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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

HWY Haul

Hwy Haul Raises $10M Series A to Modernize Produce Trucking

Hwy Haul, a cloud-based freight platform that connects produce shippers and carriers, announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding. Eileses Capital and BluePointe Ventures co-led the round with participation from AgFunder, True Blue Partners, and other angel investors. This brings the total amount raised by Hwy Haul to $15.6 million.

As Syed Aman, cofounder and CEO of Hwy Haul explained to me last year, existing methods and workflows for getting fresh produce shipped from farms to stores around the country is still very manual and complex. It can require phone calls with truck brokers to find a carrier, multiple manual temperature checks to ensure food safety, and paying truckers can still take weeks after a haul is delivered. All of this complexity results in low transparency and food waste from loads not being kept at proper temperatures or being sent to the wrong destination.

Hwy Haul is looking to fix all that by automating the process associated with hiring truckers and shipping produce nationwide. The cloud-based system allows truckers to find instant quotes, book loads and reduce paperwork. Shippers (farms, wholesalers, etc.) can more easily hire carriers, monitor the temperature and humidity of loads, and optimize routes.

All of this, the company says, results in greater insights into shipments, reduced wait times and a more optimized supply chain. And if it’s one thing Aman knows, it’s the supply chain. Prior to co-founding Hwy Haul, Aman was Director of Supply Chain at Walmart, where he helped build Walmart’s online grocery platform.

We asked a couple weeks ago whether supply chains are sexy now as there are a raft of startups looking to transform how food is moved about the country. RipeLocker creates containers that adjust factors like oxygen levels and air pressure to extend the shelf life of produce. Varcode uses blockchain and IoT to ensure the items in the cold chain remain cold. And Gatik is creating self driving delivery trucks for the middle mile. And now with $10 million in fresh capital, Hwy Haul can keep these supply chains truckin’.

HWY Haul Brings AI to Automate Fresh Produce Freight and Fight Food Waste

Unless you see one parked outside your grocery store, you probably don’t think too much about the freight trucks that are so vital to getting food onto store shelves. Today, trucking freight, especially produce and fresh foods, from the farm to the store is a pretty complicated and manual process. And HWY Haul wants to change that process with automation and artificial intelligence.

As Syed Aman, cofounder and CEO of HWY Haul explained to me by phone this week, current methods for scheduling shipments require a lot of phone calls and paperwork. Farms need to call brokers to get a trucker, multiple calls must be made to track a load en route, drivers need to stop for temperature checks to make sure produce is kept cold, and once that produce arrives at the store, it can take weeks for a trucker to get paid.

HWY Haul promises to automate this process with what it calls a “managed marketplace.” The company’s cloud-based platform allows farms (or stores or other suppliers) to schedule a vetted driver, determine the cost for each trip, monitor their route in real-time, and keep constant temperature checks (to ensure the food stays cold). Once delivery is made, HWY Haul processes the payment automatically.

In addition to potentially bringing more efficiency to the business of trucking fresh food across the country, Aman said HWY Haul can also help reduce food waste by reducing load rejections. When a load is rejected by the store, that food can wind up in a dumpster. By helping bring loads in on time and always at the correct temperature, Aman said that using HWY Haul can result in fewer of these wasteful rejections.

HWY Haul is actually among a crop of startups working at different points along the supply chain to bring more automation and precision while fighting food waste. AgShift uses computer vision to help establish objective prices for food. Varcode creates blockchain-based thermal stickers to ensure food is kept at the right temperature throughout the cold chain. And Silo automates operations around buying and selling food as well as forecasting supply and demand.

Based in Santa Clara, Calif., HWY Haul has raised an undisclosed Seed round of funding. The company makes its money by charging the shipper a fee per route booked.