I'm developing a Luggage Delivery business with a few partners. It now often costs $40 for the first bag and up to $125 to check your bags at the airport on your flight. Luggage Ahead will be a first class service where a major overnight carrier collects your bag before your trip, and has it waiting for you at your destination. There are currently luggage companies out there doing this same service, but at astronomical prices. We will be able to offer much more competitive pricing for the same services, truly making it more worthwhile to send your luggage ahead, rather than paying to wait and check it at the airport. We hope to be up and running by 2009 Thoughts? Update: We are open for business! We have, by a rather large margin, the best rates among all luggage shipping companies. If we could just get our SEO and search results to be the best among all companies! check us out. http://www.luggageahead.com
I think it's an incredible Idea SD. I love living in a Democracy, where a bad situation turns into a good situation for somebody else If you can really follow through on this, and the bags are delivered directly to my desitnation, I can easily see you being the next Bill Gates
as long as my stuff doesn't end up in jersey and your kids wearing my clothes............... good idea though.
thanks for the nice feedback. my family has been in the transportation business for amost fifty years. needless to say, we have many connections and contacts thoughout the industry. we do have an amazing opportunity to help the public and help ourselves.
Incredible idea. Everybody would use this, especially if the price is better. I'm sure you've probably already thought of this, but it would be great if you could schedule it and pay for it online ahead of time. Make sure you let us know if/when you get this off the ground. I'm sure a lot of us have contacts we could refer to your service.
Thank you my friend. And absolutely, its a call ahead, or book on-line service. We'd recover your bags a few days prior to your departure, and have them waiting for you at your destination.
I've been doing it for years. It was well worth it, even when there were no check in fees. Good luck with it. I'm confident it will catch on.
Awesome idea Seth. I would use something like that if I wasnt a ridiculously light packer. Anyway if it gets going Ill be happy to refer you business.
Thanks for all the positive feedback everybody. I do appreciate it. We hope to be running by 2009. I'll certainly keep you all posted.
With crappy service, numerous lost bags, and now charging not only for second bags, but FIRST bags, at quite high prices, the airlines are shooting themselves in the foot. There is definately a window of opportunity for a convenience company to come and do what your proposing. How nice that you dont need to lug your bags all over the airport, stand in endless lines to check them, recover them, pay increasingly high amounts of money just to be the last person at the carousel watching the last sad bags go round and round wondering what the hell city yours ended up in. Now you just get on your plane, fly off, and poof, there they are! Question ... by destination, do you mean at a destination airport, or do you take them right to the hotel/house/business of your customer. Either way, if its not very expensive, it could become quite popular.
The bags will deliver directly to your home, hotel(waiting with concierge), office, villa, wherever the consumer desires. Tracking and accountability is another plus too. Right now its a very high end luxury. A typical single 45 lb suitcase from NY to LA costs in the $300 to $500 range, depending on the level of service you choose, 2 day, economy, overnight. That's what existing companies charge. We're looking to blow these rates out of the water, at least by 30-50%. This would obviously make it more accessible to the average person.
Now this fee, is that solely based on actual weight or DIMM weight? Would there be a way to leverage size and weight to get the most of the packaging? Suitcase are quite bulky and also heavy when empty (I have a suitcase that is 15 pounds empty) would you offer packaging cases to clients? If the luggage is going door to door, then there wouldn't be the need for bulky suitcases.
suitcases don't normally dim out, so it'd be actual weight we'd be charging on(and actual weight these present companies are charging on). In instances of surfboards or guitars, that would probably be dim weight. We're going to develop a simple rate chart based on a variety of suitcase/golf bag/garment bag sizes. the goal is to make it as simple and fast as possible for the consumer. you raise an interesting point about offering packaging solutions. Theoretically, people could go buy a $2.00 box at Staples, and throw all their stuff in there. At the same time, we want to keep our identity as a luggage shipping company. But that is a notion to be considered. Perhaps creating a lightweight travel case, throw some logos on there for advertising, available for purchase at a reasonable price. The type of thing where if you used it once, it'd pay for itself. thank you for the interest. id be happy to hear anymore suggestions or questions!
Dude I'm just waiting for this thing to get off the ground. I have a high-end concierge client here locally I'd love to refer you to.
I appreciate that man. I'll certainly keep you updated. The goal is still to have a tangible operation running by Jan. 09'.
You haven't seen my wife pack lol! Huge ****ing cases, filled with shoes and 20 change of clothes for a weekend trip. No problems, hope it added a positive thought for how to separate yourself and also keep costs to you and client down. Down well I think it could add a different take. Plus at the hotel, you break the box down, store em under the bed and no more luggage clutter!
Awesome idea. I travel all the time ... this last trip it cost me $65 to check my bag ... and that was just one.
we're getting close. 6-8 more weeks and we should be open for business, helping make everyones lives a little bit easier.
When you get a website I'll give you a link on mine, preferred vendor, alliance. I have about 6 sites that I can do that with.
Thanks a lot man. I appreciate that. We're hoping the site is up Dec. 1, and we're operating by mid Dec. trying to speed things along.
no, international too, serving most countries in the world. however, our initial qoute system and web orders will only be domestic. international orders will need to be placed through our 888 number. thats how most of the other companies in this industry work.
the sites up! still have some tweaks and modifications to do, but for those interested, check it out! http://www.luggageahead.com
yes sorry, we had it up for a few days, but had to close it for a another week or two to finalize content. thanks for the interest...we're almost there!
I love this idea. I just flew back to vegas and i hate the luggage process. Waiting on the lines, checking them in, picking them up, making sure its under 50 lbs ect...its annoying...your idea sounds great! and next time i fly i would be interested in doing this. I leave vegas may 9th or 10th...let me know if its up by then!
Still loving this idea brother SD, and in fact with all the current things going on in regards to Airlines and luggage, I once again see this turning into gold. I imagine the Logistics are incredible, but hang in there brother, and I WILL be keeping an eye as Travel in my future could become a weekly occurance.
for relatively young guys, im 31, my bro is 42 and our partner 42...we have well over 50 years combined experience in the transportation/shipping industry. so yeah, there will def. be some headaches ahead, but nothing any of us haven't seen before. to quote Bruce Lee, we'll have to "Be like water", in the beginning and flow and contort to all needs and demands. But we should be so lucky to be scrambling to fill orders. I think we have a great company here, and have the rates and background to make a big splash in this not so well known service industry.
i had a dream you beat George St.Pierre in a UFC title fight, and your last name was Bellichek. I swear. freakin weird. but lets keep this thread about luggage.
Thanks brother. We're currently fine tuning our affiliate program, where they'd, (or anyone in the cust. service/travel industry) get 10% of the gross for getting their customers to use us. There's also a referral program for typical consumers who get up to 5% or 50 bucks off their next order. like i said, we're still working on these things, but its all coming together nicely. and if you google search luggage shipping, luggage shippers and a plethora of other scenerios describing what we do, we're already near the top of the sponsored links. now we're working on that organic search result ...which should take a few months. pay-per click is kinda pricey. but you or her can contact me through our website with questions regarding anything site related, if you are indeed interested in pursuing a more intimate relationship with the company. http://www.luggageahead.com