Boston, Massachusetts, USA
January 30, 2019
Indigo Agriculture, a company dedicated to harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet, announces the launch of Indigo Transport. The $7.5B agriculture transportation market represents the third largest sector within the US transport industry. It moves 800M tons of products annually yet remains inefficient and costly for stakeholders throughout the supply chain. Shippers of agricultural products – including growers, food processors, grain elevators, etc. – are faced with a time-intensive and often unreliable sourcing process. Inconsistent demand and limited price transparency reduce carrier profitability. In addition, absence of digitized load-matching leads to unsustainable greenhouse gas emissions. Indigo Transport solves these inefficiencies by implementing technology to connect shippers, buyers, and carriers for an optimized transportation network.
Indigo Transport manages the pick-up, transportation, and delivery of grain between shipper and buyer. By offering a network of independent carriers for transporting grain around the country, the platform enables growers to accept the best bid for their crop. Since the launch of the program in October, over three thousand trucks have been enrolled.
Indigo Marketplace, a digital e-commerce platform that connects growers and buyers for the streamlined sale of grain, integrates Indigo Transport as the preferred logistics provider. Through this integration, growers can accept the highest value bids, even those beyond their local markets. More than $10B worth of grain inventory has been submitted to Marketplace since its launch in June of 2018 – all of which can be hauled through Indigo Transport.
“The number one benefit working with Indigo is the people – their follow through has been excellent,” said John Tibbits, a grower based out of Minneapolis, Kansas. “It’s been an eye-opening experience that I’m able to produce grain that processors actually want, and that those processors are willing to pay a premium for it. The delivery service is excellent in this regard, giving me an opportunity to meet the processor deadline. With Indigo Transport, I don’t feel like we need to worry about stopping the rest of the farm to deliver the grain to a processor.”
In addition to having access to a wide and growing network of carriers, growers that are commercially licensed can enroll their trucks in Indigo Transport, operating as carriers. Trucks are an underutilized and expensive on-farm asset. Enrolling these assets in Indigo Transport activates a new revenue stream for growers.
“Consistency is the biggest issue today for agricultural transport – we need steady work,” said Frank Williams of Spain to Maine Hauling. “I like how Indigo handles the business for us. When they find something in the area, I get the whole contract at once. With other companies, there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through to get the ball rolling. I didn’t have to go through all that with Indigo – the account manager did exactly what he said he was going to do.”
“Every bushel of grain produced today moves by truck at least once before arriving at its destination,” said David Perry, Indigo’s CEO. “This means grain transportation is crucial to the success of our food system. But inefficiencies in the overall process – including communication, reliability, and availability – are bad for growers, grain buyers, and the environment. Indigo Transport eliminates those inefficiencies by streamlining grain transport and creating a system that is transparent to not only growers and buyers, but ultimately to consumers.”
Through a mobile app available on iOS and Android operating systems, carriers enrolled in Indigo Transport can identify and select loads that best fit their operation. Indigo matches loads to carrier preferences, manages payment, and provides live support. Shippers on this platform have access to a localized network of carriers for the haul of their agricultural products. Indigo Transport is federally licensed with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA) of the US Department of Transportation.
To learn more about Indigo Transport, click here.
Why we launched Indigo Transport
The automotive industry boomed in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. This paired with the development of an interstate highway system led to a new method for the transport of agricultural products: trucking. Hauling grain by truck became a potentially cheaper and more efficient alternative to trains and steamships, depending on the distances involved.
Access was the critical value-add. Stations and ports are few and far between; but as the twenty-first century approached, every municipality in the country was close enough to a highway exit. Trucks began to pick up grain directly from, or close to a farmer’s field. Pick-ups, as well as deliveries, could be arranged to meet the needs of carriers moving the crops and growers offloading it. Consumers and buyers had more reliable and rapid access to goods grown hundreds of miles away, fostering even more demand. The automotive age paved right over existing boundaries.
Today, every bushel of grain moves by truck at least once before reaching its destination – many bushels move two or three times. The domestic industry is worth more than $7.5B and moves more than 800M tons of agricultural products. Despite our continued reliance on trucking, and dramatic improvements in the trucks themselves, we have not significantly improved the industry’s overall efficiency. Whereas digital technologies have changed how we travel (e.g. Uber, Lyft), rent cars (e.g. Turo), and even how carriers choose to freight (e.g. Uber Freight, Convoy), transportation in agriculture has not yet advanced. This inefficiency costs growers, buyers, and ultimately consumers. Questions around who can move grain, and when, inhibits a farmer’s ability to sell to the right buyer. Advancements in technology should not only streamline the supply chain but enable one that is transparent and profitable for all of its stakeholders, especially farmers.
Agricultural trucking currently happens two different ways: either farmers deliver grain themselves with their own trucks, or they contract commercial trucking companies for pick-up and transport. Farmers who own their own trucks do so primarily for flexibility – to always have a vehicle on standby after harvest. The downside is that these expensive assets remain unused for the majority of the year. For those farmers looking to maximize value around their trucks, creating an enterprise is a time-intensive process that will be limited in scope unless given full attention. Contracting with commercial trucking companies, meanwhile, does not come with guarantees, whether around availability or reliability. This is not to mention inefficiencies in coordinating or following logistics from pickup to delivery, whether within your own operation or when outsourced to another company. Carrier cancellation or delivery issues fall on the grower to remedy, a burdensome process when already contracted with a buyer for a specific delivery date.
This is why we launched Indigo Transport™ – to give farmers who have their own trucks a way to maximize their value, and a way for farmers without trucks to find reliable carriers for their loads. Growers, with the right licensure, can register their trucks in the program to begin not only hauling their neighbors’ grain, but any that fits their specifications or needs. Our platform matches carriers to growers (or, growers to growers) on a real-time basis to support the rapid movement of crops to the buyer. Delivery can be planned months in advance, or at a moment’s notice, to any buyer. This enables farmers to make a higher margin on their grain, sell to a buyer further away who’s willing to pay for specific attributes of the crop, as well as receive dedicated, live logistic support from the Transport team at Indigo. The benefits of the program also extend to carriers, with the chance to access an expanding inventory of grain within Indigo Marketplace™. Any other company looking to ship products can also access Indigo’s dedicated network of carriers.
Indigo Transport optimizes the industry that changed how agricultural goods moved from the grower to the buyer nearly 70 years ago. Technology can now connect the bookends of the supply chain, preserving the value of a farmers’ crop as it moves from grower to buyer, and ultimately from buyer to consumer. This, coupled with our other technology platforms – specifically the use of satellites to track macro patterns in transportation logistics – promises further streamlining of the supply chain as we continue advancing our model.
The original idea behind Indigo Transport was a personal, responsive, and reliable platform that supports our commitment to grower profitability and responds to consumer demand for traceability. I believe the platform we are announcing today does that – offers a viable solution for one of the biggest challenges in ag today.
ABOUT INDIGO
Indigo improves grower profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health through the use of natural microbiology and digital technologies. Utilizing beneficial plant microbes and agronomic insights, Indigo works with growers to sustainably produce high quality harvests. The company then connects growers and buyers directly to bring these harvests to market. Working across the supply chain, Indigo is furthering its mission of harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet. The company is headquartered in Boston, MA, with additional offices in Memphis, TN; Research Triangle Park, NC; Sydney, Australia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and São Paulo, Brazil.
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