Acquisition puts BigRoad in the growth fast lane

WATERLOO — BigRoad, a startup offering technology that automates the paperwork truckers must complete every day, has been bought by a Toronto-based company specializing in connected vehicles and the Internet of Things.

The price Fleet Complete paid was not disclosed.

The BigRoad team will continue working out of its offices on Phillip Street in Waterloo. The startup’s founders, brothers Terry and Kelly Frey, and Dan Collens, former chief technology officer, are no longer with BigRoad.

“It is just an amazing company. BigRoad is really poised for some amazing growth this year and next year,” said David Prusinski, executive vice-president of sales and marketing at Fleet.

This December, all truckers in the United States will be required to have an electronic logging device that records routes, stops, speeds and hours behind the wheel.

It is expected Canadian regulators will not be far behind.

BigRoad developed an electronic logging device for trucks.

Its software has been downloaded more than 480,000 times. It is the most downloaded electronic logging app for drivers using Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.

That’s why Fleet was so interested in the business.

“We were new into the space,” said Prusinski.

Fleet, which has financial backing from Chicago-based private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners, has focused on technology that dispatches, tracks and manages fleets of trucks.

More than 8,000 companies use its technology, and the company has been growing by 30 per cent a year, said Prusinski.

“Where we needed some really strong branding for the electronic logging device mandate, BigRoad needed maybe a little bit of capital backing,” said Prusinski.

Fleet’s distribution partnerships with Telus in Canada and AT&T in the U.S. will help BigRoad expand its share of the market, he said.

In North America alone there are five million vehicles that must have an electronic logging device, or ELD, and at this point the majority do not, said Prusinski.

“Our carrier partners are so excited about bringing the BigRoad solution to the market,” he said.

“It really positions BigRoad to be a leader, if not the leader in the hours-of-service, ELD world,” he added.

In 2011, when Terry Frey was looking to found a startup, he focused on trucking because it generates more paper than any other sector of the economy except tax collectors.

BigRoad started in the Acclerator Centre in Waterloo and later moved into a former BlackBerry building on Phillip Street in Waterloo.

When Prusinski came to BigRoad’s office earlier this week to mark the closing of the deal, he stepped into his past.

It was the same office where Prusinski worked when he started at BlackBerry, then Research In Motion, in 2004.

“My desk is still there, right there, in the same RIM colours,” said Prusinski.

“I just thought: ‘Wow, how far the world has come in 14 years.’”

Several former BlackBerry buildings in the area of Phillip and Columbia streets are now occupied by startups, and Prusinski marvelled at the changes.

“Driving around it is hard for me to express how energetic I am about Kitchener-Waterloo because of the energy around the tech sector,” he said.

“I just love it.”