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Comment by KaoruAoiShiho | Hacker News Reader

Can somebody give an example of a service that needs this, where Fedex wouldn't do?

FedEx is not really focused on same day/same hour intra city delivery. Most of the shipping providers have an infrastructure around warehouses set in place. This means that the shipping providers picks up all packages and then brings them to a warehouse where they are sorted and then shipped out again. UberRush comes to the pick-up location and directly brings it to the recipient.

> FedEx is not really focused on same day/same hour intra city delivery.

Well, in that they have lots of other services, sure, but FedEx does have both long-distance (FedEx SameDay) and shorter-time-window local (FedEx SameDay City) same-day services.

The main difference would be that FedEx isn't subsidizing rates with investor money to fuel growth, so its more expensive.

DHL has same-day and within-of-6-hour delivery in most cities.

Sure. I've been involved with a bunch of vendors who exhibit at conferences. Often there is an "oh shit" moment when you unbox the crates and find that the monitor you have is busted. You're missing an audio cable. You really need a 4' 2x4 to fix a collapsed table.

Doesn't really matter, but you could see a need for an "equipment and stuff" on demand in an hour type of service catering to these events.

Similarly, every wedding venue can have an "emergency" service for missing stuff ("Florist flaked? We can put petals to the metal and have them there in an hour!")

These are perhaps more extreme, but I'm sure there are any number of restaurants in your area that don't deliver, but might like to have that capability. One morning last week I went to my local bagel shop to find the manager loading dozens of boxes of bagels into her car (catering for the local school's Teacher Appreciation Day). There is insufficient demand for the bagel shop to have a full time delivery driver, but big catering orders UberRush might really fill a need for them.

These are great examples!

The local delivery case is really where UberRUSH provides the most value. We also take pride in our developer tools and experience and invite you to check out our docs:

https://developer.uber.com/docs/rush

I'm curious how you might compare them to FedEx's docs?

http://www.fedex.com/us/developer/web-services/index.html

Oh man, oh man. Don't get me started on the utter mess that the UPS and FedEx APIs are. I've gone through the app certification process for both, as well as Stamps.com (USPS), and I think the only other project that rivals that mess is ADP (development took over a year, certification took another 6 months and 10s of thousands in fees.)

As an example, the developer document solely for obtaining shipment rates is 98 pages long.

The on-demand aspect of the service is what I believe to be most important. FedEx et all will deliver to my doorstep, but can they be here in an hour?

> FedEx et all will deliver to my doorstep, but can they be here in an hour?

FedEx SameDay City Priority seems to guarantee delivery within 2 hours from package ready time within the shortest (0-15 mile) delivery range, and its available in a lot more cities than UberRUSH.

Competition with bike messengers in the case of same-day wet-signature document delivery. Very big demand among legal and financial firms within major cities.

UberRUSH is powered by both vehicle-drivers and bike riders! :)

Craigslist delivery would be cool

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