Advice from cycle couriers sought

I am considering building a web/phone app for cycle couriers. Before I spend time and money on it, I wanted to bounce the idea off couriers to see what they thought of it.

This is the idea: basically an application for ordering cycle and motorcycle couriers in the same way that you can hail a taxi on the Hailo app. This is how it could potentially work:

• Courier customers would download the web or phone app. (This would be free to download)
  
• Couriers would have the app on their phones as a provider. (This would be free to download but involve some registration - such as providing photo ID).
  
• a customer could request a courier and their current location would be automatically uploaded. The destination for their delivery they enter on the app.
  
• and in the same way that Hailo identifies the nearest available taxi, the app would identify the nearest available courier. All nearby couriers would get pinged the message and they can either accept or reject the job.
  
• if the courier accepts the job, the customer gets a picture of the courier and a hang name and the estimated time to collection
  
• payment is all done electronically (the customer's credit card details are stored in the app) directly to the courier's bank account or Paypal account or similar
  
• the customer gets a message on delivery
  
• couriers can be given positive ratings and "favourited" by the customer so that that if they see a courier they used before and liked, they are more likely to use again.
  
• the customer would be charged a flat rate over and above the couriers fee per delivery (the courier would not pay for this - the costs of the app use are covered by the customer)
  
  

The advantage for customers I see is that they do not have to use an agency and they can hail whichever courier is nearest and do it very simply. The advantage for the courier is that they could well pick up extra jobs that happen to be nearby and also bypass the need for any agency. A courier using this app need not have any bosses. The dream would be that it would be so simple to use that people who do not normally use couriers would use it - e.g. simply someone whose flatmate is locked out the flat gets a nearby courier to relay keys over.

Before I spend time, money and effort building such an app I would really like to hear from cycle couriers to know whether they think it is a good or bad idea, whether they would be interested in using it, what the problems would be etc. Much appreciated.

as a ex courrier an i can see maybey one of the problems of this method would be stringing together RUNS of jobs which normally is the controllers job,
this looks as though the courier could end up doing lots of miles for peanuts
dunno tho

Unless you use your phone whilst riding, you'd have to keep stopping to check the app, no?

The problem with couriering is that the riders earn far too little, are almost always 'self-employed' (but without any of the real control over their work that genuinely self-employed people have), get no holiday pay or sick pay, in a job that is dangerous at times, do not have employment rights and and are mostly treated as disposable. Overall the courier industry is a sewer of lies, greed and exploitation, both from the courier companies and from clients.
If your app can rectify that then you will have couriers queueing up to be part of it. If not, you will just be a new part of the problem.

There would be an audible/vibrating alert when a job was requested near the courier.

You don't want to be asking if or how it works, but how you could game it / break it.

How would individual couriers game the system to their own personal advantage, but to the overall detriment of the system - multiple sign-on accounts, so that they can pick up more than one package? What if they just can't be arse to complete a delivery, say if another, easier one was close? Will they end up hanging around in areas known to have more pickups / shorter drop-offs? What is to stop a group of couriers combinging together to monopolise jobs?

sounds like a great idea if it works, the courier themsleves would have to calculate runs, but given their frustration with controller, possibly no bad thing....

biggest problem as I see would be "take up" both in finding a fleet of riders and clients, needs to be worthwhile for riders to sign up.

OP has not discussed pricing, who sets this? could lead to price wars and lower wages for couriers, if they set themselves.

I cant see this as a standalone app, cant put my finger on it but I think they'll have to be some sort of human involvement in the management.

Shamefully I watched Triple Rush, a tv show that followed three courier companies in NYC. I believe that this kind of method is used by the Mess Kollective, no controller, companies fill out a form online and it sends out an SMS to all riders who then can accept or reject. Seems to work but then I suppose without a controller how do you string runs together? You could be riding across the entire city and back for two pickups.

Hailo for couriers?

Would the couriers be compelled to take the jobs that are longer distance and to areas out of their usual vicinity? As the ability for a courier to make money under this is based on their proximity to the next job after completing the current one.

How would distance (from the epicentre of most jobs) be rewarded accordingly?

Also, check out http://postmates.com/

They're US only at the moment, just a few key cities. But they are doing roughly this and then went further and opened it up to consumers to use it to get deliveries for things from places that wouldn't normally do deliveries.

As a very ex courier who hasn't been in the industry for 10 years this sounds brilliant, obviously things have changed since I was doing it but heres a few of my thoughts/ideas on it:
Idealy you want to start with couriers working for other companies doing jobs inbetween.
Would it only be bike jobs or is it for vans/cars too? Clients always like to push something on a bike to get cheaper rates so it would need to be well defined with charges for wrong call outs etc
Have regular times off etc, I used to have certain runs I did every day at certain times so I would want them always to be blocked. Or even just turn it off and on if your clear.
Maybe be able to set up your own personnel pick up and delivery areas you work in.
Insurance for packages? Although couriers are self employed their companies have insurance for the packages for certain amounts who would provide this?
Whats to stop couriers just accepting all the jobs and then doing them as and when they can.

Sounds like a great idea if implimented well

I think it sounds intriguing, but will be very hard to balance the best interests of customer and courier. As a customer, it would be great to be able to submit a job (pickup, destination, time it needs to arrive), get couriers to quote for it, then choose one that suited me. But as a professional courier, you run the risk of being undercut by part-timers earning a bit of extra cash. Maybe you need a scheme to level the playing field, penalizing occasional couriers in some way, or maybe sending more timely notifications about jobs to regular users?

The other concern is with notifying couriers based on proximity. You can get much cleverer here - notifying couriers who are idle but within reach of the pickup, or couriers that already have scheduled drop-offs in that area (unless they have a follow-on job that is incompatible).

All good comments. Please do keep them coming.

The desire for "runs" is an interesting issue. How about this? The app would not just ping the couriers nearby but also couriers who were on their way to that area on an existing job (i.e. they have accepted a job and the destination is set) so that a courier heading to a particular area stand some chance of picking up another job in that area.

Hailo for couriers?

Would the couriers be compelled to take the jobs that are longer distance and to areas out of their usual vicinity? As the ability for a courier to make money under this is based on their proximity to the next job after completing the current one.

How would distance (from the epicentre of most jobs) be rewarded accordingly?

How does it work at the moment? Is it charging done purely by distance or are they zones (sort of like the Tube) or some mixture?

Didn't someone post about exactly this a few months ago?

**Downloads app, puts on fakenger wear, goes around collecting free sh!t for a day.

Customer knows where courier is? That'll never work.

"Just around the corner.. 5min, max.. "

Also, how would you stop muggins here taking jobs from full timers? People could just decide they wanna go for a walk at lunch, pick up and drop off a package while they're doing it.

Smartphones are expensive. What company is likely to invest in a bunch of them for riders? Or are the riders going to have to own them to work?

@WillMelling: I hear you. I'm certainly not looking to add to problems and hoping to make the industry more convenient and ideally help it to gain a new lease of life.

Also, check out http://postmates.com/

They're US only at the moment, just a few key cities. But they are doing roughly this and then went further and opened it up to consumers to use it to get deliveries for things from places that wouldn't normally do deliveries.

Thanks for this. I had not come across this one.

As a very ex courier who hasn't been in the industry for 10 years this sounds brilliant, obviously things have changed since I was doing it but heres a few of my thoughts/ideas on it:
Idealy you want to start with couriers working for other companies doing jobs inbetween.
Would it only be bike jobs or is it for vans/cars too? Clients always like to push something on a bike to get cheaper rates so it would need to be well defined with charges for wrong call outs etc
Have regular times off etc, I used to have certain runs I did every day at certain times so I would want them always to be blocked. Or even just turn it off and on if your clear.
Maybe be able to set up your own personnel pick up and delivery areas you work in.
Insurance for packages? Although couriers are self employed their companies have insurance for the packages for certain amounts who would provide this?
Whats to stop couriers just accepting all the jobs and then doing them as and when they can.

Sounds like a great idea if implimented well

I was envisaging bikes and motorbikes. No cars or vans.

Insurance would have to be covered in the fee (administered by the app company - the couriers would not need to worry about it). Ideally it would be flexible so that the customer can choose the level of insurance.

Couriers accepting all the jobs and doing as and when they can? Well each courier gets a rating. Someone doing this is likely to get a bad rating because the delivery will take a long time. Also, unless they are near or going to be the near the pick up they will not get pinged about the pickup.

**Downloads app, puts on fakenger wear, goes around collecting free sh!t for a day.

That could not happen because the couriers would have to be registered (with photo id) and bank details. They'd get billed for stuff that went missing.

Check out zipments it's been done already

Everything's been done already, but there's always room for someone to do it better.