Trucker Path

Trucker Path
Private
Industry Transport
Founders Viktor Radchenko, Ivan Tsybaev
Headquarters Mountain View, California
Key people
 Ivan Tsybaev (CEO)[1]
Services road transport, logistics
Website truckerpath.com

Trucker Path is an American transportation network company specializing in online and mobile services for the trucking industry. In early 2013, the company released its trip planning and resource locating mobile app Trucker Path. In mid-2015, it was followed by Truckloads, an online marketplace specializing in connecting freight companies with carriers. By March 2015 the Trucker Path app had 100,000 users. One year later, Trucker Path had reached 1,000,000 downloads on iOS and Android combined. By June 2016, the number of active monthly users surpassed 450,000, which represented 30% of all Class 8 truckers in the U.S.

History

The early version of the application for truck drivers was developed by Viktor Radchenko who was inspired to create it after hearing his trucker friends complain about the difficulties they had finding truck stops. Trucker Path was the fourth application Radchenko had developed since moving to Silicon Valley from his native Ukraine in 2010. Before creating Trucker Path, he didn't have any direct involvement in the freight industry.

The early beta version of the app was launched in February 2013, and by August had reached 50,000 active weekly users. In October 2013 Radchenko began working together with Ivan Tsybaev to found the company officially, with Tsybaev acting as the organization's first CEO and Radchenko as the chief technology officer. Tsybaev envisioned the company becoming a freight transportation marketplace. To build up userbase, he decided to focus on positioning Trucker Path as a crowdsourced navigational assistant that would make it easy for truckers to plan their trips by helping them find truck stops, parking, rest areas, washers and other POI. Initially, the application focused on providing trucking information primarily for the United States of America.

At the 2013 LA Auto Show, Trucker Path was named one of the eight finalists for Fastpitch, a competition for automobile-related startups. In February 2014, Radchenko left his job as chief technology officer at Trucker Path.

In September 2014, the company raised US$1.5 million in seed funding from Renren, a China-based social media company founded by an American citizen and MIT/Stanford graduate Joseph Chen. Renren prefers to invest in the U.S. based companies that have the potential to expand into China. Their other investments include SoFi, a digital finance and p2p lending company, and a Swiss-Israeli secure mobile phone company Sirin Labs.

In June 2015, Trucker Path raised a US$20,000,000 Series A round from Chicago-based Wicklow Capital. The round involved a follow-on partner, Chinese social media giant Renren.

In July 2015, Trucker Path released Truckloads, a B2B marketplace specializing in connecting transportation brokers to carriers. Initially, the application was available only by invite. Between July 2015 and February 2016, Truckloads was available as a public beta. In August 2016 the app has reached 100,000 installs. The app features InstaPay, a payment system which guarantees payment to approved truckers within 48 hours.

According to CEO Ivan Tsybaev, the popularity of Trucker Path and other trucking applications correlates with the smartphone adoption rate in the industry. He believes that the primary effect of these apps will be replacing dispatchers for owner-operator drivers.

Trucker Path application

The main Trucker Path app for iOS and Android provides truck drivers with various information, e.g. parking availability, locations of truck stops, weigh stations, and truck wash facilities. In March 2016 Trucker Path received an update that added Fuel View, a feature that allows drivers to see and compare fuel prices on the map.

Of the 6,000+ truck stops listed in the Trucker Path database, 3,277 were independently run. The data on those stops was gathered based on user-generated input and ratings. Collected from over 450,000 active users, that information allows truckers to plan their parking in advance and spend less time searching for available spots, which is an increasingly important safety issue in the industry, according to the study by Federal Highway Administration.

As of August 2016, the app is shown to have between 500,000 and 1M downloads while its two closest competitors, All Stays and Trucker Tools, have between 100,000 and 500,000 registered downloads on Google Play Store. Based on the input from more than 25,000 users, the app received a 4.7-star rating on Android.

Truckloads application

Launched in July 2015, Truckloads enables its users to quickly tap into available trucking capacity across all North American markets.The platform includes a mobile app for truckers that helps them find available loads and a web-based panel for freight brokers which they use to see nearby trucking capacity and post loads for moving.

After a period of beta testing, Truckloads has so far been downloaded more than 100,000 times and has shown an average 15% monthly growth. As of summer 2016, more than 1,000,000 loads are posted on the platform every month. Truckloads offers freight companies access to more than 190,000 owner operators who have installed and enabled the Trucker Path app.

References

  1. ↑ "Trucker Path Announces Wider Availability for its New Truckloads App". Layover.com. July 2, 2015. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
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