AscendTMS, one of the leading suppliers of transportation management systems to small to medium businesses (SMBs), has made its first acquisition.
InMotion Global, which owns AscendTMS, has acquired LoadPilotTMS. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Tim HIgham, InMotion’s CEO, said in an email to FreightWaves that LoadPilot customers are SMBs, as is AscendTMS.
The LoadPilot TMS will halt operations March 25, and its users will migrate to the AscendTMS product before that date.
In response to questions submitted by email by FreightWaves, Higham said the company had not made acquisitions in the past “because the multiples were so ridiculously high.”
Previous targets ultimately weren’t attractive
“Most companies we looked at in the past in the TMS space were losing money, had few customers, and had inferior technology,” Higham said in his email. “And most were handed too much VC money that simply supported their consistent losses. So buying something in the past made little sense until their VC or PE owners either refused to fund them any further, or their price expectations became more realistic.”
AscendTMS is “actively” working on an additional acquisition which Higham said he hopes to close in 45 to 60 days. He said there also are three other potential purchases in the pipeline.
The field is disaggregated enough that Higham said “we’ll do a dozen or more if we can find them.” A full time employee devoted to mergers and acquisitions is being brought on to the AscendTMS team, Higham added.
Higham said LoadPilot had built an “impressive and loyal customer base” in the 20 years since it was founded, but that its technology was aging. “As a standalone product, it’s been impossible for them to compete with newer technology over the last five years or so,” Higham said.
In a prepared statement released by InMotion, Rusty Pile, LoadPilot’s founder and CEO, said the company “wanted to ensure that our legacy of stellar customer service and providing first-class freight software would be preserved. By joining forces with AscendTMS, our customers are moving to the #1 rated system in the market.”
Higham agrees: big M&A year coming
There have been rumblings that 2026 is setting up to be a big year for logistics M&A. Higham said he agreed.
He divided the types of deals that might get done into three categories.
One would be “deals between two unprofitable companies, often with high debt loads, looking to try to survive.” But Higham was skeptical that those would succeed: “two bad apples don’t make a good one.”
The second would be from VC companies looking to exit investments “that haven’t performed well,” Higham said. “They will sell them to simply recoup some of their investment so they can move on and deploy their recovered capital into something else.”
The third, according to Higham, would be “deals involving highly profitable companies with low to no debt that have been patiently waiting on the sidelines looking for opportunities at the right price for the right asset.”
“These buyers now have their chance as so many sellers are eager to talk, and many of them need a suitor quickly to save them before the inevitable happens, which is usually bankruptcy,” Higham said.
Higham reiterated that past opportunities were not attractive to his company but that conditions have shifted.
“For years and years I thought that maybe it was me that was crazy as I watched all these deals announced for sky-high valuations where one or both of the companies involved weren’t profitable, and had in my opinion crappy products and even worse prospects,” he said. “But eventually the tide turned as I knew it eventually would, and it’s now giving us a chance to buy the right assets at the right prices.”
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