SambaSafety acquires Vigillo, aims for 'comprehensive' solution

Looking to expand its capabilities as a company “completely focused on solving driver-related problems,” SambaSafety, a pioneer in driver risk management, has acquired Vigillo, which provides real-time data for analyzing commercial driver and motor carrier safety performance.

Most basically, the combined companies will bring together Vigillo’s CSA data with SambaSafety’s MVR data, resulting in a “comprehensive solution that is absolutely needed going forward,” explained Richard Crawford, CEO of SambaSafety, in a conference call with trucking editors Wednesday.

Crawford added that he and Vigillo President Steve Bryan began discussing the possibility of joining forces 18 months ago, leading to the acquisition that closed Feb. 17. He did not provide financial details. Samba staff immediately will be added to the current Vigillo team as operational functions are integrated. The Vigillo brand will continue with regard to truck regulation products, and a combined “common dashboard” will be released to select, shared customers as early as next month, according to Crawford.

“There are very significant problems to be solved, and the way to attack those problems is the way Steve and I have been doing it for years: We’re leveraging technology; we’re bringing in disparate data; we correlate data, we normalize it, we analyze it. Then we present customers these solutions to solve that specific problem, whatever it might be,” Crawford said. “We’re very similar in that regard, and there are many more things we can do together—so many opportunities to help the industry and help our customers.”

Bryan will stay on as president of Vigillo, and will lead SambaSafety’s development of regulatory solutions.

“I am as excited as I could possibly be to be partnered with a much larger organization with much more resources,” Bryan said. “Best of all, it’s going to let me go out and engage with the industry, spend more time out with customers and at conferences than I was able to do while I was also running the company. There’s no place I’d rather be than on a stage with a microphone, telling everybody about  the great things we’re working on in this amazing industry—to help everybody understand their data and make the roads safer.”

Vigillo’s current customer base is about 2,000 carriers, Bryan noted. Combined with SambaSafety’s commercial vehicle customers, Vigillo will now serve 5,000 fleets representing more than 1 million drivers—“and we expect to grow that significantly.”

SambaSafety’s overall “customer set” totals more than 15,000, Crawford said.