Lamp Post Group

The three founding partners — Ted Alling, Barry Large, and Allan Davis — collectively govern investment decisions. All three were co-founders of Access America Transport, the third-party logistics platform sold to Coyote Logistics in 2014. They remain the sole investment committee, with no external limited partners dictating deployment timelines or strategy shifts.

Lamp Post's operating companies — Steam Logistics, Trident Transport, and the broader freight brokerage network — function as an embedded radar for supply-chain technology startups. Founders within the logistics sector often surface through operating-company relationships, conferences like FreightWaves' events, and the Chattanooga logistics cluster. The firm's venture studio also generates internal deal flow by incubating concepts that address gaps observed in its operating businesses.

Lamp Post operates as a hybrid: a venture arm makes early-stage equity investments, a venture studio incubates and launches new companies, and a portfolio of logistics operating companies generates cash flow. The operating companies are not merely portfolio holdings — they are active businesses that also serve as strategy labs, customer discovery channels, and co-investment partners for new supply-chain technology ventures.

The firm primarily makes direct equity investments into early-stage companies, with occasional participation in later-stage rounds for breakout portfolio companies. There is no public evidence of the group writing commitments into third-party venture funds. The permanent-capital structure means deployment is not constrained by a 10-year fund lifecycle, which shapes a preference for direct, enduring ownership stakes.

FreightWaves is a portfolio company whose founding team was backed in part by Lamp Post Group. The firm has maintained a sustained governance presence through board-level involvement as FreightWaves expanded from a niche data provider into a multi-product media and analytics platform serving the global logistics industry. The relationship is emblematic of Lamp Post's model: an initial venture check followed by deep operational engagement through the freight ecosystem.

The venture arm concentrates on early-stage companies — seed and Series A rounds — particularly in enterprise software, industrial technology, and supply-chain automation. The venture studio creates pre-seed opportunities that may be capitalized before a formal round. Later-stage follow-on investments occur selectively when a portfolio company demonstrates exceptional traction and the firm's operating expertise can compound returns through that growth phase.

Capital originates from the personal wealth of the three founding partners, generated principally by the 2014 sale of Access America Transport to Coyote Logistics for a transaction valued at approximately $636 million. The group has not publicly disclosed raising external capital from institutional or individual limited partners, operating instead as a permanent-capital investment vehicle funded by the founders' liquidity and ongoing operating-company earnings.