Arrive Logistics' new majority-owner deal comes with no debt attached and a plan to push growth even harder. CEO Matt Pyatt explains why the company accepted Mubadala Capital's investment, what changes internally, and why Arrive still sees a freight market vulnerable to disruption. Pyatt also details Arrive's scale — more than $4.5 billion in truckload business and 8,000 loads per day — along with his read on rates, capacity, and where the fourth quarter could be headed.

Arrive Logistics has closed a majority-stake investment from Mubadala Capital, an independent entity majority-owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, in a deal the company's CEO described as 100% equity, with no debt used to finance the transaction. The agreement positions Arrive to accelerate hiring, expand its trailer fleet, and push into new customer verticals without the earnings pressure that accompanies a public listing. The structure also stands out at a time when private equity involvement in freight brokerage has often involved leveraged buyouts; an all-equity deal leaves the company without new debt-service obligations heading into an uncertain rate environment.

Arrive CEO and co-founder Matt Pyatt said the 10-month process was designed to rationalize the company's investor base, giving existing backers — including LeadEdge Capital, which joined in 2018, and ATL Partners and its co-investors, who came aboard in 2021 — the option to either reinvest or exit. "We're basically just reloading the gun, so to speak, and allowing us to continue to invest in our business," Pyatt said.

The brokerage is on pace to move more than $4.5 billion in truckload volume this year at a run rate above 8,000 loads per day. Pyatt said load volume grew 25% to 27% in 2024 and is up more than 20% year over year in 2025, having more than doubled since 2022. That trajectory runs counter to much of the brokerage sector, which spent 2023 through 2025 battling a prolonged freight recession marked by excess capacity and depressed rates that forced many smaller brokers out of the market. The company hired 500 people in 2024 and 650 so far in 2025, and Pyatt said total headcount added this year will reach roughly 1,000.

"You can't optimize the P&L and maximize growth. And so it's a blend — you don't ever want to burn cash, but you want to have a fine line of like, are you deploying tangible investments that you know you're going to get an ROI on, while continuing to take market share," Pyatt said.

A major deployment target is the drop-trailer segment. Pyatt noted that for-hire truckload is roughly a $500 billion market, with approximately half of that volume moving on drop trailer — a segment in which brokers have historically captured only 2% to 3% of share. Drop trailer, in which a trailer is left at a shipper's dock for loading or unloading outside standard appointment windows, has grown as shippers facing driver shortages and tight dock capacity seek scheduling flexibility. Arrive currently operates 700 to 800 trailers and plans to invest significantly to grow that asset base. The company also identified the small and medium-sized business shipper segment and healthcare verticals as underpenetrated opportunities.

On freight security, Pyatt said Arrive has built a 45-person team covering fraud, claims, and compliance. Cargo theft and double-brokering schemes have drawn heightened industry attention in recent years, prompting carriers and brokers alike to tighten vetting. The brokerage works with only 9% of the roughly 450,000 carriers in its vetting system, requires carriers to have at least one year in business, and routes 93% of loads through carriers it averages loading 15 times per month. "Since the beginning of the year, I think we went 900,000 loads without a single theft," Pyatt said.

On the broader market, Pyatt said rates likely peaked in July, expects them to settle in the third quarter, and sees normal seasonality potentially pushing rates back to July levels in the fourth quarter. He argued that the floor in a future downturn will be meaningfully higher than in the last cycle — roughly $1.95 to $2.05 per mile plus fuel on dry van, compared with the $1.60 to $1.65 plus fuel lows seen from 2023 through 2025 — because capacity has not returned to the market at the pace seen after the COVID-era surge.

Source: FreightWaves