Imagine a truck delivering a load of beer. The delivery is punctual. The agreed rate looks respectable. Everyone involved has apparently done their job. Then the truck drives away empty. Somewhere nearby, another company needs a truck. Its transportation manager is buying that journey separately. The two decisions may be sensible on their own. Together, they produce a rather expensive absence of cargo.
- Leaf matches freight plans to the networks carriers actually run.
- Adapt uses shipment history and dispatch data to propose connected contracts.
- The prize is fewer empty miles and steadier costs, with existing carriers still involved.
This is the problem Leaf Logistics has chosen to make its business. The New York company’s proposition is that freight buyers should look beyond the individual load. What happens before pickup and after delivery influences what a carrier can afford to offer. The journey home belongs in the calculation, even when it belongs to somebody else’s freight.
The auction that forgot the journey
Leaf began in 2017 as Logistics Exchange, adopting its present name in 2019. Historical reporting identifies Anshu Prasad and Stefan Friederichs as founders. Prasad had worked in transportation procurement and led Kearney’s global analytics practice. He understood the attraction of using technology to make an old purchasing process faster. He also came to see the limits of that ambition.
In a 2023 conversation with investor Madrona, he recalled helping businesses automate freight buying early in his career. Yet transportation managers still returned each morning to another stack of shipments needing coverage. Better purchasing tools had left them exposed to a market they could neither schedule nor control. The recurring scramble was the clue.
“Implicitly, [the transportation industry] is a connected industry, but practically, it is not.”
Anshu Prasad · FreightWaves, 2022
The distinction matters. A shipper judges a lane between two locations. A carrier must judge the network that keeps its trucks and drivers occupied. Buying each lane through fierce competition can miss the combinations that make the work economical. Leaf’s answer is to make those combinations visible before the contract is awarded.
Give the carrier a better-shaped problem
Adapt, launched in July 2021, is now the center of Leaf’s pitch. Its current workflow starts with shipment history from the shipper and completed-load data from carriers. Machine learning looks for unstable volumes, fragmented tendering and developing cost risks. Carrier digital twins model where equipment flows, where trucks accumulate and which proposed work improves the balance.
That can change the unit being purchased. Several thin lanes into one market can become a denser bid item. A set of related journeys can become a package a carrier proposes together. Instead of simply asking who will take an isolated load cheaply, the buyer can ask which combination fits the provider’s operation.
The plan is then revisited monthly, with execution feeding the next round of recommendations. Leaf positions this as a neutral layer between a shipper and its carriers. Customers keep their transportation management system. They keep their relationships. The intervention is in the decisions those systems and relationships must support.
Connect compatible loads before buying capacity. Geography, timing and equipment still have to agree.
The empty miles are the evidence
Leaf’s earlier products made that coordination more concrete. Flex introduced forward contracting, committing transportation ahead of time. Flex Fleets, announced in February 2023 after pilots during 2022, offered multi-shipper dedicated capacity. BASF and Party City were among the named pilot participants. Trailer pools also gave participating shippers access to drop-and-hook operations without acquiring their own trailers.
In its launch announcement, Leaf reported 76% fewer empty miles, linehaul savings of up to 30%, and 99.9% on-time performance. These are company-reported pilot and operating results, with different measures describing different benefits. They should be read as evidence of what coordinated freight achieved in that setting, rather than a forecast for every prospective customer.
The commercial cast is revealing: large shippers in food, consumer goods, retail and chemicals, alongside carriers and brokers. AB InBev has said it worked with Leaf from 2018. Its transportation executive Loren Foster called the company a “logic layer.” Solvay Technology Solutions described better supply-chain reliability. Sage Freight emphasized predictable work for its carrier partners. Each wanted a different consequence of the same coordination.
A company financed to connect the gaps
Building that layer required venture capital. Leaf announced a $20 million Series A led by Playground Global in March 2020. A $37 million Series B followed in February 2022, led by Sozo Ventures, with Madrona and returning investors participating. FreightWaves then reported 425 shipper customers and more than 550 carrier customers - a historical snapshot of the network.
Leaf’s legacy carrier FAQ described an open-book business model with fixed fees charged to the shipper and carrier for each freight transaction. Today, the Adapt introduction begins with a complimentary assessment. The distinction is useful for buyers: the transaction economics of the earlier offering should not be mistaken for a published price list for the current platform.
The current team page lists Vikram Punwani as CEO, bringing transportation investing and trade-finance experience. It also calls Bryan Schulte its Chief Data Janitor and Jeff Ryan a utility infielder. There is a pleasing lack of ceremony in those titles. Freight data needs cleaning; freight relationships need someone willing to cover several positions.
Start with the return trip
The practical lesson is available even to a manager who never buys Leaf. Evaluate the carrier’s whole circuit. Look for complementary volume. Test proposed awards against changing market conditions. Revisit the plan when actual shipments depart from expectations. A low lane price means little if the arrangement becomes difficult to execute.
Leaf’s method needs participation: its current shipper FAQ asks for at least five preferred carriers. It also needs usable history and compatible freight. As an operational inference, irregular volumes, mismatched equipment or impossible pickup windows would limit the available combinations. Software can reveal a circuit; trucks must still run it. Leaf’s wager is that enough useful circuits are already there, waiting for someone to buy them together.