A story of building what didn't exist for domestic Canada and Canada–U.S. cross-border freight
Canadian freight has always been complex. For decades, 3PLs ran domestic Canada and Canada–U.S. lanes on tools built for someone else. We decided to build for it, with Mexico ready on the same login when you need it.
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2007: Matt Silver grew up in freight.
He was a kid around his dad's freight business and started at Coyote Logistics as an intern at 19.
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2014: Mexico freight still ran on Nextel radios.
Matt launched Coyote's Mexico business. Cross-border loads moved on Nextel radios and who you knew, with seven or eight parties on every shipment.
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2018: Forager taught the lesson behind Cargado.
Matt founded Forager, a Mexico and Canada digital brokerage that Arrive Logistics acquired in 2022. Cargado was built as a marketplace for brokers, not another brokerage.
“You can either be a service provider or a tech company. You cannot be both at the same time.”
Advice Matt got while building Forager -
2023: Brokers kept asking for a real marketplace.
Mexico had become the U.S.'s No. 1 trading partner, with no modern marketplace and no real rate data. In October, Matt teamed up with Rylan Hawkins, who joined Convoy from Microsoft and spent eight years there. He built Convoy Go and Convoy for Brokers, which let brokers cover loads with Convoy's carriers. Now they'd build that for Mexico and Canada.
Matt Silver
Co-founder and CEO
Coyote Mexico · Forager · Arrive
Rylan Hawkins
Co-founder and CTO
Microsoft · Convoy
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2024: Cargado went live on a Thursday in April.
Cargado means “loaded” in Spanish. After meeting carriers face to face in Laredo, we launched with three brokers and 200 carriers. By Monday, carriers were bidding.
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2025: Canada, Market Rates and a Series A.
The marketplace expanded into Canada and domestic Mexico. We launched Market Rates, built on live carrier bids, and the Excel Add-In, and raised a $12M Series A led by LGVP.
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Today: Hundreds of brokers and 2,400+ carriers.
Day one Today Carriers 200 2,400+ Brokers 3 Hundreds That includes 8 of the 10 largest logistics companies in North America. Every carrier is vetted before it can bid, and we meet brokers before they join. Two straight FreightTech 25 top-10 finishes and $22M raised.
Prefer to hear it told? Matt tells the whole story on the podcasts page, from Bloomberg's Odd Lots to The Freight Pod.
For decades, cross-border freight ran on walkie-talkies, spreadsheets, and legacy load boards that never kept up.
Then it moved to WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and tech built for domestic freight, patching together networks through emails and word of mouth. “The tools we have weren’t built for this.” Matt Silver had lived the carrier-broker frustration for years, first at Coyote Logistics, where he started Coyote Mexico in 2014, then at Forager, the cross-border freight platform he later sold to Arrive Logistics.
By 2023, Canada and the U.S. were each other’s top trading partners, with roughly $3.6B in goods crossing the border every day.
Nearly $1.6 trillion in goods trade was moving across North American borders (Census/BTS). Cross-border volumes were accelerating. But the tech still hadn’t caught up. In October that year, Matt teamed up with Rylan Hawkins, of Microsoft and Convoy, to build the modern marketplace for Canadian and cross-border freight. By December, the team was meeting with carriers across the network.
Cargado, which means “loaded" in Spanish, went live on a Thursday in April 2024.
It started with three brokers and 200 carriers. That first day, a few loads posted, but there were no carrier notifications yet, so nobody was bidding. By Monday, with a few calls to carriers and a few more loads posted, carriers started bidding and matching with brokers.
In 2025, the Cargado marketplace went live for domestic Canada and Canada–U.S. cross-border, with Mexico on the same login.
We also launched Cargado Market Rates (rates based on real carrier bid data, refreshed weekly, an alternative to stale historical averages from legacy load boards) plus an Excel plug-in that pulls Canada–U.S. rates into an RFP in seconds. In April, we raised a $12M Series A led by LGVP, fuelling our mission to connect 3PLs and carriers across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico through modern tools, a vetted carrier network, and structured communication.
Today, 2,400+ carriers are on Cargado, with market rates based on real carrier bid data.
Canadian freight isn't inherently hard. It has just been underserved by a modern workflow and modern market data. We're building the marketplace and infrastructure layer so 3PLs can run all their Canada freight in one place: intra-Canada and Canada–U.S. (northbound and southbound) with vetted recurring capacity, market rates defensible in an RFP, in CAD or USD, English ou en Français, and Mexico as upside on the same login.
Hundreds of brokers are on Cargado, including 8 of the 10 largest logistics companies in North America, alongside 2,400+ vetted carriers, and we're just getting started. Cargado's future is loaded with promise and plans.
Prefer to hear it told? Matt tells the whole story on the podcasts page, from Bloomberg's Odd Lots to The Freight Pod.
To make freight interconnected, dependable, and transparent for every 3PL and carrier moving goods across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.
Meet the team
Our values
Obsess Over Customers
We work to deeply understand every broker and carrier who uses Cargado and prioritize their needs above our own. We balance immediate feedback with forward-thinking innovation, building not just for today but for the future of the industry.
Seek Truth,
Use Data
We ground our work in facts, ask hard questions, and challenge our own assumptions. Curiosity drives us to understand the "why" behind every problem. We balance thoughtful analysis with decisive action.
Win As
a Team
We put shared success above individual recognition. We communicate honestly, challenge ideas with respect, and fully commit once a path is chosen. Outcomes over ego. Progress over pride.
Move With Velocity, Take Accountability
We move fast but in the right direction. We take full ownership of outcomes, not just tasks. We act with urgency and initiative, and we're resourceful enough to unblock ourselves before asking for answers.
Our investors
Life at Cargado
Cargado is distributed across North America. We're a small, fast-moving team of freight operators, engineers, and builders who use AI as a daily multiplier.
We'd make room for one person: a chief of staff who is further down the AI rabbit hole than our CEO. The careers page has the details.
Join us
Cargado is distributed across North America. We’re a small, fast-moving team of freight operators, engineers, and builders who use AI as a daily multiplier. We're not hiring right now. Our careers page explains the one exception.
Cargado in the news
News and releases
All release notes →All press coverage →Visit the media hub →
Integrated Mexico and Canada capacity in Tai TMS
Connect Tai TMS (Tai + Descartes) to Cargado's marketplace of 2,400+ vetted carriers in Mexico and Canada. Post loads under your rules, get carrier bids back in Tai, and confirm covered loads in Cargado Chat.
See how the integration worksDark mode
Cargado now has a dark theme on every screen, for brokers and carriers.
Cargado release notesMarket Rates in MXN and CAD
Get market rates in Mexican pesos or Canadian dollars, in the app and the API.
Cargado release notesCargado and GoodShip partner on cross-border freight benchmarks
Cargado's Mexico and Canada lane benchmarks, inside GoodShip's procurement workflows.
CargadoThe Cargado mobile and desktop apps
Cargado on the App Store and Google Play, with desktop apps for Mac and Windows.
CargadoCargado Introduces Cargado Chat
Launch coverage of Cargado Chat, the freight-first messaging hub.
FreightCaviar2026 FreightTech 25 winners revealed onstage at F3
Cargado climbs to #9 on the FreightTech 25: back-to-back top-10 finishes after debuting at #10 the year before.
FreightWaves