Cargomatic expands into San Francisco

Cargomatic, a Venice Beach, Calif.-based technology company whose platform connects shippers, freight brokers, and motor carriers providing local, short-haul delivery services, said today it has expanded into the San Francisco Bay Area, which includes Oakland and San Jose.

Cargomatic, which launched in early 2014 in southern California with a concentration on the Los Angeles market, added the New York metro area, which includes New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, in August. The company focuses on linking shippers, brokers, and truckers for hauls of less than 150 miles.

Cargomatic has said local trucking markets across the U.S. are inefficient, fragmented, and underserved, and are ripe for disruption by technology platforms that effectively aggregate and rationalize capacity. The market for local trucking services is estimated at between $77 billion and $82 billion a year. Despite its size, the local trucking sector has been ignored by technology providers, who saw no potential for profit among the multitude of "mom and pop" carriers, Brett Parker, the company's president and cofounder, said in an interview.

However, Cargomatic said it efficiently connects with these independent firms through a sophisticated service that supports two-way communications, real-time tracking, schedule updates, push notification of delivery confirmation, and electronic logging of proof of delivery and bills of lading.

Unlike companies with similar aggregation models, Cargomatic works with freight brokers. The company is also a licensed broker.

Cargomatic has tentative plans to expand to cities like Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, Parker said. Future expansion will depend on shipper demand, he said.