Dallas—EquipmentShare, a data analytics and software startup geared to the construction industry, has raised $26 million in funding.
The investment round was led by Insight Venture Partners and existing investor Romulus Growth, with participation from Y Combinator, another previous investor. The money will be used to expand its geographic reach and further develop new products. EquipmentShare began as a marketplace to bring the construction site into the digital age: Contractors and construction firms with idle equipment like forklifts, cranes, and bulldozers can find others on EquipmentShare’s site that want to rent them.
Now, the company offers customers what co-founder Wally Schlacks calls a telematics system for fleet management called ES Track. “This is a one-window view for all of their assets,” he says. “In order for contractors to (know which of their equipment is idle) they first have to know if they have poor utilization and if so, in which assets.”
ES Track can also help contractors and those running large construction sites monitor maintenance requirements of their equipment and comply with a new federal regulation, Schlacks says.
By December 2017, contractors must comply with the ELD mandate by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which requires them to prove hours of service—say, commercial trucks on the road—using electronic logging devices.
Currently available in four U.S. cities, EquipmentShare will launch in eight new markets in the South and Midwest in 2017. Last May, the company announced it had raised $5.5 million in a Series A round and it was operating in two markets.
“As we explore and build out a deeper and deeper level of technology that connects those assets, there is so much opportunity to deliver value beyond just sharing assets,” Schlacks says.
