A working product · Live on the Mid North Coast
Town Runs connects people who need something from town with neighbours who are already making the trip, across 45 places around Coffs Harbour, Bellingen and the valleys. Designed and built end to end. These screens are from the app.
The problem
Out here the big shops, the hardware and the click and collect orders are in Coffs Harbour, and the bakery or the chemist you need might be one valley over. Driving there and back for one item costs the time and the fuel of the whole trip.
Meanwhile someone you know is already driving that way today. The trouble has always been finding out who, and sorting it without a chain of texts.
Town Runs makes that one tap. Ask once, and the people already going see it.
Phase 2
The pilot ran between Bellingen and Coffs Harbour. Phase 2 opens 45 places, from Dorrigo to Red Rock to Bowraville, and a trip can run between any two of them. Kalang to Bowraville counts as much as Bellingen to Coffs.
Nobody lists the towns along the way. When someone adds a trip, the app works out the road and every town it actually goes through, and shows it as “Also goes through”. Someone in one of those towns can ask too.
Going a different way, the back roads, say? Add a going via place and the road follows it. Trips run one way, there and back, or out one road and home another, and things can be picked up on either half.
How it works
Say what you need, where it’s from and what you’ll pay for the pickup. It goes to everyone whose road goes that way.
Someone already making the trip offers to do it. When more than one does, you choose who.
Once you’re matched, a chat opens between the two of you. Each step, confirmed, picked up, delivered, shows as it happens.
Pay the person who did it by PayID, PayPal or cash, then confirm it arrived and rate the trip.
The other button
Heading into Coffs on Saturday, or over to Bellingen every Tuesday? Add your trip and what you can pick up. People who need something see you first, and you choose which requests to take on.
A trip can be one day, a few days, or a regular thing. Everyone picks their own two places, and Browse shows only the trips and requests that fit them, in either direction.
The money
Whatever you offer for the pickup goes directly to the person doing the run.
And all it costs you is $1.
Trust
Profiles show a name, a rating and how many trips someone has completed. Every figure comes from real completed trips, never invented.
No messages from strangers. A conversation opens only between the two people doing the request together.
The trip isn’t finished until the person who asked says it was delivered. If something goes wrong, there’s a way to say so.
Your idea
Every app here started as one clear question about real life. If you have one, I’d like to hear it.