I love the concept of crowdsourced delivery where travelers can earn money just by making use of the extra space in their luggage or car. But this is still a field that is very much in its infancy. And it’s going to need significant growth to really gain traction because without a critical mass, this peer to peer service really can’t succeed. It’s like ridesharing, but for cargo. Without enough people listing trips they are taking it’s virtually impossible for people with things they want delivered to find a match with travelers.
graphic from canubring.com
Most of the air shipping companies launch with services focusing on peer to peer delivery between two specific countries. The founders tend to know their market well, often because they are expats living in one of the two countries and traveling frequently to the other. This is a logical way to start, but it remains to be seen how well these companies can expand beyond their narrow band of geographical expertise.
You can check out my list of all these crowdsourced delivery businesses by viewing the “delivery” category in this google spreadsheet. Below are the new additions.
Deliv – Recently raised $4.5M in series A investment. This is a crowd sourced same-day delivery service for large national retailers in the US.
MeeMeep – Founded in 2012, this is a peer to peer ground shipping company in Australia.
Cargomatic – This network for local truck shipping is more business to business than peer to peer, but still a nifty way to take advantage of vehicles on the road with extra space for shipping. They are connecting shippers with truckers who have extra space and want to take on more freight. Cargomatic just signed up $8M in Series A funding on January 29.
Kaargo – Just launched a roadtrip based delivery company in the United States. The website is slick but they will need to work hard to gain enough users and compete with other new companies in this space like Roadie.
Also worth mentioning is the new PiggyBee website which is quite a bit more sophisticated than the version I used to deliver shoes to Granada. This site has deliveries across a wider diversity of places around the world than most others. And some really odd listings too. For instance:
Would you be interested in carrying this lawnmower from London to Texas?
