SINGAPORE (May 11): The shipping industry was going through a downturn and shipping lines were consolidating in favour of mega vessels.
When one vessel came in, truckers would have to transport so much goods that they would even need to rope in other truckers. But when a job was finished and the truck companies were waiting for another shipment to arrive, they found themselves stuck with too many trucks.
With stiff competition, business for these truckers were made even more difficult.
In comes Haulio, a kind of Uber for truckers that allows companies to post requests on a platform to move containers from one point to another.
Haulio is founded by Alvin Ea, a fresh graduate whose family runs logistics company HUB Distributors Services.
Since the platform went up last May, Ea has convinced 150 companies to join. About 63 of them are in the haulage business.
Haulio is set to raise a seed round from multiple investors soon. Previously, PSA unboXed (the venture capital arm of PSA) and NUS Enterprise (the entrepreneurial arm of the National University of Singapore) invested in Haulio in a pre-seed funding round. The platform has also received a grant from SPRING (now part of Enterprise Singapore).
Find out more about the Haulio platform in this week’s issue of The Edge Singapore (Issue 830, week of May 11), on sale now at newsstands.
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Haulio wants to match truckers to containers, set to raise a seed round
