Tampa-based logistics firm CURA Freight LLC is expanding its workforce and operations and is projected to reach $30 million in sales this year — more than triple what the company earned just two years ago.

CEO Alex Critcher and President Eddie Santucci started CURA in 2017, specializing in nationwide third-party logistics for shipping by rail, roads, warehouses and more — and it’s on track for immense growth, they say.

In 2019, CURA ended its year at just shy of $9 million in sales with only six full-time salespeople. In 2020, company sales climbed to $14.95 million while only adding one additional salesperson, executives said. In 2021 Q1, it reached $9.54 million in sales with seven full-time sales staff and 14 total employees.

Critcher and Santucci are leading the growth. They worked with large logistics companies and noticed workflow issues in the industry.

“I was climbing up the corporate ladder,” Critcher said. “I found out the lack of utilization of the data that company wasn’t using that if it had, it could’ve made everyone’s job much easier. Some days, I would make 400 or more phone calls to find one vendor to do a job we had committed to for a customer.”

The pair decided to open their own logistics business inside a 10,000-square-foot 1912 building historically used for cigar rolling. In general, the sector is lagging roughly eight years behind in technology needed to be competitive in the space, Critcher said. To that end, creating a proprietary transportation management software system that makes finding vendors through a database and closing transactions a seamless process has been a big boost to CURA.

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