Charging Stack Podcast: How Bruntor is Rethinking Last-mile Delivery

In this Charging Stack podcast episode, we talk with Raimonds Jurgelis, CEO and co-founder of Bruntor, a Latvian hardware startup building electric cargo scooters for last-mile delivery and urban services.

Bruntor’s vehicle is a four-wheeled, stand-up cargo scooter that fits into roughly the footprint of a bicycle but can carry around 400–500 liters of cargo. It is built for short, frequent stops where vans are clumsy and bikes are slow to start and stop. In pilots with Latvian Post, Bruntor’s scooter proved up to four times faster than walking routes, while staying compact, stable, and easy to use for postal workers.

Raimonds shares how Bruntor started with an off-road electric skateboard, went through hackathons and early prototypes that looked like “a potato box on wheels,” and eventually landed its first institutional customers. He also talks about why they chose the hard path of hardware, how they test durability by literally trying to break their own vehicles, and what it takes to sell a completely new vehicle type into slow, risk-averse organisations.

Prefer reading instead of listening? Check out our full Bruntor profile for a breakdown of the business model, use cases, and strategy.

Everything about Bruntor in one place

View Bruntor directory profile

This episode is for you if:

• You work in last-mile logistics, city services, or fleet operations
• You are exploring alternatives to vans, cargo bikes, and e-bikes
• You like hearing the honest side of hardware startups in mobility

In this episode, you’ll learn:

⚡️ How Bruntor evolved from an off-road electric skateboard to a cargo scooter built for work
⚡️ Why stand-up cargo scooters can beat both vans and bikes in dense, stop-heavy routes
⚡️ How Bruntor designs around real workflows by shadowing postal workers at 3 a.m.
⚡️ Why hardware fundraising and sales cycles feel completely different from software
⚡️ How regulations around “what counts as a vehicle” can block or unlock entire markets

Topics covered include

• The origin story: building a powerful off-road electric board during COVID and realising the market was elsewhere
• The hackathon prototype: welding a handlebar onto the board and using a cat carrier as the first cargo box
• Landing Latvian Post as the first customer and proving that Bruntor can be up to four times quicker than walking rounds
• Cargo capacity vs agility: fitting bike-like length and width while offering several times the volume of a typical bike
• Why stand-up riding and “step on, step off” behaviour matter when stops are 20–100 meters apart
• Common misconceptions about scooters in delivery and how Bruntor compares to cargo bikes, vans, quad bikes, and wheelbarrows
• Use cases beyond parcel delivery: city park maintenance, hospitals, farms, zoos, retail logistics, and mobile cafés
• How Bruntor thinks about durability: hiring someone whose job is to try to break the vehicle in real city conditions
• Business model choices: selling vs renting, why test periods of 2–3 weeks are central to conversion, and how custom cargo boxes are designed around tools and parcels
• Working with cities and regulators, and why some pilots stall simply because there is no legal category for four-wheeled stand-up scooters
• The plan to introduce a simpler entry-level model and possible two-wheel version for markets where four wheels do not fit the rules
• Fundraising plans, why hardware investors are cautious, and lessons from a €2,000 trip to plug in one loose cable
• What it takes to build a vehicle category, not just a single product, including modular “plug-and-play” attachments and future features like follow-me mode

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