Volvo Group Venture Capital AB has announced an investment in U.S.-based trucking company aifleet, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) technology to address inefficiencies in the trucking industry, particularly in truck utilization and driver satisfaction.

Founded in 2020, aifleet operates in the full-truckload segment of the U.S. trucking industry. According to aifleet, its fleet achieves 40% higher driver utilization than the industry average by leveraging the company’s AI technology that boosts truck efficiency by optimizing route planning and scheduling, reducing empty miles, and automating processes.

“aifleet is addressing inefficiencies in the trucking industry in a differentiated manner, building technology and proving out its capabilities through their own fleet operations,” said Joe Darcy, investor at Volvo Group Venture Capital, in a news release. “Not only are they increasing the utilization of the trucks on the road but also making sure drivers have an optimized working environment.”

The U.S. full-truckload market size is $400 billion, but it’s a massively inefficient and fragmented market with half a million carriers, where even the biggest has less than 1% of the market. As truck utilization has trended downward since 2018, aifleet has developed technology to mitigate the utilization problem to radically improve trucking efficiencies, while bringing real humanity back to the driver experience, said Marc El Khoury, co-founder and chief executive officer of aifleet, in a release.

“The Volvo Group is committed to driving innovation and more sustainable transportation solutions, and it’s clear that aifleet, leveraging their unique technology, shares our ambition,” added Stephen Roy, chairman of Volvo Group North America and president of Mack Trucks.

Additional funding secured

In addition to Volvo’s investment, aifleet recently secured $16.6 million in Series B funding, led by Heron Rock’s Tom Williams, with participation from Volvo Group Venture Capital and other investors. The company’s total funding now nears $50 million.

With the new capital, aifleet says it will fuel its technology research and development, grow its operations team to support the fleet at scale, grow its sales organization, and further develop scalable infrastructure and processes. 

For customers whose freight they ship, aifleet offers efficiency with better service, which includes more visibility into where loads are at any given time, more capacity so customers don’t need to rely on multiple carriers, and AI that automatically responds to any customer inquiries.