URB-E is a compact container delivery network that is transforming the last-mile delivery process. From the mind of a former Porsche and Fisker engineer, these electric vehicles and collapsible containers are economizing retail delivery operations from carbon footprints to traffic footprints. And now, since partnering PenguinPickUp, they’re introducing a customer-oriented, entirely new modality for delivery here in Canada as well as the U.S
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
URB-E is a compact container delivery network that is transforming the last-mile delivery process. From the mind of a former Porsche and Fisker engineer, these electric vehicles and collapsible containers are economizing retail delivery operations from carbon footprints to traffic footprints. And now, since partnering PenguinPickUp, they’re introducing a customer-oriented, entirely new modality for delivery here in Canada as well as the U.S
On this episode of The Voice of Retail podcast, I sit down with Charles Jolley, the CEO of URB-E, to talk about how the company is reimagining package delivery. URB-E was ready for the e-commerce boom long before the pandemic sent consumers online. Charles sheds light on how the company has kept up with rapid growth, and what they’ve learned from offering solutions for delivery in high-density environments.
In eighteen months of COVID-era supply chain and delivery service complications, the promise of URB-E’s design is a refreshing look at the innovative adaptations that lie ahead.
Thanks for tuning into today’s episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we can continue getting amazing guests on the show.
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
URB-E is a compact container delivery network that is transforming the last-mile delivery process. From the mind of a former Porsche and Fisker engineer, these electric vehicles and collapsible containers are economizing retail delivery operations from carbon footprints to traffic footprints. And now, since partnering PenguinPickUp, they’re introducing a customer-oriented, entirely new modality for delivery here in Canada.
On this episode of The Voice of Retail podcast, I sit down with Charles Jolley, the CEO of URB-E, to talk about how the company is reimagining package delivery. URB-E was ready for the e-commerce boom long before the pandemic sent consumers online. Charles sheds light on how the company has kept up with rapid growth, and what they’ve learned from offering solutions for delivery in high-density environments.
In eighteen months of COVID-era supply chain and delivery service complications, the promise of URB-E’s design is a refreshing look at the innovative adaptations that lie ahead.
Charles Jolley
The key thing about them is they're designed to be small to operate in much more compact environments. So, you can fit actually, for example, the bike in the trailer or fold up so you can fit six of them into a parking spot.
Michael LeBlanc
Charles, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How you doing this morning?
Charles Jolley
Thank you for having me very well. Thanks.
Michael LeBlanc
Perfect. Now, where am I,
Charles Jolley
I’m here
Michael LeBlanc
Where am I reaching you today?
Charles Jolley
Oh, well, as it turns out, I'm down in the Caribbean enjoying some depression passing over me. So, I'm watching a nice downpour of rain at the moment.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, it sounds like a nice,
Charles Jolley
Trying to take a little break just before the holiday, the holiday rush takes off though. This is our last chance.
Charles Jolley
Right on the peak. And I'm sure you've been busy because and we're going to talk about that you doing some really exciting stuff. So, thanks for taking time out of your, out of your, your vacation, basically.
Charles Jolley
Yeah, sure.
Michael LeBlanc
All right, well, tell me Let's start at the beginning. Tell me about yourself. Your, your background and your role at URB-E.
Charles Jolley
Yeah, so Well, my background, I've spent most of my career in Silicon Valley, I built a few tech companies spent some time at Apple and Facebook, I was really lucky to be there at Apple in particular when we launched both the iPhone, and iPad, and I helped do the internet service as part of it. So that was pretty interesting, you know, got to see a lot of what it's like to introduce, kind of, new platforms and technologies that can really have a big change on, on the way we live. And I guess I would say I've been kind of chasing that the rest of my career. So that's kind of how I ended up at Facebook.
Charles Jolley
And, you know, then ended up meeting the founders of URB-E a few years ago. And I started out as an investor actually got to know the team quite a bit. And you know, they've been interesting, they were working on this pretty interesting problem, which at the time in 2019, pretty on-, only a few people were really thinking about some of the biggest retailers, which was around, you know, how are we going to solve delivery when it becomes a really, really big scale problem? Not just like, we thought there were a lot of deliveries happening in 2019. Right. But of course, it's nothing in comparison to what we've experienced after COVID.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
And, you know, there are a few companies working on it. And then last year, I would say it became a problem that almost every retailer is trying to solve now. And, and you know, because the, they've been dealing with this for a long time. And the founders are from Porsche and Fisker and have spent a lot of time designing really high-performance vehicles and thinking about electrification. You know, I felt that we had a really compelling solution. So, they asked me to join last year as the CEO, and I was excited to join them. So, we've been at this now together as a team for the last year and we're deployed in New York and getting ready to, well, launching in Toronto and, and spreading out across North America.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, that's exciting. And that's what brought us together. And this podcast is recording before your official launch, but by the time we play it, you will have launched so there'll be a little bit of news.
Charles Jolley
Yes.
Michael LeBlanc
Now tell me about. So first of all, so URB-E has been along how long before you became involved? How long have they been working on this problem before they brought you on?
Charles Jolley
Well, URB-E started in 2015. And the original idea was actually this really cool, little foldable scooter that they designed for, you know, for commuters to get back and forth. And I would say the interest of Peter and Sven, the founders, had always been around what comes after the cart, you know, are we going to do something different than these giant, you know, two to four-ton vehicles? When you switch to electric there's, there's a lot of challenges actually with reproducing the way a car is made today. If you just want to do the exact same thing with electrical, can we do something a little bit smarter? And you know, they weren't the only ones thinking about this, right. Scooters came along. Scooters became a really big thing in 2015 - 2016. You have Lime and, and, and others come out.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
But they designed something really new and then they ended up getting approached by UPS and then a few others and, and they said, ‘Hey, we'd like these scooters. We want to see if we can do this to come up with something that is, you know, more applicable for delivery’. And I would say one of their big wins early on was that they were able to design a system for UPS where they could replace with these very small scooters, and a wagon and trailer system. And they had a special system for carrying parcels, they could replace four big brown trucks with five of these tiny little scooters that use, you know, 96% less carbon and are much, much smaller could go right up to your doorstep and do a quick drop off, and so delivered really great experience for customers. And that was really where we got started.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, it's a great segue to my kind of broader question about what problem you're trying to solve. Because on the, you know, the most obvious problem is last-mile delivery. And of course, we've had this great acceleration here in Canada, we probably move forward five years, we're catching up a little bit and
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
And in the States, you probably moved ahead two years, but you know, that was inevitable that was coming anyway, right?
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
Ecommerce is growing double-digit pre, in the before-time, and it's probably going to grow double digit again, after the COVID era whenever that, whenever that is or whatever that looks like. But there's a broader issue, right, like I was on, you mentioned New York, It's actually been one of the longest times of my life, I haven't been to New York City. I'm based in Toronto, so New York City was like a, you know,
Charles Jolley
Not far.
Michael LeBlanc
That's a quick commuter flight for me.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
And I used to marvel, and I remember, I was watching all these ups, trucks and the different trucks. And I'm thinking, My God, what a great revenue source for the city because they're all being ticketed. I think there's hundreds of 1000s of dollars a day. And the density and, and probably, you know, parcels all over the sidewalk. And but it was like a mess.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
And then there's people who are now thinking about the sustainability element of everything they do. I think a little bit, we're all thinking a bit, a bit more. Yesterday, I mean, my goodness, the UN put out a report yesterday saying we've got a big problem for the next 30 years.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
and we're having a bigger problem if we don't do something about it. Is there a bigger problem that you set out to solve other than kind of, you know, the important problem of last-mile delivery for retailers?
Charles Jolley
Well, you know, I think the really great opportunity is that I mean, look, the first thing you want to solve for us is the carbon footprint. Also, the traffic footprint, like, you mentioned, you go into the cities, and you know, what you experience in New York, it's coming to a city near you, right?
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah. Right, yeah.
Charles Jolley
Well, we just have such a huge increase in, in demand and packages, that it's really breaking the systems. But I think so that that's kind of, I would say people come for the carbon savings, but they stay for the containers, which is actually where I think the big opportunity is because if you're going to have the chance to there's it's been, you know, decades, since we've had a chance to introduce an entirely new modality for delivery. And if we get to rethink this from scratch, I, we've thought that there's, there's an opportunity here to build something that has a much higher headroom than just having a, you know, an electric truck.
Michael LeBlanc
Right.
Charles Jolley
So, what our system is designed to do, we have the, you know, we have the electric vehicle itself, which we can get into.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Charles Jolley
But we also have these small, what we call micro containers. And what that means is you're actually able to instead of having a truck pull up and let's say spent 45 minutes loading in the back of your car, store, whatever it might take either loading or unloading. You could also use this to supply stores. But instead, you can pack these containers separately. And then when the band pulls up, or the vehicle pulls up, you just load it and go. It's like a pitstop, right,
Michael LeBlanc
yeah,
Charles Jolley
and that seems really simple. But you know, you know, containers seemed really simple when they were introduced into shipping, and they completely transformed the entire industry.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
And it's not just the containers, but it's all the infrastructure you build around it. So, imagine being able to create entirely different containers that are maybe an entirely mobile store.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
So you can have a store with all of the, you can have a container with all of the goods that you think customers might need out on the street and 10 minutes away from your nearest from somebody when they want to order as an example where you can design networks or live supply chains where you can get, where you can get supplies, you know, in real-time moving across the city much more efficiently. So that's really what we're excited about. We think the, we think that 95% lower carbon footprint six times lower traffic impact, that's really important. And that's what's driving a lot of the adoption right now. But the containerization that we're building on top of it, that's really where I think of this as a potential to really drastically change the way retail operates within a city in the future. That's what we're most excited about.
Michael LeBlanc
Well it's,
Charles Jolley
Sure.
Michael LeBlanc
It's one of those things that visualizing and I'm going to put a link into your website because you've got some nice visualizations but the visuals are really compelling because it's really a three-part system the way I look at it right you've got your, what looks like a bike, a powered bike, you've got a trailer and then you've got these large rectangular what you call the containers and what I, what I marveled at just watching it for a little bit, is how individuals can just load up this container and it holds an amazing amount of weight, right? We're not talking a small bit of weight here what is it,
Charles Jolley
800 pounds. Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
800 pounds, or four, you know, just almost for almost 400 kilos, and then the individuals can roll it onto the trailer and, and then attach it to this bike and just move around and I was I was marveling at how easily it was that they were moving around is that that the genius of the mechanics of the engineering this, this three-part system that works together? Yeah.
Charles Jolley
Yeah, you got it. I like that you saw the parts at the modularity of it, because that I think, is one of the most important parts, you know, every city that you operate in is a little bit different. And so the idea behind our system is we have a vehicle platform, which consists of some kind of motorized vehicle, it could be a bike, we have a two-wheel version, we have a four-wheel version we're working on, then you have the trailer that can actually hold all of these containers.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
And you know, both of those, the key thing about them is they're designed to be small to operate in, you know, much more compact environments. So, you can fit actually, for example, the bike and the trailer fold up, so you can fit six of them into a parking spot, which means that you can store a whole fleet of them behind us behind the store, right. So, so there's some things about them, because they, the kind of magic of this is that we design these vehicles as what we call a local delivery network. So, so we imagine a future where every neighborhood will have their own set of, fleet of vehicles that can move containers around, they don't have to go on the highway, which is why we can make them so small and efficient.
Charles Jolley
And then you use these containers that like you said, they're really easy to load them and unload them. One person can roll them on and off.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
You know, we have a bunch of, we have a the, the, the trailers will actually kneel down. So, they so it's really easy, just roll them on and off. And when you don't use them, they also fold up so you can fit 24 of those into a parking spot.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow.
Charles Jolley
So, you know, very, very compact, and then easy to just unpack. And because it's modular, we can tune it for each different city. So, for example, the vehicles we've launched with PenguinPickUp, they're, they're also a bike and a trailer system, which is the best fit for Toronto because there's a lot of you know, bike lanes and
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
an existing infrastructure we can use. But they're slightly tuned differently to fit Canadian legal requirements to make sure that they run at a safe speed, we don't allow them to go too fast. So, you know, we have a lot of safety features on it. So you know, I think that modular system, and then the fact that you can pack them up, keep them close to where all of your retail is. And then it's easy for people to just, you know, plug and play and basically go, that's really the secret sauce that makes this really effect-, efficient for people.
Michael LeBlanc
So, two follow-up questions on that just about the logistics. So, my listeners kind of understand.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
So first of all, you're operating in New York City. So, New York gets a bit of snow, like, like Toronto does.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
So, let's talk about that. And then the second is, what's the, kind of, delivery per-, perimeter like where, where can it go? Where is it optimized? So how far out what's the, what's the perimeter? So, talk about the weather?
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
How do you, how do you account for the weather? And then how and then what's the optimal, kind of, not route density, so to speak, but how far out from your central depot wherever that may be is optimal for the, for the solution?
Charles Jolley
Yeah, so you know, surprising, it was actually surprised us a bit, we thought we would need to build a lot more, we're working on more weatherproofing to make the, to make an environment it's so easier for the riders, but we've actually found Canada is one of the largest adopters outside of Europe, of bike cargo systems. I think I think Canada just in general is very, you know, focused on driving that sort of green initiative and transforming your cities compared to a lot of other places in North Americans in particular and, and so there's, there's just a tremendous amount of interest and people you know, basically bundle up I think, I think is how they'll do it in the wintertime. And then we're working on you can actually put some can some safety and weather proofing around it windshields and other things that we are, we're actually actively developing right now for the Canadian market. That will make it a lot easier for riders. I would say,
Michael LeBlanc
Winter, winter tires on the trailers.
Charles Jolley
Well, that's one thing I was gonna say,
Michael LeBlanc
On the trailer, yeah.
Charles Jolley
is we do design the trailers in the bike, though for safety. And so, they have you'll notice our, our bike wheels, they're really wide they actually are our motorcycle wheels, and then, or moped wheels, and same thing on the rear trailers we've designed with a very low center of gravity. So, it's designed specifically for working in really bad inclement weather and still maintaining a lot of tread and actually even the design of our, of our bike which is, is a no one else in the markets really built something like this. It's what's called a mid-drive motor. So, we have a motor in the middle and a gearing system that goes to the back and then and the reason we and then a specialized automatic transmission we've actually developed for the backer hub, rather, that is able to really handle transferring lots and lots of weight while keeping the bike stable on the ground even in the snow and typically you'll go around maybe two or three kilometers from the center. That's, that's about this the range that people will go, although it's a swappable battery, and you could take it, you know, easily 9, 10, 20 during a day, if you wanted to.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like if I think of another Canadian city that's actually ahead of Toronto, I think of Montreal,
Charles Jolley
Yes.
Michael LeBlanc
Which is very bike focus way more actually, so then,
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
then, then Toronto. But of course, they get, they get real weather, not just a New York or Toronto winters, they get real weather.
Charles Jolley
They know, they've made the bikes work there. So, we're just kind of coasting along, I would say, in their, you know, in their trails.
Michael LeBlanc
Right, right. Well, you mentioned PenguinPickUp. So very exciting news, you've done a deal, a business deal with PenguinPickUp, but talk about that, and talk about how that came about and how they chose you and give us the, give us some insight?
Charles Jolley
Well, you know, PenguinPickUp is, I think one of the things that's really special about them as a delivery company is they've really focused a lot on, on the consumer experience, that's always been one of their main points of differentiation, right. They have all these stores, it's easy for you to come in and pick things up and get what you want, when you want it, instead of having to coordinate.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, very savvy.
Charles Jolley
And, you know, now I think they, they t-, got in touch with us a few months ago, and we're saying, "Hey, you know, we've been doing this, this, this store pickup for a while, and now we have a lot of customers that would like to have, some of the packages go straight to them. And there's a lot of partners that they have that would like to do this. But we want to do it in a way that's really efficient and good for the community. And, you know, and also really efficient for us." And I think the fact that we were able to deliver on all of those criteria and, and do it in a way that's very safe and proven to work in a city like Toronto, which is fairly similar to New York, and certain, you know, in certain key ways,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
Is a big reason we ended up working together, you know, I really have enjoyed working with them. Because like I said, you know, kind of my background, I guess I just have a real passion for creating products and experiences that are going to make consumers really happy. And you know, I've really enjoyed working with PenguinPickUps. Team, because they have that very similar view on the world. For sure.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah. And they're very savvy, they've been doing a long time, they've been doing, you know, I knew the folks who created PenguinPickUp, and they're, they're, they're very, very good at what they do. So,
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
It's a real testament that they would choose you as a partner because they know, they know what they're doing. Very well. S,o congratulations on that. And
Charles Jolley
Yeah, thank you.
Michael LeBlanc
Talk about the oper-. Yeah, talk about the operating costs a little bit. So, you've talked about, you know, modular, you talked about storage, which is which clearly you've as an organization thought well about how to store you thought you thought pretty much thought through every, every part.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
From an operating cost perspective, you've got, you've got the human component, then you've got the cost, is it? Is it comparable to other solutions? How do you think about that? And how do you position that with retail partners and folks like PenguinPickUp?
Charles Jolley
Well, our general goal is that if you are just going to basically swap a truck or van with one of our vehicles which you can do because we can carry 800 pounds or 400 kilos of cargo as you mentioned, which is really as much as typically ends up in any truck or van that you see driving around the city doing the last mile so, so we're it's really a one for one replacement. You know, the cost should be basically comparable. One thing that we do that makes just that model better is we actually offer our system fully turnkey, so customers are able to essentially pay us a fully managed fleet rate or lease rate and it's kind of fleet-as-a-service. So, they don't have to put all of this onto their balance sheet or go you know, learn how to train their team to manage it, we can even provide storage and, and daily routine maintenance and everything.
And one reason we like doing it that way is because we still control the vehicles we can continually improve them. So just you get kind of,
Michael LeBlanc
Right
Charles Jolley
on this train with us we're going to be getting a better improvement. If you go into the full containerization which requires a lot more changes on the company side right like that. Then you're typically having to implement some changes inside your warehouse for example in the way you pack things. But if you go into full containerization we can almost double the efficiency actually more than double the efficiency of most deliveries or you know cut the cost and up to half, which is a really, really big savings. And you know the real reason for that is you typically look at your typical like time spent with a delivery driver, which is the most expensive part of last-mile, is the drivers time. Almost 40% of that will usually be spent loading their truck reorganizing,
Michael LeBlanc
Right,
Charles Jolley
Their truck and all of the time to spend managing the truck and so because we're able to replace that with this really quick you know, five-minute load and go it, it just immediately offers you a massive improvement in efficiency and lowers your cost dramatically.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, I love the visual as soon as I looked at it, I was imagining, because I talk a lot about on my various podcast, the strategy around the hybridization of retailers as, as I do a Steve Dennis and, and what we talk about is using stores as your distribution center. And there's more of that.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
So, this is a great solution for that. I mean, there's one thing to ship from a central DC and the and the mechanics of that, as you say, great efficiency, but as a solution to ship from store.
Charles Jolley
Yes.
Michael LeBlanc
And to me, it was, it was really interesting. Now, you've been there a year that the organization has been around for a while, what lessons have you learned, I mean, you're now operating at more scale, you've got the, you know, the great acceleration driving volumes, probably more than more than you anticipated, in a short amount of time any, any lessons learned modifications, you've made approaches that are different at the doorstep or anywhere else, any anything you've done, and change that different than, than a year or 18 months ago.
Charles Jolley
Gosh, I think the, I think the main thing we've learned is that value, how much the value of a product like this is in the integration of all of the parts. I w-, there was a major ecommerce company, their, their fleet buyer said something to me, once it really stuck with me, he said, you know, we love with the reason we, we'd love to replace vans. But the reason we can't so easily is because when you buy a van, you don't just get the van, you get fueling stations,
Michael LeBlanc
Right
Charles Jolley
and you get repair centers and supply chains, and train drivers and insurance and you know, roads. And there's just all of this infrastructure that you inherit when you pay that $40,000 or whatever for a van. And, and if you're going to introduce a new vehicle class, it's really, it's one thing to build the vehicle and make it actually work. Which is, by the way, a gr-, a lot of work, right. Not very many, not very many people in the world can do it.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
There's only probably four or five today that have vehicles that can even meet these criteria.
Michael
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
But then you also need to make it so that people can actually deploy it. And so that's really where we evolved to this, this business model where we think of everything we do as an integrated whole from supply chain to this to the servicing, to storage. And you know, the way everything has to fold up and sit in the back of a retail store. And there's software that connects all of this together. So, you can get real-time visibility on where your cargo is, as it gets makes its way to the customer. All of those pieces have to integrate together. And, and so it's hard. There's a lot of work you have to do before you have a product.
That is that's one reason I think people have been talking about this for so long. And you know, you've been hearing about this number of years and years. I think one of the big block bottlenecks is just there's just a lot of baseline infrastructure and system components that we have to build before this is a practical product to use at scale in the market. And probably I think, URB-E, now is one of maybe two in the US that can do this right now. You know, and there's some over in Germany that have, have approached some of that, but you know, it's hard to get things over here because of COVID.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
So, we're really in a unique space where you know, people that are trying to solve this problem today, you know, URB-E is, URB-E is, I would say I think, you know, probably the leading contender to do that here in, in our continent, I'd say,
Michael LeBlanc
Right on, right on. Well, well, what's next for URB-E? I mean, the "what's next for URB-E?", question is funny, because there's a lot going on,
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
in your life you just launched in Toronto, and you're you're here in Canada, what's what's next for, for the organization? And, and kind of follow up question, if, if listeners want to learn more, where do they go? And how do they get in touch? So first of all, what's on the big what's on the roadmap, so to speak for URB-E?
Charles Jolley
Yeah, so well, we're getting ready for a really busy holiday season, I would say we have a lot of customers that will be rolling out with us in New York City, and Toronto, and, and we're also setting up some service in Seattle right now, and Los Angeles. So, you know, that's keeping us really busy just getting all of these different service areas up and running. That's really exciting. I think the, the next big thing we're going to be working on, one of the big things we'll be working on next year is our actual instore integration experience, which is probably relevant for, for, you know, your listeners. And, you know, you mentioned that being able to bring stores, you know, use stores as actual forward deployment hubs. That's something that we think a lot about too.
And so, one thing we've been developing is some software that, that would allow you to, for example, have a what we want you to do is to have a have a container in the back of your store. It can be folded up when it's not news so it doesn't take up space. You can open it up, basically put orders into that as you go, and you scan the order scan the container. When the container is full, someone can pick it up and take it and do the delivery. And so, we think it's, it's going to ultimately be a once we have this and fully deployed as a software system. It's going to really make it possible for a lot of these retail stores to convert their back of store into a, an actual deployment hub where they can offer you know a while have really fast instant delivery and other great, great features to their customers.
Michael LeBlanc
Well interesting, to hold on that point, though I'm a little, I want to dig a bit deeper.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
So you've, you've got your software going, you've got the, the container is loaded. So a driver gets dropped off, like the human person can, goes up.
Charles Jolley
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
A driver goes by so, so the idea being that there should be basically shared vehicles out there. So, we can have delivery partner with the vehicles and the driver. So, if you're a store, you don't have to go worry about, you know, maybe it's a PenguinPickUp, right, or someone like them. So, if you're a store, and I'm not announcing that with them, just to be clear, but, but as an example of what type of partner we would work with. So if you're a store, you know, you want to offer same-day delivery, you want to offer, you know, maybe new types of services that you can, that you can dispatch out, if you're retail,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Charles Jolley
you can basically just have the container in the back, use our software to load it up with orders. And then you know, press a button and a delivery partner will come by pick it up and take it away for you. That's really the vision we're driving towards.
Michael LeBlanc
That's really interesting, because so you could be a retailer located in downtown, for now, Toronto, LA or New York,
Charles Jolley
Yes.
Michael LeBlanc
and take a bunch of orders all day. And then whenever you reach that optimal a driver, basically someone who's going to move that, comes and starts to deliver in that two kilometers, or the two-mile areas that am I getting that right?
Charles Jolley
You got it exactly right. Yeah. And you could you know, and the cool thing, this is why we love containers so much, because there's really just scratching the surface of what you can do with this new type of platform. You know, you could imagine having containers that are set at different delivery time windows, so two hours or same day, you know, or next day.
Michael LeBlanc
or next day, right, next day or next day you spend the day loading it up, and, but yet you can deliver next day.
Charles Jolley
Exactly, yeah. And that can get dropped off. We already operating in New York, these, these what we call staging locations, where people will pack containers from other boroughs, let's say Brooklyn, and those will get dropped off in the morning at the staging location, and then drivers will take them around and deliver them during the day in Manhattan.
Michael LeBlanc
Interesting, so interesting, or, and, and it's been a great conversation. I love your system. So, tell me about where the listeners can go to learn more and get in touch.
Charles Jolley
Yeah, so you can go to our website URB-E.com, that's URB-E.com, and, and there's a contact form and get in contact, get in touch with us, we'll be happy to, happy to share a lot more information. We have a lot of videos and, and an actual concrete, technical information and we can, you know, maybe even arrange to show a demo. We love showing it off. It's the best thing to do is to see it in person.
We'll also be at Home Delivery World in Philadelphia for people that are attending that conference with the, with the actual equipment there. So maybe you can come take a test ride.
Michael LeBlanc
All right. Well, very good. Well, Charles, thanks so much for joining me on The Voice of Retail. It's been great. Congratulations on your success so far.
Charles Jolley
Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc
I wish you much too much success in the future. And thanks for joining me and telling me all about your system.
Charles Jolley
Thanks for having me on. It's been great.
Michael LeBlanc
Thanks for tuning into today’s episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts, so you don't miss out on the latest episodes, industry news and insights. If you enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we can continue getting amazing guests on the show.
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc., and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!
Michael LeBlanc
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