Will Lawrence, co-founder and CTO of Iron Sheepdog, often says that building something simple can actually be very difficult. Iron Sheepdog's goal is to build easy-to-use technology for the short-haul trucking industry. This approach is also why the company believes it has been able to see a level of adoption in the industry that its competitors haven't.
The Williamsburg, Virginia-based company's software aims to make the short-haul trucking sector more seamless and efficient, primarily for truckers who book short-haul jobs through brokers. This includes outsourcing. Companies can track the trucks they contract through Iron Sheepdog, giving them more transparency into where their trucks are, how long they're working on, and how much they're being paid. Truck drivers themselves will also get an easy-to-use app to help them take on jobs and get paid online.
Iron Sheepdog this week announced a $10 million Series B round led by SJF Ventures with participation from Grand Ventures, Supply Chain Ventures, and strategic partners. Mike Van Sickel, co-founder and CEO of Iron Sheepdog, told his TechCrunch that the company spent its first few years making sure it could gain solid customer adoption and achieve profitability. Ta. Now we are trying to scale up.
“Trust is the most important characteristic. We need carriers to actually use the app,” Van Schickel said. “All the solutions out there forced by contractors are [subhaulers] If they are not willing to accept it, it will cause more problems. ”
The idea for Iron Sheepdog came from the real-life experiences of the three co-founders, Van Sickel said. They were not working as short-term truck drivers themselves, but for the company that hired them. Van Sickel said that even though his software solutions exist for every other part of the business, there hasn't been a good solution for hiring short-haul truck drivers. The existing process led to frustration on both sides.
Although not the first company to try to build software to manage these short-haul truckers, Iron Sheepdog has grown by doubling every year since its founding. That's because we approach construction differently than our competitors. Rather than focusing on contractors to drive adoption, we started with short-haul truck drivers themselves.
“We decided to look at the problem from the bottom up rather than the top down,” Van Schickel said. “We created a very simple app for sub-carriers and tied it into a 24-hour paycheck. I call it simple. We deliberately wanted to help them adopt it. We kept it simple.”
By encouraging truck drivers to sign up for the free app, they also encourage the brokers providing their work to do so, affecting the entire chain. Contractors also want to sign up, knowing the app will give them access to a network of over 4,000 short-haul truck drivers. The company makes money by having these contractors pay underlying truck drivers through the platform.
Van Sickel said that now that they have a significant number of brokers and truckers on the platform, companies will be able to better utilize them. For example, a company can reduce the number of trucks needed by hiring trucks to do two jobs or dropping off materials at two job sites on the same day. This could also help reduce emissions.
“If you think about Uber Eats, the Uber driver doesn't leave their house, pick up a sandwich, go to your house and come home. That's not how the industry works,” Van Schickel said. “Once you get behind the wheel of these trucks, you can start finding ways to make better use of them.”
The Iron Sheepdog round stood out for several reasons. One is that, despite increased investment in construction technology startups in recent years, this part of the system hasn't received the same attention. Software that speeds up site planning won't do you any good if coordinating trucks to get the job done slows down the process.
This area has also been largely overlooked in trucking innovations. While there are already companies looking to develop self-driving construction vehicles and companies looking to repair last-mile cargo, there is far less technology going into dump trucks and their equivalents. There are other companies trying to help solve this problem, such as TruckIT and Loadtraxx, but Iron Sheepdog is one of the few, if not the only, venture-backed startups tackling this problem. It seems like one company.
It's also worth noting that Iron Sheepdog is focused on adoption. It's clear that companies need to build products that their target organizations will actually use, but this isn't always the case. As a result, many industries are falling behind in terms of technology.
New technology won't do you any good if no one uses it.
“It has to be a crawl, walk, run approach, but it can't be a crawl, run approach,” Van Schickel said. “There is a disconnect between some of the software solutions that are being developed and the willingness of the individuals who actually use them.”