Global transport marketplace uShip has acquired Boxby, the Scotland-based courier exchange. The purchase expands uShip’s global presence and creates more significant localized opportunity for transporters.
The boxby.co.uk site will remain active throughout the incorporation of key uShip processes and functionality. Boxby co-founder Sandra Patterson will serve as a uShip consultant.
“Boxby has done an outstanding job organically establishing itself within a competitive UK courier services market,” said Matt Chasen, CEO and founder uShip. “Acquiring Boxby directly supports uShip’s current global expansion by helping to build on our already explosive UK growth, which has jumped 300 percent since last year.”
Ayrshire, Scotland-based Boxby and uShip operate similar and complementary businesses: each matches customers’ deliveries with extra space in transporters’ vans, resulting in fewer empty lorries on the road and more affordable delivery costs. Research shows a quarter to half of UK lorries operate virtually empty, while using uShip saves customers an average of 40-50 percent.
Sandra and Alistair Patterson started Boxby in 2007 after operating the online Lochryan Furniture Store for 20 years. By selling items through their website and eBay, they found that in nearly all cases, items sold were too large, too valuable or too heavy to post. Seeing the need, they created the Boxby delivery business. Today, over 2,500 couriers are registered on Boxby.
About uShip
uShip helps relieve the stress and high cost of moving hard-to-ship items, such as cars, furniture, pianos, boats, haulage, heavy equipment, pets and more. As the first and largest online transport marketplace, uShip connects people and businesses with feedback-rated transporters. Carriers place competitive bids to win business, often filling extra space in their trucks and saving customers an average of 50 percent. During its first five years, the uShip marketplace attracted pounds Sterling 100 million in business transactions, one million listings and 170,000 service providers. Launched in 2004, uShip operates globally with localized functionality in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, European Union and Australia.
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