Roadie Reunites Delta Customers with Delayed Bags and Baby Groot

“I am Groot.” Everyone loves Marvel’s adorable tiny tree stalk. Eighteen-month-old baby Syl Lou is no exception. In fact, he demands his mom Jacquie read Night, Night Baby Groot each evening.

After a trip to Disney World, Jacquie brought home a dancing Baby Groot as a surprise for Syl Lou. But when she arrived at the carousel, her bag wasn’t there. And neither was Baby Groot.

That’s when our partnership with Delta kicked into gear. It’s not often that checked luggage gets delayed at Delta, but when it does, they count on Roadie to get it back into customers’ hands faster and friendlier than any other airline in the industry.

For Baby Groot and Jacquie’s bags, that meant only 30 minutes after she got home — with plenty of time to play before putting Syl Lou to bed.  

Our mini-Marvel adventure is just one example of how Roadie is transforming delayed baggage from a stressful mishap into a winning recovery. In fact, our Drivers have helped shorten Delta’s bag delivery times by 65 percent, while dramatically improving their customer satisfaction scores.

It’s exciting to see Atlanta hometown partners come together to transform the logistics industry. We see a future beyond inefficient and inflexible logistics models, where tapping into existing resources enables unprecedented efficiency, flexibility and sustainability. Delta has proven to be a true partner in helping us realize that vision.

It’s an ambitious goal, but we’re well on our way to getting there. Our Drivers have covered nearly 5 million miles coast-to-coast to reach more than 9,000 cities -- a larger footprint than Amazon Prime. And we just celebrated our third birthday.

Our partnership with Delta and their commitment to innovation has helped fuel our success. We launched our bag delivery program in 2015, and we now deliver for over 50 airports, including here in Atlanta, which boasts the busiest airport in the world.

Transportation is part of our city’s DNA. So when you bring a logistics powerhouse like Delta together with a startup that’s innovating in mobility, data science and crowdsourcing, you truly have the power to disrupt 100-year-old industries. As Delta COO Gil West says, “the west coast doesn’t have a monopoly on innovation.”

Thanks to our unique Collaborative Delivery model, which taps into unused space in vehicles already on the road, everyone from pilots, passengers and flight attendants to people working at Hertz and Burger King can make money delivering bags on their way home from the airport. They essentially get paid for going home, which is pretty cool.

And it’s not just the airlines. Roadie is helping retailers, grocers, and other businesses use existing resources —  employees, customers and other drivers within close proximity to stores — to ramp up same-day delivery with unparalleled efficiency, flexibility, speed and scale.

Surging consumer demand for urgent and same-day delivery has companies of just about every size and shape looking beyond traditional delivery models to stay competitive and improve their customer experience. In fact, nearly 90 percent of retail logistics executives say they’ll be using crowdsourced delivery within a decade. The opportunity is just staggering.

I founded Roadie on the principles of southern hospitality and neighbors helping neighbors. Our partnership with Delta really embodies that principle. Thanks to them, plenty of small businesses and other enterprise customers like The Home Depot, Tractor Supply Co., Macy’s and Kroger just to name a few, our collaborative delivery network is growing every day. We’re helping retailers, small business owners, eBay sellers, and occasionally a dancing Baby Groot. And just like one of the world’s largest carriers did nearly a century ago, we’re just getting started.