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When moving, no one looks forward to renting a U-Haul. That’s why a team of recent college grads is launching Buddytruk, a ridesharing app for moving and hauling, this month.
The Santa Monica-based company is simplifying the moving experience by building upon the strides made by successful ridesharing companies like Lyft ($700 million valuation) and Uber ($3.5 billion valuation).
“We look at them as trailblazers in the ridesharing industry,” social media manager Adam Jacobs said. “We’ve taken what’s great from the ridesharing industry, like on-demand service, great branding and friendly drivers and applied that to one of the worst experiences in the world – moving and hauling.”
Since Buddytruk was founded in October by CEO Brian Foley and COO Russell Tuchman, the team has been making swift moves to ease the pain of moving around LA. It’s a pain they experienced themselves when moving dorms and apartments (Foley is a Pepperdine grad and Tuchman is a UC Santa Barbara grad). The team of 10, which is spread across Austin and St. Louis, is currently raising a seed round for its iOS launch this month and Android launch next.
The small team is gearing up to face big-name moving and hauling competitors like U-Haul or 2 Guys and a Van, “but lucky for us, the whole industry is fairly fragmented,” Jacobs said. And none of these big companies make moving quite as personal Buddytruk aims to make the experience.
“Rather than bugging a friend, renting a U-Haul or using an expensive moving service, you will use a local driver (background-checked and DMV checked) to haul the items for you,” Jacobs said. “And you’ll know the money isn’t going to a huge company, it’s going to a local driver from your community. We like to call the whole experience 'Social Hauling.'”
Photo credit: Flickr
