BitBuilders 015: Glid Technologies - Transforming American Freight

?? This week on BitBuilders - tl;dr:

• From military logistics to SpaceX to revolutionizing freight movement: Kevin Damoa's journey to founding Glid
• The broken state of US freight infrastructure: why transloading costs $800-2500 per move and adds weeks to shipping times
• How autonomous robots can bridge the gap between road and rail while creating better jobs
• The social impact opportunity: transforming port-adjacent communities through technology and education

"Until you solve for that middle step - going back to Elon's term, local maxima - you're still just adding more problems to the equation. If you still need a transload, you're still putting more time and cost to your logistics process and increasing inflation by doing that."

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A Soldier's Journey to Logistics Innovation

We often think of innovation as starting in a garage or college dorm room. But sometimes, the most impactful solutions come from people who've lived through the hardest problems firsthand. Kevin Damoa's journey to founding Glid started in the unforgiving terrain of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he served as a combat logistician in the US Army.

In theater, logistics isn't just about moving goods – it's about survival. Kevin's team had to move essential supplies through active combat zones, dodging IEDs and engaging in firefights while ensuring critical resources reached the warfighters. The stakes couldn't have been higher: without reliable logistics, an army loses its fighting capability within days.

This experience taught Kevin the fundamentals of robust logistics systems: redundancy, contingency planning, and the critical importance of getting supplies through no matter what. "We'll use ground or rail or air," he explains, "but air is always the last resort." These principles would later shape his approach to civilian logistics challenges.

The SpaceX Chapter: When Rockets Meet Logistics

After transitioning to the Air Force, Kevin found himself at SpaceX during its scrappy early days. As one of the first employees in flight module logistics, he was responsible for something few people think about: how do you safely transport a rocket across the country?

Working alongside Alan Merrick, Kevin approached rocket transportation with the same intensity as military operations. They designed custom transport apparatus and personally accompanied multi-million dollar rockets from California to McGregor, Texas for testing, then on to launch sites at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg. The stakes were just as high as in combat – one mistake could destroy an irreplaceable asset and set the entire company back.

This experience at SpaceX, combining hardware innovation with logistics expertise, would prove invaluable. Kevin witnessed firsthand how technological innovation could transform seemingly impossible logistics challenges into solved problems.

The Breaking Point: America's Logistics Crisis

The catalyst for founding Glid came in 2022, as Kevin watched America's logistics infrastructure buckle under the strain of post-pandemic demand. The port congestion crisis exposed deep structural weaknesses in how we move goods across the country. But Kevin saw something deeper: we were losing our ability to manufacture and move goods efficiently within our own borders.

Looking across different transportation modes – space, air, ocean, road, and rail – Kevin identified a critical bottleneck: the "transload" point where goods move between road and rail transport. This seemingly simple transfer process costs between $800-2,500 per move and can add weeks to shipping times.

The problem is compounded by rail's unit economics: trains typically won't depart until they're about two miles long, meaning goods often sit waiting for trains to fill up. A shipment from Tacoma to Chicago can take 22 days by regular rail service, or 9-12 days with expedited transloading – but at a significant cost premium that eats into margins.

The Glid Solution: Bridging Modal Gaps with Autonomous Robotics

Glid's solution is elegantly simple in concept but revolutionary in execution: create vehicles that can seamlessly operate on both road and rail, eliminating the need for traditional transloading entirely. These autonomous "gliders" combine commercial off-the-shelf components with proprietary chassis design and advanced sensor fusion for safe operation in both environments.

The company is starting with practical, contained use cases. Their first partnerships in Washington and Oregon focus on moving rock and waste materials with Taylor Transport and Portland Vancouver Junction Railroad, operating on 33 miles of private rail. This controlled environment allows them to prove out the technology safely before expanding to more complex scenarios.

But the vision goes far beyond just moving rocks. Glid is building a three-tiered solution:

1. Hardware: The autonomous glider vehicles themselves
2. Software: platform for brokerage, load optimization, payment processing, and tracking
3. Education: Learning management system to upskill workers for higher-value roles in automation and robotics

The Social Impact Imperative

What sets Glid apart is its focus on social impact alongside technological innovation. Kevin points out that 90% of International Longshoremen's Association workers live in port-adjacent communities, which are often economically disadvantaged. The resistance to port automation stems partly from fear, but also from lack of education about how automation can create better, safer jobs.

He contrasts this with ports like Rotterdam and Shanghai, where automation has led to higher efficiency and better working conditions. Rotterdam's automated port handles nearly triple the capacity of America's most efficient ports while providing good jobs and community benefits.

Kevin envisions using technology as a catalyst for community transformation. "There's no reason why our port-adjacent communities can't be middle-class communities," he argues. By combining automation with education and upskilling programs, Glid aims to create pathways to better-paying, safer jobs in robotics and automation.

Building for Scale: The Road Ahead

Glid's immediate focus is executing pilot programs and proving their technology works reliably. But the long-term vision is ambitious: Kevin wants to see Glid operating everywhere from ports to borders, helping America reindustrialize by solving its logistics bottlenecks.

The company aims to help push rail utilization from its current low levels to 95%, dramatically reducing road congestion and transportation costs in the process. And true to Kevin's space industry roots, he even has a "moonshot" goal of operating on lunar railways that DARPA is planning.

Key learnings from our conversation:

1. Innovation often comes from deeply understanding problems firsthand – Kevin's military and SpaceX experience gave him unique insights into logistics challenges
2. The biggest opportunities in logistics aren't always about speed, but about eliminating costly friction points like transloading
3. Technology adoption requires addressing social impact – successful automation needs to create better jobs, not just eliminate existing ones
4. Start with controlled environments to prove out revolutionary technology, then expand systematically

#logistics #infrastructure #robotics #automation #sustainability #socialimpact #deeptech #startup