Announcing Portex and Our $6.25M Raise to Build the Future of Intelligent Freight Logistics

Our entire globe is connected by an essential, though often invisible industry: global freight shipping. From the chair you sit on, to the screen you’re using now, every product traverses a complex, multi-trillion dollar ecosystem before it touches our hands. 

The pandemic of 2020 underscored the critical role of the freight industry, as well as the reality that much of its participants remain mired in outdated tools: email chains, spreadsheets, PDFs, and phone calls, resulting in labor-intensive workflows and suboptimal operations and costs.

Over the past decade, new software has had an enormously positive impact on much of the $4 trillion global freight market, especially the largest companies shipping goods. These companies have gained significant time and cost savings through enterprise-grade tools, known as Transport Management Systems (TMSs), that help them procure carriers, who move goods.

However, these solutions are too costly and cumbersome for small- to mid-sized shippers – ~80% of companies globally. As a result, this cohort has been stuck with software that’s either too bulky for their needs; or more often, they depend on manual, inefficient workflows that hinder their ability to optimize their operations, minimize costs, and compete.

In an industry with tight margins – and a backdrop of global economic uncertainty – every efficiency matters. We created Portex to make it possible for small- to mid-sized companies to experience the same level of cost and efficiency savings that have already been unlocked for large companies, for the first time.

My path to Portex developed over decades. I first became fascinated by supply chains growing up in Tennessee, a major logistics hub, where my grandfather was a glass manufacturing plant manager at Ford Motor Company for four decades. He gave me an appreciation for how much effort and intention goes into even a single component of a larger product, as well as the deep complexity required by companies to create a finished product like a car.  

When I moved to Silicon Valley a decade ago, I was keen to explore the intersection of logistics and technology. I first got exposed to transportation technology at Uber, and later, joined Flexport, where I sparked a deeper passion for supply chain logistics. There, I was captivated by the stories of our customers: brands and manufacturers whose innovations and perseverance keep the global economy moving. They not only excel in their respective fields, but also possess deep insights into the intricacies of global supply chains. 

It became clear to me how much these companies and brands could gain from using more powerful workflow technology that was built for their specific needs. This was the inspiration for Portex.

Since making the first prototype of Portex three years ago, I’m humbled that Portex is now a fast-growing platform that has already enabled nearly $100 million of freight transport spend. Many of our early customers are food & beverage, packaging, construction, special machinery, and steel and plastic manufacturing firms. However, the pace of our early traction is a testament to our potential to transform shipping for hundreds of thousands of companies in all categories, around the world.

Portex has made it fast and seamless for companies to connect with any of their freight partners and manage all of their shipments and operations in one place. We built Portex to support how small- to mid-sized shippers actually work: with a flexible range of multiple shipping partners, so they can thoughtfully optimize for a wide range of factors, from shipping speed and timeliness, to cost, mode, and more. 

Imagine a peanut butter brand needs to move its final product to retailers to reach customers: Portex makes it seamless for that brand to manage and optimize any element of global freight procurement in one place. 

A brand can use Portex for anything from one-off freight procurement, to end-to-end freight management: brands can organize operations across their freight providers with instant messaging, review bids and quotes to book freight, secure competitive rates, review automatic analytics and actionable insights, and manage shipments to ensure their product successfully reaches their final destination, such as retailers’ warehouses, on time. Portex makes this complete workflow streamlined through an intuitive interface and painless onboarding.

The results have been humbling and energizing. Portex has reduced the time our customers spend on freight tasks by 80%, or 25+ hours per week, freeing up teams for more strategic work. Portex has also cut customers’ freight spend costs by 30%, which can translate to millions of dollars per year. 

What’s the secret? We know that the shipping industry isn’t broken; it’s been highly effective for centuries. That’s why Portex is designed to support the way shippers actually work and enable those work flows to be more informed, streamlined, and efficient. We put our customers at the center of our product experience, approaching product development as co-builders. We obsess about their needs and experience, and communicate with them daily to understand how to improve and what to build next. This is a key reason, for example, that Portex is broker-agnostic, meaning shippers can work with as many brokers or carriers as they’d like, just like they already do manually to secure the best pricing and service for their needs. 

These feedback loops have shaped every part of the product and will continue to drive our roadmap.

A few examples of our customers’ gains: one of our earliest adopters, Modesto, Calif.-based Pacific Southwest Container, was able to reduce their transportation costs by $2 million annually by seamlessly considering more shipment options. Similarly, Boulder City, Nev.-based polymer concrete-manufacturer, Armorock, reduced their quote-request time from 5+ hours to just 30 minutes, freeing up resources for more strategic work. And take cream cheese-manufacturer Franklin Foods, who has saved 4+ hours per day and $250k in its first year using Portex.   

We’re also helping logistics teams optimize their broader operations with smart analytics. For example, with Portex, Community Coffee – the largest family-owned coffee brand in the US – cut the time they spend generating analytics reports on metrics such as ship speed, carrier performance, and cost, from a few days to a few hours. 

With this new round of funding, we’re laser-focused on building an even more powerful, intelligent feature set, powered by AI and our unique set of real-time logistics data. We’ll also invest in our go-to-market efforts to support our rapid domestic and international growth. To support this, we’ll be hiring for a number of key roles – please get in touch!

As we embark on this exciting next chapter, we’re grateful for the support of our customers and investors who share our vision for a more efficient, transparent, and competitive logistics ecosystem. Together, we’re improving the way businesses ship goods around the world, one load at a time.