Truckstop.com buys freight bill financing firm

Load board service operator Truckstop.com said today that it has acquired the freight bill financing firm D&S Factors LLC, in a move to expand the range of payment services it offers to truck drivers and other transportation industry businesses, the company said.

Fruitland, Idaho-based D&S Factors provides factoring services to the trucking industry, handling a business's freight bill invoicing and collections in exchange for a five percent fee. In return, D&S Factors' clients collect their payments within days instead of weeks, the firm says.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Also today, New Plymouth, Idaho-based Truckstop.com said it has hired financial service and software executive Roy Banks to serve as president of D&S Factors and of LoadPay, a Truckstop.com division that offers payment services for carriers and brokers.

Banks, who has been serving on the Truckstop.com board, was most recently CEO of Network Merchants LLC (NMI), a Roselle, Ill.-based provider of payment-enablement technologies for value added resellers (VARs) and independent software vendors (ISVs). He previously was president of Authorize.Net, and CEO of Accelerated Payment Technologies.

Diana Luoma, who had been president and CEO of D&S Factors, will join Truckstop.com and serve as a consultant to Roy, Brené Hutto, chief relationship officer at Truckstop.com, said in an email.

By running both D&S Factors and LoadPay, Banks will be charged with finding ways to increase efficiencies and reduce costs for each stakeholder in the transportation industry, Truckstop.com CEO Paris Cole said in a statement.

News of the deal follows Truckstop.com's announcement in July that it had acquired Grizella LLC, a provider of software for the freight transportation industry. The company also said in March that it had integrated its payment platform software with MercuryGate International Inc.'s transportation management system (TMS).