In what could be a game changer for the promotional products industry, a new service is pairing freight shipments with nearby trucks for easy, sometimes even same-day, delivery.

Culver City, CA-based Bolt uses pooling technology that connects shipments with nearby trucks and vans that have extra space. You can go to shipwithbolt.com to enter your shipping locations, dimensions and quantity to get an instant quote. Then you can book a freight delivery in under a minute without the need to calculate freight class or negotiate rates with carriers. Same-day shipping service is available in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Deigo, New York and New Jersey.

“Bolt is going to be the future of how freight gets done,” says Shane Ball, director of sales at Bolt. Ball has plenty of experience in the promotional products industry, having founded former distributor Capture Group before working in business development at AST Sportswear Inc. (asi/30244). He was one of Bolt’s first customers, and after witnessing how efficient and cost-effective the service was, he decided to join the 18-month old startup.  

“It's so easy to use and extremely reliable that I figured I can help other businesses just as Bolt helped mine,” Ball says. “It could very well be the next big thing in tech and logistics, and I want to be a part of the ride.”

Aaron Peck, co-founder and CEO of Bolt, is no stranger to the delivery field – he is also the co-founder of Skurt, a Los Angeles-based rental car delivery service. In February of 2018, Skurt was acquired by Fair, an app-based company seeking to reinvent how people lease vehicles. While working in manufacturing and warehousing, Peck says he was plagued by the inefficiencies and fragmentation that exist within the last mile of the delivery process. So, he decided to develop a paperless service that gives users access to a centralized network of connected trucks with real-time tracking.

“We rank carriers in each lane based on reliability and on-time percentage to ensure your freight is connected with the best carriers possible, while offering extremely competitive price points at different service levels,” Ball says.

Hundreds of companies are using Bolt on a daily basis, Ball says, including Top 40 supplier Innovation Line (asi/62660) and Top 40 distributor Bamko (asi/131431). “In today's world, the consumer expects the same service and speed that e-commerce or companies such as Amazon have been able to deliver,” Ball says. “Bolt gives the promo and apparel industry a great leg up on keeping up with that speed with same-day, on-demand delivery service. Bolt's technology gives everyone the peace of mind that it's going to deliver on time by allowing you to track all the way to delivery and then get an instant proof of drop-off.”