Van Life: Why A Former Monzo Executive Has Launched A Tech-Enabled Courier Company Aimed First At Small Businesses.

Nearly thirty years on from the launch of Amazon, it might be fair to assume that online sellers and logistics companies have, between them, pretty much nailed the process of delivering goods to grateful recipients.

But then again, perhaps not entirely. When Tristan Thomas, an executive with mobile banking company Monzo started a wine subscription service with his brother during the pandemic lockdown in the U.K., he found that efficient and cost-effective delivery was not something that could be taken for granted. Put bluntly, he felt his nascent business was not being well served by established couriers.

“We’ve all experienced poor delivery from the customer perspective – goods being thrown over fences and that sort of thing – but what I found was that the merchant experience is worse.”

Rather than complaining, Thomas instead began to explore the idea of setting up his own courier – one that was both operationally friendly towards its business customers and capable of offering a good service to consumers.

Fast forward to 2022 and Packfleet – a business founded by Thomas in the company of two other Monzo employees – has 50 vans on the streets of London, delivering goods on behalf of around 150 customers. But in reality, is there anything that can be done to genuinely improve delivery services? After all, we’ve all become used to 24-hour deliveries – often within agreed time slots – and order tracking. Is there anything that can be added to the mix?

Thomas believes there is a lot that can be done – particularly for small businesses – by taking an app-based approach to managing operations.

Operation And Tech

“We are both an operations company and a tech company,” he says. Or to put it another way, Packfleet has built its own tech stack to manage the business of moving goods around.

The tech stack is intended to ensure that merchants can set up collections and deliveries either on a case-by-case or recurring basis using an app, which also tracks the progress of the order. Delivery addresses and time slots can be changed when the drivers are en-route.

In addition, the Packfleet fleet is comprised of electric vehicles and the company says it offers a 100% carbon-neutral service.

Carbon Neutral

So how important is that aspect of the service? Thomas is realistic about the company’s green appeal. “It is important to customers but there are other factors they have to consider like price and reliability,” he says.

Equally, even if it is a differentiator now, with the U.K. moving towards net zero, increasing numbers of delivery vehicles will be electric in the coming years. So in the longer term, EVs won’t make Packfleet stand out. “But we wanted to do it the right way, right from the beginning,” says Thomas. In other words, the green proposition is part of a bigger mix.

And in that respect, the company has set out its stall in terms of reliability. “Some courier businesses have seen a 10% failure rate,” says Thomas. “We have a failure rate of 0.1%.” The measurement here is goods that fail to arrive, rather than goods that arrive just a little bit late.

Perhaps as important, Thomas says the company took time to explore what small businesses wanted from their couriers and this information was built into the platform.

But can a company like Packfleet really compete with businesses that have thousands of vehicles on the road and serve the entire U.K.? Again, Thomas is realistic. “At the moment, we can’t sell John Lewis ( a major British store) because we don’t have enough vehicles.” However, the company can provide a good service to small businesses in fixed geographical areas and expand from there.

The plan is to first expand the operation in London and then expand geographically. “We began delivering just a few parcels a day in South East London and we’ve grown from there. This month we will cover all of the area within the 25 (London’s orbital motorway)”. From there, the company intends to expand to other British cities, starting with Birmingham and Manchester. More vans also bring an ability to target bigger retailers.

Far from being sewn up, the delivery space is evolving. Goods are being delivered by established couriers in vans but also – depending on where you live – by autonomous vehicles traveling on pavements and in some cases drones And of course. There are companies like Deliveroo that have grown and thrived using their own tech stacks. Packfleet is part of that mix. All this is probably good for e-commerce entrepreneurs, who can choose delivery models to suit recipients and their own customers.