Hodgepodge of thousands of independent trucking companies and thousands of small to large enterprises, all painstakingly coordinating over decades-old technology.

While this understandably looks like a mess to most, Roolin and Robbi saw it as an opportunity. They’re the co-founders of Logisly, a managed trucking platform aiming to bring trust, reliability and efficiency to the Indonesian trucking industry. Today, we’re pleased to welcome them to the MHV family.

We’ve been tracking Roolin and Robbi’s progress from the very beginning, and have been impressed by their execution. Only a year-and-a-half into their journey, the business is doing fantastic, with gross margins in the double digit range and contribution margins already positive. The team has admirably walked the tightrope of growing their shipper and transporter networks and revenues while also ensuring SLAs (service-level agreements) are met. They’re also admirably avoiding the landmine to which others often succumb: overhiring to make up for low tech adoption or loss-making contracts for the sake of higher topline numbers. Now they’re ready to scale and that’s where MHV comes in.

Of course, the hard work is just the beginning. While they’ve made great strides, all the digital trucking players in Indonesia combined represent less than 1% of its trucking sector, so there is much more to do. The ecosystem is fragmented; there’s zero transparency; service is unreliable and trucks are coming back from their hauls empty-handed — all because of a very inefficient marketplace. And if the problem is not solved soon, it will hamper the country’s double-digit e-commerce and consumption growth, which is being fueled by a rapidly growing middle class.

So what’s Logisly’s solution? A lot of tech backed by a lean and obsessively efficient operations center. Tech for shippers to easily submit orders and quickly get matched with the right truckers. Tech to make sure as many backhauls (cargo carried on return journeys) get filled as possible, putting more money into the hands of truckers. Tech for truckers to manage their fleets and proactively deal with problems ensuring their trucks are on the road, not sitting idle. Tech to flag and remove bad actors from the ecosystem. All of this is overseen within a war-room like operations center - from request to delivery to collections.

But this is just the beginning.

There’s plenty more to do — from gamification and incentivization for truck drivers, so they’ll embrace the tech, to efficiently addressing the long-tail SMEs shippers, to solving the credit issues plaguing the industry. Plans are drawn and there’s no time to waste, so let’s get this show on the road!

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