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Warren Stephens Bets on Startup Roadie Shipping Network

4 min read

The Atlanta startup Roadie has been described as the “Uber for package delivery.”

The company’s website calls it “the first neighbor-to-neighbor shipping network.”

Roadie’s CEO and founder, Marc Gorlin, said, “It’s a community of folks who help one another out by giving other people’s stuff a lift when it’s going in the same direction they’re already going.”

Roadie uses the excess capacity of passenger vehicles already on the road to move packages from one point to another. The Roadie mobile app connects drivers with people who need to ship goods to where those drivers are already headed.

Nearly 250 million passenger vehicles hit the road every day with more than a billion SF of excess capacity, Gorlin said. Roadie leverages that extra space in those vehicles and the desire of individual drivers to earn a few extra bucks without going too far out of their way, whether they’re headed to work or to the Florida panhandle.

Despite the neighborliness of Roadie and talk of community, it’s also a startup that seeks to disrupt the $100 billion-plus shipping sector dominated by UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service.

And in January, Roadie announced that it had attracted $10 million in funding from heavy-hitting investors including Warren Stephens of Stephens Inc.; TomorrowVentures, the investment firm founded by Google’s Eric Schmidt; the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, the private equity investment arm of UPS; Alan Schwartz, executive chairman of Guggenheim Partners; and Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, the mobile payments company.

“Like the disruptive innovation Uber has brought to the transportation industry and Airbnb has brought to lodging, we see Roadie bringing a similar value to the shipper market,” Stephens, of Little Rock, said in the news release announcing Roadie’s launch.

Roadie is another participant in the new “sharing economy,” which relies on trust to make it work — hence, the “trust economy.”

Roadie is not Stephens’ first investment in a Gorlin company. Stephens also invested in Kabbage, an online lending company co-founded by Gorlin.

How It Works

Joining the Roadie network, for both senders and deliverers, is free.

Let’s say your brother Bill in Fayetteville wants to send your late mother’s 112-piece sterling silver flatware set to you in Little Rock. Bill would download the Roadie app and create what Roadie calls a “gig,” or shipping assignment, posting photos and a description of what’s to be shipped and pickup and delivery details.

Roadie determines the price based on this information. There’s no bidding or negotiating. “You’ll know exactly how much the Gig costs before you post it to the Roadie community,” the company says.

Would-be “roadies” vie for your gig or shipment, and you choose the one you like. Gorlin sees feedback playing a big role.

Roadies can browse gigs by price, location, distance and size. Most local gigs will pay between $8 and $20, the company says, and long-distance deliveries with oversized items can pay up to $200.

The sender pays through the Roadie app after the shipment is successfully completed. Roadies are paid through direct deposit into their bank accounts.

The company keeps 20 percent of the gig fee and the Roadie driver keeps 80 percent.

Gorlin said that despite the comparisons, Roadie and Uber are “quite different.” That’s because “Uber is on demand, and Roadie is true peer to peer,” he said in a telephone interview with Arkansas Business. “The difference is this: When you summon an Uber with your app, someone’s coming somewhere they weren’t already going and then taking you somewhere else they also were not going. Instead, with Roadie, someone in your general vicinity is heading in a direction where your stuff needs a lift anyway.”

At the end of the year, the company will provide drivers with a record of miles driven so they can be claimed as a tax deduction.

And through a network of Roadie partners, drivers will also get special savings on food, gas and other items. In late February, Roadie announced that all 1,750 Waffle House restaurants had become official “Roadie Roadhouses,” or meeting sites for senders and drivers. As part of the initiative, Waffle House restaurants in 25 states offer free food and beverages to Roadie drivers.

Gorlin said Roadie would soon be announcing fuel and lodging discount partners.

The company has seen 50,000 downloads in the past 10 weeks, Gorlin said, and is now available in all 50 states.

The CEO notes one huge advantage for Roadie: It has no fixed assets. “I don’t have to change a windshield wiper. I don’t have to rotate tires. I don’t have to change oil.”

Gorlin sees big potential for disrupting the traditional package delivery companies. “Who’d have thought five years ago that the largest taxicab company in America would own no vehicles?”

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