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Comment by heidar | Hacker News Reader

Working on TruckPlease https://www.truckplease.com/ If you need to move something you can post it there and guys with trucks and moving companies around you will put down quotes for the job. Then you can accept/decline the quotes and get connected to the mover. It's a Rails app. The focus is on stuff within the same city (or county at least) so shorter local moves.

It's mostly in Vancouver, BC right now although we get stuff posted from all over the US and Canada.

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I think it's a great service, and was really toying with the idea of creating something like this when I was living in the UK. But mostly for ebay purchases.

There are lots of bargains for furniture and heavier stuff which is 'pick-up-only'. If you can get a quote for picking it up and delivering it before you even bid on an auction, this will open up loads more opportunities for both buyers, sellers, and local delivery companies.

So my 2 cents worth of tip is adding an ebay bookmarklet or a way to add an eBay id instantly to get a quote on.

Also lots of potential if this grows for moving companies who have extra space in their trucks to bid and fill those gaps within the area.

Thanks! You might already know but the UK has AnyVan which is similar but perhaps more for long distance stuff. I think they have eBay integration too. You're right that is a huge market though.

Thanks for the tip about AnyVan. I wasn't aware of it. Now I'm in Germany, but I see that they have German presence as well. Very useful to know!

You've been making some ripples on reddit! Do you anticipate needing to hire additional staff anytime soon?

Yeah people seem to "like" the idea on there! We probably will not be hiring until we have streamlined our model a bit more and started earning revenue or raised another round of funding.

You should put a picture of different trucks on your home page to drive to point "further" home. Excellent idea.

We're working on having a new photo taken for a redesign of the front page that is coming up. Different trucks is a neat idea. We toyed round with some ideas and ended up with just wanting a photo of people moving. Not sure what we'll go with yet but different trucks is cool since it tells you that we have variety!

If you don't mind me asking, how did you start getting 'movers' to join the platform? What kind of marketing did you do? And what about getting the word out to people?

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