$40 million Series B funding round propels Dray Alliance to transform port technology in US

Dray Alliance, a venture-backed startup headquartered in near the Port of Long Beach that is focused on building a container trucking platform to deliver shipping containers from ports to warehouses more efficiently, has completed a $40M Series B round led by global venture capital group Headline.

Headquartered near the Port of Long Beach, Dray Alliance has developed a software platform that provides complete container management, including automated status notifications, real-time GPS tracking and document management and analytics for every container. The platform also provides a marketplace that seamlessly connects shippers to the Dray Alliance network of vetted truckers, enabling capacity that adjusts based on supply chain needs.

“The bottleneck and logjam at the ports is due to truckers, port terminals and other stakeholders coordinating inadequately with analog systems and emails. Tens of thousands of containers are shipped to the ports every day, and port drayage is a $50 Billion market in the US,” said Steve Wen, Co-Founder and CEO of Dray Alliance. “However, more than 90% of logistics companies are manually coordinating trucks and emailing spreadsheets to customers as updates.”

“We believe that the entire container shipping process should be data driven and digital. Drayage is the last-mile delivery of shipping containers and one of the most painful processes for our customers,” continued Wen. “Our vision is to build the most predictable, connected, and efficient container digital shipping infrastructure.”
The round includes $20M equity financing from Headline, Craft Ventures, Harpoon Ventures, Matrix Partners and Quiet Capital, with an additional $20M working capital financing from J.P. Morgan. Dray Alliance’s digital platform leverages data, automation and a mobile app for truckers to deliver shipping containers more efficiently for some of the largest brands in the country.

“Steve and the Dray Alliance team have built a platform with significant potential to increase efficiency at the ports and solve common logistics problems,” explained King Goh, Principal at Headline. “Supply chains will continue to face challenges, and port logistics companies need to innovate to stay ahead of the curve. I look forward to seeing how Dray Alliance continues to address these challenges and support more agile, scalable supply chain infrastructure.”

Dray Alliance Co-Founder and CEO Steve Wen grew up working within his parents’ importing company and later started his own trucking company to learn about the pain points of port logistics. In just a few years, he has grown Dray Alliance to be one of the fastest growing port logistics startups in the world and was nominated to be the cover for the Enterprise Technology section of Forbes “30 Under 30” 2022.