Roadie, a same-day delivery service that leverages unused capacity in passenger vehicles, has received a $37 million boost from The Home Depot and other investors.
The funding will allow Roadie to expand its use of machine learning to predict capacity and match deliveries to a nationwide pool of more than 120,000 drivers based on real-time supply and demand. The crowdsourcing model taps into passenger vehicles that are already on the road, the company said, allowing the service to reach 89 percent of U.S. households.
See: How Dealers Can Compete In A Same-Day Delivery World
The investment follows recent retail delivery partnerships with Ferguson, Home Depot, Menards and Walmart, as the four-year-old start-up scales from its initial consumer and small business customers to Fortune 500 companies. Its reach now extends to 224 metro areas and up to 100 miles around every major U.S. city.
“In today’s hyper-competitive retail environment, it’s not enough to only offer same-day delivery to folks in NFL cities,” said Roadie founder/CEO Marc Gorlin. “Our model is a gamechanger for retailers, wholesalers and consumers who want same-day delivery of any item, of any size, to any zip code, at any time. An investment like this further validates our crowdsourced model, which retailers are fast realizing is a highly flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient option to reach all of their customers, wherever they might live.”
For its part, Home Depot described Roadie as “a key partner” in bringing same- or next-day deliveries to 90 percent of the U.S. population. “The Home Depot is committed to building the fastest, most efficient supply chain in home improvement, and our customers have made it clear that same-day or next-day deliveries to their homes and job sites are a critical part of that,” said Mark Holifield, supply chain executive VP for the home improvement chain.
Home Depot signed on with Roadie last fall, beginning with same-day delivery of more than 20,000 items from over 300 stores in select markets including Atlanta, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Pricing for the chain’s “Express Delivery from Store” service begins at $8.99.
More recently, Roadie joined Walmart’s roster of grocery home-delivery services in January.
Roadie isn’t the first last-mile delivery service to tap into passenger vehicle drivers. Amazon’s Uber- and Lyft-like Flex program recruits motorists with the promise of flexible schedules and up to $25/hour, while Walmart has experimented with sending sales associates home with customer orders that can be dropped off en route.
