the best application on the market because they have built something that does make truckers’ lives easier. They help them find parking and cheaper fuel, along with their next load. Those tools are really valuable.”
Prasad Gollapalli, the founder and CEO of Trucker Tools, told FreightWaves, “Scale was becoming really important to us. Our customers began asking us to become faster and faster with product development. We needed a partner that had knowledge on scaling these platforms and has resources to go into different markets. ASG aligns with our goals and sees our customers as partners and builds products that are customer centric.”
Trucker Tools, founded in 2013, was recently recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms, positioned as a niche player for its strength in providing a carrier relationship management tool that provides capacity visibility for 3PLs, brokers and carriers.
Trucker Tools’ platform allows small to midsized transportation providers access to 1.4 million truckers using the mobile booking and tracking application, enabling more than 300 freight brokers the ability to digitally freight match their carriers, including automated one-click booking.
“We have recently seen a wave of digital brokers entering the transportation space, but I think their impact on the market was not what people expected,” Buckingham said. “Brokers are here to stay, but a lot of these [smaller] brokers can’t build technologies themselves and they need a technology growth partner to be able to build a platform that helps them make their business more effective and allows them to scale faster and I think Trucker Tools can do that for them.”
Gollapalli said with ASG, Trucker Tools will have the ability to expand its offerings, including final-mile services with e-Courier.
“Traditionally we have focused on carriers and brokers,” Gollapalli said. “We started thinking about product expansion and how we could go beyond just truckload visibility. Our customers began pushing us to look into other tools outside of truckload. … ASG has companies that can help us expand into final mile and other modes of transportation and customers in different industries that will allow us to scale faster.”
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