Truxhelm — self-serve TMS для небольших автопарков в США

Comparables: TruckingOffice ($25–$130 a month by fleet size), AscendTMS ($49–$149 per user), Truckbase (per-truck plans from $290 a month billed annually), Tailwind TMS (acquired into WiseTech's CargoWise), Rose Rocket and Axon for larger fleets, and McLeod at the enterprise end. Truxhelm sits between the cheapest tools and the sales-led ones: self-serve, a 30-day trial, and per-truck pricing a 5-truck fleet can pay with a card.

Who pays

Paying customers are carriers with their own MC number: owner-operators with 1–2 trucks, and small fleets of 3–25 trucks where the owner or one office person dispatches. A 'sale' is a carrier that converts from the 30-day free trial to a paid plan (trial sign-ups are an earlier step inside each channel's funnel). Average fleet across the base is about 5 trucks.

How it makes money

Three plans billed monthly by card: Owner-Operator (1–2 trucks) $59 a month — 38% of paying customers; Fleet Core at $30 per truck, average 6 trucks = $180 a month — 44%; Fleet Pro (IFTA, settlements, ELD sync) at $40 per truck, average 15 trucks = $600 a month — 18%. Weighted subscription ARPU ≈ $210. On top, two partner revenue shares that together add about 11% (total ≈ $236 per customer a month): factoring referrals (10% of the factor's fee on carriers who factor through the integration, ≈ $11 per average customer) and a fuel-card rev share (≈ $15 per average customer).

Key assumptions

• Pricing is anchored on public competitor prices: TruckingOffice charges $25 (1–2 trucks), $55 (3–7) and $90–$130 (8+) a month; AscendTMS $49–$149 per user; Truckbase per-truck plans start at $290 a month billed annually. Truxhelm's $59 / $30-per-truck / $40-per-truck sits above the cheapest tool and below the sales-led ones — a 6-truck fleet pays $180 against $290+ at Truckbase.
• Trial to paid: a no-credit-card 30-day trial converts at 12% for search sign-ups and 5% for social sign-ups (median B2B self-serve, not top quartile). Search clicks cost about $7.50 — above the industrial & commercial CPC proxy that Webtonic uses for trucking, because software keywords are bid by funded TMS vendors. Each trial gets a 20-minute onboarding call and data import, about $40 per paying customer.
• Churn is high because the customers themselves fail: FTR counted about 4,755 net revocations of operating authority per month in 2025 (Ryan Transportation's monthly updates), and small carriers are the ones that exit in a freight recession. Retention: 86% of paying customers still pay after month 1, 59% after a year; after that owner-operators keep leaving at ≈ 3% a month and fleets at ≈ 1.8%, a blended ≈ 2.4% a month for the 38/62 mix (the engine takes one tail rate, so the blend is held constant — conservative for a base that drifts toward fleets).
• Partner income is a minority stream. Factoring partners pay referrers about 10% of their fee on referred carriers (Outgo/DAT affiliate program; Summar pays 15%). Assume 6% of customers factor through the integration at ≈ $1,800 of factoring fees a month (4 trucks × ≈ $18K of invoices × 2.5%), i.e. ≈ $11 per average customer. Fuel-card partners pay a cents-per-gallon rebate; assume 15% of customers enroll ≈ 4 trucks × 1,700 gallons × 1.5 cents ≈ $100, i.e. ≈ $15 per average customer — an assumption, not a published rate.
• Cost of revenue per customer: hosting and storage $4, ELD/load-board/maps API fees $4, SMS and e-mail $1, card processing 3% of the bill; support is in-house (four agents by year 3 at ≈ $4.5K a month). US SaaS is sold ex-sales tax (states that tax SaaS add it on the invoice), so there is no VAT line.
• Team: founders and go-to-market in the US, engineering nearshore in Mexico/Colombia at $7.0K–$7.5K a month fully loaded per senior engineer (US senior engineers cost ≈ $12.5K) — the standard way small vertical-SaaS companies keep burn compatible with $59–$600 tickets. Founders take $8K for the first year and a half after launch, then $12K; customer success ≈ $5.5K, support ≈ $4.5K; employer payroll tax and benefits ≈ 12%. No outbound sales team — growth comes from search, social, ELD marketplaces and content, and marketing spend grows in steps with revenue.
• Horizon 60 months: a self-serve SMB SaaS with this churn takes years to pay back its build and acquisition spend, and initialCash of $1.45M (a seed round) covers the trough. Revenue per FTE is high because there is no outbound sales team; acquisition is bought from Google and Meta instead of hired. There is no sales team to book into CAC: all acquisition is paid media, marketplace listings and content, so the channel CAC is the acquisition cost apart from growth-marketer salaries.

Risks

• Customer mortality: a freight recession that pushes rates below operating cost kills small carriers faster than any competitor can. Churn of 4% instead of 2.8% after the first year cuts LTV sharply.
• Price compression from below: TruckingOffice-style tools at $25–$90 and free tiers bundled by ELD vendors (Motive, Samsara) and factoring companies that give TMS away to win factoring volume.
• Paid search inflation: CPC on TMS keywords rises as funded vendors bid; the model's search lines already decay to 80% efficiency, a doubling of CPC would stretch the payback of acquisition past a year.
• Partner dependence: the factoring and fuel-card shares depend on partner contracts that can be renegotiated; the model keeps them below 15% of revenue for that reason.

How to adapt this model

• Different fleet mix: change tier shares and the average trucks per Fleet tier — a base of 10-truck fleets roughly doubles ARPU and halves churn.
• If you are a factoring company giving the TMS away, set tier prices near zero and raise the factoring line to your full factoring margin; CAC is then measured against factoring revenue.
• Sales-led variant for 25–100 truck fleets: add an AE team, use the search_b2b/outbound lifecycles with a 3-month delay and add a one-time onboarding fee.
• Canada: reprice in CAD and add GST/HST (5–15%) as an expense line if prices are quoted tax-inclusive.

Sources

• TruckingOffice pricing — Basic $25/$55/$90, Pro $35/$75/$130 a month, 30-day trial: https://www.truckingoffice.com/tms/transportation-management-system-pricing/
• Truckbase pricing — per-truck plan minimum $290/month billed annually: https://www.truckbase.com/pricing
• AscendTMS — $49 to $149 per user a month (checkthat.ai comparison): https://checkthat.ai/brands/ascend-tms/pricing
• tailwindtms.com redirects to WiseTech CargoWise (acquisition): https://www.cargowise.com/solutions/cargowise-transport/tailwind-tms/
• Ryan Transportation, October 2025 truckload capacity update — FTR net revocations ≈ 4,870 in October, YTD average ≈ 4,755 a month: https://www.ryantrans.com/october-2025-industry-update-truckload-capacity-outlook
• Trucking Dive — FMCSA grants vs revocations of operating authority, 2025: https://www.truckingdive.com/news/fmcsa-grants-reinstatements-revocations-operating-authority-2025-data/808968/
• Outgo (DAT) affiliate program — 10% revenue share on referred carriers' factoring earnings: https://outgo.dat.com/affiliate-referral-program
• Webtonic — trucking/logistics Google Ads statistics 2026, CPC proxy $5.87: https://www.webtonic.io/blog/trucking-and-logistics-google-ads-statistics