Our Mission

Streamlining middle-mile Logistics for a sustainable and prosperous future

Transportation is the foundation of modern society - everything we use, from mail to groceries to raw materials, must move from point A to point B. As our need for movement grows, the efficiency of that movement becomes increasingly critical: faster, cheaper, and more reliable transportation directly improves our ability to deliver food and medicine to communities in need, or simply get packages to people who are waiting for them. But our current transport systems carry heavy burdens beyond their monetary costs. Freight transport generates 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions while filling our roads with dangerous trucks and our skies with noisy and polluting aircraft. It’s time to do better.

“If we’re going to “Do Right and Feed Everyone,” we need better infrastructure to connect cash crops to markets, milk from dairy farms through the supply chain to the grocery stores, timber to lumber mills...”

— Sonny Perdue, Former Secretary of Agriculture

Our mission is to make freight easy, in order to make sure that every community has access to the goods and technology they need without harming the environment. We’re going to do this by building a “conveyor belt network in the sky” to move freight from business to business and community to community while minimizing emissions and eliminating the need for new infrastructure.

We are passionate engineers with a history of designing futuristic aircraft, radically better automobiles, and the most advanced last-mile delivery drones. Now, we’re going to make freight transport better for everyone.

The Problem

Critical capacity, cost, and environmental challenges in middle-mile logistics

The global logistics industry is experiencing unprecedented strain as e-commerce growth and just-in-time delivery demands continue to surge. This growth has exposed significant inefficiencies in traditional transportation networks, leading many retailers to establish their own middle-mile operations: a stopgap solution that ultimately reduces overall network efficiency compared to consolidated operations. The dramatic increase in shipping costs relative to demand over the past 15 years points to substantial supply-side bottlenecks in the industry.

The cost of freight transportation has increased significantly more than demand, air freight even more drastically.
Data Sources: Federal Reserve Economic Database, Bureau of Transportation Statistics

Infrastructure: These capacity constraints stem from fundamental infrastructure limitations and operational challenges. Congested roadways and airports, combined with persistent shortages of drivers and pilots, create hard limits on system throughput. Traditional solutions like infrastructure expansion are increasingly untenable – both financially and politically. The I-10 to I-15 Interchange project illustrates this challenge: an 11-mile road expansion providing just 20 years of capacity growth has taken 15 years to complete at a cost exceeding $1 billion. With hundreds of similar bottlenecks across the US transportation network, infrastructure expansion alone cannot meet growing demand.

Emissions: The environmental impact of middle-mile freight compounds these challenges. This sector currently accounts for approximately 7% of global carbon emissions, with projections showing emissions doubling by 2050 without radical technological intervention. Meeting EPA's 2050 emissions targets requires near-complete decarbonization of the freight sector : a daunting task given current technologies. Zero-emission alternatives face significant hurdles in range and payload capacity, making them economically challenging. Additionally, the limited supply of sustainable energy sources and battery materials, combined with 20-30 year vehicle lifecycles, necessitates immediate action.

Regional Air Freight: A microcosm

Regional parcel air freight, the movement of smaller payloads between hub and spoke airports, represents a particularly acute example of these challenges. Despite covering relatively short distances, this segment constitutes the majority of express freight delivery costs according to UPS executives. These high costs force excessive package consolidation at major hubs, increasing total travel distances. The environmental impact is equally concerning: while handling just 0.003% of US freight tonnage, regional air freight produces 0.25% of freight industry CO2 emissions: a staggering 73 times more CO2 per ton than the industry average.

To get an express parcel from Savannah, GA to Burlington, VT with current networks it takes 4 flights for a total of 1360 nm in the air. The direct flight would be 830 nm, not much more than half.

This confluence of capacity constraints, environmental imperatives, and economic inefficiencies demands a new approach: one that circumvents traditional infrastructure and manpower bottlenecks while dramatically reducing energy consumption.

Our Solution

We will build a network of autonomous dedicated freight-transport aircraft that are radically more efficient than current vehicles allowing us to sell transport capacity to industries and freight consolidators that need intercity deliveries at much lower cost and emissions than current modes.

The Start: A radically more efficient freight aircraft

Our aircraft integrates recent advances in aircraft technologies including composite structures, distributed electric propulsion systems, aerodynamic drag-reduction techniques, and critically autonomous navigation and control. Composites and autonomy allow for significant mass reductions in the aircraft while electric propulsion systems and drag reduction significantly increase the efficiency of the aircraft. According to our sizing models, we can achieve a roughly 80% reduction in energy usage per payload ton-mile. This efficiency improvement, the elimination of pilot costs, and the reduction in maintenance cost due to electric propulsion lead to a 40-50% reduction in cost per ton-mile, reducing freight costs and unlocking more direct deliveries and smaller and more remote communities.

Aircraft Concept highlighting blended-wing-body design and LD3 container capacity

Autonomy (20% Energy Savings): Autonomy allows the removal of pilot-related systems and climate control needs reducing fuselage volume, structural mass, and aerodynamic excrescences like windows and doors. Additionally, autonomy eliminates pilot costs and reduces constraints on routes, unlocking significantly increased utilization. TRL 7

Containerization (6 % Energy Savings): Integrating standardized containers improves volumetric efficiency of the payload bay reducing extra fuselage mass and drag by getting rid of unneeded surface area. Also, using standardized containers reduces sorting and loading time and manpower needed, reducing ground crew costs. TRL 9

Blended Wing Body (26% Energy Savings): BWB design integrates the fuselage and wings into a single lifting body, dramatically reducing wetted area and associated drag. Additionally, the integration of the wings and fuselage increases structural efficiency, resulting in a reduced wing and fuselage mass. The improved lift-to-drag ratio and lighter structure significantly decrease energy requirements per payload. TRL 7

Carbon Composites (16% Energy Savings): The lighter weight of carbon composite structures compared to traditional metals reduces the overall mass that needs to be lifted and transported. This lower structural weight means less energy is required for the same payload capacity. TRL 9

Distributed Electric Propulsion (48% Energy Savings): Multiple smaller electric motors allow for optimal thrust distribution and better aerodynamic integration. Electric propulsion eliminates many of the inefficiencies of combustion engines, while distribution allows for better boundary layer control and reduced drag, nearly halving energy consumption. Additionally, it unlocks the usage of turbogenerators which are ~30% more efficient than current turboprops. TRL 6

All of these technology integrations result in a much smaller and more efficient aircraft for the same payload further reducing energy, pilot, maintenance, and manufacturing cost.

Technology used to achieve ~80% reduction in energy usage per revenue payload-distance.

Data: Internal Sizing Tools

Our approach to the design and engineering of our aircraft allows us to integrate existing aircraft supplier’s technology into a superior package. Many competitors in this space rely on assumptions of advancements in current technologies like significant battery energy-density improvements or hydrogen fuel-cell systems. We do not. This allows us to quickly design and iterate on learnings and brings our entry into service forward.

The End: An integrated network of right-sized vehicles everywhere

Our aircraft’s cost and energy savings unlock service to additional communities, however, the real gains for industry and society come when we integrate more of freight into a unified network unlocking much greater consolidation and the square-cubed law gains in payload fraction and propulsion efficiency. To do this we will leverage the data gathered and relationships built with our initial regional air freight system to optimize our next offering for the next step in revolutionizing middle-mile logistics. This endeavor has three future paths:

Larger Hub to Hub Deliveries: We will apply our technology to larger aircraft, payloads, and ranges in order to replace much of the freight volume currently being flown on inefficient converted passenger jets like 767s, significantly reducing aviation environmental impact.

Smaller Point to Point Regional Deliveries: With data on package flows we can leverage our increased efficiency and decreased cost to allow development of smaller VTOL drones that can deliver smaller payloads from town to town without having to go through consolidation at hubs, reducing overall miles flown and aircraft emissions.

Warehouse to Warehouse Freight: Larger and slower aircraft that can interface with warehouses and shipping centers will reduce cost per payload further; this unlocks priority freight volume currently taken by trucks, reducing impact on communities and roads and eliminating infrastructure bottlenecks.

The Market

Regional Air Freight: Potential waiting for new tech to unlock

A clear market need for these improvements exists, as demonstrated by both competitors and potential customers.  First demonstrated by sustainability commitments and major innovation initiatives from freight integrators like DHL (committing to significant GHG emission reductions, fleet electrification by 2030, and net zero by 2050) and UPS (committing to halving GHG emissions by 2035 and achieving net zero by 2050).  Further evidence includes regional cargo operator fleet upgrades and Letters of Intent/Memoranda of Understanding with aircraft startups, such as Alpine Air Express's LoI for 75 Aura Aero hybrid aircraft and Ameriflight's commitment to 20 Natilus BWB cargo aircraft and 35 Sabrewing cargo drones. The biggest differentiator in this market is cost as all carriers and aircraft achieve the same delivery time.

Market size breakdown by economic region.
Data from Form 10-K filings and flight data

Our aircraft will reduce operating costs by 40-50% and allow us to undercut existing regional carriers while maintaining high margins. In the regional air freight market most of the customers are freight integrators like UPS, FedEx, and DHL delivering hub-to-spoke freight. Typical prices are between $3K and $4K per ton and are either purchased as discrete route contracts or by mass and distance. This business is concentrated at a number of regional hubs around the world. As an example, Alpine Air Express receives approximately $12M in revenue from their operations at the Billings, MT hub.  The North American market ships approximately 500K Tons of parcel air-freight per year. At $3500 per ton, the North American market is around $1.8B and the worldwide total addressable market is around $4.2B. This market is growing at around 4-5% per year.

Our implementation of autonomy, reduced shipping costs, and system integration will enable us to take market share from regularly scheduled truck-freight such as warehouse fulfillment for retail and e-commerce. This market expansion opportunity represents around 10-15% of the $900B truck-freight market for a TAM of $100B. For example, a study by North Dakota State University predicts that in rural regions like Richardton, Iowa. The delivery of electronics, currently truck-borne, could be achieved by large cargo drones for significantly reduced cost.

Estimated delivery costs via cargo drone for electronics in Rural Iowa.
Bridgelall R. Spatial Analysis of Middle-Mile Transport for Advanced Air Mobility: A Case Study of Rural North Dakota. Sustainability. 2024; 16(20):8949. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16208949