A WA business is fast becoming the gold standard for transport management systems nationally.
Bustle is a great Western Australian scale-up story: an established SME using innovation to shift the dial in the road-freight sector.
Like many of WA’s unsung high-growth businesses, Bustle shows how founder ambition can turn incremental improvements into industry-wide digitisation.
Bustle’s journey began in 2015 when Mike Holden and Shannon Coleman, both of whom had a long association with the transport industry, harnessed their frustrations with the sector’s limitations.
The pair saw an industry that was an old-school, paper-heavy sector with a pervasive ‘if it’s not broke, why fix it’ mindset that left it struggling with inefficiency and lack of visibility.
“The industry was really fragmented, very messy, paper-driven,” Mr Holden said, highlighting that legacy software then failed to deliver on promises despite heavy investments.
Rather than waiting for change to be imposed from the outside, Bustle built its own technology, which was initially viewed as an Uber for freight model.
Shifting the dial
As with other innovative-active SMEs, the business had a turning point. Bustle’s point to shift the dial came when its founders deliberately repositioned the business. They invested in systems, leadership capability, and a product strategy that evolved from their own lived experience.
They combined these factors with extensive industry consultation that revealed demand for backend savings beyond just freight costs.
In 2018, the business pivoted to a white-labelled software-as-a-service platform when joined by technology expert Brad Johnson.
The platform debuted that year when it delivered a transport management system for Bibra Lake-based Matic Transport, prioritising drivers as the core data source over legacy accounting tools.
Regulatory shifts
Reforms to Chain of Responsibility laws in 2018-19 demanded even more innovation with end-to-end visibility, catalysing Bustle’s capabilities for tracking, credentials and safety across carriers.
In March 2022, its National Heavy Vehicle Regulator-approved electronic work diary put a rubber stamp on the software as an industry-wide accepted tool.
The versatility of the software means it is fit-for-purpose for all carriers (tier one-three) and provides the end user with full visibility on the freight movements through the use of the connected carrier network.
In addition, the platform enables innovation at scale for carriers of any size.
Bustle’s modules unify operations, compliance, finance, and assets with driver apps for single-entry data, live insights and a focus on integrations and connectivity.
The Bustle team has experience in connecting its software to existing systems, enabling five-truck SMEs to be scaled to national fleets.
Ongoing development has included a focus on margin intelligence, cost optimisation, reducing empty running and delivering proven return on investment.
Mr Coleman said Bustle had demonstrated its ability to profitably digitise transparency.
Contribution
As a scale-up, Bustle exemplifies how established SMEs deliver outsized contributions to the state, presenting prime investment opportunities amid sector turmoil. Its manifesto vows a “safer, more connected, responsive, and smarter” industry, positioning it to redefine transport economics.
WA is a global leader in enabling technologies.
Bustle has demonstrated that sophisticated, globally relevant solutions can be built in WA, far from the traditional technology centres.
WA is taking technology leadership in many sectors, with high-potential SMEs turning local capability into enduring competitive advantage.
The state is demonstrating global leadership in technology such as remote autonomous operations across trucks, trains, underwater unmanned vehicles, and medical and marine vessels.
Now, Bustle is taking the lead in transport tech, fast becoming the gold standard for transport management systems nationally.
Why it matters
WA’s economy depends heavily on efficient, safe and transparent freight networks. And SMEs play critical roles throughout supply chains.
By digitising operations from the truck up, Bustle is lifting the performance of this SME-heavy layer; improving compliance, utilisation and ultimately margins for operators across mining, retail and regional logistics.
WA innovators are proving that geography is no barrier to world-class capability.
For investors, policymakers and ecosystem builders, it is a timely reminder that some of the state’s most compelling innovation stories are already in the market, hiding in plain sight in the scale-up sector.
• Greg Riebe is program lead for ScaleUp WA and INVESTinWA, and executive director of Entrepreneurs in Residence Pty Ltd
