2020 was… well, it was a year.

Where do we even start to reflect on 2020? In so many ways, it was one big, terrible meme. But under all that, we were changed in profound and unimaginable ways. A lot of it was terrible. But not all of it.

While we were all stuck at home, many of us saw more of our families. We cooked more. We read. We built and made things that we’d been putting off for years. I finally got around to going on a diet.

Here at Roadie, the year was a wild ride — easily one of the most challenging and rewarding of my time as an entrepreneur. 2020 transformed delivery from a convenience to an essential service. In March, our team started working overtime to get drivers and customers the information and tools to keep themselves, and each other, safe. As the father of two teens and a 6-year old delivery start-up, I thought about safety almost constantly. We made changes to our platform and our operating procedures and asked our business partners to do the same. 

We rolled out Doorstep Delivery in March.

More than anything, we found ways to say YES. We scaled delivery capacity by the hour, day and week to meet demand for groceries, pharmacy, medical supplies, home goods and more. Overall, delivery volume on our platform grew almost 10X in 2020. We expanded our retail store footprint by 30% to more than 15,000 locations nationwide, and that doesn’t even include the demand from consumers, like you and me. We sent everything from office furniture to care packages to our friends, neighbors and family members when we couldn’t meet in person.

And what do we need most in a pandemic? Apparently, carbs. Unlike other on-demand delivery companies, food isn’t our bread and butter, but our bakery customers posted a whopping 43,000 deliveries to all of us at home stress eating. There were some days that Piece of Cake on Collier Road in Atlanta sent more Gigs than Southwest and Alaska Airlines combined. When the pandemic shut down in-store operations at national franchise bakery Nothing Bundt Cakes, we rolled out service to more than 100 stores and delivered more than 9,000 bundtinis alone. Honestly, I’d never even heard of a bundtini before 2020, but I can assure you a red velvet bundtini will cure what ails ya'. It was a silver-frosted lining in the middle of the crisis.

(One friend told me personally that she’d sent a birthday cake to her quarantined Mom and Dad on each parent’s birthday. That made me smile.)

Turns out when life gets hard, we need carbs.

We needed cleaning supplies, but we also needed tools and materials for home maintenance and DIY projects — not just in major metros, but in the small cities and rural towns in between. In less than 3 weeks, our Roadie team worked with the folks at Tractor Supply company to roll out same-day service to 1,462 new store locations, helping them become the first major general merchandise retailer to offer same-day delivery from 100% of stores. Throughout the pandemic, their 1,900+ locations have provided critical services for America’s heartland, where most delivery providers struggle to reach.

Likewise, The Home Depot’s delivery orders had spiked 500% by early April. Demand for large and oversized deliveries jumped more than 20%. With only 24 hours notice, our teams worked together to launch same-day service to more than 300 new Home Depot stores. That kind of speed is unheard of at a Fortune 100 company, but they were fully committed; we all made it happen because we had to. 

DIY drove massive growth in home improvement, as well as other categories like art supplies and automotive, and we launched huge expansions with both Michael’s and Advance Auto Parts. In fact, we saw more growth in automotive than any other category.

Same-day delivery demand spiked across all essential service categories, including grocery, pharmacy, medical and home supplies.

But surging demand for same-day delivery wasn’t just a retail problem. Roadies delivered PPE and surgical gowns to healthcare workers, and turkeys to food banks. And while folks were at home, they were collecting more than toilet paper and hand sanitizer. One driver carried a ceramic Bambi from Philadelphia to Bridgewater, MA; another delivered a pump organ in Grand Rapids, MI.

Here in our home state of Georgia, drivers got to play a small part in this year’s historic election, delivering truckloads of absentee ballot dropboxes paid for by Cox Enterprises for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

Some of the junk in our trunk.

Despite so many challenges this year, I’m proud to say, we got the job done. In fact, even with all the increased demand, our on-time-delivery rate was consistently high. That’s one of the great things about our ‘on-the-way” network — it’s remarkably easy to tap into latent capacity when you need it. The system just works. More than anything, we all just felt incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to make a positive impact during such a hard time.

Of course, none of that would have been possible without our drivers. Our community grew to 200,000 strong across the country, from Atlanta, GA to Zigzag, OR, and together they drove more than 27 million miles this year. That’s like 2,000 trips to Japan and back — driven by regular folks looking to earn extra cash, many of whom told us they found real purpose in being part of the solution. 

All in all, it was Roadie’s biggest year on record — revenue grew by 400% and we had our first profitable quarter ever. But Roadie has never been just about the numbers. This year reminded us that we’re a company and a community of real people. Neighbors, driving on the same streets we do, with a little extra time and extra space to give someone’s stuff a lift. 

Like Jiaxu in Bristol, Connecticut, who started driving with Roadie after the pandemic wiped out his family pet-sitting business. Or like Wanda, a retiree in Atlanta, who started driving with her husband at the start of the pandemic to earn extra cash. I got to meet them when they picked up a Gig I sent and they sent me pics from Fort Lauderdale in their Roadie gear — they turned their side hustle into a trip to the beach.

Check out our 2020 Year In Review for more stats about how Covid impacted delivery over the past year. It was a wild ride, and I have a feeling 2021 may be much the same. I don’t know what’s in store for us yet, but if nothing else, I hope there’ll be more cake.