Mothership

Aaron Peck and Gregg Luskin founded the business in 2017 after working together at on-demand rental-car startup Skurt, where Peck was a founder/product leader and Luskin led engineering. Initially called Bolt, the company applied an Uber-like marketplace and dispatch model to palletized freight: businesses quote and book a load digitally, Mothership matches local jobs to screened independent carriers, routes multi-stop work, tracks movement and digitizes bills of lading/proofs of delivery. It rebranded to Mothership in 2019 and expanded from local same-day box-truck delivery into nationwide less-than-truckload service through partner carriers, a transportation-management dashboard, shipper and carrier APIs, AI-assisted quoting/rebill prevention, and FreightProtect cargo protection. The company is a broker rather than an asset-owning carrier: FMCSA lists Mothership Technologies, Inc. as an active property and household-goods broker with USDOT 3029631, MC-38682 and FF-21038, zero power units, and an Austin address. Public financing evidence supports an early $5.1m seed, a $16m 2019 Series A at $64m post-money, and a $76m 2022 financing led by Benchmark, WestCap and Bow Capital with former Con-way Freight CEO Douglas Stotlar. Those disclosed rounds imply approximately $97.1m raised; several databases incorrectly call $76m the lifetime total by omitting the earlier financings. Other reported shareholders include Acrew Capital, ALT Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Elefund, Fifth Wall, Greylock, OMERS Ventures, Quiet Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Susa Ventures, Soma Capital, UpHonest Capital and angels, but public evidence does not cleanly allocate each to a round. By 2022 the company claimed 4x pandemic-era same-day last-mile revenue growth, 26 metros and customers including DoorDash, Gopuff, Harbor Freight Tools and Happy Returns. The current site markets 21 same-day metros covering 70% of the U.S. population, nationwide LTL across 50,000+ lanes, 27,001 verified carriers, 97% on-time pickups/deliveries, 0.10% damage/loss claims and 40% lower rates. These are first-party operational claims, not audited figures. The live product is clearly active in 2026: the newsroom and help center continue publishing releases, and the carrier app has 2026 updates. Commercial access is transaction based; eligible high-volume shippers receive the software without a monthly fee and pay per shipment, local same-day starts at $45, and FreightProtect starts at $0.13 per $100 of cargo value. Market risks include freight cyclicality, thin brokerage margins, dependence on third-party carrier service and insurance, cargo loss/theft, fuel/tariff volatility, classification/rebill disputes, and competition from legacy LTL carriers, brokers, 3PLs and freight marketplaces. A small Trustpilot sample was poor, but it is not sufficient to infer broad service quality and is recorded only as a monitoring signal.

Founding story

Peck and Luskin saw manual, fragmented freight operations while building Skurt's vehicle-delivery network. They reused their marketplace, mobile and dispatch experience to create Bolt in 2017 for automatic local truck matching, then renamed the business Mothership in 2019 and expanded to national LTL.

Business model

Two-sided managed freight marketplace and licensed brokerage connecting business shippers with screened local carriers and national LTL partners, supported by workflow software, APIs and cargo-protection products.

Per-shipment brokerage margin/transaction revenue, accessorial charges and optional FreightProtect coverage; software access is free for customers meeting volume requirements, with enterprise/API economics undisclosed.

Traction

Current first-party claims: 21 same-day markets covering 70% of U.S. population, nationwide service across 50,000+ lanes, 27,001 verified carriers, 97% on-time pickups/deliveries, 0.10% claims and 40% lower rates. Use-case counters include 195,000+ milk-run shipments, 25,000+ direct-injection shipments and 17,000+ curbside-home shipments. The AI assistant reportedly saved tens of thousands of shippers more than $1m in rebills/adjustments.

Latest developments

The 2026 newsroom shows continuing releases for real-time tracking, support chat, centralized address books and rebill transparency; FMCSA still lists active broker authority as of August 9, and the carrier app received multiple 2026 updates. No new disclosed financing, acquisition or exit after May 2022 was located.