Black-owned trucking company now worth $850M after raising $115M to help truck drivers excel

CloudTrucks, a Black-owned trucking company, has raised $115 million in series B funding, totaling its valuation to $850 million. The round was led by Tiger Global with participation from Menlo Ventures, including investment from Flexport and angel investors Michael Ovitz and Opendoor CEO Eric Wu.

The investment will enable CloudTrucks to accelerate its expansion as it helps small trucking businesses and entrepreneurs streamline administrative bottlenecks and keep more revenue, according to Business Wire.

“Nearly every sector of the economy relies on drivers to transport its goods and we are eager to use this latest round of funding to continue optimizing the trucking business—especially as our country needs new truck drivers more than ever,” said Tobenna Arodiogbu, co-founder and CEO, CloudTrucks.

“We’ve seen the number of loads completed on our platform grow 8x since last year, and we recognize the importance of providing a complete business-in-a-box solution for drivers to make the most of every run.”

“CloudTrucks has always seen the trucking industry as the backbone of America and has made it its mission to create world-class tools and services that empower truck drivers to make a greater profit with fewer headaches,” said John Curtius, Partner, Tiger Global Management.

Curtius said Tiger Global is excited to see the company continue to transform some of the industry’s broken practices like antiquated payment services and processes.

CloudTrucks essentially combines data and tooling to take the headaches out of running a trucking business. The California-based company was launched in May 2020 and caters to the 3.4 million small or single-person businesses run by independent truckers, as stated by Shoppe Black. The company was co-founded by Arodiogbu, Jin Shieh and George Ezenna in 2019. It raised its $20.5 million Series A in December 2020.

In the last year, CloudTrucks has introduced new innovative products to deal with challenges in the trucking industry: CT Cash, Flex, and Business Intelligence.

“CT Cash is designed for drivers who are looking to get paid faster and alleviate cash-flow constraints, providing instant pay and cash card options in addition to receiving cash advances. Similar to Virtual Carrier, CloudTrucks’ existing product for independent owner-operators, the new Flex product line is designed exclusively for small trucking businesses and those drivers who are not looking to drive under CloudTrucks’ authority,” a statement by the company said.

“Additionally, CloudTrucks’ Business Intelligence dashboard provides a comprehensive breakdown of a driver’s performance, personal expenses and revenue for drivers to better determine how they can yield the most profit,” the statement added.