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Cargado's Series A funding round was in addition to $10 million that has already been raised. (Cargado)

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Load board company Cargado gained $12 million through a recent funding round with the aim of bolstering its cross-border freight marketplace, the company announced April 7.

Cargado plans to use the funding to accelerate product development and expand its integrated cross-border freight marketplace so that customers can better manage their operations. The Series A funding round was in addition to $10 million that has already been raised.

“It’s a marketplace,” Cargado CEO Matt Silver told Transport Topics. “There’s more than just loads. There’s contracted freight that people connect on and book as well. And we have a lot of plans from a road map perspective to move well beyond just being your traditional load board and more of a collaboration platform where freight brokers and trucking companies can better collaborate, communicate and partner up on the way that they move freight.”

Cargado said in the announcement that the additional funding comes on the heels of rapid growth since its public launch six months earlier. LGVP led the recent funding round with participation from existing investors like Primary Venture Partners, Ironspring Ventures, Zenda Capital and Proeza Ventures. There were new investors in this round, too, including Conversion Capital, Assembly Ventures and Friends & Family Capital.

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“When the company’s customers start asking if they can invest alongside you, it’s time to pull the trigger,” said Itai Tsiddon, partner at LGVP. “We were greatly impressed by Cargado’s vision and look forward to partnering with Matt and the team to building it to its maximum potential.”

Cargado has expressed confidence that nearshoring — when companies move more of their foreign operations to countries closer to domestic markets — is here to stay despite uncertainty around tariffs. Cargado warned that the technology to support cross-border freight has been lagging even as Mexico has become the No. 1 trading partner of the U.S. because of nearshoring.

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“Between integrations and additional products on the road map, we’re excited about where everything is going this year and what our product is going to look like at the end of this year,” Silver said. “I can tell you very confidently that we won’t just be the cross-border load board at that point. We’ll be much more than just a load board in terms of what people use our product for.”

Cargado has welcomed more than 200 customers and over 650 carriers to the platform since its inception. A big focus of its load board has been trust and collaboration. Because of that, the platform started out as invitation-only. Cargado also vets all carriers before allowing them to join to ensure a secure and transparent environment for all users.

“The way that freight brokers and trucking companies do business together today — part of the way that those companies interact — is through load boards or marketplaces,” Silver said. “But they do more than just book loads and communicate on those loads. There’s a lot more to it than that.”

Silver pointed out that the life cycle of freight often includes many steps, so the goal is to bring all of that together into one platform that can be used across the entire process for companies that deal with cross-border freight instead of just being used to post and cover loads.

“All those different parts are currently being done through a combination of WhatsApp, email and spreadsheets,” Silver said. “And so we want to bring that entire experience into one place where brokerage and trucking companies can collaborate more efficiently and effectively, and communicate more effectively, to support that entire workflow.”

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