A Head Start Document for Entrepreneur Connect
This document was provided by Scott and Carmen Moscrip. The focus of the Moscrip’s presentation will be to answer questions that students and faculty have. Read-up on their entrepreneurial adventures and on Wednesday, March 27 at 1:30, come prepared to ask the Moscrips anything you want. Pick what you want to learn. Go back to Entrepreneur Connect page.
Truckstop.com — How did it start?
After graduating from Texas A&M University, Scott went to work in Washington, DC, full time for the federal government as a computer R&D specialist. After being told that he was too young looking and too maverick for an entry level management position in late 1994, Scott was invited by his parents to move back out West and bring the grandchildren closer to their grandparents which he did in April 1995.
Scott’s father, Doug Moscrip, offered to help him get started in a True Value Hardware business but since Scott couldn’t nail two boards together correctly and had no idea about tools it was decided to let him develop a business idea on his own. In June 1995, Scott traveled down to Doug’s house in northern California from Idaho to propose doing a state-wide Internet Service Provider business for the State of Idaho. This business idea was received lukewarmly and was asked for more thought to go into it.
Scott’s other purpose for traveling to Northern California was to bring back his father’s 74 Mercury so that it would be better preserved in the Idaho climate. On the trip back, in the middle of the desert of Nevada, with a car that only had an AM Radio with 8-Track player (i.e. with no distractions), Scott drove by an old rusted out semi-trailer that a company had painted up as a billboard. The billboard said basically, “Loads to Anywhere, give us a call at this number.” As Scott drove past the billboard he laughed and thought how foolish it would be for truck drivers to be driving around the middle of the desert looking for a sign telling them where to pick up freight.
Then it hit like lightning. It was foolish to think that, but was there an alternative? Armed with napkins, receipts, a couple of pens stuck under the seat, and no distractions, Scott proceeded to think of all the things a truck driver might want to find and use on the Internet. Upon returning home, Scott dialed into the Internet and started doing Altavista and Lycos searches (Yahoo and Google didn’t exist in those days) to see if there were any websites that dealt with trucking on the Internet. Upon finding 3 websites that even mentioned the word truck (1 ’63 Peterbilt and 2 pickup truck pictures), Scott excitedly called Doug and said he had an idea. Make a spot where truckers would stop on the Internet to do things. It would be called, Internet Truckstop. Internet Truckstop was officially launched on July 24, 1995.
How did it grow?
Internet Truckstop (ITS) started with 3 unpaid employees: Scott, his wife Anne, and his mother Pat. Scott took care of all technical issues: buying and building machines, programming computers, listening to customer ideas on things that would be better to attract more customers, installing phones, etc. Anne helped with data entry and answering phone calls. Pat did a lot of customer service. The entire business was run in the basement of the 2 bedroom 1 bath home that Scott lived in with his wife and 2 kids.
For the first year, the business grew at approximately 100 new customers a month, which wasn’t bad considering most people in 1995 had never even heard of the Internet. In March 1996, ITS was invited to a trade show and was featured by one of the tradeshow members in a technology forum. There was much skepticism until another of the presenters, a large and very prosperous member of the association who upon finishing his presentation stated, “We have been using ITS for 3 months and it works great!” From that point, ITS had “made it.” By the end of March 1996, ITS was running in the black. By the end of 1996 ITS started hiring employees. In 1997 ITS averaged signing up 200 companies per month. In 1998 it was 400 companies per month. Today as a “mature” business ITS has almost 800 employees and continues to grow and expand.
Customer feedback and ideas and word of mouth advertising were the primary drivers in product development and business growth through 2016. A full salesforce was added in 2016 and the business grew very rapidly.
Internet Truckstop has also gone through many technological changes. As technology has improved so has the service. The “Classic” interface will have version 3.0 launched in December 2011 and the new interface was launched May 5th, 2010 to bring the system up to current modern programming standards and tools. In November 2014, Truckstop.com was updated again and over the course of 2015 version 4 of the software will be released in stages to its customers with an emphasis on real-time delivery of information. Today Truckstop.com runs on Version 5.X.
In 2013, a Management Team was hired as a result of a consultant review of the business. It was determined that for the business to increase the speed of growth that more help would be needed. The Management team runs the day to day operations of the business, allowing Scott to focus on new product development and ideas.
In 2015, the load board portion on Internet Truckstop was renamed Truckstop.com and Internet Truckstop was transformed into the Internet Truckstop Group (ITS, RTF, uDrove, LoadPay, ITS Financial Services) to better represent the multitude of companies under the ITS umbrella. Also, more than 80 new employees were hired and the business continues to grow with more than 50 new ideas on the project development board. Over the next two years, another 115 employees are expected to be hired to handle the growth and development of these ideas.
After more than 20 years, in December 2015, Scott was promoted to Chairman and Paris Cole took over as the CEO of Internet Truckstop Group.
In April 2016, Bregel Sagemount was brought in as the growth equity firm to help the Internet Truckstop Group grow its business. Their capital injections allow for acquisition of companies, continued hiring of skilled players, and experience in taking mid-sized businesses and growing them into larger firms.
In late 2016, a major rebranding effort was begun to transition the names and products from Internet Truckstop to Truckstop.com. All references to Internet Truckstop in this document are now outdated and Scott gets fined $20 by the company each time he refers to it as Internet Truckstop so keep him on his toes in his presentations.
In April 2019, ICONIQ purchased a majority share of the company and replaced Bregel Sagemount as the lead investors and Scott transitioned to full time innovation and creates products for the company today. The company had more than 400 employees at the time of the ICONIQ purchase.
What are the Internet Truckstop products?
Internet Truckstop is a Freight Matching company. Similar to an eHarmony.com or Match.com, ITS collects information on where freight is available for pick up and where trucks are available to haul it, so instead of matching up boys and girls through our network, our customers match up trucks and freight. Last year ITS had more than 75 million loads posted and over 12 billion page views made on the system for that freight by its customer base. With such a large marketplace using the ITS system, other products naturally were created.
Credit$top was started to provide credit worthiness and credit reporting mechanisms for the truckers on the people they hauled freight for. A single unpaid invoice can takes 2 months of profits out of a trucking company so credit information is a critical component on deciding who to do deals with.
Carrier Performance Reporting (CPR) is similar to credit but it tracks the performance of the carriers in moving freight. A shipper who has a bad incident with a carrier can also go out of business if the goods the carrier is hauling are ruined or not delivered in a timely fashion.
FuelDesk helps drivers locate the least expensive fuel on their routes.
RateMate helps both truckers and shippers know what rates are between the two points so that both sides understand what is a reasonable rate for moving the freight.
Decision tools such as Pintac, Load Densities, Negotiation Strength, etc. help the users to understand the market dynamics such as supply and demand and allow the better position of trucks to eliminate “deadhead” miles or miles driven without freight or revenue.
Shippermate helps carriers and intermediaries to find and locate shippers as potential customers. It is a directory of over 8 million shippers, their annual freight spends, and seasonality of shipments as well as major products shipped.
ITS Marketplace is a potpourri of products sold to carriers, intermediaries, and shippers including fuel cards, insurance, business software, etc.
ITS Dispatch Software: Software to run your trucking or brokerage business delivered as SaaS. Designed for beginning and small businesses. In late 2016 ITS Dispatch was acquired in full by Truckstop.com.
Clear: Allows you to establish your own private network within the Internet Truckstop system.
CACCI: Launched July 16, 2011 CACCI provided carrier monitoring of insurance, authority, and safety. A all in one location service of information.
CRS: Launched July 16, 2011. CRS provides a quick mechanism to a trucking company to supply the necessary signatures and documentation to be set up and ready to haul freight.
BFF (branded freight finder): Creates a cell phone app that only shows the loads that are available for one shipper. Has the added feature of allowing the driver to electronically capture his paperwork for submission and for tracking the truck’s location. This is being replace by the Truckstop.com Digital Freight Matching app.
Cell Phone app Development: ITS Trucker, ITS Broker, and other apps are being created and deployed to the transportation industry. As the battle between technology and regulation increases apps are being developed to help enhance efficiencies within the industry.
RFP: A new Request for Proposal system was designed and implement in Dec 2012. The new system allows customers to send RFPs to carriers for bidding. The first RFP sent resulted in 100 TIMES more responses than the customer had ever received and sorted and categorized all results instantly saving the customer valuable time in awarding bids.
BI & Consulting: In November 2015, Truckstop.com announced new initiatives to deliver BI tools and information to the transportation industry. Built on the Domo platform and loaded with more than 8 years of full historical data, the Truckstop.com consulting group helps companies benchmark their businesses and create scoreboards to see who is “winning” in the industry.
Education and Training: In 2012, Internet Truckstop formed a partnership with 3 Idaho Universities and the local high school to provide the funding for dual credits for all high school students. Through the program, students as young as freshmen, can start taking dual credit courses with the goal of completing 30 college credits prior to graduation from high school at a total cost of $250 to the student for the 30 credits. To help accomplish these goals, computers, software, ipods, and other technological devices have been established in the elementary school to accelerate learning prior to entering middle school. For the first time ever, 5th graders will be taking pre-Algebra to prepare them to take Algebra in 6th grade. By completing the 30 or more college credits, students will be able to enter formal campus life as sophomores, greatly increasing the college graduation rates. College/trade school attendance went from 48% in 2012 to 83% in 2013, and 86% in 2014. The program has been so successful that the Idaho Legislature in 2014 passed new funding to help students pay for dual credits (3 credits for juniors and 6 for seniors). It is a start in the right direction to make high school more meaningful to students. The program has now been expanded to up to 60 credits of dual credit can be taken in high school as the school district has worked on upgrading teacher certifications to all additional classes to be taken.
Rate Analysis & Rate Forecasting allow customers to analyze their rates to see if they are over or under paying for their freight movements and the forecasting component allows them to perform RFPs with confidence on where the industry is going over the next year.
CargoShield allows carriers or shippers to purchase single load dollar one cargo insurance for each individual haul insuring that the cargo being transported is insured. The insurance subrogates to the carrier’s insurance which makes it really interesting when there is a claim because it is one bureaucratic titan battling another!
Load Insights track exact statistical data on the freight on the system including the level of interest that carriers have in the load.
Carrier Profitability Tools creates the ability for the carrier to determine the profitability of each load that they are looking to haul. Some of the best paying loads are actually the least profitable so carriers are able to make better decisions as to how to keep their business healthy when rates are falling in the market.
Carrier Centric helper apps: Fuel Optimization and ePermit book are 2 new apps launched in 2018.
Mergers and Acquisitions for 2018: Grizella LLC and D&S Factors LLC were both acquired over the summer of 2018 pushing the number of employees of Truckstop.com to close to 500.
Other Ventures
Because of the success of Internet Truckstop, and because Scott continually clones his work load so that he has nothing left to do in the office except convert Oxygen to Carbon Dioxide, he continually works at thinking up new ideas. Ventures that Scott has launched include:
pFreight – done in combination with Ryder Systems of Miami, pFreight would have created a single application for all trucking needs. Started in late 1999 at the height of the dot com boom, pFreight was doomed because the technology couldn’t keep pace with the ideas that needed to be implemented (it was ahead of its time). pFreight ultimately failed in early 2001 as part of the dot com bust.
D&S Factors – started in the Spring of 2003, D&S Factors is a receivables factoring company for the Internet Truckstop customers. Receivables factoring involves purchasing invoices from the carriers at a discount and billing the shipper. D&S does non-recourse factoring which means when they agree to purchase the invoice, it belongs to D&S and if the shipper doesn’t pay for it, D&S takes the loss. When it was started it was done for just a few customers. In 2008 more than $100 million in invoices were factored and D&S Factors ranked #3 on the Aggie 100 growth list. In 2016, I sold off my equity in this company. In 2018 Truckstop.com acquired 100% of the company for Internet Truckstop Group.
Truckstop.net – started in late 2003 as a series of wi-fi hotspots installed into truck stops across the country. With massive investor funding and a major roll out in 2004, Truckstop.net was ultimately installed into over 500 locations throughout the U.S. Unfortunately, the engineering/technology firm failed in the installations of the systems for a large variety of reasons and the customers couldn’t access the Internet. When asked to fixed the systems, they declined, litigation ensued, and finally in April 2010 it is scheduled to go to trial where the only question that really remains in front of the judge is how much damages the company should pay for their failure to deliver according to contract.
Roady’s Truck Stops – started in 2007 by merging 2 competitors into a single new entity, Roady’s became the largest brand of truck stops in the U.S. with more than 400 locations scattered across the country. Roady’s primarily does purchase consolidation and marketing for their independently owned locations, similar to how True Value Hardware works in the hard ware industry. Roady’s also is the title sponsor to the annual Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl played near New Year’s Eve in Boise, Idaho, typically pitting the WAC conference champion versus an ACC team. Roady’s provides a physical contact point for trucking customers and allows promotion and the sales of physical goods to the carriers.
Scott’s Berry/Scary Farm – started in 2002 when with the purchase of some property near his house, Scott needed to become a farmer. Not being typical Scott of course chose odd items to farm including raspberries, strawberries, table grapes, and super-sized pumpkins. Because of demand for fresh produce by local markets additional land was purchased and the farm was tripled in size in 2012.
SWAMM Enterprises was started in 2009 and is a property management group responsible for commercial and residential properties.
ITS Financial Services was started in 2009 and is focused on issues such as Broker Bonds and Trusts, Insurances of all kinds for transportation, and Authorities and Permits. TripCargo has become a standard product in the industry and continual innovation to bring new Insurances to the market are continuing. In November 2015, CargoShield was announced and launched to the industry. CargoShield is a full cargo coverage, single load, door to door insurance policy for shippers, 3PLs, or Carriers. Carrier no longer have to buy monthly insurance policies to cover the freight that they haul.
uDrove and uDrove Wireless were started in 2009 and are focused on compliance cell phone applications for the transportation industry. More than $12MM was spent on this business unit through 2016. This business was shut down in January 2017 as the complexity of creating a compliance app overwhelmed the staff. The application development then switched to focusing on helping customers with work flow instead of compliance and the group is now doing very well within Truckstop.com. This product was shut down in 2017.
OTR Pro: Launched June 2011. OTR Pro is a joint venture deal with Wright Express to provide a low cost fuel card and banking services to the transportation industry and to eliminate high transaction costs.
Internet Sky: Launched Dec 2011. Internet Sky is a corporate airline busy flying executives and employees around the nation in an effort to improve transportation and entrepreneurship.
Firkins Development Corporation. Launched May 2013 is developing a 60-lot subdivision in the City of New Plymouth effectively adding 10% more lots to the current city and creating the first new spots for homes to be built since 2000. 20% of the subdivision lots sold before the final platt was approved by the City in February 2015.
Roady’s Grill: Launched October 2013 is as a concept restaurant for the Roady’s Truck Stops group. Developing into a driver themed restaurant made to attract local patron as well as over the road drivers. This business was closed down in February 2017 due to financial hardships. The business was losing $5,000 per week while paying the employees $12 per hour. A move to put employees at $15 per hour would have exacerbated the losses and patrons were not willing to pay the added 40% in cost to the meal to offset the losses. This business was shut down in 2017 because it just couldn’t make a profit and the landlords wouldn’t make the changes necessary to help the business be profitable.
Real-Time Freight: Acquired in 2014 is a Transportation Management System run in a SaaS environment. Primarily focused on providing technology to shippers, brokers, and 3PLs. Strategic investment to help make use of the ITS data.
LoadPay: Launched in November 2015, LoadPay is the first payment system that gives control to the carriers over their receivables and offers discounts back to shippers on their payables.
Kunoa: The only slaughter house in the Hawaiian Islands is on Oahu. It is run by government contract. In February 2016 a coalition of marketing, logistics (us), and the cattleman’s association took over the contract to run the facility and to help fulfill the protein needs of the Hawaiian Islands and the rest of Polynesia. In 2017 we sold our equity in this company for a tidy profit.
Fuel for Clover: Part of the Clover family of P.O.S. Systems. Fuel for Clover concentrates on bringing modern technologies to hook fuel pumps at locations to their POS systems. Revolutionary in design, the system uses iPad or desktops as its standard hardware instead of any proprietary hardware. The typical fueling location will spend more than $250,000 on hardware to run his location. Fuel for Clover delivers all of the hardware and connections for less than $10,000. And because it is part of the Clover platform it hooks into easily with all other Clover POS systems.
Åcahand Foundation: In late 2019, proceeds of the sale to ICONIQ were used to set up a private foundation focusing on Education, Emergency Welfare, and Economic Opportunity Development. In January 2020 a research mission was taken to Melanesia (Fiji, Solomon and Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea) to learn about the serious challenges facing people in this part of the world. Lack of education, transportation, and economic opportunities plague these countries. The foundation is working on a 20-year plan to help improve all these facets with special emphasis on Papua New Guinea (the most populous island/the worst education system). The foundation also goes by the fictitious name Light Orlando in Orlando and it works locally to improve conditions in Central Florida.