Convoy Hauls In $400 Million To Build Up Digital Trucking Busines

The Seattle-based company has now raised more than $660 million to expand its long-haul truck booking operations

Convoy, a Seattle-based digital freight booker backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, closed a $400 million funding round to expand use of its data platform and other services that CEO Dan Lewis says reduces wasted time, empty trailers and even tailpipe pollution for truckers.

Since its founding in 2015, Convoy has grown to handle tens of thousands of loads per week, booked using its app that matches shippers and truck operators.


Cofounder Lewis, a former Amazon executive with an extensive background in logistics, sees huge potential for boosting the efficiency of an industry that remains more reliant on Rolodexes and telephones than data science.

“One inefficiency is just finding the truck. Today truck brokerages and large carriers have pretty significant teams of people whose job is to call around and find a truck,” typically relying on a list of a hundred or so drivers they’re familiar with, Lewis, 38, tells Forbes.

 “As a trucking broker gets bigger, traditionally it doesn’t get more efficient. It just has more people doing the same thing with the same level of efficiency.”