Spokane Valley-based CDL PowerSuite LLC, which is a software provider for truck driving schools and commercial driver's license training, management, and compliance, has acquired Tribe Media Lab SPC. 

Following the acquisition, CDL PowerSuite has hired Tribe Media co-founder and marketing director Andrew Hite as its new CEO in what Hite refers to as an "acquihire," a term used to describe the acquisition of small startups and other companies primarily to acquire the company’s talent.

He declines to disclose the terms of the transaction. 

Tribe Media has helped CDL PowerSuite founder Jason Boudreau with marketing since its inception in 2023, and it was a running joke that the CDL PowerSuite would grow so big that one day Hite would join the company full time, he says.  

“It was probably inevitable that we would end up here and he would buy our company,” Hite says. 

In the new structuring of CDL PowerSuite, Boudreau is now the company’s founder and president and will shift his focus to compliance and creation of educational videos and content that is sold to driving schools, students, and trainees, Hite says. James Youssef, another Tribe Media co-founder, is now CDL PowerSuite’s chief marketing officer. 

CDL PowerSuite’s projected annual revenue for 2025 is $4 million, Hite says, up from $2.7 million last year. 

“We want to grow, and we’re comfortable growing year-over-year," Hite says. "But we really want to focus on building out the team and culture for the sustainability of the business model itself.” 

CDL PowerSuite was developed to help trucking schools meet standards for training set by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Boudreau jointly launched a second software company, ELDT LLC, to help train entry-level commercial truck drivers.

Boudreau also owns Spokane Valley-based commercial truck driving school, Drive509, a trade name for CDL Solutions LLC. The businesses are located at 3620 N. Eden, in Spokane Valley, and operate independently.

With the acquisition, CDL PowerSuite has 21 employees. Hite says the growing company is assembling sales, development, and marketing teams. 

“Everyone here is here for a reason," Hite says. “It is definitely a team effort around here.”