“We’re watching our user behavior go from a place where they used to own every vehicle they needed at a time to a place where they’re now grabbing spare capacity off Fluid.”Įberhard hopes to see that type of supplementary use morph into an end state where companies don’t own a single truck and run solely on Fluid Truck’s platform.įluid Truck argues that its tech stack, which is designed to smooth out the booking and renting process, gives it a competitive edge in a market dominated by the likes of U-Haul, Ryder and or other small depots. ![]() “You can hop on our platform, rent a truck and be in it in a matter of minutes, which really allows businesses to scale up and scale down,” said Eberhard. It’s no surprise that e-commerce is one of the industries Fluid Truck has targeted. With e-commerce expected to continue to rise at a global 9.5% compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2025, the demand for accessible trucks for hire might see correlative growth. That type of growth sounds promising, but the company did not provide a baseline, so it’s hard to judge scale. Founder and CEO James Eberhard told TechCrunch that revenue increased 100x in the last two years. The investment, its first external round, comes after rapid growth at the four-year-old company. Private equity firm Bison Capital led the round, with participation from Ingka Investments (part of Ingka Group, the main Ikea retailer), Sumitomo Corporation of Americas and Fluid Vehicle Owners. The Denver-based company said Tuesday it raised $63 million in a Series A funding round to expand its truck-sharing platform, which helps mid-mile and last-mile delivery companies remotely manage an on-demand rental fleet via web or mobile app. Now, it has the capital to help it get there. “The partnership with Cartken for autonomous robot delivery builds on Grubhub’s existing campus offering and is a seamless fit for campus environments, which are notoriously difficult for cars to navigate,” said Grubhub in a press release.Fluid Truck has built an app-based platform that aims to take away the pain and cost of owning or leasing commercial vehicles, all while grabbing market share from established companies like Penske, Ryder and U-Haul. Secondly, the robots can bump up how quickly food gets to students.įood delivery service Grubhub announced it will be entering the partnership this fall as well. First, the university wants to ease the cost of delivery. The university’s senior director of dining services said in an interview with Ohio State News that they put this plan together with two goals in mind. Now, startup Cartken is working to produce a larger fleet of rovers to make even more deliveries in the coming weeks. The autonomous delivery buggies were first tested on the campus during the Spring semester, bringing food from food providers to dorm rooms on the campus. The robots will travel around to drop off food orders with hungry students. Ohio State University students will notice robots on wheels on campus this fall. Walmart could end up purchasing up to 10,000 vans, which the company plans to have up and running by 2023. The market liked this announcement, boosting Walmart’s stocks by 50%. In mid-July, Walmart announced it’s buying at least 4,500 of Canoo’s EV delivery vans. Walmart is purchasing 4,500 Canoo EVs, and the United States Army is also interested in Canoo’s technology. ![]() We’ll keep you posted on the progress! Amazon isn’t the only big box retailer moving forward with a greener future. Amazon says the plan is to have 100,000 vans on the road by 2030, but a July 21st New York Times article also points to Rivian’s struggles with ramping up production because of semiconductor shortages. ![]() In fact, the timeline is a bit unclear as it stands right now. Getting to production of 100,000 vans won’t happen overnight. As Amazon slowly adds to its own LMD fleet of vans, it will ease off reliance on UPS and other delivery contractors. Now, some of its 100,000 EVs from Rivian are finally in gear!Īs of July 21st, hundreds of the EV vans have already hit the road, in cities like Chicago, Phoenix, Baltimore and Seattle. Amazon announced its partnership with Rivian nearly three years ago. It’s all in a goal to cut down on emissions. Amazon is officially rolling out its custom-made delivery vans, produced by Rivian.
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