Company description
mtvan gives couriers all the tools they need to trade with each other.
They can use mtvan every day to find extra courier work, to find empty couriers, to cover your courier work, to track their courier movements with real-time GPS tracking, to take real time signatures for proof of delivery on their PDA, to let their customer book on-line, to invoice their customers, and to make new contacts in the courier industry.
It’s an easy-to-use, all-in-one courier toolkit, with 'Facebook-style' online networking tools, that helps connect couriers and courier companies to help make a more profitable operation for everyone.
mtvan works in almost all countries of the world.
Team
Tim Gilbert has been a key figure in the UK courier industry for 30 years.
Richard Williams gained a degree in Industrial Design at Loughborough University in 2004.
Business model
mtvan is a capacity engine. It attracts capacity in the form of couriers and courier companies to its sticky content in the form of attractive online facilities. One of the facilities is a freight exchange, where users can place work to be covered by other users, and this in turn attracts more users.
The capacity is used (by other users as above), and by mtvan's sister site www.deliverysupermarket.com, which offers a wide range of delivery options purely to the end user.
The model makes money by charging couriers and courier companies to join mtvan. and by taking commissions and 'rent' from courier companies and parcel networks who appear in premium slots on DeliverySupermarket.
The end users on DeliverySupermarket do business direct with mtvan users, so credit risk and commercial liability are not shared by DeliverySupermarket or mtvan. DeliverySupermarket acts as an introducer.
DeliverySupermarket.com, low live in beta, is a revolutionary price comparison website for the delivery of parcels or larger items throughout the UK, which allows its customers to access a wide range of courier and parcel operators enabling them to get access to the best price possible.
Until now, parcel delivery websites have traditionally simply been resellers for the big parcel companies, such as DHL and Royal Mail. For the first time, DeliverySupermarket.com offers customers the option of a “Buy it Now” price for urgent transactions, or if time isn’t a major consideration, but the cost is, a customer can choose the “Quote Me” option which provides them with competitive bids from other independent suppliers around the country.
Over 1000 courier operators are already involved in the project, as users of mtvan.com, giving unprecedented scope for price and service to match end-user customer expectations.
Tim Gilbert, co-founder of DeliverySupermarket.com, says: "With many other price comparison sites, the benefit to the customer is hard to measure, and often the customer service response can disappointing if anything goes wrong. However on DeliverySupermarket, offers come directly from independent operators' control rooms, so are completely personalised, giving the customer the best possible chance to benefit from the keenest prices available on the day.”
DeliverySupermarket.com offers prices from a uniquely wide range of services and operators, including sameday 'rush' and even two-man, so giving customers the opportunity to find quickly a genuinely "best price" for their specific delivery.
With the current economic climate, many of the independent courier and parcel delivery services are keen for the extra work. This new website allows end-user customers to take advantage of significant cost savings, whilst offering couriers new opportunities to fill their vans.
Prices are offered for UK and international deliveries, and for same day and overnight services, from an envelope to a pallet or even a shipping container.
Competitive advantage
The competitive advantage lies in the combination of active capacity on mtvan, and of the breadth of offering, both service and price, that this delivers to DeliverySupermarket users.
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Tim Gilbert
I like this update!
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