Meridian is on the road to closing the AI gap for mom and pop freight brokerages
Meridian's AI platform was designed to give small freight brokerages access to the same data insights as big competitors.
Daniel Lucas didn’t have to travel far to join The Comapany Lab’s (CO.LAB) mobility accelerator. As a longtime Chattanoogan and Tennessean, he’s the CEO and founder of Meridian — and as a local, he understands the region’s freight and logistics landscape firsthand.
While the city is nationally recognized as a leader in quantum innovation, even the home of “Freight Alley” can be a bit innovation-hesitant. In his eyes, these companies are typically multigenerational businesses that haven’t fully jumped on the AI train de
“Being local, I see a huge opportunity for Tennessee to really just double down on innovation,” he said. “Freight companies are already here. They’re already established, and they know the industry, but most of them have no idea how to use AI effectively.”
Lucas previously served as vice president of strategy and innovation in the freight and logistics industry, where he worked closely with logistics companies and saw firsthand the gap in how information was managed. Companies relied on multiple disconnected systems. Staff spent hours compiling reports from each one. Lucas knew there had to be a better way.
That realization led him to build Meridian, a private cloud platform that pulls in brokerage data in real time and gives companies an AI interface to ask questions in everyday language with no technical expertise required. Users can ask about lane performance or customer trends and the system draws from all their data sources at once to provide an answer.
The goal is to level the playing field for smaller operators.
“With Meridian, what I’m doing is bridging the information gap and giving that technology to companies of all sizes,” he said. “This means they can compete with companies who have their own business intelligence officer and an entire staff of people to put those reports together. These are mom-and-pop shops who have been in the business for 20 years. They know their business, but they’re not going to be able to compete with people who have that type of technology.”
By participating in the six-week cohort, Lucas is looking to test the feasibility of his product and pursue customer discovery.
“I came into this with an open mind that the market may or may not want this tool,” Lucas said. “I want to learn if this has the viability to be a real product or not, and I want to see it vetted. The team has been incredible so far. They teach you how to target your initial customers, how to appeal to investors and how to market your product. I’m confident that after the six weeks, I’ll have a clear plan and know my audience.”
Connect with Lucas on LinkedIn.
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