# Pylon · Pricing Rationale (Internal) This document is for the operator and the buyer of Pylon. Not for prospects. Why per-truck, why $8, when to discount, when to walk, the LTV math, and where Pylon sits relative to comparable software. --- ## Standard price: $8 / truck / month Starting at 5 trucks ($40/mo floor). Stacks linearly. 10 trucks = $80. 25 trucks = $200. 50 trucks = $400. Annual prepay knocks 15% off. Includes: live dispatch board, AI dispatch suggestions, driver app + SMS dispatch, customer-facing tracking link, end-of-day reconciliation, ELD integration (Samsara, Motive, Geotab, Verizon Connect), loadboard integration (DAT, Truckstop), unlimited dispatchers, unlimited customers, unlimited loads. ### Why $8/truck specifically Three anchors: 1. **The enterprise dispatch software floor is $40 to $80 per truck per month.** Trimble, McLeod, Aljex sit in that band, plus implementation fees of $5,000 to $25,000. We deliberately undercut by ~5x to remove price as the buying objection. The product is narrower (we are a dispatch board, not an ERP), so the price reflects that. 2. **The volume discount is built in.** A 5-truck fleet pays $40, a 50-truck fleet pays $400. The marginal cost to us per added truck is essentially zero (database row + a few API calls). The price scales with customer value because more trucks means a bigger bottleneck on the human dispatcher. 3. **It is below the owner-operator approval ceiling.** Owner-operators making $1M to $5M revenue can authorize $8/truck without thinking. $40/truck would trigger a board-level conversation at most fleets we sell to. We chose to be small enough to not be a conversation. --- ## When to discount ### Annual prepay: 15% off A 12-truck fleet at $96/yr/truck = $1,152 annual. With 15% off, $979. Cuts churn and forwards cash. Take it every time. ### Trade-association partnerships ATA (American Trucking Associations), TIA (Transportation Intermediaries Association), state-level associations. Negotiated 20% off for verified active members. Association takes a per-acquisition fee. We pay it gladly because predictable inbound is worth the discount. ### Multi-fleet operators Operator runs three separate fleet entities (e.g. one for hot-shot, one for refrigerated, one for last-mile). 10% off the second fleet, 15% off the third. Same root operator, three boards, separate billing. ### Design-partner fleet in a new vertical: 50% off for 6 months Hot-shot, drayage, intermodal, last-mile delivery, white-glove furniture. One design partner per vertical. Recorded case study with metrics is the trade. After 6 months, list price. --- ## When to walk We do not negotiate below $5/truck on standard plan. Hard floor. - **Below $5, the support cost eats the margin.** Even fully self-serve fleets generate ~2 to 3 hours/month of human handoff (ELD integration tweaks, custom-field requests, billing questions). At $5/truck on a 10-truck fleet ($50/mo) we are still profitable; below that we are not. - **The fleet that fights $8/truck will fight every feature request.** They will demand custom integrations and threaten to leave when we charge for them. - **The fleet that fights $8 will not become an LTV customer.** The expansion path (driver-app upgrades, customer-portal premium, route-optimization premium) is all $50 to $200/mo add-ons. If they fight the entry, they will not expand. Walk-away script: "I understand. The way Pylon is priced, it usually pays back in dispatcher hours saved inside the first week of the month. If $8/truck does not make sense for your fleet, the math probably does not, and we should both look elsewhere. I will follow up in 90 days." Do not chase. --- ## LTV math ### Assumptions (refresh quarterly) - Average fleet size at signup: 14 trucks. - ARPU: 14 × $8 × 12 = **$1,344/yr** at standard. - Annual prepay penetration target: 40% (trucking operators prepay more than legal because cash flow is more predictable). - Blended ARPU after annual mix: ~$1,304/yr. - Net expansion (fleets grow): ~12%/yr historical [TBD: confirm via cohort tracker]. - Gross margin: ~84% (LLM inference, infra, ~3 hr/mo human supervision per fleet). - Monthly churn target: ~2.0% (the dispatcher's tool has high switching cost, we want low churn). - Average customer lifetime at 2.0% monthly churn: 50 months. ### LTV $1,304 × 0.84 × (50/12) × 1.12 (NRR uplift) = **~$5,114 LTV** per fleet at standard. That looks small until you remember the 50-truck fleets pay $4,800/yr and the LTV tail is roughly 6 to 7x the average. ### CAC ceiling 3:1 LTV:CAC means we can spend up to ~$1,700 per fleet acquisition. Realistically blended CAC is $400 to $600 (mix of inbound, outbound, association partnerships). ### Payback period At $1,304 ARPU and 84% margin, gross profit per customer-year is ~$1,096. Payback against a $500 CAC is about 5.5 months. Annual prepay shortens that to under 2 months on the prepay cohort. --- ## Comparable services | Service | Pricing | What you get | What is missing | |---|---|---|---| | Trimble TMW | $40 to $80/truck + $5K to $25K implementation | Full enterprise TMS | Implementation cost, complexity, 6-month rollout | | McLeod LoadMaster | $50 to $100/truck + heavy implementation | Enterprise-grade dispatch + accounting | Built for fleets 50+, overkill below | | Aljex | $35 to $60/truck | Brokerage-focused | Fleet-side dispatch is thinner | | Samsara | $30 to $40/truck (ELD + telematics) | ELD compliance + telematics | Dispatch board is light, not the focus | | AscendTMS | $0 to $35/truck | Free tier (limited), paid TMS | UX shows its age, slow updates | | Pylon | $8/truck, $40/mo floor | Dispatch board, AI suggestions, SMS dispatch, ELD/loadboard integration | (Standard) no full accounting, no IFTA filing | The cleanest comparison for prospect calls is the dispatch-time number. Every alternative still requires the dispatcher to manually rebuild the board across screens. Pylon is the dispatch board. --- ## Prices we will revisit - **Q4 2026:** raise standard to $10/truck once we have 100 paying fleets and a 6-month retention cohort. - **2027:** introduce Pylon Pro at $18/truck with full route optimization, IFTA filing assist, and a customer self-serve portal. - **Never:** unlimited free tier. Free trials are 14 days, full features, no credit card. After day 14, the dispatch board has either become indispensable or it has not.