Roadie is a newish mobile app that, at first blush, appears to want to be the Uber of the shipping sector. With the app, you can post a “gig,” which amounts to paying to have an item sent across town or cross-country in a random person’s car or truck. Or you can take on a gig and get paid to transport an object for a stranger in the unused cargo area of your car or truck. To test out Roadie, I decided to try to send a bottle of homemade hot sauce to a friend in New Orleans. I posted the gig and waited.
A Billion Cubic Feet of Unused Space
Roadie launched in 2015 when founder Marc Gorlin of Atlanta needed to get some boxes of custom tile from a warehouse a few hours away to finish a bathroom renovation. When he realized there would be no possible way to get the tiles the same day through traditional shipping methods (not to mention the cost of same-day shipping), he had a eureka moment from which the concept for Roadie was born.
This kind of impromptu need is where Roadie hopes it can fill a niche. By its own estimates, vehicles traversing U.S. roads have about 1 billion cubic feet of unused cargo space. Company spokeswoman Jamie Gottlieb said the figure is based on the 252,700,000 light vehicles on U.S. roads in 2014 and figuring 15 to 70 cubic feet of cargo space in each car or truck.
Roadie aims to fill that space with items as small as a shoe box or as large as a couch. Gottlieb said using the app can save money on shipping clumsier items such as furniture or car parts across the country, and some small businesses, such as florists, can (and already do) use it to send smaller items around town the same day.
If you post a gig, the app calculates your price based on distance, urgency, and size. Your delivery can be tracked on the mobile app, and the goods you’re sending are automatically insured up to $500, with the option to buy additional coverage up to $10,000.
How Does It Stack Up Pricewise?
I got some estimates for non-urgent shipments of items from the Detroit area to New Orleans, about a 1050-mile trip. Roadie quoted me at $274 for a “huge” item (such as a sofa), $249 for an “X-large” item (such as a bicycle) and $234 for a “large item” (such as a television). Pets could be sent by preapproved drivers for $299.
The same kind of casual solicitation for a 200-pound shipment—a conservative estimated weight for a piece of furniture—was quoted by UPS at $372 and by FedEx starting at $588. However, for a 50-pound, medium-size package, both UPS and FedEx gave me a quick quote for about $50 for ground shipping, while express and next-day shipping, as expected, were both significantly more expensive.
So Roadie does appear to be cheaper, especially for bigger items, and you don’t have to worry about packing the item. In fact, Gottlieb said the company insists that items are left at least partly unpacked as part of an “open-box policy,” so that drivers are not unwittingly ferrying illicit items across the country through the mobile app.
Roadie’s unique nature gives it the air of a disruptor, but the company does not see itself as upending shipping companies such as UPS or FedEx. In fact, UPS is an investor in Roadie, and Roadie gets its shipping insurance through UPS Capital.
Not-So-Big Payday
How much does one get paid to transport something? When I looked at the app, there was an offer to take two chairs from Merrillville, Indiana, to Miami—a 1360-mile trip—for $267. If your car gets an average of 25 mpg, for example, you’d need 54.4 gallons of gas to get there. Estimating fuel prices at $2.50 a gallon, the trip would cost about $136. So when factoring in gas costs, the job would pay a net of $131.
But apparently that’s not the way Roadie is supposed to be used. The idea is for someone already going from Merrillville to Miami to use extra space in their vehicle to take these two chairs and get $267 for it. Although Roadie looks to fill needs that can be immediate or impulsive, in the same way people use Uber or Lyft, it actually is not intended to function in the same way in terms of employing smartphone-based contractors.
Roadie drivers are subject to a rating system, similar to mobile-app-based chauffeurs. But where ride-sharing apps act as a secondary or even primary source of income for drivers, Roadie driving is not intended to be a full-time gig, according to Gottlieb. “Roadie’s a little different—we’re on the way instead of on demand,” she said. In other words, anyone planning on quitting a day job in favor of becoming a full-time Roadie driver would be in for a sporadic and unreliable source of income.
My 1050-mile Gig Promises a $40 Payout
Meanwhile, speaking with Gottlieb helped me see how flawed my approach to this whole thing was. My hot-sauce gig was posted and would cost me $51 while promising to pay the Roadie driver $40, as the company takes about a 20 percent cut.
Who on earth would want to drive a bottle of hot sauce for some stranger, who demands that it be kept refrigerated or at least on ice, more than 1000 miles to New Orleans for a mere $40? It became clear to me that shipping small items long distances is not what this startup app is geared for. Not yet, anyway.
But even if my initial approach to Roadie was a bit backward, posting the gig made it clear there is still another hurdle the company needs to overcome, at least in the upper Midwest: There are very few gigs. At press time, my hot-sauce post was the only solicitation for a courier in the state of Michigan. Zooming out geographically, at least eight states in the middle of the country appeared to offer no gigs.
Gottlieb said Roadie has had tens of thousands of gigs posted to the community since its launch and has been downloaded some 300,000 times. Its legitimacy was underwritten financially by $15 million in Series B venture funding last June. But it’s still working to get the word out that it exists. It has enlisted rapper Ludacris for promotion and has embarked on partnerships with companies including Waffle House and Goodwill.
Media coverage certainly doesn’t hurt, either. Speaking of, if anyone is headed from the Detroit area to New Orleans, you’re welcome to take a bottle of hot sauce along for the ride. Roadie will pay you $40, and I’ll pay them $51.
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