Mudflap: Transforming Trucking Payments
9Yards is excited to announce that we are co-leading Mudflap’s Series B alongside QED with participation from investors including Commerce Ventures, Matrix Partners, Corazon Capital and Vertical Venture Partners.
The $800B trucking industry is one of the largest and most fragmented industries in the US. There are ~1.2 million for-hire trucking companies, 97% of which operate 20 trucks or less. While enterprise trucking fleets are able to use their size to negotiate deep discounts on spend such as fuel, repairs, and other services, SMB fleets have no purchasing power and are forced to pay significantly more. As a result, the vast majority of trucking companies operate at razor thin profit margins. SMB fleets represent the largest market opportunity, but there has never been a way to efficiently aggregate and provide collective benefits and services to this segment.
Enter Mudflap. Mudflap’s mobile-first application is used by tens-of-thousands of truck drivers to discover best available rates on fuel and soon to be repairs and maintenance, parking, lodging as well as other discretionary spend. By efficiently aggregating the fragmented SMB trucking segment, Mudflap is able to obtain enterprise-level volume discounts on behalf of its truck drivers. Similarly, Mudflap partners with truck stops, providing them with an unprecedented amount of incremental traffic as well as customer insights.
Strong and Accelerating Network Effects
As both sides of Mudflap’s virtual network grow larger, both truck drivers and truck stops exponentially benefit, resulting in a viral growth engine. The more truck drivers that purchase fuel with Mudflap, the greater leverage Mudflap has to negotiate discounts which subsequently attracts more drivers to the network. The more drivers that join Mudflap’s network, the stronger the value prop becomes for truck stops to access Mudflap’s driver volume. This flywheel is very difficult to replicate — it would take significant time, capital, and execution to aggregate an equivalent number of truck drivers and truck stops in order to compete with Mudflap’s existing footprint.
Building the Modern Payments Platform for the Transportation Industry
Mudflap has a highly effective wedge into one of the largest and most economically relevant industries globally. Today, 1 -20 truck carriers make $200B+ of payments across fuel, repairs, parking, lodging, and insurance. The majority of these payments are processed through archaic means. Fleetcor and WEX currently dominate the trucking payments space, with a combined market capitalization of $20B+. These legacy payment platforms disproportionally benefit the enterprise segment and are widely despised by customers for their predatory fees and poor user experience.
Mudflap is building a modern, end-to-end payment platform. While a more costly and time-consuming upfront lift, it is critical for the Next-Gen fleet payment solution to be mobile-first and closed-loop: payments are made by drivers and received by merchants within a single payment infrastructure. Direct integrations with truck stops enable Mudflap to truly offer the cheapest discounts while also becoming a deeply rooted infrastructure layer. Mudflap is also the first mobile application at scale that enables truck drivers to engage, discover, and transact — resulting in a better, cheaper, faster experience that driver love.
Mudflap is Just Getting Started
Mudflap has become one of the most efficient and fastest growing businesses at the intersection of supply chain and fintech, emerging as a category leader — and fuel payments is only the starting point. Mudflap’s vision is to democratize access to additional financial products and services and become the trusted platform for its underserved customers.
9Yards is excited to partner with Mudflap as they continue to level the playing field for truck drivers and truck stops while at the same time reshaping the way our supply chain transacts.
