Like so many things in 2020, this holiday season is going to be… well, a little weird. Large holiday gatherings are off the table for many, and visiting crowded stores to shop for gifts is downright implausible for a lot of folks in a pandemic environment. 

More than ever before, many shoppers will be counting on same-day or urgent delivery for their holiday needs — and, likewise, many businesses will be counting on delivery companies like Roadie to provide it.

Roadie makes it easy and cost-effective for businesses to flex to peak — whatever peak may be for them. It’s different for every industry, and most of the time, we can plan ahead for it. For florists, Valentine’s Day is game time. Retailers, of course, often rely on a spike in sales in Q4 every year to meet their sales projections. Our airline customers usually see huge numbers of travelers in the summer months and around the holidays. 

But sometimes, you can’t predict when you’ll need to flex up quickly. 

For example: in 2019, one of our customers — a major airline — experienced a system outage nationwide and suddenly had to deliver 6x as many mishandled bags than usual.

And of course, most of us couldn’t have predicted the pandemic. Retailers like The Home Depot and Tractor Supply Company had to focus on home improvement supply delivery to keep sales flowing in — in fact, Tractor Supply scaled same-day delivery to 100% of its stores in less than three weeks and The Home Depot handled 500% growth on same-day delivery demand with our expertise.

Being plugged into a same-day delivery platform can help you smash record sales, too. Nothing Bundt Cake, a popular nationwide bakery chain, used to have to cap sales for Mother’s Day weekend. After securing Roadie as a same-day delivery partner, that limit disappeared completely. They were able to accommodate a 113% spike in sales.

The truth is, we can’t always forecast demand — but the crowdsourcing model succeeds because it doesn’t need to. We can add delivery resources in real-time. As delivery volume goes up, the number of active drivers delivering within our system goes up as well — while delivery times and costs remain the same.

With more than 150,000 drivers, Roadie has delivered items to more than 13,000 cities and towns across the U.S. and covers 89% of U.S. households — the largest local-same-day footprint in the nation, even bigger than Amazon Prime Now. 

If you’re approaching your own peak season, it’s not too late to add on-demand to your home delivery toolbelt. We’ve helped our customers launch in as few as two weeks. Reach out and let us show you how you can add instantly scalability into the last mile.