Greg's Corner

Start-up tries to solve the ‘last mile’ problem

In the retail war between Amazon and WalMart, we constantly hear about the ‘last mile’. The last mile in the delivery chain is supposedly the most expensive phase of home delivery and each retail giant has been trying to solve that problem for years. Now a start-up out of San Francisco seems to have a plan that they think solves the last mile problem.

Recently, noted tech blog TechCrunch did a write up on delivery fulfillment start-up Darkstore. Darkstore wants to take the fulfilment centers of retailers out of rural areas and bring them into bigger population centers in order to cut down time and cost on the last mile. Darkstore has storage space in several urban markets and uses delivery services like UberRUSH and Deliv to get the items to your door in a more timely manner.

However, Darkstore just recently partnered with another delivery company called T-Force Final Mile which has expanded Darkstore to 40 markets nationwide. The problem is T-Force Final Mile used to be called Dynamex. Dynamex is also used by Amazon in some markets and have not had the glowing reviews that one would hope. Both Yelp and Amazon reviews contain stories of Dynamex allegedly delivering packages to the wrong address or not delivering them at all.

Maybe this new partnership with Darkstore will cause T-Force Final Mile/Dynamex to improve their image and reputation, otherwise they could drag down Darkstore with them.