Pallet, a California-based unified transportation and warehouse management system provider, has raised $18m in a series A funding round.

Pallet says it will use the funds to grow its team, expand operations and invest in enterprise product capabilities. The funding contributes to a total of $21m raised to date.

The logistics industry is a cornerstone of the global economy that often operates in the shadows. That is, until something breaks – a delivery is sent to the wrong address, a couch is backordered for months, or a shortage causes car prices to skyrocket. Despite that these operations are mission critical to everyone’s day-to-day lives, the industry remains extremely inefficient and error prone, relying on antiquated and disjointed software that is exacerbated by labour-intensive and manual workflows.

“We started Pallet to bring logistics software into the 21st century,” said Sushanth Raman, CEO of Pallet. “I met my cofounder Andrew [Spencer] at Retool, where we were focused on finding inefficiencies in the ways that developers worked and fixing them. We knew we could bring the same thinking to this neglected industry.”

Pallet’s platform is a unified, AI-powered transportation management, warehouse management, and accounting and billing system. It brings every team together on the same, easy-to-use platform, whether they are a dispatcher, warehouse manager, accountant or customer service representative.

Pallet’s core functionality includes:

• Unifying systems and operations: replace disjointed point options and run all transportation segments through one system.
• Empowering teams with AI: automate repetitive and tedious workflows, and reduce errors around order entry, dispatching, invoicing and billing.
• Delivering premium service: track statuses live, provide real-time notifications.

Since launching in April 2023, Pallet has earned the trust of trucking companies across the USA such as BLK Out Logistics and Victory Final Mile. The average Pallet user spends more than six hours per day on the platform. Users have also seen productivity improvements and cost savings. For example, teams have seen nearly 70% reduction in manual-intensive workflows such as order entry.

But the work has only just begun. “We know that no two logistics businesses are the same, so their software shouldn’t be, either,” Raman said.

Over the next two years, Pallet will focus on expanding product offerings to meet the needs of larger logistics agents, as well as build out its team by hiring people across engineering, product and go-to-market functions.

The funding round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Activant Capital. Angel investors also participated, including Zach Frankel, Toast founders Aman Narang and Steve Fredette, Dutchie CEO Tim Barash, Home Depot board member Manuel Kadre, and Cedar Capital partner John Curtius.

“Moving materials and products from source to customer is essential to nearly every business, which is why logistics software is more than a $20bn market,” said Kevin Zhang, partner at Bain Capital Ventures. “Sushanth, Andrew and the relentless team at Pallet won’t stop until they’ve helped every transportation management organisation to unify, optimise and automate their operations.”

Pallet (www.trypallet.com) creates supply chain software for end-to-end logistics visibility, automation, control and optimisation. Its flagship product is a transportation and warehouse management system designed to streamline business operations. The company launched in 2023 and is based in San Francisco.