Anshu Prasad and the trouble with an empty truck

A truck can make a perfectly punctual delivery and still have a disappointing day. The goods arrive. The paperwork gets signed. Then the driver heads toward the next pickup with nothing in the trailer. The customer has received what it ordered; the road is carrying a rather expensive box of air. Anshu Prasad built a company around the distance between those two versions of success.

For years, he had helped businesses work with data and buy transportation. Leaf Logistics, the company he co-founded in 2017, asked companies to look beyond their individual shipments. Could their plans fit together? Could the next load become part of the arrangement before the first one left? His working life offers a gradual answer, with a few detours through science, consulting and the obligations of being an alumnus.

A red sweater, a different ball club

Prasad arrived in New York from India at nine. In a later conversation, he remembered landing at JFK in December and encountering snow or ice for the first time. Preparing for school produced a smaller, more personal problem of interpretation: a red sweater came with what looked like extra arms. They were leg warmers. He wore the warmest things he could find.

He grew up in Flushing, home territory for the Mets, and became a Yankees fan during the 1980s. Even his baseball allegiance required a little independence. At Cornell, he studied biochemistry; his father had taught organic chemistry. Graduate research was a possibility. The enthusiasm for startups around him in the late 1990s helped pull him toward another kind of experimentation.

That childhood story is appealing because it leaves the awkwardness in. The future technology executive first had to work out some fairly basic local equipment. He remembers help from other people as part of the process, rather than presenting arrival in a new country as a feat of solitary ingenuity.

The problem waiting after the purchase order

His professional route included Tigris Consulting and, later, Kearney. He helped build European operations for a technology consulting business and became a senior partner at Kearney, building and leading its global Analytics practice. An Oxford MBA joined the Cornell biochemistry degree. The work put him close to the machinery of large businesses: their operations, their purchasing decisions and the information needed to improve both.

A career in analytics supplies an unusual vantage point. A transaction can be measured down to its last decimal place while the surrounding arrangement remains poorly understood. Someone must decide what belongs inside the calculation. In freight, that boundary can be the difference between a satisfactory purchase and a truck that spends too much of its working day between purchases.

Prasad came to see a recurring frustration among transportation managers. They worked through shipments that needed coverage, then returned to another stack. Better purchasing tools had not removed their exposure to an unpredictable freight market. Leaf’s founding question grew from that repetition: how much of the work could be planned and coordinated before people had to scramble?

“carriers agreeing to do work are driven by if what they’re being asked to do works for them.”

Anshu Prasad, 2022

A name, a network, and a bet on tomorrow

The business began as Logistics Exchange. In February 2019, Prasad signed the announcement of its new name, Leaf. The original ambition was already there: connect shippers, brokers and carriers on a fairer playing field, with greater transparency and more predictable service and costs. The name changed two years into the work. The coordination problem had survived the rebranding quite comfortably.

An exchange is an intriguing model for a founder to choose. It requires participants to find a reason to join, then a reason to trust the arrangements they make there. Software has to be useful to people with different responsibilities and different measures of success. A shipper’s concern about a missed delivery meets a carrier’s concern about whether the day’s work will pay.

Leaf announced a $20 million Series A in March 2020, led by Playground Global. Its account of the business emphasized historical and forward-looking data, advance commitments and less manual work. Solvay Technology Solutions described more predictable transportation and improved use of storage assets. The appeal extended beyond obtaining a rate: knowing what would happen could change how the rest of an operation was managed.

A $37 million Series B followed in February 2022, led by Sozo Ventures. Madrona joined the round. Its investment explanation focused on the waste created by separate transportation networks and the possibilities of connecting them. REFASHIOND Ventures, another investor, highlighted the founders’ shared Kearney experience and the combination of analytics, transportation knowledge and operations research. Stefan Friederichs, Prasad’s co-founder, brought that last discipline to the team.

The carrier has a business, too

Talking about carrier compliance can make freight sound like a schoolroom: the customer gives instructions, and the provider is expected to follow them. Prasad’s discussion of the subject takes a more commercial view. A carrier accepting work may be responding to immediate uncertainty. Acceptance alone does not establish that the arrangement will be attractive next week or next quarter.

He asks people to consider the small business behind the truck. Vehicle utilization and driver pay matter to that business. A route has to make sense as a circuit, including the miles between paid loads. Looking only at whether the carrier agreed can conceal the economics that determine whether it will keep agreeing.

That perspective gives coordination a human scale. A truck is visible; the sequence of decisions keeping it occupied is harder to see. The planner, the dispatcher and the driver encounter different pieces of the same day. A useful plan must survive contact with all three. Otherwise, the spreadsheet has enjoyed a successful afternoon while everyone else is still making phone calls.

Putting the return trip on the plan

Flex Fleets made the idea more concrete. Launched in February 2023 after pilots during 2022, the offering brought multiple shippers into dedicated fleets. BASF and Party City were among the named pilot participants. Rather than depending on one shipper to supply all the work, the fleet could run coordinated moves across several.

Leaf reported a 76% reduction in empty miles, linehaul savings of up to 30% and 99.9% on-time performance in its launch announcement. Those are company-reported results from its pilot and operating experience. Each measures something different: unused travel, transportation cost and delivery performance. None should be read as a universal result for every shipment.

The structure also included trailer pools and more predictable schedules. These are practical details, which is their charm. A transportation idea becomes meaningful when it changes the equipment a carrier can use, the waiting a driver encounters or the work a shipper can count on. A clever model still has to show up at the loading dock.

Four questions beyond the freight bill

Prasad’s writing with Chris Gaffney and Mark Shaughnessy put transportation into a wider management conversation. Their 2021 article asked finance leaders to consider customer service, budgeting, volatility and the people needed for a more data-driven supply chain. A freight budget was connected to the experience of receiving a product and the ability to plan a business.

The talent question deserves its place beside the financial ones. Their argument linked the attraction and retention of capable people to sustained investment in technology and development. Better tools require people who can use them. People, in turn, need a reason to believe that this work offers scope for judgment and progress.

There is a recognizable concern running through that argument and Leaf’s product: how much energy should be spent repairing the same arrangements every day? Reliability has value partly because it creates room to think about something else. A plan that holds can be an invitation to do more interesting work.

The school he kept coming back to

Another part of Prasad’s public life runs through Hunter College High School, where he graduated in 1993. By October 2007, he had joined the Hunter College Foundation’s board. A winter 2008–09 account described his involvement in work toward an endowment for the campus schools. He regarded his own education there as a gift and wanted to contribute time and resources in return.

Endowments are patient objects. They ask people to arrange for benefits that may arrive long after the meeting is over. The work offers fewer dramatic moments than a startup launch, but it involves its own negotiations among money, institutions and future needs. Prasad spoke about gaining an appreciation for the breadth of decisions facing college presidents and trustees.

Hunter’s spring 2023 account of fellow trustee Alex Kohen described their collaboration in keeping the campus schools’ interests in view. Prasad chaired the audit committee. His current professional biography also includes that responsibility. It is a substantial thread in a career otherwise easy to recount entirely through employers and funding rounds.

The next chapter has a different job title

In 2024, Prasad announced that he had stepped down as Leaf’s CEO after seven years. He thanked customers who had taken an early chance on the company, along with investors and colleagues. He would remain a shareholder and supporter. He also mentioned a transition at home: his child was heading to college, and he was looking forward to some downtime.

Today, Alvarez & Marsal lists him as a managing director in New York, specializing in supply chain, logistics, transportation and advanced analytics. In October 2026, he appeared with Cory Painter and host Chris Walton on Omni Talk’s retail discussion. The subjects included Albertsons, digital grocery, shopping technology and returns. His work had moved into another setting with plenty of operational questions to examine.

The through line is a willingness to follow a problem beyond the place where a job description might end. From the freight purchase to the carrier’s next load, from an education received to an institution supported, Prasad’s record keeps widening the frame. The delivery may be complete. There is still a journey to account for.