Glīd was the winner of Startup Battlefield 2025, convincing judges on Tuesday that it can tame one of supply chain’s gnarliest problems: the chaotic handoff between road and rail that delays containers, raises costs and threatens yard crews. The company pitched its software-and-sensors stack as a way to make intermodal moves easier, safer and smarter—without asking shippers, terminals or carriers to rip and replace their existing systems.
“We believe in many cases rail is efficient over distance, but the integration from truck to train needs significant improvement,” said CEO and founder Kevin Domoa, who first got interested in cleaning up that interface while loading heavy armor onto trains for the U.S. Army early on in his career.
That perspective from the ground up is the foundation of the design for Glīd: digitize the yard, choreograph that handoff and make sure you put people in front with an informed decision when it’s necessary to do so.
Why Glīd’s Logistics Pitch Stood Out to Judges
Intermodal friction is no niche headache—it’s where delays add up. UNCTAD calculates that about 80% of world merchandise trade by volume is carried by sea, much of it entering and leaving ports on rail or trucks. But data tends to be trapped in legacy EDI feeds, gate clerks reconcile paper with screens, and waiting drayage drivers frustratingly sit at appointment bottlenecks for assets that are not being utilized. And those service slowdowns then cascade into detention, demurrage and missed service windows.
Safety is equally pressing. Transportation and warehousing workers experience far higher rates of injury than the private industry average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with some years having incident rates around double the norm. Rail yards pose unique risks—blind corners, heavy lifts and tight choreography between people and machines. Glīd’s commitment is to minimize close calls and ambiguity with geofencing, authenticated workflows and live visibility.
There’s an emissions angle, too. According to the Association of American Railroads, rail can be 3–4x more fuel-efficient than trucking over long distances, which leads to up to ~75% lower greenhouse gas emissions per ton-mile. Making the transshipment more palatable paves a clearer road for shippers to place more freight with rail without sacrificing velocity.
Inside the Glīd Platform for Intermodal Operations
The architecture of Glīd combines a neutral orchestration layer with yard-level intelligence. The underlying platform ingests data from TMS/WMS tools, terminal operating systems, ELDs, rail telematics and EDI messages; normalizes into APIs; runs a rules engine that schedules moves, verifies chain-of-custody and alerts operators if plans are drifting. A mobile app walks drivers through authenticated gate-in/out, automatic checklists and dynamic slotting to reduce idle time.
The company’s upcoming product, Glīder, focuses on the physical yard: low-power sensors and edge cameras to verify container IDs, tie-down status and location; computer vision to identify unsafe proximities; digital twin maps to visualize live assets and crew. The system generates auditable timestamps for every handoff—perfect for compliance, claims and performance analysis.
Operationally, a truck brings in a rail-bound container that was pre-validated and arrives with an approved mission; it clears the gate using credentials on its phone and is sent to a spot. While the box is hoisted and staged on top, it automatically reconciles equipment numbers, seals and paperwork. If a crane falls behind or the composition of the consist changes, dispatch is updated on the fly and drivers are re-routed before a queue forms.
Great Plains Industrial Park will be the testing ground for Glīd, as it is launching a pilot there to prove out the model in a live intermodal setting. The company tells us it will track truck turn time, container dwell and safety events as key value metrics, and is building integrations so you’re not just slapping another siloed screen on your ops desk. The pressure cooker of Startup Battlefield, the team said, had forced a bootstrapped startup to “run a tight ship” when it came to software testing at low headcount.
A Crowded Field and Distinctive Diversity in Logistics
Glīd will join a market crowded with visibility and execution platforms—think project44 and FourKites on tracking, the likes of WiseTech Global’s CargoWise for enterprise workflows, and Flexport’s digital freight services. Where Glīd claims space is the yard-level, rail-road interface: bridging legacy EDI with modern APIs, marrying software and lightweight hardware, and making the few seconds in which costs spike and safety risks increase as efficient as possible.
Macro trends are tailwinds. The World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index indicates ongoing shortfalls in infrastructure and customs efficiency, and shippers continue to fortify networks following recent supply shocks. According to an estimate by the consulting firm McKinsey, end-to-end digitization could cut logistics costs by 15–20% and improve asset utilization—savings that are frequently found in those chaotic short legs between modes that Glīd is addressing.
What the Win Means for Glīd and Its Next Steps
In addition to an equity-free cash prize, the visibility it affords from Startup Battlefield is a credential with terminals, railroads and industrial parks that vet vendors very closely. Glīd says it is hiring in engineering, data, safety operations and field deployment, as well as spending its war chest on integrations, safety certification and repeatable playbooks for inland ports and rail-served campuses.
The near-term goals are clear and countable: demonstrate reductions in dwell time and truck turn, reduce paperwork touches and log fewer yard safety incidents. If the pilot takes off, Glīd may bring an additional layer to intermodal handoffs—something that feeds more freight onto rail, allows yard crews to work with increased confidence and keeps a squeeze on those supply chains.
