Software now generates half of Loadsmart's gross profit, co-founder and CEO Felipe Capella told FreightWaves, a disclosure that marks the sharpest repositioning of a major digital freight broker since the sector's wipeout began. The figure covers two products launched after a 2021 strategy review: ShipperGuide, a transportation management system for midsize and enterprise shippers, and OpenDock, a dock-scheduling platform now live in more than 4,500 distribution centers and warehouses across North America.

The New York-founded, Chicago-based company launched in 2014 as a pure digital freight broker — a model that has since claimed Convoy, Transfix's brokerage operations, TruckerPath, Cargomatic, TruckSmarter, NextTrucking and FreightAI. Loadsmart survived where those peers did not, and Capella credits a deliberate decision to protect the firm's research-and-development budget rather than slash it.

Why did the pivot start in 2021?

Capella said the turning point came from a hard look at unit economics, not from optimism about venture funding. With a large R&D budget on the books, the company faced what he described as a binary choice: cut costs sharply, or create a high-margin revenue line that would justify the spend. Loadsmart chose the second path and built the software business that now drives half its gross profit.

"We cannot afford to be that fragile," Capella said, explaining why the firm refused to assume that scale alone would eventually validate its cost structure. "It just takes one bad cycle to destroy your company."

He pointed directly at competitors that made neither move when freight markets turned. "A few of these companies that you mentioned did neither — they didn't adjust their cost structure and they didn't create a new revenue line that was more high margin that again justifies R&D," Capella said.

What is left of the brokerage?

Loadsmart still ranks as a top-70 U.S. freight broker, Capella noted, and the traditional business has become "quite exciting for the first time in many, many years" as capacity-side constraints tighten the spot market. Even through the prolonged freight downturn of 2023 and 2024, when many brokers watched gross profit shrink, Capella said Loadsmart was "growing pretty healthily."

For shippers, the repositioning means Loadsmart can bundle brokerage execution with TMS and dock-scheduling tools rather than sell them separately. For forwarders and rival brokers, it signals that the surviving digital natives are competing on software margins, not just transaction volume.

Where does the third revenue line lead?

The company is now adding AI agentic products aimed at enterprise shippers. Capella described a near-term future in which software agents handle the routine clicks and workflow steps that human operators currently perform inside TMS, WMS and YMS platforms. Workers would shift toward recruiting, deploying and monitoring those agents, stepping in only when human judgment is required. In parallel, Loadsmart is expanding OpenDock into a full yard management system offering.

What does the funding climate look like now?

On the broader investment environment, Capella called it "definitely a more rational market" after years of zero-interest-rate-fueled valuations stretched venture-backed logistics startups well above public-market comparables such as Descartes, Manhattan Associates and Trimble. SaaS valuations have fallen far enough, he added, that some companies' current worth may not cover their preferred equity stack — a dynamic that makes cash-flow-positive business models essential for survival.

The implication for the sector is stark: freight tech founders who still plan around the next funding round, rather than gross-margin math, are betting against a market that has already repriced them. Capella's roadmap — half the gross profit from SaaS, a brokerage riding a tightening spot market, and agentic AI as the next line — sketches what a durable freight tech company looks like after what he calls the apocalypse.