Logistics Matchmaking Remora app pairs cargo with carriers.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa

Remoras 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."

Experience in Aviation, Innovation

"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 thirdparty 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...