SmartHop

SmartHop is a Miami-based software company serving trucking carriers, owner-operators and independent dispatchers. Its platform combines load booking with trip and back-office management: it aggregates loads from DAT and directly from brokers into a single load board, generates load recommendations using market intelligence and rate comparison, supports bidding and automated booking, and can run background searches for freight around the clock. The company describes the product as helping users navigate the spot market, plan more profitable routes and reduce deadhead miles.

Beyond booking, the platform handles day-to-day operations for small fleets: driver and broker communications, automated trip and broker status updates, document scanning and storage, GPS tracking, truck calendars, rate confirmation transcription, invoice creation, expense tracking and payroll generation. Market analysis features provide daily insights and heatmaps of active lanes, while performance reporting and forecasting tools let operators set goals and track fleet and team performance. The platform supports full truckload freight across 53-foot dry vans, reefers, flatbed and power-only equipment, regional and over-the-road lanes, fleets with solo and team drivers, and dispatchers managing multiple MC numbers.

At the time of its 2021 Series A, SmartHop was described as an AI-powered "business-in-a-box" that let owner-operators compete with larger carriers by lowering operating costs and opening access to broker networks, including discounted fuel, faster access to capital at rates 1–2% below market, insurance costs roughly 13% below retail, and Ryder lease terms said to cut total cost of ownership by 18%. Planned extensions included invoice factoring underwritten with the company's own booking data.

Founding story

Co-founder and CEO Guillermo Garcia began as a pet food delivery driver while in college in Caracas, Venezuela, using his parents' garage as his first distribution center, and grew the operation into a roughly 500-person trucking company. After immigrating to the United States and attending Columbia Business School, he started an LTL trucking company in Miami that grew into a full-truckload over-the-road carrier with more than 40 trucks, experiencing firsthand the unpredictability of the spot market and the administrative burden of running a fleet. He partnered with Miguel Sucre, a computer scientist who had built part of the systems used by Garcia's carrier, and the two launched SmartHop in 2018.

Business model

SmartHop sells a self-service software platform to trucking carriers, owner-operators and independent dispatchers. As of 2021 the company charged a transaction fee of 3% of gross sale on booked loads, an arrangement management described as aligning its revenue with customer earnings since no fee applies on days a truck is not running. The site as of 2024 lists tiered monthly subscriptions — Starter at $50/month, Basic at $150/month, Growth at $300/month and Premium at $1,250/month, with discounts for quarterly billing — differentiated by number of supported MCs, booking automation (bid and book-now, 24/7 background search, auto-book and dedicated lanes), back-office automation and, at the Premium tier, dedicated dispatching and lane management plus an account manager. The company has also pursued adjacent revenue from embedded financial products, including discounted fuel, insurance and invoice factoring.

Transaction fee of 3% of gross sale on loads booked through the platform (as described in 2021), alongside tiered monthly or quarterly SaaS subscriptions ranging from $50 to $1,250 per month, with implementation fees and paid add-on MCs for some plans; additional planned revenue from embedded financial services such as invoice factoring, fuel and insurance programs.

Traction

At the February 2021 Series A the company reported 50 full-time employees, roughly 100 trucks using the product, more than 6,000 loads booked in under a year, and average gross revenue of $10,000–$15,000 per truck per month. Ryder, which operates 275,000 trucks, tested the product before investing.

Latest developments

As of its 2024 website, SmartHop markets a unified fleet and dispatch management platform with four published subscription tiers, multi-MC support, broker and DAT load integration, automated bidding, market forecasting, GPS tracking, automated invoicing and payroll, and a Premium tier that includes dedicated dispatching and lane management services.