Executive Summary & Business Plan

HaulHitch is a marketplace for long-distance moves that do not need a moving company. A person with a household to move posts the route, the date, the size of the load and the trailer situation. A screened driver who is already driving that corridor claims the job, hauls the load, and is paid when it is delivered.

The price is computed up front from the real driving distance between the two cities and the size of the load, so the mover sees a firm number before posting and the driver sees the same number before claiming. Nothing is negotiated by phone, surveyed at the house, or billed by the hour.

HaulHitch earns on both sides of every completed job: a 10% service fee added to what the mover pays, and a 15% commission withheld from the driver payout. That is 25% of the job price per completed move, with no subscription and no listing fees. The web app is live and processing real payments, driver screening and Stripe Connect payouts are running, and the iOS build is in App Store review.

• Do it yourself: a one-way rental truck plus fuel, plus driving 12 to 20 hours, plus loading everything yourself. The one-way drop fee and mileage are the largest line items, and nobody helps with the actual work.
• Hire a mover: full-service van lines price from a survey, book weeks out, and are the most expensive option by a wide margin.
• Containers: cheaper than full service but slow, and the mover still loads and unloads everything at both ends.
• Meanwhile, drivers cross state lines with a truck and an empty or half-empty trailer every single day.

The gap is a firm, transparent price for: put my furniture on a trailer that is already going that way, and hand it back at the other end.

1. 1

   The mover posts the move: pickup and drop-off city and state, date, load size from studio to 4+ bedrooms, and the trailer arrangement. They either have their own trailer, have a rental, need a driver who brings a trailer, or need a driver who has a tow hitch installed.

2. 2

   The app prices it from real driving distance, a base fee, a per-mile rate and a load-size multiplier, plus an interstate surcharge when the route crosses state lines.

3. 3

   Screened drivers see open jobs on their routes with the price and the trailer requirements, and claim the one that fits their equipment.

4. 4

   Mover and driver coordinate in in-app chat, and the job moves through accepted, in transit and delivered.

5. 5

   After delivery the mover pays in the app. Stripe splits the charge: the driver is paid out automatically through Stripe Connect and the platform keeps its fees.

6. 6

   Both sides rate each other, and either side can report or block the other.

• Base fee of $175 covering pickup, drop-off and handling.
• Distance at $1.60 per driving mile, calculated from the real route rather than straight-line miles.
• Load-size multiplier from 1.0 for a studio to 2.8 for a 4+ bedroom house.
• A $250 interstate surcharge when pickup and drop-off are in different states.
• Rounding to the nearest $5, plus an optional $50 fee when a rented trailer is dropped at the destination instead of returned.
• Locked and re-verified: the charge is recomputed server-side from live distance at checkout, and a job whose price no longer matches is refused rather than charged.

The mover sees this number before posting and the driver sees it before claiming. There is no bidding and no surprise line item at the other end.

HaulHitch is a pure transaction-fee marketplace. It charges a percentage of each completed move and nothing else, so revenue only exists when a mover's goods arrive and the driver gets paid.

• Mover service fee of 10%, added at checkout with the total shown before payment.
• Driver commission of 15%, withheld from the payout, with the net payout shown before the job is claimed.
• No subscription, no listing fee, no pay-per-lead. Take rate is 25% of the job price, split across both sides of the transaction.
• Payments run through Stripe Checkout for the mover and Stripe Connect for driver payouts, with sales tax calculated automatically at checkout.
• Because the fee is a percentage, revenue scales with the value of the move as well as with volume: a local studio move is a small transaction, an interstate household is a large one, and the operational work behind both is identical.

• No driver can claim a job before passing screening: driver's license front and back, a live selfie matched against the license photo, proof of an installed tow hitch, a current state trailer inspection, and consent to a background check.
• Screening decisions are made by a person, and an expired license or inspection blocks the driver from working.
• Drivers only see jobs whose trailer requirements match their verified equipment.
• Coordination happens in in-app chat, and ratings, reporting and blocking are available on every profile, message and job.
• Data is isolated per user: movers see their own jobs, drivers see open jobs plus their own, and administrators see the screening and reporting queues.

• A firm price with no survey is the opposite of the moving industry's default, and it is the single strongest reason a mover chooses it.
• It uses capacity that already exists: for a driver already making the trip, the marginal cost is fuel and time, not a new trip.
• It sits between the two extremes: far less work than driving a rental yourself, far cheaper than a full-service van line.
• Both sides are gated. Screened drivers and up-front payment protect the mover; a firm price protects the driver from bargaining after arrival.
• Density is the product: every additional verified driver on a corridor shortens time-to-claim, which is what a mover is really buying.

U.S. household moves cluster heavily between May and September, and a large share are long-distance. That segment is split between full-service van lines at one end and rental trucks and containers at the other. The middle option, where someone else drives while the mover still packs and loads, is thin and largely offline.

• Seasonality cuts both ways: peak months carry the year, so driver supply on the top corridors has to be recruited before May, not during it.
• Two supply pools already overlap with the product: people who own a truck and trailer outside the big cities, and drivers relocating between states anyway.
• Trailer rental is a distribution channel. A mover who has already rented a trailer is the warmest possible lead.

1. 1

   Phase 1, months 0-3: corridor launch

   Pick two or three high-volume interstate corridors, for example the Northeast to Florida. Recruit drivers who already own a truck and trailer and run those routes. Keep supply tight enough that every posted job is claimed within a day.

2. 2

   Phase 2, months 3-6: prove repeatability

   Fill the same corridors to the point where a mover can post a date two weeks out with confidence. Add two-sided referral credit and partner with trailer yards, storage facilities and moving-supply stores where movers already are.

3. 3

   Phase 3, months 6-12: expand

   Open adjacent corridors only as supply allows, publish route-level pricing and driver reputation, and add peak-season capacity before the May-September window begins.

• Close the iOS App Store release, then ship Android from the same codebase.
• Driver acquisition on the launch corridors, with screening turnaround kept under 48 hours.
• Insurance and damage-claim workflow: per-job coverage terms and photo-documented condition at pickup and delivery.
• Corridor alerts so a driver is notified the moment a job appears on a route they already drive.
• Corridor analytics on claim time, fill rate and price acceptance to decide where to expand next.

• Driver supply on a corridor: launch narrow, recruit before demand, and never advertise a corridor that cannot fill.
• Damage or loss in transit: condition photos at both ends, documented terms at checkout, and coverage through an insurance partner.
• Regulatory: interstate household-goods transportation and brokering requirements vary by route, so licensing and any broker authority obligation are confirmed for each corridor before scaling.
• Price accuracy: checkout recomputes the price from live distance and refuses a job whose stored price no longer matches.
• Seasonality: plan the year around the peak and use winter for driver onboarding.

• Fill rate: the share of posted jobs that are claimed, the single number that decides whether a corridor works.
• Time to claim: how long a mover waits for a driver.
• Price acceptance: how many movers post after seeing the firm price.
• Revenue per completed job and effective take rate.
• Dispute rate per hundred jobs, and driver repeat rate.

HaulHitch is live on the web and processing real payments. Driver onboarding, document screening, in-app chat, ratings, driver calendar and route tools, and user guides in English, French and Haitian Creole are built. The iOS app is in App Store review.

The immediate priorities are the App Store release, verified driver supply on the first two corridors, an insurance and damage-claim process, and enough completed moves on those corridors to prove that time-to-claim stays under a day.