US same-day courier network extends to 18,000 cities
The same-day delivery network Courierboard.com is now connecting courier companies with customers in more than 18,000 cities across the United States and Canada. Just four years on from its launch, the online portal now has more than 1,700 independent courier companies as members, providing rapid delivery with a particular focus on delivering within regions and locally.
The Florida-based company’s chief operating officer June Hayford told Post&Parcel today that Courierboard is now the starting point for around 15,000 shipments a month.
It offers a shipping alternative for odd size, high weight items, those with unique handling needs or that are required especially quickly.
When a customer seeks a quote for a shipment through the website, within minutes the request goes to every member courier company within 75 miles of the zip code entered by the customer, who then bid on the job.
The customer can then choose the best rate for their shipment from among the bids.
Hayford said: “My partner Chris had invested in a very small courier company out in New York, and he was seeing how hard it was for them to get new business and how hard it was for a small company to bid for jobs.
“He said wouldn’t it be good if this industry had a web portal like an eBay or a Match.com to go to. And so we created this website.”
Hayford said it took her and business partner Chris Kane three years to gather together sufficient courier companies to make the system work, but now she believes they have more than 95% of large courier companies as active participants.
Requests for Proposals
Adding to the thousands of individual shipments facilitated by the website, Courierboard also features Requests for Proposals from companies seeking registered courier companies to bid for larger jobs.
“Those are the really attractive business propositions for our customers because they might represent a million dollar contract,” said Hayford, estimating that last year RFPs featured on Courierboard.com represented around $20m to $30m worth of business for courier companies.
“These include proposals from some of the big companies trying to set up a network of courier companies to handle regional and nationwide deliveries,” she explained.
Although around 80% of the shipments arranged through Courierboard are local or regional, Hayford said the company is now working on identifying those couriers on their system with the kind of connections to arrange nationwide delivery.
The hope is that Courierboard would then be able to notify these couriers to longer-distance jobs.
“So if you need something right away you could use FedEx or UPS because of their flight capability, but if it’s heavy and could be driven, it could be done through our courier members,” she said.
