Onward Delivery

Onward Delivery operates a final-mile freight marketplace for "big and bulky" goods such as furniture and large appliances. Shippers, retailers and brokers post orders to Onward's load board, where shipments are instantly priced and smart-matched to box trucks already traveling in the same direction, filling otherwise empty cargo space. The platform digitizes documents and processes across the final-mile journey and includes auto-scheduling, real-time tracking, routing and delivery planning, customer management and automated billing features.

The company sells to two sides of the market. Brokers and retailers use Onward to offload difficult, long-distance or seasonal-peak deliveries and to expand geographic reach without standing up their own delivery departments; carriers use the marketplace to claim or bid on FTL and LTL orders that fit their existing routes, offload low-margin orders and configure matching preferences. Onward also offers a dispatching software product, supplemental on-demand delivery teams drawn from a nationwide network of furniture carriers, and full-service delivery and warehousing management.

At the time of its December 2021 seed announcement, Onward served roughly 70-75 retail stores, with named partners including Slumberland Furniture, Bassett Furniture, Woodley's Fine Furniture, Element Home and The Tile Shop. Company materials later cite more than 1,000 final-mile carriers nationwide, hundreds of live integrations and over 30,000 orders delivered.

Founding story

According to the company's seed announcement, Onward Delivery was founded in 2020 by industry professionals who encountered the inefficiencies of freight brokerage firsthand. CEO Grafton Elliott said the idea followed his experience procuring box trucks for retailers in leadership roles at his prior company, CDS Logistics Management, where a lack of shipment density limited routing efficiency and brokers' direct partnerships with individual carriers created fragmentation. He described observing two separate box trucks dispatched to the same area for a large home improvement retailer when a single truck could have carried both shipments.

Business model

Onward operates a two-sided marketplace connecting shippers, retailers and brokers with box-truck carriers, taking orders onto a load board and matching them with carriers that have spare capacity. Alongside the marketplace it offers dispatching software, supplemental delivery teams and full-service delivery and warehousing operations.

Published pricing includes dispatching software at $200 per month when used standalone (offered free of charge when bundled with other services), supplemental delivery team pricing of roughly $120-$135 per white glove delivery and $90-$105 per drop-off delivery, plus industry-standard accessorial fees and a fluctuating fuel surcharge based on DOE standards. Full service and warehousing is quoted per engagement. Pricing depends on route time, order size, volume and delivery density, delivery complexity and local cost of living.

Traction

In December 2021 Onward reported partnerships with roughly 70-75 retail stores and named retail partners including Slumberland Furniture, Bassett Furniture, Woodley's Fine Furniture, Element Home and The Tile Shop, with a team of about 10 and plans to add roughly 20 employees. Later company materials cite more than 1,000 final-mile carriers nationwide, hundreds of live integrations, over 30,000 orders delivered, a 4.8 driver rating, a 0.2% incident rate and 94% on-time performance.

Latest developments

Current company materials present Onward as a broker- and forwarder-focused white glove and big-and-bulky delivery network with more than 1,000 final mile carriers nationwide and hundreds of live integrations, plus productized offerings spanning dispatching software, supplemental delivery teams, and full-service delivery and warehousing.