Truck Lagbe

Truck Lagbe operates a digital trucking marketplace in Bangladesh that connects individual customers and corporate shippers with truck owners and drivers through a mobile app and website. Bookings cover short-haul and long-haul freight across truck sizes ranging from pickups (7 ft / 1 tonne) through medium and large trucks up to 23 ft / 25 tonne units and flatbed and low-bed trailers. Customers enter pickup and drop-off points, truck type, loading time and cargo details; registered owners then submit bids, typically within 30 minutes, and the customer selects a quote. The platform also offers full-day truck rental, up-and-down (return-route) trips, multi-stop deliveries, loading/unloading labour services, home, office and bachelor shifting, and corporate logistics packages.

The business runs two distinct models: an on-demand marketplace serving SMEs and consumers, and a brokerage operation serving larger companies on credit. Technology is used to match freight supply and demand, publish price quotations transparently, provide real-time GPS shipment tracking and raise truck utilisation, including by filling otherwise empty return legs. Separate apps are published for shippers and for owners/drivers, the latter allowing registration, trip discovery and bidding. Company materials state clients save up to 17% on transport costs, a figure the CEO attributed to bid-based competition producing fares at least 17% below traditional truck fares.

Founding story

Co-founder and CEO Anayet Rashid identified the opportunity while reviewing distribution costs in his existing FMCG business, where two shipments to Jessore a week apart cost Tk 35,000 and Tk 8,000 respectively. Investigation showed the gap arose because a truck not based in Jessore priced in an expected empty return leg, while a Jessore-based truck heading home accepted the load as incremental revenue, evidence of a broader supply-demand mismatch and unused return capacity. Rashid discussed the idea overnight with his childhood friend Mir Hossain Ekram, then the two conducted field research in Comilla and Tejgaon with intermediaries, transport agencies and truck owners, who responded positively. They committed to the plan around December 2016, began searching for a technical lead in January 2017, hired a CTO who proposed a cost-effective way to build the software, and by February 2017 had assembled seven shareholders and four management members.

Business model

Truck Lagbe intermediates between fragmented truck supply and shipper demand through a two-sided app platform. It runs an on-demand marketplace for SMEs and individual consumers, where owners bid on posted trips, alongside a brokerage arm that serves larger corporate clients on credit terms. Value-added services for truck owners, including the sale of fuel, tyres and lubricants, were identified as an expansion area at the time of the Series A.

Revenue derives from intermediating truck bookings on the marketplace, where owners bid for shipper trips, and from brokerage services extended to larger corporate customers on credit; adjacent lines include shifting services, labour for loading and unloading, and corporate logistics contracts.

Traction

At the September 2021 Series A the company reported around 40,000 registered vehicles from small pickup vans to large lorries, more than 80,000 registered truck owners, drivers and customers, and over 5,000 businesses using its services, serving thousands of customers daily. The company website reports more than 11,000 businesses, over 1.8 million app downloads and more than 700,000 successful trips.

Latest developments

An August 2024 case study on the company's creation recounts the founding process and early product build. Current website figures cite more than 11,000 businesses served, over 1.8 million app downloads and more than 700,000 completed trips, with service lines spanning truck booking, shifting and corporate logistics.