New OneRail offering focuses on addressing final mile challenges for retail shippers

Earlier today, Orlando, Fla.-based OneRail, a provider of final mile delivery services for enterprise shippers, rolled out a new offering, entitled QuickSmart, that enables retail shippers to immediately find more final mile delivery capacity required to support increased in e-commerce demand brought on by the coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic.

OneRail Founder and CEO Bill Catania told LM that the company began working on “QuickStart” two weeks ago, when it became apparent that social distancing and “contactless” delivery became a priority.

“We began by putting ourselves in the shoes of our clients by asking ‘what are the biggest pain points if you had to double or triple delivery volume almost instantly?’” he said. “The biggest barrier to instant scale for our clients was the time requried to facilitate an enterprise tech integration, the second pain point was instant delivery network coverage. OneRail solves the integration pain point by utilizing the existing e-commerce enterprise solution to automate the creation of delivery orders, or (if they don't have an e-commerce solution and are store-based or ‘upstream’ in the supply chain) we provide a  ‘delivery user interface’ for them to enter deliveries manually if needed.” 

Catalina added that OneRail already had a national network with 75,000 couriers, making the second pain point easier to solve. And he explained that OneRail decided to lower all barriers to entry during what has become a very difficult time financially for many businesses, large and small, by eliminating the integration and transaction costs associated with using the OneRail platform. 

When asked what the biggest benefits of QuickStart are for OneRail’s retail shipper customers, Catalina said that many of OneRail’s shipper customers have previously utilized a single delivery network, whereas OneRail provides an aggregated carrier network comprised of four different fulfillment segments, ranging from sedans to pick-ups to cargo vans to commercial box trucks.

“In addition to the ease of delivery fulfillment, OneRail bears the burden of logistics management, which means our clients don't have to spend any incremental cost to scale delivery,” he said. “The OneRail logistics management team follows up on all exceptions (late deliveries, damage, wrong address, wrong items), which seem to occur in around 10% of deliveries. This is a significant operating efficiency as our clients can focus on selling more and being strategic while we manage their final mile, stem to stern.”

In terms of the competitive advantages QuickStart offers from a OneRail perspective, Catalina said that it is a complete solution, rather than a fragmented one, or in pieces.

“There are many solutions out there that solve different parts of the problem, such as courier matching, or exceptions, or courier capacity, but there are none that have seamlessly and elegantly linked the automation of the delivery order, dispatch to an existing ‘network’ of couriers, and full “human” logistics management through proof of delivery,” he said. “QuickStart is truly end to end and turn-key.”