The idea for BroadLoop, a paving intelligence platform, was first formed as an academic exercise in the University of Louisville Entrepreneurship MBA Program.
It was 2016, the co-founders Nick McRae and Max Kommor first semester in the program, and the duo were looking for a problem they could solve with a new business concept. McRae had experience as a software developer for a fleet tracking company, and Kommor was working for a contracting company, where real-time spending issues prompted the idea.
“[Kommor] was working for a contracting company,” McRae, CEO of Southern Indiana-based BroadLoop, said. “It was a bridge rehabilitation job, and he notice dump trucks were stacked up on the job site.”
Kommor, COO of the company, was in charge of the project costs and noticed there was extra waste with the tucks sitting there not being used. After a little research, he and McRae found it was a strategy called over trucking.
Company’s often use third party sub-haulers to move materials to job sites. Since a company doesn’t own the trucks, McRae said that often means it doesn’t have transparency about where they trucks are or when they will arrive at the site. Over trucking is when a company purposely orders too many trucks because it costs more to leave workers sitting idle than to have too many materials and trucks at the job site.
“It costs them $1,000 an hour for their crew to sit idle, but it only costs around $100 an hour for a truck to be there,” McRae said. “Due to the lack of visibility over their virtual fleet, they will often add a few extra trucks to avoid the potential $1,000 an hour of costs—basically just an insurance policy.”
McRae said this creates an artificial resource constraint where some job sites don’t have enough trucks to get the work done, but other job sites have unused trucks piling up.
The duo decided there must be a better method to ensure a more efficient process. That’s when they created BroadLoop, a platform that helps asphalt contractors measure and improve metrics that drive performance. It allows them to get more visibility over all operations, specifically regarding third party sub-haulers
“Some of these jobs have 20%, 30% more trucks than they actually need,” McRae said. “If we can help them gain visibility over where those trucks are and have the confidence to allocate them across other jobs, they can lower their job costs and make more progress on others jobs with the same number of trucks.”
BroadLoop gives the companies access to their trucking fleets, that they either own or are contracting, in every step of the process. McRae said the platform uses GPS technology to show a complete view of trucks on a map in real time so the company can see which routes they are taking, the material they are hauling, and an estimated time of arrival to job site.
There are several different mediums in which companies can access this information. McRae said there’s a web-based interface for dispatchers to communicate, coordinate and schedule what the routes are.
For drivers, there’s a mobile application they can download which uses their phone’s GPS information. BroadLoop also offers different devices, like a portable GPS unit, that comes with telematic capabilities.
The company is currently looking at partner-enabled solutions as well. McRae said if an asphalt company is already using other telematics software, like KeepTruckin, Samsara, and Verizon Connect, BroadLoop is looking to work through those marketplaces to integrate its systems.
“We don’t have to have people keeping four different GPS units in their truck,” McRae said. “We can work together and pull in data we need to.”
To date, the company has raised just under $600,000 in capital. BroadLoop was a Vogt Award recipient in 2017 and has won some other business plan competitions as well, McRae said.
While it hasn’t been stated yet, the company has a goal to raise more funds in 2022. Next year will be BroadLoop’s year for growth, McRae said, as it completed a Techstars accelerator program this year.
“Investors are looking at companies coming out of these programs because they were highly vetted from the beginning,” McRae said. “They just pour into you for three months with resources and mentorship and support and accelerate the preparedness for growth.”
Through the program, BroadLoop hired two more employees, Operations Manager Kim Roudenbush and Vice President of Sales Al Cleeland. The company has eight employees and is looking to hire more in 2022.
Technology in the asphalt industry is becoming more of a requirement, which companies like BroadLoop are looking to capitalize on. McRae said the Federal Highway Administration brought forth a new initiative in 2021 called e-Ticketing, which "improves the tracking, exchange, and archiving of materials tickets", according to the FHWA website.
“Contractors have the upcoming couple months to find systems and vendors and technology partners to comply with those specifications,” McRae said. "State transportation departments are moving forward with technology initiatives and we're seeing more acceptance of technology in the construction industry. It's an exciting time to be in this space and we're proud to be on the leading edge of it."
The company's will be exhibiting at the World of Asphalt Conference in March 2022. McRae said this will give BroadLoop a chance to be on the world stage and get in front of its target customers, especially as new regulation comes in.
