Small-Town Company Launches Crowdshipping Platform at $9.99 Price Point

From: iGofers LLC
Published: Wed Jun 25 2014



A rural south Alabama company announces the launch of a crowdshipping platform that challenges the public to re-think the way we travel.

The site was built with ordinary people in mind, and is useful for finding other members of the community to carry people, courier documents, and transport goods of any type: from a pair of shoes by a housewife, to a piece of heavy equipment by a specialized carrier.


Based on a simple platform for listing available freight (the site calls it "trips"), iGofers.com is simple enough for the average user to navigate, yet functional enough to guide the listing user and the carrier (the site calls them "Gofers") through every step of the pickup and delivery process.


Members are able to enter and search trips by pickup and delivery location, category, and vehicle required. The listing member enters the price he is willing to pay for delivery, and other members can apply for the trip, even submitting free-form bids in the "comments" field. The "Trip Alert" setting notifies members of new trips posted near the zip code they specify, giving the listing member instant communication with potential "Gofers" in the area.

"Our society is very mobile. We are spending billions of dollars on fuel, and wasting countless hours of precious time traveling, when we could be spending time and money on our families, and the other things in life that matter more. I am suggesting that we utilize resources that are readily available: each other." said Scott Holmes, managing partner of iGofers LLC. "I know it can be done, but we are going to need to trust each other, and be trustworthy."

In the Fall of 2013, Holmes was helping a relative remodel an older home. While installing ceramic tile on a tub surround, he ran out of tile. "I was frustrated," Holmes said, "because the tile was purchased at a big-box store 100 miles away, and it took a 200-mile round-trip and a day off work to get the project going again. At that point, I knew there had to be a better way. I wondered how many people from our rural area were walking around in the big-box store that very moment. If we could just get the message to them, most people would gladly pick up the supplies we needed and bring them back home."

iGofers.com is versatile enough to be used by many types of customers. Shoppers buying from online classifieds or auctions, small businesses who can't afford a full-time driver, and a many, many others.

The market for last-mile logistics is far from being conquered, but wide-open platforms like iGofers.com could be disruptive to some of the current corporate offerings, simply because it provides a "win-win" scenario for the parties involved.

Although the site was not designed to compete with giants like Uship, iGofers.com may be an attractive alternative. Because there are no commissions or extra fees charged to carriers, commercial shippers may negotiate better rates.












Company: iGofers LLC
Contact Name: jholmes811
Contact Email: info@igofers.com

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