emoras are small fish that cling to larger animals for a free ride. Their name comes from a Latin word meaning “to hinder or delay,” but the Alaskans who’ve taken the fish as their mascot are doing exactly the opposite. They’ve started a company to streamline cargo shipments.
With backgrounds in aviation and logistics, co-founders Rebecca Clark and Jody Oyen created Remora to pair cargo or passengers with the most appropriate carrier.
“Jody and I started Remora while I was the managing director of Arctic On-Demand [AOD] because we saw a market that the company was missing and also the need for a simplified tool,” Clark explains. The centerpiece of Remora is an app that helps clients schedule cargo and passenger flights on planes that have available space.
emoras are small fish that cling to larger animals for a free ride. Their name comes from a Latin word meaning “to hinder or delay,” but the Alaskans who’ve taken the fish as their mascot are doing exactly the opposite. They’ve started a company to streamline cargo shipments.
With backgrounds in aviation and logistics, co-founders Rebecca Clark and Jody Oyen created Remora to pair cargo or passengers with the most appropriate carrier.
“Jody and I started Remora while I was the managing director of Arctic On-Demand [AOD] because we saw a market that the company was missing and also the need for a simplified tool,” Clark explains. The centerpiece of Remora is an app that helps clients schedule cargo and passenger flights on planes that have available space.
“There has been tremendous infrastructure growth in Alaska over the last few years, and now people in rural areas have access to WiFi that wasn’t available before,” adds Oyen. “So it makes sense to provide an efficient, modern tool that everyone from Native corporations to healthcare facilities to retail businesses and families ordering groceries from Costco can use to get materials where they need to go. Our app simplifies shipping and makes it more efficient on both ends.”
“We were hangar mates,” Clark says of her introduction to her future business partner. “And that’s where I got my first taste of Alaska logistics, coordination, and aviation.”
A Tucson, Arizona native, Clark came to Alaska after graduating from college to join Copper Valley Air Service in Glennallen.
Oyen, who originally worked as a wildlife biologist in rural Alaska, started flying about twenty years ago and eventually began to fly commercially for Copper Valley Air, where she met Clark, who was the company’s business manager at the time.
Clark left the state for a job with MonoCoque Diversified Interests, an aviation asset company in Austin, Texas, where she dealt with aircraft acquisitions around the world. “I gained a better knowledge of aviation from a global perspective,” she says. “That led me back to Alaska, where I started Arctic On-Demand, a third-party logistics company, in 2020.”
At the time, Clark was living in Oyen’s basement, with plans to find her own place.
“Then COVID hit, and we were quarantined together,” Oyen says with a laugh. “Rebecca had only planned to stay a couple of weeks, but once Anchorage shut down, she ended up living with us, and it turned out to be a great experience.”
During this time, the friends began talking about work challenges and realized that there was an opportunity to improve the shipping process.
“We were discussing the challenges facing AOD and other companies and realized that a market was being missed,” says Clark, noting that AOD closed in November 2021. “From both the pilot perspective and the operations side, we discussed how complicated it was to move even the smallest piece of cargo to some communities, not to mention filling a whole C-130.”
“Rebecca was expressing her frustration and lamenting how outdated these types of operations are in Alaska; a lot of air carriers still use paper manifests,” says Oyen. “While that works for them, on the customer side it involves a lot of phone calls and emails, and it’s very time-consuming. We asked ourselves, ‘Why isn’t there an app for this? There’s an app for everything else.’”
Figuring out how to streamline air cargo logistics was no simple matter, however.
“There are more than 300 airlines in the state of Alaska, and the general public isn’t aware of all of them or how to get in touch with them,” says Clark. “It’s a daunting task. There had to be a way to provide efficiency and convenience—right at your fingertips.”
To develop the app, the partners hired a developer who grew up in Alaska and was familiar with life in rural communities.
“We wanted a quality product, and it would have taken us years to learn how to code and develop it, so we hired a wonderful developer who understood what we wanted—things that someone who hadn’t spent time in Alaska would not understand,” says Clark.
“For example, he understood that there would be instances when a [Cessna] 206 would land on a gravel strip, with nowhere to deliver cargo to, or that sometimes a person on a four-wheeler was the delivery point,” she adds.
The name of the company signifies a symbiotic relationship between air carriers and cargo. “Like the remora fish, we want the cargo to ‘latch-on’ to pre-existing flights around the state, providing the cargo shipper a more economical price and efficiency in flights,” says Oyen.
While most of the general population is familiar with apps and their use, the partners chose to keep the app simple and user-friendly. “We wanted it to be much more efficient than picking up the phone and making calls,” says Clark. “And while our plan right now is to focus on aviation, the way it is designed, it can move into other logistics markets, such as ground and marine, in the future. We have the ability to expand into different verticals as Remora grows.”
The app, which became available on the Apple app store and on Google Play in May 2021, can be used with both iPhones and Androids and is free to download. Once a customer creates a log-in, they input cargo information and multiple carriers receive the request and can offer quotes. The app also handles charter or seat requests.
“For example, a customer writes the description of the cargo, including dimensions, weight, and other details that the carrier needs to know,” says Oyen. “Then they add the dates for the cargo to be shipped and received, and that request goes out to each carrier on our network… The carriers then analyze the information and respond to the customer with a quote,” she continues. “The customer decides which quote works best for them, and once they accept the bid, the customer and carrier can connect through messenger on the app with more details.”
The Remora process has numerous advantages. While the customer and air carrier can stay anonymous while looking for the best price and timing, the carrier can still respond quickly and efficiently to customer requests.
“On the carrier side, things can change at a minute’s notice, so people carry their phones with them religiously,” says Clark. “Because of this, they are able to answer clients quickly with the information that’s right in front of them, and they can choose to utilize the app whenever they see fit. It’s a huge time saver for them.”
The app also introduces customers to airlines that they may not have known about before this innovation. “We are making the market a more even playing field for everyone—from small, one-plane air carriers to the full-fleet airlines in the state,” says Oyen. “On the other hand, some carriers may find that they have competitors out there that they didn’t have before.”
The app could also prove beneficial to the environment, as planes that have extra space can be filled, cutting down on the number of flights that are needed.
“When airlines can fill their flights, it enables them to fly more efficiently,” says Clark. “This is important with fuel costs so high, and airlines also make more money by adding cargo to fill flights to the full payload capacity of the aircraft.”
“Fewer flights, fewer carbon emissions,” adds Oyen. “That’s better for everyone—and the earth.”
As cohorts and members of Launch Alaska’s portfolio, Oyen adds that Remora is a strong proponent of sustainable flying. Launch Alaska works to accelerate Alaska’s clean energy economy by scaling technology to fight climate change.
While the Remora app is free, each transaction comes with a management fee. All transactions have a set price under a certain amount of weight, and if the cargo exceeds that amount, the price is based on percentage.
“The fees are split between the customer and the carrier,” says Oyen. “Traditionally, each air carrier charges a service fee; but now, instead of the carrier collecting a $30 service fee, we get a share because we’re providing the service to the customer and doing all of the legwork.”
She adds that contract pricing is negotiable for companies that work with Remora consistently. “So many Native corporations and government agencies move cargo and passengers around; Costco has couriers that make a lot of runs to remote lodges,” she says. “There are so many different needs in Alaska, and we’re hoping to fit them all.”
While Remora plans to expand into ground and marine logistics, it has its hands full with aviation changes in Alaska. This includes the addition of the Pacific Air to Sea Service, also known as Alaska PASS, at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.
Alaska PASS is an alternative for maritime shipping from Asia to ports on the West Coast. Instead, cargo planes would stop at the Anchorage airport, and the goods would be packed into containers on southbound ships that would otherwise return empty to Tacoma or Seattle.
“There’s also a proposal to add fuel stands and a possible cargo distribution warehouse at South Airport Park, which provides even more opportunities for cargo to come in from Asia,” adds Oyen. “Currently, planes stop here to fuel and continue on to the East/West Coast, but if those flights unload here, that cargo could be put onto other planes or ground or marine barges, and Remora can play a role in helping to distribute that cargo very efficiently.”
UPS and FedEx are both expanding their operations at the airport, and plans are also in the works for a cold storage building aimed at supporting the cargo industry.
Clark adds that while Remora is currently focused on Part 135 aviation, which refers to small, unscheduled carriers, they see opportunity to expand into the larger Part 121 airlines, domestic and international, as well as to grow into different markets.
“Look at Hawaii, New Zealand, and Canada; they are all lacking infrastructure, and we see opportunities there on the ground and marine side of things,” says Oyen. “That may be several years out, but there is a lot of opportunity.”
She adds, “We’ve had so many people both inside and outside of Alaska reach out to us and say that this is needed—this is where aviation logistics needs to go. It’s really encouraging.”
The partners are especially pleased that the Alaska entrepreneurial community has been so welcoming as they get their business off the ground.
“It’s really fun being a female entrepreneur in Alaska. Rebecca and I weren’t very familiar with that community here, and we’ve learned a lot about other start-ups,” says Oyen. “It’s been a really great experience so far, and we appreciate all of their support.”
“It’s pretty special not only being a female entrepreneur in Alaska but to be in aviation,” adds Clark. “There is a limited number of females in aviation, and the number in aviation technology is even smaller.”
She continues, “Alaska is a perfect proving ground, a great market, and an impeccable place to learn and develop. We are so grateful that we’re creating something here in Alaska, where we live, work, and play, and hope that we can pass down the knowledge that we’ve gained to help continue to grow Alaska’s female population in entrepreneurship and aviation.” 