Show HN: TruckPlease – Moving sucks, so we decided to make it easier
truckplease.com
truckplease.com
1) There's no easy way for users to browse. 2) The whole "gig" messaging and the entire call to action on the page is painfully confusing. -"Describe your gig." What? Am I in a band? Is this for a "seller" or a "buyer"? -Why do you need a description of "moving"?? "I'm moving." would be my description. What are you looking for here? Couldn't you just have a button for "I'm moving?" -There's just a general lack of context here.
I do understand and don't need it explained, but I guarantee the average user is going to be totally confused.
I think this is a difference in regional word usage. I'm accustomed to hearing "gig" used only to refer to a temporary agreement for musicians or similar artistic entertainment, like a single concert or perhaps a tour of concerts. But I have met people from the UK who use it to refer to any job.
E.g. Fiverr 'gig's caused me a lot of misunderstanding the first time I browsed the site
I think it's generally a term to avoid that has been popularised by quasi-hipster tech.
Most probably, the word 'job' or even 'move' would be much less prone to confusion here.
We chose to go with "gig" for two reasons:
- It's a less formal way to say "job" which could be misleading for drivers looking for work, since most of these moves will be one-off things.
- We looked at the popular sections on craigslist where drivers post their services or users post looking for drivers and those sections are Services & Gigs; so we went with gigs for familiarity.
You may also consider funneling your traffic immediately to separate "buyers" and "sellers." Car sharing services often ask immediately whether you're looking to rent someone else's car or to rent out a car that you own. It's worth thinking about or testing anyway.
Good luck!
Indeed, ISTM that the trouble with moving your own stuff is not so much the truck - most people rent a u-haul or similar even if they have to bribe a friend to drive it - as the difficulty of finding people who know how to manhandle furniture and appliances without damaging them or the building they're being moved into/out of, and how to pack a truck so that the contents don't move around during transit.
This. If you just need a truck, U-Haul or similar will do that for under $100. If you want to move anything fragile and valuable, pay someone knowledgeable and insured. There just isn't much money in schlepping things around town for $40 plus gas.
You really need to deal with both state and federal consumer-oriented laws relating to moving, and bills of lading and the like.
You should also learn about the laws relating to "agency". As the agent of truckers, connecting the trucker to the customer, you can find yourself to be on the hook for movers and truckers that fail to deal with state laws, which can be quite "interesting" to an entity in your position.
The reason for such state laws and federal regulation: low estimates on the job, and truckers that hold a person's goods hostage for the surprisingly high bill. Nationally: you need to know your providers are reputable and capable.
#1 - I'm continually amazed at how flakey the drivers/moving services are - they all advertise multiple times a week that they have moving services available, but you have to call about a half dozen of them and leave messages before you eventually get one that will get back to you and commit. You would think they would at least get back to you quickly, and then refer the work to someone else.
#2 - The quality of service that you get varies quite a bit, and doesn't seem to correlate with what you pay as much as you would like - I've paid anywhere from $90 to $150 for moving and sometimes I get two, highly qualified movers, and an enormous truck capable of moving an entire house ($60/hour, 2 hour minimum). Sometimes you get a yahoo with a big uncovered pickup truck ($90/hour).
If there was a service that could solve those two pain points - eliminate the hassle of trying to track down the service, and making sure the person actually showed up when they said the would, and giving me some sense of what I would be getting (Big Truck? how big? Are the movers going to help me move things outside? Do they bring blankets for things like glass desks?) - then I'd be interested in using it.
The cheapest price on unpakt is $517 for my type of move. They are clearly looking at a different target market.
What I mean by delivery is more something along the lines of...
- I have something I want to pickup (maybe off Craigslist or something) and I don't have a truck. Would be nice to have someone who has one help for a flat rate.
I wish this service was around when I owned a truck.
My parents run a removals firm in the UK, British Association of Removers accredited. Are you hoping to displace the removal industry of people moving entire homes?
The actual physical handling of people's goods should never come down to price, a bidding war on moving the personal belongings of your entire personal life is never going to end well. Unlicensed, unregulated cowboys will never handle your belongings as well as someone who has had training, is fully insured and has twenty years of experience.
Moving people is hard work, it's difficult to judge a price based upon what people say, distance to the truck? Amount of packing that needs to be done? These are all things that can add huge amounts of time, and therefore money into moving home and due to the fact you're dealing with people's hard earned personal possessions something that shouldn't be ignored.
In all seriousness, the one question I could never answer for myself is "what happens when there's cocaine in the box?" Have you considered this and how this risk will be handled?
As a market place ensuring safety is the value add. Having a rating system would be nice. Perhaps requiring only facebook/linkedin could help?
Or drivers upload their photo and drivers license and the photos should match? I don't have a solution, but something to think about.
Reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke: "I love my FedEx guy cause he's a drug dealer and he doesn't even know it...and he's always on time."
Super curious what their plans are to monetize (it looks like TP is currently completely free)?
Right now we're completely free but we have a lot of ideas for monetization. One of them being handling payments and taking a cut and another would be to sell optional related services, like moving/rental insurance, cleaning services, and moving supplies.
Tough to see what the product looks like without actually signing up and posting/bidding.
Should get a t-shirt that says "No I will not fix your computer and no you can't borrow my truck, but you can pay me for either if you'd like.
Thanks guys, this is a neat website.
https://www.truckplease.com/how-it-works
"TruckPlease doesn’t employee anyone..."
$80 was first bid, took it. Excited to see how this goes!
Local or national?
Edit: right now we're focusing on local moves within cities but there's we have no problem with the site being used for long-haul moves.
This isn't a bad market to get into. You should educate yourself though more in it.
Is this more for small jobs within a city? Like if I needed to pick up some furniture or something similar.
We really like uShip! But we're different. While uShip has the functionality to offer local moves, their primary focus is on larger long-haul moves. Movers generally use their service to fill empty space on their trucks so they can get the most for their time/fuel costs.
Our main focus is on local moves. We've tried using uShip for in-city moves in a few cities and getting bids for these on their site is pretty hit and miss since most of their drivers prefer a longer haul.
Seriously... I love this.
Focus on estate sales and you will grow rapidly.
I think this is an excellent idea with great potential.
The moving industry is nice, but I think there is much more potential in larger retail purchases and local delivery.
Our main focus is on local moves. We've tried using uShip for in-city moves in a few cities and getting bids for these on their site is pretty hit and miss since most of their drivers prefer a longer haul.
Other than that, really cool idea.