Uber-Like Package-Delivery Service Roadie Harnesses Holiday Travelers
Roadie partnered with musician Chris Bridges, aka LudacrisPackage delivery during the holidays is getting a boost from a new source: holiday travelers themselves.
At least that’s the aim of Roadie, a year-round company that is attempting to do for package delivery what Uber does for passenger service.
The Atlanta-based company, which began service in central Ohio earlier this year, connects road-trippers with those who are looking for a way to ship a package, either across town or across the nation.
“Over 90% of people are driving this season,” said Jamie Gottlieb, a Roadie spokeswoman. "So you can pay for the trip by picking up a gig on the way.”
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The company launched nationally in March 2015 “because of a tile shower,” Gottlieb said.
“Our CEO and founder, Marc Gorlin, was on the road from Atlanta to his family’s condo in Florida when he got a call from a tile contractor working on the bathroom,” she said. “All the tiles had arrived broken. The nearest place that carried replacement tile was a four-hour drive away.
“He looked around on the highway and he saw drivers all around and thought, ‘Surely someone on this road is driving to Florida. I’d pay to have them drive the tiles there.’”
That untapped delivery capacity led to the development of Roadie.
Here’s how it works:
Someone with a package posts on Roadie’s website or from the company’s app, which is available for download in the iTunes Store and on Google Play. The posting includes a photo, a name, a description of the package, where and when the package should be picked up and the destination.
Drivers already heading in that direction will begin offering when they can pick up and deliver the package. Senders pick a driver from those offers.
Pricing is determined by distance and urgency, in addition to the delivery. Most local deliveries cost between $8 and $50, and long-distance deliveries — or "gigs,” in Roadie’s terminology — with oversized items can cost as much as $650, sometimes more if pets are being delivered.
Once the package is picked up, there’s no guesswork about its location during the delivery: “We have real-time tracking on the app so you can follow the package at all times,” Gottlieb said.
Drivers get about 80% of the fee for a delivery, with Roadie getting the rest.
Anyone with car insurance and some other basic qualifications can become a Roadie driver, although “it’s not meant to be a full- or part-time job,” Gottlieb said. “It’s a way to make cash from a path already taken.”
That is a big reason why Roadie is likely to remain a niche player in the $90 billion shipping industry, said Satish Jindel, founder of SJ Consulting Group, a Pittsburgh-based consulting firm serving the transportation and logistics industries.
“It’s a company that’s being creative and finding a new way to leverage mobile technology to create a business,” Jindel said. “It has the opportunity to be a niche business for some packages, but it’s not a company that any of the big players worry about or feel threatened by.
“Everyone wants to think of themselves as disruptive. But there’s a big difference between what Uber has done and this. In this case, people want things delivered today or the next day and there are other people going in that direction, so why not. There are hassles, but some people will do it.”
Whether niche or not, Roadie has already begun helping people in Columbus deliver their packages.
One recent example involved Jocelyn Perry, who thought she had finished helping her grandmother move to Atlanta when she realized that there were some items left in a storage unit that were too large to take on a plane.
So Perry posted with Roadie, asking for help in delivering lawn chairs, a microwave, clothes, boxes of lamps and some other items by the end of the month.
Instead of a month, it only took a week to move her grandmother’s things to Atlanta, Perry said.
Delivering pets during the holidays has become particularly significant for Roadie. “Holiday shipping can make what’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year into the most stressful,” Gottlieb said.
One pet delivery that happened over Thanksgiving was particularly noteworthy. It came after Chau Nguyen of Atlanta learned that a family friend had died in Florida and left two dogs.
“Within an hour, I had an offer,” he said. “Within a day, I had three offers. The dogs were picked up within 48 hours and delivered safe and sound.”
