Courier Direct Magazine catches up with Tim Gilbert, founder of mtvan.com
July 15th, 2009What have you been up to?
Six months ago we decided to rebuild mtvan totally from scratch. We set out to build a business networking site, with a freight exchange, location tracking, Proof of Delivery, and customer invoicing. We wanted to bring the networking benefits of sites like Facebook to the courier industry, to make it easier for small businesses to make essential business contacts, as well as a freight exchange to cover work efficiently. We looked at everything we had been doing, and if it wasn’t working we threw it out, and if it was working we improved it. And we made a list of all the things our users had always said they wanted us to do, and we’ve done all that too. So it’s been a busy time for us here.
Is it going well?
Well our users tell us they like it. It’s complete, it’s working, and people are signing up and networking with each other and trading work, so that’s what’s important.
What problems have you faced?
We’ve really stretched some of the new technology to the limit, so some stuff has held us up a bit. Google maps and directions, for example. It’s brilliant what you can do with it, but once you get past the point of just wanting a simple map with a dot on it, it’s quite complicated. Our users told us they wanted validated postcodes, and accurate mileages, with automatically generated ETAs, and full directions. It’s all there now, but it’s taken a bit of working out. Plus of course, it works in every country that Google has maps for, so we’ve spent a while making it work with the Euro as well as with Pounds, so we’ve had to get exchange rates to work like on eBay.
What’s good about it?
I think the best thing about it is that it’s not just the same old tired freight exchange model, but it includes things that people are used to having to help with the rest of their lives on the internet, such as Facebook-style networking tools. We’ve tried to make it so that you can do everything on it, from booking to invoicing, including PODs and location tracking. The great thing about the internet is that it keeps making your business cheaper to run. Not so long ago it used to cost £1 a day to track a vehicle. Now it’s free to our users. And it’s the same with the customer invoicing. Courier software used to be such a big deal. Now you just sign up, log in, and get stuck in.
What’s different about it?
It loads much faster now. It offers much more to the user, both vendor and courier. It’s quicker to book work. The alerts system is really accurate. There’s a neat xml feed if people want to connect it to their existing software. And people love the social and business networking side. We’re also totally independent of any courier company now, so it’s much clearer what we are offering now.
Have you had good support from your colleagues in the industry?
Yes, we been really pleased with the way people have stuck by us, and said they wanted us to produce something really modern, and above all something that was good value. That doesn’t just mean cheaper, but refreshingly better and more in line with how their business is now. It’s not just the recession driving that. The plain fact is, people are used to the internet being free. So if you’re going to charge, you have to set the price at a sensible level, and deliver stuff that really impresses them. Ten years ago you could charge what you liked. Now people are rightly demanding much more for a lot less.
What’s next?
We’re going to carry on encouraging our existing users to make a habit of using mtvan every day to cover their work more efficiently, to get more work and to make more contacts. We’re also talking to lots of other people about taking a fresh look at what we’re offering, and asking them to see how that compares with their current courier work exchange.
We’re also launching a separate end-user website, www.DeliverySupermarket.com, to introduce new customers directly to our users. It offers a uniquely wide range of services to the end user, based on the services our users are happy to quote for. We don’t get involved in the job or the money, it’s a straight introduction, to bring more work and customers to mtvan users. We’re aiming mainly at the under-35s using couriers now, the Facebook generation, who are completely at home on the internet when buying business services, and who see the old phone-based business model as rather quaint. They don’t want quaint, they want slick web services that deliver them results and value. That’s what we’re all about.