Our Story
The peer-to-peer trailer marketplace built for the way people actually live, work, and play – connecting more than trailers.
The Spark
It Started with a Track Day
In the summer of 2021, towlos founder Matt Jones and a group of friends needed to trailer their Corvettes from Chicago to Road America—one of the country’s most iconic road courses. The stakes were simple: drive the cars four hours on public roads and risk a breakdown that ruins the weekend, or rent a car hauler and arrive ready to race.
They chose the rental route. The problem was, they couldn’t find one. U-Haul didn’t have the right type. Local rental shops had nothing that fit a low-slung sports car. Weeks of calls, favors, and dead ends later, the frustration was real—but so was the insight.
“Trailers are a critical piece of the adventure puzzle. And they’re also the most overlooked.”
A Massive Opportunity
350 Days of Dust
Matt started paying attention. At the track, in driveways, on farms, behind shops—trailers were everywhere, and almost none of them were moving. He asked owners the same question over and over: how often do you use it?
Two to five weekends a year. That was the consistent answer. Tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, productive roughly 2% of the time. The U.S. has an estimated 20 million registered trailers. The overwhelming majority sit idle most of the year.
That’s not just a personal inconvenience. It’s a massive market inefficiency—and a massive opportunity.
The Marketplace
One Platform. Every Trailer. Every Adventure.
towlos is the peer-to-peer marketplace that connects people who need the right trailer with the owners who have one sitting idle. Think of it as Airbnb for trailers—but purpose-built for the specific, high-stakes needs of hauling.
The platform serves an extraordinarily wide range of use cases, because the trailer problem doesn’t belong to any single hobby or industry. It shows up everywhere:
- Motorsports & car culture: Enclosed car haulers for track days, autocross, car shows, and collector transport. The use case that started it all.
- Horses & livestock: Bumper-pull and gooseneck horse trailers for regional shows, rodeos, trail rides, and vet visits. Owners who haul a handful of times a season can offset thousands in annual costs.
- Boats & marine: Boat trailers, PWC trailers, and pontoon haulers for lake weekends, fishing trips, and seasonal launches. Access to a trailer can be the difference between a summer on the water and a summer watching from shore.
- UTVs, ATVs & side-by-sides: Open and enclosed trailers for hauling machines to trails, dunes, and off-road parks. One of the fastest-growing segments on the platform.
- Snowmobiles: Sled-deck and enclosed trailers for powder days and winter rallies. Seasonal demand meets seasonal supply—a perfect marketplace fit.
- Motorcycles: Single and multi-bike trailers for rallies, track days, and long-distance moves. Riders who want to save miles on the odometer and arrive fresh.
- Overland & rock crawling: Flatbeds and tilt-deck trailers for oversized Jeeps, Broncos, and custom builds that aren’t exactly highway-friendly. Getting to Moab is half the battle—towlos handles the first half.
- DIY & home projects: Dump trailers, utility trailers, and equipment haulers for demolition weekends, landscaping jobs, and that kitchen renovation you’ve been putting off. Rent a dump trailer for Saturday instead of making twelve trips to the landfill.
- Contractors & small business: Heavy-equipment trailers, enclosed cargo trailers, and flatbeds for the jobs that come in bigger than your current rig can handle—without the commitment of buying.
“Wherever there’s something that needs hauling and a trailer collecting dust, towlos belongs in the middle.”
For Trailer Owners
Turn Idle Iron into Income
If you own a trailer, towlos gives you a way to earn from an asset that’s otherwise depreciating in your driveway. Hosts set their own pricing, availability, and rules. towlos provides the platform, the renter vetting, and the insurance infrastructure—through Protect+, our purpose-built coverage—so you can rent with confidence.
Some hosts earn enough to cover their trailer payments entirely. Others treat it as passive income from something they’d own regardless. Either way, the math is simple: a trailer that earns is better than a trailer that sits.
The People Behind the Platform
From the Operating Room to the Open Road
Towlos was founded by Matt Jones, an orthopedic surgeon, who eventually traded scalpels for software. The same instincts that made him a good surgeon—precision under pressure, empathy for the people he served, and the resilience to push through when things get hard—now drive the way towlos is built. Building a startup, it turns out, demands the exact same things. Just with fewer scalpels and more Slack messages.
The biggest lesson from medicine was this: listen first, understand the source of the pain, then eliminate it. That mindset drives everything at towlos—from the host onboarding experience to the insurance products that protect both sides of every rental.
The growing team brings deep expertise across brand strategy, go-to-market, product design, and engineering—supported by advisors with experience in marketplaces, insurance, trailer manufacturing, and outdoor recreation. Together, they share a conviction that the trailer industry—long fragmented, offline, and underserved—is ready for its platform moment.
What We Believe
Freedom. Access. Opportunity.
At its core, towlos is about removing the barriers between people and the experiences they care about. We believe:
- Access beats ownership. No one should have to buy a $20,000 trailer to use once or twice a year. And if they already own one, it should work for them—not just sit in the driveway.
- Trailers unlock freedom. The right trailer is the bridge between the garage and the trailhead, the lake, the show grounds, the job site, or the starting grid. towlos makes that bridge available to everyone.
- Owners deserve opportunity. towlos is building a new class of micro-entrepreneurs—people who turn an underutilized asset into a real income stream, on their own terms.
Design Minded
Obsessed with the User Experience
towlos isn’t just a rental platform. It’s a technology company leveraging AI and modern design to build infrastructure for human connection—bringing weekend warriors and the next generation of outdoor adventurers together, helping each other, while empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Matt had a trailer problem. It turns out millions of people do too.
Connecting More than Trailers
