A startup called Terminal has raised $3.1 million in a seed funding round to develop an API platform that aims to seamlessly integrate trucking data across various systems in the industry. Much like how fintech API provider Plaid enables banking applications, Terminal wants to unlock innovation in trucking by making vehicle data more accessible.
The Fragmented Data Landscape in Trucking
The trucking industry generates massive amounts of data across telematics systems, transportation management platforms, electronic logging devices, dash cams and other connected vehicle technologies. However, all this data lives in fragmented silos, making it extremely difficult for solution providers to access and utilize.
Companies spend upwards of 50% of their engineering resources building custom integrations with various data sources. And even after incurring massive costs, the integrations break frequently due to a lack of standardized APIs.
This severely hampers the development of innovative solutions in insurance, supply chain visibility, fleet optimization and trucking finance that could benefit greatly from harnessing rich real-time data on truck movements, driver behavior, shipment locations and more.
The Terminal Platform – A Unified API for Trucking Data
Terminal, founded by former fintech engineers Raghav Midha and Connor Giles, aims to solve this problem by providing a Unified API platform to connect and normalize data across all major telematics systems in trucking.
Inspired by the success of Plaid in banking, the founders recognize trucking is ripe for disruption through better data accessibility. By removing the barriers to easily integrating various data sources, Terminal wants to kickstart rapid innovation across the industry.
The platform starts with normalizing and connecting GPS and sensor data from electronic logging devices (ELDs), dash cams, IoT sensors and transportation management systems. With the ELD mandate requiring most commercial trucks to adopt such telematics devices, carriers now have rich data that could power better insurance rates, enhanced fleet oversight, sustainable financing and more.
But technical hurdles still prevent solution providers from harnessing this data at scale to deliver such offerings. Terminal solves this by providing ready API access to normalized data on over 150,000 trucks so far.
Unlocking Innovation in Insurance, Fleet Management and Other Services
By tackling perennial trucking data issues, Terminal is empowering next-generation solutions for improved safety, efficiency and sustainability. Its customers already include insurance providers like Trimac Transportation, who can leverage the data to provide usage-based insurance rates.
Other fleet software vendors are building vision-based AI to alert dangerous driver behaviors, predict maintenance issues, optimize routes and improve fuel efficiency using Terminal’s robust data feeds. Carriers in turn get access to such innovative offerings in exchange for sharing telematics data.
Financial services companies are also exploring new credit, lending and invoice factoring products for small trucking companies by analyzing data on shipment volumes, routes, fuel consumption and health sensor metrics.
With reliable access to data through Terminal’s platform, the possibilities are endless – ranging all the way from designing eco-friendly trucks to logistics automation.
Accelerating Platform Development
With $3.1 million in new seed funding led by Golden Ventures, Terminal plans to expand its engineering team to accelerate development. By hardening its existing partnerships and expanding use cases, Terminal aims to provide the most reliable and highest-quality data APIs in trucking.
The end vision is an open and unified data platform that removes friction for building any data-driven innovation in the trucking ecosystem – whether for enhanced safety, improved efficiency or complete autonomous logistics. Terminal wants to catalyze this future by becoming the backend data infrastructure for all next-gen trucking solutions.
By leveraging their expertise and resources, Lading Logistics aims to provide efficient and reliable international shipping and logistics solutions for their clients.
