Serial entrepreneur Marc Gorlin was heading down from Atlanta to his place in Perdido Key, Fla. to oversee some work being done on the bathroom of his condo there, when he got the call from the guy doing his tile work.

"This tile is broken as shit," Gorlin recalls "Glenn the tile guy" telling him. Replacement tiles would take an extra three days to ship down to Fla. from their source in Birmingham, Al., extending the job and costing Gorlin another day of work.

It was there on the overpass of I-65 heading out of Montgomery, Al. that Gorlin had the idea for what would become Roadie, a company angling to disrupt the $90 billion shipping industry in the U.S.