Logistics Startup of the Month: project44


Every month we select one logistics startup which represents a positive example of innovation in Logistics and Supply Chain and has the potential to alter the way the industry operates. This July, Transmetrics selected project44, the world’s leading advanced visibility platform for shippers and logistics service providers, as the “Logistics Startup of the Month” for its outstanding achievements in the development of advanced visibility for logistics.

In order to learn more about the startup and what it does, we have talked with Mike Reed, Chief Strategy Officer at project44, about how project44 connects, automates and provides advanced visibility for all transportation modes and shipping types.

First of all, congratulations on becoming the Logistics Startup of the Month! Can you please briefly introduce our readers to project44? 

Thanks, we’re honored to be recognized by Transmetrics.  

project44 (p44) is the world’s leading advanced visibility platform for shippers and logistics service providers. We connect, automate, and provide visibility into key transportation processes to accelerate insights and shorten the time it takes to turn those insights into actions. p44 supports all transportation modes and shipping types, including parcel, final-mile, less-than-truckload, volume less-than-truckload, truckload, rail, intermodal, and ocean.  

Leveraging the power of the p44 platform, our customers can increase operational efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve shipping performance. 

How does your visibility platform for shippers and third-party logistics stand out from the competition?

What’s unique about project44 is that we offer the largest network which significantly improves our customers’ time to value and overall ROI of their visibility investment. This includes access to more than 8.5 million vehicles worldwide. With a data-first approach to visibility, we cleanse, normalize and enrich all data to ensure our customers have access to the most accurate ETAs possible. Additionally, we are the only GDPR compliant visibility platform on the market, meeting the highest standards of data privacy. Because of this, we are the most trusted visibility provider by European over-the-road carriers.

Picture Credit: project44

One of the remarkable advantages of your platform is your integrations with other solutions. Can you please share how do they work and what benefits they are bringing for your clients?

With more than 57 integrations and partnerships including Oracle, SAP, and JDA, project44 helps eliminate data silos and create a seamless and efficient visibility process. After collecting and normalizing the data, project44 integrates into a TMS or ERP system, allowing organizations to have access to high-fidelity data within the same system they already use to manage transportation logistics. By building integrations with TMS and technology partners, we can reduce real-time visibility gaps and power our customers’ systems with high-quality data. 

What is the meaning behind your unique name – project44?

US Highway 66, constructed in 1926 and covering a total of 2,448 miles from Illinois to California, is one of the most famous roads in America. As transportation evolved, engineers sought out more direct routes between cities and towns, and in 1953, the first major bypass of US 66 was constructed. It was called Highway 44. Sixty-one years later, project44 was born with a vision of a truly digitized and automated transportation value chain. As an innovative company responding to the changing needs of the industry, it was only fitting that we got our name and inspiration from Highway 44.

What kind of challenges and opportunities arise with having a business on both sides of the Atlantic ocean?

To create a comprehensive global transportation visibility platform, we acquired GateHouse Logistics—a visibility leader based in Denmark—in 2018. This has allowed us to grow a business that can deliver visibility globally while still providing the local knowledge needed to understand our customers’ challenges and needs.

By combining our networks, we now have the largest carrier network in North America and Europe, including more than 600 global telematics/ELD device integrations, allowing customers to achieve end-to-end visibility across all modes and geographies. Additionally, our Network Management Center, an automated carrier onboarding application that’s available in six languages, rapidly connects North American and European truckload providers to the Advanced Visibility Platform. This makes it easier for customers to overcome the fragmented market and start tracking their shipments faster.

Could you please share any recent client’s success stories? How did project44 help in particular?

Magna, a leading global automotive supplier, is a great example of how customers are using project44 to tackle complex supply chain challenges. They used p44 to introduce a more efficient Long Distance Just-in-Sequence (LD-JIS) logistics program for their Smart Factory, which has become a blueprint for the automotive industry.  

With project44, Magna’s dispatchers and controllers have real-time visibility of all JIS suppliers and can monitor planned routes and deviations, allowing them to ensure loads in the supply chain will arrive on the right vehicle, in sequence, and on time. project44 has helped them automate data flows to eliminate costly errors from human intervention and increase on-time delivery by 40 percent. 

How project44 makes the world run faster, one global network at a time

In your opinion, in addition to the complete visibility, what are the other technological trends that can improve the logistics operations in the next 5 years?

As organizations begin to master visibility and leverage predictive analytics as a standard practice, they can stitch together modes and geographies to achieve end-to-end supply chain visibility. With this insight, they can investigate the quality data they have acquired, identify patterns, and reevaluate operational inefficiencies. This level of business intelligence will allow organizations to implement more efficient and cost-effective practices.  

Technology is heading in the direction of offering these types of analytics capabilities, and it will only increase over the next few years as more businesses incorporate advanced visibility into their supply chain strategy.  

Being a very successful young company, what kind of advice can you give to the other logistics startups and founders?

At project44, our values are the core of everything we do, which has contributed to our success and growth. One of our values is to obsess over our customers, meaning our customers’ success is our top priority. By focusing on our customers’ challenges and pain points, we have built a product and offering that not only solves their visibility obstacles but also adds value to their business. In such a customer-centric market, it’s impossible to succeed without understanding your customers’ current and future challenges, providing them with more value, and listening to what they have to say.  

What major developments should we expect from project44 in 2019-2020?

Over the next couple of years, we will continue to strengthen the Advanced Visibility platform to provide the high-fidelity data and capabilities needed for organizations to make informed business decisions. We’re focused on growing our network of carriers across all geographies, expanding functionality that allows organizations to run prescriptive analytics, and creating more transparency and collaboration in the transportation process.

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