Transportation

Truck-Sharing Company Fluid Truck Raises $63 Million From Investors


A year into the Covid-19 pandemic a major investment announced Tuesday is further evidence of the continuing strong demand for vehicles to ship and deliver goods. That evidence comes in the form of $63 million in Series A funding for peer-to-peer truck sharing platform company Fluid Truck.

The funding was led by Bison Capital, with participation by Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, Fluid Vehicle Owners and Ingka Investments, part of the Ingka Group which operated 378 IKEA furniture stores in 31 countries.

Based in Denver, Colo., Fluid Truck provides businesses the ability to rent from its fleet of trucks, vans and SUVs. Late last year the company added 600 Lightning Electric vehicles to its fleet consisting of electrified Ford E-450 Class 4 trucks and Lightning Electric HINO 268 Class 6 trucks. 

Online via Fluid Truck’s website and its mobile app, businesses that can range from local shops to freelance movers to mainly medium sized businesses, are able to rent as many vehicles as they need and manage their fleets and drivers 24/7. 

In an interview with Forbes.com, Fluid Truck CEO James Eberhard said investors are showing confidence in his company because its business model provides so much flexibility and cost savings for small to medium businesses.

“We’ve really found something that’s pretty compelling to businesses where they can take this approach of, really, more of fleet as a service versus them buying, maintaining, managing vehicles,” Eberhard said. “We’ve been growing at a pretty dramatic rate. We’ve grown over 100x in the last two years from a revenue standpoint.” 

 Andreas Hildebrand, Partner at lead investor Bison Capital, and Fluid Truck board member explained his company’s confidence in Fluid Truck declaring in a statement, “Easy and affordable mobility is critical for the success of small and medium-sized businesses, yet the prehistoric tools and models of traditional incumbents often make vehicle rental cumbersome. Fluid Truck’s easy-to-use app allows business owners to flexibly and affordably build their fleet, manage employee scheduling on-the-go. They’ve demonstrated their ability to successfully scale, and we’re thrilled to partner with the team as they grow and provide individuals and businesses with 24/7 mobile access to a wide array of trucks and vans.”

Fluid Truck’s addition of those 600 Lightning Electric Vehicles was a plus for participating investor, Ingka Investments.

”We are delighted with this investment in Fluid Truck as this partnership is closely aligned with our zero emission customer delivery ambitions,” said Krister Mattsson, Managing Director of Ingka Investments in a statement. “Fluid Truck has an increasingly electrified delivery fleet across the U.S so this is another step in enabling IKEA Retail to provide last mile delivery services to our customers, continue to improve on our customer promise, while also reducing our environmental footprint.” 

Eberhard agrees the Covid-19 pandemic has added increased importance to the fleet management services companies like his provide as the number of shipments and deliveries has increased due to health-related restrictions.

“They were already moving in that direction,” he pointed out. “Covid is just another accelerator of an already existing trend. A lot of traditional retailing has changed.” 

Fluid Truck currently operates in California, Colorado, Florida,Georgia, Texas and Washington State, having expanded into nine new markets last year while reporting a 600% increase in revenue. Eberhard says the company plans to continue to build out what he termed a “national footprint” in the U.S. this year plus enter into several international markets.



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