Nuvocargo acquires South Carolina-based 3PL

Nuvocargo announced it has acquired third-party logistics provider Merge Transportation, the company’s first 3PL acquisition.

Deepak Chhugani, founder and CEO of Nuvocargo, said the acquisition gives the company a 3PL focused on intra-U.S. freight solutions and helps expand their service offerings across all of North America.

Nuvocargo was founded in 2019 as an all-in-one AI-powered platform for trade among the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The company offers 3PL, 4PL, freight brokerage, customs brokerage and managed transportation solutions.

“With the acquisition, we become a full North America logistics business now, adding intra-U.S., with Mexico and Canada,” Chhugani told FreightWaves in an interview. “Now we have intra-U.S. brokerage with Merge Transportation. Nuvocargo is growing and has different capabilities. Merge is an awesome partnership where our customers are going to benefit from support with intra-U.S. capabilities. We believe Merge’s customers are going to benefit from their needs with Mexico and Canada cross-border.”

Charleston, South Carolina-based Merge Transportation was founded in 2019. The company, which has about 14 employees, provides full truckload, less-than-truckload, refrigerated, rail, air and hazmat transportation services across the U.S.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The entire Merge team is expected to join Nuvocargo.

Chhugani said he expects the acquisition of Merge Transportation to add “tens of of thousands of shipments a year by the end of the year.”

In addition to acquiring Merge Transportation, Nuvocargo is expanding its Mexico City office, hiring more people to join its product team.

Chhugani said the company is growing the Mexico City staff to improve its AI-powered tools such as NuvoOS and be closer to clients south of the border.

NuvoOS is the company’s end-to-end transportation management system tailored to the complexities of U.S.-Mexico trade.

“One of our business units is our U.S.-Mexico 3PL, our brokerage in Mexico City, and we have some folks from our product teams based in the office,” Chhugani said. “Because they’re the ones helping scope out the requirements of what to build, we’ve found a lot of success in having them be very embedded in the operation and seeing the day-to-day, especially for cross-border, places where there’s a lot of complexities and handoffs between the different people at the border, so they’re shadowing these teams that are using NuvoOS  and the AI tools that we’ve built day to day.”

Nuvocargo also recently received Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism certification for its customs brokerage. CTPAT is a voluntary supply chain security program offered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“A big part of our U.S.-Mexico cross-border brokerage is CTPAT carriers, because that’s what shippers need,” Chhugani said.

With so much uncertainty in the supply chain due to tariffs being imposed across the global marketplace, Chhugani said he remains bullish on U.S.-Mexico trade.

“Even in this deep 30-month freight recession we’ve been in, Nuvocargo’s three business units all grew more than double,” he said. “We’re seeing a lot of resonance with our business units and our technology in the past year. We’ve seen a lot of strong momentum organically, and now it’s even more exciting with this merger and acquisition. The company has really grown significantly, and I think we’re positioning ourselves really well in the future of North America and also the future of artificial intelligence.”

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