[jobu]

Shipping is only capital intensive if you intend to own the trucks, trains, or ships. Convoy appears to be more of a middleman between owner-operator truckers and shippers or manufacturers.

The problem is that many (most?) of the truckers that own their own rig are middle-aged and older, and getting them to use technology like this may be an uphill battle:

“I think they’re relying too much on computers,” said Brian Larocque, a new driver based out of Connecticut.

[jbeales]

Yes on both. I work in tech that services the trucking industry. Getting drivers, (and dispatchers, actually), to truly trust a computer is difficult. They use a lot of apps, but trucking's got a strong culture of self-reliance, and people working in trucking probably care more about single points-of-failure than DevOps do, relying on Convoy would be a pretty big single point of failure, so they'll have to prove themselves worthy of the trust.

However, 82 million should get them there. That's a ton of money to build a business with no capital costs. The big risk for them is the incumbents deciding to move quickly - most of them have the cash, so if they realize their business model is threatened by Convoy, they'll move quickly, and be supported by their existing cash flow.