The ride-hailing company Sidecar is getting into deliveries. The service—which has lagged behind Uber and Lyft in the transportation market—has spent the last six months restructuring its platform to ship products, in addition to people, around San Francisco.
Today, the company announced it would begin to roll out the delivery option for users across the country. According to the numbers from their pilot program, the expansion into logistics has been beneficial for all parties: Sidecar reports that drivers earned 75% more when they delivered both packages and people, and companies save 1/5 on delivery prices while cutting delivery times in half.
The pilot program appears to be small at launch, so it remains to be seen whether this model will be a scalable option for other sharing economy-style companies. As of today, the only partner in Sidecar's delivery program is with the restaurant delivery service Eat24. However, Sidecar has marketed its new service as a feature that will be delivering everything from food to flowers directly to your door.
There is already stiff competition in the delivery field. Uber has been rolling out its own version of a similar service, UberRUSH, in markets around the country, and Roadie is a recently announced app that solely aims to connect sharing economy drivers with items to deliver.