Vancouver’s TruckPlease helps make moving easier and cheaper

After buying a desk on Craigslist, Sasan Aghdasi was in need of a mover.

“I think I had to call about seven movers before I could finally get someone who was willing to do it,” the Vancouver entrepreneur told the Georgia Straight by phone.

Aghdasi thought that there must be a way to simplify the process for customers. He cofounded TruckPlease Web, a local startup that launched its moving-jobs website in April.

Prospective customers post their jobs on TruckPlease by submitting the date, time, destination, and other details of their move. The site then alerts moving companies in the area—those that have created accounts on TruckPlease—and they can offer quotes.

“Vancouver is our busiest city right now,” Aghdasi said. “If you post a job, you’ll start getting a quote within the first 10 minutes. Then, within the hour, you’re going to have multiple quotes. And then the moving companies compete with each other, so we drive down the price actually quite a bit.”

Right now, TruckPlease claims to save customers an average of 25 percent per move, and it isn’t charging any fees.

According to Aghdasi, the site also has customers and movers in Victoria, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and other cities. They’re transporting everything from small items to the contents of houses—mostly within the same city.

Over 420 jobs have been arranged through TruckPlease since it launched. More than 800 movers have signed on to the site.

In the future, Aghdasi said, TruckPlease will either charge movers a subscription fee for using the site or a fee per job.

They also plan to create profiles for movers and allow customers to post and read reviews.

“A lot of these guys, they’re smaller companies,” Aghdasi said. “Some of them have websites. Some of them have profiles on Yelp and stuff. But there’s no real central place for this.”

TruckPlease has raised $65,000 in seed funding.

Aghdasi maintained the site improves the experience for both customers and movers.

“You can do everything online, but it’s very difficult to find a mover online,” Aghdasi said. “So we want to bring that process to the web.”