Kevin Damoa first encountered the challenges and dangers of moving freight from road to rail as a 17-year-old US Army soldier tasked with loading tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles onto the rail. It was—as the mechanical engineer and founder of Glīd Technologies puts it—the beginning of his love story with logistics.
It’s a love story that continued during a 13-year stint with the US Air National Guard as a firefighter in his private sector roles at SpaceX, Northrup Grumman, Romeo Power Tech and Xos Trucks — to name a few.
But it wasn’t until 2022, while working on Harley-Davidson’s e-bike brand spinoff, Serial 1, that Damoa returned to the road-to-rail problem.
“I had my come-to-Jesus moment,” Damoa recalls of the pivotal moment he decided to strike out on his own. “I looked around the world and thought, ‘OK, the railroads are broken, the ports are really congested, the roads are congested, the road deaths are crazy. Why don’t more people use rail?” And then my 17-year-old self tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Because it’s hard to get things from road to rail.”
Damoa identified the problem: the complex, multi-step process that takes a container from a ship to a freight train. He founded Glīd Technologies to try to solve this. The California-based startup (pronounced Glide) is among 20 Startup Battlefield finalists competing at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
Glīd is not trying to compete with trains. Instead, the company focuses on the first mile port-to-rail, as well as road-to-rail applications in large industrial parks.
“The first mile is where all your problems happen,” he said. “This is where you unload the ships and stack your containers and then figure out where they’re going. That process is still broken and involves a series of steps.”
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Once a ship arrives in port, a crane picks up a container and loads it onto a receiving truck, a vehicle used for maneuvering short distances, where it is then driven into a high stack. A forklift lifts the container and moves it into the stack. Later, a forklift is used to load it back onto a receiving truck, which then drives to the railroad. A forklift or crane is then used to pick up the container and load it onto a freight train, where it waits.
Glīd has developed several hardware and software products to speed up and reduce the cost of transporting containers by rail and ultimately to their destination. Its first is the GliderM, a hybrid-electric vehicle with a rear hook that can pick up and move 20-foot containers directly onto the rail without the need for forklifts.
The startup is also developing logistics software and a low-profile armored platform called Rāden that can slide under any trailer, pick it up and move autonomously along the road to the rail line.
“You can look at us as the baton runner,” he said, describing the system. “We’re offering that next-mile load; the name of the game is utilization—you know, how many containers can we get through that first mile, in a day, in order to maximize or optimize our costs.”
And the cost structure is compelling. By cutting forklifts and pickup trucks and using rail instead of semi-trucks for delivery, Damoa said he is able to offer the company’s mobility system as a service at a fraction of the cost. Customers are charged a $300,000 annual subscription, which gives them access to a GliderM or Rāden and their logistics software called EZRA-1SIX. Customers are also charged 8 cents per ton per mile. Damoa said it’s a bargain as the companies get a train, a truck and a forklift all in one, plus the service. By comparison, the cost per ton per mile today — if transshipment, train and truck fees are included — is about $2.27, according to Damoa.
The 14-person startup focuses on short-haul rail systems, line-owning ports and industrial parks. Glīd has already signed agreements with four short-line railroads as well as the Port of Woodland in Washington, Taylor Transport of Vancouver and Great Plains Industrial Park, a 6,800-acre site in Kansas with 30 miles of interior rail tracks and an on-site transshipment facility.
Glīd’s technology and business model also resonates with investors who see potential in the technology and business model.
Damoa said the first two years were difficult, noting that he couldn’t pay someone to invest in Glīd. But he just passed through Antler Startup Acceleratorwhich gave him critical CEO and pitch skills, the startup was more successful. Glīd received an investment before building its first prototype.
The startup announced in July that it had raised $3.1 million in a pre-funding round led by Outlander VC, with participation from Draper U Ventures, Antler, The Veteran Fund, M1C and angel investors. She has since raised more, bringing her total to $7.1 million with a post-money valuation of $35 million.
If you want to learn more about Glīd from the company itself — while checking out dozens of others, hearing their pitches, and listening to guest speakers on four different stages — join us at Disrupt, October 27-29 in San Francisco. Learn more here.
