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I'm talking about the truck rental business. I've personally never had a good experience using U-haul for a move (truck I reserved not there, long wait times in

by afs27 5y ago

I'm talking about the truck rental business. I've personally never had a good experience using U-haul for a move (truck I reserved not there, long wait times in shop, online reservation flow sucks, etc.). A lot of my friends have had similar experiences too. I know they're entrenched and have a lot of advantages, but they are definitely an incumbent that hasn't innovated almost at all. I think the move would be testing one market with a fleet of vans for small apartment moves and see what the magic features are.

hindsightbias 5y ago
The business model is roughly $1/mile not including insurance. Since uber/lyft are more than that, tech isnt going to help much. Nobody buys vans to share. Maybe a pod designed for autonomous Tesla trucks, but people today do not own what will fit in one pod. Perhaps permapod. You graduate frome college and are gifted a permapod that will always be available to store or move your stuff. Like in the old days when we stored all our files in email tarballs because the university did not enforce filesize limits on email.
- afs27 5y ago
  Damn b, you just flew right over my head with this permapod talk haha.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  It’s not the same industry, but I wonder if there’s a way to make low volume freight shipping cheaper. There’s been a few things I almost bought if it weren’t for the fact it costs 10X more to ship than to to purchase the item, often for things I was shocked to hear were too big for parcel shipping. I even had people offering to let me use their docks and the shipping was way to much.
the_arun 5y ago
Turo for trucks? https://turo.com/ https://turo.com/
- afs27 5y ago
  This is definitely along the lines of what I was thinking. There are obviously varying degrees of moves, from a micro I'm moving a couch to an entire house. Maybe the micro case would be the one to start with, where you can get quick and easy access to a pick up truck or small van.
gregjor 5y ago
I had a bad experience once and so did some other people I know, based on using a service a couple of times and expecting something more efficient and high tech than local truck rental. That doesn’t lead directly to “ripe for disruption.” U-Haul and its several large and numerous small competitors is already highly optimized. It’s just not optimized the way tech nerds think about optimizing. U-Haul is part of a larger company, Amerco. Compare their profits to a disruptor like Uber.

by afs27 5y ago

hindsightbias 5y ago

The business model is roughly $1/mile not including insurance. Since uber/lyft are more than that, tech isnt going to help much. Nobody buys vans to share. Maybe a pod designed for autonomous Tesla trucks, but people today do not own what will fit in one pod. Perhaps permapod. You graduate frome college and are gifted a permapod that will always be available to store or move your stuff. Like in the old days when we stored all our files in email tarballs because the university did not enforce filesize limits on email.

afs27 5y ago
Damn b, you just flew right over my head with this permapod talk haha.
the_only_law 5y ago
It’s not the same industry, but I wonder if there’s a way to make low volume freight shipping cheaper. There’s been a few things I almost bought if it weren’t for the fact it costs 10X more to ship than to to purchase the item, often for things I was shocked to hear were too big for parcel shipping. I even had people offering to let me use their docks and the shipping was way to much.

the_arun 5y ago

Turo for trucks? https://turo.com/ https://turo.com/

afs27 5y ago
This is definitely along the lines of what I was thinking. There are obviously varying degrees of moves, from a micro I'm moving a couch to an entire house. Maybe the micro case would be the one to start with, where you can get quick and easy access to a pick up truck or small van.

gregjor 5y ago

I had a bad experience once and so did some other people I know, based on using a service a couple of times and expecting something more efficient and high tech than local truck rental. That doesn’t lead directly to “ripe for disruption.” U-Haul and its several large and numerous small competitors is already highly optimized. It’s just not optimized the way tech nerds think about optimizing. U-Haul is part of a larger company, Amerco. Compare their profits to a disruptor like Uber.