Established delivery services are convinced that such a move is imminent. They assume UberRush will use the same smartphone technology that allows businesses to summon vans at a moment’s notice and has already allowed it to carve deeply into traditional black cab and minicab businesses.
As in North America, UberRush is likely to target clients along the full spectrum of businesses from large corporations to small independent stores.
In the UK the prospect adds significantly to concern at Royal Mail, which is already grappling with inroads on its parcels operations by internet retailer Amazon. Royal Mail reported a 31 per cent drop in profits in the six months to the end of September 2015. Moya Greene, chief executive, had warned previously that Amazon’s move could halve the growth potential of Royal Mail’s parcels business over the next several years and hit other rivals. “When an online retailer of the scale and size of Amazon decides to build its own delivery network, that changes the market for everybody,” she said.
Gary Paulin, co-founder of equity brokerage Aviate Global, predicts that the traditional companies in the sector will not disappear but are unlikely to retain anything like their past domination of the market. However, Deutsche Post’s DHL Group suggests the business model of the US group will turn out to be “relatively niche”.