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Loadsmart, a New York-based digital freight technology company, has raised $19 million to improve the flow of its freight through American ports.
Ports America, a large terminal operator and stevedore in the U.S., joins Maersk Growth as an investor, Loadsmart said in a Sept. 5 news release.
This latest round follows Loadsmart’s Series A round in late 2018, bringing funding to date to $53.3 million, company officials said.
The investment will go toward Loadsmart’s new Smart Drayage initiative, helping industry participants rethink the flow of shipping containers through marine terminals and develop a free-flow model to accelerate the transit of goods through the largest ports in America. The free-flow model means that truck drivers will be given the best container available when they arrive at the port, having pre-agreed with a specific mileage band trip, according to Loadsmart co-founder and CEO Ricardo Salgado.
As a result, Loadsmart projects that truck drivers will be able to reduce their time to get in and out of the port by at least 25%, Salgado said. At the same time, Loadsmart estimates that port operators will be able to reduce container shuffles by at least 50%.
Maersk moves around 13 million containers a year, or about 15% of the world’s container market. Ports America operates 33 port terminals in 22 cities in the U.S. and moves an estimated 6.7 million containers in and out of the country, according to LoadSmart. — Transport Topics
